Epilogue
Katy survived.
Judith, who had no great faith in a higher power, thought it must be some kind of miracle, though she later learned that Katy wasn’t the first to fall beneath the wheels of a train and walk away.
Well, not walk away.
What saved her was that she fell between the tracks.
She hit her head in the fall, and she’d been unconscious when the train had gone over her.
The wheels hadn’t touched her, but parts of the train undercarriage hung too low for Katy to come out unscathed.
She had suffered a fractured skull and three fractured ribs, lacerations to her chest that required one hundred and twenty stiches to close, and a ruptured spleen.
It had taken only fourteen minutes for the emergency teams to converge on the station, but it was another twenty-two minutes before they’d managed to get her out from under the train.
She’d been so close to death. In the hospital, they’d stabilised her and sent her up to surgery, where her spleen was removed and her lacerations closed.
The doctors said her chances of survival were low.
But after forty-eight hours in the ICU, the same doctors decided she was well enough to be moved to the ward, and ten days after Katy was carried into the hospital, she was wheeled out of it and sent home.
Two weeks after that, on a Friday evening at five o’clock, Judith rode her bike over to Katy and Oliver’s place, making a couple of pit stops along the way. She parked and got off the bike, then limped her way to the front door. She knocked, and Oliver opened it, enveloping her with a hug.
‘Careful! Jesus. If I drop all of this, Katy will never forgive me.’
Judith had brought wine—two bottles—and a giant bag of Indian take-out. It was her turn to cook, which always meant take-out, because Ollie refused to eat anything Judith had had a hand in. Admittedly for good reason.
‘Let’s take it outside,’ Oliver said. ‘Katy’s on the deck.’
They found her curled up on the outside couch, a blanket across her legs and a glass of wine already in hand.
‘Your doctor said that’s okay?’
Katy raised an eyebrow. ‘She recommended it.’ She looked tired, and too thin, and there was yellow bruising on her forehead and at her collarbone.
‘No more pain meds?’
‘No more pain meds,’ Katy confirmed.
Oliver took the bag of food inside. He filled two plates and brought them back to the women, then retreated back into the house.
‘He doesn’t want to join us?’ Judith asked.
‘He’s going to eat with the kids. They’re going to watch a movie.’
It was a beautiful evening. Unseasonably warm, with a gentle breeze.
Judith and Katy ate and drank and talked about nothing at all.
When the food was finished, they pushed their plates to the end of the table, and Katy refilled their glasses.
Grimacing a little, Judith lifted her legs and rested her feet on the chair opposite her.
‘How is it?’ Katy asked. ‘How’s the leg?’
Judith shrugged. ‘It’s fine. Coming along.
Stitches are coming out next week.’ She’d been very lucky that there’d been no infection.
The bucketful of antibiotics they’d ploughed into her had probably helped.
It was nothing, nothing at all in comparison to what Katy had gone through—was still going through.
‘And Cameron?’
Judith smiled, shaking her head. ‘He’s great. Really great. I saw him and his dad yesterday. You’d think something like that would screw up a kid for life, but he seems okay, really.’ She paused. ‘Do you think he’s just faking it? Putting on a good show for his dad?’
‘Maybe,’ Katy said. ‘But kids are resilient, you know? It will probably help that he was so brave in the cave. He kind of rescued himself. He’ll be able to hold on to that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I heard they found the bodies.’
Judith shook her head. ‘No bodies,’ she said. ‘Except poor Maggie’s, of course.’
‘Maggie?’
‘The Andersons’ last au pair. Ruth Hall used her father’s old trick. Lured Maggie to the cave, killed her there, waited a day or two and then applied for her job.’ It was Maggie’s body that Cameron had felt, floating in the water beside him.
‘They didn’t find the others?’
Judith shook her head again. It was too late. Too much time had gone by. Even bone won’t last ten years in sea water.
‘We found all of their bags and their passports. With what Ruth said to me, that’s enough. The cases are officially closed.’
There was a wide egg-chair thing on the other side of the porch. It looked comfortable. Judith stood up and made her way over to it.
‘This new?’
‘Bianca wanted it. She has her father wrapped around her little finger. They went to Bunnings to get drill bits and came back with that.’
Judith sank into the chair and rested her head against the back of the cushion. She was still dog-tired. The doctors said she’d lost a lot of blood. It would take time.
She looked at her friend. ‘I’m so sorry. I never thought she would go after you. And I should have. I should have seen it coming.’
Katy waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘There’s no way you could have known what she was going to do. No possible way. And you’re not going to take responsibility for it. I’m not having that shit. It’s just self-flagellation. It doesn’t help me, or you, or anyone.’
‘Yes, boss.’ Judith closed her eyes. She couldn’t let it go that easily. She should have seen Ruth for what she was from the start.
‘I didn’t mean for you to do that, you know,’ Katy said.
‘Do what?’
‘When I said you should be brave for other people, I didn’t mean that you should follow a psychopath into a cave, unarmed.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Can we just agree, though, that that kind of thing is not a good idea?’
‘Shut up, Katy.’
Katy made a sound of mock outrage, and Judith smiled to herself, her eyes still closed. She could sleep there, easily. A minute passed, and she very nearly drifted off.
‘What about Ruth?’ Katy said, and all the humour was gone from her voice. ‘There’s still no sign of her?’
Some of Judith’s ease left her. ‘She’s in the wind.’
‘And what about your job?’
‘I don’t know. Still to be decided, I think.
’ Judith had already received the notice.
She was being called before a full disciplinary board.
The process had been postponed while she was recovering from her leg injury, but it would happen, sometime in the next couple of weeks.
It was hard to know what the outcome would be.
Ruth had sent the audio recording and the video to three different journalists, and there had been articles published and questions raised, but there had also been articles published about how she had rescued Cameron from the cave, about how she’d finally solved the murders of five missing women.
No one, it seemed, knew quite what to think.
Victoria Police had yet to make a statement.
‘Right,’ Katy said.
‘It’ll be all right,’ Judith said.
The prospect of losing her job was not as terrifying as it once would have been.
The attack on Katy, that journey down the side of the cliff and what had followed afterwards had put a lot of things in perspective.
Judith was a fighter. She had savings. One way or another, she’d survive.
And she might hold on to her job yet. It helped that she was being credited for the Charlie Palmer solves.
It helped too that Rocky was going to bat for her. She owed him so much.
‘I suppose it will be,’ Katy said, but she sounded dissatisfied.
Judith opened her eyes. ‘She sent me something.’
‘What?’
‘Ruth sent me a letter.’
Katy leaned forward in her chair, her eyes wide. ‘Are you serious? You never told me!’
‘It only arrived this morning. No personal delivery, she’s finished with that trick. It came by Australia Post. In a plain envelope. I called the station, they sent someone over to collect it.’
‘Well, what did it say?’
‘It wasn’t from Ruth, not really. It was a letter from Miriam.
She wrote it before she died, sent it to Ruth as a kind of apology, I suppose.
She was trying to explain why she’d made the decision to die.
That letter was the basis for everything.
Ruth pulled quotes from it and sent one to each of us—Walker, Jack, Elsa and me.
Everyone she blamed for her sister’s death. ’
‘And now Ruth’s sent that letter to you. Does that mean she’s done with you? Not done with you? Which?’
Judith sank back into the chair. She didn’t know the answer to that question, but she knew that whatever Ruth’s intentions, Judith was going to find her and put her behind bars.
There was already a nationwide manhunt. Hundreds of cops were already looking for Ruth Hall, and soon Judith would join them, officially, or unofficially.
But not right that minute. For a minute, for an hour even, Judith wanted to lie back in this big, ridiculously comfortable chair, her best friend safely nearby, to rest her head and her tired body, and maybe even sleep.