Violent Exposure (33 page)

‘Wear patterns and all?’

‘Yep. The lab even found traces of the stuff in the tread. He’s chock-full of denials, of course, but he’s got no alibi and more than one snitch has told us they hated each other’s guts. Not sure how the dealer died yet but the PM’s on today so if they find he was murdered, we’ll be punting him over.’

‘Nice.’ She would enjoy seeing Gee fed into the homicide
investigation machine.

‘And Bridges, the guy with the pot? Doesn’t look like much will happen to him. He’s just small fry.’

‘But a big liar.’ Detectives were going past her into the meeting room. ‘This has been just fabulous, catching up, but I have to go.’

‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘Might catch you later, yeah?’

Or not
, she thought, and turned and went into the room.

She told Dennis what Murray
had said about Gee. He raised his coffee cup and his eyebrows at the same time. ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer young man.’

The meeting began with Dennis updating the group on the progress with Jesse Locke. ‘We’re still trying to contact his boss who’s an ex-detective, and hoping to gain some leverage there. Any test results back, Bianca?’

‘The bit of plastic in Suzanne Crawford’s wound is indeed
duct tape, of a generic brand available nationally,’ Detective Bianca Kent said. ‘The previously unidentified prints on the handle of the Crawfords’ back door are Emil Page’s. His DNA test isn’t finished yet but his blood type matches the third sample found on the kitchen floor, and the stains on his shirt match both Suzanne’s type and that of the sample, believed to be Connor’s.’

It was confirmation
that Emil had been at the scene when the murder happened. Ella said, ‘Why wouldn’t Connor just kill Emil outright?’

‘Maybe he planned to set up Emil for it, try to make it look like it was Emil who killed Suzanne and kidnapped him,’ Jen Katzen said.

‘And something went wrong and Emil died and so he dumped the body.’

‘Is the PM done on Emil?’ Ella asked.

‘Preliminary results show death was
possibly caused by asphyxia following airway obstruction from a drug overdose, but toxicology’s still pending,’ Detective Steve Mitchell said. ‘They got a lot of trace evidence from his clothing and are still sorting through it. It was definitely adhesive from something like duct tape around his wrists. It doesn’t look like he struggled against it much.’

‘Maybe he was drugged from the outset,’
Detective Jen Katzen said. ‘Does Connor have injecting skills?’

‘Connor could have anything,’ Ella said.

Dennis nodded. ‘Any news from the tech people?’

Detective Peter Hepburn said, ‘They worked overnight and emailed their report just now. The Bytes cafe computer servers revealed no searches of anything deeper than the generic sites, Google and so on; nothing that we couldn’t have found ourselves.’

Ella sat back in her chair. She’d hoped to get something juicy to toss in Jesse Locke’s face when they returned to the hospital, but this gave them nothing at all to work with.

‘I’ve got something here, I think,’ Daniel Farley said, highlighting something on a computer printout. ‘These are the logs of the calls made on the mobiles belonging to the Streetlights kids. I’ve been crossmatching the
lot of them and one phone, belonging to Aaron Maguire, called Emil at 4.30 pm the day that Suzanne died. It stands out because this is the only time that he rang Emil, and during the period logged here Emil never rang him.’

Ella sat forward. ‘Angie Crane told us that those kids hated each other.’

‘Were competitive,’ Dennis put in.

‘Same thing at that age.’ Ella remembered talking to Aaron Maguire
at the nursery, how he’d claimed Suzanne came onto him so he kissed her, and how his attitude had got right up her nose. ‘Kid’s a smartarse.’

‘We’ll track him down, find out what they talked about.’ Dennis made notes. ‘Find out who else he called and when.’

‘Emil texted someone at five that afternoon,’ Ella said. ‘Have another look at the number?’

‘On it,’ Farley said.

Hepburn said, ‘Uniform
found the Crawfords’ car abandoned down a back street in St Peters. It’s been stripped but there’s what look like bloodstains on the back and front passenger seats. Neighbours say it’s been there a day or so in that state. One also said he’d seen it before that being belted around the streets by a couple of teenaged boys – one who is never seen out of a hoodie.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Dennis said.

‘It’s possible Connor, or whoever drove it away from the house that night, dumped it somewhere and these kids had it from then.’

Ella said, ‘Did he describe the kids? Maybe they’re from Streetlights.’
Maybe this is all tied in tighter than we can imagine.

‘He said they’re locals who hang out in the neighbourhood all day,’ Hepburn said. ‘Uniform’s looking for them now and forensics has the car.’

‘Good,’ Dennis said. ‘How’s the canvass going around Emil Page’s body-dump site? If the killer didn’t have that car it’d be good to know how he got the body there.’

‘A couple of reports of various cars but nothing outstanding and nothing more than partial plates,’ Detective Allan Glenroy said. ‘We’re looking into them. There’s no CCTV near that location so no go with that either.’

‘How’s it
going with missing persons?’

Jen Katzen said, ‘Some in that bracket have already had age progressions done but don’t fit the picture we have of Connor. We’re looking at more today.’

‘Right,’ Dennis said. ‘Tasks.’

Ella’s mobile rang. She checked the screen and excused herself from the meeting.

In the corridor she said, ‘Shep, how are you?’

‘Did you talk to your father?’

‘He’s doing okay,’
she said. ‘How’s Lydia?’

‘A little better, they say. I can’t see it myself. They said it might take a long time.’ He paused.

She said, ‘We haven’t found him yet but we are getting closer.’

‘I trust you,’ he said.

They fell silent. She could hear his breathing and wondered if he could hear hers. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I don’t hear her any more.’

The corridor went blurry at the sadness in his voice.
Times like this she hated being a cop.

M
ick couldn’t believe they were actually sitting in the IVF centre with the admin person printing out a receipt for all the cash they’d just handed over. And here was Jo, lit up like an angel by the sunshine flooding through the window, laughing about her big casino win and how they immediately knew what they’d spend it on, wasn’t it great?

Mick gripped the sides of his chair. Last
night he’d lain awake in bed, thinking about coming here, imagining Aidan jumping out of a doorway and demanding the rest of the money, or a cop stepping into their path because Aidan had dobbed, or the muzzle of a gun pressing into his ribs because the neighbour wasn’t that feeble after all and had described him so well that the dealer’s mates had tracked him down. If it was the cops, he’d use Sophie’s
barrister’s argument of violent exposure: he was so stressed that he thought this was the right thing to do. But nothing had happened, and here they were, the woman handing him the receipt and Jo smiling at him as she made an appointment for next week.

Outside on the street, he squeezed her hand. ‘Did we just do that?’

‘I told you it would all be fine.’ He couldn’t seem to slow his breathing.
The day was too bright and the street noise too loud and he grabbed her arm to stop himself falling over.

Jo wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘You want to sit down?’

‘Give me a minute.’

We just paid for our family.

His heart hurt from joy and fear combined.

His mobile rang and Jo helped him get it out of his pocket. The screen said
Chris
.

‘Hey,’ Mick answered. ‘How’s –’

‘Guilty but only
eighteen months!’ Chris shouted.

‘What?’

‘She’s guilty, but they gave her just eighteen months and then parole!’

Mick got goose bumps.

‘She’ll get to take Lachlan to his first day of school. She’ll get to see him grow up!’

Chris was laughing and crying at the same time, and the street blurred in Mick’s vision, and he pressed the phone into Jo’s hand and his face against her neck.

*

The
tape peeled back a fraction further then Connor’s fingers cramped up.

Please
.

He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t simply sit there until the whisperer came back. He couldn’t bear thinking about what he might be planning to do to him, couldn’t stand to just wait, stinking of his own filth, racked with pain, with lips that were dry and split and a mouth that tasted of dry blood. If he could get one
hand free, he could maybe . . . he didn’t know what, but it had to be better than this.

He grasped the tape again.

*

Angie Crane’s hair was flat. ‘I haven’t seen Aaron since the day before yesterday. That’s normal though. He comes and goes a bit.’

‘Talked to him on the phone at all?’

She shook her head.

‘Where might we find him?’

‘Hard to say. Video arcades in George Street maybe. Wandering
around the Cross.’

‘Does he work the Wall?’

‘No!’

‘Angie,’ Ella said. ‘It’s a fact of life. We need to find him and make sure he’s safe.’ Little white lie there, but Angie appeared to be listening. Ella added, ‘We don’t want him to end up like Emil.’

‘Okay. He might be near there. Maybe.’

On Kellett Street, Ella was about to get in the car when Dennis said, ‘There he is.’

Ella said, ‘What?’
but Dennis was already running. Beyond him, she saw a scruffy teen scramble into a turn then trip on the overlong legs of his jeans and fall flat on his face. Dennis was on him in seconds. By the time Ella reached them, he was hauling a flushed Aaron to his feet.

‘This is fucking police harassment.’

She smiled into his face. ‘We haven’t even started yet.’

He was so combative they took him to
Kings Cross police station rather than to the Streetlights office.

He slumped onto a chair in the interview room and scowled at them. ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘Got your phone on you?’

‘Nup.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Lost it.’

Convenient
. ‘When did you lose it?’

‘Two weeks ago, maybe.’

‘Tell anyone?’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Angie, who pays for the thing?’ He shrugged.

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘No I dint
tell her. Or anyone.’

‘When did you last see Emil Page?’

‘That little arse? No idea.’

‘Have a rough guess,’ Ella said.

‘Months. When he left to do his cooking thing.’

‘Bakery apprenticeship,’ Dennis said.

‘Whatever.’ Aaron snorted back mucus and Ella’s stomach turned.

She said, ‘When did you last speak to him?’

‘Never did, if I could help it.’

‘The last time,’ she said again.

‘Before
he left. He was in my face and I told him to fuck off.’

‘What was he in your face about?’

‘Just shit.’

Ella’s anger was rising. ‘What shit exactly?’

‘How’m I sposed to remember?’

‘Try,’ Dennis said, his voice ice-cold.

Aaron rolled his eyes. ‘How the Crawford chick liked him and not me, how he reckoned that made him better than me.’

‘Before he left,’ Ella said. ‘That was weeks before she
kissed you. Months.’

‘Yeah, and the little arse wasn’t here then so he didn’t see it.’

‘You liked her,’ Ella said. ‘You liked her and he knew it.’

He sucked his cheeks and made as if to spit on the floor, but didn’t. ‘She was just a chick.’

‘Where were you the night that she was killed?’

‘I was here.’

Ella narrowed her eyes.

‘Drunk and disorderly,’ he said. ‘I was in the fucking cells.’

‘We’ll check that,’ Dennis said.

He shrugged.

‘When did you last use your phone?’ Ella said.

‘Fucked if I know,’ he said. ‘Day before I lost it, probly.’ Ella said, ‘So if we ring any of the numbers on your call log since that time, and ask the person who answers, you’re sure none of them will say it was you who phoned?’

‘Abso-fucking-lutely.’

‘Mind waiting here while we check a few things?’

‘Yes I do.’ Aaron stood up and walked to the door with the air of one who’d done this before and knew they couldn’t hold him.

Dennis opened the door and he strolled out.

‘Don’t leave town,’ Ella said after him, adding, ‘Weasel’ under her breath.

Dennis said, ‘Daniel’s checking all the other numbers Maguire’s phone called so with a bit of luck we might score something nice there.’

‘With a lot
of luck, you mean.’ Her phone rang. ‘Marconi.’

‘This is Ryan Dawson. I believe I might be able to help out on your case.’

Jesse Locke’s doctor didn’t like her, Ella could tell. She was good at knowing these things. She smiled at him and he looked away.

‘You must understand that my patient’s welfare is my number-one priority,’ he said.

‘We do,’ Ella said.

Dennis cut in. ‘I can assure you that
we don’t want to inflame Mr Locke’s condition in any way. My own father has heart trouble and I know how little emotion or stress it takes to set him off. I promise we will be as brief and as gentle as we can.’

The doctor considered him. ‘I would like you to be the one to speak to him, and for no more than three minutes.’

Dennis inclined his head. ‘Of course.’

Ella kept her face straight and
her mouth shut until they got into the corridor. ‘You told me your dad’s fitter than a flea,’ she whispered.

Dennis walked with his eyes front. ‘Shh.’

Jesse Locke pushed away his half-finished lunch tray when they entered his room. Ella stood back from the foot of his bed while Dennis went to the side.

‘How are you doing today, Mr Locke?’ he asked.

‘Quite frankly I feel harassed.’

Dennis
smiled. ‘This won’t take long. We just need to finish yesterday’s conversation.’

‘I was done,’ Locke said.

‘We weren’t,’ Ella said. ‘If I remember correctly you were telling us what you were doing with Suzanne Crawford in the internet cafe.’