Nicki Mara was a statistical anomaly: a missing teenager who was actually a kidnap victim. I entertained many theories but never suspected the truth.
A year earlier, Lucas Mara had fallen out with his fellow partners in a law firm. Unbeknown to us, he’d helped himself to considerable wealth on the way out, which he hid in old dummy accounts. His former business partners had been blatantly disobeying the law; they were involved in drug trafficking, bribery and violent hits. Lucas had broken their pact and gone rogue, so he needed to be punished. They threatened him and killed his dog, but he held firm: he refused to give the money back.
After Nicki went missing he feared the worst, but he heard nothing for weeks. So he said nothing to us, praying she really had run away. And then the threats came. Never traceable, and nothing overt but enough for Lucas to know some bad people had Nicki and she was in danger. He felt trapped. He couldn’t give them what they wanted without revealing his role in their crimes and going to gaol. Plus, I suspect deep down he didn’t believe they would hurt her.
After Deirdre told us he was sneaking out of the house at night we questioned him, grilled him, until he finally admitted to us he thought she’d been abducted and that he was trying to find her. Unbeknownst to us the stupid fool also contacted his old co-workers and said he would turn them all in unless they returned Nicki.
It backfired badly. They ordered their hit men to kill Nicki. To make her go away. They pumped her full of heroin and strangled her.
I wake groggy and bloated but feel no pain. The hospital bed is surrounded by a light blue curtain, and I close my eyes and see Nicki slumped in the grimy bathtub, her skin mottled and bruised. I immediately jerk my eyes open again.
Cam appears on the blue curtain screen. He’s holding the lighter, leering at me as he moves his thumb. I grimace when I hear the gunshot reverberate through the pub kitchen. A strange rasp escapes my mouth.
The curtain shifts and Mac’s face appears. He pushes past the material and lowers himself into a hard plastic chair next to the bed.
‘Where’s Ben?’ I croak.
‘In the next room, sound asleep,’ says Mac. ‘He’s going to be fine. Same as you.’
I relax, my limbs melting back into the bed.
‘The baby is fine as well,’ Mac says softly. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. ‘Earlier today, after you left, Ben mentioned that you said we might have a baby. I didn’t quite know what to say.’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Yeah.’ He sighs. ‘I’m sure it is.’
‘Lucas Mara called me,’ I say quietly. ‘A few days before we found Nicki.’
Mac pauses, frowning. ‘I know, you told me.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ I start to cry. ‘I didn’t tell you what he said to me.’
‘I thought you said he was just rambling. You called Deirdre and suggested she make sure he saw a counsellor.’
I try to sit up but my wrists buckle. ‘I should have listened to what he was trying to tell me. He told me he had a dream. That some men had taken Nicki. That he had a feeling she was in a house in Mosman. And I just thought he was losing his mind. He was babbling and manic, and I didn’t take it seriously—I was distracted with the Ronson case and still thought Nicki was a time-wasting runaway.’ I groan and put my face in my hands. ‘I gave up on her. But we could have found her, Mac. We could have saved her.’ My voice dips to a whisper. ‘She must have been so scared.’
He strokes my cheek. ‘Gem, don’t. Don’t torture yourself. You know better than that.’
‘I really wanted to find Abbey. That’s why I came here.’
‘I know,’ says Mac. ‘But it wouldn’t have brought Nicki back. You’re a good cop, you care, and you do the best you can with what you’ve got.’
‘It’s not always enough,’ I say.
‘No, it’s not, but you’ve known that for a long time. Nicki’s case was complicated. We all got things wrong. Even if you had taken Lucas seriously, what would you have done? Searched every house in Mosman?’
‘I just wish I’d made Lucas tell me what he knew. Now they’re both dead.’
Lucas hanged himself in custody a fortnight after Nicki was killed.
‘Yeah.’ Mac slumps back against the chair. He looks awful.
‘Are you alright?’ I say feebly.
For a second I think he is going to cry. A strange ripple shudders across his face before he straightens and grabs my hand, saying, ‘Yes, but I never want to go through anything like what happened today ever again.’
I soak up his touch. ‘Me neither.’
‘Gemma, I’m going to go.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m flying back to Sydney tonight.’ He extracts his hand and checks his watch. ‘In about two hours.’
A surge of emotion renders me mute.
‘It’s Molly’s birthday tomorrow, and I should be there,’ he continues.
‘I forgot about that,’ I murmur.
‘I shouldn’t have stayed here,’ Mac continues, thrusting his fingers through his hair. ‘Not only would none of this have happened but I should have given us both the space we need to think.’ He looks so lost.
‘I’m so sorry, Mac.’
He nods. ‘Me too. There’s a lot I admire about you, Gemma, but I need you to let me in if this is going to work.’ His hands curl and his jaw tenses. ‘No matter what we decide. That’s non-negotiable for me.’
‘I know,’ I whisper.
‘You need to think about what you want.’ He gets up. He presses his lips against my forehead. ‘All of it. Today scared me, Gem. I need to go home. I need to think too.’
In the huge hospital bed, Ben looks heartbreakingly small. He is washed-out but surprisingly animated. I sit on the edge of his narrow bed and hold his hand, trying to answer his questions about Cam. He traces the freckles on the back of my hand as he considers my answers and I’m relieved he doesn’t seem to remember a lot of what happened.
‘We can organise some counselling for him,’ says Tran to me later as we sit in the tiny hospital cafeteria, steaming mugs of hot chocolate in front of us.
‘I need to find someone in Smithson for him to see anyway. He needs to deal with a lot more than just what happened today.’
Tran looks at me steadily. ‘You’ll be cleared, Gemma, no question. You had no choice.’
‘How’s de Luca?’ I ask.
‘She’s doing okay.’ Tran shakes her head. ‘They’re going to start digging at the site Cam mentioned tomorrow. It’s unbelievable—I’ve driven past that bloody Welcome to Fairhaven sign a million times. Sally’s mother fainted when we told her.’
‘My colleague Owen Thurston called me,’ I say. ‘He and his team have brought Cam’s brother in for questioning. He’s a doctor in Sydney and his wife is a pharmacist.’
Tran takes a sip from her mug. ‘Yes, it’s bigger than we realised. We’re looking into what the former CI knew. Back then the drug network wasn’t as widespread, but at the very least he turned a blind eye. At worst he was taking a cut. Cam has made some serious money through all this, especially over the past two years.’
I nod. ‘He had a steady pipeline of impressionable boys who were desperate for extra money and looking for some kind of purpose. And he had the perfect transient market of backpackers and wealthy holidaymakers to sell to. As far as he was concerned, everybody was a winner. I think he even convinced himself that because the drugs weren’t illegal the whole set-up was somehow above reproach.’
‘I still find it hard to believe no one ever said anything. I mean, especially these days.’
I dip a spoon into the froth and feel the bubbles dissolve in my mouth. ‘Cam ran everything off the grid. He used existing delivery networks, paid people just enough for the risk to be worthwhile. And once they were involved, they were complicit. I’m guessing he sold half the stuff straight from the pub, yet he was never the frontman. I don’t think he let many people into his inner circle—Rick and Aiden were exceptions.’
‘And Greg,’ Tran murmurs.
‘Yes, though I have no idea if that night played out the way Cam described. Whether Sally’s death was really an accident, for instance. I hope forensics can settle that.’ Lane’s pleading face rears up in my thoughts, and I think of his insistence that Rick or Daniel killed Abbey. ‘Cam also wouldn’t tell me what he did to Abbey. I wonder if perhaps because she was so young, he couldn’t even admit it to himself.’ I picture him blacking out Abbey’s face in Rick’s ruined bedroom, the teenage boy’s blood-soaked body lying metres away, and shiver.
‘Well, the team found nothing about Abbey at the pub today,’ says Tran, ‘but we’ll see how we go around the Fairhaven sign.’
I hold air deep in my lungs before I slowly exhale. At the end of the corridor I see Vanessa, her long hair streaming behind her as she hurries toward me.
‘When do you want me to give my statement?’ I say to Tran.
She yawns. ‘Let’s do it tomorrow, then you can take your little boy home.’
I don’t let Vanessa see Ben until she has stopped crying.
‘I just can’t believe any of this,’ she says, walking back to my room with me. ‘Though, do you know what, Tommy never liked Cam. One of those gut feelings, I guess.’ Her face crumples. ‘But I did. He had me fooled.’
‘He had all of us fooled,’ I say. ‘And I’m pretty sure Stuart Klein was involved in Cam’s scheme. I think he paid off witnesses before the inquest.’
‘Was he involved in the drugs as well?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
Vanessa bites her lip until it turns white. ‘God, Gemma, I’m so glad Ben is okay. When I heard he was there today, I just—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
I shake my head. I can’t let myself go to the dark place, the alternate version of reality where Ben is not okay.
‘Tommy’s very upset about everything, not just Lane,’ she says cautiously. ‘He’s so glad Sally’s parents might finally get some closure, but he’s distressed about what happened today.’
I pull off my robe and throw it over the chair before I climb back into my hospital bed. ‘Vanessa,’ I say once I’m settled.
‘I know,’ she whispers, her hands almost covering her entire face. ‘He needs help.’
‘Yes.’ I try to look stern. ‘And if he doesn’t come clean, I will report him.’
‘He’s very old-fashioned, Gemma. He hates asking for help. But I know you’re right.’
‘It’s not just the addiction issues,’ I say, and she winces. ‘He’s lied to a lot of people. He needs to think about whether being a cop is the right thing for him now.’
Her eyes widen. ‘What else would he do? That’s all he knows.’
I pause as I pull the covers up to my waist. ‘I’m sorry, Vanessa. I understand this isn’t easy.’
Her gaze drifts to the side of my bed where there is a glass of water and a tablet.
‘He hurt his back. That’s how this all started, you know. He’d given up smoking the year before but he wasn’t dealing well with that. He kept relapsing. And then he landed in hospital with his back—he’d got knocked over breaking up a fight at the hotel.’ She picks at the hem of her purple skirt and worries her fingers against it. ‘He was in so much pain, and the medication was a godsend. In the end, though, well . . .’ She clears her throat. ‘I could see what was happening but he wouldn’t listen to me. So I left a few years ago, you know. I moved out of the house for almost three weeks. No one knew. I was so angry because we’d talked about adopting a child, and then he went cold on the idea and I knew it was the drugs. It was like his whole personality changed.’ She gives me a strained smile. ‘He had me getting them for him until after Christmas this year when I refused to be a part of it anymore. I don’t know where he’s getting them now.’ Her face crumples. ‘He even had a kid from the station making doctor appointments at one point. God, it might have been Lane.’ Straightening her spine, she forces another smile. ‘But in the end I was weak. I moved back home.’ She looks at me imploringly. ‘The thing is, I love him, Gemma. He has his flaws but he’s a good man. I just told him I didn’t want to know. I do my thing and stay out of his business. We don’t have children but I guess I see him as my responsibility. I look after him.’
‘Ben loved spending time with you, Vanessa,’ I say quietly. ‘Thank you for looking after him. Both of us.’
Her eyes brim with tears and she nods, sniffing. ‘When are you going home?’
‘I’ll probably have to give my statement tomorrow, so sometime after that.’
‘I can look after Ben while you do that, if you like?’ She dabs at her eye with the sleeve of her ruffled blouse.
‘I’m sure he’d love that, thanks. I also want to see Dot. I need to apologise for not being able to find her daughter.’