Violent Exposure (23 page)

‘Why?’ Netta
said. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask you.’

‘Well, someone cancelled their scan appointment so the doctor fitted us in.’

‘What?’

‘We had the scan this morning. We left the doctor’s a little while ago.’

‘I was going to come with you.’

‘It was fine,’ Netta said. In the background Franco called out, ‘Nothing to it!’

‘What did the doctor say?’

‘You know, take your tablets,
eat less ice-cream.’

Ella heard her father chuckle. It wasn’t reassuring. ‘Mum, I wanted to be at the doctor’s when she talked to you about the report.’

‘You’re at work.’

‘Why did she change it if there was no urgency?’

‘Like I told you, somebody cancelled,’ Netta said.

‘But why did they pick Dad as the first replacement?’

Dennis came out of the shop with two steaming cups.

‘I don’t know
the ins and outs of the medical world,’ Netta said. ‘But we are grown up, you know. We’re not incapable of going to the doctor’s.’

Ella put her free hand on her hip. ‘I just wanted to give you some moral support.’

‘Well, there’s no need now, because everything’s fine.’

Ella said, ‘How about I come round tonight, have a visit?’

‘We’re going to Adelina’s for dinner so we won’t be home,’ Netta
said. ‘I have to go, I’m in the car. Bye, darling.’

Ella stuffed her phone into her pocket and took her cup with a tense hand.

‘Okay?’ Dennis asked.

‘God only knows.’ She tried to shake off her worry by telling him what she’d realised about the convenience stores. ‘Between this and the shifting staff situation, how are we ever going to find the place Suzanne used?’

‘Drink your coffee and come
on,’ he said. ‘The next haystack awaits.’

*

The whisperer had screwed the gun into the side of Connor’s head and jammed the needle into his thigh. The pain in the muscle had made Connor’s eyes water but he hadn’t made a sound, still hoping that this – whatever it was – could eventually all be over without Suzanne ever knowing a thing about it.

The whisperer had made him help Emil up. ‘Walk,’
he’d hissed, pushing them both towards the kitchen. ‘Stand there.’

The drug had quickly taken effect and Connor struggled to stay upright, knowing that the sound of a fall would bring Suzanne running, knowing he was lucky she hadn’t heard Emil being shoved over. He’d stood in a worsening daze while the whisperer first chose a knife, then pressed the gun hard into his forehead until he held out
his hands to be taped. He’d cut the tape with the knife, and with the tip backed Connor up against the door, then turned to Emil, sagging drugged against the wall, and slashed his arm.

Emil had yelped.

‘Baby?’ Suzanne had called out.

On the chair, Connor started to cry.

*

Ella’s mood worsened with each internet cafe.

‘Cafe is the wrong word,’ she said to Dennis after they’d left one place
where the dark carpet was verging on sticky and the young man behind the counter didn’t speak but only shook his head. ‘Cave is much more fitting.’

Dennis looked like he was having trouble mustering a grin himself. ‘Knock-off time soon.’

She checked her watch. Half past four. They’d have to head back for the end-of-day meeting soon, but they were in the Cross already. ‘Humour me with something.’

He gave her a flat look.

Angie Crane looked at the clock when they walked in. ‘I was just about to leave.’ Ella smiled. ‘We won’t keep you long. Where would Brooke Hayes be this time of day?’

‘She moves between various friends,’ Angie said. ‘I can give you the addresses of a couple.’ She pawed through the papers on her desk. ‘Her mobile number as well.’

‘She has a mobile?’

‘They all do.’

Ella said, ‘Emil too? Even though he’s left?’

Angie nodded. ‘We let them keep them for a couple of months. I’ve already tried to call him, more than a few times. First it went to voicemail but now the mailbox is full.’

Ella bit down her question about why Angie hadn’t mentioned this before. She and Dennis were equally at fault in that they hadn’t thought to ask. She just never expected kids who
were either homeless or the next closest thing to have phones – after all, you needed an address and ID and all sorts of things.

‘How do they get them?’ she asked.

‘Through us.’ Angie held up a sheet of paper. ‘Here you go. Numbers for all the kids. They’re prepaid so they can’t bust the bank.’

‘So if you arrange it all, you must have their online passwords, you must be able to see who they’ve
made calls to and when,’ Dennis said.

She nodded. ‘Right there on the page. It’s a condition.’

Ella said, ‘Use your computer?’

She opened up the phone company’s website and entered the phone number and password for Emil’s account. His phone hadn’t been used since the day of the murder. She said to Dennis, ‘Last call out was at 3.40 pm that day.’ She read out the number.

He dialled it on his
own phone then went into the corridor.

Ella typed on. Because the phones were prepaid, the logs showed no details about incoming texts or calls. The last text out was just before 5 pm that same day. She read out the mobile number to Angie. ‘Recognise that?’ Angie frowned. ‘Can’t say I do.’

Ella scanned down the list of numbers belonging to the other Streetlights kids but the number wasn’t there.
She took out her own mobile and rang it, ready with some bogus name and accent if someone answered, but it went straight to a generic voicemail message that gave her the number and no name. She hung up.

Dennis came back. ‘It was a fortune-teller hotline, but they don’t keep records so she couldn’t tell me anything.’

‘She couldn’t work it out psychically?’ Ella said.

‘Ha ha.’

‘It makes no sense,’
Angie said. ‘Emil wasn’t into that sort of stuff.’

‘That you knew about,’ Ella said.

She turned back to the computer and printed out the pages of calls Emil had made, then looked up Brooke’s records. She used her phone mostly for texting. Ella scanned through the numbers but none jumped out at her. She printed her records too, then the other kids’, then picked up the office phone handset.

‘We need you to ring Brooke and ask her to come in,’ she told Angie.

Angie looked at the handset like it was a snake. ‘Why?’

‘For the case.’

‘About Emil?’

‘Yes,’ Ella said, meaning
sort of
.

Angie sighed and dialled. Ella pushed the speakerphone button.

‘Hello.’

‘Brooke, it’s Angie. Can you come to the office, please?’

‘What for?’

‘Uh, there’s a letter here for you.’

‘From who?’

‘It doesn’t
say.’

Brooke spoke to somebody in the background, then said, ‘Okay.’

‘Will you be long? It’s just that I need to close up.’

‘On my way. See you soon.’

Angie hung up and said fiercely, ‘These are good kids. There’s no way I’d lie to any of them if Emil wasn’t missing.’

‘We appreciate that,’ Dennis said. ‘Thank you.’

Angie sat back in the chair with a grunt. Dennis read the phone records,
and Ella walked about looking at the photos of the kids on the wall. She saw another one of Emil, biceps bunched for the camera, barbed-wire tatt dark blue on his arm, then one of Gus and Brooke and the Greenleaf girl appearing deep in conversation.

The office turned orange with the setting sun.

C
onnor sat silently in the dark. His throat was raw from thirst and shouting for help. He was worried about Emil, who he still couldn’t hear. He ached to get up and move to ease the worsening pain in his legs, arms, back and shoulders. He’d shouted that he needed to piss, but nothing happened, and he’d wet himself again after an agony of trying to hold on. The wound in his chest throbbed
like it was infected, and his groin burned and stung from being wet for so long. But none of it came close to the pain in his heart and mind caused by his emerging memory.

He’d been sitting in the living room in front of the TV while Suzanne lay in bed upstairs. He hadn’t wanted to go up while she was awake but he knew she would fight sleep as long as she could. She’d tried to talk to him about
the paramedic; he’d said he knew that she’d been with him: she’d lured him to Marrickville in time to see them eating together, for God’s sake, her foot curling around his under the table; but Connor wouldn’t be drawn further. And no, he didn’t want to talk about why she’d done it.

He knew already. Why else had he been drinking so steadily all evening? No way,
no way
could he give her what she
wanted. For one thing, pulling that one toothpick out meant the whole construction of his life would crash down. For another, he couldn’t help but believe that once she knew the truth she would leave.

She’d cried and stormed upstairs. He’d stared, drunk and unseeing, at some show.

She had said it, once; said she guessed this was his fear and his reason for not telling her, but couldn’t he see
that with his silence he was driving her to it anyway?

He’d turned off the TV and sat there, caught.
Tell her and she leaves; don’t tell her and she leaves.

Then the tap at the door.

The gun, the tape, the knife. Emil’s cry of pain. Suzanne’s calling, ‘Baby?’

He rocked against the tapes. Oh God, if he could only hear that word from her lips again!

And then she’d come down the stairs and into
the kitchen, wearing only a pair of his boxers, the ones he’d loved running his fingers over when they were on her, and he knew she’d been willing to make up a little, and the loss of it all and the threat and the fear made him stumble towards her, limbs a thought behind because of the drug and the beer. The whisperer was quicker and slashed his chest and shoved him to the floor.

He’d seen anger
flash in her eyes then, and recognition, she’d known both of the guys – both of them! – and she’d screamed but then the guy was on her, stabbing so fast, the knife in and out, and Suzanne so surprised, falling back against the fridge then to the floor, looking down at herself then up at them.

Connor had scrambled to her side and pressed desperately on the wounds, her blood rushing like hot oil
between his fingers, his own blood dripping from the cut in his chest and mingling with the flood. Suzanne had gasped for breath, her eyes on his.

He wept.

*

Ella looked at her watch. It’d been twenty minutes and Brooke hadn’t turned up.

Dennis said, ‘Meeting.’

She knew. They had to go in the next few minutes or be late.

‘Call her again,’ she said to Angie.

Angie huffed but did so. ‘Voicemail.’

‘Remind her.’

‘Hi Brooke, it’s me. Don’t forget this letter I’ve got here! Bye.’ She hung up.

Ella said, ‘Found the addresses of her friends yet?’

Angie burrowed into the papers on her desk. ‘They’re somewhere here.’

Dennis tapped his watch.

Ella nodded. ‘Got a photo of her too?’

Angie stopped shuffling. ‘You don’t think something’s happened to her?’

‘Highly unlikely,’ Dennis said. ‘We
just need to confirm a couple of details.’

‘The sooner we find her, the sooner we can do that,’ Ella said.

‘Perhaps you could email it to us later,’ Dennis said.

‘But if we could get it now that would be best of all,’ Ella said.

Angie went into a paper-shuffling frenzy. ‘Here . . . no, that’s not it, wait, yes. Yes! Here it is. Two friends she made in the last year while she’s been involved
with us, social-minded people who sometimes fit kids in when the shelters are full. Would you like me to call them? It’s no bothe–’

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis said, reaching for the page. ‘We can do that.’

‘The photo?’ Ella said.

‘Oh. Here.’ Angie took down the picture that showed Gus and Brooke and the Greenleaf girl talking together. ‘I’ll get this back too?’

‘Promise,’ Ella said.

In the car,
Dennis pulled out into heavy traffic. ‘We’re going to be late.’

‘It was important to get this stuff.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘She probably got busy talking to her friends and forgot, or wasn’t coming in the first place. What attraction would a letter have? These kids don’t write them and don’t get them.’

‘We don’t know that she wasn’t coming,’ Ella said. ‘What if something’s happened to
her like it’s happened to Emil?’

‘We don’t know for sure anything’s happened to him either.’ Dennis changed lanes. The brakelights of the streams of cars in front of them made his face red. ‘Perhaps that girl he wanted to talk to lives out of the city and he’s gone away for a few days.’

‘Just leaving his job like that? His cat?’

Dennis stared out at the traffic. ‘Maybe Roger the dodger was
meant to mind it and forgot.’

Ella shook her head. ‘Something’s off. I want to copy and hand out Brooke’s photo and get nightshift to check these addresses.’

He said, ‘What exactly do you think is going on?’

‘I wish I had a clue.’

*

Mick strode home from the bus stop with his workbag squeezed to his chest and the strap wound three times around his wrist. A corner of the money pressed into
his ribs and he raised the bag and sniffed. Nothing. Back at the station he’d checked while locked in the toilet, worried about what Jo might pick up, and thought he’d caught a whiff of dead body, but then couldn’t smell it again. On the bus he’d thought the same for a second, but the woman sitting dully next to him hadn’t looked at him funny or even made a face.

Light streamed from the front
window of their terrace onto the dark footpath. He had the keys ready in the side pocket of the bag, and in three seconds was inside and turning the dead-bolt behind him. ‘That you?’ Jo called.

‘Nope.’ He kicked off his boots and slung the bag over his shoulder then pulled one strap back down so it hung casually loose.

‘C’mere and gimme a kiss.’

‘I’m going to shower first.’ He went to the kitchen
doorway and Jo looked up from the stove. ‘Stinky case.’