Cold Justice (29 page)

Inside the office a squat woman in her late fifties smiled up at them from a low desk. ‘May I help you?’

‘Detectives Marconi and Shakespeare, New South Wales Police.’ Ella flashed her badge. ‘Is the principal in?’

‘I’m afraid he’s in Melbourne for the day,’ she said. ‘Can anyone else help? The deputy perhaps? And may I ask what it’s regarding?’

‘The deputy would be fine,’ Ella said. ‘It’s about a homicide. We need to look at your student records from 1990.’

The woman went away and brought back a smooth-haired young woman with a broad smile. She put out her hand. ‘Detectives, how lovely to meet you. I’m Penny Flatt, the deputy head. Is this about Tim Pieters?’

‘It is.’ Murray stepped forwards. ‘We’re looking into the movements of students in the weeks following his death.’

Amazing,
Ella thought.
He doesn’t think this idea is worth much, but put a pretty woman in front of him and he’s suddenly all go.

‘We’re happy to help in any way we can,’ Penny said. ‘Come on through to Admin and we’ll see what Mary can dig up for us.’

They followed her down a corridor. Ella saw Murray watching her legs and elbowed him. He smiled sheepishly but kept watching.

In an office full of filing drawers Penny introduced them to a woman in bright red glasses behind a computer. ‘This is Mary.’

‘What specifically are you after?’ Mary asked.

Ella said, ‘Let’s start with female students who left the school in the month after Tim’s death. That was the twenty-first of October in 1990.’

Mary typed quickly then looked at the monitor. ‘Okay. There’s a bunch of them, but most actually graduated. Let me take the Year Twelves out of contention and see what else we have.’ She typed again. ‘Hmm. Just one. Freya Marie Gregory. She was in Year Nine and left the school that week. It says here she moved to Orange and enrolled in Oaktree College.’

Ella looked at Penny. ‘Any chance we could see a photo of her, please?’

‘It’ll be in the files.’ Mary pulled open one of the huge drawers and ran her finger along the dividers.

Ella nudged Murray. ‘Ring Chris Patrick and see if he has a fax.’

He took his mobile into the corridor as Mary lifted out a folder and flicked through pages.

‘All I have is a class photo, but there’s a name list so I can tell you that Gregory is . . .’ she brought it over and placed a long red nail on a girl, ‘. . . this one here.’

Freya Gregory had long brown hair and brown eyes and a nice smile. She stood in the back row of the group so was obviously one of the tallest in the class. She looked like any of a million teenaged girls out there, Ella thought.

Murray came back. ‘He’s got one, but he said you could also scan and email it to him.’

‘Brilliant,’ Ella said. ‘Do you have facilities for that here?’

‘Absolutely,’ Mary said. She cut a hole in a piece of paper and laid it over the photo so that only Gregory’s picture was visible, then put the lot in the scanner. ‘What’s his email address?’

Murray held out his notebook and she copied it down, typed a message, attached the file and hit send.

Murray’s phone rang a moment later. ‘Chris, hi,’ he said. ‘Oh. Okay. No worries. Thanks anyway.’ He hung up. ‘He doesn’t know.’

Dammit.

Mary handed Ella a colour copy of the photo and a page with Gregory’s enrolment details.

Penny said, ‘Would you like us to look further? The school year ended not long after that, but we could see who didn’t return the next term if you like?’

Murray nodded and gave Penny his card. ‘That’d be great. I’ll be in touch soon.’

Penny shook their hands. ‘Anything we can do to help.’

In the car park Ella said to Murray, ‘You men are so obvious.’

He smiled.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘where have we heard the name Freya recently?’

‘I don’t think we have.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ she said. ‘But where?’

He shrugged. ‘Beats me. Think about it on the drive back.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, distracted. ‘See you there.’

At the office, Murray went to the computer while Ella took the bagged florist’s card and envelope into Galea’s office and brought him up to speed.

Galea nodded. ‘Send it off and see what comes back. Be interesting to know just what’s going on with all that.’

‘Much come in from Crimestoppers about the newspaper piece?’

‘A few,’ he said. ‘The faxes are on your desk. I think Jackie had a bit of spare time and went through some for you.’

Murray looked up from his monitor when she reached her desk. ‘I found a Freya Marie Craig, same DOB, living in Homebush.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Any record?’

‘Only as a witness. She’s a paramedic.’

She punched him in the shoulder. ‘I knew I’d heard her name.’

‘Ow.’

‘At The Rocks station yesterday when we went to talk to Georgie, she asked her partner to bring in another chair and I’m certain she called her Freya. Don’t you remember?’

He was still rubbing his shoulder. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘The age looked right too. I bet it’s her.’

‘Hmm.’ He frowned.

‘Exactly. Why didn’t she mention that she’d been a student there too?’

‘I’m thinking more that Georgie should’ve let us know.’

Ella tapped a nail on the desk. ‘Let’s go see Freya at home.’

‘She might be at work,’ he said.

‘Georgie’s on nights tonight, she told me. Freya would be working the same. She’ll be home asleep.’
Perfect.

But he was frowning again.

‘What now?’

‘I think we’d be better off getting stuck into the Crimestoppers reports.’

‘Galea said Jackie had started.’

He held up two pages in one hand. ‘This is what she did.’ He picked up a thick wad in the other. ‘This is what remains to be done.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You stay and do that while I talk to this Freya.’

‘What are you going to say? You have no evidence of anything at all. It could be complete coincidence that she left. You don’t even know if she knew Tim, let alone was the girl Chris Patrick saw with him in the record shop.’

‘She’s still worth talking to.’

‘It’s such a long shot it’s ridiculous.’

She shrugged. ‘Time will tell.’

Freya kicked the doona off. She should get up, she was way too wired to sleep, but what then? There was housework to do – oh God, there was always housework to do – or she could cook dinner and put it in the fridge for James to reheat tonight. Neither idea appealed, and she suspected that if she did get up all she’d do was pace the house.
May as well stay in bed and toss and turn.
At least she was lying down.

She turned the pillow over. She couldn’t get comfortable. Her head and stomach hurt. She felt guilty and worried and, oddly for her, almost teary. But lack of sleep could do that to you. It meant nothing more.

There was a knock at the door. She pulled the pillow over her head and lay there listening. Jehovah’s Witnesses, she bet. They were always coming around. They’d try once more then go away.

Another knock, a little louder. She used to get up and tell them no, but they didn’t listen, and she got so wound up saying, ‘No means no, don’t you get that?’ that she could never get back to sleep afterwards. Now she just avoided the issue altogether.

Another knock, and another. Bloody hell. Freya pressed the pillow against her ears and shut her eyes.
Can’t you tell I’m sleeping?

‘Freya Craig? It’s Detective Marconi. I need to speak with you.’

That. Fucking. Georgie.

The cop was practically hammering. ‘Freya Craig, please open the door.’

If I had nothing to hide, I’d answer.

She threw on jeans and a T-shirt and went nervously downstairs. A big deep breath and she opened the door. ‘Hi, can I help you?’

The woman half-smiled and flashed her badge. ‘I’m Detective Ella Marconi. I saw you briefly at the ambulance station yesterday.’ She put her hand on the door. ‘Mind if I come in?’

‘Certainly.’

You have nothing to hide, you are pleasant and cooperative. You lead her into the lounge room and offer her a seat like a normal person. You sit yourself down, relaxed, perhaps a little on edge, curious, but not,
not
, guilty.

‘What’s this about?’

‘Do you know the name Tim Pieters?’

‘He’s the murdered boy you’ve been talking to Georgie about. He went to our school. Or I went to his school.’
Chuckle. Nice touch.
‘However you’d like to put it.’

‘How well did you know him?’

‘He was two years ahead of us,’ she said. ‘I’d seen him around. When I heard he was dead I knew who they were talking about. But that’s about it.’

Ella stared at her. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve recently learnt that Tim may have been in a relationship. Do you know anything about that?’

Fuc-king Georgie.
‘No, I don’t.’

‘You don’t know of any girl he might have been seeing?’

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Like I said, I hardly knew him.’

‘Big co-ed school like that, you’d often see couples wandering around together, wouldn’t you?’

‘You may do.’ Freya shrugged. ‘But as you say, big school. Kids everywhere. You didn’t see everyone all the time.’

‘Hmm.’ Ella’s gaze was even. ‘You know, it strikes me as odd that you knew we were talking to Georgie about Tim and you never volunteered the fact that you were at school with him too.’

‘I had no idea you would be interested,’ Freya said. ‘I assumed you were talking to her as the girl who found the body, not as one of his thousand fellow students.
Are
you talking to everyone?’

‘Just to those students who left abruptly after his death, or who’ve been brought to our attention for some other reason.’

‘Regarding the leaving, you can blame my mother,’ Freya said. ‘The murder sent her into a complete spin and she decided all of a sudden we had to get out of the city. I didn’t want to go, but I was sixteen, so what say did I have?’

She felt beads of sweat running down her ribs. She hoped her face looked dry and open and honest.
Brought to their attention for some other reason – Georgie, you bitch.

Ella took out a notebook and wrote something down. Freya brushed fluff from her sleeve and glanced out the window. P
lease leave
, she thought.
Please, please leave
.

Ella’s phone beeped. She kept writing. Freya tried to look uninterested, feeling the silence drag out, feeling like Ella was testing her to see how long before she spoke. She bit her tongue harder and harder, and kept her mouth shut.

Finally Ella clicked her pen away and stood up. ‘Well, I guess I’ll let you be. Hope you have a quiet nightshift tonight.’

Trying to breathe, Freya shut the door, waited till she heard her car drive off, then ran to get her mobile. Dion’s number was still in the received calls list. She almost dialled it then thought of call tracing, phone logs, line taps.
Oh God.

No. That was paranoid. If they knew anything Ella wouldn’t have just left like that.

Would she?

Freya peered around the edge of the curtain. She couldn’t think. Better safe than sorry. With a shaking thumb she deleted all calls received, and tried to tell herself again that nobody could know anything.

She just wished she still believed it.

The water heater in the office kitchen was working again, and Murray was making a coffee when Ella came in. ‘How’d you go?’ he asked.

‘She said she knew nothing about it.’

‘Told you.’

She reached around him for a cup. ‘I don’t know if I believe her.’

‘Based on, let me guess, a hunch?’

‘Laugh if you want.’

‘Oh, I am,’ he said. ‘Did you talk to Georgie as well? Ask her why she never mentioned Freya was at school then too?’

‘I don’t consider that a problem. She answered the questions we put to her and we didn’t ask for her thoughts on anything else.’

‘But surely if you have a concern about one you should have a concern about the other.’

‘Whatever.’ She stirred her coffee and tossed the spoon into the sink.

‘Whatever? What are you, fifteen?’

‘That’s not what they say,’ Ella said.

‘What do they say then?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s not that.’

She walked from the kitchen. Chris Patrick couldn’t say if it was Freya, and the only people who knew for sure were Tim, now of course dead, and the girl herself. Maybe it was Freya, maybe it wasn’t, but for now she could just sit glowering in the back of Ella’s mind. It was time to get on with other stuff.

Her phone beeped and she remembered the earlier one indicating the arrival of a message. She opened and read it.
Hello, how’s your day going?

She didn’t recognise the number.

The second message was from the same person.
It’s rude to ignore your mother lol.

She dialled it.

‘Hello, Ella.’

‘Mum . . . ?’

Netta started laughing. ‘You got our messages!’

‘Of course I got them,’ Ella said. ‘When did you get a mobile?’

‘Just now. Those were my first thingies. Texts. Not bad, huh?’

‘Great,’ Ella said.

‘Lol.’ Netta laughed. ‘I love that. Lol. Lol!’

Ella heard male voices in the background. ‘Is that . . . Who is that? Is Wayne there?’

‘He brought the phone and showed us how to use it,’ Netta said.

Ella’s head was spinning. ‘Why? How?’

‘He rang to thank us for the dinner and I told him about the Cecile Brunner and he came straight over. Then when we were in the garden we talked about you and I said how sometimes it’s hard to get hold of you and he went out and got us this lovely little phone.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ Ella said.

‘I know, isn’t it wonderful? Now we can keep in touch all the time,’ Netta said. ‘I can let you know where we are and what we’re doing, and you can do the same!’

Ella closed her eyes. ‘Could you put Wayne on, please?’

‘Hang on. Lol.’ She went away giggling.

‘Hey, honey.’