Cold Justice (22 page)

Murray jangled the keys irritably on the way back to the car. Ella crossed behind him and yanked them from his hand. ‘Disappointed?’

‘She must still have feelings for him.’

‘After five years?’

‘She was with him for, what, fifteen? And then she leaves just like that?’ Murray said. ‘There’s no closure there.’

‘Sounded like she had plenty to me.’ Ella started the car.

‘As for that sleeping lightly thing – you can’t tell me she can be one hundred per cent sure.’

‘There’s no evidence.’

‘Wade’s ute wasn’t broken into.’

‘Those old things can be opened with practically any key,’ she said. ‘No need to smash a window when you can do that. Plus, it was hot-wired.’

‘Another extra touch.’

Ella turned west into spits of rain. ‘Don’t forget that the killing was accidental.’

‘That’s only what the court decided,’ he said. ‘May I remind you that the truth does not always out.’

Freya hid in the tiny run-down kitchen of the dead man’s house, sick with shame.

They’d finished at the hospital in silence, then responded on a call to this man, collapsed, and found him dead in his lounge room. Freya had asked Control to send the police, while Georgie had comforted his friends and explained this was normal procedure in all sudden deaths. Now the old couple had gone back next door, and Freya and Georgie were alone in a silent house with a cold, stiff body and the world’s biggest elephant.

Freya peered around the doorjamb. Georgie sat on the lounge by the body, her elbows on her knees and her head down. Freya’s stomach cramped with guilt and regret. When she’d first seen Georgie in the ambulance she’d felt alarm, yes, but also joy. Before everything changed that year in high school, they’d been great friends. Best friends. Although, she thought now, best friends probably shared more than she’d felt able to.

She turned away. On the wall by the whirring fridge a calendar said it was still 2005. The ceiling was covered in greasy dust, the air smelled of chops and the small window that looked out onto the back lawn was painted shut. A frypan, white with grease, sat on the grimy stove and a cockroach skittered into the drain in the sink. Freya kept her arms close to her sides and looked out at the rain-damp, overgrown lawn and thought about Tim.

It had started after a soccer match against Pennant Hills High. She’d been in Year Eight. Both the boys’ and girls’ teams had played, the girls first, and she’d come off the field exhilarated at their win, the blood pumping hard in her veins. She was supposed to go back to school, but had stayed sitting on the low fence, seeing the clods of dirt fly from the boys’ boots and the sunlight flash on their golden shirts. Afterwards she’d gone into the change room for a drink of water and Tim had been there. They’d started talking. She’d sat down on the bench. The room smelled of stale sweat and damp concrete but she could smell him too, his deodorant, his energy. He had reached over her to get his bag from the shelf and brushed up against her. She’d put her hand out, curious. She’d heard him breathe in. There was nobody else around. He’d slid his hand along her shoulder and the touch of his fingers on the bare skin of her neck was electric. Her hair had come loose from its ribbon and fallen down over his hand. The golden cloth of his shorts made ridges between her fingers and underneath it he was hard and trembling. She’d moved her hand and watched his face, curious, and as he came he clutched her shoulder and she’d felt power like nothing before.

The next time was at the movies. They’d bumped into each other at the shops. Fifteen minutes later they were sitting in the dark. She remembered his hands on her skin, the movement of his fingers, how she’d pressed her face against his shoulder, and the feeling of even more power.

Later, outside, he’d asked her to be his girlfriend.

‘No.’

He’d looked shocked.

‘Let’s just stick with this.’

It seemed easier, better. She’d seen girls with boyfriends, how they went everywhere together, the neediness on both sides. She didn’t want to be that way.

She glanced into the lounge room again. Georgie hadn’t moved. On the wall next to her hung a sepia photo of the dead man in his air force uniform. Freya had looked at it while Georgie checked the body when they’d first arrived. He’d been handsome in his younger days. She couldn’t tell what he looked like now because he was upside down over the side of the lounge, his skinny white legs pointing out of tartan boxers at the ceiling, his yellow soles motionless in the air. The five bottles of Anginine and three Nitrospray squirters dotted about the coffee table and the one fallen from his hand showed his poor health as well as his likely cause of death. She imagined him sitting on the lounge and looking at that photo of himself and wondering where the hell that young man had gone.

She made her foot scuff on the filthy linoleum but Georgie didn’t look up. Her heart hurt. When she’d been asked to do this assessment she’d known there was something odd going on – between that email, which nobody in their right mind could imagine that Georgie had sent herself, and Stronach’s mention of trouble at her home station, how could she not? She’d been determined to do a solid job, to judge the person only on her work, and to be fair even when other people in the service couldn’t, or wouldn’t. But now look. She was as bad as the rest.

But what could she do? If she admitted to the cops that she’d been with Tim, they would ask when and why it had ended. There was no way she could tell them that. Then they’d ask what she knew about his death, and she couldn’t tell them that either.

She had no other option.

She turned away from the unmoving Georgie and looked back out the window.

About a month after that movie, a month during which they’d met up in dark bus shelters, different cinemas, behind isolated classrooms and in bushland near the school, she and Tim had wagged afternoon classes and gone to his house. Everyone was out. He’d been sweating and nervous. He’d kept pulling back, asking, ‘Is that okay? Is that okay?’ She’d drawn him nearer and held him tight and felt his muscles tense against her. Again, more power.

And again he’d asked her to be his girlfriend. He’d been hurt by her refusal and threatened to not see her again. She’d shrugged and kept getting dressed. He’d relented, holding her hand, wanting to cuddle. She’d said she had to go.

Two weeks later she’d joined the after-school drama group with Georgie. That first afternoon the teacher, Dion Entemann, had gone around the circle of students introducing himself and shaking hands with each one. He was twenty-three, a man with strong hands and a sweet smile and knowledge in his eyes. With Georgie giggling beside her, Freya had smiled back, and squeezed his hand, and knew, just
knew,
that things were going to change.

There was a knock at the door. ‘Police.’

Freya was already at the doorway. Georgie jumped up from the sofa, and the legs wobbled but the body didn’t fall. They didn’t look at each other as they went to the front door.

The cops were burly, their belts heavy on their hips, a blue clipboard under the younger one’s arm. Georgie gave them the story, told them their names and contact details for The Rocks station, and said goodbye.

Freya walked outside, smiled at the neighbours, and got in the ambulance. Georgie followed, slamming her door and ramming in her seatbelt.

Freya pushed down her guilt. She had to be strong. She had no choice.

She just had to hope that Georgie didn’t decide that her threat meant Freya had something to hide and therefore she
must
call the detective, no matter what.

The rain had stopped by the time they reached Pendle Hill where Wade Tavris lived in what had once been a motel. Ella parked on the street and walked up the wet concrete driveway with Murray striding out ahead of her. At the driveway’s far end a graffitied wall and two dead eucalypts failed to block noise from the Great Western Highway. The front office door was painted and padlocked shut and a warped blind hung on the inside of the dusty glass behind a Bankcard sticker so faded it was almost white.

Tavris lived in unit five. Ella saw a number on the door to unit two and empty screw holes suggesting numbers on the rest. She stood to the side of five’s door while Murray knocked.

The door opened and a short, skinny woman looked out at them. Ella felt sized up and recognised in an instant.

‘He’s not here,’ the woman said.

‘And your name is?’ Murray said.

The woman considered either the question or her answer. ‘Sharon Fielding.’ Behind her a child started to cry. She looked over her shoulder and the crying stopped.

‘How long have you and Wade been together?’ Murray asked.

‘Four months.’

‘Mind if we have a word?’

‘Aren’t we already?’

‘I mean, can we come in,’ he said.

‘I know what you mean.’

Sharon didn’t move from the doorway. She turned her head to look inside the room again, her dyed red and blonde hair swinging stringily over her shoulder. She muttered something about coppers and stepped back.

The room was small and made even smaller by the chunky furniture squeezed into it. The air was damp. Toddlers’ clothes were draped along the back of a worn red velvet lounge while the toddler in question sat sucking his thumb and feeling a balding spot on the cushion. Sharon sat next to him and folded her arms.

‘He reported yesterday.’

‘We’re not here about his parole,’ Murray said.

Ella glanced about. The chairs by the table were piled high with papers, plastic bags, flattened beer cartons and clothes. The table itself was covered in car engine parts.

Sharon looked at the child and he looked up at her. His legs stuck straight out on the lounge and he smiled at her around his thumb and clapped his feet together as if in excitement. Ella couldn’t recognise anything remotely exciting.

‘How long have you lived here?’ Murray asked.

‘Couple of months.’

Ella saw a school tunic on a coathanger hooked on the handle of the broken pantry door. ‘How many of you?’

‘Four,’ Sharon said. ‘My older kids are with my parents in Doonside.’

‘One bedroom?’

Sharon tossed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘DOCS knows.’

The tunic was ironed, Ella saw; the iron sitting on a folded towel on the kitchen bench. ‘Is Wade working?’

‘Bits and pieces.’

‘It’s hard,’ Ella said.

Sharon looked at her as if that was the most stupid thing she’d ever heard. Of course it was hard. Ella wondered what it cost to live here and how it must feel to have no other option. The tunic was for a girl aged about ten and Ella pitied her, imag-ined trying to do homework here and how strong you would have to be to break free of this life. She looked at Sharon and realised too late that all this was showing in her eyes as Sharon straightened her spine and glared.

‘I’m sure you know the name Tim Pieters,’ Murray said.

‘That boy in Pennant Hills,’ Sharon said. ‘Wade dint have nothing to do with it. He’s not like that.’

Murray laughed.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘that arsehole at the pub was pissed and came at Wade with a broken bottle.’

‘We read the witness statements,’ Ella said.

Sharon rolled her eyes. ‘They were all friends. Wade wasn’t even s’posed to be there. He told me all about it. He was working with a removalist over there and they went there for one beer, and he went outside for a smoke and –’

‘Okay,’ Murray said.

‘It was only one punch,’ Sharon said. ‘He didn’t want to kill him.’

‘He did though,’ Murray said. ‘And we need to talk to him. Here’s my card. Have him call when he gets in.’

‘You see a phone?’

‘Or we can just come back at random times.’

She grunted. ‘He’ll use next door’s.’

Murray grunted back and walked outside.

Sharon let the card drop on the lounge. The child tilted his head against her arm and she encircled his leg with her fingers.

Ella nodded at him. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Devorn.’

‘Nice.’

Sharon shrugged like she knew what Ella really thought and didn’t care.

‘Bye,’ Ella said to the child, and he smiled at her.

Murray was already halfway down the drive, hands deep in his pockets. She was hurrying to catch up when a ute coated in grey primer turned into the driveway. The man behind the wheel looked at them, and she saw both that he picked them as cops and wasn’t surprised they were there.

‘Here we go.’ Murray turned around.

They followed the ute back up the drive. The man parked and got out with his hands on his hips. ‘What now?’

‘Wade Tavris?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know the name Tim Pieters?’

He sighed. ‘I saw that on telly and I knew you’d be back.’

‘I told them,’ Sharon said from the doorway.

‘I didn’t do it.’

‘Tell us again about that night.’

Wade smelled of sweat and dust. Up close he looked tired. ‘Read the statement I made back then. Read the notes they made when they came to talk to me again six years back.’

‘We have,’ Ella said. ‘We want you to tell us.’

Sharon stamped inside and slammed the door.

‘I was working as a brickie’s assistant at a site in Castle Hill,’ Wade said. ‘We worked that Saturday morning then went to the pub. In the evening I went to Jane’s flat in Hornsby. We had Chinese from this place down the road. We went to bed. The next morning I found my car was missing and I reported it. The day after that the cops turned up at the site. I did nothing wrong but I lost that job. Enough?’

‘You should know that we’ve just had a chat with Jane Lincoln,’ Murray said.

‘So what?’

‘She’s still got some issues with you.’

‘I don’t care what she’s got,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it.’

Ella said, ‘You know what’s interesting about old cases? We can now get DNA results from samples we couldn’t test before.’

‘And it’s funny,’ Murray added, ‘how often it’s somebody we looked at way back then who proves to be the culprit.’

Wade shrugged.

Murray stepped closer. ‘We’re telling you this because we like our suspects to be fully informed.’