Jill took a bite from her Vegemite toast and washed it down with strong tea. The run to the beach and back had cleared her head and the self-pity she’d been feeling earlier had been replaced by anger. Nick Rimis might think she was crazy and unreliable, but she’d worked too hard for it to fall apart now. With this enforced leave, she’d dig deep and come up with the evidence to prove Robbie hadn’t taken his life.
Once dressed, Jill sat down on the lounge with her laptop and glanced across at The Morning Show on the television. She picked up the remote and turned the volume to low, and then double-clicked on the folder she’d created on Robbie.
With no other real leads, she decided to start from scratch — their childhood. Robbie and Fin had gone to live with their grandmother after their parents had died in a car accident. She needed to speak to someone who knew Robbie and Fin when they were children and knew their grandmother. It could be just a coincidence, but around the time the grandmother died Robbie’s behaviour changed; at least according to Fin. It was a long shot but something in Robbie and Fin’s past may explain what led Robbie to his death and explain Fin’s strange behaviour.
Jill tried to remember if Robbie had ever mentioned where his grandmother had lived. She thought it was Katoomba. Calloway was not a common name so when she checked the white pages she found two Calloways in Sydney; one in Pendle Hill and the other in Balgowlah. There was only one listing in Katoomba. She wrote down the address and phone number. She dialled the number but it was disconnected. It was worth trying the neighbour, they may know something. She did another address look-up, got the name, and then used it to find the number. When she made the call, there was no answer. She tried the same procedure again, but this time a few doors down from where Grace Calloway had lived. Someone answered on the first ring.
‘Hello?’ The voice was low, male.
‘Yes, hello. My name’s Detective Jill Brennan. I’m calling from Chatswood Police. I’m looking for someone who might have known a Mrs Grace Calloway.’
‘Yeah, I knew Gracie. The wife and I went to her funeral.’
‘Can I have your name please, sir?’
‘Yeah, it’s Allan, Allan Briggs.’
‘Mr Briggs, can I ask how long you’ve lived in Milton Street?’
‘About five years, came up to the Mountains to retire after I left the job at the steelworks down south.’
So Allan Briggs would never have met Robbie and Fin. They would have already left Katoomba by then. ‘Is there anyone still living in the street who might have known the Calloways from before 2001?’
‘Let me think. There’s Maureen Hardcastle. She was Gracie’s next-door neighbour. I remember speaking to her at the funeral. But she’s not living there anymore. The family shuffled her off to a nursing home, she was having trouble with her memory.’
‘I don’t suppose you know which nursing home?’
‘Haven’t a clue, sorry love.’
Jill thanked him for his help and a few phone calls later she found Maureen Hardcastle at the Burlington Aged Care Home in Katoomba.
Jill thought about the police shows she watched on television. There were similarities to real policing, but it was never that straightforward, a murder investigation could take months or years to solve. In some cases, the crime went unsolved. The script writers of the shows made it look so easy — a person is murdered, a witness comes forward, a chase ensues, a twist, maybe a red herring or two thrown in for good measure, and an hour later the bad guy is behind bars. An hour…yeah, that’d be nice.
To regain her credibility Jill had to find proof Robbie had been pushed, or at least proof he’d fallen accidentally, from the clock tower. Maureen Hardcastle might be just the person to help. Jill drove across the Parramatta River and followed the GPS prompts to the entrance of the motorway. When she drove onto the M4 she put her foot down. She’d rung through to the nursing home before she’d left the outskirts of Sydney. Maureen Hardcastle would be expecting her, if she remembered.