I looked at the screen again. At Russell’s face. The presence of Russell as a match to the mystery DNA profile offered me hope for a moment. Russell wasn’t in a direct paternal line to Chris. He was Chris’suncle. I googled again.
Can Y-STR DNA test link uncles and nephews?
The answer made me sink in my seat.
This testing can be used to establish if two men come from a paternal line, which can include relationships such as siblings, uncle/nephew, cousins and many other possibilities.
There were two possibilities. My father and my son. Arthur had an alibi. Chris didn’t. And Chris was on camera.
‘Fuck.’ I banged my fists against my skull. ‘Fuuuuu—’
A horn blast right next to me made my stomach leap into my chest. I turned and looked, saw Bridie’s face across the road’s centre line, behind the window of Russell’s Mustang. She rolled her window down and I rolled mine down, and Russell leant across her to frown at me.
‘The hell is wrong with you?’ he asked.
I lifted my laptop from my lap, so that it was visible to the two of them. I had to swallow hard before I could form words. ‘Technological issues,’ I managed.
‘You get the swab results yet?’
I couldn’t answer, sat breathing and staring at them. Bridie’s eyes were wandering over my face, probably taking in the changes since the last time she’d seen me. Five hard years and one of the worst days of my life unfolding right now in real time.
‘Because if you haven’t yet, you need to get your arse back to where I sent you!’ Russell jabbed a finger at me.
‘I got them,’ I said.
‘Well? Was there a match in NCIDD?’
Help, Russell, my brain screamed.Help me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No match.’
Russell gave a disappointed click of his tongue and leant back in his seat. Bridie smiled at me. Her hand was hanging out the window a little. She waved, her fingers out of my brother’s sight, and I waved back, and their car pulled away.
RUSSELL
The moon was high by the time we left town. It turned the ghost gums on either side of the road a cold blue. Bridie drove with her eyes hard on the road, leaning forward too far, the way P-platers do. I was glad she took the corners with care as the road ascended quickly out of the valley, not just for the sake of the ’Stang’s paintwork but because beyond the guardrail the land dropped off at a sickening angle, sheer walls studded with huge blocks of yellow sandstone. Wallaby country. I reached over and flicked on the high beams for Bridie without saying anything, but she did a little embarrassed wiggle and touched the lever where I’d touched it, as though assuring me she would have done that herself eventually. I settled in and called Gail Caplan, then the guys from Chloe’s apartment, then three other people. I was clipped, getting through the calls in mere seconds, disappointed about the lack of a DNA match for Chloe’s killer. I reminded myself to ask Evan when I got back to Redbelly just how far the techs were into their testing. Were these prelim Y-STR results, or were they the full shebang? I made a note on my phone.
The headlights flashed on a property with a wrought-iron sign hanging out by the driveway. Grevillea Lodge was perched up another steep embankment, a cantilever house with huge glass walls overlooking the valley. The whole building was lit gold. Bridie parked on a river-stone driveway and yanked the handbrake up ina way that hurt my teeth. ‘Okay.’ She gave the strained sigh of the anxious performer. ‘Let’s do this!’
The oversized oak door of the house opened on a spacious entryway, revealing a slender woman in a shapeless cream linen garment I’ve known rich women to wear; somewhere between a dress and a tunic. Cult-leader chic. Bridie hung to the side with her rescue cage and seemed to want me to introduce myself first, but I didn’t. For an agonising few seconds nothing happened, until I gestured for Bridie to take the lead. ‘On with the show, kid.’
‘Oh, uh, right.’ Bridie stepped forward, clutching the cage to her chest. ‘Hello. I’m Bridie Powder. I’m here with Wildlife SOS?’
‘Well, thank god.’ The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Yes. Hello. Welcome.’ She turned and shouted over her shoulder into the house. ‘Damien! Damien, they’re here! The wildlife people!’
Bridie stepped into the house gingerly, moved to the side again to let me go ahead. I put a hand on the small of her back, pushed her forward. ‘What are you doing, Birds?’ I murmured. ‘You’re the wrangler, not me.’
‘Oh, I just figured you would want to, uh …’
‘I don’t want to do anything.’ We followed the linen-wearing lady through the enormous house. ‘This is your gig, Bridie. Go work your magic. I’m just the offsider.’
Bridie seemed taken by some shot of confidence. We walked into a lounge room straight out ofHabitus Living. Bridie set the cage next to a similarly expensively dressed man: mid-fifties, with the general look of someone gently and expertly dusted off with botox or fillers, the same as the woman. Bridie introduced herself and I hung around with my hands in my pockets, gazing at the view of the violet-dark valley and feeling poor.
‘We started hearing the noises around three o’clock this afternoon,’ the woman, who’d introduced herself as Myra, told me. She was gesturing to a pot-belly shaped fireplace standing in a corner: a boxy, detached thing with four legs. ‘We don’t know if it’s a bird, or a rat, or a possum, orwhaton earth we’re dealing with.’
‘What kind of noises did you hear?’ Bridie asked. The couple turned to her. They’d both been staring at me, and I was slowlygetting the sense that they thought I was the leader of this whole operation, the way Bridie herself had for reasons I couldn’t fathom. The couple glanced at each other, then my teenage daughter, who was opening the cage and spreading a towel out on the base.
‘Just scratching,’ the guy, Damien, said. ‘Scratching and clawing. Whatever it is, it seems to get partway up the flue and then falls back down with a thud.’
