A taxi drops Jim and me at the entrance to the private estate where the Galeas live, and we walk the rest of the way. It’s a humid eighty degrees Fahrenheit and I’m clammy and uncomfortable in my twill maternity trousers and long-sleeved top.
‘Someone forgot to tell Queensland that it’s mid-winter,’ Jim observes. He’s wearing chinos and a short-sleeved shirt, but there are sweat patches appearing in his armpits.
We head down a slight slope, following the edge of a golf course. Senior citizens in brightly coloured clothes trundle along the links in their golf carts, beneath palm trees swayed by a breeze from the river. The network of streets has broad pavements and identical bungalow homes, their front gardens colourful with jacaranda and hibiscus.
Jim consults his phone’s GPS. ‘Calandra Gardens. It should be down here on the left. We’re looking for number 43.’
The slatted blinds are half shut, but there’s a car parked on the drive. We walk up to the door and ring the bell. It’s opened by a stout woman with curly hair dyed vivid auburn. A grey-haired man in pale blue slacks and a sports shirt appears at her elbow, and a dog inserts itself between them, its anxious expression mirroring that of its owners.
‘Are you Russell and Audrey Galea?’ Jim asks.
‘Yes,’ says the woman. ‘Who wants to know?’ The croak in her voice and the deep lines in her skin betray a lifelong cigarette habit.
‘And you’re the parents of Holly Galea?’
The man clenches his jaw tightly and blinks. His wife’s expression shifts from wary to miserable.
‘Our daughter passed away over a year ago,’ she says.
‘I know,’ says Jim, with a smile of sympathy. ‘I’m very sorry. Could we come in and have a quick word about her?’
‘You’re from the UK?’ Russell Galea pipes up. ‘Are you the London police?’
Jim shows his business card. ‘We’re conducting some private enquiries, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police,’ he says smoothly. So smoothly I can tell he’s done this many times before. ‘This is Alice, an associate of mine,’ he adds vaguely. We had agreed beforehand that we would not, at this stage, divulge what we knew about Holly’s extorting money from my late husband.
‘I guess you can come in,’ Audrey Galea says. ‘The police in London said they’re still investigating who killed her.’ She clutches the doorframe for support, and her husband rubs her shoulder. ‘We’re just so devastated. The whole family. We don’t know what the hell to think.’
We’re led into the open-plan living room, which feels oppressively full of large furniture, serried china knick-knacks and arrangements of silk flowers. Audrey sits down heavily in an armchair and fumbles in her bag for a packet of cigarettes, lighting one with trembling fingers. Russell goes into to the kitchen, the dog trotting at his heels, and reappears with a tray of cold drinks.
‘Do you know why Holly decided to travel to London,’ Jim consults his notes, ‘back in March 2018?’
‘She’d had a car accident and couldn’t work for a while, but she did have some compo money from that. And she decided she may as well use it to travel, didn’t she, Russ?’
Russell Galea nods.
‘And before that – did she live in Sydney?’
Audrey nods. ‘She did. She trained as a lawyer. She was ever so smart was our Holly.’ A beam of maternal pride lights up her lined face, and she reaches for a framed graduation portrait, handing it first to Jim, and then to me. The girl clutching her degree certificate is a lot slimmer than the one I met, her hair a lot longer, but there’s no doubt it’s the woman I saw in Waverley Gardens that night.
‘Did she say anything about meeting up with anyone in particular while she was over there?’
‘Well, you know, she had friends from school and from uni who were living in London. I know she planned on trying to catch up with a couple, as well as seeing the sights. But I don’t have specific names, if that’s what you mean. She didn’t give names, did she, Russ?’
He shakes his head with a sigh, scratching between the dog’s ears.
‘Did she tell you where she planned to stay?’
‘We knew she’d booked a hotel, somewhere reasonable. But we only found out the name of it when they sent her tablet back to us.’
Jim and I exchange a look.
‘Her tablet?’ Jim asks. ‘As in a hand-held device?’
‘Yes,’ Audrey confirms. ‘We don’t have a charger for it, so we haven’t used it or anything. We put it in her room with the rest of her things.’ She exhales a long trembling breath that threatens to break into tears.
‘The police took the rest of her stuff from her hotel room,’ Russell says, ‘They’ve kept it as evidence now… now they know she was killed. The tablet must have been separate.’
Jim frowns. ‘And you haven’t shown this to the police? Over here?’
Audrey and Russell look at each other, as though they’ve been caught doing something wrong. I feel sorry for them, and try and reassure them with a smile.
‘It’s perfectly understandable if you didn’t want to,’ I say. ‘Especially if you don’t have the rest of her things.’
‘We weren’t sure what to do, to be frank,’ Russell mumbles. ‘The shock was something terrible. We weren’t really thinking straight.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Let me fetch it for you.’
He comes back with a padded envelope containing the largest model of iPad and a compliment slip from the Novotel in West Kensington, signed by someone called Anya Wojcik, Deputy Manager.
‘Could we take this with us?’ Jim asks. ‘It will only be for a few hours, then we’ll return it.’
‘No worries,’ Audrey nods. ‘It’s not like it’s doing us any good lying around here.’
We find an internet café in the nearby community of Warana, and the manager helpfully finds us a charger for the iPad. While it’s charging, we sit at a table outside with a bottle of beer and an iced tea, surrounded by surfers and backpackers. Jim punches the phone number on the compliment slip into his mobile and walks a few metres away to a quieter spot so that he can hear better.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ he says, returning to the table and wiping the sweat from his forehead with a paper napkin. ‘I spoke to Anya Wojcik. She’s still working at the Novotel.’
‘And?’
‘She remembers Holly well, because of the press stories when her body was found. She says that the day before she vanished, Holly came to her with her iPad and asked if the printers in the business centre were Wi-Fi enabled because she needed to print something from her tablet. After she’d used the printer, she gave the iPad to Anya and said there wasn’t space for it in her room safe and would she keep it behind the front desk until she checked out. Anya locked it in the reception staff’s own safe. Then, when she first went missing, the assumption was that she’d buggered off without paying her bill. That happens quite a lot, apparently. The police didn’t get involved until Russell and Audrey made a formal missing person’s report some days later. So Anya mailed the iPad back to 43 Calandra Gardens, which was the contact address Holly had given when she checked in. Months later, when Holly’s body was found, Anya wondered about the iPad, and whether it should be with the police, but she felt so badly for the Galeas that she didn’t like to ask for it back.’
I take a long sip of my iced tea. ‘Interesting. Did she say what Holly was printing?’
‘She didn’t know, but she checked the business centre receipts and she was charged 45p, which means it was just one page,’ he drains the contents of his beer bottle in one go, ‘which hopefully we might be about to see.’
When we go back inside, Holly’s tablet has sufficient battery life for it to be switched on. Jim swipes through the screens, looking through the assorted apps. He opens Files, but the browser is empty.
‘Try Notes,’ I suggest.
He opens the application and starts reading. I watch the expression on his face change. ‘Oh my God,’ he breathes. ‘This is it.’
‘What?’ I demand, reaching for the iPad. ‘Let me see it.’
‘Alice, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Let’s just take a minute and—’
But I’ve already taken the iPad from him and started to read the typed page.
30 March 2018
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
For the record, I want you to know that today I’m meeting with the wife of a man called Greg Henderson, in London, UK.
I first met Greg in July 2015, on a dating site where he called himself ‘Ben’. I was working as an escort at the time, and he tried to forcibly have sex with me without paying. I later found him using the same pseudonym on other websites, but I didn’t know his true identity. Then I saw an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a man wanted in connection with the killing of a waitress called Pearl Liu. The photo was of ‘Ben’. That’s when I learned his real name and that he had worked at a company called Spectrum Financial.
A couple of years later, completely by chance, I saw a photo of Henderson online, only now he was in the UK and he was calling himself Dominic Gill. But I knew it was him, and when I contacted him by email, he confirmed it. He started paying me money to stop me telling anyone. Since I’d had a car accident and was unable to work, it’s my intention to negotiate a one-off sum from Greg to keep me quiet about his true identity. I have travelled to London to try and finalise this arrangement with him.
One thing I am sure of is that I don’t trust him. So if you’re reading this now, then something has happened to me.