You Had It Coming Page 11

  The judge called for one of the court officers, who unceremoniously steered her from the room. She was allowed to return the next day only because the judge felt sorry for her; he could see that this was a woman to be pitied, not punished.

  On the day the jury handed down their verdict, Roslyn lost control again. Spitting with disappointment and rage on the steps outside the courthouse, newspaper and TV cameras capturing her reaction and broadcasting it around the country. Megan’s parents were firm believers in the establishment. They respected school teachers, police officers, law and order. They kept to the rules, drove below the speed limit, never parked illegally or took an illegitimate sick day. The trial crushed their belief in the establishment. Rapists could get away with the most heinous crime. Defence barristers could tell shameless lies. What was the point of keeping to the rules?

  Painting the skirting boards is back-breaking, fastidious work, albeit strangely therapeutic. Slow precise strokes of the brush, the clean smell of paint, the satisfying improvement after the first coat. The Fray’s ‘How to Save a Life’ is playing on her phone. The song was popular around the time of the trial. Megan remembers hearing it on the car radio on the way into court in the mornings, her dad driving in his careful way, her mum fixing her hair in the sunshade mirror, both of them still hopeful about the outcome.

  William Newson chipped away at their hope, day by day, week by week, until it was extinguished. He chipped away at their belief system, until it crumbled around them, leaving them looking foolish and naïve. Worst of all, he chipped away at their fortitude.

  It’s no surprise that Roslyn has been compulsively following the news. She is selling her house because of William Newson; he is still impacting her life, all these years later. It makes Megan uneasy, that’s all. Something snapped in Roslyn that day in the courtroom. Her pain was excruciating to watch. Her outrage was both magnificent and deeply disturbing.

  For the first time in her life, Megan was frightened of her.

  Dinner is salmon and salad. Roslyn is complimentary about the simple meal as well as Megan’s progress with the painting.

  ‘The place is starting to look really good, love. Amazing what a lick of paint can do.’

  ‘Walls next– that should make a big difference. I spoke to Seb. He’s going to fly up Saturday and help with the outside.’

  Roslyn is thrilled; they haven’t seen Seb since last Christmas, when he, Cassie and three-month-old Tia visited. Tia is almost one now and starting to bear weight on her pudgy legs, using furniture to pull herself up and into all sorts of mischief. Not a lot of painting would get done with her around so on this occasion she will be staying at home with her mother.

  After dinner, Roslyn starts decluttering the kitchen cupboards. Now that she has committed to the sale, she seems to be a mixed bag of emotions. Nostalgic. Excited. Terrified. Just like Megan. But the important thing is that they’re finally doing this.

  While Roslyn works in the kitchen, Megan attacks her wardrobe. Her approach to fashion has always been random, acquiring single pieces rather than complete outfits, mixing and matching clothes and accessories from all eras of her life. Now it needs to be culled to fit the limited storage space of a one-bedroom apartment, her future accommodation.

  Roslyn comes to say goodnight about two hours later.

  ‘Are you planning on sleeping in there?’ she asks, eyeing the bed, which is buried under mounds of clothes.

  ‘Yeah. Being ruthless is harder than I thought.’

  Her mum puts her hand over her mouth to contain a yawn. ‘The kitchen is a mess too, but I’ve run out of steam. Hopefully, it won’t get in your way.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. Night, Mum.’

  The clothes are more than just a jumble of fabric, colours and styles. They hold memories of foreign cities and nights out with friends. A leather jacket purchased in Barcelona, even though the weather was unbearably hot. The green maxi dress she wore to Seb’s wedding. It’s a wrench, but both items haven’t been worn for years.

  It’s another hour before Megan emerges with two black garbage bags destined for the charity shop. As Roslyn forewarned, the kitchen is in disarray. Megan navigates her way through half-full boxes and lifts the kettle to establish its water level: just enough for a cup of herbal tea.

  Roslyn’s phone is charging on the kitchen counter. Megan looks at it, and quickly looks back to the kettle, which is starting to make noise. She glances at the phone again, before swinging around to extract a cup from the wall-mounted cupboard behind. One last, prolonged look before sighing and giving in; her mum’s passcode is Seb’s birthday.

  Megan checks the pages that have been left open on Safari: headline after headline about the shooting. Between the laptop and the phone, there are dozens and dozens of news articles, all recent except for one that’s a few months old.

  Young woman uses shock tactics to draw attention to low number of convictions for rape cases. ‘I want people to know my name,’ said Laura Dundas. ‘I want people to see my face and my body. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am telling the truth.’

  The accompanying photograph shows a young woman standing outside the Downing Centre District Court, wearing a bikini. She’s holding a placard, I’M NOT A LIAR in red block capitals. Her gaze is unflinching, even though she must be shivering with the cold; it’s the middle of winter. Her bravery and vulnerability bring a hard lump to Megan’s throat. She feels her pain, the powerlessness that drove her to these lengths. William Newson up to his old tricks, calling girls liars. Roslyn would have gone ballistic on reading this.

  Megan taps on the next page that’s been left open: a map, with a red location pin. Killara! She uses her fingers to widen the zoom. William Newson’s street address.

  The kettle whistles as it comes to the boil.

  Why has Roslyn been looking at this map? How does she know Newson’s exact address? She must have found it somewhere on the internet. But why? Some sort of macabre desire to see where it actually happened?

  Then a nauseating, treacherous thought: what if this map, with its ominous red pin, has been open since before the shooting?

  20

  JESS

  The youth class is winding up and the serious fighters are trickling in. Billy arrives in his suit, looking every inch the lawyer from the city. He disappears into the changing room and emerges a few minutes later in black shorts and grey T-shirt. He smiles at Jess while he wraps his hands with protective strapping. He has a nice smile and knows it. She bets he uses it a thousand times a day as he tells his clients things they don’t want to hear.

  ‘Hey, Jess.’

  ‘Hello, Billy.’ It’s a struggle to be friendly. She can’t get over the fact that he’s a lawyer, one of them. ‘How’s your day been?’

  He pulls a face. ‘Pretty crap, actually.’

  ‘Well, you’re in the right place to release some frustration. Go extra hard on the bags.’

  Vince runs the warm-up session – a twenty-minute routine of punching, skipping and squatting – while Jess catches up on admin at the desk. Music pumps through the sound system. Fists pummel the punching bags. Vince, hands stuffed in the pockets of his track-suit pants, yells out orders. He’s tough on this group. If they want to fight at an amateur or semi-professional level, they’ve got to put in the work.

  The warm-up finishes. Jess is needed at the ring for the sparring. The first duo is Billy and Matt. Jess positions herself in Billy’s corner. He’s the first person she has coached to this level, from complete novice to the precipice of being an amateur fighter. Despite her personal misgivings, she’s proud of his progress and work ethic. She helps him on with his gloves.

  Vince presses the buzzer and it starts the thirty-second countdown. Dua Lipa is playing on the sound system: ‘Don’t Start Now’. Billy and Matt are bouncing around, readying themselves. The buzzer sounds.

  ‘Find your range, Billy … Jab to the body, set it up …

  ‘Don’t put yourself on th
e ropes, get out of there … Good work.

  ‘Great defence, mate. Yep, that’s the way … Move to your right … Lean on the back foot.’

  Billy’s posture looks good today; he seems to be making a concentrated effort to sit lower. His defence has been faultless so far.

  ‘Keep him away from you. Don’t let him dominate. This is bread and butter, mate. Get in there. Nice jab. One more. Go for it.’

  The round finishes. Matt and Billy touch gloves before retreating to their respective corners.

  ‘You’re boxing really well, mate.’ Billy deserves the praise. She needs to treat him like any other member of the club.

  ‘Thanks, Jess.’

  ‘Vince has a fight lined up in a couple of weeks. He’ll talk to you about it later. We’ll need to get blood tests organised and stuff.’

  Billy’s first official fight. He beams with pleasure.

  Dylan O’Shea had a nice smile, too. It transformed his pale unhealthy face into something altogether more attractive. Jess remembers saying so to Megan at the party.

  ‘He’s much nicer when he smiles.’

  ‘Doesn’t make a difference,’ Megan said flatly. ‘I’m not into him.’

  Jess’s attraction to Thomas Malouf had also waned. His arm felt heavy around her shoulders. She had noticed his eyes assessing other girls at the party, checking if there were any better options.

  Dylan had got them drinks. Another big smile as he shoved glasses into their hands. ‘House s-s-s-special.’

  The readiness of Dylan’s smile could have been an unconscious compensation for the fact that his words were so hesitant.

  Now Dylan O’Shea has got hold of her phone number – probably from the gym’s website or Facebook page – and he wants to talk. Well, Jess wants to talk too. She wants to know if he remembers practically forcing those drinks into their hands. She wants to know if he remembers Megan pushing him away when he tried to kiss her. She wants to know if his guilty conscience has caught up with him, or if he is still pleading a terrible misunderstanding.

  ‘Lachlan and Jordy, you’re up next,’ she calls out, forcing her thoughts away from Dylan O’Shea and into the here and now.

  The industrial park seems darker and more ominous tonight. Jess hurries, her breathing loud and sharp, her fists clenched in preparation. The night has echoes from two weeks ago, when she got that shocking text from Megan. Do the police have a suspect by now? What was the motivation? Some kind of moral issue? Money? Revenge? A family feud? There have been ongoing appeals for information, members of the public urged to come forward. Are the police floundering or hiding how much they really know? Jess hasn’t heard anything from the detective who went to see Megan. She didn’t really expect to. There must be plenty of other, more recent, lines of inquiry. Still, Jess wouldn’t have minded asking the detective a question or two of her own.

  The platform is freezing, a piercing wind preceding the arrival of the train. By contrast, the carriage is over-heated and airless. It’s almost empty: a middle-aged man on the opposite side, who looks decidedly worse for wear; a younger man, a few rows back, with sleeves of tattoos on his bare arms. Doesn’t he feel the cold? Jess pulls the sleeves of her sweater down and uses the reflection in the window to keep an eye on both of them. The younger guy gets off at Roseville. The middle-aged man seems to be fighting the urge to fall asleep. His head drops, then jerks back up again. The train pulls into Killara. A couple of kilometres from here is where it happened. Two weeks to the day.

  Jess’s attention is caught by a figure walking along the platform. Floppy hair, overcoat, scarf, smartly dressed. Fucking hell, is that Thomas Malouf? Did he just get off this train? Jess thinks she recognises the saunter. She squints through the window, but all she can see now is the back of him. Is her mind playing tricks? Conjuring up Thomas because William Newson and Dylan O’Shea have been so much in her head?

  The train pulls away and Jess exhales, unfurling her hands. It’s not Thomas. She’s imagining things. Dylan made some noise here and there over the years, but not a squeak from Thomas. Jess likes to think that he is living overseas, so she is not constantly looking over her shoulder. Are Thomas and Dylan aware that their former lawyer has been shot? What does Dylan want to talk about? Maybe the shooting propelled him back in time, forcing a confrontation with his guilt.

  Jess is guilty, too. There were actions she should have taken, actions that would have prevented what happened. She should have shrugged off Thomas’s proprietary arm, let him know that she’d changed her mind. She should have said ‘no thanks’ to the drinks, and the ones that followed. She should have listened to Megan when she said she wanted to go home. And this is hard to admit, but she also should have respected Megan’s wishes about not involving the police, or even their parents. Involving the police, going to court, losing … by the time they were done, the damage was tenfold.

  Jess has decided to meet Dylan O’Shea. Maybe he has realised – finally – that Megan won’t budge and Jess is his only option if there’s something he needs to get off his chest. Well, Jess has some stuff to get off her chest, too.

  Number one: she is not a liar.

  Number two: how could he sit in that witness box, shaking and looking petrified, and at the same time being so fucking selective with his memory?

  Number three: plying them with drink after drink, that was part of the plan, wasn’t it?

  Jess will meet him, although she hasn’t told him yet. The when and where are her decision. This is on her terms. It’s the least she – and Megan – are owed.

  21

  BRIDGET

  Two weeks and not much to show for it. The detective inspector is visibly disappointed.

  ‘I thought you’d have more than this, Bridget.’

  Katrina is in her early sixties, her silver hair cut in a razor-sharp bob. She’s an extremely elegant and intelligent woman, who maintains impeccable standards in all areas of her life. Bridget hates disappointing her.

  ‘I thought I’d have more, too. All that door-knocking, those filthy bins, hours of CCTV … Plenty of lines of inquiry with the family and work-related threats – just nothing we can grab hold of and run with.’

  It’s a high-profile case and as a result there’s pressure to make an arrest. The police commissioner has weighed in, as well as a few politicians. The law community has spoken publicly about their concerns. Loudest of all is the media, running the story daily, demanding updates and asking tough questions. A large whiteboard is mounted on the wall of the detective inspector’s office. Katrina cleans it off and picks up a blue marker.

  ‘Remind me where everyone was on the night in question,’ she says.

  Bridget complies. ‘As you know, Suzanne Newson says she was at home, but we can’t corroborate that. Her phone signal indicates that it was in the area but that’s no proof of anything. She mentioned a neighbour who may have seen her in the garden in the late afternoon, but both she and the neighbour can’t pinpoint the day with enough certainty. Joshua claims he was in transit from work. We have CCTV showing him en route to his car at 6.50 p.m., and footage of his car going over the bridge at 7.05 p.m. We’ve asked him to provide further details on which route he took from there. His phone signal implies that he went directly home but, again, phones and their owners can be in separate places. Joshua seems to blow hot and cold. Happy to talk when I called to his office but less than pleased to see me at the funeral. The other two sons are living in London and Canberra so we’ve eliminated them for now.’

  On the whiteboard, Katrina has written the following in bright-blue marker: Suzanne: Home? Joshua: Car?

  ‘Any strange payments or receipts in anyone’s bank account?’

  ‘Not that we can determine.’

  ‘Changes to life insurance or the beneficiaries of his will?’

  ‘No changes. All three sons will inherit equal amounts.’

  Katrina draws a shaky line, splitting the whiteboard in two. ‘Let’s consider the work
angle. The threats that were made.’

  ‘Fergus Herrmann. Father of an eighteen-year-old girl. Very upset about an application Newson made to the DPP to drop charges. Grabbed him by the throat outside the courthouse. An AVO was taken out and it appears that Mr Herrmann kept to its terms and initiated no further contact. I guess he has form, though. I’ll arrange a meeting with Mr Herrmann, see where that takes us.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Laura Dundas. Twenty-two-year-old arts student. Classic case of he said/she said. Not enough evidence for a guilty verdict. Laura protested outside the courthouse for a few days. You might remember it on the news. She was in a bikini, holding a placard saying, “I’m not a liar”. Early one morning, she managed to gain entry to Newson’s office and spray-painted the reception wall. She was charged with damaging property and trespassing.’

  ‘Did she ever directly threaten him?’

  ‘Several witnesses heard her screaming all sorts of threats. The court imposed a community service order and there was another AVO.’

  Katrina looks appalled. ‘Good God! You’ve got to ask, why did he keep taking those cases? How could it be worth it?’

  Bridget shudders. It wasn’t worth it. Very possibly cost him his life.

  ‘Then there’s his executive assistant, Emily Wickham. Away on honeymoon when the shooting happened. Something about her is not sitting right. Preliminary investigations about her salary and career trajectory set off alarm bells. She’s paid thirty per cent more than the going rate for someone of her experience. She’s half Newson’s age, very beautiful and newly married. I don’t think they were having an affair but something was going on.’

  Katrina adds Emily’s name to the second half of the board.

  Bridget exhales loudly. ‘Not forgetting the bizarre coincidence of Megan Lowe being the first responder, which I can’t get my head around.’

  Katrina is across the Malouf–O’Shea case. Bridget discussed it with her boss early on, when prioritising resources. She hasn’t pursued this line of inquiry beyond some cursory checks. Megan – obviously – was at work at the time of the shooting and so was Jessica Foster. Besides, what are the chances of a twelve-year-old case still being relevant? Nevertheless, the two women – Girls A and B – still hover on the periphery of Bridget’s thoughts.