‘Oh, I see.’
‘We’re just minding them for the next couple of days – being good grandparents and all that. We love it though.’ The woman wiped her palms on her pyjama pants and extended a hand. ‘Ebony May. Though I’m sure you know that.’
With the situation seemingly under control, Emmett followed Ebony to a dining room table. Angus May joined them shortly after, carrying a teapot and several pretty floral cups.
‘How do you have it? Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just black is fine.’ Emmett struggled to get a decent grip on the fiddly chinaware, the handle far too small. ‘Thanks for having me over.’
Ebony shifted her chair in closer to the detective, and reduced her voice to a whisper. ‘You have some news for us?’
‘I do.’ Emmett gave up on the tea and instead clasped his hands before him. ‘There’s been a discovery out in Blairgowrie. Human remains have been found – we don’t have a positive ID on them yet but we think—’
‘That it’s Cecilia.’ Angus finished the thought for him.
‘Yes.’
‘Where was she found?’ Ebony asked, her eyes lowered to the tabletop.
‘Bones were discovered on a back beach a couple of days ago. Subsequent searches uncovered the remainder of the skeleton within a crevice on a nearby cliff face.’
‘A crevice?’ Cecilia’s mother still wouldn’t look up.
‘Between rocks.’
A gentle hush settled over the room, as the two parents timidly sipped their drinks.
‘We thought you might have had a different kind of breakthrough with the case – got a new lead on who was responsible,’ Angus eventually admitted, before reaching a tired hand to his wife. ‘But finding her is a good thing. At least now we can give her the burial she deserves.’
At this, Ebony could no longer contain her tears, the woman’s face contorting – the same, agonising pain that Emmett had watched on the recording of the first press conference earlier that morning.
‘It’s likely this will lead to new avenues of inquiry, so please don’t give up hope that we will find the person who did this.’
Neither parent responded. The hands joined across the table turned whiter.
‘I know it can feel hopeless, but new witnesses often come forward after many years. And of course we don’t yet know for certain that it is your daughter.’ Emmett finally managed to grasp the stupid teacup, taking a large mouthful of the now tepid liquid. ‘But I did want you to be aware of the development.’
‘We appreciate it.’ Ebony nodded stoically, releasing her grip with her husband and wiping her eyes. ‘And we knew she was gone for good; we’ve known that ever since we received the news that she was missing.’
‘Really? Why’s that?’
Cecilia’s mother looked sadly to her husband. ‘We knew something was wrong when we saw that she’d tried to call us so many times in a row that day. She got through to our answering machine on each occasion, but never left a message.’
Emmett frowned, resisting the urge to pull out a notepad. ‘Sorry, I’m not quite following what you’re talking about. Multiple missed calls? When? From what number?’
‘They came from the landline of the house where she was staying, Leicester’s place, on the morning of the day she vanished. We’d made her call us when she first got there at the start of the school holidays, but after that she only rang when she had to or when she was upset about something.’
‘She didn’t have a mobile phone?’
‘No, it wasn’t like it is nowadays.’
‘Of course. But how did you know it was her?’
Ebony blinked furiously, before rubbing at her eyes again. ‘She never said anything, but when we played the messages on the answering machine, both Angus and I agreed that we could hear her breathing. Why didn’t she say something?’
Emmett waited for Cecilia’s mother to compose herself, watching as she retrieved a box of tissues from above a piano.
‘How many calls were there and what time were they made?’
It was Cecilia’s father who responded this time, his face slowly gathering colour as he considered his response. ‘There were four calls that came through one after the other, sometime early in the morning – well, early for us, maybe 6 am or so? At any rate, we weren’t up yet; that’s why we missed her. I’ve told the police all this before, of course. It should be somewhere in their notes.’
‘I’ll make sure to check. Did you keep the messages, or did an officer get a recording of them?’
‘No.’ Angus exchanged a sombre look with his wife, his eyes wide and glassy. ‘It was my fault. I deleted them before anyone could save them. I didn’t mean to, but I wiped the tape. Can you believe it?’ He gave his head a gentle shake. ‘The last sounds we had from our little girl. Gone.’
She’d spent the morning in front of her computer, zooming in and out of the photographs, and playing with light and filters. Finally, Cindy had three acceptable images. But were they different enough from what Tobias had sent her? Not really, she decided, despondently holding up her mobile phone to compare the images on her screen to the originals on her handset.
The photo she liked most was taken from further back, when the young officer must have been crouched down. The rocky landscape at the foreground, the huddle of police in the distance looking small and trepidatious. It was chilling, without being gratuitously graphic.
Cindy flicked next to the shocking image of the skull, which had been photographed from above: exhumed from the gravesite and lying on some sort of blue sheet. She’d spent the most amount of time working on this picture, painstakingly increasing the contrast between light and shade so that the minute features of the bone were more obvious, adjusting the colour balance and carefully editing out an officer’s clumpy black shoe, which had just snuck into the bottom left of the frame. She stared at the photo. How would the girl’s loved ones feel if they saw this image plastered all over the news? Cindy pushed the thought away.
The third picture was a stock-standard shot of forensic officers going about their work, their masked faces solemn, if not disinterested. The slight blurriness of the photo suggested Tobias had taken it in a rush, or perhaps without wanting to be seen, and Cindy frowned as she looked at the very average image again, still not entirely convinced she’d done enough to improve it.
She stood up from the kitchen table, leaving her computer and stretching her arms out wide. Her bigger worry was that Tobias would see the news coverage and realise what she’d done. Or would he? She reached above the fridge for the tin of shortbread she kept hidden, opening it up and inhaling the smell of buttery goodness. One big benefit of working for the AAP was that all images and copy were sent out without bylines. Anonymous. So perhaps . . .
The ping of an email arriving in her inbox sounded and Cindy returned to her computer screen, licking bits of sugar off her fingertips. It was a copy of the next fortnight’s roster from her editor. She excitedly clicked the message.
Sorry Cindy, not much work for freelancers at the moment. I’ll let you know if that changes.
She read the short email and opened the attachment. Her name wasn’t on the roster at all! She checked it again, scanning down the columns to ensure she hadn’t made a mistake. Seriously?
Closing the webpage, the mundane image of the forensic officer stared at her, tauntingly. What did she have to lose? She picked up her phone and rang her editor.
‘Hi, so I have some news about those bones that we thought weren’t human.’ She didn’t bother wasting time with small talk. ‘Turns out they’re the remains of a girl who went missing in the late nineties.’
‘What? Really?’ Frantic tapping sounded down the phone – her editor searching online for what he’d missed, no doubt.
‘Yes, but no one else knows that yet, so you won’t see reports anywhere. And more importantly,’ Cindy paused for dramatic effect, ‘I’m the only one who’s got photos.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The lunchtime service always started slowly, a gentle trickle of regulars who politely waited in line, well accustomed to the rules: one serving of soup, one piece of fruit, two biscuits, and a hot drink.
Daphne smiled as she ladled a generous helping of the day’s offering – split pea and ham – into a red ceramic bowl. ‘Doing alright, Shane?’
The man’s lips parted, a nervous stuttering of garbled words.
‘This ought to keep you going, and make sure you help yourself to a bread roll too.’
When she’d initially launched the food kitchen it was held on the first Friday of every month, staffed by just a few volunteers inside the small events hall at St Andrews church in Rye. Now it ran every week, their fold-up tables taking up most of the lawn adjacent to the white stone building, with a well-organised roster of rotating helpers.
Daphne looked up to see the line had grown, snaking its way back down to a narrow driveway and around to the carpark. She frowned.
Her parish had two churches – St John’s in Sorrento, and this modest property at Rye. St John’s had been where she and Robert had resided. Their small cottage, at the back of the beautiful brown limestone building, had been constructed from all local materials in the mid-1870s. Yet for whatever reason she’d always felt more at ease working in Rye, and now, more than ever, it seemed that her services there were most urgently needed.
‘You don’t have anything warmer, Stella?’ She noticed the young woman before her looked uncomfortable in just a grubby singlet, the ceramic bowl shaking slightly in her hands. ‘Have your lunch and then go and see Mandy inside. We’ve got a lot of jumpers and jackets that have been recently donated; I’m sure there’ll be something in your size.’
The woman nodded mutely before moving on.
Daphne continued serving the food, her portions getting smaller and smaller as the ladle began scraping the bottom of the pot. She’d just finished her final bowl and was about to carry the empty vat to the kitchen when he approached her, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. It had been so long, years, since she’d last seen him, that she almost didn’t recognise the man towering over her.
‘How can I help?’ Daphne squeezed the handles of the pot, her shoulders rising.
The steely eyes narrowed; the jaw clenched. ‘I left something with your husband.’ The man’s face hardened, his glare unwavering. ‘And I want it back.’
When Emmett returned to his office, he found Lanh seated on the carpet floor, circled by the case file boxes. In front of him was a giant spiral notepad, which looked like it was intended for an art class rather than detective work.
‘What are you doing?’ He couldn’t hide his bemusement.
Lanh barely looked up, apparently completely absorbed in whatever he was reading.
Emmett dropped his bag and joined his colleague, self-consciously crouching near him. ‘You know you could have sat at my desk – or taken the boxes to your own office.’
‘These statements are inconsistent.’ Lanh’s voice was oddly monotone. ‘She’s lying.’
‘You’re going through Gypsy’s interviews again?’
‘No.’ He finally lifted his eyes. ‘The other girl – Scarlett.’
Despite the slight twinge in his knees, Emmett accepted the unusual seating arrangement and sank lower to the floor, taking the document from Lanh. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘At first when she says she lost contact with Cecilia she describes tripping and falling; later she speaks as though someone pushed her.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes . . .’ Lanh sorted through a neat stack of papers next to him. ‘It’s when she’s questioned about these facial injuries.’
Emmett leant over to view the slightly faded copies of photographs. He remembered this image: the teenager pictured staring morosely at the camera, a significant cut beginning to heal just below her left eye socket.
‘It’s certainly a nasty bruise.’
‘She didn’t trip and fall. And she wasn’t pushed either.’
‘You think she was involved in a fight with someone?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Why wouldn’t she just say that though?’
The young detective shrugged. ‘If both girls are lying, they both know what happened to their friend.’
‘Maybe . . .’ Emmett didn’t like the way his colleague was so quick to draw conclusions. ‘They could have been scared.’
Lanh pulled a face that suggested utter disbelief. Emmett chose to ignore it.
‘We’ll interview Scarlett and Gypsy once the remains are confirmed, but I’d like to focus first on the main suspect, the local man who was arrested. He mightn’t yet know about the discovery of the bones, and that gives us time to go through all the information on him and consider putting some surveillance in place.’
‘Tap his phone?’
‘Exactly – and maybe even set up GPS tracking or get some patrols to sit off his house. Then we can drip-feed pieces of information to the media and see how he responds.’
Lanh seemed vaguely energised by this suggestion, bobbing up to his knees and flipping his enormous art pad to reveal a new page of notes.
At the top, WARREN TURTON was written in heavy pencil, the letters drawn over themselves several times, rather like Nicholas’s writing exercises at school. Vertical lines down the length of the page created columns, in which dot points were jotted.
30 September, 1998 – First statement:
– Lives on Koonya Avenue and knew of the three girls
– ‘No idea’ what happened to them that night
– Can’t explain why a witness reported seeing Cecilia May in his car on the morning of Wednesday 23 September
– Says his car was stolen over the weekend, but he ‘didn’t get around’ to filing a report with police
‘What’s this sighting of Cecilia in a car?’ Emmett leant in closer.
‘It was a tip-off from the general public. The local station held an appeal for information on the Friday after Cecilia disappeared . . .’
‘Yeah, I watched the recording of her father speaking at that only this morning,’ Emmett interrupted.
‘Right. Well as you’d expect, that resulted in the hotline being flooded with calls, including one from a local woman who claimed to have seen a teenager, matching Cecilia’s appearance, sitting in the front passenger seat of a white sedan, being driven by a Caucasian male. The sighting was made on Melbourne Road, only a couple of blocks up from the intersection with Koonya Avenue and, according to this witness, the teenager looked distressed.’
‘And let me guess,’ Emmett murmured. ‘Warren drove a white sedan?’
‘Precisely. He was already on investigators’ radar because of his criminal history. And he couldn’t agree to police inspecting his vehicle, because it had been “stolen”.’ Lanh used his fingers to make imaginary quotation marks in the air.
‘Geez,’ Emmett let out a low whistle. ‘Now I can understand why Leicester Reyes is so filthy this prick has got away with it for so long.’
3 October, 1998 – Reinterviewed:
– Admits he saw the girls on the Tuesday evening, but insists he didn’t follow them
– Claims he was home alone on the night Cecilia went missing
– Can’t explain why his car was found burnt out in the Point Nepean National Park
Emmett stopped. ‘Point Nepean National Park, where’s that?’
‘Above Portsea.’ Lanh shuffled his stack of papers again and retrieved a map.
A large green area covered the tip of the peninsula, which narrowed to a pointy edge, surrounded by the waters of Port Phillip Bay on one side and Bass Strait on the other.
‘It certainly doesn’t feel like this is a question of who killed Cecilia May.’ Emmett frowned, returning to the damning notes. ‘And he even made a confession didn’t he? At what point did all that happen?’
‘We’re getting to that.’ Lanh tapped his notepad.
6 October, 1998 – Arrested and charged:
– Admits following the girls and attacking them near Koonya Ocean Beach
– Agrees Cecilia May is dead but won’t say where the body is
– Can’t explain why he attacked her, or reveal how he committed the crime
‘That’s a sudden change of heart,’ Emmett stared at the notes, an odd feeling in his stomach. ‘I wonder what made him suddenly admit to it all.’
Lanh shrugged. ‘The pressure probably got to him. And all the news coverage. Maybe he decided to give that kid’s poor parents some relief.’
‘Mm,’ Emmett couldn’t bring himself to agree. It was a rare crim that suddenly found a conscience. More likely he cracked under pressure. The police would have been interrogating him pretty hard, especially since one of their own was affected. ‘And then someone came forward and vouched for him? Who was that?’
‘A Reverend from his local church.’
‘Really?’ Emmett was about to say something further when a heavy knock made him turn.
‘Sorry to interrupt.’ The station secretary leant into the room. ‘But the superintendent wants to see you both. Straight away.’
With more effort than he would have liked to admit, Emmett pulled himself up from the floor and followed Lanh out of his office, the young detective scampering ahead, almost sickeningly eager to face their boss.
Bryce was seated behind his desk, forearms pressed to the table, fists clenched. ‘Have you seen?’ he barked, well before either detective had got through the doorway.
Emmett’s stomach dropped.
Bryce swivelled his computer so that the detectives could view the screen. ‘They’re on the homepage of the Herald Sun, the Age, the Australian . . . even the fucking Guardian, for Christ’s sake.’
An image of Cecilia’s parents reaching for each other across the table appeared in Emmett’s mind, their hands turning whiter and whiter. It was the same white that was staring out at him now: their daughter’s remains published above sensational headlines for all the world to see.
The Girl Remains (Detective Corban) Page 6
