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Garima drove Lexi home from the hospital. He eyed her sideways as they crawled through the traffic to her house. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked, his tone infused with fake lightness.
Lexi sighed and nodded with more enthusiasm than she felt. She lengthened her seat belt so she could turn to face him as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Let’s both stop lying to each other,” she said. “You didn’t want me to discharge myself, and I’m pretending I’m fine. In truth, you’re right. But swallowing hurts, so all the hospital staff wanted to feed me was fruit salad and a weird green jelly with melted ice cream. If you leave me there, I’ll starve to death. All I want is a cuddle with Nahla, an inane movie, and my sofa.”
Garima suppressed a smile. “I can help with the last two, but you’re on your own with the cat cuddling. I scoured out her bowl with a lovely lemon cleaner this morning and she clawed my shins.”
“Most cats find citrus repugnant,” Lexi replied. “I’d hurt you if you ruined my breakfast.”
Garima winced and wrinkled his nose. “Oh,” he breathed. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine. I’ll fix it.” Lexi rested a hand on his shoulder. “When can I fetch my SUV from Sam Barnard’s house?”
“Grunwald will organise its return,” Garima assured her. “He promised.”
“Have you heard anything from Tarant?” Lexi stared through the windscreen and admitted to herself that she hadn’t missed him.
“Ah, yes!” Garima raised an index finger and rapped his temple in punishment for forgetting. “Sorry. I answered his call to your phone while you slept. Explained what happened. He rushed to the hospital and Grunwald spoke to him in the corridor. He looked very upset when he returned.”
“Tarant or Grunwald?” Lexi asked. Tarant’s distress afforded her a modicum of satisfaction. But Garima smashed that for her by replying, “Grunwald. Can we please call him Peter, as that’s his first name?”
“Whatever,” Lexi replied. “Did he say what upset him?”
“No.” But Garima’s blue irises sparkled. “Technically, I bowed my head in prayer, and he made a series of serious phone calls from the hallway. Tarant left a sheet of paper filled with lists of names and dates. One of them triggered Peter like a bee sting.”
“Oh-kay.” Lexi dragged out the word. “So, Tarant’s done the dirty on his ex-brother-in-law,” she mused. “He’s given the cops a list of our cases on which Rojas matched names and addresses with vehicle registration plates. Sometimes, he offered background information for extra cash. Now, he’s using that to blackmail anyone suitable for his purposes, including a senior colleague who we once discovered taking part in a sex scandal. That’s how he went from beat officer to detective overnight.”
Garima nodded, but made no comment. His brow lined in thought. “I miss Donald,” he said after a while, drawing out a sigh. “How could anyone hurt such a genuine man and leave him dying in a skip?” He swallowed and tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel as they slowed for traffic lights.
Lexi dropped her chin and resisted touching her painful throat. She wanted to offer comfort, but sensed the banality of suggesting he’d had a quick death. Her own traumatic experience made a lie of any platitudes. Instead, she reached out her right hand and laid it across her brother’s shoulders as he navigated the narrow streets to her home. She dug her fingers into his unruly curls and massaged his tense neck muscles. “Perhaps he died before entering the rubbish,” she offered instead.
Garima spoke again as he indicated for the turn into Drake Street. “The pathologist believes Father Donald died inside the skip, upside down amongst the trash. His killer garroted him with the wire, pushed him against the metal side and then flipped him up by his feet. My friend died amongst cardboard, and bags filled with dirty nappies.” He glanced sideways at Lexi without seeing her. “Peter Grunwald said his men found addressed envelopes in two of the biggest bags of household rubbish. They traced it back to a neighbour who missed the refuse truck on Friday. He broke the catch on the skip when he couldn’t fit his bags through the narrow gap.”
Lexi pressed her fingers hard over her mouth. Such a tiny, selfish action had aided a killer. The open skip presented an efficient hiding place for a dying man. Otherwise, passersby might have noticed a priest flailing in the gravel and an old man standing over him.
“It’s the little ripples of sin, isn’t it?” Garima said, his tone filled with grief. “Every wrong action leads to outcomes beyond our comprehension. Stealing from an employer or breaking a padlock on someone else’s rubbish skip because you didn’t get up in time to put out your bags.”
“What will happen to Darlene Barrymore?” Lexi asked. She twirled an unruly curl between her fingers and kept her arm rested on Garima’s shoulder. “Did Grunwald lock her up?”
“There’s no evidence she realised what Sam was capable of,” he replied. “It’s possible he conned her, too.”
“Why did she lie about the broken catch on the skip?” Lexi demanded. “Such a stupid, innocuous fib.”
Garima made a sound in his throat like a growl. “Appearances, I believe. Father Donald picked her up from Barnard’s house first thing in the morning. There’s no question he knew who lived there and that it troubled him. Too late to pass it off as an overnight stay with a female friend. Perhaps Mrs Barrymore misinterpreted his silence as condemnation. She’s a stalwart in what falls into the category of improper behaviour. And gossip is a tremendous problem among the ladies of our community. She wanted to spare herself from any scandal.”
“So, a little lie got bigger once her only witness died,” Lexi concluded. “If we believe her, which I don’t. I’m not even sure now that she saw a cheery Father Donald heading for the rectory. What if she lured him behind the church to meet Sam?”
“The police can’t prove it,” Garima concluded. “But Grunwald’s officers have checked local traffic cameras and pieced together Father Donald’s journey to Sam Barnard’s house that morning, back to the church, and then to Keith’s.”
“Did he make it to his coffee meeting with Lachlan’s chauffeur?” Lexi asked.
“The café staff swear he didn’t,” Garima said with a sigh.
“So Robin never got the chance to warn him?” Lexi exhaled a ragged breath. “Where is Robin then? And why, after so many years of service, did Lachlan believe he’d committed some horrible faux pas?”
Garima released a massive exhale and parked on Lexi’s driveway. The gate slid closed behind them. “A problem for another day,” he replied.
