But the upcoming trial had gripped the nation more than even the murders had, it seemed. Wine fraud captured the minds of the masses and the media in a way that two dead, fingerless women couldn’t even come close to. Easier to stomach, a 6:30 p.m. timeslot. Well, said Lauren the last time she was in to visit, people love to watch a rich bastard burn. As Alexis had said, it’s about what we’re comfortable rebelling against. In this new age where social justice and social media intertwined, two dead women was horrible, sure. But fucking with a bottle of wine? That was a personal affront to every hardworking Australian! And that was great TV.
Some might think it lucky that Andrew had stayed out on bail so long until the trial, but Jack thought Andrew would probably be willing his sentence forward. He’d treasure the relative safety of a prison cell. He’d ripped off some rich, powerful people.
‘And Sarah?’ Jack said.
‘She turned a lot over to them. She’ll testify, I guess. I think a heavy fine rather than jail time awaits her, personally. As for the business . . .’ She slid a finger across her throat. ‘Birravale Creek Winery isn’t a creek, it’s a dry riverbed now. They’re bankrupt. I think she’s started making soap.’
‘Soap?’
‘Artisan stuff. Platypus Soap, she’s calling it, or something.’
He chuckled to himself. ‘Landmark, plant, or animal.’
‘Huh?’
‘Nothing. Soap-maker’s joke.’
‘Okay.’
‘Lauren.’ Jack leaned forward, the steel of the table cool against his wrists. ‘I’ve got a lot of time in here, and I still can’t get one thing clear. Andrew wouldn’t admit what he told me, up the top of his wine silo, to anyone else.’
Lauren shrugged.
‘And here I sit now. Because I grabbed that shoe. All because Andrew Freeman fetched it and set a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow, to clear his conscience. But now he won’t talk about it.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘It’s incongruous.’
‘You’re starting to sound like my brother. What are you implying?’
‘Andrew knew that Curtis killed Eliza, but he never knew where she was. Just like everyone else, he thought that the cellar was filled with concrete. So how did he even get the shoe? There’s only one answer. He didn’t. You put it there, didn’t you? Her shoe?’
She shifted.
‘You knew I had it. That’s why you kept asking me if I’d told you everything. You were the one pointing me towards everything that suggested Curtis’s guilt. Devil’s advocate, you said. But we were on the same team and you were trying to guide me without alienating your family? Is that right? Because when you told Andrew Freeman that you heard footsteps the night Eliza was found, you had to take it back. Even though you did actually believe it. But I understand – you were sixteen, and maybe your father convinced you that you’d done something bad, made you doubt yourself. And then the show. It would have started to make you nervous. You’re older, a woman now, and you saw a chance to correct your mistake. You wanted to make sure he didn’t – that he couldn’t – get out. And you gave me that option. The shoe wasn’t Andrew’s confession, it was yours. And I fucked it up for you. I’m sorry.’
There was a long pause. The sound of the prison’s everyday filtered through the air, through the door. Prisons are like ships; they groan and they rattle.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I heard him get up. In the middle of the night.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘After all this, you still don’t know how to listen. I know that he got up that night.’
The way she said it again – I know – with such sincerity. Jack remembered her standing in her driveway, neck tilted upwards at a passing cloud. We both want the same thing, you know? she’d said. I want the world to see what really happened to Eliza too.
She knew.
‘That night I think I finally understood that what Curtis was doing to me was wrong,’ she said. ‘And I just knew that when he got up, that when he went down to the restaurant . . . I knew what he’d do. And I finally summoned the courage to tell Andrew the truth. Enough to get rid of him.’
Partners, Curtis had chuckled, sure.
And Jack suddenly knew why Curtis had killed Eliza. He had overheard her leaving the voicemail to Sam Culver, but he’d misinterpreted it. He’d heard her trying to sell a story to a tabloid. Something weird was going on in town. And she thought it might make some trashy news. And Curtis had thought she was talking about something else. Not wine.
Her recoiling at Curtis’s touch on the porch, the night they’d traced Eliza’s steps. Something she said in Sydney, leafing through files: Dad let Curtis get away with anything.
‘Oh, Lauren —’
Andrew, confessing on top of the silo: Someone had been in her room. A boy. She knew Curtis got up in the night, because he was in the bed with her.
Lauren averted her eyes. Talked at the ground.
‘I thought I was ready. I wasn’t. I realised I would have to be the central witness in a major murder trial. I’d be questioned on the stand, and I’d have to tell the truth. There might be TV cameras. And I was ashamed. I was young, and it had been so long, and you feel like it’s your fault. And I didn’t want the world to see me like that. So I retracted my testimony.’
‘She didn’t get out of the hatch twice, did she?’
Lauren shook her head.
‘Who do you think opened the door?’ she said. ‘I swear, I tried to help her. Then he got her, and after that is when she found the hatch in the roof. If she’d just made it to the road . . . Why do you think he had a bed down there in the first place, Jack? Why? Fuck. You’re only the second person I’ve ever told this to.’ She wiped her nose.
The second person. Eliza? He didn’t have the heart to kill her, but he couldn’t let her go either. Until he had to. This was about keeping his abuse a secret.
In a distant echo in Jack’s mind, he was sitting on the floor of the cellar. Two muffled gunshots. One in panic, but why the second? She’d finally stood up to her abuser. Blood dripping through the ceiling.
Lauren must have been terrified, watching the show, that public opinion was changing. She couldn’t go to the police, or confess that she knew about the cellar, or any of it, without revealing her shame. She’d tried to do it all without confessing. She’d tried to help Eliza escape on her own. She’d left Jack the shoe to find. Sitting on Jack’s own bed, she’d handed him the blueprints that showed where the old cellar was, begged him to look closely. With Curtis in jail, she was, at least, safe.
‘You let him out,’ Lauren breathed. Tears tracked her cheeks. ‘None of this had to happen.’ Such regret, there. Then she stood. ‘I have to go.’
‘Lauren, wait.’
‘Why? I’ve told you enough.’
Something distant. In the car park, Ted’s hand slipping from his. Falling. Liam. Air. Dust. Whump. Something there. Distant. Memory locked up, too.
It was guilt rising in him, he was sure, this unease. Lauren had given Jack the keys to help her, and he’d shoved them right back in her face. She’d been helping him the whole time, trying to point him in the right direction. Trying to help him catch Curtis, but so she’d never have to admit her part in it. It never occurred to him that she had an agenda of her own. Jack was her shield too. She’d never really believed in the copycat; that’s why she got so upset whenever Jack had turned his thinking away from Curtis. Only when he was finally dead did she seem, at last, relieved. Jack should have known.
That was the memory. Ted’s last words. To Jack. You know.
Something wrong there. That unease in his gut. Because he hadn’t said it when Jack had shown up with the axe. No. He’d said it when he had turned. When he had seen . . . her.
I’ve been digging too. You’re not the only one who can build a case.
What if Ted wasn’t out there planting evidence? What if he was out there stealing it for himself? Because he was buildi
ng a case, not against Curtis but against . . .
Ask her about the night of the murder.
Ted had told him that at the funeral. The night of the murder. The murder. Jack had assumed Ted had meant the night of Eliza’s death. What if he hadn’t?
Watch out, the axe thief had yelled as the truck bore down. Why had Ted warned him?
You know. His voice. Sadness. You know.
‘Ted knew,’ Jack said.
Lauren turned. Cocked an eyebrow.
‘What?’
‘He figured it out. I shouldn’t have been thinking who would gain the most by Curtis being in jail. It was who needed him there the most.’
Because Lauren was okay while her brother was in prison. But then Vincent started getting sick, and Curtis was set for release, and she must have known he’d come for her again. So she’d left the shoe and hoped it would be enough to keep him inside. She wasn’t counting on Jack fucking it all up. ‘You pushed me for the police details,’ Jack said slowly. ‘You asked me for the police side of the investigation. Questions about the copycat, if the police knew who they were yet.’ Lauren, in the restaurant, I need to know everything behind the scenes. ‘Because you knew they hadn’t bought Curtis doing it, that they knew the second murder was a set-up. Because you were worried they’d catch up with . . . you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘But Ted knew first. And he wanted to play the hero, we got that right. That’s what got him killed. His refusal to tell anyone, so he could have all the glory, saving up his big exposé. He took the axe that night. And you saw him do it. That’s why you were chasing him with the gun, you could have defended that with self-defence. It’s so easy to try the dead, you said it yourself. And you would have got him red-handed in the middle of “planting evidence”. But he ruined your plan, because he took the axe, the one that you had ready in the shed for the police to find, except they hadn’t come yet. Because Winter didn’t want to cause a scene.’ Lauren, sweeping tools off the bench in frustration. Because she knew what Ted had taken. ‘And then you knew you were fucked. Because Ted Piper had the evidence that you’d planted against Curtis. And you started to realise he was going to use it against you. The police were looking for a copycat instead of Curtis, you learned that from me, and you could see it falling apart. But you saw a second chance. Your initial plan to frame Curtis had fallen through, but now you knew who Hush was, didn’t you? You figured it out at the funeral. That’s why you insisted on coming. You didn’t know it was Ted yet, but you knew Hush would be there. You stood up the back. You had Alexis’s phone already so you called him, and when his phone rang, you marked him in the crowd. Because, of course, Ted never turns his phone off.’
Jack recalled a phone ringing at the funeral. The words were coming out of him faster than he could make the connections in his brain, but they were coming and they kept coming.
‘How convenient that her sad ex-boyfriend was the person who was stockpiling evidence against you. Then it was a race against time – could you frame him before he had enough to pin it back on you? So you had your scapegoat. And you then started to try and bait me into that line of thinking too. Looking back, it was only after Ted took the axe that you decided the copycat was a plausible theory worth pursuing.’ He remembered finding the phone – Curtis had wanted to call the police. So had he. Lauren was the only one who objected, talked them around. She’d even had Jack call the number: I’m your sister. The call logs would be just as incriminating. ‘Because at first, you were guiding me to all of the answers I needed about Curtis. But you needed me to be the one that pieced it together. Because if you accused Ted directly – well, he had the axe, didn’t he?’
Memories of her, trying to get him to do what she wanted. Tear apart the shed if you need to. She wanted him to find the axe first. Sitting on his bed, handing him the old restaurant blueprints for a closer look. Do you think it’s some kind of message? she’d said, when they were standing in the field, stamping her feet in a dull thud on the actual trapdoor, That there’s some meaning beneath the body being right here? Some meaning beneath, indeed. She wanted him to find the cellar. Curtis’s words: This is the work of someone who wants to get caught.
‘No wonder it sounded so ridiculous that Curtis thought everything was planted. Only the person right next to him could do that. You wanted another quick case. You hoped the cops would haul Curtis away and not ask too many questions. And in me you had a biased party, so desperate to find Curtis’s guilt. I was the perfect foil.’
Same killer, she’d said, when they first met. Because she needed someone to go down for her crime as well. But then Ted had interfered. He remembered Lauren begging her brother: This is literally your last chance. Just own up to something. His response: Alexis’s killer knows that it’s not sticking to me. They’re getting desperate. He’d been right.
‘But after the axe went missing you knew that Curtis’s arrest wouldn’t be enough anymore, because as soon as Ted came forward it would stick to you. You needed to cover your tracks first and get Curtis second. You changed your mind and I didn’t even notice. You planted the phone. You deleted everything in it except for the one path you wanted me to take. Steering me back on your course. Suddenly you believed in the copycat. Andrew Freeman – you hoped that might work because at least it tied the murders together. But he talks too much, and I . . .’ A slow dawning. Should we shoot at him? ‘You asked me for the gun. I didn’t give it to you.’ He wondered if Andrew might have accidentally met his end if he had. Lauren had known that Andrew wasn’t a perfect solution. She’d gone along with it, but what had she said? I think we still need to get the axe back . . . ‘Then I figured out the cellar. And you took your opportunity. In the pub, you insisted your brother was guilty for both murders. You hoped the drama of his death would again cover up that he wasn’t the second killer. And you were right; most of what Ted had would have stuck to a dead man. Most people would have believed it, too. But then I figured it out. Too slowly, and in the wrong order, but I saw what you’d wanted me to see the whole time – your scapegoat, Ted. And suddenly you had the added advantage of silencing him properly.’
‘Ted attacked you in the car park.’ A nervous smile.
‘He attacked me, yes. But only after he saw you. He must have thought I was your accomplice. He didn’t attack me before you showed up. Before that, he was actually asking for my help. He really was fighting for his life. And you swung that final blow. There’s no one to say otherwise now.’
None of this had to happen.
‘Ted murdered Alexis,’ Lauren said, ‘because he knew that sometimes there’s a bigger evil at play.’ Framing a guilty man. The lies you can live with. ‘Maybe he thought that sometimes you have to stoop to their level to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing? Murder?’
‘Careful. I’m just guessing at Ted’s mindset, Jack.’ Lauren spoke slowly, large breaths between every few words, tiptoeing through a minefield. Careful not to slip. ‘Alexis got a murderer out of jail, remember. He must have struggled to let her live with that.’
‘So she deserved to die?’
‘No, she didn’t, Jack. But maybe other people made that decision for him.’
None of this had to happen. So that’s how she computed it. As Jack’s fault. Her justification was that he’d pushed her hand. Something else she’d said: When I heard she was dead, I thought it might be useful.
‘You can rationalise it by blaming me, but I didn’t make any choices for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Admit it, Lauren. This was exactly what I thought it was about. Revenge. Revenge on Curtis. Revenge on Alexis. There’s more than a sliver of him in you. There’s a fucking beating heart.’
That seemed to hit her hard. Lauren breathed through her nose. Slow.
‘Tell me something,’ Jack said. ‘Why kill her? You did it to right a wrong, but you’ve gone and done the same thing?’
‘Please stop
accusing me, Jack. Ted killed her. You said it yourself – because she got Curtis out. Just like you, she knew everything but didn’t act.’
There was the slip, under her words. She knew everything. Another statement: You’re only the second person I’ve ever told this to. Not Eliza, as Jack had assumed. Eliza hadn’t known anything – Curtis had said so himself in the cellar, Jack recalled now. Lauren had told Alexis everything – the real reason why she couldn’t testify – in order to keep herself off the stand. Jack imagined Lauren telling Alexis that she knew the truth, that she was the witness the prosecution needed, and the reasons she couldn’t come forward. Alexis knew that. But this was a huge case. Too good to pass up. So she’d gone and let Curtis out anyway.
Jack tried to picture Lauren in the laneway. He saw her startling Alexis. Why did you let him out? I told you not to let him out. I told you what he did to me. Alexis telling her to calm down. Come in for a drink. We’ll talk. Bent over, starting to lift the garage door. Lauren, the axe heavy in her hand. Filled with hurt, hate and revenge. It was revenge on both of them, Alexis and Curtis. I am not a victim anymore. She’d shot her brother twice. Twice. The second one in the head. Anger, there.
‘Put your recorder on the table,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘Your podcast recorder. Put it on the table.’
Jack took it from his pocket and placed it on the table. Busted. It was recording, the orange display glowing. He went to turn it off, but she shook her head. Leave it on. She hadn’t said anything incriminating yet. He’d done all the talking. She knew it. He knew it. The recording was useless.
‘Good theory,’ she said, consciously raising her voice so the recorder would pick it up. ‘It’d make a good TV show.’
But as she said it, she put two fingers to her lips. Two fingers. Shhh.
Then she slowly pushed both fingers between her lips. Bared her teeth around them.
Animal.
Greenlight Page 31