Wainright laughed. ‘Just doing our job.’
Drummond saw her watching and swallowed whatever he was about to say. The look he gave her was so full of pity and remorse that she had to turn away. It couldn’t matter to her that he was getting a hard time at work, and she didn’t want to admit he might be sensitive enough to understand the effect this had on her. He was just another cop trying to make a case, and her evasions and temper had made it easy for him to slot her in as suspect.
‘I know it’s hard to see strangers going through your home.’
His rich voice, so close behind, gave her goose bumps and stirred something she didn’t want to feel. And why did he keep creeping up on her like that? Someone should hang a bell around his neck.
‘If these are the games you play in Sydney,’ she said as he fell into step beside her, ‘I’m not surprised New South Wales is broke.’
She couldn’t stand the compassion that softened his face, and turned her gaze to her mother’s bedroom. The hospital bed was still there, covered in the white sheets. Even the water jug still waited on the bedside table, coated with dust, the contents long since evaporated. A russet-coloured jumper lay crumpled on the bed as if just tossed there by its owner. Night after night her mother had waited for him, and night after night Mina had lain awake listening to her sob into that ratty thing. Even in death, her mother wouldn’t part with it. One of the paramedics had pried it from her hand before they placed her on the gurney.
After the funeral, Mina had spent countless nights haunting her mother’s room, trying to feel her presence. She’d even tried hugging that crappy jumper, the very thing that had come to represent everything they’d lost, including the bonds that had once knit them together. Can’t be a storyteller without a ratty old jumper. He always said that before he spun a yarn about little girls who rescued dragons or stood up to nasty bunyips. That man, the handsome, laughing man she’d adored, bore no resemblance to the real Jacko.
A warm hand rested on her shoulder, and a thumb caressed the knot at the base of her neck. She grabbed at the fingers, so large in hers, closed her eyes and let the world recede. Her muscles relaxed and a sense of drowsy peace descended.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
Drummond’s voice. It was his hand she clung to, his fingers caressing her, giving her comfort. She spun away from his touch, her heart beating against her ribs. She had to get out of here. Drummond was behind her, an officer stood at her mother’s door and another blocked the front entrance. She pushed past Drummond and hurried along the hallway toward the kitchen, her eyes glued straight ahead. If she saw any more cops poking at her memories, she would lose it.
In the kitchen, things were no better. Most surfaces seemed coated in fingerprint powder. It was ridiculous. Over-the-top. She couldn’t breathe. She had to get out, away from the prying eyes, from the sympathy in Drummond’s gaze.
Mina escaped into her sitting room. Wainright stood near the door of her bedroom holding a baby-doll nightie against his torso. The sheer scarlet fabric clung to his pregnant stomach.
‘Get your filthy hands off that!’ Mina lunged for him.
He sidestepped, and swung his hips in a grotesque parody of beauty. ‘Woo-hoo. Guys! Check this out.’
‘Wainright!’
Drummond stepped out from behind her, ready to intercede. She cut him off and snatched the scarlet fabric from Wainright’s pudgy fingers.
‘Get the hell out of my house.’
Two CSOs, the male from the front door and the female from the bedroom, appeared in the doorway.
‘All of you. Get out!’
‘Don’t get your undies in a twist, lady.’ Wainright tried to grab her arm.
‘You touch me and I’ll castrate you.’
The officers got set to intervene. Drummond got there first.
‘Frank. That’s enough.’
For all the emotion Drummond showed, he could have been made of stone. Fuck him. Fuck all of them. Mina gripped Wainright’s thick wrist in both her hands, stepped behind him and twisted his arm up his back.
He yowled in surprise. ‘Let go of me, you crazy bitch!’
She pressed her foot against his tailbone and shoved him hard. He stumbled into the middle of the room and turned on her, his fists bunched, his face almost purple. Drummond shot her a look like a proud parent. Proud? Who was she kidding? It was just a ruse to gain her confidence. He was good-cop-bad-cop rolled into one.
‘Go cool off, Wainright.’ Drummond jerked his head toward the front door. ‘I’ll talk to you back at the station. The rest of you can pack up and go. I’ll take it from here.’
Wainright ambled past and spat a white gob of saliva. It missed her by centimetres and landed on her coffee table. When the female officer made a move to comfort her, Mina saw her off with a withering glance, balled up the nightie and swept toward the back door. Drummond’s footsteps weren’t far behind. She let the screen door slam, hoping it would catch his chiselled chin and give him a bruise to match hers. When she reached the garbage bin, she flung open the lid and tossed in the scarlet fabric.
‘Is that necessary?’ Drummond stood the other side of the bin.
‘Just how should I feel about a sweaty stranger having his hands in my underwear drawer? Happy? Grateful?’
Chapter 16
LINC FOLLOWED HER INTO the depths of her back garden, half expecting her to turn around and deck him. After that impressive manoeuvre on Wainright, he knew she was capable.
At the centre of the small cottage garden nestled beside the old stone shed, she flung herself onto a weathered wooden bench. ‘I thought you were the morally upright cop who was going to show us local yokels how to do things right.’
‘Am I supposed to know what you mean?’
‘A busload of crime scene people taking prints for a break-in?’
It was excessive, not to mention clumsy, childish and bloody expensive, but he wasn’t about to admit that, or explain his earlier run-in with Wainright. If she knew about the crap he was getting at work, she’d either rejoice or feel sorry for him. After the unsettling moment they’d shared in the depth of her hallway, neither was a palatable option.
‘I’d like your statement now,’ he said. ‘What happened. When. What you saw or heard.’
‘Why are you even involved? Why aren’t you chasing your bogus antique theft theory?’
‘Bogus?’
Were those her boyfriend’s words? Forbes had initially dismissed his argument and Engles, the detective working the Schmidt case, had flat out laughed.
‘Yes, bogus. Have you even bothered to interview the victims? You don’t have to scratch too deep to work out half of them think it’s to do with a protection racket.’
He’d been through the witness statements until he could recite them backwards. If there had been the slightest suggestion of anything like that, he wouldn’t have missed it. Mina Everton, like most in this town, was dead set against the possibility that these apparently random robberies were carefully targeted.
‘I’m surprised you’re not more concerned,’ he said, ‘considering you’re in the trade.’
‘You think I’m involved?’
‘Should I?’
She turned her face away to stare at the yellow hang of flowering wattle. The sun lit her profile and loose curls. She could have posed for Botticelli. Yet this slender beauty had gone out of her way to avoid giving him a statement about last night. And she’d just admitted to talking to witnesses.
‘Why have you been avoiding my calls?’ he asked.
‘I was with Gibson. Interruptions aren’t conducive to negotiations.’
‘If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you. And you won’t help yourself by interfering in an investigation.’
She launched herself from the seat and paced, her gaze alighting on everything but him. The garden’s white scoria path crunched beneath her shoes as she paced back and forth, a little wobbly on her heels. A scowl marred
her brow. Her slender arms hugged her waist.
‘Why the hell did you let that fat creep anywhere near my house?’ she said. ‘Why won’t you people just leave me alone?’
There was no excuse for Wainright’s behaviour, and ‘sorry’ wouldn’t dent her defiance. Perhaps reality would.
‘Leaving you alone isn’t an option. Whoever broke into your house was very careful to chisel out the locks.’
She stopped pacing, but still didn’t look at him. Her fingers clutched at the hem of her shirt. ‘You think they’re planning on coming back?’
He let her imagine that for a moment, but her thoughts didn’t go where he expected.
‘I don’t keep antiques in my house, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ She faced him again. ‘And in case you’re wondering, everything I have is legitimate. I have all the receipts.’
‘You need to stop fighting me. I’m trying to help.’
She caught his eye then looked away. ‘Get on with it then.’
He suppressed a sigh. Maybe she would have been less hostile if Constable Dubois had been with him. Dubois might have the ginger hair but Mina Everton had the temper. She was as thorny as one of the roses in her front yard. ‘The chiselled locks show forethought and cunning. You say nothing was stolen. It doesn’t fit the pattern. I have to ask myself whether it’s to do with you, your work, or the people you know. Like Forbes Monroe. Or your father.’
‘Is that some kind of interrogation technique? You throw out theories and see how I react?’
Why couldn’t she just give him the damn statement? He stared at the shed wall, at the ochre and gold lumps of ironstone held together by concrete pebbled with gravel. A fissure ran from the rusting iron roof to the thistles at its base. In some places he could have put his hand right through. Morning glory pushed its green fingers into cracks and crevices, and the purple trumpet flowers quivered when the faint breeze stirred. The building had an old-world charm complemented by the tiny garden’s backdrop of wattles.
She jabbed his shoulder. It must have hit a nerve because his entire torso quivered.
‘Are you going to stare at that wall, or answer me?’
‘That shed is more forthcoming.’
A mixture of emotions skimmed her features. ‘It’s not a shed. It’s a workshop. It was my mother’s studio for her bronze work.’
‘She made sculptures?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. There’s more to this family than embezzlement. Jacko had the arts degree, but Mum was the true artist.’
There were plenty who thought the type of embezzlement Jacko Everton had pulled off was very artistic. He thought about the frugal way she lived and the time-warp kitchen; her father’s actions hadn’t just affected the fortunes of Failie. It couldn’t have been easy for her or her mother. After what he’d learned about her father it was too easy to imagine they were in it together, that this break-in was a fallout between thieves, but he prided himself on following the evidence. So far, there was very little of that.
‘Do you know the person who attacked you?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Her tone was adamant, but she stared at her feet and gripped her elbows the way she had when Forbes lost his temper. She knew where his questions were heading and clearly wished him gone. He wasn’t going to avoid a question because it made her uncomfortable.
‘Do you believe your father broke into your home? Is that why you won’t speak?’
‘You think I’d protect a man who didn’t care enough about me to stick around?’ Her glare spoke volumes.
‘You must realise your secrecy looks suspicious.’
She pressed her lips into a grim line. ‘You do think I’m involved.’
In this town, Jacko Everton was a festering wound, and he’d set the tone with her this morning, going in too heavy-handed and letting his base emotions control him. He couldn’t even be sure he would have behaved differently had he known her history. There was no point backing off now.
‘As a dealer you have the knowledge and the contacts to fence the goods. And it’s clear you have financial difficulties.’
‘So everyone in need turns to crime, do they?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Are you going to arrest me?’
‘Not without evidence.’
‘Evidence? That’s not necessary in this town.’
‘To me, it is essential.’
She stood beneath a branch of yellow wattle, chewing her lip. He’d witnessed her anger and stubbornness, but he’d also seen the raw grief beneath the surface. It took everything he had not to guide her back to the seat and soothe her fears the way Forbes had done, but no matter how vulnerable she looked, he could never cross that line. The quiver through his body when she’d clutched his hand in the dim hallway reinforced the danger of that.
‘I’m not part of this town, Mina.’
‘You locked up your own brother.’
‘Despite what you may have heard, I didn’t arrest him on a whim. I just happened to be unlucky enough to be the one who pulled him over at the breathalyser station. When I saw the drugs, I had to make a choice: bury the evidence or maintain the oath I’d sworn just days before.’
‘And you chose your job.’
‘I chose my integrity.’
His brother had understood that. His father hadn’t.
She fidgeted under his scrutiny then threw herself back onto the seat and launched into her statement so fast he fumbled pulling out his notebook. She pinned her gaze on the dilapidated shed and spoke about waking in the night and smelling aftershave, hearing the dog in the kitchen growling, disturbing a balaclava-wearing intruder in her mother’s part of the house.
‘I yelled at him to get out. Spirit was snarling and growling.’
‘Where’s your dog now?’ He hadn’t seen any sign of it, but that didn’t mean Forbes’ worries about her state of mind were correct.
‘Why? Are you going to interrogate him too?’
Her smart-arse comebacks wore on his patience. ‘Then what?’
‘I shoved out my hand.’ She replayed the action, pushing the heel of her hand outward. ‘I missed. He kept coming.’
‘How can you be certain it was a man?’
‘You kind of notice these things when he’s got his hands all over you.’
His breath caught. ‘Did he sexually assault you?’
‘No.’ She almost spat the word at him. ‘This will go faster without interruptions.’
He’d come back to the assault soon enough. ‘So you defended yourself?’
She reached up and touched the purpling on her forehead. Her gaze had returned to the shed. ‘I kneed him in the groin, so he smacked my head against the wall. That’s when he tried to smother me with his glove.’
Jesus Christ. ‘Why didn’t you report this? Why didn’t you tell Forbes Monroe?’
The muscles in her jaw tightened. So Forbes had let her down when she needed him most. All those sweet-nothings, the hair-stroking and cuddling must have been his way of apologising. The thought of a rift between them brightened his mood, then he wondered at the kind of man he’d become that her misery could make him happy.
‘Spirit grabbed the guy’s trouser leg as he reached the foyer doors,’ she continued. ‘I threw myself at the bastard, managed to grab him around the waist and we fell to the veranda. He tried to crawl away. My hands were slipping. I grabbed onto his legs, but he kind of pulled himself along the veranda dragging me behind.’ She looked up at him, the muscles in her face taut. ‘I’m sure that’ll be a good source of laughter in your station canteen. I bet you’re sorry you missed the live show. While you’re at it, you can tell them that I sat on the lounge all night with a baseball bat, too frigging frightened to stay in my own bed.’
Christ, she’d sat there all night, alone, knowing Forbes wasn’t coming and terrified the intruder might return. It seemed ridiculous that Forbes was the only one she could turn to. He took in her
strained features, the fisted hands shoved into the crook of her elbows, the way she’d almost hunched into herself as she’d given him her statement. Perhaps she’d become so used to shutting people out she didn’t recognise a helping hand when it was offered.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’ he asked.
Behind him a magpie warbled and another set up a rhythmic screeching. Mina moved to a bird feeder hanging in the fall of a wattle’s branches and filled it from a bag kept next to the tree trunk.
‘Mina, look at me.’ He waited until she faced him. ‘You need to be checked out by a doctor.’
‘Why? So another stranger can prod me to see where I hurt.’
‘Veiled criticisms aren’t going to make this go away.’
She reluctantly returned to the garden seat. Her description was so scant it would fit any mid-weight, middle height male.
‘Is there anything else you remember? The smallest detail could help me find him.’
‘Why does it matter to you?’
He could have answered that it was because he was a cop, that it was his job, but perhaps it was time for a bit of raw honesty.
‘Because I don’t want him to come back and hurt you.’
She flushed and shifted on the seat as if she’d found a rough spot. Normally, he’d push until the witness cracked, but he pictured her sitting up all night with the bat at her side, alone and terrified. No matter how much she despised the police, surely she would have wanted some assistance.
He sat beside her and, as gently as he could, asked her again why she hadn’t called the police. Her green eyes shimmered. Christ, if she cried in front of him that would kill any pretence of professional distance. He was only human.
As if she’d read his thoughts, Mina stood and resumed her stunted pacing.
‘You want to know why I didn’t call? Because of this!’ She gestured to her driveway where the crime scene officers were taking their time packing up their gear. ‘The intrusion, the questions, strangers pawing through my stuff. Since I was twelve, I’ve had shit heaped on me by those I thought were friends, crap about the Everton Curse, apples not falling far from trees, that I’m a criminal-waiting-to-happen. I’ve had enough!’
Pieces of a Lie Page 11