Silent Fear (26 page)

‘Fuckin bullshit,’ the man said. ‘She’s hurt and I’m just trying to get her some help.’

‘Yeah, and she can stay, but you have to go,’ the nurse said.

The man put his face close to the screen. ‘You’re a fucking power-hungry little weevil, aren’t you, sitting behind your wall.’

The guard tapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s enough, mate. Outside.’

The man smiled into his face. Ella saw the wild light in his eyes and the furious energy in his face. She glanced at the guard’s belt. He had pepper spray and handcuffs, but both were in neat leather pouches with closed press-studded flaps. In a ring at his right hip hung an extendable baton, and his palm rested on the top but he didn’t seem ready to use it.

‘I’ll go out when this shithead gets my girl some help.’

‘You’ll go now.’ The guard took hold of the man’s arm and turned him towards the door.

The man let him do that much, then used the momentum to swing right around, dropping one knee and driving his fist into the guard’s stomach. The guard folded over and the man raised his fist again.

Ella boosted the gaping little girl over the line of chairs into the safety of the row behind, then yanked out the gasping guard’s baton and flicked it to its full length.

‘Police! Get on the ground! Police!’

The idiot swung a left hook at her jaw. She twisted out of range, then snapped the baton down on his forearm, feeling its weight strike deep into the bone.

The woman with the sore foot kicked her in the back of the leg. ‘Leave him alone!’

The man growled and tried to grab her and she hit him again, this time on the shoulder. Something cracked and he yowled.

Ella was panting and shaking from the adrenaline. She raised the baton ready to strike again.

The man hissed at her but sank to the floor, his left arm hanging loosely by his side.

The woman tried to kick her again, but lost her balance and stumbled. The guard tried to grab her and she fell into the weeping grandmother’s lap. Ella seized her arm and hauled her down beside the man. He had a lump the size of a lemon pressing up against the shoulder of his T-shirt.

The woman saw it and started wailing. ‘You fuckin bitch, look what you did!’

The guard leaned one hand against the arm of a chair, pressing the other hand to his stomach, trying to get his breath. Ella took his cuffs and snapped one around the man’s good wrist, then reached for the woman’s. She tried to pull away but Ella grabbed her skinny arm and clicked the cuff shut around it, then stood up straight.

Under the crying of the three children, the room had a peculiar silence. She saw the way the mother and grandmother looked at her, how the teenagers had moved way back to a corner and everyone else was staring. Violence did this, she knew. People saw it on TV and in movies so often, they never expected to feel so shocked and upset when it happened before them in real life.

‘Sorry,’ she said to the room.

The guard put his clammy palm on her arm. ‘Thank you.’

‘Bitch,’ the man on the floor said.

At the counter the nurse was on the phone. Doctor Callum McLennan stood behind him, the door at the back of the room still slowly closing. Ella met his gaze and found it impossible to read. She turned her face away, searching for the round blue eyes of the little girl, but she had her face pressed into her mother’s waist and Ella could see only the back of her head.

TWENTY-TWO

I
n the next hour, the man was cuffed to a treatment bed to wait for X-ray, the woman’s foot was judged to be only bruised and she was taken by uniformed police to the local station to be charged with assault and possession of the marijuana found in her pocket, the guard was fortified with a cup of tea and able to continue his work, and Ella sat waiting in the same family room she’d been in just two days before with Seth Garland and paramedics Holly and Joe. She sipped sugared coffee and pressed her fingertips to her temples and tried to shake off the uncomfortable feeling that had descended since the fight.

The door opened and Callum put his head in. His gaze was direct and flat. Ella thought he was going to tell her to leave, she could get nothing without a warrant, but instead he said, ‘Follow me.’

They went into a small stark room with an examination bed, two chairs, a desk and computer. A cardboard file lay facedown beside the mouse.

‘Have a seat,’ he said.

She did so and took out her notebook. If he was going to turf her out now she could at least make it look like a surprise.

He sat behind the desk and folded his arms on the top. ‘How’s your leg?’

She looked up.

‘The nurse said the woman kicked you.’

‘I’ve hurt myself more rolling over in bed,’ Ella said.

Callum smiled.

She kept her mind clear. ‘I need some information.’

‘There are policies about this sort of stuff.’

‘It’s a murder investigation and now people are missing.’

His eyes looked grey in the bright fluorescent lights. She felt examined. Known.

She nodded brusquely at the desk. ‘Is that Roberts-Brice’s file?’

‘The nurse also told me you lifted that little girl over the seats.’

‘Can we stick to the subject, please?’

His eyes didn’t let her go. ‘I know why you did that.’

‘Is this relevant?’ She looked down and straightened her notebook on her knee.

‘You knew the adults would protect the baby and toddler with their bodies, but they couldn’t do anything for the little girl.’

‘It’s my job.’

‘The nurse said he’s never seen anyone move as fast as you did doing that.’

She felt a flush run through her and the uncomfortable feeling grow. It was shame, she realised. It didn’t matter that she’d put a violent man on the floor. She’d frightened people and then seen in their eyes that her actions, even if necessary, had sickened them.

Callum took a box of tissues from the desk drawer and slid it towards her. ‘The air conditioning in here always makes people’s eyes water.’

‘I’m fine.’ Her tone came out harder than she intended. ‘I just need to know about Sam Roberts-Brice.’

‘I can’t show you anything.’

‘The murder victim had a little girl himself,’ she said.

‘I said, I can’t
show
you.’ He put his fingers on the cardboard file.

She studied him for a long moment. He gazed back at her, his eyes gentle.

She said slowly, ‘Roberts-Brice said he got injured falling from a skateboard.’

‘I was told that story too.’

‘I heard elsewhere though that he may have been assaulted,’ she said. ‘What I need to know is which version fits his injuries.’

‘I would say the elsewhere version,’ Callum said.

‘Thank you.’

‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘if I was being asked for particular details, I could probably go so far as to say he suffered a number of punches from a right-handed man while being held by two people, probably men, a fact I know because of the large red fingermarks on his arms.’

‘I didn’t see any marks when I spoke to him on Saturday.’

‘They would’ve disappeared in a day or so.’

‘What day did he come in?’

‘Sunday evening, a week ago.’

Six days before Paul Fowler was shot.

She said, ‘His wife brought him in?’

Callum nodded. ‘He said he didn’t want any fuss, but he was afraid that I could tell he was lying. I see that look all the time.’

It wasn’t an unfamiliar look to Ella either. ‘Did you say anything to him about it?’

‘I asked his wife to go out and get him some water, then I told him that if he admitted how it really happened it would help my assessment and treatment, and that while we weren’t bound to report it to the police, letting somebody get away with violence once more or less permits them to do it again.’

The mention of violence put Ella back in the waiting room, seeing the back of the little girl’s head.

‘How’d he respond?’ she managed to say.

‘He said he should’ve known he was too old to skateboard.’

She looked at her notebook. She hadn’t written anything on the page and couldn’t think what to put there now.

‘Do you think whoever assaulted Roberts-Brice also killed your victim?’ Callum said.

‘Probably, but I have no idea who they are.’

She felt lost in the case’s twists and turns, unable to see where she was going or even where she’d been. Part of it was tiredness, but she also felt that she was somehow not doing her job well enough, not being the person she wanted to see reflected in people’s eyes. In Darcy Fowler’s eyes especially, she realised.

Callum said something.

‘Sorry?’

‘How’re your parents?’

She blinked at him.

He said, ‘When Murray was talking about his dad, you mentioned that you knew how that felt. I wondered if they’re okay.’

She didn’t know what to think of his interest.

‘My dad was sick for a while, a few months back. He’s doing all right now though. They’re actually cruising around New Zealand at the moment.’ She hesitated, then decided to go ahead and ask him in return. He’d opened the door, after all. ‘How are yours?’

‘Mum’s getting by,’ he said. ‘She had to sell up and move, because of the . . .’ He looked at the mouse and moved it sideways an inch but didn’t then look at the screen. ‘Dad pleading guilty was the best possible thing, I think. It probably avoided some of the trouble.’

Genevieve McLennan had seemed a nice lady and Ella didn’t like to imagine how she might’ve been harassed.

‘Aunt Tamara and Uncle John took Josh and moved to Tasmania,’ he went on. ‘Cut themselves off from us. Haydee sent me a Christmas e-card last week with no personal message in it.’

Ella nodded, and waited.

‘As for Dad,’ Callum said, ‘he doesn’t like us to visit. He says he wants to focus on doing his time and forget everything else.’ His eyes were fixed on the desk. ‘He wanted to work in the prison hospital but they said it was too dangerous.’

Ella wasn’t surprised. A child molester and murderer was not going to be safe anywhere in Long Bay but isolation.

Silence settled over the room, then he said, ‘And I came back to medicine. Didn’t even wait for the election.’

‘Because of the fallout?’

‘I was sick of it anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s almost impossible to get anything done in politics. I thought it was frustrating in hospitals, but at least here I can help people directly.’

‘There’s something to be said for that,’ Ella said.

Her phone beeped with a text from Dennis.
We’ve found Garland’s Audi. Bad news.

She said, ‘I have to go.’

Callum stood up and put out his hand. She took it, feeling the warmth of his palm and the grasp of his fingers around hers.

‘Thanks for the info,’ she said.

‘Better let you go catch a bad guy.’ He didn’t release his grip.

She’d put his father in prison, but he was holding her hand. She looked into his eyes.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

Next minute she was outside. The early morning atmosphere still held the heat of the night but it felt fresh on her cheeks, and the sky turned a light-filled shade of pale blue as the sun crept up towards the horizon. Her chest felt full of air, her head clear.

She got into her car and took out her phone to call Dennis about the Audi, then saw Detective Wayne Rhodes walking across the asphalt with a female detective she recognised from a training course. Wayne saw her and raised his hand. She lowered her window.

He said to the woman, ‘I’ll catch you up,’ and came over.

‘Hi,’ Ella said. She felt friendly, chipper even.

‘You’ve done us a favour this morning.’ He leaned an elbow on the car roof. ‘We’ve been after that guy you clocked for ages.’

She grinned. ‘Really?’

‘He’s a genuine shitbag. Does home invasions, ties people up and beats the crap out of them.’

‘I should’ve hit him harder.’

Wayne tapped his fingers on the roof and stared at an ambulance backing into the bay. ‘I hear you’re having some issues with John Gerard.’

‘Where’d you hear that?’

It embarrassed her to think that Dennis might’ve told anyone what she’d said.

‘He’s known for causing issues.’

‘And yet he got into the squad,’ Ella said. ‘I hear he has friends in high places.’

Wayne was still watching the ambulance. He tapped his fingers on the roof again. Ella knew him well enough to know he wanted to say something but also knew she wanted to get going.
Time to force the issue.

She started the car. ‘So I guess I’ll see you around.’

He looked at her. ‘If you want me to have a word, I will.’

‘Word with who?’ Realisation struck her. ‘With Gerard? You think I might want you to tell him to leave me alone?’

He lifted one shoulder. ‘Guys like that –’

Ella’s head was full of steam. ‘You think I couldn’t tell him that myself?’

‘I was about to say, guys like that don’t always listen to women.’

‘I just put that shitbag on the floor. You think I couldn’t make Gerard listen if I wanted to?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘I’m just trying to help you out.’

‘Do me a favour and don’t.’

She reefed the car into gear and slammed down the hand-brake and screeched out from under his arm.
Unbelievable
.

Down the street she pulled over to phone Dennis. The sky looked ordinary now and she was angry and sweaty in the steamy morning.

‘What’s happened?’ she said.

‘Garland’s car was found half an hour ago. There’re two bodies in it.’

*

The street in the industrial estate near Botany was cordoned off. Ella held her badge out the window and a young uniformed constable raised the tape for her to drive underneath. Fifty metres ahead she saw marked and unmarked cars in a driveway that ran between two long buildings full of light industrial businesses. She parked outside an auto-electrician’s and walked to where Murray and Dennis stood at the back of a truck. When she got close she could see the Audi had been parked behind it, shielded by it from the street.

‘It’s them,’ Murray said.

Ella looked in, already dreading what she would have to tell Holly.

Garland was in the driver’s seat, his head tilted a little as if he was glancing out at the asphalt. Blood had trickled from a bullet wound behind his right ear and dried on his neck, and brain matter and bone had spattered against the roof over his seat from the larger exit wound in his left forehead. Ella bent and peered across him to where Norris sat slumped with his head against the B pillar, his mouth open, a similar wound in his right temple, a similar amount of spatter on the pillar beside and the roof above him, his eyes closed and his face stark white.

Flies buzzed over the bodies. On the other side of the car the Crime Scene photographer leaned close to the window and fired off shots.

‘Rigor mortis,’ Murray said. ‘They’ve been dead for hours.’

‘No weapon found yet,’ Dennis said. ‘Doesn’t look like the .22 that was used on Fowler though.’

‘Not with exit wounds like that,’ Murray said.

‘Any chance Garland could’ve done it and someone stole the gun later?’ Ella said.

Murray lined up his index finger at the back of his own head, in the location of Garland’s wound. ‘Possible, I guess. Shoots Sanderson, shoots himself, gun falls into the back seat, someone driving by pulls up and takes a look and rather than calling us just lifts it.’

‘We’ll test for GSR on his hands,’ Dennis said. ‘But you said they only met yesterday?’

Ella nodded. ‘As far as Holly told me anyway.’

‘So what’s the motive?’ Dennis said. ‘Even though he could physically have managed it, when you set it beside Fowler’s death and Sam Roberts-Brice’s assault you have to think it’s all linked and done by a third party.’

Ella looked around at the tops of the buildings but there were no CCTV cameras. She put her hands on her hips. The rising sun was bright and hot on her face. She could hear truck gears grinding on a nearby street and the click of the scene photographer’s camera. ‘Holly said she last spoke to Norris at eleven thirty yesterday morning, when he was excited because Garland apparently had some friends who might be interested in a property he was selling. Then at two in the afternoon he left her a voicemail saying he had something to tell her when he saw her. Someone else tried to call him and got his voicemail from five, as did Holly when she started trying at eleven last night.’

‘When did Sutton’s surveillance begin?’ Murray asked.

‘About three,’ Dennis said. ‘He was home and had no visitors, then he headed over to Trina’s shortly before seven. Intercepts on their phones are still pending.’

Ella said, ‘After the meeting with Kelly at McDonald’s, did Carl Sutton go home or back to Trina’s?’

‘Home, and last report from Kemsley an hour ago was that he hadn’t budged,’ Dennis said.

‘He’ll be budging shortly,’ Murray said.

Dennis nodded. ‘Time to bring in him and Sam Roberts-Brice and Jared Kelly, and start going hard. I’ll also send out a canvass around Sanderson’s house, see if we can find out what time they left and try to work out a timeline of where they went between then and now.’

A news helicopter hovered overhead, the lens of a camera focused on them.

Ella glanced up at it, then back in at the bodies. ‘I’ll tell Holly.’