Saving Rose

by Kate Genet

  Something. Something that would make a difference. She couldn’t call the police and she couldn’t stop him from walking through her flat, but she could do something.

  Dashing on nimble feet, Jeanette squeezed through the door back into Tracey’s flat. It was set out exactly like her own – they all were, although she’d only been in three out of the six in the row – and she reckoned she knew Tracey well enough to be able to find exactly where she’d keep the key to the lock on the back gate that Jeanette had made her put on.

  Sure enough, there it was in the kitchen drawer. Third down. She brushed aside the broken pens and paper clips, rubber bands and plastic tags from bread bags and snatched up the little key, holding it tight enough for it to bite into the soft pad of her thumb.

  Then she was out the back door again, slipping the key into the lock, gripping it in suddenly slippery fingers and having to tell herself to calm down before it twisted the right way and the lock sprang open. Unthreading the padlock from the bolt and dropping it to the grass, she was counting under her breath again.

  She’d reached fifty-seven by the time she was down the end of the alley and looking around for Danny’s car. It was a white one, a station wagon, with his name on the side, under the words Wedding Photography.

  And there it was. Sporting a long graze along the side, which she frowned over for only a moment, brain twitching at the memory of her cousin Annie’s car, which some arsehole had backed into at the park the day Sahara died.

  Breath caught in her throat, Jeanette forgot about counting and pressed her fingers against her lips instead. She bet if this car was compared to Annie’s, the damage would match up exactly. Another thing to tell Zoe’s police friend.

  Darting closer to the car, Jeanette wondered what she was going to do. Although seeing the damage and recognising it was enough right there.

  The car wasn’t locked. She’d reached out and grabbed the door handle without even knowing she’d decided to. Now the passenger’s door was open, and she was reaching in, her mind in a daze, operating purely on instinct, and a moment later she was closing the door, a nylon backpack on her shoulder.

  There were steps somewhere behind her and she spun around, hair flying, perspiration popping on her forehead.

  But it was just old Mrs. Murray, who lived in the last flat in the row, opening her gate and peering out.

  ‘Is it safe, love?’ she asked, spotting Jeanette, whose thoughts stuttered inside her head. Did Mrs. Murray know? How did she know?

  She was speaking of the earthquake and aftershocks, of course, but there were more pressing matters. Any moment now and Danny Fry was going to come back along the alleyway to his car and she had to be out of sight when he did that. For a moment, she thought of dashing around down the footpath in front of the block of flats and back that way, but Mrs. Murray stood blinking blindly at her, old and confused.

  Jeanette was beside her a moment later, drawing her gently back into her little dot of a backyard, closing the gate behind her and putting it on the latch, then leading her in between the flower beds back into the flat.

  ‘Everything’s all right,’ Mrs. Murray,’ she said, closing the back door behind them. ‘I think the worst is over. How about I make us a nice cup of tea?’

  58

  The grin was loud on his face when Danny opened the door to his car and slid in behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Score one for the Fry!’ he crowed at the empty car and sat there a moment with his hands loosely on the wheel in the ten and two o’clock positions.

  It had been a job well done, and yes, he admitted to himself – a great deal of fun. Standing there in the middle of Sahara’s room had given him a frisson of excitement that hadn’t had its match since the day the child had been in his arms, wriggling against him. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her hair again, transported back to the day at the park, the balmy weather, the distant sound of children’s happy laughter, the warm breeze on his hot cheeks, and her breath against his neck, setting the delicate hairs there all aquiver. His whole body thrummed with excitement at the memory. She’d been so young, so fresh, and for a moment, she’d been entirely his.

  His hands ached to stroke her firm young body again.

  Except she was gone. She’d slithered away from him, misunderstanding him, thinking suspiciously that he was going to hurt her, when that had been the furthest thing from his mind. Oh, it might have hurt a little, to begin with, but he would have made it up to her, would have soothed and shushed her, pressed his lips against her downy skin, kissed her better.

  He opened his eyes, humming deep in his throat. Now that this ridiculousness with the photographs and the like was behind him, it was time to look to the future.

  There was no need to think he’d have to give up his job. People were always getting married. He’d get a few gigs, invest the money in more equipment, and there’d he’d go, off again. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have a good cover story for losing all his portfolios. No one would feel anything but sympathy for someone who had lost their every possession in the Christchurch earthquake. And their wife, he reminded himself.

  He’d get along just fine.

  He’d already reached for his phone before he remembered he’d thrown the stupid thing away. Sitting back in the seat, he sniffed instead. Never mind. He’d just pick up Rose and drive to the airport instead. Buy a ticket right at the counter there. If the planes weren’t flying yet, that was fine. He’d just find a motel and camp out until they were. There was no way flights would be grounded more than a day or two.

  Then he and his little Pumpkin would be winging their way across the ditch back to Aussie and a fresh start. It would be better this time. He had a career, a family of his own, no one would be able to say he wasn’t qualified to look after Rachel anymore.

  She’d be grown up now, of course, and he sat there watching the grey light over the street, thinking about that little fact.

  Then decided it didn’t matter. In fact, it would be a boon. She’d help him with Rose and she’d understand his other needs too. She’d help him with those, make it easier for him.

  Nodding, he decided it would all work out very well indeed.

  An empty space caught his eyes and he gaped open-mouthed at the footwell in front of the passenger’s seat.

  For a moment, he simply didn’t understand. There was a short circuit in the synapses and the message his eyes were trying to relay refused to travel to the centre of his comprehension.

  Then in a blink it did and understanding flooded him like a dam bursting and he felt it push him back against the velour car seat cover and his head swam for a moment as he tried to stay afloat.

  His hand looked oddly far away, reaching for the door handle and slamming the door open, as did his feet when he swung them out onto the road and dragged the rest of himself after them. He stood on the road, squinting up and down the yellow centre line, thoughts circling around inside his skull, refusing to meet up properly, but bumping in the end into each other in inescapable reality.

  The pedestrians ignored him, tucking their heads down as though they might catch something if they were to meet his eye. And none of them had what he was looking for. None of them carried a grey backpack with pockets on the back and each side and a padded slot inside where you could slide in your laptop and be assured that as long as you didn’t fling it down too many canyons it would be pretty well protected.

  Unless it was stolen, of course. If it was stolen, then you were well fucked. Good and proper. Especially if said laptop computer, even heavily passworded, contained approximately fifteen files of child pornography.

  Swinging around on feet he couldn’t feel, Danny Fry looked up and down the road, searching. He moved away from the car to stand in the middle of the footpath.

  Still there wasn’t the person he was looking for, the one who had opened the door of his car and taken the bag from where he’d left it on the floor in front of the passenger’s se
at.

  He’d never even thought to lock the car. The key had gone straight from ignition to his pocket, no thinking along the way. For starters, this was a tiny little suburb in Christchurch, for crying out loud, not the middle of Sydney or something.

  It should have been fine to leave the car unlocked for five minutes. Or ten, or whatever. Sure, maybe he should have locked it…

  Oh hell, of course he should have locked it. That much was exploding bright and clear in the front of his mind like the fireworks display on Sydney Harbour on Australia Day.

  ‘Fuck!’ he yelled, not caring who heard him. There was no one about anyway. An old bat twitched her net curtain at him, but that was all. The bag was gone, along with the person who’d taken it. Long gone.

  His fingers, when he drew them through his hair, were like steel springs, raking across his scalp and he bared his teeth in a snarl as he stalked around the car and climbed back in.

  That was it, he decided. Time to blow this Popsicle stand. There couldn’t be any hanging around now.

  Time to get the kid and get out of town.

  59

  Claire was watching Moana’s dark head poring over the mobile phone, a deep frown creasing her fine skin, when the front door burst open.

  ‘I heard voices in here! Jeanette!’ the young woman said, gasping, a kid with bright hair the same colour as Rose’s swinging wildly on one hip.

  ‘Jeanette isn’t here,’ Moana said. ‘Who are you?’

  The woman came to an abrupt halt and stared at the group of them. Claire watched the battle between suspicion and eager neediness on her face.

  ‘She’s Tracey, one of Jeanette’s friends,’ Margaret said with a sigh.

  ‘Mrs. W!’ Tracey regained her breathlessness. ‘I been looking for you all over! Jeanette sent me out to find you!’ The kid on her hip stared at each of them in turn, then tipped his head upwards to gaze curiously at its mother.

  ‘You know where Jeanette is?’ Moana asked.

  There was a frantic headshaking in reply. ‘That’s the problem! She sent me out…hang on – why should I be telling you anything? I don’t know who you are.’

  Claire answered. ‘I'm Claire, Zoe’s friend – Jeanette told you who Zoe is, right?’ She waited for a nod, ignoring the fact that she’d spoken of Zoe in the present tense, and it came a moment later. ‘This is Sergeant Moana Hodge. We’re both here to talk to Jeanette.’ She gave the young woman a calm smile. ‘Are you able to tell us where she is?’

  ‘This is about Sahara, right? And the dude what killed her?’

  Neither Claire, nor, she noticed, Moana, answered, but it didn’t matter because the young woman, Tracey, barely stopped to draw breath.

  ‘He was here, you know. I saw him in the shop right up the road, okay? He was buying a pie.’ She blinked at them. ‘And a bottle of Coke, one of them small ones, and a chocolate bar.’ A slight sniff. ‘A Moro, in case it matters.’ This time she did pause long enough to draw in a noisy lungful of air. ‘Which it don’t, of course, especially as he wasn’t buying them because he was hungry or anything.’

  Claire interrupted. ‘You’re talking about Danny Fry?’

  A vigorous nod in reply. ‘Yeah, it was him, all right. Jeanette showed me the photo last night, told me all about him, and Zoe, and what had happened.’ She nodded toward the phone. ‘She caught him on there when she was taking photos at Sahara’s party. He’s right there by the trees where she’d gone to hide. I don’t believe for a minute she woulda climbed the fence. Sahara was a real sensible girl.’ The woman’s face suddenly fell, going pale around the red spots of acne that most probably came from poor diet. Claire shut her eyes briefly, chiding the harsh judgement. Zoe would have had her on for jumping to those sorts of conclusions.

  But, she thought straight afterwards, she was probably right. Still, the kid in her arms looked clean and bright enough.

  ‘You saw Danny Fry in the neighbourhood?’ she asked, feeling Moana nod beside her.

  ‘Not just in the bloody neighbourhood,’ the woman said, almost yowling, ‘but asking for directions to here!’

  ‘Here?’ Moana asked. ‘Here as in right here, Jeanette’s flat?’

  ‘Yeah, you got that right. Bold as anything, he was. Betty behind the counter wouldn’t tell him nothing at first, but he was real smooth, you know? And so she got Pat, who owns the shop – ‘

  There was an apologetic glance for all the explanations and Moana nodded and smiled at her. Claire added hers to the mix.

  ‘Anyway,’ Tracey continued. ‘I knew Pat would likely tell him so me and George, we got out of there as fast as we could without drawing any attention to ourselves, and we hoofed it down here to warn Jeanette.’

  At a guess, Claire decided, George was likely to be the little boy being jiggled up and down as the girl told her story. Stepping forward, Claire grabbed him as his mother gestured again and he flopped outwards.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Tracey said and Claire looked at the child a moment, unsure why she’d picked him up, and wondering what to do with him now. There was a small snort from beside her and Moana plucked the boy from her hands and passed it to Margaret with an apologetic shrug. Margaret set the child on her lap and patted him rhythmically on the back. The kid promptly stuck his thumb in his mouth, leaned against her, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Tracey,’ Claire said. ‘Why don’t you sit down here at the table a moment and tell us the rest of your story?’

  ‘But you don’t understand!’ she said. ‘We gotta get out there and find Jeanette! He’s got her, I guarantee it.’

  Claire could feel Moana’s sudden stiffening at her side and her own skin tightened around her muscles.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s got her?’ she asked. ‘You’re saying Danny Fry has Jeanette?’

  A flicking back and forth of her head. ‘I mean, that I got Jeanette to come hide out at my place, so he wouldn’t see her, you know?’

  They nodded at her in unison.

  ‘So that was good. He got there like thirty seconds after she hopped over the fence to my place.’ Tracey sniffed at the memory of the close call. ‘But then Jeanette got real worried about her mum.’ A glance at Margaret. ‘She didn’t want you walking in on him, so she said I had to go find you. You’d be on your way to the shop, she said. So I said I’d go, and I’ve only just got back cos I didn’t find you anywhere.’

  ‘I went for a bit of a walk,’ Margaret said.

  Tracey shook her head. ‘Except I been searching everywhere for you, pulling out my hair worried that arsehole would get you before I did.’ She paused and the look of pure dismay on her face would, under any other circumstances, have been almost comical. ‘And now he’s got Jeanette.’

  ‘I'm not quite seeing how you’ve come to the conclusion that Danny has Jeanette,’ Claire said, keeping a grip on her impatience. There were obviously some dots that needed connecting.

  ‘Well, see, she was supposed to be at my place, right? But when I got back from looking for Mrs. W. just before, she wasn’t there anymore.’

  ‘She wasn’t at your flat, but had been when you’d left?’ Moana clarified.

  Vigorous head-nodding. ‘That’s right. So I came here, sneaked up the path, figured it was safe when I heard all your voices, and I came in.’ She looked momentarily abashed. ‘Didn’t reckon you’d mind, Mrs. W. Especially if Jeanette were here.’

  Except, thought Claire, Jeanette Woolsley wasn’t here.

  Moana must have been having the same thought because a moment later she was talking into her phone.

  ‘I want a trace on this cell number,’ she said, waving a hand in Claire’s direction. Pulling out Zoe’s phone, Claire scrolled through the contacts and showed Moana.

  Moana recited the number, then raised an eyebrow at the small crowd around her. ‘Do any of you know what Danny Fry drives?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Tracey was practically jumping up and down. ‘I saw it when I came out of the shop. It’s one of those white Mazda s
tation wagons.’ She blinked and grinned. ‘Might not be much to go on, except that he’s got a big sign on the side that says Danny Fry Wedding Photography. You can’t miss it!’

  60

  Moana smiled at the other two women and ushered Claire out onto the front doorstep. She ran stiff fingers through her thick hair and stared at Claire’s moss-green eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of any of this,’ she said.

  Claire dropped her eyes down to the path, then gazed out at the street, her face impassive. She gave a shake of the head. ‘Nor do I,’ she said. ‘What do we actually have?’

  Moana counted on her fingers. ‘A photograph of Danny at the park when Zoe quite obviously thought he oughtn’t to have been there.’

  ‘And which made her run back home and break into his personal things.’

  ‘Which led her to uncover some more photographs.’

  ‘In which he was abusing his kid sister.’

  They were silent a moment, taking in how their friend must have felt upon finding those.

  ‘So she – understandably – went running off to get Rose,’ Moana said. ‘I would have done the exact same.’

  ‘All of us would.’ Claire’s restless eyes settled on Moana for a moment and she could see the sharp light behind them. ‘Except then nature intervened.’

  ‘The earthquake.’ The aftershocks were still an almost continual shivering of the ground. Search and rescue teams were already flying in from all over the world. The Australians had arrived late the night before, Moana knew. Today the Japanese and Americans had joined them, with more on the way. She didn’t want to think about the enormity of the tragedy playing out only kilometres away from them. Her own small job was to continue looking after the welfare of the city’s children.

  And today that started with Rose Fry.

  ‘Do you think he’s really got Jeanette?’ Claire asked. Her voice was calm. In fact, everything about her was calm, and Moana looked at her, guessing it was this quality that allowed her to sail single-handedly around the world’s oceans. She’d done a little Googling of her own after Ari had raved about Claire Wilde and discovered there was no way on the planet that she would ever do the things this particular woman did. Not even if people offered big bucks to do it. Which apparently they did, although Moana’s gut feeling, sneaking looks at the woman in front of her, was that money wasn’t the motivating factor.