Noah's Law

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  ‘Not much. It just confirms the killer’s escape route.’

  ‘But it’s weird. Why would the guy bash Maureen over there—’ I turned to face the garbage bins in the corner of the car park, ‘and then run back towards the shops and into one of them? Why not run out of the car park?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I quickened my pace, heading towards the garbage bins where Maureen had been killed.

  ‘See, it doesn’t fit. The guy kills her here. Then instead of running to get to the main road and away from the scene, he risks trapping himself by turning around and running into a shop.’

  ‘How did he know the shop’s door would be unlocked?’

  ‘Exactly. It was a big risk to take. Plus he’d be more likely to be seen. He couldn’t have known there were no witnesses.’

  Amit emerged from around the corner. He joined us and we filled him in.

  ‘Simple,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘The guy who ran through the shop wasn’t the murderer.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. He had to have been. We can’t just ignore the fact that a random guy bursts into a shop shortly after the time Maureen was killed. What, he was just dying for a noodle box?’

  Jacinta said, ‘So, what did you learn, Amit? Did you see Rodney Marks?’

  ‘Rodney and Webb were both there.’

  ‘Actually, wait, Amit,’ Jacinta broke in. ‘Let’s go back to that coffee shop. It’s a bit suss for us to be standing here in the car park. Rodney might see us.’

  We returned to the coffee shop across the road and ordered a round of coffees.

  ‘I pretended I was doing work experience for the local paper,’ Amit said, an amused glint in his eye. ‘They believed me.’ He took out a little black notebook from the inside pocket of his jean jacket.

  Jacinta and I laughed.

  ‘Very professional,’ she joked.

  ‘Actually, they believed me because I didn’t act professional. It works in the movies all the time.’

  I tried not to groan.

  ‘I went to the front desk,’ Amit continued, ‘and asked to speak to the manager. Rodney Marks came out of the back office. I spun a story about doing work experience. I said I hated it but I had to write a short article about crime in the area or I’d get a bad report. I acted like it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. Then I asked him for information about Maureen’s murder.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked.

  ‘He clammed up.’

  ‘So it didn’t work.’

  ‘Wait. Rodney said he couldn’t comment because there was a case on. He did say what a tragedy, blah blah. But that’s not the interesting part. When he finished talking to me he went back to the office. That’s when one of the staff came up to me. He stood in front of me and, in a real low voice he said, “She was partly to blame”.’

  ‘It must have been Webb!’ Jacinta cried.

  ‘Yep. So I go, “Oh yeah, what makes you say that? Did she kill herself ?” You know, I was trying to provoke him. And he goes, “All I can say is that I know for a fact that a staff member offered to walk out with her. But she refused.” Then Rodney came out and when he saw Webb talking to me he called out, “Harold, can I see you for a moment?” and then rushed over and asked me to leave. Before I walked out the door I looked back and saw Rodney and Webb arguing. Rodney was furious, but Webb was really relaxed. He was smirking. It was pretty bizarre.’

  I leaned back in my chair, lifting my right foot up and resting it on my left knee. We sat in silence for a few moments, absorbing the events of the day. There hadn’t been any major revelations. But it seemed to me that was the kind of stuff that only happened on television. In real life, it was a slower process, and smoking guns didn’t suddenly appear out of thin air. It was the difference between a five-thousand-piece puzzle and a toddler’s twenty-piece puzzle. In real life, each tiny piece made a difference and was a lot harder to find. We were making some progress, getting some shape around the edges. But I wasn’t ready to confess out loud that we were still hopelessly lost when it came to filling in the middle.

  ‘What’s your theory?’ Amit said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

  I took a moment before answering. And then, before I knew what I was saying, it all came pouring out. ‘I don’t think Bernie cared about his wife. I think he’s putting on this act for the money. I reckon the case is just a bullshit attempt to profit from her death. And his anger over Webb’s statement has nothing to do with his wife’s memory being insulted or some crap like that. He’s just pissed off because if the judge believes Webb, his compo payout is cut.’

  Amit gave me a quick nod and then turned to Jacinta. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I’m not so cynical. I don’t see any solid evidence of that. It’s all just intuition at this point. And today didn’t give us any leads, just more questions. And I’m not sure they’re the right questions, either.’

  ‘So you think this is a clear-cut case?’ I challenged her.

  ‘No,’ she said tersely. ‘Like I said, I have a gut feeling that something’s just off, but I don’t know how we can take this any further, how we can test your theory.’

  Amit took a sip of his coffee. ‘If this was a movie we’d be able to access the best investigative resources available to a homicide squad. Personally, if I had to pick one, I’d be the IT geek who can track a person’s every move. You know, they say you can track a person’s day electronically. Like using the ATM, paying for something with your credit card, logging onto the net.’

  ‘Your point being?’ Jacinta asked.

  ‘We need to get into Bernie’s head.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how you jumped from ATMs to getting into Bernie’s head,’ Jacinta said. ‘Actually, I’m not even going to bother asking.’

  Amit smiled good-naturedly. ‘Do not attempt to understand how my brilliant mind operates.’ I was about to say something but Amit hit me on the shoulder. ‘Shut it,’ he ordered, then continued, ‘We need to access Bernie’s email or phone. I mean, you could probably trace a person’s life based on their emails or text messages, right?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Jacinta scoffed.

  ‘Do you know how to hack into email?’ I asked.

  ‘Noah!’ Jacinta yelled, prompting some people sitting beside us to turn around and stare.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you hearing yourself? This is unethical, illegal!’

  ‘We need proof.’

  ‘The end should never justify the means.’

  ‘Well that just sucks,’ Amit said loudly, ignoring Jacinta’s glare.

  She went on, ‘Plus, even if Bernie is a cold-hearted greedy bastard who’s only doing this for the money, the law doesn’t care about his motives in pursuing Jenkins for compensation. If he has a case in law, then that’s all that counts.’

  ‘Okay, okay, fine,’ I said grudgingly.

  ‘Don’t fight too hard,’ Amit said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jacinta said, arching an eyebrow. ‘You caved a little too quickly.’

  ‘No, you’re right. We need more evidence before we can justify invading his privacy.’

  Jacinta sculled the last of her coffee and jumped up. ‘Oh for God’s sake, you have totally missed my point! Anyway, I’m leaving now. I’m going to see a movie with my flatmate and I can’t wait to spend the rest of the day blissfully ignoring Bernie, Jenkins Storage World and the two of you!’

  And with a wide grin, she left.

  Ever since I’d started work I’d been catching the train and still hadn’t managed to get a seat. I was sick of standing and I was sick of having to keep my balance every time the train came to a clumsy halt. I worked out that the doors on the fifth carriage in the morning train had a nine out of ten chance of stopping at a point on the platform where somebody had graffitied BAZZA WOZ HERE in black spray paint.

  Today I was going to put my theory to test. I stood
, one foot on BAZZA, one foot on HERE, and braced myself. The train approached and I could sense the people beside me shifting, ready to launch themselves at the doors. Sure enough the doors opened smack bang in front of me. There was nobody getting off so I leaped in and rushed up the stairs (I figured there was a high probability that the majority of people are inherently lazy and would instinctively choose to go downstairs). I found an empty window seat and climbed over the man sitting on the aisle. A window seat with my butt parked on a seat. Bliss.

  But there was more to a comfortable public transport experience than getting a seat. I could smell the garlic breath of the guy next to me; hear the sound of a man behind me snorting up his snot; the voices of two girls loudly analysing a Facebook wall message; the air-freshener-type potpourri perfume of the old lady in front of me which, when mixed with the garlic breath, made me think of eating garlic prawns in a bathroom. Then there was the guy on his mobile phone talking as loud as Dad when he speaks to his family in Egypt (he hasn’t worked out that he doesn’t need to raise his voice just because there are oceans between them). I wanted to be home in my bed completely and utterly knocked out, snoring as loudly as the guy next to me now was.

  My phone rang. The guy next to me didn’t even flinch.

  It was Dad.

  ‘How about lunch today?’

  ‘No thanks. Criminals don’t usually consort with the judiciary.’

  ‘I like your use of the word consort. See, working in a law firm has expanded your vocabulary. Have an intellectually stimulating day. Bye, son!’

  Amit’s mum was having a group of friends over for brunch and Amit needed an excuse to be a million miles away from home. He sent me a text message to say he’d be coming into the city so I could take him out for lunch (his exact words were: ur the 1 on a lawyers salary so u can pay). He was going to head to the city early to avoid the aunties’ home invasion and hang out at the hobby shop in the Queen Victoria Building. The remote-control car section was one of our favourite places in Sydney.

  Bernie’s case was on in court that morning so I sent Amit a text back to let him know he could come and watch if he got bored. He took me up on the offer. I think he was curious to see the inside of a courtroom. I told him to meet me in the foyer of the Supreme Court at ten fifteen.

  On my way to work I debated convincing Casey to let me back on Bernie’s case. But to do that would mean I’d have to kiss up to three people: Aunt Nirvine, who’d been filled in by Casey about our last meeting with Bernie and who wasn’t too happy; Casey, who thought I was sabotaging her case; and Bernie, who didn’t trust me. It seemed like a huge amount of effort. The alternative was a lot easier.

  I convinced Jacinta to let me do the court filing morning run. That way I could go to court, file documents at the court register, and then slip away and meet Amit in time to sneak into the directions hearing. If anybody asked me why I was late back to the office, I could always say there had been delays at the register, which was, according to Jacinta, common enough.

  I had no idea what good could come out of my going to the directions hearing. But that morning, as I was shoved around while trying to get a seat on the train, I had made a pact with myself. Today would be it. I would go to the directions hearing and, if there was nothing suspicious, I would permanently banish Bernie’s case from my mind.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Jacinta warned me as she handed me a manila folder containing the pleadings to be filed.

  ‘Everybody is entitled to a fair trial,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Only that the end should never justify the means.’

  We exchanged amused glances and I tucked the file under my arm and walked out, heading for the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

  Amit was sitting on one of the red window seats that lined the foyer of the Supreme Court. The foyer was crowded and noisy, with solicitors, barristers, litigants, court staff and spectators lining up in the queue to pass through security.

  Casey and Bernie were there, standing beside the windows. I pranked Amit’s phone and he came outside, as we had agreed.

  ‘Can you see Bernie?’ I asked him.

  We were near the entrance doors but in a position that allowed us to see Bernie and Casey without them seeing me.

  ‘He’s wearing faded jeans,’ I said, ‘and he’s standing next to that tall woman with the—’

  ‘Black suit? That narrows it down.’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, I see him. Is that Casey, the lawyer whose facial muscles don’t twitch?’

  ‘That’s the one. They’ve just joined the queue. You better be quick and get in the line, close to them. Try and listen to what they’re saying and follow them up to level seven, that’s where the directions hearing will be held. Casey will kill me if I go anywhere near Bernie. Try and get a seat near them in court.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘At the registry. Level five.’

  ‘I’ll call you when I’m done.’

  ‘You have to turn your phone off or put it on silent. If it rings in court you’ll get in trouble.’

  ‘Okay, I’m off.’

  He left, queuing up behind Bernie and Casey. The queue was growing longer now, and I slipped in, leaving about ten people between me and Bernie and Casey.

  When it was Casey’s turn to go through, she placed her folders and handbag on the security conveyer belt and walked through the metal detectors. Bernie then followed. The metal detectors sounded loudly.

  A security guard approached him and in a cheerful, booming voice asked: ‘Sir, do you have anything in your pockets?’

  ‘Yeah, me keys and phone.’

  ‘I need you to put them in this box and onto the belt. Thanks, mate.’

  When Bernie walked through, the detector sounded again and the security guard approached Bernie.

  ‘Belt?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bernie said sheepishly.

  ‘You’ll need to put it through too, mate. Some of them don’t give us a problem but others do.’

  As Bernie removed his belt, the box containing his phone and keys suddenly crashed onto the floor and Amit was on his haunches, apologising loudly.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘I knocked it over.’

  So much for keeping a low profile.

  When Bernie and Casey had finally finished with security they headed in the direction of the lifts.

  I sat in the registry on level five waiting for Amit to call. But an hour passed and I still hadn’t heard from him. I wondered whether Bernie’s matter had been delayed in the list. Maybe another matter was taking longer than usual. When another half-hour passed without so much as a text message from Amit, I decided to sneak up to level seven and find out what was happening.

  When the elevator doors opened onto level seven, I stuck my head out. There was only a guy with a trolley of folders waiting for the next lift. I exited and cautiously turned into a long corridor, courtrooms branching out from it. There were only a few people, huddling together, talking in hushed tones. The crowds for the directions hearing list had obviously broken up. Slowly, I approached the courtroom. The large double doors were open and I could see the bench, though not the rows of seats on either side of the doors. Court was still in session, and I could see the judge talking to a solicitor standing at the bar table. A barrister in long black robes and a curled grey wig stepped out of the courtroom, nearly knocking me over in his rush to get out.

  ‘Has the list nearly finished?’

  ‘That’s the last matter,’ he said without stopping.

  So where was Amit?

  As I turned back to the lifts my phone beeped to indicate that I had received a text message.

  Meet me on the corner Martin Place/Phillip NOW.

  I rushed to the lifts.

  Amit was waiting on the corner. He was hopping from one foot to the other, a wide grin plastered on his face.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I said.

&n
bsp; ‘You are going to kiss the ground I walk on.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘When we were at security I noticed Bernie had the exact same phone as me. A Nokia 1600. Pretty standard, yeah? Well it was the same colour and impossible to tell from mine. So I knocked over the box and made a switch while I was pretending to pick up his phone and keys.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘Man, this is real! We are dealing with some serious stuff here. Anyway, I figured I had about ten or fifteen minutes to hang on to the phone before turning it in to security and getting them to call my phone. Bernie’s phone was still on so I went to his inbox. He had over one hundred messages.’

  I punched the air. ‘Amit, you are a legend!’

  ‘I know! I couldn’t go through all the messages so I decided I’d see if he had any saved from before his wife’s murder. Well, as I thought, there were none that went that far back. So I opened random ones. There was a lot of lovey-dovey crap between him and his girlfriend. Her name’s Annie.’ He screwed his face up in disgust. ‘Bernie’s nickname is Love Machine.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said.

  ‘I hear you, bro. So anyway, I wrote down some of the messages I thought were pretty important. My writing’s shocking because I was in a rush. Here, take a look.’

  He passed me his little black notebook.

  ‘I also wrote down who he sent the message to, or who they were from. You were right about Rodney Marks. There’s something dodgy going on.’

  To G/F: That bitch always wanted 2 screw me ova I’m getting my own back now. To Rod: Its called compensation 2 victims act. We can make a shit load out of this. You just need 2 keep it out of the courts & get me a settlement FAST.

  To Rod: Meet me at DH near the aquarium same time as last wk.

  From Rod: Her sister is a witch how dare she accuse u of exploiting Maureen’s death.

  To Rod: Maureen’s sister is pissing me off. She’s on my back 4 suing. She’s got dirt on me. She better keep quiet.

  I looked up.

  ‘This is incredible. Amit, you’re a genius.’

  ‘Check out the next one to Rodney.’