Cold Justice (11 page)

‘Jesus, you had to work with him even after that?’

‘He rostered us like that,’ Georgie said. ‘I think he thought he’d get under my skin quicker that way. Anyway, this poor old lady was a concentration camp survivor and she had a number tattooed on her arm. In the hospital, we were about to slide her across to the Emergency Department bed when Ross catches sight of it. He grabs hold of her arm and starts rubbing his thumb across the tattoo, and he says, “Imagine, a Nazi put this on her. A Nazi held her arm while she screamed and writhed, just like I’m holding her now”, and he tightened his grip until she started to wince.’

‘No way.’

‘I got stuck into him, told him to let her go and leave her alone,’ Georgie said. ‘But then he looks across the bed at me with this glint in his eye, looks around to check nobody’s nearby, then bends down close to the lady and hisses “Heil Hitler!” in her ear.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘I rushed round to his side of the bed and yanked him away. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. He said, “She can’t hear, she can’t understand, so what’s the big deal?” I was so angry I couldn’t even speak. We moved the lady onto the bed then Ross took the stretcher out. I bent down to her and said I was so sorry, I even hugged her as best I could, her just lying there, but she didn’t move or speak or respond. I hope she didn’t understand him, but who could tell?

‘I found the nurse and asked if she’d heard it, but she hadn’t. Nobody had. So when I put in my complaint to the area super, Ross denied it all, said it was a horrible thing to accuse him of, he would never, ever do such a thing.’ She shook her head. ‘They believed him, and there was another black mark against my name.’

‘But what a thing to invent!’ Freya said. ‘Who on earth would make that up?’

‘That’s what I argued,’ Georgie said. ‘It didn’t matter. Ross was orchestrating this whole thing against me, and in the end the pile got so big, and what with the dead man’s family complaining to the media, management decided to act and sent me here.’

‘Oh man, he really hates you.’

‘It’s because I stood up to him from my very first day,’ Georgie said. ‘He made a crack about my lunch looking like dog food and started barking. I told him to stop it. He said, “Ooh, this one’s a lively bitch,” and came right up to me and air-humped my leg, if you can picture that. I told him to back off or I’d call the area super. He laughed and did it more so I got on the phone.’

‘And let me guess,’ Freya said. ‘Nobody else was on station to back up your version of events.’

Georgie nodded. ‘Ross put on this big act, whining about how all the girls who come to Woolford cause such trouble and this is why they shouldn’t be allowed in the job. The super hemmed and hawed and said we should just try to get along.’

‘Good old management.’

Georgie nodded. ‘I’m curious: why did they tell you I was coming?’

‘They said you were here for a six-week review and assessment. At the end of the period, if you were judged non-competent there’d be a hearing at which you’d be asked why you should keep your position.’

‘The famous rubber-stamp hearing,’ Georgie said. ‘In other words I’d be sacked.’

‘I have to say that was the impression I got.’

‘Was it Butterworth who told you?’

Freya shook her head. ‘Our area super came to the station, and Ken called me into his office to talk to her. She said there’d been some trouble at your home station and it was thought best to assess you somewhere else.’

‘They didn’t elaborate about the trouble?’

‘I asked,’ Freya said. ‘They didn’t tell me.’

‘What’s the super’s name? Where’s she from?’

‘She’s never worked out that way, far as I know,’ Freya said. ‘Lilian Stronach. She’s been in the job about seventeen years, mostly as S/O on the northern beaches then back into the CBD the last few years. Been the super here for about a year now. Seems okay. She listens, at least.’

‘That only really counts if she acts on what she hears,’ Georgie said.

Even if Stronach hadn’t worked out west, it was possible that she’d met Ross some other way, or that somebody higher up was pulling her string, and that the planned outcome was indeed to have Georgie face that so-called hearing. Although the fact that she hadn’t told Freya the details of the situation hinted at the possibility of an astute mind.

It didn’t really matter. It was best to trust no one.

‘Mate, you’ll be fine. And dinosaurs like Ross can’t go on forever.’ Freya drove into the hospital. ‘His meteor is coming.’

Georgie said, ‘But what worries me is what kind of shit-storm he’ll try to pull off before he dies.’

Callum sat at his desk with Ella’s card in one hand and the phone in the other.

‘Feel like some reading?’ Anna said.

He looked up at her. She held a collection of meeting minutes and committee reports half a ream thick. ‘More?’

‘This is only some of it.’

He sighed. ‘Just leave it there.’

She put it down in front of him then went back to her desk. Callum swivelled his chair away from the pile and pressed Ella’s number into the phone.

‘This is Detective Marconi of the Unsolved unit. Please leave your message and I’ll call you back when I can.’

He thought for a split second about hanging up. ‘Hi, it’s Callum McLennan. We met yesterday at the school, at the sports-centre opening for my cousin. Tim Pieters.’ He shut his eyes. ‘I just wanted to apologise for my aunt. That is, I take it you saw the news last night? I had no idea she would do something like that, and I hope it hasn’t caused you any problems. Also, uh, I wondered if you wanted to interview me. Just let me know.’ He recited his mobile number. ‘Thanks very much.’

He pressed the button, the line clicked in his ear and it was over. He put the phone down gently. She was probably terribly busy, she could be on the edge of some breakthrough; anything could be going on in there.

He stared out the window at the green spire of St Stephen’s across Macquarie Street.

1990

The day of the funeral was hot. Callum’s new birthday jeans were too big. His mum cupped the back of his neck with her hand, then threaded a belt through the loops and pulled it tight.

‘How’s that?’ she said.

‘Good.’

Going downstairs behind her, he slid his thumb under the bunched-up denim pressing into his stomach.

In the garage, he stood by his bike against the back wall while his mum helped Nanna Olive into the front seat. His dad put his hand on the handlebars then rubbed Callum’s shoulder. ‘How you doing?’

‘Fine.’

The drive to the crematorium was long and bright. Callum stared out the window at the people doing normal things on this normal Wednesday, a mother and child arguing in the car next to them at the lights. He thought of Scott and Andrew and the others at school, burning more lines on their plywood squares in Art, while he was in a car next to his mother, who kept raising her sunglasses to dab her eyes and look across at him.

‘You all right?’ she said.

‘Yep.’

His dad glanced around. His eyes were red. Directly in front of Callum, Nanna Olive sighed and sighed.

There were TV crews set up outside the chapel. Inside it was gloomy at first, then Callum saw the coffin on a silver stand at the front, piled high with white flowers. His mother took his hand as they walked up the aisle. Her palm was sweaty and he felt the muscles moving as her fingers tightened and loosened against his. They sat in the second row from the front, and Josh turned and smiled at them and held up a red toy bulldozer.

‘Nice,’ Callum said.

Uncle John had his arm around Aunt Tamara’s shoulders. Haydee was crying against Nanna Olive’s chest. Beyond them was the coffin. Callum tried not to look at it, but then music started playing, a song he didn’t know but which made his mother cry and tighten her grip and his father take her other hand, and all that time the coffin just stood there and he couldn’t help but imagine Tim inside it, Tim’s long legs under that bit of the flowers there, his face up the other end, all of him lying still under the lid.

‘You okay?’ his mother whispered.

He lifted her arm over him and pressed into her side, sliding down on the chair so his head was in her armpit. He listened to the beat of her heart instead of the talking going on up the front. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to watch Uncle John stand by the coffin with one hand clutching the shiny wood and the other dropping pages, and Aunt Tamara gather Haydee and Josh to her like a hen pulling chickens in under her feathers.

He concentrated hard on the sounds of his mother’s heartbeat and breathing, the air going in and out, the movement of her ribs against his face, the feel of her arm down his back and her hand on his hip. When music played again and people cried louder, he squeezed his eyes closed and went further into that warm place. When she placed her other hand on his face and tilted it up to her, kissed his forehead and whispered that it was over, he came back.

There were sandwiches and cake and cups of tea on the verandah. He stood with Josh, who put a slice of cake in the bulldozer’s scoop and knelt in the dirt and ferried it around among the rose bushes. He butted the dozer into Callum’s school shoe and the cake fell out. ‘Tim’s dead,’ he said. ‘The bad man did it.’

The bad man. Callum thought about him being out there somewhere and wondered if he felt anything about what he’d done. He saw the detective he’d talked to, holding a cup of tea and listening to somebody but with his eyes everywhere. Callum looked around as well. Schoolboys in uniform pushed their socks down in the heat, a woman in a hat patted Aunt Tamara’s arm, a man brought Nanna Olive a glass of water. Uncle John and a man in a blue suit stood together talking, the man holding two cups of tea as Uncle John used both hands to wipe a paper serviette across his forehead then across his eyes and keep it there.

The detective watched Uncle John steadily. Callum had overheard his parents talking late last night and knew that the police thought maybe Uncle John had done it. He didn’t think it was right for them to think that. Uncle John was as gentle as his dad. In fact, if he’d had to pick anyone in his family as most likely to kill someone, it would’ve been Tim himself.

The man put his arms around Uncle John, the teacups still in his hands high behind his back. The detective ate a slice of cake. Josh ran the dozer over Callum’s shoe and the sun beat down on them all and Callum wondered if something so broken could ever get fixed.

Ella walked out the back of the Pieterses’ house to the granny flat. Sunlight glinted off the in-ground pool and leaves dotted the top of the brick barbecue. Ella pictured the family here that last night, the smell of the meat cooking, the birthday cake on a plastic tablecloth, the argument rising up into the air.

The door of the granny flat was closed. Ella knocked.

Tamara opened it and looked out.

‘May we talk for a moment?’ Ella said.

Tamara came out and sat on the low wall by the barbecue. Ella stayed on her feet.

‘John said you spend most of your time out here now.’

Tamara shrugged.

‘May I ask why?’

‘He snores,’ she said. ‘I can’t sleep through it any more, so I put the light on to read then he wakes up and complains.’

‘The other bedrooms weren’t far enough?’

‘I could still hear him. If I don’t get any sleep I feel even worse than I do normally.’

Ella nodded. ‘John and I were just talking about the argument at the barbecue on the night that Tim died.’

Tamara shrugged again.

Going to be like that, is it?

‘I’d like to know what you remember of that evening.’

‘Everything,’ she said.

‘About the argument specifically.’

‘Tim was cranky that evening, and he wasn’t happy about cooking, and then he was rude to my sister and her husband, and then John had words with him, and then he left.’ Tamara slapped the leaves from the barbecue plate. ‘It’s all in my statement.’

‘So I read,’ Ella said. ‘Your thoughts haven’t changed?’

‘Into what?’

‘Let me try this another way,’ Ella said. ‘Who do you think did it?’

Tamara stood up. ‘That’s surely a question for me to ask you.’

‘That isn’t an answer, Mrs Pieters.’

Tamara went into the granny flat and shut the door. Ella knocked.

‘Mrs Pieters, open the door, please.’

She heard the lock turn. Her mobile rang. While knocking again, she looked at the screen. Galea.

‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘There’s a letter here about your case.’

She stepped away from the door. ‘From who?’

‘Anonymous.’

Ella started running across the yard.

FIVE

E
lla burst into Galea’s office. ‘What’s it say?’

He held out an evidence bag containing a sheet of blue paper. She took it and read the single line:
You need to talk to the girl who found the body.

The handwriting was stiff and blocky. Deliberately disguised. She turned the bag over. The back of the page was blank.

‘Prints?’ she asked.

‘A couple of smeared partials, nothing good enough to use.’

‘Envelope?’

‘No usable prints there either.’ He held out another evidence bag. ‘Posted last night in the city, probably at a postbox in the southern end of the CBD. Self-adhesive stamp and back, so no saliva for DNA.’

Ella reread the front.
The girl who found the body.

‘I guess it’s a response to Tamara’s performance on the news last night,’ Galea said. ‘Someone’s got significant guilt to act so quickly.’

It was a good sign.

At her desk Ella checked her phone messages with one hand while pulling up the case file with the other. Her mother had called, and she remembered the voicemail beep earlier. Well, that would have to wait. Callum had called too, and while thumbing through the sheaf of statements she scribbled a note to herself to call him back.

The statement by the girl who’d found the body was three pages long. Georgina Elisabeth Daniels had been fourteen and living with her parents in Hampden Road, not far from the Pieters family’s house. She’d been walking her dog early that Sunday morning and when the dog hadn’t come out of the long grass by the road she’d gone in to get him. She’d run to the closest house for help, then returned to the body to ‘kind of stand guard’. She’d said, ‘I was worried that somebody else might find him, you know, a little kid or something, and freak out.’