Silent Fear (22 page)

Her phone buzzed.
Speak of the devil.
She watched Norris’s name flash until the voicemail picked up. A couple of minutes later the beep told her he’d left a message, and she dialled and listened.

‘
Hi, it’s me. Just wanted to let you know that – look, never mind. I’ll tell you tonight. Hope your shift’s improved. Love you.
’

She slammed the phone shut. If he loved her he would’ve turned Seth away at the front door. He would’ve listened and taken her advice not to speak to him, not to get involved in any way.

She tore the dressing off her wrist and turned her arm so the infinity symbol was exposed to the sun. Caryn had got the same tattoo on the same day, the pair of them giggling and yelping in a tattooist’s on Chapel Street in Prahran, then taking the tram to the beach and eating ice-cream though it was autumn. She remembered the pale sunlight, the feeling of the wind against her skin and the way her heart beat faster when Caryn talked about the life they were planning: how now that they shared her tiny flat they could get off the gear together, they’d save up and buy groceries to last them so they wouldn’t have to go out until it was over, and how great the move to the country would be, how they’d grow vegies and raise chickens and help kids who wanted to get clean. And they’d done it – the getting off the heroin anyway.

She remembered those first few days after the pain and nausea and the crazy-driving cravings had gone, feeling like she was emerging from a swamp. The first day they stepped outside. The first time they saw their dealer and didn’t buy. The first time she saw Seth and told him she’d finished with everything and was leaving, and no, he couldn’t get some cash just to tide him over, not now, not ever again.

Then their parents died, in a fire in their rented house. The cops said they suffocated in their sleep from the smoke so hadn’t felt a thing, but the desire to use again was like an overwhelming thirst and Holly was sure she would have gone back if Caryn hadn’t been there. Seth having disappeared somewhere, Caryn had helped her arrange a grave-side service in an outer suburban cemetery. The day had been bone-chillingly cold, the wind carrying cheering from a local VFL game as it whipped across the dead grass, and she and Caryn and a grey-faced minister watched her father’s coffin lowered into the hole first, then her mother’s laid on top. Caryn had put her arm through hers and Holly had thought about hens pecking in sunlit grass on their farm-to-be, then Seth had come stumbling through the cemetery and accused her of taking his share of their parents’ money, shouting down her explanation that they’d drunk everything except their clapped-out Honda, which she’d sold to pay for this plot, screaming that she’d never make it, never, that she was born to be an addict just like him.

She wept in Caryn’s arms and wondered if it was true. Caryn whispered to her of hope and blue skies, deep breaths of country air and infinite possibility, but just weeks later she was dead and Holly was fleeing Melbourne on a bus bound for Sydney, weeping against the cold window and fighting withdrawals all over again.

She put her head on her knees and let her tears drip onto the sand.

EIGHTEEN

E
lla stood on Marrickville Road with her hands on her hips. The sun was so bright she had to squint even behind her sunglasses. Traffic motored past in both directions and the air smelled of exhaust fumes and hot tar and fried food.

‘I bet if you sat there in the cafe and I stood here and hissed you wouldn’t hear a thing,’ Murray said.

‘The guy raised his voice.’

She scanned the tops of the buildings.
There.
A CCTV camera outside the pub. She walked around the corner into Spencer Street and saw another one.

She pushed open the heavy door of the pub and went in. The room was dark and cool, a TV on the wall showing the cricket, drinkers lined up on stools along the bar turning their heads to watch a batsman tip and run.

The woman behind the bar was short, her hair a chocolate brown and pinned up at the sides like a 1940s housewife’s. She put her hand on a tray of glasses and raised her eyebrows at Ella. ‘Chardy, love?’

Ella held up her badge. ‘Is the manager in?’

‘Oh, sure. Round the back there.’ She gestured vaguely along the bar with her thumb, then shouted, ‘Ron!’

Ella headed the way she’d indicated as Murray came in to join her.

‘Tooheys New, darl?’ the barmaid said.

‘I’m with her.’

They went through into the next bar: a more open space with another TV, this time playing music videos, and a pool table. A younger woman was pulling beers. A man with receding reddish hair came out of an office behind her and Ella held up her badge again. ‘Are you Ron?’

‘Ron Innis, day manager. Come through.’ He held the door open for them. The office was small and there was only one chair so they all stood. He shook their hands. His palm was fleshy and hot. ‘How can I help?’

‘We’re investigating a homicide,’ Ella said. ‘A witness saw two people of interest outside here yesterday and we’re hoping they may be on your security tapes.’

The people at the pool table cheered, and he closed the door. ‘Is this about the murder in the park?’

‘We’re not at liberty to talk about it,’ she said. ‘Your CCTV is working, I take it?’

‘Absolutely.’

He turned to open a cupboard. Ella saw twists of wires and an electronic recorder with a digital timer that was counting off seconds.

He said, ‘What time were you after?’

‘Can we look at the half-hour between one thirty and two?’

He pressed buttons on a remote control. A TV screen flickered to life, first showing a live split-screen picture of the streets, then going black as he sent the counter speeding backwards.

‘Must make your job a bit easier now every other place has a set-up like this.’

‘It doesn’t hurt,’ Ella said.

Innis watched the numbers on the screen. ‘We resisted for a while but saved a bunch on insurance when we finally did it.’ He slowed the thing down as it approached the time. ‘There you go. Starting at one thirty yesterday afternoon. The left side of the screen shows the view from the camera out the front, the right shows the view from the camera at the side.’ He handed her the remote. ‘Get either of you a drink?’

‘Water’d be great, thanks,’ Murray said.

He went out and pulled the door shut behind him. Ella used the fast-forward button to get through the first ten minutes, then slowed it down a little. The streets had been busy. Groups of people walked comically quickly through one camera’s field of vision and into the next, crossing the street and disappearing from view or continuing down the side of the pub. A large number went in and out of the pub’s doors. This was a good business, Ella thought.

‘Going to be hard to pick someone out,’ Murray said.

Ella watched the counter and slowed it down to real time shortly before quarter to. People wandered along, stopped to talk, window-shopped, waited for cars before crossing the street. They strolled and talked on their phones and wiped sweat from their foreheads. Then a couple came along, the woman walking briskly in front of the man. She spoke over her shoulder, then jerked to a stop and faced him.

Ella got goose bumps.

They talked for ten seconds, then the man held his hand out to the side as if indicating height. The woman hit his arm with her open hand, then swung around and marched on to disappear out of the first camera’s range and reappear in the second as she came around the corner. The man followed and they went down the side street.

Ron Innis came in with two glasses on a metal tray. ‘Here y’go. Oh. You found them?’

Neither Ella nor Murray answered. Ella stared at the screen as the couple passed one parked car, then the next, then the next. Their figures grew smaller and closer to the edge of the screen, then, at the last moment, they stopped. They had another quick face-to-face conversation, then the man handed something to the woman. She got in the driver’s door of a parked light-coloured car and he went around to the passenger door. Ella held her breath as the car pulled out and drove towards the corner. It was a mid-size four-door sedan, maybe white or cream, but it was difficult to know from the black and white picture. She could make out enough of the numberplate to see it was a NSW one with the arrangement of two letters, two numbers, then two more letters, but not what those letters and numbers were. The car braked for a pedestrian who walked past its nose without a sideways glance, then it waited for a truck to pass before turning left onto Marrickville Road.

There were banks down that way, Ella thought. Banks meant more CCTV.
We could follow them all the way along. See if they turned off. Get better images of the people themselves. And if the police photographic unit’s computer can’t clear up this image enough to read the numberplate, we can get more to feed it.

She stopped the recording and scanned backwards to watch them again.

Ron Innis put the tray down. ‘Are they the killers?’

‘We can’t discuss it,’ Murray said, his eyes fixed on the screen.

The car drove away and Ella looked at Innis. ‘We’re going to need this tape.’

‘It’s digital, not tape,’ he said. ‘I got a spare thumb drive here somewhere.’

He saved the footage and handed her the drive and she put it in her trouser pocket, pushing it deep so she could feel it against her leg through the fabric. She thanked him, then she and Murray went back out through the bar and onto the street. The air was as hot as ever, the breeze like a hairdryer blowing into her face.

‘It’s getting on for meeting time,’ Murray said.

Ella walked away from him down Spencer Street to the place where the light-coloured car had been parked. A black Toyota was parked there now. There were houses on both sides of the street, and she went through a brown picket fence and up three steps to the closest one and knocked on the door. While waiting for an answer she looked back to the footpath. They would’ve had a great view of the car. Maybe the pair had argued again before they’d got in, and loudly enough for the resident to take notice. Maybe when parking they’d bumped another car, and the resident had seen and written down their numberplate.

Murray tapped his watch.

She turned away and knocked again.

‘They’re not home,’ Murray said.

God, he was a pain. She looked at the house next door, then at the ones across the street.

‘We have to go,’ he said.

She stalked down the steps. Numbers six and eight on this side, seven and nine on the other. They’d include them in their report to the meeting and people would come back to question the residents, and hopefully someone would be home, and they’d collect more of the fragments of information that would eventually bring her face to face with this woman who’d lied so well, so boldly.

And not just lied
, Ella thought, following Murray back up the street,
but lied with tears in her eyes. And I sympathised and told her she’d done her best.

*

They arrived at the office at quarter to five. ‘We could’ve stayed and knocked on more doors,’ Ella said.

‘Better than being late.’ Murray sat at his desk.

Ella went down the corridor to the bathroom and on the way back found a woman stepping out of the lift. She was dressed in a pink shirt and grey pant suit and had a calm and collected air. She looked like she belonged: clearly a detective.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for someone on the Paul Fowler case.’

‘That’d be me. Ella Marconi.’

‘Chloe Barcoe.’ They shook hands.

‘You were on that intercept,’ Ella said.

Chloe nodded and held up a digital recorder. ‘I think I’ve worked out who the callee was.’

They went to Ella’s desk. Murray rolled his chair over to listen.

‘I thought it was a little familiar when I first heard it,’ Chloe said. ‘Then I thought I was wrong, but it bugged me for the rest of the shift and all day. I listened again this afternoon and it hit me: I’d heard this guy talking about animals before. But not dogs – birds.’

She pressed play and voices filled the room.

‘
So how much you want for the parrots?
’

‘
Like the ad says, twelve hundred each
.’

‘
I’ll give you twelve for both
.’

‘
The price is not negotiable
.’

‘
Prices are always negotiable
.’

‘
We’re a pet shop. We don’t do deals. The price is the price
.’

Chloe stopped the tape and searched forward. ‘We taped that from a mobile owned by one of his friends in a drug operation last year. It goes on for a while longer, then he actually gives the guy his name and asks him to call back when he can, quote, “talk sensibly about prices”. Here’s some of last night’s call.’

‘
Yeah.
’

‘
It went fine.
’

‘
That’s not what she said.
’

‘
She fuckin worries too much.
’

‘
It’s a legitimate concern.
’

‘
He’s dead, isn’t he?
’

‘
Yeah, but you have to get away with it yet.
’

‘
Forget what she says. It’s going to be fine.
’

Chloe pressed the stop button and Ella nodded. ‘I hear it. He’s got a bit of a monotone and he takes a sharp breath in just before he speaks.’

‘You can hear all that?’ Murray said.

Ella looked at him. ‘Can’t you?’

Chloe said, ‘It’s the little breath in that I notice most. It’s as if he sniffs before he speaks.’

‘Play them both again,’ Murray said.

Chloe did so. Murray leaned close to the machine and frowned.

Ella listened to the sniffs, to the flat tone, then said, ‘You hear it? Especially on the words “legitimate” and “negotiable”.’

He sat back in his chair. ‘You’d need an expert to say for sure.’

‘I’ve already put in the request,’ Chloe said. ‘But I was satisfied enough to look him up.’ She gestured to Ella’s computer. ‘May I?’

‘Go ahead.’

Chloe typed a name into the database and a criminal record appeared.

‘Trent James Bligh,’ Ella read. He was twenty-seven years old. His face in the mug shot was thin with pronounced cheekbones and a trimmed dark goatee beard, his hair dark and combed back flat. His eyes were dark and direct, his lips a thin line. He’d spent seven months in jail four years ago for possession and supply. There was nothing on his record since then, but Ella knew that meant only that he hadn’t been caught. Using public phones as they had last night indicated a planned cautiousness over whatever he was up to.

She tapped the screen. ‘Is that right – his current home address is unknown?’

‘Yep. There’s nothing in the electoral rolls or RTA database either.’

That meant he wasn’t enrolled to vote, and he had no legal driver’s licence nor a car registered in his name. ‘What about these known associates?’

‘The first one’s dead,’ Chloe said. ‘Two and three are still in jail with three and nine months to serve respectively. The fourth, Luiz Paz, is likewise location unknown, in all the same ways as Bligh.’

Ella printed off copies of Bligh’s mug shot, then clicked through to Paz’s record. He was thirty and had spent only two months inside, also four years ago, also for dealing. He had a round face with the hint of a double chin, clipped brown hair and prominent ears. His brown eyes were deep-set and leaning towards squinty. She printed copies of his photo too.

‘Can I get a copy of those voice files?’ she said.

‘Keep the recorder if you want,’ Chloe said. ‘I don’t need it for a few days.’

‘This is great,’ Ella said. ‘Thanks so much.’

Chloe smiled. ‘It’s us against them.’

They saw her to the lift, then Murray checked his watch. ‘Meeting time.’

*

‘Let’s get started,’ Dennis said. ‘Marconi and Shakespeare, if you could start with the PM report, please.’

There was nothing to highlight on the whiteboard this time so Ella summarised the findings from her chair, the afternoon sun streaming through the windows straight into her face. The detectives were silent when she described the damage to Paul Fowler’s spinal cord and the doctor’s thoughts on the female bystander’s involvement.

‘We now have Comfits of both bystanders,’ she went on, ‘and today a caller to the hotline gave us sketches she made of two people she saw arguing outside a cafe in Marrickville two hours after the shooting. The drawing of the woman is a match for the female bystander, and while the drawing of the man was not, the clothing he wore fits the description of the man seen hanging about the park with a long sports bag shortly before the shooting.’

She described Phillipa Meddeman confirming the woman’s Comfit and her description of the couple’s argument, including the mention of the dog, then talked about finding the CCTV at the pub. ‘They drove away in a light-coloured sedan. The numberplate’s visible but not legible, but we have the footage and with any luck the image can be cleaned up.’

John Gerard drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. ‘Did this couple have a sports bag? Or bumbag?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘My theory is that the shooter and bystanders met up somewhere, swapped or got rid of that bag and the woman’s bumbag, changed their dress slightly, then split up again.’