An Accusation: A Novel

by Wendy James

  HONOR: AUGUST 2018

  Honor was with Ellie in the temporary accommodation the police had arranged for them at the Luxury Inn when Stratford called to say he and Moorhouse were heading over, that they needed Ellie to look at some pictures. Honor had been trying to work—she had other clients who needed her attention—but it had been difficult. Incoming calls from outlets trying to talk to Ellie were so constant that she’d had to hand all her other clients over to her assistant. There would have to be some serious rescheduling when she was back in Sydney, but now was not the time.

  The girl had spent the afternoon lying on the lumpy double bed, eating cheese puffs and watching Geordie Shore on an endless loop. She hadn’t been the best company, was anxious and demanding, and Honor had had to work hard to stay patient. The constant noise from the television was doing her head in, but they’d finally reached a compromise—Honor paid the receptionist a ludicrous amount of money to go out and buy Ellie a pair of headphones.

  The receptionist—Elaine someone or other—was another middle-aged dowd who claimed to have been an old friend of Honor’s at school. “My parents ran this place back then,” she’d said with a fat smile, as if inheriting this dump were something to be proud of. These multiplying numbers of former “acquaintances” were doing her head in, too. Since buying the weekender, most of her visits into town had been brief, and, apart from a few unavoidable celebrity guest–type appearances at local functions, her encounters with locals had been mercifully limited. But since the news got out that she’d taken Ellie on as a client, things had changed. So many people she’d forgotten, or would really rather not remember, had been keen to renew her acquaintance, welcome her back into the fold, so to speak. It was as if she were wearing a neon PRODIGAL DAUGHTER sign on her back.

  “I remember when you were just a wee thing,” one very old lady, apparently an old friend of her grandmother, had said, baring startlingly white teeth. “You were such a quiet little thing. Like a little mouse. I never imagined you’d grow up to be such a bigwig.”

  There’d been others, too—friends of her parents, the woman who’d run the corner store, a couple of old schoolteachers, parents of classmates—who had come up to speak to her on one pretext or another but who had all really wanted to talk about that poor sweet girl.

  She’d been taken aback by the interest—Ellie wasn’t a local, after all. But as the editor of the local paper had pointed out, Ellie Canning was the biggest story since local underworld identity Billy Cominos was shot point-blank in the Paradise Café back in the 1960s. Now that had been a scandal, sure, but one tinged with tragedy. Billy had, despite his undoubted criminal tendencies, always been a good bloke.

  But this story was different. This time the town could enjoy the proximity of the crime without being personally involved.

  There were no sides to be taken, no judgments to be made. The perpetrators, everyone was certain, would be out-of-towners, because there was literally no one that anybody could think of, no one who counted, no one who belonged, who fit Ellie’s description of her captors. Washers simply didn’t do this sort of thing.

  Honor knew the police had been conducting searches of all the properties that matched Ellie’s description from the few details she could recall of the exterior of the place where she’d been held—a milk pail–shaped mailbox, a long driveway, a cattle grid, a low-hanging front veranda. All these features were utterly commonplace; no doubt there were dozens of local properties that fit the bill. She hadn’t imagined they’d come up with anything solid this early on in the investigation.

  Honor did a quick clean of the room while Ellie showered and brushed her teeth, making herself presentable just moments before the two detectives arrived. Hugh maintained his professional distance, but Jenny Moorhouse gave her a friendly grin.

  “How’s the babysitting going, Honor?”

  She rolled her eyes, gave the requisite heartfelt sigh. “Teenagers. I only just got her out of bed, to be honest. She’s basically been doing nothing but eating junk food and watching reality TV shows all afternoon. It’s driving me up the wall. I feel like I should be encouraging her to do something more wholesome, but I’m not sure what.”

  “Teenagers are such a joy. Or so I’ve heard. Mine aren’t quite there yet, but I’m happy to wait.” She added, her expression more serious, “It’s good what you’re doing, though. It’s shit that a decent kid like Ellie is going through something like this and has to cope with it all on her own.”

  “She hasn’t said much, but yeah. It’s a tough old world for some. Don’t worry about me. I’m getting business out of it, don’t forget.” Hugh filled them in on the investigation’s progress. They’d been to a number of farmhouses that morning, all within a ten-kilometer radius of where Ellie had been found. Even though, Stratford explained, that was probably far in excess of the distance she was capable of walking, taking into account the state she’d been in when she was taken to hospital, the drugs she’d been given. But as the doctors said, the human body was capable of amazing things when put to the test.

  “And,” he pointed out, “we can’t be sure that Ellie’s memory of that time is intact. It’s still possible there are things she can’t account for. We can’t, for instance, rule out the possibility that she was given a lift at some point after her escape and we’ve been looking in the wrong area.”

  What they’d expected was that it would be almost impossible to find any conclusive evidence of just who the perpetrators were. The most likely scenario was that they had been visitors to the area, perhaps even using aliases, and that they’d cleared out as soon as Ellie made her escape. They hadn’t had great hopes about finding the place she’d been kept either. It was really a needle-in-a-haystack situation, going on the information Ellie had given them. Even within their defined radius, the number of homes in the area, which included a large number of holiday rentals, made it challenging, to say the least.

  But as it turned out, Hugh went on, his expression almost cheerful, the first few days of the investigation had been far more productive than expected.

  “We don’t want to get your hopes up, Ellie, but we do have some possibilities. We’ve brought along some photographs for you to look at. Places with some of the features you’ve described.”

  Ellie, sitting cross-legged on the bed, listened intently, her hands clasped nervously in her lap, eyes wide, expectant.

  “So have you actually worked out where she was kept? Who did it?”

  Hugh took his time answering. “There’s no way we can be sure about anything until we have confirmation from Ellie. So if it’s okay, love, Jenny will show you some photos.” He spoke soothingly, obviously sensing Ellie’s discomfort.

  Jenny took an iPad out of her bag. “Can I sit beside you?”

  Ellie nodded, and Jenny sat down on the bed, wriggling over awkwardly with the tablet. “Just say no if you don’t recognize anything, yes if you do. It might take a while. There are quite a few.”

  “I’m just scared I won’t remember right.” Ellie sounded very young.

  “Just do your best.” Stratford’s voice was kindly, encouraging.

  Honor watched Ellie as Moorhouse swiped through the images.

  “No. No. No.” Initially the girl shook her head at each picture, her face impassive, but then something in her expression changed, a degree of uncertainty creeping in. “I’m not sure—there’s something about this one.” She hesitated. “I think it’s the trees. There’s something familiar . . . Oh God, I really don’t know. It was so dark. And I was so out of it.”

  “That’s okay, sweetheart.” Moorhouse was calmly reassuring. “There’s plenty more.” She swiped the screen again.

  “No.” Again. “No.” And again. “No.”

  A new image. Ellie paused. Looked more closely. Took a shaky breath.

  “Yes. Yes. I do recognize this one. Definitely. It’s a bit different, but I recognize the light. And that horrible paint color.”

  She lo
oked up, smiling triumphantly at Honor and Stratford. Then her eyes filled with tears. Honor felt her own shoulders sagging with relief.

  “This is the room,” Ellie whispered. “This is where they kept me.”

  The two officers exchanged a rapid glance. Considering what Ellie’s identification meant, it seemed to Honor that they were incredibly calm.

  Moorhouse held up the iPad again, her expression somber. “I’m going to show you a photograph now of the owners of this house, Ellie. I’d like to know whether you recognize them.”

  Ellie’s eyes widened, her hand moving involuntarily to her cheek.

  “Oh my God. That’s her. That’s the woman.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it, enlarged the image. “It’s so weird,” she said wonderingly. “She looks so . . . normal.”

  Moorhouse’s jaw clenched; she flicked to the next picture. “And what about this one?”

  Ellie gave a short laugh. “Yes. That’s the other one—the mad old lady. Her mother.” She shook her head, slid her finger across the screen, swiping back and forth between the two images.

  The two officers looked at one another again.

  “Are you certain, Ellie? It’s very important that we get this right. You’ve accused these women of an extremely serious crime. They could both go to prison for a very long time. You need to be one hundred percent certain.”

  “Can I know who they are?” Ellie asked. “Are they, like, known criminals or anything? Have they done this sort of thing before?”

  Moorhouse looked up at Stratford, who nodded.

  “That’s the thing. They haven’t. They really don’t fit any sort of . . . regular profile for this sort of thing,” he explained.

  Honor couldn’t help herself. “I can’t imagine there is a regular profile for any of this. There’s nothing regular about it, surely?”

  “No, you’re right. But this has come as a bit of a surprise, if I’m honest.”

  “Who is it?” Honor tried not to sound too interested.

  “You understand that anything we say here is in complete confidence, Honor? It can’t be mentioned outside this room until our investigations have been completed. There’s a lot of work to be done before we can lay charges, and we need to ensure there are no stuff-ups. We don’t want to lose this one on technicalities.”

  “Of course I understand!” She didn’t even try to hide her impatience. “And I’ll make sure Ellie understands, too.”

  “Okay. If I have your assurance.” He nodded at Moorhouse again, and she turned the screen so that Honor could see the image.

  “This might come as a bit of a shock. I believe she’s a friend of yours.”

  Honor moved closer, and the image on the screen resolved. The figure was familiar, as was the background. She looked at Moorhouse, then at Stratford. She laughed but again felt herself closer to tears. “You’re not serious?”

  The policewoman gave an uncomfortable shrug.

  Honor turned to Ellie. “You really recognize her? You’re sure this is the woman who abducted you?”

  ABDUCTED: THE ELLIE CANNING STORY

  A documentary by HeldHostage Productions © 2019

  ELLIE CANNING: TRANSCRIPT #8

  When I look back now, it’s, like, so crazy that I really didn’t think about trying to escape at first. I really should have freaked out, but I didn’t. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it was because the woman was so calm and so kind. There wasn’t anything frightening about her. Nothing at all. And I couldn’t remember meeting her, the car trip. Whatever it was that she gave me did something really strange to my memory. I’d remember bits and pieces sometimes—like pieces of a puzzle that I couldn’t quite put together.

  To be honest, most of the time I actually enjoyed being there. Being with her. She was really motherly . . . in a way that my own mum never had been. And none of my foster parents either. She would do my hair. Sing to me. Read me books. I was always warm and comfortable—oh, and clean. There was this little bucket bath thing she’d set up in the toilet room every couple of days. She gave me this really sweet body soap, and I’d just, like, wash all the important bits so I didn’t feel grotty. And then she’d give me a fresh pair of pj’s.

  And the food was really good. Like, almost gourmet compared to what I was used to. And there was always dessert.

  Every now and then I’d be conscious enough to get a bit bored. Once I spent a couple of hours scratching my initials into the wall behind my bed with a teaspoon just for something to do. And every now and then I got really peed off about being left alone all day and started shouting—hoping that someone would come down and talk to me. I could hear them walking about upstairs, but no one ever came.

  Mostly I was sort of content. It was like I was a little kid again, only it was a different sort of childhood to the one I’d actually had. And it was kind of amazing to have no responsibilities all of a sudden. Life had been pretty stressful. I’d been working really hard all year—with the exams coming up and trying to get the scholarship for college. Being stuck in that room was like this mad holiday.

  After a while everything about my old life—the Abbey, my mum, exams, teachers, my foster parents, all my plans for university, going to St. Anne’s next year . . . all of it began to feel like a dream. And the bed and the room and the woman and the days I spent lying there doing nothing and no one ever expecting anything from me—this felt like the real world. Like the only world I’d ever known.

  SUZANNAH: AUGUST 2018

  The police came back in the afternoon.

  Despite my late arrival, I had managed to get away from school reasonably early. I called into the supermarket to get dinner things and then headed straight home.

  It wasn’t quite four when I arrived, but the day had turned gloomy, and it was already beginning to get dark.

  I’d left the convection heater on in the family room, but for some reason Mary was watching the television in the freezing-cold lounge room. She didn’t respond when I greeted her, the manic energy of the morning gone, but just stared blankly at the screen. She was wearing an old cotton shift of mine—a beach dress, short and sleeveless—and her skin was covered in goose bumps, her body shaking. I moved her back to the warmer room, brought her a rug and wrestled her into a woolly cardigan, pulled socks up over her ice-cube feet, and turned the convection heater up to full blast. I asked her if she wanted tea, something to eat. There was no response, but I made her a cup of tea anyway, sweet and milky, sliced bread for toast. She ate only a little but slurped down the lukewarm liquid and eventually perked up enough to begin whining about being tired, cold, needing a bath.

  Mary’s bath had become another nightly ritual since winter hit. It seemed to soothe her, and in this weather, it was almost the only thing that would warm her perpetually cold body. I ran the water for her, added a generous squirt of some musky body wash, and helped her climb in. Her body, once strong and shapely, was all bones and angles, her stomach concave, hip bones jutting, breasts shrunk into two small drooping sacks. She gripped my forearm with a clawed hand and climbed carefully into the bath, then sank down into the water. She lay low in the bubbly water, eyes and nose just above the waterline, relaxed, her hair in an untidy pile on her head. After a long, relieved sigh, she closed her eyes.

  “You won’t fall asleep?” I asked the same question every night. I’d had a tempering valve fitted to the bathroom taps, so I didn’t have to worry about her scalding herself.

  “Don’t be so silly.” She waved me away dismissively. I could have been a servant, a nurse, someone she’d hired, certainly someone she considered entirely insignificant. I guessed that wasn’t so far from the truth. I left her there, the door partially opened. She’d call out when the water cooled down or she wanted to get out.

  While she soaked, I made myself a cup of ginger tea and a piece of Vegemite toast, trying to beat the nausea that had made its evening return.

  This time I heard the car—or was it cars?—pull up, th
e march of feet across the gravel. Mary was still in the bath, so for once I managed to get to the door before her. The same two police officers were standing on the veranda. There were no friendly smiles this evening, and they hadn’t come alone. A small crowd milled about outside, awaiting instructions, some officers wearing those white suits that made them look like they were about to handle radioactive material.

  “Ms. Wells.” Stratford held out a document, his face grim.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you back?” I took the official-looking paper, glanced down, but it was impossible to read in the gloom.

  “This is a warrant to conduct a full search of your premises.”

  I could hear Mary padding up the hall, her damp feet sticking to the worn carpet. She was singing, her voice low and sweet, some song I didn’t recognize. I heard the sharply indrawn breath and saw the startled glances of the officers but didn’t turn around. She came up behind me, rested her sharp chin on my shoulder, her hair dripping on my shoulder, down my back.

  “Oh, hello there, big boy. Are you a friend of Suzannah’s? I’m her mother.”

  He swallowed. “Evening, Mrs.—Miss Squires.”

  Mary pressed in behind me damply; I tried to shrug her off. “A warrant? But I don’t understand. You’ve already looked around. You said that everything was fine. What have you come back for?”

  He ignored my question, but his voice was gentle. “I think this might be a good time to contact that solicitor, Ms. Wells.” He looked behind me briefly, cleared his throat. I turned at last. Mary was stark naked as well as dripping wet. “And you should probably get some clothes on your mother—I think it’s going to be a cold night.”

  I rang Chip, who laughed. “A police search? What’s going on? Did you murder Mary and hide the body?”

  “It’s serious, Chip. It’s about that girl, the one who was abducted. Ellie Canning. They came this morning and had a look around—they said they were just checking out all the houses in the area . . . and now they’ve come back with a search warrant. They—he, the detective, Stratford—”