Leah Giarratano: Vodka doesn't freeze

She slumped against a chair and waited for Scotty. I need a holiday, she thought.

Claus Ziel and Belinda Behm had been walking for two hours, but Claus was insistent that they not stop and rest yet. Belinda moaned and hooked her fingers into his belt, forcing him to drag her up another slight incline.

'Not long, baby, it's not far to go,' he said, looking at his map, putting on an extra spurt to help Belinda up the hill.

Claus and Belinda had travelled halfway around the world together, backpacking, and today, at a waterfall he had read about two years ago in his dorm room in Germany, Claus intended to ask Belinda to be his wife. He looked back over his shoulder at her, red-faced and trudging gamely up the hill. So beautiful. She'd fallen behind a couple of steps, and he decided they should stop for just a moment. He could hear the falls close by. They'd stop for a drink and arrive refreshed. The moment should be perfect. He'd waited two years.

As Claus and Belinda shared a water bottle on a rock, deep in the bush in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, a fat blue-tongue lizard skittered off the path ahead to avoid the noise they made. It waddled into its favourite hiding place and looked back at the path, blinking. It flicked its cobalt-coloured tongue across one of its eyeballs and sat back to wait for the humans to walk by.

Many more years would pass before anyone discovered the lizard's hiding spot, the eye socket inside Jamaal Mahmoud's skull. Around the time Claus Zeil had been sit-ting on his bed in Germany two years before, planning this day, Jamaal Mahmoud's brother-in-law had thrown Jamaal's badly beaten body off the ravine fifty metres above.

The blue-tongue lizard shifted a little and went to sleep. Dr Leah Giarratano has had a long career as a psychologist. An expert in psychological trauma, sex offences and psychopathology, she has had many years' experience working with victims and psychopaths. She has worked in psychiatric hospitals, with the Australian Defence Force, and in corrective services with offenders who suffer severe personality disorders. She has assessed and treated survivors of just about every imaginable psychological trauma, including hostages; war veterans; rape, assault, and accident victims; and has worked with police, fire and ambulance officers.