Cold Justice (33 page)

‘Whores,’ Hilary screamed as Freya U-turned past her.

‘At least we know her lungs are fine,’ Georgie said.

Freya didn’t answer.

It was 5 am before they pulled back into the station. Georgie stomped inside and slammed the door. Freya stayed in the ambulance, arms folded on the wheel, watching the sky lighten with the coming day. She felt sick of herself, sick of everything. The night had been hellish. If it wasn’t already bad enough being around Georgie, the lying cow, who insisted endlessly that she hadn’t told the detective, they’d faced a stream of shitty cases, including a drunk at 1 am who’d smeared vomit all over himself and kept trying to grab her, and a domestic at three where she’d had to duck to avoid getting the snot smacked out of her by an ice user who was pissed because the cops were trying to protect her husband and children. Just now they’d been to an old man who’d slipped on the way to the toilet and been too feeble to get up again, and after they’d lifted him up, stripped him of his wet pyjamas, dried him and dressed him, listening all the while to his even feebler wife promise and promise that they could manage, don’t take him, he’ll die if you put him into a home, they’d helped him back to bed, and on the way Freya had become aware of things crawling on her legs. As soon as they’d sat him down on the yellowed sheet, she’d pulled up her trouser legs and found a bunch of fleas. She’d managed to catch them all but even now the thought made her reach down and scratch.

How had her life turned so bad so quickly? This time last week she’d been looking forward to meeting her assessee, planning how she’d ask her questions to test her knowledge, intending to do a thorough and proper job, and pass her if she was good enough or help her see what she needed to fix if she wasn’t.

But now here she was, having threatened and then been betrayed by that same assessee, on the brink of being investigated by homicide detectives, with the entire fabric of her life at risk of unravelling if somebody got hold of just one thread.

1990

It was quiet and dim inside the hall. The rest of the drama group had gone home, Georgie included. Freya had walked out with her then turned back, saying that she was thinking of entering the eisteddfod and wanted to discuss monologues with Mr Entemann.

Now she locked the door then walked up behind him. He dropped the prop hats he’d been packing away, looking first nervous then shocked as she slid her hands around his waist.

‘This isn’t . . .’ he said. ‘I mean . . .’

She moved her hands down across his hips then turned him to face her. He was breathing fast.

‘I can’t –’

‘Yes.’ She pulled him close and kissed him, and felt his hands skim her back.

‘Really?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

He was different from Tim. She clung to him, her back pressed against the wall, his thighs so strong beneath her, his knowledge clear in his eyes and his hands. She had to fight not to bite his shoulder.

Later, she sat on his lap, comfortable in the silence between them while his fingers stroked her back through her uniform. Crickets started up in the gloom outside.

‘I should go,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Say I’ll see you again next week,’ she said. ‘Or sooner.’

He smiled.

He unlocked the door and they went out together, close but not touching.

‘Slut.’

She spun around. Tim stood by the shrubbery, stiff with rage, a broken cricket stump in his raised hand.

‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Dion wrenched the stump out of his hand and threw it away.

‘We were talking about the eisteddfod,’ Freya said.

‘For all that time? Yeah right.’

Freya shrugged and went to walk past but Tim blocked her way. ‘I know what you were doing.’ His voice was shaking.

He couldn’t know:there were no windows and the door had been locked. ‘We were
talking
about the
eisteddfod
.’

Indecision crossed Tim’s face.

Dion put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s just all go home, eh? You need a lift?’

Tim jerked free. ‘Get your hand off me.’

‘Calm down,’ Dion said.

‘You’re my girl,’ Tim said to Freya.

‘I’m not yours, I’m not anybody’s,’ she said. ‘Just go home.’

‘I’ll tell,’ Tim said.

‘Tell what? We were talking about –’

‘I’ll tell!’ His voice rose shrilly in the gloom, then he turned and ran away across the grass.

Dion stood close to her. Close but not touching. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I better make sure I go in that eisteddfod now.’

Tim hadn’t told. He followed her around the school at a distance over the next few weeks and lurked outside the hall when drama group was on, and eventually Freya and Dion took to meeting late at night.

Dion’s daughter, Chelsea, had bad reflux and he would put her in the car and go for a drive so his wife, Andrea, could sleep. He would come past and Freya would sneak out of the house and, with Chelsea oblivious in her capsule in the back of the Volvo, they’d go park somewhere. Dion made her feel good, made her laugh, and sometimes had to put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

Her parents never suspected a thing. She’d felt a little guilty about that sometimes, but really, what she was doing seemed no big deal.

Until that night.

After that, she’d been relieved when her mum had freaked out and insisted they move. More than relieved: she’d been downright glad.

The phone rang. Another job. It was twenty to six. Seagulls were already aloft in the pink and blue sky and Freya stared up at them through the windscreen as Georgie stamped back across the plant room.

Oh God, she was so tired. So sick and so very tired. She needed . . . She didn’t know what she needed. To talk? She thought briefly about ringing Dion when the shift was over, then remembered she’d deleted his number from her received calls log yesterday.

It didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing to say.

Callum was already running late when he detoured to West Pennant Hills, but what Anna didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. He’d say it was traffic, and that somebody should do something about the state of the roads in this place, and she’d laugh and let him be.

He pushed open the door to his father’s surgery to find the waiting room empty. His mother looked out of the staffroom. ‘Tea?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine.’

He went in there. Tamara sat at the small table and clutched a mug with both hands. Her eyes were red. Genevieve rested a sisterly hand on her arm.

‘Your father’s examining Josh,’ she said to Callum.

‘Is he okay?’ Callum asked.

Tamara welled up. ‘I brought him in for a check-up, but your dad just told us Josh said he’s been having dizzy turns. I didn’t know anything about them.’

Callum walked through the waiting room and knocked on the office door. ‘Dad?’

‘Come in.’

Josh lay on the examination bed with his shirt off, patting his belly. ‘Hello, Cal!’

‘Lookin good, Joshy.’

‘See the octopus on me?’

He was hooked up to the ECG machine, the leads connected to the six tags stuck across his chest and one on each of his arms and legs.

‘Nice.’

Alistair frowned at the ECG printout on his desk. Callum looked over his shoulder.

‘This look okay to you?’ Alistair said.

‘Yes.’

‘Josh told me he’s had some little dizzy episodes and I thought there might’ve been something here to explain it.’

‘Maybe a twenty-four-hour monitor might be the go.’

‘I have already thought of that.’

Callum heard the edge and softened his voice. ‘I wasn’t telling you what to do.’

Alistair didn’t reply.

On the bed Josh slapped a rhythm on his stomach. Callum turned to him. ‘When do you get dizzy?’

‘What?’

‘There’s no pattern,’ Alistair said. ‘It’s not even every day.’

‘When was the last time?’ Callum asked Josh.

Josh frowned at his handfuls of white belly.

Alistair lowered his voice. ‘He’s embarrassed. He won’t tell you anything about it. But at least he’s admitted it to me, and now I can help him.’

‘I’m okay,’ Josh said.

‘It’s all right, buddy,’ Callum said to him before turning to Alistair. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m thinking about antihypertensives.’

‘He could lose some weight.’

‘You know how hard that would be for him. He could arrest before then.’

‘But –’

‘He’s got the heart murmur, his weight, hypertension, and he’s having dizzy spells. Plus Tamara’s lost one son already.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Callum said. ‘You’re his doctor.’

‘That I am.’ Alistair pulled a prescription pad out of a drawer and started writing.

Callum watched him for a moment. ‘Quiet in the waiting room today.’

‘Economics,’ Alistair said without looking up. ‘People want bulk billing and I can’t afford to do it.’

‘So they’re not coming any more?’

Alistair shrugged.

It seemed odd to Callum. People loved his dad, had loved his granddad too, and kept coming because they wanted the whole family tradition thing. There’d been considerable pressure for him to join the practice too and keep it all going. People liked continuity of care, and why wouldn’t they?

‘That’s the only reason?’ he asked.

‘Why else?’ Alistair signed the script, tore it from the pad and folded it in half.

‘Speaking of drugs,’ Callum said, ‘I came to tell you that I talked to a friend of mine, a rep for a drug company. He’s sending out some adrenaline and so on to restock you.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Dad, you need this stuff. He’s sending it for free.’

‘Do I get a lollipop?’ Josh said.

‘I’ll see if I can find one,’ Alistair answered, then said to Callum, ‘What are the odds of it happening again?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’re a doctor and this is a surgery. You need to have it on hand.’

‘No.’ He fossicked in the desk drawer.

Callum stared at the top of his father’s head. His hair was thinning out. His father was old, he realised.

‘Look, I can run you through it. I’ll write you out a drug chart, what to give when. It’ll be simple.’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘It’s not easy to remember all that stuff when you hardly ever use it, that’s all,’ Callum said. ‘In hospital we have the information stuck on the wall, plus there’re always other people to ask. Here you’re on your own.’

‘I don’t need your help.’ Alistair produced a misshapen yellow lollipop in wrinkled plastic. ‘Put your shirt on, Josh. We’re all done.’

Josh buttoned up his shirt then accepted the lollipop. ‘Thank you.’

Callum sat back in the chair. He would have his friend send the drugs regardless. If by some shocking chance he was here when somebody else arrested, at least he’d be able to do a bit more than the average first-aider.

Josh jumped down. ‘Am I good?’

‘You’re a doozy,’ Alistair said. ‘Let’s go see your mum.’

‘Bye, Cal.’

‘Bye.’

Callum was left sitting alone in the office, thinking about his father, and the future, and the past.

‘Coffee,’ Ella said. ‘I need coffee.’

Murray didn’t look up from his reading. ‘Plenty of hot water in the kitchen.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ She slumped into her chair. ‘A proper partner would run and make me one.’

‘If you’re tired because you’ve been up all night shagging it’s no concern of mine.’

‘Ha,’ she said.

Shagging was the complete opposite of what had happened. Wayne had called round, knocking at the front door until she’d heard him over the shower and grabbed a towel and gone to let him in. He’d tugged at the towel but she’d kept it firmly in place and it pretty much all kicked on from there. No, he couldn’t see a problem with giving her parents a mobile. Wasn’t it great to keep in touch? Why was she so angry? There was no need to shout! Blah blah. Slamming doors. Crappy sleep, thinking,
I am right, aren’t I
?

‘Earth to Ella.’

‘I’m here,’ she said irritably.

‘Penny Flatt from Macquarie College emailed some more photos of Freya Gregory.’ Murray clicked the mouse through three pictures of girls playing soccer. ‘This is the best one.’ It was a side view of teenaged Freya with her hair tied up in a golden ribbon, watching something intently. ‘I’ve emailed it to Chris Patrick but not heard back yet.’

Ella nodded.

‘And I’ve just put the Kingsleys into the computer.’ He turned his monitor so she could see.

‘Interesting. Has she rung?’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But somebody else rang Crimestoppers and said it was her on the CCTV.’

He handed her the report. This caller was a librarian and knew Danielle Kingsley as a regular borrower, and was one hundred per cent certain it was her in the picture.

‘Let’s go,’ Ella said.

At the Kingsleys’ house Murray rattled the cowbell and Ella stood with her hands on her hips. The woman who answered was in her early forties and had short, dark hair and Ella recognised her immediately from the CCTV tape.

‘Danielle Kingsley,’ Murray said. ‘You never rang us back.’

She flushed.

‘Mind if we come in to talk?’

‘There’s really nothing to talk about,’ Danielle said. ‘I have no clue about any of it.’

‘Let’s sit down and chat, shall we?’ Ella moved closer to the door and put her hand on it.

‘Kelly said something about a car? I only have my red Mini.’

‘How about we sit there?’ Ella pointed past her to a lounge. One end was piled high with folded washing. She could hear the toddler laughing somewhere in the house. ‘Let’s just have a little chat.’

This time when she moved closer, Danielle gave way.

When they were inside, she shut the door and picked up the washing and put it in a basket. ‘I don’t know anything about anything.’

‘Where’s Paul today?’ Murray said.

‘Out.’ She sat at the table and held the basket on her lap. N
ice defensive wall
, Ella thought.

‘Where were you on Sunday night?’

‘Here.’

‘Alone?’ Murray said.

She looked at the floor. ‘Yes.’