‘My dad buys that stuff,’ I said. ‘But I have a real problem eating cheese that smells like my socks.’
John grinned. ‘The smellier the cheese, the better it tastes.’
‘That’s just what stuck-up snobs say to make themselves think they’re really cultured.’
‘I thought you said your dad buys the cheese?’
‘Yeah, he does. He’s a stuck-up snob too.’
John let out a laugh. ‘You don’t even hold back on your family. He’s a big-time QC, isn’t he?’
I nodded.
‘He writes a lot of articles too. Hey, he wrote that book on equitable remedies, didn’t he? Now I know why your sur-name’s so familiar.’
‘Yeah, when he’s not working on his cases he uses his spare time to write books and case notes. He forces my sister and me to proofread them. We pretend to know what he’s talking about but most of the time we need a dictionary to get through the first page.’
‘His book was the prescribed reading in my equity class. Your dad’s a legend.’
I surveyed the room. It was slowly filling up.
‘Do you reckon there are any criminal lawyers here?’ I asked, helping myself to another donut.
‘Gotta love the lawyer jokes, hey?’ he said, nudging me in the side with his elbow.
I smiled. ‘Yeah, yeah. Let me put it differently: any lawyers who practise criminal law?’
He popped a grape in his mouth. ‘See that girl there with the long dark hair and the navy blue suit?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She works with Legal Aid. Criminal division. We went to uni together.’
‘Okay.’
‘She’s my ex. She hates me.’ He pulled a face. ‘It was a bad break-up.’ He pretended to shiver. ‘I don’t even want to remember it.’
I laughed. ‘Oh, right. So why point her out?’
‘Introduce yourself. These things are for networking. People just walk up to other people and introduce themselves, nothing wrong with that. For example, you see that girl there with the cool bob and killer legs, standing by the ugly dude with the gonzo nose?’
‘He’s sucking up most of the oxygen in the room with that thing.’
‘I’m going to wiggle myself into their conversation and introduce myself.’
He wiped his hands with a napkin.
‘Teeth check,’ he said, standing in front of me.
‘Top right.’
He cleaned his tooth with his napkin and showed me again.
‘Good to go,’ I said.
‘Thanks, dude.’
He turned and I called him back.
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘What? Did I miss a tooth?’
‘Nah, just a word of advice from the younger generation. Try not to say dude – ever again.’
He winked and walked away.
John was right. Nobody cared if a complete stranger walked right up to them, squeezed themselves into their huddle and said, ‘Hey, can I join you?’
I knew this for a fact because I was watching how other people were mingling. I was trying to work up the nerve to talk to the Legal-Aid-ex-girlfriend-with-a-grudge-criminal-law lawyer.
She eventually left her clique and approached the table I was hovering over (I’d demolished two donuts, three pastries and one tart and felt like chucking). She was pouring herself some tea when I said: ‘Hi, my dad’s a Queen’s Counsel and writes textbooks.’
What?
You know that feeling when you want the world to swallow you up? Well even that wouldn’t have been good enough for me. I wanted to undo my life, go back to the time I was a foetus; a chromosome even. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said.
‘Well good for you,’ she said, looking at me like I was a total weirdo.
‘Sorry, that was a dare. Your ex put me up to it. He wanted to see if I’d have the guts to talk to you. My dad actually works for a car wash. He stands on street intersections and holds up those signs.’
She laughed. ‘So my ex dared you?’
‘No, that was a lie. He’s trying to avoid you ’cause of the bad break-up. He’s still cut up by it.’
I hoped she could take a joke. He was standing in plain sight chatting up another girl.
Obviously she couldn’t.
She rolled her eyes. ‘I am so over him. I’ve got a new boy friend now . . . So, where do you work?’
Cool. I was passing as a lawyer. I’d have to make sure Jacinta knew of this.
‘I work with John. Personal injury, that kind of stuff. You do criminal law, right?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have you ever come across a plaintiff and defendant plot ting together in a case?’
‘You’ll have to explain.’
Without going into too much detail, I told her about the case.
‘I’ve never come across that before. It’s incredibly risky of them.’
‘If they got busted, what would they be in trouble for?’
She bit her bottom lip. ‘Hmm . . . fraud, obtaining money by deception, a whole raft of financial criminal charges.’
‘Would they be locked up?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure there’s a prison sentence for those kinds of crimes.’
I took a sip of orange juice. ‘It’s just so hard to prove. I mean, we need some evidence but they’re covering all their tracks.’
You would think I ran my own firm from the tone of my voice. It was fun, realising she actually believed I was a qualified lawyer.
‘Welcome to my world. It’s all about the evidence. Sometimes you just wish a smoking gun would drop out of the sky and seal the case.’
‘I have a smoking gun.’ I lowered my voice, thinking of the text messages we’d found on the phone we’d stolen. ‘It’s just that I didn’t get it through . . . er, the proper channels.’
‘Inadmissible, but knock-out evidence. Don’t you just love those? So you’re stuck.’
‘Big time.’
‘Well, usually it’s little things that get you over the finish line. A comment a witness makes. A slip of the tongue by somebody. You’ve just got to keep your five senses switched on.’
The Legal Aid lawyer was right. I needed to start digging up more evidence. Doing the groundwork. So that evening, instead of going home, I caught a bus to Jenkins Storage World. I didn’t tell Amit or Jacinta. After all, it might be a waste of time and they’d just think I was an obsessive loser. This had nothing to do with obsession. Nadine had her girlfriends over for a movie night. I needed an excuse out of that.
I’d decided to check out the people in the block of flats overlooking the car park. I didn’t buy that nobody heard or saw anything.
I headed to the block of flats that shared a wall with the car park. The doorknob on the front door to the flats was missing, a wide hole in its place. I pushed the door open and walked up the four flights of stairs. I’d decided I would start at the top, flat number eight. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. It was five fifteen. Maybe whoever lived there was still at work. I moved on to number seven. An old lady opened the door a crack, leaving it on the chain.
‘Yeah?’ I could hear the news blaring in the background. Her tone indicated she clearly wasn’t too happy with the interruption.
I took out the photograph of Maureen and Bernie. ‘Hi, I was just wondering if you can remember hearing or seeing anything suspicious on the evening of 2 July 2008? Maureen White was murdered in the car park next door. I’m sure you must have—’
She slammed the door shut in my face.
‘Don’t know anything!’ she hollered from behind the door.
A lady holding a screaming toddler answered the door at number six. She’d been visiting her in-laws that afternoon and wasn’t around when the murder happened. The man living in number five could only remember hearing the police siren. The young guy in number four – a uni student who’d been ‘busting his balls for an accounting exam that night’ – suggested I speak to the lady who lived in
number one.
‘She saw something but didn’t want to tell the police.’
‘Why not?’
‘She lives alone. She didn’t want to get involved. I don’t blame her.’
I went down the stairs and knocked on her door. An old lady answered, again peering out at me from behind a chain.
‘Yes?’
I repeated my spiel, holding up Maureen’s photograph. Her eyes crinkled, her cheeks reddened.
‘Who are you?’
I spun my story. ‘I’m a relative. I’m just trying to get answers for my own sake. The police have been useless.’
She blinked hard and sighed. Then she said: ‘Why do you think I didn’t bother talking to them? I’ve had my bag snatched out of my hands in broad daylight on the main road and the police did nothing. My friend was knocked over by a bunch of hoons at an ATM. They took her cash. Again, the police said that they couldn’t do a thing.’
‘But this was murder.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I reckon you could be stabbed in front of the cops and they’d still tell you there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘No. How do I know you’re not a serial killer?’
I laughed. ‘I promise you I’m not.’
‘Don’t make no difference to me what you promise.’
I tried not to laugh again. ‘Okay, well can you please tell me what you know about Maureen’s murder?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Closure. We just want some answers.’
I had to admit sometimes the clichés were best. She must have thought so too. She leaned her head against the door-frame, the chain almost touching her face. ‘Don’t bother telling anyone what I’m going to tell you because I’ll deny I ever met you. Got it?’
This woman’s charm was overwhelming.
‘Yeah. I got it.’
‘Okay. I was walking back from the shops. I was coming up the driveway here when I heard a loud scream. To be perfectly honest, I thought someone was laughing hysterically or just fooling around. As I continued up towards the door I noticed the screaming had stopped. I was curious.
‘I crept over to the fence as quiet as I could and peeked through a large gap. I couldn’t see anybody fighting. I couldn’t see a body either. The car park was deserted. She was killed near the garbage bins, they said in the paper. Well, from where I was standing my view of the bins was blocked. So I never saw nothing.
‘I thought I’d been imagining things but then I saw a very tall figure wearing a hood and white mask running out of the car park.’
‘White mask?’
‘Yeah, like a surgical mask. Very odd. He was sprinting down Paisley Road in my direction. I hid behind the bushes along the fence. I saw him go into the alleyway alongside our building.’
‘What alleyway?’
‘If you’re facing our building, we’ve got the car park wall on our left and the alleyway on our right.’
I nodded and asked her to continue.
‘Next thing I know, a car speeds out of the laneway and hooks a left onto Paisley Road. I reckon the same guy was driving.’
‘Can you remember what kind of car?’
‘Yeah, an old Ford. No mistaking it. Reminded me of the one my no-good son drives.’
‘What colour was it?’
‘Dunno. Black, dark green maybe.’
‘Okay, so what happened next?’
‘I just kind of froze. The imagination goes funny, you know? I never seen no body so I didn’t know what happened. But I had a horrible feeling. Those screams, then this guy in a hood and mask.’
‘What time did you see the guy?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I left the shops at five.’
‘Well what time did you head back to your apartment?’
‘The news was still on . . . I made it in time to watch Antiques Roadshow. That’s at five thirty.’
‘Is that all?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss. But don’t you dare mention this to the police or anybody. Like I said, I’ll deny everything. I live alone. I don’t need trouble. The information I have couldn’t possibly help that poor girl now anyway.’
I was quiet at dinner that night. I picked at my pizza and pretended to listen to Dad brag about how successful he’d been in cross-examining a witness that morning. But all I could think about was that lady’s words. She made me even more determined to rescue Maureen from all this ugliness.
Mum invited me and the girls over for dinner the next night. Dad was working late again and would pick us up on his way home. He must have been relieved we were getting a home-cooked meal even if it was being cooked by Mum and was probably made of cactus.
George, Mum’s husband, was on the floor of the family room, doing a puzzle with the twins. I’d been waiting for Mum to leave the room but she was still packing the twins’ toys away, muttering about being fed up with the mess.
I’d been thinking about the information the woman in the flat, aka the Bad Samaritan, had given me. One of the most useful things she’d told me was that a dark Ford had left the scene just after she’d heard screams around the time Maureen had been killed. That meant I had to scrap the mysterious person who’d run through the noodle shop. The getaway car, the scream: that stuff was much more likely to be connected with the murder.
You’d have to be a real professional to bash someone’s head in, drive away and not leave any evidence in the car. A drop of blood, a hair, something incriminating. So where was that car?
I thought about all the movies I’d seen. They were really the only frame of reference I could work off. If you’re going to commit a crime and need a car, you’d be stupid to use your own car. You’d steal a car and then dump or torch it. I could be wrong but I was going with a Hollywood-knows-best instinct for now.
So I needed to know if any cars matching the Bad Samari-tan’s description had since been reported stolen or, even better, been found. And who better to ask than somebody who worked the stats at the RTA?
‘George, I need a really big favour.’
He looked up, surprised. Although we had a normal enough relationship, I rarely asked him for anything.
‘Sure, Noah, what is it?’
‘You can’t tell Mum. Promise?’
‘Well, I can’t make that kind of—’
‘I’m trusting you, not Mum. If you can’t promise then just forget I asked.’
I knew I was manipulating his desire to be on good terms with me. Mum had always been on our backs to try to bond more.
‘Okay, I promise.’
‘All I need to know is whether a Ford, dark colour, was reported stolen or found dumped on 2 July last year. Can you find out for me?’
He hesitated. Jenny tugged his arm, trying to get his attention. ‘Come on, Dad,’ she whined.
‘That’s all you want me to do?’
‘That’s all.’ I looked at him pleadingly.
‘That’s pretty simple. Can’t get into any trouble for that. Sure.’
What he didn’t know was that somewhere out there was a car that just might have evidence of a murder in it. Who did it belong to? And where was it? Maybe this would be the first step to finding out.
Branko and Ameena (who was back from leave) walked into the photocopying room as I was bent over the machine fixing a paper jam. I’d done the odd task for them but really didn’t have that much to do with them. They were often in court, breaking up families and arguing about whether a pergola was a fixture and who would keep the kettle.
‘Hey, Noah,’ Branko said, ‘Casey told us you’re great with the photocopying.’
‘Yeah, she would,’ I muttered.
‘Can you copy five folders for us by tomorrow?’ Ameena said.
‘Fine.’
‘Did we mention we need three copies of each folder?’ Branko asked.
‘No. Fine.’
‘And
we need you to number every single page with the paginator. Each folder has about fifteen hundred pages. So that’s forty-five thousand pages. Can you manage that?’
I nodded, careful not to talk in case I swore.
‘Then please do a contents page.’
‘And an annexures page.’
‘ARE YOU PEOPLE SADISTS?’ I yelled. I felt the scene in slow motion. I could see my words in the air and wanted to pluck them back. But then Branko and Ameena burst out laughing.
‘Hey!’ Branko said with a laugh as he raised his hands up as if he was surrendering. ‘We were joking. John put us up to it.’
‘He said it was to get you back for telling his ex he was still hung up over the break-up. Apparently she called him and gave him an ear-bashing.’
I laughed hard. ‘She called him?’
‘Yeah,’ Ameena said. ‘Take it from two family law solicitors: never get between a couple who have split.’
‘It’s gruesome,’ Branko said, pulling a horrified face.
‘Only the most hard-hearted, insensitive people can do it.’
‘And that’s us,’ Branko added.
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I said.
After changing the toner and doing a coffee run for Aunt Nirvine, I went back to my cubicle. There was a memo on my desk from Casey. It looked like I was back on Bernie’s case.
MEMORANDUM
From: Casey
To: Noah
Dated: 7 January
Re: Bernie White v Jenkins Storage World
Noah,
The matter is listed for hearing on 19 January in the civil list in the Supreme Court of NSW. We do not yet know which judge has been assigned to the hearing. I am briefing Counsel Paul Valopolous to appear. Below is a list of tasks to be completed as a matter of urgency.
1. I intend to call the witnesses listed below.
2. I have prepared Subpoena to Appear for the witnesses listed below. Insert their contact details into the Subpoena. You will find their contact details in the latest correspondence file.
Our witnesses:
• Bernie White
• Professor Carlos Banks
• Constable Thompson.
3. Photocopy all documents flagged with a yellow post-it note.
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