Blood Secret (20 page)

28

Detective Duncan was in his car when he answered his mobile. Rennie told him she'd meet him at the station. He didn't ask why.

She didn't want to waste time so while Naomi fussed in the kitchen, cleaning up the toast and coffee makings, she moved quickly through the house checking the locks, Joanne's words ringing in her ears.
Have you still got the Glock?

She couldn't take a loaded pistol – any kind of pistol – to a police station. Carrying it in the car was a risk, too, with a nosy, unpredictable teenager aboard. So she pushed her pack into the back of the wardrobe, out of sight but easier to grab than from the
top shelf.

Naomi was waiting for her by James's car when she came out. ‘It's not what you think,' she whispered as she hugged Rennie. ‘It'll be okay. I know it will. It has to be.' She held Rennie's hand against her belly. ‘Squirt needs both Aunty Rennie and Uncle Max to be here.'

The mound of baby under Rennie's palm felt firm and full and warm. She had little to offer a child beyond baby­sitting but she wanted to be there anyway – for herself, if not for the baby. As she held the door for Naomi, her gaze wandered to the car's rear seat where a large, cardboard box filled the space. She read the label on top. ‘Oh, you've got the cot at last.'

‘Better late than never, huh?' Naomi laughed. ‘James finally picked it up yesterday. It's only been waiting at the store for a month.' She cocked her head at the back seat. ‘I just hope it gets assembled before the baby arrives.'

And again: What would he be like after the baby arrived?

‘Let me know what the police say,' James told her across the roof of the car.

‘Let me know how you go, too,' she returned firmly.

As they left, she eyed Hayden warily as he headed towards the carport, remembering last night's disappearing act. If Anthony Hendelsen was in Haven Bay, Hayden needed to
stay close.

‘Listen, Hayden,' she said as she caught up with him at the back of Max's car. ‘You need to do what I tell you, okay?'

His blink was intentionally slow, the
resentment clear.

‘Don't give me that.'

‘What?'

Possibly there was some tried-and-true method for making a teenager do what you want but she had no idea what it was, only that a threat in the right place would get the job done. ‘Okay, fine. This is how it's going to go. There are things I need to do and you're going to have to wait while I do them. You stuff me around for five minutes and I put you on the first train to Yamba and you can see this out with your grandparents, you got that?'

His face screwed up with the beginnings of an indig­nant retort.

She didn't wait for it. ‘You got that?'

‘Geez, what the . . .?'

‘Do you understand?'

‘
Yes.
All right. Whatever.' The last word was tossed over his shoulder as he opened the passenger door. That was fine; she didn't need him to be polite,
just obedient.

Brood was what he did as she drove out of Haven Bay, slumped in his seat, face turned to the passenger side window. The silence gave her a chance to think through her options with Detective Duncan – a past like hers took some explaining and the fact she hadn't been honest from the start might be the least of her problems. Whichever way the conversation went, it was going to have its rough moments, no getting out of that. She just wanted to make sure that at the end of it, the cops understood they needed to look for Max. She turned onto the highway and stepped on the accelerator.

Maybe it was the speed that gave Hayden some extra nerve. ‘Why have you always got the shits?'
he said.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Me?'

‘Duh.'

She turned away to chuckle silently. ‘My older sister set a bad example. What's your excuse?'

‘
I
haven't got the shits all time.'

‘No? What do you call it then?'

He didn't answer so she flicked a look at him across the car and grinned a little. Oh yeah, he had the shits now.

By the time they'd parked and walked to the door at the police station, Hayden's mood seemed more sombre than ticked off. The gravity of his father's situation was hard to miss
from there.

Detective Duncan's blue eyes scanned her flatly as he crossed the foyer to meet them, different to the breakfast-munching distraction by the lake, not so relaxed as yesterday. Had Evan spoken to him already? How much would she need to explain? He covered his expression with a smile. ‘Renée, how you doing?'

She nodded. ‘This is Hayden, Max's son.'

The cop held out a hand, spoke firmly and earnestly to him. ‘I'm Detective Phil Duncan, Hayden. I'm trying to locate your dad. It'd be a big help if one of my detectives could have a chat with you. Would you mind doing that?'

The kid grasped his hand awkwardly and stood a little taller. ‘Yes. I mean no, I don't mind.'

‘Great.' He said it as though the kid was joining the investigative team.

Rennie had been worried about what to do with Hayden while she was here, not wanting him to hear what she had to tell, not sure about leaving him alone in the waiting area to get bored and frustrated. Now she followed with a degree of relief as the detective took Hayden into a large office and introduced him to a twenty-something cop with a crew cut, a huge tattoo growing out of a sleeve and a gun in a holster at the waist of his jeans.

‘I'm having a Coke, you want one?' the young officer asked as he led Hayden out the door. Rennie wasn't sure if the cop would impress him or scare the hell out of him – either would
be fine.

‘We can talk over here, Renée,' Detective Duncan told her as he steered his way around a collection of work­stations, rolling out a chair at a desk, pointing at another one for her. ‘I got a call from a friend of yours this morning. An Evan Delaney. Except he knows you as Katrina.' He kept the smile on his face as he waited for her to sit, a friendly, how-about-that kind of thing. When he spoke again, his voice had found some steel. ‘I'm wondering why you didn't give me that name yesterday, Renée.'

She felt the defensiveness before she spoke. ‘My name
is
Renée Carter and yesterday I didn't think it had anything to do with Max's disappearance.'

He nodded, like he'd give her that one. He pulled a file from the top of a stack and opened it. ‘Katrina Hendelsen, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Interesting name, as it turns out. I whacked it into the computer after I got off the phone from your mate Evan and, I've got to admit, I was surprised.' He tapped a printout, raised his eyebrows as though it was an incredible coincidence. ‘Mother died from knife wounds inflicted by father; father serves six for manslaughter; currently serving fifteen for attempted murder of two daughters, one of whom shot him twice.' He lifted his eyes. ‘That would be you, right?'

She fixed her gaze on him and clenched her jaw at his casual recounting of the facts.

‘Katrina Hendelsen has a long list of charges against her name. I can see why you might want to change it.'

This is for Max, Rennie
told herself.

*

He was counting. Twenty-two hands-knees-slap on the wall, twenty-three hands-knees-slap on the wall. No reason other than a need for some kind of order. Maybe when he wrote a book about it, he could say he'd crawled three hundred and seventy-six hands-knees-slaps in an easterly direction. Of course, he wouldn't know if it was easterly until he got out. In which case, the book was
on hold.

He stopped, rubbed his knees, eased onto his back. Either he was running a temperature or the ground was cooler here. He scooped up a handful of surface dirt, let it slip through his fingers. Did it again with a little more focus. It wasn't wet, not even damp, but it seemed a tad sticky. He touched the wall – dry and cool like it'd always been. He listened for the trickle of water. Nothing. He sniffed at the air. His nose wasn't working too well but maybe, just maybe, it smelled a bit . . . dank.

His pulse tapped with newfound energy, his throat swallowed deeply, painfully in anticipation. Please be a river of fresh flowing water. One that would quench his thirst and wash him out of this goddamn place. He got to his knees, ignoring the pain in his head, testing the floor and the wall with each hands-knees-slap. Six shuffles and he hit a damp patch. He patted at the ground, edging forwardss, his trousers turning wet where his kneecaps pressed into the dirt.

Sludgy then muddy then . . . aahhh.

Cold, liquid water.

The puddle was too small to lie in. Just a narrow indentation where the floor of the tunnel met the wall. He grazed his cheek on the rock as he tried to get his lips to it. Fuck,
fuck
.

The wall. The wall was
wet
. He flattened a hand on it, found a thin trail of wetness, followed it upwards, the surface underneath slimy and slightly furry. Moisture oozed between his fingers, dribbled over the webbing and down the backs of his hands. His mouth was tingling as he put a palm on either side of the trail but as he leaned in, stuck out his tongue, he felt the solid mass of the rock face looming above him and hesitated.

What if it was a toxic leak? He was in an underground tunnel; he had no idea what was above it. A dump site, chemical storage. He rested his cheek on the cool, trickling flow, need and craving making it hard to draw breath. The real question was, could he crawl away without drinking? He turned his face and touched his lips to the
slick trail.

There was barely enough water to move around the inside of his cheeks but he slurped and sucked, the sound loud in the hollow silence.

Oh, yeah, you've come a long way, Max Tully. Once voted Most Likely to Succeed, now alone in a dark tunnel and licking a wall to stay alive.

A million years ago, he'd been the it-kid in high school – rep soccer, rep sailing, good marks, lots of friends, no real effort. Got into uni no problem. He was going to be a mine engineer – design the holes, not dig them. He took it all for granted, never considering that the good things in life might not always be there just waiting to be claimed. Then a little unprotected fun in the back of his car and he screwed up his own
dream run.

He'd figured just once without a condom, how unlucky could they be? Then he'd figured it was his fault, he should do the right thing, marry Leanne and become a family – they could fall in love afterwards and live happily ever after. Then he'd figured six months off uni to earn a little money down the mines and he'd go back to the books. Easy.

Except Leanne couldn't get a full-time position after Hayden was born and it cost money to pay rent and feed a family. And they didn't fall in love and they weren't happy and there was never enough cash for him to go back to uni. Then he and Dallas, looking for a quick, extra buck, swapped a night shift with another mine team and the roof came down and any chance to retrieve his golden days
was gone.

All his life, he'd wanted without thinking. The first half he'd got everything he'd reached for. Maybe if he'd had to work harder or if he'd missed out a few times in those years, he might have learned to think when he wanted more.

 

 

29

Max clawed at the earth at the base of the seepage, scooping out a bigger gathering hole, his tongue dry again before the water was deep enough to drink. Then he got on his haunches and lapped like a dog.

‘You'll do anything if you're desperate enough.'

You got that right, Pav, Max told him silently, mud clinging to his tongue and coating his teeth. Different time, different place and Max was still disgusting himself.

The two of them had been in Pav's courtyard, slouching in garden chairs, watching the lights over the lake and drinking themselves into philosophers. Max was out of rehab, back in Gran's flat without Leanne and Hayden, limping, depressed, edging his way towards alcoholism, trying to find excuses for doing things the clever schoolboy in him would never have thought he was
capable of.

‘Does it make it okay if you're desperate?' Max had
asked cynically.

Pav had shrugged. ‘It just makes it a fact.'

Except Max hadn't been desperate, he'd been angry. Not a yelling, shouting thing, although sometimes it came out as that. There'd been a fire inside him, smouldering, hissing, hot coals slowly cauterising him from within. He hadn't known how to staunch it – or maybe he had and didn't want to think about it. Either way, it'd fuelled him, made him reckless and thoughtless and self-centred. He'd cheated on his wife, he'd put a man in hospital, he'd cried for himself while his best friend lay cold beside him.

‘Could you drink your own piss?' he'd asked Pav, tired of thinking about his own
low acts.

‘If I had to.'

Well, Pav, just to let you know – when you're dying of thirst, you won't have any piss. Or a cup to catch it in. ‘I wouldn't kill anyone.'

‘What if someone was trying to kill you?'

‘Okay, then I wouldn't murder anyone.'

Pav looked unconvinced. ‘You can't know that.'

Max remembered raising an eyebrow at him over the rim of his bourbon glass. ‘You'd be okay with murder?'

‘I know what it's like to be desperate.'

‘Doing it is one thing. Being okay with it is another.'

Another Pav shrug. ‘I've done bad things and lived with myself.'

‘Yeah but did you kill someone?'

Pav looked at him for a long, silent moment. Not like he was trying to remember whether he'd committed a murder, because who'd forget that? More like he was deciding how to answer. Or maybe he'd had too much vodka to come up with an explanation. As he took a breath, there was a voice from
the door.

‘Pav.' Trish said it quietly, some kind of private warning. Pav glanced up and back down at his drink. She was in her dressing-gown, short, red hair standing up in patches, eyes bleary. She'd been in bed and got up to put an end to the philosophy session. Max wondered how long she'd been standing there. ‘You've had enough to drink. Come to bed.'

‘It's all right, Trish. I'll be there soon,' Pav told her gently, waiting until she'd slid the door closed before looking at Max. ‘She doesn't like me talking about it. She still worries it could find us here.'

It had taken Max a few drunk, baffled seconds to understand Pav's meaning. ‘What could find you here?'

‘The past. The world is a small place now.' The shrug again. ‘Trish worries.' He stood up, capped off the bourbon and vodka. ‘Come on, you've had enough, too.'

Max pushed himself out of his chair, unsteady but not ready to finish. ‘What, wait. You killed someone?'

‘I did a desperate thing. It's in the past. I left it there. It's where it belongs. You should learn to do it as well.'

Max followed him to the door and as Pav fumbled the latch with his bottle-laden hands, asked him softly, ‘Does Trish know what happened?'

‘Yes. And she'll kill both of us if you ask her about it.' The door slid open but instead of stepping through, Pav turned and looked him hard in the eyes. ‘No more, Max. No more questions and no more self-pity. You've done enough of that. It's time you learned to live with yourself.'

Max leaned away from the puddle of water, spitting, trying not to retch. He'd tried to take Pav's advice, wanting to leave the past behind and live the way he'd promised Dallas. And he'd found Rennie. He didn't know what she'd been through, just recognised the hidden scars of a past left behind. He wasn't sure he deserved to find love but he wanted to be worthy of it. She'd been hurt, manipulated, frightened, damaged, he'd figured that much. She deserved better and he'd wanted to be the one to give her it
to her.

So what had
he done?

He was alone in a black hole, injured, concussed. He had a track record. People around him got hurt – he got hurt – when he wanted without thinking.

Had he hurt
Rennie too?

Had he
wanted more?

Was that what he'
d done?

*

The edginess Rennie had felt when she'd spoken to Joanne bubbled under her skin again. She wanted to tell the detective to quit pissing around and make his point so they could move on. But she'd known it would go something like this. If she was going to help Max, she'd have to sift through the garbage of her life first. Even knowing that, the diversion was worth a try. ‘My record has nothing to do with Max. He's never heard of Katrina Hendelsen.'

‘Let's see.' He kept reading from the file as if she hadn't spoken. ‘We've got, and in no particular order, resisting arrest, theft of a motor vehicle, a vagrancy charge, use of false identification, defaulting on rent. And then there's the illegal possession of a firearm, illegal
use
of a firearm, assault and court-ordered counselling.' He glanced up. ‘That's pretty serious stuff, Renée. We generally like to know that kind of information when we're conducting an investigation. It would've been better coming from you.'

If that was the only point he was trying to make, it wasn't so bad. She could do contrite. ‘I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I wasn't trying to be deceptive. I just didn't think it had anything to do with Max disappearing. I still don't. It's my father I'm worried about.'

‘So I hear.' He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. ‘You want to tell me about that?'

She gave him the potted version: SAS, delusions, the hunt-and-scare campaign, the murder, the attempted murder, the vow to find her. ‘Anthony Hendelsen is a resourceful and violent man. He's out of prison so there's every chance he's responsible for whatever's happened to Max.'

He nodded. ‘When did you learn he'd been released?'

‘This morning when Evan rang.'

‘But you rang Evan last night to find out where your father was.'

‘When I realised the car had been searched I started to wonder. It's the kind of thing my father would do. Then there's the man I saw taking photos outside the cafe yesterday. And the blood, of course.'

‘And you didn't know your father had been released prior to that?'

‘No.'

‘You weren't notified by Corrective Services?'

‘No.'

He watched her, let the moment draw out. She knew it was a ploy to make her say more. She should have left it at that but her defensiveness was working overtime and she fell right in. ‘I can't explain that. Our solicitor is listed as the family representative on the Victims Register. He knows the situation with my father. I don't know if he wasn't contacted or he hasn't followed through.'

‘You said our solicitor?'

‘Yes.'

‘That would be you and your sister, Joanne Hendelsen?'

Wariness made her slow to answer. ‘Yes.'

‘Did she change her name, too?'

‘Yes.'

‘So what does she go by now?' It was said with a grin, like it was all a bit of fun picking a
new name.

She should have kept her mouth shut. ‘Simone Carter.'

He jotted it down. ‘She live around here, too?'

‘No.'

‘Where is she then?'

Rennie hesitated. ‘Up the coast.'

‘Queensland?'

She watched his genial smile, trying to figure out where he was heading. He probably used his chummy cop front for both victims and bad guys – reassuring for the frightened, a false sense of security for the guilty. Problem was, she wasn't sure which category he'd put her in and didn't know whether the curiosity about Jo was to settle her down or whether he had a genuine interest in the other Hendelsen daughter. ‘I'm not sure. She moves around a lot.'

‘Have you got a number for her?'

‘She's got nothing to do with this.'

‘I'd still like a number, Renée.'

The resolve in his voice made her heart thump. Her instinct was to say nothing and keep her sister out of it but this morning, Detective Duncan thought Max used his own keys to get into the glove box, had implied he was hiding, not missing. He'd been told money had disappeared from MineLease and now it turned out Max's girlfriend hadn't been completely honest, that she and her sister had long police records involving theft and deceit and illegal weapons.

She took a breath, trying to calm the alarm that was rising inside her. If he thought Jo had any relevance to his investigation, he was shuffling around the wrong pieces of the puzzle. If she resisted his questions, would he jump to the conclusion that past guilt made them the most likely suspects? That Rennie and Jo were
somehow involved?

‘Look, Detective Duncan, my sister and I broke the law, I'm not denying that. But we're not criminals. Neither of us has done anything wrong in six years. Check the record. We just want to live like other people while we can.'

‘It can cost a lot of money to live like other people.'

He wasn't smiling so much now and Rennie felt her agitation bump up a notch. She was meant to be helping Max, now there were three of them in trouble. Would she make matters worse if she tried to explain again? If she didn't convince him about her father, it could get a whole lot worse. ‘Okay, I'm not stupid. I see where you're going with this but you're on the wrong track. I don't know anything about the money James mentioned. All I know is my father is out of gaol and you should be look­ing for him.'

‘I think we should consider that for a moment, Renée. Max didn't come home on Saturday night. It's now Monday lunchtime – let's call it a day and a half later – and you're only now talking to me about your violent, ex-con father who's been out of prison for five months. I'm wondering why it took so long for you to have a conversation with me about that.'

‘I didn't know he was out of prison.'

‘I'm not convinced that's the truth.'

She said nothing, not sure what he was accusing her of, worried she'd make
it worse.

He watched her a long time. Waiting, gauging, judging, she guessed, maybe trying to figure out what exactly was going on. There was no smile when he
finally spoke.

‘Fraud is a serious crime, Renée.' He edged forwards, softened his eyes with sympathy. ‘I know you know about being in trouble. That makes it harder when someone you love does something wrong. You want to protect them, try to keep them out of it. I've seen it over and over and it's tough. And here's the thing.' He laid a hand on the table, palm up. ‘I'm not sure what's happening here. At this point, I'm willing to believe you have nothing to do with the money. You say you're on the straight and narrow now and maybe you just want him to come to his senses and hand the money back. I understand it if you want to buy him some time, try to redirect the investigation for a while. Maybe you've talked to him, maybe you haven't. I don't know. But either way, it makes you an accessory, Renée. And for someone like you, with your record, protecting a criminal won't look good.'

Realisation hit like a thump to the back of the head. He thought the story about her father was bullshit. Fuck. She stood up. Fuck.

He followed suit. ‘You need to think about yourself here.'

‘No.' For the first time in her screwed-up life, it wasn't herself she needed to think about. ‘I need to find Max.' She hauled her bag off the floor and turned to leave.

‘It's not too late to help yourself, Renée.'

She took a second to glare at him. ‘You are so far off base you may as well take a bloody holiday.'

‘I still need your sister's phone number.'

‘Try investigating.'