Adam Lee turned on the television set in the airless room off the kitchen of his father’s Chinese restaurant. Along with the television set, the room contained an old sofa, a single bed, drums of cooking oil, sacks of rice and a bar fridge.
Adam grabbed a beer from the fridge and slumped down on the sofa. The television was switched on and a news update droned in the background. Adam looked up when he caught something about a passenger jet crashing in Eastern Ukraine. An act of terror, the news presenter said. A break for an ad and then…
‘Patrick… Patrick Hill.’
Adam turned the volume up and watched while the news camera panned Callan Park, then the camera moved in for a close-up shot of the clock tower. A woman reporter was talking about the body that had been discovered earlier that morning — Patrick Hill, a sixty-eight-year-old man who lived in Glover Street across from the Park. He was described as a retired businessman and the person whose dog had discovered a police officer’s body at Callan Park a week ago.
A photo of Patrick Hill flashed onto the screen, followed by Robbie Calloway in his police dress uniform. Mention was made of the deaths happening in the same location. They said nothing about Patrick being shot, only that he had died from a heart attack. Adam wondered what the police were playing at. All he could think of was what he knew from the police crime shows he watched on television, the investigators often held back information to eliminate crank suspects from admitting to a crime they hadn’t committed.
Adam was relying on Fin to incriminate herself. Her drinking was out of control and he knew she’d been having blackouts. She certainly had a motive to kill Hill. If it came out Hill had abused Fin when she was a child, the police would be looking at her, for sure.
Adam tried to remember if there was anything he’d overlooked but he was confident there was no evidence to link him to the deaths of either Robbie or Patrick, apart from Robbie’s gun. He put his magazine down and thought about the Gweilo female detective who’d come to see him in the hospital after the attack at the Interchange. This was the worst part; wondering if she was smart enough to work it out. When Fin had told him the detective and her brother had been friends, it had been the first piece of bad luck — he hoped his luck would hold out.
There was a loud knock on the back door.
Adam swung the door open. Fin was on the doorstep.
‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’ Adam stepped back into the room and Fin walked past him. ‘Geez,’ he said, ‘you look like the walking dead.’
Fin clasped her hands. ‘It’s Uncle Patrick. He’s dead, it’s all over the news.’
‘Of course, he’s fucking dead. You killed him, remember?’ Adam whispered.
‘I did?’ Fin looked at Adam and trembled.
‘I was there with you. You had Robbie’s gun. I had to take it off you. Don’t you remember?’
Fin paced the room. ‘What’s going on? Have you been lacing my stuff with something, some sort of mind-altering shit?’
‘Keep your voice down, will you? Someone will hear you. Anyway, the way you’ve been acting it’s got nothing to do with me.’ Adam stepped back and held up his hands in protest. ‘Promise on my dead mum’s grave.’
Fin bit into her lip. ‘Where’s Robbie’s gun? We have to get rid of it.’
Adam bent down on his knees and pulled it out from behind a loose brick in the wall. It was wrapped in plastic. He passed it to her.
She stared at it but didn’t take it. ‘Get rid of it,’ she said.
‘I wiped it clean. Thought I’d keep it as a souvenir.’
‘No. It’s Robbie’s gun. I don’t want you using it.’ Fin looked away.
‘How did you get it anyway? Didn’t think cops took their guns home with them.’
‘Robbie was going to threaten Uncle Patrick with it. Robbie always told me he’d get Uncle Patrick one day. He wanted him behind bars for everything he’d done to us. He must have wanted to scare Uncle Patrick into a confession. It was only my word against his with Gracie dead.’ She stared at the gun again. ‘I can’t remember being with Uncle Patrick at the tower but I remember taking the stairs to the top. My memory’s a blank.’ Fin frowned. ‘Oh, Adam, what are we going to do?’
He shrugged, took a swig of beer. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, but there’s no way I’m going down for murder. Here, take the gun.’
Fin knocked Adam’s can of beer to the floor as she rushed from the room.