Deserving Death (26 page)

Linsey swallowed. Imagined herself going back to Carly’s and telling her she could fold up that single quilt and return it.

‘Are you okay?’ her mother said.

‘I’m better than okay,’ Linsey said.
Do it. Say it.
‘I’m in love.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ Her mother beamed. ‘Is he someone we know?’

‘Pick me up,’ Maya whined.

Linsey did so and Maya wrapped her arms around her neck. Linsey said, ‘Sort of.’

Zoe was looking at her oddly. Their father appeared mystified, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said in the first place. Their mother waited, eyes bright. Probably planning the wedding already.

Say it.
‘It’s Carly.’

‘What?’ her mother said.

‘What did you say?’ her father said.

Zoe just kept looking at her.

‘Carly is my girlfriend,’ Linsey said. It sounded like she was talking down a long tunnel, the words weird and stretched out. She felt dizzy. ‘Carly and I are in love.’

Her father frowned. Her mother blinked, eyes shiny with tears. Zoe shifted her gaze from Linsey’s face to Maya’s.

Is this how it starts? Linsey thought. Would there be shouting and sobbing? Would Zoe come over and pull Maya away from her because she was suddenly a bad influence?

Her mother pressed her hands to her face. ‘How can this be?’

‘I thought you were friendly with Stuart,’ her father said.

Linsey had no idea who Stuart was. ‘It just is,’ she said.

Zoe hadn’t moved. Linsey couldn’t read her face. She felt her own tears rising.

‘I’m moving in with her,’ she said, trying to pull herself together through practicalities, to distract them with their favourite subject. ‘So the unit will be ready to let by the end of the week.’

‘But why?’ her mother said.

‘Why did you fall in love with Dad? Why did Zoe fall in love with Benjamin?’ Linsey said. ‘The only difference is that Carly’s a girl.’

Her father stood up. ‘I need a drink.’ He walked out of the room without looking at Linsey.

Her mother wept. ‘What did we do?’

‘What did you do to make Zoe straight?’ Linsey said. ‘Can you hear how ridiculous that sounds?’

‘Then how did it happen? Oh, I knew we should’ve chosen the co-ed school.’

‘Zoe went to the same school as me,’ Linsey said. ‘Mum, it just is. And it’s nothing bad. Can’t you be happy for me? I’ve found someone I love who loves me back.’

‘Maybe it’s a phase.’ Her mother clutched the lounge cushions. ‘If you just meet the right boy –’

‘I have met the right boy,’ Linsey said, ‘but she just happens to be a girl. That’s all there is to it. This is who I am. No phase, nothing. I am a lesbian.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘But your life will be so hard. People can be so hurtful.’

‘Then maybe you should make sure that you aren’t one of those people,’ Linsey said.

Her mother stood up and grasped Linsey’s arm. ‘You don’t need to decide this now. Give it some time. Francine’s son Daniel is back from Canberra – let me introduce you to him. He’s so nice.’

Linsey put Maya down. Zoe still hadn’t spoken, and was looking out the window. ‘I already have a partner.’

‘Just meet him,’ she said. ‘Go out to dinner with him and see how you feel. That’s all I ask.’

‘No,’ Linsey said. ‘You didn’t ask that of Zoe when she brought Ben home.’

‘This is different.’

‘That’s the point,’ Linsey said. ‘It should be just the same. You accepted her choices, why can’t you accept mine?’

Her mother stared at her. ‘That’s a very hurtful thing to say.’

‘You should try standing in my shoes,’ Linsey said. ‘I had no idea your love was conditional.’

Her mother drew herself up, her mouth a hard line. ‘I think it would be wise if you left.’

Linsey glanced out the window and saw her father staring into the hydrangeas, a glass of whisky in his hand.

‘Don’t you dare,’ her mother said.

Linsey looked back at her, hoping to see love or at least understanding, but her mother turned away. Zoe had picked Maya up and had her face buried in her hair. Maya’s blue eyes met hers, and she reached towards her. Linsey choked back tears and walked out.

*

Ella cupped her hands against the yellow glass of Janssen’s front door. ‘Knock again.’

Murray hammered on the wood, making the door rattle in its frame. Ella watched the empty hallway and listened closely for movement. Nothing.

She went to the windows along the front of the house, as Murray took out his phone. Closed curtain, closed curtain . . . not even gaps at the side for her to peer in. She looked up at the first floor windows, then down the side of the house to a closed timber gate.

Murray hung up. ‘The receptionist at the CCTV centre said he’s not there and they don’t know when he left.’

Ella said, ‘Let’s check the back.’

She tugged back the gate’s bolt and stepped in carefully, peering ahead to where the yard opened out, seeing lawn, a clothes line, the corner of a garden shed, shrubs along the fences. Murray went past her and pounded on the back door. Ella walked onto the grass and looked up at the sheer curtains in the first floor windows, then around the garden again. A metre-long patch of shrubbery caught her eye. Some of the leaves were shrivelled, dying. Some already dead leaves lay on the slightly mounded earth underneath.

She’d seen that before, as a nervous probationary constable. Her training officer had pointed it out and described what was underneath. They’d called detectives and crime scene officers, and watched them dig up the decomposing body.

She crossed the grass, broke a twig off a healthy shrub, then knelt by the dying ones.

Murray shook the French doors. ‘Locked up tight.’

Ella scraped at the soil and saw white granules. ‘Murray.’

‘I’ll see if I can find that neighbour.’

Ella could smell it now, the rank odour of death. ‘Murray.’

‘What?’

‘I think this is a grave.’ She scratched at the soil, seeing how it’d been packed down, the amount of lime increasing the deeper she went. It had done its job of masking the smell until the surface was disturbed.

Murray crouched beside her. ‘I thought you were kidding.’

She struck something with the twig. She pulled a latex glove from her pocket and put it on, then scraped at the dirt with tense fingers.

Shrivelled skin. Bony knuckles. She brushed off the dirt and lime.

An old woman’s hand, the wrist disappearing into the speckled soil.

‘His mother,’ Murray said.

*

With a body in the yard, they were entitled to enter the house. The Janssens’ back door gave way on the third kick. Ella stepped inside with her heart racing and weapon drawn, glad to have Murray at her back, glad to know that Dennis and the troops were on their way. The kitchen was small and smelled of cooked meat. The house was silent, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone hiding upstairs. Anyone standing in those windows would’ve had a great view of the front and back lawns.

Ella eased along the tiled floor, careful as she approached the next room and came in view of the stairs. Murray covered her as she ducked around the doorjamb into the room with the French doors. Brown lounge and two brown armchairs arranged along three sides of a large Persian rug; along the fourth side, a cabinet with a large flatscreen TV.

‘Clear,’ she hissed at Murray.

He edged ahead of her to the front room while she watched up the stairs. She heard his shoes on the parquet flooring and in a moment he was back.

‘Clear,’ he breathed.

Ella started up the carpeted stairs, stepping to the outside where creaks were least likely, watching the landing. Still no sound. The world outside had gone silent too. It was unnerving.

She reached the landing and peered around the corner. Three rooms, doors open. No sound, no movement. She gestured to Murray and he covered her as she inched to the nearest door, the bathroom. Towel, soap by the handbasin, Sunsilk shampoo in the shower.

She motioned Murray onwards.

The next room was a bedroom. Pink ruffled bedspread over a double, polished timber dressing table with a row of framed photos Ella didn’t stop to look at, matching timber wardrobe. Ella braced herself and aimed as Murray reached for the handle. He yanked the door open and she saw a tidy pile of women’s folded cardigans and slips in one side, and on the rack in the other a row of neatly hung dresses. Old lady dresses, she thought. The mother’s room. He’s kept it all as if she’s coming back any moment.

Murray crept on. The last room was full of light streaming in the front window. They eased around the jamb and saw a wide desk with a humming computer, a king single pushed against the wall, and a pine wardrobe. Ella caught Murray’s eye and he readied himself as she grasped the knob. She pulled it open and saw drawers of underwear and T-shirts; hanging up, shirts, trousers and three jackets.

‘After all that.’ Murray holstered his weapon.

Ella kept hers in her hand. She went to the window and looked out. The white curtain was sheer and she could see the street and front garden.

Murray moved the mouse with a pen. ‘Hmm.’

‘What?’

‘I can see us.’

‘What?’

She went to look. The screen was divided into sections. The first four showed the front and rear gardens, the empty kitchen and the living room. She lifted the curtain and saw a tiny wireless camera screwed to the sill. The next section on the screen showed her and Murray from the front, through the webcam at the top of the monitor. The last showed them from behind.

Murray peered at it, then looked up along the wall. ‘It’s here.’

He pointed to a tiny hole in the cornice and Ella saw his fingers up close on the screen. She also saw the internet connection flashing.

‘He could be online and watching this,’ she said.

Tiny green lights were lit on the speakers. She thought of a microphone and pulled out her notebook and wrote
He might be listening too.

Murray read it. ‘We’ll fix that.’

He grasped the mouse and closed the screen. A black desktop appeared, with documents labelled MAXINE and ALICIA and MARK.

He opened the MAXINE document and scrolled down. ‘He’s got her address, her husband’s shifts, her neighbour’s comings and goings, and then notes about the murder. Listen to this.’

But Ella was looking up at the camera again. ‘Oh god,’ she said. ‘He could’ve seen Carly come here. If he knows we’re here too, he knows she’s the reason why.’ She pulled out her phone and dialled.

‘
Hi, this is Carly. Please –
’

Ella hung up and dialled again.

‘
Hi, this is Carly. Please leave your deets.
’

‘You were right,’ Ella said into the phone. ‘It’s Janssen. He might be onto you. Keep safe. We’re on our way.’ She hung up. ‘Come on.’

‘I have to stay,’ Murray said. ‘The scene, remember? The body.’

Ella grabbed the keys from his hand and ran down the stairs.

Twenty-six

C
arly was staring out the kitchen window when someone hammered on her door. She hurried over and checked the peephole, hoping to see Linsey there, sheepish about using her key, but saw instead a boy of around ten. She thought she recognised him, that he lived nearby. As far as the peephole showed, he was alone.

He shifted from foot to foot, then hammered again. ‘You’re ambulance, right?’ he called. ‘There’s a man outside – I can’t wake him up.’

The kid had conceivably seen her coming and going in uniform. He had something in his hand. A twenty-dollar note?

She said, ‘Where’s your mum?’

‘She’s at work. I think this man’s really sick. Somebody called the ambulance but they’re taking too long. Somebody said he’s dying and to come and get you.’ He fidgeted even more. ‘Can you please come?’

She unlocked the door and opened it. The boy took off running and she stepped out to follow, then from the corner of her eye caught movement from the other direction. Andrew Janssen.

She jerked back as something hit her hard in the face, harder than she’d ever been hit before.

Janssen caught her in his gloved hands as she fell, lifted her into the flat and locked the door behind them, just as her mobile starting ringing.

‘Oh, Carly,’ he said.

*

Linsey couldn’t tell how she felt. On the one hand, there was grief and pain, but on the other there was a kind of wild exhilaration. The dread was over, the worst had happened, and she was still alive. It was like she’d been paralysed and now she could move and breathe again. She put down the window to feel the wind on her face.

She was pulling into a space outside Carly’s block when her mobile rang. Zoe. She hesitated, then answered.

‘It’s me,’ Zoe said. ‘First of all I want to apologise for not standing up for you against Mum.’

Relief washed over Linsey like a wave. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. I didn’t do what I should’ve,’ she said. ‘I’m thrilled for you and Carly. It kinda took me by surprise at first, but then you said that about me and Benjamin and it clicked. Love just happens, right? I’m sorry for stuff I’ve said in the past – that was just stupid, and I’m sorry.’

Linsey gulped tears.

‘Mum and Dad will come around, don’t worry. I’ll point out how happy you’ve been lately and remind them that we should always love whoever makes you feel like that. And here, someone wants to talk to you.’

A bit of mumbling, the phone was briefly dropped, then Maya said, ‘Come to tea, Linny.’

Linsey heard Zoe prompting in the background.

‘An bring Carly,’ Maya said.

‘I will,’ Linsey said, laughing. ‘We’ll see you soon.’

She hung up, then grabbed the new door key off the floor. Carly had told her once that some people’s attitudes could change, and quickly, when they realised an issue involved someone they loved. She couldn’t wait to tell her that whatever happened with her parents, she’d still get to see Maya.

She ran up the stairs and was about to jam the key into the lock when she heard a noise inside the flat. A moan, and not a good one. A moan of someone in pain. A thud, followed by the low sound of a male voice.

No, oh no.

She pressed her back against the wall and dialled triple 0 on her mobile.

‘Police, fire or ambulance?’

‘Police,’ she whispered.

A click.

‘Police, what is your emergency?’

‘Someone’s in my girlfriend’s flat and I think he’s hurting her,’ she hissed.

‘What’s the address?’

She went blank for a moment, then remembered. ‘Please hurry,’ she said at the end. ‘And tell Detective Ella Marconi.’

‘Officers are on the way,’ the woman said. ‘Can you stay on the line?’

‘No. I’m going to help her.’

‘It’s better if you keep yourself safe –’

Linsey hung up, stuffed the phone in her pocket and slid the key as quietly as she could into the lock. There was no way she was going to let anything happen to Carly without trying to stop it.

The door swung open silently. The living room looked undisturbed. She listened, and heard another moan. The bedroom.

She thought of screaming, to bring the neighbours out and frighten the guy off, but there was no way out of the flat except this door. If he felt trapped, there’d be no reason not to hurt Carly more.

She sneaked across to the kitchen and lifted the big butcher’s knife out of the knife block. She eased along the short hallway towards the bedrooms, glancing in at the yellow quilt in the spare . . . oh, to be back in that moment.

‘Fucking bitch,’ the man said. ‘Look at me.’

A thud. An agonised grunt from Carly.

Linsey tightened her grip on the knife.

*

Carly couldn’t breathe. Her throbbing head was pressed back into the bed by Janssen’s gloved hand over her mouth, and every time she did manage to suck in some air he punched her in the stomach. Her face was numb and tight and bleeding. He was on top of her, his weight on her hips, her arms pinned under his knees. She could see his forehead, red and sweaty. She could smell the latex of the gloves he wore under the fingerless boxing gloves.

‘Fucking bitch.’

She tried to move her jaw. If she could free her mouth a little, she’d bite a chunk out of his palm, even through the glove, but his hand tightened over her face and his other fist landed a punch square in her temple. The room spun and swirled.

She fought the panic.
Gather your strength, then bite and fight.
But she couldn’t free herself from under his weight, and his hand gripped her face so hard it felt like her jaw was about to shatter. She heaved her torso against him, but he leaned in harder with his hand and punched her again, then started to squeeze her throat.

‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Look, bitch.’

She shut her eyes.
I’m going to die. Here in my bed, where I slept wrapped around Linsey. I’m going to die and she left on a fight and I didn’t get to tell her I love her one last time.

Her head was bursting and she could feel her carotids pounding against his grip.

‘Look at me,’ he said again, but it sounded like it came from far away.

Linsey
, she thought.
Oh, Linsey
.

And for a second she smelled her perfume, and felt her presence close by, then there was nothing.

*

Linsey leapt onto the bed and stabbed the knife into the man’s back as hard as she could. The blade went in near his right shoulder and snapped off. He lurched and bellowed. She slashed at the back of his neck with the broken end, then he shoved her onto the floor and fell on top of her.

He rammed his forearm under her jaw. She struggled to stab at his side with the knife, but her hand slipped up the blade. She felt blood pour over her skin but no pain. He forced her head backwards and squeezed her neck against the floor with his gloved hands. She stabbed at him again but the handle slipped out of her slick fingers.

She scrabbled at his face, trying to gouge at an eye or at least blind him with her blood. He turned his face away and bit her hand. She tried to lurch up against his arm, trying to headbutt him, to loosen his grip, but he forced her back down.

Suddenly an arm snaked around his neck and pulled him backwards. Linsey got a blurred impression of Carly’s snarling, battered, bleeding face.

The weight lifted off her throat as the man fought Carly, and she groped on the floor for the knife. Her ears rang. She struggled to get out from under him, but he let go of Carly, grabbed her throat again and started to squeeze with both hands.

Carly yanked at him harder but he only tightened his grip. Linsey’s vision turned red, then darkened to black.

*

Neighbours were running to the open door of Carly’s flat when Ella raced down the corridor. She shoved them aside and drew her weapon. Lounge room was clear. The screaming kept on. Kitchen, small bedroom, then in the main she saw a blood-soaked Andrew Janssen wearing MMA gloves over latex ones and strangling a motionless but equally bloody woman on the floor while Carly fought to choke him from behind.

‘Police!’ Ella shouted. ‘Hands in the air! Now!’

Janssen looked up. He coughed and blood sprayed from his mouth in a fine mist.

‘Hands in the air, Janssen! I fucking mean it!’

She saw him look at her, at her gun trained right on his chest, then down at the woman again. He leaned into his grip on her throat.

‘Last chance!’ she shouted.

‘Do it!’ Carly was screaming. ‘Stop him!’

Janssen looked up again and she saw in his eyes that he wasn’t going to stop. He knew it was over, he knew what he faced: a lifetime in jail, the revelation of what he’d done. He was making his choice.

‘Get off him!’ she shouted at Carly. ‘Get out of the way!’

Janssen’s gaze locked on hers. He leaned further into the unconscious woman, his whole weight behind his hands, and Ella pulled the trigger.

*

Janssen slumped forward. Her ears ringing, Carly leapt off the bed and grabbed his arm and hauled him off Linsey. She lay motionless, her eyes half-open, her mouth slack. Carly pressed her shaking hands to her throat, desperate for a pulse.
No, oh no.

‘Is she okay?’ Ella was next to her, feeling Janssen’s neck with her gun still in her hand.

There was something, Carly was sure. Or was it her own heartbeat, hammering right through her body? She pressed her ear to Linsey’s chest but couldn’t hear anything through the ringing.
Please, please no.

Ella was on her phone, asking for an ambulance urgently, telling someone that Janssen was dead.

Her own head throbbing, Carly took hold of Linsey’s warm and bloodied face, gently opened her mouth, tilted her head back and breathed into her. She watched her chest rise and fall, then breathed again.

‘Please, sweetheart, please.’

Ella asked people to go away. Carly got a vague glimpse of neighbours retreating from the doorway. She pressed the flats of her fingers into Linsey’s neck again, pressing deep beside her larynx, closing her eyes, focusing everything on those points.
Don’t leave me. I love you.

There. There!

‘Come on,’ she said into Linsey’s face. She breathed for her again. ‘Come on.’

Linsey took a choking breath of her own, then another. Carly grasped her shoulders, unable to speak.

Linsey coughed and blinked. She smiled through sticky spatters of Janssen’s blood. ‘Hey,’ she croaked. ‘I told them. Zoe’s invited us for dinner tonight.’

Carly started to laugh with relief. ‘You came all the way back from nearly dead to say that?’

‘It was so worth it.’

Carly closed her eyes in gratitude and gathered her up in a hug.

*

By the time Ella got back to Janssen’s house, the driveway was blocked by media vans and police cars and the house was full of detectives. She found Murray in the backyard, watching the recovery of the body. She could still feel the recoil of the gun in the muscles of her hands, smell the blood, see the look in Janssen’s eyes, and hear the screams.
It’s okay
, she told herself.

‘Hi,’ she said.

He looked up. ‘I heard what happened. You okay?’

‘I’ve been better.’

‘And Carly and her girlfriend?’

‘Linsey,’ she supplied. ‘Bruised, sore, shaken, but okay. Amazingly.’

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Dennis is inside if you’re looking for him.’

‘I’ll see him in a moment.’

The crime scene officers paused in their excavation to take more photos. The mixed lime and soil was piled up neatly, the knees of the officers’ overalls stained with it.

‘Did you hear that Tessa persuaded Robbie to come in?’ Murray said. ‘He spilled his guts completely. John Morris was found at his parents’ place and has been arrested. And he’ll be investigated properly over Noela Cross.’

‘That’s good.’

Murray nodded to the hole and the bent backs of the officers. ‘Janssen was a loon. Dennis and I looked at more of those files. He goes on about life not being fair, how he always thought that if you worked hard and did your share then everything would work out well, but what actually happens is that you do all that and still get ignored. That, quote, everything you value fails to value you in return and that in the end you realise you’re as worthless and powerless as dust on the floor, end quote. Poetic, don’t you think?’

Ella didn’t answer.

‘He killed Maxine Hardwick because he believed she was too weak to do her job at that crash and he got hurt as a result. He bitched about her being on TV, about the focus being on her when he was the one who suffered. He seems to have hated female paramedics generally, saying they’re all weak but that the pretty face gets the attention.’

The officers put down their tools and leaned into the hole.

‘He also blamed this Amanda Depasquale, who apparently he was working with when he suffered an earlier back injury, then whined about how she moved overseas, out of reach,’ Murray said. ‘Vardy was on his hit list for what he saw as a failure to help his compo claim. Vardy was injured himself and working in HR, processing paperwork, that sort of thing. He told Janssen he couldn’t help, that he had nothing to do with workers’ comp stuff, but Janssen didn’t believe him.

‘Janssen only sussed out about the affair when he started watching Hardwick, and he wrote all this detail about how he didn’t expect Vardy to come back to her house that night and freaked out when he knocked at the door. He left Hardwick on the kitchen floor, grabbed her wallet, turned the lights off in the hope that Vardy would go away, and scrammed out the back. He wrote about how he’d regretted not having time to lay her out in bed, that even though she deserved to die, she didn’t deserve to be left uncovered on the floor. Sicko.’

‘And so he planted the wallet in the Vardys’ garage,’ Ella said.

‘Bingo,’ Murray said. ‘He’d kept her licence. Dennis found it upstairs, along with Alicia Bayliss’s switched-off mobile.’

‘Where did Alicia fit in?’

Murray paused as the officers lifted the body out. Lime and soil trickled off the wizened form and the smell of decay became more pungent. Ella saw the woman’s matted grey hair. Her face was covered by a dirty square of cloth. A man’s handkerchief, she thought.