The Darkest Hour (11 page)

Authors: Katherine Howell

Joe’s flat was ten minutes from the Homicide office. Lauren walked there in a daze. The door to the small block was propped open with half a brick, and she climbed the two flights of pebblecrete stairs, pulling herself up on the railing, and came to his door. Her knock echoed in the stairwell.

The peephole went dark. ‘Lauren?’ He opened the door, yanking on a T-shirt, his hair wet. ‘What’s wrong?’

So much was wrong she didn’t know where to start. She shook her head.

‘Hey, it’s okay. Come on in.’ He locked the door behind her and followed her into the living room. ‘Is it about the burnt guy?’

She rubbed her hands over her face. If he went with her to the detectives, if both of them said they weren’t certain what Kennedy had said, maybe they had a chance.

‘The other night,’ she said. ‘James Kennedy. I wondered if I was wrong.’

‘About what?’

‘Maybe Kennedy wasn’t saying Thomas Werner at all.’

Joe shook his head.

‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Maybe he was saying . . . I don’t know . . .’ She couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with Thomas. ‘Some other name.’

‘It was definitely Thomas Werner.’

‘But how can we be sure? The siren was on,’ she said. ‘The situation was bad. Those times your blood thumps in your ears and you’re thinking about everything to do, and what if this and what if that. And you were concentrating on getting us to the hospital quick and safe.’

‘Not me,’ Joe said. ‘I heard him yell out “Thomas Werner stabbed me”. I’ll get up in court and say so, a million times over.’

There went that idea. Lauren felt sick.

‘Are you . . . you’re shaking,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Do you remember me telling you about a guy Kristi was living with, a few years ago? Felise’s dad? He went back overseas before Felise was born. Do you remember me ever telling you his name?’

‘I don’t think you ever said. Why?’

‘It’s Thomas Werner.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since, and today I told the detective that I knew somebody by that name and so it was possible that I’d been confused about the name Kennedy told me.’

‘No. That was what he said.’

‘But like I said, the siren was on,’ she said. ‘You were looking at the road. And maybe I had told you Thomas’s name and it was in your subconscious, and whatever Kennedy said we both came up with the same interpretation.’

‘The right interpretation,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s what he shouted. But it doesn’t matter anyway – I mean, there must be more than one person with that name. It’s not going to be him. You just said yourself he went back to Austria years ago.’

‘It’s him,’ Lauren said. ‘He’s threatened me.’

Joe went still. ‘Threatened how?’

‘Yesterday he rang me up and said I had twenty-four hours to withdraw my statement or he would do something bad.’

‘How the hell could he know about it?’

‘He must know somebody in the police,’ Lauren said. ‘Nobody else knew about what was going on.’

Joe paused. ‘What exactly did he say?’

She didn’t want to repeat the words. ‘It involved fire and the house when people other than me were in it.’

Joe was silent. A muscle worked furiously in his cheek. ‘What are the police doing?’

‘I didn’t tell them,’ Lauren said. ‘Thomas told me to withdraw my statement and I thought it was best to do exactly what he said. When the detective said I couldn’t withdraw it, all I could think was to come here and talk to you. That you would know what to do.’

‘You have to tell them,’ he said. ‘They can protect you and Kristi and Felise.’

‘But if there’s a leak in there, maybe they can’t,’ Lauren said.

‘But if they can find that leak, it could lead them straight to him. You telling them what’s going on could be the best lead in the case so far.’

There was the sound of a key in the lock and the door opened. Claire walked in and stopped dead. ‘I thought we were going out,’ she said to Joe.

‘I’m running a bit late.’

She looked at Lauren. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here.’

Lauren knew she should explain, come up with a reason why she was there, but all she could think of was Thomas’s threat and the question of what she was going to do.

‘We were talking about the burns case from last night,’ Joe said. ‘She’s a bit upset about it.’

‘You drove all the way here for that?’ Claire said.

‘Actually I caught the train,’ Lauren said.

‘That’s even crazier.’

‘Don’t say crazy,’ Joe said. ‘Jobs like that can really get in your head.’

‘I have looked after a few myself.’

‘Yeah, but by the time you get them they’re all doped up and cooperative – we’ve stabilised and treated them,’ Joe said. ‘You haven’t wrestled with them on the burnt carpet of their home or–’

‘I was just going anyway.’ Lauren got to her feet. ‘Joe, thanks for the talk.’

‘I’ll walk you down,’ he said.

Claire eyed her as she went past.

In the stairwell Lauren said, ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Listen. You should go straight back to the police now. They need to know.’

They walked outside and stood on the pavers under the big oak tree that shaded the entrance. Lauren could see Claire on the balcony upstairs, making no pretence about watching them.

‘I hope she’s not angry at you all day.’

‘Don’t change the subject,’ he said. ‘Is it my imagination or are you reluctant to tell them?’

She knew she should, but at the same time she could see that path leading to the discovery somehow of her lies about Blake. Her perjury. The night before, when Joe was having his second shower at the station, she’d sneaked a look at the policies folder. Conviction of a serious offence could get her sacked.

‘I don’t want to cross him,’ she said. ‘If whoever’s the leak hears about it, who knows what he’d do.’

Claire threw a twig at the back of Joe’s head. ‘We’ll be late.’

‘Just a minute,’ he said.

‘Anyway,’ Lauren said, ‘the detective’s coming round to see Kristi this evening. I’ll tell her then. Nobody else will be around, so there’s no risk of it getting back to Thomas straightaway.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

He hugged her.

Lauren heard Claire mutter something and slam the balcony door. ‘Are you going to tell her what we really talked about?’

‘I’d classify it need-to-know, and she doesn’t.’

‘She’ll be suspicious.’

‘She’ll be fine.’ He let her go. ‘Do you want a lift to the station?’

‘I’m okay, thanks.’ She glanced up. The balcony was empty. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Keep safe, hey?’

On the train Lauren sat on the top deck and stared out the window. She still wasn’t sure that she’d tell Ella when she saw her that afternoon. She kept thinking there was some way to do what Thomas had said, though at the same time she knew it was dangerous to trust that he would keep his word.

She just wanted him gone. Back in Austria, away from all of them. There was so much danger while he was here – not only of physical harm, but because he knew what had really happened with Blake. While it was ridiculous to think he would admit to his part simply in order to prove that she’d lied, what if the police somehow managed to put the case together? Thomas’s defence could weaken both prosecution cases, Blake and Kennedy, just by telling what she’d done.

The other thing was whether Thomas might try to lay any claim to Felise. She knew Kristi would panic about this more than anything else; in her mind, the threat of injury would seem remote beside the threat of a custody battle. She had to tell her though. This morning.

The train slowed going through Clyde. East of the station three workmen poked at a fire in the waste ground by the lines. Lauren stared at the flames and the dead black grass and thought of the man’s charred skin from the night before. While Kristi’s greatest concern might be custody, hers was something else.

The train went on but the flames stayed in her mind.

ELEVEN

E
lla slid lower in her seat as the late-morning sun slanted in the windows and filled the car with light and warmth. They’d been there twenty minutes, talking quietly about Lauren and the Thomas Werner she knew. She felt increasingly conspicuous, sure that anyone wandering past and seeing the two of them sitting in the car would recognise them for what they were.

‘We should get out,’ she said. ‘Walk the street a little.’

‘March up and down in front of his block?’

‘Go for a walk, I said.’

‘And Drysdale’d turn up the moment we’re out of sight at the end,’ Murray said.

They’d sent a uniformed officer up to knock at his door. There’d been no answer. When the officer came down and got in his car, ignoring them as he’d been asked, Ella stared at Drysdale’s balcony till her eyes watered. If he was home, he’d be out taking a peek, surely. But there’d been nothing.

‘Maybe he’s done a runner. Gone interstate or somewhere.’

Murray’s gaze was fixed on the rear-view mirror. ‘Is this him?’

Ella shifted to look in the wing mirror. ‘That’s him.’

Benson Drysdale approached like a frightened cat. Ella saw his eyes dart about, examining each car parked on the street before he came alongside. It was only a matter of time before he spotted them and fled.

‘Ready?’ she said.

Murray eased his hand onto the door handle.

Drysdale came closer. He carried a plastic shopping bag. Ella could make out the shape of a carton of milk.

‘Any second,’ she breathed.

Drysdale reached the rear of the car, looked in and began to scramble into a turn. Ella shoved her door open and was running down the footpath behind him before he’d made ten metres. He dropped the bag and she leapt over it. She could hear Murray’s feet slapping behind her. Drysdale stumbled and she reached out and grasped the back of his shirt and yanked him to a halt.

‘Silly boy,’ she said. ‘Why are you running?’

Murray came up beside them, Drysdale’s plastic bag in his hand. Drysdale put his hand out for it but Murray held it out of reach. ‘Don’t panic, nothing’s broken.’

‘Just groceries?’ Ella said.

‘And a bit of light reading material.’ Murray fished out a porn magazine.

Drysdale jutted out his chin. ‘That’s private.’

Her grip firm on his arm, Ella turned him around and pushed him towards his building. ‘So is your flat, but we’re still going in there.’

His apartment was small and dank. A table in the centre of the living room held a huge computer. Drysdale stuck his hands in his pockets and faced Ella. ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Why did you take off from work on Wednesday?’

‘I was sick.’

‘Oh, really.’ She folded her arms. ‘We checked in with your boss, Daniel Peres. He said you haven’t been back, you haven’t rung in or anything. He said he might have to fire you.’

He shrugged. ‘Crappy job anyway.’

Murray came back in from the other rooms. ‘Repair a few computers, do you?’

‘It’s a hobby,’ Drysdale said.

Ella said, ‘How well did you know James Kennedy?’

‘He was a driver at Quiksmart.’

‘How well did you know him?’ she said again.

‘We’d chat,’ he said. ‘That was it.’

‘You’re not much of a liar,’ Ella said.

Murray pushed a chair against the backs of Drysdale’s legs. ‘Sit.’

‘This is a homicide investigation,’ Ella said. ‘You know what that means?’

‘That a guy died.’

‘It means that we don’t stop digging for information until we know everything,’ she said. ‘How we deal with people is determined by how hard they make our job. If you were up to something dodgy with Kennedy or someone else at Quiksmart, and that’s why you ran away and why you’re lying now, we need to know. Tell us now and we’ll help you if we can.’

Drysdale looked at his hands, clenched in his lap.

‘Or,’ she went on, ‘you can make us work harder, and waste time, and in the end we’ll find out anyway, and then we won’t be inclined to help you one little bit.’

He sighed. ‘I sell stuff on eBay. Computers that I repair or do up, you know.’

‘And?’

‘And James would deliver them around Sydney for me, for a cash-in-hand delivery fee from the buyer, like at a discount rate, and we’d split the money.’

‘He did this on his rounds, you mean? Slipped extra stuff into the load?’

‘Yes.’

‘What else?’

‘Nothing else.’ Drysdale shook his head. ‘That’s it.’

Ella looked at Murray, who laid his hand on Drysdale’s shoulder. ‘You ran away from us for that?’

‘I didn’t want Peres to find out.’ He looked up at Ella. ‘Did he really say he’d sack me?’

Ella stepped closer. ‘Did you ever hear Kennedy mention the name Thomas Werner?’

Drysdale sat up straight. ‘You think Thomas killed him?’

‘You know someone by that name?’

Drysdale nodded. ‘Yeah, he was with James one day when he was working. They came round here – I took a sickie but I had some stuff for him to pick up and deliver, you know – and when I saw the van pull up I took the stuff down there to give to him. James came round to open the sliding door and put the stuff in, and this guy was in the passenger seat. I said something like, hi I’m Benson. He said his name. He had an accent and I said, oh, are you German, guten tag, my mum’s family comes from Germany and I know the accent, you know? And he says, kinda smirky, as if I should know the difference, no, I’m from Austria. But then Kennedy’s getting toey, it’s obvious he wants to go, so I step back and off they shoot.’

Ella’s heart hammered in her chest. ‘You met an Austrian Thomas Werner with James Kennedy.’

‘He definitely said that was his name?’ Murray asked.

‘Thomas Werner, yep.’

‘What’d he look like?’

‘Short brown hair,’ Drysdale said. ‘Average-size guy, I guess. It’s hard to say when they’re sitting in a van and you only see the top half.’

‘Eye colour?’ Ella said. ‘Anything distinctive about what you could see?’

‘Eyes, I’m not sure. There wasn’t really anything distinctive about him. Just his accent. And he seemed really arrogant.’

‘Did he say if he was living here, or a tourist?’ Murray said.

‘He didn’t say,’ Drysdale said. ‘You really think it was him who killed James? Oh, man.’

‘When did you meet him?’ Ella asked.

‘Maybe six months ago,’ Drysdale said. ‘I can probably narrow it down.’ He switched on the computer. ‘I think I know what I gave them to deliver, so I’ll just look that up and then I’ll be able to tell you the exact day.’ He turned his chair around as the screen came to life.

Ella tilted her head for Murray to follow her into the tiny kitchen.

‘We need to call Kuiper,’ Murray said.

‘We need to get down to Immigration,’ she said.

‘Here you go,’ Drysdale called. ‘Computer hard drive and a monitor, to two different addresses on the twenty-seventh of May.’

Murray wrote down the information.

‘Did you and Kennedy ever discuss Werner afterwards?’ Ella said.

‘Just once, in a roundabout way,’ Drysdale said. ‘This was a couple of days later. James was in the warehouse and I went to see him. He was moving some stuff from a truck into his van, and I asked him how it went, could Werner be trusted. Before he could answer somebody else came past and he shut up quick. Afterwards he put his finger to his mouth, you know, like a shh signal, then slipped me my half of the delivery money. I guess I figured that meant the guy was cool and it didn’t need to be discussed.’

‘Did Kennedy seem worried, or scared?’

‘Nup. He was just the same as ever.’

‘Was anyone else in the company involved in this kind of thing, this surreptitious delivering?’

‘Not with me.’

‘With anyone else?’

He pinched his lip. ‘James once said something that made me think other people were doing it too, but I don’t know who, or what they were moving.’

‘What’d he say?’

‘I’d said to him that I hoped we didn’t get caught, ’cos we’d be in the shit with Peres, and he said something about more than just us being in the shit.’

Interesting.

Ella said, ‘We’ll need you to go to our office and make a formal statement about this. Here’s the address.’ She gave him her card.

He screwed up his face. ‘Do you have to tell Peres what I was doing?’

‘We won’t tell him directly,’ Ella said, ‘but it might come out at some point.’

Drysdale’s face fell.

Ella dialled Kuiper on her mobile before they were out of the building and told him what they’d learned.

‘Head on over to Immigration,’ Kuiper said. ‘I called them earlier, but I’ll get onto them again now and let them know you’re coming.’

She ended the call. ‘I’ll drive,’ she said to Murray.

Kristi’s current mosaic job was in a new building on a narrow street on a west-facing slope in Point Piper. Lauren squeezed between a plumber’s van and a plasterer’s ute parked on the footpath. The glass doors to the foyer were still covered in plastic, the left side propped open with a wedge of two-by-four. Lauren went inside and pressed the lift button. Three radios played different rock stations in apartments nearby, accompanied by the pounding of hammers and the buzz of an electric saw. Lauren shook her hands out by her sides, trying to settle herself down, trying to think of what to say. It wasn’t every day you had to tell your sister that her ex was a murderer.

The lift travelled smoothly then opened onto a glass-walled foyer. The harbour views were stunning even through the protective plastic but Lauren didn’t pause to look. There were only two apartments on each floor, and the door to 16A stood open. She could hear Felise singing inside, hitting the high notes in a space that sounded like a bathroom. The place smelled of fresh paint.

‘Kristi?’

‘In here.’

Lauren’s shoes squeaked on the polished wood floor of the apartment. Felise ran out to meet her. ‘Did you see the sea?’ she said.

‘I did.’

She took the girl’s small warm hand and let her lead her to the bathroom where Kristi was on her knees by a feature wall opposite an empty spa.

‘What’s up?’ Kristi said, gluing a piece of green tile into place.

Lauren briefly squeezed Felise’s hand –
give me strength
– then let it go. ‘Felise, sweetie, could you take your sketchbook into the other room and draw me a picture of the biggest boat you can see?’

‘But I’m doing school.’ She pointed to the shower cubicle. Dolls and bears sat around the walls and in the centre was a spread of pencils and a notepad covered in scribble.

‘Just for five minutes, please,’ Lauren said.

‘No.’ Felise folded her arms.

‘I’m sick of arguing with her this morning,’ Kristi said. ‘Let her stay.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘So talk.’

Felise sang the rollcall. ‘Big Bear and Blue Bear and Little Alice and Benjamin.’

‘I can’t, like this,’ Lauren said. ‘Come into the other room.’

‘I’m on a deadline.’ Kristi selected another piece of tile from an assortment on the floor. ‘While she’s singing, she’s not listening. So just tell me.’

‘Freddie Frog and Jumpy Jim,’ Felise went on.

Lauren lowered her voice. ‘It’s about Thomas.’

Kristi was on her feet. ‘He wants Felise.’

‘No. Listen.’ Lauren made her sit beside her on the side of the spa. ‘You know the man I told you about the other day, the one I looked after, who told me about what happened to him? Specifically? Remember?’

‘I think I know what you’re talking about,’ Kristi said.

Felise had turned around and was watching them.

Lauren lowered her voice even further. ‘He told me that Thomas did it.’

Kristi stared at her. ‘What?’

‘I want to know the secret,’ Felise said.

Lauren dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Thomas stabbed that man.’

Felise grabbed Kristi’s knees. ‘Tell me too!’

‘Killed him?’ Kristi said faintly. The piece of tile fell from her hand and broke on the floor.

‘Yes.’

Felise jumped up and down. ‘Tell me the secret!’

Lauren pulled her into a hug. ‘Just a minute, Flea.’

‘How do you know it’s
him
?’ Kristi said.