Leah Giarratano: Vodka doesn't freeze

'Mercy, as I mentioned on the phone, I want to speak with you about some of your clients.'

'Of course, of course, darling, but first we must have a coffee, a glass of wine? How is your sister?' she said over her shoulder as she walked towards a sideboard.

Mercy's tangle of curls was more unruly than usual and hid half her face as she fussed around an espresso machine in a corner of the room. She turned to face Jill with a coffee cup in one hand, a wine glass in the other, wearing a questioning smile.

'Coffee, thanks, Mercy. Black. No sugar. And Cassie's fine.'

Mercy dropped the smile when she turned back to the sideboard. She sloshed red wine into a huge glass, then attended to the espresso maker.

'I've no more clients today. Might as well,' Mercy chirped brightly as she took a deep sip of her wine. 'Sure I can't tempt you? Just a glass. I picked this up in the Hunter last year. It's a gorgeous pinot noir. You have to try-'

'Mercy, I don't want any wine. Thank you.'

'Of course. No problem. I know you're working. Sorry.'

'Don't be sorry, Mercy. I appreciate the offer.' Jill curbed her impatience. She knew that interviews, unlike interrogations perhaps, should always remain positive. A collaborative atmosphere was required when gathering information from someone. She smiled. 'I really appreciate your time. You look like you've got a lot to do.' She gestured around the room.

Mercy looked at her office as though seeing it for the first time. 'It is a mess, isn't it?' She giggled nervously.

'You should seemy office!' Jill knew most people would be happy to eat straight off her desk, it was so clean, but she wanted to join with Mercy, reduce some of her defensiveness.

Mercy finished preparing Jill's coffee and brought it over to the low table. Jill noticed half of the wine Mercy had poured herself was already gone. Oh boy, she thought. Better get on with this.

'Mercy, I've got some news to tell you that could come as a bit of a shock,' she began, when Mercy had taken a seat. 'I'm in the middle of an investigation. Three men have been killed. Believe it or not, Mercy, each of these men was connected to patients you've treated in the past.'

'Are you serious? How extraordinary.'

'That's what I thought.'

'How can I help, Jill?'

'Well, I don't know. The thing is, in an investigation you look for patterns, anything that seems to link things together, and then you follow them wherever they take you. It's probably a little like your work, Mercy, searching for reasons why people have particular problems, looking for things that could have happened in their past.'

'Quite. Yes, I see what you mean.' Another deep sip left little wine in Mercy's glass.

'First I thought I'd tell you the names of the men who've been killed. Maybe you've heard your patients mention them.'

Mercy waited.

'Dennis Rocla, David Carter, George Manzi.'

Nothing.

'Mercy, have you heard those names before?'

'I don't believe so, no, Jill.'

'You're sure? Give it some time.'

Mercy finished her wine, set her glass down on the table. Too hard. The delicate stem of the glass snapped in two.

'Shit!' Mercy looked as though she might cry. She and Jill both stood.

Jill tried a small laugh to dispel the awkwardness. 'Flimsy bloody things. You know, my sister bought me six Riedel wine glasses. Supposed to cost a hundred dollars each or something. She got them duty-free. I've got two left! I'm going to have to go out and replace them before she comes over.'

Mercy took the broken glass to the sink. She seemed to draw herself together as she walked.

'Jill, I'm sorry you've had to come all this way. I don't think I can help you. I don't know these men.' She walked back towards the armchair, but rather than taking a seat, she fussed around with a potted plant, absently breaking off leaves, snapping them under her fingernails.

'I do not associate with men like that,' Mercy continued. 'I'm afraid there's nothing I can tell you.'

'Men like what?'

Mercy's face coloured; her eyes narrowed.

'Well, Jill,' she said, 'if these men are connected to patients of mine, I'm assuming that they had no positive influence in their lives. You know the people I work with are mostly victims of abuse.'

Jill let it slide, but she was puzzled. She'd come out here because she thought that Mercy could have an unwitting link to the killer, might unknowingly have some information she could pass on. But the psychologist was obviously very rattled; this was not the calm woman she'd consulted two years ago, and her last comments revealed she was hiding something. Or someone.

'Yep, well, you guessed correctly,' said Jill. 'Four of your patients have made complaints against these men. Let's see…' she consulted her notepad, although she knew the names by heart. 'Hailey Carter, Travis O'Hare, Giselle Forest and Carly Kaplan.'

'Ah.'

'I thought maybe if we talked about your patients a bit,' Jill continued, 'you might think of something that could help us find some sort of connection between the deaths of these men.'

Mercy walked to the glass doors and opened them. Scented warmth wafted into the room, soon obliterated by acrid smoke when Mercy lit a slim dark-brown cigarette. Gitanes. Jill remembered her smoking the French cigarettes in the courtyard during one of their sessions.

'Jill, I did tell you on the phone that I won't be talking about my patients. In fact, I can't. Unless I believe they, or someone else, is in direct danger because of something they have told me, I am obliged to maintain confidentiality about everything we might have discussed.' She blew a long stream of smoke into the courtyard. 'I'm sure you can understand my position. I can assure you, however, that I don't know anything about the deaths of those men.

'I can say though, Jill,' she continued after a pause, turning and looking Jill in the eye, 'that I'm not particularly perturbed about them having been killed. And to be honest, I don't know why anyone else would or should be.'

Jill leaned back in the armchair and studied her hands. She looked up at Mercy, framed in the doorway, arms held close to her body, her posture reflecting both anger and anxiety. This wasn't at all the way she'd thought this interview would go. On the drive home from the hospital, Jill was quiet. She told Scotty she had a headache, and while this was true, the main reason she wasn't speaking was because of the confusing thoughts chasing each other through her mind.

She couldn't shake the ridiculous notion that Mercy Merris might have actually killed these men. But this didn't seem to make sense. First of all, female killers did not typically bash men to death. And Mercy was a wealthy professional woman. Why would she do it? It had to be something else. Maybe she knew the killer, or suspected one of her patients and was covering for them. Maybe Mercy was just burnt out, and Jill was reading culpability into her exhausted anxiety. She could relate to that feeling. She chewed on skin around a fingernail.

Mercy had articulated the question Jill had not been able to rid from her mind all week – why was she investigating these deaths at all? Why was anyone? Before the interview had ended Mercy had said that someone had done the world a big favour, and it was pretty difficult to argue with her. Wasn't someone out there doing what Jill had signed up to do as a cop? Stopping child molesters?

She shifted in her seat, faced the window.

Was the killer planning more deaths? If another paedophile were killed, how many children would that save from being raped? She'd read once that one paedophile might molest up to seventy children in their lifetime. What was the right thing to do here? Jill didn't know any more.

It's unusual for so many to be here, thought Wayne Crabbe, darting glances around the room. He used a mirror beside him to surreptitiously observe his peers; he knew well that people here did not like to be stared at. An eclectic mix of men were scattered in heavy leather armchairs around what had been built as the ballroom of a sprawling harbourside mansion.