CHAPTER 32

‘Didn’t take long,’ said Barb, as she heaved herself back over the gearstick.

‘Dead end,’ he said. As they battled Parramatta traffic toward the freeway, he explained what Perkins had told him.

‘Well, eliminating false leads gets us closer to the real ones,’ said Barb cheerfully.

‘I guess, but I don’t know what other leads we have for Karen.’

‘Let’s focus on Joe then. In particular, his podcast.’ She reached into the bag at her feet and brought out a laptop. ‘Joe’s computer. I thought we could listen to the interview he did with Sal’s flatmate on the way to Katoomba. I was tempted to start without you, but I went for a nice walk along the river instead.’

Seb tapped the steering wheel, uncertain.

‘What?’ asked Barb.

‘It’s fine. Sal and I were … close, so … Joe interviewed me for his podcast too, and I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not looking forward to hearing people talk about her.’

‘I can listen by myself if you’d prefer.’

‘No. I should. I just hope we find this whole podcast thing is a false lead too, so we can stay out of the past and focus on the present.’

Her hand hovered over the keyboard. ‘Shall I?’

Seb nodded. Barb pressed play.

‘Thanks for doing this, Monica,’ came Joe’s voice, clear as a bell.

Seb had to stop himself looking for him in the back seat. He eased onto the freeway and increased his speed, hands more twenty to four than ten to two.

‘Can I start with how Sal came to be living with you in Leura?’ asked Joe.

‘Sure,’ said a husky female voice, maybe late twenties, sounding a bit nervous. Her voice was clearer than on a phone line, but not quite as clear as if they were in the same room.

Zoom, Seb guessed.

MONICA: I knew Sal from uni. We were in classes together, became friends. I grew up in Dubbo, and didn’t really like Sydney. Too expensive, too many people. I visited the Blue Mountains and loved it. I found a place to rent in Leura at the end of first year, did lectures online, came down once or twice a week for tutorials, did my reading on the train, it worked fine.

Halfway through second year Sal called and said she wanted to leave Sydney too. Did I know anywhere? I was in a two-bedroom cottage, and my flatmate was moving out in three weeks, so I told her she could move in with me. Sal said she was at Central Station, literally on her way. She said she’d stay at a youth hostel or something until the room was free. It sounded like something had gone wrong for her, and she was leaving quickly, but she didn’t say and I didn’t press. I talked to my flatmate who was this lovely, mellow guy, and he was fine with Sal sleeping on the couch until he left. A couple of hours later she arrived.

JOE: How was she when she got to your place?

MONICA: Fine, but kind of distant. Like, she was usually super friendly and full of energy, but that day she was quiet. Seemed to have a lot on her mind. Then later that first night I heard her crying in the bathroom.

Over the next couple of weeks I tried to give her opportunities to talk without prying, if you know what I mean, but she just said there had been a lot going on. She was doing that thing of saying she was fine a lot, which is usually a sign that someone isn’t.

JOE: Did she ever say or hint at why she left Sydney so quickly? You probably knew about her band, which was doing quite well. And all her close friends were in Sydney.

MONICA: I was definitely curious, but she didn’t get specific. ‘Everything just got too much.’ ‘I needed to get away.’ That sort of thing. But she was different.

JOE: How do you mean?

MONICA: When I first knew her she was heaps fun. Full of beans. Always in the moment, totally engaged in whatever she was doing. But in Leura she was quiet, withdrawn, distant.

Seb felt Barb looking at him, and forced himself to remain expressionless. The recording played on.

JOE: What did Sal do up there? She had a busy life in Sydney.

MONICA: She worked at a café, did uni, mainly online. She liked being at home. Lots of yoga on YouTube. When I went out I’d always invite her, cos she seemed like she needed some cheering up, but she always said no. Not being a drinker, she didn’t really want to come to the pub.

JOE: She gave up booze?

MONICA: She didn’t drink up here. She said she’d had a bad experience with alcohol and wanted to stay clear of it, and in control.

JOE: Interesting.

MONICA: And she was on anti-depressants. She didn’t tell me. But she didn’t try to hide it. The pills were in the bathroom.

Barb pressed pause and looked at Seb, whose eyes had widened.

‘We were flatmates the whole time she lived in Sydney, and I never saw any pills,’ he said. ‘We shared a bathroom and talked about everything, and she never mentioned that. She was bright, chirpy, motivated, always “up and at ’em”. Not like Monica’s describing.’

Barb unpaused.

JOE: Do you know how long she had been on them for?

MONICA: Maybe a week after she moved in, she asked me if I knew a good GP. Soon after I saw the pills.

JOE: Did she have any other friends up there? Boyfriend?

MONICA: No boyfriend. She didn’t really socialise. When she had free time, she just liked to stay home, chill, do yoga, study, play guitar, write in her journal.

There was a slight hiccup in the sounds, perhaps a technical glitch, then it resumed.

JOE: Did anything unusual happen before she died?

MONICA: Maybe five months after she arrived, a week or two before she was killed, I got home and she was upset and agitated, pacing up and down the garden like she’d had too much coffee. I asked if she was okay, and she was, like, ‘It’s just something I need to deal with.’

JOE: She wasn’t taking anything … else?

MONICA: Drugs? Never saw anything, and given her stance on alcohol, I really doubt it.

JOE: How long was she agitated for?

MONICA: A few days. I thought it might have been something to do with why she left Sydney so fast. I asked her then why she’d left, more directly than I had before.

JOE: What did she say?

MONICA: She said someone let her down.

Seb felt his heart rate increase, and tried to breathe normally.

JOE: She say anything more specific?

MONICA: No.

JOE: Did you tell the police that?

MONICA: Yeah, but … it was pretty vague. No names. Also, one day around then, she was in her room and I went in to see if she wanted a cuppa. She was sitting on her bed, staring at something in a plastic bag. When she saw me, she slipped it into a drawer in her bedside table. I feel a bit bad about this, but I was curious what was going on, so when she was out, I had a look in the drawer.

JOE: What was it?

MONICA: A light blue T-shirt with blood on it.

Barb paused. ‘Joe wrote “Whose shirt? Whose blood?” in his notebook.’

Seb nodded. Barb unpaused.

JOE: How much blood?

MONICA: Not heaps. A few splotches.

JOE: Was it her shirt?

MONICA: I don’t know. I didn’t open the bag.

JOE: How was she in the days before she died?

MONICA: More positive. She seemed kind of determined, like maybe she had resolved whatever was upsetting her. But that’s just a guess.

JOE: And then she got murdered.

MONICA: Yeah. I … found her.

JOE: Geez.

MONICA: Yeah I packed up her stuff for her mum. And that bag with the shirt in it wasn’t in her room anymore.

JOE: Maybe she chucked it out?

MONICA: Doubt it. When I saw her with it she was looking at it like it was important. Her journal was missing too. The cops reckon the killer took it as some sort of memento. Apparently they do that sometimes. The cops thought it might have been on the sofa with her when he …

JOE: Do you know how the killer got in?

MONICA: There was an open window in the kitchen, but that was weird, because there had been two murders in a week, and the police were warning women who were alone to be careful. Sal and I talked about it. We were nervous. Everyone was. We were both double-checking everything was locked, and she wouldn’t have opened it to let air in cos it was cold. I don’t get how she could have left that window open, but no way would she have opened the door to a stranger.

JOE: Okay. Thanks so much, Monica.

The interview ended, and they drove in silence up into the mountains, the plains of Sydney’s western suburbs replaced by uphill bends sweeping through bush. Every few minutes they passed through a small town, the road their umbilical cord. Seb sensed Barb’s frequent sidelong glances at him, but it took a while before he felt up to speaking.

‘Gee,’ he said eventually.

‘Yes. Before Sal left Sydney, you didn’t see any signs she was … changing?’

‘There were some things stressing her out a bit, but she seemed to be handling it.’

‘What things?’

‘Toward the end our first year in Sydney she started going out with Joe, but then after three or four months she broke up with him. He was upset. She felt guilty. She also had money problems, she wasn’t doing well at uni, and she felt bad that Leanne hated her because she blamed Sal for “stealing” Joe from her. Then there was the band. It started as this fun thing in Bullford Point, but when we moved to Sydney we started to think we might have a chance of making it, and that put pressure on her because she was the main songwriter. I think Sal felt like she was carrying everyone’s dreams, not just hers.

‘Then Dev started managing us. She was super organised and very ambitious, but it almost felt like we were working for her. She kept hassling Sal to write “a hit”, but at the time she and Joe were writing together, and then after they broke up, Joe didn’t want to do that anymore.

‘Because Sal was so funny and clever and talented, we all assumed she was fine. We were flatmates, so I talked to her every day, and she seemed fine. But maybe she was more fragile then we realised. Maybe all those pressures got to her, became too much, and that’s why she ran away to the Blue Mountains. But …’

‘What?’

‘In Sydney, she was never withdrawn or down like Monica was describing. I would have seen it. I didn’t see any sign she was thinking of leaving. It feels like something else, something major, must have happened to have made her want to do that.’