Violent Exposure (14 page)

‘I really don’t,’ Barnley said. ‘Suzie was the nicest person and I can’t think of any reason for anyone
to hurt her in the slightest, let alone kill her. And I can’t think why Connor’s disappeared now. Unless he’s been kidnapped by the killer.’ His eyes widened. ‘Could that be who was driving the car?’

‘If that was the case, who would do it and why?’

Barnley shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’

With a bit of phoning around, they tracked Peta Davies to her office in the broking division of a large
bank in the CBD. Her PA showed Ella and Dennis into the office where Peta sat hollow-eyed behind a pile of papers, and offered them coffee.

‘No, thanks,’ Ella said. When the PA was gone, she said, ‘We’re surprised you’re at work, after that fight.’

‘I go away for five days and the place apparently falls apart.’ Peta leaned across the desk. ‘Have you found him?’

Ella shook her head. ‘We have
a lot of people looking though.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch with you?’ Dennis asked.

Peta barked a hard laugh. ‘He’d better not even think about it.’

‘Scott Barnley said he doesn’t think Connor could’ve hurt Suzanne.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Peta said. ‘But I’ve had an abusive boyfriend myself and I know how charming they can be on the outside. Even after I left, and told people, they just
couldn’t see it in him and felt their own assessment was more correct than what I was saying.’

‘Katie told us that Suzanne confided in you.’

Peta nodded. ‘She told me she thought Connor had a secret. It was maybe seven, eight months ago, I guess. She’d come around to our place and we’d had a few drinks and Katie had fallen asleep on the lounge – she’s a bit of a two-pot screamer – and Suzanne
leaned over close and said that she wasn’t happy. She’d told me that a couple of times over the last year or eighteen months – usually it was because they’d been arguing – but this time she said she thought he had some big secret. I asked her what she meant – did she think he was having an affair? But she just shook her head with these big tears in her eyes.’ Peta’s own eyes welled.

‘Did she
ever tell you anything more about what she thought this secret was?’

‘She thought he was hiding something about who he was or what he’d done or been before they met. She didn’t know what though. She said she kept hitting dead ends when she tried to find out.’

‘How was she doing that?’ Ella asked.

‘She searched the web, even paying those sites that say they can give you somebody’s full background.
But nothing came up – I mean nothing. No birth certificate or anything. He didn’t seem to exist. He’d told her his parents died in a house fire when he was a teenager in Western Australia, and she couldn’t find any record of that. She’d wanted to contact people in the places where he’d lived, but he was so vague about it and would only say Sydney, or Melbourne, for example, that she simply
got nowhere. I suggested she hire a private investigator.’

‘And did she?’

‘If she did, she never told me.’ Peta wiped away a tear. ‘Just last week I asked her how it was going but she said she didn’t want to talk about it. I emailed and said I’m here, call me anytime, but she never replied.’

‘You said she didn’t think Connor was having an affair,’ Ella said, ‘but did she ever lead you to think
that she was?’

Peta pressed her teeth into her lip. ‘Not as such.’

‘Meaning . . . ?’

‘I knew she’d slept with this one young guy, but it was pretty short-lived, and just physical, so it was really more like a fling.’

Ella glanced at Dennis who was writing notes. ‘When was this?’

‘Couple of months ago, as best I can work out,’ Peta said. ‘She only told me when it was over, on another night
when we’d had a few and she started talking about this great sex she’d had.’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Emmett, Emil, something like that.’

Ella and Dennis exchanged looks. This was more than the kissing they’d heard about.

‘Did she tell you why it ended?’ Ella asked.

‘No.’

‘Did you think that Connor might’ve found out?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He seemed pretty clueless about the
whole thing. Suzanne could really hide stuff when she wanted to. She was good at putting up a front.’ She looked down at her desk. ‘I was lucky that I got to know her as well as I did.’

‘Did she mention any other, uh, flings?’

‘No, just that one.’

‘Did you wonder if she’d had any more?’

‘I guess it’s possible – like I said, she was good at hiding stuff – but no, I didn’t wonder at the time.’

‘She ever mention anyone named Robert?’

Peta shook her head.

‘Did she have friends other than your group?’

‘Not that I was aware of,’ she said. ‘I knew she got on well with her staff at the nursery but I don’t think they really hung out.’

‘Did you ever see her with a surfie-type man with blond hair?’

‘Nope.’

‘Do you recognise anyone in these photos?’ Dennis passed over the RTA traffic and
convenience-store CCTV pictures.

‘I know that’s Suzanne’s car but I can’t say who any of the people are.’

‘What can you tell us about Stewart Bridges?’

‘Him,’ she said. ‘He’s an odd bod. Katie and I met him when he shot my sister’s wedding last year, then he was at this Christmas party we went to with Suzanne and Connor, and he just somehow hit it off with them. I could never really see the
attraction myself.’

Dennis said, ‘Is there any chance he and Suzanne were seeing each other?’

‘I can’t imagine it.’ She screwed up her face. ‘No, I’m almost certain they weren’t.’

‘Almost?’

‘Well, like I said, Suzanne could be good at hiding stuff.’

‘Neighbours say he was at their house a lot, dropping in a couple of times a week,’ Ella said.

‘Really? Huh.’ Peta sat back in her chair. ‘He
was never there when I was there, that’s for sure. They never talked about him either.’

‘Any idea why he might be there that often?’

She shook her head. ‘No clue whatsoever.’

Back on the street, Ella said to Dennis, ‘Suzanne might’ve got close to Connor’s secret after all.’

He nodded. ‘Nothing on the home and work computers, but there was that call about her being in an internet cafe.’

‘We
need to step up on that angle, and find out if she hired a private investigator too,’ Ella said. ‘Do you think that might’ve been the blond man?’

‘But why would she go with him to hospital?’ Dennis said. ‘Maybe he was another lover.’

Ella unlocked the car. ‘So we need to find the cafe and the computers she used, and hopefully track what she looked at.’

If they could find out what Suzanne had
learned about Connor’s secret, they might just be able to figure out where he was now.

*

The breathing continued. Connor had worked out it was coming from low on his right, as if somebody was sleeping on the floor. The breathing was slow and didn’t change, even when he’d gathered his courage to move in an effort to loosen the tape, even when he’d said a tentative ‘Hey’ into the darkness. Even
when he’d screamed for help until his throat was sore.

He struggled now against both the fog in his mind and the tapes that held him. The adhesive pulled at his skin and his thoughts refused to link. His chest hurt and he vaguely remembered getting cut there. He tried to breathe shallowly. He was exhausted and hungry and so thirsty, and his head throbbed, and his urine-soaked jeans chafed him
as he worked his legs against the tape, but it was all pain that he offered up in the hope that it would somehow earn Suzanne a reduction in hers.

A hole appeared in the cloud in his head and he remembered that the younger of the two guys had been bound with tape too. He stopped struggling and tried to recall more. The silver duct tape had been around the guy’s wrists, and he remembered now that
he’d only seen this once he’d opened the door. And he’d seen – what else? It was just out of his reach.

And then he saw Suzanne on the floor again, her eyes on his. Saw himself trying to stop her bleeding. Felt again the heat of her blood on his hands.

Oh Suzanne.

He felt air moving against his sweaty skin and froze.

He listened. Another breath from the person on the floor – and an inhalation
from elsewhere in the room? He strained to hear. Yes, quiet breathing on his left. And a new smell of men’s piney deodorant. The hair on the back of his neck rose.

He shouted, ‘What the fuck do you want with me?’

There was no reply.

He sat still, then started to work his wrists against the tape again. ‘Arsehole.’

‘Language.’ The voice was a whisper and sent goose bumps down Connor’s spine.

He felt hot breath against his face and threw his head forward.

‘Missed me,’ the voice said.

It had to be the other man. What did he look like? Why was he doing this?

Connor said, ‘I know who you are, and when I get out of here I’m telling everyone what you did.’ And spat into the darkness.

A gloved fist hit him in the face. His head rocked back and blood exploded from his nose and lips. Holding
back a cry of pain and fear, he dropped his head between his shoulders for meagre protection against further blows as blood ran hot over his mouth and chin and soaked his shirt. He sucked in a mouthful and spat again.

‘You have terrible aim.’ The whisper came from his right side now.

Connor spat a third time.

A giggle.

‘Fuck you,’ Connor said.

No response.

He raised his head and tried in
vain to see under the padding and tape. He listened hard for the soft sound of a shoe on tiles, of cloth moving against cloth, but heard only the snore of the person on the floor.

He fought against the fear that threatened to make him as immobile as the tape. He summoned up his courage for Suzanne’s sake, seeing her before him in the blackness.

Still alive. Not dead.

Despite what he’d seen
with his own eyes.

A miracle, please. Let her be alive. Let me get out of here and find she’s alive.

Oh God, please.

‘Are you praying yet?’

‘Fuck you,’ Connor said. ‘Fuck your tape, fuck your chair, and fuck your dungeon.’

There was no reply. ‘You hear me?’ Connor shouted through his split lips. ‘Fuck you!’

Silence.

*

After the evening meeting, Ella got in her car and headed home. The
sky was purple streaked with pink, the tops of the clouds still bright, but she couldn’t take pleasure in any of it. She felt drained. Glancing in the rear-view, she saw she looked every bit as exhausted as Dennis and the other detectives had as they’d straggled to their cars.

They’d been on the go for more than eighteen hours but were now in a holding pattern. Detectives had started visiting
internet cafes with Suzanne’s photo but with no luck so far. Reports were pending on the fragment of possible duct tape, on the DNA of the blood spots found at the scene, and on the Crawfords’ and Bridges’ phone records. The warrant for the hospital records was choking on red tape. A search was under way using Peta Davies’ information that Connor’s parents may have died in a house fire when he was
a teenager, but they’d had to apply a ten-year time frame just in case, they had no names to cross-reference with, and while they were starting with Western Australia, it could really have happened anywhere in the country. Or even overseas.

If it had happened at all.

Connor’s past was so vague, you had to consider that every single thing he’d told his friends might be a lie.

Ella rubbed her
eyes. Traffic stopped and started. She yawned and rested her forehead on the top of the wheel.

Horns woke her.

Okay, okay.

She drove on.

Her mobile rang and she saw it was Wayne. She couldn’t think of anything to say, and stared out the windscreen and let it go to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message.

She was close to home when she swung into the right lane at a roundabout and turned around.

Her parents’ house in Chullora was the same as ever: greenhouse down the side, roses along the front, their heads looking heavy in the evening gloom, and fern trees deepening the shadows on the verandah. There were no lights on, inside or out.

She knocked but there was no answer. She rang their mobile but it went to voicemail.

She sat on the steps and watched the sky turn darker. They were probably
at Aunt Adelina’s house, or having dinner at the club, or seeing friends. Not suddenly taken ill and admitted to hospital. She checked the screen of her mobile, then called her voicemail in case a notification hadn’t come through. Nothing.

The air smelled of cooking chops and carried the raucous cheers of television game shows. Her fatigue enveloped her mind like a grey wool blanket. She rested
her head on her folded arms and dozed, then woke stiff and with an aching back as a car slowed on the street and turned into the driveway, headlight beams swinging along the fence.

Ella stepped down onto the lawn. Her mother parked by the house and Ella opened the passenger door.

‘Ella,
carina
. How are you?’ Her father leaned out to hug her, then she helped him stand. Her mother got out of the
driver’s seat and came around to take his other arm. ‘How come you’re here?’

‘Just dropped in to say hi.’

Her father’s arm was warm and skinny in her grasp. He smiled at her and she saw the creases she knew so well, the laugh lines around his eyes, the thinning grey hair on his shiny scalp. His brown eyes looked straight into hers.

She said, ‘It’s good to see you,’ and felt in her chest how
much she meant it. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Perfectly,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you too.’ He freed his arm from her mother’s grip to raise his hand and place his cool palm flat along her cheek. ‘My girl.’

She kissed his stubbled face, certain he wasn’t hiding anything, and nor was her mother, smiling across his head.

‘How’s the case?’

‘Slow,’ Ella said. ‘Listen, Dad, what kind of scan are you having?’

‘Some thing with a fancy name,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’