Web of Deceit (26 page)

‘I don’t believe you.’

She handed him the ticket and the bank information.

Weaver held them in his puffy hands.

Ella
said, ‘This is when you say “How could she do this to me?”.’

‘And then we answer that she’s trying to get in front, to make it easier on herself,’ Murray said. ‘She told us about the skimming, about the plan to go on the cruise and not reboard, about the properties you sold.’

Weaver looked up at them without speaking. There was a long pause.

Ella’d thought he might’ve fallen
apart on learning of Holder’s betrayal and now felt growing unease as she tried to read his face. ‘We found her, you talk. That was our deal.’

He put the ticket and bank details on the bed. ‘You showed your hand a bit early though, didn’t you?’

You little weasel.

‘So you’re just going to clam up.’

‘I need to protect myself.’ His eyes took on a different cast, and he looked
like a hard-nosed businessman rather than a forlorn lover. ‘I need to think about my future.’

‘You asked us to find her, and we found her,’ Ella said. ‘If she’d been trying to hang herself, I would’ve broken down the door and saved her, just like I did you.’

‘But she wasn’t,’ Weaver said.

‘What seems to be the problem here?’

Ella turned to see Prue Weaver in a white linen
suit, Gucci handbag over her shoulder, and her arms folded over a layer of shiny dangly necklaces.

‘There’s no problem,’ Bill Weaver said.

‘That’s not how it sounded.’ Prue shot a look at him that could’ve burned a hole in a wall. ‘Perhaps you could give us a minute?’

Ella and Murray walked out into the hallway. She could hear Prue’s sharp voice, and caught the odd words; something
about ‘saved your life’ and ‘silly stupid man’ and ‘tell the truth’. Her phone buzzed. Callum:
I’m sorry.
Better, but still a delete.

‘Maybe she’s smarter than we gave her credit for,’ Murray whispered.

Ella held up crossed fingers.

Prue Weaver came to the doorway. ‘Detectives?’

They went back in.

‘Bill has a question for you,’ Prue Weaver said.

Weaver licked
his lips. He looked somehow smaller than before. ‘What did you want to know?’

Ella shot a grateful look at Prue. ‘What was the topic of the conversations you had with Marko Meixner in the corridors?’

‘He said he needed money, and asked for a raise. I don’t have authority to give him one, and nobody higher up wanted to know about it. Then he asked if I could somehow send more work his
way. But I couldn’t do that either.’

‘Why did he need money?’ Ella asked.

‘He told me his wife was expecting and asked me not to tell anyone. I wanted to help but I couldn’t. And now he’s dead and he’ll never know his child.’

Ella ignored the crocodile tears he blinked away. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this when we first spoke to you?’

‘All I could think about was my own skin.
That you were there because you knew what I’d been doing.’

‘Even when we started asking about him?’ Murray said.

He nodded and wiped an eye.

The bastard was sorry for himself, not Marko. Ella glared at him. ‘What about the other stuff you said about him that day? How much of that was true?’

‘All of it. Marko was a fine young man. His work performance was excellent. He’s
going to be missed.’

But not by you, Ella thought, because you’ll never work there again.

‘What about the calls that you took in your office,’ she asked, ‘when you told Peter to leave you alone? And when he overheard you saying, “No, no!”?’

Weaver glanced at his wife and at least had the decency to blush. ‘Miriam. She wanted more money. She wanted me to take increasing amounts,
but I was worried about getting caught. She bullied me into most of it, you know.’

Prue said, ‘Hmm.’

Exactly what I was thinking.

Ella said, ‘You know that Marko got at least one similar call?’

‘About stealing money?’

‘No, I mean where he was saying the same thing.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Bill Weaver said.

‘Would you have known if Marko was
taking money?’ Murray said.

‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘I was all over everything there. I had to be, to make sure what I was doing was hidden.’

Ella looked at Murray. This was feeling more and more like a dead-end.

‘We’re going to talk to you again,’ she said to Bill.

‘He’ll be happy to help,’ Prue said.

‘As if I have a choice,’ Bill muttered.

‘I told him the choice,’
Prue said to Ella. ‘He could tell the truth for once in his goddamn life and I won’t divorce him, or he can keep quiet and I’ll take him to the cleaner’s.’

The couple glared at each other. Good luck, Ella thought.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ she said.

She and Murray walked out through the hospital.

‘Now what?’ Murray said.

She thumped his arm. ‘Back to where we were before.’

*

Alex was outside McDonald’s in Maroubra, a pile of posters tucked under his arm, wrestling with a tangle in the sticky tape, when his mobile rang. He almost dropped it in his hurry to answer. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Brent Mason. We’ve traced the mobile number Mia’s been in touch with. It was bought from a service station in Mascot by someone named Shannon Pitman, who gave an address in
Beaconsfield. Do you know that name or anyone in that area?’

‘No.’

His hand was slippery on the phone. Jane came over with her own wad of posters and stood watching his face.

Mason said, ‘There’s nothing on that name in our records or in the electoral rolls, so it could be someone under eighteen. We’re going there now and we’ll keep you posted.’

‘What’s the exact address?’
Alex’s heart thudded in his chest, but his mind was clear and sharp as glass.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Mason said. ‘I know what you’d do, because I’d do the same. I’ll call you when we know anything. We’re on our way.’

Alex hung up and told Jane what Mason had said. ‘Beaconsfield’s pretty small. How long would it take to find a couple of cop cars outside someone’s house?’

The
suburb was fifteen minutes away. Jane drove and Alex sat forward in the passenger seat, his phone in his hands, willing her to drive faster. She floored it along Anzac Parade then Gardeners Road, weaving through traffic, then swung right on the orange into O’Riordan. Alex stared down the street. No police cars in sight. Jane slowed and they looked both ways down Doody Street, then she accelerated
along to Collins.

Alex looked left along it. His mouth was dry. ‘Nothing.’

She turned right. Alex looked down the next street, then the next. ‘There!’

Jane yanked the wheel. Two police cars were parked by the left kerb, nose to tail, two officers talking to Brent Mason in the street.

Jane pulled up and Alex leapt out. ‘Where is she?’

‘She’s not here,’ Mason said.

Alex started towards the bearded middle-aged man who stood on the doorstep of the house with a fourth officer. Mason grabbed his arm.

‘No such person lives here,’ he said, ‘and the guy doesn’t even know the name. He let us search the place. His wife and kids are inside.’

‘Kids? Are they… Boyfriend?’

‘All under five.’ Mason let him go.

Alex felt faint. ‘Neighbours?’

‘Either elderly or young families.’

‘Then why this address?’ Jane said behind him. ‘Where’s this Shannon?’

‘The whole thing was possibly made up,’ Mason said. ‘You can buy pre-paid SIM cards and fill in the details online, with nothing to prove you are who you say you are.’

‘So there’s nothing here for us at all?’ Alex couldn’t breathe. Spots appeared before his eyes.

‘We’re tracing the number through the towers, which pick up a signal when it’s turned on, and we’re doing the same with Mia’s phone. Unfortunately, both are turned off right now, but they’ll check them sometime and we’ll be waiting.’

Alex felt like he was falling.

‘I haven’t heard back from Immigration about your ex-wife, but I’ll call them again,’ Mason said. ‘Mia’s photo’s all
over the web, the news sites and everywhere. Every police car on the street has it, and fireys and your lot are doing the same. One way or another, we’ll track her down.’

Alex found himself walking back to the car without answering. He couldn’t feel his legs, and his ears were ringing. He’d expected to find her, and instead there was nothing. Worse than nothing, because the person she’d
been talking to had deliberately hidden their tracks, knowing that they’d eventually be the object of a search.

TWENTY-FIVE

M
urray parked in the same place outside Grace Michaels’s house. They walked up the gravel drive, their shoes crunching on fallen twigs and dead leaves swept into ridges by the recent rain, the same kind of debris spilling from the gutters on the roof. Moss coated the mortar between the white-painted bricks of the front porch and the air smelled of decaying
leaf litter and damp earth. New security screens covered the windows and the door. When Ella found the handle locked, she knocked hard on the frame. Murray stood back and surveyed the street.

The door inside the screen opened. Ella could just see Michaels’s shape through the thick steel wire.

‘Remember us?’ Ella said.

‘Yes.’ She made no move to open the door, and said nothing
else.

‘Can we talk?’

‘I’m on leave,’ Michaels said.

‘It’s very important and it won’t take long.’

‘I’m on leave,’ she said again.

‘We’d appreciate it if we could talk for a few minutes.’

‘It’s really not a good time. My son’s sick. We were up at the hospital last night. He has asthma and he’s just gone off to sleep.’

‘We can talk quietly in the next room,’
Ella said. ‘I promise you it won’t take long.’

She couldn’t see Michaels’s face, but after a long moment the woman unlocked the door.

‘Thank you.’ Ella stepped inside, past green lights flashing on a shiny new alarm keypad on the wall.

Michaels didn’t answer. She relocked the screen door behind them, then closed and locked the front door. She gestured for them to go on into a
living room, where a muted TV played a
Friends
rerun and a boy of around five slept curled under a blanket with his cheek on his folded hands. A framed picture of Michaels in a wedding dress, smiling beside a tall man in a suit, stood on top of the TV beside two of the boy at a younger age. A mobile phone and a cordless landline handset sat on a coffee table next to the TV remote, and a three
iron golf club lay on the rug underneath.

‘Practising your swing?’ Ella said.

‘I keep meaning to put that away.’

Michaels sat on the lounge next to the boy. She was dressed in khakis and a blue T-shirt and wore tightly laced runners on her feet. Her dark shoulder-length hair was in a ponytail. A tiny gold cross hung on a chain around her neck, and a plain gold wedding band glinted
on her left hand when she stroked the sleeping boy’s hip.

Murray stayed on his feet while Ella sat in an armchair.

‘You’re married,’ Ella said.

‘So?’

‘You weren’t wearing any jewellery when we met you at the office.’

‘I keep my private life private.’

‘I can understand that,’ Ella said. ‘What’s your little boy’s name?’

Michaels’s eyes held hers. ‘I don’t
mean to be rude but I’d like to get on with it.’

‘Certainly,’ Ella said. ‘Have you seen Paul Canning lately?’

‘Not since we talked about him the other day. I’m not due to see him again until next week.’

‘Will that be for an arranged meeting or an unexpected drop-in?’ Murray said.

‘I don’t know,’ Michaels said. ‘My diary’s at work.’

‘How long have you been off?’

She tucked the blanket around the boy’s shoulders. ‘Since he got sick. A couple of days.’

‘And when do you think you’ll be back?’ Ella said.

‘When he’s better.’

‘Was your husband at the hospital last night too?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s overseas.’

‘Holiday or business?’

‘In East Timor, with the army.’

‘Must be tough,’ Ella said.

Grace Michaels
shrugged. ‘It’s what we know.’

Ella looked at the boy. His skin was perfect. He breathed evenly through his mouth and she could see his neat white teeth.

‘He has your chin,’ she said to Michaels.

Michaels raised her eyebrows. ‘Is that what you came here to say?’

‘What do you honestly think of Canning?’ Ella asked.

‘He’s doing well.’

‘So you think he’s reformed,’
Murray said.

‘I do.’

Ella picked up the three iron and rolled the shaft between her palms. ‘When did you get the security screens?’

‘I’m not following your line of conversation.’

‘I’m curious,’ Ella said. ‘They look new. Do you like them?’

‘Do I
like
them?’

‘I’ve seen them advertised on TV. I wondered if they’re any good. Do they make you feel secure?’

‘What are you trying to say, Detective?’

‘Security’s important when you have a family,’ Ella said. ‘Kids are so vulnerable. Which reminds me – when we met the other day I didn’t get to finish telling you about our case, did I? The victim’s name is Marko Meixner. He went under a train. He testified against Canning in the trial seventeen years ago; was key in getting him convicted, in fact.
That’s why we were checking Canning’s alibi, which you so ably provided. Marko was a lovely guy, by all accounts. His wife’s lovely too. And four months pregnant. I reckon she’s concerned about security as well.’

Michaels lowered her gaze and touched her son’s foot.

‘I might tell her you have these screens,’ Ella said. ‘What’s your little boy’s name again?’

‘Elias,’ Michaels
said faintly.

‘Nice name,’ Ella said.

‘It’s my father’s.’

Ella nodded. ‘Has Paul Canning threatened you and your family?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’ Ella said.

‘Of course.’

They stared at each other for a long moment.

‘He’s done it before.’

‘He’s not doing it to me.’

‘We can help you,’ Murray said.

‘I don’t need any help.’ Michaels stood
up. ‘I think it’d be best if you left.’

Ella put down the golf club and smiled at the sleeping boy. On her way to the door, she motioned towards the new alarm keypad. ‘This come with the screens in a package deal?’

Michaels unlocked the doors and held them open, her jaw tight. She kept her gaze fixed on the trees in the yard, and the second Ella and Murray were on the porch and clear,
she slammed and relocked the doors.

Ella and Murray walked down the driveway.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she said.

‘I believe I am.’

She stood at the car door and looked back at the house. ‘Reckon she’ll ever admit to it?’

‘Not if he’s threatened that kid.’

She checked her watch. It was time they headed back for the meeting. ‘Think Langley will believe
us?’

Murray just looked at her.

‘I know, I know.’ She got in the car. ‘Let’s go.’

*

Alex had gone home for half an hour, but even with Jane there the silence and emptiness was too much, so they were back out in the car, driving, looking. They’d been to two DVD rental shops, a skatepark, two McDonald’s restaurants and a KFC store, various takeaway joints and the forecourts
of three supermarkets where groups of teenagers sat. He’d handed out posters and asked people to call him. Either nobody had seen her, or nobody was saying.

His phone rang as Jane pulled into a Red Rooster. He recognised Brent Mason’s number. ‘Have you found her?’

‘Not yet,’ Mason said. ‘And we’re still trying to locate the mobiles. I heard from Immigration though. Your ex-wife, Helen,
is in the country.’

‘What?’ Alex felt his face go slack.

‘She’s been back for almost a year. She’s no longer living at the address that she listed on the forms when she came back in, however, and we haven’t been able to trace her since then.’

Alex’s head was spinning. ‘What about a driver’s licence? Electoral rolls? Rental agreement?’

‘We’ve checked,’ Mason said. ‘We know
she hasn’t left, we just don’t know where she is. We’re thinking a press conference tomorrow and you ask her to come forward.’

‘You believe she has Mia?’

‘Why hide so completely unless you want to get away with something?’ Mason said.

Alex thought he was going to be sick. ‘I have to go.’ He opened the door and put his legs out, his head hanging down.

Jane said, ‘What’d
he say?’

‘Helen’s back.’

‘That’s great! If Mia’s with Helen, she’s got to be safe.’

‘But if Helen has her, she’s deliberately hiding, she’s deliberately doing stuff so I don’t know where they are.’ He was sweaty. ‘Is she going to try to take her out of the country? She can’t do that. She can’t just come in and wreck everything like that.’

‘It’ll be okay,’ Jane said.

‘And that’s if Mia really is with her,’ he said. ‘It could be a coincidence that she’s back. She’s been here for more than a year, after all, and never got in touch. It could still be some creep Mia met online. It could be anyone.’ Images of the dead girl in the bush and the despair of the other Mia’s parents filled his mind.

It’s not a killer. Don’t think like that. It’s Helen.

But if that’s true, how do I find her?

Nat had said she hadn’t heard from Helen, but she’d sounded odd. Distinctly odd, he thought. He’d put it down to what had happened in the past, but now he picked up his phone.

‘Alex,’ Nat answered. ‘Any news?’

‘Helen’s come back.’

‘Really? When? Have you seen her?’

‘Immigration told me.’ He closed his eyes to focus on her tone,
on any background noise. ‘They don’t know where she is though. You’re sure you have no idea?’

‘I really wish I did.’

There was a brief silence, then Alex said, ‘I have to say I’m a little surprised at you. I thought you might’ve called today to see how things were going.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy.’

Or else she knew for sure that Mia was all right.

Alex said,
‘You said earlier that you’d like to help. Can you come and put up posters?’

‘I wish I could, but I’ve hurt my arm and I can’t drive.’

Oh, really
. He narrowed his eyes at Jane. ‘How did you hurt it?’

‘Caught it between a boat and a motor.’

‘How about I pick you up?’ he said. ‘Drop you home after.’ He felt hypersensitive to her reluctance. What was she hiding?

‘I wouldn’t
be able to put posters up,’ she said. ‘My arm’s really bad. How do you know if you’ve broken a bone?’

‘Go to hospital and get an X-ray.’

Another silence, then Alex heard the male voice murmur in the background.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nat said, but he didn’t know whether she was speaking to him or the man, and then she hung up.

He looked at Jane. ‘We need to go there.’

‘Where’s
there?’

‘Boatyard near Neutral Bay.’

She nodded. ‘You want to call Mason?’

‘He’ll tell me to stay away, that they’ll check it out, and then they’ll take ages to get there. Or she’ll lie again and they’ll leave. But I know Nat. We have this… past thing. I think she’ll tell me the truth if I ask her face to face.’

She nodded again, then glanced at the Red Rooster store.
‘Time for a bathroom stop first?’

*

Ella stared out the passenger window, trying to get it straight in her head. Ten minutes after they’d left Grace Michaels’s house, she grabbed Murray’s arm. ‘Pull over.’

Murray braked hard and swung into a service station. ‘What’s –’

‘Shut up for a second,’ Ella said. ‘It was pretty clear that Michaels is lying, right? She’s got new security
screens, a new alarm set-up – she’s a frightened woman. That means Canning got to her, and has probably threatened her and no doubt that kid, and
that
means she’s going to keep up that lie as long as she possibly can.’

‘Right,’ Murray said.

‘So she’s not going to admit it to us unless we find a way to (a) open her defences and (b) get her and her son to somewhere safe,’ Ella said.
‘I think if we can get her to tell us what’s going on, we’ll be able to crack Natasha Osborne. I reckon Osborne’s either involved or she probably knows who is, because Canning couldn’t do all that himself, could he? If he was following Marko, he had to have someone drive him, drop him off outside Town Hall or whatever.’

She thought of the dark grey Mazda she’d seen leaving the boatyard the
night before.

Murray was nodding. ‘Okay.’

‘Grace Michaels would be terrified that Canning would find out she’s told and then not get locked up again,’ Ella said. ‘We need to show her that we’ll be able to get all the evidence we need to put him away for good.’

‘Okay,’ Murray said again.

She looked at him. ‘You see where I’m going with this?’

‘I think so,’ he said.
‘But how are you going to persuade her to talk?’

‘Just get us back there.’ She pulled out her phone as he drove back onto the street. When Langley answered, she laid out the case as best she could, concluding, ‘I think if we can promise to keep Grace Michaels and her son safe, she’ll tell us the truth.’

‘You think,’ Langley said. ‘You don’t even know for certain that she’s involved.’

‘Then there’s no harm in making the promise,’ Ella said.

‘You need hard evidence –’

‘And I’ll get it once she knows she and her boy are safe,’ Ella said.

Langley didn’t answer. She crossed her fingers, and tried to stay silent, but finally couldn’t resist saying, ‘Nothing’s lost if I’m wrong, but there’s a lot to gain if I’m right.’

Murray frowned. ‘Don’t make it about
you,’ he hissed.

‘And by a lot I mean the safety of a mother and child,’ she added to Langley.

Another long moment of silence, then Langley said, ‘Tell her we’ll do what we can, contingent on her disclosing everything she knows.’

‘Thanks,’ Ella said. She hung up and looked at Murray. ‘Can’t you drive any faster?’

*

Jane sat on the toilet, her elbows on her knees and
her forehead in her hands, looking at more spots of blood.

Shit.

She rifled through her bag and found a fresh pad. The pregnancy test kit was there too, silent and ominous in its paper bag. If she did it now, at least she’d know. But this was the bathroom at Red Rooster, and three teenage girls were laughing by the sinks, and Alex was walking anxious laps of the car outside, desperate
to find his daughter.

She rammed the package to the bottom of her bag and zipped up both it and herself.

On the way out through the restaurant, her phone rang. Laird. She hesitated. He had helped: Mia’s photo and details would be on TV soon, not just a few power poles and the internet. Practically everyone watched the evening news.