The Naked Room (26 page)

CHAPTER 44

After Dark

Detective Senior Sergeant Susan Prescott

Saturday: 7.55pm.

Something smashed in the buildings beyond the perimeter of the estate. The night was split asunder by the blast from a shotgun. For a shocked moment, the countryside forgot to breathe.

‘Go, go!’
I shouted.

Evan and Ben ran, followed by two of our team with guns drawn. I raced beside them, trying to keep the beam of light from my torch on uneven ground. The target looked a hundred miles away.

We grouped outside the entrance to the building, waiting to see if anyone came out.

Nothing happened.

We started up the stairs, flattening ourselves against the walls. The stench of gun powder, fresh blood and faeces was overwhelming.

Nothing stirred.

‘Someone turn a light on!’ screamed one of my team from the top of the stairs. Evan fumbled around until he found the switch on the wall outside the door. Light flooded the room, revealing bodies strewn on the floor, with two men standing, dazed, one holding a shotgun. The team shouted, ‘Drop it! Get down! Down! On your face! Hands behind your backs!’

‘Jees-us, get an ambulance!’ Ben’s voice cracked with panic.

I sent out the call and squeezed through the doorway into a small room. Three dishevelled, blood-spattered men knelt on the floor. One was an old, grey-haired man, the other square-headed Tommy Esposito. The third prisoner was Ally Carpenter’s father, whom they released on my identification.

Two blood-splattered bodies lay in a heap in the corner of the room amid debris leaking from an upturned porta-potti. Sheets of blood-spattered and what was probably urine-soaked newspaper were scattered on the floor. My team whipped out surgical gloves and pulled them on. An officer carefully picked up the shotgun, put the safety catch on and bagged it.

I looked at the bodies. The one sprawled on top had been shot in the back at point blank range. Amid the bloodied mess, I could see backbone and ribs. A broken torch stuck halfway out of what looked like lumps of meat on the floor.

A groan came from underneath a stretcher which was tipped against the wall. For a split second everything stopped.

James got there first and assisted by one of my team to turn it upright. A young woman was lashed on top, legs spread-eagled, her face bruised and smeared with blood, long hair tangled and wet. She moaned again, deep in her throat. Blood had seeped through the gag in her mouth. Her camisole top was rolled to her waist, exposing bloodied breasts.

Ally Carpenter.

I skidded over and struggled to undo the gag. James knelt, trying to untie the cords binding her icy limbs. Ben thrust him aside and cut the ropes. Her eyes opened, rolled and closed without focusing. Her arms and legs flopped uselessly.

Shocked? Drugged? Probably both.

Her ashen-faced father slid down the wall to sit beside her and stroke her face. As I wrapped my coat around her, I noticed he was using his shirt as a sling. I moved to check it, but he shook his head emphatically. Turning my attention to the carnage, I recognized Briece Mochrie lying partially obscured by the shotgun victim. His features were almost unrecognisable, a slice in the side of his neck, blood oozing from his throat. Oozing—

‘Mochrie’s alive! Where’s the ambulance for God’s sake? Quick, apply pressure.’ I scrabbled in my coat pocket for a handkerchief, a scarf, anything.

My team rushed to pull the top body away. ‘Where’s the fucking ambulance, for Chrissake’s?’ someone yelled.

Sirens blasted their way through the night, surging closer as I listened. ‘Almost here,’ I yelled. Evan, calm amid the chaos, held both hands over the wound in Mo-chrie’s throat, blood trickling through his fingers.

A woman screamed above the hullaballoo. Eloise barged her way in and paused a moment to gaze in horror at the bloodbath. Seeing James sitting by Ally, she shrieked and threw herself at them. He leapt up and caught her in mid-air with one arm as she slipped, almost crash-landing on her daughter.

‘It’s all right! El! She’s alive!’
he shouted.

I couldn’t hear myself think. The sirens stopped outside the building and I stepped out of the room onto the landing. Red, white and blue lights both from emergency vehicles flashed insanely around the staircase. A gang of paramedics thundered up the stairs and promptly jammed themselves in the doorway. The smallest, a woman, squeezed through and followed a pointed finger to Mochrie. One stopped, briefly, to examine the dead man.

Within what seemed like only minutes they stretchered the cellist out of the room wrapped in a foil blanket, his face covered by an oxygen mask. A tube snaked from his arm to a bag carried by a paramedic. His head appeared scalped. Two medics attended Ally, while James occupied himself with preventing Eloise grabbing her daughter.

It was finally over, with one man killed and another so badly wounded he might not survive.

CHAPTER 45

Aftermath

Detective Senior Sergeant Susan Prescott

Sunday: 10.00am.

I arrived at the hospital, battled my way through the swarm of media and scooted behind a trolley load of flowers. James joined me as I took my place with the group of people waiting at the lifts. We called first at the ward where Eloise, suffering from shock and exhaustion, had been kept overnight,

‘Mrs Prescott, please, will you wait while we see Ally?’ she begged.

I explained that I was visiting in my official capacity and they would have to be patient while I saw their daughter alone. We helped her into a wheelchair and parked it outside Ally’s room. The forthcoming interview between parents and daughter would be interesting.

Ally Carpenter leaned back against her pillows, gazing out of the window across the city to the mountains. My heart turned over. Her face was battered and bruised, lips puffy and still seeping blood. Her eyes were blackened and swollen; one was weeping. As I watched, she dabbed at it with a wad of soft dressing. A chunk of hair had been cut from the side of her head. A cradle kept blanket pressure off her legs. She turned her head when I closed the door and watched without curiosity, as I pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.

‘I thought I’d never live to see the mountains again,’ she croaked, sizing me up out of her good eye, after I introduced myself.

‘I must admit I didn’t think you would either and I’m extremely relieved you’re safe. Do you feel up to talking to me?’

‘Yes.’ She stared at me. ‘I know you! I just know you somehow. I couldn’t believe…anyone was…searching for…me and then one night…I felt someone was looking out for me,’ she said slowly. ‘Was it you?’

‘I was very concerned for you,’ I replied carefully. ‘What night was that?’

She frowned. ‘I can’t remember. The days and nights rolled together. But I felt something, that someone had said a prayer. Does that sound quite mad?’

‘No. It doesn’t, and yes I prayed for you and sent you vibes.’

She grimaced as she tried to smile, and then reached for a glass of water on the trolley. Her nightgown fell open at the neck to reveal thick dressings over what the doctors had advised were cuts and bites on her throat and breasts.

‘Thank you. Brie? Where is he? They said he was all right now. Does that mean he’s been hurt?’ she asked fearfully, as she put the glass down having only taken an awkward sip.

‘He was badly injured and the doctors needed to operate. He’s in ICU, but he’s doing well. We didn’t save you, by the way. He did.’

‘Oh, my gosh.’ She made a feeble attempt to push the bed covers back.

‘No, stay in bed, Ally. You can see him when you’re both up to it.’

She flopped weakly back onto the pillows and I gently drew the bedclothes over her again. ‘Can you tell me what happened? Don’t worry if you can’t remember everything. The main details are important, the rest can wait. Just take it slowly and if your mouth is too sore, we can leave it until later.’

She filled in the events of the past week and was quite calm until I had to tell her of Jessica Rallison’s murder. The news of Georgie Hird’s death was even harder.

Then she asked about the kidnapping. ‘They said my father is rich. Was that the only reason?’

‘Primarily no, but they were determined to get everything they could. Do you remember one summer on Masters Island when you were twelve?’

Her eyes widened.

‘You and a group of children, including Pamela Miller, goaded a boy called Steven Henderson into climbing Wild Pony Rock. He fell and was badly injured.’

‘But he recovered!’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He was in hospital for awhile, but he got better, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, he did, but when he turned sixteen he committed suicide.’

‘No. Surely not.’ She looked horrified.

I took her hand in mine. ‘Apparently, Steven was always a mentally fragile child and an unstable teenager. I won’t pretend the accident didn’t have a bearing on that. He needed to wear a calliper permanently on his leg from the injuries he received on the rock, but it wasn’t the only factor. He was brutally tormented at school and his parents’ divorce was extremely traumatic for him. His mother blamed you for his disability, which she insists was the only reason he committed suicide. She was unable to accept that her son had mental problems long before the accident, and that his parent’s behaviour contributed to his troubles. In consequence, he didn’t receive the psychiatric care which may well have saved him.’

‘It was the day of the Teddy Bear’s picnic to raise money for the community hall,’ said Ally, sadly. ‘We’d eaten and the adults told us to go off and play. We didn’t go far at first, but we ended up on the beach at Wild Pony Rock. We had all been told to stay away from it, but,’ her mouth twisted with self disgust. ‘we didn’t listen. We started daring each other to climb it and then I picked on Steven—’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘And I—he—’

‘Ally, you were a child.’

‘That doesn’t excuse what I did. I was twelve and should have known better. Pam tried to stop me, but of course, I wouldn’t listen.’

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed gently. ‘Who else knew about it, Ally?’

‘Everyone who was there, all of the people who live on the island. I got into terrible trouble, we all did, and the police gave me a good talking to. Mum—’ words appeared to fail her.

‘We’re satisfied we have the whole story now,’ I said, mentally wincing.

June Esposito arrived home as her husband and father were being loaded into the police van. We watched in amazement as the woman collapsed into screaming meltdown. Deprived of her opportunity to wreak revenge on Ally, the discovery that her stepson Angelo, with whom she was totally besotted, had been blasted to death with the shotgun by her panicked father, sent her over the edge of sanity.

Beyond caution, she couldn’t tell us about the plan fast enough, after which it took four burly police officers to hold her for the paramedics to plunge a sedative injection into her buttock. Her shrieked invectives faded as the ambulance bore her away.

At the station, June Esposito’s father, Robert Fox, filled us in on the details. Tommy Esposito hid behind the time-honoured, ‘No comment.’

‘She’s right. I was to blame for Steven being crippled,’ Ally said, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’ve had nightmares about it for years. I’ll never forgive myself. And Georgie and Jess are dead because of what I did.’

‘Tommy Esposito killed Georgie. Angelo was Jess’s new boyfriend and he murdered her. We haven’t got the full story yet, but enough to know the basics.’ I didn’t think Ally needed then to hear how her friend died or that she had been pregnant.

‘Angelo?’

‘Yes, he was the one who attacked you last night.’

‘Scarpia. That’s what I called him.’ She shuddered and pulled the sheet tighter against her chest.

‘Scarpia?’

‘Yes, from the opera, Tosca.’ She went on to explain that Scarpia, the evil agent of police raped Tosca, the heroine. He was a brute and they all died in the end. I wasn’t sure I was best pleased about the analogy of the police behaving so badly, but my concerns were more immediate.

‘Did Angelo rape you, Ally?’ I asked.

‘No, but he would have if Brie hadn’t got in and saved me.’

Relieved, I told her what we knew so far, including Jessica’s collusion in her kidnapping.

‘Jessica pointed you out to the Esposito’s in Traynor’s that night.’

‘I didn’t realise she hated me enough to actually do that. We weren’t getting along while we lived in the UK, you know, but I thought we were friends again.’

‘Did you tell Jessica about Steven’s accident sometime?’

‘Yes, Pam, Jess and I talked about it one night in London when we were getting stuck into the wine.’

I recounted the rest of the events as matter-of-factly as possible. ‘Tommy Esposito married Steven’s mother, June, after her divorce. It was her idea to kidnap you and make their fortune. Tommy was having an affair with Ms Hird and one night when she had too much to drink, she told him your father’s name. June Esposito saw the advertisement for household staff which your father placed in Brisbane Courier Mail and came up with the idea for herself, Angelo and her father, Robert, to apply. Tommy obtained false employment records for them and they presented themselves as a package deal. Actually, they were very lucky to get taken on as a group, but as is so often the case, the devil looks after his own.’

I paused. If Ally showed signs of being too tired I would stop, but she appeared to be holding up.

‘After Tommy killed Ms Hird because she realised he was involved in your kidnapping, he made a play for Mrs Miller, your mum’s friend. Of course, he knew it was the perfect opportunity for him to find out what your parents and the police were doing. She didn’t know he was anything but what he presented himself to be, a new lover.’

I didn’t tell her they sent Georgie’s ear with Ally’s earring in it gift-wrapped to her parents. She would find out soon enough about that.

‘They were never going to let me go. A man with a weird-shaped head, told me I was going to die.’

Tommy Esposito. Nice. Tears welled up and her mouth wobbled, but she continued stoically. ‘Then Scar-pia came up there last night, and forced me to kiss his— ugh. I kept trying to fight and turn my face away, but he gagged me and punched me a lot.’ She looked at me, shame-faced. I knew the doctors had taken scrapings from inside her mouth to test for Hep B or venereal disease.
Dear God, please let it be negative
.

‘I should have fought harder.’

‘You wouldn’t have stood a chance with him if you had,’ I said bracingly, an image of Jessica’s murdered body flashing into my mind.

‘He was about to r-rape me,’ she repeated.

I stood up, leaned over the bed, gently clasped her fragile, trembling body in my arms and explained why Angelo could never hurt her again.

‘But why me? Why should I be alive and three people dead? First Steven, then Georgie and Jess, all gone because of me.’

‘They’re not dead because of you, Ally. Each one of them made a decision for which he or she was responsible. What is going to be the hard part for you is making sense of what happened.’

We shared a moment of understanding before I gave her more news. ‘Your parents are out there waiting to come in. Are you ready to meet your father?’ I heard the whole story from James the night before.

She nodded nervously.

‘I’ll go out and send them in. Talk to you later.’ But as I turned to leave the room, someone knocked softly on the door. Ally sat up straight, smoothed her hair back from her face and took a deep breath.

‘Come in.’