Already Dead (21 page)

Aiden flicked his eyes to the activity inside the house – fingerprint powder being dusted on her dining chairs – then back at Jax. ‘No more questions?'

She hesitated, unsure, a little embarrassed. She'd heard his meaning: she'd given him nothing momentous, no nice mystery-solving piece to the Brendan Walsh puzzle, so it
was time to move on. It was his job, she got that. And she
was
an amateur. Just a stay-at-home mother with a fixation problem. Aiden was right. She was too close, her perspective had been skewed – and she clearly couldn't investigate her way out of a cardboard box.

He stood, lifted a chin to the cop at the door.

‘Actually …' She rose to her feet. He'd promised free rein on questions – and she had an obsession that needed a damn break. ‘I've got more questions and we've got a deal.'

Aiden told her that, deal or no deal, forensics got first priority. He didn't sit when he came out again, just stood with his feet apart, arms folded and mobile in hand – body language for let's-get-it-done.

He told her he'd have to stick to their bargain: answer her questions, not provide a running commentary on his investigation. His phone pinged several times with incoming texts and she wondered if he'd had it switched to silent before or whether he was suddenly in demand. Jax managed to hold him in place long enough to recount his discoveries of Brendan's whereabouts in the days before the carjacking.

Brendan Walsh spent the Friday and Saturday on a Secure Force assignment: a property protection detail driving from Sydney to Melbourne to pick up a woman's jewellery collection, then returning with it ahead of a removalist's van. Nothing suspicious about the job, no papers or documents in the inventory, all delivered well within the estimated time, customer satisfied. And why not, Jax thought. She'd transported her own meagre collection of jewellery in a toiletries bag.

Kate Walsh spoke to her husband for the last time via the landline in his flat late on Saturday afternoon. He told her there was an extra shift going; she accused him of wanting to stay away. Kate found several missed calls from his mobile on Sunday and Monday but nothing in the message bank, and she was unable to make contact with him. So far, Brendan's mobile hadn't turned up. Aiden was having forensics check the burnt-out car for any indications the phone was inside.

According to Secure Force, Brendan didn't have an extra shift over the weekend and didn't turn up to the one he'd volunteered for on the Monday. He'd been assigned as one of three bodyguards to protect an American actor during a whistlestop tour of Sydney and there'd been a scramble finding a replacement for him. Brendan's boss had tried repeatedly to contact him without success. Brendan's flatmate hadn't seen him since the Friday morning, when he left for the Melbourne job.

‘So that's two days he was out of contact,' Jax said. ‘In the car, he said he'd been holding it off for two days. I thought he meant he'd been trying not to kill himself.'

Aiden didn't comment. Well, it wasn't a question.

She pressed on. ‘The men who were waiting for me at my car last night – maybe they turned up at Brendan's flat or he saw them somewhere and he spent the time trying not to be found. Holding “it” off could have meant holding
them
off, couldn't it?'

‘We know one chased you. We don't know they were after Walsh.'

She dragged her teeth across her bottom lip. ‘Meaning they could have been
with
him before he got in my car?'

‘Meaning I'm not jumping to any conclusions.'

‘It's got to be connected, though, don't you think?'

‘I agree that's a possibility and I'd like to know where he was in those two days, but we can't assume he was being pursued by them.' Aiden's phone signalled another message. He checked its screen before continuing. ‘There could be other explanations. He could have been acting with them. He could have committed a crime and was evading police. Or Kate Walsh might have been right that he wanted to stay away – he could've been having an affair and was off on a dirty weekend.'

Jax straightened with surprise. ‘You think an affair's a possibility? That he spent the weekend with a woman then lost touch with reality.'

Aiden's phone pinged again. He didn't look at it, just spread his hands in apology. ‘Jax, I've got to go.'

She thought of his capable-looking colleague, Suzanne May, and felt a beat of self-consciousness. Was the detective constable texting so he could make excuses and escape? ‘Aren't you going to read it?'

‘I know what it says,' he shot over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

‘Stop wasting your time?' She made it sound like a joke.

He looked back at her. No guilt at being caught out. Not laughing, either. ‘We'll unravel it, Jax, trust me. But I've got to get to another crime scene.'

‘Oh, right.' She'd been prolonging someone else's drama.

Inside, the uniformed cop was gone and the forensics officers had their heads down dusting the living room. Outside, the courtyard was empty except for Zoe and her dolls. She was six, old enough to play on her own, but there were cops here – not to protect her but to collect
evidence of someone uninvited. ‘Zoe, baby, come inside while I walk the detective to the door.'

Holding Zoe's hand, following Aiden through the living room, Jax told herself to be grateful he'd stayed as long as he had. She eyed the well-sprung effortlessness of his legs as he climbed the stairs, figured if Brendan had remembered something about Afghanistan, it would take time to track the answer down. As well as contacts and a lot of phone calls.

‘I've got more questions, you know,' she told Aiden as he opened the front door.

‘I'd be surprised if you didn't.'

Sweet talker. ‘When do I get to ask them?'

A chuckle rumbled in his throat as he stepped off the threshold. ‘Give me a call, buy me a drink and bring a list.'

‘It might need two drinks.'

He slipped black sunglasses on. ‘Then you're buying.'

She grinned at his departing back for about two seconds before the amusement fell from her face. Was that flirting? What the hell was she thinking? She was holding her daughter's hand and he was a cop whose interest was now reduced to getting her victim support. Still … she'd thought her sense of male–female interface had died with Nick.

Taking Zoe upstairs, away from the fingerprint powder and the array of questions it would generate, Jax remembered Aiden's,
We'll unravel it
, and wondered if the ‘we' included her or just his team of real investigators. Ignoring the boundaries she'd wanted to establish, she helped herself to Tilda's fridge, throwing together a cheese sandwich and sitting with Zoe on the deck in the breeze, thinking about where she'd gone wrong with her research.

She didn't have access to the kind of information a cop might gather – at least, not in the three days since the carjacking. She'd approached it all like a feature article, as though her time with Brendan was one long interview and her job was to verify everything he'd said. Her speciality had been human interest, she looked for the truth in people, tried to give a sense of who they were while she wrote their story. She'd hoped to discover
who
Brendan was, hoped it might explain his intentions.

Aiden, on the other hand, was a cop. He wasn't interested in who but
what
Brendan had done in a timeframe that was relevant to a coroner's investigation. Information that proved or disproved, not ideas that suggested what he'd been thinking and feeling. Aiden assumed an affair or a crime or bad company as easily as he might assume Brendan ate toast for breakfast.

Maybe Aiden had seen too much. Maybe Jax was naïve and idealistic.

‘Hello?' a voice called.

Jax met one of the forensics guys halfway down Tilda's stairs.

‘I was told there was electrical equipment missing from up here.'

Jax pointed him to the TV unit and the walnut desk and watched with Zoe while he worked, fielding her daughter's questions and telling herself that Aiden wasn't shutting her out – he'd promised to answer her questions so long as she was buying.

Except he was considering culpability and collecting facts for an inquest. He wasn't interested in the level of desperation that made a person get in a car and point a semiautomatic pistol at a stranger.

The forensics guy packed up his kit and stood. ‘I think you've got a budding scientific officer there,' he said, nodding at Zoe.

‘I think she's aiming for interrogator.' Jax smiled.

‘We're finished downstairs. You can go back in there now.'

Jax made a start, straightening chairs, wiping off fingerprint dust and thinking. Of Kate Walsh.

Brendan's wife was stuck inside Jax now, like a splinter that was deep and sore in the palm of her hand. She wanted to figure out Brendan's message and give it to Kate so at least one of them could move on.

Jax checked her watch. ‘Come on, Zoe. We're going out again.'

‘Where to?'

‘A cafe.' To see a man who might have some of the information she needed to put it all together.

‘Can I bring my dolls?'

Jax glanced at the mound of them in Zoe's wheelbarrow. ‘You can bring two.'

‘Three?'

Zoe had been brilliant all day. A long, sensitive, fraught day. ‘Okay, three dolls.' Jax pointed to her cheek, leaned down for Zoe to kiss it, bundled her into a quick, tight hug in return.

She phoned for a cab, locked the house, made another call while they waited for it on the driveway and was told her car was ready to be picked up from a police compound in the city. She wanted it back; after the break in, she wanted to know she could leave in a hurry. But two men had found her Mazda on the street yesterday, so she figured
it could stay where it was for another few hours and she'd pick it up when she was ready to drive home again.

She dialled another number as the cabbie headed down the hill towards the beachfront.

‘Russell, it's Jax,' she said.

‘Hi, Uncle Russell,' Zoe called from the other side of the back seat.

Jax turned the phone as he called back. ‘Hey, Zoe-bear!'

‘We had some police at our place today,' Zoe said, as though she'd been dying to tell someone.

Jax returned the phone to her ear. ‘She's a blabbermouth. I wasn't going to tell you.'

‘Everyone okay?'

Her eyes drifted to the long, gentle curve of beach that stretched ahead of them. Sand the colour of egg yolk, an ocean fringed with the crisp white of breaking surf, all baking under a deep blue sky. ‘We're fine. We had a break-in. Some electrical stuff was taken. And my big laptop.' He was already worried about her – he didn't need to know she'd almost chased a guy.

‘Geez, Jax. Did you run over a black cat recently?'

‘Yeah, I hit a pack of them the day I left Sydney.' Could it just be bad luck? A random carjacking, a couple of overzealous guys looking for YouTube fame last night, a simple neighbourhood robbery today …

‘Daddy's files were all messed up,' Zoe called.

‘Shhh.' Jax pointed a warning at her.

‘You got Nick's files back?' Russell asked.

‘No.
My
files on Nick. They were dumped on the floor when someone went through the bedroom. It wasn't about the files, though.'

‘So the cops think it's just a robbery?'

The cab pulled up at traffic lights and Jax eyed the occupants of the car beside her. Young surfers – not anything like the men who'd chased her. ‘I don't know but I've got a theory, though. I talked to the detective about it at the house but came off sounding like Agatha Christie.'

‘Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple?'

‘Either is relatively humiliating.'

He laughed. ‘So what's this theory?'

Jax rolled her lips together, not sure if he'd be concerned or a good sounding board. Either way, he had access to sources she didn't have. Keeping it simple, trying not to say anything that might prick Zoe's ears, Jax talked him through the possibility that if Brendan had sensitive information, a ride up the motorway with the wife of Nick Westing might make a third party concerned.

The cab negotiated a corner before Russell responded. ‘What are the cops saying?' The reservation in his voice made her wonder if she was still sounding like Agatha.

‘About the break-in, not much. But Brendan Walsh was out of contact for almost two days before he got in my car. He had an argument with his wife on Saturday, didn't turn up for work on Monday and his flatmate didn't see him.'

‘You dug all that up?'

No, he didn't think she was Agatha. He was worried she was starting a new box of files. ‘No, the investigating detective told me.'

‘What, he just offered it up?'

‘Yeah, right. No, I made a deal. I gave him what I had in return for some information on Brendan.'

‘What
do
you have?' It wasn't reporter's eagerness. He sounded reluctant, as though the thought of her answer was making him wince.

She tried to tone down her attitude. ‘Just some notes I threw together. I talked to Brendan's wife, thought it might put things into perspective. You know, for her. For both of us.' When Russell didn't say anything, she added, ‘I made my material sound better than it is. I definitely got the better end of the bargain.'

‘Jax, what are you doing?' Reproach and concern.

‘It's not what you think. I'm not starting more files. I'm thinking about writing a story,' she lied. ‘You've been telling me I should start writing again so I'm, you know, pulling ideas together, thinking about where I might go with it, and the detective had information I thought I could use.'

Another pause. Maybe he was deciding whether to believe her. ‘Are you sure you want to start with this one? It's pretty close to home.'

The cab slowed and she saw the cafe up ahead in the next block.

‘It won't be a firsthand account of the carjacking,' she said. ‘Kate Walsh told me about Brendan's PTSD. I thought I might use that as the angle, unless something else crops up in the research.'

‘Well, you know I'd be happy to sort through a few angles with you. I haven't run a Miranda Jack by-line in years.'

Now she felt bad. ‘Thanks. Actually, you might be able to help. Have any of your guys spoken to Brendan's employer? It might be useful to know what he actually did at Secure Force and some of the clients he worked for.'

Russell's answer was slow in coming – either writing himself a note or wondering what he should give her. ‘I'll ask around and get back to you.'