‘That’s a lot of clues,’ said Panton, encouragingly. ‘Emma?’ she urged. ‘Do you recognise anything in the room? Does it trigger any ideas about who the woman who collected Fox might be?’
Emma shook her head. She had her hand over her mouth and she was gaping at the image.
‘Are you sure she’s asleep?’ she asked.
Maven interrupted. ‘You know everyone had that photograph in the nineties,’ she said. ‘I recognise it. There’s a shop in Byron Bay, they must have sold a million of them. Black frame, dolphins shooting out of the water. Most people got rid of them years ago.’
‘I don’t remember seeing it before,’ said Emma.
‘Think hard,’ said Franklin. ‘But anyway, this email, it’s valuable. We know it’s been sent from a Gmail address. Probably they made a new one, but maybe not. We might be able to trace it to somebody. These people seem pretty sloppy. We’ll definitely be able to find out when they created it, provided the guys at Google are in a mind to help us. They usually are. With luck, we’ll be able to figure out where it was sent from. We’ve got something to work with, at least.’
Maven looked sceptical. ‘But what does that photo tell us? We’ve got no idea when it was taken. How are we supposed to know whether Fox is still okay?’
‘She has to be okay,’ Emma said desperately.
‘I think it’s a good sign,’ said Panton. ‘It means that whoever has Fox wants to make contact. This is not one of those situations where they want to keep the child and . . .’
Seeing Emma’s horrified face, she stopped suddenly, and her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eyes downcast. ‘I just meant, I think we can feel positive because . . .’
‘No. What are we supposed to do now?’ asked Brandon, angrily interrupting. ‘Email them back?’ He was standing with one hand supporting a wilting Emma. ‘Ask them how and where they want the money? Is that how it works?’
Franklin went to answer when his phone began flashing, at the same time as Panton’s.
‘Wait, this could be something,’ Franklin said.
He clamped his phone to his ear and listened carefully. He glanced in Emma’s direction, then in Brandon’s. Everyone waited. Finally he said, ‘Roger that’ and dropped the phone to his side.
‘What? What do they want?’ said Brandon.
‘Yes, come on, what is it?’ said Maven.
‘Okay, you know they want a million dollars.’
‘Yes, thank God,’ said Emma.
‘Okay,’ said Brandon. ‘When?’
Franklin glanced at the two of them. A million dollars. Okay, thank God, and when? Like that was fine?
‘I doubt very much that the police commissioner – the Minister, if it goes that way – can approve the payment,’ said Franklin. ‘We have a no ransom policy, same as the government. It’s got to be about finding Fox and the perpetrators.’
Maven snorted. ‘What are you even talking about?’ she said. ‘We can’t run any risks with Emma’s daughter. She’s a major star. If they want money, let’s give them money. I’ll arrange it with Jock. Where do we leave it? I assume they want cash?’
‘They don’t,’ said Franklin. He still had no intention of letting anyone pay a ransom – or not yet, anyway, not without speaking to Cath Hoffman, and probably not even then – but the instructions had been interesting. ‘They want Bitcoin. Do either of you know what Bitcoin is?’
The question hung in the air for one beat, then two.
‘Yes, we do,’ said Brandon, finally. ‘I have a Bitcoin account. That was how I paid Airlie.’
Tuesday 13 October
1 pm
‘Well, this is a fairly devastating milestone. Little Fox-Piper has now been missing for a full twenty-four hours. As we said from the outset, twenty-four hours is not a milestone police wanted to reach . . . the first twenty-four hours being crucial in an investigation like this . . .’
Is now the moment when I should confess?
As desperately stupid as it sounded, Emma could not stop repeating the words to herself: Confess! Confess!
But also: No!
Don’t be stupid. What good could it do? You did something ridiculous but it was a long time ago, and it’s got nothing to do with this, so just forget about it.
Except she couldn’t forget about it, because the ransom demand was in. And the police were refusing to pay it, not without at least having another go at finding out who had her daughter.
‘Let’s just pay,’ Emma said. ‘Let’s just pay and get my daughter home. They don’t want to hurt her. They just want money. Let’s give them money.’
‘That’s not how it works, Emma,’ said Franklin. ‘I can feel your desperation. We don’t pay ransoms. What kind of precedent does it set? You can’t guarantee the return of the child by paying. And whose child will be next? We have to get to the bottom of this.’
Brandon started shouting. ‘This is fucking ridiculous. You can’t be serious. You’re risking my child’s life. I don’t give a fuck about your protocol, I want the ransom paid and my daughter home!’
‘Even if we do pay, there’s no guarantee they’ll return her,’ said Franklin. ‘No. I want you to look at the picture. Think hard. Where was this taken? Could it be somebody you knew from the country, Emma? Could it be somebody you’ve interviewed?’
Emma had found herself searching desperately through her memory bank, trying to find something, anything, to give him, something, anything, to exhaust him and his officers, something, anything to enable her to say, that’s it, we’ve got no more, there’s nothing to say, please, please, let’s just give them what they want, whoever they are, and get my daughter home.
And then she’d remembered. And she was amazed that they didn’t already know. Could they really not have found the messages from her old boss, Eric, on her phone by now? She had deleted them, of course, but Emma knew as well as anyone: the internet is forever, including iPhone messages. You can delete them, but they’re never really gone. At some point Franklin would get a search warrant for her phone records, if he hadn’t already, and he’d be asking her: Who is Eric? What do these messages mean?
But what was she supposed to say? ‘I do have something to tell you. I had an . . .’
What had she had?
Not an affair. A dalliance? Was that what it was? Because nobody could call it an affair.
I had a dalliance and it didn’t end well.
That’s definitely how The Snoop would put it: Emma Cardwell had a dalliance and it hasn’t ended well. Not an affair. She’d brushed up against the idea of an affair. She’d considered it. She wasn’t proud of herself. Emma had always taken her marriage vows seriously. She’d never wanted to cheat. But Eric had come back into her life just as her marriage started to come under serious pressure.
She had believed Brandon when he told her about not wanting to meet the girls on Affairs-4-You. She’d listened while he poured his heart out: I’m just so hungry for sex, Emma, and I wouldn’t have cheated on you, but I needed some kind of outlet, and I’m so bored at home, and all the damn time, I’m thinking, have I even done the right thing coming here? Does she want to be married to me?
They’d gone to counselling. They’d patched it up. They had a go at having sex again. But part of Emma had wondered: what if one of those girls had offered to meet him? Would he have gone? Not that Brandon needed Affairs-4-U to get laid. He had always been attractive to women. He was a good-looking guy – especially in Sydney, where his Texan charm and Texan accent stood out. Emma had seen how women reacted to him. Mothers at the school gate, even Noelle at Crayon and Clay, they’d all said the same thing: ‘He’s so cute!’
So darn cute! She got it. That’s why she’d fallen for him, too. Now the marriage was under pressure. Scraping along the bottom. That’s how Emma would have described it. For a year or more, they’d been scraping along the bottom, trying to hold on to some of what they’d had way back when. Not that Emma had ever
considered divorce. She’d never wanted to get divorced, not least because Maven would have to handle it. Maven would have to put out a press release, saying: ‘After nine happy years, Emma and Brandon have decided to pursue separate paths in life. They wish each other well, and it’s completely amicable and their focus is on the wellbeing of their children, and they will continue to co-parent.’
No, divorce wasn’t what Emma wanted. She still loved Brandon and anyway, divorce seemed exhausting. The family home would have to be sold. She might even lose custody of the children, because Brandon was their primary caregiver. How would that go down in The Snoop?
There would be endless speculation about her love life.
Emma Cardwell steps out with a new beau!
Emma’s Mystery Man!
No. Even with the disappointment of Affairs-4-U, even as they scraped along, she’d stick it out and suck it up. But then Emma had run into her old boss, Eric Gough, in the Hunter Valley. She’d been scheduled to speak at a fundraising lunch.
Come and have a glass of wine with Emma Cardwell from Cuppa!
She hadn’t been scheduled to stay overnight. The Hunter Valley trip was easily done there and back in a day, and in any case, Liam would have driven her. But Emma had wanted to take a long drive, to think about things. She had wanted to spend a night alone in a hotel room, having room service and drinking red wine and eating potato chips and watching reality TV.
Me time, basically, to see if the marriage could be saved.
She’d arrived a little early for the event, and there had been nobody waiting to greet her as she came through the heavy doors. Then she’d heard a voice. ‘If it isn’t little Emma Cardwell.’
She turned, and it was Eric. Her first ever boss from the Stellar newsroom. They’d got talking. Emma remembered Eric leaving to start some kind of internet business, leading to great wealth and early retirement and, if the gossip was right, divorce, remarriage, and a second divorce, and his own vineyard in the Hunter. She’d been happy to see him. Eric had been one of the first people to encourage her in her new job at Stellar – You’re going to be fine, kid – and he was also somebody who knew her before she was ‘Emma from Cuppa’, which was always nice. They exchanged numbers, and Eric said, ‘After you’re done, why don’t we catch up? We don’t have to go out. Come to my place. I’d love you to see it. I’ll whip up a pasta and we can talk about old times.’
Emma hadn’t committed herself to anything. ‘Okay, well, can I call you later and let you know?’
She had intended to send a text: It was great to see you, but . . .
But she’d been tempted. Because why not go? What harm would it do? A few drinks, a bit of dinner. This wasn’t about sex. Nobody had suggested sex. This was just a few glasses of wine, a nice reminder of how nice it felt to have somebody besides your husband show a bit of interest, even when you weren’t intending to do anything wrong.
Some innocent flirting, to buck up her confidence. She needed that. Because did Brandon still even fancy her?
She couldn’t really say. Nine years into marriage, and after three kids, she had lost confidence in his desire for her. People were forever saying what good shape she was in – amazing for her age – but like anyone over forty, Emma had a bit of sag in her breasts, some fat on her back and some stretch marks on her belly. She had moles and scars and cellulite. She held it all together on Cuppa with ropes and pulleys and shape-wear, but all that did was create a mirage. Undressed and unmade-up, Emma looked like any other middle-aged human person: a bit run down, especially compared to all the lean and gorgeous young women who hung around the set.
Brandon had lost interest. How long had it been since they’d last had sex? She couldn’t remember. Who was the last person to see her naked? Probably the girl who did her bikini wax. Or maybe the doctor who did her pap smear.
How depressing was that?
Why not catch up with Eric? Nothing had to happen.
And so she’d texted Eric back: Address?
He’d replied in a nanosecond. Emma had put on her jeans, and asked reception to call her a cab, and she had gone out with her hair scraped back and nothing more than lip gloss on her face. The cab driver glanced in his rear-vision mirror after she got in, before saying, ‘Emma Cardwell!’
She’d smiled and said, ‘Hello.’
‘This is one for my memoirs! Where do I take you?’
She gave him the address. Eric’s place was a short distance from the hotel. The driver talked non-stop about how much his wife loved watching Cuppa. How much she loved Emma! How his wife wouldn’t believe it when he told her that she’d been in his car, so would Emma do him a great honour and pose for a selfie?
She had agreed – a near-fatal mistake.
Eric must have seen the headlights coming up the long gravel drive. He was standing in the open doorway of his country estate. The foyer behind him was all smooth marble, and sweeping staircase. He was wearing brown corduroy pants and a tan cashmere jumper.
‘I am so glad you’re here.’
‘I’m glad too.’
Emma looked around. The place was very masculine, right down to the built-in bar. There was no sign of the teenage son. Eric poured a glass of wine for her and they settled into sumptuous chairs on the back deck to look at the stars. Conversation was easy. Eric asked Emma about fame, and she’d spoken more honestly and openly than she had for a while.
‘It creeps up on you. One day you can walk outside pretty much unnoticed and next thing you can’t. Most people are friendly but there are days when you just wish for some peace and quiet,’ she said. ‘To be able to go to the supermarket without people looking to see what’s in your trolley, you know?’
She asked him about his divorce. ‘What happened?’
‘Life,’ he said, and he laughed, like he was past it. ‘We had three kids, and it was the usual story. She felt unappreciated. Our kids didn’t sleep. She was stuck at home. I was working long hours. Everyone warns you about letting kids in the bed but ours would scream the house down, so into the bed they came, and no sex for six years.’
‘None?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You need another drink.’
‘I think I do.’
She had stayed much later than intended. Eric had proven a decent cook. He’d put on some Johnny Cash and they found themselves doing a few dance moves in the kitchen. He caught her in his arms and said, ‘Emma Cardwell. I always knew you were going places.’
He was a head taller than she was, and his grip was firm. But Emma was sober enough to push him away, saying, ‘I guess I should go.’
But she didn’t go. Not immediately. They’d kept standing and looking at each other.
‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘Then let me.’
Emma had paused. ‘All right.’
She’d found herself facing his Adam’s apple. She placed her hand flat against his chest and felt his heart beating. He put his hand over her hand, dwarfing it. He unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. Emma closed her eyes. Eric undid another button. Her bra was delicate. English embroidery, with tiny eyelets, and a ribbon of baby-blue satin. Eric had rested his hands – briefly, whisper soft – on the surface of her breasts. Her heart began to beat faster. She swallowed. Eric raised his hands to her shoulders, and thumbed her bra straps down.
‘I must be out of my mind.’
‘When was the last time you felt like this?’
‘Not for a very long time.’
‘How does it feel?’
She thought for a minute. ‘This is a very bad idea,’ she said. ‘I’m married. And if I got caught . . . It’s horrible for anyone to get caught but if I got caught, that’s a whole public spectacle. That’s a disaster for me, and for my children. I lose my job. The gossip pages go crazy.’
‘Forget all that. You’re safe here. Stay.’
‘I can’t stay.’
‘You can.’
‘I absolutely cannot.’
She had pulled away. Desperate for time to think, she said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
He let her go, and she hurried away, locked herself in, and allowed herself time to catch her breath. Then she looked up and gazed at herself in the mirror over the vanity. No. This just isn’t you, Emma.
She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door. And screamed.
Eric had been standing right outside, so close to the bathroom door that his nose must have been practically touching it. Emma jumped, and Eric laughed. He laughed and laughed and held his stomach, bent over with mirth at Emma’s expense, like her reaction – her panicked scream – was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
Emma put her hand on the edge of the bathroom sink. ‘You scared me half to death.’ She looked down at the tiled floor. She was embarrassed by the strength of her reaction, and she knew that if she looked up into the mirror over the vanity basin, her face would be bright red.
Eric, though, he was smiling and saying, ‘God, that was funny.’
Funny?
Emma swallowed hard. She hated that kind of thing. Practical jokes. Surprises. People leaping out from behind curtains, doing stupid things to make another person feel all panicky.
And what was with the laugh?
Eric’s honking laugh? Where had that been, during their dinner? Emma wanted to get out. She wanted to go home. She pushed politely past him and walked out of the bathroom. Eric followed. He could see that she hadn’t found it funny, that she was upset and about to leave.
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought it would be a bit of a laugh. Lighten the mood.’
Emma smiled a tight smile. ‘You gave me a fright,’ she said.
Eric put on a baby face. ‘I’m sorry. I was trying to make you laugh.’
‘Okay. I get that. But honestly, Eric, we shouldn’t be doing this.’
The Ones You Trust Page 20
