Sleight Malice

by Vicki Tyley

  “Okay,” said DS Kim Mitchell, thumping the side of her hand against the table. “As much as we would like to give you the answers to all your questions we can’t. We just don’t have them yet. No hidden agenda; it’s as simple as that.”

  Fergus grunted.

  The detective’s pale-blue eyes narrowed. “As you know,” she said, her voice tightening, “it takes time to analyze evidence, talk to witnesses, follow-up leads and the like. Granted, the sooner we can do that the better, but at this stage, there is little in the way of facts I can tell you.”

  Desley sat forward on her chair. “What can you tell me?” So far, all they had done was talk in circles, and as much as Fergus probably thought he was helping, he wasn’t. She had yet to learn anything new.

  “Okay, from what you told us today and our officers last night, your friend Laura left here to go home somewhere around 10 p.m. Correct?”

  What did she have to do? Engrave it in stone? She had lost count of the number of times she had been asked the same question. Were they expecting her to change her story, hoping to catch her out? Maybe the timing didn’t sit neatly with their perceived timeline of events. Who knew? She sighed. “Yes.”

  “As far as you were aware, where was her de facto, Ryan Moore?”

  “Sydney,” she said, for what felt like the tenth time in as many hours. “Just how many times do we have to go through this? Why don’t you ask the man himself?”

  The detective glanced at Desley and then back at her notes. “The fire investigator tells us that the fire had been burning inside the house for quite some time when the next-door neighbor called triple-O at 2.17 this morning. Burn patterns and residual accelerant traces point to arson. Remains of an unidentified male found in what was probably the master bedroom. Cause of death yet to be ascertained. That’s it,” she said, closing her notepad.

  “You don’t really expect me to believe that that’s all you have, do you? There has to be more.”

  “Anything else I told you would be mere speculation. Desley, I can understand your frustration, but rest assured we want to find your friends as much as you do. At 4 p.m. today, there’s going to be a press conference. Not only will we be disclosing the details I just told you, but also photos of both Laura and Ryan will be released and we’ll be appealing for anyone with any information to come forward.”

  Fergus opened his mouth to say something, but Desley silenced him with a raised hand. “Tell me; were there two cars in the garage? You must know that.”

  DS Mitchell gave her a half-smile. “See, that’s where you come in and why we need you to answer our questions. If we can recreate the events leading up to the fire and the disappearance of your friends, we stand a good chance of solving this case quickly. Who better to help us with that, than someone close to the couple.” She shuffled in her seat. “And in answer to your question: the only car in the garage, or at least what was left of it, was a silver Honda Civic registered in Laura’s name.”

  “Oh my God, if Laura didn’t drive herself away, who did? Have you checked the airport car parks?” Desley asked, it suddenly striking her that instead of catching a taxi, Ryan might have driven to the airport. “If Ryan’s flight hasn’t landed yet, his four-wheel-drive is probably there.”

  “We haven’t checked the airport, but Ryan’s flight landed at 10:15 p.m. last night.”

  “No, you must be mistaken. Laura was really looking forward to seeing him again. She would’ve said something if he was coming home early. She certainly wouldn’t have sat around here drinking wine.” It didn’t make sense, but nor did anything else that had happened in the last twelve hours.

  “Unless of course,” Fergus interjected, voicing Desley’s thoughts, “he wanted to surprise his wife and managed to get a standby seat.”

  “We checked that. He didn’t fly standby,” DS Mitchell said, shaking her head. “The 20:45 flight from Sydney was his original booking. No seats were booked for today in either his or the company’s name.”

  Unable to sit still any longer, Desley pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. “So what are you saying? That unbeknown to Laura, Ryan came home last night, murdered this man, set fire to their house and then took off somewhere with Laura?”

  “That’s one possibility, but that’s all it is. Speculation as I said.”

  Desley sat down again, her thoughts running riot. Why had Ryan booked the flight for Thursday night but told Laura it was for the Friday morning? Who was the mystery man? What was he doing in the house? Where was Laura? Had Ryan taken her against her will? Desley refused to believe Laura could be in any way involved.

  “Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn here,” Fergus said, “but one reason Ryan might have planned to be home early, could have been he suspected Laura of having an affair—“

  “This is getting beyond ridiculous!” Desley bounced to her feet again. “Laura doesn’t have a lover on the side.”

  “That you know of.”

  DS Mitchell threw Fergus a daggered look. “And why we should be dealing in facts.”

  Her mind in overdrive, Desley excused herself and headed for the kitchen. She needed that coffee. First though, she wanted to try Laura’s mobile number again. If only she could talk to her, this whole mess could be sorted out. More importantly, she would know her friend was alive.

  From where she was in the kitchen, she could hear Fergus and DS Mitchell talking, but not what they were saying. Turning her back to the doorway, she picked up the phone and pressed redial. Her silent “answer” chant had no effect and the call diverted straight to Laura’s voicemail. She left no message, hung up and immediately dialed the mobile number from Ryan’s business card, which was pinned under a magnet on the side of the refrigerator. No answer. She cursed. Why weren’t their mobiles switched on?

  “Need a hand in here?” Fergus said from behind her.

  “Just looking for…” she said, drawing out the last word as she hurriedly shoved the cordless phone into the cutlery drawer, swapped it for a tablespoon and opened the pantry cupboard. Standing on her tiptoes, she grabbed the silver-and-red tin of illy ground espresso coffee from the top shelf and, holding it aloft like an award, turned to him, “…this.”

  “Desley, I didn’t mean to—”

  She cut him off. “Hope everyone likes it black,” she said, her attempt to infuse some warmth into her voice falling flat. She avoided his gaze, busying herself with scooping two spoonfuls of the wonderfully aromatic coffee into the stainless-steel filter and tamping it down.

  “Please let me explain.” Fergus spoke to her back. “The key word here is suspected. For whatever reason – real or imagined – it’s possible Ryan suspected Laura of being unfaithful. Whether Laura is or isn’t having an affair is beside the point.” He gave a little laugh. “Believe me, in my line of business I’ve seen a lot of adulterers. However, I’ve also had clients who were convinced their partner was cheating on them, but if they were, my team never found any evidence of it.”

  The doorbell rang. “That will be your mate,” Desley said, without looking up. “He’s probably locked himself out.”

  Fergus took the hint.

  Grateful for the reprieve, she took a deep breath. Of course he was right. And she shouldn’t have leapt down his throat like that. He didn’t deserve it. I should reserve my wrath for the bastard who is actually responsible for all this, she told herself as she emptied the filter and reloaded it with fresh coffee for the next two cups.

  Why was she being so uncooperative? The detectives were only doing their job. What did she have to fear from the police? Could she subconsciously be scared about what the truth might reveal? Had her ex-husband’s open disdain for Ryan been based on more than mere macho competitiveness? But then again, she reminded herself, he hadn’t taken to Laura either. Did it point to some failing on her part? Was she not the judge of character she thought she was?

  She finished making the coffee, a male throaty laugh from the dining room s
urprising her as she set the cups, teaspoons and a bowl of sugar on a tray. Then she heard Fergus’s voice, more lilt to it than there had been earlier. Evidently, he and DI Buchanan had called a truce.

  Determined to follow Fergus’s example, she carried the tray through to the other room. After all, if she thought about it, it was in her interests to work with the police, not against them.

  CHAPTER 5

  Desley stared unseeing at the partially constructed webpage on her computer screen. If she had thought work could hold her attention, she’d thought wrong. Pressing the Alt-Tab keys, she toggled windows. No new emails.

  On the off chance she had somehow missed an alert, she checked her mobile phone for messages. Nothing. The police had promised to stay in touch, as had Fergus, but the person she really wanted to hear from was Laura. The worst part was not knowing. Reality had to be better than the tortured images her fears painted: Laura suffering third-degree burns, abandoned and left to die an agonizing death in the middle of nowhere; Laura trapped in the wreckage of Ryan’s crashed four-wheel-drive, hurt and bleeding; Laura…

  Her gaze dropped to the bottom-right of her screen.

  3:49 PM

  Eleven minutes to the press conference. She had put off calling her parents all day, in the vain hope she wouldn’t have to tell them that the flaxen-haired woman they treated as one of their own was probably in grave danger, possibly dead, but definitely missing. Let alone the not so small matters of the fire and the unidentified male body. She had no choice; she couldn’t let them hear about it on the news.

  Psyching herself up, she dialed her parent’s number and waited for the call to connect.

  Answering machine. She cursed, berating herself for forgetting that both her parents would be hard at work in the milking shed at this time. Not that they were ever easy to contact. Milking around 250 cows on the dairy farm they owned and ran near Devonport in Tasmania’s north-west kept them busy and neither had the time or the inclination for mobile phone technology. “One bloody phone is more than enough for me,” her father used to say. Her mother’s recorded singsong voice finished.

  “Mum, Dad…” Realizing how harsh she sounded, she made a conscious effort to soften her voice. "It's Desley." As if they wouldn't recognize their own daughter's voice. “Please phone me…” She searched for the right words. ‘Urgently’ would only panic them, but nor did she want them to turn on the television before deciding to call her back. “…as soon as you get this message.”

  Hoping the cows were listening to Mozart and not the radio, she hung up and tried Brandon’s mobile. Always the Casanova, her younger brother had been smitten the instant he met Laura, despite the fact she was eight years older than his youthful 20-years at the time. She had laughed off his older-woman quest, but played up to his attentions all the same. Desley felt sure, though, that the slightest indication from Laura that she was taking him seriously would send her commitment-phobic brother wheelspinning off into the distance. His phone rang seven times before diverting to voicemail.

  He either had his head under a car bonnet — making sense of something she had never been able to — or was lying on his back under the vehicle studying its underbelly. But then again, since it was Friday, it was possible he was already ensconced on a barstool at the pub with his mates. She left a message and hung up.

  After checking her emails once more, she headed for the living room and turned on the television. She muted the sound and scrolled through the channels, settling on Channel 7 when she didn’t come across any news updates. Then, sprawled across the couch with the remote control in one hand and the phone in the other, she waited for her parents and brother to ring.

  At least she had a family. Had the police had any luck in tracking down a next of kin for either Laura or Ryan yet, she wondered. As far as she knew, Laura had no living relatives. Her father died in a tragic car accident on his way home from work a week before her ninth birthday. A heart attack claimed her mother’s life fourteen years later.

  Occasionally, Laura would make reference to a brother, clamming up the instant she realized her slip. Then she would laugh, like she had just made a joke, but it wasn’t enough to mask the torment and something else Desley couldn’t quite fathom in her friend’s dusky-blue eyes. Was it grief? Had her brother died, too? Or was it possible that somewhere in the world Laura had a brother, estranged or missing perhaps, but still alive and well?

  What about Ryan? Whenever family was mentioned, he somehow always managed to avoid the subject. Did he not have any relations either? Could that be part of what drew him and Laura together? A mutual understanding? But then again, for all anyone knew, he could have spent his childhood being shunted from foster home to foster home. At the time, it hadn’t seemed that important. Only now did it dawn on her how little she knew about the background of the man Laura had fallen in love with almost four years ago.

  Propping her head on one of the couch’s black suede scatter cushions, Desley stretched out on her back and took a long, slow breath. Her eyelids felt heavy, as if anchors had been fastened to the lashes. She gave in, her resistance eroded by her body’s increasing need for sleep.

  The doorbell rang. She groaned, her forearm shielding her eyes from the shards of daylight. She could’ve sworn she had drifted off for only a second or two. Her body told a different story. The doorbell rang again. Eventually the message from her brain got through. Forcing her sluggish muscles to move, she rolled off the couch and grumbling like a bear woken prematurely from hibernation, lumbered toward the front door. Beware the person on the other side, especially if he or she was a Jehovah’s Witness or a door-to-door salesperson she equally had no time for, even on a good day.

  “Trent!”

  He gave her a lopsided grin, pushed himself upright from the brick wall and, using one hand to steady himself against the electricity meter-box, took a step toward her. She didn’t need to smell his breath. Looking past him, she scanned the driveway and street for the whereabouts of his car.

  “Two visits in one day. To what do I owe this great honor?” she said, irritated that on top of everything else, she had to contend with her drunken ex-husband. Again. “More to the point, how did you get here?”

  “Taxi,” he slurred, taking another shaky step.

  He hadn’t always been so sensible. Thank God for small mercies, she thought, remembering her flattened mailbox, and thankfully the only casualty of his drink-driving to date. That she knew of.

  “Aren’t you going to let me in?” he asked, his lips peeled back in what he no doubt considered a winning smile.

  She cringed. “Why should I?”

  “Don’t be like that, Des. We were good together once.”

  “Oh now I get it. You’ve had another row with Selena, haven’t you? Jesus Christ, Trent,” she said, shaking her head at his audacity. “Only you could think that crying on your ex’s shoulder about the woman you left her for would be acceptable behavior.”

  “Please, Des, it’s cold out here.”

  She opened the door, standing well back as he bounced from wall to wall down the short hallway, leaving a haze of sour alcohol in his wake. She couldn’t send him packing in his state. Well, not at least until she called another taxi to take him home. Bastard or not, ‘Drunk dies of hypothermia in gutter’ was not something she wanted on her conscience.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” she said, doing her best to guide him into the living room without actually touching him. “I’ll make coffee.” Then you’re out of here, she added silently.

  In the kitchen, she made a double-strength espresso. She still had no milk and she knew he would screw his nose up at it. But then again, he wasn’t in a position to quibble. In a last-minute compromise, she added a heaped teaspoon of sugar and carried it through to the living room.

  Letting out an exasperated sigh, she sat the cup on the coffee table. On the couch she had just vacated, lay Trent passed out, open-mouthed and snoring. Not an attractive look. She de
bated what to do, deciding her best option was to let him sleep it off. That way at least, he couldn’t do himself or anyone else any harm.

  She dragged her old tiger-striped beanbag out from the corner, plopped it directly in front of the TV and settled down to wait for the 4:30 news. She turned up the volume not to listen to the children’s program currently screening, but to drown out the loud, guttural snores coming from the couch.

  News about the arson, suspicious death and suspected kidnapping she expected to be the lead item was usurped by the shocking announcement of the senseless rape and murder of an 8-year-old Perth girl in a shopping centre toilet. Desley jammed her fist into her mouth, the bitter taste of revulsion welling in her throat. An innocent child’s life had been cut brutally short. Although it didn’t lessen her anguish any, Desley knew Laura and Ryan’s disappearance just couldn’t compare. She still had hope; the little girl’s family didn’t.

  Detective Inspector Grant Buchanan’s head and broad shoulders filled the screen, his fierce grey eyes boring straight into hers, replaced a moment later by footage of the fire. Almost against her will, she leaned in closer to the television, taking in the harrowing detail like a hungry voyeur. Her breath caught in her throat as she recognized herself being manhandled away from the burning house. Then it was gone.

  An image of Laura and Ryan arm in arm, smiling radiantly at the camera suddenly appeared. They looked so happy. And why not? A promising future had lain ahead of them then. Nothing could have survived that fire intact. The photo had to have come from a work album or staff newsletter. Whereas the picture of the black Nissan Patrol they showed could have come from anywhere.

  She switched off the television and headed upstairs to her bedroom, hoping to escape Trent’s snoring. For one insane moment, she considered phoning Selena to let her know he was all right. Then again, Selena hadn’t given Desley a thought when she had seduced her husband and ripped apart their marriage.

  In the doorway to her bedroom, she paused and looked longingly at her soft bed and its mountain of pillows. Eventually she would have to sleep, but not until she had spoken with her family. Instead she opted for the curved-arm, art deco style club chair in the far corner, her body protesting with a series of yawns as she sat down and tucked her feet under her.