It wasn’t that it was too sad to watch Liam die. It was that it was too easy.
‘How did you let her go?’ Jack said.
‘I didn’t,’ Maurice said simply. ‘She’s still around. She’ll pop up every now and then. In my dreams. Or I’ll just be driving along and she’ll say something. But – and here’s the real thing – I get to remember her differently. Before, because I mixed her up with what I wanted – like closure, pain – the memories I had of her were blood on the carpet, missing fingernails. She was angry and sad and screaming, and every thought I had was not actually about her, it was only about what happened to her. And now—’ He sighed, smiled, and Jack could tell just how hard he’d worked to get where he was. ‘I’m allowed to just miss her. And that seems much more fair.’
Jack understood. All he had for memories of Liam was a wheezing machine. A metronome heartbeat. A fight with his father. Chalk marks on a wall. Did he even remember, properly, before the accident?
‘Sometimes it’s not about letting them go,’ Maurice said. ‘It’s about getting them back.’
Jack considered this. Maurice walked out of sight around the side of the cab. Banged the metal. It thrummed like Jack was inside a drum.
‘Come on. I’ll give you a lift to your motel,’ Maurice called from outside. ‘It’ll be fun. I’ll put the siren on.’
CHAPTER 29
By the time Jack dropped Harry home in Sydney, another half day, the sun was weighted and the news of the coastal shooting had gone nationwide. Harry had read various news articles out to Jack on the drive: Pornography Ring Exposed at Family Carnival; One Dead, Police Officer Hero. A chubby-cheeked Indian boy had gone viral with an eyewitness account featuring finger guns and pew-pew noises. Jack thought the accuracy of his account varied. Especially when the helicopters and explosions came in.
That was why Winter had been candid instead of tight-lipped, Jack realised. Jack wasn’t being fed confidential police information. He was getting the story they wanted out there. The arrogance to have thought he was getting the scoop. Winter wanted Jack, an inevitable leak, to do just that. A shoot-out in public is tricky to put a positive spin on, but the emotional justification of taking down some real monsters is a fine tonic. It was the same rub that Gareth had used to turn Sam from a victim into Good Riddance. Jack was impressed by Winter. A man who was bad in a fight, but could punch up a press release.
Jack accepted Harry’s invitation for a drink. He’d already decided, after mulling on Maurice’s advice, that he’d go home tonight. Probably. But he wasn’t in any hurry. And he wasn’t much of a drinker, so one beer would soften his nerves.
Harry’s apartment made more sense on a second visit. The mess through his kitchen, the pile of cheap clothes – his real clothes – and mismatched furniture: this was the difference between him and his brother. And sure, Harry had played dress-up, but he’d only been able to cover up the surface. The recordings he kept, they made sense too. He’d never mended things with Sam, and so had instead created these one-way conversations as substitutes. It was easier to pretend your brother was talking to you than to actually talk to him, Jack knew. Jack decided that Harry’s apartment was like the inside of Maurice’s brain. Shelves of tributes, memories.
Jack feared the library inside him would be an empty room, only a bed and a silent machine. He didn’t have hundreds of hours of ready-made memories. And in his mind he stepped into the room, curtains closed for taped eyes, and there was dull moonlight across the bed, an island in the centre that seemed further away than possible, and then the mattress that only had wrinkled divots in the shape of limbs, shadowed as if filled with dark water. Maurice had managed to open the curtains, fill his room up again. Jack didn’t know how just yet.
Harry handed Jack a beer. Chinked it, wandered into his office. Jack took a sip and followed. The bookshelves were still in ordered chaos. Harry’s whole family was in this room – their voices and their objects. His father’s twenty-first present on the wall, Harry’s name spelled large. His mother’s record player. His brother’s face, frowning with concentration, fossicking on the Midnight Tonight shelf, choosing an episode.
‘Do you have favourites?’ Jack asked.
Harry didn’t turn around. ‘I have least favourites.’
‘Put on the pilot. I want to see you together.’
Harry walked his fingers along the spines and pulled one out. In silence they watched the last time the two brothers had been on screen together. Now that Jack knew what had happened between them it had a special resonance. The last time Sam’s hand was still and confident.
‘How long before Sam’s first attempt was this?’
‘Days,’ said Harry. He squinted at the screen. Sam was doing a piece to camera. ‘Can’t tell, even now.’
Jack didn’t know Sam well enough to agree, but he couldn’t find anything dark in his performance, in his smile. This was a man thinking of ending it all, trying to drink and drug himself to oblivion, and at the same time solving his childhood sweetheart’s murder. At the time of this taping, he’d either already written the letter, or was about to, according to Ryan’s timeline. Before he was on TV.
Harry ejected the disk, swapping it for the final episode. Sam had better make-up, a nicer suit, and the lighting was refined, but otherwise not much had changed.
‘Five years later and I couldn’t tell either. I used to imagine he was talking to me. That’s why I recorded everything. But now he’s dead, and I can’t force him back to life just because I want him to speak to me. You know?’ Jack nodded; he knew better than he’d admit. ‘And no matter how many times I watch this, he still dies at the end.’ Harry scrolled through the video as he spoke. Sam’s mouth was opening and closing, hand jumping up and down with nerves. ‘And every time, I’m hoping for something different. Nup. Exactly the same.’
Jack watched the screen. He’d seen this video more times than he could count, and yet, right in this moment, it felt like there was something more there. Something Harry had said? Jack had always thought it odd that Sam was more nervous five years into his hosting career than when he was pitching to the networks. Yet he’d put that down to Sam having had his brother by his side to calm him. But now Jack knew that Sam was struggling even back then, and had made his first attempt soon after. So why was he so calm and collected in the pilot? Jack was talking himself in circles. He’d watched this a hundred times, and it was the same as the last time he’d seen it, and the same as the time before that.
‘Stop,’ Jack said.
‘Huh?’
‘Seriously. Stop. Rewind it. Back to the start of this, when he clears his throat.’
Harry rewound it and they watched again from where Sam stuttered at the autocue – where they had assumed his killer had started talking to him. It was as they’d seen before. He stumbled on the word. Took a breath. A nervous tic of his left hand, drumming.
‘Nothing,’ said Harry.
‘Go back a season.’
‘Which episode?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Any.’
Harry picked one, swapped discs, and started to fast-forward through it. Jack stopped him when he saw Sam’s left hand move. They watched it.
‘Back to the last one.’ Jack said.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Look closely,’ Jack said, as Sam did his double take on the autocue, started to become anxious. Harry leaned forward, still couldn’t see it.
‘What?’ he said, eyes up close to the screen.
‘It’s not nerves. It looks like a random drumming of the fingers, but the first three seconds is always identical. See?’ He pointed. ‘First, he puts his index finger down four times.’
Harry flitted back through the episodes. His forehead crinkled as he tried to figure out what Jack was telling him, saw that he was right. Sam was very deliberately plunging his left index finger down four times in quick succession. Tap tap tap tap. It was like he was playing the same opening bar of the sa
me song on an invisible piano, and then he scattered into random jazz.
Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t get it. Isn’t that what a nervous tic is? What’s significant about that?’
‘We’ve spent the last week looking for someone who kills with words, and you two stubborn brothers have managed to forgive each other without saying a single one,’ Jack said. Brothers refusing to talk to each other was nothing new, and now he knew the shard of glass in the hospital room was the slice between them. But he hadn’t realised the significance of Harry’s recording at the time. ‘You recorded every single episode, Harry. Don’t tell me you hate him.’
‘I don’t, but—’
‘That’s the thing. This collection, all of this – he knew you’d record it. Just like you did for your mum, for your dad. He knew, or hoped. Or both.’ Jack’s heart was hammering. He’d looked around the room and knew he was right. He and his father were doing the same thing, unable to talk, looking for a faceless answer, hoping the other would find it without having to admit that either was wrong, or right, or anything at all. A silent, masculine family. Jack and Harry were hunting a killer who wielded words as weapons, but sometimes the gap between words screams loudest.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You said your dad tried to teach you. It looks like Sam learned. And if he was expecting you to record this, then maybe one day he was hoping you would learn too. You’re waiting for him to forgive you? There’s too much pride between brothers for either of you to admit that you were wrong, that you were sorry, so you’re saying it in different ways. You’re doing it now, after he died, sure, but he did it too. But he didn’t want to talk to you either. So he thought of something else. Maybe he would have told you eventually, but five years was just not enough. It’s like writing you letters and putting them in a shoebox instead of sending them. He’s talking to you, Harry. He’s been talking to you for the last five years.’
That invisible piano riff was not a series of musical notes but a series of deliberate taps of the fingers. Some slow and some fast. And there was a poster on the wall that matched Sam’s finger movements perfectly. One that Harry had gotten from his father, a radio guy, for his twenty-first birthday.
His name, with Morse code underneath.
The first four taps of Sam’s left index finger matched the four dots under the letter H. Then middle. Ring. Little. Thumb. Sam swapped fingers each letter.
Every episode for the last five years, Sam had been sending messages starting with the same word.
H-A-R-R-Y.
CHAPTER 30
HARRY.
LILY’S HERE. SHE GAVE ME A GUN.
Harry set the pen down, having transcribed Sam’s final message. They’d searched for a Morse code template online and worked letter by letter. They had to pause it often and replay. Sam was quick, fingers darting on the desk. Able to read the autocue and tap at the same time. Five years of practice.
LILY’S HERE.
Solutions rushed through Jack’s mind. The killer on the autocue knew about Lily. That was how they’d done it. Sam, who Celia had said was sometimes depressed or disconnected, might have believed it was Lily, talking to him from the grave. His fragile mental state was able to be pulled into that delusion. Is that how you drew the guilt out of someone? The final message on the autocue was in first person. I thought you wanted this. Don’t back out on me now. Like they were a team. The meaning behind it was clearer now: Join me. And Sam Midford, wrapping his hand under the desk, feeling like it was what he deserved, replying Yes.
If Lily was in the photos, and they weren’t planted, Sam had had them to help his investigation. And if he was looking at her like that, dipping into the past, how traumatic it must have been to see her words on the autocue.
SHE GAVE ME A GUN.
Winter’s theory that Dennis Slater had been spooked by Jack asking questions about Lily Connors had never held water with Jack. It was a sensible solution, an easy one. It had all the bad guys dead at the end. And Dennis, in possession of images that – Jack was now confident – included Lily, was certainly a ‘bad guy’. But Jack hadn’t even properly met Dennis, let alone pointed the finger. Sure, Dennis may have been spooked by recognising Harry, but his reaction seemed quite rash. Add to that Jack’s doubts about Dennis’s ability to even execute the two crimes, and it felt like there was someone else in the picture. What had Winter said? ‘Especially when it involves people of profile, like this, there’s always a fear that there may be . . . more.’ If someone had been feeling the heat from Sam’s suspicions and decided they were ready to pack it in, killing Sam and leaving breadcrumbs back to their associates seemed a fair way of tying up loose ends.
The only person in town he’d actually asked about it was Hank Waldren, sitting in his patrol car, who had all but demanded Jack stop digging around. And then proceeded to do exactly that. Three gunshots seemed a lot. And the fabricated story of the radio summons. The shotgun was cracked to load shells. Or unload. Maybe, when he saw a familiar face, Slater was putting his gun down?
Suicide by cop, Maurice had called it. ‘Whoever’s first on the scene buys the narrative,’ Jack had said himself. And he knew that for whoever was behind Lily’s death, then Sam’s, and now maybe even Dennis’s – constructing a narrative was this killer’s skill. Their MO.
And then there was Lily’s impossible murder. Maurice had spent years presenting theories and evidence to the local senior sergeant only to be told by him that his evidence wasn’t good enough. No one’s there to pull the trigger, it can’t be murder. Even if Maurice had found something explosive, Hank wouldn’t have admitted it if he was involved. It would have been easy to gaslight Maurice, make him look obsessive or insane.
And if Hank Waldren had known that Sam Midford was the person Lily would call in distress . . . If he was working with Dennis Slater, who ran the damn ride, it made sense that once they saw the Midford Twins get on, opportunity had called and they’d been left up on the Ferris wheel that night on purpose.
‘He thought Lily was talking to him.’ Harry rubbed his temple. Thinking. Coming to the same conclusions Jack had. ‘Would he believe that if he wasn’t taking his medication?’
‘He had the pills in his pocket,’ Jack argued, but then remembered what Maurice had said about the sugar pills. ‘But you’re right. Maybe it was for show. Taking them out of the bottle for Celia to see, but pocketing them. It’s plausible. Harry, Waldren was in Lily’s room. He told us. That puts him first on scene in two deaths.’
‘Seems a stretch, Jack. Even for you.’
‘If Waldren was the first responder, he might have got there fast enough to lock the window he’d used to get in and out. Sue Connors kicked the door in, but if she was cradling her daughter, would she see him flick a window lock? If he says nothing was disturbed, there’s no one to dispute him. By the time Maurice got up the stairs, he said the room was full of people.’ Even as he was saying it, Jack knew he was clutching at straws. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something dodgy behind the carnival shoot-out, but the locked-room solution seemed pretty risky for a murder. It would have been ballsy of Hank Waldren to stride right on in, to bank on Sue not checking any part of the room. Lily’s death had too many holes.
It was late, they were tired, and Jack realised he was doing what he’d promised he wouldn’t: trying to fit the evidence to a narrative rather than the other way around. If anyone was going to accuse a police officer, especially Jack, they needed something bulletproof. And while Jack’s theory kind of fit Hank Waldren, it needed the waistband taken in, the hem brought up.
‘I hear you. And I agree he’s been around a lot of bodies. But let me ask you this: what if Sam had been asking Waldren questions? What if us asking those same questions made him piece it together, realise what Dennis Slater had done?’ Harry’s gaze lingered on his brother, paused on screen, on his final two words.
‘You’re saying that he did go to the caravan with inten
t, but not with self-preservation on his mind? Looking for justice?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe Sam told him his theory. And he’s just one guy. Where was Ryan during the shoot-out? Matter of fact, where was he during the taping? Are you discounting the whole of Channel 14? There’s no link between Hank Waldren and the station. Twelve hours ago you accused me.’
‘If the answer’s impossible, the question’s wrong,’ said Jack, mimicking Harry at the carnival. There were two impossibilities in Lily’s death having been a murder: that Lily’s door was locked, and that the killer got out. Was the ball in or out of the bucket? What question were they asking? And Harry was right: Waldren wouldn’t have been able to get into the television studio. Even if he was involved, it wasn’t enough. Winter had said, ‘There’s always a fear there may be more.’ Celebrities fall like dominos in these kind of scandals. It’s an elite circle. Who else in such a circle had a connection to that shitty little seaside town?
‘We need more,’ Harry said. He swapped the discs, an episode back. They waited for the finger taps and slowly dissected the rhythm of the words. Jack peered at Harry’s notepad.
HARRY. HEATHER’S STARTING DANCE NEXT WEEK. I’M PROUD OF HER.
Harry swapped it for another episode, randomly chosen from the pile. Sam looked younger, trying on stubble. A couple of years ago. His finger tapped out the intro. Harry scrawled the rest.
HARRY. YOU SEE THE NEW BOND MOVIE? YOU’D LIKE IT.
Without asking, Harry went back to the first broadcast episode. Sam’s hands moved more slowly. Less confident with a new skill. Bung notes. Typos.
HARRY. HOPE YYOU LIKE THIS. SEE YOU UN THE OTHET SIDE.
Jack had half-expected this episode to carry a resonance, an apology or acknowledgement of what they’d been through. But there were no confessions here. This was the mundane, the everyday. The family group message, the social email. Anyone else would pick up the phone. But not stubborn, hurt brothers. This was the only way Sam was brave enough to say anything. Not ready for Harry to listen yet – he knew Harry wouldn’t have learned Morse code – but not willing to waste the years either. He hadn’t forgiven him, but he hadn’t forsaken him either.
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