The Darkest Hour (15 page)

Lauren turned into the driveway into the park and found two metal poles in settings in the concrete blocking their way. She could see padlocks at their base. ‘We got keys for those?’

Joe shook his head.

The police obviously didn’t either. A marked car was parked on the beachfront path beyond the poles and Lauren could see the tyre marks on the grass where the officer had driven. She followed, working the ambulance up the kerb then down again, then flipped off the lights and stepped on the brake.

A uniformed constable came over and she put the window down. ‘Where is he?’

The officer gestured at the lapping water.

‘Still?’

‘We’re waiting for divers and crime scene.’

‘We need him out,’ she said. ‘We might be able to save him.’

‘Not according to that guy.’ The officer pointed at a skinny man in a worn blue wetsuit who stood on the concrete path facing the sea, his arms folded across his chest and snorkel gear lying by his feet.

‘You mean you haven’t even seen him?’

The cop shrugged. ‘He’s like three metres down.’

‘Fair enough,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll go talk to this guy.’

The cop went back to his car and Lauren stuck close to Joe as they crossed the grass. Out in the open she felt hyper-sensitive to every noise, every movement that she caught from the corner of her eye.
He can’t have followed you here, he couldn’t have known you’d come here. He doesn’t have a scanner, and anyway you never said your location on the air.

‘Hi,’ Joe said to the wetsuited man. ‘You found the body?’

The man’s straggly hair flapped wetly when he nodded. ‘You here to transport it to the morgue?’

‘We don’t transport bodies,’ Lauren said.

‘Only on rare occasions,’ Joe put in. ‘No, the police called us here just in case.’

‘Dude’s a total goner,’ the man said. ‘Caught on a rock by a rope, regulator’s out of his mouth, he’s just rolling back and forth with the sea. Pretty peaceful.’

‘I’m sure he was delighted,’ Lauren said.

Joe nudged her. ‘Thanks,’ he said to the man. ‘You want a blanket or anything if you’re waiting around for the other cops?’

‘Nah, I’m right in this.’ He patted his wetsuited thighs.

Joe prodded Lauren ahead of him back to the ambulance. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Sit in there, lock the doors, listen to some music. I’ll deal with all this.’

Lauren’s neck was sore from turning her head all the time. She got in the truck and squeezed the wheel hard. ‘I thought I was doing good.’

‘You are,’ he said. ‘Shit, most people would be hiding under their bed. You’re doing marvellous.’

He shut the door gently and she knocked the button down with her elbow. He winked at her through the glass then walked away. She rested her folded arms on the bottom curve of the wheel while he spoke to the uniformed officer, then to the next batch of cops who turned up, three jumping down from a rescue truck and a couple in civilian clothes getting out of unmarked sedans. Joe obviously knew one of these men, going over to him with a huge grin, shaking hands and talking animatedly. He glanced back at the ambulance often.

Lauren checked the mirrors, touched the tracking device buttoned securely in her shirt pocket, and tried to relax. Sunlight glinted off the water. Most of the beach was contained inside a shark net and a group of elderly women in swimmers stood in the shallows, talking and watching the police with interest.

Joe came over. She unlocked the doors. He climbed into the ambulance’s passenger seat, pulled the door shut and locked it, and picked up the microphone. ‘Thirty-four to Control.’

‘Thirty-four, go ahead.’

‘Police are requesting we stay on location until the code four has been retrieved.’

‘Thirty-four, thank you. Call me when you’re clear on that.’

‘Copy.’

Joe racked the mike and looked at her. She stared out the windscreen at the police. ‘You know that guy, huh.’

‘Simon Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘We were in the Navy together, years ago. He just transferred from Penrith to the detectives in here.’ He chuckled. ‘Small world.’

Three police pulled on blue wetsuits and checked their dive gear on the shore. A ferry cut through the green water leaving a churning trail of foam. Passengers crowded along the side. Clouds moved across the sun and over on Middle Head it looked like rain.

The police divers waded into the water. They signalled to each other then went under. Lauren stared at the lines of bubbles.

‘What’s the guy doing diving here anyway?’ She struck at her tears with the back of her hand. ‘Alone, and with no flag?’

‘It’ll be okay,’ Joe said.

She shook her head, knowing things would never be okay again.

I
n Crows Nest, Murray found a park in a street off Willoughby Road and they walked back around to the tall sand-coloured block of units. ‘Unit twelve,’ Ella said, and Murray pressed the buzzer.

They waited. The traffic on the street behind them was loud. Ella went for the buzzer again, a long press. This time the intercom came to life.

‘What!’ The woman’s voice was hoarse.

‘Police,’ Ella said.

‘What?’

‘Detectives. We’d like to speak to you for a moment.’

There was a pause. ‘I’m coming down.’

They got their badges out. Ella tried to push Lauren from her mind.
She’ll be fine
.

The door beside them opened and a woman looked out. She was in her mid-twenties with long curly red hair falling to the shoulders of a tightly cinched dressing gown. ‘Yes, you did wake me,’ she said.

Ella put her badge in front of the woman’s face. ‘Are you Jules Cartwright?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You were living here five and a half years ago, is that correct?’

‘Yes. Again, why?’

‘We’re investigating a homicide,’ Ella said. ‘And we’d like to talk to you inside.’

The woman made a face.

‘Or you can come with us to the station, if that’s more convenient.’

The woman shoved the door fully open. ‘Come on then.’

Her flat was spacious, and dark until she pulled back the living room drapes. ‘You may as well sit down.’

‘Thanks very much,’ Ella said.

Murray got out his notebook. ‘Is Jules short for Julia?’

‘If it was I would’ve said so,’ Jules said, then apparently hearing the bluntness of her tone added more gently, ‘wouldn’t I?’

Ella frowned at her. ‘Our investigation has turned up an incoming passenger card from five and a half years ago with your address on it. The person we want to speak to wrote that he was staying here.’

She screwed up her face. ‘It’s too early to think back that far.’

‘Try,’ Ella said. ‘Or do you let so many foreigners put your address down as their next port of call that it’s hard to separate them out?’

‘Hey,’ Jules snapped, then stopped. ‘Thomas.’

Ella’s heart jumped. ‘Who?’

‘Thomas Werner.’

‘Nationality?’

‘Austrian.’

‘How old?’

‘Early thirties by now I guess.’

‘Do you have a photo of him?’ Ella said.

‘Sorry.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Um, about a metre seventy-five, average build, brown hair, brown eyes. Wore jeans all the time. Good tan, or he did have back then anyway. Loud laugh.’

‘Can you confirm that this is him?’ Murray handed her the photo taken from the airport tape.

‘That’s him all right.’

‘How and where did you meet?’ Ella said.

‘We met on holiday in Spain the year before, partied together, and I said – as you do – if you’re ever in Australia, come and stay. Everybody says that, but nobody ever expects to be taken up on it! Especially with no prior contact.’ She shook her head. ‘He turned up here expecting to move in.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was stunned. He was going on like we had a boyfriend/girlfriend thing happening. I told him I was already seeing someone. I mean, it wasn’t like anything serious had happened in Spain.’

‘How did he respond to that?’

‘Actually he wasn’t too shattered. He kind of
acted
disappointed, but I got the feeling that he would’ve taken it if it was on offer, as well as being convenient to have somewhere to stay, but seeing as it wasn’t, oh well.’ Jules rolled her eyes. ‘I mean, he brought a girl home within the week.’

‘So you let him stay?’

‘Well, we
had
had fun in Spain,’ she said. ‘I said he could bunk on the lounge there for a few days until he got sorted out. He was here for just over a week, I think.’

Ella looked down at the lounge she was sitting on.

‘Do you know where he went?’ Murray said.

‘Nope.’

‘Do you know of any other friends he had, any possible places he could’ve gone? Any place he mentioned?’

‘I never met anyone. A guy did ring a few times, but he never said his name and Thomas never talked about him or anybody else. We didn’t spend all that much time together. I work most nights and he was going out and so we slept a lot of the day.’ She crossed her legs. ‘Oh, I remember in Spain I heard him talking to some other Aussies about the Barrier Reef, what it was like to visit and dive on and so on. But he never talked to me about it when he was here.’

‘What about friends in Spain? Did he introduce you to anyone?’

‘Can’t remember,’ she said. ‘Bit of a blur, most of it.’

‘Did you see him or spend time with him later, after he left here?’

‘Once,’ she said. ‘I was out with friends at this nightclub, what’s it called – Rosie’s, I think, in the city. I saw him having an argument with this other guy.’

‘When was this?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I guess two, maybe three years ago.’

‘You’re certain of that? You’ve seen him more recently than four years ago?’

‘Absolutely. No more than three years.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was a bit of push and shove, then the bouncers kind of moved in and yanked the other guy away.’

‘They didn’t yank Thomas too?’

She shook her head. ‘I kinda wondered if he knew the bouncers, actually. Usually they rip it into everybody, but they seemed friendly towards him.’

‘Any idea what the argument was about?’

She hesitated. ‘Can we go off the record for a second?’

‘Certainly,’ Ella lied.

‘I met Thomas in Spain because he was selling Es. Ecstasy, you know. So when I saw this going on in the club I figured that he was probably doing the same here, and the argument had to do with that.’

‘Did you ever see any evidence he was selling here?’ Murray said.

‘Like did he leave them lying around the lounge room, or did I buy any? No.’

Sure, Ella thought.

Jules moved forward on her chair. ‘Can I ask, is Thomas the one who’s dead or the one who did it?’

‘His name’s come up in our investigation, that’s all we can tell you,’ Murray said.

Ella asked, ‘Would you be surprised either way?’

‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong.’

‘But?’ Ella said.

‘But he could be so . . . superficial. Like nothing really touched him. Like I said, when I told him I was seeing somebody and he couldn’t stay for long, I swear he was only pretending to be disappointed. As if he thought that would get him something.’ She twirled a ringlet of hair around her finger. ‘It’s not hard to imagine him getting into trouble with the drug thing, selling Es on somebody else’s turf and not caring, not trying to fix the situation, and then finally getting himself knocked off.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? He’s the victim.’

Ella stood up. ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘Here they come.’

Lauren looked up to see the divers emerge from the water. Beyond them the police boat nosed into the chop that was building in the wind. One of the divers carried a big underwater camera, which he handed now to someone else. Another gestured at a waiting rescue officer, who unfolded a white body bag on top of a big green tarp on the sloping beach. People had gathered along the path to watch, and the elderly women in their swimmers, now with their towels wrapped around them, edged closer along the sand.

The divers carried the body out of the sea to the bag and laid it carefully down. The dead man slumped to the side, the tank on his back keeping him on the slant. He wore a black wetsuit with red panels and trim. A dripping brown rope was tangled around the valve on the tank. Someone looped his regulator back over his shoulder and the plainclothes detectives huddled over him.

‘We’d better go see,’ Lauren said.

‘I can go alone.’

She shook her head and got out of the ambulance. She walked across the path and down onto the beach, Joe close behind, the sand squeaking under their boots.

The dead man was Asian, and young. Drops of seawater clung to his short black hair and eyebrows. His skin was pale purple. She could see where fish had started to nibble on his lips and swollen tongue. He smelled like cold meat.

‘Found this too.’ One of the divers held a dive knife by its yellow and purple bungee cord. The blade was bright stainless steel, solid with a raking point and a row of deep serrations near the hilt. ‘About three metres from him, still well within the reach allowed by the rope.’

An empty knife sheath was strapped around the dead man’s right calf. His steamer wetsuit covered all but his face and hands. He wore wetsuit booties on his feet.

‘Maybe he panicked when he got caught, couldn’t think straight.’ The man who’d reported the body was behind them. A uniformed officer came around to move him away.

‘PM’ll show us more.’ Joe’s detective mate stood up. ‘Could you guys transport?’

‘Sorry?’ Lauren said.

‘The doctor’s coming to confirm him deceased but there’s a backlog with the contractor’s vans. They can’t get here for an hour at least. We’ll be done in about fifteen, and we’re starting to attract a lot of attention.’ He nodded at the growing crowd. ‘We just need him shipped to the morgue, that’s all.’

‘We’ll check with Control,’ Joe said. Lauren went with him back to the ambulance. ‘This is all right, hey? Nice easy job. Patient we don’t have to talk to.’

‘You know what those body bags are like,’ she said. ‘He’ll leak everywhere.’

‘So I’ll mop it out.’

‘It’ll smell.’

‘We’ve got air freshener.’ He leaned into the cabin and picked up the radio microphone. ‘Thirty-four.’

‘Thirty-four, go ahead.’

‘Thanks, we’ve been asked by police to transport from this location.’

There was a pause. Lauren crossed her fingers.

‘Thirty-four, that’ll be fine. Advise when you’re departing.’

‘Thirty-four copy.’ Joe hung up the mike and looked at Lauren. ‘You’d rather be doing a proper job?’

She headed back towards the police. She didn’t want a dead guy in her truck today, and she didn’t want to go to the morgue. It was just too close.

The doctor had arrived. He chatted to the police while he laid a clipboard on the grass and pulled on gloves. He drew back the dead man’s eyelids and looked into his eyes. He put the back of his wrist against his cheek. He took a stethoscope from around his neck, inserted the earpieces, and pressed the diaphragm briefly to the wetsuited chest. He took the earpieces out and let the scope dangle as he pulled a pen from the clipboard, signed the certificate of life extinct, and handed it to Bradshaw. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

Fifteen minutes later Lauren and Joe pushed the loaded stretcher into the ambulance. The scuba gear was still on the body and it made a strange and lumpy shape in the body bag.

Lauren stood in the doorway looking at the silent shape. ‘Do you ever feel that sometimes the world is just all death and bad stuff?’

Joe put his arm across her shoulders. ‘You want me to drive?’

‘I’m fine.’

They got into the front and she started the engine.

Joe said, ‘When’s your next block of leave?’

‘Not till March.’

‘Maybe you should see if you can get some earlier. Swap with somebody.’

‘I don’t need a holiday, and I can’t afford to go anywhere anyway.’

She put the ambulance into gear and moved slowly over the grass. A council ranger had turned up and unlocked the poles from the driveway, and the crowd of gawkers shuffled apart to let the ambulance through. Lauren stared straight ahead, feeling their eyes on her, not meeting their gazes.

Joe picked up the microphone and said, ‘Thirty-four is code five.’

‘Copy that, Thirty-four.’

Lauren glanced in the rear-view mirror at the strapped-down body bag. ‘They find any ID on him?’

‘Nope.’

‘Looked pretty young.’

‘About twenty, they think,’ Joe said.

Lauren pulled out onto the street. ‘So what will they do?’

‘Simon said they’ll check the car parks for a car that could be his, see if they can find anybody who saw him going in, if anybody had seen him before. Check missing persons reports.’

Lauren thought of the family wondering where their brother and son was, why he hadn’t called or come home. She hit a bump and looked into the mirror again. The dead man didn’t move.

At the morgue they were buzzed in by a staff member. Lauren took a deep breath of air before pushing through the heavy doors. The smell of death wasn’t strong, but even the faintest whiff could cling to clothing for the rest of the day. She wheeled the stretcher along the tiled corridor, wondering if her burnt man was here yet.