Cold Justice (12 page)

Ella thought it was lucky she hadn’t freaked out herself. At fourteen she was hardly a mature adult.

The ambulance came, then the local police, and she’d given her details, then this official statement had been made later that day, by which time Tim had been identified. Turned out they’d gone to the same school. Tim had been two years ahead of her and she’d said she didn’t really know him.

She’d signed her name at the bottom of each page, a girlish and self-conscious signature with an elaborate loop in the ‘G’ and a circle over the ‘i’.

Ella studied the letter again. What could she know that she hadn’t already told them? Had something happened in the intervening years? Often information came from disgruntled ex-partners, but it wasn’t as if Georgina had had one at the time of Tim’s death. Unless she’d known more than she’d let on and had told somebody since?

Ella read the interview with Ronald Gordon, the occupant of the house where Georgina had gone for help. Nothing that he said stood out as odd either, though there were more documents detailing a second death in the street that day. Eighty-two-year-old Lucille Oldham had lived five doors up from Gordon and was found in her house by police officers during the canvass of the street. The front door was wide open and she lay just inside, wearing a nightie and dressing gown. She had no signs of injury and the post-mortem found she’d died of a heart attack during that night. Constantine speculated that she may have seen or heard something, gone to her door to investigate, and somehow come into contact with or been threatened by the killer, but none of the other neighbours had noticed anything odd, none had heard a sound, there was no evidence of a break-in to follow up, there was in fact no evidence at all, and the investigation into her death had gone nowhere.

Ella turned to her computer and typed in Georgina’s name and date of birth. It came back with a match to a Georgina Elisabeth Riley living out in the west of the state. She picked up the phone and dialled her number.

‘Hello?’

Ella explained who she was. ‘Is Georgina Riley there, please?’

‘She’s in Sydney. She’s a paramedic stationed in The Rocks,’ the male voice said. ‘I’m her brother-in-law, Adam. I’m a senior constable here in Woolford. Is everything okay?’

‘I need to speak to her about a statement. Do you have a number where I can contact her, please?’

‘Got a pen?’

Ella wrote down the mobile number he recited and thanked him.

‘No worries,’ he said.

Ella dialled Georgina’s number.

In RPA’s ambulance bay, Freya tucked the clean sheet over the stretcher mattress and put the folded blanket on the end. She was sick to death of the thoughts going round and round in her head: worries about Dion, about tonight when she’d see him, whether he’d recognise her, and what would happen then. Nothing, she tried to tell herself,
nothing
, but it seemed impossible to believe. She sat on the ambulance’s back step and sighed.

Georgie stuffed the plastic-wrapped pillow into the pillowcase and plumped it down on the bed, then eyed the café across the road. ‘Coffee?’

‘Not for me,’ Freya said. ‘Feel like crap.’

‘Domestic stuff can do that to you,’ Georgie said. Her mobile started ringing and she took a few steps away to answer.

Domestic, whatever,
Freya thought. Tonight would take just a few hours and then it’d be over, and who knew, maybe she’d never have to see him again. Maybe he really wouldn’t recognise her. Maybe she was getting all knotted up for nothing. She pulled herself to her feet and loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. Maybe . . . Oh, bullshit. It was going to be bad.

‘Hey.’ Georgie had her hand over the phone, a funny look on her face. ‘Do you remember Tim Pieters?’

Past and present collided and the earth shook under Freya’s feet.

‘You okay?’ Georgie grabbed her arm. ‘Here, sit down. You look like you’re going to pass out.’

‘It’s . . .’ Freya struggled to think. ‘Abdo pain.’ She put a hand on her right lower quadrant for effect.
Oh no. No, no, no.

‘Do you remember him?’

‘Rings a little bell,’ Freya lied. ‘Guy from school who was killed?’

Georgie nodded. ‘This is a detective wanting to talk to me about how I found his body. They’ve reopened the case.’

The world spun.

‘She says it’s urgent. Reckon it’s okay if I say to meet me here? Reckon Control will give me a little time?’

Freya shut her eyes and tried to breathe.

‘Man, you look terrible,’ Georgie said. ‘You should go in and see a doctor.’

An idea fell into Freya’s burning brain. ‘I think I will. Tell Control we’re off the road for a bit and you can meet the detective while I’m getting seen.’

‘Great! You want a hand to get in there?’

‘It’s okay.’ Freya got up, hand pressed to her side. As she walked slowly away she heard Georgie say into the phone, ‘Can you come to RPA?’

When the Emergency doors slid shut behind her, she sagged against the wall, trying to clear her mind, trying to
think.

Okay.
Even if she had to lie to a doctor, she would stay inside for as long as it took for Georgie’s little tête-à-tête to be over, because if she was to run into that detective, and Georgie mentioned that she’d gone to Tim’s school too, oh, and she’d left pretty much right after he died – well, that was curious wasn’t it? There was sure to be digging. And while she and Dion had been lucky before, she was terrified that their luck might have run out.

The single good thing was that through Georgie she might be able to find out what exactly was going on, and just how much they knew.

This had to be it. Late model dark blue Falcon, unobtrusive aerial on the back. Georgie watched the car pull into the Police Only spot in RPA’s ambulance bay. The woman who got out was a little on the short side, her dark hair blowing everywhere in the breeze, her sense of purpose obvious.

‘I’m Detective Ella Marconi,’ she said. They shook hands. ‘So what do you remember about finding Tim Pieters’s body?’

‘I was walking our dog at about six,’ Georgie said. ‘He was a pain, he had this internal clock and woke up that early every day. The other days of the week Mum or Dad took him for a walk, but Sundays I had to do it, and get the paper while I was out. I didn’t mind really. It was kind of nice being out and about early, before anyone else.’ She felt like she was clogging up the story with useless information but the detective didn’t appear bothered. ‘We headed down towards the park because he liked to have a run there on the oval. We were going along the side of the road and I’d let him off his leash already.’

She remembered the crunch of the gravel under her feet, the smell of the bush, the conversation of a family of magpies as they pecked their way across the oval. Wally’s tags jingled on his collar as he trotted along then veered off into the grass.

‘I kept walking and called him. When he didn’t come I jangled the chain on his lead but he still wouldn’t come out.’ She saw herself standing there in the sunshine, one hand on her hip, thinking he’d found something disgusting to roll in, and when she got home she’d have to postpone flipping through the paper in the sun and give him a bath instead. ‘I went back and called him again. I could hear his tags clinking. I told him he was a little shit.’ Big words for the fourteen year old she’d been. She remembered them falling into the sunlit morning like stones. ‘Then he whimpered.’ The sound had chilled her. ‘I thought he must be hurt, or maybe trapped in some way. I went into the grass and saw something but I didn’t really have time to think about what it was because the next thing I was right on him.’

She remembered the utter stillness of the body. She’d told kids at school who asked, with their eyes full of a curiosity and desire that she now saw every day when people brought up her job, that he’d looked asleep, but he hadn’t. He’d looked dead.

‘Go on,’ Ella said.

Georgie blinked. ‘Wally was snuffling round near his face. I shouted at him, and when he came back I grabbed him and started running to that house.’

‘You were frightened?’

‘A little, I guess,’ Georgie said. ‘Mostly I just knew I had to tell somebody. And he was . . . I don’t know, I could recognise from his back that he was young, and it felt so wrong that he was lying there, and nobody knew where he was. His family, I mean. They would’ve been worried.’

Ella nodded. ‘And then what?’

‘I banged on the door until the man opened it,’ Georgie said. ‘He had the shits until he saw my face. I told him what I’d seen and he called triple 0. I felt like I had to go back there, and was on my way, the guy following me, when the ambulance turned up. I showed them where he was.’

She remembered the sky-blue of their uniform shirts, and how they’d moved into the grass so calmly, with no fuss; they knew what they were doing and they weren’t afraid and it showed. She remembered thinking,
I want to be like them.

‘When they came out they said they were very sorry but he’d passed away.’ She remembered that phrase. She used it herself now. ‘The taller one asked if I was okay, did I know him, was I feeling faint or anything. I said I couldn’t tell if I knew him until I saw his face, and that so far I felt okay. They thought the guy from the house was my dad for a minute, then once they realised he wasn’t, they offered to get their controller to call Mum and Dad. I said yes, and suddenly felt a bit shaky at the thought of them coming there – I think for some reason I wanted to protect my mum, like if possible I didn’t want her to even know that this had happened, could happen to somebody around there. Especially someone who might’ve been as young as me.’

‘When did you realise who he was?’

‘I would’ve known if I’d seen his face, but they never asked me to look,’ Georgie said. ‘I was kind of shooed away, much to Mum’s relief. I found out that afternoon when I had to go to the station and give a proper statement.’

‘How well had you known Tim?’

‘Only to see around the school,’ she said. ‘He was two years ahead of me. I don’t think we’d ever actually spoken.’

‘Were there rumours about what might have happened?’

‘There were a few,’ Georgie said. ‘One was that he was gay and he’d gone with somebody willingly but then got killed for whatever reason.’

‘Did you hear how that started?’

She shook her head. ‘Rumours go around schools like wildfire and sometimes there is no reason. There wasn’t one for that, as far as I heard.’

‘Okay.’

‘But another was that it was some kind of drug thing.’

‘Was he a user?’

‘I don’t know,’ Georgie said. ‘He didn’t really hang out with that crowd, but otherwise I couldn’t say.’

‘Did people talk to you about him? Other kids at the school?’

Georgie nodded. ‘It was all questions, though. They asked what he’d looked like, could I smell him, were there flies, was he shot or stabbed, was there blood and guts. The counsellor pulled me out of class and asked how I was doing too.’

Georgie remembered the woman’s long hand over her forearm like a damp and tepid towel. She hadn’t wanted to talk to her, with her brown beads and slow nods and prepared facial expressions. Especially when under it all Georgie’d seen the same eager desire to pry that the kids had.

‘I just kept telling people he looked like he was asleep. They had nowhere to go with that.’

Ella nodded. ‘Is there anything new in your thinking about the case?’

‘No, why?’

‘Nothing’s changed? You haven’t remembered something?’

‘No.’

‘Do you talk about it much?’

‘Hardly ever.’

‘When would you talk about it?’

‘If I got teamed with someone new on the road and we got talking about murders and stuff we’d been to, maybe.’

‘Ever outside the job?’

Georgie shook her head. ‘Why?’

‘What would you say if I told you that somebody sent us a letter implying that you know more about this case than you’re letting on?’

Georgie was stunned. ‘What?’

‘So you’re surprised.’

‘Of course! I just told you everything I know.’

Ella’s gaze was steady.

‘I mean, you must have read my statement from then. Did I just leave anything out? Or add anything new?’

‘No.’

‘What did the letter say I’m supposed to know?’

‘It wasn’t clear on that.’

‘Who sent it?’

‘Anonymous.’

‘Well –’ A thought struck Georgie. ‘Wait. I know who it’s from.’

‘Who?’

‘I was bullied at Woolford, where I used to work. The ambulance boss there is in cahoots with some local people and I’d say it’s one or all of them doing this to hassle me even more.’

Ella narrowed her eyes.

‘Some people knew about it out there,’ Georgie said. ‘All they’d have to do is search the web for details about the case and they’d have enough information to sound convincing.’

‘But to what end?’

‘Like I said, just to hassle me. They want me to quit.’

‘Why would they want that?’

Georgie screwed up her face. ‘It’s a long and complicated story.’

‘Try me.’

Georgie told her about the accident. As she spoke she wondered if she should mention the man she thought she’d been seeing, but decided against it. Ella was already looking at her a little oddly.

‘Can you give me these people’s names?’

‘With pleasure.’ Georgie recited the list she knew by heart. Sometimes she was annoyed that she couldn’t get them out of her head; other times the memory showed its worth. ‘Is this, like, perjury?’ Maybe they’d go to jail.

Ella wrote in her notebook. ‘Proving who sent it could be tricky.’

‘What about fingerprints?’

‘Also tricky.’

Georgie got the feeling she didn’t believe it was them. ‘But who else would do it? And why?’

‘It’s one of the avenues we’ll explore,’ Ella said.

Georgie’s phone rang. It was Control. ‘Are you guys available?’

‘I don’t know. What is it?’

‘Urgent call from a medical centre in Bondi,’ Control said. ‘Ten-year-old girl with cyanosed legs. Doctor’s stating it’s meningococcal and I’ve got no one else.’