Chapter Twenty-Three
The Metropolitan Remand Centre was a prison located at Ravenhall, about twenty kilometres from Balwyn.
It was a maximum security facility where prisoners were held pretrial, until the outcome of their cases were determined, and occasionally when they had been sentenced but their sentences were under appeal.
It would be Jack Miller’s home for the next year or two, as his murder trial made its ponderous way through the system.
Judith met him there at three p.m. on Thursday afternoon.
Rocky had set the meeting up. It took place in a windowless interview room, deep inside the prison.
Jack was waiting for her, his hair still wet from the shower.
He was wearing a prison-issue grey T-shirt and pants.
He sat, his hands shackled to a restraint bar attached to the meeting table, looking exhausted and shellshocked.
Judith introduced herself.
‘I have a lawyer,’ he said. ‘You can’t talk to me without my lawyer present, right?’
Judith nodded. ‘That’s right. If you prefer, I’ll leave now.
We can try to arrange a time to meet when your lawyer is available.
That will take at least a few days to set up, maybe a week or longer.
Like I said, it’s your choice. All I can tell you is I’m not here to try to catch you out.
I’ve got some questions about what’s happened, and I think you might be able to help me figure something out. ’
Jack did not look reassured.
Judith took a seat. ‘I just want you to tell me your side of the story.’
‘Why? I’ve already done that, again and again. No one is listening to me.’
‘I need you to tell me again.’
‘Look, I didn’t know Robert Walker, okay?
I’d never heard of the guy until all of this happened.
Detective Jansen says that I murdered him as some kind of revenge for my girlfriend, who killed herself years ago.
He thinks I blame Walker for not saving her.
But that’s insanely stupid. Miriam died ten years ago.
If I was going to get revenge, why wait ten years?
I didn’t even know that she’d gone to see the guy, okay? She never told me.’
Judith’s eyes were on his face, watching every movement, every micro-expression, looking for anything at all that would indicate he wasn’t telling her the truth.
‘I checked the dates,’ she said. ‘Walker died ten years to the day after Miriam’s suicide. That’s doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me.’
Jack stared at her helplessly.
‘Tell me about the letter,’ she said.
‘The letter?’
‘You told Detective Jansen that the gun was delivered to your home. That it came with a letter.’
‘It wasn’t a letter. It was a note. Just a sentence.
‘Tell me what it said.’
‘I . . . I can’t remember, exactly. I think it said something like He’s still here but he’s gone.’ It didn’t make any sense.
Judith corrected him. ‘The exact line was He’s still here, sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be. That doesn’t mean anything to you? Really?’
‘Should it? Jesus, I don’t—’
‘Think about it for a moment.’
But it was clear Jack wasn’t seeing a connection. Judith didn’t know what to make of that. Was he being obtuse? Was it so close to him that he couldn’t see it? Or maybe it was her . . . maybe Rocky was right, and she was reading too much into the line, seeing things that weren’t there.
‘Tell me about Ruth.’
‘Ruth.’
‘Miriam’s sister, Ruth.’
‘Miriam didn’t have a sister,’ Jack said flatly, with absolute certainty.
‘She did, Jack.’
He stared back at her, clearly disbelieving.
‘She was four years younger than Miriam. You’re telling me that you never met her? That Miriam never once mentioned her to you?’
‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not. Whether this is all part of some game you’re playing. No, Miriam never mentioned that she had a sister. No, I never met her.’
‘You knew that Miriam had been in the foster care system?’
‘Yes, of course. Her parents were killed in a car accident. She went through three different foster families before she aged out. That was something we had in common. Messed-up childhoods. Wait, do you mean a foster sister or something? Because she would have had foster sisters.’
Judith ignored the question. If he was telling the truth, then he wasn’t going to be much help to her. He couldn’t tell her where to find Ruth.
‘Tell me about the box,’ she said. ‘The one you say the gun came in.’
‘It was just a box. Like a shoebox, but plain cardboard, and wrapped up like a present. Kind of gothic, black wrapping paper, a red velvet ribbon, a little daisy stuck into it. There was a handwritten card with my name on it. And that note. Why did you ask me about the note?’
There was no reason not to tell him. He’d find out eventually. His lawyer would get all of the information in discovery.
‘Because Robert Walker’s wife was also sent a box like yours. Sounds like it was the same kind of wrapping. Came with a similar note.’
Jack’s eyes widened. ‘What did the note say?’
‘I tried to get help. That was a big mistake.’
Jack was quiet for a long moment. ‘What else? What was in the box?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
‘There was a USB drive. With a video.’
‘Showing?’
‘It seemed to show Walker having a sexual encounter with a woman in his consulting rooms. It might have been a fake video. That has to be confirmed.’
Jack’s hands were still shackled, but the chain had some movement. He was able to raise his hands. He rested his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands and rubbed at his forehead.
‘This is all so strange,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think this is all so strange?
’ He raised his head again. ‘I promise you. I had no idea Miriam went to see him. No idea. But if I had, I wouldn’t have blamed him for her death.
She saw him once, right? Why would I blame a doctor who had seen her once, when I lived with her, I loved her, and I didn’t save her? ’
‘Jack, I need you to think. Think hard. Maybe Miriam never said anything to you about her sister, but you knew her. You lived with her and you loved her, just like you said. There must be something.’
But Jack was shaking his head. ‘If you mean a birth sister, a sister from the same parents, then she never said anything. I don’t know why she’d hide something like that. It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Were there places Miriam liked to go? Did she ever go away for a few nights and not give you a full explanation for where she was going?’
Again, he shook his head. ‘Never. She never stayed away at night. During the day . . . I was working, she could have gone anywhere.’
‘Did she have close friends from her childhood? People she spent time with?’
‘No. There was no one. That was part of it, you see. Part of why we needed each other so much. We didn’t have anyone else. Not family, I mean.’
‘Okay.’ This wasn’t getting her anywhere. She pushed back her chair.
‘Wait, you’re leaving?’ Jack suddenly looked panicked.
‘I’ll have someone bring you back to your cell.’
‘But what does all of this mean? That Walker’s wife got a box too? Does that mean you believe me? That you’ll let me go?’
‘It’s not that simple. Better that you talk to your lawyer.’ Judith was almost at the door.
‘Wait. Wait!’
She turned.
‘Can you check on Cam? My son, Cameron. He’s at my friend’s house. Elsa Anderson.’
‘You should talk to your lawyer,’ Judith said.
‘I don’t know when I’m going to see him again. You said it could be days. Please. Please could you just make sure that Cam’s okay?’
The strain in Jack’s face and voice was evident.
‘If your son’s with your friend, I’m sure he’s okay. But yes, I’ll check on him for you.’ She took Elsa Anderson’s address.
‘Thank you,’ Jack said. ‘Thank you very much.’
* * *
Judith left the prison with her mind still turning.
She checked her phone when she got back to the car and saw that she’d missed a call from the garage that had her bike.
It was ready to collect. She called them back and managed to talk the young mechanic into driving the bike to the station and meeting her there.
He was as good as his word. By the time she’d driven over and parked the patrol car in the secure garage, he was waiting outside on the street.
She signed his paperwork, gave him the fifty dollars she’d promised him for the personal delivery, then gave him another thirty dollars, the keys to the scooter and her address.
He set off to get a tram to her place, happy enough with their deal, and Judith drove her bike into the garage and parked it, this time taking care to find a space near the exit that was in direct view of a camera.
She went upstairs. There were others in the squad room, and Judith nodded a hello, but she went directly to her desk and logged in to her terminal.
While she waited for the computer to wake up, she took out her notebook and turned all the way back to the notes she had taken in her interview with Alexis Turner a week and a half ago.
Her notes were sparse, far too sparse, because she’d been aware of the voice recording.
She’d scratched down only a handful of words: Alexis’s name and her age and her status as a college student.
The words headaches and claustrophobia then, a little further down the page, student—food science/chemistry and Robert Walker.
His name was underlined. The pen had gone deep enough that it had very nearly ripped through the page.
That was it. The end of her notes. She’d stopped writing because she’d been so focused on watching Alexis. She hadn’t wanted to miss anything the other woman said. Judith turned back to her screen and called up the video recording. She slipped on her headphones, pressed play, and closed her eyes.
Just like that, she was back in the room, listening to Alexis describe what had happened. Telling her about Walker, about how he’d told her to relax.
Alexis had been completely believable. That was the thing that Judith’s brain kept bumping up against. Judith wasn’t a fool and she wasn’t naive.
She’d worked at least an interview a week .
. . sometimes as many as four or five . .
. for her entire career. Which meant something like a thousand or fifteen hundred interviews.
In all of that time the vast majority of people who’d sat opposite her had lied badly.
You got to know the tells. The unnecessary detail or exaggerations.
The eyes that kept slipping away or that held on to hers too tightly.
There were a hundred obvious tells and a hundred others that were so subtle she probably wouldn’t have been able to describe them specifically, but she recognised them, or at least her subconscious did.
Every now and again she’d come across an expert liar—someone who could pull off a lie with perfect ease—but that was rare, and even with those people, there was usually at least one moment that seemed off.
With Alexis, there had been no discordant moment.
Judith had believed her. One hundred per cent believed her.
But Alexis Turner was not at all who she had appeared to be.
She’d adopted a false name, and with it a false personality.
The real Ruth Hall was a more complex being than the angry, hurt girl who’d sat opposite Judith in the interview room.
The real Ruth was an excellent liar. She was clearly intelligent and organised and inventive.
She was also fearless. She’d walked into a police station and sat opposite Judith and played her role, utterly convincingly.
She’d then killed Robert Walker. She had, Judith believed, set up Jack Miller for that murder.
Maybe Walker had deserved his end, and plenty would argue that he’d had it coming, but did Jack deserve what Alexis had sent his way?
Judith didn’t think so. Jack had failed Miriam—admitted it in his own words—but he’d been young and clueless.
There had been nothing deliberate. Clearly, Alexis saw things differently.
Frowning, Judith closed the file again and logged off the system. She picked up her mobile and called Katy.