RILEY TRAILED AN ambulance into the school and up the drive to the Greens’ house. Tom was cuffed on the grass out the front. The arresting detective stood over him and another Satyr officer waved the paramedics through. ‘Woman’s collapsed inside,’ he told them.
Patel stayed with Tom while Riley followed O’Neil and the ambos. There were two more detectives in the hall.
Sarah Green lay prone on the family room floor, one cheek to the carpet, eyes closed. Scott Green moved aside to let the paramedics get to her.
O’Neil turned back to the two detectives. ‘No one goes into the rest of the house,’ he said, ‘including the father. Crime Scene en route.’
Scott Green looked from O’Neil to Riley.
‘What happened?’ O’Neil said.
Green was calm. ‘There was a commotion outside. She went to see.’ He glanced down at his wife. ‘She came back all white and fainted.’
Riley squatted to speak with the ambos. The mother was conscious but in shock. There was no sign of injury, but she may have hit her head as she fell. They would take her to Westmead and at this hour the doctors would keep her overnight for monitoring.
‘Mr Green,’ O’Neil said, ‘we need to take Tom down to the station and ask him some questions. We need you to accompany him.’
Green stared at him. ‘What questions?’
Riley straightened. Forensics would start with the boy’s clothes, looking for the missing seventy mils of blood. They had a warrant but they needed the father out of the house. O’Neil went through the living room onto the lawn. Riley moved across to Scott Green. ‘Would you come with us outside, please?’ she said.
Tom was sullen on the grass. Drone laws were ambiguous. O’Neil cautioned him and cast the net wide, charging the boy under the Surveillance Devices Act and with breaches of anti-voyeurism and anti-stalking legislation.
‘We’re going to take you to the station now to answer some questions,’ O’Neil said. ‘Your father will come with you.’
‘Not him,’ Tom said. ‘I hate him.’
‘What is this?’ Scott Green scoffed. ‘Can we take the cuffs off?’
Tom hissed at his father. ‘I haven’t done anything. Figure it out.’
Scott Green shrugged at Riley.
‘You can ride with your son,’ O’Neil nodded towards the Commodore. ‘He needs an adult support person.’
‘Not him,’ Tom said.
The ambos came out the door with Sarah Green on a stretcher.
‘It’s your choice, Tom,’ Riley said, ‘but if your father doesn’t come, we have to assign someone at the station.’
Patel led the boy to the car. Riley stood beside Scott Green. Figure it out. If the father knew there was something to dispose of, taking him to the station would only delay him. He could get it done tomorrow, or the next day. The ambulance doors opened in the driveway.
‘You should travel to the hospital with your wife,’ Riley said, ‘and stay with her there. In the morning, we’ll bring you over to see Tom and ask you some questions. I’m sure we can clear all this up.’
At the Parramatta station, they printed Tom and took a buccal swab. It was close to midnight, Saturday, January seventh, and Legal Aid were thin on the ground. The desk sergeant rang around the acceptable persons list and eventually an old Greek volunteer with clunky English appeared.
‘Perfect,’ O’Neil said.
Patel went into the interview room with Riley. Farquhar and O’Neil watched through the glass.
‘Tom,’ Riley said, ‘you understand you’ve been charged with spying on Marguerite Dunlop with a drone?’
The boy shook his head.
On her laptop, Riley clicked the footage of Marguerite and turned it to him. Tom watched for a few moments, swallowed, touched his mouth. ‘Wait, what? That’s not mine. I’ve never seen that before.’
‘It was taken by your drone,’ Riley said. ‘It was found in your room.’
His lip curled. ‘Nah.’
‘The footage was shot on your drone about a month ago,’ Riley said.
His head shook. ‘Someone must have borrowed it.’
‘Really?’ Riley said. ‘Someone borrowed your drone, put the video they shot on it onto a USB stick and stuck it under your desk in your bedroom?’
Tom nodded and stared at the wall.
‘The day after Marguerite was killed you flew your drone again and filmed her body.’
‘Did not.’
‘You can see her lying dead,’ Riley said, ‘on the footage. You filmed her lying dead.’
‘Yeah right. So I did that and then gave the police my memory card. Smart.’
‘You were working up to it. You came back later to do it properly. But it was too windy. So you walked right up to her. You couldn’t stay away. You were going to film her. But then you saw Craig Spratt.’
His face screwed into teenage contempt.
‘Tom,’ Patel said. ‘We have a lot of evidence. This is just the start. It’ll be much better for you if you tell us the truth. If you lie to us now—well, judges don’t like that.’ She looked at the volunteer.
‘It’s right,’ the man said.
Tom studied his hands in his lap.
‘Our forensic investigators are going through your room now, Tom,’ Riley said. ‘Technicians are going through your laptop. They can tell if the USB has been connected to your computer. They’ll find your fingerprints on the stick—and on the Blu Tack you used to hide it.’
He sniffed.
‘What else will they find in your room, Tom?’ Riley said.
‘They should mind their own business,’ he said. ‘Stop snooping around.’
‘Snooping,’ Riley said. ‘That’s an interesting word. You know all about snooping, don’t you.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘You’re a bit of a voyeur, aren’t you. Peeping Tom,’ Riley said. ‘You like to watch.’
‘Retard,’ he said.
‘We know you liked to watch Marguerite.’ Riley tapped the laptop and leant forwards. ‘Did you kill Marguerite Dunlop, Tom?’
His head went back. ‘Are you serious?’
‘You didn’t mean to kill her, did you. She surprised you in her bedroom and you lashed out. You hit her hard enough to kill her.’
He crossed his arms.
Riley’s phone pinged with a text. O’Neil: Come out now.
She motioned to Patel and they left the room. O’Neil was with Farquhar in the corridor.
‘Lab’s come back on the knife,’ he said.
Riley’s jaw clenched.
‘They got a good print,’ O’Neil said. ‘It’s a match with the prints on the bench. They’re confirming it now against what we just collected from Tom.’
Riley found her ulcer. It was on the mend. ‘What else?’ she said.
‘The blade was possibly used on the dog. And possibly on the plastic. Too many variables to be definitive.’
‘Can we charge him with murder?’ Patel said.
O’Neil didn’t answer. Riley looked at the door of the interview room. If they charged him with murder, he wouldn’t get bail. But they didn’t have enough to convict. A magistrate might not even commit him to stand trial. The defence would simply argue the prints had been left in the house when Spratt let Tom in to look for the dog.
‘Let’s keep at him,’ O’Neil said. ‘Use the knife and the prints against him, stack it up and see if he cracks. We can charge him with animal cruelty if it helps.’
Riley reached for the door and Patel followed her in. Tom had his back to the volunteer.
‘You were careful after you killed her,’ Riley said. ‘You washed her and wrapped her and washed the whole package again. You read the Gladesville story in the news, about how bleach kills DNA. You used a lot of bleach.’
Tom was looking at his spot on the wall.
‘Come on,’ Riley said. ‘I’m paying you a compliment. You were smart. You did your research. Even before you killed Marguerite, you were following the Gladesville case. BMK. He fascinates you, doesn’t he?’
‘You washed everything,’ Patel said, ‘but you didn’t wash her hair. Why was that?’
His eyes widened in derision. ‘Didn’t have any shampoo?’
‘You knew if you washed the blood from her hair it would run everywhere, leave traces,’ Riley said. ‘Police are good at finding blood, right?’
‘You’re the cop.’
‘Like I said, you were careful, but you were only careful after you killed her.’
His face folded closed. Riley wondered what he’d lived through.
‘Before you killed her,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about that. There’s this funny thing with the bench in that room at Marguerite’s house where you climbed in. Five perfect prints, we found there: a thumb and four fingers of the left hand.’ Riley arched her fingers and thumb and touched the table with the tips. ‘You must have gone just like that.’
The boy raised his right hand and gave her the finger.
‘Do you know where our lab found a match for those prints, Tom? … On your knife. See what I mean about not being careful?’
The kid yawned. ‘What’s the big deal? I told you I was in the house, looking for Tatters.’
Patel leant forwards. ‘Tom,’ she said, ‘it’s not just your prints we have from the knife.’
The boy pushed back his chair, straightened his legs out, folded his arms, put his chin on his chest and closed his eyes.
‘The technicians looked at your knife under a microscope,’ Patel said, ‘and also the plastic Marguerite was wrapped in, and the roll of plastic behind the maintenance shed—’
Riley raised a hand. They couldn’t lie. ‘The lab used something called fracture fit to compare the cuts, and found they were a match. That’s irrefutable evidence. The judge just takes it as true.’
The room was silent. Riley looked at her watch. 1.15 a.m. Maybe a stint in the cells would shake him up. His eyes were still closed, his legs outstretched. His limbs, his face, his hands, his neck, every part of him was brown from the sun. Except his feet … she remembered him in thongs walking before her on the path from the cave. Pale feet—he always wore shoes. She looked at the pair he was wearing. Brand new, black-and-white Nikes …
His mother had said he was at Carlingford on Friday, buying trainers.
Riley felt the slippage, realisation calving. She rose with it, motioning Patel outside.
There were two uniforms stationed in the corridor. ‘Give us a sec,’ Riley said.
O’Neil appeared.
‘Who have we got at the hospital?’ Riley said.
‘Annie,’ O’Neil said, ‘and two constables.’
Riley called Tran and told her what she needed. She hung up and paced the hall. In his story about Gladesville cleaning up, Diamond had speculated that the killer was incinerating evidence. It was rubbish, just another thing Beat-Up Benny had wrong. Tran rang back. Riley listened and ended the call and walked over to O’Neil and Patel.
‘It’s his shoes,’ Riley said.
O’Neil looked past her to the boy in the room.
‘Not those,’ Riley said. ‘His old ones. I think I know where they are.’
Riley trod on the V8 across the river on O’Connell Street. There was nothing on the roads and she ran the red lights.
‘You think the blood is on his shoes?’ O’Neil said.
Riley turned into the school. Sarah Green had told Tran that Tom had asked for money for new trainers early in the week, maybe Tuesday. Sarah had bucked up because she’d only bought the last pair a couple of months ago. Tom had showed her a shoe that was ripped along the instep. He’d said he’d torn it in the bush.
‘Sarah says she put it in the rubbish,’ Riley said. ‘But here’s the thing: she only saw one shoe.’
‘The rubbish is collected centrally and trucked out,’ O’Neil said. ‘We put a stop on it. We’ve been through it.’
They were at the back of the school now, turning onto the access road they’d used earlier. Big gums loomed in the headlights.
‘There’s something else I want to check,’ Riley said.
She pulled up, popped the boot with the button, passed around gloves, paper booties and evidence bags. She clicked on a torch and they walked in tight single file with Patel in the middle and O’Neil behind her. It was two a.m., the same time of night as Patel’s attack. The three of them kept up a low murmur to each other as they went, past the waterhole, to the cave. They gloved up and put the booties on. Riley slipped in first.
‘Tread carefully.’ She lit their way then played the torch over the debris on the floor.
O’Neil went forwards and squatted.
In the beam was a white-striped black Nike. O’Neil opened an evidence bag and Patel picked up the shoe by the heel, held it between thumb and forefinger in the light. The white of the emblem was stained a rust colour. She turned it slightly. The blood had seeped through, marking the green inner sole.
O’Neil pointed at an edge of material on the bottom of the tongue and Patel pulled it gently. A cloth name tag had been sewn in. It was blotted with blood but readable. Tom Green.
‘Don’t you just love an organised mother?’ O’Neil said.
‘Or father,’ Riley said.
Patel placed the shoe in the bag and O’Neil held it out. ‘I don’t think we’ll call that circumstantial,’ he said.
They stood and Riley shone the torch over the campfire and the kindling and newspaper. ‘The papers are from this week,’ she said. ‘He must have brought them down to start a fire. He’d read about incinerating evidence. I think he was going to burn the shoe.’
‘Then we walked in on him here,’ O’Neil said. ‘He must’ve been going out his window to finish the job.’
‘But why show one shoe to the mum?’ Patel said.
‘It mustn’t have had blood on it, so he sliced it open to ruin it,’ Riley said. ‘He had to make an excuse for getting a new pair.’
‘But if you think father and son,’ Patel said, ‘why didn’t he ask his dad for the money?’
Riley’s eyes met O’Neil’s in the torch light. Figure it out. If Scott Green had been helping clean up, Tom would have gone to him for cash.
‘Scott’s asleep outside Sarah’s room at the hospital,’ Riley said. ‘Annie went and checked. She said he was using a vending machine as a pillow.’
‘If Scott’s part of it,’ O’Neil said, ‘he missed the memo marked urgent.’