The Silent Inheritance (14 page)

He wasn’t drunk. He’d poured his first whisky before six o’clock and it took more than five whiskies over a five-hour period to get Freddy drunk. He felt like a winner – until he reached the now near-deserted car park, a perfect place for a couple of druggies to bowl him over. He looked behind, around, then quickened his pace to the car, pleased to lock himself into it.

He hadn’t found Rolland. Had Cheryl been at home, she would have. She knew the names of his mates, knew their mothers, knew their mothers’ phone numbers. He knew Steve and Mick, knew that Steve had lived over their back fence at Vermont, that Mick had lived over the road from Steve, so instead of turning left into Canterbury Road, he turned right.

The Commodore may have made that trip a thousand times. It found its own way home to Freddy’s old street, and to his old house. They’d watched it being built, he and Cheryl. It had cost them a hundred thousand. An Asian had paid close to eight hundred thousand dollars for it at the auction two weeks ago. There was profit to be made in property.

He pulled into his old driveway, his headlights illuminating weeds taller than the azaleas Cheryl had planted beside the fence. It looked deserted, lonely – which was not Freddy’s problem. He’d got thirty thousand over his reserve price.

He sat a while, the motor running while he walked the rooms in his mind. She’d loved him when they’d moved into those rooms, when they’d had nothing but each other and a mortgage that would choke a horse. For five years they’d delayed starting a family, both of them working to get that mortgage down to a manageable size.

Then Rolland came, the joy of their lives.

Memory of the principal’s office moved Freddy. There appeared to be light showing over the back fence. He might find Rolland there. He backed out to the road and headed down the street he knew would take him through.

Well treed, this area. Trees shed leaves, mountains of them in autumn. He was thinking autumn, thinking of his trees at Camberwell, when he flicked on his left blinker, and made the turn—

Movement.

Yellow.

THUMP!

And blind.

Braking, a reflex action, the Commodore’s ABS brakes stopped him dead, and Freddy sat, foot jamming that brake pedal to the floor, jaw hanging, frozen in his seat, his round frog’s eyes staring blind at the shattered windscreen, aware that any movement on his part and he’d shatter.

Yellow. That’s all he’d seen. A runner.

He sat gripping the steering wheel, willing that running man to attack his car, smash the rest of his windows, drag him out to the road and kick his head in.

Seconds, minutes, eons …

He had to … render assistance. He had to … call for assistance.

And one, then the other, he drew his hands from the wheel, put the shift into
Park
, pulled on the handbrake, released his seatbelt, opened the door and got his feet onto that road – and his legs refused to support him. He clung to the open door, not wanting to see what was out there, and seeing nothing, not on the road behind nor in front of the car.

He’d seen yellow. He’d seen movement before the impact. His windscreen was shattered. One headlight was dead. He’d hit something.

Someone.

Assist the victim. Phone for assistance.

Looked to where the intact headlight was highlighting the trunk of a tree, the kerb.

And saw. White. A bare white leg.

‘Oh my God!’ he wailed, and he ran to the leg and to the female it was attached to. ‘Oh my God, my God.’

She didn’t move. He didn’t touch her. He reached into his jacket pocket for the mobile he never moved without. Not there. He checked every pocket, found his wallet, found that nest of dollar coins in his trouser pocket. Found no phone.

Knew where it was. Beside his bottle where he’d left it, after six texts to Rolland.

Time to face the music. Call me. I’ll pick you up.

If that shit of a kid had called him …

‘Oh my God,’ he moaned and stepped back, and trod on something unstable. The tree trunk saved him landing on top of that girl. He picked up a silly high-heeled platform shoe, and how the hell could anyone run in that?

Not his current problem. She was injured. He had to … to render assistance. Had to knock on a door.

Late. Who’d answer their door in the middle of the night?

Had to.

Knew what he had to do, just couldn’t make himself do it. He’d had four drinks at home and one more at Vegas, bigger drinks at home than that poured at Vegas. The first thing the police did at an accident scene was breathalyse the driver. He might not be over the limit – or not far over it – but if any alcohol was found in his system, he’d be at fault.

And he had those three bottles in the car.

BARRISTER ARRESTED. DRIVING WHILE INTOXICATED.

Freddy looked at a house three doors down on the far side. It was showing a light. He had to walk across that road and knock on the door.

He knew what the law required him to do, but his legs didn’t want to walk him over the road. Instead, they took him back to the girl’s side, where this time he got down to a knee, got close enough to listen for her breathing.

She wasn’t.

‘Oh Jesus Christ, help me.’

He found her arm, her wrist, willing her pulse to throb, and when it didn’t, he felt for the artery at her throat.

Blood there. Warm sticky blood and no pulse.

He’d killed.

And couldn’t get back to his feet to get away. Wiped his hand on the grass, on the leg of his trousers, then pushed himself to his feet on the tree trunk and turned to the house showing a light.

And saw neon-lit headlines.

DRUNKEN BARRISTER KILLS VERMONT TEENAGER

She’s dead, Freddo. An ambulance won’t save her
, the devil whispered in his ear.
You’re dead too if you walk over there. Everything you’ve worked your guts out for is gone.

Freddy’s heart wasn’t dead. It hammered in his throat, ears, lungs. He wasn’t going to live long enough to knock on any door.

At least whoever finds you will recognise you, Freddo. If you dropped dead in Camberwell, your nearest neighbour wouldn’t recognise you.

FREDERICK ADAM-JONES DROPS DEAD A STREET AWAY FROM WHERE HE SPENT THE BEST YEARS OF HIS LIFE WORKING HIS GUTS OUT FOR LOVE

All gone. His love gone to Bali. His son, his pride and joy, gone to the dogs, and Frederick Adam-Jones was going to jail to join a few of his disgruntled clients.

The car motor was still running, urging him to get in and run. He looked at it, aware that it wouldn’t get him far, not with a shattered windscreen and one headlight. He turned off the motor, the headlight, and then in a darkened street walked back to the girl.

He hadn’t been travelling fast enough to kill anyone. He’d made a left-hand turn out of his street, one he’d made a thousand times before. She’d come running out of nowhere and it hadn’t been his fault.

It would become his fault. His eldest brother had done time for manslaughter. Freddy might have got him off with less time but had kept his distance. Hadn’t set eyes on a few of them since the day they’d taken a little kid who couldn’t kill a cockroach pig shooting and he’d spent the day howling.

He’d killed, and his frog’s eyes leaking, his nose dripping, as he stood over his first kill.

And the lights at the house across the street were turned off.

Reporting what you’ve done won’t bring her back, Freddy. Cheryl’s in Bali. Rolland will crash wherever he ends up tonight. He won’t come home. Your mobile is at home, Freddy.

*

Frederick Adam-Jones was nothing if not methodical. He’d never knocked out a windscreen, and when his useless little hands failed him, he kicked it free of its frame. He had no conscious plan, but watched the road like a thief, like the murderer he was when he carried the jacket-wrapped windscreen glass around to the boot and dropped it in.

He emptied peanuts and chips onto his passenger seat then, the plastic bag in hand, he walked the road picking up pieces of smashed headlight, feeling for pieces with his shoes. He moved the car up level with the dead girl, checked the road where it had been, swept the gutter with his shoe and when he could find no more fragments, he tied the handles of that bag and tossed it into the boot.

Only desperation gave him the strength to load the dead weight of that girl, and while he was struggling, a flash of white lightning lit the macabre scene – but showed him where he’d dropped her shoe. Thunder shook the dark cave of that tree-lined street, before he got her in and closed that boot as hard rain came pounding down.

He drove wet, and became wetter with no windscreen to keep the storm out. He drove back roads through that storm, knowing that he was now one of the bastards he defended, but knowing too that he was one who knew how the law worked, and that if he was going to do this, he’d do it right.

T
he photograph of smiling Danielle Lane could have been Heidi Jasper, grown a year or two older. Ross had been thinking ‘Heidi’ since he’d heard ‘shopping centre’.

The missing girl’s mother was convinced her daughter was on her uncle’s boat, with her father, heading for American shores. Parents always cling to the safer options. They hope when there is no hope.

Ross hoped Danni was with her father, but by Monday he knew that Martin Lane had an April date in a Sydney court, and that no father was going to kidnap his child and jeopardise his chance of gaining legal custody of her.

Her mother was a beauty. The old photograph he had of Martin Lane was of a tall, good-looking blond. Between them they’d produced something out of the box. Perfection, that kid.

He’d spoken at length to Barbara Lane. She’d told him what she’d wanted him to know, that she’d been modelling in America when she’d met and married Martin Lane, that she’d wanted their daughter to be born and raised in Australia, that when Danni had been in her second year, she’d allowed her husband to take the child to America to meet his parents, and how he’d refused to bring her back, how she’d had to move back there, where she’d remained until Danni’s tenth year. She hadn’t been specific on dates, but from what he’d gathered, her daughter had been around three years old before Barbara had joined her husband in America.

Ross had spoken to Samantha Smith and the youths Danni had been with at Forest Hill. All three kids told the same story, that she’d done her block about something and walked off in a huff, that they’d last seen her heading towards the escalator.

There were three levels to that centre, shops by the score, access to the car park on all levels and security cameras everywhere – as there had been at Chadstone. He’d spun through a thousand hours of tape when Heidi had gone missing, and was doing it again, searching for a blonde-headed girl, searching blind for a needle in a haystack, uncertain whether her father had taken her or if the killer had taken his fifth. Martin Lane wasn’t answering his mobile.

Ross knew what he looked like. He had no description of the killer, so he trawled on through that mire of moving bodies, sifting an ocean of mud for one grain of gold and willing that grain to jump out and hit him in the eye.

A male wearing a white t-shirt and Nike cap jumped out as he strutted by Danni and her school friends in that upstairs shot, before they’d separated. Ross marked the spot, then searched on.

Half an hour later, he picked up Nike again, on the bus stop tape. He knew that cocky strut. Couldn’t bring to mind why he knew him, kept thinking Han Solo, from
Star Wars
.

He spun the tape backward, played Nike forward, slowed that strut to a stroll then stilled the tape and zoomed in on a grainy face.

And Roy Bull dropped a file onto his desk.

‘Take a squiz at him,’ Ross said. ‘We know him.’

Roy studied the screen for a moment then shook his head. ‘He rings no bells with me, Sarge.’

‘My bells are ringing but no jackpot,’ Ross said.

They’d found two positives of Danni, one at the Woolworths checkout, and if she’d been preparing to abscond with her father, why bother loading her schoolbag with supermarket shopping? She would have packed her favourite outfit, her laptop.

They’d gone over her room, her mother watching their every move and telling Ross every two minutes that she’d already told him a dozen times that nothing was missing, that Martin Lane had money enough to buy Danni anything she wanted.

A strange woman, who might have been a top model before she’d given up her career to bear her daughter – and maybe resented giving it up. She’d divorced her husband eighteen months ago. At that time, they’d agreed to joint custody – until, according to Mrs Lane, Martin and his brother had attempted to kidnap Danni.

Ross had quizzed her about the kidnap. She’d admitted that she’d dropped the charge but had been awarded full custody, and if ‘that cowboy’ had wanted to see his daughter he’d had to do it at a police station, and only twice a month.

‘After every visit, she was impossible to live with, which is why we moved to Melbourne,’ Barbara said.

She had difficulty speaking her ex’s name. On several occasions she’d called him ‘the cowboy’. She’d been unaware that Danni was in contact with him.

Samantha Smith had been more informative. ‘Her father and her Uncle Alan take tourists fishing in Queensland,’ she’d said. ‘He used to send her photos from everywhere up there.’

Samantha knew about the court date on 22 April. She knew that Danni wanted to go home to America. She knew that Barbara Lane had moved down to Melbourne because her boyfriend lived down here, and that her boyfriend was married with four kids and that Danni’s mother worked for him.

Ross had spoken to David Crow and his office manager this morning. The manager claimed to know nothing about his employer’s or Mrs Lane’s private life. Crow denied any relationship with Mrs Lane, other than that of employer and valued employee. He’d been out of town from Friday to Sunday night, and claimed to have known nothing about the abduction until his wife had turned on the television on Sunday night and they’d seen Mrs Lane’s appeal to her ex-husband.