Liars, page 30
‘Just Gary, and he went straight to bed. I assumed the others were in their rooms.’
‘And of course Leanne doesn’t have an alibi either. We don’t know where she slept. You said you and Sal left the pub to walk home together, then you decided to come back?’
‘Yep,’ said Seb, suddenly self-conscious. He tried to arrange his face into a neutral expression, but he seemed to have forgotten how.
‘That doesn’t really make sense to me, I’m afraid,’ continued Barb, frowning. ‘I just wonder if there’s more to it?’
Seb looked blankly at her. Or tried to. Was he smiling? He tried to make his mouth a straight line.
‘In the podcast, Joe said he thought you had strong feelings for Sal, and you might have had a disagreement with her that night. I’ve noticed how upset you get when her death comes up. I mean, of course you do, as a friend, but is it perhaps more than that? If you did have strong feelings for her, then that night at the pub, everyone else was around, and then, finally, you’re alone, walking home with her. She was single again, you’d drunk quite a lot. It just seems unlikely you’d turn around and go back to the pub unless … Did you, perhaps, find yourself telling her how you felt? And did you return to the pub, as Joe suggested, because it didn’t go well?’
He felt frozen. They sat in silence a long time, side by side on the couch, Seb staring straight ahead at nothing. He could sense Barb studying him, until, without making a conscious decision, he started to talk.
‘I’d fallen for her before she got with Joe. When they broke up, I tried to be patient. Told myself to go slow, and I did. I was a good friend, listened to all her break-up stuff, but … I didn’t know how she felt about me. Didn’t know if she knew how I felt. It was driving me crazy. That night as we walked home, I blurted it out.’
‘How did she react?’
‘In my mind, I imagined us falling into each other’s arms, but … she said, of course she liked me, but she’d just got out of a relationship and we were all in a band together, so it was complicated and she needed to simplify her life, not complicate it more and … I just got this feeling of doom, like everything was collapsing, and I said something stupid and angry and stormed off.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I can’t really remember. That she was hiding from the truth or something pathetic and ridiculous like that. Then, next morning when I got home, she was gone. I assumed it was because of what I’d said. That it was the last straw for her. I was the person she thought she could talk to and trust, and then suddenly I’d become yet another problem for her. Ever since, I’ve thought, if I’d just kept quiet, she wouldn’t have left and …’ he found it difficult to get words out ‘… she wouldn’t be dead. It’s my fault.’
Barb put her arm around his shoulders.
‘You poor boy. Carrying that all these years.’
Seb nodded, unable to speak.
‘But now, you know you weren’t the last straw. Because someone assaulted Sal, and it must have been later that very night, after you’d left her.’
‘Exactly,’ he said despairingly. ‘After I’d left. If I hadn’t of said all that, we would have gone home together, and maybe whatever happened, wouldn’t have, because I would have been there. It’s still my fault.’
CHAPTER 65
After Sal died, from the outside, Seb’s life looked the same. Uni, work, home with a new flatmate, occasional nights at the pub. But the lights had dimmed. Everything had gone grey. Her absence was constantly present.
He didn’t drop out of uni, but he did stop caring and barely passed the year. By then, it was clear the police had failed to find her killer. He applied to police college. He wanted to make amends for his failings with Sal. Maybe he could become a detective and solve crimes, even prevent them.
After training he was posted to Blacktown, a big station with a clear pathway to detective. There was lots to learn, responsibility to earn, progress to be made. A year in, he attended a call to an apartment. A woman had been stabbed, and he watched her die as the paramedics did their best. The next day her boyfriend was arrested and Seb realised the essential pointlessness of becoming a detective. Even if you caught the killer, it was too late. The person was still dead. Soon after, he saw a posting to Bullford Point. Everyone else thought ‘backwater’. He thought ‘home’.
It was a two-person station, and his boss knew how to live the easy life while still hitting his KPIs. Setting up random breath-testing sites every second Saturday at one of three sites all the locals knew didn’t seem like cutting-edge policing, but it was low stress. He was comfortable, and that would do.
After two years, Seb’s boss retired, his position wasn’t filled, and Seb was alone and in charge. He could always become a detective later, he told himself, and sometimes even believed it. Occasionally, the desire to solve important cases still tugged, but he would remind himself how he had deliberately tried to break up Joe and Sal’s relationship, and then caused Sal to run away from Sydney. He had behaved badly, and as a result the woman he loved had died. Was he really responsible enough to be a detective?
He had never had a girlfriend, despite opportunities. He had a one-night, two-night, even a three-night stand, but then always found himself retreating, finding little things to be irritated with, and making excuses until the message was received. None of them, after all, were Sal. Days, weeks, months passed. Then, when he finally met a woman he did like, it was all stuffed up because, once again, he was lying and cheating.
CHAPTER 66
Sitting on her balcony, munching her usual breakfast of two slices of toast with strawberry jam, Barb admired the birds’ busy feeding routine, manoeuvring up and down the rail to peck at the seed she had just put out.
As she sipped her tea, she wondered if there was more that Seb hadn’t told her about what happened on Sal’s last night in Sydney. Could his disappointment at Sal’s rejection have bubbled over into anger? Could alcohol have disinhibited him to the extent that he had grabbed Sal, and perhaps more? Could it have been he who assaulted Sal, and had the shock and upset caused her to run away? It seemed so unlike the Seb she knew, though. On the other hand, she found it almost impossible to believe that Joe had spent years lying and stealing, or that Dennis had had an affair, and they had. People surprise you.
Back to work. She opened Joe’s phone, found Monica’s number and called her. No answer. Should she leave a message? But what? ‘Hi, we haven’t met, but I listened to the podcast interview you did with Joe about your murdered housemate, Sal, and I think a bit of your interview was cut, and wondered if you remember everything you said, because I think Joe was murdered.’ It would sound like the rantings of a mad woman. She hung up. She would ring again later.
Her phone pinged. Dennis.
Just got an electricity bill reminder, so letting you know. Hope all well
She read it three times. How was she supposed to reply? How was she supposed to feel? Being an accountant, he had always paid the bills, whilst she had taken care of shopping, gardening and fixing things. Since he had left, she had discovered that paying bills didn’t actually take long at all, once you got the hang of that online banking. You could even set it up so they paid themselves! He had definitely got the better of that deal.
She didn’t get many texts. She scrolled down and didn’t have to go far before she found Joe’s last one, sent the day he died.
Really enjoy working with you, despite the messy car. You should get an archaeologist in there. Who knows what they’d find? In fact maybe there’s one lost in there somewhere already!
Cheeky. Typical Joe. The first time he had been in her car, he’d said, ‘Your house isn’t like this.’
‘Well, the house doesn’t have wheels, for one,’ she’d replied.
‘I meant … your house is very tidy.’ He’d glanced sideways at her, perhaps nervous he had overstepped.
Barb had only been slightly offended. ‘My husband wasn’t a neat freak, but I just felt that keeping the house tidy was the right thing to do. But the car was mine, so I did what I wanted.’
He chuckled. ‘You were rebelling.’
Perhaps in her own quiet way, she had been. She opened the text from Dennis to reply.
Thank you
Polite, but neutral. Play it cool.
If she had been rebelling in letting her car get messy, she didn’t need to do it anymore. She grabbed a garbage bag and headed outside.
CHAPTER 67
Seb had arrived at the station early, just before eight. Stomach clenching, afraid of what he might find, he had started looking for photos taken by Gary, Leanne, Viv, Dev, Joe and himself shortly after Sal’s death on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and any other platform he could think of. He wished he had access to their phones, but this was a start.
He had had Insta and Facebook at the time, but didn’t post much. On his Facebook he found a few group photos from before Sal died, but none after. He remembered her funeral, in Bullford Point. Awful. No one took photos at funerals.
Leanne next. He didn’t expect much. At the time she and Joe were delving into drugs, not exactly living a life that prompted lots of happy snaps. ‘Hi, peeps! Here’s me shooting up!’ Sure enough, no social media accounts for her except Facebook, which had been dormant at the time. He was weirdly still able to access Joe’s Facebook, despite his death, but nothing doing from back then.
Gary had Twitter, Insta and Facebook, and thousands more followers than the rest of them combined. His feed was mainly witty observations and jokes, plus promotions for gigs and whatever else he was doing. No photos from that period.
These days Dev had a vigorous social media presence, filled with pics of her beaming in front of real estate. Back then, she had already started to use Insta and Twitter to market herself to the world. At gatherings, she was always the one insisting on group selfies, and when he scrolled back that far there were plenty. But again, understandably, none in the weeks following Sal’s death.
Viv, surprisingly, had a well-maintained Facebook page containing many recent photos of him on bikes, next to bikes, bikes alone, and bike shoes. His account stretched back to uni days, but there was nothing of the group after Sal’s death.
*
Barb opened the front door of her car. Inside, three corn chip packets stared insolently at her from the passenger seat. She loved corn chips. After a hard day’s work, they were the perfect gobble on a drive home. She put the wrappers, plus three empty apple juice bottles and other papers and plastic into the garbage bag before moving to the back, where things got really ugly. You could hardly see the seat through the empty corn chip packets, juice and soft drink bottles, and plastic packaging from the window latches, door handles, etcetera she installed for clients. She binned them, then kneeled to reach under the seat. More corn chip packets, two Snickers wrappers and thirteen dollars in coins. Did shops even take coins anymore? Would she have to find one of those old-style bubble-gum machines? She pushed her arm further under the seat, her shoulder muscles complaining. Or was it the ligaments? She pulled out more wrappers, then reached under again and felt from side to side. That seemed to be it. She started to extract her arm and it brushed something metallic. She grabbed it and pulled it out.
It was a small, black rectangular prism, a couple of centimetres high and about fifteen wide and broad. On one side was a USB hole. She had never seen a computer backup before, but would bet this was one, especially as it had a piece of masking tape stuck to it with the word ‘ARCHAEOLOGIST’ written on it.
She pulled out her phone and looked at Joe’s last text.
Really enjoy working with you, despite the messy car. You should get an archaeologist in there. Who knows what they’d find? In fact maybe there’s one in there somewhere already!
He’d sent her a coded message, telling her where his backup was. Why? She thought back to the last time Joe had been in the car, the day he died. They were walking down the driveway of the Simpsons’ holiday house in Kincumber to tidy their garden when he’d doubled back. ‘Forgot my bag.’ She hadn’t even thought about how difficult it would be to forget a bag that had been sitting on your lap. He must have had the backup in it and hidden it under her passenger seat. Why hadn’t he just asked her to mind it? Probably because he hadn’t wanted her to ask lots of nosy questions.
But why hide it? He must have thought he was getting close to uncovering the truth, and been worried someone might interfere with his computer. The backup was a precaution, one he hoped he would never need. He knew she never cleaned her car, and kept it unlocked, so he would have been able to retrieve it anytime. Then in his final text, sent later that day, he had given her a clue. Just in case.
CHAPTER 68
‘Every police station has a spare computer, but if I want a new kettle I have to buy it myself,’ Seb had complained as he pulled the laptop from a cupboard. He and Barb now watched a virtual disk spin on its screen as Joe’s backup regurgitated its contents.
Eventually, a message. ‘Download complete!’ Even the computer was excited.
‘So now we listen to everything again, to see what’s missing,’ said Barb.
‘It’s simpler than that,’ replied Seb. ‘We just look at the length of each interview on the backup and compare it to the same interview on his laptop. `If they’re the same length, the interviews are the same. If they’re different lengths, something has changed. Then we listen to the longer backup version, and work out what bits were deleted.’ He paused, glancing at Barb. ‘You’re looking confused. Or is it overwhelmed? Okay, you discovered this, so I’m going to do the comparing. I’ll text you when I know something. You go and have a nice walk or something.’
‘Are you sure?’ Barb asked.
‘Yes. I’ll need some quiet time, so if you see anyone approaching the station, tell them I’m in Woy Woy at a siege. Unless Frieda’s lost her cat again. That’s a genuine emergency.’
CHAPTER 69
Barb walked around the mangrove track, wondering if they were on the verge of a breakthrough. Her phone pinged. Dennis again.
How are you going with things?
She stared at it. What did that even mean? What ‘things’? Was there a subtext? If so, what? That he still cared? That he felt guilty? That he missed her? That he was alone and bored and wanted to text someone? Or was it just a bland enquiry into her welfare?
How should she respond? Great!! Never better!? Make him feel like he was missing out. Or was that too transparent? Lonely and missing you? Definitely not. Neediness pushed people away. Besides, whilst that answer had been true for the last few months, was it still true now? Sometimes, definitely. Right now? Not really.
All good here. You?
That seemed neutral. As she walked, she couldn’t stop herself checking her phone for a reply every few minutes.
Eventually, anticlimactically, it came.
Fine thanks
Her tyres deflated. No point replying to that. She wondered if his flurry of texts – well, three in a day – was an indication that he was regretting his decision to leave. Would he eventually tire of Ellen and want to return? If he did, would she take him back? Could things between them ever return to normal after what he had done? Could they find comfort and peace again, or would she be forever sniffing his shirts to check for perfume?
If she did take him back, would that mean she was weak? Apparently Beyoncé’s husband cheated, and they were still together, not to mention Hillary Clinton, and they were both feminist icons, weren’t they?
She imagined him begging her. ‘I’ve been a fool. Please!’
How would she respond? If the alternative was being alone, perhaps it was worth a try. But she was getting ahead of herself. He hadn’t asked.
She wondered how Seb was getting on. Had she made a mistake in leaving him alone with Joe’s computer backup, potentially a vital piece of evidence? He was, technically, a suspect. If he did have something to hide, could he tamper with those computer filey thingies?
It was hard not to get mixed up when he was both her nice, sensible crime-investigating partner and someone who could have killed Joe.
Another ping. Seb.
Have discovered podcast recordings that were deleted from Joe’s computer!
CHAPTER 70
They sat at Seb’s desk, staring at the computer.
‘The first bit that is on the backup, but not on Joe’s laptop, is a part of Joe’s interview with Monica,’ said Seb.
‘Yes, I thought I heard something that could have been a cut.’
‘Here it is.’ He clicked.
JOE: It was pretty weird. All of us in the band used to spend so much time together, then Sal left and we never saw her again. Did she talk about the band?
MONICA: A bit, yeah. She lit up when she did. They were good memories for her. I think she missed it. But she saw at least one of you again.
JOE: Who?
MONICA: A woman.
JOE: Leanne? Dev?
MONICA: Leanne was her name, yeah. She came to our place.
JOE: Really? When?
MONICA: Umm … maybe three weeks before Sal died.
JOE: Did you meet her?
MONICA: Briefly. She looked kind of worn out. Straggly blond hair, old shirt. She was cold cos she didn’t have a proper coat, just a cardigan.
JOE: That’s her. It’s weird, though, cos Sal wouldn’t let any of us know where she was. She hardly replied to our texts, and the person in our group she was least close to was Leanne.
