Silent Fear (17 page)

‘How sure are you about that?’ Murray said.

‘Ninety per cent.’

Ella said, ‘Do you know anyone called Daniel?’

‘Nope.’

‘No other staff members, no delivery drivers, no competitors . . .’

‘Nobody at all.’

‘What did you think they were talking about?’

‘I had no clue.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Smart guy like you?’

He smiled. ‘I figured Daniel had to be someone they both knew, that’s kind of obvious, but beyond that . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Did you hear Henreid’s answer?’

‘No, I got the hell out. Like I said, I need the job. Until Tuesday.’ He held up crossed fingers.

Ella said, ‘Did you mention it to Paul afterwards?’

‘I thought about it the next day,’ Steven said. ‘I thought I might just let slip that I’d overheard them arguing, test the waters to see if he was okay, but he was in a foul mood so I kept my mouth shut.’

‘How was Henreid?’

‘In an even fouler mood, actually,’ he said. ‘We had a shocking day. Everyone tiptoeing around . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I saw one customer walk in, look around and leave. Like she’d picked up this bad vibe.’

Ella glanced at Murray and he closed his notebook.

‘Thanks for your help,’ she said to Steven. ‘Good luck with the interview.’

‘Thanks.’ He blushed again, so intensely that Ella wondered how often he heard something kind or encouraging.

Outside, the sun was blindingly bright and hot. Ella and Murray walked without speaking back down the driveway to the car.

She got in, pulled the door closed and started the engine. ‘Henreid.’

‘Up to something,’ Murray said.

‘Definitely.’ She turned in her seat to face him. ‘Arguments, some guy called Daniel . . . good friends, my arse.’

‘To the shop, Batman,’ Murray said. ‘It’s time we chatted to him again.’

*

At the carpet shop they found the two staff tidying piles of mats, the place empty of customers.

‘Henreid here?’ Ella asked.

‘He’s gone,’ one said. ‘After you left he stood in the window for a while, then just walked out without saying anything.’

*

Murray phoned Dennis and updated him while Ella drove towards Davis Henreid’s home address in Enmore.

Murray hung up. ‘He said he’ll send someone else to talk to Trina’s mother, and to make sure we don’t miss the postmortem at eleven.’

Ella glanced at the dashboard clock. It was right on ten. Enmore wasn’t far from Glebe, so they had plenty of time for grilling.

Henreid’s place was the first townhouse in a row of six in a small street off Simmons. Plane trees grew inside steel cages in the footpath and globe lights on poles were stationed at intervals along the white walls of the buildings. Cars with resident stickers lined the kerbs. Ella eased along the row but there wasn’t even a driveway to park across.

‘Do we know which car’s his?’

Murray checked his notebook. ‘Dennis said grey Camry, rego AT 37 XL.’

There was no such car there. Ella double-parked next to a white Volvo directly outside Henreid’s house and got out.

A sandstone block wall held in a lush garden that ran the length of the building. Steps led through the garden bed and up to each door. Ella scanned the windows of Henreid’s house as she walked. There was no sign of movement.

She stepped onto the porch and saw immediately that the front door was open an inch. Her heart started to jump. She pointed to the opening and Murray nodded. There was no damage to the door or frame: no splintered wood, no bent lock plate, no blood smears either. She couldn’t see in further than the jamb. The house was silent.

‘Concern for welfare,’ she said in a low voice.

‘I agree,’ Murray said.

With that, they could enter to make sure the occupant was not dead or dying, that a crime wasn’t taking place. More adrenaline spilled into her blood as she took latex gloves from her pocket and pulled them on, then pushed the door fully open with her fingertips.

The hallway contained only a small table on which sat an empty glass vase. Two doorways led off the hall to the left, one at the end, and on the right a flight of stairs went up.

Ella placed one hand on her gun. ‘Police,’ she barked. ‘Step out into the hall.’

The house stayed silent.

They moved inside. The first doorway down the hall was opposite the foot of the stairs. Murray edged in and checked it.

‘Clear. But look at this.’

She peered over his shoulder to see a red pool on the carpet. It was too bright to be blood.

Murray sniffed. ‘Paint.’

Ella went further in and looked around. Nothing else was disturbed. The paint was so out of place and lurid it jarred her to look at it.

They went back out into the hall. The next doorway led into a dining room that looked unused. A vase of dead flowers stood in the centre of a dusty table, old petals scattered around its base. There was no paint here.

Murray peered out of the curtained French doors at the back. ‘Small courtyard. Empty.’

He quickly checked the final doorway and the kitchen beyond it, then together they moved to the bottom of the stairs. The landing was gloomy despite the brightness of the day. Ella gripped her gun, still in its holster on her hip, and glanced at the first step, covered in beige carpet like the rest.
Still no bloodstains, at least.

She took one step at a time, trying to hear beyond the thud of her heart in her ears, trying to see into the shadows on the landing, trying to sense the presence of a person lurking there. Murray was so close behind her she could feel his breath on her arm. Once she was halfway up her eyes adjusted and she saw the landing was empty. There were two closed doors straight ahead and one around behind them. The place was as still as the grave.

She drew her gun, and Murray did the same.

She motioned towards the first door ahead, the one on the left. Murray moved into position to cover her in case someone burst out of the other rooms. Ella tensed her shoulders then tried to relax them, and turned the handle and pushed the door open in one swift movement.

It was a bathroom, white tiles with blue trim, white towel hung neatly over the rail, no people and no paint.

They went through the same procedure at the next door, Ella’s nerves growing tighter by the second. This was a bedroom, white-and-blue-themed again, with dark exposed beams across the ceiling. Red paint had been poured on the bed in a pool that dripped off the sides and onto the carpet. Murray watched the third still-closed door while she hastily checked under the queen-sized bed and in the walk-in wardrobe.

The landing seemed a mile wide as they crossed it, the last door looming dark in the white wall.

Sometimes I hate my job.

She and Murray exchanged a split-second glance. He covered her and she reached out, wrenched down the handle and slammed the door open.

The room was a home office, complete with wide and tidy desk, silent computer, and filing cabinet in the corner. No people, but another pool of paint, as bright red as the others and poured under the desk, spreading out to make islands of the desk’s legs and the castors of the chair.

‘That’s a lot of paint,’ Murray said. ‘Two, three cans? Careful too. Not a footprint anywhere.’ He bent down. ‘Carpet feels like velvet. How much do you think that cost?’

‘The man owns a carpet store.’

Ella holstered her gun and looked out the window at the street. Nothing moved. It felt like the day was holding its breath, wondering the same thing she was.

Where was Henreid?

THIRTEEN

H
olly squeezed the Mazda into the far corner of the Auburn station plant room. She got out, locked the car, then headed for the muster room door, looking at the blue WRX in the other corner and wondering who she was working with. It didn’t really matter; the important thing was that she was out of the house. Seth’s greatest enjoyment of telling your secrets had always come from doing it while you were there. She had to hope that between that and her warning to Norris nothing of importance would either come out or be believed.

The side door of the ambulance closest to the muster room was open and when she got close a voice inside said, ‘Well, well, well.’

Her heart seized. Why hadn’t she thought of this?

Don’t let him see your fear.

Kyle stepped down from the back of the truck with a smile so wide she could see past the pointed tips of his eyeteeth to his fat grey molars. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, the inside of her left wrist pressed against her ribs.
More importantly, don’t let him see the infinity symbol.

‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘How lovely of you to join me.’

‘Is Roberto sick?’

‘Apparently.’ He drew the final syllable out. ‘Making this my lucky day.’

‘Any jobs waiting?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess they’re letting us have a lazy Sunday morning lie-in.’ He chuckled and her skin crawled.

She turned away and went into the storeroom, grabbed a waterproof dressing and hurried into the women’s locker room. She locked herself in a cubicle, peeled the backing off the dressing and smoothed it over the inside of her wrist. The white pad in the centre covered the infinity symbol perfectly.

She dropped the wrapper into the bin, then went out to the muster room and phoned Control. ‘I’m here.’

‘Thanks, mate,’ Euan said. ‘Stand down for now.’

Holly hung up. Any other day they’d be on the go from the start. She wanted to get out on the road and work, so the day would speed by and her time alone with Kyle would be limited, but there was nothing to do.

He opened the door and started to speak but she got up and walked back into the women’s locker room.

Lacey picked up on the first ring. ‘Babe.’

‘They gave me another shift.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m in Auburn’s bathroom right now,’ Holly said. ‘I got home to find that Norris had invited Seth over for a jolly reunion so when they called I jumped.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Euan.’

‘Hm.’

‘I couldn’t figure it out either,’ Holly said. ‘What I didn’t consider was that I could end up working with that twerp Kyle.’

Kyle called through the door, ‘Are you going to be long? I want to show you something.’

‘Hear that?’ Holly said.

‘Christ on a bike,’ Lacey said. ‘Don’t go out there, he’s probably unzipping.’

Holly heard the station phone ring and Kyle answer it. She said, ‘I have to now.’

‘Remember, grasp the shoulders for stability,
then
knee the nuts.’

‘You’re a good friend.’

‘Be careful of Euan too,’ Lacey said. ‘He’s a nice guy, but I wouldn’t trust him. Beware the apparently friendly phone call.’

‘Job,’ Kyle shouted.

‘Okay!’ Holly shouted back.

‘Exasperation already.’ Lacey was laughing. ‘I want to know about the murder before it gets on the news.’

‘You’ll be the recipient of my one phone call,’ Holly said. The ambulance horn honked. ‘I better go.’

Kyle was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine, when she climbed into the vehicle. He dropped it into gear and screeched out of the plant room before she’d clipped in her belt.

‘What’s the call?’ she said.

‘Collapse.’ He glanced over. ‘What’s up with your wrist?’

‘Dermatitis.’ It was a common occurrence, what with the multiple hand washings and alcohol hand rubs paramedics used.

He swung the ambulance across the path of a car whose driver tooted the horn. ‘Can’t they see the lights?’

Holly grasped the armrest. ‘You had many accidents?’

‘One. Plus a few near misses.’ He hauled on the wheel to take another right with the tyres squealing. ‘They’re all morons around here.’

‘Yeah, I can see one now.’

He glanced across her out the window, then apparently realised her inference. He met her gaze. ‘The worst ones, of course, are the women.’

She shrugged and pulled on gloves. ‘I’ve never had an accident.’

He muttered something.

‘Say it aloud or keep it to yourself,’ she said.

‘I said, no, you probably just cause them, you should check your rear-view sometimes.’ He thumped the steering wheel to change the siren from wail to yelp.

Holly laughed. ‘That’s not bad.’

Kyle clenched his jaw. He roared up too close to the back of a slow car in front, then tore past on the wrong side of the road, making an oncoming car swerve aside.

‘You know I’m more than happy to report you, right?’ she said.

‘The case could be a cardiac arrest.’

‘Yeah, and killing us and another driver on our way there will help a lot.’

His knuckles went white on the wheel and a muscle bulged in the side of his jaw but he slowed down a little. The siren was the only sound in the cabin for the next couple of minutes, then he turned left into an industrial estate. Holly watched the closed smash-repair workshops and spare-parts dealers flash past the window, then Kyle braked hard, swung into the car park of a building with a maroon sign saying ‘Gentlemen’s Club’, and flipped the siren off.

‘We’re here,’ he said, and grinned at her.

Let him see nothing.

Holly picked up the microphone. ‘Seventeen’s on scene.’

‘Thanks, Seventeen,’ Control said.

Kyle pulled out his wallet. ‘Let’s make a bet. Twenty says that it’s another junkie.’

‘You drove like a maniac to get here and now you want to sit and chat?’

Holly jumped out, slammed the door, and grabbed the Oxy-Viva and monitor from the back.

Kyle came around the truck, making a big show of putting the note in his shirt pocket and buttoning down the flap. ‘Got to be careful; junkies steal anything that’s not nailed down and this place’ll be full of them.’

That smirk.

She pushed past him and headed across the asphalt car park to the doorway where a well-dressed Asian woman in her early thirties waited. When she got close she could hear soft rock and smell room deodorant and carpet cleaner. The woman smiled and motioned her in, and Holly braced her shoulders and entered.

The place was like many she’d seen: lounge room and reception desk in muted colours, flatscreen TV playing music videos, hazy prints of semi-naked women on the walls, and a hall leading away to the girls’ lounge and the bedrooms. She followed the woman to the third door on the left, Kyle close on her heels, still muttering about junkies.

In the room, a naked man lay sprawled on his stomach on the queen bed. The sheet was rumpled, the bedspread kicked off the end. A girl of about twenty stood between the bed and the ensuite shower, fresh make-up on her face, blonde hair up in red ribbons that matched the robe she’d tied around herself.

‘He’s still breathing,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ Holly put her kits down and leaned over the man.

A phone rang at the reception desk and the Asian woman left.

The man looked about thirty. His face was pink, his skin dry and warm, and a quick lift of his eyelids showed that his pupils were of normal size and reacting to light. Holly pressed the arch of bone over his eye but he didn’t move.

‘You two shoot up together?’ Kyle asked the girl.

‘No.’

‘Separately?’

‘No.’ She folded her arms. ‘I don’t know what he took and he certainly didn’t take it in front of me.’

Holly shot Kyle a look, then turned to the girl. ‘What happened?’

‘He was just finishing when he passed out,’ she said.

The man’s pulse was a little fast at one hundred beats per minute and his blood pressure was up too, at one-forty on one hundred.

‘Did he complain about pain or feeling strange or short of breath?’

The girl shook her head. ‘He seemed happy.’

Kyle sniggered.

Holly glared at him. ‘How was he before?’ she asked the girl.

‘A little speedy, I thought,’ she said. ‘But smelling of beer too.’

‘How could you tell?’ Kyle said. ‘All I can smell in here is cheap deodoriser. Or is it perfume?’

‘Shut up and help me roll him,’ Holly snapped.

‘Give me a second to put gloves on first.’ He made an elaborate show of pulling them out of his pocket. ‘God only knows where anything in this room’s been.’

Holly was hot with anger and embarrassment. She couldn’t let him win, not here.

She looked at the girl as Kyle reached for the man. ‘Ignore him. He never gets any and the jealousy’s killing him.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Kyle said.

The girl grinned.

‘I get it all the time, and I never, ever have to pay for it.’

‘Help me roll him.’

Kyle took his time leaning in to grasp the man’s hip and roll him onto his side. ‘All the time,’ he said again.

‘Sure, Kyle.’

Holly put an oxygen mask on the man’s face and attached the monitor. He still wore a condom but had no erection. She covered him with the sheet and got out the kit to check his blood sugar. The girl bent to a pile of clothes on the floor and came up with a wallet.

Kyle snatched it from her and opened it. ‘Took the cash out earlier, did you?’

The girl ignored him. ‘Is there anything more I could’ve done for him?’ she asked Holly.

‘You did great.’ She smiled at her, and the girl smiled back.

‘His name’s Tony Cook,’ Kyle said. ‘He’s thirty-one and lives in Granville. No medical cards or info here.’

There were no signs of injury to Tony’s body, no injection sites on his arms. His abdomen was soft, his breath sounds clear and equal. The blood sugar machine beeped and displayed a level of four-point-two. Holly checked pupils, pulse and blood pressure again. Nothing had changed.

‘Get the stretcher,’ she said.

Kyle dropped the wallet on the bed. ‘Don’t you think you should put a line in?’

‘Just get it.’

He stared at her for a moment, then sauntered from the room.

The girl sank onto the side of the bed. ‘How d’you stand working with him?’

‘It’s our first day,’ Holly said. ‘And our last, if I can help it.’

She ran an ECG strip from the monitor and copied the details from Tony’s driver’s licence onto the end.

The girl touched Tony’s shoulder. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Drink and drug combo, probably. Unless he’s had some kind of stroke, but that’s not very likely.’

‘Will he be okay?’

‘Everything looks promising.’

Holly pressed above his eye again, then gave him a gentle sternal rub. He moved his shoulders slightly but that was all.

‘Are you going to give him Narcan?’

Holly looked at the girl, who folded her arms, putting her hands over the inside angle of her elbows. Holly wanted to tell her it was okay, she wasn’t trying to see, she’d been there herself, been here, in rooms just like this, with men just like this one, and it was okay.

‘No,’ she said instead. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s taken any narcotics.’

The girl nodded.

‘What’s your name?’ Holly asked.

‘Krista.’

‘I’m Holly. Thanks again for your help.’

There was a crash near the doorway and Kyle swore and looked in over the head of the stretcher. ‘Can’t get it in.’

‘There’s medication for that,’ Krista said solemnly. Holly held back a smile.

‘Not –’ Kyle turned an angry red. He pushed past the stretcher and into the room. ‘Is he awake yet? He’s going to have to walk.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Holly said. ‘Go and call for backup.’

Kyle eyed her, his face hard. ‘These places always look somehow familiar, don’t you reckon?’

‘I thought you said you never paid for it,’ she said.

He glared at her, then stalked out.

‘I wouldn’t do him at twice the rate,’ Krista said, and Holly laughed, but felt fear snake its way around her heart.