Web of Deceit (23 page)

Alex took her latest school picture from the sideboard. He was shaking, and so cold.

‘Thanks,’ Mason
said. ‘It’d be good if you can keep contact with her friends, ask them to try again to remember anything at all about who she’s been in touch with, if she ever dropped a name of a new friend, anything like that.’

‘I’m going to the school to ask around there,’ Alex said.

Mason nodded. ‘That’s good. Now here’s my card. My mobile number’s on it. Call me anytime. I’ll keep in touch and
let you know the instant I hear anything.’

They stood up.

Alex said, ‘That’s it?’

‘Once we get that information back we’ll understand more about what’s going on,’ Mason said.

‘But…’ He didn’t know what to say. He wanted so much more. But what could they do? Kick down every door in the city? Stop every vehicle? ‘What about checking with the neighbours about whether
they heard a vehicle last night? Finding out if a taxi picked her up? Can you hack into her email account?’

‘If your babysitter heard nothing, it’s unlikely a neighbour did.’ Mason’s voice was steady, resolute. ‘And checking with taxi firms and doing computer work like that is time-consuming. I know how that sounds, but I promise you, at this point all our time needs to be spent elsewhere.
We’re likely to find out what we need from the first few things we’ll do.’

‘This is my daughter.’ Alex felt Jane’s hand on his arm.

‘We understand,’ Mason said. ‘And we need to get going to find her.’

He let them go. Jane stood behind him in the doorway, and Louise sat snivelling in the kitchen. He felt lost, unanchored, bereft.

‘I’ll drive you to the school,’ Jane said.

Louise agreed to stay at the house in case Mia came home. It was the least she could do, Alex thought, even though deep down he knew none of this was her fault.

Jane’s phone beeped as they were pulling away in the car. She looked at the text and deleted it one-handed without comment. Alex pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. He felt like if he didn’t get some distraction his
head would explode.

‘Talk to me,’ he said.

‘We’ll find her.’

‘About something else.’ He rubbed his forehead hard. ‘Who’s Rooney?’

‘The detective who’s looking after Deb. So to speak.’ Her phone beeped again. She deleted it again. ‘I thought she might be able to give them a hurry up. I don’t know if it helped.’

‘Thanks for trying.’

Another text, another deletion.
She was scowling.

‘Everything okay?’

‘You don’t need to hear it.’

‘I keep seeing kids’ bodies in my head,’ he said. ‘I need to think about something else, even for a couple of minutes. Please.’

She looked in the rear-view, and adjusted her grip on the wheel, then sighed. ‘Okay. You remember I told you a while back that Breanna and Alice had moved back here, that we were
having dinner often, and they were always texting me?’

He nodded. His head thumped.

‘They’re actually still in Melbourne,’ she said. ‘All those calls and texts and dinners were with someone else. He asked me to keep it quiet. We’d been seeing each other for three months, and he told me he was separated, then the night before last I found out he lied.’

Alex looked at her.

‘No need for pity,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I was an idiot.’

‘I’m not pitying you,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised. Why did you let him persuade you that keeping it secret was a good idea?’

‘I know, oldest trick in the book, right? Never eat out, never tell anyone, don’t be seen in public together. But in this case it made sense for another reason. He’s Laird Humphreys.’

‘The guy with
the ears on the news?’

‘The one and only,’ she said. ‘I was with him the night you went to that crash, which makes me feel sick. But night before last I went to his place and his wife opened the door, then he pretended not to know me. I parked at the beach and got drunk, then stumbled home and fell over Deb. It was awful. I told that Rooney detective everything yesterday morning.’ She changed
her grip again. ‘I think… I mean I don’t know, but I think there’s an idea that maybe Laird or his missus came around and found Deb, who happened to be there to smash more windows or whatever, and attacked her thinking it was me. Seeing as we look so alike and it was dark.’

‘But they haven’t been arrested?’

‘Not that I’ve heard. Rooney didn’t say anything about it before.’ Her
phone beeped again. ‘Yesterday morning he came around and said he’d been about to break up with her, it was me he really wanted to be with. Then Steve turned up, drunk as a skunk, and started ranting at me, and Laird took off. Now he won’t leave me alone. “I’m so sorry, you’re the one I really love, please talk to me.”’ She glanced at the text and deleted it. ‘Tosser.’

They reached the school.
Alex motioned for her to drive through the gates. Girls in uniform walked between one building and the next, and he thought for a second that one was Mia, then she turned her head and he realised it wasn’t. He wondered if the dead Mia’s parents felt the same jolt and despair every day of their lives.

‘We’ll find her,’ Jane said.

TWENTY-TWO

E
lla’s phone buzzed as they walked into the hospital. Callum again.
Can we talk?
Delete.

Bill Weaver closed his eyes when they entered his room. The purple bruising on his throat had yellowish edges and the skin was no longer red. Ella still heard whistling when he breathed.

‘You damaged your windpipe?’ she asked.

‘Like you care.’ He tugged
the sheet up to better cover his belly.

Murray rested an elbow on the bed rail. ‘Need I remind you that she saved your life?’

Weaver turned his head away.

‘I thought you might’ve been back home by now,’ Ella said.

‘They won’t let me out until the swelling in my neck’s gone down.’ His voice was scratchy and hoarse. ‘They said if I lose weight that’ll help. Thanks for the
tip.’

‘Has Miriam been in to see you?’ Ella said.

He breathed for a moment, whistle in, whistle out. The buzzer hung over the rail by his hand but he didn’t reach for it. ‘Why would she?’

‘Seems wrong if she hasn’t. You two being so close, according to her neighbours.’

He shrugged, fleshy shoulders jiggling inside the white hospital gown.

‘Are you worried about her?’
she asked, and when he didn’t answer added, ‘We are, a little. We can’t find her anywhere.’

‘So she’s gone away for a few days. People take holidays, you know.’ His cheeks reddened.

Ella leaned on the rail beside Murray and touched Weaver’s hand. ‘Bill, look at me.’

He hesitated, and when he finally turned his head towards them his lashes were wet with tears. ‘Happy now?’

‘It’s time to tell us everything,’ Ella said.

He shook his head. ‘I want you to find her first. I need to know she’s okay. She hasn’t called or visited, and she doesn’t answer when I ring.’ He gestured at the landline phone on the bedside cupboard. ‘I’m worried about her. She might’ve done something silly, like I tried.’

Ella remembered the steely look in Holder’s eyes when they’d
talked to her at the office and thought that suicide would be the last thing on her mind. ‘We’ve been to her home and office multiple times. Nobody’s seen her. Where else might she be?’

‘There’s a boutique hotel in The Rocks,’ he said. ‘The Woolcott. But I’ve rung them and she’s not there under her name, nor under the name I know she sometimes uses.’

‘Which is?’

‘Greta Summers.’
He wiped his eyes.

‘How much does Prue know?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How long’s it been going on?’

He frowned.

‘The sooner you tell us, the sooner we’ll leave,’ she said.

His sigh made the whistle louder. ‘Six months. And I know how it looks. But this isn’t some kind of low-down affair where people are just getting their rocks off. This is love.’

‘So the cruise?’
Murray said.

‘For me and her, yes.’

‘And the money from your properties?’ Ella asked.

He shook his head. ‘I’m not answering any more questions until you find her.’

‘It’s all in her name, isn’t it?’ Ella said. ‘It wasn’t the GFC at all.’
Poor Prue.

He grasped his forearms over his stomach, the closest he could get to folding his arms. ‘Find her.’

*

‘I’m
Alex Churchill.’ Alex’s voice boomed and he moved back off the microphone a little. ‘My daughter Mia is in year nine.’ He gestured behind him, where her picture was being projected onto a huge screen at the back of the stage. ‘I need to know if any of you have seen her this morning, or if you might know where she is now. She made a new friend recently, and if any of you have any idea who that might
be, I need you please to tell me.’

Below him in the hall, hundreds of girls in the familiar uniform looked back at him in silence. No hands went up.

‘I really need your help. Please.’

Dennison, the principal, stepped forward to the microphone. ‘If you do know something, come and see me in my office immediately following the assembly.’

‘Anything at all,’ Alex leaned in to
add. ‘Even if you’re not sure whether it’s relevant. Please.’

He glanced at the side of the stage. Jane stood in the wings, one hand on her hip, the other resting on her stomach. She nodded.

He looked out at the girls again. ‘Please.’

Dennison said, ‘Thank you, girls. Assembly is over. Go to your classes.’

It didn’t seem enough. They were getting up and leaving, and nobody
was even looking back. He wanted to grab the mike and shout at them, order them to speak.

Jane touched his arm. She seemed to read his thoughts. ‘They’re just kids.’

He had to look away from her gaze.

‘If they know something, they’ll come,’ she said.

They were alone on the stage. Dennison was on the hall floor, walking through the students to the door. Nobody approached
her. Fear tightened its grip on Alex’s throat.

They waited in the office for fifteen minutes, turning down offers of tea or coffee, Alex hovering by the door, looking down the empty corridor and willing a contrite student to appear. Jane and Dennison made small talk that he couldn’t focus on.

Finally, the principal looked at her watch. ‘You may as well go. We’ll ring you if any students
come in later.’

‘Can you ask the teachers to talk to them?’ Alex said. ‘Especially anyone who looks like they might be hiding something?’

‘They already are,’ she said. ‘Everyone wants to find her, Mr Churchill.’

Outside, the day was bright. It felt like a travesty. He got shakily into the passenger seat of Jane’s car as she climbed behind the wheel, her hand brushing over her
stomach again. The bruise on her cheek was dark.

‘Where to?’ she said.

‘Are you okay to keep on?’

‘Of course. Where else would I be?’

‘It’s just that you look a bit pale, and you keep touching your stomach,’ he said. ‘Did Steve hit you during his rant?’

‘No, not at all.’ She started the engine, her eyes fixed on the street ahead. ‘I just have anxious butterflies,
I guess.’

There was something in her voice he couldn’t recognise.

‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘For everything.’

She reached over and squeezed his wrist.

*

The Woolcott occupied a renovated nineteenth-century sandstone building in a laneway off George Street, close to the Harbour Bridge. The front doors were dark heavy timber with long brass handles and they cut off
all sound of the outside world. Leather chairs stood empty in the foyer, and two staff watched them approach from behind a long desk.

‘Welcome to the Woolcott,’ the younger man said. He had smooth pink cheeks and a diver’s watch on his wrist.

Ella held up her badge. ‘We need to speak to one of your guests.’

‘What name?’

‘Miriam Holder. Also try Greta Summers.’

He
frowned at the computer screen and shook his head. The older man came over.

‘She probably checked in two days ago, in the afternoon,’ Murray said. ‘She might have a car with her, a dark blue Toyota sedan, numberplate QKM 377.’

‘There’s nothing listed with that plate, I’m afraid.’

‘She probably paid cash,’ Ella said.

The men shook their heads. ‘All our current guests have
given us their credit card.’

‘And Miriam Holder isn’t the name on any of them?’

‘Sorry.’

Ella put her hand on the high counter. ‘What about Bill Weaver? Or William? Or even Prue Weaver?’

‘Nothing even close to those,’ the younger man said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Shit.

‘Are there any women staying here alone at all?’ Murray asked.

A glance at the computer. ‘All couples.’

‘Any of the women in their forties?’ Ella said. ‘Skinny and kind of hard-looking?’

The men shook their heads. ‘Nobody like that.’

Murray thanked them and they walked outside.

On the footpath, Ella said, ‘You have to think that Holder would’ve guessed that Weaver would cave and tell us where she might be, and so she’s gone to stay somewhere else.’

Murray nodded. ‘So
what next?’

‘We have Gorrie watching the flat, and we don’t know where else to look for her,’ she said. ‘So let’s switch tracks.’

‘To what?’

She didn’t answer, and started for the car.

*

They stepped out of the lift in the Chatswood building that housed the State Parole Authority offices, turned right along the corridor and pushed through the heavy glass door to the
waiting area. The clients’ chairs were vacant and there was nobody behind the desk. Ella hit the silver bell with one finger and looked down the empty hallway to the interview rooms and desks at the back and thought about when they’d been here before, how they’d just started telling Michaels why they were checking into Canning when it had all kicked off with the parolee in the interview room. How
she never really saw the look on Michaels’s face when she heard what Canning might’ve done.

The same receptionist came out from the back and sat behind the desk, her brown hair tied back in a plait, a plain grey shirt buttoned up to her neck. She didn’t smile. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Grace Michaels, please,’ Ella said. She and Murray showed their badges.

‘She’s not in today.’

‘Then we’ll need her home address.’

‘We don’t give out that information.’

‘It’s about a homicide,’ Ella said. ‘We’re detectives.’ As if she didn’t know.

‘Not to anyone for any reason.’ The woman’s eyes were flat.

Murray smiled. ‘Do you remember when we were here the other day? We got one of your clients under control?’

‘Rules are rules,’ the woman said.

‘How
long has Michaels been off work?’ Ella asked.

The woman raised her eyebrows.

‘That’s restricted too, huh?’ Ella snapped her badge holder shut. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Downstairs, Ella looked at Murray. It’d be simple enough to get Michaels’s home address from their own office. ‘Fancy making a house call?’

*

Grace Michaels’s house in North Ryde was on a quiet street,
set back from the footpath and surrounded by trees dangling enormous strips of bark. The garage door was closed and the driveway empty. The place looked deserted, but Ella knew you always had to expect someone to be watching from a window.

She was about to get out of the car when her phone rang. She answered to hear a woman screaming. Her hair stood on end. ‘Chloe?’

‘Fletcher’s here!
He’s killing Audra!’

She slammed her door and motioned for Murray to drive. ‘We’re on our way.’

‘Help me! Oh God, please help!’

The line dropped out.

‘You hear that?’ she said to Murray, but he was already accelerating away from the kerb. He hit the siren and grille lights as Ella reached for the radio. They were close, only one suburb away, but there might be uniforms
closer.

Murray braked hard at a red light, looked both ways, then accelerated through. ‘Fucking Fletcher. We should’ve seen it,’ he said.

‘Just hurry.’

*

Jane held the poster against the power pole and strapped it on with clear packing tape. She turned to see Alex walk out of the bottle shop and into the bakery next door, his face tight with anxiety, a sheaf of the posters
in his hands. She watched him speak to the woman behind the counter, holding out a poster and pointing out Mia’s height and build and the contact information for the police and himself along the bottom. The woman nodded and took it.

Jane met him at the door. ‘We should stop and eat something.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ He turned back to the bakery and took his wallet from his pocket. ‘What do you
want?’

‘I meant for your sake.’

‘I can’t eat.’ He pulled out a ten and tried to give it to her.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said.

‘Sure?’

He nodded at her hand, and she realised she was touching her belly again.
For fuck’s sake.

‘Let’s keep going.’ She looked along the street. Newsagent, chemist, travel agent, butcher. ‘You do the newsagent.’

She walked into
the chemist and told the sympathetic assistant about Mia.

‘I saw her on the news,’ he said, his eyes on the bruise on her cheek. ‘Of course we’ll put the poster up.’

‘Thanks.’ Jane glanced over her shoulder. No sign of Alex. ‘I’ll grab a pregnancy test too.’

‘All righty,’ the man said. ‘Any particular brand?’

‘Whichever.’

‘Some have two tests in the one kit. They
tend to be a little more expensive, of course, but sometimes people like to –’

‘Sure, okay, whatever.’

He paused as he was putting the box into a paper bag. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, have you thought about getting something for that bruise? There are some amazing creams on the market now.’

‘No, it’s fine.’ She glanced around again. ‘I kind of need to get going.’

He
taped down the top of the bag. ‘That’ll be 22.95.’

She handed over the cash and stuffed the bag into her handbag, which she then jammed under her arm. ‘Thanks.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Huh?’

‘With finding the girl,’ he said.

Outside, Alex looked at her just as strangely. ‘You okay?’

‘This place is going to be covered in Mia’s picture soon,’ she said.

Her phone buzzed
with a text and she lowered her head to look at the screen. Laird.
I’m so sorry, please just…
Delete.

She looked up. Alex had already moved on to the next pole, was lashing the tape around the poster in a frenzy. The police hadn’t called. Jane hoped they were taking it seriously, not just thinking Mia would turn up of her own accord when she got hungry or tired.

*

She was
collecting the next batch of posters from the photo-copier when her mobile rang. It was a number she didn’t recognise. ‘This is Jane.’

‘It’s Detective Juliet Rooney. Where are you?’

‘Helping Alex copy posters in Officeworks,’ she said.

She watched him take another batch from the tray of the next machine and stack them on the bench. His face was white, his eyes unseeing.

‘I wanted to let you know that I’ve talked to Laird Humphreys,’ Rooney said. ‘A friend arrived at his place soon after you left the other night; a friend who’s a magistrate. I’ve interviewed him, and he says that he talked to both Laird and Lucille, then she went to bed soon after. The two men sat talking and drinking scotch until midnight.’