Silent Fear (23 page)

‘Your theory,’ Gerard said.

Ella looked at Murray. ‘You want to tell about Henreid?’

Murray sat forward and told the group about their interview with Paul Fowler’s boss, the details of how Fowler had quit his job, and then how they’d spoken to Fowler’s ex-colleagues. ‘One of these, Steven Parkes, told us he spoke to Trina Fowler on the phone at twelve twenty and she told him then that Fowler was dead from a gunshot.’

‘Aha,’ Gerard said.

Murray didn’t stop but Ella could see from the tight muscles in his jaw that Gerard annoyed him. It was a small comfort to know she was not alone.

‘When we checked this with Trina she said she forgot to tell us earlier because the shock affected her memory,’ he said.

‘Hm,’ Gerard said.

‘She said Paul’s parents are on their way home, so we should be able to speak to them tomorrow,’ Murray went on. ‘We also spoke with a neighbour of Trina’s who said that Fowler had told her a few months ago that his life felt pointless and he was unhappy with his job. She also said that Carl Sutton has been around frequently in the last two weeks.’

‘I knew it.’ Gerard bounced his fists on his thighs.

‘However,’ Murray said sharply, ‘Parkes also told us that he overheard an argument between Davis Henreid and Paul Fowler in which Fowler said, “Every word Daniel said about you is true”. He didn’t know who Daniel might be. When we went back to the shop to ask Henreid about it he’d left, and when we went to his home we found it’d been vandalised.’

‘Which brings us to me,’ Gerard said.

‘Before you start,’ Murray said, ‘Ella has something more.’

Good on you
, she thought.

‘We just spoke to a Drug Squad detective who believes she has identified one of the speakers in the intercepted phone call from last night as this man.’ She went to the whiteboard and taped up the photo of Trent Bligh, then wrote his name next to it. ‘Bligh is twenty-seven. He spent nine months in Silverwater four years ago for dealing heroin but has flown totally under the radar since then. Current address is unknown, current associates also unknown, though one past associate is dead, two in jail, and one, Luiz Paz, is likewise living at places unknown.’

She passed out copies of both men’s mug shots.

‘How sure is this detective of what she heard?’ John Gerard said, leaving his copies on the table. ‘I mean, it’s just a voice. He could’ve been disguising it for all we know.’

‘How about we have a listen then?’

Ella took the digital recorder from her pocket and played the two samples. Around the table, detectives nodded just as she had.

‘I hope you’re getting proper voice recognition done on that,’ Gerard said when it ended.

His frown warmed Ella’s heart. ‘It’s under way.’ She looked at Dennis. ‘That’s it.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Surveillance started on Carl Sutton and Trina Fowler this afternoon, and so far both have been at their respective houses and not gone out. We’ll plan to bring them in for further interviews perhaps tomorrow. Martin, Gerard, what did you find on Davis Henreid?’

Gerard flattened out his notebook and looked around at them all. Next to him, Detective Annika Martin sat back in her chair with her arms folded and her gaze fixed elsewhere. She looked tired and fed up, and Ella felt for her.

‘We started by going to Davis Henreid’s house, where we found no signs of forced entry,’ he said.

As we told Dennis
, Ella thought.

‘He wasn’t there, and his car is also missing. It’s a grey Camry, rego AT 37 XL.’ He looked around as if making sure people were getting that down. ‘Calls to his mobile go straight to voicemail and he doesn’t call back. The cans the red paint came from haven’t been found. A number of fingerprints have been collected from the doors and inside the house but there’ve been no hits within the system yet.

‘Henreid’s closest neighbour on one side was away for the weekend and got back as we were finishing up so was no good for what went down last night, but he said Henreid was generally a quiet guy. The couple on the other side, the Maggiottos, heard Henreid arguing with a male last night at around ten.’

He went through what Ella had already heard from the couple: that the argument went for about ten minutes, involved the statement ‘It’s always about money’, possibly from Henreid, and ended when a young man left the house and drove off in a red Mini. He described Henreid’s maybe girlfriend as well, the fortyish woman with the blonde hair, hard face and no name.

‘Regarding Henreid’s current whereabouts, we’ve found nothing so far on a check of red-light and speed cameras for his car. We put an alert through VKG for patrols to keep an eye out. We searched his house and found an address book that lists the single name of Kim, with an address and phone number crossed out, but the number is disconnected and nobody living at the house recognises that name or Henreid’s. We also found a record for Henreid’s mother, but she’s totally off with the fairies in a nursing home. I told the staff to phone us if he comes in for a visit.’

He had a smug ‘job well done’ air that was like a splinter in Ella’s skin.

‘You’re thinking the Kim might be the blonde girlfriend?’ she said.

‘It’s a possibility,’ he said.

‘You know that Kim can be a male’s name too.’

‘That too is a possibility.’

‘And you couldn’t find any other family, any friends?’

‘According to the neighbours and the nursing home staff there are none to find.’ Now he looked at her, his eyes cool and hard, a muscle twitching once, twice, in his temple. ‘Henreid is a solitary man.’

Annika Martin said, ‘The guy’s weird is what he is. If you ignore the paint, the place was spotless. Hardly any food in the cupboards. Not a single bin in the place, and the wheelie bin was empty and perfectly clean.’

That is weird
, Ella thought. ‘You think he takes his rubbish to work each day and dumps it there?’

‘Maybe,’ Martin said. ‘And his computer has nothing on it apart from a dozen spreadsheets and documents with various names pertaining to the shop, and each of those is password protected. Bill Maggiotto said Henreid once told him he’s so aware of security that he uses different passwords for every single thing. Not just each program, each actual item.’ She shook her head. ‘If we decide we need to do it, cracking those is going to take some time.’

‘We also tracked down his accountant,’ Gerard cut in, like a child who hates not being the centre of attention. ‘A search of the files at the shop turned up his phone number. His name’s Daniel Lee and he’s driving back from a funeral in Victoria today. We talked briefly on the phone and he’s meeting us at his office in Ashfield first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Daniel,’ Ella said. It was the name that Steven Parkes had heard mentioned in the argument between Henreid and Fowler.

‘Yes,’ Gerard said with an exaggerated air of patience. ‘It might be that Daniel. An employee of the store wouldn’t necessarily know that was the accountant’s name.’

‘And did he tell you much?’ Ella said.

‘He was surprised to hear we couldn’t find Henreid,’ Gerard said. ‘Said the guy’s the most regular, ordinary client he has. Says the business isn’t great but it ticks over and Henreid seems okay with that.’

‘So you told him what was going on,’ she said. ‘You didn’t think to wait until you got into his office and you could see his reaction? It didn’t occur to you that he now has a heads-up in case he needs to destroy anything before tomorrow?’ She saw Annika Martin mouth to the detective beside her,
I told him.
‘Henreid’s a man who argued with another about money not twelve hours after one of his ex-employees was murdered – an employee it seems he wasn’t too pleased with – and who’s since gone missing. That makes him kind of important.’

‘Exactly.’ Gerard’s ears flushed pink. ‘We needed to know if there was somewhere we could look for Henreid. If he had a holiday place somewhere. An accountant would know about that. I deemed it important enough to ask.’

‘And does he have a holiday place somewhere?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t just gone out for the day, or hooked up with his lady friend for what remains of the weekend,’ Gerard said. ‘You can hardly say he’s missing just because he doesn’t answer his phone.’

‘Moving on,’ Dennis said. ‘Hayes, you said you got something from traffic division?’

Frances Hayes looked at her notes. ‘A speed camera in Earlwood caught a dark blue Kia doing fifteen over the limit in Homer Street. Timing puts it shortly after the time the golfer saw it swerve out of the car park. The numberplate traces back to a tiny rental car company with an office near the airport. So far they’re not answering their phones or their door. I put out an alert on VKG but the car hasn’t been spotted yet.’ She turned a page. ‘Re: the phone records, so far all I’ve had is an acknowledgement of the request.’

‘Good work,’ Dennis said. ‘Bennett, you were with the divers?’

Reece Bennett nodded. His blue business shirt was dark with sweat around the collar, which was open, his tie pulled well down, and Ella could see flecks of dirt and fragments of grass stuck to his neck. There’d been a breeze by the river, she guessed. He said, ‘They went right along under the bridge and found only sticks and a couple of lengths of metal from those chain-link fences. No gun.’

‘I knew the boyfriend was lying about seeing someone drop something in there,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s all coming together.’

‘Not all the sticks were covered in algae,’ Reece Bennett said. ‘The divers said some had gone in really recently, possibly even yesterday.’

Gerard shrugged. ‘That’s a kid thing to do. Sutton said he saw a man, not a kid.’

‘Okay,’ Dennis said. ‘Eliopoulos, what’s news with the canvass?’

The canvass had gone on for most of the day, spreading wider, turning up nothing that seemed of much relevance. Ella sat listening, feeling John Gerard’s eyes on her, hearing him flick the corner of Trent Bligh’s mug shot against his finger. She guessed he hated that new avenues were opening up in the investigation – that maybe Henreid was involved, that this Trent Bligh could be part of it too – but she herself loved it with a passion that made it hard to sit still.

NINETEEN

H
olly was driving home at six, sunburned and sandy but feeling better than she had all day, when her mobile rang. The screen showed Lacey’s name and she put it on speaker. ‘

Holly Golightly,’ Lacey said. ‘Sorry I missed your call before. You okay?’

‘What a fucking day.’

‘The dickhead being dickier?’

‘He tried to blackmail me.’ Holly felt her heart speed up and her palms grow damp with anger and adrenaline at the memory. ‘Grabbed his bits and said my secret didn’t have to come out if I didn’t want it to.’

‘Holy shit,’ Lacey said. ‘Did you snot him?’

‘I called in sick and took off,’ Holly said. ‘Couldn’t go home because last I heard Norris and Seth were having a fine old time bonding, so I went for a drive to the beach. Just sat on the sand and watched the water.’

‘Shoulda come here,’ Lacey said.

Holly didn’t want to tell her the truth: that after their argument she hadn’t felt the least bit like seeing her. ‘I thought maybe your new girlfriend might be over.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Lacey said.

‘Yet,’ Holly said. ‘I can hear you’re smiling.’

‘Whatevs,’ Lacey said with a chuckle. ‘So listen. If Kyle’s trying blackmail, he clearly has no proof, which means you’ve got zippo to worry about. If he tries to say anything now, he’s admitting that he went to prostitutes and you can trot out your play-dead story. That’s way worse.’

‘We’re getting married in five months.’

‘Norris won’t drop you.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I feel bad that I never told him, but how can I do it now?’

Lacey was quiet for a moment.

‘What?’ Holly said.

‘Look,’ Lacey said, ‘all my experience of marriage adds up to nothing, so I have no real clue. But –’

The line crackled in the silence.

Holly gripped the wheel. ‘Say it.’

‘Forget it. What do I know? The love of my life left me for a country.’

‘You may as well say it.’

‘It’s just,’ Lacey said, ‘it seems to me that the way a person starts is the way things go on. You know?’

‘Meaning,’ Holly said, her tone flat.

‘You know I love you,’ Lacey said. ‘You’re the sister I never had. You’re closer to me than anyone and have been since Donna left. Hurting and pissing you off is the last thing I want to do. I want you to get married and live happily ever after, and I think you should trust that Norris loves you enough to accept the truth. It’s not like it’s that bad, Hol.’

‘When we first got together he asked how many boyfriends I’d had,’ Holly said. ‘I told him five. He got the shits.’

‘You’re both older now, wiser.’

‘I asked him how many girlfriends he’d had and he said numbers were irrelevant.’

‘Well, guys, you know –’

‘He lies to me,’ she said. ‘There’s something going on with how our rent’s paid and he won’t tell me what it is.’ She could hear her voice rising but couldn’t stop it. ‘He lies to me and I’m supposed to be lily-white pure?’

‘You’re frightened, and I understand why,’ Lacey said. ‘But it’s going to be okay.’

‘You said it yourself,’ Holly said, ‘you know nothing.’

She hit the end button and threw the phone on the passenger seat where it bounced onto the floor. She turned the radio up loud so she couldn’t hear when Lacey called back and glared at the back of the car in front, trembling with anger. All she wanted from Lacey was support and what did she get? Some friend she was, and after Holly’d been so sympathetic about the overtime debacle too.

At home she swung into the driveway and hit the brakes hard, skidding the tyres in the pebbles, a sound that usually made Norris come out and say something about looking after the place a little better. She turned off the engine and leaned down to grab her phone. No missed calls, no texts.
Fine. I didn’t want her to call me back anyway.

She got out of the car into the evening heat and slammed the door hard. She almost hoped Seth was still here; the serrations of her hurt and fury pressed against the flesh of her heart and to scream and throw him out would wear the teeth down a little.

The front door was unlocked. She kicked it shut behind her. ‘I’m home,’ she shouted, but got no reply.

She stalked to the kitchen and looked out at the pool. The water was calm and still. A row of stubbies sat between the two plastic recliners along with an open box of Pizza Shapes. She went out through the unlocked sliding door and picked it up. Empty. They’d been drinking, got hungry again, gone for a late pub lunch and not made it back yet, she thought. She was out there working, making money to pay rent for this place and its mysterious lied-about status, and they were having a fine old time.

Fuck ’em all.

She dropped the box on the pebblecrete and walked inside. She went upstairs and changed out of her uniform into shorts and a singlet top, then came back downstairs, turned on the air conditioner, made herself a mojito in the biggest glass she could find, and sat on the lounge. She picked up her book and tried to focus on the words, tried to block out her life and all its swarming issues, but couldn’t keep her mind in one place and was soon sitting forward, frowning at the floor, as if the way out of the mess could be found there.

*

Holly woke up close to 8 pm, stiff from lying on the lounge. She worked her neck and rubbed her face and went into the kitchen. She made a fresh mojito and drank it straight down, then made another and a dinner of Jatz and French onion dip. The house was deliciously quiet. The sleep had cleared her mind, and she lay back on the lounge with her glass feeling that she finally had some perspective.

If Kyle did have some wonderful contact at Royal Melbourne, they’d check the files and all they’d see was Lissa’s handiwork. The woman had said she knew how to make it look right, and she was, after all, putting her own livelihood on the line as well, so Holly had to trust that it was safe.

And if Kyle still told people she’d been a prostitute . . . well, as Lacey had said, it was his word against hers, and she had friends in the job, and he was an obvious twerp.

She felt better about Seth too. He was still a threat, he could still tell Norris a whole lot of stuff she really didn’t want him to hear, but again it would be his word against hers. He was a blow-in she’d already told Norris not to trust, and she was Norris’s fiancée for goodness sake.

She decided she would do whatever it took to get Seth out of their life. He’d already taken Caryn Lansky from her. The fear that he might be able to turn Norris against her, take him from her too, strengthened her determination.

She had to lie and be tough about it, that was all. It didn’t matter what anyone said; nothing could be proved and she just had to stick to her story. She’d been doing it for years – she simply had to keep on the same way. No problem.

It felt good to have the castle protected again, the walls rebuilt and solid. Impenetrable.

She got up to the DVD player. ‘Norris, I’m going to watch
The Office
,’ she called out. He hated the show, and she turned it up high, laughing out loud and spilling mojito down her front.

She watched three episodes, then a fourth, then found her gaze slipping over to the clock on the wall. It was almost ten.

She checked her mobile. No messages, no missed calls.

She got up and lifted the handset on the landline. Dial tone present. No problem there.

She looked in the drawer of the hall table where he always dropped his keys and wallet, and found they were both gone. He was merely out late. She sat back down.
The Office
was still playing and she made herself watch. It wasn’t really even that late. It was no big deal.

The episode finished, and she stared at the screen all through the next, then picked up her mobile and called him. It went to voicemail without ringing.

‘
Hi, you’ve reached Norris Sanderson of Cardello Realty. Sorry I can’t take your call right now. Please leave your details and I’ll ring you back as soon as I can.
’

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Just checking in, seeing when you might be home. Let me know, okay? Love you. Bye.’

As she hung up she remembered the message he’d left her earlier and dialled voicemail to listen again.

‘
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.
’

Let her know what?

Maybe Seth had told him, and he’d believed it all and was out getting drunk.

Maybe he’d believed it all and left her.

She tried to tell herself it wasn’t true, but next second was running up the stairs, charging into their bedroom, throwing open the doors of the walk-in robe.

Everything was there. His jeans, his shirts, his four suits. She touched a sleeve to be sure it was real, then closed the doors.

Okay, not moved out then.

‘Just late,’ she said, her voice loud in the quiet room. ‘Get over yourself.’

She took a deep breath and let it out, then dug into the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a tattered notebook. On the last page was Lissa’s name and mobile number. Holly thought for a moment, then texted,
Holly here, how’s that job?
Vague enough, but Lissa would know what she meant.

She went back downstairs and sat down. Her call going straight to voicemail at least meant he hadn’t seen her name and chosen to hang up on her or not answer. But he was always saying how important his phone was, how he had to keep it charged and switched on and close at hand at all times. ‘You never know when a buyer might see a house and call.’
Yeah, right
, she’d thought at the time. He mostly did rentals, only sometimes helping out in sales, and there’d have to be five sales-hungry people totally unavailable for the call to be diverted through to him. But it meant he always answered. Always.

She sent him a text as well, the same message as her voice-mail, then tucked her phone in her pocket and turned off the TV. The silence in the house felt oppressive now. She went to the kitchen and put on all the outside lights, then went upstairs and looked out the window at the still sweltering street. There was nobody around. A breath of breeze moved the fronds of the palms in the neighbour’s front garden.

She called her voicemail and listened to the message he’d left again, trying to hear something, anything, in his tone. But he sounded normal – in fact, if anything, he sounded happy.

In their bedroom she took his address book from his bedside table. His closest friend was Kirk Holloway.

‘I know it’s getting late, and I’m sorry,’ Holly said, ‘but I wondered whether you’ve seen or heard from Norris this evening?’

‘Not a thing,’ Kirk said. ‘In fact I called him myself at about five, to see if you guys wanted to come over for a barbie, and got his voicemail.’

Holly sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Were Ben and Mason there?’

‘You betcha. In fact Mason and Jenny only just left. They asked about you two and I said about the voicemail. They hadn’t heard from him either.’

‘Will you let me know if he gets in touch?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t find him.’

‘Maybe he went to see Chris or Peter.’

‘I’m trying them next.’

‘He’ll turn up,’ Kirk said.

‘I hope so.’

Neither of Norris’s brothers had seen him or heard from him today. Both offered to come and help look, or just to stay with her, but they lived in Newcastle and she knew they had to work in the morning.

‘Thanks, but I’ll be okay,’ she told them. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

She looked out the front window again and saw nothing except the quiet night-filled street.

She went into the study and booted up the computer. There was nothing on the news sites about any accidents. She Googled Norris’s name but found only the usual work stuff and his Facebook page. She clicked on the latter and entered his standard password –
holly000
– and found there’d been no recent entries from him and no messages from anyone else that hinted where he could be. She logged out, then looked up Seth’s address on Google Earth again.

His phone numbers were in her notebook.

She left the computer on, went to the bedroom and pulled that day’s uniform shirt out of her backpack. Her notebook was a heavy rectangle in the pocket. She weighed it in her hand for a moment, then dropped it on the bed, went back to the front window and took out her mobile.

‘My buddy Holly,’ Lacey said. ‘Howzit?’

‘I need to apologise,’ Holly said, ‘and I need your advice.’

‘Friends are no use if you can’t get shitty at them now and again. What’s up?’

‘Norris hasn’t come home,’ Holly said. ‘I got home and they were out. They’d been drinking and I thought they walked to the pub or something, but he hasn’t come back and he hasn’t called either and I’m a bit worried.’

‘I can hear, my dear,’ Lacey said. ‘Okay. Did he take his wallet and his keys?’

‘Yes, both, but the doors weren’t locked.’

‘Easy enough to forget that,’ Lacey said. ‘At least we know he’s not been abducted then. Joke, joke. Okay. He’s got his wallet, his keys, and I take it his phone as well?’

‘It goes straight to voicemail.’

‘I reckon you were right first time. He’s at a pub getting smashed. He’ll stagger home soon and get all romantic, then fall asleep on top of you in the middle.’

‘But you know what he’s like with his phone. Why would it be off?’

‘You said yourself they were bonding,’ Lacey said. ‘Or maybe someone punched Seth’s head in and they’re at the hospital and they had to turn them off.’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Lacey said. ‘But all he is is a bit late.’

‘What if Seth told him and he believed it?’

Holly’s resolve was wavering again. She didn’t understand what was wrong with her, how it could come and go so quickly.

‘You give men too much power,’ Lacey said.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘If a guy doesn’t like you because of mistakes you’ve made in the past, is he the best guy for you to be with?’

‘You said earlier you want to see us married.’

‘And I do,
if
he’s the one. If he can know that about you and know it’s not the end of the world. Jesus, I mean it’s not even the start of the end of the world. If he loves you, nothing else should matter.’