Malicious Intent (10 page)

Bingo!

Hogan picked up the discarded cigarette butt and placed it inside a brown paper envelope.

This time, Deab, you can’t worm your way out of it..

The white Ford Falcon slowed about fifty yards behind the parked red Torana, then drove past the gray brick house, turned right into the adjacent side street and parked in the shade of a tree two houses down. Constable Wheeler positioned his side mirror to get a good view of the front of the property. From his rearview mirror, he could see Deab’s car.

He wound down the driver’s window and watched. He didn’t recognize this street. Deab hadn’t been here in the last two weeks, but that didn’t mean much. Mohammed Deab was a busy boy with his extracurricular activities. This could have been business or pleasure; the object of surveillance overindulged in both. Either way, the plainclothes constable didn’t care.

After the driver walked around to the passenger side, Deab climbed out of the Torana and reached into the backseat. He pulled out an iron bar and the two men headed for the house.

‘Shit!’

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Constable Wheeler scrambled for the mobile phone by his side and dialed.

‘Detective Farrer, we’ve got a problem. Deab and an accomplice just entered a house. 5120 Greystanes Road. He’s carrying an iron bar of some kind and looks pissed off.’

He listened to the instructions.

‘Don’t get involved, Wheeler. I’ll call the local police and arrange an ambulance. Do you understand me? Do
not
get involved.’

The young constable knew better than to argue with ‘The Bitch’ from Homicide. She may have been short in stature but she had bigger balls than most blokes he’d met. At least he always knew where he stood with her, and she’d already proven that she wasn’t afraid of carrying the can. If things stuffed up now, she’d be carrying more than that.

‘Okay.’ He tried to sound comfortable about the situation.

‘Don’t compromise the surveillance. We’ve put a lot into this and I don’t want you to blow it now.’

‘Okay,’ the young constable repeated, ‘I understand.’

Waiting and staying out of sight were what Wheeler did best. As a child with a terrible stutter, he’d been too afraid to speak. At each new school, the other children had treated him as if he were invisible. Even though the stuttering had been controlled for years, Shaun Wheeler chose to make a career out of being ‘the invisible kid.’ But now the idea of sitting by while a crime took place unnerved him. It’s where the ethics became blurry. He studied the side mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on. His fingers tapped the dashboard.

Three minutes and forty seconds later Deab left the house, carrying his makeshift weapon. His mate was a couple of steps ahead and seemed in a big hurry to get away.

A woman ran out to the front yard, screaming for help, hitting Deab with her fists. The older man shoved her to the ground and got into the car. The driver must have kept the engine running, because he pulled out quickly, swiping a parked van in his path.

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‘Shit! Where are the uniforms?’
Constable Wheeler threw open the car door and sprinted toward the woman. As he hur-dled the low fence, he saw that her hands were covered in blood. She kept screaming.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and asked her where she’d been hurt. It took until a police car screeched to a halt in the middle of the road for him to realize she wasn’t injured.

‘Inside!’ Wheeler shouted above the woman’s screams. ‘Two suspects absconded in a red Torana.’

An officer wrote down the details. Wheeler’s priority was to disappear but the woman wouldn’t let him go. She dragged him to the open front door, clawing at his arms.

‘Listen, lady,’ he pleaded, ‘the police are here now.’ He tried to release her grip. ‘I can’t get involved.’

Inside the entrance lay a body in a pool of blood, the face unrecognizable. From somewhere came the hissing of air.

‘Jesus! He’s alive!’ Wheeler shouted.

The woman wailed over the battered body, only to be drowned out by the ambulance siren outside.

The two ambulance officers rushed inside with tackle boxes and an oxygen cylinder. One gave orders and the other held a mask over the swollen and bleeding face. Wheeler staggered from the house.

He stared at the blood on his own hands and wanted to throw up.

12

Anya put the suitcase in the trunk and slammed it shut.

With Ben still down the South Coast with his father, she’d thought she might as well brave the expert-witness conference Brody had recommended. It was the only way she could think of to make the weekend pass more quickly. The morning was crisp, clear, and the sun hadn’t yet risen to its full glory. At this time of year, 5:00 am was her favorite part of the day, when the raucous calls of parrots beckoned young children (and by default, mothers) from their beds. She went back to the house to check the locked windows, and deadlock the front and back doors. She resisted the urge to check again. Martin complained that she was obsessive about safety. This came from a man who couldn’t close a door, let alone lock one. The thought of him opening windows day and night was a constant worry. Fresh air could get you burgled, or worse.

She stopped herself from phoning Martin and leaving a message on his voicemail, to remind him to lock the caravan for Ben’s sake. There was no point aggravating him right now.

The car was one of the few places she felt both safe and free.

She locked the driver’s door from the inside and cleared Liver-pool within half an hour. Once out of the suburbs, Canberra was less than three hours away. On the freeway past Mittagong, KATHRYN FOX

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the sign for the Sutton State Forest appeared. There she had examined the remains of a retired couple reported missing on a camping trip. The sight and smell of the decomposed bodies would always stay with her. For the first time in her career, she’d wanted to cover the bodies, to give them a modicum of dignity in death. From the severity and extent of their injuries, it was something they were deprived of in their last hours or days. The murderer had never been caught, and from the diffuse and extensive injuries, Anya remained convinced the injuries were caused by two different people.

Her thoughts turned to the family of the couple. The only comfort to the four grown children was that they had some closure and could bury what was left of their parents. The bodies, if not the family, could rest in peace.

Anya switched on the Radio National classical station and tried to enjoy the trip. The last half hour of the drive to the nation’s capital, past Lake George, was the most relaxing.

Planned roads made everything easy to find – Lake Burley Grif-fin and the Captain Cook memorial fountain, sights she always enjoyed. Once over the bridge, she saw the Hyatt Hotel on the other side of Commonwealth Avenue. She turned right into a side street, drove back onto the main road, pulled in and parked her car outside the entrance.

At reception she entrusted her suitcase to a bellboy, then located the registration desk for the conference. Linda from the legal firm Mulholland and Chater introduced herself with a smile and polished white teeth. Linda had almost perfect dimensions and immaculate ‘presentation,’ as she flashed her eyes around for the men and barely gave Anya the rundown. The conference would begin at 9:00 am sharp and had a full program, including a mock cross-examination of each delegate, which would be videotaped and assessed for feedback by the group.

‘The weekend will be great,’ Linda said, beaming through bright red lipstick.

Anya had a flashback to the days of Newcastle University and the torture of watching herself on videotape as a group of 76

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people she barely knew dissected her professional and personal skills. She felt her blood chill.

The process was nonthreatening, or so the tutors said. The only thing remotely more threatening would be going through the whole thing naked.

She suddenly regretted coming. The object of the conference was to be less intimidated by lawyers, not humiliated by them in front of peers, and pay a fortune for the privilege. So far, the weekend was shaping up to be appalling, courtesy of her ex-husband and Dan Brody.

She thanked the human Barbie Doll from the firm and collected her information package. Turning, she noticed a familiar face beside her at the registration table. An older delegate sidled up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good to see you back, Vaughan. You’re looking well.’

‘Thanks, Tom. It’s good to be here, or anywhere, for that matter,’ he said, as the man caught the eye of someone else and moved on. Vaughan’s gaze fell on Anya.

‘Excuse me, have we met?’ he asked jokingly. He smiled warmly and extended his right hand.

‘Hello, Vaughan.’ Anya shook his hand firmly.

‘I thought you told Dan you weren’t coming?’

‘Plans change.’ She quickly added, ‘Couldn’t beat a weekend of masochism. Embarrassing yourself in court doesn’t endure.

So I thought for posterity’s sake, I’d record it on video.’

‘Come on, it isn’t that bad. This course is designed to help expert witnesses,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me you actually believe the propaganda in the brochure? It’s just a money-spinner to take advantage of socially challenged experts?’

‘I’m one of the organizers’ – he paused – ‘and a speaker.’

Anya shook her head and bit hard on her gum. ‘Please don’t say you testify for Mulholland and Chater, the greatest conjur-ers of class actions in the country?’

‘No.’

‘That’s lucky, because I could have put my other foot in it KATHRYN FOX

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with a comment about the company’s public persona,’ she said, glancing at Barbie giggling with a man old enough to be her grandfather.

‘Is there a problem with my wife?’

Anya felt her cheeks go a deeper shade of red.
Oh God, me
and my mouth.

‘I’m sorry
.
I didn’t know. I mean, I’m not sorry for you. I mean –’

Vaughan laughed and touched her arm. ‘No need to apologize, I was kidding. I’ve never been married. I’ve always preferred what a woman has to offer from the neck up. Animated mannequins,’ he said, glancing in Barbie’s direction,

‘don’t hold interest for long.’

Anya was dumbstruck. She breathed a quiet sigh when one of the waiters asked delegates to make their way to the dining room for the introductory session.

Stopping at the first table, she filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee and grabbed a chocolate-filled croissant from the pastry table. Vaughan watched her with a curious expression.

‘What? Aren’t the condemned allowed a last meal?’ Anya said defensively.

Vaughan let her walk through the door first and whispered,

‘The video session’s not until tomorrow.’

The morning sessions included talks by crown prosecutors and defense lawyers. Anya had seen many of them in court, and had been on the receiving end of their semantic games and caustic tongues. She did have to admit, though, that compared to other witnesses, they treated her with respect on the stand. The police constables were routinely made to look like bumbling idiots for the jury.

Before lunch, the slowest session of any conference, Vaughan Hunter made a presentation entitled, ‘Mind games –

verbal and nonverbal communication in the courtroom.’ His imitation of lawyers’ and witnesses’ body language had the audi-78

MALICIOUS INTENT

ence laughing, although the underlying message was clear.

Juries always sense when someone is uncomfortable, unsure or out of their depth. Arrogance, pretentiousness, overconfidence and underconfidence were fast ways to alienate jurors. Anya wrote the words ‘Competent, sympathetic, authoritative, but be humble’ and wondered if she would ever become confident in a courtroom.

She looked around the room at the people chuckling while they squirmed, a sure sign they recognized themselves in Dr.

Hunter’s role plays. Among the thirty or so participants, she knew a couple of forensic physicians from Melbourne, a professor of pharmacology, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and a ballistics technician from the crime lab. Each was fixed on the speaker. No one in the room dozed, testament to Vaughan Hunter’s ability to hold an audience’s attention after a morning snack of pastries and tepid tea.

‘The final take-home message is never be coerced into giving an opinion out of your area of expertise. Don’t guess. You’ll only dig yourself into a hole and a lawyer with half a brain cell will bury you before you realize it’s happening. Apart from that, have fun on the stand! And good luck tomorrow.’

The room applauded and everyone recessed for lunch.

Anya rose and headed for the door, keen to avoid polite conversation with people she barely knew. She took lunch to her room and decided to miss the last two sessions – one discussing the ethics of expert witnesses and the other covering legalities of subpoenas and medical records. Instead, she thought she’d look at the National Gallery’s exhibition of John Glover’s paintings of colonial Tasmania, and explore Questacon, the hands-on science center by the lake.

She changed into a denim shirt, jeans and sandals and walked the few blocks, past the National Library. Canberra was often described as sterile, but Anya liked its clean, uncluttered feel. Unlike being in Sydney, she didn’t feel grime under her fingernails or on her skin at the end of the day. The bike tracks around the lake and huge areas of grass and parkland within KATHRYN FOX

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walking distance of the city center meant that in the fine Saturday weather, families were out cycling, walking, scootering or picnicking as the bells of the carillon rang across the water.

The gallery never failed to delight, and John Glover’s depic-tions of Anya’s home state were mesmerizing. She made her way to the exit after staring at Jackson Pollock’s
Blue Poles
with even less appreciation than ever and walked over to Questacon.

Inside, she strolled up a long ramp into a gallery of sideshow exhibits. Children squealed as they took turns to slide down what, to the naked eye, appeared to be a fifteen-foot vertical drop.