Web of Deceit (15 page)

FOURTEEN

A
t eight the next morning, Ella stood in the autopsy suite of Glebe Morgue. Marko Meixner lay naked on the steel table, his eyes closed, his right foot placed neatly next to the stump of his lower leg, the deep lacerations and crush injuries to his chest and shoulders gaping open. She could see the red tissue and yellowish fat layers and the bright white bone
of broken ribs. The blood had been cleaned off his skin and the edges of the wounds were dry, and above it all his face was unmarked and almost serene.

Ella watched the pathologist peer closely at Meixner’s skin, while beside her Murray kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. She thought again about Fletcher’s suspicious behaviour the previous night: lurking outside the Meixners’ building then
going home. She hadn’t told Murray about it. Yet.

‘Now this is interesting,’ the pathologist said.

Ella stepped closer. Murray glanced down then away.

‘It’s a recent bruise.’ The pathologist pointed a gloved finger at a mark on the top of Marko’s right arm.

‘Are those fingermarks?’ Ella said. ‘As if someone grabbed him from behind?’

The pathologist nodded. ‘It was
a large hand using considerable force. About a week ago, I’d say. Let me keep looking and I’ll see if there’s more.’

Fletcher had big hands. She nudged Murray.
How about that?

He swallowed hard and nodded without looking at either her or the body.

The pathologist examined Marko’s scalp, pulled the overhead light nearer to look more closely at an area on his neck, then had his
assistant help him turn Marko onto his stomach. He was stiff and his hands struck the steel table like he was making a point. Ella could see the bruise more clearly now, and stared at it, wishing for an impression of rings or some other distinctive mark.

The pathologist worked slowly down Marko’s body, then stretched his back. ‘There’s nothing else.’

The assistant took a series of
photos, including a ruler in some to indicate dimensions.

‘Over we go again,’ the pathologist said, and once Marko was on his back he took up a scalpel and began to cut.

Murray walked away. ‘Are these his clothes?’ He picked up a plastic bag of bloodstained clothing sitting on the bench.

‘Yep. Mobile phone’s in there too.’

Ella watched Murray pull on gloves, untie the bag,
and sort gingerly through the contents. The phone he lifted out looked like an older-model iPhone. He studied the screen with a frown. ‘Cracked to buggery. Won’t even turn on.’

‘Tech heads might be able to get something out of it.’ Ella turned back to the table just as the pathologist lifted off a section of ribs to reveal blood pooled in the chest cavity underneath.

*

Afterwards,
Murray sat in the car with his hands hanging between his knees. Ella started the engine, thinking of the hand-shaped bruise. The photos were in a manila folder, tucked safely down the side of her seat. She needed to tell Murray what she’d seen Fletcher do last night. She shouldn’t have gone there, but he wasn’t her boss. He’d be fine with it.

‘It’s not the death or the body that gets me
so much,’ Murray said. ‘Or even the smell in there. Blood itself’s no problem. God knows, I’ve waded around in the stuff. But that.’ He shuddered. ‘That foot sitting there. Out of place.’

Ella checked for cars and swung out.
Tell him what you did.
‘I knew a copper once who could handle the most splashy blood and guts but couldn’t stand vomit.’

‘Vomit doesn’t bother me. Phlegm, on the
other hand. Ugh.’

She glanced over at him.
Tell him.
‘What does your girlfriend do?’

He raised his eyebrows and looked out the window, and she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he smiled. ‘She works in publishing. She’s an editor. The company makes educational books – school textbooks and so on.’

‘Do you talk to her about this stuff?’

‘Not really. She sometimes asks.
I give her the clean version.’

The lights on Parramatta Road went green as Ella approached and she drove through the intersection.

‘You wouldn’t have that problem, I guess,’ he said. ‘Him being a doctor. He sees everything.’

She smiled.
Tell him!
She took a deep breath. ‘Listen. I went out last night.’

He grinned at her.

‘Not that kind of going out. I went to Fletcher’s
house. He got in his van and I followed him. He drove to Chloe’s place and sat outside for five minutes then drove back home.’

The smile drifted off Murray’s face. ‘You can’t use that.’

‘I know.’

‘If Langley found out, you’d be off the team faster than a… faster than –’

‘I know,’ she said again. ‘But Fletcher’s got pretty big hands. He’d be strong too.’

‘We need
to ask Chloe about the bruise when we get in.’ Murray stared out the windscreen. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t see him go there while under official surveillance.’

Ella said, ‘I could call in an anonymous tip. Report a lurking van, give the numberplate.’

‘Let’s try pushing the point with Langley first,’ he said. ‘Keep the tip as backup.’

*

They reached the office ten minutes before
the meeting. Murray, still pale, went to wash his face. Ella sat at her desk and picked up her phone to call Audra, but found a voicemail waiting for her.

‘It’s Juliet Rooney. Can you ring me back? Whatever the time.’ She’d left her mobile number.

Ella called her.

‘Long time no talk,’ she said when Juliet answered. They’d done a course together and got along well. It was nice
to hear her voice again. ‘How’s Randwick?’

‘The beating heart of the city, as ever,’ Juliet said. ‘Now listen. I’ve got this assault and a witness dropped your name. Jane Koutoufides, paramedic. Ring a bell?’

‘She’s a witness in my current homicide case.’ Ella summarised the situation about Meixner, the crash, the train, the old murder. ‘What happened?’

‘Her ex’s wife was beaten
unconscious with a golf club outside Jane’s house last night.’

Ella struggled to process that. ‘And Jane saw it? Heard it? Not – she didn’t do it?’

‘She found her,’ Juliet said. ‘She says she was out on the piss, walked home, and tripped over the woman lying in her front yard.’

‘She says,’ Ella said. ‘You don’t believe her?’

‘She and the victim had been arguing, and yesterday
afternoon had a fight from which they both got bruises. My question to you is: what impression did you get when you dealt with her?’

Ella thought. ‘I can’t see it.’

It was just an impression, they both knew that, but it was never a wasted conversation to check. It reminded Ella to call the Central Coast, see if Paterson was back on the job.

‘Is she seriously a suspect?’ she asked.

‘We have a couple of neighbours who heard her coming down the street before she found the body and started screaming, and we’re checking her alibi for the time before that,’ Juliet said. ‘But the women look almost the same, so Jane may actually have been the target.’

‘Huh,’ Ella said. ‘Well, good luck.’

Murray arrived as Ella put down the phone. His hairline was wet and he finished
wiping his hands and dropped the paper towel in the bin. ‘Good luck with what?’

‘Another case,’ she said. Time was moving on. The meeting would start soon. ‘You want to ask Chloe about the handprint bruise, or see if this Paterson guy’s back from sick leave?’

He pulled his phone close. ‘What’s his number?’

While he dialled, Ella rang Chloe Meixner’s mobile number. Audra answered.

‘It’s Detective Marconi,’ Ella said. ‘How are you? How’s Chloe? Are you still at the hospital?’

‘She’ll be discharged this morning. She’s doing okay.’

‘I have a question,’ Ella said. ‘Did Marko say anything to her about somebody grabbing him by the arm, a week or two ago?’

Audra asked the question, then Chloe came on the line. ‘He didn’t say anything.’

‘Did you notice
a bruise on him in that time?’

‘No, nothing. Where was it?’

‘High up on his right arm.’

‘I didn’t see anything, but he didn’t often go around shirtless,’ she said. ‘Come to think of it, he did wear a T-shirt to bed in the last week or so. Usually he wears a singlet. It’s been cooler though, so I just assumed it was that. Do you think he was hiding it from me? Why wouldn’t he
tell me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ella said. ‘Is everything else all right?’ It seemed a ridiculous question, and when she heard Chloe start to cry she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later.’

Audra got back on. ‘Just catch whoever did it.’

Ella could hear Chloe weeping.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘We’re doing everything we can.’
Though if we had more people, we could do more.
‘Is she okay? The baby’s all right?’

‘We’re getting by,’ Audra said. ‘I better go.’

Ella hung up and looked at Murray. ‘She didn’t know about the bruise. She even wondered whether he was hiding it from her.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I should’ve rung in that fake tip about the van on the way here. We could’ve been on our way to pick him up right now.’

‘We can always ring it in
later. That cop’s not back, by the way.’

‘Have they told him we’ve been calling?’

‘They said he’s really sick.’

Sick schmick. She wanted to know what he thought, whether he felt that Canning might be capable of revenge. She knew that one murder while drunk was a lot different to following someone and pushing them under a train, and there were the intervening years to take into
account too. She still wanted to ask him though.

Murray checked his watch. ‘It’s time.’

They went down the corridor together and took seats in the meeting room with James Kemsley and John Gawande. Langley shut the door, then introduced Annie Blackwood, forensic accountant from the Fraud Squad. She was a civilian of around forty-five, dressed in a smart magenta jacket over a black shirt
and pants. She smiled at them.

‘Annie will go this morning with Gawande and Kemsley to the Payton and Jones offices.’ Langley smoothed his tie, today a bright sky blue. ‘You boys look into tracing the phone calls made to Meixner and Weaver there, while Annie has a chat to the staff, and then we should be able to move on.’

Ella sat back in her chair and folded her arms.

‘Then
head out to Fletcher’s worksite. Check with people other than his mate that he was indeed there until four. Talk to Fletcher himself again. See what he says when you ask him directly about what time Daley Jones left.’

That was hardly the challenge he deserved. Ella tried to speak but Langley kept going. She was definitely ringing in about the van now.

‘Shakespeare and Marconi, you’ll
pay a visit to Bill Weaver’s wife,’ he said. ‘A polite chat but see if you can find out what she thinks about what he did. Check in with the man himself again too. Then have another try with Miriam Holder, and her colleagues. Hopefully they’ll be more forthcoming than she was.’

‘They can hardly be less,’ Murray said.

‘Then look a bit further into Canning.’

‘The post-mortem found
a hand-shaped bruise on Meixner’s shoulder,’ she cut in. She made Murray stand up and grabbed his right shoulder from behind to demonstrate. ‘It was a large hand, so most likely male. I checked with his wife, but she knew nothing about it and believed Meixner must’ve been hiding it from her. Fletcher has large hands. I think we should get him in for a formal interview.’

‘What was the cause
of death?’ Langley asked.

‘Blood loss from severe trauma from going under the train,’ she said. ‘What about Hossain? He could check out Mrs Weaver while we get Fletcher.’

‘He’s back on the old cases,’ Langley said.

Those bloody old cases.
‘But we could use him here.’

‘Work fast and you might have time to do it yourself.’ Langley stood up. ‘Questions? Good. Back at five.’

Ella stared at his back as he walked out. Kemsley and Gawande talked to Annie Blackwood as they followed. Murray sat silently in his chair beside her.

‘He won’t be interested in this case until it’s been unsolved for a year,’ Ella said. ‘What can we do? Can we go over his head?’

Murray snorted. ‘You know what happens when people do that. They’re back in uniform and working in
some shithole, never to be seen again.’

She leaned in close. ‘My tip idea looks brilliant now, doesn’t it?’

*

Jane lay curled on her bed with her arms around a pillow. She’d had a three-hour doze in the spare room at the back of her house when she got home, because uniformed cops had still been doorknocking her neighbours and a news crew was filming on the street. The bastards
had zoomed in on her getting dropped off by Rooney and scurrying inside, but they were all gone now. The path was wet and clean after some kind person had hosed it off, and she was back in her own bed. She wanted to sleep again, but couldn’t. Her mind wouldn’t shut up, bouncing between the feel of Deb’s blood on her hands, past conversations with Laird, the other blood that was still coming, the
pale stillness of Deb’s face.

She didn’t know why she felt like this. She couldn’t count the wounded bodies she’d seen, touched, dealt with – hundreds probably. At least. Plenty of people that she knew too. Plenty dead as well. Some went peacefully in their beds; some traumatically, like Marko under the train. Some wanted to go, like the woman she’d saved on the roof, who went up there again
later, this time at night when nobody was around, and was found twisted and cold on the ground the next morning; but most didn’t, like the kids in the crash Alex went to.

How absurd that she’d got a medal for grabbing that woman while Alex got nothing except what she suspected was a case of PTSD. Just because a photographer had seen her on the roof, and Alex had been alone.

You also
got Laird out of it.

And what a nightmare that’d turned out to be.

She refused to think about him any longer. She had to go get her car. Call up Gittins. But first she’d ring Steve, find out how Deb was, and then call the kids.

She’d thought that Laird might try to ring so had turned her phone off before she had her doze. He hadn’t, but Steve and the kids all had, Breanna and
Glenn multiple times.