Chapter 47
47
Max
‘I should have said something.’ Grey’s face was hard angles of fury as he ripped the keys from Bessy’s ignition in the visitors’ parking lot. ‘I should have told her what really happened, begged for forgiveness, something ...’
‘And what good would have come from that?’ Max asked. ‘She’d already made up her mind that you or all the Barbaranis were responsible for Rocky falling off that balcony. Nothing you said would have changed that. You could have driven him home and put him to bed and if he’d died from an overdose or from an undiagnosed brain tumour, she still would have found a way to blame you. That’s what women like Libby do, that’s how they justify their worldview.’
Neither of them said anything else as they jogged over the loose grey bitumen of the visitors’ car park, though Max wondered if something had relaxed ever so slightly in Grey’s shoulders.
‘You were never here, okay?’ Alexandra looked over her shoulder as she ushered them through security. ‘We’ve got about five minutes before shift change and you’ll have about thirty seconds from then to get out before you get locked back in here again, Conrad. Everything’s changed now that we’ve had a ...’
‘Death,’ Grey said, as though he was still trying to convince himself.
‘How did it happen?’ Max demanded, her heart thundering in revolt against her body for dragging it back into this place.
‘We can’t be sure,’ Alexandra said.
‘But you think it’s suspicious?’ Max prompted as the guard took them into a room lined with monitors showing each angle of the prison. She felt a little sick knowing that she’d once been one of those amorphous shapes dotted on the screen, her movements catalogued while a guard sat in one of these chairs eating reheated chicken curry. That was the future Frankie Barbarani had to look forward to – a future she would already be getting a taste for in remand at Bandyup Women’s Prison while she awaited her trial.
‘We can’t rule anything out,’ Alexandra said. ‘Especially as she had no known medical concerns. She didn’t appear lethargic and there was nothing out of the order mentally. If anything, she seemed in higher spirits than normal.’
Because no one had broken the news to her yet that the Barbaranis were still alive.
‘The body’s with the coroner,’ she continued. ‘We won’t have the full report for a while.’
‘I know Frankie Barbarani visited Libby five times within the year,’ Grey said, ‘and I also know that Frankie’s mentor, Esme Gold, was stuck in the same block as Libby and Max.’
‘You always were a know-it-all.’ Alexandra lowered her eyes. ‘You know I wasn’t at liberty to tell you any of that. Should have guessed you’d find another way to get the information. But I didn’t know about the connection between Francesca and Esme, I just knew that Francesca had been to see Libby. Obviously, if I had, I—’
‘I’m not blaming you ,’ Grey said.
I am. A bit , Max thought.
‘Did anyone visit Libby these past few days, since we were here?’ Grey asked.
Alexandra was already clicking through the security footage as though she’d anticipated his question. ‘I know exactly what time stamp to look for,’ Alexandra said, clicking furiously, ‘because she died a minute after he left.’
He. The second visitor Alexandra had mentioned.
‘She just collapsed in the hall outside the visitors’ room. No wound or anything. We couldn’t find a pulse. It was silent, like the Grim Reaper had just floated past and snatched her soul.’
‘No wound?’ Max said.
Alexandra pursed her lips as she brought up a clip stamped 1.30 p.m. the day before. Libby sat in the visitors’ room, facing away from the camera, but her slim shoulders and scraggly hair swept up in a thick ponytail showed it was unmistakably her.
They waited in silence as the tape played the last few minutes of Libby’s life.
If it wasn’t for the movements of the other inmates hugging and laughing and fighting with their loved ones around her, Max would have sworn the tape was paused. Libby stayed perfectly still, like a lion waiting for its prey. Eventually, a tall, lean figure with blond hair sat down in front of her. The camera was blurry and the angle cut off most of his identifying features but Max had watched footage of him getting thrown to the ground by Luca Barbarani on many grainy and opportune screens from the night Rocky Road died.
This visitor’s face was the last one she’d seen before she lost Grey and the others at the gala. Even in a black beanie and gloves, she wasn’t going to forget Forrest Valentine in a hurry.
‘ He poisoned the wine.’ Grey dragged a hand down his jaw. ‘The walk, the way he leans slightly too far to the left with every second step. And the height. That’s the guy from the CCTV in Liquor Paradise.’
‘ Forrest Valentine? ’ Max said. ‘Working with Libby ?’ She watched as Forrest reached out a gloved hand, brushing his thumb against Libby’s bare skin.
Just a scratch. Enough to kill you three hundred times over.
Ice crystallised over her lungs.
‘Tell the coroner to test her for etorphine,’ Max said. ‘It won’t be on the list of drugs she’ll look for. It’s a buffalo sedative, used by wildlife vets.’
‘But Quinton’s in custody,’ Grey said.
‘His satchel was missing, he said, down in the passageway. Forrest must have stolen it before he ran.’ Max pointed to the frozen shot of Forrest holding Libby’s hand. ‘He put etorphine on his glove, just like he put the rat poison in the Barbarani Sangue.’
Frankie’s voice rang in her ears like the after-effects of an explosion. They’ve done it before.
‘The boating accident,’ Max said, ‘where all of Forrest’s family died. What if it wasn’t an accident? What if it was ETR? Didn’t Frankie say Forrest’s brother was a member?’
‘You think Callum Valentine made the same promise to ETR that Frankie did? They kill his family so he becomes the sole heir to the mining fortune?’
‘Did they look similar?’ Max asked. ‘Forrest and Callum? They were twins, right?’
‘Identical.’
‘So what if ETR made a mistake?’ Max tucked her shaking hands into her jeans. ‘And the wrong brother drowned? Forrest wasn’t supposed to survive the accident, Callum was.’
Grey’s eyes gleamed. ‘If Forrest realised what his brother had done ... and tracked down Esme ...’
‘Esme’s the connection between Forrest and Libby.’
‘Take us to Esme Gold,’ Grey demanded. ‘Now.’
‘I can’t.’ Alexandra’s face was the colour of chalk. ‘They relocated her two days ago. Maximum security. Even you can’t get in there, Hawke.’
The black and white ghosts on the screen were the only life in that room as Alexandra’s words thumped against the concrete like dead birds.
‘It won’t matter,’ Max said quietly. ‘Forrest had his own motivations.’ She thought of the way Luca had looked at Ariana La Marca all night, Sophie’s article about the black eye he’d given Forrest at the party. But she’d never be able to prove it.
Just like Evan, Forrest was a monster who’d escaped. Max was left in the wake of their screeching tyres, counting dead women.
‘You need to get out of here,’ Alexandra urged, directing them back down the corridor. ‘I don’t have a good enough explanation for why two civilians are here when we’ve had an inmate potentially murdered by a visitor right under our noses.’
Civilian. The word didn’t hurt as it once had. Cop. Criminal. Civilian. Maybe she didn’t have to fit into one box.
‘There won’t be any more,’ Grey told her quietly, as she scanned them out of the door. ‘He’s silenced the only people who could put him in a place like this.’
Something clanged down the corridor. Alexandra whipped her head around. ‘Go!’
Grey took Max’s hand and they pelted down the corridor as Alexandra slammed the door behind them. The sound of a full stop. A chapter ending. But Max had no idea how to turn the page, or where to run from here.
Had Libby convinced Forrest to play his part by promising it would eradicate Luca Barbarani from the world?
‘I know she lied,’ Max said, as she and Grey were assaulted by the caustic morning sunlight, ‘but she didn’t deserve ... She was just trying to survive, grieve her son ... She might have—’ She broke, the image of Libby slumping forward on the prison’s grainy CCTV footage replaying on an endless loop in her mind.
She might have helped us. She might have repented. Libby had never liked Esme; she was probably just using her and ETR because the easiest way to get to the Barbaranis was through one of their own. Max had never been able to hate a bee for stinging her. It was just protecting itself, its hive – it was instinct. And the same way, she couldn’t hate Libby Johnston, and she couldn’t hate Jackie, not completely.
But she could hate the men who’d tried to destroy them.
Something blazed inside her – a flare started from a flint against a silver knife. A knife picked up from a kitchen bench. Or a knife that never existed at all. A memory so hazy she’d never be sure.
But the dishwasher had been on. And Jackie never left the kitchen in a mess. It had been the only thing they’d ever fought about, until Evan. When they lived together, Max existed in comfortable chaos, while Jackie was Marie Kondo. A knife would never have been left out on a kitchen bench in a house that Jackie owned when a dishwasher was on.
But maybe Evan had threatened her with one earlier that he’d pulled from the drawer – before he threw her through the coffee table. Maybe Jackie had grabbed it herself, maybe she’d started the fight. But maybe, in her shaking, hallucinogenic state, Max had grabbed a clean knife from the drawer while Evan lay bleeding by her feet and put it on the bench before her colleagues arrived.
For the first time, as she stared up at the prison gate, the sun burning through her eyelids, Libby’s lifeless body burning through her soul, Max let herself believe the version of events where the knife had never existed. Where she’d tried to kill an unarmed man before he killed her friend.
She let herself be that person, who she might be but would never know for sure. She had to be okay with that.
That was what helped her breathing steady. That and the warm, solid body surrounding her, at her lowest, her worst, seeing all of her and not flinching.
‘I know,’ Grey murmured, as she collapsed into him, tears and hair and teeth. He held her while she quaked, her tectonic pieces converging and transforming, trying to adjust to this reality. But this time she didn’t have to do it on her own.
‘We’ll get him,’ Grey promised. ‘We’ll get him the right way. Nella will help us prove it, we just need to bide our time. I’ll keep you updated, every step of the way. I’ll drive down to Perth, I’ll ...’ He stopped as she pulled back, her blurred, tear-drenched vision able to make out those two forest brown eyes – her headlights in the darkness of this moment.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I ...’ He fumbled, a characteristic never once in history associated with Greyson Hawke. He raked a hand through his hair, suddenly unable to look her in the eye. ‘Sorry, I just assumed you’d want to be kept in the loop. But it’s probably ... You don’t want—I don’t have to ... I mean, you can just go back and ...’
‘Grey.’ She pushed her hair back. The pain was there, of course, but for the first time it felt contained, like she could touch it without scalding her hands. Because he was there too. ‘I’m staying.’
His head shot up. ‘Staying?’
She smiled at the incredulous look on his face. Ha , she couldn’t help thinking. I won. I made that look appear. ‘In Bindi Bindi Cove. I texted Nella back in the car – I want the job. I thought maybe we could do it together.’
‘Private investigation?’
Max shrugged. ‘I’m not getting my badge back. I’m not sure I even want it. Private investigation involves everything I loved about being a police officer but I get to do it on my terms. Pick my cases, choose how I want to make a difference. And I want you to do that with me, if you’re willing.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, obviously you’d have to interview and everything, I can’t guarantee I’ll hire you, but—’
She wasn’t exactly sure what the ‘but’ was going to be because it was trapped by the fierce press of his mouth.
‘You can’t do that to me at work – I’ll report you to HR.’ She smirked into his lips as she let that intoxicating Christmas paper smell wrap her up. Her tears weren’t dry yet, but the morning sun was slowly crystallising them to her skin, his rough thumb helping it along.
‘Well, I’m still cataloguing the multitude of infractions you’ve made at my current workplace: assaulting me in my garden, swimming naked in a hot spring while on the clock, uniform violations of the highest impropriety ...’
‘All right.’ She traced a finger over the sharp curve of his jaw; she’d murder him if he shaved before she’d had time to enjoy this exact length of stubble. ‘How about we just call it a truce and start afresh. A clean slate.’
‘A truce?’ His brow furrowed. ‘Seems a bit extreme.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘I want to argue with you forever.’
‘No truce then?’ Her lips brushed his as she felt his mouth curve in surrender.
‘Never.’