Cold Justice (15 page)

‘Nice evening,’ John said, startling him. ‘Sorry, I was tied up on the phone.’

‘Callum saved a bug,’ Josh said. ‘It’s over there now.’

‘I just wanted to ask if you’d talked with that detective,’ Callum said.

John nodded. ‘She was here earlier.’

‘Dad rang me to say she’d been out to see him. He’s concerned it’s digging up the past too much. That it’s not good for Aunty Tar.’

‘He rang to say the same to me, but Tar will be fine,’ he said. ‘You’ve talked with the detective too?’

‘Not yet.’

John nodded, and seemed to read something in his eyes. ‘Tar really will be fine.’ He squeezed Callum’s shoulder, and Callum saw his gaze focus on his hair.

‘The detective seems smart,’ he said, resisting the urge to move his hand up to his head.

John nodded. ‘I think she gets it. Thank you for doing this for us.’

‘I’m sorry it wasn’t done before now.’

John pulled him into an awkward hug then released him.

Josh patted his shoe with a wet hand. ‘Love you, Cal.’

‘Love you too, mate. I’ll see you later.’

In the car, Anna was reading the paper. ‘Done?’

‘I need to get a haircut,’ he said.

Back in the office, as the late afternoon sun slanted in the windows, Ella read the six-year-old notes in the Pieters’s file about Ivan Milat. John had indeed brought it up with the detectives then, and they’d checked it out thoroughly but found no links.

She turned back to the anonymous letter. She believed Georgie when she said she knew nothing more than what was in her statement. Ella had heard thousands of people tell thousands of stories, a goodly proportion of them complete crap, and she liked to think she had enough nous to at least pick when somebody was genuine. The way Georgie spoke about that day was totally convincing.

She put her notebook by the computer and typed in the name of Georgie’s road-accident victim.
Ivor McCrow
. Up he popped, a shining beacon of decency in society if ever there was one. Good old Ivor was born in 1980 and had a juvenile record dating from his fourteenth birthday, moving smoothly into the adult record on his eighteenth. Driving unregistered, stolen vehicle, stolen parts, drunk and disorderly, resist arrest – then the list ended on 21 September 2008.
Deceased.
Ella clicked through to the case listed by the date and read the details of the sketchy outline Georgie had told her.

Crap.

How awful to go through that, to do your best to save someone when your boss wouldn’t help you, to know they’d died because you happened to be driving on that bit of road at that time even though their stupid drunk-ass self shouldn’t have been lying there in the first place.

Ella entered the next name.
Barnaby McCrow.
He was two years younger than Ivor but had worked hard to make up for it, starting his juvenile record at twelve, doing everything Ivor did plus a spot of assault, a little welfare fraud, even a bit of drug dealing. Ella wondered how much the McCrows had really done, considering police could never catch everyone at everything.

There were two older brothers, Hamish and Francis, and a sister, Martita. They all had records for similar offences, Martita a few more with the drugs and less on the cars, and then Ella found their mother. Faye McCrow had been jailed for a year in the seventies after siphoning money from a bank where she’d been a teller, and had convictions after then for drug offences and welfare fraud. She looked like she’d been clean for the last five years, but perhaps she sat at home and taught the kids the ways of her world, an evil matriarch living off the proceeds of her teachings.

It wouldn’t surprise Ella to know that these people were indeed behind the letter, unconcerned about it misleading the case and not caring about wasting police time. To people like this, police were the enemy.

She typed in the name of Georgie’s old boss from Woolford:
Ross Oakes
. Like so many paramedics he was listed as having been a witness in a number of cases, but also appeared as a victim. She clicked through and read that he’d been punched by one of his own officers, who’d been convicted and given a bond.
And no doubt sacked
, she thought. In her experience paramedics tended not to beat each other up, and she wondered what was behind it, how much provocation there might have been. Maybe not much, if Georgie’s depiction of Oakes was accurate. She’d said that Oakes was some distant cousin of the McCrows, and that was one reason why he’d joined in the harassment of her, the other being that he was simply a bastard.

She sat back and stretched her shoulder. It was almost time to go. Wayne was bringing dinner over to her house, Thai from that takeaway place she liked, and the DVD of
The Wire
that was going around his office. It was one hell of a show but she was tired and needed coffee now to keep her going until then.

In the little kitchen, a silver-haired man in grey trousers and a grey shirt was looking at the hot water system. Ella remembered it was out of order.

‘Reckon you can fit it? Or should we hassle them for a new one?’

He turned to her with a frown and her world imploded.

Frank Shakespeare. Oh my God.

She reversed quickly, out of the little kitchen and back into the office.
Oh God.
If it wasn’t bad enough that she’d shouted at him that time years ago to get out of her homicide scene because she’d thought he was a nosy passer-by, she’d now mistaken him for a maintenance man. Ex-assistant commissioners didn’t appreciate such things. Couldn’t see the humour in it. She tried to smile at herself but she couldn’t see the humour in it either.

She sank into her chair, feeling sick.

What was he doing here? Once retired, that should be it: you went and you didn’t come back.

But perhaps more to the point was what was he doing here in the Unsolved office, where she still hadn’t learnt who her new partner was to be and where Murray had eyed her case like a thieving bloody seagull?

Georgie climbed the steps onto the Harbour Bridge and started north with her head down. Her scalp was tight and her shoulders sore. She still felt awkward around Freya, and not just because she’d been all over the place today, first interested when Georgie had told her about the accident, then moody and distant during most of their other jobs. Georgie wished she could believe Freya’s story about why she’d left school and forget that look of dismay, not let any of it bother her, but she’d never been that hard-shelled person and didn’t know how to become her now.

At least the shift was over. Now they had two days off and she could talk it all through with Matt tonight, clear out her head, and see things freshly on Monday.

The sun was going down but it was still warm. Her boots struck the concrete footpath evenly and it was a pleasure to be moving faster than the peak-hour traffic. Overhead the metal superstructure was dark grey against the blue evening sky, and her shadow stepped steadily along from one fence panel to the next. The Opera House shone in the sunset and tourists gathered at the fence and fired off their cameras as if the sails would be gone tomorrow. She smiled at one couple, who then said something to her in Japanese and held out their digital camera, pointing at themselves and at the Opera House and harbour behind them.

‘I’d love to,’ she said.

She stood with her back against the fence to the highway and snapped off a few shots, wide at first then zooming in. The couple said what she guessed was thank you and shook her hand. It was during this that she glanced south and saw him.

He leaned against the pylon, watching her.

She only realised she’d tightened her grip on the Japanese man’s hand when he said something and tried to pull away.

‘Another one,’ she said and reached for the camera.

They let her arrange them facing north. In the first shot, the man by the pylon was obscured behind the Japanese woman’s head. For the second one she stepped to the side and looked over the camera past the couple. The man’s face was impassive below his reflective sunglasses and he raised one hand in a lazy mock-salute.

She took the picture, and another, and another. The Japanese man said something.

‘Sorry,’ she said, but didn’t give the camera back, instead pressing the button to see the photos she’d taken. ‘If I give you my email –’

The Japanese man put out his hand.

‘Just a sec.’

She scrolled back and forth. The couple were there, the pylon behind them, the other tourists, but no man. She moved to shield the screen from the sun and checked again and frowned. She looked up. The pylon stood alone.

The Japanese man put his hand on the camera. ‘Thenk you.’

She let it go. The breeze picked up and whipped the smell of exhaust across from the traffic. She gripped the fence behind her and stared at the path to the south. It wasn’t possible. Was it?

A group of tourists came past, talking about how great the bridge was, and she realised the man could have stepped in behind them when he saw her aim the camera. And then he could have ducked in behind another group before this lot came too close. Just because she couldn’t see him now didn’t mean he wasn’t still there.

She set off north. She held her head high but the back of her neck prickled and the path home was long. She walked faster and felt in her bag for her phone.

‘Hi, this is Matt. Thanks for calling. Please leave your message and I’ll call you back.’

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way across the bridge. If you’re home, can you come and meet me, please? It’s such a beautiful evening, the water looks fantastic.’ She didn’t want to hang up. ‘Hope you get this, hope to see you soon.’

She kept the phone in her hand and glanced over her shoulder. A bunch of people were spread out across the path and keeping pace with her, fifteen metres back. She couldn’t see past them. She stepped out a little quicker.

The flags streamed in the wind high above her. Her breath came hard in her chest. A ferry foamed white water on the harbour and the footpath stretched out before her and she felt the urge to run. She looked back. The tourists had clumped tighter, forming a wall she couldn’t see through.

The breeze gusted and her skin went cold. The noise of buses braking and laughter from the tourists filled her ears when she so badly wanted silence to listen for running feet. She tried to get a grip, tried to be rational and think through what could actually happen, what were the odds. If it was Barnaby, what was he going to do here in broad daylight, with tourists and traffic passing by? If it wasn’t Barnaby, if it was . . . that other . . . then she had nothing to worry about. He couldn’t hurt her. She believed in physics and chemistry, after all, in the logic of the body, that when the heart stopped consciousness left and that was it. She’d seen countless people go and some come back, and it was like turning a light switch off and on: the circuit was either there or it wasn’t; there wasn’t some echo of the light left to float about and follow others.

Or so she’d once thought.

She wanted to run.

She was past halfway. She lengthened her stride. She tucked her bag against her side as if reducing wind resistance. The corners of her phone dug against her palm.

‘Hi, this is Matt. Thanks for calling. Please leave your message and I’ll call you back.’

‘It’s me again. Are you on your way? See you soon, I hope.’

She was on the downhill slope, she told herself. She was getting faster. He would have to get around the tourists and then catch up. She had run from things before, people, situations; the best self-defence tool a paramedic had was their feet. She could be fast, and the adrenaline she felt would make her faster.

She wouldn’t think about it not being Barnaby. She didn’t believe. She refused to.

She was nearing the northern pylon. She could see the end of their street down below. Pedestrians wandered, none of them identifiable as Matt. She dialled him again and this time didn’t leave a message.

She looked back. The tourists were still there, though they had dropped off her pace. She looked ahead to the stairs that led down to Ennis Road. The shops there would still be open. She could rush down the stairs and into a shop and pretend to be buying something for dinner. She could ring Matt again and wait for him in there.

She focused on the top of the stairs. Her back tingled with the feeling of being watched. She glanced back but still couldn’t see him.

‘Hey.’

She stopped dead.

Matt came up the last few stairs and took her arm. ‘You okay?’

Her heart started again. ‘You frightened the crap out of me.’

‘Sorry. I got your messages and thought I’d surprise you.’ He kissed her. ‘How come you’re all clammy?’

‘There was this guy.’ She pointed south. ‘Behind the tourists.’

‘Can’t see anyone.’

‘Wait till they come past.’

Even as she said it, Georgie knew he wouldn’t be there. He’d have turned and gone back the other way when she wasn’t looking. The tourists came by laughing and talking and the path behind them was empty for a hundred metres.

‘What was he doing?’

‘Just walking.’

‘Following you?’

‘It felt like that.’

‘Call the cops?’

She made a face. ‘I just wanted to get to you.’

‘But you were worried.’

‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘I didn’t . . . I mean, I thought it was . . .’

‘Who?’

‘Barnaby McCrow.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe we should call the cops.’

‘Nothing really happened.’

‘But this is the second time,’ he said. ‘You thought you saw him – or one of them – yesterday too. Otherwise you wouldn’t have wanted to know if they’d been seen around town.’

Thanks very much, Adam.

‘I don’t know for sure if it was him.’

‘If we report it, the cops can look into it,’ Matt said. ‘This could be serious. He’s got motive.’

‘What if we ring Adam and ask him to go and check for us?’

Matt was silent for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But if Barnaby’s not around, we make it official.’