Cold Justice (3 page)

Georgie said, ‘Technically she’s a near-drowning. I should stay and look after her.’

‘Technically she’s a pain in the arse,’ Freya said. ‘Listen. I’ll stay and look after her till the others get here. You go to the truck, get yourself all wrapped up in the back, have a little rest. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘Okay.’

Freya squeezed her arm. Her dark blue eyes were concerned. ‘You’re not short of breath yourself, are you? Didn’t take any water on board?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not going to get back to the truck in ten minutes and find you overflowing with pulmonary oedema and making a mess of my nice clean floor?’

‘I’ll call on the radio at the first sign of foam.’

Freya smiled. ‘Good.’

Georgie pulled the sheet tighter around herself and started off, head down, through the crowd. Somebody started to clap and others joined in. A couple of people patted her on the back and she heard someone say, ‘Well done,’ and then, ‘Bloody psycho wasn’t worth it’.

She reached the ambulance and climbed into the back. It was empty and echoing without the stretcher. She took a blanket from the linen locker and sank soggily onto the vinyl seat.

See, it went fine. She’s alive! There is no jinx, no taint.

The sun came in the window and she felt warmed, calmed a little.

It’s like Matt said: we’ve left the past behind and it can’t hurt us if we don’t let it.

She looked out at the people pointing onto the wharf and talking, at the people walking past on the concourse. A little girl sat on her father’s shoulders, his broad hands firm around her ankles, her hands flat on the top of his Wallabies bucket hat, a bigger version of her own. Georgie watched their passage, saw the man point at a ferry chugging slowly in and smiled as the little girl waved at it, then her gaze latched onto a man leaning on the railing behind them, staring straight at the ambulance, at the tinted window behind which Georgie sat.

Georgie shot out of her seat. She stumbled over the stretcher rails on the floor, her wet sock slipping on the lino, and kicked open the side door. She leapt down into a sea of red uniforms – a crowd of schoolchildren being herded past by their teachers. She tripped and almost fell onto one small boy, scrambled to her feet and out of the way, and backed up against the ambulance where she could look across the river of red hats.

The man was gone.

She stared right and left, but couldn’t see him. She shakily picked up her blanket, retreated into the ambulance and locked the doors.

The past was not behind them at all. The past had followed her, right into the city.

TWO

E
lla read that Tim had gone out that night with four friends: Gareth Wing and Damien Millerton who he’d known since kindergarten, and Steven Franklin and Christopher Patrick who he’d become friends with in Year Seven. Gareth Wing said in his statement that Tim had been quiet and had drunk more heavily than usual that night. Detective Will Tynan had asked why that was, but Wing hadn’t known or even been able to guess. Damien Millerton, who’d said he was probably closest to Tim, had told Detective Peter Constantine that he thought something had been on Tim’s mind for a while, a few months at least. He said that about three months before he died, when the two were walking home after a party, Tim had asked if he’d ever thought he was gay.

Ella’s phone rang. She dragged herself back to the present. ‘Unsolved, Marconi.’

‘Hello, darling,’ her mother said. ‘How are you doing in there?’

‘Fine,’ Ella said. ‘Busy.’

‘You and your busy.’

In the background Ella heard her father say, ‘How is she?’

‘She’s good,’ Netta said to him.

‘Is she coming for dinner?’

‘I haven’t asked her yet,’ Netta said.

Ella said, ‘I can’t come tonight.’

‘When then?’

‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Because we want to hear about your first day back.’

‘It’s going really well.’

‘No pain in your shoulder?’

‘It’s fine,’ Ella said. ‘I’m sorry but I have to go.’

‘Ring when you get home?’

‘Mum.’

‘I know, I know, so kill me for worrying about you.’

‘I’ll talk to you later.’

‘Bye,’ Franco called.

‘Your father says goodbye,’ Netta said. ‘Think about dinner for sometime soon, Ella, all right?’

‘I will. Bye.’

Ella put the phone down and checked her watch, then picked up the interview transcript again. She wanted to be across as much of Tim’s story as possible before she headed out.

‘You or him?’ Detective Constantine had asked Damien Millerton.

‘Him,’ Millerton said. ‘If I thought that Tim was gay. Could I see it in him, that sort of thing.’

‘Did that strike you as strange?’

‘Shit yeah,’ Millerton said. ‘Anytime we talked about girls he used to go on the most, reckoned that when his family went on holidays to the south coast he always got heaps.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘Not really, but he was my mate, so I wasn’t going to call him on it, was I?’

‘So what did you say that night?’

‘I told him not to be a dickhead.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He went quiet for a bit, and we kept walking, and then he said if he told me something could I keep it secret. I said yes, and he said something had happened with a man, he didn’t know what to do, he came and so he thought he must be gay. It was dark but I could hear he was almost crying. I tried to think of something to say, but I mean, shit, what do you say to that? Then this car came along, it was the brother of one of our mates from school, and he gave us a lift home.’

‘Did you ever try to bring the subject up again?’

‘No,’ Millerton said. ‘I figured if he wanted to talk about it he would. If he didn’t then he wouldn’t.’

‘So on the night that he died,’ Constantine said, ‘did he give you any indication at all of what might be wrong? Was it related to that situation?’

‘Nah. He said there’d been a birthday barbecue thing at his house for some of his family, and there’d been an argument.’

‘Between who?’

‘Him and his parents. He didn’t say what it was about though.’

‘Did you see him speak to anyone else in the pub that night, apart from your group of friends?’

‘Like was he hitting on anyone, or getting hit on? No. Not that I saw, anyway.’

‘Or just talking in general?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see him leave?’

‘No,’ Millerton said.

‘When did you realise he was gone?’

‘About midnight somebody asked where he was. I hadn’t seen him for about half an hour or so, probably. We checked the dunnies and went outside in case he was spewing in the gutter but he wasn’t there.’

‘How far did you go, looking for him?’

‘That was it,’ Millerton said. ‘We figured he got a taxi home. We went back inside and partied on. Shit, I hate myself for it now.’

The interview ended there. Ella put down the transcript and checked the autopsy report for any findings of semen or sexual assault, but there was nothing. Tynan and Constantine’s summary described their fruitless efforts to learn more about Tim’s possible relationship with a man: the rest of his friends denied being taken into his confidence, and his photo wasn’t recognised at any of the local gay haunts. There had been a couple of gay bashings in the three months prior to Tim’s death and the culprit, a man named Garry Thomas, was in custody at the time. Constantine had interviewed him and his known associates, but had written that Thomas’s friends had solid alibis and the murder seemed like news to Thomas himself.

Ella frowned. Tim’s friends might not have been telling the whole truth, and the same with anybody encountered at a gay hangout, especially if they thought it could lead to trouble or didn’t want themselves identified.

She reached for her pen.
Ask his friends again.

The next transcripts were of interviews with Tim’s parents. Even on paper, Tamara Pieters’s rage and grief was clear. John came across as shocked, stunned, almost paralysed with the loss. Ella learned that Tim was a good boy, a good student, had no enemies, nobody with a reason to kill or even harm him. But both Tamara and John admitted not knowing about Tim’s drinking, nor that he and his friends were sneaking into pubs.

Constantine had told John what Damien Millerton had said. ‘Did Tim ever raise this subject with you?’ he asked.

‘Never,’ John said.

‘Did you talk about sex with him at all?’

‘I took him to an educational film one night when he was at primary school,’ John said. ‘I told him if he ever wanted to know anything, he only had to ask.’

‘And did he?’

‘No.’

‘What was the argument about at the family barbecue that night?’

‘Tim was misbehaving. I had to pull him into line.’

‘Misbehaving how?’

‘Not doing as he was asked, answering back.’

‘What did “pulling him into line” involve?’

‘We argued about what was appropriate behaviour, and then I told him he couldn’t go out with his friends.’

‘That was all?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Did it become physical?’

‘You’re asking if I hit my son? No, I did not.’

‘You didn’t need to restrain him, anything like that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Your wife said that you went out later that night.’

‘We realised about nine that Tim was gone,’ John said. ‘Tamara and I argued about what we should do and how we would punish him when he got home.’

‘You had different thoughts on that?’

‘I told her this was serious and that we should take away his bike and his Walkman and refuse him driving lessons for three months. She said we could ground him for two weeks and that would be enough.’

‘That must have been aggravating, especially when you were already angry with Tim.’

‘I know what you’re saying.’

‘What am I saying?’

‘I read crime novels, I watch the shows. I know you always look at the family first, and I know how it sounds when I say that, yes, I was already angry with Tim and then I was angry with Tamara too. None of it means I killed my son.’

‘I haven’t said that you did.’

‘And now even saying this . . . Can we just finish? Yes, I was angry at Tamara. Is that what you want to know? We argued on and off over the next couple of hours and then she stormed off to bed. I stayed up, and after a while I couldn’t stand it and went out in the car looking for him. I don’t know how I thought I’d be able to find him because the chances that he would be walking down any street as I drove down it were small.’

‘But you still went looking.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where exactly did you go?’

‘I went out onto Pennant Hills Road and went south first. I drove past the Millertons’ on Boundary Road, then I headed north. I know I went past Steve’s and Gareth’s and Chris’s houses in Thornleigh but I’m not sure in which order.’

‘What time did you leave the house?’

‘After Tamara went to bed, which was about eleven, I think.’

‘Care to guess how long afterwards?’

‘I really can’t say. If I’d known I would be attacked about it I would’ve made a note.’

‘Nobody’s attacking you.’

‘I lost my son.’

‘And we’re trying to find out who killed him,’ Constantine said. ‘Sit down, please, Mr Pieters.’

‘I
lost
my
son.
’

The transcript said that John Pieters broke down sobbing and the interview had been ended for that day.

Ella checked her watch. She had five minutes before she had to leave. She flipped forward in the transcripts, past interviews with Tim’s sister, Haydee, pausing at the one with his brother, Josh: a brief half-page with the explanatory header that the interviewee had Down’s syndrome and was accompanied by his mother. Ella felt for the boy as he cried all the way through the session, repeatedly telling the detective that Tim was gone and the bad man had done it.

She had just found the next interview with John and checked her watch again – one minute – when a familiar voice said, ‘I heard you were back.’

She looked around to see Detective Murray Shakespeare loitering in the doorway. ‘Here I am,’ she said.

He came over. ‘What have they got you doing?’

‘This and that.’ She watched his gaze move over the pages and felt possessive. ‘Much going on in the squad?’

He picked up the photo of Pieters in his school uniform. ‘You got new evidence, new DNA results?’ She could hear the interest in his voice.

‘A relative is a politician and throwing his weight around, wanting it reviewed, that’s all.’ She tried to sound casual as she stuffed the transcripts and scene photos into her bag. ‘I doubt there’s much in it really.’

He looked at her notepad. ‘Ask his friends what?’

‘Just checking details.’ She shuffled the rest of the papers together and closed the file. ‘Anyway, I have to go out.’

‘Where to?’

‘Long story.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘Catch you later.’

‘Is it to do with the case? Should you be going alone? I could ask if –’

‘Bye, Murray.’

In the car she checked the street directory, then opened the transcript on the passenger seat. She didn’t have time to read it now but planned to grab it up at every red light between here and there, so that by the time she met John Pieters, as she was sure she was about to do, she would know whether he’d again protested his innocence too much.

Freya hesitated, then knocked on the locker room door. ‘Ready?’

Georgie came out in a dry uniform, the wet one dripping in her hands. ‘I didn’t hear the phone.’

‘Control hasn’t called,’ Freya said. ‘I know it’s busy, that’s all.’

The sooner we’re flat out, the sooner you’ll have no time to ask me questions I don’t want to answer,
she thought.

‘I’ll just hang these up.’ Georgie started into the plant room then looked back. ‘Could you grab my boot? It’s on the floor in there.’

Freya went into the locker room. It was steamy from Georgie’s shower. She picked up the wet boot and the damp towel it was sitting on and avoided herself in the mirror.