Emmet

‘The Crown would like to call Imogen Blair as a witness.’

Emmet sat up straighter in his seat as he watched his cousin being led in by one of the court officers. Imogen was wearing make-up and heels but she still looked extremely young.

She raised her hand and took the oath. ‘I do.’

The Crown waited for her to sit, before requesting, ‘Please state your full name, your date of birth, the age you are now and your place of residence.’

Imogen’s voice wobbled as she provided the routine answers.

‘Thank you. Imogen, I am going to show you some video footage, which you and the jurors will see on your television screens. The video clip was posted by Bridie Sullivan to her Instagram account, two weeks before her abduction.’

The video showed the ocean, swimmers bobbing under a perfect blue sky. The camera panned to the sand and the crowds, before circling back to the water, just as a wave crashed in.

‘Thank you,’ Madame Crown said to the court officer who was handling the technology. ‘Imogen, can you recall this particular day when you and Bridie went to Cronulla Beach?’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘Did you meet anyone there?’

‘Yes, we met some of Emmet’s friends. We talked to them for a little bit.’

‘Did you and Bridie speak to anyone else that day?’

‘We spoke to a girl, a woman, who was sitting next to us. I asked her to watch our stuff while we went for a swim.’

Madame Crown nodded to the court officer, who replayed the video and paused on a thin woman with large sunglasses and elaborate tattoos.

‘Imogen, can you please tell the court if this is the woman you asked to watch your things?’

‘Yes, that’s her.’

‘Can you please tell the court if you know who this woman is?’

‘I didn’t at the time. But now I know that she is one of the accused, Courtney Vaughen.’

‘Thank you, Imogen. Your Honour, I would like to tender this video footage.’

‘Objection,’ one of the three defence barristers called out.

‘Overruled,’ the judge said immediately. ‘We’ve been through this already, Mr Thomas.’

Some legal argument followed, with the defence barrister and the judge exchanging tit for tat. Imogen’s gaze wandered to the gallery and Emmet smiled at her. Fitz was also being called as a witness and would probably be shown the same video clip. He’d seen Courtney rummaging in Bridie’s bag while the girls were off swimming. They now knew that Courtney had tampered with Bridie’s phone that day, installing spyware to track her movements and online activity. Courtney had sent the text, purportedly from Fitz: Meet me at the bathrooms near Gate C. A needle in the arm, just the right dose to make Bridie confused and compliant, but not comatose. Waiting out of sight of CCTV cameras for the drug to take effect and the concert to finish, before blending into the throngs exiting the venue.

Emmet shivered, rubbed his bare arms with their tattoo sleeves: all his own designs. He was a second-year apprentice now. Like the rest of the family, he’d changed a lot over the past year. He had his driving licence, an amazing girlfriend (Kiara) and a better appreciation of his family. He would never forget the awful hours when his sister had been missing, or the wild joy on seeing her wan face when Mum FaceTimed from the hospital.

‘You stayed at the stadium all that time?’ Bridie had asked from her hospital bed. ‘You’re an idiot!’

Emmet came back to the present: the Crown had moved on with a new question.

‘Can you please tell the court if you saw Ms Vaughen at any other time besides the day at the beach?’

‘Yes, I noticed her on another occasion when Bridie and I were on the bus. She got on at the same stop as us. The bus was mostly empty, and so I found it strange when she sat in the seat directly behind us. I remember thinking she looked vaguely familiar …’

The Crown asked for another video to be played, this time CCTV from the bus. Courtney had been following Bridie in the weeks before the abduction, making sure that the spy software was working, and that she was familiar with her target. The concert would be dark and crowded: spiking the wrong girl would be a catastrophe.

Emmet still couldn’t believe it. A criminal chain leading from Courtney to Lily’s dad to the gang leader, Joel Hashem. All the names he had written in his notebook that night had been irrelevant. Even AJ, whose real name was Alistair Jones, a Year Eight student posing as a Year Eleven. Bridie’s abductors were people they wouldn’t have suspected in a million years. The closest they’d got was when Emmet had been speculating about whether a taxi or Uber had ferried Bridie from the area. An Uber had. Bridie had been sitting in the back, hands taped, drugged, disoriented; George Pearson, a man she’d known and trusted for years, was behind the wheel.

There was still a lot they didn’t know, because George, Courtney and Joel Hashem had all exercised their right to silence when questioned by police and were considered unlikely to take the stand. Emmet had learned that the jury was not allowed to infer guilt from their silence. He’d also learned that it was the prosecution’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt: the defence didn’t need to respond with their own witnesses or evidence if they didn’t see fit, which seemed lazy and lopsided, and nothing like the dynamic court cases depicted in the movies.

The question nobody seemed to be able to answer: how much evidence was enough to get a conviction? Or three convictions, as needed here. With each passing day, the silence from the dock seemed to grow more profound and powerful.