CHAPTER 64

‘Morning,’ said Barb, as she entered the station. She placed two coffees and a laptop on the counter, raised the piece at the end, came through, regathered her luggage, put a coffee in front of Seb and pulled a chair to his desk. ‘Isn’t it good you’re never busy?’

‘I wouldn’t say never.’

‘It means we have lots of time to talk. I know you usually have a flat white, but I thought after the shock of yesterday a cappuccino might be a welcome treat. How are you recovering?’

‘Fine, thanks. Much better now they’ve caught him.’

‘Perkins has been arrested?’

‘He’s “assisting Internal Affairs with enquiries”. That means they’re telling him how much trouble he’s in, and trying to get him to spill on others involved.’

‘Goodness. Well done, you. Amazing job.’ She opened Joe’s computer. ‘Now for the next problem.’

She explained her suspicion that there had been deletions from Joe’s podcast. ‘If something has been cut, would there be some way of getting it back? I’m not asking you because you’re male, by the way. I’m asking you because you’re young.’

‘He might have backups,’ mused Seb.

‘Whatups?’

‘In the cloud. Or to an external drive.’

As far as Barb was concerned, Seb might as well have been speaking Etruscan, or saying something about car engines.

‘Let me see.’ Seb poked and moused the computer. ‘Connect to our wi-fi …’ More poking. ‘Wow. No backups into the cloud.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Either Joe never made any … But everyone backs up their computer. It happens automatically. Or all his backups have been deleted.’

‘How would that happen?’

‘By someone deleting them. But no one would delete their backups. Why would you?’

Barb hoped the question was rhetorical. She was so far out of her depth there might well be a giant squid beneath her. She didn’t even know what questions to ask.

Seb took pity on her. ‘A backup is a safety, so if something happens to your computer, you’ve still got everything. If someone wanted to remove something from Monica or Leanne’s interview, just cutting it wouldn’t be enough, because you’d still be able to access the original version from an earlier backup. To properly get rid of it, you’d also have to delete all the backups.’

‘And that’s what happened?’ Barb ventured cautiously.

‘Exactly.’

She felt like she’d solved Wordle first go.

‘Joe’s computer had heaps of free space, so there was literally no reason for him to have done it,’ continued Seb.

‘So does that mean that if there were clues in the podcast, and someone cut them, and then deleted all the backups, they’ve gone forever?’

‘Unless Joe backed up his computer to an external hard drive as well and put that somewhere.’

‘To a what?’

‘It’s a device about the size of a phone.’

‘Right. Got it. Umm …’

‘Yes?’

‘Would that be a mobile or landline phone?’

Seb smiled. ‘Mobile.’

‘Right. But why would someone go to the trouble of cutting bits of Monica and Leanne’s interviews? If they wanted to get rid of something, wouldn’t it be easier to simply delete the whole sound file?’

‘Yes, but also more obvious,’ said Seb. ‘Joe’s killer wanted it to look like there was no killer. Leanne knows she was interviewed, as do others, so if her whole interview disappeared, it might look suspicious. But who’s going to notice a little cut?’

‘Me! Eventually. Pity it was Leanne’s interview.’

‘Why?’

‘The others would be more likely to remember what they had said. With Leanne, well, she can be a little … addled.’

Seb nodded. ‘What about Sal’s housemate, Monica? If she said something about Sal and Leanne, she might remember it.’

‘I don’t even know her surname, but her number might be in Joe’s phone. I’ll try to track her down.’

They both sipped their coffees, accidentally in unison.

‘I had another thought,’ said Barb. ‘If you were being strangled, you’d fight like heck, yes?’

Seb immediately looked uncomfortable.

‘Don’t think about her,’ urged Barb. ‘Imagine the victim being someone you don’t like. Joseph Stalin.’

‘I don’t actually know much about Stalin.’

‘Very unpleasant. Take my word for it. Now, the first victim was very old, the second had cancer. Sal was small, but according to Monica she had been doing regular yoga, plus when people are desperate, they find extra strength. I bet you swam faster than you ever had yesterday when you were being shot at?’

He nodded again.

‘Choke me.’

Seb stared at her, alarmed. ‘What?’

‘Pretend, obviously. Come.’ She moved to the old sofa by the wall and lay back on it. ‘Stand above me and put your hands on my neck. You might need to rest a knee on the cushions.’

Seb reluctantly obeyed, lowering a knee to the sofa and, as lightly as he could, resting his hands on her neck.

‘If you were trying to kill me, you’d need two hands, which means you couldn’t hold or block my hands.’ Barb started waving her hands around. ‘The harder you push, the more you lean down, yes?’

Seb gently experimented. ‘Yep. Leaning down, I can apply more pressure.’ He glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘I really hope no one walks in.’

‘If they do I’m going to scream, “Help! Stop!”’

‘Not funny.’

‘But if you were strangling me and someone walked in, well … who would they call?’

‘Ah, that joke.’

‘Back to business.’ Barb reached her hand up and touched his cheek. ‘I can reach your face or neck. I could scratch you, punch you.’ She turned her head to the side and craned her neck, while grabbing his wrist and pulling it toward her mouth. ‘I could probably bite your wrist. If I was doing either of those things, and you were trying to strangle me, what would you do?’

‘Ignore it and squeeze harder.’

‘Exactly. To stop me scratching and biting, you’d have to stop choking me, so you’d press on until the job was done.’ She looked satisfied. ‘You can let go now.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Seb released his hands and almost jumped away from the couch.

Barb got up and paced up and down the side of the station next to the sofa. To get out of her way, Seb sat on it.

‘So for the next few days,’ Barb said, ‘the Strangler might have had scratch marks on their face or neck, or bite marks on their wrist. She stopped and covered her face with her hands.

‘You okay?’ Seb asked tentatively.

‘Just trying to put it all together. Here goes. Sal fled Sydney because someone assaulted her. She didn’t tell any of her friends and, six months later when she visited Viv, moved the photo of them all so she couldn’t see it, suggesting to me it was one of them. She was considering reporting the assault to police, but before she did she was killed, and a bloodied shirt she had as evidence of her attack went missing.

‘Seven years later, Joe does a podcast about it, starts to find out things, and also ends up dead. The people who know most about Joe’s podcast are the people he interviewed, who also happen to be Sal’s closest friends. Dev, Gary, Leanne, Viv and umm …’

‘Monica,’ added Seb.

‘Well, yes, Monica. But also, umm …’

‘Oh. Me.’

‘Yes.’ Barb hurried on. ‘Now, I’m not saying someone in your friend group definitely killed Sal and Joe, but they’re definitely the strongest suspects. And as we discussed, Dev and Viv aren’t cleared. Nor are Gary and Leanne.’

‘What about me? As far as you’re concerned, am I cleared?’

‘Yes, of course. Definitely … I mean, technically, no … but let’s say yes.’

Seb opened his mouth, about to try to grapple with her response, but decided to conserve energy. ‘Would Leanne and Dev have had the strength to strangle her?’ he asked instead.

‘They’re both bigger than her. Mayne said the Strangler may have controlled his victims with a gun, perhaps a replica. They use the gun to make Sal lie on the sofa, stand above her, put one hand on her throat, drop the gun and use both hands. So, yes I think so.’

Unpleasant images formed in Seb’s mind.

Barb continued. ‘Here’s the thing. Maybe someone remembers back then, just after Sal died, seeing one of you – one of them,’ she corrected, in response to Seb’s withering look, ‘with a scratched or bruised face, or a bite mark on their wrist. Maybe someone has a photo taken just after she died. Do you have any?’

She sat beside him on the couch.

Seb pulled out his phone and scrolled. ‘Pretty sure I wasn’t in the mood for photos after … Nope. Nothing for weeks.’

‘But maybe some of the others have some. It’s a lead.’

‘Agree.’ Seb drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘I listened to the last bit of the podcast.’

‘Good. I listened to it again last night, too. I had a question. Sal’s last night in Sydney, you slept at Joe and Gary’s place. After you went to bed …’

‘A.K.A. passed out on the couch …’

‘Do you remember anyone going out, or coming in?’

‘No, but I’d drunk a lot. I was out.’

‘If we think Sal was assaulted that night, you could see it two ways. Everyone who was sleeping in that house has an alibi – you, Dev, Gary, Joe and Viv. But, really, no one does. Anyone could have come home and then snuck out again. Did you see anyone when you got to their house?’

‘Just Gary, and he went straight to bed. I assumed the others were in their rooms.’

‘And of course Leanne doesn’t have an alibi either. We don’t know where she slept. You said you and Sal left the pub to walk home together, then you decided to come back?’

‘Yep,’ said Seb, suddenly self-conscious. He tried to arrange his face into a neutral expression, but he seemed to have forgotten how.

‘That doesn’t really make sense to me, I’m afraid,’ continued Barb, frowning. ‘I just wonder if there’s more to it?’

Seb looked blankly at her. Or tried to. Was he smiling? He tried to make his mouth a straight line.

‘In the podcast, Joe said he thought you had strong feelings for Sal, and you might have had a disagreement with her that night. I’ve noticed how upset you get when her death comes up. I mean, of course you do, as a friend, but is it perhaps more than that? If you did have strong feelings for her, then that night at the pub, everyone else was around, and then, finally, you’re alone, walking home with her. She was single again, you’d drunk quite a lot. It just seems unlikely you’d turn around and go back to the pub unless … Did you, perhaps, find yourself telling her how you felt? And did you return to the pub, as Joe suggested, because it didn’t go well?’

He felt frozen. They sat in silence a long time, side by side on the couch, Seb staring straight ahead at nothing. He could sense Barb studying him, until, without making a conscious decision, he started to talk.

‘I’d fallen for her before she got with Joe. When they broke up, I tried to be patient. Told myself to go slow, and I did. I was a good friend, listened to all her break-up stuff, but … I didn’t know how she felt about me. Didn’t know if she knew how I felt. It was driving me crazy. That night as we walked home, I blurted it out.’

‘How did she react?’

‘In my mind, I imagined us falling into each other’s arms, but … she said, of course she liked me, but she’d just got out of a relationship and we were all in a band together, so it was complicated and she needed to simplify her life, not complicate it more and … I just got this feeling of doom, like everything was collapsing, and I said something stupid and angry and stormed off.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I can’t really remember. That she was hiding from the truth or something pathetic and ridiculous like that. Then, next morning when I got home, she was gone. I assumed it was because of what I’d said. That it was the last straw for her. I was the person she thought she could talk to and trust, and then suddenly I’d become yet another problem for her. Ever since, I’ve thought, if I’d just kept quiet, she wouldn’t have left and …’ he found it difficult to get words out ‘… she wouldn’t be dead. It’s my fault.’

Barb put her arm around his shoulders.

‘You poor boy. Carrying that all these years.’

Seb nodded, unable to speak.

‘But now, you know you weren’t the last straw. Because someone assaulted Sal, and it must have been later that very night, after you’d left her.’

‘Exactly,’ he said despairingly. ‘After I’d left. If I hadn’t of said all that, we would have gone home together, and maybe whatever happened, wouldn’t have, because I would have been there. It’s still my fault.’