The Mak Collection (116 page)

Simon would tell only what he had to.

‘You dealt directly with Warwick O’Connor,’ said The American.

Simon nodded.

‘And Damien?’

‘Damien has never met him.’

‘Good,’ Jack Cavanagh interjected. ‘There are no other loose ends to tie up with regard to the hiring of this lowlife? Just you and this man, Warwick—no one else?’

Simon felt uneasy about the way he’d said ‘loose ends’ but he nodded his head.

The American stepped in again. ‘What was the recording device used by the woman?’

Simon looked shocked. ‘I have never seen a video. I didn’t think there was one. But, uh, she was using her mobile phone at the party and I caught her recording. That could be it.’

‘Good. Let’s hope that any recording is of low quality. Do you remember the make and model of the phone?’ The American asked.

‘Uh…no.’ Simon did not take note of things like that. At least, not in those circumstances.

‘We will need to find the phone. Do you know where it is now?’ The American asked.

Simon bit his lip. ‘I broke it. When I saw her recording I took the phone off her and stepped on it.’

The American kept taking his notes. ‘And then what happened to the phone?’

‘It was broken so I threw it out,’ Simon explained.

The American looked at him like he was a moron. ‘So you saw this woman making a recording at the party and you “stepped on” her
phone. Did you check to see if there was anything damaging on it before you threw it out? Did you check to see if there was any recorded material on it, or if anything sensitive had been sent to anyone?’

Simon felt the blood drain from his face. ‘No, sir. It was broken. I just got rid of it.’

‘Where did you dispose of it?’

‘In the wastebasket at the house.’

Jack Cavanagh slammed a fist down on the desk, making Simon jump with fright in his chair. His heart began pounding even harder. He felt like a man staring at a noose that was made for his neck alone.

‘Has the rubbish been collected since the party?’ The American asked Jack.

‘Yes. Estelle, the maid, cleans the rubbish out daily. It would be long gone,’ Mr Cavanagh said, sounding very displeased.

‘Is there any chance she, or another of your staff, might have seen something?’

‘No, no,’ Simon tried to reassure them. ‘The phone was in pieces, I swear. No one could have used it.’

‘We need to find out what was on it,’ The American said. ‘And if anything sensitive on it was sent to anyone else.’

‘But I don’t know how,’ Simon pleaded. ‘The phone was wrecked. I just didn’t think—’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Jack Cavanagh hissed.

‘Let me take care of that,’ The American said.

Mr Cavanagh was clearly livid now. He sat behind his desk, seething. Then he pointed a finger at Simon. If it were a gun he would have pulled the trigger, Simon felt sure.

‘Because you failed to come to me when there was an issue concerning the protection of my family, you will now have the responsibility of seeing that things are made right,’ Mr Cavanagh said darkly. ‘This is an opportunity to regain my faith, Simon.

‘There will be a man arriving this weekend from Mumbai. He will have the relevant details of the situation and he will contact you. Bob here will make sure you are ready for him when he does. Everything—and I mean
everything
—you know about this Warwick O’Connor who has come to blackmail this family, you are to tell Bob. Everything. Everything you know about this video, the people in it, how they came to be in it and how the video came to be in someone’s possession, you will tell him. You will tell Bob everything about these people, and everything about what my son has been getting into.’

The American sat quietly with his notepad.

‘I do not want or need to know the details. You tell Bob everything, and you listen to what he says.’

‘Um, yes, sir,’ Simon replied nervously.

‘I will arrange for money and instructions to be made available, and you will deliver them to him personally. Bob will oversee the transaction
to make sure there are no mistakes. Is that all clear?’ Simon did not answer. ‘I said, is that clear?’

‘Um, yes, sir, it is clear. But…what does he look like? How will I know—’

‘I want no questions from you—just answers. You give Bob all the information he asks for. I do not need to know any more of the sordid details of this mess you and my son have made. I will leave you two to discuss this further.’

Jack Cavanagh stood up from behind his massive mahogany desk.

‘I am very disappointed, Simon.
Very
disappointed. I don’t want this situation spoken about to anyone,
ever.
Not even to me, unless I ask you directly about it. Is that clear?’

Simon nodded. ‘Yes, sir, it is.’

‘If I discover that you have not been truthful with me or with Mr White here, or that you mentioned this conversation to anyone at all…Well, I know my son will be very sad to lose his friend.’

Simon accepted his orders, and Jack Cavanagh left him with The American, his notepad, and the certainty that this was indeed serious. Simon would have to tell it all. No amount of charm would get him out of this one.

At eight o’clock, Mak was still sitting in the childhood bedroom of the deceased young Meaghan Wallace, talking with her bereaved mother and being shown album after album of family photographs. She found herself being sucked into the woman’s raw grief. Seeing all these photographs of Meaghan when she was a baby and a toddler, and going to school for the first time—it was not helpful. Things had gone completely off track, but Mak found it difficult to break away. This woman seemed to need her there. She just wanted someone to listen to her stories about her daughter. She wanted someone to see the albums and the memories, and see Meg as she did.

Mak looked over at a bedside clock and saw the time.

Damn.

She and Andy had an eight o’clock dinner date at Icebergs restaurant. She would be at least thirty minutes late now, and she still didn’t have what she needed. She had to wrap it up.

‘Um, Mrs Wallace,’ Mak started.

‘Call me Noelene.’

‘Noelene, may I use your bathroom?’

‘Oh yes. Yes, of course.’ Noelene closed the album she was showing Mak and put it lovingly back into its place in the stack on the bedroom dresser. She pointed the way and Mak walked out of Meaghan Wallace’s bedroom and down the hall to the toilet, feeling relief in having escaped the room.

Oh God, poor woman. Poor woman.

Makedde flicked the light on. The bathroom was wallpapered with teal flowers; the towels were all in the same shade. Mak closed the bathroom door behind her and snatched her phone out of her pocket. It had a number of voicemail messages and missed calls. She had switched it to silent so as not to disturb the Wallaces.

Mak didn’t bother to check her voicemail messages. Instead, she called Andy right away. He was probably waiting angrily in the living room for her to return, or worse—he might be at the restaurant sipping a drink by himself while she stood in a sea of teal in a bereaved stranger’s bathroom.

‘Flynn,’ he answered.

‘I will be there in twenty minutes. I’m so sorry,’ Makedde said in an apologetic whisper.

‘Why are you whispering?’ he asked.

‘I can’t explain right now. I’m in someone’s bathroom, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ She
cupped her hand around the phone to further muffle her talking.

‘Bathroom? I’m not at the restaurant yet. The reservation isn’t till nine. I couldn’t get us in until then. I’ll meet you at the house at quarter to—I’m still with Jimmy,’ Andy said.

He’s still at work?
Suddenly Mak didn’t feel so bad.

‘I’ll be home in half an hour, tops,’ she told him. ‘I love you.’

Mak hung up and tucked her mobile phone away. Before she stepped out, she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were red, and there was an unmistakable sadness in them. Mak noticed some vague similarity between herself and the photos she had seen of Meaghan. It was far from a strong resemblance: Meaghan had been shorter, younger and more of a yellowy blonde, but perhaps Noelene was opening up to Mak in part because she was a young woman a bit like her daughter.

What would it be like to lose a daughter?
She knew what it was like to lose a mother.

Mak shut the light off and stepped back into the hall just as Noelene was closing the door of her daughter’s room. Mak had spent over an hour and a half with her and had well and truly let things get off track. Now, before she left, it was time to broach the difficult subject of Tobias Murphy.

‘Mrs Wallace, how do you feel about the police case? The suspect they have, Tobias Murphy—’

‘Oh,’ Noelene said, and shook her head back and forth. Mak could see that the name had struck a chord. How would it be to have someone mention the name of the person accused of killing your own child? Noelene took a few steps down the hall and paused, and Mak became worried that she’d lost her. Mak had waited as long as she could, and been as gentle as she could. Perhaps she had asked the wrong way? She probably should have taken a seat somewhere and had more tea first.

‘My sister…she was the black sheep of the family…after what happened,’ Noelene said, and touched the doorknob of her dead daughter’s bedroom thoughtfully. She seemed reluctant to move from that room, and those memories.

Mak was confused. ‘Your sister?’

‘Tobias always seemed like a nice enough kid,’ Noelene offered graciously. She looked down the hall to Ralph, who still sat in place in the living room, his arms crossed, the television volume up.

‘Are you saying that you
know
Tobias?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He’s our nephew.’

Mak reeled at the news. Tobias Murphy was Meaghan’s cousin?

He killed his own cousin?

‘You know, that poor kid had a rough time from the start. I loved my sister. I will always love her, but she let Tobias and Georgina down. She just wasn’t strong enough for what happened. She never forgave herself.’

Mak waited, her eyes wide.

‘Barbara finally killed herself two years ago.’ Noelene crossed herself and shook her head. ‘She’d tried so many times before.’

‘Oh. Oh, I am so sorry to hear that.’

‘She had been depressed for a long time. She never really got over what happened to…Krista. Or to Georgina.’

The names squeaked out unwillingly. Mak didn’t understand—who were Krista and Georgina? She took mental notes as she listened, but did not interfere as Noelene spoke. She obviously had a lot more homework to do if she had let such an important piece of information slip past.

‘She didn’t take proper care of them after that,’ Mrs Wallace continued. ‘She couldn’t even take care of herself. None of us was surprised when Kev left.’

Kevin Murphy. Tobias’s father.

Mak nodded solemnly, pretending she had already figured it all out. ‘And then Kev…?’ she prompted.

‘Remarried. He got married a number of years ago. He has kids with his new wife now.’

Mak nodded.

So Kevin Murphy had moved on and started a new life for himself. Mak wondered how open he and his new wife had been to young Tobias, the one remaining tie to Kevin’s first marriage—and she wondered how open Tobias had been to
them? Mak had seen the name ‘Kevin Murphy’ in the Tobias Murphy file, along with the name of a woman whom she had initially assumed was Tobias’s biological mother. A lot of women didn’t change their names after marriage any more, so it was foolish to assume anything.

Mak looked at her notepad. ‘You mentioned a Georgina?’

‘Barb’s daughter.’

‘And where is Georgina now?’

‘She suicided when she was fifteen. It was an overdose.’

Mak nodded solemnly.
Fifteen.
‘I am so sorry to hear that. She was Tobias’s older sister?’

Noelene nodded.

One suicide at fifteen, and a runaway at fourteen who is now charged with murder.
Mak could see how lucky she had been in her own life. Up until her mother had passed away from cancer, her family life on the west coast of Canada had been idyllic. The Vanderwalls had been a strong family, and seemingly one of the few families at Mak’s school which had not been fragmented by divorce or death. Mak’s schoolfriends had always wanted to come over to her place because her parents were so normal. No evil step-parent or drunken brothers—just a normal and safe family home, with the added bonus of the mystique of having a powerful police officer for a father. They’d always wanted to sneak into her father’s office to see his trophies and awards, his handcuffs—and his gun.
He must have known, too, because he never left it out.

‘Did Meaghan and Tobias know each other well?’

‘When they were very little they were inseparable.’ Noelene looked towards her feet. ‘Barbara was sick a lot. Tobias often stayed with us when she wasn’t well. Meg and Toby played and played. Meg liked to take care of him. In those days Kev couldn’t care for Toby on his own, so we saw a lot of him. They didn’t have stay-at-home dads back then.’

She said this last sentence pointedly, as if she held some bitter feeling that Makedde’s generation had it easier.

‘Meg used to take care of him all the time…like she enjoyed playing mother to him. When she was twelve she used to put him in the pram and push him around the yard…’

This memory seemed to be too much for Noelene—she finally broke down. Her face crumpled, tears springing from her eyes.

Mak felt responsible for Noelene’s rehashing of painful memories, for her tears. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she said feebly, and placed a hand gently on the woman’s arm as she shook and wept.

‘Did he really murder my girl? Did he?’ Noelene cried.

Who on earth—let alone Meaghan’s mother—would want to believe that Meaghan’s own
cousin could have stabbed her for nothing but a hit and a bit of cash?

‘Did he really do it?’ Noelene repeated, sobbing. ‘Do you think someone else might have done it?’