Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(30)

‘Stop! You’re going to break it. This is not a toy, you fuck! This is very expensive shit!’

‘Did you reveal anything …’ Tox said slowly, ‘that would have led Sam …’

‘I left the autopsy photos with him, OK?’ Nigel breathed. ‘He’d have known the girls suffered certain injuries from the pictures.’

‘So you forced the confession?’

‘We encouraged it. There’s nothing wrong with that. We provided him with materials to help him along. That’s all.’

‘Did you starve him?’

‘No.’

‘Did you beat him?’

‘No!’

‘Did you leave him in the custody of people who did do those things?’

‘Get out!’ Nigel grabbed a cricket bat from beside the garage door. ‘Get out of my garage!’

Tox took the train from the tracks, detaching the battery-pack carriage, making the internal lights flicker and die. He threw the train over his shoulder so that it crashed onto the cluttered table against the wall.

‘I wasn’t there for the whole Blue confession, alright?’ Nigel begged. ‘No one was. We didn’t keep a log. It was twenty-two hours. People came and went. The tape wasn’t always on. It’s possible Blue was leaned on too hard.’

‘It’s possible?’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

Tox nodded, wandered around to the harbour, making sure he was always on the opposite side of the table to Nigel. He spied the miniature model of the Joker standing on steps of the town hall, a Tommy gun in his hands. Tox snapped the Joker from his place on the model landscape, smiled at the tiny purple-jacketed figure in his fingers.

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘My favourite.’

Tox threw the Joker up and caught him in his palm, put the little man in the pocket of his leather jacket. He winked at Nigel as he ducked back under the garage door and out into the night.





Chapter 41


LINNY SIMPSON CUT a dejected figure at the back of the cafe, staring into a stained coffee cup as Whitt entered. He went to her table and stood there expectantly, perhaps a couple of seconds too long, before she broke from her reverie.

‘Ms Simpson?’

‘Hi,’ she said, watching him sit. The inch of coffee at the bottom of her cup that had so fascinated her looked cold. ‘I don’t have long to talk to you.’

‘That’s perfectly fine. I’m grateful for you giving me any time at all.’ Whitt caught the eye of the waitress and ordered for them both. ‘I understand you’ve stopped cooperating with the officers you’ve been dealing with. Detective Spader and his team.’

‘They don’t believe me,’ Linny said. Though it had been almost five months, Whitt could hear astonishment lingering in Linny’s voice. Flickers of rage. ‘No one believes me. My own family are starting to think twice about my story. I’m getting messages online from people I don’t know saying I’m lying about all this.’

‘ Are the messages threatening?’ Whitt asked.

‘They’re abusive,’ Linny said. ‘People think I’m making up what happened because I want to free Sam Blue. Or because I want attention. My fifteen minutes of fame.’

‘There are some difficulties with what you’ve said,’ Whitt said carefully. ‘Your story changed in subtle ways.’

‘Well, it was hard to remember,’ Linny pleaded. ‘I mean, in the beginning. I remember it clearly now.’

Whitt nodded though his thoughts were grave. That wasn’t how memory worked. The longer Linny waited after the actual event, the more degraded her memory of it would become. An inference here, a suggestion there, a few sleepless nights running the thing over in her mind, and the whole story would become unrecognisable.

‘Why don’t you take me back to that day?’ Whitt took out his notebook, slid a collection of papers across the page. ‘I have your police statement here. You say you’d just finished an ethics class …’

‘I walked over to the parking garage.’ Linny said. ‘Up the fire stairs. There was no one around, not on that level anyway. I think I’d seen some people before I went up, but I’m not sure. He was waiting just next to the door. When I came through, he grabbed me around my throat.’

Whitt made notes. Linny Simpson was the Georges River Killer’s type. Brunette. White. Slim, petite. Student of the university, a motivated, budding business undergrad. The way she described being grabbed was convincing. An inexperienced abductor might grab a woman around the middle, allowing her to scream, to throw her weight forwards, her centre of gravity keeping her upright. If he swept his arm around her throat instead, made a headlock, and yanked her backwards, he’d have her off balance and silent.

‘He tried to drag me towards a white van parked to the right of the door,’ she said. ‘I was screaming.’

‘How could you have screamed when he had you in a headlock?’

‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘I was so shocked. It happened so fast.’

‘Was the van indeed white?’ Whitt asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Your initial police statement says it was green.’

‘I was mistaken,’ Linny said. ‘I remembered later that it was white.’