‘Yes and yes.’
‘Where did you go again?’ Murray asked.
‘Kickboxing class,’ she said. ‘At the gym in Marrickville.’
‘Do you have your own gloves?’ Ella said.
‘Yes.’
‘Mind if we have a look?’
‘Why?’
Murray said, ‘Could you please just bring them here?’
‘Only if you tell me why.’
Ella and Murray exchanged a glance.
‘Fetch them and I’ll explain,’ Ella said.
Tessa’s gym bag smelled of stale sweat. She pulled two pairs of boxing gloves out and laid them on the table. Ella picked up the MMA pair and looked at the pads over the knuckles. The black plastic coating was coming off in patches, exposing the black fabric underneath.
‘What happened here?’ she said.
‘Wear and tear. Bits were coming off when I trained on Tuesday. Why?’
‘We’re going to have to take them with us,’ Murray said.
‘If you tell me why,’ Tessa said.
Ella shook her head. ‘Sorry, no can do.’
‘Then I say you can’t take them.’
‘You invited us into your house, you handed these over, and we suspect they may be evidence,’ Murray said. ‘That means we can.’
‘Evidence in what? I take it all back!’
‘Sorry,’ Murray said.
He and Ella headed for the door.
‘I told you all that stuff, you’ve probably put my brother in danger, and now you’re treating me like this?’
‘We’ll keep looking for Robbie,’ Ella said. ‘Let us know if he gets in touch. You still have my card from Monday, right?’
‘Tess?’ The voice was female, weak.
‘Your mother?’ Murray said.
‘Screw you,’ Tessa snapped. ‘Get the hell out of my house.’
The front door slammed behind them the second Ella’s foot was clear. ‘Well, well,’ she said.
Murray took the gloves and inspected the patchy surface. ‘You really think these might be them?’
‘Robbie has a key to the house,’ she said. ‘Morris could’ve got access.’
‘Why not just buy a pair and chuck them?’
That was probably what had happened, but they had to follow up on everything.
‘The lab will know,’ Ella said.
They were getting in the car when her mobile rang.
It was Dennis. ‘The DNA of Mark Vardy’s swab matches the hairs found on Maxine Hardwick’s dressing gown.’
*
Carly pushed the trolley through Ikea. She’d rung both Alicia’s parents and Chris, just to check in, and got voicemail both times. She left messages, somehow without crying. Now she was here with a job to do. No more angsting over who was lying about what and why, she told herself. Andrew Janssen was right: the police would find out what was going on.
Yellow striped single-bed quilt cover and sheet set, check. Down quilt and pillow, check. Timber single-bed frame and firmish mattress she’d arrange to have delivered, and ditto for the matching timber bedside table. Now for a reading lamp with yellow shade. She parked her trolley beside a display and mused on the selection. It had to be bright yellow, no question there. And tall, she thought, with a bendy arm so you could pull it down close. She brushed her fingers across the frame of one and looked into the top of the empty shade, then a voice said, ‘Carly?’
She turned to see Mark, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, eyes so bright he looked almost manic.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘If you don’t want to talk to me I can go,’ he said.
‘Of course I want to talk to you.’
‘I wasn’t sure. I’ve been getting calls at home, people driving past and shouting things.’ He rubbed his face. She could hear the bristles against his palm. ‘And then there’s this guy.’ He nodded towards a man dressed in a navy polo shirt and dark jeans who stood running his hand along the back of a nearby lounge and not looking their way. ‘Follows me everywhere.’
‘A cop?’ she said.
‘The service has put me on leave until this is all cleared up. I had to get out of the house. I was here to pick up bookshelves for Anne the day that Control rang me about Alicia. So I thought I’d come back.’ He seemed dazed, half-dead on his feet. His hair looked greasy and his shirt hung loose on his body.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said.
They went to the lounge in the next nook along from the man in the polo shirt. He sat down too, bouncing a little as if testing the cushions. Carly saw him glance at them through the shelves.
‘I had nothing to do with what happened to Maxine,’ Mark said. ‘You have to believe me on that.’
In the face of his desperation she didn’t know what to say. ‘I can’t believe the cops are following you.’
‘I had an affair with her,’ he said. ‘I loved her. They think I killed her because she wouldn’t leave her husband or because I wouldn’t leave Anne or something, but it wasn’t like that. We were there for each other.’
‘Oh,’ Carly said, thinking of last night, the attempted kiss. ‘Did they talk to you about Alicia?’
‘I never had anything with her. I know that’s what you’re asking. And they’ve searched my house and found nothing. I swear on my life that I didn’t hurt either of them.’
She looked at him sitting there gripping his knees, his anxious eyes on her face, his arms below his short sleeves thinner than ever.
‘But how did the wallet get there?’ she said. ‘Who could’ve put it there and why?’
‘I haven’t stopped asking myself that for one second,’ he said. ‘I can’t sleep, I don’t eat. Anne tries to talk to me and I can’t even listen. I kick myself for not fixing that lock.’
‘What lock?’
He told her about the faulty lock on the garage door.
‘Who knew about that?’ she asked.
‘A lot of people. Pretty much anyone who came to our house more than once or twice.’
‘And who among those people might want to hurt you?’
‘Nobody that I can think of,’ he said. ‘I’ve been over and over it. I’ve been in this job my whole life, always done the right thing, never stepped on anyone for promotion or anything like that. I’ve only ever worked on the road, or in HR for a bit when my back was dodgy, but all I did there was stamp and sort entry applications. Was it a patient I pissed off? But how would he know where I lived, and about the link between me and Maxine?’
‘So who knew about that?’ Carly said.
‘I thought nobody, though Anne told me that she’d worked it out. But as far as I know Maxine never told her husband or anyone else.’
‘If her husband did know though?’ Carly said.
‘From what Maxine told me he’s not the least bit violent.’
‘Still,’ Carly said, ‘who else is there?’
Mark said, ‘I wish I could figure that out.’
Carly saw the man in the polo shirt answer his mobile, look their way, then stand up.
Mark was rubbing his face again. ‘None of this feels real.’
Carly watched the man walk their way, taking out handcuffs. ‘Mark.’
‘Mark Vardy,’ the man said.
Mark looked up.
‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Maxine Hardwick,’ the man said. ‘Stand up and put your hands behind your back.’
Mark did so in a daze. Shoppers gathered to watch. The cop clicked the handcuffs closed and Carly felt hot and cold all at once. ‘Is this a joke?’
The cop looked through her and started walking Mark through the crowd towards the exit. Carly wanted to call out something to the back of Mark’s narrow head before he disappeared but her mouth was dry, her mind stalled. Instead she gripped the handle of her trolley and looked defiantly at the whispering shoppers until they moved away.
*
Mark Vardy sat without moving in his chair as Ruby Dixon disputed the legality of his arrest and demanded his release. Paul Li tapped his thumbs slowly together as if marking time until she was done, and Ella watched Vardy’s face. His eyes were distant. He looked like he was weighing things up.
Dixon finished and nobody spoke. She snorted and grabbed Vardy’s arm, but he didn’t stand.
‘I want to make a statement,’ he said.
‘I’d advise against that,’ Dixon said.
He pulled free of her grip. ‘I want to tell them what happened.’
‘Think very carefully about what you’re going to say,’ she hissed. ‘Confessing causes me problems in court.’
He looked at Ella and Paul. ‘I was there the night that Maxine died.’
‘I need to confer with my client,’ Dixon barked.
‘Be quiet or leave,’ Vardy said to her. Dixon blinked and sat down.
Ella kept her breathing slow, measured. ‘Go on.’
‘I lied when I said before that we hadn’t been together for five years,’ he said. ‘She got in touch a couple of months ago, said she wanted to see me again. We met up a few times at hotels. She was unhappy. She and Dean weren’t getting along. The fly-in, fly-out life wasn’t working.’
He paused. Ella’s heart was beating hard.
‘We were supposed to meet that evening, but she cancelled,’ he said. ‘She was upset. I thought Dean must’ve found out but she said no, she just felt unhappy with everything. She said she wanted more out of life but she couldn’t explain what that meant. After Anne went to work I drove to her house. She wasn’t thrilled to see me but she let me in. We talked for maybe ten minutes, standing in the front hallway. She was dressed for bed, pyjamas and dressing gown. I tried to get her to tell me how she was feeling but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I suggested we sit down and have a coffee but she wanted me to go. We hugged. I tried to kiss her and she got angry. Told me I had to leave. So I went.’
Ella could tell by the look on Dixon’s face that she was processing all of this at warp speed. Yes her client was there, but his hair got on the victim’s dressing gown during a harmless goodbye cuddle. Plausible.
‘Then I went back,’ Vardy said.
Alarm in Dixon’s eyes.
‘Go on,’ Ella said, keeping calm and cool. She could feel Paul practically vibrating on his chair.
‘I’ve seen too many people killed from random accidents to ever leave somewhere on an argument,’ he said. ‘I got five or ten minutes down the road and turned back. The lights were still on in the house but she didn’t answer the door when I knocked. I called out a couple of times, softly, but heard nothing. Then the lights went out and a door slammed. I figured that was her being mad still and showing me she was not coming to the door. So I left again, and went home.’
Ella could already see how the prosecutor would build this case. He admits he was there, he admits they argued. He left hair. There was nobody home to say what time he got back. Circumstantial, but strong.
On the other hand, if – if – he was telling the truth, the killer could’ve been in the house when he knocked. Could’ve heard him and panicked. Could’ve hit the lights and fled out the back door, pulling it shut behind him. No prints had been found but the latex gloves would’ve seen to that.
‘Interview suspended,’ she said. They had things to check.
Twenty-three
C
arly dragged the assorted crap out of the spare room and into her own, shoving it under the bed. She’d go through it sometime and organise what to take to Lifeline, but not today. Today she just wanted to be absorbed in the task of setting up this space, putting together the bed when it arrived, imagining Linsey’s reaction when she saw it, not thinking about why Mark had been arrested.
She unpacked the quilt, cover and sheets and shook them out, then built the lamp. She was running the vac over the carpet when the delivery guys arrived. They carried in the big flatpacks and the mattress, she signed the paperwork and saw them out, then she got her toolbox from under the kitchen sink and built the bed.
Andrew Janssen said people could hide themselves, sometimes for years. She pulled the plastic wrapper off the mattress and heaved it into place. She took down the dingy green curtains and crammed them into the bin, then fetched her phone and the business card he’d handed to her as they’d left the cafe.
A moment later he picked up. ‘This is Andrew.’
‘It’s Carly. Mark’s been arrested.’
‘What?’
‘I saw him in Ikea,’ she said. ‘A cop was following him around. We talked for a bit then the cop came up with handcuffs and said he was under arrest for killing Maxine. Walked him out, right through the crowd.’
‘This is unbelievable,’ he said. ‘They must have something good to justify arresting him. DNA from the scene or something like that.’
‘He told me he’d had an affair with her, so DNA could be from that, couldn’t it?’
‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘Though the police might think he made up the affair, if nobody else knew about it. I certainly had no clue.’
Carly thought of the near-miss kiss.
‘Either way it goes to show how you never know your friends like you think you do,’ he said. ‘And I guess now they probably think he killed Alicia too.’
‘It’s hard to imagine though,’ she said. ‘That he’d be able to hurt someone like that. That he could do it physically, let alone have it in him emotionally.’
‘I could tell you some stories about angry people,’ Andrew said. ‘Little pipe-cleaner arms don’t necessarily mean a man can’t punch someone to death.’ Somebody spoke in his background. ‘I have to go. Are you okay?’
‘Sort of,’ she said.
‘Call me again if you need to.’
She put down the phone and went back to the spare room. Any DNA could easily be from the affair. But if the only people who’d known about it were Mark and Maxine . . . it did sound a bit like a lie.
She shook out the new yellow curtains and started to hang them. The effort of reaching up, struggling to get them straight, trying to fit the rod back into place in the dodgy little plastic holders, made her arms tremble. It made her think about how wounds like Alicia’s took a lot of force and she couldn’t imagine that Mark with his thin build and
–
what’d Andrew called them? Pipe-cleaner arms
–
could inflict that sort of damage.
She dropped the rod.
How did Andrew know what sort of injuries she’d suffered?
He’d even used the word punched. She was sure that hadn’t been in the news; they always said things like assaulted or beaten, whether weapons were used or not.
But so what? He could’ve assumed. Or Tessa could’ve told him, at the Orange Grove. Or she herself could be going crazy.
She breathed out and tried to calm down. Picked up the rod again. Managed to get the ends in place, then stood for a moment with her hands on her hips before grabbing her phone and wallet and heading out the door.
*
Linsey sat on the lounge in Zoe and Benjamin’s house, watching Maya watch
In The Night Garden
.
Maya pointed. ‘Ninky Nonk.’
‘I see it,’ Linsey said.
She herself preferred
Peppa Pig
– it was way less like a drug-induced hallucination – but Maya loved Igglepiggle and his friends.
It had been a busy morning. They’d been to the doctor’s, where Zoe’s worries about a rash on Maya’s leg were soothed, then had morning tea with everyone at the real estate office in Bondi. Linsey had watched her parents fuss over their granddaughter, their love for her shining on their faces. They’re good people, she’d told herself. They love you just like they love her. They’ll see that you’re still you, no matter who you love. But she hadn’t been able to say anything.
A car door slammed, then Zoe burst into the house. The jangle of keys, the clunk of shoes being kicked off, and she appeared in the doorway.
‘Washing?’ she asked.
‘It’ll finish any moment,’ Linsey said.
‘Cake?’
‘Five minutes to go.’
‘You’re the best.’ Zoe disappeared upstairs.
The original plan, begun a year ago, was that Lindsey would mind Maya, but gradually Zoe had started asking if she wouldn’t mind emptying the dishwasher, or picking up a few groceries when she took Maya to the park, or running the vacuum over the floor. Now there was often a list. Linsey involved Maya and tried to make it fun, and it was. Maya revelled in the attention and appreciation, in being part of something and feeling useful, not told to be quiet and leave Mummy alone. Her little face when Linsey arrived, and then when she left . . . it made Linsey heartsore. Whatever the family might think of her news, they loved Maya, and they all knew how much she loved Linsey. They surely wouldn’t want to hurt her.
The washing machine beeped.
‘Mind hanging that out?’ Zoe shouted from upstairs.
Putting out the washing would get her even further on Zoe’s good side, which was a smart move if she was going to come back into the kitchen and, as they chummily turned the cake onto the rack, mention that she was in love with a woman.
‘Sure,’ she called back.
Maya looked around as she got up. ‘Where we going?’
‘Want to help Linny with the washing?’
Maya nodded. ‘I do pegs.’
‘That would be awesome,’ Linsey said.
They came back inside ten minutes later, the smell of warm cake filling the kitchen where Zoe frowned over her iPad at the table.
‘I put the jug on,’ she said.
It had already boiled and clicked off. Linsey got cups from the cupboard and made tea – green for Zoe, white with one for herself – while Maya sorted a double fistful of pegs into colours along the table edge.
‘God, nothing but bad news,’ Zoe said as Linsey put her cup in front of her. ‘People getting bashed in the street right outside their own homes.’
Do it, say it, tell her.
‘Honey, don’t shove the iPad like that,’ Zoe said. ‘Put your pegs on the floor if you want more room. Or take them into the lounge and line them up in there. No, I said don’t shove it.’
Linsey opened the oven and touched the cake with a trembling finger. It was done. She took it out and sat the pan on the rack.
Tell her. Say it.
Can I talk to you?
‘Honey, on the floor I said.’
Linsey’s mouth was dry, her hands damp. She hadn’t spoken the words aloud. Just say it like that, she told herself. Say ‘Can I talk to you?’ and Zoe will look up and say ‘Sure’ and shut the iPad off, and they’ll sit across from each other and Zoe will take Maya on her lap and pay attention and she’ll understand, because love is love, you don’t choose who you fall in love with, it just happens, and she’ll nod and smile and then she’ll say, ‘All that matters is that you’re happy.’ And then word will get to the rest of the family and they’ll all hug, and then Carly will be there too and they’ll hug her as well, and everyone will live happily ever after.
‘One of the bashings was in Newtown,’ Zoe was saying. ‘I worry about you working there.’
‘Assaults can happen anywhere,’ Linsey said.
‘It’s a weird area,’ Zoe went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve met you there for lunch, what, three times now? And every time there’s been some weirdo come in.’
Coming into the cafe when Linsey was working wasn’t exactly ‘meeting her’.
‘People are all the same underneath, no matter how they dress,’ Linsey said.
‘You know what I mean,’ Zoe said. ‘Those punks that first time? You could smell them a mile off. And all those piercings – so much metal in your body has got to be bad for you. Then the other day, that “family”.’ She made quote marks in the air.
‘So long as the kids are loved and wanted, who cares?’
‘But what sort of role models are they for kids?’
‘There’s plenty of single parents out there, grandparents raising kids, foster families, you name it. I saw –’
‘I know, I know, you saw it all as a social worker,’ Zoe said.
‘I did, and it didn’t matter to the kids who raised them as long as that person loved and cared about them,’ Linsey said hotly. ‘And plenty of kids in trouble come from perfectly straight families.’
Maya shuffled the pegs around on the floor.
‘I’m just saying,’ Zoe said.
She sounded mild. Not pissed, not annoyed. Now was the time. Now.
Maya came to lean on her leg and draw a peg along the seam of her jeans.
Zoe smiled at her. ‘Love your Aunty Linny, don’t you?’
Now.
Now!
But she couldn’t make the words come out.
‘Speaking of.’ Zoe put her elbows on the table. ‘Did you hear Simon got in touch? Emailed Mary and Neil and said he’s getting married. Or doing a civil thing, a what’s-it-called. Invited them, can you believe it?’
Linsey’s mouth was so dry. ‘Why wouldn’t he? Mum and Dad were at yours.’
‘Yeah, but mine was normal.’
‘Because you married the person you love,’ Linsey said. ‘Which is no doubt why Simon’s doing it too. Don’t you think?’
Zoe looked away to the iPad. She flicked her finger across the screen and appeared to study something there. She started to speak, then Maya stumbled on the pegs and fell, and began to cry.
Zoe scooped her up. ‘Oh sweetie, did oo get a booboo? Did oo hurt ooself?’
Linsey was hot with nervous sweat. Just start slowly, she thought. She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking of moving.’
Zoe looked at her over Maya’s head. ‘Where to?’
‘Newtown, actually.’ Her grin felt ghastly.
‘Huh,’ Zoe said. ‘Any reason why?’
‘Well, money, sort of.’ Her voice sounded loud in the small room. ‘If I share with someone I save on rent, and it’s close to the cafe so I save on petrol and parking and all that as well.’
‘But you don’t pay much rent in the flat now,’ Zoe said.
‘I know, but it still works out cheaper.’
‘You’ve got somewhere in mind already?’
Linsey nodded. ‘Carly’s place. It helps her too, with the rent and power and so on.’
She wondered if Zoe could see the lie in her eyes. She wished she was stronger and could tell the whole truth from the outset.
‘You’ll be further from us though.’
‘I know, but it sounds like I might get more hours at the cafe soon, so I’ll be working there more than I work here.’ Linsey felt pinned by Zoe’s gaze. ‘I’ll be able to save more money. Start thinking about investments and so on.’ All the family was mad for investment.
‘Well, I guess it makes sense in that light,’ Zoe said. ‘Sharing though, after you’ve had your own place for so long? I’d find that tough.’
‘I think it’ll be okay,’ Linsey said.
Don’t blush, do not blush!
Zoe smiled at her.
Time stood still. Linsey was seized by the desire to tell her the rest of it.
Actually I want to move in because she’s my girlfriend.
Ten simple words. Three seconds to say. Her breath was caught in her chest. Three seconds, and Zoe might keep smiling and say, ‘Cool’, or ‘I wondered’, or ‘You should bring her over for dinner’. Or the three seconds might be like an earthquake, a before-and-after event during which the foundations of her world crumbled, perhaps beyond repair.
Zoe’s iPad chimed. She looked at the screen. ‘Want to go watch TV again with May-may? I have to answer this email.’
The moment was gone, if it ever had been a moment. Linsey was cold with despair and disappointment. If she left, Maya would watch
In the Night Garden
alone, but she couldn’t stand to stay with the undelivered announcement booming in her head, her failure knocking in her chest.
She stood up. ‘I have to go.’
*
Carly knocked on Tessa’s door and waited, feeling antsy. The street was busy with cars streaming past. She was about to knock again when the door opened.
‘What do you want?’ Tessa said. She looked as surly as she sounded.
‘Can we talk?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Just for a couple of minutes,’ Carly said.
‘I’m busy.’
The screen door was still closed between them. Carly grasped the handle. It was locked. Tessa made no move to unlock it.
Carly said, ‘Did you tell Andrew Janssen about Alicia’s injuries?’
‘Jesus, what is this? Yet another conspiracy theory?’
‘Did you?’ Carly said. ‘I know you two talked at the Grove. What did you talk about?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Small talk. Weather. I don’t remember.’
‘Tess!’ The cry came from inside the house.
Tessa scowled. Carly looked past her but couldn’t see anything in the dim hallway. She recognised the smell, though, from too many calls: unwashed bodies and clothes and bedsheets, stale air from closed-up rooms containing those unwashed bodies and clothes and bedsheets. She’d never thought about who Tessa lived with.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
‘Tess!’ It was virtually a shriek.
‘I have to go,’ Tessa said abruptly.
She shut the door and Carly heard her walk away down the hall, then another wail from whoever it was deeper in the house.
The flyscreen under the security grille was worn and holey. She could probably get her fingers in and flip the latch. If the front door wasn’t locked she could go in and see if Tessa needed help. And if she helped her, then Tessa’d be obliged to think a little deeper and answer her question.
The hallway was even gloomier than it’d looked from outside. She followed the murmur of voices past a clean but shabby kitchen and a tiny dining area, where a couple of flowers from the weeds out the front stood in a glass on the table, to a dark and dank bedroom.