Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(13)

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you why. I’m looking at you and I’m guessing you’re about … what? Thirty years old?’

‘I’m thirty-three.’

‘Right.’ I nodded. ‘I’m thirty-six. My brother and I were removed from my mother’s care when I was two years old. She was a prostitute. A drug addict. I spent sixteen years in foster care,’ I said, watching his face. ‘I don’t know how many homes we were shuffled through. Sometimes Sam and I were together. Sometimes we were apart. We never stayed anywhere for more than a year. But in each and every family, the kids would tell me the same thing as soon as I arrived. This is my house. Those are my parents. You don’t touch my toys. You don’t hug my mum. You don’t belong here.’

Kash’s defiant frown had softened a little, if only with confusion at my candidness. I leaned forwards so that he could see that I meant every word I was saying.

‘People have been telling me to fuck off out of their territory since before you were born,’ I said. ‘And for all those years, my answer’s been exactly the same.’

He waited.

‘This is my house now,’ I said.





Chapter 18


WHITT SQUEEZED ALONG the packed aisle and settled near the middle of the row of spectator seats to the left of the courtroom. Above him, the press gallery was all looking at their phones, updating their editors before the morning’s session began.

As Harriet’s brother was escorted into the huge space in his crumpled suit, a hush fell over the crowd. Whitt tried to catch the man’s eye, but Sam’s stare was on the back of the courtroom.

Today, expert witnesses would testify about Sam’s mental capabilities. The frail, big-nosed Doctor Hemsill had taken the stand, and avoided eye contact with Blue as he read from his report.

‘We can infer that much of Samuel Blue’s troubling history is directly attributable to developmental issues caused by his mother’s use of illicit substances during her pregnancy,’ Hemsill said. ‘His tests show low patterns of stimuli reaction in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, which we know are areas of the brain affected by substance abuse in utero. The prefrontal cortex controls a lot of our civilising, inhibiting behaviour. It’s what stops you lashing out or acting violently, for example, when you’re experiencing rage.’

Whitt thought about Harry as he made notes. The times he’d seen her kick down doors, throw things, charge forwards with her fists balled when the stress of her situation became too much. He tried to shake her out of his head.

‘Impulsivity is something we see often with these kinds of brain activity patterns,’ Doctor Hemsill sighed. ‘Reactions to emotion, rather than logic. Blue’s social abilities are also greatly hindered by his neurological patterns. He has trouble with empathy. He can be abrasive. Hard to relate to. He naturally finds it difficult making friends at all, but when he does make them, his loyalty endures beyond reason.’

Whitt had accidentally written ‘Harry’ instead of ‘Sam’ in his notes. He crossed out the name, but circled the word ‘empathy’, tapping his pen thoughtfully on the page. Harry shared her brother’s wild, unpredictable personality. She was abrasive and hard to relate to. But she did not lack empathy. Whitt had spent a couple of weeks in the desert with her, watching her toss and turn in her sleep, watching her struggle under the almost physical weight of her worry for whomever the Bandya Mine killer would target next. She’d been broken-hearted after a spider in their cabin had been found unceremoniously squished. She felt things for others. In fact, sometimes Whitt thought she felt them too keenly. She would take the crusades of others on as her own responsibility, fight for people who didn’t want or didn’t deserve it.

Whitt had lost himself in dreaming. He rubbed his eyes, looked around. At the end of his row, a man with a closely shaved head was sitting with his hands on his knees. Whitt didn’t know what it was that drew his focus to this man. Perhaps it was his attentive presence in the distinctly sparse seating area reserved for supporters of the accused. Whitt and the man were alone on the bench, and the bench behind them was empty. But no, it was something more. Whitt realised that almost every set of eyes in the courtroom was focused on the large screen behind the witness stand, where Doctor Hemsill was pointing at parts of the human brain lit up with different colours.

But the shaven-headed man’s eyes were on Samuel Blue. The man was not just staring; his gaze was locked on Blue, like a cat with its attention fixed on a bird. The hairs on Whitt’s arms were beginning to stand on end. Something told him to commit this man’s face to memory. He looked at the notebook before him. Perhaps he could make a sketch. He took up his pen. But when he turned back to examine the man again, he was gone.





Chapter 19


I SAT AT Snale’s kitchen table with my head in my hands, listening to the officer rattling around the kitchen, scraping food together for her two city guests. It had been a long day, and when Snale showed us to our accommodation, my space a single fold-out bed at the end of her large enclosed porch, I felt the desire to fall into the sheets and bury my face in the pillow. It was a struggle to keep my mind on the diary that lay open in front of me. Snale came to the table with her notebook in her mouth and two wineglasses in her hands.