Tell the Truth (24 page)

He didn't look over, didn't say anything. Regretted, not for the first time, bringing her along. Why hadn't he just said no? He was so weak.

‘Stacey asked you to find her dog, the one that her husband talked about on the news,' Imogen said. ‘That's right, isn't it?'

‘I was asked not to say,' he said, matter-of-fact.

‘How come she can call you but not call the police?'

He turned on the radio. John Farnham filled the car briefly before Imogen reached over and turned it off.

‘It makes you look dodgy,' she said.

‘I'm not.'

‘They already think you're up to something.'

‘I'm not,' he said again.

‘Don't you think you should tell them she rang you? I mean, what do you think is going on with her? How can she ask you to find her dog, but she can't tell you where she is or how to find her? It makes no sense.'

‘She asked me to get her dog, and that's what I'm doing.'

‘But what if that was a coded message or something? What if she was told by whoever's got her that she could ask you to find the dog but nothing else, but really she wants you to tell the cops?'

‘You didn't hear her voice. It was like she only had a minute before someone came into the room.'

‘But if she had access to a phone for just a minute, why not call the cops?'

‘Look,' Rowan said, ‘I don't know, okay? I don't know what's going on. And because of that, I'm going to do what she asked me, and that's to find the dog and not tell anyone.'

‘You just told me.'

He turned sharply into the RSPCA car park and hit the brakes, pulled out his wallet and dropped a twenty in her lap. ‘Get yourself a taxi back to the cafe if you disagree so much with what I'm doing.' He yanked the keys from the ignition and strode across the concrete to the front door without looking back.

*

The dog that jumped against the wire had clipped patches between areas of straggly hair, and his long eyebrows were gone, but Rowan said, ‘It's him.'

‘You're sure?' said the girl.

‘Definitely.' Rowan squatted and put his fingers through the wire and the dog went into an ecstasy of wagging and leaping circles. ‘Do you know how he got here?'

‘A guy brought him in as a stray yesterday. Poor pup was unconscious, and the guy said he'd found him on the side of the road and thought he might've been hit by a car.'

‘His hair was already like this?'

‘Yep, and smeared with mud as well.'

‘And was he hurt?'

‘Not at all. The vet discovered he'd been overdosed on Valium. We gave him oxygen and looked after him and he woke up hours later.' She opened the pen and Gomez leapt into Rowan's arms. ‘There's a fee to get him out.'

He looked down at the dog's sheared-off eyebrows, at the roughly clipped patches on his body. ‘Who was the guy?'

‘No idea.'

‘Don't people have to leave details or anything?'

‘He did, but when we tried the mobile number he'd left it was disconnected.'

In the office, Rowan sat with Gomez tense with excitement on his lap while the girl filled out forms and crunched his credit card. He wondered if Imogen was still in his car, if she was right.

A bit more chat, a liver treat for Gomez, then Rowan was walking out with the dog cradled in his arms. Imogen was gone, his car left unlocked. He put the dog in the back seat and got behind the wheel, trying to think clearly, and failing.

TWENTY-FOUR

C
allum said, ‘It's nice of you to drop by, but I'm too busy to stop for lunch today.'

‘I have a question.' Ella followed him into the consulting room. ‘It's work-related.'

‘Is it now?' He sat on the edge of the desk and smiled at her. ‘Come and whisper your work-related question in my ear.'

‘Murray's here too. Gone to the bathroom,' she said.

Murray appeared in the doorway, drying his hands with paper towel. ‘What did he say?'

‘I haven't asked yet,' Ella said. ‘Could a person take a litre and a half of blood from their own body?'

Callum said, ‘As in . . .'

‘As in out of their vein or whatever. A person familiar with blood and needles. Let's say, a paramedic.'

‘I would say yes, with conditions.'

‘Those being?'

‘Can they manage themselves so they don't lose more than that? Can they replace that fluid, and do it without losing consciousness?' Callum said. ‘Am I right in who I think you're thinking about?'

‘Most likely,' she said. ‘Could that person do all of those things?'

‘I would imagine so. It'd take a long time to get that much blood out though. As an example, the blood bank only takes four hundred or so millilitres at a time, less if you're small, and that takes maybe ten minutes. Plus it'd start to clot immediately.'

‘And the clots would then dry?'

‘That starts to happen straight away,' he said. ‘On the surface at least. Obviously.'

Some of the blood in the car had been still semi-liquid, some of the clots still wet.

‘How does the blood bank avoid clots?' she asked.

‘The equipment's treated with a substance, usually citrate or heparin, that inhibits the clotting factors in the blood. Otherwise, as soon as the blood comes into contact with plastic, or air, or pretty much anything, whammo, clotting begins.'

Ella nodded. ‘A test of the blood would show that up?'

‘Yep,' he said.

She took out her notebook. ‘Spell citrate and that other one for me.'

He did so. ‘Also, once having taken that blood out, the person would probably need intravenous fluids.'

‘Which a paramedic could give to him or herself?'

‘Shouldn't be hard at all,' Callum said. ‘They'd be anaemic though, and have to eat a lot of iron-rich food or take iron tablets if they can't get a blood transfusion.'

‘Anaemia would show up in any subsequent blood test or in any body part, right?' Murray asked.

‘Yes,'
Callum
said.

‘Could a paramedic get access to citrate and heparin?' Ella asked.

He glanced out the door. ‘Let's ask one.'

‘Ask about local anaesthetic too, and a scalpel. And twenty-five-gauge needles.'

Callum disappeared for a minute, then returned with a lanky paramedic. The young man's hair was blond and spiked up, and the name on his badge said Grant.

‘Just a couple of questions,' Callum said. ‘Could a paramedic get access to local anaesthetic, a scalpel, IV fluids and a giving set, and citrate and/or heparin?'

Grant blinked. ‘Well, local we have on station, so no problems there. Same with IV fluids and giving sets, and twenty-five-gauge needles and the small syringes we use with them.'

‘Do you need to log those things when you take them?' Ella asked.

‘Nope, they're just there. Take them whenever you need them. The scalpel, well, we don't stock or use them, but it'd be easy peasy to lift one from a hospital. Stores rooms are open all the time.'

‘That's true,' Callum said.

‘Citrate and heparin are more tricky,' Grant said. ‘I don't know where heparin's kept, if you need the keys to get it or whatever. But there's a bit of citrate in the blue-top blood tubes, and tubes are everywhere in a hospital, so again if you really wanted to you could lift a couple pretty easily.' He screwed up his face. ‘That sounds like I've thought about how to nick stuff, but really I haven't.'

A voice said something unintelligible over the radio on his belt, and he started. ‘I gotta run.'

‘The amount of citrate in the tubes he mentioned is tiny,' Callum said when he'd gone. ‘Only enough to keep two mils or so from clotting. Heparin's stored in the drug cupboard and not necessarily under lock and key. You could get it if you knew what you wanted and chose your timing. It'd be easy enough to then inject it into the container, though the levels wouldn't be precise.'

‘I don't think they'd need to be,' Ella said.

‘Where do the local and the scalpel come in?'

‘Someone couriered me a woman's little toe. There's a bunch of needle marks around the cut edge that the pathologist said are probably sites of local anaesthetic injection.'

‘Wow,' Callum said.

‘Yeah, you'd think it was her birthday,' Murray said.

‘You're still trying with that one?' Ella said.

‘I like it.'

‘You asked about a paramedic,' Callum said. ‘What are you thinking? That she's done all this herself?'

‘Maybe. If you were a kidnapper and had to cut off part of someone's body and send it as a threat, you'd send an ear or a finger. Something highly visible in life that'd make it mean more. And would you fill the victim with local anaesthetic first? Plus you'd send it to the husband, along with your demands. Why send it to me? Why keep sending me text messages as well? If, on the other hand, you were doing it to yourself, you'd go for something you could manage pretty well without, something not so noticeable later in life. And you'd use plenty of local anaesthetic.'

Callum looked sceptical. ‘But why do it at all? For police attention? Or because she's got a psych issue?'

‘Or because she needs something and thinks I'm the only one who can give it to her,' Ella said.

‘Like what?' Murray asked.

Ella said, ‘Help.'

*

Ella called Dennis and explained everything then called the lab and asked for the tests on the blood and the toe to be done urgently. Added an extra one, knowing it sounded like an afterthought when really it wasn't.

‘So you're thinking what, exactly?' Murray asked, but before she could explain, her mobile rang.

‘This is Imogen Davidov,' a woman said, sounding
concerned. ‘I'm a friend of Rowan Wylie's? You interviewed me on Monday?'

‘Yes, I remember,' Ella said. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘Well, I had brunch with Rowan this morning, and during it he took a call that I am almost certain came from Stacey Durham.'

*

Rowan carried Gomez into the house, calling, ‘I'm home.'

‘You brought us a dog,' Megan said in the kitchen.

Emelia ran in from the backyard and squealed.

‘Don't scare him,' Rowan said. ‘We're just minding him for a bit.'

Emelia tried to pull Gomez out of Rowan's arms.

‘Sit on the floor,' he said. She sat cross-legged, her arms out.

He crouched and let them look at each other, Gomez wagging so much his body shook, his tongue trying to reach Emelia's face. She was already giggling.

‘No squealing,' Rowan said. ‘Ready?'

She nodded, and he put Gomez into her lap. The dog jumped up on her straight away and she fell backwards laughing, the dog whining with delight in her arms.

‘How about we go outside,' Megan said. As the pair chased each other on the grass, she added, ‘Am I right in thinking I've met this dog before?'

Rowan knew she and Simon had been to a barbecue at James and Stacey's house. ‘Probably.'

‘Where did you find him?'

‘At the RSPCA. Someone left him there unconscious.'

‘How did you know to look?'

‘Just a hunch,' he said.

Gomez raced in circles around Emelia, who ran after him laughing.

‘It might be a problem when he has to go home,' Megan said.

There was a knock at the front door. Rowan looked through the back screen to the front, and saw the detectives.

*

The sun shone down from a cloudless sky as Ella watched Rowan's granddaughter play on the lawn with Gomez. The dog's hair had been cut off in patches, especially round his face, to the point where she wouldn't have recognised him. Further away, the little girl's mother pulled weeds from a vegetable patch, glancing their way as she tossed the weeds onto the lawn.

‘So Imogen told you,' Rowan said.

‘Yep,' Murray said. ‘So now you'd better tell us.'

‘I got a call asking me to go and find him.'

‘From who?' Ella asked.

‘I don't know.'

Ella looked at him. ‘That's not what Imogen said.'

‘She only heard my side of the conversation. It was a woman, but she was whispering, and she never gave her name.'

‘Did you think it was Stacey?'

‘I couldn't be sure.'

Ella gritted her teeth. ‘This woman, whoever she was, asked you not to tell anyone that she'd called. But if it was anyone but Stacey, I don't think you'd be lying to us.'

He looked at the kid and the dog.

‘Rowan,' Ella said.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It was her. She asked me not to tell anyone. She said it couldn't get out. I asked her why she didn't call you, and that I could pass on information to you, but she said I couldn't tell anyone.'

‘How did she sound?' Murray asked.

‘In a hurry. It seemed like she had to get off the phone before somebody came into the room, something like that. There was a noise in the background, and she said she had to go and hung up.'

They'd already checked, and knew that no call or text had come from Stacey's phone that morning.

‘Did the number show on your screen?' Ella asked.

‘It was blocked.' He took his phone out of his pocket and gave it to her.

‘Did she sound sick or weak?' Murray said.

He shook his head. ‘Anxious, and stressed, I guess.'

Ella scrolled through his phone to the last call received. Number blocked, as he'd said. But that only meant the number was hidden from the receiver; it was traceable once they got onto his provider.

She said, ‘What do you think is going on with her?'

‘How would I know?' he said.

‘You must've been thinking about it. You must've wondered why she'd say not to tell anyone, why she'd call you about the dog but not say anything about how you could help her.'

He looked away at Emelia. ‘I don't know why she'd do that. I asked her and she pretty much told me to shut up and listen. Made me promise her I'd get the dog.'

‘But why?' Ella said. ‘Why only that?'

‘She loves him,' Rowan said. ‘She loves that dog so much.'

‘More than herself?' Murray asked.

Ella looked again at the dog on the grass. It was pouncing on the thrown weeds. Stacey was alive, and apparently well, or reasonably so, and . . . and what?

‘Did the RSPCA people say how he got there?' she asked.

Rowan nodded. ‘A man took him in unconscious yesterday, saying he'd found him like that by the side of the road. The RSPCA vet said he'd been drugged with Valium, and his hair was cut all ragged like this and he was covered in mud.'

Ella thought of the Valium in James and Stacey's bathroom cabinet.

‘They tried to ring the man later but the phone number was disconnected.' Rowan paused. ‘Stacey told me Gomez might look different.'

‘So she knew,' Murray said.

‘She said “might”,' Rowan said.

Ella shook her head. ‘She knew.'

*

The RSPCA waiting room was busy with families clutching pet-carriers containing yowling cats, massive dogs that strained at their leads and barked like the hounds of hell, and a surly elderly man with a panicking canary in a cage in his arms. Ella and Murray had to wait while the girl at the desk helped a woman who had some creature scratching about in a cardboard box. Ella resisted the urge to push in, and had to fight not to pace the room as well. They were getting close now – she could just about smell it.

Finally the woman moved on and the girl smiled at them. Ella showed her badge and explained what they wanted.

‘That was me,' the girl said. ‘Hold on a sec.' She found someone to replace her at the desk, then took them through to an office that smelled like disinfectant. ‘He said he found the dog on the side of the road and thought it was dead before he realised it was unconscious. When I tried to call the number he'd left so I could ask if he'd noticed if the dog had vomited, it was disconnected.'

‘He left a name as well?' Ella said.

She nodded and turned to the computer on the desk, typing quickly. ‘Barry Watson.'

Ella wrote it down, along with the number the girl read out. ‘Did you think he was telling the truth?'

‘I did at the time,' the girl said. ‘I've seen people trying to surrender their pet by saying they found it, it's not theirs, but usually they seem either a bit upset or a bit shifty. He didn't seem like he was either. The other giveaway is that the animal clearly knows the person, though of course this dog was unconscious.'

‘Of course,' Ella echoed. ‘The dog had been given Valium, was that right?'

The girl nodded.

‘Is dog Valium different to human Valium?' Murray asked. ‘Could you tell which one he was given?'

The girl shook her head. ‘It's the same drug called diazepam, but it wouldn't be given to a dog unless he was having seizures or something like that.'

Ella said, ‘What did this man look like?'

‘He was white and middle-aged,' the girl said. ‘I didn't notice much else. I was more worried about the dog.'

‘What kind of clothes was he wearing?' Murray asked.

She thought. ‘It was a business-type shirt, white, I'm pretty sure, but without a tie. I remember because there was mud on the front from him carrying the dog. But I don't know what else he was wearing, like the kind of pants or shoes or whatever.'