by Sarah Bailey
‘We’re not saying you did anything bad, Paul,’ says Fleet, ‘but you sure as shit weren’t painting your mate’s house in Castlemaine either, which is a problem. We like things to be neat around here. So. Let’s try this again: where were you on Wednesday afternoon?’
Paul squeezes his eyes shut before saying, ‘I always planned to come to Melbourne this weekend. Go to the footy.’
‘Yep, we’re not disputing that,’ Fleet replies with artificial patience.
We found football ticket purchases for both Friday night and Saturday afternoon on Paul’s maxed-out credit card.
‘But why did you come into town on Wednesday?’ Fleet presses. ‘And why did you lie about it?’
‘I was with a woman,’ he eventually mutters.
‘What woman?’ I snap.
‘A prostitute,’ he says so quietly it’s almost a whisper.
‘Very convenient,’ sighs Fleet. ‘Manage to grab her name? Phone number?’
‘No.’ He reddens. ‘I picked her up. It wasn’t like, at a place or anything.’
‘You were with a street sex worker?’ I say, not quite able to keep the surprise out of my voice.
He nods and squirms in his chair. ‘Yeah. Look, I didn’t want to say anything. I don’t want Mum to know. Or Dad. But it’s got nothing to do with Sterling.’
‘Yes, well, we don’t need to shout it from the rooftops but we need a bit more detail so we can verify it. This is serious, Mr Wade. We can’t account for your whereabouts at the time your brother was fatally attacked. We’re going to need to find this woman and confirm your alibi.’
Paul reddens more deeply. ‘Well, I don’t know her name but I was with her in my van. I picked her up then I took her to an underground car park. Um, on St Kilda Road. No one’s around there during the day. I dropped her back in St Kilda and headed to the city. I was about to go to a pub, just play the pokies or whatever, when Mel called me.’ He makes eye contact with me for the first time. ‘I know it doesn’t look good, ‘specially as my brother and I weren’t mates, but I swear I had nothing to do with what happened.’ ‘Is meeting up with sex workers on the street something you do regularly?’ Fleet asks.
Paul lifts his shoulders and mumbles, ‘Just sometimes when I come to the city. I don’t like going to the places. Everyone looking at me and stuff.’
‘Where do you usually stay when you come here?’ asks Fleet.
‘Dunno. Just cheap places. Sometimes I sleep in my van.’
‘Why did you call your brother on the Sunday before he died?’ I ask.
Paul looks like he’s about to deny it before he takes a deep breath and lifts his shoulders in defeat. ‘Mum was at me about it. Thought we should talk more.’
‘So it was a duty call?’ says Fleet sceptically.
Paul grunts. ‘Yeah.’
‘Did the chat go well?’
‘Not really. Sterling started going on about all the fancy shit he was doing. He didn’t give a toss about me and my life.’
‘How did the call end?’ I ask.
‘Dunno. I was pissed off but it was just…normal, I guess. We hung up. I hated talking to him. We had nothing in common. Never have, really. He just didn’t get it, how hard it is for normal people.’ Paul is getting worked up, his jaw clenching repeatedly as he rocks forward on his chair.
‘I don’t know,’ says Fleet, ‘it seems like your brother did a lot of charity work and donated money to causes. He seemed to have a caring side.’
‘It was total bullshit!’ explodes Paul. ‘All that effort he put into bloody strangers while his family is struggling to make ends meet. I fucking hated it.’
I let his charged words fade from the room before I ask, ‘Did Sterling know how much trouble your parents were in financially?’
‘He must have known. Last time he came up it would have been obvious. My parents are proud people and they don’t like to make a fuss, but he would have known.’ Waves of fury cross his face as he tries to keep a lid on his emotions.
‘It must be tough watching your folks struggle like that,’ says Fleet.
‘It’s tougher on Mel. She lives up the road from Mum and Dad. She and her husband help out on the farm but they’ve got their own problems. One of their kids needs special care so they have a hard time of it.’
‘But Sterling didn’t have to worry about any of it,’ I say.
‘Nope,’ says Paul indignantly, his eyes shining. ‘He left Karadine when he was a kid and barely came back. Got himself a fancy new family and that was it.’
‘He visited though, right? And he stayed in touch with your parents. They told us he called them every week.’
‘Yeah, well, he probably felt guilty or something, I guess.’ Paul slumps back into his seat. ‘He only visits once a year. Mum and Dad don’t let on but they hated all his TV and movie stuff. They just wanted him home. But he thought he was too good for the farm. Too good for us.’ Paul rubs a meaty fist over his eye. ‘Mum is pretty upset about him getting engaged and not telling anyone. I know that everyone thought he was a superstar but he was a selfish little prick.’
Fleet and I don’t respond.
After a moment Paul feels the need to substantiate his statement. ‘He was. He was so ungrateful, especially to Mum and Dad, seeing how they did so much for him, and letting him move to Melbourne as a kid.’
‘Well, at least he can be generous now,’ says Fleet. ‘He hadn’t lived with Lizzie for very long and his last-known will directs all of his assets to your parents. So even if she can claim some of them, I doubt your family will have to worry about the farm anymore.’
Paul grunts and stares rudely at the wall.
‘But maybe you already knew that,’ adds Fleet.
Paul remains silent, his large arms crossed in front of him.
‘Okay,’ I say, sighing, ‘why don’t you describe the woman you say you spent last Wednesday afternoon with?’
Tuesday, 21 August
11.06 am
Even in our modern, digital world, alibis aren’t always as easy to confirm as you might expect. Sometimes we luck out and deal with people who have highly scheduled lives, like lawyers or doctors. And anyone who has a personal assistant is a godsend when it comes to piecing together daily movements. People who work in labour jobs are handy too: a factory worker usually turns out to be exactly where they said they were and this can be confirmed by several others. It’s the unemployed, the students, the single, the stay-at-home parents and the elderly who cause us the most trouble. And some people can simply be vague about their movements. Sometimes this is deliberate, but often it’s because they drift through their lives without taking much notice of what they’re doing at any given time. When you have nowhere particular to be, you can end up being everywhere.
Soon after my arrival in Melbourne I worked a case in which one of the main suspects was an older man, a widower, who spent most of his days catching the train to the end of the line and back again. He liked the feeling of going on a journey, and as a pensioner this daily joy cost him only a few dollars. Trying to nail down his whereabouts in the lead-up to an assault became a very time-consuming CCTV puzzle.
One of the biggest issues with the Wade case is that we don’t know whose alibi we need. Most of the cast and crew can now be accounted for, but the additional masked person remains a mystery. We don’t know if they are known to us or a complete stranger. We can’t work back from where they were supposed to be at the time of the attack.
To that end, we’ve settled on a spray and pray approach and are just ticking off the whereabouts of everyone in our sights.
We now have a team of uniforms trying to verify Paul Wade’s alleged afternoon dalliance last Wednesday. They are slowly working their way up and down the streets of St Kilda as they search for the dark-haired lady in question. So far no one remembers seeing Paul or his van and our team certainly hasn’t happened upon the lucky woman. Because his phone was off for most of the afternoon we have no way of k
nowing if he’s telling the truth about being in St Kilda between 3 and 5 pm. All we know is that he was near Flinders Street Station by the time Melissa called him just after 5.30 pm on Wednesday.
We’ve confirmed the Beaufords’ statement that they were both in Adelaide on the day of the attack. Their son Jack was at home with his girlfriend. All the communications we’ve found between Wade and the Beaufords, and Wade and Jack, are extremely positive. He was more intimate with them than with his parents. ‘Hell, I considered asking them to adopt me,’ Fleet told me. ‘They are so charming it’s ridiculous. I can see why Wade was smitten.’
Frustratingly, no one can confirm that Ava James was in her trailer during Wade’s attack. There’s no CCTV footage from the areas around the three makeshift trailers that were positioned at the top of the park, and because the entire area was under a security lockdown she didn’t have a personal guard with her. One of the cast mentioned that just before the zombie scene began, they saw Ava outside a trailer talking on her mobile; she claims she never left her trailer and watched the whole scene play out on a split-screen. We’re trying to confirm if she made or received a call during that timeframe but her overseas phone company is making local access to her records difficult. While we know it would have been easy enough for her to slip on a costume and join the seething mass, we’re not convinced that she could have made it back to one of the costume trailers without raising any suspicion. All we can be certain of is that Ava didn’t leave the set until she demanded one of the security guards take her to the hospital about twenty minutes after the attack—her hysterics were witnessed by many.
Brodie Kent maintains he spent the day just ‘wandering around the city’. We’ve managed to verify his presence at one cafe where he had a coffee at 11 am, but aside from that he was just one of thousands of bodies walking the streets and taking in the sights.
We decide to ask him to come in for further questioning.
Brodie answers breathlessly when I call, immediately wanting to know if there’s a development. He is disappointed when I tell him I can’t share any information but says he’s nearby and will come in straight away.
Looking pale and haunted, he sits nervously opposite us in the same interview room as last time. We grill him for more detail about what he was doing on the day Sterling died. ‘I was just thinking,’ he insists. ‘I was working on my screenplay and I find it helps when I walk around, taking in all the different types of people. I stopped a few times for coffee and I used the bathroom in David Jones, but aside from that I was just walking and listening to music.’
Brodie admits being near Spring Street at various points throughout the day. He can’t remember exactly where he was when Wade was attacked but says he deliberately avoided the crowds. His phone died sometime in the afternoon, and he claims he didn’t find out about Sterling’s death until he saw the news when he got home around six-thirty.
I sigh, frustrated that, just like Brodie’s walk that day, we are simply looping in pointless circles.
‘Tell me, Brodie,’ I say, deciding to change the subject, ‘did Sterling mention anything about a phone call he received last Sunday?’
He scrunches up his face as he thinks. ‘On Sunday?’ he repeats.
‘Yes, later in the afternoon, maybe around four-thirty.’
‘He spoke to his brother on Sunday,’ says Brodie. ‘I got home from a dance class and he was pretty upset about it.’
‘Did he say what they talked about?’
‘Not really. He just said that his brother called and that almost straight away Paul picked a fight with him. The guy’s a homophobic jerk.’
‘Do you know what the argument was about?’ I press.
‘No, he didn’t say. He wasn’t close to his family. They never really understood him.’
‘Do you think Sterling’s brother knew about you and him?’ asks Fleet.
‘No way. Definitely not.’
‘How do you know he’s homophobic then?’ asks Fleet.
‘Just from what Sterling told me. His parents, they seem like nice people, but they’re very old-fashioned. My parents are kind of the same. But his brother has no excuse. I think he was jealous of Sterling even though he would have done anything for his family. He was amazing like that. Paul was a big part of Sterling not feeling like he could be his true self. You should see some of the stuff Paul posts on Facebook. It’s really disturbing.’
‘It doesn’t seem like Sterling had much contact with his siblings,’ I say.
‘I don’t think he did. Especially not Paul. It made him really sad, the way his family didn’t accept so much about him.’ Brodie’s mouth pulls into a bizarre shape as he tries to stifle a sob. ‘I’m dreading the funeral. Do you know how weird it will be for me?’
‘It must be very difficult,’ I say gently, trying to imagine being in Brodie’s position.
He nods, tears spilling from his eyes. ‘I’m so lonely without him,’ he says, his body trembling through a contained sob. ‘I’m not close to my family, I don’t have that many friends. I wish so badly he was still here.’
‘You have Lizzie,’ I say tentatively.
His dark eyes glisten. ‘I like Lizzie, I do, and she’s good to me…but, well, I know this sounds weird but Sterling was the one who held us all together. Without him around it feels unnatural. Plus, she has her brother and a ton of friends anyway. They’re at the apartment all the time. Especially now. I don’t want all that noise.’
‘Did you feel bad about lying to her like that?’ Fleet questions, implying that he should have. ‘It’s pretty rough carrying on with her boyfriend under the same roof.’
Brodie sighs and briefly puts his head in his hands. ‘I know it wasn’t right but I believed in what Sterling and I had so much, I guess I just figured it would all work out somehow. I didn’t want to hurt Lizzie and neither did Sterling. I think I convinced myself that they would break up. And when she’d moved on, we could make our relationship official.’
‘Are you certain she didn’t know?’ I ask.
‘I really don’t think so. We were super careful. Sterling was still affectionate to her.’
‘Brodie,’ I say, ‘we don’t doubt what you’ve told us—that you had a sexual relationship with Sterling—but it doesn’t help that there was so little communication between the two of you.’ I stare at him until he meets my eyes.
‘Like I said, we were very careful,’ says Brodie flatly. ‘He was really paranoid about people finding out. Especially Lizzie.’
‘Over the past few weeks there were minimal texts and private messages between you, and barely any calls,’ Fleet jumps in. ‘That makes it impossible for us to know exactly what kind of relationship you had, especially recently.’
Brodie tilts his chin in that defiant way only the young can. ‘I know what we had. Me moving in with him made it obvious just how right we were for each other.’ His eyes fill with tears. ‘When Lizzie wasn’t around it was perfect, like we were a real couple.’ He wipes at the wetness on his cheeks. ‘But you’re right, I have nothing to prove it all now. I never thought I would have to. Now I feel like I’m dying.’ He waves his hands in front of him theatrically before letting them settle in prayer on his chest.
Next to me I can feel Fleet actively rejecting Brodie’s drama before he bluntly says, ‘I guess from where I sit I’m just struggling to understand why you came forward with all of this. I appreciate that you didn’t go to the media, but if no one knew then it has no bearing on the case. Sterling isn’t here to verify it. What’s the point of us knowing?’
Brodie looks pleadingly at us. ‘I just wanted someone to know. I can’t tell my parents, I can’t tell Lizzie. I wanted someone to know how much I care. I hope he knew. And I want to know who did this to him.’
‘I can understand that,’ I say, offering a counterpoint to Fleet’s harshness. ‘It must be hard to keep the level of your pain secret.’
‘Exactly,’ he says, shuddering. ‘It is a nigh
tmare.’
‘The problem is,’ says Fleet, ‘close relationships are the first place we tend to find motive. And we still don’t know where you were when Sterling was attacked.’
‘I didn’t hurt him,’ says Brodie firmly. ‘I’m not a violent person. I could never do something like that to anyone. Let alone someone I loved so much.’
Fleet looks at him, unblinking. I roll my neck from side to side, stretching out the sore muscles while I keep my eyes on Brodie.
I’m about to speak when Brodie caves under Fleet’s stare and says quietly but firmly, ‘all I can say is that everything I’ve told you is true.’
‘Do you think Sterling was as serious about your relationship as you were?’ I ask gently. ‘Is that something you worried about?’
An edge creeps back into his voice. ‘I don’t know much about anything anymore but I know how we felt about each other.’
‘Why do you think he proposed to Lizzie then?’ I press.
His jaw hardens as he grits his teeth. ‘I’m not sure he did. I think Lizzie’s lying.’
Tuesday, 21 August
5.43 pm
I look up from my paperwork and shake my head, trying to get my exhausted eyes to focus. I miss Ben, I realise, identifying the specific ache of want that passes over me. I miss our easy intimacy. I miss his stream of questions and soft smooth skin. I miss holding his small body in my arms. I let my mind wander for a moment, and picture being back in my old lounge room with Ben playing at my feet. But the image won’t hold. A cramp forms in my calf. I miss my son but I can’t see myself returning to live in Smithson. I shake my head and circle my shoulders in their sockets. Going backwards isn’t an option, I think for the millionth time. I need to make this life I’ve chosen work.