Cold Justice (7 page)

Maybe just enough.

But there was no way in the world she could knock on that door. Just no way.

She’d have to find out some other way.

Anna drove them back into the city. ‘That went well.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ Callum said.

‘My job,’ she said. ‘Now listen, that man you were speaking to at the end there, Benson Smith, you need to call him tomorrow and ask him to lunch. I think Thursday next week is free.’ She thumbed through her Blackberry, one eye on the screen and one on the road. ‘Hmm. Friday might be better.’

‘I think I’m going to call that detective.’

‘To go to lunch?’

‘To say thanks. See if she wants to talk to me.’

‘That’s good,’ Anna said. ‘Now, Benson Smith used to be the mayor and is –’

‘I think she really could do it,’ Callum said. ‘I got that feeling from her. She’s really focused.’

‘It’s her job.’

‘Didn’t you feel it? The energy coming off her?’

She glanced at him.

‘It’s not like that,’ he said.

‘Did I say anything?’

He sat back in his seat and looked out the window at the pink afternoon clouds. Ella could really do it. He felt a thrumming low down in his spine. He’d become a doctor to
do
things, to have an effect, to change the course of events. He’d become an MP because he’d been told he could do the same on a bigger scale. So far it hadn’t worked out that way – there were meetings, and meetings about meetings, and great scads of paper to wade through, and still the emails and letters and phone calls flooded in from his old colleagues: ‘We’re counting on you to help us’; ‘We need help or this ward/theatre/department will close’; ‘We are close to breaking point, we cannot go on’. But his requests for meetings with the Minister for Health were absorbed into the minister’s office and never heard of again. He hadn’t realised the difference in scope either. It seemed so obvious now, but in the hospital it was him and one child with respiratory difficulties at a time, and never mind how many people were waiting – he could be in the moment and change that course. Whereas now, there was so much to do, so many people asking for his help, and all of it urgent but none actually a here-and-now life-threatening emergency, so it was useless to try to think like a doctor and triage the onslaught.

Tim’s case was something to cling to. He had done this one thing, helped get it reopened, and now this detective, Ella, was on it, and he felt the thrumming increase at the thought that she could really do it, and his family would get to face the culprit, and their courses might be steered just a little back to where they should have been.

1990

He sat on the wall beside the barbecue, kicking his heels against the brickwork and watching Aunty Tamara pour herself another glass of champagne. There was something about his family that made their birthdays all fall within the same two months. It was the genes, his dad said. ‘I’m a doctor, so I’d know, right?’ Callum was never entirely sure whether he was joking, but all it really meant was that every year they came to Aunty Tamara and Uncle John’s house for a barbecue tea and a cake massive enough to fit the names Tamara, Olive, Genevieve and Callum on it. And then it was only a few hours’ sleep till his birthday started for real, and this year he was getting the red BMX and they were going to the track at Castle Hill for the whole afternoon. He kicked harder at the wall, seeing himself on the BMX, doing a wheelie further than he’d ever done before. Scott said BMXs were special, they were made special so you could do more stuff better. Callum had told Tim that, and Tim had said it was bullcrap, Scott only said it because he had a BMX himself and Callum didn’t (yet) and so he was big-noting his bike. But Tim wasn’t into BMXs anyway, so what would he know?

Tim stabbed the sausages so hard that Callum heard the fork tines hitting the barbecue plate. Tim was seventeen, six years and a whole world older than him. Callum watched him frown at the cooking meat, saw the muscles move under the skin of his forearms. They’d learnt all about puberty at school; he knew about the hormones and crap that ran around in your blood and made you change ‘from a boy into a man’ as that film they showed was so fond of saying. He could see the faintest moustache on Tim’s upper lip and the changed planes of his face. He wondered what it was like. Did you feel it when the hair started to grow? When it started in other places too, did you just wake up one morning and look down and there it was?

Tim rapped the fork on the top of Callum’s head. ‘What are you staring at, fuck-knuckle?’

Callum blushed. Tim sniggered. Callum felt so young and hairless. ‘You’re not supposed to swear.’

‘Fuck that, and fuck you too.’

Uncle John loomed but didn’t seem to have heard the swearing. He yanked the fork away from Tim. ‘You’re supposed to be cooking.’

‘I am!’

Uncle John jabbed at the steak and sausages. ‘One task, that’s all we give you, and you still end up skylarking.’

Callum watched Tim glare at his father then turn his stare on him, and he dropped his gaze and kicked the wall.

In the Unsolved office, Ella reread John Pieters’s statements then looked up Peter Constantine on the police intranet. He was still in the job and worked in the Area Command office in Lismore.

She picked up the phone.

‘You bet I remember that one,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to hear somebody’s onto it again.’

‘What do you recall about John Pieters?’

‘Ah, the father.’ Constantine paused to let loose a hacking smoker’s cough. ‘Scuse me. The father had no alibi, and he struck me and Will as a little off.’

‘Anything specific?’

‘He was really angry,’ Constantine said. ‘Going on about how it shouldn’t have happened, he’d told Tim not to go out, that sort of thing. Have you spoken to him?’

‘Just a quick chat today, but I’m going there again tomorrow. He seemed very friendly and helpful. As you can imagine.’

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Nothing came of it when we tried, but it’ll be interesting to see if time has changed anything. We also took a run at a local perv, what was his name –’

‘Garry Thomas.’

‘Yeah, nothing there either. And then there was that Wade Tavris – his car was seen skulking nearby, then it was in that robbery and found burnt out later. His girlfriend was his alibi, and I heard when they looked at the case a few years ago they were still together, but you never know your luck. We found no actual evidence though, so whether the car really was stolen as he claimed – well, who knows? Oh, what about DNA? You get anything on those blood drops?’

‘Being processed,’ she said.

‘I hope that shows something. We poked sticks under every rock in the area, shook up the dirtbags and scumsuckers for miles around, talked to hundreds of kids at his school, teachers, tuckshop ladies, maintenance men – shit, we even dressed a dummy in his clothes and stood it on the side of the highway outside the pub in Hornsby – and we got nothing that led anywhere. And believe me, Tynan and I checked it all.’

‘Is Tynan still in the job?’

‘Dead ten years. The big C.’ Constantine coughed again. ‘It’s getting me too, unfortunately. But anyway. Good luck, and let me know how you go, all right?’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Bye.’

Among the people they’d interviewed at the time were seven locals with records of assaults against young men. Ella propped the file by the monitor and entered their names. One was dead, two were in jail, one hadn’t appeared on the system since that time, and three had further records of assaults, drink driving, drug convictions and fraud. One of these, the Wade Tavris that Constantine had mentioned, had been released from jail late last year. Ella read that he’d been convicted on a manslaughter charge after an unprovoked attack on a young man outside a pub in St Ives five years ago. There’d been nothing further on his record and his parole was going okay. His alibi for the night of Tim’s death was his girlfriend, Jane Lincoln, who said he’d spent the night at her flat, though nobody else could corroborate it. He lived in Pendle Hill now, and Ella put Lincoln into the database, crossing her fingers that she didn’t appear at the same address.

Searching . . . searching . . .

It must be peak hour on the network. Too many requests frying up the synapses. Ella got up for a coffee.

In the small kitchen a note was taped to the hot water system with ‘do not use’ scrawled across it. Ella looked in the cupboards for the back-up kettle but found only a dead cockroach and a couple of sugar sachets. She went back to her computer to find it still searching, then ducked downstairs to the café next door.

When she got back to her desk, the long black single shot with one sugar burning her hand through the corrugated cardboard cup, she found the search was done. Jane Lincoln now lived in Concord, a considerable distance from Wade Tavris. Ella smiled into her coffee and hoped that the distance was more than just physical.

It was already late in the afternoon; Lincoln would have to wait for her surprise visit. Instead Ella turned to Callum’s statement, taken on the Monday after Tim died.

‘My name is Callum McLennan and I’m eleven years old.’

He’d been accompanied by his father, Dr Alistair McLennan. Callum was asked about the birthday barbecue held at the Pieters’s house.

‘There was an argument,’ he’d said.

‘Between who?’ Constantine had asked.

‘Tim and Uncle John and Aunty Tar.’

‘Do you know how it started?’

‘Tim called me a rude name and Uncle John came over and said he wasn’t cooking the food right. Tim was angry but he just walked away. Later, after tea was over but before they brought the cake out, I heard Tim and Uncle John arguing near the pool. I don’t know if it was still about the cooking or not.’

‘Was it about swearing at you?’

‘I don’t think Uncle John heard that.’

‘What did Tim call you?’

‘I can’t say it.’

‘It’s okay,’ his father said.

‘We need to know,’ Constantine said.

‘Well.’ He paused. ‘It was the f word, with knuckle on the end.’

Ella smiled.

‘Thanks,’ Constantine said. ‘Did you see anyone else arguing, or just your uncle and Tim?’

‘I saw Aunty Tar and Dad talk to Tim too. Not for very long though. Both times Tim kind of stamped away.’

‘Did Tim ever tell you if he had any enemies? If he’d been in a fight with anyone?’

‘No,’ Callum said. ‘I don’t think Tim liked me much. He didn’t talk to me like that. Mostly it was swearing, or he’d give me a dead leg or a Chinese burn when nobody was looking, or hit me on the head like he did with the fork at the barbecue.’

Ella guessed he’d started crying then because his father had asked for the interview to end. Poor kid. She saw his date of birth and realised he’d turned eleven the day that Tim’s body had been found. Talk about special birthday memories.

It was well after six when Freya pulled up to the station after a busy afternoon. The doors were down, nightshift already out working, and James was leaning on the bonnet of the Commodore talking to a man in his thirties while Robbie jumped along the low wall beside the footpath.

‘That’s my husband, Matt,’ Georgie said as the man waved.

‘That’s mine, James,’ Freya said. ‘And our son, Robbie. And I’m betting that hunched over her iPod somewhere in the car is our daughter, Ainsley.’

She pressed the remote to raise the roller door and backed the ambulance in.

Robbie dashed to the front grille. ‘Turn the siren on! Turn the siren on!’

‘Not tonight.’ Freya had the start of a ferocious headache and the thought of the extra noise made her want to hit someone. ‘Did you get your braces?’

He came to the window and bared his teeth.

‘Lookin’ good,’ Freya said.

‘Very smart,’ Georgie said.

‘They hurt,’ Robbie said. ‘Dad said I could have a McFlurry for tea.’

‘Did he,’ Freya said. ‘What’s wrong with vegetable soup?’

Robbie made a gagging sound and ran away.

‘Kids,’ Freya said. ‘You got any?’

‘Not even planning.’

‘Smart.’

Georgie laughed, picked up her bag and the wad of case sheets and got out. Her husband was all smiley-smiles as he came up the driveway, then looked concerned at the scratches on her face. Freya watched them and saw James was watching them too.
How long since we hugged like that?
She could remember it, how she’d felt moulded to him, her head fitting against his chest, curves against curves, but now something else was there. Or was absent – she hadn’t worked out which. Her arms always felt strange around him, and generally he was already moving back when she dropped them away.

This was not how she’d wanted to be as a woman.

She got out of the ambulance and slammed the door.

Up close Georgie’s husband, Matt, was gorgeous. He smiled and shook her hand as Georgie introduced them. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said.

‘You too.’

James came up at a trot. Freya introduced them.

‘Down from the sticks, I hear,’ James said to Georgie, then faked a jab and cross at her head and laughed: haw haw haw. ‘Testing your reflexes. You gotta be ready for anything now you’re in the big smoke.’ He nodded at the scratches on her face. ‘I can see it’s already taking it out of you.’

Jesus.
Freya wanted to close her eyes and be somewhere else. She wanted not to see the awkward smile on Matt’s face and the embarrassed glance Georgie gave her, and the way her husband still had his guard up, ducking and weaving.

She grabbed the case sheets from Georgie’s hand. ‘We’ll be a few minutes with paperwork.’

‘Okay,’ Matt said.

Haw haw, from James.

In the muster room she turned to Georgie. ‘I’m so sorry about that.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘He has trouble when he meets people. He’s shy and he tries to cover it up and it comes out as crap like that.’

‘It’s fine, truly,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s nothing.’

They started filing the case sheets and Freya wondered what her life looked like to Georgie: a husband who acted like a dickhead, a cheeky son, a daughter who never even showed her face.