I went to Cyn’s funeral. It was a big affair with lots of people there from Cyn’s other life. People I didn’t know. Megan stayed close to Anne and I kept my distance.
Smith orchestrated things perfectly. The police moved in on the Tadpole Creek protest and closed it down. Examination of the site revealed four bodies of elderly people, all women, buried in deep graves. All this was kept hush-hush until the remains had been identified from dental records. The common link between them was that they were former patients of Dr Bruce Macleod who was arrested and charged with their murder. Smith kept me out of it and claimed that his investigators had made the link between Macleod, the site and the financing of the protest. I understand Miss Cartwright is going to give evidence against Macleod who, apparently, had some black marks against his name back in Britain.
For a supposedly smart operator, Macleod made some fundamental but understandable mistakes. Analysis of the remains showed that he’d apparently been experimenting with drugs and surgery designed to reverse Alzheimer’s disease. The old people were his laboratory rats and well selected because they didn’t have any attentive, caring relatives and when the cops learned that these missing oldies were dementia cases their interest and energy dropped. So far, so good. Macleod knew that disposing of bodies in the big wide world is chancy. A controlled environment is the go; but his controlled environment slipped from his control before he could do anything about it. The protest he backed was a holding action. With the Olympic juggernaut held at bay and only the protesters to deal with, he reckoned to have a fair chance of correcting his mistake.
Work at the site went ahead quickly and smoothly and the few press articles that attempted to make sinister connections between the Games and the ‘Tadpole Creek Graveyard’ were quickly forgotten.
I tried to get in touch with Tess Hewitt but her phone didn’t answer and when I drove out to Concord one sunny day with my explanations and a forty-dollar bottle of red wine at the ready, I found a For Sale sign and a neighbour who told me she’d packed up and gone to the north coast. A while later I got a postcard from her from Byron Bay with Mae West on it. I think I will go up and see her sometime.