The Grotesques (17 page)

“Perhaps I could give you my number and you could ask him to give me a call?”

“Just a moment.” George moved around the young woman so he could see the hunk. “Tom, you don’t know if Matt is coming in tonight?” he called across the room.

“Hazy? Haven’t heard from him. Must be sick or something ’cause he’s off work.”

“Hazy?” Ella queried, looking up as she tried to recall why the name sounded familiar.

“Yeah.” Tom smiled as he ran a gouge along one corner of his block. “He’s always a bit vague.”

“Matt Hazy?”

“Give him a break,” the blonde said as the connection struck Ella.

“As in Matt
Hayes
?”

“He’s upset his girlfriend’s missing,” the blonde explained at the same time.

“You know him.” Tom put his hand on the bench. The chisel stuck straight out toward her. What was it with men and tools?

“He made the dragon?” They had all stopped working now. Her heart was thudding. “When was the last time anyone spoke to him?”

Tom’s mouth moved as he worked it out. “Three days ago.”

It was Ella’s turn to do the math. She was relieved it was such a simple sum because that meant she wasn’t the last known person to see Matt. Knowing that, she could face Danes.

“He was hyped ’cause some reporter interviewed him.”

“Yes. I was there.” She retrieved her mobile, scrolled through her contacts, and dialled the illicitly obtained number. It went to voicemail. “He’s not answering. Look. I’m worried. Any chance you’d come with to check up on him?”

“It’s cool. He’s got a paying project.”

“What’s this?” George asked, looking down his beaked nose. Tom answered with a cheeky smile.

“Does he have an emergency contact?” she asked.

“You’re looking at him,” Tom replied. He hadn’t resumed carving.

Ella glanced at the kid. He had slowed his work with a tool too sharp to be in the hands of a minor so he could listen. She walked up to Tom’s bench so she could use a low voice.

“I’m the reporter Matt spoke to. I’ve been investigating the Port River disappearances. My friend’s gone missing. The first girl to disappear, Cecily Williams, was his cousin. My house burned down the night after I talked to Matt. Bekka’s missing, and if Matt’s not answering . . .”

“Let’s go,” he said, picking up a jacket and flinging it over a shoulder.

George followed them into the front room. He looked worried as he scratched his crooked nose. It was disconcerting the way it reminded her of the grotesques, but then they were never out of her mind these days, and Genord had claimed Romain modelled his statues on real people.

“You haven’t been to the Church of the Resurrection, by any chance?” she asked him as Tom jingled open the door.

George raised an eyebrow. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing really. Thanks for your help.”

ELLA PEEPED INSIDE
the lounge room window. The curtains were open but the house still. Tom came back through the side gate after rapping on the bedroom window.

“Don’t think he’s home. No worries.” He fished a rock from under a bush, slid the base out, and produced a key. “Comes in useful after a night at the pub. Hazy’s not so good at rationing his grog,” he said as he let them in.

His finger went straight to the light switches in the lounge and kitchen. The food scraps on the unwashed dishes piled in the sink were crusted dry, and the clothes thrown over mismatched chairs stank of body odour.

Ella wandered back to the lounge while Tom checked the rest of the house. Nothing much had changed since she had been here last, except the coffee table was clear of empty cans. She stepped over the beanbag to the entertainment unit and rummaged among pirated DVDs until she found the paper Matt had confiscated.

It was a sketch of a dragon, its head crossed out in red felt pen. She couldn’t see why; it looked perfect for the body. She tilted the discs, reached behind, opened a few, but found nothing else. Just in case, she lifted the cushions from the sofa where she had first found the sketch. A white edge poked out of the bottom of one arm. She worked the paper out of a small tear, stuck her hand in, and found three more hidden in the stuffing. They were all of dragons, though the artist had not drawn the same one twice. The obsession bordered on childish, but in her book an artist that left his sketches headless was psychopath material. Still, she had a hard time crediting sloppy Matt Hayes with stashing a girl’s headless body. That left whoever had commissioned the job.

Tom appeared in the doorway. The left side of his face was drawn, as though he was not sure whether to worry. “He’s not here.”

“You went from saying he’s sick to saying he’s working on a paying project.”

He shifted. “He never missed work because of it but he never answers calls at this time anymore either. Says an artist needs uninterrupted time.”

“What was he working on?”

“Wouldn’t say. Some sort of nondisclosure contract attached to it. But it was big. He was going to get a lot of cash. Said we’d be set up for a wicked holiday.”

“If it was that big, why was he arguing with Bekka about the cost of a pair of heels?”

Tom made a sound between a hmm and a choke. “That wasn’t the half of what they argued about.”

“You were with them?”

He took a breath as though deciding whether to spill the beans, then shrugged. “Bekka was complaining he was never home. Said he should have been paid something in advance seeing how long it was taking. She was threatening to give whoever a piece of her mind. Hazy was rabid. Said if anyone found out, he wouldn’t be paid at all ’cause of the contract.”

The nondisclosure statement hadn’t stopped Matt telling his friends about his lucrative deal. What were the chances he had told Bekka who brokered it? The girl had stormed off toward the church, Matt had admitted that much, but Ella needed more than speculation.

“You’re his best mate.” He had told her on the ride over that they had done their apprenticeship together and now worked for the same electrical firm. “People are missing. Two girls are dead. If you know who it is or where he might be, we need to check he’s okay.”

Tom shook his head. “Couldn’t tell you.”

“Is this his project?” She passed him the sketches.

His brows lifted in surprise. “Never saw.”

“But you did go to his workshop to try and find out.”

He winced. “Chantelle, Bekka, and I followed him from the pub one night. Hazy had a blanket over the window and wouldn’t let us in the door.”

THE POOR LIGHTING
around the shed down near the docks made Ella nervous to the point she glanced over her shoulder. She wished she hadn’t. A dark creature was flying around the nearest streetlamp. Tom didn’t hear her soft squeal over the rattle of the door. “Hazy,” he called. She trailed him as he worked his way around the shed, banging on the galvanised iron. “Hazy.” It held no more signs of life than the house. He peeped through the slat window.

“Can’t see a thing.”

“How do you feel about breaking and entering?”

He looked at her, chest puffed out, and smacked his lips. “In me mate’s best interests.” He pushed on the middle glass slat until the window ground far enough ajar for his hand to squeeze through. “Nothing to these.” He fiddled with the thin piece of metal that bent over to secure the glass on each side then slid the plate out. It slipped from his hands as he tried to turn it, shattering on the floor inside.

“Hopefully nobody heard that,” he said.

He managed to bring the next panes through. She laid them on the concrete while he worked on the others. The sound of breaking glass was nothing compared to the rattle of the metal panels as he hauled himself onto the sill and jumped inside. Ella jiggled up after him.

“You all right?” he asked as he grabbed her arms to help pull her up. Feet firmly on the floor, she stuck her head out. A siren wailed in the distance. The area looked deserted, but their racket could have woken a vampire. It would be just her luck for someone to have reported them.

She turned when Tom flicked a light switch down by the door. The shed was empty. And large. Besides their own, two pairs of footprints compressed the wood shavings that speckled the dusty floor. The strain of the last few days had to be getting to her, because the pattern of clear concrete between them looked like four giant paw prints. She wasn’t even going to concede the long crescent tapering between the back two could be a tail. Or that the front paws were so close to the door there was no room for a head.

“Something’s wrong,” Tom said, hands on hips as he studied a beer can on a table down that end. “No way Hazy’d leave a beer unfinished.” He took a swig. “Flat. Tastes old.”

“Perhaps he was tired. Or whoever he was working for came to collect.”

“And not take the can with him? Not on your life.”

“We better not disturb too much,” she said, eyeing a wire bin full of crushed cans in one corner. A piece of wood poking from behind it caught her eye. She fetched it. It was identical to the scale she had picked up at the church. Just to be sure, she fished that one out of her bag. Now that she looked, a few more were scattered around. That made a definite connection to the Church of the Resurrection, though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what use the mason would have for a headless wooden carving when he hated wood.

Boots slapped against the concrete outside.

“Someone’s out there,” she whispered.

A gun poked through the window. “Hands up.”

Her chest went tight. Then the blue shirt of a security officer appeared. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Me mate’s missing,” Tom said, his hands in the air.

THE HAMMERING AT
the door, insistent, persistent, angry, demanded immediate attention. Cat biscuit box in hand, Ella opened it to find Detective Danes filling the doorway. He shouldered his way into the entry hall and turned to face her. Rob, standing a few paces back, followed with more reluctance.

“Adam,” she breathed, feeling her face blanch.

“We need you to accompany us to the station, Ms Jerome,” Danes said, taking the lead.

She swallowed. “What’s going on? Have you found Adam?” She couldn’t believe she wanted the answer to be
no
, but he’d be here himself if he was all right.

“Missing Persons is following up,” Rob said with genuine concern. She let out a sigh of relief, realised she was crushing the box, and dropped her hands. “They
are
taking this seriously.”

“Good. Because you know he had a reason to go back to the church.” It had been forty hours. No one could deny he was actually missing. She had a right to be on edge.

“We’ll do this down at the station,” Danes interrupted.

“Am I under arrest?” She couldn’t think what for, but as far as she was aware, family received news at home. While she wasn’t related, she
was
staying in his house.

“That could well depend on how you explain yourself.”

“You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with his disappearance?” If it were up to brusque Danes, she had no doubt she would be in a cell. Forgetting him, Ella peered at Rob. The lines on his forehead seemed to have deepened, and more grey strands had appeared at his temples. He had moved no further than the doorway, blocking it, she noticed with a displeased tightening of her lips. While his hands were in his jacket pocket, there was nothing casual about his stance.

“We are simply asking you to assist us in our enquiries,” Rob said with formal restraint.

“I see,” Ella said, holding his worried eyes. “Well, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”

Rob’s gaze was unwavering but it was still Danes who answered. “We have the results of the DNA tests. You have some explaining to do, Ms Jerome.”

Ella snapped her head round. Nothing about Danes’ deadpan face revealed what those results might be. Hovering between curiosity and alarm, she weighed her options. Her best chance to find Adam was to ferret out new information, and the best way to do that was to co-operate. “I’ll get my coat.” She bit back a caustic comment as Danes followed her to the laundry where her raincoat hung and watched her put it on. The ludicrousness of the situation hit home when she saw a patrol vehicle with red and blue lights flashing behind their unmarked car. Ella shook her head, grateful there had been no sirens. What were the neighbours going to think?

“Do you really think I had something to do with the murders?” she asked.

“What makes you think this is about the murders?” Danes held open the back door of their unmarked car.

“If it was about anything else, it wouldn’t be the pair of you here.” For the first time in the difficult and tiring past three days, a tinge of amusement had crept into her voice.

“We’ll do this at the station. And you would do well to remember the seriousness of the situation.”