by Jaye Ford
The detective let her talk, eyes fixed on her face as though he was reading the story there as well. She was almost done when there was a knock on the chassis and a woman stuck her head into the open doorway. ‘Sarge?’
‘Excuse me a minute,’ he told Jax and left her. Not quite alone – a uniformed officer stood at each door.
She took a sip of water and felt fatigue settle over her like a thick blanket. Limbs too heavy to lift, head an unbalanced weight on her neck. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep but her heart wouldn’t stop hammering and her lids seemed to be fixed in the open position.
Beside the car, out of earshot, Aiden Hawke stood with his legs spread and his arms folded across his chest as his colleague did the speaking beside him, weapon on the belt of her trousers, clipboard and pen in hand. Out on the motorway, traffic was queued up behind patrol cars – bumper-to-bumper and snaking all the way back to the bend, probably a whole lot further out of sight. Above, two helicopters circled slowly. At least one of them was a TV news chopper.
Footsteps on the gravel made Jax glance at the windscreen. Aiden Hawke and the female detective were now standing beside Jax’s car. All four doors were open, and someone was in the driver’s seat. Aiden bent at the waist and peered into the rear, nodding while the woman pointed with a gloved hand. As he walked back to Jax, she tried to remember what was in there. A few cleaning products that would only hurt the environment. No gun collection to incriminate her.
The blue sedan rocked as Aiden got in. ‘What are the boxes on your back seat?’
‘I’m moving house.’
He frowned. ‘Is that it?’
‘No, the rest went up yesterday. I handed over the keys to my old house this afternoon.’
‘You’re moving to Newcastle?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Merewether. It’s my aunt’s house.’
‘She has two?’
‘No. My daughter and I are moving in with her.’
He nodded.
The was no judgement in it but she wanted to clarify. ‘My husband died last year. I had to sell the house.’
‘I’m sorry. You’re Nicholas Westing’s wife, aren’t you?’
The question caught her off guard, but she realised he must already know the answer and probably had a lot more information than that. He’d known her name when he pulled up and started shouting, and he’d got Jax from somewhere. He’d followed her for an hour or more, calling in troops, setting up a roadblock, probably checking the record of the owner of the car he was following. Possibly he had her email addresses and the balance on her bank account. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s a good town. You’ll enjoy being back there.’
Maybe he had her residential history, as well. ‘It’s not a great start.’ This whole day felt like a bad omen, made her wonder again if she’d done the right thing.
‘No, I imagine it was a terrifying experience. I’m sorry it had to end like this.’ He nodded towards the ambulance that stood like a shield beside the crash scene. Maybe it was for the best that she couldn’t see what was over there. She’d had too many ugly images in her head over the past year; she didn’t need more.
‘Okay,’ he said, we’re-done-here in his tone. ‘I’d like to get an official statement from you tonight, while the details are still fresh in your mind. But not here. You’ll feel better when you can get away from all this. Do you think you can manage that?’
She wanted to hold Zoe, hug Tilda, have a stiff drink. She also wanted this over. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ll have to leave your car here, so an officer will drive you to the station in Newcastle. One of my detectives has spoken with your aunt but you can call her yourself on the way in. I’ll see you there in a while.’ He shifted on the seat, getting ready to leave, paused a second and looked back. ‘What did you say to me in the car park?’
The moment flashed through her memory. Spine-stiffening terror, the risk of trying to catch his attention, the relief when he was waiting for her eyes. ‘Help me.’
He nodded once. Followed it with a sudden smile and a quiet huff of a laugh, as though she’d confirmed what he wasn’t sure he’d seen. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it end there – I didn’t want to get you shot.’ It was an aside, a sentence in parenthesis without the police-business tone. Maybe a message from Aiden Hawke, guy in the wrong place at the right time, instead of the detective who’d done his job.
‘Nothing to be sorry about there,’ she told him.
Nodding again, he banged twice on the chassis as he got out, and was pointing and talking again before he’d left the doorway.
A uniformed officer told Jax her car would be towed to a police compound, fingerprinted and searched. Her handbag, when it was passed in to her, had clearly been through the search process already. The contents looked like they’d been tipped out and stuffed back in, and she wondered if it had happened before or after Aiden Hawke decided she was a victim and not an accomplice. There was no sign of her mobile. She guessed they’d find it in the glove box if they hadn’t already, probably fingerprint it too. What would the detective make of Brendan’s prints all over it?
Dusk turned the afternoon to early evening while Jax made the journey into the heart of Newcastle from the front of a patrol car – a trip that was as weird and off base as the rest of the day had been. The motorway heading north was deserted. Aside from a single police vehicle at the roadblock site, there wasn’t another car to be seen. Just the faint glow of their own headlamps in the lowering light and the constant stream of traffic heading south.
Inside, the air was filled with the hum of the engine and constant chatter from the police radio. All of it was from the crash site, as though keeping Jax and her driver updated: crime scene investigators arrived, then another two ambulances for passengers in the minibus; a contra-flow was being set up by the RTA, sectioning off a lane on the other side of the motorway to start the process of getting the banked-up traffic moving. And the media made its presence felt – a news chopper touched down on an empty section of motorway, reporters wanted details and an officer requested a spokesperson.
It was a big story. All of it – the gunman, the police operation, the massive traffic jam. Jax knew the news desk at her old paper would be trying to get a journalist and photographer into a chopper so they didn’t have to wait at the back end of the traffic. Other reporters would be working the phones and their police contacts. They’d know it was her by now – the who travelled as fast as the what when there was an angle, and the angle on this was Nicholas Westing’s widow involved in a police drama. His death would be rehashed yet again. Maybe it was just as well Jax’s mobile was with the cops – she didn’t want to take the inevitable calls.
The officer driving lent Jax a mobile and as she dialled Tilda’s number, she tried to scrounge up words and a voice that said she was fine, brave, holding it together. ‘Tilda, it’s –’
‘Jax, honey. Are you all right?’ Tilda’s 61-year-old voice was tremulous with concern.
‘I, I’m …’ She didn’t finish, couldn’t speak for the sobbing. ‘Christ, Tilda, sorry. I’m okay, I just …’
‘No, Jax, don’t be sorry. Just so long as you’re all right.’
She pulled in a loud, hitching breath, unable to answer, grateful just to hear her aunt’s voice, reminded of other times, years ago, and the tears and reassurances between them. Newcastle would be okay. Tonight, anyway.
‘I haven’t told Zoe,’ Tilda said. ‘And I kept the news off the TV. Russell rang too, he knew it was you.’
‘Yeah, I figured he would.’ He’d handled the media for her before and she was hoping he’d do it again.
‘Where are you now?’
Jax explained about the statement she had to make, said she didn’t know how long she’d be, asked would Tilda pick her up from the station when she was done. It could be hours and it meant bringing Zoe out late but she needed to hug both of them.
At the
station, she was given coffee, a chocolate bar from a vending machine and a seat in a glassed-in office that looked like a cross between a kitchenette and a meeting room. After the heat on the motorway, the air-conditioning was freezing, so the officer who’d been her driver found a blanket and then hung about like it was her job to keep an eye on Jax. Maybe it was. What would she watch for – signs of shock or criminal intent?
Jax’s cheek was resting on the cool of the tabletop when Aiden Hawke walked in, crumpled shirt the only sign of a long day, his dark hair a foil to his pale irises. She followed him with her eyes until he’d pulled out the chair beside her, then she sat up and rubbed her face.
‘Detective Hawke,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you call me Aiden?’
‘Aiden, then.’
‘How are you going?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve got nothing to compare it to.’
He blinked – not the response he’d expected, perhaps.
‘I’m too exhausted to move but I can’t close my eyes,’ she explained. ‘It feels really weird, a bit out-of-body, but maybe it’s normal. What do you think?’ Her mouth felt loose, the words a little slurry.
‘It sounds like you’re doing okay but you should try to talk to someone in the next day or so, a counsellor or psychologist. If you can’t find one, I can give you the number for a victim support group.’
A full-service cop. ‘Thanks.’ She wondered if he’d be seeing someone too – he’d pointed a gun at a frightened woman, it would have to do something to his head. Not that he seemed perturbed about it now.
‘Before we start with your statement, I want to let you know that our preliminary inquiries are indicating the man in your car was Brendan Walsh. He was under treatment for mental health issues and had stopped taking prescribed medication.’
No surprise there. ‘Was it post-traumatic stress disorder?’
‘PTSD has been mentioned, among other things.’
She nodded. He wasn’t the only soldier to be injured by the memory of what he’d seen and done. ‘What else?’
‘Apparently there’d been some issues around …’ he held up a finger, took a notepad from his shirt pocket and read: ‘Anxiety, paranoia and fear of delusions.’
‘Who feared the delusions? Brendan or the doctors?’
He hesitated. ‘I can’t clarify that as yet.’
Either way, nano spiders said the delusions had arrived. ‘Was he frightened about people coming after him?’
‘That detail wasn’t discussed in the initial phone call but it’s possible, likely even, that none of it was real.’
She nodded. It was possible. She could believe that – but she’d also believed Brendan, at least on some of it. ‘Does he have a wife and son? Kate and Scotty?’
‘He has a wife and child who live in Newcastle. I can’t confirm their names for you.’
‘He wanted to go to Newcastle?’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘He never said where. He just wanted to get to Kate and Scotty.’ And she’d imagined driving all the way to Queensland with a gun in her face. ‘Did he go to Afghanistan?’
‘We’re still accessing his military records.’
‘But he was in the military, right?’ Or had Brendan read her article and imagined he was at the airbase with the other soldiers?
Aiden took a second to answer. ‘There’s nothing to indicate anyone was after him.’
She pressed her lips together, irritated that he hadn’t given her a straight answer yet, recognising the tactic and already resenting it. She’d had twelve months of Homicide cops deciding how much she needed to know, picking and choosing what information they’d share, feeding it out like scraps to a hungry peasant.
‘You’re safe, Miranda,’ he said.
Except for that – she needed to hear that. His words cut through her temper and started a fresh rush of tears. She wiped her face with a corner of the blanket, cleared her throat, folded her arms on the table, grateful for his silence while she pulled herself together.
When she was done, he picked up a pen from the pad he’d put on the desk. ‘I’d like to get the details down while they’re still fresh. Do you think you can manage that?’
The real question was whether she wanted the details to keep running through her head, weighing her down until she came back to the station to let them out. She knew what it was like to have shock and sadness linger inside her, and she wasn’t sure she had room for more. She pulled in a breath. ‘Yes, let’s get it over with.’
It took another hour to go through it. He asked her to start from when she left the house, steered her back on track when she struggled to stay in chronological order, pressed gently for when and how Brendan had shouted or lunged or freaked out. She waxed and waned between being grateful for Aiden’s patience and wanting to tell him to give her a damn break, all the time trying not to let the process remind her of the long hours she’d spent with police over Nick’s death – crying, being interviewed, begging for information.
Halfway through, the uniformed cop came back with new bottles of water and a couple of takeaway sandwiches, and left to let Tilda know they’d be finished soon. When Aiden finally drew a line under his notes, Jax stretched her neck side-to-side, a ripple of cracks popping down her spine.
‘I’d like to talk to you again when we’ve finished at the scene and completed the witness statements,’ he said. ‘Can you come in tomorrow afternoon? It’ll give you a chance to add anything else you might remember.’
‘I was hoping to forget it.’
He nodded – empathetic but insistent. ‘I know you must want to put it behind you but we need to wrap it up properly.’
She thought of the past year, wondering how far they’d get with the wrapping up on this one.
The blanket was still around her shoulders as Aiden walked her downstairs and swung open the door to the foyer.
‘Mummy!’
Zoe. Freckles and gap-toothed and soft, brown curls. Dragging Tilda across the waiting area, both of them wearing long, bright scarves and strings of Tilda’s customary beads.
Jax dropped to her knees and caught her daughter in her arms. Hot tears welled behind her lids and she squeezed her eyes tight, trying to keep them from Zoe. She didn’t need to see her mother like this. Not again.
12
It was dark and quiet on the streets of Newcastle as Tilda drove a familiar path home, over the headland and past a long stretch of beach.
‘And Aunty Tilda said I could wear her scarf and beads,’ Zoe told Jax from the back seat, talking non-stop as though one night apart had been a whirlwind holiday. ‘She said I looked … What was that word?’
‘Gregarious,’ Tilda answered.
‘Oh, yeah. Gregarious.’
And Tilda would know, Jax thought, glancing at her aunt across the car. Wealthy, arty, trim and glamorous in a bohemian, owning-her-age kind of way.
Zoe told Jax about the curry she’d helped cook and the painting at the gallery they’d visited and the peppermint tea she was allowed to taste.
Jax tried to enjoy her daughter’s chatter, glad Zoe didn’t know what had happened, wincing as the volume grated on the headache pulsating inside her skull. She turned her face to the passenger window and watched the fluorescent white crests of surf on the black ocean, remembering another time in Tilda’s car, passing this way with nothing but the clothes she’d been wearing.
That night, the stench of smoke had still clung to her hair from the fire that burned her home to the ground and turned her parents to ash. Her world-travelling, childless aunt had driven out west and picked her up, and Jax had arrived with no money and shattered by tragedy. Now, nineteen years and a lifetime later, she didn’t feel a whole lot different – except this time, she’d brought a daughter.
Novocastrians had a theory that people who grew up here and left would eventually want to come back. There was plenty of reason to: Newcastle was a great place to bring up fa
milies or retire, where you could afford to live by the beach without spending every waking hour at a job that kept you away from it. Nick had talked about moving up – he’d figured they could both work from home and enjoy a better, freer lifestyle – but Jax had never wanted to return. Not to live. Newcastle was where she’d grieved, hurt and healed. The concept of returning had always felt like a backward step.
And now she was here and feeling like hell – for old and new reasons.
Tilda pulled the car into the garage and the three of them trundled through the internal door to the large, tiled foyer that sat midway between the two levels of the house. The sight of cardboard boxes stacked to one side made Jax’s headache grind and a groan slip from her throat.
‘Don’t even think about it now,’ Tilda said. ‘Zoe and I made up your bed and found your jim-jams, didn’t we?’ Zoe looked up at them and nodded, bouncing strands of hair framing her freckles. Tilda gave Jax’s shoulder a gentle rub. ‘You don’t need anything else tonight but dinner and a Scotch, and both are waiting for you upstairs.’
Jax glanced briefly down the half of the staircase that led to the lower level where she and Zoe would be living. The self-contained apartment had been painted two weeks ago and there was still a hint of the chemical smell in the air that wafted up. It was theirs – lovely, roomy, a financial blessing.
And the end of another life.
Trailing Zoe and Tilda up the stairs, Jax lifted her eyes to the expanse of glass at the top. Even exhausted, she found it hard not to be gobsmacked by the view. Tilda’s two storeys were on the side of a hill, the top level looking towards the city, the lower facing the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Tonight, the suburbs that stretched out below the house were a carpet of fairy lights that edged the surf all the way to the darkness of the next headland. Off to the right, navigation lights on the ships queuing for the port hung like lamps suspended in deep, dark space.
