The drive back to town was just as crazy as the drive there, except this time Rebecca had a full stomach. She didn’t feel at all well. The fact that, despite her best efforts, she was now beginning to doubt Jonathan, didn’t make her feel any better. By the time Jonathan pulled into his North Adelaide driveway, Rebecca had turned green. She leapt out of the car, crunched over the gravel driveway to the hydrangea bed bordering the house, and vomited violently.
‘Oh dear,’ said Jonathan with a worried look on his face. ‘It must have been something you ate. I hope it wasn’t the dessert. Dessert was the only course we had that was the same.’
Rebecca rolled her bloodshot eyes and grabbed a tissue in her pocket to wipe the edges of her mouth.
‘I need a glass of water,’ she growled.
‘Sure, come inside,’ said Jonathan.
Rebecca drank her water and tidied herself up. She said her goodbyes and drove her car into the city and into a car park around the corner from the police headquarters in Angas Street.
She went up to the heavily fortified counter and crouched down to yell through the small holes in the bullet-proof glass between herself and the policewoman sitting behind the counter. ‘I’m here to see Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jarvie.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’ muffled the policewoman.
‘No,’ Rebecca yelled back. ‘It’s about a murder case.’
The policewoman looked up from her papers and for the first time looked Rebecca in the eye. ‘Name?’
Rebecca momentarily thought the policewoman might be asking for the name of the murder victim but decided to go with her own. ‘Rebecca Keith!’
‘Take a seat.’
Rebecca looked around. There weren’t too many seats free. There was an assortment of types in the waiting room: men in business suits, presumably on business, and a couple of women with young children. Rebecca wondered if the women were wives of policemen, visiting their husbands, or if they were suspects in some crime. There were a few men with tattoos, looking unkempt and threatening, at least through Rebecca’s prism. She decided to take a seat by the businessmen, pondering if her stereotyping had gotten it all wrong and the businessmen were the more dangerous villains out of the lot of them.
She hardly had a chance to cross her legs when the policewoman bellowed on the public-address system, ‘Ms Keith, please proceed to the counter.’
Rebecca was startled into jumping up from her seat and ungainly leaping across to the counter. The policewoman slid a visitor name badge and a visitors’ book under the glass partition. ‘Put your details here, sign there, and wear this. Take the lift to the tenth floor. Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jarvie will meet you at the reception area there.’
‘Right,’ said Rebecca, finding it difficult to write on the book perched halfway on and halfway off the narrow counter on her side of the glass. Rebecca pinned her visitor’s pass to her top and took the lift to the tenth floor as instructed.
Travelling up in the lift, Rebecca once again began to get nervous at the thought of seeing Gary. This guy was really getting to her.
The doors opened, and there he stood. He was wearing a black suit that complemented his dark-brown hair.
‘Good afternoon, Ms Keith. To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘I think I have a couple of leads for you,’ said Rebecca.
‘Follow me,’ said Gary, and he led her to an interview room, picking up Detective Alice White along the way.
‘Please be seated,’ said Gary, politely pulling out a chair for her. He and Detective White sat opposite. Detective White opened her notebook.
‘What is it, Ms Keith?’
‘Well, I was at Jonathan Riddle’s house today.’
Gary raised his eyebrows. ‘One murder suspect visiting another?’
‘Jonathan hadn’t been out of his house since last Friday, and I thought he needed jollying up. I decided to visit him and then take him out to lunch with me. I had to go to McLaren Vale on work, so I thought I could also fit in lunch with Jonathan.’
Rebecca noticed Gary’s beautiful brown eyes and long eyelashes.
‘And?’ prompted Gary after a long pause.
‘Oh, yes. Well, he needed to have a shower, so I decided to go out to his old stables, which is now a garage with a storage attic upstairs. I needed to find all the olive gear and bring it down ready for Saturday’s annual harvest.’
Gary looked curious, but he didn’t ask about the harvest, so Rebecca moved on.
‘I was rummaging around and found the olive gear in an old chest, but I also found a range of dried herbs hanging on the rafters. One bunch of drying leaves was holly. Some people use holly for medicinal purposes. Anyway, the holly had a variegated red edge to the leaves, just like the ones around Leong Chew’s ears.’
Rebecca pulled out the sample she had in her pocket.
‘Bag it,’ said Gary to Detective White. To Rebecca, he said, ‘We have already made a search of Jonathan’s house, but no one picked this up.’ To Detective White he said, ‘Get a squad around there to search again. Bag a sample of that holly, and make sure no one’s fingerprints or DNA contaminates it. Ask forensics to see if there is an exact match with the holly we found on Leong Chew. And I want a thorough search of that garage. Top to bottom. It was missed, and I’m not happy about it!’
Gary turned back to Rebecca. ‘Thank you, Ms Keith. Did you tell Jonathan Riddle you found this holly?’
‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to upset him. I was there to cheer him up, not to throw him into another round of anxiety. However, there is something else.’
‘Yes?’ said Gary.
Rebecca cleared her throat. She was finding it hard to say, knowing it was looking bad for Jonathan. When she did speak, it came out in a rush. ‘I think Jonathan has blood on his jumper!’
‘What jumper, Rebecca, and how do you know it is blood?’
‘Well, I don’t know it is blood for sure, but it looks like it. It was the jumper he was wearing on the day we discovered Leong Chew’s head on Popeye. He was wearing it today at lunch, except this time he wasn’t wearing the blazer, and I saw red blotches on the back of his sleeve.’
Gary smiled.
‘What are you smiling at? This isn’t funny,’ said Rebecca.
‘It’s blackberry jam,’ said Gary. ‘We took swabs of everyone’s clothes, including yours, if you remember. Jonathan was asked to take off his blazer, and the stains on the back of his jumper’s sleeve were noticed. I’ve read the forensic notes, and no traces of blood were found on Jonathan’s jumper. What they found was blackberry jam and a range of other foodstuffs, but no blood.’
Rebecca looked visibly relieved. Her instinct about Jonathan had been right, and she was again sure that the holly matter would be cleared up in Jonathan’s favour.
‘I knew it. My instinct told me Jonathan was innocent,’ said Rebecca.
‘But instinct can be wrong, Ms Keith. If the police relied on instinct, we wouldn’t get very far. You were wrong about the blood, but as for this holly, if there is a direct match, it does mean we will have a lot of questions for Jonathan, whether he’s directly implicated or not. The holly has been found on his property, and that raises serious suspicions, assuming there is a match. Is there anything else?’
‘No,’ said Rebecca. ‘That’s it from me. I think I’ve passed on enough for one day. How about you? Have you got any other leads you are following?’
‘I’m sorry, but at the moment, the information between us can only go one way. I cannot let you know any details of the investigation unless I need your assistance on a matter.’