Chapter 5
RUSSELL
We got almost all the way to Glenorie in silence so thick and loud it thrummed in my brain; heavier than the roar of my Mustang.
And it’s an old Mustang, with a throaty growl and a loose alternator belt.
Bridie is tall, like me, so she curled up in her seat in a jumble of legs, like a greyhound on an undersized dog bed, and watched the suburbs become steadily bushier until the horizon had disappeared and we were surrounded by tall, pale gums.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said, ‘I’m really sorry about this.’
She probably thought I just meant the past hour, when really I meant the past ten years, so she said, ‘It’s not your fault. It’s work.’
‘It kind of is my fault, though.’
‘How?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I might have given a drug dealer a little love tap yesterday. This case is my punishment.’
‘You hit a guy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’ Bridie turned slightly in her seat. I felt her eyes on my face, gripped the steering wheel hard, told myself this week was about being completely honest.
‘Um. Well. I’d been called in to take a look at his apartment in Hillsdale.
There were bullet holes all over it. The guy’s girlfriend had called the cops because they’d been robbed for a bunch of electronics.
And she shouldn’t have done that, because, you know …
It was an obvious dealer house.’ I shifted in my seat.
‘So her boyfriend, he was pissed already. Then the girlfriend starts telling me that there’s not only electronics missing from the apartment but cash, too.
Lots of it. And I ask why there’s so much cash lying around.
And the boyfriend grabs her to shut her up. ’
‘He grabbed her?’
‘Yeah. Hard. So, I … you know …’
‘You smacked him one.’
‘I did.’ I looked over at Bridie.
We both fell silent. Bridie’s face was unreadable.
I’d punched someone in front of her once, and the guilt about that was like a splinter in my brain.
We settled back into the swampy, suffocating silence.
My phone was buzzing in my pocket. I rounded a curve and the small township of Glenorie opened up in front of us, a big Woolworths car park and a cluster of shops hugging a little road leading into the suburb.
There was a giant fibreglass meat pie sitting on top of a trailer off to the side of the road, big as a kiddie pool.
‘I need coffee.’ I started pulling over. ‘I was up all night filling in reports and stuff for clipping the junkie. Do you, uh … do you drink coffee?’
‘I do.’
I slipped my wallet from my pocket and handed it to her. ‘Maybe you could go grab us some supplies while I get started on those thousands of phone calls.’
She took the wallet wordlessly and got out. The relief her absence brought made me break out in a sweat. This was like the worst date I’d ever been on in my life. I finally answered the unknown number. ‘Yeah?’
‘Gunther Powder?’
‘It’s Russell. Who’s this?’
‘Oh. Right. It’s Senior Sergeant Louis Dodge here, from Wisemans Ferry Area Command. I’m calling because—’
‘Okay, so for you it’s “Detective Inspector Powder”, then. Or “Sir”.’
There was silence on Dodge’s end of the line, a beat while the rural cop switched gears and started pedalling hard to catch up.
‘Right. Of course. Detective Inspector … I was just checking on your ETA. I’ve got the scene held down, but …
I don’t know if you want a sitrep now, or when you get here, or … ?’
‘What do you mean you’ve got it “held down”?’ I let my voice, which was already tight, tighten further. ‘Get it through your head now, Dodge, that cop speak terms like “sitrep” and “held down” annoy the shit out of me. What’s the scene?’
‘It’s a hotel room, sir. Girl in her twenties killed in her room at the pub here in town. Chloe Lutz is her name.’
‘And who’s been inside that hotel room?’
‘Ah, well, I’ve got four patrollies from Wisemans Ferry station assisting me. They’re my staff. And we’ve been sent a snapper—uh, a photographer—from Sydney. She got here ahead of you, so I let her in to do her thing.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ I held my head. ‘Dodge, get the photographer out of there until I’ve done my walk-through. Get everyone out of there. Have the four patrollies been in the room?’
‘No, sir, they’ve been in the hall, but—’
‘Get everyone out of the fucking building, Dodge. For fuck’s sake!’
‘You’ve got it, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t be sorry; do your job and establish a cordon. Have you got the names of the paramedics?’
‘The ones who took the body away, you mean?’
‘The body’s gone?’
‘Uh, yes. It’s—’
‘Why is the fucking body gone?’
‘If you’ll give me a second to explain.’ Dodge drew a strangled breath.
‘It wasn’t immediately clear to the paramedics on scene how long Ms Lutz had been deceased.
The body was limp, and the heating was cranked in the room, so she was warm and she appeared to have been, uh, just recently injured.
There was a decision made to get her out of there and continue CPR on the off chance she might be helped. ’
‘Jeeez.’
‘The deceased is now at the local medical centre, until we’re instructed by you to transport her Sydney for forensic testing. I’ve got the staff from the pub trying to drum up a list of names of everyone who was here last night.’
‘What? Everyone who was where?’
‘The hotel rooms are above a pub. It’s looking to me like someone’s followed the victim to her room from the crowd downstairs, maybe went berserk when she wouldn’t let him in.’
‘Listen to me carefully, Dodge. Because I’m only going to say this once.’
‘Okay?’
‘I need your half-baked theories about what happened during this homicide like I need to contract a flesh-eating disease of the eyeballs,’ I said. ‘Offer me another one and we’re going to have serious problems.’
‘Got it, sir.’
I hung up. Bridie had climbed back into the car so quietly I hadn’t noticed. She was sitting there beside me with my wallet in her lap and her eyes just slightly too wide. I could feel the pulse in my neck ticking like a bomb.
‘I’ve ordered.’ She held the wallet up, eyes on the dashboard. ‘I didn’t know what card to use, though.’
‘Oh, right. Sorry.’ I took the wallet from her, pulled out my Visa. She tucked her lips in, nodded, did a little shuffle in her seat like she was trying to decide whether to get back out of the car or not.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Bridie.’
‘Yeah?’
‘When I’m at work …’ I struggled, my pulse slowing, sweat beading at my brow. ‘I’m … I’m a complete fucking arsehole, okay? To everyone. It … it doesn’t matter who they are or whether they’re doing a good job or not. It’s just how I operate.’
‘The Prick Switch.’ She nodded.
‘Huh?’
‘Mum calls it your Prick Switch.’ Bridie’s eyes darted to mine and then away, quick as a flash. ‘Like, you sort of … flip the switch on and become a total prick. She said you do it because it keeps people away from you.’
I watched my daughter and felt sad and embarrassed, and yet more understood by my ex-wife than I had in the course of our entire marriage. ‘That’s right. You two have talked about this?’
‘Yes.’
‘About me being a prick?’
‘Only to say, like, she wishes she had one,’ Bridie said. ‘A Prick Switch. Like, if she had one, people would leave her alone about what happened in … in the marriage.’
I mulled over a question I didn’t want to ask, a question I already knew the answer to. The answer had been riding in the back seat of my heart for half a decade. ‘People give her shit about the divorce, do they?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Still?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What kind of shit?’
‘Um, like, they call her “The Beard”,’ Bridie said. ‘Or whatever.’
I looked out the windscreen so I didn’t have to look at my child. ‘I’m sorry, Bridie.’
‘I know.’ She popped the car door. ‘I’ll go get the coffee.’