‘It was a surprise, which I’ve just ruined.’ I felt tired and flustered, needed coffee. We both fell into the awful thrumming strangeness of that concept: of me setting up a room for Bridie at my place, something only a father who was fairly certain his daughter would visit regularly and use that room often would do. The type of father I had no right at all being, at this stage in our Great Relationship Repair Experiment.
‘It’s a really nice room.’
‘I can’t wait to see it.’
‘I’m sorry, Birds.’
‘Well, since you’re feeling sorry …’ Her mouth moved with a repressed smile. Hope and mischief. ‘How would you feel about me borrowing the ’Stang?’
A voice inside my brain started screaming hysterically. I kept my face neutral, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. ‘The ’Stang?’
‘I think I just snagged my first rescue in the region,’ Bridie said. ‘Eastern water dragon with a busted leg lounging by someone’s pool. It’s ten minutes from here.’
‘I would like nothing more than for you to borrow the ’Stang,’ I outright lied, fishing my keys out of my pocket and tossing them to her. ‘Tell me how it goes.’
I was smiling as she jogged excitedly away to drive my immaculately restored classic car to an unknown rural location and use it to transport a mangled reptile. The smile plummeted as Evan came around the corner in his Kia, pulling up in the dirt right in front of me, his window open.
‘Shouldn’t you be under a rock somewhere?’ I asked.
‘You going to see the body?’
‘Not with you I’m not.’
‘Well, I just spoke to Dodge. He was heading out to check on his door-knockers. And my eyesight isn’t great, but I thought I just saw you toss your car keys to Bridie.’ He glanced at his rear-view.At Bridie, across the road and down the street a little, putting P plates on the back of the ’Stang. ‘That was Bridie, wasn’t it?’
I stood there, fuming.
‘She’s so tall,’ Evan said.
‘Get out of the driver’s seat,’ I barked, walking towards the car.
EVAN
Iendured the silence for as long as I could. The road rumbled underneath us and Russell made back-to-back phone calls, one hand on the wheel and the other on his phone, elbow on the sill. I had time to get a proper look at him, now that he wasn’t focused on me. He’d put on weight since the marriage break-up, muscle around the shoulders, a thickness in the torso. The beard was still there, and he still couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do with his hair, but the harder I looked the more I discerned an attention to detail he might not have felt he could get away with as a gay man masquerading as a straight guy—the shirt was ironed to within an inch of its life, and wasn’t some off-the-rack department store job but something more expensive. He’d stopped biting his nails and his skin was better. I was glad for him, that he’d managed to shrug off the culture of physical appearance that we’d grown up with: that a man spends $5 or less on his shampoo, doesn’t use conditioner, throws all his clothes in the dryer regardless of fabric type, and shaves his beard and nothing else. I still couldn’t floss my teeth without hearing my father’s voice growling in my brain about what a pansy I was being.
Russell was getting a scene debrief from the investigators working on Chloe’s apartment in Maroubra. From what I could tell, there’d been nothing of obvious importance found in Chloe’s living space. The girl didn’t appear to have a boyfriend, and her thingswere neat and orderly. The apartment sounded small, with a shared laundry, a 1950s brick place with security cameras at the front and back doors and nothing else. A hot, intimidating presence, filling all the available air in the car with his barking commands and heavy nose-breathing, Russell moved straight on to a phone call with Gail Caplan. Caplan talked so loudly on the phone I could clearly hear her end, which was helpful, because the previous calls had me leaning over and trying to put together clues from Russell’s responses.
‘What have you got?’
‘You first,’ my brother said. ‘Tell me that the geeks are into Chloe’s accounts.’
‘Got her bank account, no trouble at all,’ Gail said. ‘The banks are always quick to pony up. Someone’s going to send you a couple of years’ worth of statements. But the social media and the email are proving difficult. They’ve got to go through the security centres for each individual company, and they’re all on US time.’
‘Have you briefed the press?’
‘Yeah. Kept it vague. There’s interest, but the journos are absolutely flocking to Paddo’s double-bludgeoning on the Esplanade, so hopefully you won’t have too many vultures pecking at you. Did you speak to the family?’
‘Not yet. Going to see the body first.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’ll hold a briefing with the gormless nincompoops I’ve been saddled with as investigative staff here in about an hour.’ Russell glanced at me. ‘But I’m looking at it as being targeted. A silencing.’ He explained the crime scene to Gail in detail, talked about the potential missing notebook.
‘So, what did she know that she shouldn’t have known?’ Gail asked. ‘What was she working on? Was she out there for work?’
‘We need her call list. Her emails. Yesterday, Gail.’
‘Yes, yes. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.’
