Silent Fear (25 page)

‘We so need to get onto these phones and see the records,’ she said.

‘Requests are in,’ he said. ‘There was no one home at Garland’s flat, by the way.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back when we get somewhere.’

Sutton turned off in Croydon Park, fortunately staying on roads with at least a little traffic, and she followed him through Ashbury and into Dulwich Hill. He took Marrickville Road, and she slowed in the left lane outside the pub where they’d collected the CCTV footage and let Louise pass her. She pulled back out and followed at a distance, seeing Sutton’s brake lights come on as he slowed for a stumbling pedestrian on a crossing, wondering how far they were going.

He took the dogleg over Sydenham railway station and through to the Princes Highway. A car came out of a side street between his car and Louise’s, and they all stopped at the lights on the Princes Highway. Ella slouched low in her seat. The light went green and Sutton turned left, as did the car in the middle. They travelled as a group straight through the lights at Canal Road then over the rise before all turning right from the highway into Bishop Street and into the 24-hour McDonald’s.

Sutton drove into the car park. The middle car followed the signs into the drive-through. Louise went straight to a car park spot facing the highway. Ella slowed down and watched Sutton from a distance as he parked beside a small silver sedan. She chose a space beside a shrub, not too far away, and backed in so she could sit low in her seat and watch.

A familiar man with a big mole on his face got out of the silver car and went around to Sutton’s window.

Ella called Dennis. ‘We’re at the Macca’s in St Peters. He’s talking to Jared Kelly.’

‘How close are you?’

‘Louise is closer.’ She watched the men. ‘Kelly looks like he’s trying to explain something.’ He held his hands upturned and out to his sides for emphasis. ‘I can see through the car. Sutton’s shaking his head. Louise is getting out. They’ve never seen her, right?’

‘Right,’ Dennis said. In the background his landline rang. ‘Call me back in a sec.’

Ella ended the call and watched Louise stretch with her hands in the small of her back as if she’d had a long drive. Kelly glanced at her over the roof of Sutton’s car, then kept talking. Louise leaned against her bonnet and lit a cigarette. Kelly glanced at her again. Ella saw Sutton’s head turn too and she held her breath, then Kelly said something and Sutton turned back to him.

Louise smoked and stretched cricks out of her neck, checked the time on her wristwatch and typed out a text on her phone.

Ella’s phone beeped.

They’re talking about ‘the business’. Sutton says he can talk to ‘them
’.

Ella watched as Kelly kept talking, his hands propped on the sill of Sutton’s door. Then he stood straight, his gestures more heated. Sutton opened the door. Kelly stepped back into the garden as Sutton stood up. Ella could hear their voices but couldn’t make out the words. Kelly’s voice rose and Sutton glanced over his shoulder at Louise, but she was staring off in the other direction, her elbow cupped in her hand, her cigarette burning in midair. Ella saw Sutton lean close to Kelly and say something right in his face, then get back in his car. He started the engine and backed out of the space, then drove off through the car park and out onto the street. Kelly watched him go with his hands on his hips.

Ella slid down in the seat and phoned Dennis. ‘Got anyone else around? Sutton’s driving away, going left on the Princes Highway.’

‘Stand by.’ She heard muffled talking, then he said, ‘What’s Kelly doing?’

‘Just standing there. Rubbing the back of his neck and looking at the ground as if trying to think what to do. Hang on. Louise looks like she’s sussing him out.’

The detective was looking sideways at him, then she blew smoke straight up into the air and walked towards him. Ella watched her say something to Kelly, who shrugged and said something in reply. Louise smiled and answered, then went back to leaning against her car as he got into his.

‘He’s pulling out,’ Ella said to Dennis. ‘He’s on his way. I’m following.’

She and Louise ignored each other as Ella drove out after Kelly and waited at the lights behind him. She put her phone on loudspeaker and sat it on the passenger seat. ‘We’re going left, same as Sutton. Kelly lives in Tempe so we mightn’t be going far.’ She told Dennis what Louise had texted.

‘He hasn’t noticed you?’

Kelly seemed fully occupied, staring out the windscreen and never once glancing back. ‘He looks like he’s in another world.’

She kept Dennis posted as they drove back through the lights at Canal Street, past the lights she’d come out at before in Sydenham, then he turned right through a break in the median into Lymerston Road. It was too risky to follow directly and she swung around in a U-turn, heading back north to the next side street, following it to the end, then turning so she entered Lymerston from the other end. Sure enough, he’d pulled into the driveway of his small brick house and was getting out as she passed. He didn’t even look up. She slowed and watched in the mirror as he climbed the steps to the porch and went inside.

‘He’s gone home,’ she said to Dennis. ‘What’s Sutton up to?’

‘Kemsley’s following him into Marrickville, so he could be going home to Campsie or back to Trina’s. Kemsley’ll stay on him anyway, so you can take Louise on your mission.’

Ella drove back to the McDonald’s car park where Louise Brooks waited in her car. Ella backed into the space next to her and they dropped their windows.

‘Did you get anything more?’ Ella asked.

‘Kelly kept saying he wanted out, that it wasn’t supposed to be like this and it wasn’t worth it. Sutton kept arguing that he’d speak to them, he’d sort it, nobody else would get hurt. Kelly said he’d heard that from him before.’

‘Huh,’ Ella said. ‘But no clues about who “they” might be?’

‘I surely do wish,’ Louise said.

TWENTY-ONE

H
olly pressed the light switch in the stairwell of Seth’s building and looked up through the centre at the railings. It was almost three in the morning. She could hear the odd car going past on the street and a shower running somewhere. The air was warm and still but she shivered.

Seth’s flat was at the front of the building on the ground floor. The peephole was dark. She listened for a moment, then knocked. There was no answer. She felt conspicuous and vulnerable standing there, and glanced at the peephole in the opposite door, but it too was dark and no light showed under the door.

She took out her mobile and called Seth’s number. She couldn’t hear it ringing inside the flat. She rang the landline, and did hear that, but just as before there was no answer. She called Norris’s mobile, heard nothing in the flat, got a message that the voicemail box was full.

She went back outside and followed the path towards the street, then stepped off onto the grass. Two large dark windows overlooked the small rectangle of lawn, the street and the bay. She cupped her hands to the glass and thought the curtains were open but couldn’t make out anything inside. The window furthest from the path was open behind a security screen. She pressed her face to the wire mesh and breathed in, expecting the smell of mess but detecting only clean things: carpet, laundry, air. She hooked her fingers over the metal bars and felt the strength of the rivets holding the frame in place.

She knocked on the glass, waited a pointlessly long time, then headed back to the car, trying to think where else she could go, what else she could do to fill in the hours before morning.

*

Sam Roberts-Brice and his wife lived in a restored Victorian cottage in a narrow leafy laneway in the middle of Erskineville. The kerbs on both sides were lined with parked cars and Ella double-parked next to a blue BMW, the lights of Louise Brooks’s car bright in her rear-view. She wondered how someone who worked weekends in a bottle shop could afford a place like this.

The house was in total darkness. They went through a small wrought-iron gate and up a short paved path to the tiled porch. The front door was behind a thick security grille. Ella put her hand in a gap and pressed the buzzer, then waited. Behind her Louise stretched again. Ella could smell the cigarette smoke in her yawn.

She buzzed once more.

There was movement in the house and a light came on. Ella heard footsteps and got out her badge.

Roberts-Brice spoke through the closed door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Detective Marconi. We need to speak to you.’

‘It’s three in the morning. Jesus. Look – okay. Hang on.’

Ella heard him have a muffled conversation with someone before he opened the door. ‘Hi. Come in.’ His gaze shifted back and forth between them and his smile looked forced.

‘This is Detective Louise Brooks,’ Ella said.

Roberts-Brice nodded. ‘Hi. Hello. Have a seat. Can I get you something? Coffee?’

‘We’re fine, thank you,’ Louise said.

The lounge room was small and stuffy and done out in a French provincial theme. Louise took one armchair and Ella the other. Roberts-Brice opened the windows and glanced at the two-seater lounge between the detectives then stayed standing. The bruise on his left cheek and the scabbed abrasion on his forehead looked dark on his pale face, and his dirty blond hair was lank. He wore football shorts and a blue singlet and his eyes couldn’t stay still.

‘Is this about Paul?’ he asked.

‘In a way,’ Ella said. She saw his eyes flick past her and turned to see a slight woman in a red dressing gown in the doorway. Ella got up and held out her hand. ‘Mrs Roberts-Brice, care to join us?’

‘That’s fine,’ Roberts-Brice said.

‘No, really.’ Ella smiled.

The woman looked hesitant but came to sit in the centre of the lounge, tucking the gown around her knees. She had long dark hair tied back in a knot and a long face.

‘Is this really necessary?’ she said. ‘We both have to work in the morning.’

Ella smiled at her again, didn’t answer, and faced Roberts-Brice. ‘When was the last time you had contact with Seth Garland?’

‘Let me think.’ He rubbed the back of his head. ‘Yesterday. Saturday, that is. In the evening. We went to the pub. We couldn’t believe that Paul was gone. Still can’t, actually.’

‘Which pub?’

‘The Old Nag in Enmore.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘About eight,’ he said.

Louise turned a page in her notebook.

‘Who was there?’ Ella asked.

‘Me, Jared, Carl and Seth.’

‘Not Trina?’

‘No. Why would she go?’

‘How was Seth?’

‘Upset,’ he said. ‘Sad. We all were.’

‘What plans did you make?’

‘About what?’

‘About anything.’

He looked at her strangely. ‘I don’t know what you’re asking.’

‘Did you talk about getting together again, about whether ever to go back to that park, about something you might do for Paul’s memorial or funeral?’

He shook his head. ‘We were too shocked for anything like that.’

‘Did Seth mention anything he was doing on Sunday?’

‘No, I just said we didn’t –’

‘Did he mention his sister?’

‘He said something about how she was one of the ambos there at the park, small world and so on. That was all.’

Roberts-Brice’s wife’s eyes were narrow, her lips thin. ‘You cannot tell me this is important enough to get us out of bed at 3 am.’

‘What was your name again?’ Ella asked her.

‘How is that relevant?’

‘It’s Sarah,’ Roberts-Brice said. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to her. ‘They want to solve Paul’s murder.’

‘Not just that,’ Ella said, fixing her eyes on Sam. ‘Seth’s missing.’

He put a hand on the mantelpiece. ‘You’re sure?’

‘His sister Holly phoned a few hours ago. He’s not answering his phones and he’s not at home. He’s with her fiancé, who also cannot be located.’

‘They’re probably drunk somewhere,’ Sarah said.

‘Holly didn’t think so, but you might know Seth better than she does,’ Ella said to Sam. ‘Does that sound likely?’

He forced a chuckle. ‘Yeah, probably.’

‘Where might they be?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Probably somewhere the fiancé goes?’

Ella studied him. He looked at the ceiling and scratched his throat, his fingernails leaving red streaks on his skin.

She said, ‘I was telling my colleague here about your accident. Bike-riding, was it?’

‘Skateboard.’ He touched the bruise. ‘Healing up now.’

‘How did it happen?’ Louise said.

‘Mucking around, you know. Those wheels slip out from under you and down you go.’

‘Ridiculous at your age,’ Sarah said.

Roberts-Brice rolled his shoulders in a weak shrug.

‘Face first? That’s unlucky,’ Ella said.

Sarah nodded. ‘The doctor was amazed his cheekbone wasn’t fractured.’

‘So you had to go to hospital,’ Ella said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘He didn’t want to,’ Sarah said. ‘But when he came home I took one look and hauled him off to RPA Emergency. You can’t take chances with head injuries.’

‘Embarrassed?’ Ella asked him.

‘Yeah.’ The streaks on his neck darkened.

‘Like now?’

He chuckled and looked across the room.

‘Boys will be boys, I always say,’ Louise said.

Ella smiled. ‘One more thing. Someone told us that Jared Kelly and Carl Sutton don’t get along, and maybe Carl and Paul weren’t best friends either. You know anything about that?’

He frowned and sucked his teeth. ‘Well, I guess there was a bit of conflict between Carl and Paul, because Carl thought Trina was hard done by in the way Paul left, and she was trying to cope with Darcy on her own. I don’t know about any problems between Jared and Carl though.’

‘Carl seems protective of Trina,’ Ella said.

‘Only because he thought Paul should’ve been helping Trina out with money and so on,’ Roberts-Brice said.

‘Even when he had no job?’

Roberts-Brice shrugged and nodded at the same time. ‘Carl reckoned that was no excuse.’

‘Did he quit or was he sacked? We’ve heard different things.’

‘I don’t know,’ Roberts-Brice said.

Sarah huffed on the lounge. ‘Can we maybe hurry this up?’

Ella ignored her. ‘Jared Kelly strikes me as an anxious man.’

Roberts-Brice blinked. ‘I guess he is a bit tense sometimes.’

‘He gives me the impression that if anyone in a group was to lose their nerve, it’d be him.’

Roberts-Brice touched the scab on his forehead. ‘He’s high up somewhere in the public service and it stresses him. Sometimes he talks about trying to get out.’

‘Maybe that’s all it is.’ Ella stood up. Louise closed her notebook.

Sarah stood too and pulled her gown close around her and looked pointedly at the clock.

Ella held out her card to Roberts-Brice. ‘Give me a call if you remember anything about where Seth might be, or if you have something else you want to say.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ He put his hands behind his back.

She laid the card on the sideboard. ‘Oh, I forgot to ask. How was your shift at the bottle shop on Saturday?’

‘I called in sick in the end,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t face it, after everything that’d happened.’

‘Is that your only job?’

Sarah frowned at the clock again.

‘I work in stocks and bonds too,’ he said. ‘Little extra cash always comes in handy, you know.’ He smiled awkwardly.

‘Sure,’ she said.

They were hardly off the porch when Sarah shut the door behind them. The street was quiet and the thud resounded. The streetlights gleamed on the roofs of the parked cars and the air was slightly cooler than before, and a grey and white cat stared at them from a gatepost across the road. Ella stood in the street and watched Louise roll her head in a circle on her neck, clockwise then counterclockwise. The lights were already out again in the Roberts-Brice house. She wondered if Roberts-Brice was watching them from the darkness, whether the bees were starting to buzz in his head.

‘I gotta go home. I’m stuffed.’ Louise fitted a cigarette between her lips. ‘You staying on?’

‘I got a bit of sleep earlier.’

Louise blew smoke back over her own shoulder and opened her driver’s door. ‘Catch you round.’ She backed out of the lane.

Ella got in her own car and headed for RPA, her mind searching for the links that would pull the case together, while underneath squirmed the thought that Callum McLennan might be on duty.

*

Ella walked into the Emergency Department via the front doors and showed her badge to the nurse behind the glassed-in desk. She spoke in a low voice through the holes. ‘I need some information about someone who was an outpatient, a man named Sam Roberts-Brice.’

He made a face and before he could speak she added, ‘It’s part of a homicide investigation.’

He puffed air into his top lip and let it squeak back between his teeth. ‘Give me a minute.’ He got up and went out the back of the office, letting the door close behind him.

Ella turned and surveyed the collection of people sitting in the waiting room. They were spread out over the array of plastic chairs, mostly in pairs or alone, one group of three teens asleep in a huddle against each other. In the front row, a family of five, toddler asleep in his dozing grandmother’s arms, baby squirming against the tired mother’s neck, and a girl of about six turning the pages of a board book but staring at Ella with round blue eyes. Most of the adults in the room met her gaze with the assessing look that judged her less ill than them and reassured them their place in the queue was for now unchanged, while a couple figured her for what she was and looked away.

She was smiling at the little girl, who wasn’t smiling back, when the front doors opened and a man rushed in. Behind him limped a skinny woman with thin lanky hair.

The man pushed past Ella and peered through the glass. ‘Where the fuck is everyone?’

He hammered his fist against the surface, making it tremble in its bracket on the ceiling. He stank of beer and cigarettes and old sweat. His jeans were brown with grime. Under his few days of stubble his cheeks were sunburned and peeling, and below his sleeveless black T-shirt his thick arms were covered in tattoos and black hair.

The nurse came back through the door. ‘Please don’t bang on the screen.’

‘We need some fucking help here.’

‘Please stop swearing also.’ The nurse said to Ella, ‘Have a seat for a moment,’ then said to the man, ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Ella sat in the front row, leaving one empty seat between her and the little girl, who was now staring at the angry man despite her mother’s attempts to draw her attention back to the book.

‘She’s hurt her fucking foot, that’s what’s the problem. Can’t you see?’

‘I just asked you not to swear, and I won’t ask you again,’ the nurse said. ‘What happened?’

‘She twisted it coming off a motorbike last week.’

‘What’s happened to make it worse tonight?’

‘It hurts,’ the woman said. She’d sat down on the other side of the family. Ella could smell the marijuana smoke in her clothes, the odour of her unwashed hair and body, her dirty jeans. She was looking at the sleeping toddler and smiled into the face of his now wide-awake grandmother. ‘Int he a cutie?’

The nurse said, ‘What I’m asking is why are you here now?’

‘It’s a fucking hospital and she’s fucking hurt, that’s why. Just get her a fucking doctor.’

‘You need to leave,’ the nurse said. Ella knew that around now he’d be pressing the button that summoned security. ‘She can stay, and I’ll take down details of her injury in a moment, but you need to step outside.’

‘The fuck I will.’

Ella looked at the woman. She was sitting with her legs crossed, the bruised foot swinging in the air, a slight smile on her face while she watched the argument. The toddler had woken up and was trying to pull the grandmother’s hands off his ears. The mother held the baby close and tried to gather the little girl to her side.

Ella was about to stand up when a stocky security guard stepped through the doors that led into the treatment areas and approached the man. ‘Outside.’