by Garry Disher
‘Morning, gents.’
‘Charlie,’ they nodded, the greeting hobbled by the events of the previous day. Soon one of them was going to say, ‘Beautiful morning’.
Charlie cut across that: ‘Thanks for coming yesterday.’ Relieved, Saltash said, ‘Least we could do.’
‘She’d been a part of our lives, Charlie,’ Valente said.
‘Anyway, it was appreciated.’
That was the signal for awkward handshakes before Saltash trundled on down the beach in his buggy and Valente dropped his towel onto the sand and kicked off his footwear. Charlie gave a little half-wave goodbye and was a few metres along the beach when Valente called, ‘Would you like to come for lunch? About twelve-thirty?’
Charlie stopped. ‘Sorry, can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m picking up Dad around then.’
‘Oh? For what? The doctor?’
Charlie walked back to where Valente stood with his big feet planted in the lapping sea. ‘Homicide want to interview him. Formally. He could be charged.’
‘Shit. Sorry. Tell him good luck.’
‘I will,’ Charlie said and found himself looking helplessly at Valente, whose return glance was so full of open curiosity that he was tempted to dive back into the water, cleave through it and abrade himself against the rocks.
By 12.45 he’d collected Rhys and Fay and driven them to police headquarters.
Jenna Baird met them outside the building. She was older than Charlie, dressed in a white shirt hoicked halfway out of the waistband of her wrinkled linen trousers, dead-straight black hair more or less kept off her face by struggling alligator clips. The untidiness was deceptive. Baird always looked distracted, as if she’d overslept and thrown herself together before rushing out the door. And if she had a concealed self, if something dramatic lurked in her, Charlie had never seen it. She got the job done, though. A lawyer of the sharp, skewering kind.
The handshakes were brief, almost perfunctory. ‘Thanks, Charlie,’ Baird said, ‘I’ll text you when we’re done.’
Fay was agitated. ‘I thought I could sit in. He’s not well.’
Baird shook her head. ‘Not possible. You might be called as a witness.’
What she didn’t say was: In fact, you might be on the list of suspects.
Like me, Charlie thought. ‘If you need more information,’ he said, ‘just shoot us a text.’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’ve had two long consultations with your father, and I have some knowledge of the police case against him.’ She didn’t say how she’d got it. ‘Now: I need you both to prepare for the fact that they might arrest him today. In which case I will ask that he be bailed. But that will mean that one hour stretches to five or six hours.’
‘We understand,’ Charlie said, not confident that Fay did.
Then Rhys was taking Fay aside. A kiss, a hug, reassurance; Baird waiting nearby with the kind of patience that is impatient.
‘Ready?’ she said.
She took Rhys away.
Fay joined Charlie and he could see the tension thrumming in her. When he put his arm around her she leaned into him.
He took her to a shaded outside table at a Southbank café. Tense, out of sorts, they sat and watched the sun glittering on the water and the glass towers on the north bank, playing with iced tea and cake they didn’t want, and why was the place teeming with people on a workday?
Fay picked up and set down her glass. ‘When we moved to Warrandyte I couldn’t wait for our new life to begin. Instead, your dad got sick and it stopped in its tracks. Does that sound ungrateful?’
Love and its expectations, Charlie thought. He touched the back of her hand. ‘No. I wish you’d told me how sick he was, though.’
She shook her head, but whether that meant she didn’t know why she’d said nothing or didn’t want to be challenged, Charlie couldn’t tell.
Presently she said, ‘It was just chronic at first. He was fine, we could do most of the things we liked doing, he just had to be careful not to put strain on his system. But he did get worse last year. The cruise was meant to be a treat before he, before he…’ She shook that off and looked directly at him, her face raw, her voice rising and spreading: ‘Tell me the truth. Is he going to jail?’
‘You can’t think like that, I—’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘Sorry,’ Charlie said. He cast about for the words: ‘It seems they think they have a case, so it’s possible he’ll be arrested, but there’s a big difference between that and going to jail, and Jenna’s good at her job.’
She nodded gloomily. ‘She drove out to see him on the weekend, which was good of her—’
‘Wait till you get the bill,’ Charlie said.
A strangled smile. ‘And they had a long talk on the phone last night.’
‘Did he tell you what they talked about?’
‘She took him through the sorts of things he might be asked. How to answer, what to look out for, how to let her step in.’
‘Good,’ said Charlie. Although Rhys Deravin was a wily old coot who knew all the tricks of interrogation and evasion, this was different. He was ill. He was the target. And given that his fuse could be short, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t blurt out the wrong thing.
Clearly Fay had thought about that, too. ‘What if he gets confused, or incriminates himself without knowing it?’
‘Jenna will take care of him.’
Fay wet her finger and collected a crumb.
Charlie said, ‘Her knowledge of the police case: did she talk to Dad about any of the specifics?’
Fay looked up at him, hooking a perspiration-damp tendril behind her ear as she weighed her words. ‘Not much. She said she wanted to see how it went today before she worked out what her defence strategy would be. I mean, they might not even have him in their sights—might just be after information.’
Charlie could see waves of emotion in his stepmother, but before he could say anything, she added: ‘But one thing she did say, there’s something wrong with his alibi.’
Liam, Charlie thought.
‘And something about him hiring a carpet-cleaning machine from the Coles supermarket in Hastings.’
‘Everyone cleans their carpets,’ Charlie said. ‘Doesn’t prove anything.’
Yeah, you hold on to that thought, Charlie. He picked morosely at his own crumbs.
Then his phone pinged. He picked it up, saying, ‘Let’s hope we can take him home.’
A text from Jenna Baird. Come right now.
46
AS THEY FOLLOWED the ambulance, it occurred to Charlie that he was fed up with hospitals.
Cabrini this time. Half an hour frittered away dropping Fay at the main entrance, finding a park, heading inside to locate her again. She was in a waiting room, kneading a handkerchief. ‘They’ve taken him for tests.’
He pulled his chair closer. ‘Heart attack?’
She nodded. ‘Possibly not major, but still…’
And they sat side by side with that knowledge. They barely spoke. And then Fay was touching her fingertips to his jiggling leg. ‘No need for you to hang around, Charlie. If you have things to do…’
Demand information and answers, that’s what he had to do.
Two hours later, responding to her text, he was back, standing in the doorway of a room where Rhys—hooked to machines—looked frightened. Not even Fay could dispel that and seemed to know it, too, seated beside his bed, holding his hand. When Charlie stepped into the room she said, with an air of precarious good humour, ‘Look what he’s gone and done this time.’
Charlie struggled to go along with it. ‘Dodging his responsibilities again,’ he said, hearing the words crash leadenly around him.
Rhys stirred. ‘Son.’
Fay patted the side of the bed. ‘Sit.’
They’re both glad of the intrusion, Charlie thought. ‘How are you, Dad?’
‘A little heart scare, that’s all.’
Little, Charlie thoug
ht. He was about to remonstrate but Rhys’s face had gone slack; eyes half-closed, chest rising and falling sluggishly.
‘It’s okay, he’ll wake up again,’ Fay said, seeing Charlie’s expression.
‘Had me scared for a moment.’
Fay’s phone pinged for an incoming text. Charlie watched her read it and clear the screen and a moment later reach out and squeeze his forearm. ‘What have you been up to?’
Charlie shook his head: how to express the gradual erosion of his intentions? He’d driven back to the Homicide Squad, where he was given the brush-off by Bekker and McGuire, and then he’d had a sit-down with Jenna Baird in her Richmond office.
‘I had a word with the lawyer,’ he said.
‘What did she say?’
‘She apologised; she hadn’t known how wound up Dad was. They went at him hard apparently, even showed him photos of Mum’s remains. Then halfway through their arrest spiel, he grabbed at his chest and fell to the floor. She made them call an ambulance.’
Fay looked at her husband again. ‘Poor old boy.’
A curious endearment. In this room thick with electronics, disinfectants and a hopelessness kept barely in check, did she see Rhys as old? Barely three years older. And did she see him as a boy? Boyish when she’d first met him, probably, but that had dwindled in the aftermath of Mum’s disappearance. ‘Poor old boy’—curious, but full of love and pain.
‘They haven’t posted a guard,’ Fay said, with a note of bitter humour. ‘Presumably they don’t think he’ll do a runner.’
Charlie nodded. ‘I think Jenna put the wind up them. She told me there’s a Magistrates Court committal hearing slated for next month; she says she can delay it. I mean for a start, is Dad in any condition to contribute to his own defence? And…look, she couldn’t tell me much, but when the physical evidence was tested again recently, she said they found another DNA trace. Male. Not in the system.’
Fay glanced uneasily at Rhys. ‘Yes, he told me. He said they asked him who his accomplice was.’
‘They would ask that. But Jenna’s confident she can spin it another way. Reasonable doubt.’
Charlie recalled clearly what Baird had said. She’d argued before him, as if before a magistrate: ‘In light of the fact that DNA from another, unidentified male person was present at the crime scene, it appears to me that the Crown should regroup with a view to deciding if their case against your father is prosecutable.’
‘Let’s hope she’s right,’ Fay said.
Another thing Jenna Baird had said: if the virus worsened there might be limitations placed on public gatherings—in which case trials and hearings were likely to be delayed anyway.
A nurse whisked in and about, throwing them a distracted smile, checking the machines, the chart at the foot of the bed, Rhys’s position on the pillow. Waiting until she’d gone, Charlie said, ‘Did Dad say much else about the interview?’
‘No. He’s been fading in and out. And strictly speaking he’s not supposed to talk about it to anyone, in case they get called as a witness.’
They both sat there and watched Rhys, his shallow breathing.
Charlie said, ‘Fay, I never asked, but you were questioned back then?’
‘Of course.’ She touched the back of his hand. ‘I had nothing to tell them, though. I’d been at a conference in Sydney.’
‘How about since then? The cold-case unit looked at it a couple of times.’
‘The same. Nothing I could add to what I originally told them.’
Charlie wriggled his shoulders, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’
Fay said, ‘But I expect behind the scenes they looked at me pretty hard. Unusual bank transactions. Who I hung out with.’
‘It’s what they do,’ Charlie said. It’s what I used to do.
Their little burst of conversation lapsed again until Fay, glancing at her watch, said, ‘I’m just going for a walk. I’ve been sitting around all day. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Call me if anything changes.’
She grabbed her bag and left and a minute later Rhys said, ‘Is she gone?’
Slippery old bugger. ‘You’re not at death’s door, then?’ Charlie said.
‘Feels like it,’ Rhys said. He attempted to boost himself in the bed but flopped again, stretched to his limit. ‘Things I need to tell you.’
Deathbed confession? Charlie swallowed. ‘Okay.’
Struggling for air, Rhys said, ‘They laid it all out for me. I had a strong motive to kill Rose—I didn’t want to sell the house or pay her anything. I took up with Fay almost immediately and didn’t show the requisite grief. I couldn’t even be bothered to attend the inquest. I got my mates to lie for me. And my alibi was weak.’
He trailed away. Charlie waited, then said, ‘All circumstantial.’
That triggered another burst from Rhys. ‘Compelling though, with a good prosecutor. Plus, they have my mobile phone records for that day, which show two calls of interest, from their point of view. One to your mother—their argument is, I called her to find out where she was so I could go there and kill her.’
‘Did you call her?’
‘Yes. There’s no big mystery. Like I told you the other day, I wanted to drop off some tablecloths but didn’t want to run into her, it would be awkward for both of us. The thing is, it was a five-second call—her answering machine.’ ‘What was the other call?’
Rhys shifted uncomfortably. ‘The school, to check that your mum was at work.’
Charlie knew that could be spun a couple of ways. ‘You think someone at the school has remembered?’
Rhys looked at him bleakly. ‘The receptionist put me through to the staffroom and I found myself on the line with Karen Wagoner, remember her? The last person I wanted to talk to. Anyway, she said Rose had just slipped home to collect something but would be back after lunch, so I just filled in time for a couple of hours before I dropped off the tablecloths.’
‘Shit. You didn’t see anything at the house? Mum’s car?’
‘No.’
‘Dad, if Liam saw you in the area maybe others did, too.’
‘I know. Actually, Bekker and McGuire know I was there, but not through Liam.’
‘Karen Wagoner.’
‘Probably. I must’ve let slip I was leaving the tablecloths and they went back over the original photos and saw the carton on the veranda.’
‘That could sink you.’
‘I know. But what’s interesting, I was also asked about vehicles that I might have seen. Specifically a motorbike—one was reported haring through the crossing outside the primary school—or a white van—one was seen near where Rose’s car was found.’
Bekker keeping an open mind? ‘At least they’re looking at other possibilities,’ Charlie said.
Rhys snorted. ‘They’re looking at my so-called accomplice, but your Ms Baird really knows her stuff. She got Bekker to admit that the original investigators were told this at the time but never followed it up.’
‘Dad, Shane Lambert had a motorbike.’
Rhys looked baffled, an old man. ‘Did he?’
‘You know he did. He would have driven it to your place when he came to give that security advice.’
Out of the reaches of time and space, Rhys said, ‘You could be right, come to think of it.’
Then he shifted up on the pillow again, suddenly sharp as a tack. ‘Anyway, Bekker said Lambert was in the lockup that day.’
‘Yeah.’ They both chewed on that. Charlie checked his watch: Fay might return, or Rhys might fade or shut up again. Time seemed urgent suddenly. ‘Jenna told me they found a second DNA trace, male, not in the database.’
Rhys nodded. His gauntness seemed more acute. ‘She was arguing it weakened their case; they were running the accomplice line.’
‘I forgot to ask what kind,’ Charlie said. He paused and added awkwardly: ‘Semen?’
Rhys shook his head, a weak flop left and right on the pillow. ‘They ret
ested the blood on her keys. Found a male sample with it.’
Those keys…A big bunch, keys for everything. Charlie thought irrelevantly: Dad must’ve sold her car with the spare key. ‘How well did you know Lambert?’
‘Hardly at all.’
‘His friends?’
‘Charlie, I barely knew him. Let’s just say he had his uses. God, I’m tired.’
He’s being evasive, Charlie thought. ‘What about the carpet cleaner you hired?’
‘Oh, for god’s sake, I threw wine over your mother the day she walked out and made a bad job of getting it out of the carpet, all right?’
Protesteth too much. And Charlie hated to visualise that spurt of anger. ‘Did you ever hit her?’
Rhys Deravin was shocked. ‘Never. I don’t like where you’re going with this. Throwing wine over someone isn’t the same thing as hitting them.’
Not far off though, Charlie thought. He regarded his father gloomily. Even at this extreme, his heart failing him, barely holding on, he was capable of wriggling out of a mess.
‘Can I ask why you didn’t stay on in the house?’
He thought Rhys would say, ‘Because I wanted to live with Fay.’ Instead, all of his father’s reserves seemed to drain out of him. Shrinking in the bed, he said, ‘Look what they did to your mother. I couldn’t stay.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
Rhys’s chest rose and fell, barely disturbing the bedclothes, and his eyes were closed, his mouth slack, an old man sleeping. Charlie checked the time: Fay had been gone for half an hour. He texted her and took the lift down to the ground floor. Out on the street, he winced: the afternoon sun struck his eyes, struck against windscreens and even the chrome on an old MG burbling along the street. His sunglasses were in the Skoda, and he was halfway to fetching them when he paused, stepped into the concealing shadows of a signboard and watched Fay cross Wattletree Road from a yellow VW and hurry into the hospital.
47
AS THEY SPOTTED Charlie steaming towards them, the podcast twins climbed out of their car and leaned against it, their arms not folded but their postures suggestive of that. He wanted to slap the smugness from their faces.