Violent Exposure (24 page)

‘Eugh.’ She flicked her fingers at him. ‘Kiss can wait then.’

Upstairs, he shoved the bag in his end of the wardrobe and heaped his shoes on top.

In the shower, he stood turning the soap as the stream bounced off the back of his neck.

The problem was that Jo was so smart. Even in her grief she would’ve noticed any talk on the news of
them getting back pay, especially as much as this. It meant a bunch more rounds of IVF. Of course she’d’ve noticed.

She wasn’t likely to accept an inheritance story, nor one of a stranger’s generosity.

She knew he wasn’t into gambling, and when would he have had time to nip into the casino anyway? And even if he’d entered then won Lotto, he was sure they didn’t pay out in plastic-wrapped used
bills.

He rolled the soap over and over and failed to come up with even one more option, apart from the truth.

He tried to imagine saying it.

Hey honey, look at this money I stole on a job today!

Hey honey, wouldn’t it be great if money from drug deals could be put to good purpose?

Hey honey, this doesn’t smell like death, does it? Good, cos let me tell you where I found it . . .

He turned
the taps off with a jerk.

She was going to flip.

*

The tape was tight across Connor’s eyes but his tears still squeezed out. He wept silently, and when he felt the movement of air against his wet cheeks he knew the whisperer was back. He sucked his dry cheeks and spat.

The whisperer slapped the back of his head.

Connor’s ears rang. ‘Fuck off.’

‘So rude.’ The whisper was right beside his
face, the breath hot on his cheek. ‘Is that the mouth you kissed your wife with?’

Connor flung his head sideways again and thrust upwards with his feet, trying to hit the whisperer any way he could. But there was only space and too-tight bindings.

Suzanne had been trying to tell him something, there on the floor, but the whisperer had kicked him away. Full of fury he’d tried to retaliate but
the drug put a barrier between his thoughts and his body and tilted the room, and when he lurched to his feet he managed only one step before falling against Emil, who was cowering and weeping against the wall.

The whisperer had pressed the gun to Connor’s head. He hadn’t cared. If he got shot, somebody would hear and call the police. It didn’t matter if he was dead, as long as Suzanne was saved.
But he couldn’t make his limbs obey – couldn’t raise his arms to grab the gun, couldn’t even stumble back to Suzanne, gasping on the floor.

The whisperer shoved the gun under Emil’s chin and made him help Connor across the kitchen. Connor looked into Emil’s eyes and saw distress, but distance too, his pupils tiny, his mind retreating from what was going on. He was on a drug too, but something
else. ‘Help me,’ he’d said as Emil hauled him stumbling across the room, but the boy said nothing.

The whisperer had grabbed the tea towel from the stove rail and the car keys from the hook on the wall and made Emil open the back door. Connor struggled to look back at Suzanne, her head lolling, her hands slipping to her sides, her bare feet moving only slowly now in the blood. The whisperer slapped
him then pressed the knife handle into his palm, closing his fingers around it. He’d tried his hardest to tighten his grip and raise his arm and ram the knife deep into the whisperer’s chest but his muscles wouldn’t respond. He tried to move his shoulder, swing the knife that way, but managed only to lose his balance, falling outside into the ivy on the wall then onto Suzanne’s potted basil.
The knife clattered from his hand.

The whisperer picked up the knife with the tea towel and pushed Emil to the ground beside Connor.

‘Remember what I promised,’ he hissed at Emil, then walked around the corner of the house onto the driveway. Connor saw the sensor lights come on as if through a haze and heard the crunch of the pebbles under the whisperer’s feet.

‘Scream for help,’ he mumbled
to Emil. His mouth felt loose and numb.

‘He’ll kill me.’

‘Think he won’t anyway?’

‘He promised he’ll let me go.’

Connor heard the whisperer coming back. ‘For Suzanne!’

But Emil squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his bound hands to his ears, then the whisperer was back and hauled him to his feet.

He’d made Emil help Connor to the car and shove him into the back. Connor fell in, unable to
stop his head hitting the door, and the blow and the drug and the beer had sent him to some dark place where he was only vaguely aware of Emil being pushed into the front seat, and the movement of the car as the whisperer drove them away from the house.

‘So how are you?’ the whisperer hissed now. ‘Desperate yet? How’s it feel to pray to somebody or something to save you and then realise that
no help is coming?’ The voice got close, the man’s breath hot and oily on his ear. ‘How’s it feel to understand that you are completely on your own?’

Connor threw his head sideways again and hit the man’s face. He heard a grunt then a fist smashed into his ear with tremendous fury. The world spun. Connor fought to stay conscious. His ear rang and his head throbbed and he thought he might throw
up, but he struggled to pull himself together. He had to work this out.

Suzanne had recognised this man. How did they know each other? Was he one of the other guys she’d slept with – one that she’d never brought up in their arguments?

He swallowed hard against his nausea. ‘Were you jealous? Is that why you did this?’

No answer.

‘Because if anyone had the right to be jealous it was me.’

Silence.

Then little plastic snaps: the sound of a new bottle of water being opened. His mouth ached for it.

‘I know you’re thirsty,’ the man whispered. ‘How does that suffering feel?’

Connor could hear him drinking. He felt weak and dizzy with thirst and rage and grief. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘What could I possibly want from you?’

‘You want to kill me?’ Connor said. ‘Then do it. Be a man and
do it.’

A chuckle, then a chilling whisper. ‘All in good time.’

*

Ella parked in her driveway and turned off the engine. The neighbour’s palm trees were black against the purple sky and the air smelled of watered gardens and somewhere close by two little kids were laughing fit to burst, but she felt dull and lifeless amongst it all.

The end-of-day meeting had felt like nothing more than a
matter of crossing items off an endless list. Inspection of the Crawfords’ phone records had revealed nothing pertinent. Inquiries among private investigators had found that nobody had the job from Suzanne of finding out about Connor’s background, none saying they’d so much as had a query from anyone like her about anything like that. The warrant for the hospital records of the blond man seen with
Suzanne in the Emergency Department was still caught up in red tape. There were no more images from the RTA cameras, and checks into the seemingly edgy passenger flying to New Zealand had revealed him to be just some citizen. Detectives had visited Emil’s mother but she hadn’t heard from him in months. Ella had spoken about her concern for both Emil and Brooke, and people had taken their details
and photos and a couple of nightshift detectives were going to contact Brooke’s friends, but nobody seemed too buzzed.

It was all enough to make you weep.

She hauled her tired bones from the car and walked along the side of her house. It was a Federation-era house that had been split into two, and she owned the back half while deaf computer programmer Denzil owned the front. The roses Wayne
had planted months ago were still alive, barely. Her lawn was getting long and straggly. Usually her dad came around to mow but it’d been a while now, she realised.

A long while.

And he hadn’t even mentioned it. Usually he talked about how he’d come round soon, he was going to get right to it, but she couldn’t remember the last time he’d said a single word about it.

Perhaps he thought Wayne
had taken it on. It was a plausible explanation, because she hadn’t said anything to them about how she’d been feeling towards Wayne lately. They must’ve guessed though, she thought now: she hadn’t taken him there for dinner for a few weeks and didn’t talk about him any more either.

Maybe they had guessed and were staying out of it.

Or maybe they had something else on their minds.

In her house
she dropped her bag on the table, undressed and got in the shower, wondering whether she could go to Dr Thompson’s surgery herself and find out what was going on. Or whether, if she passed on her name to Dennis to give to his wife, Donna, they could somehow help. If only she knew a doctor herself . . . But she did, she realised with a flush. Callum McLennan. Doctor, MP and cousin of Tim Pieters,
the teenager whose twenty-year-old murder she’d cracked while in the Unsolved unit. She and Callum had clicked during the investigation – really clicked, she remembered now – but her discovery that the killer was another member of his family had ended that quick smart. No way he would welcome her back into his life.

She turned off the water and got out of the shower.

She was in her dressing
gown, staring into the fridge, when there was a knock at the door.

She checked the peephole. Wayne. She breathed out then turned the lock.

He held out a bunch of pink and white flowers. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’ She gestured for him to come in. He leaned in for a kiss first. She gave him one but felt nothing.

They sat on the lounge.

‘How’s the case?’

She yawned. ‘Exhausting.’

He pulled her close and
tried to press her head down onto his shoulder. She sat back a little.

‘You okay?’

‘Tired.’

‘Fancy a backrub?’

She said, ‘We need to talk.’

‘You can talk while I’m rubbing your back.’

‘It won’t go anywhere, you know.’

He smiled. ‘I know, and it’s fine.’

You say that now.
‘I mean it.’

‘I know,’ he said again.

She turned around and he smoothed his hands down her back then dug his fingers
into her shoulder muscles.

‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry.’

‘How’s Bankstown?’

‘Still there,’ he said. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

She stared at the wall. ‘I don’t know if this is going anywhere.’

‘This?’

‘Us.’

His hands didn’t slow. ‘Does it need to be going somewhere? We could just enjoy what we have and not worry about the rest.’

‘But you want more.’

‘Who says?’

‘You say that you love me.’

‘So?’

Her face grew hot. She was glad she had her back to him. ‘I don’t know if I love you.’

He pressed his thumbs into her neck muscles. ‘You say that as if it’s a secret.’

‘I should’ve told you before,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

He turned her to face him and rubbed her upper arms. ‘Like I said, it was no secret.’

She pulled back. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘You mean you’re not sure if you
want me.’

‘It’s the whole relationship thing,’ she said. ‘It’s the . . . just all of it.’

He lifted her hair out of her eyes. ‘Tell me.’

She stood up. ‘I just have to sort out my head.’ His gaze made her self-conscious. ‘I feel like I don’t know anything any more.’

He said, ‘That’s not what I see in your eyes.’

Her mobile rang. She went out to the lounge room to get it and saw Dennis’s number
on the screen.

‘Uniform on the south coast picked up Stewart Bridges,’ he said. ‘He’s in custody and on his way back up.’

A break at last. ‘How long?’

‘Hour and a half maybe.’

‘I’m on my way.’

Wayne hadn’t moved.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

‘Straightaway?’

‘Yes.’

She walked to the door and opened it.

He went out and turned on the step and put one hand on the frame. ‘Good luck tonight.’

‘Thanks.’

His fingers went white as he squeezed the jamb.

‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ she said before he could say anything more, and closed the door gently in his face.

*

Connor sagged in the chair, his shoulders drooping forward as far as the tape would allow. He couldn’t think any more. He couldn’t work anything out. He was losing feeling in his hands and feet and no longer struggled
against the tape. His lips were dry and gummy and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

‘Emil,’ he croaked, but there was no reply.

He’d lost all track of time. Had he been here a day or two or fifty? Had he dozed off? How long since the whisperer had left? Had Emil woken up and left? Without him?

He felt suddenly that he was alone, not only here in this room but in the whole world. Emil
had woken and crept away and left him there. Outside, something had happened and though Suzanne had survived the stabbing (
please God
) it didn’t matter because the world had turned upside down and there was nobody left to look for him and he would never be found. He was going to sit here in his own mess until he died of thirst.

Connor wept for Suzanne, great choking sobs that hurt his chest and
throat, but his eyes were dry. His dehydration was getting worse. He felt the movement of air against his injured face and sucked his parched cheeks and spat. When the darkness didn’t retaliate, he shouted and screamed, begged God to help him, called for Suzanne, called for anyone, anyone, please help! He promised to make everything right for real this time, to stop stalling and just tell her.
She loved him and would forgive him. He wept her name and bargained and pleaded and prayed, and at the end of it all, when he slumped exhausted in the chair, he was still alone in the dark, alone and afraid.

Then the whisper of air against his face and a slap to his forehead. ‘Shut your whingeing.’

Connor hauled himself together. ‘Fuck you.’

There was movement across the floor. Connor tried
to imagine what was going on.

The man inhaled sharply. ‘Fuck.’

‘Something wrong?’

‘Fuck, oh fuck!’ The hiss was suddenly in his face, so close he felt the breath of each word. ‘This is your fault.’