Daughters of Eve, page 23
‘Don’t be an arse, Robbo.’
He burst through the door like he was breaching the interview room and I wanted to punch him.
Patty unfolded into a fighting stance like a martial artist. Feet down, body square to the table, hands spread flat, palms down.
‘Why am I here? I’ve done nothing wrong.’
Robbo dropped into a chair without taking his eyes off her. I walked to the back of the room and leaned against the wall, right under the camera. If this went sideways, I didn’t want a record of my reaction.
‘What is your involvement with Victor Ryan?’
Something flickered in her eyes. I wondered if it was recognition.
‘He was a friend. We shagged.’
‘And the Daughters?’
My eyes went wide. Really? He was going straight there? No lead-up?
‘I don’t have kids.’
‘Not your daughters. The Daughters. The Daughters of Eve.’
She looked at him like he was talking in a foreign tongue.
‘Do you watch the news, Patty?’ My voice must have been like a balm, because her posture relaxed when she looked at me. I wanted to shake Robbo and shout, She’s not the enemy here.
‘No news is good news, right?’ She shrugged her shoulders and tried for a watery smile.
Robbo shot me a shut-up-and-watch look but I ignored it, just like he’d ignored my request to go easy. ‘Have you heard of the Daughters of Eve?’
Her face was a blank. ‘Is that a TV show? One of those reality things?’
Robbo swung around in his chair. ‘Can I see you outside for a minute?’
I nodded and he followed me through the door, his body propelling me forward. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
I leaned back against the dark grey wall and kept my posture non-threatening. Robbo loomed over me, his powerful voice filling the dimly lit room.
‘You need to back the fuck off, Robbo.’ My heart pounded as I struggled to draw breath. I was back in that shed, my grandfather towering over me.
‘She’s a suspect. We question suspects, we don’t give them an out.’ I put my hands flat on his chest and shoved him. Hard. ‘Not her, you moron. Me!’
He staggered back a couple of steps, confusion carving a crease between his eyebrows.
‘You have no idea how intimidating you can be. Six foot something and built like a Mack truck. You can scare the hell out of people, Robbo.’
His eyes crinkled with confusion. ‘What are you talking about? Are you trying to make some fucking Me Too point here?’
I took a deep breath and felt my heart rate slow. ‘You have no idea what it feels like to be a woman. To not be as strong as the men around you. To feel eyes on you, sizing you up. Constant scrutiny and appraisal.’
‘What the hell, Hart? Are you turning into one of those loopy feminists?’
I wanted to punch him so badly, but I didn’t. ‘Did you see that house as you were rushing through it? First time I went in I looked into all the downstairs rooms. No television. No computer. Christ, he wouldn’t let her have a mobile phone. I think she’s like a shut-in, she’s got no idea what’s going on out here.’
He stood down from DEFCON 1, stepped back and started pacing, probably to help him process what I’d said.
‘But if she’s not the shooter …’
‘He might be—or he might know who is. He’s connected to her, to Dawson and to organised crime, and he sure likes hurting people.’
Robbo kept pacing.
‘Or he might not be,’ I conceded. ‘This might be a dead end, mate. But either way, we’ve got a chance to take a scumbag off the street for a while. You didn’t hear them together. The way he treats her. She’s a walking, talking Barbie doll that bleeds as far as he’s concerned.’
The cogs turned behind his eyes. ‘So, what? We give her a free pass?’
God knew she deserved it after the life she’d lived.
‘No. We get her onside. If Ryan is linked to the Daughters, she’s our best hope.’
It didn’t take long. I went in alone, with Robbo watching through the mirror. I took her a coffee and we had a chat, woman to woman.
We didn’t have to wait for a warrant. Patty invited us to search the house, which was leased through such a complex series of corporate arrangements that we didn’t have anyone else to ask for permission. Her deal with Ryan was over and she knew it. He’d kill her if he got out, so her desire to obey him wasn’t what it had been.
Less than an hour later, we were holding the door open to a search team from Forensics. Patty sat in the lounge, her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor, dodging connection to anything and anyone.
‘Is she going to help?’ Robbo stood at the foot of the stairs, looking across at the double doors that led into the lounge.
‘Give her a break, Robbo. She’s let us in.’
Robbo thumped up the stairs, shoving his fingers into some too-tight latex gloves, while I settled on the lounge beside Patty.
‘How are you feeling?’
I’d wanted to break the ice, but the dark look she gave me told me I’d failed.
I tried again. ‘They’ll be respectful.’
This time she laughed without humour. ‘I’ve been violated in every way you could imagine, but this is a new low.’
I took the slap. It was fair enough. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have blue gloves rifling through my underwear and evaluating the contents of my fridge.
We sat without speaking for a while as heavy footfalls drifted down the stairs with the sounds of cupboards and drawers opening and closing.
‘Will you stay here?’ I didn’t want to pry, but given Patty might be needed as a witness, I wanted to keep track of her for a while.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t trust you bastards not to cut him loose without telling me.’
Another slap, also not undeserved.
Robbo stomped down the stairs and I caught his eye. He shook his head.
He went back along the hall and I looked at Patty. Something about her had changed; there was a hardness to her muscles that hadn’t been there before.
‘Do you remember him from when you were a kid?’ I nodded in the direction Robbo had walked.
Patty looked after him. ‘I wondered if it was the same guy. He’s …’
When her voice faded I tried to finish her sentence. ‘Older?’
She snorted. ‘I was going to say meaner.’
I guess that was a fair description of the Robbo I sometimes saw on the job, the Robbo I was seeing today. ‘He remembers you.’
Her head dropped forward as if the weight of it was too much for her neck to hold. Her muscles had relaxed. I waited for her to speak, but before she did, someone walked up the hall and turned to go up the stairs.
It wasn’t Robbo, just one of the forensics officers, but her body tensed again.
I followed her line of sight to the side of the stairs, just visible from where we sat.
I got up and went to the doorway before looking back. I could see the tension as I walked over and touched the side of the stairs, the place where a cupboard might have been, but there was no door.
I looked back. Patty had pulled her feet up onto the edge of the lounge and wrapped her arms around them. She was watching me, her thumbnail wedged between her teeth.
I snapped on a pair of latex gloves and tapped along the plasterboard. It was hollow, but you would expect it to be under the stairs. The hall was decorated with wallpaper, a light floral pattern above fake wainscotting, and I ran my fingers along the pattern until I felt the edge of a roll of paper. I pushed on one side and then the other. Nothing. I continued along the pattern and tried again at the next join in the wallpaper.
A panel sprang open, revealing a set of stairs, descending into the dark.
‘Robbo!’
Patty shrank lower.
‘Did you know about this, Patty?’
She shook her head, but she was lying.
Robbo came thundering down the corridor followed by a forensics officer who’d been in the kitchen.
I found a light switch to the right of the door and a bare light globe embedded in the wall clicked on, illuminating the stairs but making the darkness at the bottom denser.
Robbo drew his weapon and started down the stairs. A secret room makes everyone, even the most courageous of us, nervous.
Two more forensics officers came down.
‘Watch her.’ I gestured to Patty then followed Robbo down the stairs.
He found another switch and the underground room was flooded with light. It illuminated a desk, an office chair and a computer, but as I stepped off the stairs I saw Robbo advancing on a door in the back wall of the cellar.
There was a hasp and staple–style lock with a padlock swinging open. Robbo waited until I was beside him, my weapon drawn, before he opened the door.
The smell was the first thing that hit me. The stench of urine, sweat and shit.
It was dark beyond the door until a forensics officer who’d followed us down found another switch near the stairs. When the light came on we saw a bare mattress. A bucket in the corner. A ring embedded in a stone wall with a chain and manacles attached.
‘A dungeon?’
I bolted back up the stairs but Patty was gone, along with the forensics officer I’d tasked with watching her. I heard a sound like a cat choking further down the hall and followed it to the kitchen, where Patty was vomiting into the sink while the forensics officer looked on.
I waited while she rinsed her mouth with a glass of water.
‘You knew that place existed?’
She nodded and wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
She turned to the window and stared out at the tiny yard without answering me.
‘You didn’t want us to find it?’
She didn’t move.
‘That’s not how this works, Patty. If you’re cooperating, you need to tell us everything, otherwise it makes you look guilty.’
She turned around, her face ashen. ‘He kept me down there when I broke the rules. If I went out the front. If I’d shifted the curtains to look outside.’
I’d suspected, but hearing her say it was like a lead weight landing.
‘The first time he did it, I screamed till I was hoarse. I don’t know how long I was down there.’
‘Why didn’t you leave, Patty? Just run away?’
She raised her hands up to her face. ‘He found me once. He said he’d find me again.’ She spoke through her fingers.
‘What do you mean, he found you? You said he picked you up in the Cross.’
Her eyes dropped to the floor. ‘I lied. He found me and he took me. I can’t ever get away.’
I was about to ask a question when Robbo’s voice rumbled up from the basement. ‘Hart. You need to get down here.’
I looked at the forensics officer and he nodded; he was back on babysitting duty. I headed down the hall to the hidden room that would probably haunt my dreams for years to come.
Robbo and the forensics guy were waiting for me.
‘I just nudged the mouse,’ the forensics guy said. ‘I didn’t turn it on. I haven’t touched anything else.’ The air prickled with tension.
I looked at Robbo, at the deep lines that creased his forehead, then followed his gaze to the computer screen. A close-up of a young girl’s face. She looked sad and scared.
‘Wait, that’s …’ I took a step towards the computer but Robbo moved into my path.
‘You can’t touch it, Emilia.’
I looked up. Robbo never called me Emilia. Like I never called him John.
I went to step around him and his hand gripped my shoulder.
‘You can’t touch it. You can’t touch anything in here. I just needed you to see.’
I looked at Robbo and he looked at me, then we both looked back at the screen. I drank in the familiar features. ‘Why is there a picture of Grace on this computer?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘You can’t talk to him, Hart. You can’t talk to Patty anymore. You can’t have anything to do with this investigation going forward.’
My hands were balled into fists and my jaw clenched. I knew Robbo was right but every cell in my body screamed he was wrong. I’d been working the problem as we drove through the early evening darkness back to the squad room.
I had to be benched, to protect the integrity of the investigation. The defence would have a field day with any evidence that passed through my hands. But it was my job to protect my girls. My job to keep them safe. I couldn’t abdicate that responsibility, even with someone I trusted as much as Robbo ready to take it up.
I reached into the kitchen cabinet but there were no clean glasses. I looked at the draining board with dirty cups and glasses scattered over it.
‘Why the fuck can’t you boys clean a bloody glass?’ I ran the tap until the water was scalding hot, then rinsed a glass under it, wiped it with a paper towel and filled it with cool water.
I took a sip. The water in the squad room kitchen always tasted dusty, but today it had a metallic tang.
‘He has a picture of Grace, Robbo!’
‘I know he does.’
‘Would you step back? If it was Jess or one of your girls?’
Robbo flinched. ‘I wouldn’t want to.’
I tipped the water into the sink, rinsed the glass, dried it and put it back in the cupboard. It wouldn’t be there when I needed it. The boys didn’t take note of the little things. That’s why I couldn’t step back, couldn’t leave it to others to protect my child.
Fifteen minutes later I was watching Ryan through the two-way mirror. Robbo and Peterson had gone downstairs to pick up Ryan’s brief, leaving him alone. I only had a few minutes, but still I took the time to watch him tug at the cuffs looped through the anchor point on the table as his eyes darted around the bright white space.
He looked up as I pushed through the door and his posture straightened.
‘Where’s my lawyer?’
I walked to the table and rested my hands on it, leaning forward to loom over him the way Willoughby had so often loomed over me.
‘Where’s my fucking lawyer? You can’t question me without my lawyer present.’
I locked eyes with him. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Some trace of humanity? Some sense of what drove him to torture women and stalk girls? But there was nothing. Just the inky blackness of his pupils drawing me into their darkness.
‘You’re the bitch who arrested me. I know who you are. You aren’t supposed to question me without my lawyer.’
I reached into my pocket, took out my warrant card and opened it carefully so he didn’t see my details. I pulled out the two photos I kept with it and slid the picture of Rose back in. Then I laid the picture of Grace at ten years old on the table between us.
He looked down and his eyes widened then flicked up to meet mine. ‘What the fuck?’
I watched him struggling to understand what was going on.
He reached for the photo but I snatched it back and slid it in with Rose’s picture.
I’d promised not to speak, just to look him in the eye, but his eyes were empty. Cold, dark and dead.
So I leaned forward and whispered into his ear. ‘If you or any of your associates touch this child, I swear to you on my mother’s grave, I will hunt you down, every last one of you. I will make what you did to Patty look like a fucking picnic and I’ll bury what’s left of you in a shallow grave. Do you understand me?’
I pulled back and looked into his eyes and this time I saw something. His eyes creased at the corner and his lips spread into a smirk. ‘You better start digging then, because there’s not an inch of that girl I haven’t touched, inside and out.’ He ran his tongue over his lips, puckered up and blew me a kiss.
It took every ounce of self-restraint I had not to put my hands around his throat and squeeze till the spark of life had left his vile, pestilent body. But I’d promised Robbo—not a mark.
I left without another word. Walked back downstairs to my desk, grabbed my belongings and took the lift to the basement, where I climbed into my car and let the mantle of homicide detective slide away.
Anger came first as I slammed my hands against the steering wheel and raged. Then a wave of grief crashed over me and I collapsed against the steering wheel, tears soaking the sleeves of my coat. I couldn’t erase the image of seven-year-old Grace being pulled onto that monster’s lap the way my grandfather had pulled me onto his. My body convulsed, remembering every stroke, every probing finger, every wet slippery kiss, only now it was Ryan touching Grace and I wanted to tear the fingers from his hand and force them down his throat until he choked on his hunger for her.
I don’t know how long I sat down there in the dark, fighting my own demons and the devil that had hurt my baby girl, but as I pulled up out of the garage, the only light I saw was puddles under streetlights and the headlights of oncoming traffic. Rose and Grace would have had dinner and settled in for the night. They were resourceful girls. They were strong girls. But tonight I would have to be stronger. I would have to face Grace, knowing one of the monsters who hurt her was in custody, that her secrets were in the hands of the police, and that I could not talk to her about it because it was an ongoing bloody investigation.
Monday morning came too quickly, even though I’d spent most of the weekend at home watching over the girls, particularly Grace. She seemed to struggle more than Rose and me with the growing tide of social unrest and the climbing daily death toll, which had slowed somewhat with soldiers on the street, but hadn’t stopped. The triple shot to the chest MO had been replaced by a multitude of methods, from poisoning to bludgeoning, but the killing continued. That made me think the Daughters had lit the bonfire but were now standing back to toast marshmallows. The street marches continued. They didn’t spill over into violent riots often, but rape crisis centres were reporting surges in violent assaults that appeared to coincide with them.
