Cold Justice (36 page)

‘White Volvo was registered to Andrea Entemann in 1990.’ He clipped in his belt. ‘Galea said good luck.’

‘Don’t need luck with our skills.’

He looked through the photos. ‘How did Paul Kingsley describe the thing the guy went back for?’

‘Long, like a bit of cloth, maybe like a tie.’ Ella gripped the wheel.
This could work, this could really work. If the item wasn’t too generic. But if it was, why’d he go back to get it?

‘This is what I like,’ he said, putting the photos back in the manila envelope. ‘Talking to witnesses, getting decent clues. Not that fairytale hoo-ha.’

‘Don’t dismiss it yet,’ she said. ‘If this goes nowhere, I’ll be back onto that like stink on a monkey.’

Her phone beeped.
wayn cmin to dnr tnyt, u2?
She blinked at the screen. What the hell was happening? How was it that he was going and they didn’t even know if she could go too? She narrowed her eyes at the plans they might be cooking up together, all no doubt to the soundtrack of wedding bells in her mother’s head. Well, whatever. She couldn’t deal with it now. Delete.

‘Here we go, here we go,’ Murray said.

‘Yes, we do.’

They grinned at each other.

Penny Flatt was carrying a pile of folders through the college’s office when they walked in. ‘Detectives! How nice to see you again.’

‘We need to speak to Dion Entemann,’ Ella said.

‘Certainly. Follow me.’ Over her shoulder, she said, ‘Were those photos of any use?’

‘They were good,’ Murray said. ‘Thanks.’

She smiled and tapped on a closed door with a brass plate saying ‘Principal’. A long bench ran along the wall and at the far end a teenaged boy slumped against the armrest.

‘Come in.’

Penny opened the door. ‘Detectives here to see you.’

‘Certainly, certainly.’ Dion was on his feet. ‘Come in. Pleased to meet you.’

He wore a grey suit with a white shirt and a grey and gold striped tie. He shook their hands. Ella kept hold for a fraction longer and looked into his eyes. He looked away.

This was going to be good.

‘Coffee for anyone?’ Penny asked.

‘We’re fine,’ Ella said.

‘I’ll see you later then.’ She went out and closed the door.

Dion sat behind his wide desk and laced his fingers. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you yesterday, but what can I do for you today?’

‘We’ve just been talking to your ex-student Freya Craig,’ Murray said.

He blinked. ‘I’m sorry – who?’

‘Also known as Freya Gregory.’

‘Hmm.’ He looked perplexed. ‘I’m not sure. We have so many students through these doors, it’s difficult to remember them all.’

For a one-time acting teacher he couldn’t lie for shit.

‘She told us everything,’ Ella said.

‘I don’t –’

Ella held up her hand. He stopped talking. She let him stew in his own juice for a moment. ‘Everything.’

He seemed to consider this, trying to decide how to respond.

‘A piece of advice,’ Murray said. ‘Tell us what you know and we’ll do what we can when it comes to charging you.’

His ears went pink. ‘With what?’

‘Sexual intercourse with a child between the ages of sixteen and eighteen under special care, that is, when you’re the teacher and she’s the student,’ Ella said. ‘How many years do you get for that again, Murray?’

‘Eight.’

‘Eight years,’ Ella said. ‘You feeling okay there, Principal?’

Dion had gone grey. He unlaced his fingers and shakily straightened papers.

Ella had no sympathy. There were things she needed to know, and it was about time this guy faced what he’d done nineteen years ago and learned to deal with it. She slapped the manila envelope of scene photos down on his desk. ‘Tell us what you remember about the night that Tim Pieters died.’

‘Who?’

‘Cut the bullshit or we’ll arrest you, call the media, and walk you out the front gate right on home time.’

‘But I remember nothing. Really.’

‘Tell us.’

‘But what’s to tell? What do you want to know?’

‘Every last thing you remember, whether you think it’s relevant or not.’

‘I used to pick her up from home.’ He was almost whispering. ‘She climbed out the window, she said her parents never had a clue. She’d meet me down the street. Our daughter was a bad sleeper and Andrea was always desperate for sleep, so I’d volunteer to take Chelsea for a drive because that always did the trick. We’d park somewhere, Freya and I, and Chelsea would sleep through everything in the back.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it myself. The risks that we took . . . We were stupid.’

No
, Ella thought.
You were stupid. You should’ve known better.

‘That night was the same,’ he went on softly. ‘She had a fit of the giggles because she thought her dad had woken up and realised what she was doing. Next thing she said she was busting and I had to pull over
now.
She got out and went into the bushes, then I heard her make this noise and got out to see what was wrong. And I saw that boy there.

‘Freya was freaking out. She made me touch him. I didn’t want to. She made me.’ He was rubbing his fingers and thumb together. ‘I can still feel his skin.’ He looked up. ‘Does that go away?’

Probably not for you.

‘He was still a bit warm, but he was dead. I just knew he was dead.’

He put his fingers to his nose then looked at them. Ella saw blood.

‘I had a nosebleed then too,’ he said. ‘I used to get them a lot. The doctors said it was stress.’ He took a folded handkerchief from a drawer. ‘I’ve had a few again lately.’

Ella wasn’t surprised and neither did she care.

‘The person who saw you and Freya at the scene, and described the white Volvo which was then registered in your wife’s name, saw another car pull up after you left,’ she told him. ‘We think it was the killer. He’d left something behind and came back to get it. We need to know what you saw there.’

‘The body,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Think for a moment.’

‘I’ve thought about it for nineteen fucking years.’ He lifted the handkerchief away but he was still bleeding.

She opened the envelope and thrust the photos in his face. ‘See if anything is missing.’

He turned his head away.

She stood and leaned across the desk so he had no choice but to see. ‘Open your eyes. Look.
Look.
’

This time he did so. Tears welled in his eyes.

‘What’s different?’ Murray said.

‘Nothing.’

Ella put her free hand on her hip.

‘I swear,’ he said. ‘I would tell you. I swear.’

Murray said, ‘What happened after Freya made you touch him?’

‘I said we had to get out of there. She was crying. She stumbled back to the car and I ran around the front. I tripped and almost fell over.’

‘In the grass?’ Ella said.

‘Actually I got my foot caught. I had to reach down and yank this thing off. It was a bit of black plastic, rubbery tubing type thing. My nose was bleeding and I grabbed up some of the leaves I’d bled on and threw them in the rubbish when I got home.’

There had been nothing collected from the scene that was black plastic or rubber or tube-like. ‘Show me where it was,’ she said.

Dion studied the photos and put his finger on a patch of grass. ‘Probably about there.’

Ella stared at the grass in the shot. Nothing like that was evident.

Dion tentatively cleared his throat. ‘What happens now?’

‘Get yourself a solicitor and wait to hear from us,’ Murray said.

‘And tell your wife,’ Ella said, her mind still on the missing item.
Where do we go from here?

Georgie slid her epaulettes onto her shirt. In the mirror she could see Matt frowning on the end of the bed behind her. They’d been over it and over it, and there was nothing left to say.

The phone rang and Matt got up. He brought the handset in. ‘It’s Control.’

‘Hey,’ the controller said. ‘Just calling to let you know your partner’s off sick tonight, and you’ll be working out of Wahroonga. Pick up a truck and head off when you get in. Hopefully I won’t need to use you on the way.’ Phones were ringing in the background. ‘Call me when you’re mobile.’

Georgie ended the call. ‘Freya’s off sick and I’m headed to the burbs tonight. Make you any happier?’

‘Not really.’ But he smiled.

Half an hour later she was pulling out of The Rocks station. She drove north checking her mirrors, on the lookout for any car that kept appearing, that seemed to be tagging along. Traffic was heavy. Going through St Leonards she noticed a white Camry change lanes to slip into a spot three cars back. She watched it in the mirror for a while then chided herself. Cars were changing lanes all over the place, every driver wanting to move one spot ahead in their eagerness to get home.

She heard her mobile beep while waiting at a red light in Killara.

Sorry for everything. Freya.

She smiled, and texted back.
It’s all good. Talk tomorrow.

The lights changed and the traffic crawled on. There looked to be three white Camrys in the crowd behind her now. She shook her head.
Enough of the paranoia.

At the Wahroonga station her shift partner was leaning against the doorway, drinking a cup of coffee. He smiled and nodded at the darkening sky. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

The phone rang before she could answer. He went to get it, and she hauled her bag out of her ambulance and slung it into the one parked on the drive.

He came out with a Post-It stuck to one finger. ‘Male with Downs, collapsed in Pennant Hills.’

They roared down Pennant Hills Road with the traffic parting before them like the Red Sea.

‘I’m Jim, by the way.’ He put out his hand and they shook.

‘Georgie.’

‘Nice to have you aboard.’

It was nice to be there. The air was tension-free. Jim didn’t yell at dithering drivers or stare daggers at her. She glanced in her side mirror and saw nothing suspicious, no white Camrys, and started to relax.

The house in Pennant Hills was not far from her childhood home and it seemed familiar. All the lights were on and the front door stood open. A woman called out from a window upstairs, and Georgie grabbed the Oxy-Viva and headed in while Jim was close behind with the drug box and monitor.

In the hall she saw a family photo on the wall and it hit her.
Tim Pieters’s house. His family still lived here.
She felt suddenly young and bewildered again, the sight of Tim smiling out of the portrait taking her back twenty years in an instant.

‘Up here!’

Jim said, ‘You okay?’

She took a big breath. ‘Fine.’

Upstairs she found the woman who she guessed was Tim’s mother in a bedroom. A heavy-set man in his thirties lay on the bed holding her hand.

‘Hi, I’m Georgie and this is Jim. What’s happened?’

‘Josh has a heart murmur and his GP just started him on some medication.’ Mrs Pieters held out a packet. Georgie didn’t recognise the name.

Jim took it and frowned. ‘Must be new.’

‘Tonight he came upstairs after dinner and fainted at the top there,’ Mrs Pieters went on. ‘He was lucky he didn’t fall all the way to the bottom.’

‘It was scary,’ Josh said.

‘I bet it was.’ Georgie knelt by the bed and felt his pulse. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’

‘No.’ Josh smiled. ‘Your hands are nice and warm.’

‘When he’d recovered a little I helped him in here,’ Mrs Pieters said. ‘I called my brother-in-law, who’s his GP, but he’s tied up with one of his palliative patients. Then I called his son, who’s also a doctor, and he’s on his way but said to call you in the meantime.’

‘You did absolutely the right thing,’ Georgie said. ‘How do you feel now, Josh? Are you back to normal?’

‘I feel okay.’

His skin colour was good, and he wasn’t sweaty or cold to the touch.

‘Jim’s going to put three sticky dots on your chest so we can see what your heart’s doing, and I’m going to take your blood pressure on this arm here.’

He held it out for her. She wrapped the cuff around his stocky upper arm and inflated it. ‘One forty on ninety.’

Jim was looking at the monitor screen. ‘Normal sinus of eighty-eight.’

‘So far so good, Josh,’ Georgie said.

A car door slammed outside. Mrs Pieters looked out the window. ‘It’s my nephew.’

Doctors on scene could be good or bad, helpful or obstructive. Georgie prepared herself.

‘Little stab in your finger here, mate,’ Jim said to Josh. ‘Just checking there’s enough sugar in your blood.’

Georgie patted Josh’s other arm to get his attention. ‘So have you fainted like that before?’

Josh stared at his hand where Jim squeezed a drop of blood out of his third finger. ‘What?’

‘Have you felt like that before?’

He shook his head.

‘He told my brother-in-law that he’d been having dizzy spells, though he never told us,’ Mrs Pieters said. ‘That’s why Alistair put him on this medication.’

‘Do you ever have any pain when it happens?’ Georgie asked him. ‘Pain in your chest or anything else? Or is it hard to breathe?’

‘My finger hurts,’ he said, still watching Jim, then he turned his head and looked behind Georgie as a man entered the room. ‘Hi, Cal.’

‘Hey, buddy.’ The man crouched beside Georgie. He had a friendly manner and an easy smile. ‘I’m Callum. Thanks so much for coming. How’s he look?’

‘All stable so far.’

‘BSL’s four point three,’ Jim said across the bed.

‘I nearly fell down the stairs,’ Josh said to Callum.

Mrs Pieters smoothed his hair. ‘He was right out of it for a couple of minutes. There were no warning signs or anything, he just climbed the stairs and fell over.’

Georgie felt his pulse again. Steady and strong. ‘How are you feeling, Josh?’

‘Fine.’ He sat up. ‘Good.’

‘Would you like to come to hospital and see the doctors there?’

‘I want to watch TV.’

Georgie looked at Callum and Mrs Pieters. ‘What’s your preference?’

‘He seems good,’ Callum said.

Mrs Pieters nodded. ‘Alistair said it would take a couple of days for his body to adjust to the medication and that this might happen.’