‘He responds well to food.’
‘Ah, OK then, let’s give that a try.’
He produced a liver treat and sure enough Shadow emerged a few seconds later, all nine and a half magnificent kilos of him. The young man’s eyebrows shot about halfway up his forehead.
‘Is he friendly?’ he asked. I could see him doing mental calculations about how much damage those extra-large paws could do.
‘He’s a big softie.’
Sure enough Shadow behaved impeccably and suffered the usual indignities of thermometers and prodding with nothing more than a nervous purr. Then came the moment of truth. The young man picked him up and put him on the scales. I held my breath. The last time I’d visited I’d been sent away with a bag of diet cat food and a flea in my ear, metaphorically speaking.
We both watched the scales flitter backwards and forwards. It was like a weigh-in episode of The Biggest Loser. Finally the scales stopped moving and the digital readout flashed 9.56 kilos. I felt a flush of embarrassment start to creep up my neck and ears. The vet looked at me out the corner of his eye. He picked up Shadow, who gave him a smooch, asking for another treat.
He turned to me and looked me straight in the eye. ‘He’s got very heavy fur,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for another treat.
The memory, coupled with Gran’s magic touch, wiped out the last of my bad mood. I followed Shadow and Gran out the door and downstairs. Mum was in her study doing a reading for a client and she had another booked straight afterwards, so the three of us headed for the kitchen and fell into the comfortable rhythm of getting a meal ready. Gran took the lead, I peeled and chopped and Shadow got under our feet.
Mum came in an hour later, looking tired but pleased, which told me that both readings had gone well. She didn’t look like the weight of the world was on her shoulders and that meant that neither client had any dark clouds in their immediate future.
Gran put piled plates in front of us. We were having a family favourite, beef and Guinness pie with mashed potatoes and green beans. Mum opened a bottle of shiraz and with each sip I felt my sense of wellbeing return. I’ve long since resigned myself to the fact that I am a comfort eater. It’s hard not to be when you have someone like Gran in charge of the kitchen. Peach cobbler with cream followed for dessert and then I got up and made us a pot of tea.
We sat there, full and content, sipping our tea. Then I pushed my chair back and took in the two women who were my whole universe. I was struggling to remember why it was that I wanted something different from this. My self-pity party of the afternoon seemed ridiculous now.
CHAPTER
16
By the time Ed got home from Phil’s house he was wrecked. It had taken everything he had to hold it together through dinner. Phil pressed him to stay for a nightcap but he refused, pleading a pounding head. His brain felt like it was being squeezed in a vice and the pain was ricocheting around behind his eyes every time he made a sudden move.
He walked through the front door and straight to the medicine cabinet. He rummaged around looking for the last of the pills the doctor had given him when he fractured some ribs in a fight with a drunken lout a couple of years ago. He finally hit pay dirt and threw them down with a mouthful of water straight from the tap, then stepped back out to the hallway to head for the bedroom. Pausing mid stride, he looked at the door to the back room.
Trying to ignore his pounding temples he walked into the room, flicked on the light and made a beeline for the whiteboard. He looked at the photos Cass had picked out. He stared at their eyes. The colour was the same, that deep, sparkling green. It was so simple that it had never even occurred to him. He’d looked for physical similarities; similar features, similar age and similar build. The idea that someone could be choosing victims based on eye colour alone was weird. As if there was such a thing as normal with these psycho bastards.
He thought back to the scene with Cass that morning. He’d been pretty hard on her. He’d been totally incensed by what he saw as her intrusion into his home, his life and his grief. He didn’t really believe that she was stalking him. She was an odd one. He guessed she was somewhere approaching thirty but she acted much younger. She lacked the self-confidence of most women her age. From what he knew about her it was not very surprising. Sorenson had said something about her living like a recluse because of her gift. Some gift; if that’s what it’s like to have a sixth sense, she could keep it. The fact that she had come stampeding over to offer to help him without even giving him a chance to draw breath suggested that she wasn’t used to interacting with people. Most people would’ve realised that he needed time to digest the morning’s events without another full-frontal assault to add salt to the wound.
Still, he felt a bit like he’d kicked a puppy. Phil hadn’t made the situation any better either. Her sledgehammer approach had sent Cass running from the room with her tail between her legs. She was probably at home vowing never to help anyone ever again and he was largely responsible.
He looked at the photos of Susan. His heart clenched and he felt tears well in his eyes. He didn’t know what was worse: the thought that she had left him, the thought that she had been in some terrible accident, or this latest version of hell, the idea that some freak had taken her and done terrible things to her. He forced his mind away from these thoughts. The only thing down that path was madness.
He put the photos back in their places. His headache was starting to ease but the combination of painkillers and exhaustion meant he could barely focus. He would sleep and then look at things again tomorrow.
He dragged himself down the hallway and into the bedroom. He tore his clothes off and let them drop to the floor as he walked. Without turning on the light he threw himself onto the bed and tugged the quilt over himself.
The alarm next to his bed was buzzing furiously. He cracked one eye open. It felt like he was deep under water. The effort to wake up was huge. He raised a leaden arm and thumped the clock, managing to hit the snooze button. He lay there, half asleep, until it went off again ten minutes later.
He sat up, throwing back the quilt and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He did a stocktake on how he was feeling. The headache had gone, all that was left was bone weariness.
He shuffled into the ensuite and spent twenty minutes standing under a pounding shower, letting it needle him awake. Eventually the water started to turn cold and he reluctantly got out. He wiped the steam off the mirror and surveyed the damage. His eyes were bloodshot, stubble decorated his chin, and his hair, unruly at the best of times, was sticking up at impossible angles. You’re not going to break any hearts today, sunshine.
He gave himself the once-over: quick shave, teeth brushing and combing hair into submission. By the time he was done he was starting to feel better. His stomach was demanding food. He threw some boxer shorts on and headed for the kitchen.
His mobile chirruped; new message. Phil. She’d phoned while Ed was in the shower, checking to make sure he was still alive and functioning. He flicked the kettle on then grabbed the phone and pressed the speed dial, holding it to his ear while he rummaged through the pantry and freezer looking for something to eat that was approximately within its use-by date. Phil answered on the second ring.
‘Hey, I was in the shower.’
‘Good, I was just about to come over and make sure you were still with us.’
‘Don’t worry, if I was going to top myself I would have done it before now and saved you from having to kick my arse back into shape.’
‘Well you sound a bit better. Grace was really worried. She said she couldn’t remember the last time you turned down her banana caramel pie.’
‘I had a splitting head, I just needed some sleep.’
‘Yeah, I was hoping it was that and not any plans you might’ve had to dive into a bottle.’
‘Nope, no whisky, just a couple of painkil
lers and bed for me last night. Hey, I need a favour.’
‘Am I going to like it?’
‘Probably not, I need you to cover for me. Tell Sorenson I had a migraine and I’ll be in late? I want to spend a couple of hours going over some of the missing person files.’
There was a long pause followed by a whoosh of expelled breath. Ed fished a frying pan out of a draw and cracked in a couple of eggs that he hoped were still fresh enough to eat. He shoved two pieces of ice-crusted bread into the toaster.
‘Let me guess, the ones that little Miss Pain-in-the-Arse picked because they had green eyes?’
‘You have to admit, the fact that Janet Hodgson had green eyes too might mean she’s onto something.’
‘It might mean jackshit too, I don’t know how many people have green eyes but it’s got to be quite a few.’
‘Maybe.’
Phil sighed again. ‘If you have to, you have to. What time will you be in?’
‘Ten thirty at the latest.’
‘You’d better be, we’ve got a mountain of calls and paperwork and I ain’t doing it all by myself.’
Ed focused on his breakfast preparations. He had a burning desire to get started, but he had to eat first. The toast popped and he grabbed it, burning his fingers. He was no Jamie Oliver, that was for sure. Before Susan had disappeared he wouldn’t have been able to find a frying pan. The kitchen was her domain — he was relegated to menial tasks like dishwashing and taking out the rubbish. She’d been a sensational cook: in the first two years after they got married he’d gained ten kilos.
He slathered margarine on the toast and slid the eggs on top. Remarkably, they were still roughly the right shape and colour. He spooned instant coffee into a mug and poured boiling water on top. No point looking for milk; any milk in his fridge would have been there for so long it would have its own ecosystem. He stuffed a forkful of eggs into his mouth. They tasted OK — hopefully they wouldn’t be back to prove him wrong.
With plate and mug in hand he headed for the back room. He plonked them on the desk and pulled open the filing cabinet drawer. Over the last two years he’d compiled his own files on each of the missing women. Each contained copies of key documents from their official files as well as information he’d pulled together by conducting his own quiet investigations.
He’d been limited in what he could and couldn’t do. The Crime Service handled all missing person cases and they weren’t amenable to sharing. If they’d known he was snooping around there would’ve been hell to pay. He also couldn’t contact the family and friends of the missing.
If he started approaching them they were likely to ask why yet another officer was interviewing them. Given that most were already in a fragile state, any approach might have antagonised them into filing a complaint or making a phone call to the CS and then the jig would’ve been up. He’d spent the last eighteen months looking for patterns and links, looking for something that others had missed. The hours he’d burned didn’t bear thinking about and it wasn’t just him. Phil was there at his side a lot of the time as well. It was no wonder that he’d just about ripped Cass’s head off when she waltzed in and started talking about green eyes. It was so obvious that they hadn’t even considered it.
The eggs were turning into a gelatinous mess as they cooled so he stuffed a couple more forkfuls in his mouth then shoved the plate to one side. He took a slurp of coffee, scalding his tongue, then pulled out the four files and spread them on the desk. He plucked the photos off the board and placed each above its file. For the next hour he sat there, first reading the files one by one and then opening each of them simultaneously and comparing the information recorded on official reports.
The first victim, Virginia Hope, went missing back in 2008. She’d moved into a new house in Clifton a few months earlier from inner city Adelaide. She’d moved for two reasons: to get away from an ex-boyfriend who was physically abusive and to buy her own house. Clifton was a place where housing was still relatively affordable.
Her new life was pretty straight forward. She didn’t know many people. She’d been friendly with an old lady who lived next door to her but the woman had died shortly before Virginia went missing. She’d also joined a local tennis club and was seeing a man she’d met there. He was interstate on the day she disappeared so there was no reason to look at him too closely.
Most of the investigation focused on her ex-boyfriend, who had no alibi for the time she went missing. He’d been hauled in for questioning on three separate occasions but there was no proof of anything, no physical evidence at his home, in his car or at his workplace. Innumerable police hours were spent looking for forensic evidence. They found nothing.
On the day she went missing she went to work as usual, catching the bus like she always did. She caught it home again and got off at her normal stop and that was the last time anyone saw her.
The second victim had disappeared in 2010. Angela Bingham was thirty-eight, whereas Virginia was only twenty-three. Physically she was very different. Virginia had strawberry blonde hair and freckles and a natural, fresh look about her. Angela was a fiery redhead with porcelain skin but she looked like she worked hard at keeping herself beautiful, well preserved. She lived in McLaren Vale and was single but led a very active social life. She was a board member of two charities and ran her own PR company. Her life was full of cocktail parties, black-tie dinners and other schmoozing opportunities.
The Crime Service was kept very busy interviewing the multitudes who featured in her life. All their enquiries eventually ran dry and they were left with nothing. There was no evidence that she’d met with foul play; no blood traces, no signs of a struggle, no one who seemed to have a grudge against her.
The third woman was Susan. She’d disappeared in 2011. He didn’t need to read her file. Every page of it was imprinted on his brain. His beautiful Susan. She was radiant. He looked at the photo of her he kept on his desk. He felt like a knife went through him. She was so full of life. Her head was thrown back a little and she was laughing. He’d taken it on their first wedding anniversary. He’d surprised her by walking into the bedroom wearing nothing but his hat and utility belt and twirling his handcuffs. She was shocked initially but then erupted into fits of giggles. He remembered his chagrin; he’d meant to turn her on, not make her laugh so hard she cried. Once she’d calmed down, they’d made love slowly and with such tenderness that it made him ache just thinking about it. Afterwards they’d gone out for lunch and she’d been teasing him about his newfound adventurous streak when he snapped her photo.
Missing woman number four was Simone Blakewell. She was forty-five and had greying brown hair. She was thin to the point of being bony. Unlike the other three women, she was quite plain — the only beautiful thing about her was her eyes. She was a single mother who didn’t have much of a social life at all. Her two children were aged nineteen and twenty-one. They both still lived at home when she disappeared.
The kids were looked at but quickly ruled out as suspects. There was no motive for them to want her gone. In fact, their lives were considerably less comfortable without her around. The ex-husband was also investigated but he was remarried and no matter how hard they looked they couldn’t find either a motive or any evidence to suggest he was involved in her disappearance.
Ed sat back, stretched and looked at his watch. Time had flown — it was nearly ten o’clock. He was going to have to get going soon or risk facing Phil’s wrath. He stood up and flipped the whiteboard over so that he had a blank surface. He put up the four photos and wrote their names and the dates they’d gone missing. Then he wrote in Janet Hodgson’s name. He stood there for a few seconds looking at it and then it hit him. If you ignored 2009, the women had gone missing in consecutive years. He felt his gut lurch. It was more than that. The women had all gone missing in either June or July. There it was, staring him in the face, the pattern he’d been trying t
o unlock for nearly two years.
So what had happened in 2009? Was there a missing woman they didn’t know about? He stood there, his heart racing. No, she wasn’t missing; people didn’t disappear without someone noticing. Either the killer had skipped a year or there was another Janet Hodgson, another one they’d found dead. He ran out of the room and down the hallway, grabbing his keys and jacket on the way through. If there was another dead victim she might be the key to finding the killer. And Susan.
CHAPTER
17
Ed walked into a squad room so taut with nervous tension it was palpable. Phil wasn’t at her desk so he threw his jacket over the back of his chair and picked up the phone to check his messages. Samuels spotted him from across the room and made a beeline for him. Ed sighed and replaced the receiver. As much as he found the man irritating there was no faster way to find out what was going on.
‘Afternoon shift started then has it?’ Samuels asked with a leer.
‘What’s up?’ Ed didn’t bother to acknowledge the snide remark. There was no point. A reaction was what Samuels wanted.
‘Results are back from the lab on the Michael McKenzie case.’ Samuels paused, waiting for Ed to ask the question.
Ed gritted his teeth. He was going to have to play the game if he wanted to find out anything. He looked around, hoping Phil might appear and save him from the charade. No such luck. He took a deep breath.
‘So what did they find?’
‘The blood results indicate that he was nowhere near drunk enough to walk in front of a truck or pass out on the road.’
‘Really?’ Ed tried to mask his distaste at Samuels’s relish over the details.
‘Yes, and there’s way the truck hit him.’ He paused again for dramatic effect. ‘Sonya thinks he was pushed or thrown in front of it.’
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