‘We talk. Are you Hush?’
‘Who’s Hush?’
‘Were you sleeping with her?’
‘Who?’
Jack breathed. Start at the beginning. He had the gun. He had the time. He knew most of the story, he just needed Andrew to fill in the gaps.
‘Eliza knew about the wine?’
A pause. Andrew gave a slow nod.
‘She stole a bottle,’ he said. ‘The day she left.’
Jack imagined the young backpacker, after months of picking, rewarding herself for her hard work with a bottle from Andrew’s collection. A parting gift for herself. Ready to start her next Australian adventure, ill-gained celebration tucked in her backpack, swaddled in a jumper. Turning. Seeing a shadow, backlit by daylight, blocking the cellar stairs.
If he’d been able to pull the trigger, he might have.
‘Where was she for the next eight months?’
‘I assume she never left Birravale. She was here.’
Jack would bet any money she’d been underground. In the cellar. Behind so many locked doors. Just another private collection.
‘And Alexis?’
‘Her too.’ His voice full of regret. Such shame. Andrew was rubbing his cheekbones with the heels of his palms. ‘I can’t believe that. Her too.’
‘Were you sleeping with her?’
‘Alexis?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
So Hush didn’t play into it at all. Just some boyfriend. Nothing worth killing over, and only interesting in the light of trying to pin it on Curtis. Sex, passion – those common motives of which Lauren had been so sure, that Andrew had tricked her into believing by clearing the phone to point towards Hush – were void. Hell, he could have even changed the name to Hush to make it seem suspicious. It only came down to Andrew Freeman’s money.
‘Curtis —’ Andrew started. He sniffed and stood. Jack levered backwards, traced him with the gun, but Andrew went the other way. He stooped over and flipped the knitted wooden lid of the picnic basket. He rummaged and brought out a bottle.
‘Curtis was the perfect suspect,’ Jack said. Realising now Andrew’s compulsion to get Curtis. He needed Curtis to stay in the spotlight, in order to keep him in the dark. He needed Jack to stay focused. ‘Is that one real?’
‘They’re all real, mate.’ Andrew swigged it like a sailor. ‘The ones up here are for me, so I guess they’re more real than others.’
‘You must have known someone would find out eventually,’ Jack said, ‘the way you flaunted it.’
‘Maybe. I kept thinking I’d stop. You know, at the start it was a few quick bucks. But then I kept not getting caught. So I kept going. Every time I thought the glass was finally empty, someone would refill it.’
‘She’s dead, Andrew. The glass is empty.’
‘Let’s get it out of the way and then you can leave me up here to drink in peace until they come. I got her killed.’
‘Say it properly.’
‘Eliza Dacey.’ He yelled it at the sky. ‘I got Eliza killed. Happy?’
‘Good. And Alexis?’
‘Well, fine.’ He looked inside the bottle, as if it might contain an exit – Jack had a quick glimmer of Andrew smashing the bottle, lunging at him, slashing his throat – but Andrew’s shoulders dropped. ‘Yeah. Okay. That’s true. Her too, if you think about it that way.’
‘What way?’
‘I guess they’re both my fault, then.’
‘You stole Curtis’s axe. You bashed her skull in. You cut off her fingers. You guess it’s your fault?’ He jabbed the rifle between words, as if stamping the punctuation in the air.
‘Whoa, wait.’
‘I’m tired, Andrew. Tell the truth. You’ve already admitted to murdering Eliza.’
Andrew blinked twice. He necked the rest of the bottle and examined the empty. Weighing up the price, the value of this one, just like he had previously. But then he shrugged and lobbed the bottle over his head in an arc. It spun in the air, dropped out of view. Jack heard it shatter on the ground below. No point keeping the empties now, he supposed.
‘I said I got Eliza killed.’ Andrew locked his red-rimmed eyes with Jack’s. ‘But I didn’t kill her.’
‘Eliza knew that the bottle she took was a bad one,’ Andrew said, ‘and I knew as soon as I saw the gap in the shelf what she’d done. It wasn’t finished, the flavours were really unbalanced. I was still learning.’
‘Not enough brake fluid?’ Jack sniped.
‘Cigarettes contain airline fuel.’ Andrew’s rebuttal was swift, it showed he’d spent years rationalising it. ‘But we still sell them.’
‘So Eliza figured out your scam. I’m still waiting for how this works against you strangling her.’
‘I’m trying to explain. Like I said, she would have known fairly quickly she had a rubbish bottle, especially after working here. You surprised me. I thought yours was okay.’
‘There was cinnamon on the rim. It got stuck in my teeth.’
‘It’s a three-thousand-dollar wine,’ Andrew sighed. ‘You’re not supposed to swig it from the bottle.’
‘Eliza,’ he said, trying to push Andrew back on topic.
‘Okay.’ Andrew’s thumb and forefinger scissored his temples. ‘Okay. I bumped into her at the pub. She comes up to me and says she’s going on a little trip up north to do some touristy things. Says she needs some money. Doesn’t say she knows, but she knows. I gave her what I had in my wallet. It was a bit, you know.’ Andrew Freeman, thought Jack, was the only man who’d try to slide in a brag while explaining a murder. ‘Then she left.’
‘When was this?’
‘I know what you’re going to say. Just, relax,’ his eyes were pleading, looking at the gun, ‘okay, when I tell you?’
‘The twentieth of March?’
Andrew nodded.
‘What time?’
‘After five.’
Jack chewed his lip. Eliza had left her voicemail message to Discover! at 4.52 p.m. on the 20th of March. They both knew that.
‘So she tried to blackmail you.’ Jack watched for Andrew’s reaction. ‘But you overheard her phone call, that she was planning to roll you to the tabloids. A few dollars from your wallet is no big deal, but this —’
‘No! I swear, I didn’t hear the call.’ Andrew wasn’t looking at Jack, his eyes instead tracing the slightly wobbling barrel of the rifle. ‘There were others in the pub. It was pretty quiet but Ian was with me, because we’d just knocked off patrol. Curtis was there, if you can believe I’m not trying to set him up. I swear he was. And Alan was tending bar – he’s always there. Ask them.’
Jack reminded himself to calm down. His mind was running from him again – he was editorialising and trying to tell Andrew’s story for him, before Andrew had told it for himself. He just had to listen.
‘After she took your money, what then?’
‘What then? Well, I waited for her to come back. I didn’t know how this blackmail stuff worked. But I assumed she’d keep coming back and asking for more. I wasn’t worried about the money, but I was worried that she’d talk. That she’d get drunk, and spill to some friend. I could spot the girl some cash – a holiday, rent, whatever. But I was constantly worried she’d tell the wrong person. Maybe someone who knew how to wield the information better, and they’d come back – all Bonnie and Clyde in my head – and they’d both turn the screws. Worse than that, I was worried she’d just go to the cops. It was very stressful.’
‘I feel for your plight,’ Jack said flatly. Eliza had been missing for eight months, but maybe she hadn’t been missing? Maybe she had been travelling in luxury thanks to Andrew’s cash? Then what? Maybe she ran out of money. Maybe she came back, Jack’s brain shouted, and Andrew Freeman killed her. No. He didn’t kill her. He got her killed. Apparently. ‘She came back?’ Jack said.
‘That’s the thing. She didn’t. She completely disappeared. She never came to my house, never called me, never
emailed me. But all those months later, I saw her again.’
‘You saw her?’
‘It was from a distance. I was up here. But I’m sure it was her.’
‘Where was she?’
Andrew simply pointed. Jack followed the line of his finger downwards, across the lip of the silo and into the Wade vineyard.
‘I was up here,’ Andrew said. ‘And I saw her, running for the fence between our properties. Curtis came out of the house. He followed her down. I don’t think she saw him coming. I had my light on; she would have seen it. She would have known it was me. I brought her up here once. I like bringing people up here.’
You like showing off, Jack thought. ‘I still don’t —’
‘I just didn’t want her to tell anybody. That was all. I didn’t think he’d kill her, though maybe I knew he would, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I did know what I was doing. Sometimes I’m able to convince myself I didn’t.’ Jack felt the truth of those words thud him in the chest. ‘But I knew where she’d been for eight months. He had her. And I thought that if I did nothing, that would solve my problem. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ His voice was now dripping in self-justification. ‘I just didn’t do anything at all. He grabbed her, dragged her. I lost them when they went behind the restaurant, into the driveway. And then she shows up again, two days later. Except this time – well, you know what happened from there.’
‘That’s why you believed Lauren immediately, even though she wasn’t sure? You thought she was a credible witness?’
‘She was a credible witness.’
‘You hoodwinked a minor into an unsupervised confession, Andrew. She’s not even close.’
‘Oh. Okay. She’s told you that, has she?’ Andrew said. ‘Look, Lauren was sixteen. The youngest blokes in this town are Dawson’s boys, and they would have been just shy of twenty back then. I’m not saying anything, but we searched the house. Someone had been in her room. A boy. I’m not implying it was anything non-consensual, or anything more than two young people sneaking it in. But if she had to testify, there would have been collateral. If it was Brett’s boys – if – it would have been statutory.’
‘That’s a flaky theory, mate. Still sounds like arse-covering to me.’
Andrew held up his hands. ‘Maybe you are right. I’m just saying I always thought that was why she changed her mind. I’m not saying that makes her a bad person. I’m just saying that everyone’s telling you what they need to. But now I swear I’m telling the truth. I saw Curtis grab Eliza. Eight months after she disappeared. Two days before she died.’
Jack was reeling. After all this time looking for new evidence, Jack now had an actual witness. His breathing was shallow, his lips dry. The wind buffeted him. Alexis, though. Andrew had said he was responsible for her death as well. How? There was still more to know. Curtis hadn’t stolen the axe, kicked Jack in the face. Curtis wasn’t Hush. They knew that. Was it possible that Andrew had copied the first murder he’d witnessed?
‘And Alexis?’ Jack said.
‘Well, yeah, if you put it like that. I didn’t tell anyone what I saw. But it was okay because we did our job. Myself and Ian. I don’t care what you say about him – our police are good, and they’re thorough. We didn’t need all this extra shit to send him to jail, but you came along and made it out as some miscarriage of justice.’
Andrew had been able to lead the investigation with what he’d witnessed in mind. That was why the evidence was biased, that’s why the police hadn’t bothered with intricacies, why some things sounded right, but were clumsily proven.
‘But then you got Curtis out. And he killed someone else. So I suppose, now you bring it up, that I wear her around my shoulders too.’
Andrew seemed to relax now. Jack had dissected Andrew’s faux-wine gift as the calling card of a psychopath, a sign of bravura. But perhaps it was a call for help. It had to be planted by someone who knew that Jack was coming back out there and where to find the evidence. It had to be someone who didn’t want Curtis out of prison. Andrew had made his confession, just not with words.
The strangest thing was that Jack understood him. While Andrew shouldered the guilt of Eliza’s death, Jack shouldered Alexis’s. By both doing nothing, they’d both done a lot.
Jack looked down at the Wade property. In the town, to the right, red and blue lights blinked down the main street. Jack still had so many questions. Everything swirled. The evidence still didn’t match up in his brain. He could tell from up here that Curtis’s final row of vines on the road-side were drooping. Not growing as well. Death in the soil.
His gaze drifted to the fence line. Eliza had tried to run, and Curtis had come out and caught her.
She’d seen Andrew’s light. Those deeper footprints.
Eliza hadn’t been having a cigarette, stamping her feet from the cold. She’d been jumping up and down. Calling for help.
The lies you can live with.
Andrew Freeman had seen all of this, and turned his back.
Finally solving Eliza’s murder totally sucked.
By the time Jack reached the bottom of the ladder – Andrew had given him the keys, then produced a second bottle from the basket – Jack knew he couldn’t tell anyone.
Because as soon as it was out that Curtis was Eliza’s real killer the copycat killer theory for Alexis would be obliterated. Double jeopardy would implode. Ted and his team could try the new murder with precedent. A repeated MO: the axe; the phone. It would be inescapable. So Curtis goes to jail, where he no doubt belonged, but for, in part, the wrong crime. The only thing keeping him safe was that no one could tie the murders together, but as soon as he was guilty of the first he’d be guilty of the second. He’d be a guilty man framed. Curtis’s guilt was so clear, it obfuscated all else. Which was exactly what the copycat killer wanted. And Jack and Lauren were the only ones that knew the copycat was still out there.
Alexis’s killer couldn’t be Curtis; Jack had the bruises on his face to prove it. There was someone else running around out there, trading on the case. Jack had done what they wanted. By catching one killer he would set another free.
He reached the grill and bent down to unlock it. Lauren was waiting for him. He’d have to tell her everything. Soon. Standing next to her was Sarah Freeman, her arms folded. He heard a siren in the distance, coming up the hill.
He had until Andrew confessed to the cops. He figured that wasn’t much time. Maybe he had until Winter got out here from Sydney, depending on who the officer coming up the hill was. And then Jack would have to make his own confession, hand over the ASICS sneaker, and the real killer would slink away in the ensuing chaos. And it would be chaos, an absolute frenzy.
Jack hopped off the ladder.
‘You shoot him?’ Sarah said. Emotionless.
She must have been waiting for this, Jack figured. She probably didn’t know about Eliza. But she did know about the wine. Sarah looked to the ladder as if considering climbing up to see her husband. But she just stood there, stuck. It must have felt familiar for her.
Jack shook his head.
There was a crunch of gravel under tyres from the driveway. A door slammed.
Lauren hadn’t said anything yet. She held out a hand, and he passed her the rifle. She looked it up and down the barrel, as if to check it was unfired, walked two steps towards the restaurant, placed it on the grass, and came back again.
‘You should have told me you didn’t know how to use it.’ She patted Jack on the shoulder, then put her hands in the air. ‘Instead of you climbing like a maniac, I could have shot the lock.’
Jack allowed himself a smile. He raised his hands as well. Sarah caught on.
Ian McCarthy, gun up, rounded the building at a sprint. He saw them and slowed. His eyes darted across the scene, taking it in. Three people, elbows square, hands up. The rifle on the ground in front of them, no danger. Ian lowered his own gun slightly. He stepped forward, picked up the rifle, and, not quite sure what to do with
it, slung it on his shoulder.
‘Where’s Andrew?’
All three of them looked skywards.
‘Get him down.’ Ian jerked his head Sarah’s way. She nodded and turned to the silo.
‘Right. You two,’ he said to Lauren and Jack, ‘in the car.’
Ian was driving a country police car – a four-wheel drive with bright yellow stripes – rather than his usual Toyota. Both Lauren and Jack split off around the bonnet without really thinking about it, opening the doors to the backseat on each side of the vehicle like practised criminals. The doors opened from the outside, but locked on the inside, so once they were in, Jack realised, they couldn’t get out. Unless McCarthy let them.
‘So,’ Lauren said, after a few moments of silence in the car, ‘what did he say?’
‘He admitted his wine’s fake.’
‘And they knew? And he took care of them? He admitted it?’ Her voice was incredulous. Excited.
‘No. Listen, it’s complicated.’
‘When is it not?’
‘If he tells the cops what he told me, it’ll bury Curtis. Andrew’s telling the truth. I can prove it.’
‘Right,’ she huffed.
Great place to fight, Jack thought. In the back of a locked cop car.
‘If Curtis takes it for both murders, the copycat gets away.’
‘Forget the damn copycat! Look, I said when we met that if you proved Curtis guilty I’d accept it. I’ve been struggling with keeping that promise.’
‘Me too,’ Jack said.
‘I guess I always thought that it was the same person. I really thought that was the key. That we could tie it to the same killer. Fuck. It sounds awful, but I sometimes thought, for a flicker of a second, subconsciously . . . It wasn’t something I wanted to think. Alexis . . . I thought she might be —’ She almost kept going, smiled to herself, and took a breath.
Jack could see her mentally restructuring her next sentence. So as not to seem emotional. So as not to seem stupid or tricked. So as not to seem taken in by the story she was supposed to see. Jack sympathised. That was the problem with the whole damn thing. The case was a flimsy construct of hearsay and theorising, but everyone’s stories had their own predisposed endings. The copycat killer was banking on that, too.
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