CHAPTER 3

Oh fuck, there it was again! Wonderful warmth, rushing contented excitement, secure adventure, powerful peace. It picked him up and rocked him like a baby, taking him away from all the shit, telling him, promising him, that every little thing was going to be not just all right, but fan-fucking-tastic. Better than good, beyond best. Fuck, he’d missed it.

No levelling out yet. It kept on coming, crashing in, more and more, wave after wave rushing through him, carrying him along, so strongly he could hardly stay on top of it. How big was this fucking wave? Was he going to slip off and get smashed? It was too much. He wanted to keep going but he needed it to stop, keep going and stop, stop fucking stooooppppppp now, get off me, let me go, you fucker, STOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP …

*

Barb wasn’t one to honk, but she did appreciate punctuality, and as she sat in her car outside Joe’s house, she was sorely tempted. 7.33 a.m. It wasn’t like him to be a minute late, let alone three. At least, not recently. She imagined in his old life he hadn’t exactly been an ornament to punctuality. However, in the last month, whenever she had texted him a pick-up time, he had always been waiting outside when she arrived. Sometimes he even held two coffees he’d bought, which was no small thing. Given the frosty reception Sue would have given him, Barb was surprised they weren’t iced.

To make room for Joe, when he eventually decided to honour her with his presence, she reached over to the passenger seat, grabbed a corn chips packet and juice bottle and threw them into the back to join what looked like an untidy collection of service-station food wrappers and drink containers. After work she liked a snack on the way home, and couldn’t always be bothered unloading the rubbish. What was wrong with that? Tidy house, messy car.

Barb had told Eliza Cummins they would be at her place at Copacabana to tame her garden by eight and she didn’t want to subject herself to the polite passive aggressiveness that would follow if they were late: ‘I was going to bring you out a cold drink after an hour at nine, but I suppose now we should make it nine sixteen?’

She had a quick look in the mirror. Her short brown hair looked neat enough, without suggesting she had been anywhere near a hairdresser recently. She adjusted her glasses, opened the car door and pushed down on her seat to give her some momentum to exit.

Barb felt pretty good, considering she was in her late fifties and her husband had just left her. Being a gardener and handyperson kept her healthy. Sue had recently called her ‘sprightly’, which she was happy with, although one traitorous knee had started to get irritated whenever it was asked to do anything more challenging than walk in a straight, flat line.

She strode along the stone path, which happily was a straight flat line, toward Joe’s house, plants and ferns on either side. Emily Griffith had loved her busy garden and given it regular haircuts, but Joe was less interested in it than his mum had been and it was starting to get shaggy.

Barb knocked three times, trying to convey the right mixture of politeness and slight impatience. Nothing happened for a bit, and then for a bit more, so she tried again, this time increasing speed and force, and doubling the number of knocks to six. Still, no sound inside.

How on earth did you oversleep when you have commitments? She always awoke before her alarm, as if it were her job to rouse it. She stepped off the front deck and made her way down the side of the house along a rough path covered in twigs and leaves. He should clean it up. Bushfire tinder. It was unlikely any fire from the national park would make it this far, but even so, everyone should do their bit.

She came to the window of what used to be Joe’s parents’ room and was now Joe’s. The blind was down, but the window was open a few centimetres.

‘Joe,’ she called.

No response.

No flyscreen either, so she reached in and lifted the blind.

Barb’s family had occasionally gone skiing when she was young. One day it was snowing, her goggles fogged, and she had stopped halfway down a run to wait for her parents and sister. As she stood, the earth had started to slide beneath her. What was happening? Earthquake? Avalanche? After a few seconds, it stopped. She was shaken, until she realised it had not been the earth that had moved. It had been her. She had been sliding slowly backwards on her skis, her fogged goggles had caused her to lose perspective, and it had felt as if it was the earth that was shifting.

She felt the same sort of incomprehension now. Joe lay on his side in bed, in shorts and T-shirt, covers pushed against the wall, a belt tied around his upper arm. On the floor was a syringe. His skin was pale with a bluish tinge, his chest still. His eyes bulged as they stared lifelessly at the window, almost, unnervingly, meeting Barb’s gaze, and a semi-circle of dried vomit and spittle surrounded his mouth. His face was contorted in what looked like pain, but couldn’t be, because to feel pain you have to be alive.

*

‘Skim flat white,’ called Sue, wrestling with the lid. They could invent iPhones. Why not a lid you could easily get on a Styrofoam cup?

‘There you go, Dave,’ she smiled, handing it over. ‘You don’t need skim, darl.’ To be honest, he could lose a bit, but it’s nice to be nice.

‘Thanks, Sue. I’ll tell Diane you said so.’

‘Make sure you make it clear it was said in a friendly way, Dave.’ Last thing she wanted was for Diane to think she was flirting. Even worse, for Dave to.

‘Leanne, is that bacon and egg roll for Sam ready?’

There was no reply.

Sue turned to see an empty stove. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she muttered. She cracked an egg onto the fryer, laid two bacon rashers beside it, and cut open a roll. Saturdays were always busy; it was only nine o’clock and she was over it already.

At least her daughter was home. Not in the best of health, not in the best state of mind, unreliable in the shop and with the concentration span of a can of tuna, but she was here. She had gone AWOL for two days after bloody Joe interviewed her for his stupid podcast, eventually returning bedraggled, exhausted and off her face. But at least she had returned, and since then hadn’t lapsed again.

Naïve, vulnerable Leanne, following Joe to Sydney eight years ago like a dog chasing a stick, where he had emotionally entrapped her, got her into drugs and led her on a merry waltz into hell. It still made her blood boil, which was why …

‘Morning, Sue.’

She turned, automatically plastering on her ‘Happy Shopkeeper’ face. ‘Hello, Gary. Usual?’

‘Of course. That’s why it’s the usual.’ He smiled. A proper, warm smile, not like the fake ones some customers plastered on.

Why couldn’t Leanne have fallen for him, instead of Joe? Gary was tall, slim and handsome, with a straight nose, gentle eyes and Hugh Grant hair. Most importantly, he wasn’t a junkie.

Sue grabbed a felt-tipped pen and wrote ‘Sk Cap’ on a lid. They were hard to write on, too. Ridiculous.

‘Going out on the boat?’ she asked.

‘Not today, sadly. Recording the show on Monday, so have to do some prep. It’s not all talent and charm, you know.’ The twinkle in his eye made his words more self-mocking than conceited.

‘Well, you better make the most of our beautiful little bay before it gets destroyed by that horrible development.’

‘I know,’ replied Gary, shaking his head. ‘Terrible thing. But I also know you’re fighting hard. If anyone can stop it, you can. Um, know why there’s a police car outside Joe’s? Seb’s, I guess.’

‘No.’ Sue came round the counter, past Gary and outside, where she peered across the square to Joe’s house.

‘Hope it’s nothing serious,’ said Gary, appearing at her shoulder.

‘Never know with Joe. Could be anything.’

‘Not your favourite person, I know, and of course understand, but he’s been going well.’

She repressed a scoff, and walked across the square toward the house. An ambulance appeared around the corner and drove down Bayview Avenue. Not racing. No siren. Was that a good or bad sign? It stopped next to the police car, and two paramedics emerged and walked to the front door, not, it seemed, in a rush. They knocked and were let in by Seb.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Gary, who had caught up to her again.

A wash of fear enveloped Sue. She suddenly felt off balance and self-conscious, and wondered if her hands were trembling. She didn’t want to draw attention to them by looking, so she jammed them into her pockets.

‘You okay?’ asked Gary.

‘Yes of course. Just … worried, you know.’

*

As the paramedics pushed the sheet-covered body out of the bedroom on a gurney, Seb tried to pull himself together. He had known Joe since they were zero. Now he was dead.

Be a professional. Do your job.

He heard the door and turned to see a fleshy man with a buzz cut – in maybe his late forties – and a loosened tie and grey suit, stride into the lounge room like he owned the place.

‘Hey,’ he greeted the paramedics. ‘Simmonds, Homicide. Quick look if you don’t mind.’ Without waiting for permission he whipped back the sheet and peered at Joe’s face, then arms. ‘Looks like a one-off, yeah?’

‘No other track marks we’ve seen,’ said a paramedic.

‘Heroin?’ asked Simmonds

She shrugged. ‘That’d be my guess. Autopsy will tell the tale.’

‘Won’t tell us if it was accidental or on purpose, unless they can autopsy what he was thinking just before he pushed it home. Still, doesn’t matter much.’ He dropped the sheet. ‘Ta.’

The paramedics wheeled out Joe. Was it still Joe, Seb wondered, or just his body? He had seen a few bodies in his time on the force, but never anyone’s he had known so well before. He gathered himself as Simmonds descended five stairs into the open plan kitchen and dining area.

‘Hi, I’m Sebastian—’

‘Right. The keen bean.’

‘Just trying to help.’

‘Sure. Great. Looks like we got ourselves a confession, signed in needlepoint. Leave a note?’

‘No.’

‘Check his phone for one?’

‘Um, not yet.’

‘Like I said, impossible to tell if he OD’d accidentally or on purpose, but he was the last person to see Karen alive, he was our main suspect, and he’s gone back to drugs and taken enough to kill him. After all his years using, he must be a fucking dosage expert, so I reckon he probably deliberately took enough to check out.’ He paused, looking meaningfully at Seb. ‘He made a big mistake: lost his temper, killed the girl he was screwing, and knew we were closing in on him. Feels guilty, scared of going back to clink, this time for a decent stretch. Easy way out.’

Seb tried not to sound tentative. ‘I just can’t see Joe killing Karen.’

Simmonds nodded. ‘Cos he’s your mate. Might have been an accident, but. They argue, one pushes the other, the other pushes back, she trips on something – coffee table, carpet, those stairs I just came down – she lands the wrong way, unlucky, breaks her neck. We’ll never know. Anyway, she ends up dead, he panics and hides her body. If he’d pleaded guilty, said it was an accident, probably would’ve got manslaughter. Out in six.’

‘That’s one theory, but—’

‘It’s the theory. Her body’s found one hundred and seventy metres from his house. Those in a sexual relationship with the victim are the statistically most likely category of killer, and the boyfriend, Tom, is alibied tighter than a jar of fucking pickles. No one else has any sort of motive. He knows we’re closing in on him. Last night Joe panics and …’ Simmonds mimed injecting a needle into his arm.

‘I just wonder if—’

‘You’re going to hit your quota of speeding fines this month. If it’s any consolation, we have KPIs in Homicide, too. Just one, actually. Murders solved. And we just solved one in the best possible way. No year-long wait for a trial, no preparing all the evidence, no getting cross-examined by some shiny-shoed smartarse shitfuck defence barrister, no possibility of a miscarriage of justice cos the jury are morons. Good fucking result. And, to be honest, not bad for him, when you consider the alternative. That’s how he figured it too, I’m guessing.’

‘But …’

Simmonds took a couple of steps toward Seb in a way that was less ‘taking the relationship to a more intimate level’ and more ‘menace’. ‘You know, when I see a vehicle driving fast, I clock their speed, then I pursue the vehicle until I’m about fifty metres behind it. I then activate my lights and siren. After the vehicle pulls over … Oh, wait, am I telling you how to do your job? Sorry. No one likes that, right? Take my meaning? We do this every fucking day.’ He took a step back, and his face softened. ‘Look. There’s no doubt Joe killed Karen. We spoke to the head of his rehab. He said Joe was difficult, rebellious, ill-disciplined and, get this, quick to anger. They nearly kicked him out a couple of times for getting aggro. Maybe he was nice when you were growing up, but years on dope and crime changes people. I’ve seen it plenty. Their impulse control goes. They get angry quicker, violent quicker.’

‘What about Karen’s missing clothes and bag? Doesn’t it suggest she had left Tom? That was the main reason why I didn’t open a missing person file on her.’

‘We thought about that. Tom says he doesn’t lock his back door. We think Joe snuck in there that night or next morning when Tom was out and took her stuff, so it looked like she’d left him and delayed any search. Alternatively, Karen did decide to leave Tom, packed a bag earlier in the day, hid it outside the house, then took it when she went to Joe’s. That might have even led to the argument between them. Perhaps he didn’t want her to leave town, or perhaps she thought she was going to move in with him, and he wasn’t keen. Then after her death he disposes of the bag.’

Simmonds turned and headed toward Joe’s room. ‘I’m gunna have a quick look at his phone, download the contents – got this nifty new gizmo that does it in about eight seconds – and piss off.’

‘But I just think—’ began Seb.

Simmonds stopped, his back to Seb. ‘Mate,’ he said forcefully. ‘It’s case. Fucking. Closed.’