Authors: Katherine Howell
‘Good.’ He turned the wipers to high and stared out the windscreen through the grey spray of rain.
Ella looked out the back to see Gerard still there and Marion and Louise right behind him. Gerard made a complicated gesture and Ella said to Murray, ‘Someone wants to take the lead.’
Murray glanced in the mirror, then indicated and pulled over to the kerb. Gerard drove past, followed by Louise and Marion, then Murray let two more cars pass before he pulled back out. His mobile rang in his shirt pocket. He groped for it.
‘Don’t lose them,’ Ella said.
Murray fumbled the phone and it fell onto the console between their seats. Ella picked it up and answered. ‘Murray’s phone.’
There was a pause. ‘Ella?’
‘Wayne.’ She was brisk, covering her awkwardness. ‘Murray’s driving right now. Can he call you back?’
‘Tell him we have information about Dante Novak.’
‘Hold on, I’ll put you on speaker.’ She found the button and pressed it. ‘Okay.’
Wayne’s voice crackled into the car. ‘Dante Novak may not have a record but someone in his family does: Trent Bligh’s his uncle.’
‘He’s one of our targets,’ Murray said.
‘I know,’ Wayne said. ‘Dante’s mother said she hasn’t seen him for a fortnight now and doesn’t know where he is. She and her brother Trent Bligh don’t get on too well – in fact she blames him for leading Dante astray – but she wouldn’t go so far as to tell us where he’s living these days. We’ve put the word out on the street and are following up some leads and hopefully will know more soon.’
‘We’re tailing someone in the hope she’ll lead us to him.’ Ella explained what was going on.
‘Where are you now?’
‘Moorefields Road in Roselands,’ she said. ‘Call Dennis, he’ll keep you posted.’
‘Thanks.’ He was gone.
Ella put the phone in Murray’s open hand and he slid it back into his pocket.
Up ahead Devonshire slowed at traffic lights with her right indicator on. The street to the left was busy but the one she was waiting to turn into looked narrow.
‘Got to be all residential,’ Ella said. Maybe they were about to find where Bligh lived.
Gerard indicated and braked and queued behind Devonshire. Marion and Louise drove past. Murray had been travelling well back and now eased over to the kerb to sit and watch.
Car after car came the other way. Ella jiggled her foot on the floor and watched the lights. ‘Hope Marion and Louise’ve managed to turn around and are on their way back.’
‘They wouldn’t want to do it too soon though,’ Murray said. ‘U-turn could easily catch Devonshire’s eye.’
The rain grew heavier, pelting the roof and windows. There was a gap in the oncoming traffic and Devonshire accelerated across and into the side street. Gerard pulled forward into the intersection, but the gap was too small for him to make it too, and he waited while a taxi then a bus went past. Ella watched him inch forward, dabbing his brakes every other second, then saw the traffic light turn orange. The green Ford sedan coming the other way slowed and Ella saw Gerard’s brake lights go off, then he and the Ford accelerated to run the light at the same instant.
‘Oh shit,’ Ella said.
They braked, but skidded on the wet road and collided head-on.
‘Goddammit,’ Ella said. ‘Can you spot Marion’s car?’
‘Nope.’
The traffic alongside them was a solid line but the left turning lane was clear. Murray flicked on his flashing grille lights and shot along it into the intersection, then tried to swing around the back of the green Ford and down the side street, but cars had banked up across that side too.
Ella searched for Marion’s car but couldn’t see it. ‘Maybe she’s gone round the block.’
Murray craned his neck to look down the side street. ‘I can’t see her or Devonshire.’
The driver of the green Ford leapt, shouting, out of his car. Gerard got out into the rain too and pushed the man aside to walk to the head of the side street.
Ella saw past him that it was empty. ‘Shit.’
‘Move.’ Murray gestured at drivers. ‘Move!’
Someone got the message and pulled out of the line, leaving a space big enough for him to squeeze through. He sped down the side street, Ella searching each driveway, hoping against hope to see the back end of a white Mazda 6 but seeing nothing.
Murray braked at a cross street and they each looked out their side windows.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Here comes Marion.’
Marion pulled up next to them and Murray told her what had happened. ‘You haven’t seen Devonshire?’ he asked.
‘No.’
Louise looked back up the street at the accident. ‘They okay?’
‘Judging by the yelling,’ Ella said. ‘We’ll go this way, you take that, and hope we find her.’
They split up and crisscrossed the rain-drenched neighbourhood but found no sign of the white Mazda 6 either on the street or in any driveways.
Murray drove back to the accident site, where tow trucks had gathered and Gerard and the Ford’s driver carried on with their heated discussion on the footpath.
Ella called Dennis, anger swelling like a boil in her brain. ‘Gerard fucked up and we lost her.’
‘I already heard,’ he said. ‘Marion and John both called in.’
She glared at Gerard, and, as if feeling the heat, he glanced around. Even Murray was shaking his head.
She said to Dennis, ‘Murray and I are going to Trina’s.’
THIRTY-THREE
E
lla knocked hard on Trina’s door. Because she’d left the office in a rush to get to Mary’s, she hadn’t collected the photos of Sutton going into the brothel, but the plan was crystal clear in her head.
Trina opened it. ‘What now?’
‘Still no word from Carl, huh? You must be pretty worried.’
Trina put her hands on her hips. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Ringing him every five, ten minutes for the past two hours,’ Ella said. ‘No answer in all that time. No call-backs. What could he be doing?’
Trina raised her chin and said nothing.
Ella peered over her shoulder into the gloomy house. ‘Darcy still out?’
‘None of your business.’
‘I like that little girl,’ Ella said. ‘Don’t you, Murray?’
He nodded. ‘Seems like she’s got a lot of heart. Good thing, because she’s going to need it with her dad dead and her mum in jail.’
‘How dare you say something like that.’ Trina grabbed the door and started to close it but Ella put out her hand.
‘You might want to hear what we have to say.’
Trina hesitated, then folded her arms. ‘You’ve got about one minute.’
‘We know about you,’ Ella said. ‘We know about you and Carl. We know about the brothel and how you know about it too and how you like the money. We know that Carl knows the guys who shot Paul, and that’s where he’s gone this afternoon, but he wasn’t supposed to be gone quite this long, was he?’
Trina looked past them at the pool. Ella heard the rain spattering on the shadecloth over it.
‘You want more?’ she said. ‘We have photos of Carl going into that brothel and coming out, which means we know how long he was in there for, and the time frame does not suggest that he was merely, you know, putting a roster on a wall or collecting money.’
The skin around Trina’s eyes tightened.
‘We know that the people Carl’s gone to see are brutal cold-blooded killers,’ Ella said. ‘They beat up Sam. They shot Paul in broad daylight. They carjacked Seth and a man who had no part in any of this and shot them to death. They beat up the women who work for them, and one at least is believed to be still missing. Are you hearing me, Trina? They get rid of anyone who gets in their way, and it doesn’t matter what kind of agreement people think they have with them. Nobody is safe.’ She thought she caught a tremble in Trina’s lips. ‘Nobody.’
Trina’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You’d better come in.’
*
Ella sat in the same chair as before. Trina was on the lounge, her splint resting on her knee, and Murray stayed on his feet near the door.
Déjà vu all over again
, Ella thought.
‘He was supposed to call by two,’ Trina said. ‘He’d told me before that he knew them, and he could sort it.’
‘Was that before or after Paul died?’
‘After.’ She looked at the floor. ‘He said that wasn’t supposed to happen. He said he went off at them over that.’
Ella wanted to raise her eyebrows at Murray but kept her face empty. ‘Did he ever mention a woman when he was talking about these people?’
‘No.’
‘What did he say after the carjacking murders?’
‘He was all serious. Said there were things to sort out.’
‘He’s real big on the sorting,’ Murray said.
Trina made a face. ‘I know how it sounds.’
To Ella it sounded gullible. But she could see how Trina’s face lit up when she said Sutton’s name, and knew that love could do weird shit to a person’s mind.
‘When did your relationship with him start?’
‘I didn’t cheat on Paul.’
‘We’re not concerned with that,’ Ella said. ‘We need to build a timeline and that’s simply part of it.’
‘Paul and I got married because I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘That was our first mistake, and things went downhill from there. He wanted a son, used to talk about fishing and footy and motorbikes, how he could share all those things with a boy. I pointed out the obvious but he didn’t seem to believe it could happen. When Darce was born he was shattered, though to be fair he did pull himself together within a few months, and he did love her, in his way. He wasn’t happy in his life though; the whole domestic thing wasn’t right for him, he said once. He hated his job, hated being relied on by Henreid, hated being needed there and by us at home. He used to talk about his friend Seth, single and with a lot of money from his job and able to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.’ She shook her head. ‘We fought, a lot. And even when we weren’t fighting we didn’t really connect.’
‘And you asked him to leave,’ Ella said.
‘No, he left how I told you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t come home one night. I guess he couldn’t face being a grown-up and telling me to my face that he wanted out.’
‘That’s not what he told other people.’
‘His parents, you mean?’
Ella nodded.
‘He was very proud. To say he left makes him the bad guy. Saying I kicked him out puts that on me. I hated that he couldn’t even tell the truth then. That’s why I punched him.’ She touched the splint with her good hand.
‘How did it start with you and Carl Sutton?’
‘There’d always been a little spark between us,’ she said. ‘He dropped around one night, three weeks ago I guess it was. Nothing happened but I knew we both felt it. Then he started visiting a bit more often.’ She held out her hands. ‘My marriage had been loveless for years. In my mind I was out of that relationship a long time ago.’
‘When did he tell you about the brothel?’
‘Two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘I’d said that since Paul left his job he had no money so couldn’t afford to help out with the bills. Carl said he had lots of money, and told me what they were all doing.’
‘How did that make you feel?’
‘At first I was shocked, but Carl told me how it’s all very safe and clean, and is a legitimate business. And the girls want to work there, and men want to go there, so who is it harming?’
Now Ella did raise her eyebrows. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘What?’
‘The place they ran was illegal,’ Murray said. ‘There’s no safety, no standards. The girls sometimes have to have unprotected sex. They sometimes work there because they can’t find work anywhere else, and they might be addicts and need the money desperately.’
‘That’s not what Carl said,’ she said. ‘He told me it was all decent, and said it could keep making money, and gave me Paul’s share of the money, which I needed for bills. Paul hadn’t been helping and I have rent and everything –’
‘I know, you said before,’ Ella said.
Trina folded her arms, her splint looking awkward against her chest. ‘Carl’s a good man.’
‘Does he have Paul’s mobile phone?’
‘No. Why would he?’
Ella changed the subject. ‘If Carl’s so good, and those other guys are as bad as we know they are, what do you think he’s doing? Why hasn’t he called? Why is his phone turned off?’
‘He’s busy,’ she said.
‘I thought you were so much smarter than this.’ Ella leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. ‘Carl went to talk to these guys when they’ve already killed two of his friends, and he knows they did it. What do you think that makes him in their eyes?’
She shook her head. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘That makes him a witness,’ Ella said. ‘He could put those guys in jail for a long, long time. You think they’re sitting around having cups of tea?’
Trina looked at the floor.
‘If he was my boyfriend I’d be shit-scared.’
She rubbed her eyes, then dropped her hands. ‘I know you think he’s a bad man, but really he’s not.’
‘Where is he?’
‘You have to promise not to hurt him.’
‘It’s not us you should be worried about,’ Ella said. ‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know the street name,’ Trina said. ‘But I could pick it out on a map. It’s near Canterbury racecourse.’
*
They left her there, still pleading with them to be gentle, and sped through the rain-soaked suburbs to Canterbury. Ella had the street directory open on her lap, her finger on the place Trina had pointed out, and relayed the details over the phone to Dennis.
‘Troops are on their way,’ he said. ‘Meet in Queensborough Road.’
Once there Murray parked against the kerb. Wet leaves fell to the windscreen from the tree overhead and the rain was loud on the roof. Ella jiggled both feet on the floor and Murray watched the rear-view.
‘Here they are,’ he said.
He got out and went back to speak to the officers in the three unmarked cars. Ella watched through the rain-smeared back window and thought with dread that she recognised the front-seat passenger of the first car.
When Murray came back his shirt was drenched and his hair flat on his head but his eyes were bright. ‘A neighbour just called triple 0 about a shouting argument at the address. We’re good to go.’
‘Is that Gerard in the front?’
‘Yep.’ Murray started the car and pulled out.
‘I thought Dennis would’ve thrown him behind a desk.’
He shrugged. ‘I guess it’s all hands on deck when we’re about to catch the bad guys.’
It was the bad girl Ella wanted to catch, but thanks to John Gerard she was probably miles away by now. Heading interstate. Or overseas. Where they’d have Buckley’s of finding her.
Murray led the convoy through the rain towards the address. Two of the following cars broke off early, taking another street to loop around and block the road from the other side. Ella peered through the rain and poor light to see the house. It looked like any other: brown brick, red tiles, low hedge along the front, concrete driveway on which sat a dark green Commodore and a grey BMW.
Detectives got out of the cars parked across the other end of the street and she opened her door.
‘Showtime,’ Murray said, glee in his voice.
They joined John Gerard and Reece Bennett by their car, then a male voice shouted inside the house. The words were unclear but the detectives dropped to a crouch. Down the street the other officers did the same. The shouting stopped and Ella could hear her breath coming hard in her chest, the rain pattering on the parked cars, the creak of Murray’s knees as he stood again.
‘John, you come with me to the front,’ he said. ‘Ella, you and Reece go through the neighbour’s for the back.’
‘It’s okay, I’ll go with Ella.’ Gerard chucked her under the chin with a wet hand.
‘No, you won’t,’ she said.
The other detectives were coming up the street at a fast trot.
‘Whatever,’ Murray said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gerard said to her as they ran, reaching out his wet hand again. ‘We’ll get one. Rats always scuttle out the back.’
‘Don’t touch me.’
She ran across the nature strip and into the neighbour’s garden. The lawn was soft and soggy underfoot. She dashed past neat garden beds full of roses along the side of the house and into a backyard where sheets hung dripping on the line. The fence between the properties was timber palings, the back fence of this place the same, with a gate held shut by a latch. She flipped it open and peered out. The back fence of the target house had a gate as well, and between the fence line and the wide brown park stood a line of shrubs and trees. She pointed for Gerard to take a position on the far side of the gate, ignored the face he pulled, and pushed her way into the side of a shrub to wait.
The house was quiet. She imagined detectives getting into position, their blood rising like hers. She listened to water drip from the leaves around her, some of it going down the back of her neck and making her pull her collar close to her skin, and tried to breathe calm and slow. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter that Julie Devonshire wasn’t here now, that it was enough that they’d probably get the rest of them.
The rain intensified, splashing up out of rivulets on the ground, running down her back and soaking into her shoes. She wiped water from her eyes, then movement caught her attention across the park. She parted the leaves and saw a figure hurrying towards them under a white umbrella. A woman. In jeans and a pink shirt.
She waved at Gerard. He frowned at her, then she pointed into the park and put her finger to her lips. He saw Devonshire and pumped a fist down low. She shook her head and pointed to herself, then back to Devonshire.
She’s mine.
He raised his eyebrows in a distinct
As if
, then there was a crash and shouts of ‘Police! Police! Get down!’ from the house. Ella crouched lower, one eye on the approaching form of Julie Devonshire, the other on the closed gate in the fence.
Another crash and more shouting. ‘Police! Drop your weapons! Drop your weapons!’ A shot rang out, making Devonshire skid to a stop fifty metres away.
Ella stared at her through the shrub.
That face. Those eyes that had filled with tears.
When Devonshire started to turn Ella was already on her way.
The rain lay in puddles on the park. Devonshire’s feet splashed as she ran, the umbrella bobbing over her head, rain spattering the back of her pink shirt.
‘Police!’ Ella shouted. ‘Stop!’
Devonshire threw the umbrella behind her. Ella sidestepped it and almost slipped and fell. She could hear her own panting breath, the smack of her feet in the water, the sound of yelling in the target house. She had no idea where Gerard was. She squeezed her fists tight and fixed her eyes on the back of Devonshire’s shirt and ran hard.
Devonshire was faster, headed for her white Mazda. Ella saw her fumble in her pocket and hold her arm out as if with a remote but the car’s indicators didn’t blink.
Ella sucked hard at the damp air. She thought of Darcy’s pale face in the gloom of her living room, the eyes of the girl in the hospital waiting room, Devonshire’s breaking voice in the park. She started gaining on her.
Devonshire put her hand out again and this time the lights blinked.
‘Police!’ Ella shouted again.
Devonshire didn’t slow. She was almost at the car.
Ella ran hard and caught up. She grabbed Devonshire’s collar, yanked backwards, slipped and fell. Devonshire went down too, but was up on her knees in a flash and punched Ella hard in the jaw. Ella reeled but managed to seize the front of her shirt. The fabric tore and Devonshire hit her again, her fist glancing off her shoulder as they struggled, then Ella punched her in the stomach. Devonshire coughed and Ella pulled her down into the mud. Devonshire kicked her in the thigh. Ella scrabbled for a grip on the woman’s wet arm but she wrenched free and tried to elbow Ella in the face.