In the bike shop Vince, with the salesman's easy grin, had taken one look at her — all six foot plus of her — and said, `Ma-te, you don't want a scoo-dah ! You want a real bike.'
It was decades since she'd last ridden a motorbike, and back then it had been a very small Honda 50. It would take courage to engage the clutch, grasp the throttle and kick back the stand of a big bike but she was ready for it. Wasn't she the woman, after all, who had risked life and limb to come to terms with her own demons just before she and Boyd got together?
She'd followed Vince through the showroom in a kind of trance. Rows of gleaming Harley-Davidsons as big and squat as ride-on mowers conjured images of beer paunches and long, grey ponytails. They had walked past a cute array of perky, pearly, pastel Vespas, until they faced a small gang of haughty Triumphs parked like so many stags at bay. There were Americas, Thruxtons and Scramblers, plus two Bonnevilles — one green, one silver.
Thirteen grand and a test-drive later she was two doors up the street shelling out another couple of hundred for a helmet, gloves and jacket, and starting to realise just how much damage a mid-life crisis could inflict on the credit card. Mid-life? Was 46 years-old really half way? There was no time to waste.
Three months later she was swooping down towards the hairpin bend known as Devil's Elbow, leaning low into the curve, knees hugging the tank, and feeling better than James Brown. The car park at Erskine House was crowded when Decca pulled up outside reception and hoicked the bike on to its stand. She was about to remove her luggage from the panniers when her mobile squealed.
`Decca?'
`Uh-huh,' she replied with all the enthusiasm of a check-out chick.
`It's Volker.' Her ex-husband's name had been flashing up far too regularly on caller ID lately.
`Where are you?' he whined.
`Why?'
`Sorry,' he said. `None of my business, I know.'
She and Volker Danehart had shared fifteen years of comparative wedded harmony until Decca's fortieth birthday, when her husband's aforementioned mid-life crisis and a gold-digging blonde from hell had collided with disastrous results. An expensive divorce, three young sons and a demanding trophy bride later, it was starting to look like Decca had got the better end of that tired old shtick.
`You're not away on that bike again are you?' he asked.
`Yeah,' she drawled. `I've joined the Coffin Cheaters. We're on our way to an initiation ceremony in Echuca.'
Volker laughed heartily for a few minutes then stopped.
`Really?' he asked.
`Don't you have to go to baby cricket with the boys or something, Volker?' asked Decca with a sigh. `Don't you have to go flat-packing at Ikea with Stacy? It's nearly lunchtime and I'm desperate for a drink.'
`It's eleven o'clock!' he exclaimed. `So, you are out of town?'
`Yes,' said Decca.
`Okay,' he said, a businesslike tone entering his voice. `Look, this is awkward, but the police have got a guy in custody who used to be a…' he hesitated, searching for the correct term, `…patient, or whatever of yours.'
`I'm a pyschologist, Volker,' Decca snapped, `not a GP. How do they know he was one of my clients?'
`They found an appointment card at his flat when they searched it.'
`Oh,' Decca said. `Who is it?'
`One Oleg Kransky,' Volker said. `Like the sausage'.
Decca felt a chill of foreboding.
`Why have they got him in custody?' she asked, although she somehow knew what the answer would be.
`Right then, gentlemen,' Archie said. `And lady,' he added quickly with a nod that earned him a blank stare in return. The various team members swivelled in their chairs, finished phone calls and turned to face the whiteboard.
`Okay, boss,' Davey said. `So, we've got the body of an adult female found on the morning of Friday, February 4, in the Newell's Paddock area on the western overflow banks of the Maribyrnong River in Footscray. The body was discovered by a man who had driven to the end of one of the back roads running beside the railway line.'
`Junkie's playground,' Archie said with a yawn.
Detective Senior Sergeant Archibald Stock was tired. He did not want to be back at St Kilda Road headquarters on a Saturday morning. The call had come just as he was pulling on overalls. The garden was still moist from Thursday's downpour and he was longing to get busy mulching.
`It is a pretty rugged spot, yes, boss,' Davey said. `The body was partially concealed in a plastic garbage bag. The witness noticed a leg protruding from the bag and made a call to triple 0 but didn't leave a contact number.'
`Surprise, surprise,' Archie muttered. At least it was relatively quiet in the squad room. The stultifying heat outside was soon forgotten thanks to mortuary-strength air conditioning. A faint aroma of microwaved curry hung in the recycled air. Phones rang intermittently and printers spewed out forests' worth of paper. Archie struggled to focus.
`We do have a voice tape if necessary, boss,' Detective Sergeant Morecroft piped up.
Archie gave the briefest of nods. Those clumps of hydrangeas near the front porch were going to burn if he didn't get shade cloth over them before the sun swung around to the back of the house.
Davey hunched over his computer and craned forward to read. His nose almost brushed the monitor. Morecroft rolled his eyes.
`Mate, get an eye test,' Archie said, `before you go blind.'
When Detective Sergeant Glen Crockett had joined the Homicide Squad a few months ago, Archie had nicknamed him `Davey' for reasons that were mostly lost on the younger members of the team. Crockett didn't mind. He was from the country; he'd been called worse. He was a good-looking bastard, even Archie could recognise that, but it hadn't won him any friends. A `prickly prick', was how Archie described Davey to Gwen.
`They were beating a path to his desk when he first blew in,' he told his wife. `All the girls had a go, each one thinking they'd do better than the last.' He chuckled. `In the end they all just threw up their hands and tossed him into the too-hard basket'.
`Maybe he's gay,' Gwen said. `The best looking ones usually are these days, love.'
`Don't think so,' Archie said, giving his head a scratch. `Anyway, he's married.'
`So?'
`There's a kid somewhere, too. Don't give me that look, Gwen. I've seen enough in my life to know whether a guy's a fag or not. And Crockett's not. He's just… quiet.'
Too bloody quiet sometimes, Archie told himself. And not the cheeriest of company at the best of times, but bloody good at his job. There wasn't much Crockett missed.
Sheets of paper sliced into the tray while Davey stood up and went back to the whiteboard.
`Okay,' he said, `we're waiting on the final report from Dr MacBride but we already know some things from what Archie and I saw at the autopsy. Firstly, we can rule out death by drowning.'
Davey picked up a marker and began to make a list on the board. `According to Dr MacBride the body was dead before it went into the water.'
Illegible handwriting, Archie noted. What did they teach kids these days?
`Secondly, the body was not in the water for very long. No attempt seems to have been made to weigh it down, although a more thorough check will be made to see if perhaps something, which later came loose, was attached to the bag. At this stage, it doesn't look as though the original intention was to submerge the body. Dr MacBride's initial estimate of the time of death puts it at about four days ago.'
`So, we're looking at Tuesday the first,' Archie said, as he strolled over to the whiteboard and changed the word `lose' to `loose'.
`Possibly Wednesday,'