Then
We sit at Elena’s dining table like this is a family dinner.
‘What’s happening here?’ Lilia asks. ‘Did you mean it when you said you knew Ben didn’t hurt Felix?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
‘Because Michael did it,’ I say. ‘Or maybe Elena. Possibly the two of them. I’m pretty sure Patrick wasn’t involved, but I haven’t got all the details yet.’
Patrick holds up his hands. ‘I swear.’
Lilia stands up immediately. ‘Heidi! We need to go. Ben’s a dick, but he’s probably still outside and can take us to the cops.’
I put my hand on hers, flat on the table. ‘I want to hear it from Michael and Elena first.’
‘Are you serious?’ she asks. But she sits back down, moving her chair closer to mine.
‘Heidi,’ Elena says. ‘I’m sorry about Felix.’
It almost makes me laugh, the way she says it.
‘Was it because Felix pushed you down the stairs?’ I ask her. ‘Did Felix push you down the stairs?’
‘He did.’ Elena looks at me, scanning for surprise (zilch). ‘But that wasn’t why we did it.’
We.
Elena places one hand on her stomach. ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ Not what I was expecting.
‘I thought when I told him, he’d stop with everything,’ Elena says.
‘I didn’t know he …’ I don’t finish the sentence. I might not have known for sure that Felix pushed Elena down the stairs, but I knew what Felix was like. I had my suspicions that he’d treat Elena the way he treated me, and I never did anything to stop that.
‘Felix … hit you?’ Lilia asks, her voice wobbling a bit.
‘And other things,’ Elena says. ‘He controlled our bank accounts. He never wanted me to have friends or a life outside our relationship.’
Michael scooches his chair closer to Elena’s and gives her shoulder a little squeeze. Neither he nor Patrick look shocked by any of this.
‘I didn’t know how to leave him, Heidi,’ Elena says.
‘You know what he was like. I didn’t think he’d let me go.
When it was just me, that was one thing.
But when I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t let him hurt the baby.
’ She looks at Michael, her sweet face stricken.
I can see, for a moment, how they came up with this plan.
‘You could have gone to the police,’ I say, but I know what Elena’s going to say. Even I know that the most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she tries to leave her abuser and that family violence restraining orders are as useful as a damp serviette in a crisis.
Elena doesn’t say any of this. She doesn’t say anything.
‘You killed him?’ I ask, to be clear, since nobody’s spelling it out for me and if they are about to murder me, too, I’d quite like to know exactly what I’m dying for.
‘I killed him,’ Michael clarifies quickly, but Elena shakes her head.
‘It was my plan. I was supposed to do it,’ Elena says. ‘Michael was my back-up in case it went wrong.’
‘You never asked me,’ Patrick says. Is it possible he sounds hurt?
‘You’re a kid,’ Elena says.
‘You won’t even kill a spider,’ Michael points out.
‘They keep the bugs away!’
‘It was my plan,’ Elena says again. ‘I knew if Felix died suspiciously, the police would suspect me. It’s always the spouse, right?
I started thinking about how I could give myself an alibi.
Then a couple of weeks before Felix … died, the lift broke down – some electrical fault.
I was stuck in there for not even five minutes, but it got me thinking that if I could figure out a way to be stuck in the lift when Felix died, I’d have a perfect alibi. ’
‘But you needed witnesses,’ I say, keen to show how close I came to figuring it all out. ‘I guess if the witness was your brother, the cops might have thought he was covering for you. So, you invited your friends from work.’
‘All I’m saying is that I would have covered for you too,’ Patrick adds.
Elena gives him a look with big-sister vibes. ‘Shut up, Patrick,’ she says sweetly. And to me, ‘Exactly. I had the idea of inviting work friends: people I knew and liked, but not the kind of people who would cover up a murder for me.’ It’s the first time she’s used the m-word, and I feel it.
‘When Elena told me what she was planning, I wanted to help,’ Michael says.
‘Easiest acting job I’ve ever done, if I’m honest.’ He grins like he’s being interviewed on a chat show.
Then, maybe, he remembers who he’s talking to.
‘I sent Patrick to stay with a friend, telling him the show had another week to run, then flew to Perth.’
‘How did you convince Felix to have your friends over, if he hated you having friends?’ I ask Elena.
‘I never told him,’ she says simply.
‘You killed him before the party so you didn’t have to,’ I say slowly. ‘It can’t have been too early or the forensics team would have noticed the difference in the body.’
Michael nods, taking over from Elena. ‘Less than an hour before the guests arrived,’ he says.
‘Elena and Felix went out for some fresh air. He loved to drag Elena up to that lookout spot because it was so hard for her to make it. She had a rock hidden up there and was going to use it as soon as he turned his back.’
‘Michael beat me to it,’ Elena says. ‘He was waiting there and he already had the rock.’
‘I’m the big brother,’ he says, which nearly makes me laugh. ‘I never wanted you to do it, Elena. As it happened, Felix’s phone rang as he got close and he was distracted. I hit him over the head with the rock, as hard as I could, then I pushed him down the cliff.’
That phone call must have been Ben, presumably trying to convince Felix not to tell Lilia what he’d been up to. It’s a nice puzzle piece to slide into place, but now doesn’t seem the time to mention it.
‘Why a rock?’ Patrick asks and I realise he’s hearing some of the details for the first time, too. ‘Seems a bit Neanderthal.’
I’m a step ahead of him. It’s a good feeling. ‘Because then it would be conceivable that Felix might have hit his head on one of the rocks on the way down. There’d be rock particles in the wound.’
‘Exactly,’ Michael says.
‘What about forensics?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t it have been suspicious if they found Michael’s fingerprints all over the house and none of Felix’s?’
‘Michael tried to avoid touching anything,’ Elena says. ‘We wiped down everything we could think of before the guests got here.’
‘I washed my plate before heading out,’ Michael says.
‘You forgot the glass you’d been drinking from,’ Elena says, sounding only mildly reproving. ‘But I smashed that before the paramedics got here.’
‘Besides,’ Michael says, ‘my fingerprints aren’t on any police file. They would have been dismissed as belonging to someone else who’d passed through, unless the police had a reason to fingerprint me.’
It’s nothing better or worse than I’ve imagined. It’s also a ridiculous plan, because so many things could have gone wrong. What if Felix didn’t go up to the lookout spot? What if he’d spotted Michael? What if the rock and the fall and the water hadn’t killed him?
I ask a different question. ‘What were you and Elena fighting about the night of the party?’
‘What?’ Michael asks.
‘Sarah and Farnoosh overheard you arguing in the kitchen. Obviously they thought it was you and Felix, Elena, but it must have been you and Michael.’
‘Elena was having cold feet,’ Michael said.
‘I wanted to call it all off and ring the police,’ Elena says.
‘But by the time Aunty Sam got there, Felix would already have been dead,’ I say.
‘I didn’t want to go through with the party,’ Elena says. ‘It was too much. Michael convinced me to see it through.’
‘What happened after Felix fell?’ I ask, going back in time again.
‘I followed him down to the water’s edge to make sure,’ Michael says. ‘I thought the fall had killed him. We only learned later that he must have been alive but unconscious and then drowned.’
I think about the words to make sure and opt not to ask any follow-ups about whether Felix’s head was already in the water when Michael got there. Best not to know. Best not to think about it.
‘Farnoosh said Felix was cold and stiff when she found him. I should have realised that was suss,’ I say, annoyed with myself.
Patrick, who was there when I spoke to Farnoosh, nods slowly but uncomprehendingly. ‘Suss how, exactly?’
‘The cold bit barely made sense, because Felix hadn’t been out there long enough to get cold, really, even if he was in the water. But the stiffness should have been even more obvious: rigor mortis doesn’t set in for about two hours.’
‘How do you know that, Heidi?’ Patrick sort of groans.
‘True crime podcasts, Patrick. And a lot of free time.’
Elena and Michael exchange a look I can’t unpick.
‘Can I ask a question?’ Lilia asks. She’s been quiet but utterly absorbed this whole time. Obviously.
‘Sure,’ Elena says.
‘How did Farnoosh and the others not notice that Felix wasn’t Michael when they found his body?’
‘He had a fair amount of mud and blood on his face,’ Michael says. ‘But also we figured in the moment they wouldn’t really look all that closely. If you’re missing a six foot one blond guy in his twenties wearing a bright yellow Wilco t-shirt and a five foot ten—’
‘Six one!’ Patrick hoots. ‘You’re six foot nothing in shoes and you know it, brother.’
‘And a five foot ten blond guy in his twenties wearing a Wilco t-shirt surfaces, you’d think that they were the same person.’
That stupid Wilco t-shirt. It’s arguably the only bit of physical evidence I have that a crime was committed and what does it prove, really?
If I told the police everything, it wouldn’t just be my word against Michael and Elena’s.
They’ve been so sloppy. Flight records will surely show that Michael arrived in Perth before Felix died.
Elena’s friends could identify Michael as the man they knew as Felix.
Lilia would probably back me up about everything we’ve heard.
But I also know that the world is a better place without Felix in it.
If I told the police everything, Elena would never let Michael take the blame for this. Her baby would grow up without a mum or a dad, an experience I cannot endorse (zero stars – would not recommend to a friend).
‘Were you having an affair?’ I ask Elena, because it’s one of the few things I still don’t know.
Elena actually laughs, she’s so shocked. ‘No. Why?’
‘That party we had at our house,’ I say, ‘after the funeral. I overheard you on the phone telling someone it wasn’t safe to come.
You said that you loved them.’ Maybe I should be more embarrassed about my eavesdropping, but if Elena can talk freely about her role in the murder of her husband, I can admit to a little snooping.
Frown lines appear on Elena’s forehead, like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
I watch as they straighten out and disappear.
‘That was Michael,’ she says. ‘He was already in Perth, of course, and he wanted to come to support me. But it was ridiculous: he was supposed to be in Melbourne so he couldn’t possibly be implicated.
Plus, what if someone from the dinner party had turned up and recognised him? ’
‘But only Adam turned up,’ I say, thinking about it. ‘None of the others came over. What was up with that?’
‘I didn’t invite any of them,’ Elena admits. ‘I couldn’t risk it. If they’d seen a photo of Felix, it would have all come out. Adam turned up because he found out about it from a mutual friend.’
‘We thought you and Adam were having an affair,’ Patrick says.
Elena actually rolls her eyes. ‘Adam’s gay.’
‘We know that now.’
‘For a skinny Melbourne hipster, Patrick, you have rubbish gaydar.’
Lilia snickers.
I’m running out of questions, which means it’s probably time to ask the big one. ‘Right,’ I say to the siblings. ‘What happens next?’
‘What do you mean?’ Elena asks.
But Patrick gets it. ‘Nobody’s going to stop you from going to the police if you want to,’ he says and his eyes cut to Michael, like maybe he’s not a hundred per cent sure.
Then he does something so unexpected I let it happen: he reaches out and takes my hand.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about holding Patrick’s hand, exactly, it’s just that I didn’t envisage it happening during these particular circumstances.
I guess I thought maybe we’d be at the movies or sitting on the couch and he’d take my hand and I’d say …
‘Of course not,’ Elena says firmly and her eyes don’t flit to Michael at all. Also, she doesn’t take my hand (which is probably for the best).
Michael just nods, looking entirely unthreatening (although I already know he’s a good actor). ‘What happens next is really up to you, Heidi,’ he says.