The Darkest Hour (24 page)

He paused. ‘I’ve spoken with Detective Lance Fredriks about Lauren’s new information on the Blake case. He wants to interview her again, tomorrow, 9am. You’ll let her know, Marconi? And sit in on it if you want.’

Ella nodded.

‘What’s the Quiksmart link with this other homicide?’

Murray described the possible link with Feng Xie and how Simon Bradshaw would be letting them know what he’d learned, and also about their checks on the Rosie’s phone call people.

Ella then explained the phone link between Kennedy and Nolan. ‘We still have to examine the rest of the record, but Rhodes is looking into it further from his end and keeping me posted.’

‘Good work,’ Kuiper said. ‘Pilsiger, how did you go with the possible witnesses near Lauren’s house?’

‘I’ve had conflicting reports of partial numberplates on a blue sedan – some say Holden, some say Ford,’ she said. ‘I’ve been running them through the system in various combinations. Other than that, it’s a generic description of a man of average height, average build, brown hair, bleeding, who kept his head down and drove off quickly.’

When the meeting was over Ella approached Bethany Mendelssohn. ‘Excuse me.’

She looked up from her mobile phone. ‘Yes?’

‘I was wondering whether you’d tried calling the phone number from which the threat against Lauren Yates was made,’ Ella said. The sheet of paper with the number on it lay at Mendelssohn’s side.

‘We’re following correct procedure on this matter,’ she said.

‘Which is to wait until the records come back, I know,’ Ella said. She wanted to say more, but Mendelssohn’s gaze moved slowly over Ella’s hair. ‘Never mind.’

She went down the corridor and back to her desk, feeling irritable and out of sorts. She rubbed her eyes and allowed herself to think about that bloody rock. Perhaps she could call Dennis and discuss it? But when she thought about what she’d say, it sounded so stupid. Imagine if somebody overheard: after all, they might have the lines tapped now, to try to catch the mole. Imagine if word got back to Kuiper that she was so frightened about a rock she had to shut it away in her microwave.

She just had to ride it out. Things would look better tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep. She had to concentrate on the case, follow the leads.

Strong came into the office.

‘Strongy,’ Ella said. ‘How’s your mate in the phone company?’

‘Gone on leave.’

‘Know anyone else in there?’ She waved Kennedy’s phone records at him. ‘Got a live one.’

‘Sorry, we’re back to official channels only until he gets back from the Sunshine Coast.’ He picked up his empty coffee cup and went back out.

Ella frowned down at her desk.
Don’t think about that rock. Think about the next task.

She picked up the phone and dialled Lauren’s number.

T
hey’d only been on board the moored ferry for a few minutes, but Lauren already felt sick. She looked out the salt-spotted window to where the Opera House glowed white in the afternoon sun. The water was dark green in the ferry’s shadow and brighter and touched with light further out.

‘So have you had this chest pain before?’ Joe said to their patient, an English tourist in her seventies.

‘Often.’ She held the oxygen mask tight to her face with spindly fingers.

Lauren swallowed her nausea and unzipped the monitor’s pouch, attaching the three leads to adhesive dots that Joe would stick on the woman’s chest.

‘When was the last time you had it?’

‘Last week, I think, wasn’t it, William?’

The woman’s husband, a small man made smaller by the voluminous blue spray jacket he wore, nodded as he accepted a cup of tea from a member of the ferry staff. ‘Monday night. Just after dinner.’

Joe took the leads from Lauren and explained to the patient what he was going to do. Lauren tried to breathe deep and think about something other than the gentle swaying under her feet. The low afternoon sun filled the interior of the ferry with light, and people on the wharf peered in to see what was happening. She could see the stretcher behind them, parked hard up against a fence with the brakes firmly on.

Her mobile rang. She pulled it from her belt and saw it was Ella. ‘’Scuse me,’ she murmured to Joe, then walked a few steps away. ‘Hello?’

‘How’re things?’ Ella said.

‘No sign. Anything new there?’

‘Nothing on that front,’ Ella said. ‘But they want to interview you again about the Blake case.’

Lauren’s nausea worsened.

‘It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be charged or convicted,’ Ella said. ‘It’s just the first step in building the new case against Werner.’

Lauren’s stomach was roiling. ‘When and where?’

‘Are you working tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll pick you up at half-past eight.’

‘You’ll be there too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No worries,’ Ella said. ‘Keep safe, and I’ll see you then.’

Lauren walked unsteadily back to Joe and their patient, wondering if she would need to rush to the bathroom and throw up or if she could hold it until they got onto the wharf then back to the ambulance. Maybe once on solid ground she’d feel better.

Joe looked up at her. ‘Pain’s gone with O2 and aspirin, so I think we’ll be right to walk to the bed.’

They helped the woman to her feet and across the ramp. The water was dark below them. She sat on the stretcher and they covered her with the blanket.

‘Pain’s still gone?’ Joe asked her.

She nodded, watching her husband negotiate the ramp on the arm of the ferry staffer.

Joe and Lauren lifted the stretcher to its full height, loaded their equipment onto the back and sides, and started along the wharf. Lauren gripped the handles tight.
Nearly there, hold on.
Through the gates, held open by a smiling staff member, then onto dry land.

It didn’t help. She tried to breathe deep as they lifted then pushed the stretcher into the ambulance. People gathered to watch, and Lauren felt their gazes. She was not going to throw up on the street. No way in the world. She yanked down the rear door after Joe had clambered in, then hurried the patient’s husband into the front seat. She threw the gear into the rear through the side door and clambered in herself, pointing at the plastic vomit bags as she pulled the door shut and cut off the inquisitive gazes of the crowd outside. Joe, confused, handed her a bag and she got it up to her mouth just in time.

The patient tried to look around. ‘You all right, dear?’

‘She’s okay,’ Joe said.

The acid taste made Lauren’s eyes water. She slumped in the seat behind the patient’s head and took the paper towels Joe held out. ‘Are you?’ he asked softly.

She pressed a clean paper towel to her eyes, unable to answer.

Ella’s email dinged. It was a message from Simon Bradshaw:

I disturbed your friend Daniel Peres’s Sunday afternoon and got him to print out a list of possible matches for the Quiksmart barcode we found on Feng Xie’s floor. Thought you might like a squiz. Got to rush, will be back in the office in the am. Talk then, Simon.

The attachment was a ten-page spreadsheet of numbers and addresses. She was printing it out when Murray came back from the bathroom drying his hands on a paper towel.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘Possible matches for the barcode from that drug flat.’ She handed him half the pages.

The barcode numbers were nine digits long. The one found in Feng Xie’s flat had begun with the numbers 632977 and the rest had been cut off. The Quiksmart computer had coughed out every possible match.

‘God, there’s hundreds of them,’ Murray said.

‘Try not to think about it.’

Ella ran her finger down the list of addresses. None of the deliveries had been made to anywhere near Chinatown. The closest was Leichhardt, and the rest were progressively further west – Marrickville, Parramatta, Blacktown, Penrith. However, Simon had italicised a number of the deliveries. The driver’s name was Kennedy.

Ella tapped the page. ‘Interesting.’

‘But like Simon said, there are any number of ways a box could get from one of those places to a flat like that,’ Murray said. ‘Somebody gets it out of a skip behind a shop to move house with, then they take some stuff to uni, where Feng nabs it to drag some stuff home in.’

‘And cut it in half and stuffed it in a hole in the wall of a meth lab,’ she said. ‘You think it’s a coincidence that Kennedy’s name shows up here too?’

‘We don’t know that the box was handled by him. There are eight other drivers listed there.’

Ella read through the list of goods. Cosmetics, medical supplies, toys, stationery, hardware. No chemicals that you might suspect would be delivered to a drug lab. But then would anyone be so blasé as to run an operation that way?

‘Looks like Kennedy delivers to a cluster in the inner west,’ Murray said.

‘Makes sense,’ Ella said. ‘They’d save time and fuel by bunching the runs up.’

She turned to the next page where more deliveries were italicised, then a name jumped out at her from the receiver’s list.

‘Nolan.’

Kennedy had delivered boxes of toys to a Marrickville warehouse in the name of A. Nolan.

‘Who’s he?’ Murray said.

‘Wayne Rhodes’s case. Guy died the same day as Kennedy. Hand me that highlighter?’

Murray passed it over, and Ella drew a wide stripe through the listing. She turned the page. ‘Here he is again.’

‘How’d he die?’

‘Fell from a train during a pursuit by uniform, but Wayne’s uncovering some odd stuff in his background.’

Murray picked up a highlighter of his own and started going through his pages. ‘He gets a few deliveries.’

Ella finished with Nolan’s name then took up a red pen to underline his deliveries done by Kennedy. Murray followed suit, and when they were finished there were stripes everywhere.

Ella sat back in her chair. ‘So what’s this mean? A box delivered by Kennedy to Nolan ends up in Feng’s flat?’

‘If it was one of those boxes.’ Murray counted. ‘Their deliveries look like a lot but they’re only ten per cent of the total.’

‘These are three guys who died within days of each other, two by homicide, one in unusual circumstances.’ She tapped her finger on the spreadsheet. ‘This means something.’

‘But what?’

She got a handful of A4 paper and lined up different-coloured pens. Diagrams, she needed diagrams. On the first sheet she wrote KENNEDY in the top left corner, NOLAN in the top right. She drew arrows from each, coming together in the top centre of the page, where she wrote LINKS. Underneath that she wrote PHONE CALLS, then BOX.

‘Question mark,’ Murray said. ‘You don’t know what the box means yet, if it means anything. You need to add a question mark.’

She did so grudgingly, then wrote FENG in the middle of the page. ‘Did Simon say whether Feng had a phone?’

Murray shook his head. ‘And I didn’t see one in the flat.’

Ella flipped back through her notebook to the pages she’d filled in after seeing Feng’s flat. She’d written nothing about a phone.

Murray dialled Simon’s number.

‘I bet he’s gone,’ Ella said. The time on the email was more than an hour ago.

Murray listened. ‘Voicemail.’ He left a message then hung up.

Ella made a row of dot points next to Feng’s name, listing the questions to ask when they did speak to Simon.
Mobile? Number? Recent bill?

‘Imagine if we find his number on Nolan’s and/or Kennedy’s bills, or their number on his.’

‘Because of a cardboard box?’ Murray said. ‘What’s the likelihood?’

Ella didn’t care. She drew a looping line between the three names on the page, with a big black question mark over the top.

Murray stretched and looked at his watch. ‘What d’you say – want to call it quits for this arvo? Start fresh in the morning?’

‘I might just ring Wayne, see if he’s got anything new,’ she said, reaching for the phone. His number went to voicemail too, but she didn’t bother to leave a message.

Murray was standing now, looking down at her. ‘It’ll all still be here in the morning, you know.’

‘Maybe I’ll just reread the list.’

He said, ‘Anyone’d think you didn’t want to go home.’

Ella parked the car in the drive and got out with her shopping. She was earlier than she had been the day before, and the sun’s rays warmed her back as she stood there with one hand on the vehicle, the other holding the plastic bags, examining her house. She could hear the clack-clack of a skateboard down the street and a commentator calling the England–Windies test on a radio. In the distance somebody started a mower. They were the sounds of summer but today they seemed ominous to Ella.

There is nobody in the house.

She corrected herself. There were no
signs
that somebody was in the house.

She walked to the front door and inspected the lock before testing it. Locked. The windows to the side were intact and locked. She followed the path along the side, checking each window, then around to the back door. It too was locked. She went right around the front, examining Denzil’s house too, because what if somebody broke into his place then cut through the dividing wall?

You’re losing it.

She took her keys from between her fingers and unlocked her front door. She stepped in, put the shopping bags on the floor, closed the door behind her and locked it again. She listened. Silence.

Right. A quick survey, you’ll see things are fine. Get changed. Take that fucking rock and go for a walk along the river and toss it out as far as you can. Put this entire matter behind you and–

She stopped short in the kitchen. The fridge stood open. The milk was on the bench, the top of the carton open, a lazy fly crawling along the edge. The box of Special K was next to it and a bowl and spoon sat in the sink.

Her breath came hard in her throat. She seized a knife from the drawer and bolted through the place, checking behind the armchairs and under the bed. She tested the windows and doors once more and pushed at the trapdoor with the knife blade.

Nothing.

She pressed against the kitchen cupboard as nervous sweat trickled down her back. She tried to be calm, tried to think like the detective she was. If she responded to a call like this from a member of the public, what would she say?

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Those exact things: the cereal with milk.

Is there any chance you could have left them like that?

No.

Really? Are you sure? Do you have a lot on your mind? Is there any possibility at all that you may have forgotten?

She lowered the knife. It seemed unlikely, but she had been tired, and focused on that bloody rock . . .

She looked at the microwave. It suddenly felt like that would be the test. If the rock was gone, it meant . . . well, one thing. If it was there, it meant another.

She jabbed the knife point into the door-release button. The rock sat staring out at her, exactly where she’d left it.

She slammed the door in its face.

Dennis answered on the third ring.

‘It’s me,’ Ella said.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Pretty good,’ she lied. She stared into the kitchen. She hadn’t touched anything yet. She’d spent fifteen minutes trying to think what to do, who she might ring and what she would say. She’d practised saying, ‘There’s something funny going on at my house,’ but now it wouldn’t come out.

He said, ‘How’s the case?’

‘Okay.’ She heard Dennis’s wife, Donna, speaking in the background. ‘Are you busy?’