Silent Fear (36 page)

Ella punched her again, this time in the side of the head; her knuckles rang with the impact. Devonshire struggled to get up, her wet hair whipping Ella in the face, but Ella kicked her feet from under her. Devonshire fell and Ella kneed her as hard as she could in the stomach. Devonshire folded around the blow, gasping for air.

Ella knelt on her back and fumbled for her handcuffs, hauling first one then the other of Devonshire’s arms behind her and clamping the cuffs on tight. The skin around her wrists went white with the pressure but Ella didn’t care. She sat down panting in the mud and shoved Devonshire onto her back with her foot.

Devonshire looked at her. Her face was covered in mud but there were those same round brown eyes.

‘Why?’ Ella said.

Devonshire sucked her cheeks and spat mud on the ground. ‘Fuck you, bitch.’

Ella got slowly to her feet and looked across the park at the house. There were no sirens in the distance and she guessed nobody had been hit when the shot was fired. On the verandah that ran along the back a boy and five men knelt with their hands on their heads, the glint of cuffs on their wrists. Detectives stood behind them, talking, Murray and John Gerard near the boy. Dante Novak, she guessed. Next to him she could make out Trent Bligh, shirtless as before. Beside him was Carl Sutton, apparently uninjured. She recognised the roundish face of Luiz Paz, then the long face of the suspected shooter, scowling at the cops, and at the end the balding head of the male bystander who’d helped Devonshire with her murderous CPR.

The rain fell steadily on the park and she looked across the dead brown grass to the river, the eucalypts along this side and the mangroves lining the far bank.
It started in a park and it ends in a park
, she thought, but here the sun was gone, the rain soaked her, and while people had been cuffed, what had actually been fixed? Darcy would still carry her father’s Christmas present around; the holes in the lives of Fowler’s parents and Holly Garland still gaped.

‘Loosen the cuffs, bitch,’ Devonshire said.

Ella looked around. The woman’s head was in the mud, her clothes covered with it, her hair wet and stringy.

‘Hear me?’ she said. Her eyes welled with tears. ‘They really hurt.’

Ella turned away and took her mobile from her pocket.

‘Homicide,’ Dennis said.

Ella smiled. ‘I got her.’

THIRTY-FOUR

Five weeks later

H
er hand on the patient’s shoulder, Holly knelt beside Lacey and watched her thread the cannula into the fine vein on the back of the woman’s trembling hand. Blood appeared in the flash chamber and Holly nodded. ‘Nice work.’

Lacey blew out a breath of air and smiled at the patient. ‘Irma, your shaking’s contagious! What’re you doing to me?’

Irma managed to smile back and said something unintelligible. She was an obese one-legged woman with a history of strokes, diabetes and severe back pain. She was stuck in a chair, her pain too bad for her to move, and Holly kept an ear out for their backup and an eye on Lacey’s hands as she injected morphine into the cannula.

The investigation into the overtime rostering had concluded the week before, with three officers including Lacey sent back on the road, dropped to fourth-year wages and put on three months’ probation. Holly still wasn’t sure how Lacey had been assigned to The Rocks – perhaps Maida Quartermaine had felt sorry for her when she walked into Rozelle HQ, three days after Norris’s funeral, to defend Lacey as best she could – but she was delighted to be supervising her friend. Lacey talked a lot about how nervous she felt and how much she’d forgotten, and both things were true, but Holly had no doubt she’d be up to scratch in time for her first monthly evaluation with Quartermaine.

Irma’s husband, Jack, a burly man with faded anchor tattoos on his arms, stood behind the chair brushing his wife’s hair with gentle hands. He paused to lean down and kiss the top of her head. ‘How’s that feel now? Pain going away?’

Irma nodded and grimaced another smile.

Holly turned away to the drug box. Of all the things that hurt since Norris had died, it was little signs of caring that stabbed the most. Not even just between couples like this; random acts of kindness from bystanders to people who collapsed in the street had her blinking hard.

Last week, on her first day back, she’d arrived at a fatal accident to find a man standing by the car holding the dead driver’s hand.

‘Do you know her?’ Holly had asked, preparing herself to break the news.

‘No,’ he said, ‘and I know she’s gone, but if it was my girlfriend I’d want someone here like this too.’

She’d lost it completely, and even now the thought of it was bringing her undone. She closed the kit. ‘I’ll take this down.’

Outside, the day was warm. Christmas decorations still hung on the doors of the nearby apartments though it was two weeks past. She averted her eyes and went to the ambulance, put the drug kit in and pulled out the stretcher and carry sheet, then sat on the step to wait for their backup.

Three weeks ago today she’d buried Norris. She’d clung to Lacey’s arm like she’d clung to Caryn’s twelve years before, the shadow in the grave under the suspended coffin deep and dark. Around her people wept: Norris’s parents, Colleen and John, who’d come over from Perth; his brothers Chris and Peter with their girlfriends Elizabeth and Donna; his friends Kirk and Ben and Jenny and Mason. His workmates, headed by Cardello in a black suit and blindingly white shirt. Crowds of others she vaguely recognised, and then crowds of strangers. News crews, some of which were at the back filming Paul Fowler’s silent friends from the park and a couple of equally silent women, one a redhead, the other with her arm in a splint. Police, detective Ella among them, serious and sombre.

The day had been stifling, a heatwave having settled on the city the day before. Holly remembered the sweat on people’s faces running as freely as their tears. She’d felt weak, sick, not really there, and hadn’t heard much of what the minister had said because of a strange buzzing in her ears, but the creak as the wheels started to release the rope and lower the coffin into the ground had cut through like a gunshot.

When Chris and Peter had collected their parents at the airport and brought them to the house in Concord the day after Norris had died, Holly had collapsed in tears of grief and guilt at their feet. They’d lifted her up, told her it wasn’t her fault, said she was still part of their family and always would be. They’d held her and comforted her through their own tears and said they didn’t blame her, or Seth. She believed them, but couldn’t manage the same absolution.

At Seth’s funeral, held two days after Norris’s and three before Christmas, the crowd had been smaller. Again the friends from the park were there with the two women, again the news crews and police. People she didn’t know introduced themselves, said they were Seth’s workmates, said he would be missed, but there were fewer tears from everyone, including her. She’d leaned on Lacey again and hadn’t been shaken when the wheels started up but had watched the coffin descend and thought about Seth shouting at their parents’ funeral that she’d never make it, that she was born to be an addict just like him, and she’d squeezed Lacey’s arm and known it wasn’t true, she didn’t feel the call any more, she was strong.

Now the house in Concord was on the market, and she was staying for a while at Lacey’s. Cardello was handling Seth’s flat too, or at least he would be when the police forensic accountants finished their investigation. Holly didn’t care: she’d told the detectives to take it, sell it or give it to a victim of crime or something, but they’d refused. She would try again. She’d send the money anonymously if she had to. Whether he’d bought it with the proceeds of crime or not, she would take nothing from him.

Laughter made her look up at the apartment window. Lacey and Irma were clearly doing fine.

Yesterday Ella had come over and they’d sat on Lacey’s balcony as she’d told them what was happening in the case: how Carl Sutton, the blond man from the scene of the shooting, had told them everything in return for the dropping of charges of obstruction and being an accessory against his girlfriend Trina Fowler, the dead man’s ex. He’d explained how he came to know Trent Bligh and his partners in crime by accident, fixing their computers, and how he’d learned about their brothels and saw it as a way to make a lot of money. He came up with a plan, and Paul Fowler had been first to join and was keen as anything, Sutton said. Seth was also willing, and while the other friends, Sam Roberts-Brice and Jared Kelly, were hesitant at first, they changed their minds once the money started to flow.

‘Yeah, it was easy for them,’ Holly had said. ‘No work, all pay.’

Ella nodded. ‘I made that point very clear.’

Bligh was apparently unaware of the set-up until Seth, who knew him as a drug dealer but had no idea he also ran illegal brothels, suggested that they sell drugs as well and approached Bligh to be their dealer. Once Bligh found out what it was for, things went downhill: he and his thugs tracked down the place, found Sutton in it and threatened him. Then they bashed up Sam Roberts-Brice, causing the bruising Holly had seen on his face in the park, then Paul Fowler was shot, which Carl Sutton claimed had nothing to do with him, and that any of them could’ve been hit. Ella had said she still wasn’t sure about that – it was so convenient for Sutton that it was Fowler who died.

‘Anyway, we’ll keep digging and hopefully find out the truth there,’ she’d said. ‘But let me get to the point of my visit. Between canvassing and what Sutton’s told us, we found out that on Sunday afternoon Norris and Seth went to a pub near your place, then went to look at that house Norris wanted to sell, then ended up at the brothel in the evening.’

‘I don’t think –’ Lacey cut in.

‘It’s okay,’ Ella said. ‘From what a witness told us we honestly believe they were just driving past and Bligh and co. caught them. We found the fingerprints of two of the men, Luiz Paz and Simon Noonan, in Seth’s car, and on guns in Bligh’s house: both the one used on Paul Fowler and the one used against Norris and Seth. Noonan matches the description of the man seen loitering near the scene of the shooting and soon after with the female bystander – Violet from the brothel, whose real name is Julie Devonshire – and we believe he’s the one who shot Fowler. We’re hoping to charge him soon with that as well.’

‘So you got the woman too?’ Holly said. ‘Good.’

Ella nodded. ‘And the guy who was with her. His name’s Terrence Osborne. We’re still not sure if we can charge them for their so-called CPR, but drugs were found in both their houses so we have them on that at least. All in all, the whole lot of them have little prospect of getting out in the next ten or hopefully twenty years.’

‘Good,’ Holly had said again, and burst into tears.

The sound of an engine brought her back to the present as an ambulance pulled into the apartment block’s driveway. She saw a big hand wave at her from behind the wheel and a moment later the engine was off and Joel Holden got out and walked towards her.

‘Holly,’ he said, his voice full of compassion.

‘Don’t hug me or I’ll lose it.’

‘How about a headlock?’ He squeezed her head in the crook of his arm and tapped his knuckles on her forehead. While he had her close he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

She nodded.

‘For two reasons.’ He let her go and she saw his shift partner standing there.

‘Kyle,’ she said. It was the first time she’d seen him since the day he’d been threatening to expose her, the day of the night that Norris died.

‘I’m sorry about your fiancé,’ he said stiffly.

Whatever
, she thought. ‘Patient’s upstairs. Back pain. Carry sheet’s the only way; the stairs are too tight to get a board down.’

Kyle took the carry sheet, pillow and blanket and started up the stairs. Joel grasped Holly’s arm and held her back for a moment.

‘He said something weird when he heard your voice on the radio.’ He kept his voice low. ‘Something like, “One day soon everyone will know the truth about her”.’

‘Little shit,’ Holly said. She’d thought it’d all been a bluff when he hadn’t said anything. Now she thought maybe, out of some twisted form of respect, he’d just been saving it. ‘I’ve had it with him.’

Upstairs she found Kyle looking with a critical eye at Lacey’s cannula. She glared at him and he turned away.

Jack hovered while Lacey explained to Irma how they were going to slide the carry sheet underneath her, then lift her down the stairs. Irma was drowsy from the morphine and nodded with her eyes closed when Lacey took her hand and asked if her pain was okay. She was able to move enough for them to slip the sheet behind her, then they took a handle each and lifted. Kyle made an exaggerated face at the weight and Holly glared harder. Irma squawked in alarm and grabbed at their arms.

‘It’s okay,’ Lacey said. ‘Just relax. Is your pain all right?’

Irma nodded but still tensed up when they lifted her again. They walked sideways through the living room, squeezed through the door and onto the landing, Jack rushing back into the bedroom to pack her a bag.

‘Can we put her down for a sec?’ Kyle said at the head of the stairs.

‘Here?’ Joel said.

‘My back’s killing me.’

‘You need to toughen up, son,’ Lacey said.

‘Look at the size of her,’ Kyle said. ‘How do you toughen up for that?’

Irma looked up at him, hurt in her eyes.

Holly kicked him hard in the ankle. ‘Shut your trap.’

He shot her a glare. ‘You want to be careful.’

‘Or what?’ Anger built in her chest.

‘You know what.’ That smirk.

‘You’ll tell people I used to work as a prostitute and take drugs?’ she said.

His mouth opened.

‘So what?’ she said.

‘So what?’ Joel said.

‘Yeah, so what?’ Lacey said.

Kyle looked down at Irma, who was staring straight back at him. She raised her eyebrows and moved her trembly arm to pat Holly’s hand.

‘So nothing,’ he muttered.

‘Exactly,’ Lacey said.

Irma’s hand tightened on Holly’s. Something loosened around Holly’s heart and she smiled at her. ‘And down the stairs we go.’

*

Ella filled the cups. Black coffee for her, white for her parents, hot water over a slice of lemon for Aunt Adelina.

‘Your boss is on the TV,’ her mother Netta called.

Ella put down the kettle and went into the lounge room to see Frank Shakespeare in a wheelchair at the front door of St Vincent’s Hospital. ‘He’s not my boss.’

Adelina turned up the volume.

‘– very pleased that charges have been laid and have no doubt that in due course justice will be done,’ Shakespeare said. Behind him Murray stood with a gaunt woman Ella guessed was his mother, and next to them John Gerard scanned the area, chest out, like a bodyguard. Pull or no pull, he’d been sent back to his Local Area Command before Christmas following a complaint of sexual harassment from a young female PA working in an office three floors down from Homicide and one of threatening behaviour made by the driver he’d collided with when following Julie Devonshire. Funny how complaints from fellow officers never had the same effect. Still, it was her best Christmas present ever.

Ella’s father Franco said, ‘Isn’t Shakespeare the one who was stabbed just after we left?’

‘Yep. There were complications. He kept getting infections and then he had a heart attack,’ Ella said.

‘– and proof of the excellent investigative work being done by our very dedicated boys in blue,’ Frank Shakespeare continued.

‘Boys,’ Ella said.

‘I must also thank the entire police community who gave me and my family such support during this harrowing time,’ Shakespeare said, ‘as well as the lovely nurses who cared so well for a sick old man.’ He grinned.

‘Do we have to watch this?’ Ella said.

‘It’s the news,’ Aunt Adelina said.

Ella went back to the kitchen. Dante Novak had finally been charged with Frank’s stabbing the previous night, after a mate of his got arrested for a break and enter and offered up a statement about Novak’s bragging and the location of the knife in return for an easier ride. Any criminal with half a brain would’ve dumped the weapon quick smart but the knife was particularly precious to young Novak’s heart and he’d kept it wrapped in a T-shirt and hidden in the wall of the garage of his mother’s house. He’d managed to avoid charges after the raid on his Unky Bligh’s house, so it was satisfying to know that he had finally been caught.