Chapter Fifty-four

It took more than an hour for the detectives to return, but Jack enjoyed the wait. The interview room was cool, and he stopped sweating. Begley had sent out for real coffee and Anderson delivered it with a tandoori chicken and avocado wrap, and a first-aid kit. Never before had Jack been treated like a VIP in a police station.

The pampering wasn’t to last. Duffy and Maguire’s smiles, when they re-entered the room, could best be described as malicious. No doubt they were looking forward to making the next few hours as unpleasant as possible.

The detectives were accompanied by a well-groomed, middle-aged man in a sharp, charcoal suit and crimson tie. Jack smelled lawyer. His watch was a Patek Philippe. Expensive lawyer.

‘This,’ said Maguire, ‘is Rajiv Chowdhury, he’s here to represent you.’

Chowdhury shook Jack’s hand overenthusiastically. ‘Your father sent me. Just in case. I’m very pleased to meet you.’

After his initial surprise, Jack’s mind flooded with questions. How had his father even known he was being brought in for questioning? Why had he organised a lawyer? Was it some sort of atonement following the false allegations made in his own newspapers?

He and Chowdhury sat facing Duffy and Maguire across the table. Duffy opened a notebook and removed a pen from his pocket. Jack couldn’t decide whether the detectives’ expressions were malevolent or smug. Perhaps one of each.

Maguire kicked off the hostilities. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’

Jack said, ‘Am I under caution?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Good,’ said Jack, and smiled at the detectives. ‘I can say what I like.’

Maguire tried again. ‘Like I said, we’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

Jack interrupted, ‘Jack William Harris. Fourth of April, 1984. Currently residing at Seven Mile Beach Road. Would you like me to spell “seven” for you, Detective Duffy?’

Duffy glared back at him.

‘We’ve a couple of matters to discuss,’ said Maguire. ‘I believe you are familiar with Tom Bradshaw.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jack. ‘Very. Unfortunately. It’s definitely the worst terminal at Los Angeles Airport. Why do you ask? Did I forget to pay for a bagel?’

Jack felt a hand on his arm – Chowdhury’s. ‘That’s Tom Bradley not Bradshaw.’

‘Ah, my mistake,’ said Jack. ‘It is a shit terminal, though. Luckily, QANTAS has changed to—’

Maguire shouted, ‘Enough! We’ve received a complaint from Mayor Tom Bradshaw.’

‘The mayor?’

Maguire nodded.

Jack scratched his head. ‘Nope, I don’t know that I’ve ever met him.’

Duffy’s pen stopped writing and the detectives exchanged glances.

Maguire asked, ‘Were you in Mullumbimby yesterday afternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Near the council chambers?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘Buying cheese.’

Maguire’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Cheese?’

‘The IGA supermarket in the main street has an awesome deli. You guys should head out and take a look. If you like blue vein, then—’

‘Harris!’ yelled Maguire. ‘What time did you buy this cheese?’

Jack pulled out his phone, navigated to his bank transactions and showed the detectives. ‘4:53’

‘And what were you doing before you bought the cheese? In particular’ – he checked Duffy’s notes – ‘between 4 and 4.30 p.m.?’

‘Sitting in my car.’

‘Were you with anyone?’

‘No’.

‘So, nobody saw you sitting in the car?’

‘No.’

The detectives both leaned back in their chairs, looking pleased with themselves.

‘But I was on the phone. To Caitlin O’Shaughnessy. From …’ Jack checked his calls records, ‘… nineteen minutes to four. The call lasted fifty-eight minutes.’ He showed his phone to the detectives, who resumed glancing at each other again, uncertainly.

Maguire said, ‘To Caitlin O’Shaughnessy, for fifty-eight minutes?’

Jack said to Duffy, ‘You don’t have to write that down twice. Would you like me to spell O’Shaughnessy? It’s a tough one.’

A redness was creeping up Duffy’s neck, spreading towards increasingly hostile eyes. Jack was enjoying himself – not long now before Duffy went thermonuclear.

Maguire asked, ‘What did you and Ms O’Shaughnessy speak about for almost an hour?’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to record this?’

Maguire was losing patience. ‘Just answer the question, Mr Harris.’

‘We talked about the incompetent investigation into her father’s death. How the police wouldn’t recognise a murder if it bit them on the arse. How they wasted the first few critical days, contaminated the crime scene, lost the opportunity for fingerprint and DNA evidence—’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Duffy, his face now red with anger.

‘Objection,’ said Chowdhury. ‘You are insulting my client, who is fully cooperating with your enquiries by answering your question.’

Jack looked back at the detectives. ‘Would you like me to continue cooperating?’

Maguire’s lips had disappeared into a tight slit, but he nodded.

‘We also spoke at length about two useless detectives from Sydney who have made zero progress. I think we used the word “zero”, although it could have been “fuck-all”.’

Duffy slammed his pen onto the desk at the same time Maguire jumped up from his chair.

‘And then I bought some Jarlsberg.’

Duffy leaned over the table and grabbed a fistful of Jack’s shirt. ‘I am going to—’

‘Gentlemen.’ Chowdhury was firm, but calm. ‘I would very much like to suggest you stop assaulting my client and that we all take a break and calm down.’

Duffy slowly, and reluctantly, released Jack’s shirt, snatched the notepad from the desk and followed Maguire to the door.

Jack called after them, ‘White with no sugar, thanks.’

After Duffy had slammed the door, Chowdhury raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Jack shrugged. ‘What?’

‘Well, as your lawyer—’

‘Are you my lawyer? Or are you my father’s lawyer?’

Chowdhury didn’t blink. ‘As your lawyer, I would very much like to advise you not to try to make them angry.’

‘I’m the one who’s angry. Those detectives wanted my face on every TV in the country, looking like I’d been arrested. You can’t recover a reputation after that. Worse, a man has been murdered and they really have done fuck-all. So I’m seriously pissed off. The difference is, Mr Chowdhury, that I don’t show my anger, because if you do that you lose. Unfortunately, you stopped him from hitting me, because then it would have been game over.’

‘But, as your lawyer, Mr Harris, I advise you—’

‘Advise all you like. I’m just making sure they don’t mess with me again.’

They made small talk as they waited for the detectives to return. But it wasn’t Chowdhury’s interest in medieval jousting, or that all his five children were lawyers that interested Jack. Rather, it was how a Melbourne-based lawyer had travelled over fifteen hundred kilometres to Byron Bay before midday. Jack had only been brought in for questioning a couple of hours ago.

Duffy and Maguire were calmer when they returned to their seats. They didn’t skip into the room holding hands, but the threat of physical violence seemed to have dissipated.

‘Mr Harris,’ said Maguire, ‘I presume you’ve seen the newspaper allegations implying you are a person of interest in the investigation of the murder of Patrick O’Shaughnessy?’

Jack nodded.

‘Obviously, it would be remiss of us if we didn’t question you after such an allegation.’

Jack nodded again.

‘Did you murder Patrick O’Shaughnessy?’

He felt Chowdhury’s hand on his arm again. ‘As your lawyer, I would very much like to advise you not to answer that question, Mr Harris.’

Jack turned to Chowdhury in surprise. ‘What? Of course I didn’t murder Patrick.’

Maguire continued. ‘Could you tell us your whereabouts during the night of Sunday the third of November this year?’

He felt the hand on his arm again. ‘Mr Harris, as your—’

Jack ignored him. ‘I was in my father’s house at Seven Mile Beach Road. There is a ring of video cameras around the property. Nobody can get in, or out, without being seen.’

‘We checked,’ said Maguire. ‘The video cameras were not functioning on the evening in question.’

An alarm bell started ringing quietly in Jack’s head. He said, ‘I was drinking with my father’s assistant, Don Hargreaves, until very late in the evening.’

Maguire pressed on. ‘Well, according to Mr Hargreaves, he last saw you heading off to bed before midnight and didn’t see you again until after nine the next morning. Did you murder Patrick O’Shaughnessy sometime between those hours?’

The hand was back. ‘Mr Harris, I advise you—’

‘I repeat, I didn’t murder Patrick. I was so pissed that night I could barely make it to the bathroom, never mind drive ten kilometres along a winding gravel road in the dark. I’d like to remind you that you didn’t even know this was a murder until I found the leg.’

Maguire pushed on regardless. ‘Some criminals want to be caught. Is that you, Mr Harris?’

Jack turned to Chowdhury. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ He looked back at Maguire. ‘Next question.’

Maguire just shrugged. ‘You said Mr O’Shaughnessy’s laptop was stolen. Do you know what Mr O’Shaughnessy was investigating at the time of his death?’

‘As your lawyer, I advise you to answer the question as truthfully as possible.’

The alarm sounding in Jack’s head became a cacophony. He turned to the lawyer in disbelief. ‘You advise me to answer that question?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Chowdhury. ‘It doesn’t incriminate you, and may help solve this dreadful murder.’

Jack was still staring at his lawyer when the alarm bells switched off, their job done. His father wasn’t paying Chowdhury to be Jack’s lawyer, he was paying him to gather information. Which made sense. As his father had already said to Jack, if Patrick was murdered because of a story he was working on for The Beacon, Harris could be liable. That would be one big compensation payout. Chowdhury was defending Harris Media, not Jack. He was annoyed it took him so long to realise, given his father had always put his own interests first, including before Jack’s.

He turned back to the detectives. ‘Do you intend to charge me?’

Maguire couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. ‘No. Not yet.’

‘In that case, I believe we’ve finished.’ Jack turned to Duffy. ‘I was disappointed not to see you two doing the good cop, bad cop routine, but I guess that’s difficult when you’re both bad cops.’ He stood, shook Chowdhury’s hand and said, ‘I very much hope you have a pleasant flight back to Melbourne.’

Chowdhury tried to say something in protest, but Jack turned and was gone.

He stopped outside the front door of the police station, distracted by the pain throbbing in his leg. It was getting worse. He needed the wound attended to. And a tetanus shot. He searched on his phone for the nearest GP practice and made an appointment. Then he tried to gather his thoughts. Why was the video surveillance not working that night? Why didn’t Don back up his alibi on the night of the murder? And what was his father up to?