Back on the sofa, he steeled himself for the show; he drank quickly to put as much distance between himself and the images as possible.
Kibeho, 1995. The definition of human depravity. From every angle someone died in agony, or, much worse, survived, a machete wound through the middle of their face; a limb or genitals missing; intestines exposed for the birds that dived sorties in screaming, black-eyed packs. He moved through the blood and body pieces, pulling a dead woman away from her wailing infant before the child suffocated under her weight, dragging a breathing body from a pile of corpses and handing him to the medics. A small team from Medecins Sans Frontieres and the medical section of the Australian peacekeeping force patched up those they could, medivaced a fortunate few, and provided morphine to many others, who would at least die oblivious to their own screams. For many years, he envied them that.
Another glass. The bourbon burned.
The boy and his family. The memory kicked in at the worst part, of course. The father lay dead, feeble spits of blood still exiting the mess of his throat. A girl, maybe ten, waited, mute, for the next act of horror life would bring her. Her mother, a baby on her hip, keened quietly, a steady, emotionless moan that conveyed more pain than a scream. And the new man of the house – the boy, younger than his sister – shaped up with a stick to the Tutsi warrior with the machete.
The devil with the knife turned to smile at Joss; to tell him with his eyes that he could cut this family to pieces, and that Joss could do nothing but salvage anyone left when he'd had his fill.
Not this time.
Joss watched himself moving forward to meet the enemy.
On the couch, feeling as though his head had played host to a wasp's nest, Joss's hand reached between the cushions, and pulled out that for which it had been searching. He wiped the knife against his thigh, and put it back in its resting place. Close.
He let his head fall back against the lounge.
18
'YOU SEE, HE'S doing it again,' said Gabriel, cross-legged on her floor. The glow of the TV screen lit up his face. They otherwise sat in shadow, the gathering gloom of dusk waited on the balcony.
'So that would be another cluster?'
'Yup.' He kept his eyes on the screen, but she saw him make a mark in the notepad perched on his knee.
There hadn't been time to be awkward. Gabriel had walked straight to the TV upon entering Jill's apartment and had wheeled it around to expose the leads at the back. Before she'd even offered coffee, the Balmain room and Joss Preston-Jones had filled the screen. Gabriel had been animated from the start.
'I don't get it,' he'd said to her. 'I've got to see it again. This guy was throwing up deception cues all over the place. Come in here and watch this.'
She'd taken a seat on her chocolate leather sofa and leaned backwards, her arms across her chest, an eyebrow raised.
'You're sceptical,' he said.
'You think he's lying?'
'He's not telling us the whole truth. He's being deceptive again and again and again.'
'How do you know?'
'Same way I can tell that you think I'm full of shit right now. Incriminating and discriminating stress cues; verbal and non-verbal signs.' He turned back to the TV. 'You gotta watch this.'
Jill had always been interested in the principles of interrogation, and had thought she had a good sense of when a subject was lying. She knew well that most of the time what a suspect actually said during an interrogation was only half the story. The way they said it, their body posture and movements told the rest. What she learned in her loungeroom over the next two hours, though, surpassed all of the behaviour analysis training she'd had to date, and gave words to a lot of her instinctual knowledge and hunches.
'Okay, so we know that no single behaviour can tell us whether someone is being truthful or deceptive, right?' He continued without expecting a response. 'But when we repeatedly observe some kind of stress reaction, or even better, a cluster of stress reactions when a particular issue is being discussed, then we can assume it's not a random behaviour.'
From Jill's point of view, anyone speaking about a brutal home invasion would radiate stress signals. Preston-Jones was wrecked after the interview, as was almost every victim she'd ever talked to. Gabriel's eyes and voice were compelling, however. She leaned forward in her seat.
'Of course, even innocent subjects will be nervous, and we'll detect that every time. But Joss exhibits markers suggestive of poor credibility at several key points through the interview, signals that I wouldn't expect in subjects who are telling the whole truth. What we've got to figure out now is what he's omitting from his statement. What he's not telling us. But more importantly,' Gabriel turned his eyes from Jill back to the screen, 'why he's omitting it.'
Jill finally found herself on the rug next to Gabriel, propped cross-legged with her back against the lounge to better see the screen. He paused the tape at key moments and time and again showed her movements made by Joss that stood out from his typical signs of tension.
'I'm picking up more evasion than deception,' he said.
She estimated that they were around halfway through the tape.
'It could also be embarrassment,' he continued, 'but it's more likely to be guilty knowledge: withholding information.'
The discriminating stress cues, once Gabriel had pointed them out, began to appear obvious.
'Negation!' Jill pointed at Joss on screen, once again rubbing his palm up and down his nose, briefly covering his mouth. Negation behaviour, Gabriel had reminded her, was a subconscious effort to hide leaks of emotion from the face. In the video, Joss repeatedly put his hands up to the facial touch zone – the area from mid-nose to mid-chin – hiding his mouth when he spoke about the ringleader of the gang.
'Right. And what's that?' he asked her, tape paused on Joss making a sweeping gesture in response to a question asked by Gabriel.
'Aversion behaviour? He's blocking you, isn't he?'
'Figuratively, he's sweeping the question away. Remember I asked him to expand on what happened when the leader was questioning him on the ground. He used a bridging phrase: what did he say?' Gabriel looked down at the pad on his knee. '"The next thing I knew they were gone." The next thing I knew… It's a typical phrase used to cover gaps and omissions. He doesn't want to talk about what happened just before the offenders left.'
Gabriel paused the tape again and performed a yoga stretch on the loungeroom floor. His khaki shirt stretched tight over the muscles in his chest and back. Her shoulders felt stiff and she considered copying his pose, but instead she contented herself with stretching her neck from side to side.
'What else do we know about this guy?' he asked.
'Just the basic demographics, I think,' she answered. 'Age, address, family, his job. Probably we should look deeper.'
'Definitely. Look at the screen now.' Gabriel again sat up, cross-legged. 'See. That's another control behaviour. He's sitting on his hands. I think that he knows about stress cues and he's trying to suppress his nervous behaviours. Problem for him is that this tells us just as much – he's trying to be deceptive about his true emotions. When he freezes, or grips the chair, or sits on his hands within three to five seconds of a hot topic, he might as well have just let his hands do what they wanted to.
'But what I really want to know,' he said, standing and clicking off the TV, 'is where he learned that he should be monitoring his signals. I don't think he's always been a civilian, Jill.'
Jill also stood. She walked into the kitchen, and for no reason felt suddenly self-conscious. She wiped her hand across the four switches in the panel on the wall and flooded the apartment with light. What was it, six o'clock? She glanced at the clock on her wall.
'It's almost seven,' he said. 'What do you want to eat?'
'Ah…'
'We could just go grab some laksa?' He seemed to notice the startled expression on her face. 'Or maybe you're too tired. That's okay. I'll head off.'
; 'Where do you live?'
Was she supposed to offer to drive him home? This sucked. She didn't even know this guy, and now she felt responsible for getting him home. What do you do in these situations? The awkwardness of such personal exchanges was almost physically painful for her.
'Bus to Central. Central to Ryde,' he answered. 'I live in Ryde. It's an hour from here. I come out here all the time. I love the Thai restaurant up the strip.'
'Hang on a sec,' Jill surprised herself by saying. She suddenly realised she was starving. 'I'd love some laksa.'
She walked into her bathroom, splashed her face and fixed her hair in the mirror. Just before leaving, she turned back and slicked on some lip-gloss. What are you doing? she asked herself in the mirror. She left the room quickly and grabbed her handbag, not looking at Gabriel.
'Let's go,' she said, walking out of her flat.
19
'YOU LOOK LIKE you know your way around a gym,' he said.
It was only 7.45 a.m., and Jill had made the mistake of entering the taskforce meeting room without considering that she might be alone in there with Derek Reid. He'd moved on from his first-day suit to more casual clothes, and the three buttons undone at the top of his thin beige shirt showed too much tan and too little hair. She couldn't help but look twice. Yep, he waxed his chest. His sleeves barely contained his biceps. His eyes took her in, whole.
'You look like you could stay away from it for a couple of weeks,' she said. Stupid! Where did that come from? Oh my God, he thinks I'm flirting, she thought, horrified.
Reid's mouth turned up. The sheen on his copper skin caught the light as he actually flexed one bicep, pushing the fabric of his shirt almost beyond its limits.
'Maybe we could work out together this afternoon, what do you say?'
Maybe I could throw up now, she thought, but answered, 'I don't think so. I'm booked in for a spray tan.'
The corners of his smile dropped a little as he thought that through, and Jill turned to see David Tran entering the meeting room, leaning on his cane. She smiled, more than pleased to see him.
'Superintendent Last asked that I apologise for his being late this morning,' Tran spoke to them both. 'Apparently there's been a step forward in the case.'
'Do you know what it is, David?' asked Jill.
He shook his head, and they fell silent for several moments.
'So I wonder what Delahunt's excuse is for being late,' Reid said. 'I guess the Feds can show up whenever they're ready, huh?'
Jill ignored him. The service was full of people like Reid – always looking to put someone or something down. She found the constant negativity boring. She wondered what Tran was like. He certainly didn't seem to fit the usual mould. She decided to try to find out more about his experiences when he interviewed some of the past victims.
'So what did you think of Justine Rice?' she began. She directed the question to David Tran, but Reid answered.
'She gave us nothing,' he said. 'Not surprising, really, now it turns out that she was sexually assaulted by these freaks. She's not going to speak to a couple of blokes, is she?' He sounded defensive.
'There was more to it, I think, Jill,' said Tran. 'She and Ryan Temple took an instant dislike to me in particular. While it's often an advantage being an Asian cop around these suburbs, I'm afraid that it's alienated some of the vics in this case.'
Jill nodded. She could see his point. Even people who'd denounced racism all their lives could find themselves fearful or hostile towards people of a particular nationality when they'd been attacked by a member of that community. She knew from experience that when violent crime was paired with a certain ethnicity, many victims forever after avoided all members of that race.
'I have already made the observation to Superintendent Last. It is probably a good thing that some of these interviews are repeated,' said Tran. 'Because of my presence, there could be other things people are holding back.'
Reid turned away, but not before Jill caught him giving his partner a foul look.
Lawrence Last walked in, looking as haggard as ever, but this morning there was a light behind his eyes. Gabriel Delahunt followed him into the room.
'We've had the biggest breakthrough so far,' he told them as soon as everyone had taken a seat. 'Forensics came through late last night on the evidence collected at two of the crime scenes. Both names are in the system. The organic matter collected at Capitol Hill belonged to the stomach contents of a Dang Huynh, AKA Mouse. He last did time at Junee for an aggravated rob. Time before that at Parramatta for vehicle theft. He's got a bit of a juvie record. He's thirty-four now.'
'We don't know for sure that this bloke's got anything to do with the murder, do we?' Reid wanted to know.
'No, Derek, we know nothing about why Huynh was at the property. Jill and Gabriel haven't yet been able to speak to Donna Moser, the victim's daughter. He could have been there for some other reason, but we know that there was an eight- to twenty-four-hour window during which this man vomited at the residence. Beyond that, we don't know any more about the suspect than what I've just told you.
'The second piece of remarkable news, folks,' he continued, fixing each of them with an intent look, 'comes from the Rice crime scene. The lab has analysed the semen and blood sample collected on the towel by Justine Rice. It belongs to Mr Henry Nguyen.'
Jill gasped and turned to Gabriel. He raised his eyebrows at her, his face otherwise impassive.
'Yes, the name should be familiar to each of you,' Superintendent Last continued. 'On Wednesday afternoon we received an anonymous call from a woman claiming that Henry Nguyen, AKA Cutter, was the leader of this gang. I believe some of you have listened to the tape. I have arranged for a copy of the sound file to be emailed to each of you this morning. It appears that this caller does know what she is talking about, and we need very much to speak to her again. We issued a media release first thing today, indicating that we want the caller to contact us again.'
'What do we know about this man so far, sir?' Tran asked, as Last took a sip from his coffee.
'Nguyen's last known address was John Street, Cabramatta,' said Last, 'excluding, of course, his time spent in prison: Parklea, Parramatta and Long Bay. Ah, hold on a moment.' He looked down at his notes, and then read, 'Maliciously destroying property; break, enter and steal; take and drive conveyance; assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
'As a child,' he continued, 'Nguyen also appears to have been locked up for more time than he was at school, including in Minda, Mount Penang and Dharruk. Let's see…' – again he bowed his large head to his notes – 'charges whilst an inmate include fighting; threatening language; assault; and damaging property.
'And people,' Lawrence Last paused to ensure they were all listening. 'Apparently Mr Nguyen likes a knife – hence the nickname, Cutter. He's had multiple self-harm attempts in every lock-up, and most of the time he did not report them. In fact,' he cleared his throat, and then continued in the same measured tone, 'he was transferred to the hospital at Long Bay when his cell-mate went to the guards for help. Apparently Mr Nguyen had opened a wound in his stomach, and under his covers had been manipulating the area for over a week. The cell-mate informed the guards when he could no longer bear the smell.'
Jill unconsciously smoothed her hair when Joss Preston-Jones's wife, Isobel Rymill, opened her front door. A dark, glossy ponytail snaked around one side of the tall woman's neck, contrasting with her simple white shift dress. She welcomed them into her home with a smile, but hugged her arms around her slim body as they walked together towards the kitchen. Her face was shiny and clear, but her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips slightly swollen.
Superintendent Last had insisted that the taskforce continue with the witness interviews today, despite the developments. He had four officers collecting further intelligence on their two suspects, and would not hear of any definitive action being taken until they had done more surveillance to better determine their whereabouts. He was adamant that no
one went anywhere near the suspects' families, or their last known addresses, until they knew exactly where the two men were. It was important not to tip them off in any way.
So Jill and Gabriel sat sipping orange juice at the breakfast bar of the terrace house in Balmain for the second time in as many days.
'How was Joss after yesterday's interview?' Jill asked Isobel Rymill. Despite the evidence on the tape that he was holding something back, Jill had instinctively warmed to this woman's husband, and she couldn't help but wish that this family had not come into their investigation in such a brutal way. She felt guilty that she and Gabriel would this afternoon be finding out everything they could about Joss Preston-Jones. This was not the way she was used to working with victims.
As Isobel told them that her husband was bearing up relatively well, Jill couldn't help but notice the aversion behaviours she displayed – the 'liar's lean', Gabriel had called it – her body angled sharply away from Jill, almost toppling her off the back of her stool. Her eyes darted around the room like a small bird, and she twisted her fingers together in her lap.
Isobel's account of the home invasion was just as harrowing as her husband's. Jill liked to think she had a sense for detecting offenders, and Joss and Isobel did not fit the pattern. She noted the carefully maintained furniture, the mementoes, the photographs on the walls. It was a family home, an ordinary home. She had to agree with Gabriel, though. Joss and Isobel definitely seemed to be keeping some-thing back from them. This did not necessarily mean that they were hiding something related to this case; Jill had seen this kind of behaviour before. Sometimes police involvement in the life of a victim of a particular crime unearthed their involvement in a completely unrelated matter.
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