Through the phone, Stella heard the door creak open followed by the menacing rumble of an angry voice. Her heart almost stopped beating. It was Nick’s voice.
‘You bitch, you and Stella, bitches, the pair of you—YOU SET ME UP!’
Stella heard the smashing of glass then the crunch of the phone falling to the floor.
And then the screaming started.
Stella’s frantic call came through on Stevie’s mobile when she and Tash were in the operations room, bemoaning how Nick had slipped through the system.
Stevie ran with galloping heart to the car park, the phone clamped to her ear and Tash hurrying at her heels. Stella Webster was hysterical, her story garbled and confused. But there was no confusion about her description of what she’d heard going on in the Breightling house over the phone. The screams of Emma being mutilated and murdered by Nick Bennett. Stevie reassured Stella as best she could and told her to pull over on the roadside and wait for assistance. Then she hung up.
‘How the hell did Bennett find Emma?’ Tash asked, jumping into the Commodore.
‘You and Barry questioned him, you tell me.’
Tash thought for a moment. ‘Oh shit.’
‘You mentioned her name, didn’t you? All he needed to do was check the phone book.’
‘We had to ask him if he knew her, didn’t we? How were we to know he was going to be let out on a stupid technicality?’
There was no point in pursuing this further, what was done was done. Bickering between themselves was not going to get them any faster to Emma. Tash phoned for an ambulance and police back up to meet them at the Breightling house, then called the Geraldton police to meet up with Stella.
‘We’re never going to make it,’ she said as Stevie ran a red light on Guildford Road.
The magnetic light on the car roof flashed, the siren wailed. Stevie’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. ‘Never say never Tash, Emma’s a resourceful kid.’
They screamed to a halt outside the house. Stevie took the front and Tash dashed around the back. The lacquer door hung open and Stevie stepped into the hallway, broken glass crunching under her feet. A picture had been pulled from the wall and used as a weapon it seemed, its frame smashed and dangling from the torn canvas. She followed a trail of blood to the family area, where she found yet more blood, sprayed across the kitchen bench tops and dripping down the walls.
The broken balustrade lay in a jumbled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Dust from the debris was still rising like smoke and wafted in the shafts of light from the skylight. Stevie saw Tash cautiously making her way through the French doors, leaving them open behind her. The smell of damp soil, and the sound of gurgling water, brought some much-needed freshness to the room.
Suddenly Tash stopped dead in her tracks; her hand flew to her mouth. Stevie edged closer and saw him too, heard the deep sucking sounds coming from the man’s body. Nick Bennett gave one last writhe and went slack, becoming one with the hideous
objet d’art
on which he was impaled.
Stevie was the first to recover her senses. ‘Tash, hurry that ambulance up,’ she ordered, stepping over the tangle of balustrades to where Emma lay curled like an embryo with hands over her ears. Her eyes were wide and staring and she emitted a low-pitched keening when she saw Stevie.
‘Emma, are you hurt?’ Stevie gently patted the child down. Finding no sign of injury she eased her to her feet and guided her to the front lounge room, as far away from the carnage as she could get.
Emma shook her head as if coming out of a trance. Finding her voice she said, ‘I hit him over the head with the picture when he came at me and then he chased me up the stairs. The banister, he fell through the banister when he was trying to catch me. Stevie, I was scared...’
Emma curled into her as far as she could go. Stevie held her tight and tried to calm the child’s violent shivering.
She stroked her hair and patted her back as tears soaked through her shirt. My God, Emma, she thought, what on earth is going to become of you?
Some days later
Monty’s flight was finally called:
QF 71 to London, boarding now.
Sitting around a table in the airport cafe, none of them made an effort to move. Izzy sat on her father’s knee, burrowing into him. In her hand she clutched a box she’d made from ice cream sticks and decorated with shells; her present to her Scottish Grandma.
Stevie sat with her arm linked through Monty’s, trying to absorb as much of him as she could, while she could.
‘The queue’s so long, there’s no point joining it just yet,’ he said.
Stevie watched a young couple kissing and hugging. A moment later the woman was sucked through the departure door. Stevie’s eyes filled and she looked away.
‘Boarding pass, passport, money, medication, nicotine gum?’ she asked, battling to keep her voice steady.
He nodded. ‘You got yours too?’
She put on a brave smile and produced a crumpled packet of Nicorettes from her jeans pocket. ‘Bet you crack first,’ she tried for some light heartedness.
He kicked the small holdall at his feet. ‘I’d better see if I can fit this in too,’ he said to Izzy. Still holding her to him, he took the decorative box with one hand and slid it into one of the bag’s compartments.
Izzy’s face crumpled, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and buried her head in his chest. ‘I don’t want you to go, Dad!’
‘It’s not for long Izz, he’ll soon be back.’ Stevie regarded Monty in her peripheral vision; saw him briefly close his eyes, his throat moving as he swallowed.
‘Dad’s been sick: he just needs to go back to his mum for a while and have a rest. You like being with me when you’re sick, don’t you?’
‘But when will you be back?’ Izzy asked him.
‘In about three weeks, the time will whiz by.’
Izzy seemed to take comfort from this. The thumb popped from her mouth. The toys in the window of one of the duty free shops seemed to beckon.
‘Can I go over there?’ she pointed.
‘Just as long as you stay where I can see you,’ Stevie said.
‘How’s Natasha?’ Monty asked, his eyes fixed on their daughter as she rummaged through the items in a specials basket outside the shop.
‘Still talking to me, which is a surprise seeing as I’ve recommended that she undertake some retraining at the academy—a course on questioning suspects.’
Monty raised his eyebrows—impressed that she was
finally
taking her seniority seriously perhaps? Whatever his thoughts, she was glad he didn’t express them.
‘And when she’s done the course she’s being transferred—at her own request I might add.’
Stevie didn’t think his eyebrows could go any higher.
‘Why would she do that, I wonder?’ he asked.
Stevie hesitated, smiled. ‘The same reason I transferred from the SCS. A relationship with the boss.’
It took a moment to sink in. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Dolly? Hayward? You’ve got to be kidding. Dolly was the...’
‘Yes, the mystery pal she went to see after Mrs Kusak.
‘Jesus, no wonder she didn’t want that name bandied around.’
The final call for Monty’s flight was announced. Only a handful of people were left at the departure gate. Izzy and Stevie trailed behind him to the desk. The security guard examined his boarding pass then Monty stepped aside to cuddle Izzy. ‘Be good and help Mum, she’s going to be busier than ever now she’s been promoted.’
It was Stevie’s turn. Tears cooled her cheeks and burned her throat when he hugged her. ‘We both need to do some serious thinking. It’s for the best, you know it is,’ he whispered in her ear.
He pulled back, wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb and made his way down the long tunnel.
He didn’t look back.
With Izzy a dead weight in her arms, the walk back to the car felt as if she was ploughing through waist deep mud. The pressure of Izzy’s leg made the ring on Stevie’s finger swivel, the stone dig into the flesh. She paused to readjust it, then gave a ‘mother’s hitch’, hoisting Izzy further up her hip.
Mother and daughter.
Her thoughts strayed to Stella Webster.
When news came through to the ops room of Stella’s confession, it was to the accompaniment of loud cheering.
Everyone in the unit rejoiced, it seemed, that the underdog had bitten back.
In her statement Stella said after Bianca’s body was found, Emma had telephoned her to tell her what she knew about Miro Kusak and ‘Daniel’. It was then that she’d planned Kusak’s murder. Stella maintained that Emma had been no more than her accomplice and the supplier of the gun.
It seemed very likely that once news broke about cracking the paedophile ring, public opinion would ensure a minimal sentence for the bereaved mother. And Emma’s age meant that her identity could not be revealed—Stevie supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.
Her phone rang as she was searching for change for the ticket machine. Izzy was grizzling and she could hardly hear Tash’s voice through the racket. Something about the pub and a celebration. She finally hushed Izzy up by getting her to search through her purse for change as Tash prattled on. ‘Come on, you have to join us. Dolly’s coming and we have a lot to celebrate. Even Barry’s being bearable, probably knows I’d flatten him ... Stevie ... Did Monty get off okay? ... Stevie, are you there ... can you hear me? ... Are you all right?’
‘Sorry Tash, reception’s really bad, can’t hear a thing, I’ll ring you back.’
Stevie closed her eyes for a moment, then lifted Izzy up so she could put the coins in the slot and grab the ticket as it was spat out. She had finally stopped crying.
‘What would you like to do now, Izz?’ Stevie asked as she lowered her daughter to the ground.
Izzy sniffed. ‘I want to go home and watch a movie with you. I need my favourite things.’
The Sound of Music?
Jeez, must be about the twentieth time this month. ‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard all week,’ Stevie said.
***
Hitler’s bunker seemed strange and empty without Christopher, without Aidan Stoppard, without the banister rails. The police had taken away the gruesome artpiece which she’d always hated, and organised cleaners to mop up the blood. A stranger would never have known what had happened here. The real estate agent had hammered the sign outside the front and soon she would be starting school over east, paid for by a trust fund Christopher had set up years ago for her. It was the only money he hadn’t lost to Aidan Stoppard.
Miranda was asleep. Again. Emma wondered when she’d run out of GPs to get tranquillisers from, wondered how she’d cope in the little unit in Kingsley that she’d soon be moving to.
Stevie hadn’t believed what she’d said about throwing the gun in the weir. They’d found it in the garden pond. It was embarrassing to have been caught out in another lie.
But at least they hadn’t closed down her website.
Emma sat at her desk, ran her fingers through her dark hair and sighed—so much to do and so many people to email before morning came.
Katy Enigma was always of the belief that when one door closed, another one opened. The Monster had taken away her magic powers and they had taken away her secret weapon. They had also closed down her HQ where the dragon lived and the water lilies bloomed.
But no one could take away her words.
She packed her father’s abandoned laptop and a few belongings into her backpack—it could hold a lot more stuff now that it wasn’t weighed down with the jet engine—and she stepped with it into the black night. She didn’t know the answers she sought, she didn’t yet know the questions, or even the exact nature of her quest. All she knew as she stood there on the highway with her thumb poking out, feeling the hot push of the trucks’ exhaust fumes in her face, was that what she was doing felt so right...
Many thanks to the following for their invaluable technical advice and support: Janet Blagg, my editor who knows all the right buttons to press; Constable Elliot Cottrill and Inspector Tom Clay for their help with police procedure; Kellie Potter, computer whiz extraordinaire; Christine Nagel, Trish O’Neil and Carole Sutton for tips and ideas.