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  ‘How’d she get into university if she could barely read?’

  ‘I’d say she had a friend fill in the application form for her. She’d have paid them to pack it full of lies about how she was ready to knuckle down and study.’ Vicky looked at me. ‘I can see why she was so determined to live a “new life”. The life she was living here was a total fabrication.’

  CHAPTER 29

  HOPE’S PLANS HAD stalled. She knelt on the deck of her yacht, sanding the scratches in the polished wood, trying to keep her fury contained. The scratches went all the way from the anchor mount to a door at the side of the vessel, from where she’d dragged the anchor she had tied Claudia to.

  In the first days, Hope had been sick whenever she’d thought about it. All that would go in time. Already she couldn’t remember her face. Piece by piece, the memories would fall away. She just had to continue with the plan.

  Hope heard a shifting in the bathroom. She got up and marched there, slammed open the door. Finally he was awake. Ken was just coming to his senses, shaking the chloroform fog from his head. He looked down at his sleeping wife, at the sheen of sweat on her skin. The woman was ghost white.

  ‘So I had a magnificent time at the bank,’ Hope snapped.

  ‘You got the money?’ Ken’s eyes widened. ‘Now you can let us go. You can—’

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t try to send me into a fucking trap, Ken.’ Hope slammed the door again so that it banged against the shower frame. ‘The joint signatures? You were hoping to trip me up, and your plan failed.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Ken panted, swallowed hard. ‘Hope, look, I didn’t try to betray you. I just want to get my wife to a hospital. I just want this to be over. Jenny has got hours, not days, until her kidneys are going to fail and she’s going to die. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?’ Hope sneered.

  ‘No.’ Ken shook his head. ‘No, of course not. You’re very clever. It would take someone very clever to pull something like this off.’

  ‘I’ve planned every aspect of this thing,’ Hope said. ‘Nothing is going to stop me. I deserve this, you understand? I’ve waited my whole life for my moment. You’ve got to make your own life, Ken. You’ve got to change your own destiny. Nobody’s gonna change it for you.’

  ‘Imagine if you staged an incredible plan like this without hurting anybody.’ Ken nodded along. ‘Wow! You’d show everybody. You’d go down in the history books.’

  Hope sighed. She’d been enjoying Ken’s praise, but he’d taken it a step too far. The man must know what had happened to Claudia. Two young, professional women had approached him about his boat. Those same two had accompanied him and his wife around the harbour, followed him down into the engine cavity to inspect the boat’s inner workings. Now that their real purpose had been revealed, one of those girls was gone. Even from the bathroom where she’d locked them, Ken and Jenny must have heard Claudia’s scream as Hope had brought the hammer down on the back of her skull. The scrape of the anchor. She felt exhausted as Ken launched into his tired pleas again.

  ‘It won’t take long. All you have to do is bring the machine in here,’ Ken said. ‘There might be enough dialysate left for one more dose. Just untie one of my hands, and I’ll—’

  ‘You’re going to die, Ken,’ Hope said suddenly. The man before her stiffened, his eyes wide. Hope shook her head, bored, as she continued: ‘You’re both going to die. You might as well just accept that now.’

  CHAPTER 30

  TOX AND I settled in a bar on the strip in Kings Cross, sitting at the open window, watching the pimps and prostitutes wander up and down in the light rain. It seemed appropriate to head into Sydney’s red-light district. What we’d learned of Claudia’s life made me gravitate here, where the liars, cheats and criminals came to play. The homeless crowding into corners to escape the wind and the hopeless slouching around the bars, tired from weeks of endlessly drinking away reality. Kings Cross was also just around the corner from my apartment. I hoped to wander back after a quick drink and get some much-needed sleep.

  My phone calls and emails were ceasing to have any effect as word spread throughout the police force that I was working with Tox. When I called to see if the full autopsy on Claudia’s body had come in, an officer at my station put me on hold for half an hour, and then hung up. I only got the report by calling back and pretending to be someone else. I couldn’t get hold of the secondary detectives I’d tasked to look after the Burrowses, so I called their counsellor and asked if everyone was OK. I stared at Tox while I waited on the phone, trying to decide how the man himself ever got anything done without fabricating multiple identities and ringing around the world every time he wanted anything.

  While I watched, I found myself trying to imagine him as a small child in a wild pack of other kids, pulling and grabbing and yanking an adult mother to the ground, stabbing her in a hurried rush, blood soaking their tiny clothes. I imagined him cornering her son, a boy his age maybe, holding the knife to the kid’s throat. Why had they done it? Tox had a mean look to him, particularly with the bruised nose and double black eyes, the leather jacket that reeked of smoke. But I knew there was no ‘killer look’. I’d known baby-faced pre-teen boys in school blazers and caps who’d assaulted girls so viciously they’d broken their victims’ spirit for life.

  Maybe it was all just a rumour and Tox was innocent. But if it was, why didn’t he do anything to change the black mark against his name?

  I was just starting to imagine him as a kind and gentle man wrapped in the shell of a dangerous one when he put his whisky glass down, got up and strode across the room with violent intent. I watched him take a pool cue from the rack, snap it over his knee and roll the heavy end in his fist like a batter coming up to the plate.

  ‘All right, buddy,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’

  His target was a heavier, taller man who’d been playing a game of pool by the back doors of the bar. The heavy man and Tox lunged at each other.

  CHAPTER 31

  I WAS UP and across the bar before I’d really taken stock of the situation. My sheer bewilderment at the fight, and my own fatigue, had me diving into danger without a plan. I ran over and grabbed at Tox, but one of the heavy man’s mates pulled me off him and threw me into the edge of the pool table. That hurt. My fists came up immediately, and I gave the guy a couple of warning punches to the jaw. But that only made him madder. He swung a heavy fist at my head. I ducked, surged up with an uppercut that crunched teeth and bone, and knocked him out on his feet. Before he could fall forward onto me, I shoved him back. He fell into a table full of glasses where two old men were seated. They hardly moved.

  The room was suddenly full of people. I felt a hand on the back of my head, grabbed and twisted it, heard a man scream. I kicked his knee out and he flopped to the floor. I looked up just in time to see another fist swinging at me. It glanced off my brow. I ducked too late and shot the guy with a sucker punch to the gut that folded him in half.

  Tox was holding his own against the guy he’d targeted originally. It looked as though it was all about to be over when five uniformed officers burst into the room, one of them leading a huge German shepherd on a leash.

  ‘On the ground! On the ground!’

  I flattened against the stinking carpet. The dog was standing right over me, barking in my face, slobbering in my hair. I realised I’d left my police-issue phone on the counter by the window when I’d run in to assist in the fight. As I lay being cuffed I saw a homeless man shuffle along to the window, pick up the phone and continue shuffling.

  We were dragged to a police van, which had been parked hastily on the street outside the pub. It was really raining now. Tox and I were shoved into the back of the van while the other fighters were herded up against the wall of the pub for a lecture about public brawls.

  The lead patrol officer stood in the doorway and wrestled the keys into the lock on the van door.

  ‘We’re cops
,’ I said. ‘We’re both cops.’

  ‘We know,’ he replied, and slammed the door.

  CHAPTER 32

  WE SAT IN silence for a long time while the Kings Cross patrol cops drove us out of the city. Tox seemed genuinely unconcerned with our situation. He leaned back against the wall of the vehicle, watching me calmly as I worked through several levels of blinding rage.

  ‘What the hell brought that on?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘We were in the academy together. Think he left the force a few years ago. He spotted me when we walked in. Started giving me the stink-eye. I thought he probably wanted a fight. So. You know.’ He shrugged.

  ‘My life is becoming more difficult by the minute because of you,’ I snapped. ‘I can’t even get people to answer the phone to me any more. Now you’ve pulled this shit and I’ve lost my phone altogether.’

  ‘Meh. They’ll issue you a new one,’ he rasped.

  ‘Maybe!’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe they’ll just ignore me!’

  ‘I’m hard to work with.’ Tox shifted, his cuffs clunking on the metal bench. ‘You must’ve guessed that.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know it’d be this bad.’

  ‘No one’s forcing you to continue.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m supposed to drop the case completely because you’re a murderer? This was my case to begin with, asshole!’

  ‘You need to calm down,’ he said. ‘You’re going all pink.’

  I tried to hold my tongue, but I was mad, and when I’m mad the words tumble out. If I get mad enough I start swinging. I was already imagining giving him a bop on that nose just to remind him how inconvenient he was.

  ‘Did you do it?’ I blurted, shifting to the edge of my seat. ‘Did you kill that mother and child?’

  He looked up and held my gaze. ‘Yes,’ he answered.

  CHAPTER 33

  ‘WHY?’ I ASKED.

  Tox just looked at me. I wasn’t going to get an answer that easy.

  I shifted against the wall and sighed, let the rumble of the van rock me back into tired numbness. We seemed to be driving for an hour. I got up and tried to look through the slats in the door and figure out where we were.

  ‘Where are they taking us?’ I wondered.

  ‘Not the Kings Cross police station,’ Tox said.

  ‘Of course not the Kings Cross police station!’ I sneered at him, fell into whining. ‘God, I should be in bed asleep now. I should have had a nice hot shower. I should have my lovely soft pyjamas on.’

  ‘Pyjamas?’ Tox snorted.

  The van stopped. I looked out the slats but could only see darkness, the occasional orange light. Two officers came around the back of the van and opened the door.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘I can’t get down there with my hands cuffed behind my back.’

  ‘Get. Out.’

  I noted the names on their badges – Demper and Loris – and then gave up and let them have what they wanted, the humiliation they thought would make them feel like heroes. I made a jump for the ground, landed badly and fell on my face. It sounded as if Tox didn’t fare much better. I heard him slump onto his backside, try to slide off the edge and stumble.

  One of the cops dragged me up. I’d bitten my lip. My mouth was full of blood. I sat on the ground as instructed, next to my partner. I was just getting an idea of where we were – some sort of industrial area near a canal – when blinding torchlight flashed in my face.

  ‘Obviously you have no idea who this is.’ The cop flicked the light from my face to Tox’s. My vision was clouded with green explosions.

  ‘It’s Tox Barnes,’ I said. ‘I’m well aware.’

  ‘Well, clearly you need an information session on who you’re working with here, because you couldn’t possibly know who he is – or you wouldn’t be hanging out in bars with him. No one with any self-respect would,’ the cop carried on.

  I sighed. Tox was squinting into the torchlight with one eye open. The light flicked between us, blinding us over and over.

  ‘Tox Barnes and a few of his friends beat a woman and her young son to death.’

  ‘I know! I know!’

  ‘Aren’t you in sex crimes?’ The second cop jabbed me in the shoulder with his boot, causing me to topple over. ‘How could you dismiss the gang rape and vicious beating of an innocent—’

  I looked at Tox, thinking he’d jump in and correct an accusation as outlandish as this. He hardly seemed to be listening.

  ‘Gang rape too now?’ I struggled upright and squinted at the cop before me. I felt strangely defiant on Tox’s behalf. ‘I can’t keep up with all the versions of this story. What’s next? Cannibalism?’

  ‘She’s on his side,’ one of them sneered. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Where’s your badge?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s your fucking badge, bitch?’

  I was shoved to the ground. The cop took my wallet from my back pocket and tore out the detective’s badge. They took my cuffs off my belt, and my gun too. Tox they left alone. He watched, passive, from the dark beside me.

  ‘You’re an embarrassment to the force,’ the cop said, giving me a good kick in the ribs. He uncuffed me roughly and shoved my head into the dirt. ‘Have some dignity and leave this vicious dog alone.’

  They left us there in the dark, miles from the road.

  CHAPTER 34

  KEN SPELLING WASN’T going to die, not at the very moment he and his wife were beginning to settle into their well-deserved retirement. He was not going to die at the hands of some psychopathic freak who wanted to trade out of her shitty life the easy way.

  Convincing her not to chloroform him had been easy – he’d simply not responded when she’d called from the doorway, having feigned a sluggish fever from around midnight. When he was sure Hope had left the vessel, he went to work. Ken kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his socks. He stood in the middle of the tiny bathroom cubicle and stared down at his sleeping wife, trying to think of a plan. Jenny was sleeping for longer and longer periods now, and when she was awake she didn’t make sense, her words slurred and delirious, her eyes unable to settle. Ken needed to act now, before it was too late. He took a deep breath.

  All right, the door. That was a dead end. Though the bulkhead had wheels on either side, he’d heard Hope looping a rope through her side of the door every time she’d left them, probably tying it off against a pipe to lock them in. He experimented, turning his back to the door and shoving the wheel sideways with his bound hands. The wheel turned an inch or so and then clunked into place. Ken went to the wall beside the shower and kicked, listening to the sound ripple up through the iron hull. Yes, maybe he could signal someone by kicking. He lay on his back and kicked madly. Jenny barely stirred. In ten minutes he was drenched in sweat. He stopped and listened. There was not a sound from outside the vessel. He panted and stared at the ceiling of his prison.

  Maybe if he kicked in a rhythm. Three fast, loud kicks, three slow ones, and three quick again. SOS. There had to be dozens of yachties wandering back and forth along the piers outside. Surely one of them would hear his signal.

  But how long would Hope be gone? How long could he wait for his signal to be heard? Ken wasn’t even sure all his racket was making it through the double hull of the boat to the outside world.

  He stood again and looked at the porthole high on the wall behind the toilet. It had a single eye screw holding it shut. There was no way he could get it open with his hands tied. Or could he? Ken looked around the tiny room and spied the mop standing against the shelves of toiletries.

  I’m not going to die, he thought. I refuse to.

  CHAPTER 35

  MY MAJOR BREAK came at midnight, but I ignored it. I was trudging up the stairs to my apartment block, scratching dried glitter and blood off my neck and trying to remember which key unlocked my front door. I’d lost my phone, but upstairs in my apartment I could hear the sound of my laptop jang
ling with a phone call. The ringing was finished by the time I reached the apartment. I ignored it and fell face down onto the couch.

  I’d walked away from Tox in the dark of the industrial area without saying anything about the trouble he’d got us into. In truth, I was more horrified by his admission in the back of the van than I was by the rough-housing those idiot patrollies had given us. It had taken fifteen minutes to find my wallet in the dark, up against the side of one of the warehouses where the officer had thrown it, and an hour to walk back to a major road. I’d stood there waiting for a cab for another half an hour, then had slept all the way home in it.

  The laptop jangled again. I didn’t know how long I’d been out. I crawled to the screen and tapped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Harry? Vicky.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I was telling someone here what happened to Claudia and I might have a lead for you,’ she said. I fumbled blindly in the dark across the cluttered coffee table for a pen. ‘One of the other girls said Claudia had been hanging around a prostitute from the Cross named Hope.’

  ‘Huh,’ I laughed. My instincts about Kings Cross and its connection to this case were right. The Cross was where dreams, lives and promises failed. Claudia had been cooking up some kind of dream, and it had got her drowned at the bottom of the ocean.

  ‘“Hope”,’ I said. ‘That’s all you got?’

  ‘That’s all I got.’

  ‘I’ll take it. Thanks.’

  Almost immediately, an instant chat message popped up on the screen from my brother, wondering why I hadn’t been answering my phone all night. I gave him a brief rundown of my experience out in the sticks, my fingers dancing over the keys.

  SamBluDesigner77: Are you OK? Should you go to a hospital?

  BlueHarry: I’m fine. It was just a rough-housing. No worse than the guys used to give each other at the academy.