CHAPTER 12

Seb huddled over his crowded desk, typing up a morning’s haul of speeding tickets plus, for excitement’s sake, a failure to indicate. He should have added a loading for being dumb enough to do it with a police car right behind him.

Bullford Point was a small station – technically two person, but he had been the only occupant for nearly a year – and whenever he bothered to check his emails he half expected to discover it was being closed. NSW Police were gradually ‘rationalising’, or some word like that. He wouldn’t lose his job, but he would be shunted off somewhere, probably Gosford, and wasn’t looking forward to it. Working on his own could be lonely, but the alternative was being in a big station surrounded by dozens of people, most of superior rank. Currently, he was supervised only when he asked to be. Help was just a phone call away, but it was up to him whether he called, and he rarely did. If loneliness was the price of autonomy, he was happy to pay it.

‘Good morning, then.’

Seb looked up to see the top half of Barb, in a collared white shirt, smiling over his counter. ‘Hi, Barb.’

‘Busy?’

‘There are things to do, yes, but fire away.’

She looked around. ‘Is there somewhere private we could chat?’

‘There’s only us here. The very definition of private.’

‘Do you have an office?’

He spread his arms, indicating the station. On his side of the counter were two desks. The other looked occupied, but wasn’t. He just dumped stuff on it that he couldn’t be bothered to put away. When he had transferred to Bullford Point from Blacktown three years earlier, the desk had belonged to his boss. He had retired last year and his position hadn’t been filled yet. Seb suspected it never would be – part of the rationalising – which effectively kind of made him, in all but title and salary, the boss. Behind him was the back wall and door. To his right, Barb’s left, along the wall was what head office would call a breakout area and he would call a tattered couch. Beside it was a kitchen the size of a toilet cubicle, and just as inviting.

He usually talked over the counter to people, or ‘customers’ as management preferred, but it sounded like this might be something sensitive, so he raised the drawbridge near the wall, motioned Barb through, and pulled up a chair to the other side of his desk.

Having someone on his side of the counter made him realise how shabby and cramped the space was, full of filing cabinets and crammed shelves. It more resembled a storeroom someone had dumped some spare desks and chairs in than the ‘state of the art law enforcement delivery infrastructure’ head office boasted of.

He edged between his desk and a set of Meccano-like shelves to sit behind it. Despite the force’s claim that it was going paperless (Seb had been informed of this via letter), his desk contained piles of the stuff, loose, stapled, and in binders and folders. The things paper needed to survive – paperclips, stapler, envelopes, in and out tray – bumped shoulders, competing for space.

‘I have a crime to report,’ stated Barbara formally.

Seb looked for a notebook and pen, and found them hiding under an ‘Occupational Health and Safety’ folder he had been browsing through for comic relief.

‘Traffic? Dishonesty? Violence? Drugs? Or … the other?’ he asked.

‘What’s the other?’

‘You know, sexual.’

‘Oh, no. Does violence include … well, if you poisoned someone, arsenic in the soup or what have you, that’s not really violent, is it?’

‘It’s categorised as violent.’

‘I see. And would running over someone come under violence or traffic?’

‘I think if accidental, traffic, but if deliberate, violence.’

‘That seems odd.’

Seb thought about it. ‘Agreed. It’s a loose classification.’

‘What if you took cocaine and then ran someone over? Violence, traffic or drugs?’

‘Umm … is that what happened?’

‘No, just curious. I want to report a murder.’

His eyebrows went up. ‘A murder?’

‘Of Joe.’

‘Joe? Joe died of a heroin overdose.’

‘Did he though?’

‘Yes. The autopsy was clear. A large dose of heroin mixed with liquid morphine. The two combined magnify each other’s effects, possibly suggesting he deliberately, not accidentally, overdosed.’

‘If you wanted to murder someone, wouldn’t it be clever to make it look like they weren’t murdered?’

‘It would be, yes, but that doesn’t mean that’s what happened here. Joe was a recovering heroin addict. Unfortunately, they tend to relapse.’

‘I think he was murdered. Can I tell you why?’

Seb sighed. He had always thought of Barb as a calm, sensible woman. No doubt she’d been lonely since Dennis left. She had employed Joe, probably saw herself as something of a parental figure or mentor to him, so he guessed she viewed his relapse as a personal failure and had gone fishing for another explanation.

He supposed he should at least listen to her. ‘Sure’

‘Firstly, the location of his teeth. Don’t say, “in his mouth”. I mean the mouthguard he wore because he ground his teeth. Do you remember where it was?’

He pretended to consider this carefully by looking above Barb’s right shoulder and squinting. ‘Not exactly.’

‘His bedside table,’ said Barb in the way a Grandmaster might say, ‘Checkmate.’

Seb stared blankly at her.

‘Joe and I discussed evening routines. I won’t go into mine, but it does involve some light stretching. Joe told me the last thing he did before bed was to get his mouthguard from the bathroom. The last thing. Now put yourself in Joe’s shoes. After six months of rehab and two months here drug free, you’re about to relapse. How do you feel?’

‘Um, excited. Stressed.’

‘Exactly. Maybe add depressed. Anxious. Agitated. Conflicted. In turmoil. Wanting it, but not wanting to want it, yes?’

Seb nodded.

‘Do you really think that before he injected, he would have got his teeth from the bathroom and put them on his bedside table?’

Seb considered this. ‘Maybe he left his mouthguard on his bedside table that morning. He might have been in a hurry.’

‘He wasn’t. I picked him up for work at nine thirty. Pruning at Killcare. He told me that every morning when he got up, he put his teeth back in their container in the bathroom. Morning habits are very strong. I do things exactly the same way every morning. I bet you do too, yes?’

Seb tilted his head. ‘Up, shower, dressed, egg. I suppose.’

‘It’s almost automatic, isn’t it? Point two. He had a belt tied around his upper arm, correct?’

‘Yes.’ Seb tried not to sound too schoolteachery. ‘Heroin users use belts to make their—’

‘Veins stand out. I know that. I’ve been researching. On the internet.’ She rolled up a sleeve and looked at her forearm. ‘I wouldn’t need one. I can see my veins.’ She proffered her arm toward him, blue-green veins visible beneath the skin. ‘Show me yours.’

Seb reluctantly rolled up his sleeve, exposing the inside of an arm.

‘See,’ said Barb, pointing. ‘Veins.’

He nodded, impressed. Visible veins, just like the iron pumpers, despite him never following up on any of his ‘must go to the gym’ intentions.

‘But when people inject a lot,’ he said, ‘their veins start to collapse. Tying something around your arm makes them stand out.’

‘Exactly! When you are injecting a lot. Joe wasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He wore T-shirts at work. I would have seen. When you found him, were there any other marks on his arms?’

He had looked. ‘No.’

‘He was reliable, punctual, worked well, didn’t take fifteen-minute toilet breaks and emerge with a stupid grin on his face, never stole my power tools. I’m sure this was his first relapse. So why would he use a belt?’

‘Habit. You said yourself how strong they are. People develop a ritual with drugs. He used to use a belt, so he automatically used it this time.’

‘Which way do you travel to work?’

‘Huh?’

‘Like everyone, you walk or drive the quickest, most efficient way. We do everything the most efficient way. If you have to use a belt to get a vein, you do. If you don’t have to, you don’t. Using a belt when you don’t have to doesn’t make sense.’

Seb uncrossed his legs, then re-crossed them the other way, as if directing traffic using only his lower half.

‘Where did he inject?’ asked Barb.

‘Let me check.’ He flicked through his phone, found one of the photos he had taken. ‘Crook of his elbow.’

‘That’s the most popular place, according to my research, because veins are easy to find there,’ said Barb. ‘But if you inject there too much, those veins get overused and you have to move elsewhere, up or down your arm, or even to your hands or legs. Some people even inject into their privates! Can you imagine? That’d only be men, surely?’

Seb tried not to imagine.

‘This is the important bit. Joe said his arms scabbed up badly and he never wanted people to see them if he could avoid it,’ continued Barb, ‘so he always tried to inject above the elbow.’

‘He told you a lot.’

‘Sometimes people want to talk. You just have to let them. So, why wouldn’t he have injected in his usual place above the elbow?’

‘Because if he was deliberately overdosing, it wouldn’t matter if anyone saw.’

‘But again, habit. Inject in the usual place. When you found him, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, yes?’

He didn’t love her habit of making statements with a ‘yes?’ at the end.

‘Joe didn’t own pyjamas,’ continued Barb. ‘I looked in his wardrobe.’

‘Your point being?’

‘Shorts and a T-shirt were his pyjamas. He was going to bed. He put his pyjamas on, got his mouthguard and went to bed. You wouldn’t do that if you were about to inject your first drugs for nine months. You just wouldn’t. The sheets were bunched next to him, yes?’

‘Um …’

‘Have you got photos?’

He nodded, and scrolled his phone as she walked around the desk.

Seb held the phone against his chest. ‘Before you look, it might be …’

‘I saw him first, Sebastian. I’m not going to start crying.’

Nonetheless, as she looked, Seb could see she was upset. He was, too.

‘You okay?’ he asked gently.

She clenched her jaw. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing. ‘The sheet and blanket are over on the side of the bed, pushed against the wall. If you were taking drugs, you’d lie on top of the sheets. He wasn’t doing that. He was in bed.’

‘Or,’ countered Seb, ‘he liked the cosiness of being tucked up, and then as he overdosed, he thrashed about and pushed the covers off.’

That stopped her for a moment.

‘Then there’s the spare key.’ But only a moment. ‘Did you use it the morning he died?’

‘I looked for it, but it wasn’t there, so I went around the back and got in the laundry window.’

‘When I cleaned the place yesterday I found the key under the wrong rock. I asked Viv and, as far as he knows, no one had used the key since Joe died.’

‘So?’

‘So, how many you times have you put your spare key back in the wrong place by mistake?’

Seb said nothing.

‘One scenario is this,’ she continued. ‘Despite successfully resisting drugs for eight months, and being incredibly determined to stay drug free, Joe decided to use again. He gets ready for bed, puts on his pyjamas and gets his teeth. He gets into bed, under the sheets, then decides to make things more complicated than he needs to by wrapping a completely unecessary belt round his arm. Then he injects in his elbow, even though he always injects in his upper arm. Oh, and at some point he puts his spare key back in the wrong place.’

Seb didn’t want to say the next word, but couldn’t help himself. ‘Or?’

‘He went to bed that night as usual. Teeth in, light off, pyjamas on. Someone who knew where his spare key was – that narrows it down to everyone in Bullford Point – lets themselves in, injects him with an overdose of heroin, watches him die, then takes his teeth out so it didn’t look like he was asleep, puts them on the bedside table, ties a belt round his arm because that’s what they think users do, pushes his sheets to the side to make it look less like he had been in bed asleep and, as they quickly leave in the dark, accidentally put his key under the wrong rock.’

He stared at her, narrowing his eyes, because that was supposed to help you think, and tried to puzzle it all through. Could it have happened that way?

Eventually, he leaned back, reopening his eyes. ‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘If you were asleep, and someone stuck a needle in your arm, you’d wake up and jerk your arm away before they could push enough heroin into you. Also, you don’t just jab an arm. You need to find a vein. To do that you need light. If you were asleep and someone was standing over you, shining a light on your arm, you’d wake up.’

As he spoke, Barb impatiently played bongos on her knees. ‘I’ve thought of all that. Liquid morphine was also in his system, yes? What if he’d had that earlier? What would it do?’

‘Stop him worrying about the police investigating him for murdering Karen Kemp.’

‘And?’

‘Make him sleepy.’

‘Exactly. Very sleepy. Joe was at the club earlier that evening.’

‘We all were. Friday night drinks.’ Seb had arrived about five thirty. Joe, Dev, Gary, Leanne, even Viv had been there.

‘If Joe had decided to take heroin again, why would he go to the club first? In any event, if someone slipped enough liquid morphine into his drink, as anyone could have, it would have knocked him out, yes? Take maybe half an hour to work?’

‘Yeah. How do you know that?’

‘The internet. Literally everything’s on it, and I’m using “literally” correctly.’

‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘He was drinking lemonade and he complained about the taste. He was telling everyone. Even complained to the barman. Said it tasted off. And he left early. Said he was tired.’

‘Bingo,’ said Barb softly.

‘But a lot of people are tired at the end of the week.’

‘He only worked for me two days that week.’ Barb rubbed her chin. ‘So he feels tired, staggers home, bedtime routine which everyone does automatically, out like a light. Later someone comes in. They turn on, or shine, a light to find a vein, knowing he won’t wake up. How big an overdose was it?’

Seb stared at his computer screen, clicked and moused. ‘Let’s see. Whoa. Big. Very big.’

‘If you wanted to kill someone with an overdose, you’d make sure it was a big one. I found an envelope with his name on it and three thousand dollars inside at the back of his sock drawer.’

Seb shrugged. ‘So he was saving money. Putting it in an envelope.’

‘As far as I know, I was his only employer and I never gave him cash. And I hadn’t paid him that much anyway. And if you were putting your savings in an envelope, would you really write your name on it? Just in case you forgot whose money it was? No. Someone gave him the envelope. Plus, it turns out Joe owed someone three thousand, two hundred dollars. Don’t know why. Perhaps from before he went to jail.

‘I was paying him two or three hundred a week, but he had to pay Viv rent for Viv’s third of the house. And Viv had told everyone not to lend him money. So where did that three thousand dollars come from? Joe was anxious about money. That’s one reason he was going to sell the house. But then about a week ago Joe told me he’d changed his mind and he was going to keep the house.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, it’s suspicious. Three thousand dollars in cash. Even I don’t use cash anymore. I think he was desperate for money to pay his debt. Maybe it was a drug debt, he couldn’t get the money, he was going to sell the house, then he came up with some scam, probably illegal. Remember he spent years scamming and stealing. The scheme works, he gets some cash, he can pay his debt and he changes his mind about selling.’

‘You sure Viv didn’t lend that money to him to pay this possible debt?’

‘There is no way Viv would have given Joe cash. It’s a temptation to buy drugs.’

Seb stood. ‘Lots to think about, Barb. Coffee?’

‘Tea. White with none, thanks.’

He entered the tiny kitchen and prepared mugs, as the kettle upped its ante from low whine to aircraft take-off. It looked older than the internet, but improving water-boiling facilities at Bullford Point was not high on the priority list for NSW Police.

He did tea and coffee things, returned with the mugs and sat. ‘Barb, what you have is a theory. You can come up with alternative theories for lots of deaths. If someone falls off a cliff, maybe they were pushed. If someone overdoses on pills, maybe someone was pointing a gun at them and forced them to swallow. I agree there’s a few unusual things here, but no way is it enough to open a murder investigation.’

‘But if he was going to take drugs, why would he put his teeth next—’

Seb held up his hand. Surprisingly, it worked.

‘You cared about Joe. He seemed to be going well. Is it, perhaps, easier to believe that he didn’t relapse? That he was a victim? Parents do that when a child commits suicide. Convince themselves it was an accident.’

Barb pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘No. I mean, yes, I understand, but there were no signs. And his teeth. And the belt, and the key, and where he injected, and the pyjamas. It doesn’t make sense. I’m not saying he was definitely murdered. What I’m saying is that it’s suspicious. And the job of the police is to investigate deaths that are suspicious. Homicide? Is that what they’re called.’

Seb snorted. ‘They won’t help you. I already approached Homicide about Karen’s death when I didn’t think Joe killing her added up. Joe was never violent, and they’d only known each other a few weeks. That’s really unusual for a domestic murder. Plus, if Joe did it, why carry her body eighty metres right up Arden Street, Bullford Point’s steepest road, then into the national park up the hill, to the path, and down the other side? Why wouldn’t he have walked down Bayview Avenue forty metres, then up that track that goes into the bush? The ridge is lower so he wouldn’t have to climb as far, plus he would only have to walk past eight houses, not thirty. And there’s only one streetlight, not four. Sure, he would have been panicking, but Joe was smart. He would have worked out the safest way to get a body to the bush.’

‘I can’t imagine Joe killing her. Or anyone, in fact. You told Homicide all that?’

Seb cheeks burned with the memory of the humiliation. ‘They didn’t want to know. They want it tied up. Murder solved. Big tick. Which is why you approaching them with your theory about Joe’s death is a waste of time. They are not going to shift Joe into the unsolved murder pile because of a mouthguard and a belt.’

‘And a key. I have to try. Unless … what about you? If Homicide got it wrong about Joe killing Karen, that means the person who killed her got away with it. Are you happy about that? Maybe whoever did it lives in Bullford Point. And with Joe, are you a hundred per cent sure he wasn’t murdered? Because if he was, Sebastian, that’s two unsolved murders on your patch.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘I remember how proud your mother was when she told me you were becoming a police officer. She said you wanted to become a detective.’

‘Come on, that’s not fair.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to prove Homicide wrong? Or shall I go and try to convince them?’

‘They won’t listen.’

‘I’m sure Joe was murdered. I’m going to try.’

After Simmonds had told Seb he considered Joe’s death a ‘confession in needlepoint’ and was closing the case, Seb had felt a weight lift. Now he was torn. Yes, he wanted to find the truth and prove the arrogant fucker wrong. Yes, if someone murdered someone in his territory, he wanted them caught. But if he started poking about, there were things that might come to light that he would prefer stayed in the dark.

What to do? Barb wasn’t going to drop it. Homicide might ignore her at first, but if she kept pushing, maybe she would get somewhere. Far better to keep things close.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s see what we can find.’