by Pamela Hart
‘You wouldn’t understand!’ he said. ‘Men have needs. After Gloria died I needed … I knew better than to—to get involved with someone at the church. Weaver was … convenient.’ He was really sweating now, and interestingly, his explanation was all to Ruth, not to Chloe. His sister’s opinion mattered to him, which I hadn’t expected.
Convenient. It was a horrible word. Julieanne Weaver had been a lot of things, but she’d never been a convenience in her life.
‘Convenient?’ Tol asked, as if sharing my thoughts.
Stephenson looked at Tol for the first time, and I realised that he didn’t know who Tol was.
‘Dr Lang was Julieanne’s official boyfriend,’ I explained softly, and there was an intake of breath from our audience. For the first time Stephenson blanched. A man for him to answer to.
‘She wasn’t worth your concern,’ he said earnestly to Tol. ‘A loose woman is a blight on everyone she comes into contact with. She was shameless! Parading around the bedroom in those—outfits. Decent women don’t own underwear like that. You’re better off without her.’
Julieanne had been whatever men wanted her to be; it didn’t surprise me, somehow, that Stephenson wanted a whore.
‘Is that why you bashed her head in?’ I asked. ‘Because you were better off without her?’
He was thrown off balance by the accusation, not expecting it to come from me. His mouth opened and shut, but he didn’t answer.
‘Eliza Carter told us,’ Chloe added, ‘that she pushed Julieanne into the pit. She thinks that Julieanne died as soon as her head hit the beam. But she didn’t, did she, Samuel?’
Now was Martin’s moment. ‘You didn’t follow Eliza, did you, Sam? Eh? You came for a session of hot sex with Julieanne, and when you arrived, what? Eliza was coming out? Or did you arrive later? We know what you did. You took her head between your hands and you bashed her skull against that beam until she was dead, didn’t you? Once, twice, three times … what did it sound like, Sam? Did you enjoy it? Was it as much fun as fucking her? Eh?’
Ruth rushed out the back door and we heard her being sick in the garden. We all looked towards the sound and Stephenson used the distraction to run. He sprinted down the narrow strip of chipboard that led to the front door with surprising speed, but Tol moved faster, reaching out a long arm to jerk him back. Stephenson teetered on the edge of the pit.
Time slowed. I saw—I swear I saw, even though it must have happened in a split second—Tol thinking through letting him fall, letting him die, maybe, and then rejecting the idea. He pulled Stephenson around by his expensive jacket so that instead of falling headfirst he sprawled half on and half off the chipboard, hands scraping for purchase, feet scrabbling in the dirt.
Chloe and Martin ran over and Martin grabbed him, hauling him up.
‘She deserved it,’ Stephenson said, looking at Tol. ‘She said I had two options: I could marry her and be the MP’s husband, the power behind the throne, or I could buy her silence and an abortion with preselection. She threatened that if I didn’t make sure she was the candidate, she’d announce the affair to the media, and ruin the party. The church, too. I couldn’t let a little whore destroy everything we’d built, Matthew and Amos and I.’
‘When did she say that?’ Chloe asked. ‘That night?’
‘Eliza only bruised her a little. I arrived just as she was coming out. I let Eliza leave and when I came in Weaver was sitting on the beam, there’—he pointed to the pit—‘rubbing her head. She looked up at me and she laughed about Eliza. Thought it was funny that Eliza believed Matthew had been—had been intimate with her.’
It astounded me that after everything he’d done, he still couldn’t say the word sex.
Ruth had come back in and was standing in the kitchen doorway, wiping her mouth. Her eyes were dark and burning. ‘You are a murderer,’ she said.
‘I had to protect the church!’ he said, pleading for her understanding. ‘It’s more important than a slut like her.’
‘You killed your unborn child,’ Ruth said. She raised her hand, finger extended, and pointed at him with steadfast condemnation. ‘You are damned for all time.’
She was implacable, the voice of judgement, and Samuel bowed his head beneath it, his shoulders shaking as he began to cry.
‘Ruth!’ he cried, but she walked past him, shoulders straight, and went out the door without a backwards glance.
A second later Boris returned with a two-litre jug of milk, looking over his shoulder at Ruth as she walked down the street.
‘I miss something?’ he asked. He passed the milk to Fozina.
‘Yes,’ I answered. My head was spinning and I felt sick, but there was something I was determined to get done. I marched over to Fozina, picked up the clipboard which the mayor had dropped again in all the excitement, and handed it to him. He looked at it blankly, and then looked at the milk, so I took the milk away and pointed at the mayor. Obediently, he sidled around the edge of the room on the chipboard ledge and gave the clipboard to her.
She looked at me with a challenge in her eye.
‘I’m a member of the media,’ I said. ‘Do you want to make an enemy of me?’
She signed, tore off the top copy and laid it carefully on the floor in the corner. Then she gathered her dignity and walked out, followed by her entourage, with Boris trailing behind, saying, ‘Can I do the post now?’
I sighed and sat down on the edge of the pit, feeling boneless and curiously empty.
Detective Chloe and Martin did the whole process of telling Stephenson his rights while Boris enthusiastically dug the hole for the newel post, whistling. Chloe called for backup and when a patrol car arrived they handcuffed Stephenson, put him carefully in the back and watched as the uniformed officers drove him off. By that time, I’d pulled myself together, and went out to her.
‘Um—have you actually arrested him?’ I asked.
‘You’ve got about an hour before he’s formally charged. I guess you’ve earned an exclusive.’
‘Fantastic!’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
I called Tyler and said, ‘Tape this conversation right now.’ I opened the camera app on my phone, handed it to Tol and said, ‘Film us. Close up to get the audio.’
‘Taping,’ Tyler said.
‘Okay,’ Tol said, aiming the phone.
‘This is Poppy McGowan for the ABC. I’m speaking to Detective Sergeant Chloe Prudhomme.’ I turned to Chloe. ‘Detective Sergeant, is it true that there has been a breakthrough in the investigation into the death of Julieanne Weaver?’
She looked at me with a long-suffering air, but she said, into the phone. ‘Yes. We have taken a suspect in for questioning.’
‘And are you expecting to make an arrest?’
‘We expect to be charging the individual concerned with the murder of Dr Weaver.’
‘Is that individual Samuel Stephenson, the treasurer of the Radiant Joy Church and one of the preselection committee for the Australian Family Party?’
She took a deep breath, protocol fighting with a sense of debt. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Eliza Carter, the wife of MP Matthew Carter, was taken into police custody earlier today. Has she been cleared of any complicity in the murder?’ I wanted Patience to hear it straight from the police, not just from me.
‘Mrs Carter is no longer a person of interest in this investigation.’ Chloe stared meaningfully at me. That was it.
‘Thank you, detective sergeant.’
She waited until Tol lowered the phone.
‘I want you and Lang to come in tomorrow and make a formal statement about that scene in there. And you’d better email me the names of everyone who was in the room. God help us, we’ll have to take statements from all of them.’
She and Martin made their way to their car.
I went back to the phone. ‘Tyler? I’ve filmed this as well. I’ll send it to you via Dropbox. You’ve got about an hour before they charge Stephenson. The background is that he and Weaver were having an af
fair and she threatened to expose him if he didn’t guarantee preselection.’
‘Shit!’ Tyler said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Very sure. She was pregnant, but they haven’t confirmed it was his yet, so maybe you’d better not use that.’
‘We can say she was pregnant and leave it to the punters to draw their own conclusions,’ he said. ‘And play that grab of him in the car park we didn’t use before.’
‘Good. Show him as the hypocrite he is.’
‘This is great stuff, sweetheart. You want a job with me?’
‘No, thanks!’ I said. And hung up. I felt a dark satisfaction. That was the end of Australian Family trying to take over the New South Wales parliament or any other. Carter might hang on, but he’d be gone at the next election. I ticked off the ‘Take down Carter’ item in my mental to-do list, sent the video file to Tyler’s email, and that was that.
Tol was watching me from the open front door, a curious look on his face, half admiration and half distaste.
‘I wanted Patience to hear it officially,’ I said.
His expression cleared, and I felt just slightly guilty. It was true, I did want Patience to hear it. But it also felt good to get the story. To get Tyler’s praise. I understood how news reporters got hooked on their job—but I preferred kids’ TV.
I rang Mum and told her briefly what had happened and that I’d be home later. ‘You look after yourself,’ she said gently. It almost made me cry.
Tol and I walked slowly back into the house, past Boris in the pit, and went upstairs, retreating to the small private space of the second bedroom. Tol was silent until we reached it and sat down, leaning our backs against the wall. The patch of sun had moved to high on the wall. It was getting late.
‘She told me once that she wanted children,’ Tol said.
From below, Boris called out, ‘I go get the concrete, miss.’ He shut the door firmly behind him. It was just the two of us in the house now, and I felt the tension go out of me. I resisted the impulse to lean my head on his shoulder.
‘Julieanne saw everyone else as puppets to dance on her strings. I doubt she thought of the baby any differently.’
It was one of the most terrible things I’d ever said about anyone, and part of me wanted him to deny it, to argue me out of it. But he merely tucked the corners of his mouth in and then sighed.
‘Now what?’ he asked, half to himself.
‘I have to see Patience. Help her sort out if she wants to go home now her mum’s not a murderer. Want to come?’
‘She doesn’t know me. I’d be in the way.’
He was right, but I was reluctant to leave him. That moment when he’d almost let Stephenson fall came back to me with force. This was a good man. A truly gentle man, who would never knowingly hurt anyone, not even the man who’d killed his girlfriend. How many people could you say that about?
I wanted to hug him. Comfort him. Kiss him. Even if he was leaving in six weeks.
‘Tol …’ I said, not sure what else to say. He moved towards me and reached out to touch my cheek, as he’d done before. I shivered, and he moved nearer.
I looked at his changeable eyes, his beautiful hands, his mouth … Six weeks was long enough to fall in love. Did I want to risk that?
Maybe.
I thought of Julieanne, vibrantly and viciously alive one minute, dead the next. Maybe six weeks of love—or at the very least, love-making—was a good choice when death was a possibility for each one of us every day.
So I kissed him, and he kissed me back, warm and human and comforting and then, abruptly, so much more than that.
Six weeks. Six minutes. Six seconds was long enough.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My friend Ron Serdiuk first egged me on to write this book, so my first acknowledgement must go to him. And then to the other friends who let me use them as templates for some of the other characters—especially my husband, the ex-archaeologist, who might bear more than a passing resemblance to someone in the story … Particular thanks to those who beta-read the ms—Vicki Northey, Peta McCartney, Kay Ramsbottom, and of course Ron.
I had great fun writing this, and it was lovely for me that another friend, Nicola Robinson, became my publisher after yet another friend, Alex Adsett (agent extraordinaire) submitted it to her. Ladies, it’s a pleasure to work with you.
Many thanks to the team at Harlequin HQ and to all involved.
ISBN: 9781867201885
TITLE: DIGGING UP DIRT
First Australian Publication 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Pamela Hart
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