Violent Exposure (30 page)

Smoke
 . . .

No.

It couldn’t be that. Nobody knew.

No.

E
lla pushed her lunch plate aside and took out her phone. In the office, Hepburn looked through Aidan’s statement for her and read out the mobile number he’d given. ‘Thanks,’ she told him.

‘Why is it you look like you’re going to enjoy this?’ Dennis said.

‘You have crumbs on your face.’ She dialled. ‘Ringing.’

Dennis grinned and sat back in his chair as if he was at a show.

‘Hey.’

‘Aidan, it’s Detective Marconi.’

‘I can’t talk now.’

‘Are you at work?’

‘Yes, but not in the ambulance.’

She remembered what he’d said to the doctor. ‘Filming an ad, are we?’

‘I have to go.’

‘We need to speak with you. Another body’s turned up. You are at risk.’

‘He hasn’t found me yet.’ Ella gritted her teeth. Dennis covered his grin. ‘This is your official warning.’

‘Ooh, now I’m scared.’

She so badly wanted to hang up. ‘We can’t be held responsible if –’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll be fine. Gotta go.’

She held the phone out in disbelief. ‘He hung up on me.’

Dennis said, ‘I’d better call and let him know that the biggest threat to his life is now you.’

Her phone rang again. ‘What!’

‘It’s Steve.’ The detective was breathless. ‘I got the hospital warrant and found the beach-blond guy’s
details. His name’s Jesse Locke and he’s just been admitted here again.’

At the hospital Ella got her badge out in the lift.

‘You’re like a kid on work experience,’ Dennis said.

‘Just saving time.’

The doors opened on Detective Steve Mitchell, mid-pace in the foyer. He hurried over.

‘Locke’s got no criminal record but was a witness in an assault once that happened in his job as a security
guard. That time he was in Emergency with Suzanne, he was admitted with chest pain and stayed overnight. He’s in the third room on the left. He’s got some heart thing but they said we can talk to him briefly.’

Ella’s excitement grew. If this man had been with Suzanne at the internet cafe, they were about to find out how she’d searched, and maybe what she’d discovered, and maybe, hopefully, please
God, the reason Connor had killed her and a clue to where he might be now.

They started down the corridor three abreast but Ella put on a burst of speed to reach the door first. She stepped into the room and a tanned and blond-haired man in his thirties looked her way. ‘Jesse Locke?’

‘Yes.’

‘Detectives Marconi, Orchard and Mitchell, New South Wales Police.’ Badge flip then away. ‘We’d –’

‘Oh my God.’ Locke put a hand on his chest. ‘Oh my God!’

Oh, crap.
Ella flashed back to a similar situation when a suspect she’d spoken to like this had behaved almost exactly the same way then died.

‘I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear it,’ Locke babbled. ‘Somebody’s dead and I don’t want to know!’

Ella realised he thought they were there for a notification. She stepped close to the
bed. ‘We’re not here for anything like that. We just need to ask you some questions.’

He screwed up his face and clutched his chest, then grabbed the call buzzer and pressed it. He didn’t look pale though, or sweaty.

‘Mr Locke. Listen to me.’

A nurse hurried in and pushed past Ella. ‘Jesse, look at me. Do you have pain?’

He nodded, his face still screwed up, and the nurse turned to face Ella.
‘You’re going to have to leave.’

Outside in the corridor, Dennis made as if to punch her arm. ‘Nice work.’

‘Who’d ever send three detectives to tell you some rellie’s dead?’

Another nurse bustled past and into the room.

‘Perhaps he’s faking,’ Steve said.

‘But it’s not like he can avoid us forever,’ Ella said.

‘He’s just avoided us for now though.’

Ella peeked in the door. Locke lay on the
bed with his eyes closed, murmuring to the nurses. They in turn talked in calming voices while one fitted an oxygen mask on his face and the other checked his blood pressure. She was just about to withdraw and tell Steve and Dennis that Locke appeared genuinely sick when he raised his head and looked her way. Their eyes met before he threw his head back down again, but in that split

second she
saw awareness, cunning and lies.

‘You’re right,’ she said to Steve. ‘He’s just pulled a fast one.’ Dennis and Steve went to look in too but the nurses shooed them away and shut the door.

‘Goddamn weasel,’ Ella said. ‘What does he
know
?’

*

Connor bit down hard on the rag while his panicked fingers searched the tape around his wrists for a weak spot and his mind went into places he’d kept closed
off for years. More than just closed off: bolted, and boarded, and chained. Now the barrier was gone and images flooded his mind.

He saw a plain boy named Robert in worn shorts and holey sneakers, scab-kneed, anxious-faced, inept at school, slow even to lose his baby teeth, a ducker at sports, and a stumble-footed breaker of vases whenever he was taken visiting; the ordinary son of struggling
parents but happy nonetheless in their little family. Then his dad had left, and it was just him and his mum, which was good too. ‘You’re my family and that’s all that counts,’ she’d say. He’d blossomed.

Until another man came along, a big fat man, filling their little house with his bulk and his voice, taking his mother’s attention away, talking constantly about his renovating and building work,
the MG he was restoring; and a few years later, when Robert was seven, twin blonde sisters had arrived. They were the most beautiful babies, and people came up to say so in the street, the local newspaper called to take photos of their smiling faces and dimpled knees, and Robert’s shorts grew more worn, the holes in his sneakers turned to splits, his ineptitude worsened, but the notes sent home
were thrown out unread, the seat opposite his teacher on parent-teacher nights went unfilled, and he read his homework reader to himself in a whisper after he was given no dinner for reading too loudly. From the age of eleven he was dressed by the ladies of the school P&C from the odds-and-ends bin in the uniform store. He didn’t bother to speak at home, never reminded them of his birthday – though
on the twins’ fifth he was made to spend the day leading a borrowed pony about while their friends hit him with the end of the reins – and told people he was adopted. He roamed their rural area at will, and once, when found asleep in a bus stop by a rare police patrol and delivered home, screamed that these weren’t his parents, this was not his house! He started using different names, feeling
like they were coats to put on and take off, as if each name came with a new persona, new background, new family.

He stole a bus pass from a boy at another school, a Connor Ravenswood, and, holding it out at a library, sobbed that he wanted his card in his old name, his real dad’s name not his stepfather’s name, and the nervous librarian patted him on the arm and said, oh honey, yes, anything,
divorce being a relative rarity in those days and she not having experience with that sort of thing. And what is that name honey? she’d asked, and through his tears he saw her nametag, Cecilia Crawford, and said, same as yours, maybe we’re family?, and threw his arms around her, so desperate for the human contact that she couldn’t prise him off and had to type the card one-handed with the other
patting his back.

He kept the library card in his pocket. He used it to get cards in the same name at video shops, and slot-car clubs, wherever he could, not to use but just to feel that he
was
this person. Connor Crawford was strong. Connor Crawford was his own person. Connor Crawford didn’t have to jump to the orders of a pair of six-year-old girls.

Connor Crawford had no family.

But now
 . . .

He had to think. He had to work out what to do.

If he was being kept alive until he realised the whisperer’s name, to say it would probably bring death. Therefore he shouldn’t say it. And the longer he delayed, the better chance there was of somebody finding him. He didn’t know how it would happen, but any chance was worth clinging to, because he had to get out of there and expose this
man for what he was, to tell the world who’d killed Suzanne and Emil, to say that he, Connor/Robert, was not a killer.

Not a deliberate one anyway.

*

That night Mick flattened out the mashed potato on his dinner plate and thought about Carly. The afternoon working together had been long and painful. He’d tried to make conversation, had asked about her auditions, but she’d gone into the women’s
locker room and not come out until the phone rang with the next case.

Jo said, ‘Did you go to Rozelle about Aidan?’

‘Not yet.’

‘How long do you think they’ll take to make a decision when you do?’

He shrugged. ‘You know them.’

He couldn’t meet her gaze. The money upstairs was heavy on his head.

She put her knife and fork on her empty plate. ‘You okay?’

‘Just tired.’

‘There’s chocolate pudding
too.’

He laid down his fork. ‘I don’t think I can manage anything more.’

‘More for me then.’ She smiled and rested her bare foot on his under the table. ‘Listen. I’ve been thinking I might start applying for jobs again.’

He stared at her. ‘But we decided that –’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But none of the others you applied for can fit around your shifts, and you can’t go full-time, and we can’t
afford more IVF yet, so what am I sitting around the house for?’ He didn’t know what to say. After much discussion with and encouragement from Jo and his doctor last year, both concerned about his worsening blood pressure and his difficulty sleeping then his slide into a dark despair after the terrible events involving Sophie, he’d gone part-time. The improvement in how he felt, how he saw the world,
was remarkable, then one month later Jo had been made redundant, and one week after that they’d found out she was pregnant again. They’d agreed that with their history of miscarriages it’d be best for her to not work for a while, and between her payout and his part-time wages they had no trouble with the mortgage and the bills, but then they lost that baby too. The cost then went up because they
needed genetic testing of each new embryo, and money got tighter with each successive implantation and then miscarriage, and now here they were.

His eyes filled with tears.

‘I don’t mind really,’ she said. ‘I’ll do project work and we’ll save as hard as we can then go again.’

Before we get too old
was the unspoken rider. Mick felt sick. He had the answer to their problems upstairs. They could
pay and she could stay off work and time wouldn’t beat them.

She reached across and took his hand. ‘It will really all be fine.’

Determination in her voice and her eyes.

He loved her so much.

He had to tell her.

He pushed his plate aside. ‘I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen and not say anything when I’m finished. Just think about it for a few minutes. Let it settle in
your head. Okay?’

She looked a little disturbed. ‘Okay.’

He took a big breath. ‘Yesterday at work –’

There was a knock on the door. He gripped her hand tighter. ‘Ignore it.’

‘It might be one of the neighbours needing help.’ Another knock, and a male voice called out, ‘Mick.’ Mick’s stomach turned over.
This can’t be happening
.

‘Who is it?’ Jo whispered.

‘Mick, it’s Aidan.’

‘Why is he here?’
Jo said.

Mick stood up. ‘Honey, go upstairs, please.’

‘Why?’

‘Please, just go.’

She frowned at him but went, and Mick walked to the door feeling sick.

*

Ella drove away from the office that evening feeling low. Jesse Locke’s doctor had told them that Locke really did have chest pain and showed them some apparently aberrant lines on an ECG to prove it (
top-shelf weasel, able to bring that
on at will!
), and maybe – maaaybe – they would be able to speak to him tomorrow. Meanwhile, a nightshift detective was posted on the ward so there was no chance he could give them the slip. There was nothing more they could do today.

When they’d got back to the office, she’d spent half an hour on the phone tracking down the security firm Locke worked for, then leaving messages for the owner,
an ex-detective named Ryan Dawson, in the hope of eliciting a promise of a stern talking-to, but Dawson never called her back.

The rest of the afternoon had crawled as they tied up loose ends while waiting for another break. A detective had spoken with Katie Notts’ neighbour who’d said Katie and Peta’s car had a hole in the muffler and he certainly would’ve heard if she’d gone out on the night
of the murder. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have taken a taxi, but without further evidence Ella was satisfied for now. Another detective had been looking into the Crawfords’ financial records, and found they had considerable debt on their house and business but their life insurance was nothing out of the ordinary.

She’d stepped outside at one point and called William Sheppard’s mobile, but
he hadn’t answered. ‘Just checking in,’ she’d said to his voicemail. ‘Talk to you later.’

She hoped he was doing okay, and had decided as she’d walked back inside that she would go to see her parents when she knocked off. She had to find out what was going on. She didn’t really believe in dreams and ghosts and visions, but sometimes you had to wonder.

Now she pulled into their driveway and turned
off the car.

*

Mick switched on the outside light and opened the door. ‘Say what you need to then leave.’

Aiden said, ‘I want more money.’

Mick stared at him.

‘You deaf?’ Aidan said.

‘So you admit that you stole it.’

‘I could say the same thing to you.’

‘You don’t know where it came from.’

‘Explain it to me then.’

Mick looked away then back at him. ‘What do you think’s going to happen
here? Where do you think this can possibly go?’