Web of Deceit (20 page)

Another inch. His boots were almost at
the gutter.

The loop was big, but the rope wasn’t long enough for him to get it over his arm and up to his shoulder. He thought for a split second, then lowered his head and pushed the loop over it. The knot was good, it wouldn’t slip, and as long as he hung onto Rebecca, and the rope stayed twisted around her arm as well, she wouldn’t fall.

‘Alex,’ Jane whispered.

‘Pull,’ he
said. ‘Pull, goddammit!’

NINETEEN

E
lla crept her car along the kerb until she found a gap in the trees. The moon was high and the light glinted off the ripples on the water. Security lights shone down on the concrete surrounding the boatyard. She pulled on the handbrake, turned off her headlights and engine, and lowered the windows to listen. There were bats in the trees here too, and through
their squawking and her impatient stomach’s growl she heard the repetitive wash and suck of water on the rocks along the shore and around the dock’s pilings, the clink of wire ropes against masts as the moored boats rocked on the tide, and underneath all that, the faintest sound of music.

She raised the binoculars. In the car park, Natasha Osborne’s blue Ford F250 ute looked grey. A breeze
brought the smell of seaweed and salt water into the car. Ella moved the binoculars across the car park to the building, over the now-closed door to the workshop where she and Murray had spoken to Canning and Osborne, upstairs to the windows with the white net curtains. A light was on inside one room and she could see a table and chairs, and beyond it a sink and kitchen bench. Three canisters stood
in a neat row beside a spice rack and an electric jug. She scanned the other windows but they were dark. She looked back to the kitchen, but could see neither Osborne nor Canning.

The breeze strengthened and she heard the music more clearly. Classical. Probably coming from a house nearby. She swept across the car park and boatyard walkways, then out to the boats. Deserted.

She put
down the binoculars and yawned. Two places visited, two nil results. She hadn’t expected to see much here anyway. This hour of the evening, they were probably watching TV. Or having an early night in bed.

Then a flicker of light on a boat much further out in the bay caught her eye. She lifted the binoculars again. Candles. And movement of two people in front of them. The moon slid behind
a cloud then out again, and she recognised Canning and Osborne, in their dark work singlets and shorts, dancing barefoot on the deck of a large yacht. A portable CD player sat nearby. Ella could even see the green light on its top. She watched them move and sway, their arms around each other, their heads close together, the sound of violins drifting over the water.

She lowered the binoculars,
feeling like she was intruding. Clouds covered the moon and turned the bay dark, making the candles stand out brighter than ever. The figures moved slowly across the light. She took one more look through the binoculars, saw Osborne lay her head on Canning’s shoulder and his hand move up to stroke her hair, then she put the binoculars away.

*

Callum’s apartment was in a building across
the street from the Cammeray golf course. Ella parked and walked along the footpath, hearing the faint drone of cars on the Warringah Freeway, smelling the damp grass and earth from the greens, feeling the butterfly in her stomach start to flutter its wings. She’d never been here, and she studied the building with interest. She pressed the bell for Flat 3 and he answered immediately.

‘Were
you standing right there waiting?’ she said.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he said. ‘Come on up.’

The door buzzed and she pulled it open. She went up the stairs, keeping calm and cool, and found him standing in his doorway, smiling at her. He wore jeans that sat low on his flat stomach and a snug grey T-shirt. They hugged briefly and a little awkwardly, and Ella felt the warmth of his
skin and the muscles of his back under her hand.

‘Come in,’ he said.

The apartment had beige walls and carpet and a deep red leather lounge suite. Cream curtains hung half-drawn over sliding glass doors to a balcony. On the coffee table, a bottle of red wine and two glasses stood next to a plate of small wafer biscuits and tiny slices of cheese.

‘I haven’t started cooking yet,’
Callum said. ‘I thought a drink first might be nice.’

‘Sounds good.’ She sat at one end of the lounge.

Callum sat at the other and poured the wine, then gave her a glass. ‘Here’s to you.’

She stepped onto the limb. ‘To us.’ He smiled. They clinked, and Ella sipped. Her stomach rumbled and she laid her arm across it. ‘How was work?’ she asked.

‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Yours?’

‘Same.’ She felt suddenly nervous and couldn’t think what to say. She looked around at the modern art prints on the walls, the three purple tulips in an expensive-looking vase. Her stomach growled again. ‘Want a hand with dinner?’

‘First I owe you a proper apology,’ he said. ‘I should’ve told you sooner that I’d talked to Dad, and that was why I was angry.’

Ella nodded, both hopeful
and anxious about where this was going.

‘It’s just that he was so furious.’ He put down his glass. ‘I couldn’t get his expression and the way he spoke out of my head.’

Ella nodded again.

‘It got me thinking about it all. Here’s me with him in jail, there’s you with your job and your part in the whole thing. I wondered if it’s too much.’

A little breathless, she put down
her own glass. ‘It’s a big issue to carry around.’

‘It’s huge,’ he said. A little dent of worry appeared between his eyebrows.

He likes me, Ella thought. And I like him. ‘I guess the big question is whether it’s insurmountable.’

‘I hope it’s not.’ He looked at her.

‘I hope it’s not too.’ She smiled.

‘I think if we acknowledge it, and understand it, then…’ He
trailed off.

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘It’s all about being, uh, aware.’

And right now she was so aware.

He moved forward a little, his eyes testing, measuring. She slid closer and put her hand on his cheek. His skin was hot, and when she leaned in so were his lips. His hand brushed her knee, then cupped the back of her neck. The butterfly danced.

Her mobile rang.
Shit.
She
broke off and looked at the screen. She didn’t recognise the mobile number.

Callum’s hand slipped down to her shoulder. ‘Work?’

‘I don’t know.’
Maybe it’s Osborne, come to her senses.

He smiled. ‘I can wait, if you want to get it. Work’s important.’

This relationship could be good. She held back a shiver of delight, and answered her phone. ‘Marconi.’

‘This is Michael
Paterson,’ a deep voice said. ‘You’ve been trying to contact me?’

*

Jane straddled the balcony railing and heaved on the rope, the parents pulling alongside her. She saw the loop slip under Alex’s chin and his head jerk upwards, his eyes shut tight, his teeth bared and gritted. His arms and now both legs were wrapped tightly around the sagging, unconscious Rebecca. They were unbelievably
heavy and Jane’s hands slipped on the rough rope.

She could see Alex’s face turning dark with blood because his jugular veins were compressed, and God only knew what was happening to his carotid arteries. If they didn’t get them on the balcony soon, they could both be dead. She refused to even consider whether the rope might snap. She heard Alex grunt and saw his arms tighten and pull Rebecca
closer to him. She guessed he was starting to lose consciousness himself.

‘Quick,’ she said to the parents, though all three of them were already hauling as hard as they could. They strained and heaved and slowly dragged them up the tiles towards the balcony.

Jane leaned down but couldn’t quite reach them yet. Saliva ran from the corner of Alex’s mouth. His eyes were still closed and
she could see his grip on Rebecca was slackening.

They pulled again on the rope and this time they came within reach. She caught hold of Rebecca’s T-shirt, and then the mother was beside her on the railing, making a noise like Jane had never heard before, lifting her daughter with the strength of ten women, up and out of Alex’s slackening grip and over the railing and into the house.

‘Put her on her side and press against the cuts,’ Jane gasped as she grabbed the collar of Alex’s uniform shirt.

He was fully unconscious now, limp, his face dark, his mouth open and his tongue starting to protrude. The rope had left red marks on his throat and was tight up under his jaw. He breathed raspingly.

The father leaned over the railing beside her and seized Alex’s belt,
taking the weight while she loosened the rope from his neck, then she shoved one arm under Alex’s and the other behind his head and inside his collar, and they dragged him onto the balcony.

When he thumped down onto the tiles, Jane could’ve wept with relief. Instead, she rolled him on his side, pulled off the rope, ripped open the Oxy-Viva and set up two oxygen masks. She put one on him,
making sure he was breathing better and his colour was improving as she scrambled into the room where Rebecca shivered in her parents’ arms on the floor. A white T-shirt and the school uniform were wrapped tightly around her forearms and all three of them were crying.

Jane slipped an oxygen mask over Rebecca’s head and suddenly the room was full of uniforms – cops and fireys and paramedics
– and people took over from her with Rebecca.

She found herself on her knees in front of Alex, holding his hand, brushing his sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead, and telling him as he woke up that he did it, he saved her, he saved her.

*

‘Thanks for calling me back,’ Ella told Paterson.

She pointed at the sliding glass doors. She didn’t have anything to hide, but
she couldn’t focus with Callum sitting there grinning at her.

He nodded. ‘I’ll start dinner.’

She stepped out and slid the doors closed behind her.

‘It’s no problem,’ Paterson was saying. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get your message sooner. It’s about Marko Meixner?’

‘You remember him.’ Ella had only given Marko’s last name in her message.

‘I do,’ Paterson said. ‘He was the
taxi driver who tried to stop Paul Canning beating his supposed friend to death with a star picket. One of my first homicides. Marko laid himself over the vic’s bleeding unconscious body like it was his own mother’s. Got hit too. What’s happening with him?’

‘He’s dead,’ Ella said. ‘Went in front of a train at Town Hall station.’

‘Went? As in jumped?’

‘The story’s sketchy.’

‘And I take it you’re calling because Canning might be involved? Is he out already?’

‘Seven weeks ago,’ Ella said. ‘Do you remember much of the case?’

‘Enough that I’d be looking closely at him,’ Paterson said. ‘In the lead-up to the trial Marko said he was being harassed – a car was following him around when he was driving the cab, someone smashed his windows late at night, and
his cat was killed. He found it drowned in a little pond in his garden. I always thought it was Canning.’

A cool breeze touched Ella’s face. ‘None of this is in the file.’

‘That was the hard bit,’ he said. ‘Nobody ever saw anything. Marko didn’t have a witness to the car following him, or a numberplate. Plus, Canning had alibis for every single occasion. And Marko seemed to be developing
some kind of problem, anxiety or something. Schuster, who was senior to me, had an idea that it was a combination of imagination and him doing it himself, as part of his psych problem. He said it’d make us look like fools if it all went in the file.’

‘He thought Marko would drown his own cat?’

‘The cat was old. He said it might’ve been an accident.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘I wish,’ Paterson said. ‘Schuster was a stubborn old goat. Once he got an idea into his head that was it. I argued that we should take it seriously just in case, that Marko deserved protection because of what Canning was like as well as what he was doing for us, but Schuster just brushed it off. I wish I’d argued harder though.’ He sounded pensive. ‘Marko threw himself over the victim to protect
him, then got up in court and identified Canning even after all that crap, and I couldn’t stand up to a senior detective and make sure he was looked after. That’s why I remember.’

‘The situation here’s a bit similar,’ Ella said. ‘There’s some confusion over Marko’s mental state for one thing, and from there the water gets muddier. But Canning himself has alibis, one in the form of his parole
officer.’

‘If I was you I’d check them closely,’ Paterson said. ‘His alibis when it came to the harassment of Marko were good, almost too good, and I remember wondering whether the people had been threatened. One was this woman I knew to say hi to, a council ranger. First she was nervy when giving her statement, and then we’d run into each other sometimes afterwards and she could never look
me in the eye. I asked her once, and she got all shirty and said he got convicted so what’s it matter? The others I don’t remember so well, but I do know I wondered the same thing about all of them.’

‘Thanks for this.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Paterson said. ‘Call me again if you need to. Good luck.’

Ella hung up and stared out across the dark golf course, at the houses on the other
side. Marko had asked the police for help when he felt threatened all those years ago, but they hadn’t helped him. Three weeks ago, he’d tried again and got the same result.

We let him down, and now he’s dead.

She needed to solve this case. It couldn’t change what had happened, but it could right the world, just a little bit.

She slid open the glass door and stepped inside. Callum
stood in the kitchen, slicing mushrooms.

‘You look happy,’ he said.

‘Just got a phone call I’d been waiting on.’ She leaned against the bench. ‘Found out that our suspect has threatened people in the past, and I’m thinking he might be doing it again now. I need to check him out again. Talk to his parole officer, go a bit harder on the girlfriend.’

‘Parole officer?’

‘He
killed a guy years ago and my victim was the witness,’ Ella said. ‘He got out a few weeks back and looks clean and shiny but I reckon he might’ve wanted revenge.’

Callum started on a capsicum. ‘You don’t think he’s rehabilitated?’

‘That’s a rare event, in my experience.’

‘So once a crim, always a crim.’

‘Not in every single case, but in a lot of them. It’s a high enough
percentage to make this guy suspicious, that’s for sure.’