Direct Action. J D Svenson

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      ‘So … what’s up?’

      Brian glanced up. ‘Michael will fill you in.’

      There was a sheet of paper on the couch next to him and Michael leaned over to pick it up. He passed it to her. ‘Brian’s ex-wife emailed him the link this morning.’

      She read. It was a copy of the front page of The Age. GOTCHA, screamed the headline in capitals, above a half-page image of a smiling young woman in school uniform. In the colour photo her face was ruddy, the cheeks pink as if she’d just come in from the cowshed.

      ‘Holy fuck,’ she said, looking closer. ‘Sorry, I mean—’ She reddened, glancing up, but her gaze was drawn back to the page again. ‘Gosh.’ She slurped her tea, reading: A 22-year-old woman was taken into custody last night in relation to the NSW power outage. Charges under Commonwealth terrorism laws are expected. ‘They got someone.’ Outage, Cressida thought. Bit of an understatement.

      Brian remained silent, his face concealed in his coffee cup. Then he looked up at a photograph on the opposite wall. In it rows of smiling young women on bleachers wore red and navy sports uniforms, a set of hockey sticks crossed in front. Ascham. It was the Ascham hockey team. She’d played against them at PLC.

      ‘Two hundred thousand dollars in private-school education,’ he sighed. ‘Down the drain.’

      Cressida wasn’t sure whether they were talking about the girls in the photograph now, or somehow the girl in the story – or some combination of both. All she knew was that things seemed to be going weird. She grasped for something to say, but Michael stepped in again.

      ‘Cressida,’ Michael began. Then the doorbell rang. ‘Ah,’ he said, with palpable relief, standing up. ‘That must be Sandra.’

      He crossed to the front door and a moment later there was the clop of heavy heels on parquet, and a large woman in a two-piece suit and rimless glasses entered. ‘Sandra,’ Michael beamed, standing up. He shook her hand then turned to Cressida.

      ‘Cressida, this is Sandra Crane. You probably know she’s a criminal defence barrister. Among other things.’

      Criminal defence barrister? Cressida stared at the frizzy-haired woman in front of her. Last Cressida had read, the woman before her had been in The Hague, defending the former Syrian president against charges of torture and genocide. A Senior Counsel renowned for winning impossible cases, she had seen three of Australia’s most notorious murderers acquitted on appeal, one following a Commission of Inquiry twenty years after he’d been put in gaol. Cressida didn’t know whether to shake her hand or curtsey. She chose the former.

      ‘Cressida,’ Sandra said, appraising her with cool grey eyes.

      ‘A … an honour to meet you,’ Cressida said, sweat springing out on her palms and making her want to wipe them on her trousers. She resisted.

      ‘You’re a jolly champion for coming, Crane,’ Michael said, kissing her cheek. It seemed like a brave move to Cressida but she figured they must be well enough acquainted. ‘Coffee?’

      ‘Black thanks,’ said Sandra, and sat down on an armchair opposite.

      There was the blare of the coffee machine again and over it Michael called out, ‘How was the Netherlands?’

      ‘A bloody circus,’ the woman answered, putting her bag carefully beside her on the floor. Her tone was soft but emphatic, her voice deep and somehow both authoritative and laconic. It was such a contrast to how Cressida spoke, she thought, she who always found herself speaking quickly and loudly, to get everything out in case people moved on before the end of what she was saying. Sandra, however, sounded as if she knew every word she said would be strained for, and probably written down, so there was no need to make sure people could hear her. How wonderful that would be, Cressida thought. To know people were going to pay attention. To not have to make an effort to make them.

      ‘Is that the girl?’ Sandra asked, flicking her gaze at the printout. Brian handed it to her. ‘Young,’ she observed.

      ‘That’s what I thought,’ Cressida said.

      Sandra glanced at her and continued, ‘Where is she? Silverwater?’

      Brian’s eyes strayed back to Cressida. ‘I don’t know. That’s the first thing we need to find out. The article just says she turned up at the temporary cop van at Muswellbrook LAC.’

      Michael returned with the coffee and passed it to Sandra. As he sat down Brian started speaking, almost to himself.

      ‘She always was so bloody passionate about things. Used to fly into a rage at the slightest injustice when she was a child. Then of course she had to go to Iraq. Iraq. As if she wasn’t mad enough already.’

      Sandra took a small square container out of her bag and opened it to tip two small white tablets into her coffee, then stirred it. Cressida was wondering how Brian knew so much about a terrorist’s biography, and also what all this had to do with her, but mainly she was thinking that what he was saying and Sandra being here, at least it didn’t sound like it was going in the direction of a dismissal conversation, so she allowed herself to relax a little.

      ‘You seem to know a lot about her,’ Cressida said.

      Brian looked at her. ‘I should do. She’s my daughter.’

      ‘What?’

      Brian nodded. Cressida thought that maybe she shouldn’t sound so appalled. But she didn’t know how she should sound. There wasn’t anything in her internal Hannes Swartling handbook for this. She felt flustered and embarrassed, as if he had just put a bucket of offal in her lap. It would have been less awkward if he’d said the girl in the paper was his teen lover, for God’s sake, or a love-child from his past, who was now a hooker up on drug charges or extortion or, God, anything but terrorism. Then, she would have flicked to ‘understanding’. Compassionate. Non-judgemental.

      But this information made her feel instead like she might vomit. She looked across at him, trying to keep the judgement out of her eyes. Immediately she found herself thinking about what the hell had gone wrong with his parenting that his daughter had ended up in this mess. Her second thought was the photo. The girl had gone to Ascham?

      Cressida swallowed and turned her gaze to Sandra, just for somewhere to look. The other woman’s pale grey eyes were inscrutable though, and Cressida’s discomfiture slid straight off them. No help there. I guess you’d have to be pretty impassive to defend a war criminal, Cressida found herself thinking. Above such base notions as judgement.

      ‘But’ – she picked up the paper off the table again, speaking just for something to fill the silence, and scanned it – ‘it says here explosives offences.’ And hang on … Liddell? Wasn’t that one of the power stations owned by the client they’d met with on Saturday? She looked at Brian. Wow. He was seriously in the scato.

      ‘For now,’ Sandra said, sipping her coffee.

      ‘The thing is, Cressida,’ Brian continued quietly, regarding her, ‘we both know that when scandal gets out in the legal fraternity, it’s really hard to live it down.’

      Cressida felt herself flush to the roots of her hair. She glanced again at Sandra, unsure whether СКАЧАТЬ