Tell the Truth (26 page)

‘Thanks for your time,' Ella said.

They went out the front and Dimitri called the anxious patient through. Ella waited until the surgery door was closed, then asked Zaina the same question about who she'd spoken to.

‘My girlfriend who arrived when you were at my house, because she wanted to know what was going on,' Zaina said. ‘I didn't give her details though. And then the husband, James. He came to my house last night.'

The hair on the back of Ella's neck started to rise. ‘What did he say?'

‘He told me who he was, though I'd already recognised him from the news and the photo you guys showed me. I could see in his face that he recognised me too. He said he was trying to remember something specific that Stacey had said when they were here. He said he felt like it was there in his head but he just couldn't catch it, and he thought I might be able to remember. I said I didn't remember anything except her asking about an appointment. He said he knew that much, he'd talked to you two about that, about what I told you and where I lived, but he thought she'd said something about where she had to go later that day.'

Ella thought about that. ‘But you're sure she only talked about the appointment?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘How did he respond when you said that?'

‘Okay. Just puzzled, like he was still trying to remember,' she said.

‘Then what?' Murray asked.

‘He asked to use the bathroom, and I said sure, then he came back out and said thanks and left.' She looked at their faces. ‘That was okay that I talked to him, wasn't it? I figured, you know, he's the husband, and you guys told him you'd talked to me and everything, so it had to be fine.'

The front door opened and an elderly woman stumped in, a walking stick in one hand and a patent black handbag in the other. ‘Toothache,' she barked. ‘Need the dentist.'

‘We'll get out of your hair,' Murray said to Zaina, and he and Ella walked outside.

On the footpath, Ella faced him. ‘So James knew about Zaina, but not about the dentist or the bike guy.'

‘Did you leave them out of your notes?'

‘No, they're all there, all typed into the system.'

‘Perhaps he hasn't got around to them yet.'

‘I don't think that's it,' she said, hurrying to the car. ‘Call Dennis, tell him we're going to Dural. And get him to send people to see the jealous paramedic and Esther Cooper and Willetts. Then call Watmough again.'

TWENTY-SIX

B
y the time they arrived at Steve Lynch's place in Dural, Murray had left another two messages on Abby Watmough's phone and had none back.

Steve Lynch was twisting a post-hole digger into the soil. He wore khaki shorts and the same grubby Blundstones, and his shirt hung over the gate. He glanced up but didn't stop working as they got out of the car.

‘Mr Lynch,' Murray said.

‘What now?'

‘Can you stop for a moment?'

He heaved the digger out of the hole and knocked the compacted earth and stones out against a tree. His back was tanned, and sweat glistened along the hollow of his spine and in his chest hair when he faced them. Ella glanced past his house at the dog runs and saw the Alsatians sitting silently in a row behind the wire, watching.

‘Been talking to anyone about our visit?' she said.

‘Why? Was it a national secret?'

‘Yes or no?'

He brushed dirt from his arm. ‘Only the husband. What's his name? James.'

‘What happened?' Murray asked.

‘He turned up here last night, said who he was, then started saying how he'd talked to you and knew you'd been here, and he wanted to follow up on something about Stacey. He started asking questions about what I remembered from the last time I saw her, and I thought that was odd because we'd only talked online and on the phone.'

‘What did you tell him?' Ella asked.

‘Just that,' he said. ‘That I hadn't seen her, that she hadn't seemed real happy when I told her she was spoiling the dog, that that was ages ago and I hadn't so much as thought of her until the both of you turned up.'

‘How did he react?'

‘A bit annoyed, frankly. He asked a few more questions – was I sure I hadn't seen her, whatever – and I said I had stuff to do. He asked to use the loo before he left. I said there's a public one in the park down the road. He said he'd only be a minute, but I said no and told him to get on his way.'

‘You didn't want him in your house?'

‘I like my privacy.'

‘Are you sure he was who he said he was?' Ella asked. ‘Had you seen him on the news?'

‘Nope. I don't see any reason why he'd lie. And he said you'd told him that you'd been here.'

Murray got out the photo of James Durham. ‘Look anything like this?'

‘Yep,' Lynch said. ‘That's him.
Same smarmy smile.
'

Ella glanced at the silent dogs again, then at the house. ‘Mind if I use your bathroom?'

‘That's a joke, right?' Lynch said.

‘Not even slightly.'

He put his hands on his hips. Dirt marked the creases in his knuckles and ringed his fingernails. ‘Going to have a little snoop while you're in there?'

‘Why? You hiding anything?'

He snorted air and looked across at his neighbour's property where a woman in a white dress was vacuuming leaves from a tennis court. ‘Snoop away. What do I care?'

The inside of the house was cool and dim. The floor was polished timber, the walls white, the venetians on the windows turned to block the light but not the breeze. Ella looked into each room in turn: lounge with two armchairs, one pushed back and the other in front of the TV, under which a gaming console blinked green lights; two bedrooms, one Lynch's judging by the framed dog certificates and photos, the other spare, dust rising from the blue quilt when she touched it. A third room served as an office, with a desk and humming computer, more certificates and ribbons on the walls, and a filing cabinet containing training records. The bathroom was unrenovated, neat and plain. She flushed without using the toilet, washed her hands, then went into the kitchen at the back of the house. Plain brown Laminex, white bread in a bag on the bench, plate and cutlery in the sink. Out the window she could see the dogs staring back at her. Next to the runs stood a large corrugated-iron shed. Lynch had said to snoop away, so she opened the back door and went out.

The dogs didn't move, but as she drew nearer she became aware of a deep rumbling growl, a five-dog sound that seemed to start considerably lower than their throats. She walked past the pens, looking at them sideways. Their eyes were fixed, unblinking, on her, and the growl intensified. She fought the urge to run.

‘Find anything yet?' Lynch called.

He and Murray were watching her from their spot near the gate. She raised a hand oh-so-casually and kept walking.

A padlock hung open through the hasp on the shed door. She removed it and pulled the door open. An ex-ambulance painted blue was parked in the centre, and she opened the back doors to see the space had been converted into a number of dog crates. A photo of a sitting Alsatian and Lynch's name and mobile phone number were plastered on both sides of the vehicle, and again in smaller font on the two front doors. Shovels, bags of fertiliser, containers of oil, a ride-on mower, lengths of timber, fence posts, bags of concrete and rolls of fencing wire took up the rest of the garage space.

She stepped out to an instant resumption of growling, rehooked the lock through the hasp, and walked back to the front gate.

‘No bodies?' Lynch said. ‘No missing women? How odd.'

Ella placed her card on the top of the post. ‘Give us a call if James comes back.'

They got in the car and Ella started the engine,
feeling Lynch's eyes on her.

‘Call Dennis,' she said to Murray. ‘See if he's found out yet where else James has been.'

She drove five minutes down the road, then pulled over.

‘Okay, great,' Murray said into his phone. ‘Thanks.' He hung up. ‘Lamarr, the jealous paramedic, got a visit from James. Cooper and Willetts didn't. The Pendle Hill crim isn't home but one of the neighbours said that a man saying he was James had come to their door and asked if they knew anything about Stacey.'

Ella got out her notebook and looked back through it, working out the timeline, thinking over the steps. She said, ‘James didn't go to the people we talked to, but the places we went.'

‘I don't get it.'

‘We went to Zaina Khan's house, to Steve Lynch's house, to Christine Lamarr's house. James went back to all of them.'

‘We went to Dimitri's place too, but James didn't talk to him.'

‘But when did we do that?'

Murray looked confused.

Her heart beating hard, Ella got out and climbed in the back, feeling in the pockets on the backs of the front seats, in the cup holders in the back doors, down the back of the seat itself. She felt something, pushed harder to grasp it.

‘What are you doing?' Murray said.

She pulled out a plastic device as big as her thumb. ‘He was sitting back here alone after The Gap. He's been tracking us. He talked to the neighbours as well because he couldn't tell exactly which house we'd gone to.'

‘Because?'

‘Because,' Ella said, ‘he thinks we're going to find her, and he wants to find her first.'

*

On the drive back from Ryde, where Abby'd collected some things from a homewares store while Paris trotted Lucy around a nearby park in her stroller, Paris finally stopped thinking about working nightshift that night, poor dead Mr Leary and missing Stacey, and let herself imagine that she was part of this family. She couldn't decide the configuration though – whether Lucy, asleep in the back seat, was her little sister or cousin or niece, or whether Abby was her sister or aunt or her mother.

‘What are you smiling at?' Abby said.

‘Nothing.'

Abby smiled back.

Paris thought she heard a low vibration. She checked her own phone but she had no missed calls. ‘Is your phone on silent?'

‘No, why?'

‘I heard something vibrate,' Paris said. ‘Sounded like a missed call on a muted phone.'

‘Wasn't mine.' Abby glanced in the mirror. ‘Lucy, was it yours?' Lucy slept on. ‘Guess not.'

When they pulled up in the driveway, Lucy woke and started to cry.

‘Damn,' Abby said. ‘I hoped she'd stay asleep. I'm going to have to keep driving. Or take her out in the stroller.'

‘I could take her out,' Paris said.

‘You really want to?'

‘It's a nice afternoon.'

‘Okay then. Why not? Thanks.'

Five minutes later, Lucy was strapped in and chewing a rusk, and Paris was proceeding down the footpath through the afternoon sunshine. Just like a big sister, she thought. Or an aunt. Or a mother herself.

She tried but failed to imagine her own mother ever having pushed her along the street like this, and decided, savings or no savings, it was definitely time to move out. She straightened her shoulders and lengthened her stride. She would find a share house or something. Assuming that she kept her job, of course. She could scrape up her bond, she could manage rent too. And food and bills. She pictured a couple of friendly girls, other paramedics or nurses maybe, cops were good too, and they'd sit around and watch TV in the evenings and tell stories about their days. They'd share cooking and maybe the house was near a cool Thai place and maybe a funky pub, she'd always fancied having a local though she didn't drink much, and oh yeah with an awesome beer garden, not like something in an RSL, all white plastic chairs, but like one you'd see in ads for Melbourne, full of laughing happy people, a place where you'd make friends as easily as tripping over.

And the job would be okay too. Away from her mother she'd do better, and she'd get some counselling and sort out this frightened thing once and for all. She'd trust people and not be scared to tell them how she felt.

She smiled into the stroller and found that Lucy had fallen asleep, the rusk in one loose fist. She turned a corner and headed back, easing the stroller over bumps so as not to wake her.

As for Mr Leary . . . she would tell Rowan what happened. They would talk it over. If he wanted to report her, that was okay.

Coming back to the house, she crossed the street and levered the stroller up the kerb, then followed the path to the front door. It was closed. She turned the knob but found it locked.

She tapped on the frame. ‘Abby?'

There was no answer.

The car was still in the driveway, so she hadn't driven anywhere. Paris went back to the street and looked both ways, thinking she might've wanted to catch up with them on their walk, but there was nobody in sight. Maybe she was in the bathroom.

Paris knocked on the door again. Lucy twitched in the stroller, her mouth open, her eyes closed. Paris heard a noise. Something – or someone – banging.

She pressed her ear to the door and heard it again. ‘Abby?'

A cry.

The front door was solid, the lock firm. Paris grabbed the stroller and ran to the side of the house, fumbled the gate latch with clammy hands and got through. The back door was closed but unlocked, and she burst in, hefting the stroller in after her with Lucy jolted awake and wailing.

Abby lay covered in blood in the doorway to Lucy's room.

Paris dropped to her knees, hands shaking, heart racing. Abby gasped for air, blood on her lips, blood soaking through her shirt. Paris lifted the shirt and saw a gaping wound in the right side of her chest, a wound that leaked blood like a hose, that sucked inwards as Abby breathed in and closed off as she breathed out.

Panicked, Paris tried to think.
Cover the hole!

She pressed the palm of her hand over it, sealing it off as best she could. The blood flowed between her fingers like hot oil. Abby grasped her wrist and stared into her eyes like she was dying.

Paris screamed for help.

*

Ella parked outside
Abby Watmough's house
and looked past Murray. ‘Car's there anyway.'

‘You hear something?' Murray said.

‘Like what?'

The front door flew open and Paris burst out, blood on her hands, screaming like it was the end of the world. Ella ran across the lawn as Paris disappeared back inside. Whatever had happened had only just happened. The neighbours were just now starting to look out their windows and step out their doors.

‘Help!' Paris screamed.

Ella went in with her hand on her weapon and Murray two steps behind. ‘Police,' she shouted.

‘Help! Help me!'

Ella followed the sound, and found Paris kneeling by a panting and blood-soaked Abby on the hall floor. The baby howled in her stroller nearby.

‘Call an ambulance,' Paris said. Blood spotted her face and coated her hands, which were pressed to Abby's ribs. ‘And get me some plastic wrap from the kitchen.'

Pulling out his phone, Murray dashed off.

‘Help me sit her up straight,' Paris said. ‘It'll make it easier for her to breathe.'

Ella crouched and between them they pulled Abby into a sitting position against the doorframe.

‘James took Stacey,' Abby gasped, then coughed wetly.

‘How long ago?' Ella said.

‘Ten, fifteen minutes.' She sucked air.

‘Okay,' Ella said, taking out her phone, pressing the button to dial the office. ‘Did he do this to you?'

She nodded. ‘Big knife.'

‘Did he hurt your baby, or Stacey?'

Abby gave a half-shake of her head. ‘Yelling about computer. Stacey hid it. In the roof.' She gripped Paris's wrist in her own blood-soaked hand and grimaced in pain.

‘The baby and I were out,' Paris said.

‘Orchard, Homicide,' Dennis answered.

‘James has Stacey,' Ella said. ‘He stabbed Abby Watmough and left ten or fifteen minutes ago. The laptop's apparently still here.'

‘Okay,' he said. ‘Alert's going out on his car now, and I'll get people on their way.'

Murray was back with the box of plastic wrap. ‘Ambulance is coming.'

‘Tear off a piece as big as my hand,' Paris barked.