Violent Exposure (10 page)

Fair enough
, Ella thought.
We all have to do whatever gets us through the day
.

‘Emil has promise,’ Angie said. ‘He was a heroin addict when he first came to us. We got him into rehab and it wasn’t easy for him but he never gave up. He’s enthusiastic
– even passionate – and was quite the standout around here.’

‘Is he still with the program?’

‘No, he got an apprenticeship as a baker.’

Angie got up to fetch a couple of photographs. One showed a tanned young man in singlet and footy shorts mugging at the camera with a couple of others, three distinct lines of barbed-wire tattoo on his right upper arm. The second showed him wearing a white
shirt and pants and hat, a big smile on his face.

‘Reason to be proud,’ she said.

Ella handed the pictures on to Dennis. ‘How well do you know Connor and Suzanne Crawford?’

‘Suzie from the nursery, you mean? Lovely lady. Kind as the day is long. She came to us about six months ago and asked how she could get involved, whether she could offer the kids a bit of work experience.’

‘Have you spent
much time with her? Do you ever go to the nursery with the boys?’

‘And girls, we help girls out too,’ Angie said. ‘I went there once for a stickybeak right at the beginning. We’ve had coffee here a few times, early on to work out the details of the arrangement and for her to meet the other staff, and later to talk about the kids’ progress. She seemed really happy with all of them. Like I said,
really nice lady.’

‘You ever met her husband, Connor?’

‘Once, that time at the nursery. She introduced us, we said hi, that was it. No, wait, he also came to a fundraising night we had a few months back.’

‘Ever had problems with the kids working at the nursery?’ Dennis said.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Has somebody complained?’

‘How many staff do you have?’

‘Three social workers and me,’ she said.
‘Linsey Bradaghan, John Oberon and Gus Bielecki.’

Ella wrote the names down. ‘Do they usually accompany the kids to these places?’

‘Sometimes,’ Angie said. ‘They might go and watch and write up progress reports. Some of the kids struggle with anger and cooperation issues so it can be helpful to observe them in action.’

‘Did you ever hear about inappropriate behaviour taking place at the nursery?’

Angie frowned. ‘Like what?’

‘Like anything,’ Ella said.

‘Well, they know they’re not allowed to drink on the job.’

‘Aren’t they underage anyway?’ Dennis said.

‘Some of them, yes.’

Ella said, ‘We’re talking about sexual behaviour.’

‘Oh. Then no,’ Angie said. ‘Never heard of anything like that and if I did, boy oh boy, they better look out.’

‘So you would be surprised to know that at least
two of the boys who’ve been to the nursery claim to have kissed Suzanne.’

‘You’re kidding. Who?’ she said. ‘Oh, I guess one must be Emil, that’s why you were asking about him. Who’s the other?’

‘Aaron Maguire.’

‘Him. We’ll be having words this afternoon.’ Angie cracked her knuckles. ‘How is Suzanne? Can I do anything for her? Has she made a complaint? Is it okay if I call her and tell her I’m
sorry?’

‘I’m afraid she’s died,’ Ella said.

‘What?’

‘She was killed last night.’

Angie’s eyes were wide. ‘Like, in a car accident?’

‘In an incident at her home.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Somebody killed her,’ Ella said.

Angie’s mouth dropped open. ‘And you think – you can’t think that one of my boys did it?’

‘Why would you say that?’

‘You’re here, aren’t you?’ Angie was on her feet. ‘Those
are good boys.’

‘We’re here to learn as much about Suzanne’s life as we can,’ Ella said. ‘That’s all.’

Dennis asked, ‘Do you have a boy involved here named Robert?’ Angie shook her head. ‘You should’ve told me up front why you were here.’

‘Is that a no, there’s nobody here named Robert?’ Ella said.

‘That’s a no, this is wrong,’ Angie said.

‘The only reason we’ve asked about the boys is in
regards to the kissing,’ Ella said. ‘That’s it. We’re trying to understand Suzanne as best we can, because that will help us find who killed her.’

‘I really hardly knew her.’

‘We understand that.’ Ella was starting to get pissed off.

‘Her husband is probably the one to talk to.’

‘We understand that too.’ Why did people think she needed advice on how to do her job? ‘Is there anyone among the
boys you deal with, or on your staff, named Robert?’

‘No there isn’t.’ Prickly.

‘How about a thirtyish man with beach-blond hair? Anyone fitting that description involved here?’

‘No.’ Angie picked up the phone. ‘Are we done?’

‘You need to get back on hold?’ Ella said.

‘Something like that.’

‘Fine,’ Ella said. ‘But first we need the name of the bakery where Emil works and the names of all
the other young people who had dealings with the Crawfords.’

*

Connor woke with a start. His jeans were soaked and his right thigh ached and his head throbbed. The left side of his chest stung, and something was wrapped tightly around his head, covering his eyes. He felt hungover but with an extra layer of fog. He didn’t know where he was or what had happened – then he remembered Suzanne bleeding
and crying on the kitchen floor.

Oh, my girl.

He tried to slow his breathing and stay calm.

He struggled to think through the cloud in his head, through the haze of his fear and pain. He knew what he’d seen but refused to accept it.

Still alive. Please. Please.

He had to get back to her.

The thing around his head was too tight, squeezing him, and there was some kind of padding under it as
well, packed so firmly he couldn’t open his eyes. He turned his head and felt pain in his chest and a tugging against the skin and hair on the back of his neck.
Tape.
His arms were pulled behind him and taped too. His hands were caked in something . . . dry blood. Suzanne’s blood. With what little movement he had in them, he felt the edges of the wooden chair under him then something round behind
it. Tape or something similar bound him so tightly he couldn’t take a deep breath, and his legs too were bound, each to a leg of the chair. His bare feet rested on tiles. He could smell nothing but urine; his own, probably, judging from the wetness of his jeans.

He fought back panic. He had to think.

He had no memory of how he’d got here or even how the man had got into the house. No, men –
there were two of them. If he’d heard them breaking in, surely he would’ve called the police. Had he let them in? Or had Suzanne? Who were they? He strained for more detail but his memory couldn’t put links together. His mind was so cloudy, and he lost his thoughts in the fog before they could connect.

Oh, Suzanne. She’d lain bleeding and wheezing and sobbing against the fridge. One of the men
had stabbed her, he remembered with a pain like that same knife through his heart. But she couldn’t be dead. He tried to feel her out there, still alive, in hospital and getting better already, telling the police what had happened. Though it didn’t really matter what the police thought; he just needed to get back to her side. To hold her hand as she healed.

A noise made him freeze. A sigh, nearby.
Then another.

His skin crawled.

Somebody was there with him.

E
lla was at the computer, entering the information reluctantly given to them by Angie Crane, when her mobile rang. She looked at the screen and saw Detective Wayne Rhodes’ name.

She let it go to voicemail, then tried to type on.

There was no message beep.

She sat back in the chair and propped her hands against the arms. Her relationship with Wayne had been grinding to a halt over the last
couple of months and she had a feeling the end was close. Last night he’d asked her to dinner in Chinatown, and she’d said no, citing on-call, dreading sitting opposite him and working for conversation and trying to decide whether the thing could be saved. What made it hard was that he didn’t seem to feel the same: he kept talking about long weekends in Tasmania and a roadtrip to his sister’s wedding
on the Gold Coast in two months; he’d once even mentioned Christmas.

The text alert beeped.

How are you? Busy, I guess, if you caught that murder last night. Let me know when you get a break :)

She put the phone down without texting back. He was acting inspector in the Bankstown area command for six weeks, and between him being busy there and her busy here maybe the waters could clear, and
she could know for sure what they had, and whether the good outweighed the bad, and if so how that bad could be fixed. It wasn’t that they fought, she just felt she had nothing to say any more. She found herself looking at him and feeling nothing. She sometimes couldn’t even remember why they were together.

She sat forward and typed on, and got a hit with a criminal record. She wrote down the
address. ‘Dennis!’

He came in with a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘I have news.’

‘So do I,’ she said. ‘Gus Bielecki, one of the social workers at Streetlights, did a two-year stretch for assault and GBH.’

‘Who better to warn those kids about the path they’re on?’ He handed her the page. ‘Now check this out.’

Ella recognised Detective Sylvie Catt’s round handwriting across the top of the printed
lists. Checks of birth registries nationwide had come up with nine Connor Crawfords but none over the age of twenty-five.

‘We’re one hundred per cent that he fits this age?’ she asked.

‘He told the officers who responded to the domestic that his DOB is eighth November 1970. Plus you’ve seen his photo.’

‘Born overseas?’

‘Read on.’

Ella did, to learn that there were no immigrants of that name.
‘Maybe Connor was a middle name.’

‘That’s being checked,’ he said. ‘Turn the page over.’

The house in Iredale Road was in Suzanne’s name, as was the nursery and three bank accounts. Searches under Connor’s name with that date of birth turned up nothing.

‘Interesting,’ Ella said. ‘That manager said he does the accounts for the nursery – is there a register of accountants that he might be on?
What about the marriage? Don’t you need your birth certificate for that?’

‘No go with the accountant angle,’ Dennis said. ‘And remember they got married in the States? Catt tells me you can go to Key West with your photo ID and they do it on the spot. The certificate’s accepted as valid back here; you don’t need to do anything else.’

‘He has to have a passport then,’ she said.

‘Government records
are being checked, as are the banks and so on, with variable dates of birth,’ he said. ‘But the passport itself must be somewhere.’

She stood up. ‘We need to pull that house apart.’

The Crawfords’ house was closed up and silent. The blood on the kitchen floor was dry. Ella looked at it for a moment, thinking of Suzanne’s parents putting off coming in here, whether they had been already and seen
the job that awaited them.

‘Office first?’ Dennis said behind her, his breath oniony from the kebab lunch they’d scoffed on the drive over.

She nodded. ‘Then bedroom.’

He turned to detectives Bianca Kent and Allan Glenroy who’d come along. ‘Start down here. We’re looking for paperwork, identification, passports, any of that sort of stuff. Also silver or grey duct tape, in a roll or in pieces
or in scraps in a bin, anything.’

Upstairs, the office looked oddly empty without the computer. ‘How’d the techs go with that?’ Ella said.

‘I called earlier but they were busy. Left a message.’

The room was neat and tidy, the way they’d left it. When they’d searched for information on the Crawfords’ next of kin, they’d been careful to put things back how they’d found them. This time they pulled
the oak desk and pine bookshelves away from the walls, lifted out and upturned drawers, peered into the spaces they left, and examined every single piece of paper.

‘Everything to do with the nursery is in her name,’ Dennis said. ‘His appears on nothing.’

Ella held up stapled pages. ‘This is a solicitor’s letter about the purchase of the house. It’s addressed just to her but it’s a contact at
least.’ There was nothing more that was useful. No wills, no school records, no Medicare statements, no superannuation reports, no life insurance documents. No passports.

Dennis went to the head of the stairs. ‘Anything?’

‘Lots of photo albums,’ Bianca called back, ‘but nothing of him without her; none of him as a child. No paperwork so far, and no duct tape.’

They left the papers on the office
floor and moved to the bedroom. Ella felt behind the art prints for a wall safe but found only cool painted plasterboard. Dennis knelt by the bed and dragged out two archive boxes.

Ella sat down with the first one then her phone rang. The screen showed her parents’ mobile number.

‘Your father and I have a bet,’ her mother, Netta, said. ‘He thinks you got that poor woman’s murder last night and
can’t come to lunch. I think you didn’t and will be here soon. Loser pays.’

‘But your money is shared,’ Ella said.

‘It’s the look of the thing.’

‘Tell Dad congratulations. What did the doctor say?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ her mother said. ‘She wants him to have a scan next week. Just a bit of a check-up.’

‘Tell her I’m fine,’ Franco’s voice boomed down the line. ‘I’m fine!’

Dennis lifted fat envelopes
from the other box and sneezed.

Ella narrowed her eyes. ‘He’s really okay?’

‘Hundred per cent,’ Netta said.

‘You told her about his weight loss?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Netta said. ‘Really, he’s good. Ooh, the waitress is here, we have to go.’

‘Bye,’ Ella said to a dead line.

‘Everything okay?’ Dennis asked.

‘Probably.’ She took the lid off the box. ‘Dad’s lost weight and feels weak lately and the
doctor wants him to have a scan, but Mum says it’s nothing.’

‘Oh.’

She heard dismay. ‘What?’