Angie leaned across the table and softly patted Gemma’s hand. ‘This case isn’t just a job to me, Gems. I know the people involved too – I briefly worked with Bryson Finn, and Natalie was like a mother hen to us young women in the early days. You remember – helping us survive the brotherhood mentality.’
Gemma did. She’d met Angie in her first year in the job and their friendship had blossomed from there. In those days long past, Natalie had been like an older sister to them.
‘The boss has pulled in some of the best people from the other divisions. We’ve got three people following up connections with Operation Skylark. There’s always the possibility that the super had found out something he shouldn’t know. Or even that he was corrupt,’ she added, after a pause.
‘Was Skylark successful?’ Gemma asked.
‘Depends on how you look at it. It started off as an intelligence gathering operation. We just wanted to poke sharp sticks down dark holes and see what came running out. Then when some corrupt drug squad detectives crawled out, they were used to trap bigger players – cops and crims. They wore wires, put in covert cameras – all that undercover stuff. Steve was involved with George Fayed, remember. He was involved in Skylark too. Although I’m not supposed to know that. Forget I said it.’
Gemma felt her heart catch at Steve’s name.
‘The duds were allowed to resign or other arrangements were made for them to go away quietly. So they had a few wins out of it. Although losing experienced people is always a problem, even if they’re corrupt. Crooked or not, some of them are hard to replace. The information channels they operated were lost too, when they went. And we’re sure not winning this so-called war on drugs. Anyone involved in the drug industry can tell you that. In fact, we’re losing. Big time.’
Angie ate the tiny piece of almond toast that came with the coffee, chewing it slowly.
‘There are also other rumours going round,’ she continued, ‘that it’s a cop-on-cop killing. There’s another superintendent, Dan Galleone, whose name keeps coming up whenever Bryson Finn’s gets mentioned. Some long-term feud. I’m chasing it up. But it’s all hearsay and innuendo so far. People claiming they heard something about it from someone, you know how it goes.’
Gemma finished her food and Angie glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘I want to suggest something to you,’ she went on. ‘Don’t know what you might think about it, but I’d like to register you as an informant.’
‘What?’
‘Think about it. It makes sense. It stops people from grizzling if I’m seen doing something like this,’ she indicated the coffee, the food. ‘You’d be surprised how many eyes there are out there. Word gets around. Plus you could do a bit of digging around for me. You know how being a cop has its drawbacks when it comes to getting information out of certain types of people. Sometimes a civilian gets a much better result. You could ask about the sister-in-law – talk to the surviving brother. I could even get some money for you, pay for your time. Not a lot,’ she hastened, noticing the expression on Gemma’s face. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it, will you?’
She glanced at her watch again. ‘I told Natalie I’d pick her up from the hospital. She’s been there all night and morning. She’s going to need to get stuff from home.’
‘Can I come with you?’ Gemma asked, rising with her. ‘I promise I’ll think about letting you register me,’ she added, to forestall any objections.
•
As Angie and Gemma took the hospital lift, Gemma rehearsed various condolences. They got out at the fifth floor and walked through the security door to the end of the corridor. Beyond a tiny kitchenette was a sitting room, large enough for a small cupboard, low table and two chairs upholstered in green and white florals. A vase of hothouse roses stood stiffly in a perfect arrangement on the window ledge and a small television on top of the cupboard showed a mindless sitcom with the sound turned off.
Any rehearsed words of comfort faded from Gemma’s mind when the woman sitting in one of the chairs raised her ravaged, tear-stained face.
‘Natalie,’ Gemma started, ‘I’m so very sorry about your husband and son.’
Saying the words and seeing Natalie Finn’s attractive face marked with the stigmata of suffering – swollen, red-rimmed eyes, chafed skin, lank unbrushed hair – made Gemma tearful herself.
Natalie Finn, clad in a hospital gown and a man’s sports jacket, stared at her, uncomprehending, as if Gemma had said something in Swahili. Angie hurried over and squatted in front of the grief-stricken woman. ‘Natalie,’ she said. ‘I’m here to run you home if you want. You need clothes, a shower. You need to take a break.’
Natalie seemed not to have noticed her. A few more moments passed and Gemma saw Natalie straighten up, as if bringing herself out of a trance. As though seeing Angie for the first time, she said, ‘I didn’t write that note.’
‘Note?’
‘The police took my clothes away,’ Natalie said. ‘That’s why I’m dressed like this. Someone lent me the coat. I haven’t left my boy’s side until just now. The doctors sent me away. They said just for ten minutes. They wanted me to have a break. A break,’ she repeated, looking over at the roses on the window ledge. ‘Those awful roses. Why are they there? They’re too bright.’
Gemma deftly removed the vase, placing it behind the door.
‘You need to have a break, Natalie,’ Angie repeated. ‘Have you got someone you’d like me to call for you? A relative? Friend?’
Natalie seemed not to have heard her.
‘I did a terrible, terrible thing, and if Donny dies,’ she whispered, ‘I will never, ever forgive myself.’
Was this survivor guilt they were hearing? Or was it something else? Gemma wished there was something she could say or do. Was Natalie punishing herself because her child was lying at death’s door while she was in perfect health, tormenting herself with cruel ‘what ifs’?
Gemma found her eyes were being drawn to the mute television screen where highly painted and lacquered women mouthed soundlessly to men with fake tans.
‘Things happen so quickly,’ said Natalie. ‘We don’t do the things we wish we had, and we end up doing things we wish we hadn’t. And then it’s too late.’ Her fingers pulled at the damp handkerchief in her hands. ‘In a fraction of a second, life suddenly stops being what it was a moment before.’
She exhaled in broken, staccato breaths, then leaned forward, head almost on her knees. ‘I want it to be yesterday again,’ she wailed. ‘Before all this.’
Gemma, hesitating, reached over and put a hand on Natalie’s shoulders. Her touch seemed to activate a storm of tears, but she didn’t take her hand away, and in a few moments Natalie raised her head again and smeared the damp handkerchief across her face. Angie pushed a box of tissues closer to Natalie’s reach.
‘I’m sorry,’ Natalie said, taking them and using them to wipe her eyes and nose.
‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ Angie asked. ‘Or a glass of water, perhaps?’
‘If there’s anything we can do, Natalie, we’d be happy to help,’ said Gemma.
Natalie didn’t answer, and Gemma, remembering how grief made people disconnected, went to the nearby kitchenette where she made three teas anyway, using teabags from a jar and styrofoam cups that she filled with boiling water from the outlet over the sink. She found milk in the fridge and some sugar, a compressed bamboo tray, and carried everything back to the sitting room.
Natalie pushed sticky hair from her face as Gemma placed the three cups on the table.
‘The nurses have been great,’ Natalie said, staring sightlessly at the steaming white cups, ‘but they’re really busy. I’m scared he’ll wake up and I won’t be there and he’ll be frightened .
.
. but the nurses say he’s not going to do that for some time.’ Her voice faltered on the last few words. ‘I tried to sleep in the chair beside his bed. He looks so little with all that bloody medical gear around him.’
Gemma picked up a cup of tea and added milk and sugar. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through – what you’re going through.’
‘The minute I turned into the driveway I knew something was terribly wrong,’ said Natalie, her eyes fixed somewhere past Gemma. ‘I saw the light from the front door and I wondered why it was open like that on a wet night. When I pulled up, I saw Bryson’s work car and I wondered what he was doing there. I thought he must have dropped by to visit Donny.’
‘Visit Donny?’ Gemma asked, puzzled.
‘Yes. Bryson and I separated a couple of months ago. Then I thought maybe Bettina had phoned him to fetch Donny – maybe she didn’t feel well. But then when I got out of my car, I was really spooked because everything was so quiet.’
Gemma noted the slight raising of Angie’s eyebrow in her direction, the tiny nod, and she eased her notebook out. Angie remained sitting back on her heels, trying to tempt Natalie to drink some tea. Natalie Finn was talking from her shocked state. To write her words down now seemed like a sacrilege. But to lose this evidence would be a greater one. This was vital, unguarded eye-witness reporting. Gemma leaned forward, paying great attention to every word, cautiously making brief notes.
‘I could feel something terrible swirling around like one of those little devil-devils – like a toxic movement of the air. Something evil. It wasn’t just the wind. I recall I started shivering. Then I ran to the steps at the front of the house and then I saw –’
She stopped abruptly and Gemma watched as her eyes widened, reliving the scene.
‘Take it easy,’ Angie said. ‘Take your time.’
‘But before that, I wondered, where’s Findlay? What’s he doing? His car wasn’t there.’
Findlay Finn, thought Gemma, the brother-in-law, the artist.
‘Bettina’s husband,’ Natalie was saying. ‘My artistic brother-in-law.’
Natalie didn’t seem to have much time for her brother-in-law, Gemma thought, hearing the edge of contempt in the words. Again, she made surreptitious notes, getting down her impressions in as few words as possible. Natalie seemed not to notice.
‘There are three low steps just before the front entrance of Bettina’s place,’ continued Natalie, ‘and as I stepped onto the first one, I saw Bryson’s shoes and his feet near the door. Then Bettina’s legs. At first I thought they’d fallen down the stairs in some freak accident. I started calling Donny. That’s when the panic hit me. I ran inside calling him and that’s when I saw him .
.
.’ Natalie’s face crumpled and her voice distorted. ‘He was lying there, with all that blood. I was screaming and I grabbed him and put my hand over this great gushing hole in his neck.’
Natalie closed her eyes as if to block out the horror of the scene. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave him for a second because my hand was stopping the bleeding. He’d already lost so much blood. All his blood was on the wall and on the floor. Somehow, I managed to get my mobile out with one hand and made a triple-zero call. They seemed to take forever. Donny was so white – like paper. By the time the police and the ambulance arrived I thought he was dead.’ She hunched over again, folded almost double in pain. ‘I’ll never forgive myself. Never. Never. Oh,’ she sobbed, ‘poor Bryson.’
Angie stood up and went to the television set, switched the silent charade off, catching Gemma’s eye. Even though there’d be a formal police interview later, this spontaneous information was invaluable.
Natalie fished in her bag for her wallet and pulled out a small school photograph of a bright little boy, hair brushed neatly, still damp from his shower, fresh blue school shirt open at his narrow neck, big cheeky grin lighting his grey eyes, with the same high forehead and wide jaw as his mother.
‘He doesn’t look like this any more,’ said Natalie, passing the photograph to Angie. ‘I have to keep looking at this to remind me that somewhere under all those tubes and bandages in ICU is my beautiful little fellow.’
‘He’s great,’ said Angie, passing back the photo. ‘And he looks like a brave boy. I can tell from that smile – he’ll fight to live.’
The subtlest change in Natalie’s eyes indicated that the words had brought some comfort.
‘Please try to have a little tea,’ Gemma urged, lifting the styrofoam cup. ‘It could help.’
Slowly, Natalie straightened up and, ignoring the cup in Gemma’s outstretched hand, fixed her with blazing, reddened eyes from the grey mask of her face. ‘I’ll tell you what will help. You asked me earlier if there’s anything you can do for me? There is. Angie says you’re an investigator now?’
Gemma nodded.
‘Then find out who tried to kill my son! Find out who killed my husband and my sister-in-law. Find out who did this to my family!’
‘That’s what we’re here for, Natalie,’ said Angie. ‘The largest strike force I’ve ever known has been organised for this investigation.’
Natalie jumped to her feet, agitated. ‘I’ve got to go back to my son.’
‘Let me take you home,’ said Angie. ‘Just for a few hours. Donny’s in good hands here.’
‘I can’t leave him.’
‘Okay,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll call you later. We need to take a statement from you. I’ll meet you wherever you are. Here or at home. But please think about getting some rest. You’ll be better able to help Donny if you’ve had some sleep. ’
Gemma wondered if Natalie meant what she’d said, or would even later remember asking her to investigate the shootings. At least she could ask a question now. ‘What did you mean when you spoke of a note, Natalie?’ she gently probed. ‘When we first came in?’
‘Something one of the police asked me about. They said something about a note. But I couldn’t help them. They said Bryson had a note in his pocket.’
•
As they went down in the lift, Gemma could feel the weakness in her legs. The time she’d spent with Natalie Finn had drained her, using up a lot of her own largely depleted reservoir of emotional energy. While her heart had been touched by Natalie’s pain, Gemma was relieved to be out of the hospital and its environment of human suffering.
Yet the Finn family had become important to her now. Not only because of Natalie’s request, which she intended to clarify as soon as Natalie was less distraught. The murder of adults is vicious enough, she thought, but to shoot a little kid like that, in cold blood and leave him dying, is something evil. Gemma’s own sense of justice had been injured; the photograph of the bright young boy, Donovan Finn, had touched her as well.