The Accusation

by Wendy James

  ‘And this,’ she gave a gracious wave of her hand, ‘is where we keep all the girls we kidnap, officers.’

  Stratford and Moorhouse ignored her, surveying the room silently.

  ‘We haven’t been here that long,’ I felt like an explanation was required for the room’s depressing condition.

  Moorhouse gave me an understanding smile. ‘We’ve been in our place for two years, and there are still boxes I haven’t unpacked. Really, sometimes I think I should just grit my teeth and throw them away. I can’t even remember what’s in half of them now.’

  Stratford had a quick look around from the doorway, then followed Mary into the bigger room next door. Moorhouse edged around the maze of boxes and crates, and looked through a box stacked with old paintings I hadn’t yet got around to hanging. She pulled up a framed print of Margaret Preston’s Sydney Heads that I’d bought when Steve and I first set up house together.

  ‘Oh, I love this,’ she enthused, lining it up against the wall. ‘I’ve been thinking about taking up painting. This looks like something I could manage. I might just take a snap.’

  ‘It’s not actually a painting, it’s a woodblock print.’

  Moorhouse looked at me blankly, and took the photo. She rifled through the carton, and pulled out another – a long, framed poster of one of Alice Neel’s pregnant women that I’d picked up years ago. Under the dim light, the green tones looked even more sickly than usual.

  Moorhouse gazed at it for a long moment. ‘Wow. That’s kinda grotesque. She actually looks like she’s about to burst. I might get a photo of that one too.’ Her phone flashed. ‘Excellent.’ She gave me a bright smile.

  Back upstairs, the two officers took a quick look through the living areas and bedrooms – not even blinking at the chaos in Mary’s room – and then headed back outside. Mary changed her mind about accompanying us when she saw the frost still glistening on the lawn, and the three of us trudged across to the car shed. When I pulled up the central door, Stratford gave an appreciative nod.

  ‘This is a good size,’ he said, looking into the cavernous space from the doorway. ‘Three cars, eh? I’d love one like this, but the wife won’t be in it. I’ve got a boat,’ he added by way of explanation.

  ‘All this space is wasted on us, I’m afraid. We’ve only got one car, and most of the time I can’t actually be bothered driving it in. Though it’s a bit of a mistake in this weather, isn’t it?’

  He looked over at my little Mazda, its red paint shrouded in heavy frost, and grimaced. ‘So you’ve only got the one? Your mother, she doesn’t have a car?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s ever had a licence, actually. I don’t remember seeing her drive. But even if she did, they’d have taken it away now.’

  They both looked at me sympathetically this time.

  ‘She doesn’t seem that bad,’ Moorhouse said. ‘Just . . . a bit eccentric?’

  ‘It varies. Today’s a good day. So far. It tends to get worse at night, or when she’s tired.’

  ‘Is she okay on her own – or do you have to get someone in to help with her?’

  I explained that Sally came in three days a week, that when Mary was at home alone I checked in on her by phone. It wasn’t ideal, but so far it was working.

  ‘And lately Chip’s been calling in too, when he can.’

  ‘Chip Gascoyne?’ Her surprise was obvious.

  ‘Yes. We’re friends. And he’s good with Mary.’ It was too complicated to go into details.

  ‘This was the Gascoyne’s place, wasn’t it? Must’ve been a bit of a wrench for him, splitting the property like that. Selling up.’

  ‘Oh, you couldn’t really call it selling up. It’s just the old homestead, and not even an acre of land. I’ve only got the home paddock. Chip’s land actually starts right there.’ I indicated the fence that ran along the perimeter of the shed. ‘Anyway, I’m sure he’s happy enough in his new place.’

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ The inspector gestured across the paddocks. There was a dense windbreak of pines between the two properties but it was still possible to make out Chip’s chimney and a small section of his roof. I nodded.

  ‘It won some architecture prize,’ Moorhouse piped up helpfully. ‘I saw the pictures in some magazine a few years ago. It looks awesome.’

  ‘Yes. It’s perfect really – not as big as the old place, but very comfy. Everything’s new. And it’s warm.’ A gust of icy-cold wind whipped around us, as if to illustrate my point.

  Stratford laughed. ‘And that’s something you really appreciate at this time of year.’

  ‘Anyway, I think we’ve seen enough here. We’ve got quite a busy day ahead of us. How many more did you say, constable?’ He stamped his feet, looking glum at the prospect.

  ABDUCTED: THE ELLIE CANNING STORY

  A documentary by HeldHostage Productions © 2019

  ELLIE CANNING: TRANSCRIPT N7

  One day I woke up and there was a woman sitting beside me in a chair, holding my hand. I can remember just lying there, gazing at her, saying nothing, wondering who she was and where she’d come from. It took me a while to understand that she was real. That she wasn’t just a part of the weird dream world I’d been in for so long. Sometimes I thought she might have been the woman from the painting. She looked similar – dark hair and dark eyes – but she was older, and she wasn’t pregnant. After a while I decided she must be a nurse, although she wasn’t wearing a uniform or anything, just ordinary clothes – jeans and a shirt, a cardigan. She did seem sort of familiar, but it was ages before I remembered who she was, and how I’d met her.

  That first day she sat beside me and stroked my hand. She smiled and said hello. I tried to speak, to ask her where I was, what had happened, but my lips wouldn’t form the words.

  Eventually she asked me if I wanted something to eat. There was a bowl of soup, some pieces of buttered bread. The soup didn’t smell like hospital food, or even school food – it smelled spicy and delicious. Suddenly I realised I was starving.

  She helped me sit up, arranging the pillows behind me. I was too weak to feed myself, so she fed me, spoon by spoon, wiping my face with a napkin when I dribbled. It was the tastiest soup I’ve ever had. After the soup she gave me a drink of something sweet – juice or cordial – from one of those baby cups with a lid.

  After I’d eaten I started to fall asleep again, but the woman shook me gently and told me I should go to the loo first. She helped me up, and I was surprised to find that my legs were still working. She led me across the room and opened the door. There was a little toilet with one of those heavy black lids like in public toilets. The room smelled of eucalyptus, which was better than the bedroom itself, which was kind of rank. She handed me this pair of disgusting granny undies and told me to put them on and give her mine. I was scared that she was going to make me pee in front of her, but she closed the door and told me to let her know when I was done.

  Anyway, when I’d been, she helped me across the room again and back into the bed. She put my dirty undies into a bag, then straightened the bedcovers and tucked me in. She sat back down on the chair beside me, and stroked my hair while I drifted off.

  HONOR: AUGUST 2018

  HONOR WAS WITH ELLIE IN THE TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION the police had arranged for them at the Luxury Inn when Stratford called to say he and Moorhouse were heading over, that they needed Ellie to look at some pictures. Honor had been trying to work – she had other clients who needed her attention – but it had been difficult. Incoming calls from outlets trying to talk to Ellie were so constant that she’d had to hand all her other clients over to her assistant. There would have to be some serious re-scheduling when she was back in Sydney, but now was not the time.

  The girl had spent the afternoon lying on the lumpy double bed, eating Cheezels and watching Geordie Shore on an endless loop. She hadn’t been the best company, was anxious and demanding, and Honor had had to work hard to stay patient. The constant noise from the televis
ion was doing her head in, but they’d finally reached a compromise – Honor paying the receptionist a ludicrous amount of money to go out and buy Ellie a pair of headphones.

  The receptionist – Elaine Someone-or-other, was another middle-aged dowd who claimed to have been an old friend of Honor’s at school. ‘My parents ran this place back then,’ she’d said with a fat smile, as if inheriting this dump was something to be proud of. These multiplying numbers of former ‘acquaintances’ were doing her head in too. Since buying the weekender, most of her visits into town had been brief, and, apart from a few unavoidable celebrity guest–type appearances at local functions, her encounters with locals had been mercifully limited. But since the news got out that she’d taken Ellie on as a client, things had changed. So many people she’d forgotten, or would really rather not remember, had been keen to renew her acquaintance, welcome her back into the fold, so to speak. It was as if she was wearing a neon Prodigal Daughter sign on her back.

  ‘I remember when you were just a wee thing,’ one very old lady, apparently an old friend of her grandmother, had said, baring startlingly white teeth. ‘You were such a quiet little thing. Like a little mouse. I never imagined you’d grow up to be such a big-wig.’

  There’d been others too – friends of her parents, the woman who’d run the corner store, a couple of old school teachers, parents of classmates – who had come up to speak to her on one pretext or another, but who had all really wanted to talk about that poor sweet girl.

  She’d been taken aback by the interest – Ellie wasn’t a local, after all. But as the editor of the local paper had pointed out – Ellie Canning was the biggest story since local underworld identity Billy Cominos was shot point-blank in the Paradise Cafe back in the 1960s. Now that had been a scandal, sure, but one tinged with tragedy. Billy had, despite his undoubted criminal tendencies, always been a good bloke.

  But this story was different. This time the town could enjoy the proximity of the crime without being personally involved. There were no sides to be taken, no judgements to be made. The perpetrators, everyone was certain, would be out-of-towners, because there was literally no one that anybody could think of, no one who counted, no one who belonged, who fit Ellie’s description of her captors. Washers simply didn’t do this sort of thing.

  Honor knew the police had been conducting searches of all the properties that matched Ellie’s description from the few details she could recall of the exterior of the place where she’d been held – a milk pail–shaped mailbox, a long driveway, a cattle grid, a low-hanging front verandah. All of these features were utterly commonplace, no doubt there were dozens of local properties that fit the bill. She hadn’t imagined they’d come up with anything solid this early on in the investigation.

  Honor did a quick clean of the room while Ellie showered and brushed her teeth, making herself presentable just moments before the two detectives arrived. Hugh maintained his professional distance, but Jenny Moorhouse gave her a friendly grin.

  ‘How’s the babysitting going, Honor?’

  She rolled her eyes, gave the requisite heartfelt sigh. ‘Teenagers. I only just got her out of bed, to be honest. She’s basically been doing nothing but eating junk food and watching reality TV shows all afternoon. It’s driving me up the wall. I feel like I should be encouraging her to do something more wholesome, but I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Teenagers are such a joy. Or so I’ve heard. Mine aren’t quite there yet, but I’m happy to wait.’ She added, her expression more serious, ‘It’s good what you’re doing though. It’s shit that a decent kid like Ellie is going through something like this and has to cope with it all on her own.’

  ‘She hasn’t said much, but yeah. It’s a tough old world for some. Don’t worry about me. I’m getting business out of it, don’t forget.’

  Hugh filled them in on the investigation’s progress. They’d been to a number of farmhouses that morning, all within a ten-kilometre radius of where Ellie was found. Even though, Stratford explained, that was probably far in excess of the distance she was capable of walking, taking into account the state she’d been in when she was taken to hospital, the drugs she’d been given. But as the doctors said, the human body was capable of amazing things when put to the test.

  ‘And,’ he pointed out, ‘we can’t be sure that Ellie’s memory of that time is intact. It’s still possible there are things she can’t account for. We can’t, for instance, rule out the possibility that she was given a lift at some point after her escape and we’ve been looking in the wrong area.’

  What they’d expected was that it would be almost impossible to find any conclusive evidence of just who the perpetrators were. The most likely scenario was that they had been visitors to the area, perhaps even using aliases, and that they’d cleared out as soon as Ellie made her escape. They hadn’t had great hopes about finding the place she’d been kept either. It was really a needle-in-a-haystack situation, going on the information Ellie had given them. Even within their defined radius, the number of homes in the area, which included a large number of holiday rentals, made it challenging, to say the least.

  But as it turned out, Hugh went on, his expression almost cheerful, the first few days of the investigation had been far more productive than expected.

  ‘We don’t want to get your hopes up, Ellie, but we do have some possibilities. We’ve brought along some photographs for you to look at. Places with some of the features you’ve described.’

  Ellie, sitting cross-legged on the bed, listened intently, her hands clasped nervously in her lap, eyes wide, expectant.

  ‘So have you actually worked out where she was kept? Who did it?’

  Hugh took his time answering. ‘There’s no way we can be sure about anything until we have confirmation from Ellie. So if it’s okay, love, Jenny will show you some photos.’ He spoke soothingly, obviously sensing Ellie’s discomfort.

  Jenny took an iPad out of her bag. ‘Can I sit beside you?’

  Ellie nodded and Jenny sat down on the bed, wriggling over awkwardly with the tablet. ‘Just say no if you don’t recognise anything, Yes, if you do. It might take a while. There are quite a few.’

  ‘I’m just scared I won’t remember right.’ Ellie sounded very young.

  ‘Just do your best.’ Stratford’s voice was kindly, encouraging.

  Honor watched Ellie as Moorhouse swiped through the images.

  ‘No. No. No.’ Initially the girl shook her head at each picture, her face impassive, but then something in her expression changed, a degree of uncertainty creeping in. ‘I’m not sure – there’s something about this one,’ she hesitated, ‘I think it’s the trees. There’s something familiar . . . Oh God, I really don’t know. It was so dark. And I was so out of it.’

  ‘That’s okay, sweetheart.’ Moorhouse was calmly reassuring. ‘There’s plenty more.’ She swiped the screen again.

  ‘No.’ Again. ‘No.’ And again. ‘No.’

  A new image. Ellie paused. Looked more closely. Took a shaky breath.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I do recognise this one. Definitely. It’s a bit different, but I recognise the light. And that horrible paint colour.’

  She looked up, smiling triumphantly at Honor and Stratford. Then her eyes filled with tears. Honor felt her own shoulders sagging with relief. She took a deep breath, her eyes pricked.

  ‘This is the room,’ Ellie whispered. ‘This is where they kept me.’

  The two officers exchanged a rapid glance. Considering what Ellie’s identification meant, it seemed to Honor that they were incredibly calm.

  Moorhouse held up the iPad again, her expression sombre. ‘I’m going to show you a photograph now of the owners of this house, Ellie. I’d like to know whether you recognise them.’

  Ellie’s eyes widened, her hand moved involuntarily to her cheek.

  ‘Oh my God. That’s her. That’s the woman.’ She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it, enlarged the image. ‘It’s so weird,’ she said
wonderingly. ‘She looks so . . . normal.’

  Moorhouse’s jaw clenched; she flicked to the next picture. ‘And what about this one?’

  Ellie gave a short laugh. ‘Yes. That’s the other one – the mad old lady. Her mother.’ She shook her head, slid her finger across the screen, swiping back and forth between the two images.

  The two officers looked at one another again.

  ‘Are you certain, Ellie? It’s very important that we get this right. You’ve accused these women of an extremely serious crime. They could both go to prison for a very long time. You need to be one hundred per cent certain.’

  ‘Can I know who they are?’ Ellie asked. ‘Are they, like, known criminals or anything? Have they done this sort of thing before?’

  Moorhouse looked up at Stratford, who nodded.

  ‘That’s the thing. They haven’t. They really don’t fit any sort of . . . regular profile for this sort of thing.’

  Honor couldn’t help herself. ‘I can’t imagine there is a regular profile for any of this. There’s nothing regular about it, surely?’

  ‘No, you’re right. But this has come as a bit of a surprise, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Honor tried not to sound too interested.

  ‘You understand that anything we say here is in complete confidence, Honor? It can’t be mentioned outside this room until our investigations have been completed. There’s a lot of work to be done before we can lay charges, and we need to ensure there are no stuff-ups. We don’t want to lose this one on technicalities.’