Violent Exposure (31 page)

‘I think that you’re going to give me money,’ Aidan said. ‘Five grand will do. If you don’t give it to me, I’ll tell. There’s nothing you can do in return. You have no proof that I stole a single thing but the mere existence of the money proves that you did.’

‘You don’t think people will wonder how come
you
suddenly have money?’

‘I work two jobs
and I go to the casino,’ Aidan said. ‘Nobody will wonder a thing.’

Mick’s head was spinning. ‘You little rat.’

‘I’ll be sitting pretty,’ Aidan said. ‘I’ll be the honest trainee who struggled with the truth but in the end couldn’t tolerate the actions of his corrupt training officer. I’ll say your complaints about me were because I didn’t want to take part in your dishonesty.’ He paused. ‘Carly
will come under scrutiny too, of course.’

Mick’s blood boiled in his veins. ‘You fucking bastard.’

‘Six thousand.’

‘You evil little –’

‘Seven thousand.’

Mick stopped.

Aidan opened his hands. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

Mick stormed up the stairs.

Jo lurked on the landing. ‘You okay?’

He went past her into the bedroom. He opened the wardrobe, shoved the shoes aside and hauled out the bag
of money. He dropped it on the bed beside Jo and she gasped. He counted out seven thousand dollars, said, ‘I love you, baby, and I’ll be back to explain in a minute,’ then stamped downstairs.

At the front door he rammed the money into Aidan’s chest and leaned in close. ‘Say a word of this to anyone, you will regret it.’ He grabbed Aidan’s collar and shoved him away.

Aidan stumbled off the step
then turned, stuffing the money in his jacket, and mock-saluted him. ‘Thanks, boss.’

Mick slammed the door so hard a framed photograph of Jo fell off the wall.

He stood for a moment with his hand on the lock, then rehooked the photo and started slowly up the stairs.

Jo hadn’t come down to see if he was okay. She hadn’t come even halfway down to meet him.

He approached the bedroom door feeling
like his world was about to implode.

*

Her mother opened the door. ‘Ella, darling, come in. Did you bring Wayne?’

‘He’s busy,’ Ella said. The house was warm and smelled of chicken soup. ‘Actually, I don’t know if he is or not. We’re kind of not seeing each other much any more.’

‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Netta took her bag and her keys and tried to lead her towards the lounge. ‘Are you okay?’

Ella
stayed on her feet. ‘I’m fine. Where’s Dad?’

‘Having a sleep.’ Netta went into the kitchen. ‘I’m going to feed him when he wakes up. Are you hungry?’

Ella followed. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I knew you’d be able to smell the difference,’ Netta said. ‘It’s more oregano, less thyme. The snails are out of control.’

‘I’m talking about Dad.’

‘He’s sleeping.’ She lifted the lid off the pot on the stove
and stirred. ‘Didn’t I just say that?’

‘Mum.’

‘Get the bread out, will you?’

‘Mum,’ Ella said. ‘Look at me.’

‘If I turn away from this it’ll burn.’

‘It won’t,’ Ella said. ‘Mum. Look at me.’

Netta put the lid back on the pot and turned down the heat. ‘Don’t blame me if it’s ruined.’

Ella said, ‘What’s wrong with Dad?’

Netta wiped her hands on a tea towel then hung it back on the stove.
‘Dr Thompson doesn’t know.’

‘What?’

‘They did blood tests and that scan and an X-ray the same day and nobody can tell us what’s wrong.’

Ella sat down.

‘They can tell us some of the things it’s not,’ Netta said. ‘It’s not diabetes, it’s not high blood pressure, he hasn’t had a heart attack.’

Ella felt sick. ‘Is Dr Thompson sending you to a specialist?’

‘She said she would if she knew which
one to send us to.’

‘Maybe you should see another GP,’ Ella said. ‘Get a second opinion.’ Netta shook her head. ‘She said she’ll get to the bottom of it. She’s waiting for more results. Some fancy blood test. Takes a while.’

Something chimed in the bedroom. Netta hopped to her feet. ‘I gave him a glass and a spoon to ding it with when he woke up. Mind the soup for me?’

Ella went to the stove.
Steam rose into her face when she lifted the lid. She stirred the soup, watching risoni swirl, and listened to her parents murmur.

Shep had told her that Suzanne had said everything would be fine.

You’re listening to a grieving man who thinks he hears his daughter’s ghost?

She moved the pot off the hotplate and went into her parents’ bedroom. ‘I want you to see another GP.’

Her father lay
propped on three pillows, his wispy grey hair standing up, a smile on his face. ‘I’m fine,
carina
.’

‘They don’t know that.’

‘I know how I feel,’ he said. ‘I’m getting old, I don’t eat like I used to, of course I’m losing weight.’ He patted the side of the bed but Ella wouldn’t sit.

‘I want you to see another doctor.’

‘I like Dr Laura.’

‘She doesn’t know what’s wrong.’

‘Because she’s still
waiting for the results.’

Netta said, ‘I told her that already.’

Franco nodded. ‘Ella, these things take time.’

‘What have you got to lose?’

‘I trust Dr Laura,’ he said. ‘I know she will work it out.’

If only Callum was here
 . . .

‘I’m fine.’ Her father took her hand. ‘Don’t worry about me. Focus on your case.’

Ella was embarrassed to feel a lump rise in her throat and tears prick her eyes.

‘Yes,’ Netta said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Her father rings me.’ She looked at Franco, her eyes starting to well up. ‘He’s just like you.’ And she burst into tears.

*

Jo pointed to the foot of the bed. ‘Sit down.’

Mick did so and reached to touch her knee. ‘I wanted to tell you sooner –’

‘Why did you give some to Aidan?’

‘He’s blackmailing me. If I didn’t give it to him he was going to tell the
service.’

‘So you found it at work?’

‘On a job, yes,’ he said. ‘Found it. Or stole it. From a dead drug dealer.’

She raised her hand to stop him. ‘Don’t look at me for a moment.’

He turned his gaze on the floor but could see from the corner of his eye that she sat neatly erect with her hands folded in her lap. Her thinking pose. He felt her eyes on the side of his face and he blushed. ‘I’m
sorry.’

‘Shush,’ she said, but without anger. ‘Go down and make me a cup of tea, please.’

In the kitchen, he turned the jug on, put a teabag and two sugars in a mug, and got out the milk. He went to the bottom of the stairs but could hear nothing. He stared unseeing out the dark window as the jug boiled up, then poured the water with a shaking hand.

In the bedroom, Jo had taken the money out
of the plastic and set it out in neat piles and rows on the bed. ‘Twenty-two thousand, five hundred and seventy dollars.’

‘Is it?’ He put the mug down and tried to breathe.

‘Nobody but Aidan knows?’

‘There was this old guy, a neighbour, but he only saw me arrive and leave.’

‘It was definitely a drug stash?’

‘It was stuffed in the lounge.’ He left out the bit about ‘under the body’.

She put
her hands flat on the notes. Her eyes were shining. ‘This could be our family.’

His heart soared.

‘Let’s go in tomorrow and pay it all to the program and book in another implantation asap, and if that little shit Aidan comes around again we’ll say, “What? What money? Ain’t no money here.” And if he pushes further we can say I went to the casino and, oh lordy, isn’t it wonderful what I won?’

She grinned a mile wide, and he felt like he had sprouted wings as he leapt onto the bed beside her.

C
onnor worked his wrists constantly. They were raw and bleeding and he hoped the blood would somehow loosen the tapes but so far it wasn’t happening. He pulled and pushed against the tapes on his legs too, telling himself he was getting somewhere, they were stretching a little, and refusing to acknowledge that they were as tight as ever.

It was chilly in the room and he shivered, his
teeth chattering against the rag in his mouth. He’d been cold for what felt like hours. He was starving hungry and so thirsty. The cut on his chest throbbed and burned. The tape across his mouth and around his head irritated his skin. His wet jeans felt icy, and he’d dozed off and crapped himself, unable to hold it any longer, and he stank and itched. He didn’t want to think about what had happened
back when his life took that turn, or those days when the whisperer ruled the world, nor did he want to think about how this might be the way he was left to die, driven mad by thirst and itching and irritation in his skin.

He thought about Suzanne instead.

The first time he’d met her was in a bar. He’d just moved from Brisbane to Sydney and was living in a share place in Surry Hills. She’d had
a few wines and came up to him and started talking. He told her he was working as a brickie’s labourer (true, off the books) and that his parents had died in a fire when he was young (false). She told him about her course in horticulture and garden design and talked about having her own nursery someday and he saw the light in her eyes and heard the enthusiasm in her voice and fell in love right
there and then.

They met again the next night, and the next, and on the fourth night she took him home to her flat in Glebe. She talked about her past and asked about his. He told her the well-worn story of a normal child, born in New Zealand, came here when he was young, moved about the country because of his father’s work, then orphaned when his parents died in that terrible fire. No other
family. He spent much of the next fifteen or so years wandering the country. There was one moment – he remembered it still: the spring night when the air smelled like honeysuckle and she’d looked at him like nobody had ever looked at him before, like he was the most important person in the world – when he imagined trusting her with the truth, but he let it slip by and never got it back.

They
got married, a convoluted process of him avoiding the fact that he had no birth certificate for Connor Crawford. In fact, he had no birth certificate for Robert either. But a fake NZ passport and the scheme to marry in the US did the trick. Even with the lies eating at his heart, it was the happiest day of his life.

They worked hard and saved harder and bought the nursery and the house, and things
were great until she got the urge to write out her family tree. Not content with just her branches, she wanted to do his as well.

‘They’re dead,’ he’d said.

‘As are most of the people in mine.’

‘We weren’t a family who talked about family. I don’t really know anything.’

‘Skeletons in the closets?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Fantastic!’ She’d clutched his arm in glee. ‘Just what every amateur genealogist
dreams of. What were your parents’ names?’

He’d hesitated, saw no way out, and said the names he’d used in the past if anyone was curious and couldn’t be distracted. ‘Joan and Barry.’

‘Joan Crawford?’

‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘She hated the jokes.’

‘When were they born?’

‘I can never remember. September 1940 for her, I think the tenth, could be wrong, and mid-1939 for him. July. Fifteenth. I
think.’ Making it all up.

She’d scribbled all this down. ‘Mother’s maiden name?’

‘Fairbanks.’

He’d felt sick. How long would it take to find out none of this was true?

About two days.

‘Are you sure about these dates?’

‘I said I wasn’t.’

‘I can’t find anything. Not even about you.’

‘It’s probably because I was born in New Zealand.’

‘No, it’s not that. I talked to the support people who
run the website I use and even called Births, Deaths and Marriages in Wellington. They can’t find any of you.’

‘Huh.’

‘Where’s your birth certificate?’

‘Lost it in the fire.’

She’d cocked an eyebrow. ‘So how’d you get your passport?’

It shamed him now to remember how he’d walked away from her. It was a simple question, but the truth – ‘This guy in Cabramatta made it for me’ – was not going
to answer anything.

She’d told him to come back, turn around now, let’s talk. He’d kept walking, gone out for the day, stayed out all night in fact, and come home the next morning stinking of drink. She’d met him at the door with a hug.

‘Nothing you could tell me would change what I know of you,’ she’d said. ‘You’re a good man and I love you.’

He’d held her tight and smelled her hair.

‘The
worst thing you could ever do to me is cheat, and I know you wouldn’t do that,’ she’d said. ‘So there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

He’d nodded against her neck.

She’d held him at arm’s length and looked into his face. ‘Is that the worst thing that I could ever do to you?’

He was too frightened – too stupid, he thought now – to tell the truth, that the worst thing she could do was leave, and
that was precisely what he was afraid of if he admitted his entire life was a lie, so he nodded.

‘Oh, baby.’ She’d held him close again.

But when she’d found over the next few days that he still wasn’t going to tell her, things got bad.

A knife pressed against the back of his neck snapped him back to the present.

*

Ella and Dennis met at the hospital first thing.

Locke’s doctor was still
not sure. ‘He’s prone to developing chest pain when under stress.’ He thumbed through a file and started to bring out an ECG printout.

‘You showed us yesterday,’ Ella said. ‘Look, I think today will be different. Yesterday he thought we’d come to tell him that a family member had died. Now he knows everyone is fine. We simply need to ask him a couple of very brief questions.’

The doctor frowned.
‘I really would like him to remain calm and stable.’

‘Absolutely,’ Ella said. ‘And honestly, we would prefer not to disturb him while he’s here under your hospital’s excellent care. Being a homicide investigation, however, it is important that we get to speak to him, quickly and quietly, to clear up a couple of issues.’ She could feel Dennis looking at her and knew she was laying it on a bit
thick but you said what you had to. Ryan Dawson, Locke’s boss, hadn’t rung in yet but Ella had a plan to use Locke’s job as leverage anyway. They had to get into that room.