Cold Grave (30 page)

‘So it’s just assumed she committed suicide.’

‘Who knows what someone in that state of mind is thinking. Suicide is anything but rational.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small vial of pills. ‘They say drowning is incredibly peaceful. There are worse ways to die.’

As a pathologist, Anya believed otherwise. ‘I disagree. Drowning is horrific. Initially, the victims hold their breath until involuntary inspiration takes over. That means they gasp, filling their lungs with water. If the’re lucky, they get laryngeal spasm as the cardiorespiratory system collapses. It’s likely they swallow and vomit, aspirating the vomitus into their lungs. And this is all before they lose consciousness. Then they have a respiratory arrest and cardiac death occurs after a few more minutes. Drowning is anything but peaceful.’

‘Yeah well, as fascinating as the lecture is, I have work to do.’ He stood up and stumbled, his weight buckling. With a teeth-gritting moan, he hit the floor.

Anya tried to help, but he pushed her away. A waiter was greeted with the same response. He was like a sad drunk at the end of a big night, too proud to admit it.

Red-faced, he hauled himself up, back onto the chair and quickly downed two pills.

Anya asked the waiter to bring a sandwich. She appreciated FitzHarris had two major cases to investigate, but something else had him rattled. Today his behaviour was more belligerent and almost self-destructive, as if guilt was getting to him.

‘How can you work for Mats Anderson?’

Blood engorged his face. Anya moved her chair back.

‘You have no right to judge me. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘I know how your leg was injured. Did that jade you? After all your years of service, you were invalided out.’

‘We’re even then. I went through your personal things . . .’

Anya expected more anger, but he remained silent for a while as if debating whether or not to speak. Eventually, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and removed a photograph of a mother and a little boy.

‘I was close by when I got the call about a domestic.’

He put the photo on the table and his hands gravitated toward the salt shaker. He studied the crystals inside, as if watching the scene again. With a flat tone, he began to speak. ‘I walked in and saw her . . . Elise. She was on the floor in the kitchen. There was blood everywhere, like she had put up a hell of a fight. I knew straightaway she was dead, but her eyes just stared at me, begging for help. That was my fatal mistake.’

Anya swallowed, knowing what came next.

‘I should have checked the rest of the house. Before I could react, the bastard husband came out of nowhere and stabbed me more times than I can remember. I tried to fend him off, but he caught me off guard. You see, I was on my knees with Elise.’ The salt shaker rotated a couple more times. ‘I blacked out. Guess he thought he’d killed me too so he cut his own throat.’

Eventually, Fitz looked up. ‘Only thing is, there was a son. His name was Ricky. He was two years old with all this curly hair. A lot like your boy.’ He took a deep breath and sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Ricky was stabbed while he slept but could have been alive when I got there. Elise tried to protect him, but she didn’t stand a chance.’ His voice trailed off.

‘Is this them in the photo?’

Fitz passed it across. ‘It was the last one taken.’

Two faces grinned at the camera. The mother was pretty and looked so happy holding the little boy in her arms. He had a cheeky face.

‘Ricky would have turned five today.’ Fitz said, with a vacant expression. His face was gaunt and grey.

Anya blinked to prevent her own tears spilling. Crimes affected not just the victims and families, but everyone in their wake. That included the doctors who fought to save Fitz’s life, the pathologists, crime scene technicians, and, obviously, the police.

By carrying their picture, Fitz was never going to forget. Or forgive himself for what he thought he did wrong. She had seen that all-consuming guilt many times before, especially in her own family. Anya fought back tears. Ricky would always be two years old. She hoped he hadn’t suffered and had died quickly in his sleep.

A third person had been cut out of the frame, presumably the man who had killed them. She looked closely at the faces – the mother had a broad grin and dimpled chin. The expression was familiar. Suddenly, it became obvious.

FitzHarris had failed to disclose a crucial fact to Laura.

‘Elise looks a lot like you,’ Anya said.

‘You think so? I thought she got her mother’s brains and looks. Both of them hated me being a cop. They were convinced I’d get killed on the job one day. Ironic, huh? I’ve outlived them all.’

Anya passed back the photo, which Fitz studied again.

‘Ricky was the spit of me as a kid.’ He half-smiled. ‘It drove Elise mad that he was just like his pop.’

The sandwich arrived, and FitzHarris devoured it, barely taking time to chew.

‘There’s something that’s really bothering me about Lilly Chan. We can’t prove she was with any of the bowling shirts when she died,’ he said before swallowing.

Anya had not yet told him about the photos of Kandy, but without the girl’s agreement to give a formal statement, there was nothing to link those men with Lilly.

‘We’ve overlooked the secret admirer. The one who wrote that note and wanted to get her to the pool spa,’ he continued. ‘Gut feeling tells me we find him, we get the answers we’ve been looking for.’

29

Anya stood at the glass wall and watched the winds gust through the outside area, continuing to batter the folded umbrellas and rattling the chains that anchored the stacked chairs and lounges. Cords banged against the empty metal flagpoles in an irritating, syncopated rhythm. She felt emotionally wrung out after her time with Fitz and was almost relieved that Martin and Ben were still out at brunch together.

A worker in full wet-weather gear pushed against the wind to move a few feet forward around the pool, its contents were being displaced and replaced with more rain. The monotonous repetition was no longer hypnotic. For the first time, her stomach seemed to roll with the movement and she wanted to be anywhere but on the boat. A wave sloshed over the side, knocking the man to the deck. A second worker forced his way over to help. Hoods covered both crew’s faces. More of the faceless staff who worked in third-class conditions on a first-class resort.

She thought of Mishka. In this weather, she could have easily lost her footing and slipped beneath a railing. With everyone inside avoiding the weather, no one would hear cries for help. The double insulated glass ensured it. Rachel had risked her own life searching for Mishka. Anya would have done the same if there was any chance of bringing Miriam back alive.

Trying to put herself in Mishka’s shoes was not easy. Her secret employer had just been murdered, and she and Rachel were accused of extortion and mass murder. And Carlos, her paid informant, had been shot. She had to be terrified. All of her support network, apart from Rachel, was gone.

She knew too well the pain Rachel was going through. Her father coped with Miriam’s disappearance by convincing himself that his three year old had been murdered – quickly. She pictured their mother, setting the table at home tonight, like every other, in case Miriam found her way back home.

Wind howled outside and Anya shivered. Each new year brought hope that Miriam’s tiny remains would be found, so they could all finally have some degree of peace. Up until now, that was all she had wanted. But David FitzHarris had proven that having bodies to bury did little to numb the pain.

Anya decided to see how Jasmine was doing. Ben had been begging to see her again to play some more piano. If she enjoyed the distraction, it could be good for both of them.

She flinched at the ring of the phone. Karen asked if she could come urgently to the medical centre. Rachel wasn’t well.

Anya grabbed her jacket and room key, scribbled a note for Martin, and headed to the lifts. A few minutes later, she entered the medical centre through the double doors. An elderly lady sat in the waiting area with her arm in a sling. Karen was nowhere in sight.

Doctor Novak strolled out of one room holding up an X-ray.

‘Excuse me, but can you tell me where Rachel and Karen are?’

‘Neurotic passengers take up my day. Now I must deal with hysterical staff,’ he scoffed. ‘There.’ He pointed to the third consulting room and turned his attention back to the film in his hand.

‘Nasty humeral fracture, could need open reduction,’ she commented on the X-ray, just to be annoying, before knocking on the closed door.

Rachel sat in a chair, head between her legs, breathing into a brown paper bag.

Karen sat opposite, stroking her back. ‘That’s it, deep breaths. In, two, three, four; out, two, three, four.’

She saw Anya. ‘We were dressing Carlos’s wounds when it just came on. She felt palpitations and had a heart rate of two hundred and was struggling to breathe. She’s never been like this before.’

‘Hi Rachel, I came as fast as I could.’ Anya turned to Karen. ‘Did anything upset her? A phone call, patient or visitor from earlier?’

‘We had the normal clinic: coughs, colds, Cockroach and the regular hypochondriacs. David FitzHarris dropped in for a coffee and a chat, to see how Carlos was doing. I stepped outside to see a woman who had fallen out of her wheelchair.’ She stood up. ‘Rach, you’re doing well. I’m just going out to see the X-ray, Anya will be here with you.’ She looked up for confirmation.

‘I’m here.’ Anya sat and placed a finger on Rachel’s wrist as the senior nurse left the room. ‘Heart rate’s pretty normal.’

Rachel looked up from the bag, mascara smeared around her eyes.

‘FitzHarris knows.’

‘About Mishka?’

‘No, I mean . . . I don’t know. He was asking me all these questions about Nuala McKenny.’

‘What exactly?’

‘He knew I was working on that sailing and wanted to know if she had come in to be seen, and what our protocol was for rape examinations.’ Rachel took a deep breath. ‘I told him she came in and that she wanted me to examine her, not the male doctor, and he got . . . I don’t know . . . he started pacing, and getting angry. Then he said there was no medical record so maybe I wasn’t remembering Nuala right. I got scared about what he wanted me to say, so I said it was years ago and I could have made a mistake.’ She took a few, sharp breaths. ‘He wouldn’t let it go. He just kept asking me over and over again what happened that night. And whether Nuala and I were friends.’

‘Slow breaths again.’ Anya had told FitzHarris about the rape accusation but he hadn’t necessarily connected the Nuala impostor with Rachel. ‘Maybe he doesn’t know anything about Mishka or the ESOW.’

‘Then why did he say that if I was lying about anything, or knew more than I was letting on, he’d make sure I was charged with falsifying medical records and a whole heap of other things?’

Anya considered the logical sequence. ‘He looked up the records and found out you worked the night she disappeared. It makes sense to ask you what you remember because there was no medical report that Nuala had been seen.’

‘But I wrote one. It took hours because I didn’t want to get it wrong. It was my first rape case.’

Anya suspected FitzHarris was upfront enough to confront Rachel directly about Mishka if he knew she existed. There was a chance he was putting pressure on Rachel to see if she’d crack about other things as well.

‘I don’t trust him.’ The hyperventilation started again.

‘Breathe slowly, in and out. You’ll pass out if you don’t.’

Anya was not sure if she should trust him either. He had been employed on the basis of his anti-terrorism experience. Someone was setting up ESOW to look like violent mass murderers. If the police were closing in on the members, FitzHarris could have been given information on Rachel. He knew she was trapped on board until the next port so he had time to catch her off guard. Like a cat toying with a terrified mouse.

Rachel reached around her neck and removed something silver from a chain. ‘Can you look after this?’

Anya saw it was a key.

‘Mishka told me to never give it to anyone, but I trust you. I can’t risk FitzHarris or anyone from the company finding it.’

Anya listened for Karen’s footsteps or voice. ‘What does it unlock?’