‘Luke Branson, you’re under arrest on suspicion of fraudulently obtaining money by deception and using false documents to obtain financial advantage.’ The male officer puffed as he spoke. ‘You have the right to—’
Before the officer could finish his warning, Luke began babbling to Maz.
‘I’ve been set up, babe. There’s a conspiracy against us. We couldn’t leave Australia. Someone was trying to stop Gracie getting treatment. It was Dr Rawson—he wants money for his research. He’s stolen the fundraising money and disappeared. He’s taken all his records with him.’
‘Luke, there is no Dr Rawson.’
‘Oh, babe, you’re not one of them, are you?’ His sad eyes implored her. ‘Dr Rawson was so good with Gracie but then something happened. I think he misdiagnosed Gracie and now he’s making me the fall guy. There are no records, that’s the problem. I can’t work it out. Will you help me, babe? I need to get some treatment for Gracie.’
The female police officer had been listening in silence. Finally, she spoke. ‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing Gracie for a very long time.’
That shut him up.
The Tweed Heads police station was all shiny and new—not the best place for a small child and a new puppy. Marmalade skittered along the floors and peed next to a chair. As Allison cleaned it up, the policewoman on duty at the desk waved away her apologies.
‘Don’t worry, he’s a cutie. We’ve had much worse.’
Maz curled her body into the seat, happy to wait for the detectives. Her legs and stomach hurt. From sprinting. From landing on top of Luke. And from the fear. Next time she was in a police station, would they be arresting her?
The relief was written on the schoolteacher’s face but Maz could see she was trying to hide it from Gracie.
‘Daddy has to help the police with a few things,’ Allison explained to the little girl. ‘We’ll go and talk to them soon too.’ The teacher couldn’t take her eyes off the child. Every so often, she’d cuddle her or drop an arm around Gracie’s shoulders.
‘Thank you for organising the coppers,’ Maz whispered.
‘I was scared for your safety.’
‘But you didn’t think I was going off with him?’
Surely she’d earned Allison’s trust by now. Hadn’t Maz shown her capability?
‘I trusted you, but not him. You were special to him, Maz. I think he loved you in his own strange way.’
When they’d first been talking at the park, Luke hadn’t sensed the hatred inside her.
‘Nope,’ Maz told her. ‘He’s like a mirror reflecting back what you want to see. The only person Luke loves is himself.’
The afternoon stretched into evening as Allison and Maz gave their statements, and Gracie was taken to the hospital for a medical check. Apparently Luke was sticking to his story that Gracie’s mother had died. But no records existed for the Bransons, only the life he’d concocted online.
‘Do you think the mother’s dead?’ Maz asked when Gracie was out of earshot.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Allison said.
As Maz finished yet another coffee, a smartly dressed lawyer appeared at the front desk. Luke could pay for expensive advice. Did that mean he was more likely to get off?
Curtis called, furious that he hadn’t been there for the arrest.
‘Why didn’t you include me in the plan, Maz?’
‘You’re rather recognisable.’
‘I want to interview him as soon as possible. Should I fly up?’
‘I think they’re sending him back to Sydney.’
The detective had said that Luke would be taken before a magistrate tomorrow morning, with the request that bail be refused. If that happened, Luke would be sent to Silverwater remand centre in Sydney until he had a court date.
‘Luke won’t talk to you, Curtis,’ she added. ‘He’s not saying anything to anyone.’
And Gracie couldn’t remember the names of places they’d lived or other family members. Only one cousin.
‘Amelia got a new bike. She’s older than me.’
‘And what’s Mummy’s name?’ a friendly policewoman asked her. ‘Does she have another name? Is it Sarah?’
‘I called her Mummy.’ Gracie scrunched up her face in confusion. ‘Daddy called her Cee Cee.’
‘And was her last name Branson?’
‘I don’t know. Daddy said we had a new one after the fire.’
Cee Cee. A nickname. Not much for the police to go on.
When Gracie returned from the hospital, she told Maz cheerfully that she’d been there before. ‘It’s the one that cured me.’
‘How did they do that?’ Maz asked.
‘Daddy took me in and they gave me a green smoothie.’ Gracie had Marmalade in her lap again. ‘Then he said I was all better.’
The policewoman passed on the doctors’ comments.
‘No sign of cancer,’ she reported. ‘No sign of past surgery. No scars, bruising, burns. No malnutrition. They said some of the other blood tests will take a few days, but she’s looking pretty healthy.’
How had Luke conned them for so long?
Presumably Luke hadn’t given Gracie the Bio-Antidotes if she hadn’t actually been sick. That meant the blood tests shouldn’t show any banned substances. Maz put her palm up to give the girl a high-five.
‘Yay, Gracie! You’ve got the all-clear!’
A healthy five-year-old girl. Maybe, after everything, Maz had saved Gracie’s life by rescuing her from her crazy father.
49
ALLISON
Gracie was released into Allison’s care on Sunday night and they took a late flight back to Sydney. Every time Allison looked at her, she had to do a mental shift. You’re here! I thought you were sick, I thought you were dead. The detectives were liaising with the Department of Family and Community Services to try and identify any relatives.
While everyone had been mourning Gracie and worrying about Luke, the two of them were staying in a ritzy resort on the edge of the Gold Coast. Hanging out at the beach. Watching the dolphin show at Sea World. Spinning around on the Looney Tunes Carousel at Movie World. A bird show at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. A wonderful holiday.
Gracie quickly tired of Allison’s constant cuddles and wriggled out of her reach. Marmalade was the best distraction. But the little girl couldn’t understand why Daddy had to stay somewhere else.
Early on Monday morning, Allison sat in the principal’s office explaining the whole crazy mess. She had to give Declan a heads-up before the detectives came to interview him later in the day.
‘That fucker.’ Declan slammed his palms down on the desk. ‘I can’t believe he made it all up!’
Allison lurched backwards in her chair; she’d never seen the mild-mannered principal angry, never heard him swear. Thankfully, the children hadn’t arrived for school yet.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,’ she said. ‘I know you were organising the memorial but I wanted some facts before we announced it to the children.’
Allison focused on the pictures behind the principal’s desk—portraits by the older students and photos of school events. Smiling children in a safe environment.
‘Why did we believe him?’ Declan held out his palms.
‘He had all the evidence to back it up. And he looked like a caring dad going through a difficult time.’
She answered easily but the same question was constantly running through her own mind.
‘He’s a fucking sociopath.’
The swear word made her flinch again. Kind Mr Considine cursing like a footy thug in a bar fight. And he hadn’t even invited the treacherous bastard into his home. Every time Allison remembered the things she’d done for Luke, her stomach knotted. The meals she’d cooked, the gifts she’d bought, her sympathy for his wife’s death, her concern about Gracie. The emotions she’d shared about her marriage breakdown.
‘At least Gracie doesn’t have cancer and she isn’t dead aft
er all.’ Allison sighed. It was the only positive.
‘We need to work out how to tell the children,’ Declan said. ‘They’re going to be so confused and the parents will be furious.’
‘I know. The story’s coming out in the media tomorrow,’ Allison said. ‘We can’t lie about what’s happened. That would make us as bad as Luke.’
‘The scumbag has stolen the heart of our school. It’ll crush everyone.’
‘Maybe we can turn it around somehow,’ she suggested. ‘Instead of having the memorial, could we do a different community event?’
The children were told a simplified version of the truth. Gracie’s father had made a mistake about her cancer. He’d told some bad lies and the police were interviewing him. But the best news: Gracie was alive and healthy.
A detailed explanation was being emailed to parents. As soon as it went out, the school would be bombarded by phone calls.
Allison hoped that Wirriga didn’t take their anger out on her nor on Gracie. Perhaps she should read them Aesop’s fable about the bee-keeper who discovers all the honey has been stolen from the hives. When the bees return, they see the beekeeper standing there, blame him and attack. As he topples from their stings, he calls them ungrateful scoundrels who have mistaken their caring master for the thief. The moral: Things are not always as they seem.
At lunchtime, Allison returned to school with Gracie in the back seat. As she pulled into the staff car park, she pictured Luke the day her car wouldn’t start. Had he done that? Had he been watching the house, assessing his target? Even though she’d never seen his Jeep, Allison was sure it must’ve been his eyes that she’d felt raking over her home. Increasing her paranoia about being alone. She’d invited in the very person who had been causing her fear.
Gracie carefully held the dog’s lead. Her hair was a soft fuzz, growing back. She didn’t bother with a bandana.
‘Everyone’s a bit confused, Gracie,’ Allison explained. ‘They might act a little strangely.’
‘I missed them all,’ Gracie said. ‘Even silly Zack.’
When the children saw Gracie walking into the playground, they came running. The teachers cried, the kids whooped. And Marmalade scampered between their legs, yapping with the excitement.
Allison had hoped and prayed for this moment—Gracie returning to school, cured. She couldn’t get her head around the fact that the little girl had never been sick.
‘We thought you were dead.’ Zack spoke for them all.
‘No, I went to Movie World at the Gold Coast.’
‘You’re so lucky,’ Selina said.
On Tuesday, Detective Sergeant Rejman drove Allison and Gracie to the children’s hospital. After they’d walked through the main entrance doors, he asked Gracie to explain what had happened every Friday.
‘We had to wait here.’ Gracie sat down in a lounge in the foyer. ‘Daddy got the medicine over there.’
She pointed towards the hospital pharmacy. Together, they walked into the store. Staring around at the medicines on the shelves, Allison wondered what Luke used to do here.
‘Hello, Gracie.’ The pharmacist came out from behind the counter to welcome the little girl. ‘How’re you feeling?’
‘I’m all better,’ she said.
‘Fantastic!’ He winked at Allison. ‘You deserve a red frog and your special drink.’
He grabbed a pair of tongs from the counter and reached inside a huge jar of lollies to select a red frog. Then he took a kombucha from the fridge.
Gracie refused the drink. ‘No, I’m all better,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t need it.’
Luke must have told her the kombucha was her drug treatment.
‘How has she been since she finished her last course?’ he asked Allison. ‘And how’s Luke?’
Staring at the badge on his white coat, Allison didn’t know how to answer. His name: Rawson Jones. Pharmacist.
With the red frog and a picture book distracting Gracie, the detective spoke to Rawson. Confusion and disbelief flashed across the pharmacist’s face as he began to understand the extent of Luke’s scam.
‘It wasn’t just me,’ Rawson said. ‘He made friends with interns, nurses. He used to talk to other patients.’
Copying their language, their emotions.
‘He showed me X-rays and blood tests and emails from specialists,’ Allison said. ‘Could he have got those from the interns and the nurses?’
‘I guess so. He was friendly with one guy in particular—a radiographer, Samir. You should talk to him.’
When the detective tracked down the radiographer, apparently the conversation was difficult. Samir refused to believe the fraud; he’d been fed yet another story.
‘Luke’s studying to be a radiographer,’ Samir told the detective. ‘With Gracie’s diagnosis, he wanted to specialise in PET scanning. We discussed case studies for his assignments.’
Befriending medical professionals and patients. Gaining detailed information, reports, photos of equipment—all to fabricate Gracie’s disease and the others: Jessica Moore with breast cancer, Lily Ng with head injuries, Phillip Saunders with leukaemia, Hannah Bennett with ovarian cancer.
Luke had even conned them at the hospital.
An email arrived from Kayleigh that night. She’d shown the photofit pictures around Hythorne. One of the younger Luxfords was up from Melbourne visiting his mother’s grave and thought Luke looked similar to a guy who’d bought a horse from their stud last year. While the records were burnt in the fire, he recalled a name—Mike Carter. The reason he remembered: the guy was buying the horse as a surprise for his wife’s birthday. A romantic but risky move, he’d thought at the time.
Forwarding the email to Detective Sergeant Rejman, Allison added one short line: Luke told me this story about his wife’s birthday. It must be him.
One corroborated fact among all the lies. One tiny solid brick.
After crossing her fingers for luck, Allison put Mike Carter into the search bar on her laptop. A list of English men came up. She added a location, Victoria, Australia. When she read the top headline from October last year, Allison began to shake.
Father and toddler missing in fire
Mike Carter and his four-year-old daughter remain missing, feared dead, after the Nicklin Creek fire. It is believed that the father and daughter drove to an outlying farm to rescue their horses from the path of the fire. Their burnt-out car was found near the farm.
Six fires continue to burn across the state. Victoria is experiencing its thirteenth driest period on record. The predictions are for a difficult bushfire season in the hot summer months ahead.
He’d not only faked Sarah Branson’s death but his own. Used a bushfire emergency to cover his tracks.
Who was grieving for a missing father and toddler?
Two days later, Allison waited in her lounge room, clenching and unclenching her fists. That fucker—she’d borrowed Declan’s word. How dare he do this to all of them? The social worker was in the kitchen, playing with Gracie. They’d had a number of sessions. Detective Sergeant Rejman was supposed to be arriving at ten o’clock but he was three minutes late. Together, Allison and Gracie had made fairy bread and set out orange cake. The kettle was filled with water, the teacups on their saucers.
And then the detective and a woman were coming through the front door, down the hallway, into the lounge room. The woman, Chelsea, bore no resemblance to the photos of Sarah Branson. Cee Cee, as Luke had apparently called her. Long blonde hair in a ponytail, petite body—she looked like an older, sadder version of Maz.
But when Gracie appeared from the kitchen, the sadness dissolved in an instant.
‘Oh God, it’s you! Oh, Gracie. My darling girl.’
Laughing, crying, Chelsea ran towards the child. They weren’t sure how Gracie would react. Mother and daughter had each been told the other had perished in a fire. Allison and the social worker watched Gracie and waited.
Gracie giggled. A little giggle that turned
into a giant chuckle.
‘Mummy, you came back from heaven!’
Chelsea pulled her daughter into a cuddle. Kissed her cheeks, her downy hair. Wrapped her hands around Gracie’s waist.
‘I missed you so much, darling.’
‘Me too, Mummy. Don’t go away again.’
Allison had an inkling of how the mother felt, although she’d only had four weeks of believing Gracie was dead. And Gracie wasn’t even her own child. For Chelsea, it had been seven months of grieving for her husband and daughter. Even the detective had a tissue out, blotting his tears.
The mother switched between laughing and crying, pulling Gracie close and then holding her at arm’s length to stare at her face.
‘You’re a big girl now! I hear you started school.’
‘I’m in kindy. Lally is my teacher.’
For the first time, the mother looked in Allison’s direction. Still crying but smiling through the tears.
Allison felt her heart might break—with happiness. Wiping at her eyes, she tried not to think about the pain that Chelsea must have been in, assuming her family was dead. The one good thing, the one amazing thing, from this whole calamity: an unexpected, unimaginable reunion.
‘Guess what, Mummy?’
‘What, darling?’
Which bit of the crazy story would Gracie tell first?
‘I got a puppy.’ Gracie pointed towards the kitchen. ‘He’s in the laundry. Come meet him.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Mummy, you know.’
‘Did you call him Marmalade?’
‘YES!’
Marmalade danced around them, while Gracie showed Chelsea the house and garden. The tears continued to flow. Of all of them, Gracie was the most composed, telling stories about her holiday to the Gold Coast, her friends at school. As Allison prepared sandwiches for lunch, the detective and the social worker left.
‘Let’s Skype Granny and Grandad,’ Chelsea said. ‘They’ll be so surprised at how tall you are!’
The Good Teacher Page 29