The door opened. The hefty bulk of Sergeant Johnson re-entered the room, holding a folder this time. The fluorescent lights were beginning to hurt her eyes. Exhausted after the day’s events, Clementine could barely sit up straight. She had spent some time at the Safton Hospital—a couple of stitches in her face, her ear dressed and bandaged, and been given a referral to a specialist for possible reconstructive surgery. The rest would heal itself.
The Safton police had nothing but suspicion for her—mostly disguised with a well-practised civility, but suspicion nonetheless. She realised now that while Phillips and Miller had been professional in their dealings with her in Katinga, there had been a kind of warmth in the way they went about their job. Here she was a complete stranger, someone without reputation, surfacing in the middle of an evil sequence of violence.
A young constable sat opposite her, drumming her pen on the table between them. Clementine had been through the facts—those she was willing to share—several times with both of them: the chase, the kidnapping, Rowan’s arrival and everything that followed…but it was not enough—they were not satisfied.
Her body was weak, her mind drained, but she must remain alert. She knew she didn’t have to say anything. She knew everything she said could be used as evidence—of course she knew all that.
Her thoughts drifted back to the moment when the message came through, over the radios of the two young SES officers who had escorted her through the forest back to the clearing, a helicopter rescue crew reporting in clipped, crackling static: male, early twenties, multiple fractures, suspected head and internal injuries, serious but stable condition. She had dropped to her knees, there in the bush, her head in her hands, a rescuer wrapping his arms around her shoulders. And then the second message, moments later, confirming that Rowan was being treated for a gunshot wound to the leg, non-life-threatening. She had wept quietly for a long time.
‘Well, Ms Jones,’ the sergeant said, closing the door behind him, ‘you’ve been most helpful so far. Thank you. We’re almost done.’ He sat down, placed the folder in front of him and poured Clem some water from the jug on the table, pushing the small plastic cup across to her. They already had her DNA from her first conviction. She picked up the cup, drank a small sip.
Everything was just like the first time. It could almost have been the same police station, any police station across the globe, really, where the earliest signs of a person’s guilt or innocence are divined in that first moment, the justice system’s first awakenings, before the whole awful, magnificent machine cranks and grinds into action.
The sergeant watched Clementine put the cup back on the table, the room silent for a moment. He nodded at the constable, who reached forward, switched on the recorder and said: ‘Interview resumed at 16.05.’
Sergeant Johnson opened the folder in front of him, carefully turned through the pages—forms, typed notes, all upside down from where Clem sat. She couldn’t make out what they were. Page after page, just the sound of paper sliding against paper. Then a page with a picture, a photograph. Clem looked from her side of the table, her breath catching in her throat as she recognised the two crumpled cars.
Johnson glanced at her, flipped another page—a closer shot of the driver’s side door, caved inward violently. Then an even closer shot, a view of the interior, darkness within, and just the shadowy form of a person inside.
No, no, don’t turn the page.
He reached for the corner of the page, started to turn it. She closed her eyes, but the image was there, in her head, so vivid, so lifelike…Sue Markham’s head, her neck broken, slumped at that hideous angle on the steering wheel, the blood in her hair, on her blouse, eyes wide and staring. Staring.
Clementine looked away from the table, breathing hard and slow.
‘Are you okay, Ms Jones? Do you need a break?’
No. She just wanted this interview to end. She wanted the peaceful homeliness of her cottage, the mountain gums and Pocket. She turned her head towards the sergeant, making sure not to look down at the folder, shook her head.
‘Subject has indicated she does not want a break,’ he said. He waited a moment, closed the file.
Was that it? No questions? He just wanted to unsettle her? Humiliate her? It made her angry. Yes, Sue Markham was dead. She would always be dead, and it was Clementine who had killed her. But Clancy Kennedy was so very alive. Alive but still in danger—the threat to Clancy’s life had not ended with Brose’s death. He had said as much. She could do nothing for Sue Markham, no matter how many pictures Sergeant Johnson showed her. But Clancy, Melissa—she could do something for them. And the only thing she wanted now was to make sure she got out of this room without incriminating Torrens. Johnson’s ploy had backfired, seriously. Clementine’s focus was bullet-like.
‘Mr Macpherson died of a single gunshot wound to the stomach,’ said Johnson. ‘You were the only one there when he died. You told us you held his gun and pointed it at him.’
She sat, defiant, waiting for the question.
‘Ms Jones, did you shoot Ambrose Macpherson?’
She shook her head.
‘For the recording, please, Ms Jones.’
‘No, I did not,’ she said.
‘Well, then, perhaps you’d like to tell us how you knew to follow Ambrose Macpherson?’
She began, slow and deliberate, making sure to repeat the same answers she’d already given as closely as possible. ‘I got this tattoo, a couple of weeks ago. I was nervous about hygiene and infections, it was my first one. I wanted to know the tattooists had a good record, complied with health law, you know, run by reputable people’—the constable scribbled a note—‘so I researched the company, checked them out online, did a company search. Ambrose Macpherson was a director of various companies in the corporate group that owned the tattoo parlour.’
‘You did a company search to check for hygiene?’ The constable was sceptical.
‘Of course. Financial health of the company, the quality of the directors…it all tells you if the business can afford the right gear, the best people, that sort of thing.’ Factually accurate, but none of it relevant.
The constable raised her eyebrows, nodded, like she might use that approach herself next time.
‘Go on,’ said the sergeant.
‘Well, he was in the tattoo shop when I went there’—her first outright lie—‘and I heard the tattooist refer to him as Ambrose.’
The sergeant held her gaze as the constable scribbled another note.
She told them about her conversation with Clancy at the post office, the cigarette burn, the threat to his family, and the description he had given of one of the men.
‘Clancy’s description—it just sounded like this bloke, Macpherson,’ she said.
Johnson looked unimpressed. ‘Why had he threatened Clancy?’
‘I don’t know, Clancy refused to tell me.’
‘So you’d seen Macpherson just the once, in the tattoo parlour. Must have been a good description Clancy gave you.’
She recalled that night, scrubbing blood off the rocks in the vacant block next door to the Holts’ place, Brose’s face…Stop thinking, Jones. He can see it in your face.
She shrugged, nodded. ‘Reasonably good.’
‘And that’s it? Sounds like a slim lead,’ he said.
She sat as still as she could, nodded, agreeing with him, ‘Yes, it was. Not much more than a hunch, really.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police about all this when Clancy went missing? You knew they were out searching, the SES as well, they’d found a bloodied shoe, it was very serious and yet you went off on your own.’
‘Like you said, it was a slim lead, a hunch, sergeant, nothing more. It seemed ridiculous—I thought the police would just laugh at me and I didn’t want to interrupt the search effort. For all I knew they were close to finding Clancy.’
‘You didn’t think to report the assault on Clancy, the cigarette burn, after he’d gone missing?’
‘Oh, I wanted to, but Clancy had begged me not to. He was adamant. Said it would make matters worse for him and his family.’
She took another sip of water, wondering whether drinking the water was one of those indicators they teach cops to look out for when a suspect may be lying.
‘Ms Jones, we know you must have had a difficult time in prison—lawyers don’t fare well inside. Perhaps you knew Mr Macpherson through someone you met there?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Many good people get mixed up in trouble, often innocently,’ said the sergeant. ‘You might have needed protection inside, for survival. Nothing wrong with that. But perhaps you owe someone something now?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Perhaps you had a task you had to fulfil? A job for someone?’
‘No.’
He paused a moment. ‘You see, Macpherson was a known member of a well-organised criminal gang. All sorts of things in his repertoire—guns, drugs, you name it. I just thought you might have got roped into something?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘So you claim you attacked him in self-defence?’
‘Like I said, he was going to shoot me. I hit him with a stick, knocking the gun from his hand, then he came at me with a knife.’ She was matter-of-fact, careful to repeat each step exactly as she had recounted it to them the first time. ‘I hit him again with the stick, and then I picked up the gun in case he came at me again. He was lying there, he said he’d shot himself in the fight with Clancy, and then he died. That was it. I did not fire any shots.’
There was a long pause, the three of them sitting there, Johnson searching her face. Clem felt the pressure building.
They know. They know I am a killer and that I’m living a lie.
Sergeant Johnson stood up, scooping up the file he’d brought.
Then the words everything inside her was screaming for: ‘Interview ended 16.35. You’re free to go, Ms Jones.’
The flight to Earlville landed at nine that night. She walked beside Rowan as he hobbled on his crutches from the tarmac into the terminal, then went to get the Commodore and bring it around. She helped him into the back seat, his leg up and his back leaning up against the door.
She’d tried to make the journey home to his place as smooth as possible, avoiding potholes and slowing for the bends, and she’d also tried, as best she could, to thank him, choking up at the thought of what would have happened to her and Clancy had he not arrived.
He shrugged it off, said he wouldn’t have done it for just anyone.
Her voice had cracked again when she mentioned the moment he’d been shot and the agony of having to leave him behind there, concealed in the long grass, injured, possibly dead.
‘Shit yeah,’ he said. ‘My hay fever was playing up something shocking.’
They laughed and she snuck a glance in the rear-view mirror to catch a look at his smile.
Rowan’s house was a run-down weatherboard Californian bungalow on the outskirts of Katinga. A porch light came on as they approached. The lawn was patchy, long spindly weeds spiking up at the base of the walls, but the exterior was gleaming with a fresh coat of paint. She helped him out of the car, carried his bag of medication. The front verandah floorboards sloped down at one end. There was parsley and mint growing in a pot at the front door.
The rooms inside were sparse, vast expanses of cold floorboards with little furniture to speak of, her footsteps echoing so loudly she felt it best to tiptoe. Rowan decided he’d sleep in the living room, where there was a fire and the TV.
She got him comfortable on the lonely-looking old couch, set the fire and made them both a cup of tea.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
She brought the single wooden chair from the kitchen into the living room for herself, so she could sit there with him. They drank the tea in silence, too tired to speak, the fire cracking and spitting. Afterwards, she found a set of old-fashioned nesting tables in the spare room, carried one out to the lounge and set it down next to him. Next she found a jug and a glass in the half-empty cupboard above the sink, filled them both with water and arranged them on the little table, within easy reach.
As she was bending over the table, he said softly, ‘It’s been a while since anyone’s done anything for me.’
‘It’s the least I could do after everything you did for me,’ she said. He shrugged it off, looked away.
His mobile phone beeped: a low battery warning. Her hand came up to her collar as she recalled the moment in the service station toilet at Dunberry.
‘Never good to let your phone battery drop too low,’ he said, chuckling.
‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the tip. Where can I find your charger?’ she asked.
‘Bedroom. Down the hall, second door on your left.’
On the bedside table, there was a single photo in a frame. Rowan, younger, clean-shaven and smiling. In front, with her back nestled into him, was a tiny woman with short blond hair and a mischievous smile. His arms were wrapped around her, his head bent down to rest on hers.
Clem came back to the living room, plugged the charger in.
‘I nursed Kate here, you know. In this house,’ he said.
Clem looked over at him, nodded.
‘For months. She slipped away before my eyes, right here in this house. I couldn’t stop it.’
Clem sat down on the kitchen chair. ‘You gave her all the help you could.’
‘Yeah. I did. Then she needed more than I could give her,’ he said, ‘so I carried her out to the car, took her to the hospital in Earlville. She was always small, my Kate, but she was like…like a tiny bird—nothing left of her by then.’
His grief filled the room.
‘She looked pretty. In the photo in your room.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, she was. Way too good for me.’
Clem sat down next to him on the wooden chair again.
‘I locked up the house after that, shot through for a couple of years,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t bear to be here. Only been back six months or so.’ He paused, searching the walls, ‘Hard to make the place feel like home again.’
She smiled and looked around the emptiness. ‘Just a tip, Rowan, for what it’s worth—maybe a few more sticks of furniture might help?’
He laughed. It was a relief, and the room felt lighter.
She remembered the medications, got the bag from the kitchen and read the labels, handing him two large red capsules from the first box and a small white pill from the second.
As he swigged them down with the water, she picked up her coat from the back of the kitchen chair, slung it over her arm and took the chair back to the kitchen. A wave of tiredness washed over her.
When she came back to the living room he beckoned her over to the couch. She hesitated for a moment, then took a few steps towards him, thinking he had more to tell her about Kate. He held out his hand, took the tips of her fingers and pulled her closer. She knelt down on the bare floorboards next to the couch. She felt the warmth of the fire on her back as he smoothed her dishevelled hair away from her eyes, the touch of his rough fingers foreign, making her scalp tingle.
She knew she should leave, but after everything that had happened she could not find the will to resist. Her head was a fog, all her usual defences powerless against a sudden longing to feel the touch of another human being.
He gently pulled her head towards his. She could smell his earthiness. The brush of his lips on hers lingered only briefly but reached deep within her being. She let him kiss her again, kissing him back this time, eyes closed, feeling the fullness of him. An indescribable flood of relief rushed over her. She opened her eyes, smiled and stood up to leave without a word.
At the cottage she paused under the mountain gum, looking up at the pitch-black sky and the moon. The Milky Way was out in all its brilliance again. She put her hand on the trunk and felt the earth under her feet, asked whether the kiss was a mistake. She felt a puff of breeze across her cheeks, heard the shush of the leaves, and there was no more answer than that.