by Candice Fox
‘How did you do that?’ I asked.
‘The hidden skills of a morgue woman,’ Val smirked.
‘Oh god. You were listening in?’
‘No. But you’d be surprised how sound travels across the water.’ She patted my shoulder. ‘I have a boy. He’s forty-seven now. A doctor in South Africa.’
‘You never told me.’
‘Well, we don’t get on so great.’ She straightened her shirt, brushed breadcrumbs off her palms. ‘It’s been a long time since I was a parent, but some rules don’t change. You lose control – shove something in their mouth and tell ’em who’s boss. And speaking of …’ She pointed to the bread on the counter. ‘Make yourself something and get out of here. You’ve got a job to do.’
Chief Clark called me on the drive back to Cairns, almost distracting me from the hazard ahead: a four-foot-long goanna marching slowly across the heat-hazed asphalt. In my rush to get back to the search for Richie I didn’t see it, and swerved as I answered the phone through the bluetooth, watching in the rear-view mirror as the enormous lizard disappeared, apparently unperturbed by the near miss.
‘What has she done now?’ I asked.
‘She’s wandered out into the property behind the hotel and found a bunch of workers putting the final touches on a ten-by-ten concrete slab. She’s helpfully pointed out that the ground beneath the slab needs to be available for a search, because it’s possible the Farrow boy was buried there during the time period he went missing.’ I thought I could hear Clark’s jaw clicking as he talked. ‘She’s out there lecturing them about the expense and reliability of ground-penetrating radar, and I’m here getting my ear chewed off by the construction boss.’
‘We should probably have all construction near the hotel halted,’ I said.
‘That’s not helpful, Conkaffey.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I’m sending you video of the interviews with the three couples, and the boys,’ he said. ‘I’m also sending you a list of local suspects that are being checked out, and a temporary login for the database. There’s one guy on the list I’ve assigned especially to you, because he has a history with police. He might hold important details back. If you’re going to go out on a job, go online and make your intentions known so we can avoid double-ups.’
‘Aye-aye, Captain.’
‘Did you talk to the mother?’
‘We did.’
‘I assume you’re not blind, and you’re getting the same vibes we’re all getting,’ he said.
‘There may be a reason for that. Has she, uh … spoken to you about her past?’
‘What past?’ Clark said. ‘I’m yet to receive the full report on Sara and Henry from the officers doing background checks. Is there something I should know?’
I drew a long breath. ‘Sara Farrow has been questioned about the safety of her children before.’ I told Clark the story Sara had told me about Anya, the first child she had lost.
‘Were charges brought?’ Clark asked. His voice was smaller than it had been when I answered the call.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve looked into it. Sara and Henry were officially questioned but the investigation was cursory. There were pillow fibres found in the child’s lungs, and they aroused suspicion. Babies suffocate on pillows, yes, but the fibres matched a pillow that was found in the corner of the room, not in the crib. Police decided in the end that Sara might have flung the pillow out of the crib when she found the baby unconscious and simply not remembered that she had. It was possible the child had accidentally been put to bed with a pillow and suffocated on it. There was no circumstantial evidence to support a wrongful death investigation. Sara and Henry had a happy marriage, and she displayed no signs of postnatal depression. The child hadn’t suffered any other injuries and had never been reported to Child Services.’
‘Jesus,’ Clark said. ‘Why did she have a pillow in the crib in the first place? Everybody knows you’re not supposed to put anything in bed with a baby. You can be charged with child endangerment just for that, even if it was an accident.’
‘Show me the prosecutor who’s going to charge a grieving parent with that,’ I said. ‘And the forensic expert willing to sign off that the pillow was ever in the bed, even if the kid’s lungs did show fibres. If it were me, I’d say the baby was rolling around on the pillow before she was put to bed.’
‘Hmm,’ Clark said. ‘You still have to ask, did Sara Farrow put the pillow in the bed? And if so, why?’
‘You’ve got me. But we’ll never know, and in any case, it doesn’t prove anything,’ I said. I thought there was probably a host of reasons why Sarah might have put the pillow in the bed. People do stupid things. In my time as a drug squad cop I’d seen shockingly neglectful and apparently perfect parenting from millionaires addicted to heroin and life-long junkies living in squalor.
Clark was quiet. I listened to the sound of people bustling through the hotel in the background of the call, a phone ringing somewhere.
‘Sara was rattled by the questioning,’ I continued. ‘Police dragged her and Henry into the station and put them in separate interrogation rooms. Had them in there for hours. Then, when Richie was born, child services turned up to check on the family every few months. Just dropping by to say friendly hellos, you know, with their eagle eyes roaming about the place.’ I thought briefly of Jett examining my child’s bedroom, licking his teeth, judging.
‘It would have been in Sara’s best interests to tell us all this up front.’ Clark sighed.
‘You would have dug it up eventually, I guess,’ I said. ‘She’s scared. I know the feeling.’
Clark gave the new information some thought, but like most cops, he didn’t share those thoughts unnecessarily. He would go back and requestion Sara now, I knew, cornering her on film with the fact that she had deliberately withheld a key piece of information from police. If Sara was smart, she would say nothing and hire a lawyer. That would look bad for her. But it all looked bad for her. If she wasn’t used to it, she would be soon enough.
‘It’s fifteen hours,’ Clark said. I glanced at the clock under the dash. We were past the halfway mark. Specialists would now be arriving from Sydney – abduction and land search experts, forensic profilers and special crimes analysts. The clock was ticking. If Richie wasn’t found in the first twenty-four hours after disappearing, the search would turn from a hunt for a boy to a hunt for a body.
I found Amanda on the steps of the hotel, watching the press mob that had been pushed back to the other side of the street. Under a sprawling poinsettia tree, a reporter in a white sundress was trying to find an angle that would give her a shot of the hotel in the background and not leave her hair blowing in the hot breeze across her face. It would storm that evening, as it did almost every night in the wet months. The humidity would rise to maddening levels just before sunset, and the black clouds gathering over the distant blue hills would descend on the cane fields.
I went and stood beside my partner, still fighting that reflex to dive into the hotel or out into the streets and go running around trying to find Richie myself. Nearby, a small gathering of uniforms was getting instructions about doorknocks they were about to conduct around the neighbouring businesses.
‘Did you know concrete and cement aren’t the same thing?’ Amanda asked.
‘I did not,’ I said.
‘Our whole backyard was concrete when I was growing up,’ she said. ‘My mother was allergic to grass.’
‘I don’t know a lot about your mother.’ I turned towards her. Behind the black lenses of her sparkly sunglasses, her eyes were a mystery.
‘Not much to know.’ She shrugged. ‘She wasn’t very interesting. Wasted the first half of her life in a cult. One of those end-of-the-world UFO cults. Then she had me. Then I killed someone and she disappeared.’
‘And where is she now?’
‘Dunno.’ Amanda tilted her head to face the sky. ‘One of the outer galaxies, I guess.’
‘Yeah
, you’re right,’ I said. ‘A real snoozefest.’
‘How’s your sprog?’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I laughed. ‘I’m never ready for that word.’
‘I know, right?’ She grinned. ‘I love saying it. It sounds both mechanical and somehow amphibian. Sprog. Sprog.’
‘You can stop saying it now.’
‘But how is she?’
‘Devastated,’ I said. ‘She’s been dumped unceremoniously in my care and she hardly knows me. I hardly know her. I can’t wait to get back there and spend some time with her, actually get to know her. I’m full of questions. I wonder if she’s playing with the toys I got her right now. Maybe she doesn’t like them. Maybe they’re too gender stereotyped. Am I supposed to read her a bedtime story? What time does she even go to bed?’
‘Ask the megabitch.’
‘I’m not asking Kelly stuff like that.’ I waved her off. ‘She’ll think I’m an idiot. It’ll be on the internet somewhere.’
‘You’re going ask Google how to raise your child?’
‘Well, you’re certainly not helping.’
‘You’re right.’ She gagged, her head poking forward like a cat trying to cough up a furball. ‘Children. Bleurgh.’
The knot of officers nearby was dismissed, their arms full of sheets bearing Richie’s photo and information. A couple of them came and stood near us, hovering intentionally without going so far as to speak. I turned, expecting another snide remark, but found a pretty officer with shiny chocolate-coloured hair looking directly at Amanda. She had all the hallmarks of a new recruit just recently let loose on the streets – the spit-polished name badge and squeaking gun belt, the leather not yet worn in. But she was old for a new recruit, early thirties, holding the papers against her chest like a university student with a folder of assignments.
‘You probably don’t remember me,’ she said to Amanda by way of greeting. The name badge said Fischer. Amanda took her sunglasses off and examined the cop and her offsider, a skinny ginger guy with big teeth.
‘I’m Joanna Fischer,’ the officer said. ‘I was Pip Sweeney’s old partner at Holloways Beach.’
I took a step up and across, bracing to defend Amanda from some verbal or physical assault. Joanna was playing it cool, but the fingers on the edge of the paper stack she was holding were picking at the sheets anxiously. This was a routine she had practised. Amanda seemed barely aware of the danger.
‘Oh yeah.’ Amanda yawned.
‘She was my first partner, Pip,’ Fischer explained to the red-haired doofus, her nails wandering over the pages as though on guitar strings. ‘When Pip got the promotion to detective at Crimson Lake, I put in my transfer to join her. We were going to run the station together one day, we said. She was my best friend.’
‘I’ve got to tell you, this conversation is fascinating me,’ Amanda said.
‘I was there the night she died,’ Fischer said.
‘All right, that’s enough. We don’t have time for this,’ I said. Pip Sweeney had died trying to defend Amanda from a pair of killers she had stumbled upon in the course of our last major investigation. While Amanda had attempted to fight the two men off, Pip had intervened without waiting for backup and been shot dead. ‘Move along, both of you.’
‘Nah, nah.’ Amanda brushed my arm. ‘Let her finish.’
Cops were gathering within earshot, members of the door-knock crew and a couple of old detectives having a smoke.
‘I was there,’ Fischer said, the false friendliness she’d used to start the conversation dropped like a stage curtain. ‘I went to her body on the lawn behind the house and I … Seeing my friend like that. Someone so strong. So brave …’
I knew the story of Pip Sweeney’s death, though I hadn’t been there. Pip had died in Amanda’s arms, and I had heard that Amanda had told officers responding to the scene that before Pip died, the two had kissed. I didn’t know why they’d kissed, or why Amanda had told anyone that, or if there had been some romantic relationship between Pip and Amanda. Amanda’s love-life was a mystery to me, as were most aspects of her being.
‘Oh yes.’ Amanda glanced at me, a smile of comic deliciousness playing on her lips. ‘It must have been a devastating scene. I can imagine you clutching her limp body in your arms, shaking your bloody fist at the heavens. Sweeney! Noooo!’
‘Amanda,’ I warned.
‘See, Amanda told the first officers on the scene that Pip was dead,’ Fischer explained to her offsider, and the dozen or so officers pretending not to listen. ‘But I was right behind the first crew to go in. I rushed around the side of the house and found my former partner. It’s like I could sense where she was. She was still alive. I heard her take her last breath.’
The people around us were loving this, including, it seemed, Amanda. I wanted to take her arm, to lead her away, but there’s no touching Amanda. It’s one of her rules.
‘Her last breath.’ Amanda elbowed me in the ribs. ‘It’s like something out of Shakespeare. But what could she have said with her last breath? Oh, tell us, Fischer.’
‘She said I was a good friend.’ Fischer jutted her chin defiantly. ‘And she was sorry she was leaving me. I tried to tell her how much I loved and respected her, but …’ Joanna paused for a moment, her fist pushed tight against her mouth.
‘This is such a great story.’ Amanda’s eyes grew wide with intrigue, then looked almost sad. ‘It would be so much better still if it were even half true.’
People were gathering around us now, all pretence abandoned.
‘Of course it’s true,’ Fischer snarled. ‘Pip’s face. Her words. I still hear her sometimes in the middle of the night, telling me she’s sorry. Trying to breathe. I can feel her body in my arms.’
‘Nope.’ Amanda shook her head. ‘No you can’t.’
‘We should go,’ the ginger-haired cop said, perhaps sensing somehow that the tide was turning. Joanna was struggling to form words through her outrage.
‘It’s a great tale, Fischer.’ Amanda clasped her chin in one hand, her elbow cupped in the other, the mock Sherlock Holmes about to drop an inquisitive bombshell. ‘The dialogue’s a bit hammy, maybe. But there’s a bigger problem. See, I do actually recognise you.’
Everyone looked at Fischer. She remained unfazed, her shapely eyebrows arched.
‘You didn’t let me respond when you walked over here. You said, “You probably don’t remember me.” Trouble is, I do. I remember you perfectly from that terrible night.’
Fischer squinted, wary.
‘The night Sweeney died, I was smacked around pretty badly.’ Amanda turned to me. ‘Two lugheads had caught me, and Sweens McBeans was trying to come to my rescue before they pounded me into a fine paste. I ended up with seventeen stitches in my noggin. Right here. Have I shown you these?’
Amanda felt the ridges in her skull, looking up at me. I didn’t answer.
‘Anyway, Pip was already dead. Sheet over her. Kaput. They zipped her up in a body bag and put her in the ambulance. They tried to chuck me in one too, but I wouldn’t go. I don’t do vehicles. I said I’d ride my bike there. I argued with the medic for a few minutes and she finally gave up and treated my worst wounds there with me sitting on the edge of the ambulance cabin. While she was seeing to my cracked melon, I was listening to the two ambos in the front seat, chatting, when one of them mentions an interesting quirk of fate to his partner, who’s just come on the shift. Turns out, he remarks, that Sweeney is the second police casualty of the evening. Can you imagine that? Two cops in hospital in one night!’
Fischer was shrinking slightly beside her partner. She shuffled the pages in her hands, trying to recover a couple that were slipping at the bottom.
‘So I get to the hospital,’ Amanda continued. ‘They’ve taken Sweens off to the morgue. They take me into the emergency room. I’m looking around everywhere for this second police casualty, because I’m curious. I like coincidences. I think they’re magic. But I don’t see anyone in uniform.’
Fischer said nothing.
‘The only way I knew the woman in the bed across from me with the cast on her foot was a cop was when the nurse called her Officer Fischer.’
‘We’re going.’ Fischer looked at her partner, but he didn’t move. No one did.
‘You drove yourself to the hospital on your day off, because you were washing your car and you left the handbrake off and it rolled over your foot.’ Amanda looked around the faces gathered near her to make sure everyone was enjoying this moment as much as she was. ‘The ambos couldn’t believe it. You drove all the way there with a broken foot. Well, you told them. I’m pretty tough. I’m a cop, after all.’
An older detective behind me burst into a wet snigger, which turned quickly into a cackling laugh. No one else was laughing. Amanda had dropped her Sherlock Holmes routine and now grinned excitedly at Fischer, waiting for a response. But Fischer simply turned and walked away, trailing a few cops behind her. Amanda’s shoulders fell. She put her hands on her hips, the prize fighter in the ring watching her opponent climb over the ropes after the first blow.
‘Fischer!’ she called. ‘I’m not done. I want to know more about Sweeney’s last breath! Fischer, get back here!’
The gathering around us disbanded. Amanda slumped, disappointed, but her pep returned when she looked at me and saw my hand held out discretely by my thigh.
‘Nailed it,’ I said.
Amanda flipped her sunglasses down and gave me a half-strength low-five like it was no big deal.
There were interview transcripts to gather, evidence records to check, another all-points briefing in the boardroom that was led this time by a senior detective I didn’t recognise. The major new development in the case had been pioneered by a detective named Ng, who had begun to wonder whether Sara Farrow had been issued two keys by the busy receptionist who had checked her in. There had been an adjoining door between the Sampson and Farrow rooms, which would have given the boys access to a second door to the hall. After meeting with the receptionist and looking up the key issue log, it turned out that Sara had indeed been given two keys. Sara didn’t recall ever seeing the second key, but in all the stress of Richie’s disappearance, she admitted it was possible she had been given a second key and simply left it on a tabletop in the room for Richie to take without her noticing. Because of Ng’s clever thinking, it was established that the boys could have been going in and out of the room adjoining 608, Sara and Richie Farrow’s room, during the night, using Sara’s second key to get back in. The guests and staff who had been in the hotel were being reinterviewed, the focus now on whether any of them saw the boys in the halls or elevators, and how on earth Richie could have left the building, if indeed he did. Everyone clapped for Detective Ng except Amanda, who was busy examining her fingernails.