‘What are you, a reformed vegetarian?’ He laughed. He was young, cute, some kind of manual labourer, judging from the big calloused hands and the paint or wood dust in his hair. A half-eaten burger lay on the plate before him.
‘It’s just been a while.’ I munched on a chip.
‘You can’t deprive yourself of the good things for too long,’ he said.
I wiped my hands on my napkin, nodded in agreement and raised my wineglass in his direction.
‘Here’s to that,’ I said.
Chapter 37
THE SEX WAS GOOD. Wholesome and intimate when it needed to be, impersonal and rough at just the right moments, the fold-out in the garage taking the challenge without squeaking madly as I worried it would.
Pops’s dogs scratched at the door as we lay sweating in the semi-darkness. It turned out the labourer was a fitter of kitchens. It was sawdust in his hair. That’s all I knew. I lay silently, watching him try to work it out – whose house this was and why I was sleeping in the gym, why we had to be quiet and come in the back door. The bruises on my face and body. He must have wondered why I was so hungry, not just for good food and wine but for his touch. All of my possessions had been put in storage while I was in prison, unmarked boxes Whitt had shoved away for an indeterminate period. The kitchen fitter must have wondered why the only clothes I had were brand-new, still bagged beside the bed. He didn’t ask.
We rolled over together. The dogs went away and I closed my eyes, our feet touching, his arm around my waist like a belt. He fell asleep first. They always do. I revelled in the feel of his breath against the back of my neck while I waited for sleep to come. When it didn’t immediately I picked up the phone Pops had given me, opened my email account and looked at the text transcripts between Tonya Woods and Louis Mallally.
They started hesitantly. Two people who had met by chance, dancing around each other, neither wanting to be the first to voice the unspoken thing between them. He must have been nervous about the age difference. She must have been nervous about the wedding ring.
LOUIS: How’s the eye?
TONYA: See for yourself.
LOUIS: That’s a nice picture. You look happy. Are you at home? TONYA: Sort of. Little place I’ve been renting. I’ve got Rebbie here. We’re watching Frozen. AGAIN. It’s hard to focus. I’ve been thinking.
LOUIS: About what?
TONYA: My life. I want to change. I’ve tried to do it myself for so long, but I think I need help. You picking me up off the street the other day like a ragdoll was crazy. I thought, what the hell am I doing? Why don’t I have someone in my life who takes care of me instead of smacking me down?
LOUIS: I’m glad you’re staying away from that guy. You don’t need that. Not around your kid.
Tonya’s texts were all grammatically perfect. Smart girl trapped in a stupid cycle. As I read through the texts in the dark, I saw her falling for him. Not just Louis, but the idea of Louis. The lawyer. The defender. The guy with his life sorted out. Tonya wanted Louis to influence her. She wanted some of his power and confidence sprinkled about her world. I scrolled forward a couple of weeks.
TONYA: It was so great seeing you today. You’re like an energy supercharge. A bolt from the blue. I got home and scrubbed the room. Mopped the floors. I’m going to try to get a crib for Reb so she can sleep in her own bed when she stays here. It’s like you said, one step at a time.
LOUIS: You can do this, Tonya. You’re a smart, beautiful, sexy woman. You’re a good mother. I’m here to help you.
The kitchen fitter stirred, disturbed by the light of my phone. I put it away, thought about Tonya latching on to Louis Mallally, her supercharge. She was a lonely, unhappy girl trying to grab onto a man, trying to feel something. Something that would shake her up, set her on the right path. Right now I was doing the exact same thing. Dragging a man into my life, trying to shake off the numbness that the trauma of my time in prison had brought into my life. It was an easy but unhealthy outlet.
I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing and the rain falling softly on the garage roof.
Chapter 38
‘IT WASN’T AN inmate,’ Pops said.
I wasn’t awake yet. Dressed, yes. Sitting at the kitchen table, visibly conscious. But not awake. He put a coffee down in front of me and the dogs arranged themselves on and around my bare feet. I thought about what he’d said for a long time.
‘Why not?’
‘The prison was tossed, top to bottom, for the knife,’ Pops said. ‘But there wasn’t one. They found all sorts of things – razors, shanks, home-made picks. But nothing that would have made cuts that wide, neat and deep. So that means it was someone other than an inmate who killed Goldman. No inmate could hide a knife that big for that long.’
‘Did you actually see the wide, deep, neat wounds or is this from what Dolly told you?’ I sipped the coffee. ‘Because I like her but she’s as reliable as a cheesecloth condom.’
‘I got the idea from what she said to look at the forensic report,’ Pops replied. ‘Dolly claimed there were three wounds, and blood everywhere. And, from the post-mortem examination, she was right. A big gash here, here and here.’ He pointed to the side of his neck, his ribs, his belly, all on the same side. ‘Three. Now, that’s not a prison shanking, is it?’
‘No, it’s not,’ I confirmed.
‘A prison shanking, you go for quantity, not quality,’ he said. He wasn’t talking to me now, just rambling, walking around the kitchen. ‘Prison shanks are long and thin. Toothbrushes, wire, strips of glass or plastic. Easily slid down pants or up sleeves, don’t show through the fabric. So with something so narrow, you hit them as many times as you can. Try to get an artery before someone comes and stops you.’ He mimed stabbing himself in the chest, his fist moving in short jabs like someone using a salt shaker. He didn’t need to tell me any of this. I’d seen one fatal shanking and two non-fatal ones during my four months inside.
‘You want to see the autopsy photographs?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly. Goldie was my friend.’
‘That’s fine. I looked at them. The wound in the neck was a stab wound, not a gash. We’re looking for a big knife. Blade about five centimetres thick.’
‘So where did this big knife come from?’ I asked.
‘The kitchen?’
‘There wouldn’t have been anyone in the kitchen.’ I shrugged. ‘It was after breakfast. Lunch is just pre-packaged sandwiches. They wouldn’t start dinner prep until the afternoon, and even then, they’re searched on the way in and out of the kitchen.’
‘But you said there was a riot.’ Pops sat down next to me.
‘Not a riot, a level-one lockdown. A fight broke out in one of the cell blocks. They escalated it to a level two when they discovered the doctor had been stabbed.’
‘Convenient, don’t you think: a level one starting just minutes before the doctor was targeted?’ Pops was staring at me intently. The fire was in his blood, and it was affecting me, quickening my breath, waking my mind before the coffee had chance to take effect.
‘A level-one alert would have diverted guards.’ I nodded. ‘Tied them all up securing and observing inmates. The killer made sure the hall outside the doctor’s office would be clear. All inmates would have been on the ground, stationary. No witnesses.’
‘There must be a camera trained on the doctor’s rooms, right?’ Pops asked.
‘If there is, the footage would be with prison officials. And Dolly’s lawyer.’
‘I’m going to see if I can get it.’ Pops looked determined, his brows low over his eyes as though he was already shouting down anyone who tried to stop him. ‘My Corrections contacts may be able to help. They’re in Long Bay, not Johnsonborough, but they’re our best shot so far.’
‘I’ll try to find out what I can about the level-one fight just before the stabbing,’ I said. ‘I think I have an idea about someone I can … talk to.’
‘Why did you say it like that?’ Pops g
ave me a sidelong look. ‘You’re just going to talk to them, right?’
‘I’m sure there’ll be talking involved.’ I got up.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Pops sighed.
Chapter 39
I KNEW THE guy was going to try to hurt me as soon as I laid eyes on him.
He was not looking at my car. Determinedly avoiding it with his eyes, like a dog refusing to look at the couch cushions torn to shreds all over the living-room floor. He was in such a hurry that his own car, parked haphazardly at the kerb, still had its driver’s door propped open. I spotted him in the rear-view mirror, walking in a straight line towards me between the cars waiting at the traffic lights, ten minutes’ drive from Pops’s house.
I glanced at the dashboard, the doors of Pops’s car, didn’t spot a central-locking button. The man’s gun was hanging low by his side, but his hand told me he wasn’t going to fire it. Finger off the trigger, butt gripped like a club.
I put the car into park, ripped up the handbrake. He opened the passenger-side door and slid in beside me, as I knew he would, the car rocking with the new weight. Big guy. Boxy and solid. In his fifties but still strong. He grabbed a handful of the back of my hair and raised the barrel of the gun to my face.
I heard his long intake of breath as he prepared to bark threats, directions.
Before he could, I fainted.
Chapter 40
TO FEIGN FALLING unconscious, you’ve got to commit to hurting yourself. When people faint in real life they do all kinds of damage; bite their tongues, smash their faces on the kitchen countertop, drop a glass on the floor and sprawl all over the shards. When the guy grabbed me I went limp in his hands. He wasn’t ready for it, so he dropped me, and I fell forward and smacked my face on the steering wheel. I waited. He tried to process this new and unexpected turn of events, probably looked around, panic rising. The traffic light changed and the car behind us beeped its horn. I heard the clunk of his gun as he rested it on the dashboard, and that’s when I sprang into action.
I grabbed the gun and palmed the guy in the face so that his head hit the window beside him. In the confined space I twisted sideways and clubbed him hard in the head a couple of times with the butt of the pistol, losing the weapon into the back seat as his thick arm came up to block the blows.
He opened the car door and spilled out, and I followed, sliding across the passenger seat. We tangled on the asphalt, a hand as big as my head coming for my hair again, using it like a handle, rolling and shoving me down, grinding my face into the road.
Chapter 41
THE GUY WASN’T going down easy. Drivers, confused and frightened by the fray, leaned on their horns or sped past into the intersection. I caught glimpses of the man’s face as we wrestled: ruddy cheeks and a nose that had been smashed flat in the centre, scars on his shaven scalp. He was a bruiser, a bar-room brawler from the smell. I got on top of him, and he grabbed my throat. I ripped his fingers backwards, kept wrenching until the wrist and then the whole arm came with me and he rolled onto his front to stop me dislocating his shoulder. Sharp, angry cries of pain. A knee to the face ended his efforts. His big head smashed into the road and he was out.
At that moment I saw Tox and Whitt standing across the road, watching, doing nothing. They started walking towards me. There was blood running off my chin from the collision with the steering wheel, dripping onto the road that was already warm under the morning sun.
‘Oh, gee, thanks, guys.’ I threw my hands up as Tox grabbed my attacker under the arms and hefted him up. ‘You got here right in the nick of time.’
‘You had it,’ Tox grunted, his cigarette clamped between his lips. ‘Don’t pretend you’re some kind of damsel in distress.’
I was reminded of Pops’s car, still sitting a few metres away at the lights, the gun on the passenger seat and the door open. An old woman sitting in her shiny new Kia behind Pops’s Datsun seemed to be reporting everything into a phone, probably on the line with police. I signalled to Tox to meet us in a nearby alley with the guy while Whitt and I took care of the car.
The square-headed bulldog of a man who had attacked me was sitting upright, dazed, against a brick wall when Whitt and I arrived. Tox was perched on a garbage can, watching as the man came to. He tossed me a thick leather wallet.
‘Meet Travis Blenk,’ Tox said. ‘Failed carjacker extraordinaire.’
I looked at the wallet, the driver’s licence, at Blenk. He was staring at his chubby fingers, rocking slightly, probably trying to assess if he was dreaming or if he really had just had his arse whooped by his own mark.
‘You know this guy?’ I asked Tox.
‘Heard of him. He used to be a pretty good cage fighter back in the day. I heard they put him in the cage with a bear once. Don’t know how true that is.’
‘A bear?’ I looked at Blenk, tried to picture it.
‘Californian black bear, not a grizzly.’ Tox shrugged.
‘Hey.’ I nudged Blenk with my foot. ‘What’s your fucking problem? You don’t like lady drivers?’
Blenk’s eyes were almost clear. He looked at us each in turn, then reached up and took his left ear off. Checked it for damage, the way a person checks a phone they’ve dropped on the ground for cracks on the screen.
‘Christ,’ Tox laughed, squinting at the hole in the side of Blenk’s head, the embedded hook where he hung the prosthetic ear. ‘Forget it. That’s the element of surprise right there.’
‘Hey, I asked you a question.’ I nudged Blenk again. ‘You play this rough with everyone you’re sweet on, or is it just me?’
‘It’s not just you.’ Blenk put his ear back on. He spat blood on the ground, felt a tooth to see if it wobbled. ‘I have no idea who you are. I was just going for the car, that’s all. Nothing personal.’
I glanced at my partners. Blenk was about as convincing as a guy who had been caught in a toilet cubicle with the boss’s wife. A block over, at the intersection, I heard police cars arriving with their sirens wailing.
‘What do you mean, you have no idea who I am? How do you know I’m anybody?’
‘I don’t.’ Blenk wouldn’t meet my eyes.
‘Come on, Blenk,’ I said. ‘You didn’t just want the car. You weren’t going for the forty-year-old cherry-red Datsun Bluebird when you had a two-year-old grey Kia Sportage right behind it at the lights with a woman older and frailer than me in the driver’s seat.’
Blenk didn’t answer.
I crouched before the man on the ground, reached up and pulled his prosthetic ear off the side of his head. It came free from the hook fixed to his skull with a pop. I held it close to my lips.
‘Listen carefully, Blenk,’ I said into the ear. ‘You know exactly who I am. I’m Harriet Blue. I’ve been a lot of things in my life. A cop, a fugitive, a killer. But I’ve never been an idiot. You came for me just now because you’d been following me and you saw your opportunity. And if you’ve been following me, that means you knew where to find me. And that means you knew I was at Chief Morris’s house, released from Johnsonborough into his custody. Not even the press know that.’
I threw the man’s ear back at him. It hit his chest and flopped into his hands. Two patrol cops stepped into the alleyway ten metres from us. Blenk looked almost relieved at the sight of them.
‘Is this about Doctor Goldman?’ I asked. Blenk got unsteadily to his feet, started walking towards the approaching cops. ‘Did someone send you to –’
‘I don’t hurt girls,’ Blenk muttered. He looked back at me, almost apologetic. I was struck by the comment, wanted to hear more, but the cops were shouting at us, pushing us and Blenk apart.
Chapter 42
WITNESSES HAD TOLD the patrol cops in attendance that Blenk had tried to jack my car, that I’d been defending myself. I was encouraged to make a statement, to follow the cops back to the police station to sort the whole thing out. But Tox, Whitt and I refused to give our names, told the young, adrenaline-filled officers it was all a big misunde
rstanding. We didn’t want Blenk locked up. We knew what that meant – lawyers, silence, hours in custody at a police station. I would have to alert Woods to the attack to get access to Blenk, without really knowing if Blenk had anything to do with Tonya and her child’s disappearance. It was far less messy if Blenk just walked away and one of us caught up with him later.
The patrol cops apparently didn’t recognise us, were bemused by our willingness to see Blenk walk off down the street without charge. The incident brought nearby shopkeepers and bystanders to a standstill, slowed traffic, filled the air with frustrated car horns. My partners and I untangled ourselves from the police, slipped into a quiet cafe and huddled in a booth, watching the officers outside talking, trying to decide between themselves what the hell was going on.
‘Well, that was weird.’ Whitt gripped his laminated menu, flicked the corner, thinking. ‘Did you get a sense of what he wanted? Was he trying to kidnap you or kill you?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he was going to use the gun. He came up on me with his finger off the trigger, and as soon as I pretended to faint he put it down. If he was going to pop me, that was the time to do it.’
‘So he was going to take you,’ Tox said.
‘Take me where?’ I huffed in frustration. ‘Jesus. I should have let him do it. I just didn’t think.’
‘You should not have let him do it.’ Whitt frowned. ‘You didn’t know we were nearby. You could have ended up anywhere.’
‘I can handle myself.’ I kicked him under the table.
‘If Blenk knew where to find you, it must be related to Johnsonborough,’ Whitt said, rubbing his knee. ‘To Bernadette Goldman’s murder. Blenk must have a contact on the inside who saw you being picked up by Pops. It’s the only way to explain how he would know where you were so fast. The only person other than us who knows where you’re staying is Woods himself.’
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