‘A friend of Sam’s growing up,’ Winter said. ‘She killed herself over a decade ago. And as far as I’m concerned, you – and everyone else for that matter – are innocent of that.’
‘Sounds like there are only two people linking this station and what happened to this Lily chick. One of them’s dead, and the other one’s sitting’ – Gareth pointed at Harry – ‘right fucking there.’
Jack was furious. He couldn’t think. Those fucking soldiers. He’d been beating them, he had. And he wasn’t a fool; he knew he would break again, and he’d purge and regret it and reset the calendar and count from day one again. Of course he would. A ten-years-clean smoker still itches for a cigarette. Jack would always run his teeth along his gums. And he would fail. But not today.
Not today.
Internally, he yelled at his soldiers and they stepped back in a rustle of steel. Space to think. He had been so focused on the deaths being linked. He knew Sam had been forced to kill himself. He had physical evidence, on video. Gareth on camera at the filming. Beth admitting to giving information to Tom Dwyer. That was motive. Gareth could have thrown off a coat and disappeared into a crowd simply by being himself. Beth could have had an accomplice. But neither were linked to Lily Connors, whose death was still a suicide, even after all this digging. Maurice believed differently. So had Sam. So did Ryan. They all thought it was murder. And it just had a feeling about it, of something not adding up. It had made so much sense there in Lily’s bedroom: the person who murdered my daughter is the same person who killed your brother. What was he missing?
Gareth was standing by the door. Was Jack really going to let him walk out before he solved this? Back! he yelled at his soldiers. Think!
‘Buy a new suit for court,’ Gareth said to Beth, then turned to Jack. ‘You make a podcast out of this, you better use some real careful wording or I’ll have you for defamation too.’
Then the CEO walked straight out of the room. Winter rose, followed, gave Jack a consolatory squeeze on the shoulder as he passed and said, ‘He’s right, Jack. Take it easy throwing around words like murder. They mean more than you think they do.’ Harry just looked shell-shocked.
As annoying as it was, Gareth had a point: the only link between the two deaths was the Midford brothers. And that both murders were impossible. That didn’t help much.
Unless . . .
What if that was the link? What if the link between them was that both murders were impossible.
What if these two deaths weren’t connected by their killers? What if they were connected by their method?
How does a killer get out of a locked room? They can’t. It’s impossible. If the answer’s impossible, the question’s wrong. It struck Jack. Don’t bother with the door . . . this killer won’t even open it.
What if the killer never sets foot in the room in the first place?
The world’s changing, sometimes too quickly for someone like me, and police work, our law, the way we do things, is changing too. Maybe if it happened now . . . Waldren had lamented in the carpark, before changing the topic.
Lily had died back when MySpace’s only legal recourse was ‘breach of terms of service’. But these days the same thing had been ruled manslaughter. In some cases, murder. Waldren knew that.
He wasn’t ruing the fact that they lacked the forensic tech to catch a killer, as Jack had thought. He was ruing the fact that he couldn’t arrest one. Because the law hadn’t caught up. And he couldn’t tell Jack that now, because you can’t sully someone’s innocence with that accusation. Any evidence would only point towards something that wasn’t even a crime at the time. Maurice had spent a decade telling Waldren there was a murder, and Waldren hadn’t been telling Maurice he was wrong, he’d been telling him there was nothing he could do about it. These days, people were aware of the dangers of online bullying. Sam himself hadn’t wanted his daughter to have a phone until she was eighteen. Of course he hadn’t. Especially if he had known how dangerous they could be.
‘Sam was with you the whole night,’ Jack whispered.
There was such a long pause he thought Harry hadn’t heard him. Then: ‘This again?’
‘I can—’
‘You think he climbed down, killed her, and then came back? And I covered it up? I’m really not in the mood to be called a liar, Jack.’ Harry was seething.
But being four metres in the air wasn’t much of an alibi when you had a weapon in your pocket. Harry had told Jack that Sam had been nose down in his phone the whole night, and then ‘lost the damn thing a day later’. Because he didn’t want anyone to find out what was on it. Were two missed calls really enough for all that guilt Sam carried? Maybe not. But they didn’t know what Sam had said to her before he didn’t answer her calls. Jack would put money on a few phrases: DON’T BACK OUT ON ME NOW.
Gareth had sagely advised Jack to be careful with words, to choose them carefully. Winter had told him words like ‘murder’ meant more than he thought they did. In an investigation where words were wielded as swords and spilled blood, Jack hadn’t been careful enough with them. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. Harry had called it a murder from the start. So had Sam’s letter, and he’d just kept using it. What had Sam’s letter said?
I’m sorry for not believing you . . . I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out. But figure it out I have . . . I finally understand.
‘Understand’ had always seemed such a specific word to choose. So personal. And what had he said on television?
Forgive me.
His letter was an apology.
Sam hadn’t solved a murder. He’d confessed to one.
‘Lily Connors did kill herself,’ Jack said. ‘But Sam Midford told her to.’
CHAPTER 34
Harry groaned like he’d been shot. It was long, guttural and pained. A half-dead fox on a highway. He stood up and left the table. Paced outside the boardroom, shaking his head. Jack watched him, his mind still shutting those final doors.
Maurice Connors had been right all along. He had known his daughter had been as good as murdered. He must have seen the texts on his daughter’s phone after she died.
I THOUGHT YOU WANTED THIS.
DON’T BACK OUT ON ME NOW.
But how did Tom Dwyer play into it? The information Beth was feeding him had been crucial to the killer’s plan, because it told them when and where to go. So if she wasn’t an accessory, Mr Midnight’s television rival sure was. He’d grown up down the coast . . . Unless . . . Jack looked at Beth, guilt-racked and slumped on the red oak, and realised he believed what she’d told him. She wasn’t complicit. She just hadn’t known she was opening doors for a killer to walk through.
‘Beth,’ Jack said. She groaned, head still buried in her elbows. ‘This is important. Did you ever meet Tom Dwyer?’
She coaxed her head up from her arms and gave him a limp stare. Her eyes were bloodshot, wet. Nose tip pink. She looked the way Jack had seen himself sometimes: in a mirror, braced over a sink, gums fizzing, tired. I have nothing left. Her head gave a little shake. No.
‘And it probably made sense to you that he didn’t use an official email considering what you were doing. Like a Gmail or something?’
She nodded. Jack could see her making the same connection he had. It hadn’t been the real Tom Dwyer asking her to leak information. She slumped back on the table.
It was all so close to fitting together. Jack took a breath. Try to think of it like a television series, he told himself. Where is the starting point? Episode One.
Episode One. Five years ago, Sam writes a confession. Perhaps as part of his therapy, to deal with his guilt by owning up to his past. That’s the moment a killer was inspired, Jack was sure.
That’s their starting point. Now, Episode Two—
Hang on.
Five years ago, before Sam’s first suicide attempt. He was adamant that it was an accident. Wrong pills. Wrong beer. Jack believed Harry when he said Sam had been trying to dr
ink himself to death. But, maybe, that time it wasn’t an accident after all. Did that work? Jack’s phone rang again. This time he answered it.
‘Dad,’ Jack said. His father was crying. Hard. Jack felt a shard of guilt, tight in his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t pick up. I was caught at the station.’
‘Thank you.’ His father was talking more clearly now. ‘Thank you.’
What was he thanking him for? Jack was struggling to keep up with the conversation, memory still whizzing through him.
The person who murdered my daughter is the same person who killed your brother.
Those words were deliberate. Jack should have known the definition of ‘killing’ better than anyone. Suicide was not murder and murder was not killing. And yet they were. The word ‘murder’ was evolving. The person who killed Sam Midford was Sam Midford. The same person who had ‘murdered’ Lily Connors.
Five years ago, around the same time Maurice had been suspended for stealing drugs from the hospital. ‘Easily enough to lay him out,’ Waldren had told them, fearing that Maurice had stolen the pills to try to kill himself. Wrong pills. Not himself.
I found a way to let Lily go. It was the hardest thing I ever did.
‘Dad, I’m sorry. I’m in the middle of . . . I don’t understand.’
Jack was trying to figure out how quickly he could get to Wheeler’s Cove. Then he heard his brother’s name – Liam – in between the muck of his father’s emotion, and snapped to attention.
‘Liam? Dad, what about Liam?’
‘I’m proud of you,’ Peter said, still talking in snapshots. ‘Must have been so hard.’
Panic was rising now. These were the wrong words if Liam had taken an emergency turn. Proud. Hard.
‘Dad,’ Jack said slowly, ‘where’s Liam?’
‘Well.’ Peter was confused, didn’t understand the question. ‘They came and got him.’
No. Oh God. Oh fuck. No.
‘Who took him?’
‘Guy in an ambulance. Picked him up an hour ago.’
PART 5
REVENGE
You gotta buy a lock. In case someone walks in. You know, like Ry or someone.
Yeah, good idea.
. . .
You got everything? Belt’s a good idea. Can’t snap as easily.
You there?
Don’t tell me you did it already :P
I’m nervous.
Why are you nervous? We talked about it. The way you’ve chosen will be easy and you won’t even know until it’s over.
I love you so much and I just want this because you want it. You’ll be so much happier, and that’s all I want.
I thought you wanted this.
I mean, I do want it. I’m just being silly.
You’re right. Of course you are.
Thanks for always being there for me babe.
Don’t back out on me now.
Text messages between Sam Midford and Lily Connors, 2007.
CHAPTER 35
Harry wasn’t on the landing, maybe walking off his anger instead of beating the pulp out of Jack. But Jack didn’t have time to look for him. To tell him everyone here was innocent, but the crimes were just as connected as they’d thought.
It wasn’t the lack of knowledge that plagued Maurice, it was the frustration that he did know, that Sam had texted his daughter encouragement, and there was nothing he could do about it. That was why he’d gotten into scrapes with Harry’s parents. He was pointing the finger, and rightly so, but he didn’t have any legal backing for it. What phone? Maurice’s eyes had sparked when they’d discussed it. Jack thought it was the electricity of new evidence, but no: Maurice had thought someone else finally agreed with him, but now that was dangerous. Because the messages on Lily’s phone were motive. Motive to kill Sam.
He sprinted down the six flights of stairs and through the foyer. He didn’t have Maurice Connors’ phone number. He tried Ryan. It rung out. Fuck. On the street, his illegally parked VW was being levered onto a tow truck. Seriously? He tried calling Ryan again as he ran up to the truck.
A flash in the corner of his eye. Lights, red and blue. Same colour lights as a police car. Enough to spook Slater, thinking it was Maurice’s ambulance outside his van. Winter had mentioned that the call specifically asked Waldren to turn his lights on. Jack would have bet that ambos had the same frequency as police too. Waldren had been telling the truth. He just didn’t know who had called it in, that it was an ambulance hopping onto his frequency.
The lights were in the fast food carpark, across the road. Just a quick wink. Come here.
He ignored the VW and ran across the road. The carpark was sparse; no one wants fried chicken at ten in the morning. Ambulance in the far corner. Reverse parked, no one in the cab. One of the back doors flapped open. Jack slowed his approach. He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t care. Liam didn’t have time. Jack got to the bonnet, around the driver’s side. Up on tiptoes to see through the window. Empty. Around the side. He heard familiar beeping, wheezing, soft in the air. Clenched his fists. Emerged around the side, ready for a fight.
No one.
Jack whirled around. Was this a threat then? A message? A trap? There was no one there. He looked into the rear. His brother was strapped to a gurney. Jack breathed deeply in relief, in time with the wheeze of the breathing machine. All still plugged in.
Jack went to step into the cab when he felt a rough hand on his shoulder. Something plastic covered his nose and mouth. Then he was dizzy.
By the time he realised it was a gas mask, he was already falling.
The first thing Jack noticed when he came to was that he was upright. On his knees in the dirt. His wrists chafed, tied behind his back with coarse rope. He blinked away the sunlight, tried to look around. Felt a scratch like he’d shaved rough. Rope on his neck.
The ambulance was in front of him, doors open. Jack could see the blue sheets on the bed. Looked like a person on them. Maurice was sitting on the floor, legs dangling, just as he had been when they’d shared a cup of tea. The ground under Jack’s knees was packed clay-dirt that had been trampled by hundreds of feet. All the grass dead. Long shadows splayed across the ground from looming tall structures all around. Not trees; these shadows were jagged. For a second, Jack thought he was in a shipyard. Then the glare softened as he turned his head, and he realised that the structures were all stationary carnival rides. Salt on his tongue. Wheeler’s Cove. The park was deserted, not reopened since the shooting. A severed piece of blue and white checked tape fluttered from the entrance gate, keeping people away. Broken, assumedly, by Maurice driving through it.
Jack tried to stand but his legs wobbled and he pitched forwards. Forgetting they were bound behind him, he tried to put his hands out. His fall stopped anyway, the rope on his throat tight. He gagged. One of his knees was still on the ground, but it was pivoting him like a spinning top. His eyes stung. Plumes of dust rose up as he tried to stand again.
He felt hands around his ribs, lifting him into a standing position. Jack’s legs threatened to give out again, but he forced his knees to lock and stayed upright.
‘Can’t have you go like that,’ said Maurice, stepping away from Jack.
‘Let him go,’ Jack rasped.
‘I’ve got no problem with your brother. He can’t talk. You, on the other hand, you shouldn’t have told me you’d figured out the autocue. No. You talk way too much. About your brother. About your dad.’ He put a hand on his heart. ‘Your beautiful father. Letting you be a coward. Poor old man – all I had to say was you sent me. So easy. I have the costume already.’ He gestured to his paramedic’s uniform.
‘You’re a murderer. What you did to Sam—’ Jack was working the hands behind his back.
‘Apparently not!’ Maurice yelled. ‘Because according to the law he didn’t murder Lily, did he? So how could I have murdered him? Huh? That’s some double standard you’ve got there, Jack. Don’t call me that disgusting word.’
&nbs
p; ‘What he did was unforgivable,’ Jack said. ‘And yes, it was murder, manslaughter, something. I believe that too. But that doesn’t make what you did to him okay. No one knew things like this could happen when suddenly, overnight, everyone had phones, the internet. But we’ve learned more now. What people can do to each other these days. They were just kids. How many times do they comment on a video, or a Facebook post: go kill yourself; fuck off and die. They don’t know the power that has until it’s too late. He was just a kid.’
‘He knew. The things he said. He wanted her to—’
‘I’m not defending him, he did what he did. It was awful. But his intent, and yours now, those are very different things. Sometimes the world moves faster than we’re ready for. You think you’re the only one who suffered that learning curve?’
‘I’m the only one who had to look at his fucking face on television every night, knowing what I knew.’ His eyes were bulging. He walked over to Jack, calmly spoke in his ear. ‘The things he wrote to her: You gotta buy a lock. In case someone walks in. You know, like Ry or someone.’
Jack was too busy looking for an escape that he didn’t fully understand what Maurice was saying. He considered kicking out at Maurice, but he didn’t want to fall again. What was he tied to? He looked up. A collection of fibreglass domes, like looking at the hulls of a dozen boats. The Ferris wheel.
‘Belt’s a good idea. Can’t snap as easily.’
Maurice was in his other ear now.
‘I love you so much and I just want this because you want it. You’ll be so much happier, and that’s all I want.’
Either Side of Midnight : A Novel (2020) Page 25
