Tell the Truth (13 page)

*

At the hospital, Paris stood around as they unloaded, watched the other officer help the still-shaking grandma out of his ambulance and then the tearful kissing of the grandson's face, and tagged along as the pair were taken inside. She hoped she might be able to help transfer the kid onto the hospital bed, but ended up somehow elbowed out by a couple of burly wardsmen and took it as a sign to drift back outside.

She climbed into the empty ambulance. It was so spacious when the stretcher was out. The sun lit the tinted side window and the white plastic of the side lockers was smooth and shiny. She started cleaning up, looping the monitoring leads and packing them into their pouch, replacing the oxygen mask in the Viva and turning off the cylinder after checking that it was still over half-full, restocking the drug box with the IV pump set and fluid bag and making sure there were enough cannulae, swabs and tape.

‘Paris,' a female voice said, and she turned to see a woman at the open back door. She was in her late forties, her dark hair pulled back in a smooth bun, her uniform neatly pressed, and her epaulettes bearing both the paramedic supervisor and area superintendent markings. Paris's stomach fell.

‘I'm Kathryn Beattie,' the woman said. ‘Mind hopping out so we can have a chat?'

*

Blocks of units lined the street in Campsie where Jonathon Dimitri lived. Music poured from a dozen different places, including open garages and doors. Electrician, locksmith and plasterer's vans were parked fifty metres away outside a building with smoke stains on the wall above a broken ground-floor window. Leafy trees shaded the long grass on the nature strips from the midday sun, clean washing hung on racks on balconies, and three grinning children under five rolled on plastic tricycles along the footpath followed by a man in dark sunglasses who talked in another language on a mobile. As he passed their car he removed the phone from his ear long enough to shout, ‘Jasvinder, not so fast!'

Dimitri's block was set back from its neighbours. Ella and Murray crossed the concrete forecourt and followed the path down the side. The entry door was held open by a brick, and they went in and climbed to the third floor, past doors behind which babies cried and TVs blared. Someone was cooking marinated meat, and Murray said, ‘I'm hungry.'

Ella knocked on the door to unit nine. She waited a minute, raising her eyebrows at Murray, then knocked again.

‘Not home,' Murray said.

‘The sign on the surgery said closed due to illness. He shouldn't be out if he's sick.' She tested the knob but it was locked.

‘Who are you, his employer?' Murray started back down the stairs. ‘He's probably taken his girlfriend away for a few days and didn't want to say that to his patients.'

Ella leaned close to the peephole, hoping to see a change in light and dark that would indicate movement, but saw nothing. She crossed the landing and knocked on the neighbour's door.

‘Who is it?' The woman sounded nervous.

Ella smiled at the peephole. ‘Detective Ella Marconi, New South Wales Police.' She held her badge up, then smiled again. ‘May I talk to you for a moment?'

‘Is something wrong?'

‘I'd just like to ask a couple of questions about your neighbour in unit nine. Can you open the door, please?'

A moment's hesitation, then the lock turned and the door opened. The security chain was still in place, and the woman who peered through the gap had frightened eyes. She looked at Ella, then past her to Murray, standing at the top of the stairs.

Ella smiled at her again. ‘Do you know your neighbour?' She pointed over her shoulder.

‘Only a little,' the woman said. She looked about thirty, and wore a bright blue hijab. To Ella's inaccurate ear she sounded Russian. ‘We say hello. His name is John. He said he is a dentist and will check my family's teeth if we like him to.'

‘Does he live alone?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Or I should say he has done so as long as I have known him, that is six months that we've lived here ourselves. But he has a girlfriend, I think. I don't know her name but I have seen her a few times in the last few weeks.' She blushed.

‘When did you see John last?'

‘On Friday afternoon, maybe five o'clock. He was cleaning his car in the space at the back, and we said hello. But I have been working, so maybe he's here and I didn't see.'

‘Cleaning the inside or outside of his car?'

‘Both,' she said. ‘The outside was wet, and he had the little hand machine.' She made vacuuming motions.

‘Thank you,' Ella said. ‘I appreciate your help.'

The woman looked past her at Murray again, nodded, and closed the door.

‘What'd she say?' Murray asked. ‘I couldn't hear.'

‘She saw him cleaning his car inside and out late Friday arvo.' Ella started down the stairs. ‘And she's seen a girlfriend visiting the last few weeks.'

‘I told you. He's gone for a long and dirty weekend.'

Ella didn't answer. At the car she googled the bike shop on her phone and rang the number.

‘Mike's Bikes, this is Mike,' a gruff voice answered.

‘This is Detective Marconi,' she said. ‘We spoke earlier. I was
wondering whether you'd been able to find Zaina's details?'

‘I'm still looking, I'm afraid. Some of the paperwork's at home, it could be there, I just don't know.'

‘Can you remember her last name, or anything about where she lives?'

‘It's a foreign-type surname, but I can't recall it,' he said. ‘I'm sorry. I'll keep looking and trying.'

‘Please call as soon as you know,' she said.

*

Rowan stood inside the glass doors of the Emergency Department, watching Kathryn Beattie talk to Paris. Paris's head was down, her back against the wall, and she scraped at the bricks with the heel of one boot. He felt a tug inside. He wasn't sure if he'd done the right thing. At the time he'd thought he had no option, but now that he wasn't so angry he thought maybe he did. She wasn't the first to be drawn to a screaming uninjured person, and she wouldn't be the last. It was why they talked specifically about that during training.

Wayne Loftus came up behind him with the stretcher. ‘She lost it big-time, huh?'

‘She was okay.'

‘Mate, I heard what you said on the air.'

‘Her aunt's missing,' Rowan said. ‘None of us would be at our best in those circumstances.'

‘
“
You need a supervisor at the hospital because Officer Kennedy might need to sign off”? There's only one thing that means.'

Rowan rounded on him. ‘Yeah, that she might need to sign off, and someone has to run her home.'

Wayne grinned and shrugged. ‘Hey, whatever. You were there.'

‘Exactly,' Rowan said. ‘So don't say anything to her, all right?'

Wayne hit the button to open the doors and wheeled the stretcher outside without answering. After a moment's hesitation, Rowan followed.

TWELVE

P
aris listened to Kathryn Beattie talk and watched Rowan from the corner of her eye. He emerged from the hospital doors without looking her way, said something to the officer with the stretcher, and then climbed into the back of the ambulance, out of her sight. In there he'd be able to hear what Beattie was saying.

‘Do you follow me?' Beattie said.

‘Yes,' Paris answered, wanting to say,
Do you think I don't know what I did? Do you think I'm not reliving it in my head, over and over?

‘Okay then,' Beattie said. ‘Did you drive to work this morning?'

‘I caught the train.'

‘So how about I run you home?' She gestured to her station wagon.

‘My bag's in the ambulance,' Paris said.

Beattie said, ‘I'll get it for you. Go hop in. I'll be just one minute.'

Paris got in the front seat of Beattie's superintendent car and clipped in her seatbelt. Through the closed window she watched Rowan climb out of the back of the ambulance and hand Beattie her bag. They stood talking and didn't look her way.

Paris folded her arms, tucked her ice-cold hands in her armpits. Beattie would take her home and round off her little chat with . . . what?
We'll empty your locker for you, we'll bring you your stuff and the forms to sign, you'll hand back your uniforms and get a fortnight's wages
.

Her sight blurred. Six weeks, and it was all over.

*

Ella rang Dennis to update him on their progress so far but he cut in before she could tell him anything.

‘I was just about to call you. James has been found.'

‘Where?'

‘At The Gap.'

She caught her breath. ‘He jumped?'

‘No, no,' Dennis said. ‘Officers on scene say he's come back inside the fence and is talking to them.'

Ella hung up and told Murray to step on it.

*

The whole trip to Padstow,
Beattie talked about what made a good paramedic: compassion combined with an ability to keep cool.

‘Mm,' Paris said, and nodded, because she knew that already, that's what she was trying to be. Her bag was on her lap, and underneath it she was pinching the backs of her hands, trying to gather her courage to ask what she really wanted to know. She had to: it was crazy to keep going like this.

‘Make sense?' Beattie was saying.

Paris nodded. She took a deep breath.
Here goes nothing.
‘What if you're afraid?'

‘Everyone's afraid. Left here?' Beattie turned the corner. ‘You just have to put it out of your head.'

‘I mean, really afraid.' How could she get it across to her?

‘Think about something else. Think about the stuff you do know how to do. Or distract yourself in some other way. I knew a paramedic who sometimes felt faint around a lot of blood, and he'd do times tables in his head. You're at number ten, you said?'

‘What if that doesn't work?' Paris said.
What if you can't think, can't breathe?

‘Then you try harder.' Beattie turned into Paris's driveway. ‘Don't stress. It'll get better.' She smiled.

Like it was just that easy.

‘Car Twelve,' the controller said on the radio.

‘That's me,' Beattie said. She put out her hand to shake Paris's. ‘I'm glad we had this talk.'

‘What's going to happen?' Paris said.

‘We'll let you know.' Beattie picked up the mike. ‘Twelve's clear in Padstow and ready for details.'

‘Stand by, Twelve,' the controller said.

Beattie said to Paris, ‘It doesn't necessarily mean you'll be suspended or anything like that.'

Sacked
, Paris thought.
The word is sacked
. She looked up at the house. At least her mother hadn't appeared. Hopefully she wasn't home.

‘It might mean retraining,' Beattie said. ‘Counselling perhaps.'

She smiled again, and it almost killed Paris to muster a tiny one in return.

‘Thank you for the lift,' she whispered, and got out, just as her mother's car turned into the driveway behind Beattie's.

Marie opened her driver's door. ‘What's happened?'

‘Nothing,' Paris said. ‘You have to move. She needs to go.'

‘But what's the matter? Why are you home?'

Paris could see that Beattie was annoyed and felt the hot rush of embarrassment on top of everything else. ‘Just back out so she can go!'

‘There's no need to yell.' Marie slammed the door and backed onto the street.

Beattie reversed past her, then waved to Paris through the passenger window as she drove off.

‘What was all that about?' Marie said when she'd parked her car.

‘Nothing.'

‘They got you on some funny shift now, ends in the early afternoon? They drive you home at the end because you're so special?'

‘Ha ha.'
I will not cry.

‘I'm just teasing.' Marie looped her arm around her waist. ‘Come inside. Sit down. Have you had lunch? I haven't. We'll eat and you can tell me what's happened.' She shut the front door behind them. ‘Was work too much because of Aunt Stacey?'

‘I'm not hungry.' Paris hated this fake interest, the smarmy voice that always accompanied it. ‘Have the police been in touch? Is there any news?'

‘Nothing.' Marie opened the fridge. ‘What do you feel like?'

The emotions boiled up. ‘You don't even care.'

‘Of course I do.'

‘No, you don't.
Look at you. Making lunch like nothing's wrong.
'

The relationship between her mother and Stacey hadn't been good. Over the years Paris had heard arguments, some more heated than others. Plus there'd always been an undercurrent of . . . she wasn't sure what it was. Resentment? Jealousy? She hardly remembered her grandparents, but her mother had hinted often enough that she felt Stacey was always seen as the special one.

‘We need to keep our strength up,' Marie said. ‘Surely they taught you that at your sainted paramedic school? Care for the ones who care. Is that why they brought you home? Because you're too stressed over your aunt to work?'

‘No,' Paris said.

‘Why then?'

‘None of your business.'

Marie raised her eyebrows, then looked into the fridge again. ‘So what does “paramedic supervisor” mean?'

Of course. She'd seen it on the car.

‘Exactly what it sounds like,' Paris said.

‘Whenever I've had to deal with supervisors it's because I did something wrong,' her mother said.

‘The ambulance service is different.'

‘So I have been told.' She said it leisurely, each word precise, her eyes on Paris's. ‘How lucky are you, working in such a great organisation?'

*

Old South Head Road at The Gap was all but blocked off by media and police vehicles, and Murray squeezed the car half onto the footpath. The sun was shining and seagulls whined as they hovered in the breeze above the cliff edge. The Gap was a notorious suicide spot and Murray nudged her as they crossed the road. ‘Ever done one here?'

‘Ages ago,' she said. She'd been in the job just a couple of years but remembered the sight of the body on the wave-wet rocks like she was looking at it now. A nineteen-year-old man. She and her partner had had to tell his parents. ‘You?'

‘Same.'

They didn't say anything more but approached the news crews and uniformed police gathered on the wide path that led along the cliff. Durham stood in the centre of the group, addressing the cameras.

‘– and yes, I came here out of despair, out of fear that I will never see my wife, Stacey, again.' He held up a photo, crumpled as if he'd been scrunching it in a damp hand. ‘But the response of ordinary people who persuaded me back over the fence, the police who arrived to help, the paramedics who made sure I was okay, and now the news people here, have made me feel that there is hope, that someone must have seen something, and that someone just needs to look at Stacey's photo again and take a moment to think.' He paused and stared down the barrel of the closest camera. ‘If you're the person who has my wife, please return her to me. I love her more than anything in this world. I'm lost without her, and so is her family. Even her dog, Gomez, is affected. He won't eat, he's practically pining away. Stacey's a wonderful woman and we all need her home.'

‘Smart,' Murray said in her ear. ‘Humanise her in the eyes of the abductor.'

Ella knew the tactic, but something about James's tone made her doubt his reasons. The feeling made her wonder if Murray was right, if she was too suspicious.

‘I'm putting together a reward, so please get in touch. Tell me what you know. Help me find my beloved wife.' James held the photo forward as if to make the cameras focus in on it, but Ella guessed they'd be getting close-ups of the tears in his eyes instead.

There was a silence in which she could hear the crash of the surf against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, then journalists started asking questions.

‘How much will the reward be?'

‘I'm still working that out,' James replied. ‘But I'm aiming for fifty thousand.'

‘That'll bring the nutters out of the woodwork,' Murray murmured.

‘Has the blood in the car been confirmed as your wife's?'

‘I'm still waiting to hear about that from the police,' he said.

‘Do you think your wife's disappearance has anything to do with the murder of two paramedics last year?'

‘I don't see how or why, seeing as the man who did that died,' James answered.

Ella felt her ears go red. She'd been the one who shot and killed the man as he was trying to strangle his final victim.

‘What if it's a copycat?' someone said.

‘The police haven't suggested that to me,' James said.

‘Do you know the latest on the investigation?'

‘Do the police have any leads at all?'

Before James could answer, someone recognised Ella and Murray. ‘Detectives, can we get a statement, please?'

The camera lights were bright in her face.

‘We have nothing to say at this time,' Ella said. ‘Our concern here is to look after Mr Durham. Feel free to call the Homicide office in Parramatta.' Where they'd get nothing but the latest media release and perhaps a heads-up on a press conference.

The journos turned back to James and fired off more questions, but Ella pushed through and grasped his arm. He was trembling, and said, ‘I need to get out of here.'

The tremble felt real, not faked, and almost against her will her attitude towards him relaxed a bit.

‘No more questions,' she said loudly, as Murray went to James's other side, and between them they walked him down the stairs and across the street to their car.

He climbed in the back and put his head in his hands.

Ella got in the front and turned in the seat to look at him. ‘Are you okay?'

He sat back, rubbing his face. ‘Give me a minute and I'll be all right.'

‘Do you need to go to hospital?' Murray asked.

James shook his head.

‘We've been worried about you,' Ella said. ‘We were waiting at the shop but you never came back from the bank.'

‘I headed that way, then I got another text, the same as the others:
Tell the truth. You know what this is about
. I texted back, but
they just said the same thing again.
You know what this is about.
Tell the truth. You know what this is about
. That and the grief and worry and everything were too much. I drove past the bank and kept going.'

‘How did you end up here?' Murray asked.

‘Stacey used to live near here,' he said. ‘She loves the beach. I guess I thought that if I came to the place she loves, where she used to live, I could maybe, I don't know, have a revelation or something, work out what it is that I'm supposed to know. But it didn't help.'

‘Where did she live?' Ella asked.

He gave them an address off Campbell Parade in Bondi. ‘She always talks about how she could hear the surf when it was up, how she could smell the salt in the air.' His stare out the window was distant. ‘One day we'll retire to the beach. I always promised her that. That we'd go back.'

Ella said, ‘Why did you turn off your phone?'

‘I couldn't stand the messages. I hate that they have the power. I hate that all they say is that one thing over and over, that they won't explain or give any more information. I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? How can I confess or make it right or whatever it is they want when I don't even know what they're talking about?'

‘Would you turn it on now, please?'

He took his phone out of his pocket and pressed buttons. Ella heard the chimes of multiple messages. He studied the screen. ‘Three from her phone. Same as before. Plus some missed calls.'

‘May I see?'

He handed it over. She scrolled through the list of callers. Marie, the shop, her own number and that of the office. The messages sent from Stacey's phone were the same as the one James had described. They were spaced between thirty and forty-five minutes apart, and the last one had arrived more than an hour ago. She got out her notebook and wrote down the exact times, then gave the phone back.

‘So you drove past the bank then over here to Bondi,' she said. ‘Which way did you come?'

‘The normal way,' he said. ‘Through the city.'

‘Took a while, did it? We were at the shop soon after nine and Nick Henry said you'd just left.'

‘Traffic was bad, but I also sat at the beach for a while.'

‘Which one?'

‘Bondi. And walked along the streets. Walked past her old place. Walked in a daze, if I'm honest. I'd keep sort of waking up and not know where I was or how I'd got there.'