Silent Fear (11 page)

‘I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘So . . .’ he said.

‘So I might not be in any trouble, but if I do still get offered extra shifts there won’t be nearly as many as there were before.’

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘We kind of rely on that money.’

‘Since when?’

He pointed to the wall. ‘A great house like this doesn’t come cheap.’

‘You said you get a deal through your boss.’

‘Yeah, I do. But it’s still . . .’

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. We’re fine.’

She eyed him. He smiled at her, then tried to take her in his arms. ‘It’s all good, baby.’

She pulled away. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

*

Ella ended the call and turned to Murray. ‘It was Trina. She wants to see the body.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll let Dennis know.’

Ella went out of the meeting room and into the office to call the hospital and ask whether Fowler’s body had been taken to Glebe morgue yet. Before she could reach her desk the new detective stepped into her path.

‘Got a minute?’ he said.

‘Not really.’

‘It’s about the case.’

He had square teeth and light brown hair that looked dusty under the fluorescent lights. He was in his mid-thirties, and up close she could see the pores in the skin of his face and a line of shaving rash on his neck just above the sharp fold of his collar. He put his hand out and she had no choice but to take it. He held on too long and squeezed too hard.

I get it, you’re a big man.
She yanked free. ‘I have to make a call.’

‘I’m John Gerard.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘It’s good to know my publicist is earning her money.’

‘That’s funny.’ The smarmy smile grew wider.

She looked past him at the phone on her desk.

‘I won’t keep you,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to emphasise what I said in the meeting, about the victim and/or the ex having some kind of out-of-wedlock relationship.’

She almost laughed. ‘There’s a term I haven’t heard for a while.’

‘Most murders can be blamed on greed, hate or love,’ he went on. ‘Though that’s no surprise to the great Ella Marconi, I’m sure.’

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘All the murders I’ve worked can actually be blamed on the murderers.’

‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘You know what I’m saying.’

‘Thanks for the tip.’ She stepped around him and sat down at her desk.

‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘it’s almost always about sex.’

She didn’t answer. He tapped a rhythm on her desk with a hairy knuckle. She could smell his deodorant spray, one of the type that was meant to bring all the chicks running. She glanced at his left hand. No wedding band and no indentation or suntan line where one had been. No surprise.

‘Everything always boils down to it,’ he said. ‘But you know that already, right? The great Ella Marconi.’

She picked up the phone handset. ‘Don’t you have a street to canvass?’

‘Just keep it in mind,’ he said.

She turned her back to him and flipped through the phone book for RPA’s listing. She could feel him still standing there and looked back. ‘Do you need my help in some way?’

‘Not at all,’ he said.

‘You know what a canvass is, right? You have done one before?’

‘Great
and
funny.’

She turned away, picked up the phone and dialled the hospital’s number. The operator answered and Ella said, ‘Emergency Department, please.’

‘Please hold.’

Gerard hadn’t moved. She felt his eyes crawl over her head and shoulders. She thought of a variety of things to say, and discarded them all because it was clear he liked attention. She pinned the phone between her shoulder and her ear while the hold music chimed and cleaned her nails with a straightened paperclip.

‘That’s disgusting,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re still here?’

He hesitated as if searching for words then walked away. Ella smiled.

*

Orange cloud was streaking the purple sky when Ella knocked on Trina Fowler’s door. The lights were on in every room, and though all the curtains were drawn the glow through the fabric made the front porch bright. She’d seen it more times than she could count; it was as if the bereaved felt that light could drive away the darkness of sudden death.

The door stayed closed. Murray rubbed his eyes and sighed. On the drive over she’d asked what he knew about John Gerard, but he either knew less than she did or wasn’t going to say, because he’d only shrugged and checked his mobile again.

‘How’s he doing?’ she’d asked.

‘Who?’

‘Who? Your dad.’

‘Still unconscious, still in ICU.’

They’d been stopped at a light. For a moment the only sound was the tick of the indicator.

‘Why don’t you go home?’ she’d said.

‘Because I’m at work,’ he’d replied, in a tone that made her look away from him to the lines of brake lights out the windscreen.

She knocked on Trina Fowler’s door again. She couldn’t hear any sounds from inside, but the noise of air conditioners running on the neighbouring houses, plus the pool filter going behind them, didn’t make it easy. Trina had said she would be waiting. Ella leaned to look in the window next to the door but whoever had drawn the curtains had left no gaps.

Murray was silent beside her. She sneaked a look at him. He stared at the door and didn’t acknowledge her glance. He was going through some hard stuff, that was for sure, but she almost preferred the talky version to this.

She was pulling out her mobile to ring Trina when the locks turned, the door opened and a man looked out.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We were tied up. Come in. She’ll just be a minute.’

Ella took a long hard look at him as she stepped inside. ‘You were at the park today. Carl Sutton.’

He nodded. His hand when he shook hers was firm and warm. His short blond hair was damp as if he’d recently showered.

‘You came here afterwards and told Trina what happened,’ Ella went on.

He nodded again. ‘I came to give her support. I didn’t mean to get here before all of you, but she opened the door and saw my face and knew something was wrong.’

‘Then you left?’

‘To be with the others at the hospital.’

The living room was empty. Ella could hear voices upstairs.

Sutton glanced upwards. ‘Trina and her mum are just settling Darcy in bed.’

Ella eyed him. He seemed comfortable here, leaning against the back of a chair by the dining table, in no rush to call Trina down. She said, ‘Are you and Trina close?’

‘If you’re asking why I’m here now, I brought dinner,’ he said. ‘I remember after my dad died, my mum said it was a great help when people brought food. You needed to eat but couldn’t think, couldn’t shop or cook. I brought a roast chicken and vegies. It’s keeping hot in the oven. Even chips for Darcy, but she’s not feeling well.’

‘I’m asking if you two are close,’ Ella said.

‘We’re friends.’

‘For how long?’ Murray asked.

‘Couple of years, I guess. Since soon after I met Paul.’

‘You been visiting more often since she and Paul broke up?’ Ella said.

‘It’s been hard for her. Working, getting Darcy to school and everything. I help out.’

Ella said, ‘With what exactly?’

Footsteps came down the stairs and Trina appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were red and she looked exhausted.

‘Is she asleep?’ Sutton asked.

‘Almost. Mum’s lying down with her.’ She focused on Ella. ‘Sorry to keep you.’

‘No rush,’ Ella said. ‘We were just chatting to Carl.’

Trina nodded. ‘He’s been a big help.’

Ella watched them. They made no movement towards each other, gave no indication that they’d even like to. John Gerard was full of shit. People of the opposite sex could just be friends. Not that she wouldn’t keep a close eye on this situation, but that was simply good police work, nothing to do with what Gerard had said.

Trina sighed. ‘Better get this over with.’

*

At Glebe morgue a staff member asked them to wait in the family room. Trina faced the wall, staring fixedly at an ugly art print. Murray checked his phone again, then put it away. Ella watched them both and listened to the second hand tick loudly around on the clock above the door.

The drive over had been silent. Sutton had stayed behind at the house. Ella had handed Murray the keys and gestured for Trina to take the front. She’d put herself in the middle of the back, leaning forward a little, planning out her conversation.

She’d started with, ‘How’s Darcy doing?’

But Trina had asked if they could talk later. ‘My head’s killing me and I need to get ready.’

Now the door opened and the sombre staffer nodded. Trina followed him into the corridor, her back rigid, her eyes straight ahead. Ella walked behind her, Murray bringing up the rear.

The staffer stopped at a window. A closed curtain shielded the room inside from view.

Trina frowned. ‘Where?’

Ella gestured towards the window. ‘They generally do it through here.’

‘No,’ Trina said. ‘I need to see him up close.’

The staff member opened the door and they went in.

Paul Fowler lay on a steel trolley, a sheet covering him to the neck. A clear plastic tube was still tied in his mouth with white cotton tape. His eyes were closed. His skin was pale grey. Trina hesitated, then went closer and stared into his face.

Ella watched. She’d seen plenty of bodies but only a couple of times had they been people that she actually knew, and then she’d always felt like they might open their eyes any second, speak with the voice she could hear in her head, gesture or laugh or sigh. She’d found it almost impossible to believe that the essential them-ness was gone. She wondered what thoughts filled your mind when you were face to face with someone you’d known so well and – at one time, anyway – loved so much.

‘Paul.’ Trina reached out and put her hand on his arm through the sheet, then squeezed it. She didn’t sound like she was crying. She sounded puzzled, Ella thought. Disbelieving.

Murray left the room.

‘Paul,’ Trina said again, louder, like she thought it was about time he woke up.

Ella glanced at the staff member. He stared at his shoes. She looked back to Trina. A moment like this was always tricky. Most people sobbed, and it felt fine then to move up and give them a tissue from the box near the door or place a gentle hand on their shoulder. But Trina seemed like a tough one. Ella thought of the silence in the car, the ramrod straight back in the corridor. She’d wait.

Trina let go of Paul’s arm and took a small step back, then balled her right hand into a fist and punched him in the face.

Ella was surprised and startled but still managed to catch Trina’s wrist on the backswing for the next punch. She struggled to get free. Ella yanked her away from the body and hauled her, stumbling and swearing, across the floor.

‘What was that for?’

Trina tried again to pull free. ‘Now he’s left me twice. The bastard.’

The noise brought Murray in and he joined the staff member in examining Fowler’s face. Ella couldn’t see any damage, though of course dead flesh didn’t bruise. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘He deserved it.’ Trina jerked away and this time Ella released her.

‘Why?’

‘I just told you.’

Ella had seen plenty in her time, but never an assault on a body. ‘That was wrong.’

Trina cradled her hand to her chest. ‘I think I broke something.’

SEVEN

T
hey took Trina to RPA and went in the ambulance doors. A nurse put them in a curtained cubicle and said somebody would arrange an X-ray. Murray went back outside to report in to Dennis and find out what was happening elsewhere.

Trina sat on a chair with her hand resting on a pillow on the bed. The nurse came back and laid an icepack gently over her bruised knuckles then went away again. Ella sat on the other side of the bed, her elbows propped on the plastic arms of the chair, her hands in her lap.

‘That was pretty silly,’ Trina said.

‘Yes,’ Ella said.

‘Seeing him lying there made me so angry.’ She adjusted the icepack. ‘Like he’d skipped out on everything all over again.’

‘That’s how it felt when he left?’

She nodded. ‘Money was already tight, then he stopped his pay going into our account and so it was just me there, trying to deal with the bills – rent, power, all those things. I asked him for help but he said he had nothing because he’d been sacked.’

Ella remembered that Seth Garland had claimed not to know whether Fowler had quit or been fired.

‘It felt like he was abandoning us,’ Trina said. ‘Like it was all too hard. Easier just to walk away.’

A bunch of people rushed past outside the curtain, accompanied by the squeak of bed wheels and the rising beep of a monitor.

Ella said, ‘But he came back to see Darcy?’

‘A couple of times.’ Trina moved her fingers a little, testing them. ‘Took her out to lunch and brought her back and that was it. She’d beg him to stay and play, have a swim, Daddy, please, but he said he was too busy and had to go. Wouldn’t talk to me about anything, said he had no money to give me.’ She wiped her eyes with her good hand. ‘I said to him that it was fine to hate me, but to make her suffer like that was unforgivable.’

There was a box of tissues on a ledge behind the bed. Ella put it next to the pillow.

‘Thanks.’ Trina took one and wiped her eyes again. ‘Darcy couldn’t understand it, and frankly neither could I. Still can’t. The prick.’

Ella said, ‘Can you tell me about the day he left?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. We got up in the morning, I was in the usual flap trying to get Darcy ready for school and myself ready for work, we ate breakfast, then we kissed him goodbye and left.’

‘You always left first?’

Trina nodded, folding the tissue into a little square on the sheet. ‘I drop Darcy at before-school care then drive to work.’

‘Which is where?’

‘Admin at Hurstville TAFE.’

‘Paul never dropped Darcy off?’

Trina smiled a little at the tissue. ‘One of our sore points for a while. He said I was going right past, it was easier for me. I said he had more time, it was hardly much out of his way, and I wouldn’t have to rush so much.’ She shrugged. ‘Then he sold his car and bought a motorbike.’

Ella raised her eyebrows.

‘He said it was to save money, but I suspect the bike cost more to buy than he made on the sale of the car. He was always vague about the figures, of course.’

‘When did you realise he’d left?’

The nurse came in and lifted up the icepack. ‘How’s it feeling?’

‘Sore.’

‘Can you move your fingers?’

Trina did so with a grimace.

‘Okay. X-ray’s ready. Come with me, I’ll show you where.’

Ella stood up. ‘I’ll check in with Murray then come back.’

Trina nodded and followed the nurse out of the cubicle.

*

The air outside was humid and still. Bats flew across the darkening sky. Murray leaned against a wall, watching a paramedic mop blood out of the back of an ambulance.

‘Any news?’ Ella asked.

He shrugged. ‘Nothing yet on canvass. Couple of the friends have been in to do their statements, nothing good from there. It was the lead on the evening news and the public calls have started; they’re wading through them. And he’s not impressed that she snotted the body.’

‘I bet.’ Ella could practically hear Dennis’s disapproving tone in her head.

‘What about her?’ Murray asked.

‘Gone for an X-ray. She’s been talking about him. Sounds like a bit of a bastard.’ She told him about the motorbike. ‘We were up to the day he left when the nurse came back.’

Murray stared into the ambulance. ‘Imagine if you sprayed Luminol there.’

Ella watched the paramedic wield the mop. Blood reacted with Luminol to glow blue when the lights were out. It was almost impossible to remove blood completely and she could imagine the drips and smears, the handprints, the brightness in the cracks in even the cleanest ambulance. Or emergency department or police cell, for that matter.

‘Carl Sutton was one of the friends who went in to give his statement,’ Murray said.

Ella turned to face him.

‘He was still there when I called so I suggested they grill him a bit about Trina. Just friends, he says.’

‘Mmm,’ Ella said.

He glanced at her. ‘Commonest reason for murder there is.’

He only sounded a little like John Gerard but it made her wonder if they were friends. If they’d talked.

‘I better get back in,’ she said.

‘Yeah, you better.’

Something in his tone made her look at him again, but he stared on into the ambulance.

*

Ella waited in the cubicle for almost ten minutes before Trina returned, the same nurse by her side, the same icepack on her hand. ‘Sit tight, I’ll be back,’ the nurse said, before pulling the curtains closed around them.

Trina sat and laid her hand gingerly on the pillow. ‘Broken.’

‘Badly?’ Ella asked.

Trina shook her head and shrugged at the same time. ‘They say no. Just one bone, here.’ She traced a line in the air above the icepack. Ella had no idea where she was indicating. ‘Hurts like hell though.’

‘What’re they going to do?’

‘Put on some kind of splint thing for six weeks. Not plaster, some other strap-on thing that I can take off sometimes.’

‘Doesn’t sound too bad,’ Ella said. ‘You can shower. Swim.’

‘Can’t type though.’ Trina raised her hands and mimed the action and flinched. ‘Time off work. Just what I need.’

‘You have sick leave?’

‘You can use it as family leave so I’ve taken most of it when Darcy’s been sick. Not many paid days left. And now there’ll be funeral costs as well.’

‘Your in-laws might be able to help.’

‘All they have is that caravan.’ She put her forehead in her good hand.

Ella said gently, ‘When you left for your X-ray you were telling me about the day you realised that Paul had left.’

Trina nodded. ‘Nothing seemed different. I picked up Darcy from after-school care and came home. She’d done her homework there so I let her watch TV.’ Her eyes were distant as if she was seeing it all over again. ‘I was making dinner. Sausages and vegies. Paul usually got home half an hour or so after me; the shop closed at five thirty but he stayed back every day to do the accounts. By quarter past six we were ready to eat but he hadn’t arrived. I remember checking my phone, thinking he might’ve texted to say something had come up, but there was nothing.’ She paused, tears in her eyes. ‘I rang him and got voicemail. Left a message. Nothing angry, you know, just asking was he on his way, saying Darcy was starving so we might have to eat without him. Said “love you” at the end.’ She shook her head. ‘That felt so stupid later.’

‘I can imagine,’ Ella said.

Trina smoothed the sheet beside the pillow. ‘So we ate dinner, then Darcy ran up to her room to get her colouring stuff. She came back down saying that one of the pictures on her wall was gone. I went up with her to see. It was a drawing of her and Paul by the pool that she used to have stuck over her bed. This big blank space. We looked under the bed, down the side, but it was gone. I remember feeling puzzled but I told Darcy, never mind, it’ll turn up, how about you draw another one? Then I went into our room and saw that his bedside table was cleared off. He’d been halfway through some book, and he usually kept a little coin dish there, and the clock radio too. All gone. I still didn’t get it. Thought somehow we’d been robbed.’ She laughed, a short choked sound. ‘I checked my jewellery box in our underwear drawer. It was still there, but his underwear wasn’t.’ She looked at the icepack. ‘Ripped the rest of the drawers open. Tore back the wardrobe doors. All his stuff was gone.’

Ella sat motionless. Trina yanked a tissue from the box but didn’t use it.

‘I lost it, of course,’ she said. ‘Not at first. I rang him and got his voicemail again. The message I left was a bit different from the previous one. I rang the shop but of course there was no answer. I rang his friends – Seth, Carl, Sam and Jared – and got voicemail on every fucking one. By then I was shouting. Then crying. Darcy was crying too. Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?’ She blinked back tears. ‘What do you say to that?’

Outside the cubicle somebody was coughing up a lung.

‘When did he finally get in touch?’ Ella asked.

‘About eleven that night. Darcy had fallen asleep next to me in our bed. I was still wide awake. He texted and said – the words are burned in my brain – “I can’t explain. Tell D I’m sorry. There’s no one else but it’s over.” I rang him straight back but he’d turned his phone off again.’ Trina squeezed the corner of the icepack. ‘Of course I thought there had to be someone else. Why else would he just up and go like that?’

‘And was there?’

‘He kept saying no. All his friends said the same. They said they had no idea why he did it but it wasn’t over some girl.’

‘Even Carl?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I trust him.’

‘So if Paul didn’t leave for someone else, why did he go?’

‘I think he didn’t like being a family man, never truly wanted the wife and kid, the domesticity. I said that to him, but he wouldn’t stop to answer, wouldn’t even listen.’

The nurse put her head in then and beckoned for Trina to follow her out. Left in the cubicle, Ella sat back in her chair.

The only people who knew the truth of what went on in a marriage were the two who were in it, although even they weren’t necessarily on the same page, having different viewpoints and interpretations and memories. Fowler might’ve had reasons for leaving that nobody else could ever work out. But it wouldn’t be the first time in history that friends lied, thinking they were protecting someone, even if that someone was now dead and his secrets could no longer stay his own.

She drew stars next to the names she’d written down.
Seth Garland
,
Carl Sutton
,
Sam Roberts-Brice
,
Jared Kelly.
Then underlined Carl Sutton.

*

Trina was released with a foam and aluminium splint on her arm, the whole thing suspended in a sling. They drove her home: Ella behind the wheel, Murray silent over his phone in the back, Trina fingering the splint and looking out the window.

Ella parked in the estate driveway and walked her to her door. ‘What’s your mother’s name?’

‘Pauline Collins.’

‘How long is she here for?’

‘She has to go home tomorrow,’ Trina said. ‘She’s my grandma’s carer.’

‘Will you be able to manage?’

‘I’ll have to.’ Trina looked out at the pool. The filter was silent now. The security lights shone on the water’s still surface. Ella saw a bat swoop low over the water, then disappear in the darkness. ‘Paul had the option to leave. I don’t, but I never would anyway. She’s our daughter.’

She tapped on the door and Ella heard footsteps. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ she said.

The door opened and a woman in her sixties with a lined face and clipped grey hair peered out. Trina turned to Ella and said, ‘Thanks,’ then slipped inside.

‘How’s Darcy doing, Ms Collins?’ Ella asked the older woman, but the door closed and she was left alone.

Her phone rang as she got back behind the wheel. In the passenger seat Murray yawned.

‘You talked to the bystanders on the scene, right?’ Dennis said.

‘One of them,’ she said. ‘Fiona Stephens, the wife.’

‘Canvass turned up a local woman who saw a man in the park at about half past eleven this morning,’ Dennis said. ‘Her living room window has a view of the playground and she said he was hanging about and looking around. She couldn’t see a child with him and she thought it was odd. Then she had a phone call, and when she went back to the window half an hour or so later he was gone.’

‘Did she notice the ambulance and everything else?’ Ella asked.

‘No, the window faces the other direction, and she heard nothing because the house was closed up and the air conditioning on. She said she didn’t think anything more of the man until the canvass detectives came to the door.’

‘She give a description?’

‘Not much,’ Dennis said. ‘White, average build and height, short dark hair, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, she thinks. Age she’s not sure, apart from being an adult.’

Ella wrote it all in her notebook. ‘We’ll go and ask.’

‘Let me know,’ Dennis said.

She ended the call. This was a reasonable lead. The Stephenses hadn’t mentioned the man but specific questions could sometimes jog the memory, and if it turned out that they had seen him they might be able to recall something extra, something different that would help the team track him down. He might not be the shooter, sure, but he might’ve seen the person who was.

*

The Stephenses lived in a small brown semidetached house towards the southern end of Livingstone Road in Marrickville. Cicadas sang in the darkness and heat rose from the asphalt of the streets. Ella and Murray crossed the footpath, entered the tiny front garden through the manicured gap in a squared-off hedge of lilli pilli and followed a path of round pavers to the front door. It was closed and protected by a locked wrought-iron grille, and a coachlight glowed yellow on the wall next to it. Ella pressed the button on the doorframe and heard a buzzer inside.

The door opened and a thin man in football shorts and no shirt looked out. ‘Yes?’

‘We’d like to speak to Richard Stephens, please.’ Ella held up her badge.

He looked at the badge in puzzlement. ‘I’m him. Has something happened?’