“That’s okay. We can stand.”
The detectives stood in the centre of the small room, their presence enormous.
“Have you been in touch with Isabelle recently?” McKenzie asked.
“We spoke a couple of days ago,” Chris said. “Why? What’s going on?”
Jenkins gestured to the bed. “Take a seat there, Chris.”
Chris backed up and sat down, his gaze never leaving Jenkins.
“I’m sorry to inform you of this but yesterday morning, Juliette died. At this stage, we strongly suspect she was murdered.”
Chris leaned forward, eyes bulging, and mouthed, “What?”
“I apologise for being the bearer of this news, but I assumed Isabelle would have told you.”
He shook his head again. “No,” he said, but it came out so weak it was barely audible. He coughed, attempted it again. “No. I haven’t. I had no idea. Dead? Are you certain?”
“The victim’s family still needs to formally identify the body, but it’s, ah, a certainty.”
“Oh, my God.” He lowered his face into his hands. After a long moment, he lifted his head, gaze darting between the two detectives. “How?”
“She was bludgeoned with a heavy tool. We’re still waiting on an autopsy.”
His eyes were glossing. “I can’t believe this. Oh, God. Isabelle. She must be beside herself.”
“Is it out of the ordinary that she would keep this from you?” McKenzie asked.
Chris nodded, then shook his head. “I don’t even know anymore. I would have thought she’d call me immediately. She’s been on her own since yesterday?”
“A close friend has been giving her support,” Jenkins added.
McKenzie glanced around the hotel room. A suitcase sat open on the luggage holder. Bright yellow reflective high-vis shirts and blue jeans filled the insides. “So, why are you in a hotel rather than the family home?”
Chris sighed, shoulders slumping. He was finding it hard to breathe. “Issy was angry with me.”
“How so?”
He swallowed hard. His lips were trembling as he fought back tears. “She was upset with me about my ex.” His eyes widened and he gasped. “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you? Because I can tell you right now, I didn’t.”
“We’re trying to gather information at this stage to get an idea of what took place. Juliette deserves that, don’t you think?”
“Of course. And Isabelle.” He got to his feet. His legs were unsteady beneath him. “Isabelle will be devastated. Have you seen her?”
Jenkins nodded. “We spoke with her yesterday.”
“Was she… Jesus. Was she upset?”
“Understandably.” Jenkins left out the worst of the details, though they had weighed on her all evening, then again, like hard jabs to her ribs, when she awoke this morning. The guttural keening, that was the part that had almost undid her. “Take a seat, Chris, and we’ll be out of your hair soon enough,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
He sat on the unmade bed, nodded. “Sure.” Then he glanced at his watch. “I’m meant to be flying to Townsville soon. There’s no way I can go. I need to be here for Isabelle. Juliette is such a good kid. I find it so hard to believe that she’s…” His throat closed over, and eyes glossed with tears. “I should give Issy a call. Go see her.”
“Call when we’re done here,” Jenkins said, moving to the small kitchenette where there was a jug, a few cups and some teabags. She checked the tiny fridge for milk.
“What’s your relationship with Tina like?” McKenzie asked.
Chris blinked. “What’s that got to do with Juliette?”
“I was hoping you could help me out with that.”
He focused on his lap, brow furrowing. “It’s fine, I guess. Fairly amicable.” Then he lifted his head, his lips parting. “Oh, is this about the stalking?”
“I’m not sure,” McKenzie said, taking out his notepad and pen. “What do you know about that?”
Chris relayed to the detective what Tina had told him about the notes and Isabelle appearing outside her bedroom window. He explained how Tina had been trailing Isabelle to and from work. “I told her to stop it, but she assumed I didn’t believe her.”
“So, you do believe your wife was stalking Tina?”
“Of course not. I can’t see Issy doing something like that. She didn’t like Tina, I know that, and she didn’t want me seeing her, but she wouldn’t stalk her.” He groaned, regretting ever questioning her over it.
“When you spoke with Tina about her trailing Isabelle, was the conversation heated?”
He shook his head, then sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe a little. She was upset because I’d told her that Isabelle was pregnant.”
“Right,” McKenzie said with a nod, understanding how Tina, after losing her only child, would be upset by her ex-husband moving on so soon afterwards. McKenzie had two children—grown now and living their own lives. His eldest son was a solicitor, practising in Brisbane. The younger of the two, though in his late twenties, was an engineer. He still lived in town with his wife and two children. If anything had have happened to either of them, even now, let alone when they were young children, it would have broken him irreparably. He was certain of that.
“Tina had never been able to have children,” Chris continued. “We tried and tried from the moment we were married, but it never happened.”
McKenzie kept his expression impartial. “The young daughter Tina lost wasn’t your biological child?”
Chris narrowed his gaze. “Do you mean like one of the miscarriages she had?”
Jenkins handed Chris a cup of tea. He gave a perfunctory ‘thanks’ but didn’t turn away from McKenzie.
McKenzie shook his head. “Not a miscarriage. I believe this young girl was four when she died. Kadie Brooks.”
Chris sipped the hot tea. It was comforting and warm in his stomach, soothing the storm of anxiety raging inside. “You must have your wires crossed. Kadie wasn’t our daughter. She was my brother, Ben’s, daughter. A horrible accident the way that all played out.”
“Your brother’s daughter?”
He nodded.
“Are you able to tell me what happened with Kadie?”
Chris drew a deep breath. “Ben and his wife, Maddison, they used to live on a property at Yarwun, two houses up from us.”
“Where Tina still lives?”
“Yeah. Ben was meant to be watching his three kids while Maddison had gone into town to do the grocery shopping. I was at the mine, due home the following day. Tina was with Ben, in the bedroom…” He cleared his throat, looked down at his hands, never able to admit to this story without difficulty.
“Tina and your brother were having an affair?”
“Well, they both said it was only that one time. The worst timing possible.”
“How so?”
“The kids were playing hide-n-seek. Kadie had… an accident. When they found her, she was already gone.”
“I see. And this was how long ago?”
“About three years. It was messy. My marriage didn’t stand a chance. I no longer speak to my brother.”
“That would have been a very difficult time.”
Chris sipped his tea again, his mouthful too deep. He swallowed quickly and winced as the hot water slipped down his throat.
“Do you know if Tina is on any kind of medication?” McKenzie asked. “Psychiatric medications, perhaps?”
He shook his head. “Not a chance. No way.”
“Why are you so certain of that?”
“Tina’s mother was a hippy, I guess you’d say. She was into healing with food and natural things. It was drilled into Tina’s head while young. She hated drugs. Any form. She wouldn’t even take paracetamol for a headache. She was like that through our whole marriage.”
“Right,” McKenzie said. “Quickly, before we get out of your hair, where were you yesterday morning between eight and nine.”
He looked off into the distance and frowned. “Here. Asleep. I’d had a few drinks the night before—drowning my sorrows—so I was sleeping it off.”
“Anyone here with you? A mate, a lover, a sex-worker?”
Chris shook his head. “I was alone.”
* * *
When the detectives left, Chris headed to the bathroom and washed his face at the basin with cold water. He gazed at his reflection in the mirror. Pale. His eyes were bloodshot. A slight tremble in his hands.
That news had shocked him. He’d endured the aftermath of his niece’s death only three years ago, and it was a nuclear hell for everyone involved. Ben and Maddison had taken the blow as hard as could be expected.
The anger Chris harboured towards his brother wasn’t able to manifest loudly enough amidst all that grief. He was never able to scream and shout and blame his brother for his betrayal because Ben was experiencing a punishment far greater than Chris could ever wield.
Chris had attended the funeral, gave his condolences, said goodbye to his beautiful niece, and never spoke to Ben, nor his family, ever again.
Tina had been knocked off balance. It may as well have been her body inside that small casket and lowered into the ground. He’d never witnessed anything like that before. She went cold. No longer shed tears or showed sorrow. No joy or anger. Her face held the same expression no matter what they were talking about. And when they did speak, she would nod in all the right places, offer responses, but the timing was a little off, the replies slightly disconnected.
He could have forgiven her for the affair. He could have. He’d been partially to blame. Their marriage had spiralled into a rut. He’d taken her for granted. Always assumed she would be there, waiting for him when he got home after twelve long days away. But in the end, Tina no longer existed, only her shell remained, so there was no one to forgive.
When he had finally left the relationship, it was like leaving a stuffed doll behind.
That time in his life was difficult for a lot of reasons, but mostly because he never knew in any moment how he should be feeling. So many conflicting circumstances made his normal reactions and emotions inappropriate.
He contemplated the road that lay ahead of him and Isabelle and cringed. A crippling road, full of despair, full of pain unlike anything physical. He wasn’t sure he had the wherewithal to shoulder that again.
He gazed into his solemn eyes. He loved Isabelle and he would have to carry this load with her regardless of his doubts. It would be a nightmare, but they would be stronger together. Maybe.
The baby was a godsend. At least there was some hope ahead. He held onto that thought, of eventually bursting out through the other side and holding his child in his arms.
He gathered his mobile phone from the desk and called his employer, informing them about what had happened and that he’d be taking the next couple of shifts off. That would give him a little over a month to be home with Isabelle.
After a deep, shaky breath, he called his wife. His heart raced as the phone rang and rang and rang. But no one answered.
He left a message. “I was told the news, Issy. I’m so deeply sorry. I’m utterly heartbroken. I can’t even begin to imagine how you must be feeling.” He hesitated when he was about to say he would go over there. But he wasn’t certain she wanted that. If she did, he would have been one of the first people she had called. “Would you like me to come over? I’ve taken time off work. I can be there in five minutes if that’s what you want. I have no words for how sorry I am.”
He hung up, flung his phone onto the bed, lifted his face to the ceiling and cried.
Chapter 24
“I shouldn’t remember that day,” Maddison said to her psychiatrist, Dr Cheryl. “But I remember it more clearly than anything else in my life. Every single detail. I’ve heard stories about other people remembering death as though it existed in a haze, but not me. It’s vivid. So vivid. I wake at night with the images of it in my mind as though it’s all happening again right in front of me.”
Upon hearing about her blackout and waking in a park, the doctor had designated Maddison a priority. This was their third session this week. The first two sessions, she had skirted around the painful topic of Kadie’s death, pretending that her husband’s affairs were the real concern. But they never had been. They were big and bad, but they were nothing compared to her daughter dying.
“Is that where your use of alcohol and prescription drugs started?” Dr Cheryl asked.
Maddison nodded. “You can only feel that pain once in your lifetime. But to be blasted with it every single night, every single minute of my day, was unbearable. I either blocked it out or I…”
“What were you going to say there?”
She swallowed hard. “Or I would kill myself. But I couldn’t do that to Ruby and Riley. I couldn’t put them through that on top of losing their baby sister.” Tears filled her eyes.
“I understand.” Dr Cheryl leaned back in her chair, notepad on her lap, pen tip hovering over the page. “Tell me about that day, Maddison.”
She tensed, jaw clamping shut—her body’s way of telling her not to go there. But she couldn’t wake up in a park again. She couldn’t keep blocking that moment in time out because no matter how much she willed it, it never went away. It lurked in the background of everything. Like a monster, she had to turn and face it, to truly understand what she was dealing with.
Maddison closed her eyes, hid her trembling hands beneath her thighs, and, in a second, she was back there, that day her heart was ripped out of her chest.
The pounding heat of summer. The thick humidity that filled her every breath and coated her skin in a thin layer of sweat.
She pulled up in the driveway, parked beside the house. She opened the boot of her car and began piling shopping bags into her hands. If she were being honest, she’d admit that she had enjoyed her time alone those past couple of hours. Even though she was pushing a shopping trolley around a bustling grocery store, it was time to herself. She could barely shower, let alone go to the toilet in peace with three young children constantly on her tail.
She wasn’t sure that she and Ben had known exactly what they were in for by having the children so close together. Barely eighteen months between each. It had sounded reasonable at the time, so her children could grow up as friends, but the reality of having three children, aged eight and under, was much different. Her house was mostly littered with toys and hastily discarded clothes. Food was pushed under couches by little hands. And noisy. At least three times a day, one of them was whinging, fighting or crying over something one of their siblings had or hadn’t done.
Shopping with the three of them was torture, so she usually waited for Ben to have a few hours off from the gym on the slowest day of the week and duck away by herself.
She hauled bags up the front steps, lowered the door handle with her elbow, then shoved the door open with her foot. Her neck was straining from the effort. Her fingers sore from the tug of the heavy bags.
In the kitchen, Ruby jumped out from the cupboard, “Mummy,” she said with a squeal and a smile.
“Hi, my darling. What were you doing in the cupboard?”
“Playing hide-n-seek, but no one find me.”
“You’ve chosen the best hiding spot then.” She groaned as she loaded the bags onto the kitchen bench. “Where’s Dad?”
Ruby looked to the side in thought. “He in the bedroom with Aunty Tina?”
Her brows arched. “Bedroom?”
One big nod.
Maddison’s stomach knotted. Alarm bells in her brain. “Wait here,” she said to Ruby. “I need to ask Dad to give me a hand with the groceries.”
“I can help,” Ruby said and raced towards the front door.
Maddison walked up the hallway, each slow footstep to the bedroom door had her filling with trepidation. A hand on the knob, then she turned it slowly and pushed. Her focus zoomed to the space beside the bed.
&nbs
p; Her husband’s bare arse, his deep breaths filling the room. Beneath him, flat on her stomach was Tina.
Maddison screamed, her hand smothering her mouth as she did. Still to this day, she didn’t quite understand why she had screamed. Perhaps it was the shock. The utter grotesqueness of the moment. The sordidness of seeing her husband’s bare arse clench with every thrust into Tina.
Most likely, though, she had screamed because seeing her husband that way was so dissonant to every thought and every belief she had ever held about him. That one moment had fragmented the reality she had existed in since their wedding day all those years ago.
Most jarring was that Ben hadn’t stopped, he continued for a while longer until he tensed and jerked with his release.
Maddison’s expression twisted. She’d witnessed the tipping point. No return from that moment. Disgust was tightening the walls of her throat, making her want to gag. Her husband was a repulsive animal.
Ben, at last, pulled out of Tina and got to his feet. He was dressed in a shirt, his shorts down around his thighs, his erection jutting out until he pulled up his pants to hide it. Tina remained on the floor. Maddison looked at her sister-in-law, but no words formed in her mind. None adequate in that surreal moment.
With a huff, she spun away and marched down the hall. “Ruby, Riley, Kadie, come here please. Right now.”
When she made it to the end of the hall, Ruby was walking through the front door, dragging a heavy shopping bag behind her.
“Go hop in the car please and wait for me. Where’s your brother and sister?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby said. “Hiding still?”
“Go wait in the car.”
Understanding the seriousness in her mother’s tone, she dropped the bag and ran quickly out the front door to the garage. Riley appeared from behind the couch in the living room.
“Go wait in the car with your sister,” she said. “Turn it on, so you have some air-conditioning. But don’t touch anything at all. You understand me?”
All That Was Left Unsaid Page 14
