TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Y
ou don’t understand,’ Alex said. ‘I need to go.’
The senior detective with the shaved head and blue tie stared at him. Alex stared back, soaking wet, still dripping water onto the dock. Jane sat, just as wet, on a bench nearby. The helicopter was long gone and the only sound was the slurp of water under the dock and the murmur of cops around Canning’s
sheet-covered body. Alex and Jane had scrambled out of the water after the shooting and attended to Canning but the blood loss was massive and the location of the bullet entry and exits meant his heart and lungs had been severely and fatally damaged. There’d been nothing they could do.
‘What you need to do is sit down and wait to be interviewed,’ the detective said.
‘My daughter’s
missing and I have to find her.’
‘You’ve reported this?’
‘Brent Mason from Missing Persons knows all about it.’
‘That’s good,’ the detective said. ‘These situations are best left to us. Just as medical emergencies are best dealt with by you.’
‘You’re not hearing me,’ Alex said. ‘I’m her father and I’m leaving.’
‘No, you’re not.’ The detective folded his arms. Alex
guessed he was used to getting his way. This was not one of those times, however, and Alex stepped around him. He’d get in his car and… what? He wasn’t sure. Nat had been his big hope. He believed her when she said she knew nothing. But he’d get in his car, find a phone and call Brent Mason, and go from there.
The detective grabbed his arm. ‘I told you to sit down.’
‘Let go of
me.’
‘This is a police investigation.’
‘I’ll give my statement later.’ Alex tried to pull free. The cop tightened his grip. Alex bristled. ‘Let me go, now, or arrest me.’
The female detective from the train hurried over. ‘Alex, can I talk to you for a second?’
‘I need to find my daughter.’
‘Just a few minutes.’
She seemed more of an ally than the shaven-headed
man. If Alex helped her now, she might help him in return. ‘Fine.’
The male detective held on to Alex’s arm for a few more seconds then released him.
‘Over here,’ the woman said, and Alex followed. She stuck out her hand. ‘Ella Marconi.’
‘Alex Churchill.’ Her hand was warm against his cold wet skin. She was white around the eyes and seemed distracted. He said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure.’ But she couldn’t hold his gaze. He saw her glance at the covered body.
‘You didn’t have any other choice,’ he said. ‘And you saved her life.’
For an instant he saw tears in her eyes, then she blinked and they were gone. ‘I was just talking to Natasha. She said she’s your sister-in-law?’
Alex nodded. ‘That’s why I came here. I thought she might know where my ex –
her sister – and my daughter are. That’s why I need to leave, to call Mason in Missing Persons and keep looking for her.’
‘What happened in there?’
‘The guy threatened us, pulled a gun, told us to walk with him out the back.’ He wanted to get going. He looked at his watch but it had stopped in the water.
Ella took out her phone and dialled a number. ‘Mason in Missing Persons
please.’ She listened, then said, ‘Have him call me back straightaway, then. I’m with Alex Churchill.’ She hung up. ‘It’ll probably be just a few minutes. After which I’ll help you get out of here.’
‘Deal.’ Alex looked past her to where Natasha sat against the shed, her arms wrapped around her legs and her forehead on her knees. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s shattered,’ Ella said.
‘Can
I talk to her?’
‘Just to say hi. Nothing about what happened.’
When he got close he heard her weeping. He’d seen her cry like that once before, on Mia’s fifth birthday. When everyone else had left after the party, Alex had gone back downstairs after putting Mia to bed and found Natasha lying naked on a rug on the floor, rose petals that she must’ve brought with her scattered all around,
candles burning everywhere. She’d reached out to him, but he’d stayed in the doorway, completely taken aback, and in that second he’d seen her face turn deep red with humiliation and shame. She’d pulled on her clothes and, sobbing, rushed past him to her car. He’d tried to call and say it was okay, there was no need to be embarrassed, and he was sorry if she’d thought he liked her that way.
She never answered, or rang him back, and over the next month he’d stopped trying. He thought now that he should never have given up.
He crouched beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘When all this is over I’d like for you and Mia to get to know each other again.’
She looked up at him, face red and wet with tears. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. You’re her aunt.’
‘I’m
sorry that I don’t know where she is. I didn’t even know Helen was back.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ll find her.’
‘I’ll help any way I can,’ she said.
‘For now, just take care of yourself.’
He left her sitting there and went to Ella, who was talking to Jane. ‘Has he rung you back?’
‘Not yet.’ As she spoke, her phone rang, and Alex’s heart jumped in his chest. She looked
at the screen. ‘Not him,’ she said, stepping away to answer.
Alex sat on the bench beside Jane. She held her wet phone. ‘Yours dead too?’
He nodded. When he got out of there he’d buy a new one, see if the old SIM worked. Make sure his number was available if Mia called.
Jane said, ‘You know, just before that chopper arrived, Laird sent me a text asking, “Did I do good?”.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘He thinks we might get back together,’ she said, her voice full of scorn.
Alex didn’t answer. He was watching Ella on her phone. She nodded and listened and spoke, then hung up, never once looking his way.
‘What a day,’ Jane said. ‘I always thought if I was going to stare down a barrel it’d happen at work.’
He looked at her. ‘I’m sorry to get you
caught up in this.’
‘It wasn’t like you had any idea it would happen.’
‘Yeah, but you could’ve been shot. Killed.’
‘But I wasn’t.’ She smiled at him. ‘And smart move, going into the water like that.’
He glanced at Ella. She was on the phone again, but looking at him. A smile on her face as she hung up. He jumped up from the bench.
‘They found her,’ she said. ‘She
was with her mother, in a motel in Chatswood.’
Ella kept talking but Alex couldn’t hear her properly. His ears were ringing, his vision blurry. ‘She’s okay?’
‘She’s fine. Brent’s bringing her here now. Should be here any minute. After she was on the news tonight, someone rang in from the motel…’
Alex was walking towards the car park, his legs feeling disconnected, his heart
so light.
Ella followed, still talking. ‘. . . heard lots of arguing previously… arrested and taken to Chatswood police station…’
He stood on the asphalt and stared at the road. He wouldn’t believe it was real until he could see her, hold her.
‘. . . statement from you…’
A police car turned into the road and came towards him. Brent Mason was behind the wheel,
and smiling. A female officer sat in the back next to a smaller form. Before the car stopped, the back door flew open and Mia was out and running towards him.
He dropped to his knees and she flung herself crying into his arms. ‘She wouldn’t let me call you.’
‘I know, sweetie, it’s okay.’
She pressed her face into his neck. ‘I’m sorry, I thought it’d be fun, she said it’d be an
adventure, but all she did was yell at me.’
‘It’s okay, honey, it’s all right.’
He clung tightly to her. She was really here, and he knew that everything,
everything
, was going to be fine.
‘Eww, Dad, why are you all wet?’
*
Ella listened to Natasha Osborne tell the rest of her story. She’d fallen apart before, too distraught to go on. After talking with Alex, though,
and hugging Mia, she’d said she wanted to talk about the rest. It had been good at the start, she said, but then she’d started to see flashes of Canning’s temper, and he’d threatened her and had hit her, usually in the stomach, just as Ella had said would happen. She’d stopped then and cried some more, and Ella had the feeling there was more to it, perhaps even a rape, but didn’t press her on
it.
She touched her shoulder. ‘What was the situation with Grace Michaels?’
‘Earlier that week he said she’d be coming for a scheduled visit, but his friend needed him that day to drive up the Central Coast to where his little boy was terminally ill in hospital.’ Natasha wiped her eyes. ‘He said he’d told Grace and she was okay with it, her own little boy being the same age. She’d
agreed to let him miss the appointment and go there even though his friend was also an ex-con and they shouldn’t be together. He said we had to help Grace because she was helping him, so if anyone asked, they were all here together that afternoon.’
‘Did he mention that friend’s name?’ Ella asked. ‘Or did you ever meet him?’
‘His first name’s Danny and he drove this grey hatchback,’
Natasha said. ‘They were out for hours that afternoon, when Grace came around, and when they got back it was like they were high.’
‘How was Grace while she was here?’
‘Uptight and uncomfortable. I guessed that something was wrong, that he hadn’t told me the truth. We didn’t talk much. She hung around in the workshop looking at her watch, then left after about twenty minutes.’
Ella nodded. Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she didn’t look at it. ‘And your arm?’
‘He got angry yesterday, over nothing, and twisted it.’ She touched the bandage. ‘I had to put this on myself. He said I couldn’t go to hospital because people would ask questions and then he’d go back to jail. He said was that what I wanted? I wanted to say yes, but I couldn’t.’ She lowered her head. ‘I’d
wanted to help him. I thought it could be good. He seemed so nice when we were writing letters and when I visited him. And then I lied and helped him kill someone.’
‘You didn’t know that’s what he was going to do,’ Ella said. ‘How about I have someone take you to hospital and get your arm looked at? Then we’ll talk some more.’
She helped her stand, then they walked towards the car
park. Natasha glanced once along the dock, then turned away. Ella helped her into the front seat of a uniformed officer’s car, then raised a hand as they drove off.
Night was falling. An investigation team would be here soon, and there were hours of work ahead: statements, explanations, walk-throughs to demonstrate what had happened, with added pressure from the fact that it had all been
filmed, and was probably online and being broadcast already. Ella was clear in her own mind about what had happened, and knew that she’d had to shoot, that she’d had no choice. Still, now that she was alone for the first time since it happened, she felt the guilt and heartache she’d been working so hard to ignore.
Canning didn’t have to take hostages, she told herself, he didn’t have to
try to run when running was impossible. He didn’t have to raise his gun like that. And Grace Michaels and her son were safe now, and that was a good thing. But she could still see the shocked look in his eyes, the spreading red on his chest. Her phone buzzed again with the text reminder. She took it out and found a message from Callum.
I’ve just worked out this is the second time I’ve done
this – been an arse one day and expected you to forget it the next. I obviously have a problem, and I’ve made an appointment with a psychologist to deal with it. I’m sorry about behaving so badly, and about the donuts too – poor attempt at a joke there. I’m home tonight if you want to come over and slap me. I hope to see you then, though I’ll understand if I don’t. xox
Ella looked around.
Alex Churchill and his daughter were sitting close together on a bench, heads together as they talked, Mia now and then looking like she was trying to see past him to the body. Jane Koutoufides was talking to Marion Pilsiger, making gestures like she was shoving someone, describing what’d happened in the shed Ella guessed. Langley, Kemsley and Hossain stood near Canning’s body at the end of the
dock. The evening was quiet except for the slap of water on the hulls of boats and the conversation of the people who were gathering behind the police tape strung across the car park. She looked at her phone.
Busy
, she sent back, then sent another.
For now.
*
Alex listened as Mia talked. Helen had found her on Facebook three months ago, and they’d been in contact regularly on
their phones since. She’d apologised for being away for so long and Mia had forgiven her. It sounded like Helen had developed the idea of Mia running away over time, dropping hints about a better life, how mothers understood daughters much better than fathers, how Alex would be angry if he knew they were in touch because the break-up had been so bad, therefore Mia could never tell him.
‘I felt bad about keeping it a secret, but she said you told her to leave and never come back,’ Mia said.
‘You don’t remember, because you were only three, but one night she said she was going and she went,’ he said. ‘I loved her, and I wrote and begged her to come back. I would never have told her to stay away.’
‘She said we could move interstate, that we’d have so much fun together,’
Mia said. ‘I packed my schoolbag and snuck out when Louise was asleep. She picked me up around the corner. I was so happy, and she was crying, and saying how much she loved me.’
Alex noticed she was calling Helen ‘she’. Not Mum.
‘It was good at first, but then I was asking where we’d go, could we get a dog when we got there, what would my new school be like, and wanted to ring my friends,
and she got all angry and shouted at me to stop asking so many questions.’ Mia wiped her eyes. ‘She said couldn’t I just wait and see, and why was I always hungry, and would I just shut up and give her some peace for a bit.’
Alex hugged her tight.
‘I watched TV at first but we were in this tiny scungy motel room and she said it was too loud,’ Mia said. ‘So then I got out my phone to
listen to music on my headphones but she wouldn’t let me turn it on because she said you’d send nasty people to look for us, and I took the SIM out so that was okay but then it went flat and the charger wasn’t working and she yelled at me when I asked if she’d buy me a new one. Then this afternoon the police knocked on the door. She’d told me that if anyone asked I should say my name was Airlie
Green but I wanted to come home, so when the policeman asked me I said I’m Mia Churchill.’ She pressed her head into Alex’s neck. ‘She screamed and they put handcuffs on her and put her in a car. Is she going to jail?’