Silent Fear (13 page)

NINE

E
lla swung hard into the street and pulled up behind a marked police car at the front of Mary Hyde’s house. Beaman Park was a solid block of darkness at her back as she hurried across the footpath and up to the front door.

The uniformed officer who answered had a cup of tea in his meaty hand. ‘She’s fine.’

Ella went past him and into the living room where Mary sat in her wheelchair, wearing a long pink nightie under a flowered housecoat. She held a cup of her own on a saucer and grinned at Ella like she was having the time of her life.

‘Are you okay?’ Ella said.

‘Don’t I look it?’

Ella turned to the officer. ‘What happened?’

‘We came down with lights on, and the car took off,’ he said. ‘We radioed in and one of your guys stopped them around the corner. They’re still there, but it sounds like a couple of kids canoodling in the dark. Apparently the door she heard was the boy getting out to take a leak against a tree.’

‘What kind of car was it?’ Murray asked.

‘Maroon Astra hatch.’

Ella looked at Mary. It matched her rough description of the car she’d seen there previously, but the one the golfer had seen roaring away from the scene was blue. They had the paint scrape to prove it.

Mary smiled even wider. ‘That’s probably what it was last week. Those same kids. I know in my younger days once we found a good spot we stuck to it.’ She guffawed and tea slopped over the brim of her cup.

Ella wasn’t so sure. The car park by the playground would be better, darker, the houses further away.

‘We’ll go and have a word,’ she said to the officer, then said to Mary, ‘You did the right thing by calling me. Ring again anytime, okay?’

‘You’re not staying for a cuppa?’

‘Places to go,’ Ella said. ‘But thanks.’

*

Ella parked and got out of the car. The hatch had been stopped near a corner by an unmarked car, and two kids stood on the nature strip, the girl checking her phone, the boy grimacing as two plainclothes men looked at the engine. A red P-plate hung in the back window.

‘It’s all like totally legal,’ the boy said.

‘Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?’ one of the men said. Ella recognised John Gerard’s voice and quickened her pace.

‘If it’s all legal you’ll be fine,’ the other detective said.

‘Sometimes cops make shit up,’ the boy said. ‘Think you’re a hoon if you go over like fifty.’

Gerard moved towards him. ‘Care to say that again?’

Ella reached them and held up her badge to the kids. ‘What were you doing back around beside the park?’

‘You’re late to the party, Marconi,’ Gerard said. ‘Done all that.’

Ella stepped around him to face the girl. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Look at me.’

The girl did, her chin high, one eyebrow cocked, hands on her hips. She wore cut-off jeans and a white singlet top. The boy reached for her hand but she wouldn’t give it to him.

Ella glanced at Gerard. ‘I thought you were interested in the engine.’

‘Job’s done,’ he said.

‘We’ll just be a minute.’ She took hold of the girl’s arm and walked her a few steps away.

The girl pulled free and sniffed and stared past Ella’s right ear.

‘What were you doing?’ Ella said again.

‘Just kissing. There a law against that now?’

‘Depends what “just kissing” really means.’

The girl didn’t answer.

‘Got any ID on you?’

‘Nope. I told those guys that already.’

‘Have you parked there before?’

‘Nope.’

‘Where do you usually go?’

‘You saying I’m a slut?’

‘I’m asking you a question.’

The girl sniffed again. ‘That was the first time we’d parked there or anywhere.’

‘Where were you last Monday night?’

‘At home.’

‘With?’

‘You don’t have to talk to my mum and dad about this.’

‘Were they home too?’

‘Them and my sisters as well,’ she said. ‘My little sister’s birthday. We had a party.’

Ella took out her notebook. ‘Your name?’

‘You don’t have to tell them, do you? I’m not supposed to be with him.’ She looked at the boy, who was talking to Murray while watching Gerard and the other detective who’d gone back under the bonnet.

‘We’ll see,’ Ella said. ‘Name, address, age and date of birth, please.’

‘Indiana Fox-Kemp, 71 Elders Road, Marrickville. I’m sixteen, born on the third of May.’

‘And him?’

‘Justin Reuben. Lives at Unit 6, 75 Elders. He’s seventeen and his birthday’s the twelfth of July.’

Ella snapped her notebook shut. ‘Wait here.’

She met Murray at the back of the car and checked his information. It matched.

‘He says that on Monday he was at home watching telly with his mum,’ Murray said. ‘Listed what shows they watched. Begged me not to tell her about this.’

Ella looked at the pair. ‘The paint scrape was blue anyway.’

He nodded.

Gerard slammed down the car’s bonnet and the boy said, ‘Oi.’

‘Don’t push it, squirt,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s not a Ferrari.’

‘You searched the car?’ Ella asked him.

‘What do I look like?’

She turned away and motioned for the girl to get in the car. ‘I don’t want to see you two or your car around here again.’

They climbed in and started the car. The boy revved the engine for a second but drove away sedately enough.

‘Did I search the car,’ Gerard said. ‘Like I’m a fucking probie.’

Ella walked away and phoned Dennis. She told him where they were and why. ‘It was just kids looking for a nice quiet spot. They said it wasn’t them on Monday, and it’s the wrong colour car to have been tearing out of the golf club too.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘How’d you go with paramedic Holly?’

She described the conversation they’d had about the events at the scene. ‘It’s creepy to think the bystanders might’ve been deliberately doing bad CPR to make sure Fowler was gone.’

Dennis said, ‘Marion and Louise said Joe mentioned the poor effort too, but thought it was anxiety and incompetence.’

‘Holly wondered the same,’ Ella said. ‘Plus she said they had plenty of opportunity to leave, both before and after they knew she’d called us. All of which makes it look like they might be innocent, but why the fake IDs?’

‘The PM might tell us more tomorrow,’ Dennis said. ‘You off home?’

She looked at Murray, who yawned. Her own tiredness was sinking into her bones. ‘Yes.’

‘Meeting’s at seven,’ Dennis said. ‘See you then.’

‘Make sure the night crews call me if anything –’

‘I’ll be sure to tell them before I go,’ Dennis said, a smile in his voice.

*

Ella reached Putney just after one. She parked in the driveway, locked the car and walked down the path along the side of the house. A warm breeze smelling of tidal mudflats rustled the palms in next-door’s yard. The living room windows of her neighbour, Denzil, the deaf computer programmer, were lit with the flicker of his television. Her half-a-house was at the back and in darkness. She felt for the lock and thought about when she’d left that morning, heading for an eight-to-four shift and planning a peaceful sunset walk along the riverbank when she got home. Now she was exhausted, her legs and back aching, her eyes sore. She hoped her whirling mind would settle so that she could sleep.

Inside she turned on a lamp and locked the door. The light on the answering machine was flashing. She pressed the button.

‘Hello, sweetheart, it’s your parents here,’ her mother’s voice said. ‘Calling on the ship-to-shore again. Adelina had a touch of the seasick today but otherwise we’re all well.’

Ella increased the volume and went into her bedroom to change.

‘Your father’s walking six laps of the deck each day. Adelina and I do one, then sit on the sun lounge,’ her mother went on. ‘Not that it’s very warm.’

‘Tell her I’m loving the sea air!’ her father called out in the background.

‘He says he loves the sea air,’ her mother said.

Ella turned on the shower, then stood in the hall to listen to the rest.

‘He thinks he saw a whale too,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t know about that.’

‘It was,’ her father said. ‘They said we might see them.’

‘Oh, shush. You didn’t have your glasses on,’ her mother said. ‘Anyway, sweetheart, hope all’s well with you there. Tomorrow we’re going ashore for most of the day so we might not have time to phone.’

Hallelujah
, thought Ella.

‘This is ship-to-shore signing off,’ her mother said.

‘Over and out, bella Ella,’ her father called.

There was a click and they were gone. Ella smiled, pleased they were enjoying themselves and that her father sounded so well, and stepped under the water. In three minutes she’d be fresh and clean and tucked in bed, then asleep maybe two minutes after that – if she could stop her mind replaying the female bystander’s crocodile tears and shaky-voiced claims of feeling bad.

*

Holly couldn’t sleep. She got out of the spare bed and walked in humid darkness along the hallway, ducked into their room where Norris lay snoring to grab her work notebook from her shirt pocket, then went into the study. She shut the door. The computer booted up with a beep. She sat with only the glow of the monitor lighting the room and Googled her brother.

His name wasn’t uncommon, producing multiple pages of hits. She scrolled through them. Most results were clearly from the States; she clicked the option to limit results to Australian only and found a few, none of which appeared to be him. She went to Facebook and tried to search there, but had to open an account to see the full listing and look more closely at the photos. She did so using the street name of a working girl she’d once known: Cindi-Lou Perry.

Seth’s page was the ninth on the list. She stared at his photo. He smiled out from an image that was cropped on the right, as if to cut someone out. His face looked a little less lined, less drawn than it had in the park, but that might’ve been from the stress and emotion. He was wearing a blue business shirt. The collar looked ironed. He looked neat and tidy –
but that’s only what you can see of him
, she told herself.

She clicked through to find out more but his page was set to friends only. It invited her to ask to become one. She looked through what she could see of his current friends and recognised three of the men who’d been at the park. Paul Fowler was not among them.

She went back to Google and scrolled through the rest of the results from around the world, just in case, and reached the end feeling vaguely disappointed though she couldn’t say exactly what she’d hoped for. A court mention? A news article about him being an escaped criminal so she could call up and turn him in?

She checked his address in her notebook, opened Google Maps and looked it up. It was right across from the beach. She stared at the image for a while, then shut the machine down and sat in the dark.

Despite everything that had happened she could still remember good stuff. She’d worshipped his skill on his bike when she was still on a tricycle. She’d marvelled at the way he could identify the name of a song and the band in seconds of it coming on the radio. She’d been so proud that he was the fastest runner in the school, and used to try to get him to demonstrate his speed to strangers in the street. He’d known how she felt about him and had basked in it. He used to brag to her, get her to dare him to do more: jump from a higher branch in the tree, hold his breath for longer underwater. Steal a bike. Steal ciggies from the corner shop. Steal a car.

For years he’d been a beacon in her life, a friend when their parents were passed out on the lounge, a confidant under the bed when they were fighting, but her admiration and love had led her straight into trouble from which she’d barely escaped with her life.

She pushed back from the computer desk and stood up, resolute. She’d have to be crazy to think that being in touch with him again could be okay, and she’d spent years living crazy. It was time now to be sane.

*

At half past two in the morning, in a small room in the police office building in Parramatta, Detective Chloe Barcoe of the Drug Squad sat with a cup of bad coffee in one hand and her chin in the other. The blind on the north-facing window was open to the night and she stared out at the lights of the suburbs stretching into the distance. The computer screen in front of her was linked to a public phone on a street off Bayswater Road in Kings Cross. It was the third night she’d spent sitting there, and so far the drug deal she and the rest of the team had been waiting for hadn’t been arranged.
Any moment
, she thought, taking a sip of the cooling coffee.
Or maybe that should be any day. Or week. God forbid.

There was a click and the screen changed to indicate a call was being made. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. The phone hadn’t been used much on her watch but every caller had been an intoxicated male trying to get someone, usually a woman, to either meet him or let him come over. She listened to the beeps as the number was dialled and saw it appear simultaneously on the screen. Not a number she recognised. She yawned again.

‘Yeah,’ a male voice answered.

‘It went fine.’

‘That’s not what she said.’

‘She fuckin worries too much.’

Chloe started to turn the volume down again. Neither speaker was their target, and the conversation sounded like so many others she’d heard in her days working intercepts: blather and nonsense.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ the second man added, and Chloe stopped.

‘Yeah, but you have to get away with it yet,’ the first man answered.

Chloe’s heart started to thump. She grabbed her mobile and called the detectives working surveillance on the phone box.

‘Thompson,’ one answered.

‘Who’s in there?’

‘Some guy,’ he said. ‘Not our man.’

‘He’s talking about someone being dead,’ she said. ‘Hold on.’

‘– be fine,’ the second man was saying.

On the mobile Chloe heard Darren Thompson tell his partner and then the click of the camera.

‘She said you said you freaked out,’ the first man said.