Wife on the Run

by Fiona Higgins

  Paula exhaled. ‘Yes, my husband did.’

  ‘Okay. Well, Lisel was caught driving it without any parental supervision, and the vehicle registration should have been transferred

  by now.’ He sounded irritable. ‘But I’ll take that up with her mother. At least we know it’s not stolen.’ The officer thanked Paula and hung up.

  Paula stood staring at her telephone.

  ‘Everything okay?’ asked Sid.

  ‘Not really, Dad.’ She steadied herself against the island bench. ‘But it will be.’

  Hamish knocked three times, then poked his head around their bedroom door. He’d been sleeping in the backyard for well over a month now—first in a swag, then in the caravan—and she’d just started considering letting him back in the house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling her bathrobe tightly across her chest.

  He had that bleary look she despised; the one he got after three or four Friday-night beers with Doggo. Or five or six.

  ‘Want to come out on the veranda for a cuppa?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Come on . . .’ He stepped into the bedroom.

  ‘No.’ She held up the flat of her hand, like she used to when their children were toddlers.

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s just a cup of a tea.’

  ‘Hamish, it’s not happening. Not now, not ever.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He searched her face. ‘We’ve been alright these past few weeks, haven’t we? Things are almost back on track.’

  ‘No they’re not.’ She waved her mobile phone at him. ‘I heard from the Western Australian police earlier tonight. They found Lisel driving our hatchback.’

  Hamish’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again.

  ‘You weren’t ever going to tell me that you met Lisel in Perth, were you?’

  Hamish closed his eyes. ‘Look, it was her mother I met, not Lisel. It’s a long, ugly story that I—I’m ashamed of. And I really didn’t think you needed to hear it.’

  She nodded. ‘Just like I didn’t think you needed to hear about my indiscretions, which at the very least I limited to a grown man. Do you think that’s an environment of trust for our relationship?’

  He stood silent for a moment. ‘Did you and Mark Ferris actually . . .’

  She watched him watching her, wanting to know so badly.

  ‘Yes, we did. Only once.’ Her heart was battering at her chest. ‘But I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.’

  Hamish’s nostrils flared, like he’d just been punched in the stomach.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here, Hamish,’ she continued. ‘It’s only because of what happened in Darwin that we are. It was Christmas, the kids came home with you, we almost fell back into our old life.’ She looked around their bedroom, then back at Hamish. ‘But it’s over.’

  ‘I’ve been trying really hard.’

  ‘I’m not denying that.’

  They stood looking at each other.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said suddenly. ‘This is my home too.’

  ‘Then I will,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay in the caravan. You can stay in our bedroom. Tomorrow, I’ll call a solicitor. We can settle things amicably and move on. We should have done it years ago.’

  ‘You’re not serious, are you?’

  ‘Deadly.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You’ll regret this, Paula. I’ll make sure you don’t get a cent more than you deserve.’

  Showing your true colours now.

  ‘And I’d pay good money not to have to live with you, Hamish.’

  She walked to the bedroom door, then turned. ‘We’ve got two great kids, Hamish. You said that in Darwin. If nothing else, let’s not make it really nasty, for their sakes. We can tell them tomorrow, or some other time when we’ve both cooled down a bit.’ She saw a glint of recognition in his eyes.

  She shut the door behind her and crept out into the lounge room, past the sleeping form of her father. The two kids were already in bed, or so it seemed.

  They’re in their bedrooms and quiet, Paula corrected herself, which may not equate to sleep. I’m never going to assume anything about those two again.

  She stole down the stairs and out into the backyard. Then she opened the caravan door for the first time in a month.

  This is it. I’m cutting my losses and starting again at almost forty.

  Fear flooded through her.

  She climbed into the caravan and looked around.

  The last night I was in here, Marcelo was too.

  Mark, she corrected herself.

  Everything looked the same as it always had. Although Farken Frank and his forensic team had presumably combed through it; whatever her father had put in the freezer, Frank knew about it too.

  She’d been meaning to check it for weeks, but Hamish’s presence in the caravan had given her a good reason to avoid it.

  She crouched down and opened the fridge, flipping up the small silver door to the freezer. Seeing nothing, she felt inside, reaching back as far as she could.

  Her fingers closed around something taped to the rear wall. She pulled it free. A small white envelope, with a note scrawled across it.

  Paula,

  Winnings from my one-dollar bet on the Melbourne Cup first four.

  I did a dummy run with a buck of my own before placing Shirl’s bet.

  Split it with your sister.

  Love, Dad. xx

  Carefully, she opened the envelope.

  The reverse side of a bank cheque, with words penned neatly in her father’s hand: Please pay Paula McInnes.

  His signature, followed by his full name printed in capitals below.

  She turned over the cheque.

  For the amount of $969,406.60.

  23

  Winter was Paula’s favourite time of year in Melbourne. The season of hot pies and Aussie Rules, morning frosts and Sunday afternoon movies, Ugg boots and flannelette pyjamas.

  And this particular winter, it was her season of second chances.

  In April, she’d been declared HIV negative.

  It was a moment of liberation so transcendent, she’d floated above the earth for days afterwards. Unbothered by trivialities, grateful beyond words.

  By July, the papers confirming her separation from Hamish were finalised and lodged.

  Come August, with the police investigations almost over, she was poised to cash her father’s Melbourne Cup winnings.

  The post-arrest investigations had spanned six months from February, with the police grilling Paula about every minute detail of Mark Ferris’s movements during the time he’d travelled with them. All members of the family, even Jamie, had been subjected to multiple interviews with numerous officers, mostly individually, but sometimes as a group. For Paula, one of the most uncomfortable sessions had involved recounting to three stern-faced detectives, including Farken Frank—whose real title was Detective Senior Sergeant Francis Reid—exactly what she’d done with Mark Ferris in the Darwin Botanic Gardens.

  On the final day of questioning, Frank and Paula sat in the interview room across a bare wooden table. At least two police officers had been present at every other interview, but this time, Frank was doing most of the talking. Finally explaining to Paula how Mark Ferris had gone about targeting her family.

  ‘Mark Ferris is an experienced conman who went to Walkerville RSL on Melbourne Cup Day last year to scope out the mob of susceptible seniors there,’ said Frank. ‘It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, Mrs McInnes. Whenever there’s a vulnerable bunch of people drinking together on a public holiday like Anzac Day, Australia Day or Melbourne Cup, it’s a recipe for success for cons like Ferris.’

  ‘Ferris saw you and your party arrive, noticing three elderly people in your group—Sid, Barry and Shirl—and the conspicuous absence of a father figure. He decided to target Caitlin, the teenage girl of the party, as an entrée to mee
ting you. He rightly recognised you to be the family decision-maker.’

  Frank removed his cap and placed it on the table.

  ‘Ferris’s reconnaissance was going nowhere in particular until Barry and Shirl had a lucky windfall, care of your Dad’s online bet. This alone made Ferris push for an invitation to the barbecue at the Gillespie’s home later that night. There Ferris learned about your family’s travel plans, along a route that broadly coincided with some of his own pressing business. He was well aware of the existing police surveillance operation along the Nullarbor, so he did everything he could to get invited along with you.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Paula. ‘Why didn’t he just hitchhike or hire a car?’

  ‘Travelling with a family made him less conspicuous than if he’d travelled alone, and less susceptible to random stops,’ Frank explained. ‘It gave him the opportunity to do a series of pick-ups and drop-offs in network locations, and come and go from your party as he pleased. He did several weeks’ work in Perth, for example, before rejoining you in Darwin. And he was able to get some pocket money from you, Mrs McInnes.’

  She winced, remembering the money she’d given Marcelo in Perth and Darwin—without him even having to ask for it.

  How didn’t I see it? she wondered, disgusted with herself.

  ‘Don’t feel too bad,’ Frank said, intuiting her response. ‘Ferris has been a person of interest to police for years. He’s an expert at getting people to part with their cash with tear-jerker tales of dead mothers, sick grandmothers, needy sisters. He’s been stranded before, lost, terminally ill; one time he told someone he was a returned serviceman with post-traumatic stress disorder from the Gulf War. The bloke’s brazen; we discovered that even Barry and Shirl gave him a thousand dollars on the night Ferris stayed in their home. For an animal rescue centre in Brazil, he told them.’

  Brazen, not a Brazilian.

  Paula felt foolish all over again.

  ‘You’re not the first to believe Ferris’s stories, but we certainly hope you’re the last. We just didn’t have enough evidence to nab him before now. We needed Hamish for that.’ Frank chuckled appreciatively.

  ‘But how did Hamish lead you to Mark Ferris?’ It was something Hamish hadn’t stopped skiting about, but Paula couldn’t quite piece it together.

  ‘Well, an initial intelligence report was filed on your husband in Adelaide,’ Frank replied. ‘Police there interviewed a Belgian backpacker and a youth hostel staffer, who described Hamish’s erratic behaviour, his argumentative demeanour and a suspiciously heavy bag.’

  Frank refilled Paula’s glass of water, before helping himself.

  ‘After leaving Adelaide, Hamish managed to drift further onto our police radar by being spotted asleep on the steps of an abandoned roadhouse at Yalata,’ he continued. ‘We ran a quick background check on the licence plates of the car he was driving and a few other crosschecks, like ringing his workplace. We found out he was supposed to be at home in Glen Waverley on sick leave—which really got us going.’ Frank smiled. ‘I’ve been based at Yalata with Operation Dingo for the past year, so I was the one dispatched to learn more about Hamish. He seemed pretty harmless to me, but I kept track of him for a few days. It was a throwaway reference he made to a “Brazilian ninja”—travelling with you, Mrs McInnes—that sparked my interest. With a bit more digging, we found a photo of this individual—taken by a waitress at the Norseman bar during a karaoke event—and matched it to a file image of Mark Ferris. At that point, headquarters deployed further undercover resources.’

  He shrugged. ‘Problem was, that very day Mark Ferris disappeared in Perth. This left us with nothing much except the “friendship” I’d cultivated with Hamish. So we started monitoring activity to and from your husband’s mobile, to help us locate your family and Ferris, but quickly became aware that Hamish had been hospitalised in Perth with alcohol poisoning.’

  ‘What?’ said Paula. ‘My God.’

  This was news to her; Hamish hadn’t revealed this at their dinner in Darwin, nor any time since.

  Just another thing he was never going to tell me.

  ‘From the tenor of his conversations with his friend Trevor Dogger, we guessed he’d try to fly to Darwin in pursuit of you,’ continued Frank. ‘But if he did that, I would have lost my connection with Hamish, and he was our only link to your family and, therefore, Ferris.’ Frank folded his hands behind his head and leaned back, stretching.

  ‘In an operation like this one, Mrs McInnes, the key element is the capacity of the undercover officer to gain the confidence of the target. That’s a difficult trick to pull off once, and almost impossible twice. We got lucky the first time with Hamish at Yalata. If I’d let him fly to Darwin, we would’ve been forced to introduce a new undercover officer there—and we probably wouldn’t have gotten that lucky a second time. Do you follow me?’

  Paula nodded, feeling chuffed to be receiving such a detailed briefing.

  ‘We had to distract Hamish from flying and try to convince him to hire me to drive him to Darwin,’ Frank continued. ‘So we sent him a fake “broadcast message” from Yalata Nullarbor Tours, offering discount bus fares to Darwin, hoping like buggery he’d take the bait.’ Frank laughed. ‘Lucky for everyone, he did. I spent five days driving him up there, then stayed with him almost ten days in Darwin. Sure enough, Ferris popped up again in the company of your family. Hamish was the first to alert us.’

  Paula cocked her head.

  ‘So you knew exactly who Mark Ferris was, when I asked you to drive him back to Perth?’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’ Frank nodded. ‘And so did the officer who followed you and Ferris into the Darwin Botanic Gardens, posing as a ranger.’

  Paula’s mouth dropped open. ‘That ranger was a policeman too?’

  ‘One of our Territorian colleagues. We were monitoring Ferris’s phone activity by then, and we knew he’d made a plan to meet you in the Botanic Gardens. We couldn’t leave you alone with him, without some means of back-up.’

  Paula couldn’t quite believe it: she’d had unprotected sex with a conman, but had been covered in other ways.

  ‘We were planning to nab Ferris in Darwin,’ continued Frank, ‘but then we got wind of the fact he was going to try to leave the country with his wife, Liliana, another person of interest in Operation Dingo. So we waited to get them both at Perth airport instead.’

  Liliana.

  Paula had smarted about it for months, turning scarlet whenever she thought of that heady afternoon. Calling herself names in the shower, when driving the car, before falling asleep at night.

  Ignoramus. Pathetic. Idiota.

  Frank drained his glass of water. ‘Any other questions? This is our last interview, so now’s the time to ask.’

  Paula nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about his family. Was any of what he told me real?’

  She’d lain awake countless nights, remembering the heart-rending tale of Marcelo’s mother, murdered in the favela, his wayward brother Lucas, his grieving father and younger brother languishing on the farm.

  Frank twirled a pen between his fingertips.

  ‘Look, it’s hard to distinguish truth from fiction with players like Ferris. He probably drew on some of his past—that’s why he’s so convincing. What we do know is that he grew up on a run-down property on Adelaide’s fringes, the middle kid in a family of three boys. His mother was a heroin addict who died young, when Ferris was eight. His dad was a no-hoper, really. Unemployed, lived on welfare, roughed up the kids after a few drinks.’

  Paula winced.

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for Ferris,’ Frank cautioned. ‘We’ve all got complex backgrounds. But most of us don’t go around rorting people, do we?’ He closed his file, preparing to conclude.

  ‘I . . . I do have one last question,’ Paula ventured, suddenly nervous.

  ‘Fire away.’

  With her stomach roiling, she finally asked what she’d been desperate to know for months. ‘Why do you think
Mark Ferris had sex with me?’

  Frank looked at her evenly. ‘Well, it wasn’t necessary to the success of his delivery schedule, that’s for sure. My colleagues and I haven’t really seen this before, Mrs McInnes, which leads me to conclude that only you can answer that question. Presumably he fancied you.’

  Paula closed her eyes for a moment, relief flooding through her.

  And then, suddenly, she began to cry, with the sheer release of knowing that not everything had been an illusion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant,’ she said, fumbling in her handbag for a tissue.

  ‘Call me Frank.’

  He stood up and passed her a neatly pressed handkerchief from the top pocket of his shirt.

  ‘It’s been dreadful,’ she said, wiping her eyes with it. ‘Not just the investigations, but the separation from Hamish.’

  Frank nodded sympathetically. ‘Been through it myself.’

  She’d ceased all contact with Hamish in February and commenced negotiations through lawyers. Seventeen years of marriage, reduced to a clinical barrage of emails beginning with the words ‘Acting on behalf of my client . . .’

  It sickened Paula to the core. Communicating with her husband through a third party. Fighting for fifty per cent of their shared assets. Able to access her children for only half of the week. Spending a good portion of the other half dwelling on how she’d contributed to the demise of their marriage by so willingly losing herself in the role of mother, to the detriment of their relationship. By normalising that process as just something you do, a natural extension of parental commitment.

  She’d tried to look after herself in the months since the separation; exercising regularly, eating well, eschewing alcohol. Leaning on her sister Jamie for support whenever she felt particularly down, in the days and weeks when she simply couldn’t feel anything. And sometimes, when the feelings flooded out, weeping on her sister’s shoulder, grieving for the life she’d lost with Hamish. Regretting all the petty omissions and overt lies that had gradually eroded the respect in their marriage and, ultimately, led to senseless infidelities.

  ‘Did you and Hamish try counselling?’ Frank prompted.