Cold Justice (2 page)

It was also possible that Tim had known his killer and so had not put up a fight when taken. Ella read that his father, John, had been a suspect for a time, as he’d admitted going out alone to look for Tim late that Saturday night. He’d stated that he was unable to find him or any of his friends and had come home after an hour and a half of driving aimlessly about the area, so aimlessly that he found it hard to recall his exact route. The original detectives had noted that they’d been unable to determine where he’d gone or find any witnesses at all. Even his wife, Tamara, couldn’t say for sure what time he’d come home. She’d gone to bed at eleven, before her husband went out, then had woken at three to find him snoring beside her.

Tim’s uncle, Alistair McLennan, had also been out that night, caring for a dying cancer patient in Berowra. He’d said in his statement that he hadn’t seen either Tim or John after the family barbecue earlier that evening; and the patient’s husband had stated that Dr McLennan had arrived at their place at 11.20 pm and left at one, after his wife’s peaceful death just after midnight. McLennan’s wife Genevieve stated she’d woken up when he climbed into bed at one thirty.

Ella made notes. Reinterviewing all the family was a given, as was talking to Tim’s friends. The boys might have been protecting each other then, but as men now in their thirties, possibly with sons of their own, they might have regrets and feel freer to talk.

Drops of blood had been found at the scene, dotted across leaf litter closer to the road. The leaves had been collected and the blood tested. It was not Tim’s – he had no wounds, and a group test had shown the drops to be from somebody who was O positive, while Tim was AB negative. No skin was found under Tim’s nails to indicate that he had scratched his attacker. Ella studied the photograph showing the drops’ location and tried to imagine somebody suffering an injury while dumping him there. Getting scratched by a twig in the undergrowth wasn’t going to cause that sort of flow. Maybe the killer had suffered the injury beforehand, perhaps in grabbing Tim off the street, or on something in the car.

DNA testing was a rare beast in 1990, and unheard of when there was no firm suspect to compare to a sample. There was, however, a note in the file saying that the sample had recently been taken for further analysis. Ella knew that there were officers going back over such cases looking for exactly this – physical evidence that hadn’t been tested or samples that had been too small to use with the old procedures – because now, with the growing DNA database, they could enter a profile and sometimes get a match. She put the file aside and phoned the lab.

‘Not done yet,’ a male voice told her. ‘System’s so clogged.’

She sympathised, she really did, but she needed her result. ‘When, then?’

‘Call again in a week,’ he said.

As soon as she put the phone down it rang.

‘How’s it going?’ Detective Wayne Rhodes said, and her heart skipped at the sound of his voice.

‘Great.’ She told him about the case, then turned to the detectives’ names on the front page of the summary. ‘Do you know Will Tynan and Peter Constantine?’

‘Constantine was a DS when I started at Penrith,’ he said. ‘He was a good guy. He might be retired now. I can’t place Tynan though.’

‘Thanks.’ Ella scribbled a note about tracking Constantine down.

‘Galea do his speech?’

‘Yep. Seems a nice guy.’

‘So . . . how are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Perfect. No need to worry.’

He laughed.

‘I know you,’ she said.

‘I know you do,’ he said. ‘You want to meet for lunch?’

‘I’m going out.’ She told him about the newspaper article. ‘It’ll be interesting to see who might be there.’

‘I guess you’d be annoyed if I said be careful.’

‘It’s at a school in broad daylight.’

‘I won’t say it then,’ he said. ‘Have a good one, and I’ll see you tonight.’

‘Absolutely.’

She put the phone down with a smile, then focused on the pages before her.

Georgie was too nervous to reply as Freya bitched nonstop about the nightmare of driving to urgent jobs in the city while swerving the ambulance through the traffic to the Quay. She tried not to notice how the harbour glinted between the ferry terminals, or how she could smell the water in the air, and when Freya turned off the siren and stomped on the brake she made a big effort to keep her voice calm as she told Control they were on scene.

She and Freya piled the Oxy-Viva, cardiac monitor and drug box on the stretcher and followed an excited security guard onto the wharf. She kept her head down, trying to focus on the concrete under her boots, glancing only far enough ahead to see the huddle of people around a figure prone in a pool of water.

This is the city
, she told herself
, and that was the country
.
This is a harbour, placid green water, while that was an angry brown river in flood. This woman
– she could see already it was a woman: long hair plastered across a narrow face, a beaded necklace brushing the concrete –
is out of the water. She is fine.
You
are fine.

They reached the huddle and Georgie lifted the Viva from the stretcher. The watching crowd edged closer. She crouched in the pool of water beside the woman, who shivered in soaked black jeans and a white T-shirt. She lay on her stomach, propped on her elbows with her face in her hands.

Georgie put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’

The woman flinched at her touch. ‘I almost died.’

‘Do you know what happened?’ Georgie asked.

‘She jumped off the wharf,’ somebody said.

‘I did not,’ the woman snapped. ‘Somebody pushed me.’

‘Are you hurt?’ Georgie asked. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

The woman tried to sit up, grasping Georgie’s arm for support. Her palm was clammy and cold. Her nails dug into Georgie’s skin as she stared past her at the crowd.

‘He pushed me.’

Georgie followed her finger to a shocked-looking man in his sixties, big fingers wrapped around the handles of a stroller from which a three year old in a Batman costume watched the goings-on with interest.

‘Nobody pushed her,’ a man said behind Georgie. ‘I was standing right there, we were all waiting for the ferry to come in, and she just climbed the rail and jumped in.’

‘I did not.’

‘She sank like a fucking stone. Scuse the language. That guy there went in after her. Saved her life.’

Georgie saw a young man in a sodden suit and leaking shoes. His eyes were wide and he clutched the handle of a dry black briefcase with both hands. Freya went to make sure he was okay.

‘That old guy pushed me!’ the woman said again.

Here’s another point of difference
, Georgie thought:
this one’s a psycho
. She took the blanket from the stretcher and wrapped it around the woman. ‘Let’s go up to the hospital and get you checked out, okay?’

‘I want the police.’

‘We’ll have them see you at the hospital.’

‘I want that man arrested. For murder.’

‘Nobody died,’ Georgie said.

‘I could have.’

‘Let me help you to your feet then onto the bed here.’

The woman glared at her. ‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Look at you, you’re shivering.’ The young man had left, and Freya was back. Georgie nodded at her to bring the stretcher closer. ‘Let’s get you in the ambulance where it’s nice and warm. What did you say your name was?’

‘Don’t you touch me.’ The woman scrambled to her feet and pulled the blanket tight around herself, eyeing the watching crowd. ‘You’re all in on it together. You saw him push me in and none of you helped.’ Somebody laughed and the woman bristled. ‘I’ll sue the lot of you and then we’ll see who’s laughing.’

Georgie said to Freya in a low voice, ‘Blue ambulance.’

Freya pulled the portable radio from her hip and stepped away to call the cops. It was odd that they weren’t already here, but at least there were more security staff making their way through the onlookers. Georgie saw the woman narrow her eyes at their approach and made her voice warm. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here, eh? Hop up on the stretcher and let’s go to the hospital. We’ll get you out of those wet clothes, find you a cup of coffee and something to eat.’ The woman’s index and second fingers were stained yellow. ‘We’ll scab a smoke from somebody too.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Freya came back and nodded at Georgie.

‘What’s that nod for?’ the woman said. ‘You telling secrets about me?’

‘You want to know?’ Georgie lowered her voice. ‘The police are coming. If you don’t want to deal with them, it’s time to climb up on the stretcher and come to hospital.’

The woman spat at her boot. ‘Pair of bitches.’

Georgie raised an eyebrow at Freya, caught her held-back grin and matched it with one of her own.

The woman stamped her bare foot in the puddle of water. ‘Let them come. They can haul my dead, cold body out of the sea.’

‘Let’s not get stupid here,’ Freya said. ‘Nobody’s dead and nobody’s going to die.’

Georgie saw two security men sneaking along the side of the crowd. She took a step towards the woman to draw her attention. ‘What’s the point of all this bother? We go up to the hospital, we can get everything sorted out from there and let all these people get on with their day.’

The woman spotted the security guards. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Come on now. What do you say?’ Georgie put on her best wheedling tone while edging closer. ‘Couldn’t you go a cuppa? Life’s too short to stand around here all wet and cold.’

She was almost within grabbing distance. Freya sidled nearer on the other side. The woman backed to the edge of the wharf and put her hands on the railing. Georgie heard the crowd draw its breath.

The woman raised a bare, skinny foot. ‘Come closer and you’ll get one.’

‘Okay, fine.’ Georgie held up her hands. ‘Whatever you want.’ They’d wait until the cops turned up and then she’d be their problem.

The crowd let out its breath. Freya put her hands on her hips and the guards looked mildly disappointed. Georgie listened for a siren over the ferry departure announcements and realised she’d forgotten all about her watery fears.

But then the woman stopped glaring at her, clambered over the railing and jumped in.

Georgie rushed to see the white blanket billow out in the green water as the woman sank, her head a dark blob in the centre. Freya stood still with her mouth open. The security guards began to strip off their radios and boots. Georgie swore under her breath and swung herself over the railing.

The water was cold. She struggled to keep her eyes open against the sting of the salt. The white of the blanket was a blur below her and she fought to swim deeper as her boots softened her kicks. A stream of bubbles rose up against her cheeks and she made out the vague shape of the woman’s face turned up towards her.

She saw encrusted pylons from the corner of her eye and heard the deep throb of a huge engine somewhere close.

A current pulled her sideways.

She was running out of air. She wasn’t going to make it.

Again.

But then the woman rose up, her face contorted, her hands reaching for Georgie. The blanket tangled round them. Her hand shot through it and scratched Georgie’s face. Georgie tried to catch her wrist and haul the woman upwards. There was more movement beside her, a big dark shape, and she saw the glint of keys on a belt. The security guard grabbed the woman’s upper arms from behind and yanked her away from Georgie. She saw his face for a split second, his cheeks bulging with air, his eyes asking a question that she answered by swimming upwards. He was faster, shooting past. She saw his feet in grey socks kicking hard.

The surface was silver from underneath then all golden light when she burst through. The railings were open and hands grabbed for her, pulled on her collar and tore it, seized and slipped off her wet forearms. She gasped and fumbled for a grip along the slimy underedge of the wharf. Beside her, the guard was shoving at the screaming, swearing woman, trying to heave her out of the water while she hit at the hands pulling her up.

Georgie’s eyes burned and streamed from the salt water. Her mouth was full of the thin taste of diesel fuel. She took one hand off the wharf to rub her eyes and nose but her fingers were slick and green with algae.

‘Holy shit,’ Freya said.

Georgie squinted up at Freya’s pale face. ‘I’m okay.’

Freya reached down but Georgie didn’t have the strength to pull herself up. ‘Just give me a minute.’

‘Grab hold anyway.’

Georgie grasped Freya’s hand but kept hold of the wharf as well. The water below her felt bottomless. She looked down to see the blanket drifting in the current, an underwater ghost.

A strong hand grabbed her wrist. A police officer and one of the dry security guards hauled her upwards. She scrabbled at the wharf edge and kicked, losing a sodden boot, and was heaved onto the warm concrete of the wharf.

‘You okay?’ the cop said.

She nodded. ‘There’s a blanket down there still.’

‘We’ll get a diver before it buggers up somebody’s propeller.’

Along the wharf, three more police and the other dry security guards dragged the howling woman from the water. They dumped her on her front and cuffed her wrists behind her. She turned her head from side to side, her hair across her eyes, swearing and spitting. The cops then heaved the guard, still treading water, out of the harbour. People in the crowd took photos with their mobiles while a voice announced the impending departure of the Manly ferry on the next wharf over.

Freya took the sheet from the stretcher and wrapped it around Georgie. ‘Your face is scratched.’

Georgie touched the stinging spots on her chin and cheek then looked at her fingers. ‘Nothing major.’

‘Still.’ Freya pulled the portable from her belt. ‘I’ll get Control to send another crew for her then we can run up to the ED ourselves.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re soaked and you’ve only got one boot. You’re shivering as well. Come to the truck and I’ll find you another blanket.’