Fourteen
T
he electronics store was bright with fluorescent light and the gleam of new screens. Carly walked between rows of televisions of increasing size that were all showing
Monsters University
and looked around for Robbie Kimball.
‘Can I help you?’ a young woman with a faded name badge on a lanyard and a ponytail asked her.
‘Just looking,’ she said, and kept walking. She passed displays of tablets and stereos and headphones, then spotted him putting DVDs onto shelves.
‘
Flashdance
,’ she said. ‘
Dirty Dancing
. They still sell?’
‘Apparently.’ He slotted them into their spaces.
‘You’re not going to ask if you can help me?’
Robbie stood straight. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m worried about Tessa,’ she said.
He went back to pulling DVDs from the box. ‘You don’t need to be.’
‘She’s been weird, and she won’t answer her phone.’
‘She’s okay.’
‘She said she wanted to talk about Alicia then clammed up and ran away,’ Carly said.
‘Grief makes her act funny. Always has.’ He glanced past her as if checking for his boss. ‘She lost this cat once? Man.’
‘Alicia wasn’t a cat.’ Carly moved closer, getting into his face. ‘And she lied to the police about you being at the club. Why would she do that?’
‘She didn’t lie,’ he said. ‘She told me about it. It wasn’t a lie. Why does everyone think that?’ He grabbed another handful of DVDs.
‘What are the two of you hiding?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘And by the way I’m trying to work here.’
She let him push past her to slot boxes into their spaces then said to the back of his head, ‘I know you’re lying. You and Tessa and John Morris are hiding something together.’
The back of his neck turned red. ‘Who the hell’s John Morris?’
‘Look me in the eye and say that.’
He faced her, his eyes wide in a fixed stare. ‘I don’t know any John Morris.’
‘You are such a bad liar.’
‘Just leave us alone.’
‘My friend was murdered.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with us.’
‘If that’s true, tell me what’s going on.’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘So why are you turning even redder?’
Robbie glanced away over the shelves. ‘You’re going to get me sacked.’
Carly grabbed a DVD at random. ‘Now you’re assisting me with my choice. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
He closed the flaps on the box, picked it up and walked through a door marked
Staff Only
. Carly started to follow him, but was met by the same girl with the ponytail.
‘The registers are that way,’ she said. ‘Can I take that for you?’
Carly looked at the DVD she held.
Nightmare on Elm Street 3
. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
*
Ella stood in ICU by the bed of the man who was now identified as Daniel Henry Macintyre, watching his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of the ventilator. Behind her, Callum talked technicalities with the ICU staff, details she couldn’t understand about blood gases and coags and LFTs, while Murray inspected the figures on one of the machines by Macintyre’s bedside. Dennis had read out Macintyre’s string of convictions for drug dealing and use, a couple for assault, and the most recent for grievous bodily harm when stealing another user’s drugs and money. He’d been released from Silverwater three months ago.
‘He was building up,’ Murray said. ‘Getting worse. Makes sense that he’d end up killing.’
‘There’s nothing to get excited about if he dies,’ she said.
‘But at least we’d know who did it. Plus he can’t do it again. And dying is still paying a price.’
‘But he pays it on his own terms. Where’s the justice? He gets it all his own way. Plus we don’t know for sure if it was him.’
‘You’re so glass half-empty.’
‘The term is realist,’ she said. ‘He’s big and blond, that’s all we have.’
‘Plus his record, plus the ID by Kristen Szabo –’
‘She didn’t see him for long,’ Ella said.
‘– plus whatever the lab finds when they process all the evidence from the scene.’
‘I’ll feel better when we have more.’
Detectives were already taking Macintyre’s mug shot to show Prasad, the taxi driver, and trying to track how Macintyre had ended up in the pond in Sydney Park. Castro’s CCTV was being examined as well.
‘Out for three months,’ Murray said. ‘He could’ve done Hardwick too.’
They’d already talked about that in the car.
‘Again, I’ll feel better when we have more,’ Ella said.
Callum joined them. ‘He’s stable.’
‘Which means what?’ Murray said.
‘He’s not getting worse.’
‘But he’s not waking up either,’ Ella said.
‘This is true.’
Ella saw Callum’s eyes move from figure to figure on the monitors and machines, and wondered what it would be like to be able to read this place, to understand the language not just of the staff but the equipment and test results and the fluids that dripped into Macintyre’s veins. To know what it all added up to, what it meant for a person’s future.
‘So what’re his prospects?’ she said.
‘Things in ICU are often day-at-a-time scenarios,’ he said. ‘An hour at a time, even.’
‘We’re not his relatives.’
He glanced over her shoulder. ‘He’s pretty much a goner. His liver’s failing, his kidneys too, and his blood’s not clotting normally. Gets to a point where clots form in bad places, while other vessels – veins and arteries – get leaky, and then everything pretty much falls apart.’
‘All because of a drug overdose?’ Murray said.
Callum nodded. ‘Blood tests showed he’d taken a large amount of paracetamol and temazepam some hours before he was found unconscious in the pond. It’s treatable if he’d come in sooner, but my guess is he knew that and wanted to die.’
Ella studied Macintyre’s face. His eyelids were taped shut, a tube was taped into his nose, and another one was tied into his mouth. It fogged with each breath. His blond hair lay limp on his scalp.
‘How’d you go with his next of kin?’ Callum asked.
‘Detectives are chasing up his parents now.’ She couldn’t stop staring at him, lying there so oblivious.
Did you do it? If so, why?
And what was going on with Morris, and the Kimball siblings, and Hibbins?
Callum checked his watch. ‘I’d better get back.’
Murray seemed to wake up. ‘Hey, happy birthday.’ He made a fist and tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Thanks.’ Callum smiled, then went ahead of them to the lifts. He got out a floor down and they stayed in.
‘What did you say that for?’ Ella hissed at Murray when the doors closed.
‘Just being friendly,’ he said. ‘Is there a party or something tonight?’
‘There is, not that it’s any of your business.’
He looked over at her. ‘Family thing?’
‘What do you think?’
He looked back at the indicator panel above the door. ‘I’ve got a family thing on tonight. The grandies are over from Adelaide. Extended family coming from everywhere. It’ll be the first time Rebecca’s met a lot of them.’
‘You nervous?’ Ella said.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘She’s golden. They all think so.’
The lift doors opened and he stepped out, leaving Ella standing there.
*
Carly hung about the shop for a while pretending to watch Mike and Sulley on a huge flatscreen TV, but Robbie didn’t reappear. She went outside and sat in her car and got out her phone.
‘Ambulance, human resources, this is Shonta.’
‘It’s me,’ Carly said.
‘Oh my god, Carls. I’m so sorry about Alicia. How are you doing?’
The tenderness in her voice made Carly’s throat close up.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ Shonta went on. ‘First Maxie and now Alicia. I mean, seriously. What the fuck’s going on? Have the police told you anything?’
‘Not really,’ Carly croaked. ‘Hang on.’
‘Oh, babes.’
Carly wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. ‘I need your help.’
‘Anything.’
‘I need you to look up a personnel file.’
‘Anything means I’ll take you out on the town, buy you cocktails, tuck you into bed later. Or are you still with Linsey?’
‘I know it’s a big ask,’ Carly said. ‘But something’s going on with Tessa and I need to find out as much about her as I can.’
‘Something like what?’
Carly hesitated. ‘I can’t really explain it.’
‘Jesus, Carly,’ Shonta said. ‘I could get in the shit, and you won’t even tell me why?’
‘When I work it out you’ll be the first to know.’
Shonta sighed. ‘Obviously I still love you. What’s her surname?’
‘Kimball.’ Carly spelled it.
‘Give me a few minutes. Let me see what I can do.’
‘Thanks,’ Carly said, but Shonta was already gone.
She put the phone down and rubbed her eyes. She and Shonta had gone out for a while a few years ago, and though it hadn’t ended well, what with Shonta breaking things off with her then starting up with a Brazilian dancer a little too quickly, they’d eventually patched things over and become friends. She felt bad about asking her to look up the file. Shonta knew what Alicia meant to her, though.
Her phone rang.
‘I’ve got it and I’m in the bathroom,’ Shonta whispered. ‘What do you need to know?’
‘Anything bad? Complaints? Reports? Mentions of criminal stuff?’
Paper rustled. ‘Couple of rudeness complaints, couple of thank you letters, three sickie warnings. That’s it.’
Carly stared out the windscreen.
‘Sorry there’s not more,’ Shonta said. There was a sound in her background. ‘I gotta go.’
Carly put the phone down, tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, then started the car. It was time to get ready for nightshift.
*
When Ella and Murray got back to the office, the TV was on and detectives stood around watching the five o’clock news.
Ella saw footage of Alicia Bayliss in her paramedic uniform, holding a shy-looking boy around four years of age and talking to an unseen interviewer. ‘Rory was very brave,’ she said. ‘When his grandma collapsed, he called triple zero straight away. He helped to save her life.’ They cut to a shot of a grey-haired woman cuddling the child, then back to Bayliss. ‘He even held her hand all the way to hospital.’ She looked at the boy then straight into the camera, giving the same warm smile Ella had seen in the photo on the whiteboard.
One of the detectives murmured something appreciative under his breath.
The newsreader appeared. ‘Police are still yet to comment on whether there are links to the murder of another paramedic, Maxine Hardwick, who died in her Horsley Park home four weeks ago.’ Shots of Hardwick’s house behind crime scene tape, of the government contractors carrying the bagged body on a stretcher to their van, of a photo of Hardwick and her husband on a happy day. ‘In other news –’
Someone turned off the set.
‘Where was that footage of Bayliss from?’ Ella asked.
‘Feel-good segment on a bravery thing a few weeks back,’ Jen Katzen said. ‘Bunch of little kids got awards.’
‘They say anything else of interest?’ Murray asked.
Katzen shook her head.
There was a general bustle as people made their way into the meeting room. Ella sat beside Murray, thinking about Callum who would be home by now and setting up for this evening.
Dennis came in last and shut the door. ‘Marconi, Shakespeare.’
They got to their feet. The autopsy results were important for what they told you about the death and therefore about the killer. It was where you began.
‘Alicia Bayliss was beaten to death,’ Ella said. ‘She’d been struck multiple times in the face, causing skull fractures and a cerebral haemorrhage, which put pressure on her brain to the point that her brain stem malfunctioned and she stopped breathing.’ She saw again the big purple clot against the pinkish-grey brain tissue.
‘The pathologist believes that she didn’t struggle – there’s no skin under her nails, so she didn’t scratch him, nor were there defence injuries on her hands or arms. There were no other injuries,’ she went on, ‘and no signs of sexual assault. Toxicology is pending, however there were no apparent injection sites. The pathologist estimated time of death between one and four in the morning, but said the haemorrhage and swelling would’ve happened rapidly, and it’s likely she died within ten minutes of the start of the assault. Given the fact that her shoes were off but her dress was still on, and she hadn’t taken off her make-up, we believe the attack happened soon after she arrived home, at around one.’
The room was deathly silent.
‘There was one good piece of evidence.’ Ella went to the whiteboard and stuck up the enlarged high-res photo that the lab had sent of the scrap of plastic found in Alicia Bayliss’s mouth. ‘The shape and nature of the wounds suggest they were caused by blows from a closed fist and that the killer was wearing padded gloves. This was in Bayliss’s mouth and is thought to be a piece of the thin plastic coating typically found on boxing gloves. It appears the piece was torn from the glove when it came into contact with her teeth, some of which were broken. The lab’s doing an analysis in the hope we might be able to identify it further. This indication that the killer probably wore a type of boxing glove is another similarity to Maxine Hardwick’s murder. It’s possible that they are the same type of fingerless, mixed martial arts-style gloves as the ones found with Hardwick’s blood on them in the pond near her house.’
Detectives scribbled in their notebooks.
Murray took over. ‘After the PM, we talked to John Morris’s flatmate, Patrick Green. He told us Morris does some boxing training at his gym, but doesn’t actually fight. He estimated that Morris got home around twenty past twelve the night that Bayliss died, but couldn’t be sure.’ He summarised the rest of the conversation and their fruitless knocking on the neighbours’ doors. ‘We also spoke with Ben Trevaskis, the friend Morris claimed to have spent the evening with. Trevaskis confirmed this, as did a neighbour, an older gent who dislikes them both and complained about the noise. This man was certain of the time that he saw Morris both arrive and leave – 7 pm, and then ten after midnight. And he heard them in the hours between.’