Web of Deceit (9 page)

Murray closed the last binder. ‘Nothing.’

While the drawers were out she
checked their sides and bottoms, then felt inside the desk frame itself. ‘Nor here.’

She reinserted the drawers and Murray dropped in the binders. Ella closed the drawers, then looked around the office. The five other staff were watching, some wiping their eyes, some just staring with pale faces. They’d all obviously heard the news.

‘Daniel Truscott?’ she said.

A tall man with
a freckled face and receding sandy hair stood up. ‘That’s me.’

They took him back to the reception area. Peter peered up from behind the desk, but lowered his head when Ella looked at him.

She faced Truscott. ‘How well did you know Marko Meixner?’

‘Not all that well,’ he said. ‘I gave him a lift home a few months ago when the trains weren’t running, but that was the only time
we’ve spent any time together outside work. I wouldn’t call us pals.’

‘Did he ask if he could use your car?’

‘No. I only found out it was him who took it when I got a call from a police officer last night. He said that it’d been involved in an accident and Marko’d been driving it.’

‘He’d never used it before?’ Murray asked.

Truscott shook his head. ‘I can only think that
he took it because I was out at a meeting down the street for most of the afternoon, so he was able to take the keys from my desk. We have allotted spaces in the multistorey next door, so it wouldn’t have been hard for him to find it.’

Across the room, Peter knocked at Bill Weaver’s door.

Ella turned a page in her notebook and said to Truscott, ‘There was nothing mechanically wrong
with the car?’

‘Not before he crashed it.’ Remorse flickered across his face. ‘Look, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry he’s dead, but I’m not happy he wrecked my car.’

‘Bill?’

Ella looked up at Peter’s tone. He stood close to the door, as if listening, then knocked harder. ‘Bill?’ He tried the handle.

‘Is everything okay?’ she said.

‘He’s not answering his door or his
phone, and I can’t open the door.’

She crossed the floor and knocked. ‘Bill?’

Silence.

She tested the handle. It turned. She tried to open the door, but something on the other side resisted.

‘Bill, are you okay?’ she said.

Peter and Murray put their shoulders to the wood beside hers and they managed to open up a gap of a few centimetres. Ella pressed her eye to the
space and saw Bill slumped against the back of the door. ‘Jesus. Push harder.’

‘What is it?’

‘Push!’

They pushed, but Bill didn’t sprawl onto the carpet. Something was holding him in a sitting position. Ella slid her fingers into the gap and felt around the handle.

‘Is there another way into here?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Peter said.

‘Go get me a knife. Scissors. Anything
sharp. Then call an ambulance and the fire brigade.’

He ran off, and she looked at Murray. ‘Weaver’s hung himself on the handle.’

‘What?’

‘I can just reach it. I think it’s his tie.’

The tips of her fingers slid off the smooth fabric. She had to press all her weight against the door to stop Weaver’s bulk jamming it back on her hand.

‘What’s happened?’ Truscott said
behind them, Denise and Roger and the rest of the staff gathered around him.

‘Scuse me, scuse me.’ Peter shot through them all and thrust out a knife with a serrated edge.

Ella grabbed it and fed it into the gap and around the edge of the door. She shut her eyes to focus on the blade, felt it meet the taut cloth, and slowly, carefully, began to saw back and forth.

Somebody in
the staff started to weep.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer to return to your desks,’ Murray said.

Peter darted back again. ‘Ambulance and fire are on their way.’

‘Fire?’ Murray murmured to Ella.

‘Chop our way in.’

She kept her eyes closed and her grip firm. If she dropped the knife… if they couldn’t get in… and even if they could, how long had he been down? And then
there was his size. None of the big people she’d done CPR on had been as big as him, and not one of them had survived. But she needed him to live.

What does he know?

Her wrist ached, her fingers throbbed. The fabric started to give way. She could almost feel the fibres snap one by one. She worked faster, harder. She turned her face the other way, and through the gap in the door could
see the top of Bill’s head, bobbing slightly from side to side in time with her action.

‘Want me to take over?’ Murray said.

She shook her head. Her cheek was against the cool timber of the door. Her hand and wrist were on fire. How much more fabric could there be?

Then the last fibres snapped and Bill slumped over on the floor. She dropped the knife, and Murray pushed beside
her, but Bill’s bulk pushed back.

‘Peter, Roger, all you guys.’

They crammed in together and heaved. Ella hoped Bill’s fingers weren’t jammed underneath the door, but if they were it couldn’t be helped. They needed to get in there and start CPR. The shoving pushed Bill onto his stomach, and Ella tried to squeeze through the newly widened gap, but it was still too small.

‘Let
me,’ Denise said. She edged sideways into the space, straining to get through.

‘Push,’ Murray said, and they heaved again, and managed to hold Bill’s weight back long enough for Denise to slip in.

‘Can you roll him?’ Ella said through the gap.

Denise grunted. ‘He’s too big.’

‘How about grabbing his feet and swinging him around a little?’

She disappeared from view.
Ella saw Bill’s body shift a fraction and heard Denise grunt again.

‘He’s too big. I can’t do it.’

Time was ticking.

Ella said, ‘You have to.’

‘Careful of your back,’ Peter called.

Ella eyed him. They were trying to save a man’s life, and he was being all workplace health and safety?
Or maybe he’d prefer Bill to stay silent.

‘Ready,’ Denise said.

‘Push!’
Ella said to the door crew.

This time, between them, they opened the gap wide enough for Ella and she forced her way through. She seized Bill’s right ankle and Denise grabbed the left.

‘One, two, three,’ Ella said, and they tugged the dead weight away from the door. He slid onto his back, and the door flew open and the staff poured in.

‘Oh my God.’ Peter dropped to his knees
by his boss. ‘He looks dead.’

Ella elbowed him out of the way. ‘Go downstairs and wait for the ambulance.’

Bill’s face was an ugly bluish-grey, and his motionless chest rose in a steep hill towards his belly. His eyes were open, staring, and it felt to Ella like he was watching her as she dug into his neck, trying to release the slipknot he’d made of his tie. She managed to pull it
loose, then pressed her fingers into the dense flesh.

Denise waited, her shaking hands clasped over his chest, ready to do compressions. Murray hovered.

‘I think he has a pulse.’ Ella pushed deeper. It was so hard to know.

Denise felt his wrist and frowned.

‘We need to start mouth-to-mouth anyway,’ Ella said.

‘I’ll do it,’ Denise said.

Ella wasn’t going to argue
as Denise grasped Bill’s sweat-greasy face and pressed her mouth over his. She held his wrist and thought she felt a faint racing. After three breaths, his skin started to pinken and she knew that didn’t happen unless the heart was still going. Good. He still had a reasonable chance.

She glanced around to find Murray looking at Weaver’s desk. Denise appeared to be doing fine so she got up.

‘Any note?’ she asked.

‘Not printed out.’

Murray nudged the mouse and the computer monitor asked for a password.

Ella looked at the staff gathered in the doorway. ‘Anyone know Bill’s computer password?’

They shook their heads.

‘No doubt Peter will know,’ she said to Murray. ‘Checked the drawers?’

‘Financial papers and a bottle of whisky. No cups.’

On the floor, Bill started to cough.

‘Bill,’ Denise shouted at his face. ‘Can you hear me?’

He groaned and coughed again.

‘Roll him on his side,’ Ella said.

It took her and Murray plus Denise and Roger to heave him over.

‘Bill!’ Denise screamed in his ear.

‘No need to deafen him,’ Murray said.

Bill moaned. Denise burst into tears. Roger came forward and
helped her up, and took her out of the room.

Ella squeezed Bill’s shoulder. ‘Can you hear me?’

He mumbled something.

She leaned close. ‘Say that again?’
Tell me what you know.

He mumbled again.

She glanced at Murray. ‘Something about Marko.’

There was a bustle in the foyer and two paramedics and three firefighters hurried in, kits and equipment swinging from
every hand.

‘Excuse me,’ the taller female paramedic said. ‘We need to get in there.’

Ella moved reluctantly out of the way.

‘What happened?’ the other one said.

Ella described the situation. ‘I don’t know when he did it, but we weren’t able to get in for maybe four minutes.’ She pointed to the cut tie. ‘That’s what he used.’

They glanced over at it, then shone a
tiny torch into his eyes and put an oxygen mask on his face.

Ella could hear Denise weeping in the foyer. She looked around for Peter but couldn’t see him.

‘Did anyone meet you downstairs?’ she asked the paramedics.

‘Some guy told us to come to the fifteenth floor.’

‘He didn’t come up with you?’

The paramedic shook her head. ‘Are you the patient’s workmates? What’s
his name?’

‘I’m a detective,’ Ella said. ‘He’s a possible witness. His name’s Bill.’

The paramedic called Bill’s name. Ella saw his eyelids flicker.
That’s right, come on back. We’ll find out what you know yet.
She patted his meaty shoulder and walked out to the foyer. Murray was already there, speaking to a couple of the men. Denise sat trembling on the leather lounge near the reception
desk, Roger beside her, his arm around her shoulders.

‘Have you seen Peter?’ Ella asked.

They shook their heads.

Denise peered past her at the paramedics. ‘Is he going to be okay?’

‘I think so.’ Ella went behind the reception desk and pulled open the drawers. Paperclips, a stapler, sticky tape, pens and notepads. No wallet or mobile phone. ‘Does anyone have Peter’s number?’

People shook their heads.

Ella looked at Murray. He shrugged, clearly getting nothing useful from the pale staff.

The lift doors opened and she looked over to see a firefighter emerge, pushing the ambulance stretcher. No Peter.

‘I’m going downstairs,’ she said to Murray.

EIGHT

I
n the lift, Ella watched the lights flash behind the floor numbers. At ground level, she stepped out onto marble floors. The clacking of women’s heels echoed in the high space, and two empty-faced men sat motionless behind the security desk. Peter was nowhere to be seen.

Ella showed her badge at the desk. ‘Did you see the paramedics arrive?’

‘Yep.’

‘See a skinny guy meet them?’

‘Yep. He had us hold the door for them.’

‘Did you see where he went then?’

They shook their heads.

‘He didn’t hang about here, didn’t go up with them?’

‘No idea.’

Ella walked to the doors to the street. It was still raining. People hurried across at the lights with newspapers or briefcases over their heads, cars drove past
with wipers swishing, and heavy drips fell from the joins between one building’s frontage and the next. The air smelled of rain on oily asphalt and cigarette smoke. Ella looked along the footpath and saw Peter standing with his back to the wall, a cigarette in his shaking right hand, his eyes fixed anxiously on hers.

She walked over to him. ‘Why didn’t you come back up?’

He motioned
to the ground. Four cigarette butts lay around his polished shoes. ‘I don’t do well with stress.’ He glanced away, then back at her. ‘Is he, ah…?’

‘He’s waking up,’ she said. ‘With a bit of luck he’ll be all right.’

‘Thank heavens.’ Peter sucked the last out of the cigarette and dropped the stub on the ground, then twisted it flat under his toe.

‘Do you know why he did it?’
she asked.

‘He didn’t leave a note?’

‘Not that we’ve found.’

‘Huh.’ He opened his cigarette packet and tapped a new one out, then held it towards her.

‘No, thanks.’

He took it for himself and lit up, blowing the smoke above his head, eyes on its drift in the damp air. Ella waited and watched, her hands on her hips, passers-by brushing against her now and then, the
hiss of tyres on the wet road loud behind her. Peter hemmed and hawed and scratched under his jaw with his little finger while his index and second squeezed the cigarette’s barrel.

‘I don’t know for certain,’ he said at last. ‘I mean, I think he was having some kind of marital issue, so maybe it could be that.’

‘But,’ Ella prompted.

‘But there may have been something else going
on.’ He scratched his jaw again, the skin turning red under his nail. He looked over her shoulder at the street and blinked, once, twice. ‘I heard him arguing on the phone a few times.’

‘Yesterday?’ Ella said, thinking of the mysterious phone call to Marko that Roger had overheard.

Peter shook his head. ‘Last Friday he got one, early afternoon I think it was. And a couple the week
before.’

‘Do his calls always go through you?’

‘Not always. If people know his line they can call him directly. That’s what this person did.’

‘Which means you can’t know whether it was always that person,’ she said.

‘No, but it was always the same pattern.’ He sucked hard at the cigarette. ‘I can see on my computer when he gets a call, and sometimes the number appears and
sometimes it’s blocked. These were always blocked. And after Bill answered, he’d buzz me and ask me to hold everything, so I knew he wasn’t to be disturbed.’

‘How long did he talk to this caller?’

‘Five, ten minutes,’ Peter said. ‘Last Friday I could hear him even through the closed door. He was saying, “No, no, no!” Almost shouting it. Angry.’

The same words Roger had heard
Marko saying.

‘Was he saying it as if disagreeing with what the caller was saying, or trying to get somebody to stop doing something?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like if you saw somebody beating someone up and you tried to stop it, your shouts would be different than in an argument.’

He scraped his teeth over his upper lip. ‘It was as if in an argument. Insistent. No. No. Angry,
as if he’d had enough.’

Ella nodded. ‘Did you ever listen in on the calls?’

‘I would never do something like that.’

She studied him. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course.’ He widened his eyes, returning her stare.

‘Did you ever talk about the calls with him?’

‘After Friday’s one I tapped on the door and asked if he needed anything. He said, “I told you I was not to be
disturbed.”’ Peter’s voice took on the large man’s boom. ‘I thought, fine, okay, and left him to it.’

‘Then what?’

‘He wandered out about half an hour later, all smiles.’ Peter looked at the cigarette tip. ‘I didn’t bring it up.’

‘And today, after we went to speak to Denise and the others?’

‘He was quiet,’ Peter said. ‘Thoughtful. He stayed on the lounge for only a few
minutes, then said he was all right and had some calls to make and I should go back to my desk. He got up without my help and really seemed fine, if a little shaken. He told me to shut the door on my way out, and I did, then at my desk I saw on the computer that he was making a call. I could see the number, it was local. I didn’t think much more about it and got on with my work.’

‘How long
was he on the phone for?’

‘I don’t know,’ Peter said. ‘I had other screens up on the computer and didn’t see when he disconnected.’

Ella estimated that she and Murray had spent fifteen to twenty minutes talking to the other staff. Weaver couldn’t have hung himself too soon after he was left alone though, or he would’ve been dead for sure.

‘We need to go up and see who he was
calling,’ she said.

As they reached the lifts, the doors opened and the paramedics and firefighters heaved the stretcher out. Bill Weaver’s enormous belly jiggled under a white blanket while blue nylon seatbelts strained to hold him in place. Ella saw the redness on his flabby neck was turning into bruising. He looked at her and Peter from behind an oxygen mask, and tried to speak but made
no sound. The paramedics pushed the stretcher across the lobby, the firefighters laden with gear falling in behind them and hiding him from view.

In the lift Ella said, ‘Do you know the password to his computer?’

Peter shook his head.

*

On the fifteenth floor, Murray waited by Peter’s desk. The staff had disappeared, back to their cubicles, Ella supposed, or gone out for
a restorative early lunch.

Peter went behind his computer. ‘The call’s no longer connected.’

‘Can you find the number he dialled?’

He typed something on the keyboard and frowned at the screen. ‘It’s something called Holder and Byron. I don’t recognise the name.’

‘Can you Google it?’

He typed quickly. ‘It says accountants.’

‘Address?’

He read out a floor
and street number in Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills.

Ella scribbled it into her notebook. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

Peter smiled weakly.

Murray was already walking to the lift. Ella waited until they were inside and the door had closed before she spoke.

‘Bill Weaver’s had “no, no” phone conversations recently too.’

Murray nodded. ‘And while you were downstairs,
one of the other employees – a guy named Donald Staines – told me that he’d twice seen Marko and Weaver having hushed conversations in the corridor, conversations that stopped when they saw him. I took Roger aside and asked him if he knew anything about it, and he said no.’

‘Did Weaver say anything before the paramedics took him out?’

‘Mumbled a bit, nothing intelligible.’ Murray pushed
his hands into his pockets. ‘He squeezed their hands when they asked him to, and they said that showed his brain was in reasonable shape. They were going to Sydney Hospital.’

‘Let’s check out this Holder and Byron, and by the time we’re finished there Weaver might be well enough to talk to us,’ Ella said.

‘I need lunch first,’ Murray said. ‘I’m starving.’

The rain had slowed
to a drizzle. They crossed the street to a cafe and ordered sandwiches to take away. The tables were full of men and women in suits and the noise bounced off the ceiling. Ella looked out the window at the building they’d just left and thought about what might make a man try to kill himself like that. Bill Weaver knew something, and she was going to find out what.

Murray glanced at his watch.
‘I’ll just go outside, make a call.’

Ella grinned. ‘You still haven’t told me her name.’

‘Whose name?’ He winked and went out.

Ella checked her own phone and found a recent text from Callum asking her to call. Anticipation making her tingly, she went outside herself and took a few steps in the other direction from where Murray whispered sweet nothings into his phone.

‘Hey,’
she said when Callum answered.

‘Thanks for calling back.’ He sounded flat. ‘Are you off this evening? I’m on break at seven and I need to talk to you about something.’

Horns blared on the street and she put her hand over her ear. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Or if you’re busy we could meet tomorrow.’

A grey sludge of trepidation drowned the tingles. It didn’t sound like a conversation
to anticipate. If only she could count on getting overtime. But wait. ‘I’m having dinner with my parents tonight. I can’t really pull out now.’

‘Can you drop by first? It won’t take long.’

She couldn’t think of another excuse. ‘Okay.’ Then she said, ‘Want me to bring coffee from that place you like?’

‘Up to you.’

Oh, this was bad. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I have
to go.’ The line went dead.

She lowered her phone. The sound of traffic on the street was loud and the passers-by walked too close. She pressed herself against the wall. It could be disputed whether she and Callum were technically even going out, but this felt like a break-up roaring straight towards her. And from the tightening screws in her chest, she knew it was the last thing she wanted.

*

Jane went out of the muster room to the ambulance, checking her phone on the way. She’d texted Laird half an hour ago, as she usually did at lunch, and he hadn’t replied.
So today he’s busy.

She leaned into the ambulance and picked up the radio. ‘Thirty-five’s complete code twenty.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-five,’ Control answered. ‘Head to Rozelle HQ and phone me in a couple of
minutes.’

Jane looked back at Alex, who was standing in the muster room door.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you been naughty?’

‘Not at work,’ she said.

He grinned.

Her heart fluttering unreasonably in her chest, Jane waited until Alex turned into Druitt Street next to Town Hall before she dialled Control’s number on her mobile.

‘Trevor Gittins in HR wants to
see you,’ the control officer said.

‘What about?’

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘But good luck.’

She hung up and said to Alex, ‘I have to see some guy called Gittins in HR. Know him?’

‘Nope. What’s it about?’

‘It must be a complaint,’ she said. ‘Why else would they pull us off the road like this?’

‘A complaint against you? Can’t be. We’ve spent practically every second
of every shift together for the last two months. Apart from the two weeks I was off. What did you get up to then, hmm?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Then maybe you’re getting another commendation. Something to go with your bravery award.’ He smiled

She looked past him at the grey sky reflected in the water of Darling Harbour. ‘There was this really pissed guy we picked up at the casino,
when you were off. I had to restrain him from slapping me. He could’ve misinterpreted. Taken offence.’

‘If he was really pissed it’s unlikely he’d remember anything of the night, let alone you.’

‘That time frame though,’ she said. ‘It’s enough time for the bill to arrive, and that might’ve provoked him. Because what else could it be?’

‘Some crazy,’ he said. ‘Some officious nurse
maybe.’

That reminded her of Trudie. ‘What if it’s to do with Marko Meixner? What if his wife or someone is complaining that I didn’t look after him properly? What if they found something that I should’ve picked up, something that caused his death?’ She felt uneasy, clammy. ‘Maybe he had a head injury, and he had a fit on the platform and that made him fall. I knew I should’ve fought harder
for him in Emergency.’

‘It was Trudie’s decision to put him in the waiting room,’ Alex said. ‘You didn’t miss anything. I heard you in the back of the truck. You did the lot. I asked him too. He knew where he was and what was going on. You did everything you could.’

Jane frowned out the window. She felt like she had back in her early days on the job, when she’d been afraid that every
patient had something extra wrong with them, something she couldn’t see. For a while she’d overtreated – ECGs on fractured ankles, blood sugar tests on breathing difficulties – then slowly she’d learned to trust herself and her knowledge and particularly her experience. Over the years, she’d come to the point where every case was some combination of things she’d seen before. She’d believed Marko
was either paranoid or had good reason for his fear, and whichever it was, she’d checked him fully, from head to toe, more than once. There’d been nothing to miss. She’d looked after him properly and well.

But then what was the reason for this summons?

*

The ambulance administration building at Rozelle had smelled the same since Jane had first entered it for her applicant’s interview
twelve years ago. The carpet had been replaced a couple of times since then, but there was still the same hint of must in the air, still the same odour of paperwork and printer ink and warm computers, of coffee and lunches and long afternoons behind desks. The corridor Jane sat in was long, and if she leaned forward from her chair she could see almost all the way to the classrooms, full of
apprehensive students, at the southern end of the building. She remembered fat textbooks and exam nerves and shaky-handed fumbles in practical tests.
Don’t let it be over.

The uniformed officer working as Trevor Gittins’s assistant had his leg in a cast. He sat with it stuck out sideways from the desk and resting on stacked phonebooks. He hunted and pecked on the keyboard, frowning at the
monitor, and kept glancing at Jane apologetically.