by Amos, Gina
‘I don’t..., don’t…, really want to die.’
‘Come on Rose, drink up, one last drink,’ Tommy said, as he lifted her chin with his thumb. He dribbled more of Suellyn’s expensive Scotch between her thin, bloodless lips and down her throat. She swallowed and looked up at Tommy Dwyer realising he would be the last person she would see before she died. Her eyes rolled back into her head before falling forward onto the table with a loud thud. He pulled her head up by the oily roots of her hair and then let it fall back down again onto the table, and he was satisfied. She was out cold, he felt her pulse, it was weak, she would be dead soon. He wiped the table down with a dishcloth, rinsed it and emptied the remainder of the contents of the bottle down the sink. He rinsed the jam jar and the whisky bottle and left them to drain in the red plastic drainer next to the kitchen sink. He took one last look at her, smiled, and quietly left the way he had come, out through the front door, to where Suellyn was waiting for him patiently in her car. It was five-fifteen.
Chapter Twenty Six
Suellyn and Jock Kelly stood silently next to each other in the basement car park. Daniel French was standing next to the police truck, hunched over, looking down at the ground and talking into the radio as William was carefully loaded into the ambulance. Suellyn blew her husband a kiss and gave him a short, pathetic wave. William rolled over and she missed the look in his eyes as he turned his head away from her.
‘I’ll be right behind you, William. I’ll see you at the hospital.’ The rear doors of the ambulance slammed shut in her face. Suellyn didn’t follow the ambulance to the hospital, instead she walked over to bay sixteen where the Porsche was parked and drove out onto Marine Parade, turned into the first street on the right, locked the steering wheel hard and executed a perfect three point turn. She was heading back towards the city.
In a junior suite on the tenth floor of the Barclay Hotel, Tommy Dwyer was lying on top of the covers of an unmade king-sized bed drinking black coffee and eating toast. ‘Sunrise,’ a television news service was screening on the plasma screen bolted to the wall opposite the bed. He was lying low in the city hotel trying to fill his time by sleeping, watching television and ordering room service until the money from the sale of his beach house and the inheritance from Rose Phillips’s estate hit his bank account.
A knock on the door startled him. He rolled off the bed. In the hallway, the morning newspaper was neatly folded and propped up against the wall next to the door. Suellyn bent down and picked it up just as the door opened. She looked up at Tommy. He was standing in the doorway, his clenched fists resting on his hips. The fluffy white hotel dressing gown he was wearing was open, exposing his chest which was covered in a mass of tight, springy, grey hairs.
‘Well, look who’s here. Hello stranger,’ Tommy said.
Suellyn breezed past him without saying a word and slapped the newspaper against his chest.
‘Well, that’s a nice hello.’
Suellyn didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm in his voice. ‘William’s in Manly Private Hospital. He was trapped in the steam room at our apartment block last night. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that would you, Tommy?’
Tommy Dwyer stared at Suellyn with a blank look on his face. He was good at disguising his emotions, perhaps too good. Suellyn sat down on the bed and took a bite of his cold toast.
‘After you dropped me home last night, I was so drunk I didn’t even think to wonder where William was. I thought he must have been working late when I woke up this morning and he wasn’t in the apartment. The building superintendent found him when he was doing his rounds and called an ambulance. You might be interested to know that the police are asking questions and I get the impression that they don’t think it was an accident. I heard them asking the super about the automatic safety switch.’
‘Poor William,’ Tommy muttered, without attempting to hide his sarcasm. ‘He’s certainly having a rough time of it lately. Is he going to be all right? Maintenance in some of these high rise apartment buildings isn’t always as it should be.’
‘Yeah, right, I bet you’re sorry, Tommy, real sorry. Where were you last night anyway? Got an alibi for where you were after you left me?’
‘When did you start playing cops and robbers? And why are you suddenly so concerned about William?’ Tommy sat next to Suellyn on the bed, placed his arm around her shoulder and spoke to her softly. ‘It was just going to be you and me from now on, remember Sues? The settlement money from the sale of the beach house should be through either today or tomorrow and the probate from Rose’s estate will be finalised by the end of the week, or so Bartholomew says. You said that St John woman had a buyer for it. Once all the money starts to flow in we can take off to anywhere you want, Paris, the Caribbean, you name it – just you and me. We can go anywhere; do anything we want for the rest of our lives. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? We could even have a baby if that’s important to you.’
Suellyn realised what Tommy was saying was true. No more sitting around at home waiting for William to turn up when he felt like it. But now things had changed and there were the letters to consider. William almost died last night and if he had died, all the obstacles to marrying Tommy would have disappeared. No messy divorce, no lawyers, no arguments. Wasn’t it Tommy she loved? He was the only man who had ever made any attempt to understand her and her moods, and to put up with them. They thought alike, they understood each other, he was always around for her. But Suellyn couldn’t believe she was thinking like this, there was no way she was going to back off. She needed answers from Tommy, and she needed them now.
There was something nagging Suellyn, a niggling, uneasy feeling that Tommy Dwyer wasn’t really the man she thought he was. The letters had thrown up a whole lot of doubt in her mind and those doubts were taking her to all sorts of places she didn’t really want to go. Had he only been using her to get to Rose and William? Well, if he had, she had already decided that two could play at his game. These letters she found were valuable, worth something to Tommy, maybe worth his share of the inheritance. Suellyn knew she had to tackle Tommy head on, once and for all and now was the time to do it.
‘Tommy...’ but before Suellyn could say anything, Tommy had her in his arms. She felt the brush of his tongue against hers as it played gently inside her mouth. He pressed his body hard up against hers, but she didn’t want this, not now when she was so confused about her feelings for him. She dug her fingernails into his arm, their teeth gnashed against each other as she pulled away from his embrace.
‘Stop it Tommy!’ She screamed.
‘Stop what? What’s wrong now?’
‘There’s something I have to ask you. I need to know the truth. You have to tell me.’
‘For God’s sake. Tell you what? What have you got your self worked up about now woman?’ Tommy’s patience was wearing thin.
‘It’s about the letters.’
‘What letters? What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. A carbon copy of a letter I found at the beach house. It was in a cardboard box in the back of your wardrobe. I found the original letter at Rose’s house. She had it hidden behind one of William’s baby photos in a photo frame next to her bed; the letter was from your mother and dated only a few weeks before she died.’
Tommy looked at Suellyn.
‘And there’s this threatening letter you wrote to your mother.’
He knew what was coming next and he thought it was a pity, a real shame. He liked Suellyn Phillips but nothing was going to get in the way of his plans. He thought he had this all worked out, but he had thought wrong. He had underestimated her. He didn’t realise that she had a conscience. ‘Well go on Suellyn, get what’s troubling you off your chest.’
‘Tommy, tell me, did you kill your mother? Did you kill Rose? Did you try to kill William?’ Suellyn stood up from the bed and studied his eyes, trying to find the truth that lay hidden behind them. ‘Did you only pre
tend to love me to get to my family?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
‘The only one I have for you,’ Suellyn shot back. She didn’t wait for Tommy to answer her. ‘It’s over Tommy. I know what you’ve done.’
Tommy stood up and circled her. He placed his hands gently around the graceful curve of her slender neck, pulled back her jumper and kissed the top of her shoulders lightly and tenderly. He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but there was no other way. Nobody would miss her if she suddenly disappeared, he knew that. People go missing all the time, especially women like Suellyn Phillips.
Suellyn reached behind her and put her slender fingers on top of his. She tried to pry them away from her neck. She was surprised by his strength. When he pressed the tips of his fingers deep into the side of her neck, Suellyn’s survival instincts kicked in, she began to fight. Tommy responded. He placed his hand over her mouth, but she freed herself from his grip. She swung her arms around wildly and kicked her heels hard into his shins. He released his grip momentarily and she transferred all her weight onto her right foot so that she could balance herself. He was like a madman, he came at her repeatedly, grabbed her around the waist as she tried to reach the front door. Instinctively, Suellyn’s body dipped to one side to avoid him, but he executed a well-timed rugby tackle. He reached out and grabbed her calves and dragged her body back to him like a crazed animal. He rolled her over onto her back, belly up and mounted her. The look on Suellyn’s face as she stared into Tommy’s dark eyes was one of sheer terror. He flattened the weight of his body against her and again he tightened his grip around her neck. They struggled on the floor; his face contorted and turned red with the effort of restraining her. It was at that point that Suellyn Phillips decided it was time to scream, there wasn’t anything else she could think of to do. The scream was more like a howl, the sound of a bitch in heat. He responded instantly to her outburst by placing his hand hard over her mouth. Their bodies moved together, she bucked him and he pressed down on her more heavily this time - his eyes wide, stared into hers and she waited, expecting the inevitable, a swift ending. He knew her body well enough to be able to anticipate her every move. He wedged one of his knees into her stomach, pinning her securely to the floor. Her eyes bulged and the blood drained from her face. An explosion of bright lights went off in her head like a box of Chinese fire crackers. She didn’t want to die. She tried to shift her weight from underneath him but he weighed at least thirty kilos more than she did and as her body trembled, she wanted to shout, to scream, to do anything to stop him, but the restriction on her larynx stopped her from uttering a single word.
A loud knock at the door startled both of them. The distraction was enough that Tommy’s hand slipped from Suellyn’s mouth. He hesitated as he turned his head in the direction of the door. Suellyn gasped for air and kicked and clawed at him with the last ounce of strength she had left, red welts formed on his cheek as her long tapered nails clawed at him; they wrestled, their bodies became as one as they rolled across the floor. Suellyn lashed out at him with her long bare legs, with her skirt riding up her thighs she struck out at him and knocked the corner of the glass coffee table next to the lounge, sending an expensive looking Chinese lamp exploding to the tiled floor.
Rimis drew his Glock 22 from his leather holster inside his jacket, turned the door handle hard and pushed his shoulder against the unlocked door while Brennan crouched down low and rushed into the room behind him.
*****
Two burly police officers cuffed Tommy Dwyer and cautioned him. He was dragged to his feet and led away with his arms firmly secured behind his back. Brennan stepped back from the doorway and raised her eyebrows as Tommy passed her. She almost felt sorry for him as she noticed the scratches on the side of his face and realised that he had probably bitten off more than he could chew when he took on Suellyn Phillips.
Rather than take the lift and run the risk of a chance meeting with a member of the public, Tommy Dwyer was escorted to the basement car park by the fire stairs and was led out through the ground floor fire exit doors. He was dragged down the ten flights of stairs with his head bowed, his shoulders slumped - looking more than his sixty-four years. Apart from the scratches to his cheek, Suellyn had also delivered to her attacker some rather nasty claw marks to his upper chest and two large distinctive bite marks circled his bruised nipples. The man looked like he had been attacked by a wild animal.
Nick Rimis handed Suellyn a glass of water. She ignored him and the glass. He thought to himself that the woman had guts, despite her bad temper and crazy mood swings. He looked at her sitting on the lounge with her feet tucked beneath her. She looked vulnerable and childlike and something stirred in Rimis, an overwhelming feeling that he needed to protect this woman. Someone had thought to throw a blanket around her shoulders and as she sat on the lounge in a state of shock, Rimis wished that he had insisted they call an ambulance.
‘Suellyn,’ he muttered her name gently, trying to reconnect with her and bring her back to the real world.’
Suellyn looked up at him with red brimmed and swollen eyes.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like us to call an ambulance?’ he asked with genuine concern in his voice. She had been through hell and back with Tommy Dwyer. The red marks and bruises on her neck were a testament to that. It was only by chance that he and Brennan showed up when they did. If they’d arrived any later, it was anyone’s guess as to what would have happened next.
Suellyn looked at the good looking detective standing in front of her. Wasn’t this the macho guy who only yesterday accused her of murdering her mother-in-law? Here he was again, standing in a city hotel room after having saved her life. Tommy Dwyer, she realised would have killed her, or at least, given it a damn good try. ‘No, I’m okay,’ she whispered hoarsely. She spread her fingers lightly over her thin delicate throat. ‘My throat hurts like hell and my body doesn’t feel much better, but I think I’ll survive.’ She smiled weakly as she looked into Rimis’s deep, brown eyes.
As he looked back at her, he realised there was something about this woman, something special. He was surprised that she was able to manage a smile after all she had been through and he wondered what was going to happen to Suellyn Phillips. She had lied to him about her whereabouts on the day Rose Phillips was murdered but now wasn’t the time to talk about that.
‘We’ll organise a car to take you home. Is there anyone we can call for you, a close friend, a relative?’ Rimis asked.
‘No, there’s nobody really, thanks all the same, but I’m fine. I really am. I think I’ll just take some paracetamol and go to bed when I get home. I promise I’ll call my GP tomorrow. But there is one thing you could do for me.’
‘Name it.’
‘Tell William what happened,’ she turned and looked at the female detective standing next to him. ‘Tell him… tell him that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.’
Chapter Twenty Seven
The early light of day entered the hospital room. The night shift had just finished and a tea trolley rattled up the corridor; lights were switched on and a young intern was conducting her early morning rounds. It was another day, a day William Phillips had never expected to see. As he lay in his bed, propped up with the help of two plump pillows, he looked out through his private hospital room window at a cold, drizzly day and hoped that the new shift would be more sympathetic to his needs and a lot younger and prettier than the previous lot.
A new face entered his room.
‘Good morning William.’
He could tell by her accent, her green eyes and her thick, short cropped raven hair that Catherine was Irish. She flipped over a page on his medical chart and pulled the trolley with all the gizmos on it over to his hospital bed and began the tedious task of measuring and monitoring his blood pressure, temperature and heart rate. Catherine popped a thermometer under his tongue and held his wrist.
William was relieved when he was told by the emergen
cy registrar, that he’d not suffered a heart attack. What he had experienced in the steam room was an anxiety attack, dehydration, hyperventilation and physical stress caused by extreme temperature, not to mention the concussion he sustained when he collapsed and fell to the floor.
‘So, how are you this morning, William?’ Catherine said in her fine Irish brogue.’ Feel better for a good night’s sleep?’
‘A lot better thanks. At least a lot better than I did this time yesterday morning, to be sure, to be sure.’
She laughed politely at his corny attempt to impersonate her accent. She recorded his blood pressure and wondered why it was that patients always thought they could imitate Irish accents and why they even bothered. After arriving in Australia every second person she met had an Irish ancestor sitting somewhere on a branch in their family tree. At first she thought it was a clever pickup line, but then soon realised as she got to know a few Australian larrikins that there were many similarities between these Aussie males and the lads she had left behind in Wexford.
Catherine left the room and William returned to his cup of coffee. He was unwrapping a packet of plain sweet biscuits when Jill Brennan tapped lightly on the open door to his private hospital room. His hair was ruffled after sleep and he needed a shave. A business show on the television was quietly running in the background and a copy of The Australian and The Financial Review were lying open across his knees. His mobile phone was resting on his stomach.