Tell the Truth (8 page)

‘But listen, I can't get away this evening,' he said. ‘She's all over the place emotionally and it doesn't feel right to leave.'

‘It's fine,' Ella said. ‘I don't know what's going to happen here anyway. If we find something we could be here all night.'

‘Phew,' he said. ‘I've heard that bad things can happen when a guy stands up a lady.'

‘And every one of those rumours is true.'

‘I bet.' There was a smile in his voice. ‘I promise I'll get free for the dinner tomorrow night.'

Ella groaned. ‘Do you have to? I've been praying for a reason to cancel. I thought this might be it.'

‘What Aunt Adelina wants, Aunt Adelina shall have,' Callum said.

Ella's father's sister had been nagging Ella and her parents about meeting Callum for months. Years, actually – the two, or was it three years? – since they'd started their on-again, off-again relationship. Suspecting that Adelina planned to interrogate him on marriage and babies, Ella had put it off for as long as possible, but last time she and Callum had been at her parents' the three of them had gone ahead and arranged it all, right there in front of her at the dinner table.

‘It'll be fine,' he said.

‘Don't say I didn't warn you.'

She heard his mother call out in the background, the usual harsh tone in her voice.

‘I'm being summoned,' he said. ‘I'd better go.'

‘Good luck,' she said.

‘You too, sweetie,' he said. ‘Bye.'

She went smiling into the office, and found Murray on his phone at his computer. The screen showed Saturday's weather forecast.

‘Five per cent chance is nothing,' he was saying. ‘It's the closest thing to zero there is. Yes, I'm looking at it now. It says westerly winds. That means any clouds will go out to sea and
it'll be a beautiful day.' He glanced around at Ella. ‘Honey,
I have to go. It'll be fine. I'll call you when we finish, okay? Love you too.'

‘Trouble in paradise?' Ella said when he'd hung up.

She thought he might joke about Nata
sha
freaking out, but
he didn't seem to hear her. ‘Five per cent really is nothing, don't you think? Not even a shower.' He chewed his lip as he stared at the screen. ‘The marquee's not big enough to fit everyone in if it pours.'

‘It won't,' she said. ‘Five per cent. They shouldn't even have put it on there.'

He looked at her with hope in his eyes. ‘You think?'

‘For sure.' She clapped him on the shoulder, feeling like he was her young excited brother. ‘It's going to be great. Callum and I can't wait.'

*

In the fifteen minutes before the meeting, Ella put Adelina and Callum and the whole family dinner/marriage and baby question out of her head, and called the lab to learn that the blood in Stacey's car had been typed as AB positive, the same as Stacey's and only two per cent of the population, and that two head hairs found stuck in the spatters had been confirmed under microscope as matching the ones collected from the hairbrush they'd bagged at her home. Comparing the DNA of the hair and blood would take time, but Ella had a deep leaden feeling about what the result would be.

She called Computer Crime to be told that Elizabeth Libke was off today but back tomorrow morning. She put down the phone and told Murray, who nodded and hammered on at his reports. Rain streaked the windows and the office grew noisy with arriving detectives, bringing with them the smell of damp clothing and sweat and hours spent in their cars and walking and talking to people, and getting nowhere.

Maybe thinking about the dinner wasn't so bad after all.

What bothered her wasn't the actual topic – marriage and kids weren't offensive ideas, per se – but the way Adelina pushed it. It was like you were nothing if you didn't get all that shit locked in and tied down. Especially as a woman. Adelina frequently lamented her own lack of children, and how ‘it makes me feel empty, in here', said mournfully as she touched first her abdomen then her chest over her heart. She'd look at Ella and her ringless fingers with sorrow, and more than once Ella had overheard her asking her parents what was going on between her and Callum, whether it was proper and serious or not. No doubt tomorrow night she'd be asking that same question of Callum himself. The scenario made the back of Ella's neck uncomfortably hot.

‘It's time,' Murray said, and she was glad to get up.

In the meeting room, the atmosphere had a different tension to the usual. Homicides carried with them the concern that the killer might get away or might kill again before justice could be done, but here – at least until Stacey's body was found – they had a chance to save her. Then Ella
thought about what Callum had said earlier about the effects of the blood loss, and wondered whether Stacey was conscious, whether she was even still alive.

Their boss, Dennis Orchard, came in and closed the door. ‘Marconi, Shakespeare?'

Ella and Murray took the floor. She looked at the solemn faces around the table and had a strange moment of deja vu, a feeling that somehow most of her days had been spent right in this spot, describing the terrible end of someone's life and the beginning of the path to getting them justice. Even when they achieved that, the person was still gone, the terrible end had still happened, and tomorrow she would be standing here again, talking about someone else, then someone else, then someone else. This time, would things be different? She felt tense, breathless, dizzy, then Murray cleared his throat and she came back to herself with a jolt.

‘Stacey Caroline Durham is thirty-nine years old, married, and works as a paramedic,' she said, seeing their gazes move to the enlarged photo on the whiteboard behind her. ‘She was last seen yesterday afternoon by a neighbour between five and five thirty, driving away from her home alone and looking cheerful. Her car was found this morning by a work colleague, Rowan Wylie, parked in a light industrial estate in Homebush. It was locked, and approximately one to two litres of blood was found inside.'

Murray handed out photos of the inside of the car, showing the location and spread of the bloodstain. Detectives studied it with grim faces.

‘Stacey Durham's husband, James, was away from Friday until this morning at a conference in Melbourne,' Murray said. ‘He was seen by a neighbour to leave his home on Friday afternoon, and travelled with an employee, Simon Wylie, who is Rowan's son. Their flights have been confirmed with the airlines, and their attendance at the conference by the hotel.' Dennis had told them before the meeting began. ‘They returned to Sydney this morning. Durham states he last spoke to Stacey yesterday at about 4 pm. He said she told him she was tired, that she planned an early night. He texted her this morning and got no reply, but that's apparently not abnormal. He went directly from the airport to his work, a computer shop in Strathfield, then Rowan Wylie called him about the car.'

‘Rowan Wylie was taking his granddaughter to a play centre when he claims to have noticed Stacey's car and felt curious enough to look inside,' Ella said. ‘He and James Durham have been friends for ten years, and he has worked with Stacey for eight. He introduced them to each other. Rowan's current work trainee is Stacey's niece, Paris Kennedy. When interviewing Rowan I got the impression that he has some kind of attachment to Stacey, and Paris Kennedy told me that James had asked her once if she thought there was anything going on between the two.' She described James glancing over at Rowan as well, and Aimee Russell and Claire Comber's descriptions of James calling Stacey often. She then went over Marie Kennedy's behaviour and her phone conversation with Stacey at half past three Sunday afternoon about plans for Paris's twenty-first. ‘Marie said Stacey sounded fine.'

Murray said, ‘The Computer Crime section received an anonymous tip three months ago alleging that James Durham was defrauding his clients. An investigation revealed no wrongdoing and the matter was closed, but we've yet to speak to the investigating officer to find out further details.'

Ella said, ‘At ten thirty this morning, when we were speaking to James at his house, he received a text message sent from Stacey's mobile. The text read,' she checked her notebook to make sure she got it right, ‘
You know what this is about and you won't see her again if you don't do the right thing
. I sent back a text asking who it was, and the reply said,
You know what this is about. It's time to tell the truth
. I then identified myself and asked where Stacey was. The sender said,
James knows everything
. I asked them to explain what that meant. The reply was,
Tell him to tell the truth
. I asked again for an explanation but there was no reply. Phone tracking showed that the messages were sent from an area of about one square kilometre between Stanmore railway station and Parramatta Road, and ten kilometres from the last known location of Stacey's phone, Bicentennial Park in Homebush, at ten past six last night. The phone hasn't been switched on since. James Durham denies any knowledge of what's happened to Stacey, and said he has no idea what the texter is referring to, though he then linked it to the anonymous tip himself, saying that it should've been investigated more thoroughly at the time.'

Detectives scribbled notes.

‘The Durhams' house was distinctly clean and tidy,' Ella went on, ‘but Stacey's sister, Marie, said neither Stacey nor James are particular clean freaks.' She described the notebook with the missing pages and the imprint that was being analysed at the lab, then how James's first response when Rowan Wylie called him about his wife was to phone the bank.

Murray said, ‘He told us it was to see if any money was missing, if she'd perhaps been forced to withdraw a large amount, but his employee Simon Wylie said he also asked about putting a stop on the accounts.'

‘Huh,' Sid Lawson said. ‘As if he thinks someone might try to make her empty them?'

Murray nodded. ‘That's what he said.'

Ella summarised their interviews with the Durhams' neighbours, mentioned the neighbour yet to be interviewed, and again talked about Stacey's friends, and how Rowan Wylie had beaten them to them.

‘Sounds like he's at the heart of this thing,' Lawson said.

‘He also has an alibi for Sunday evening,' Murray said. ‘In addition, CCTV near the location where Stacey's car was found shows this.' He played the footage from the office supplies store and the detectives watched the car pull in and the driver get out, then ride away on the bike. ‘We can't tell from this if the driver is male or female, but they're smaller than Wylie. Checks were made of other cameras in the area.'

Sid Lawson and Marion Pilsiger came to the front.

‘Most of the CCTV cameras we checked didn't take in the road,' Pilsiger said, as Lawson inserted a USB drive and brought up the file. ‘And most of the ones that did reach that far didn't show us anything more than what we've already got. But these bits came from a shop at the corner of the street, then a traffic camera around the corner.'

Lawson pressed play. The camera showed a view inside the shop and to the footpath and road beyond. The cyclist rode up and stopped, presumably at a red light. He or she put one foot on the ground and kept their head low as if aware that there might be a camera watching. A light-coloured sedan pulled up on the other side of the person but the angle of the shot meant that the driver couldn't be seen. Cars passed it going the other way, then the sedan's passenger window slid down and the cyclist's head turned towards it.

‘They're talking?' Murray said.

The cyclist shook their head and looked at the ground, and after a moment the window went up again.

‘Someone asking directions?' Wilson Turnbull said.

‘Or could be an accomplice checking about any problems,' Lawson said.

Ella stared at the car. Light-coloured sedan, probably white to blend in with the thousands of other white cars on the road. Late-model Commodore by the look of it. Again, thousands out there.

The traffic light evidently changed and the cyclist moved off, the car following it off the screen. Ella leaned forward as if that would let her see more of it. ‘You can't see the plate.'

‘Not in that clip,' Lawson said.

The screen changed to show footage from higher up, from a traffic camera on a pole. The entire intersection was visible, and Ella watched the cyclist turn the corner while the light-coloured car went straight ahead. Its back was visible but the numberplate was hard to make out even when Lawson clicked pause.

He said, ‘We've already sent it to the lab for cleaning up.'

‘Starts with an M,' Murray said. ‘Or is it an N?'

‘Then we have this.' Lawson pressed play again.

The cyclist moved across the lower half of the screen and a small dark-coloured car swung around the corner behind it. As the cyclist rode around a parked car, the moving one almost hit them. The car swerved and the cyclist wobbled. The passenger window went down and a dark face appeared, shouting something back at the cyclist.

‘Nice,' Murray said.

‘Even nicer is that we've already traced that plate, because further down the road they went past a speed camera and got snapped,' Pilsiger said. ‘Owner's name is Mackenzie Walker, female, aged nineteen, lives with her parents in Strathfield. We've called them but she's out, and they can't contact her because her mobile's been cut off for non-payment. We left a message.

‘Using what we got from other cameras, we were able to trace the cyclist to where they turned off Underwood Street into Mason Park, which, coincidentally or not, adjoins Bicentennial Park.' She put up a photocopy of a map, and drew a line in thick red pen to show the route. ‘There are a number of places where they could've left that park and we've been unable to find out which one they took, so don't know where they went after that. But from all the footage we managed to get this photo from one of the CCTV cameras which might be suitable to put out to the media.'