White Throat Read online

  Clem watched Mr Henderson lead his wife to his car. Mrs Lemmon came to mind, back in Katinga, knitting her beanies. Clem was about to make her sad, too. It was better though—to cut the ties quick before she hurt them even more.

  She looked up at the blue sky. Not a cloud in sight and the wind abating. Jesus Christ, Helen. This is too much.

  And she was so…not hungry, but empty. She hadn’t eaten, couldn’t eat. Her mouth was dry, her tongue still felt swollen with salt. The paramedics had given her a bottle of water. She took another sip, poured a dribble on Pocket’s snout. He opened his lips to the side, scooped at the water with his tongue.

  Sergeant Wiseman came walking across the yard with Constable Griffin in tow, towering over his boss. ‘So, care to tell us what happened here?’ She squinted in the late morning sun, one thumb hooked over her heavily laden belt.

  Wiseman had described the scene inside to Clem earlier. Two shots to the head, point blank range, dead, instantly. Clem’s stomach had turned upside down and she’d dry retched behind the pandanus. Now she stood up. The police had given her a T-shirt from the bedroom but she was still in the same shorts, dry and crusty with salt. She tensed. This was the moment Wiseman would finally come round and start heading in the right direction. Don’t stuff it up, Jones.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not sure where to start. Safest to focus on the action, probably. ‘This guy, the dead guy, he came in through the back door. He had a gun.’

  ‘D’ya know him?’ Wiseman was shorter than Clem, maybe just on five foot, tiny but fit, a little pocket rocket with a voice that made it clear she’d brook no bullshit.

  ‘No, never seen him before.’

  ‘What, a stranger? With a gun, for no reason?’

  ‘Yes, a stranger and yes, he had a gun. Fucked if I know what his reason was…I mean, sorry, I’m so strung out…I don’t know why. I didn’t have a chance to ask him. He fired a shot and it hit my friend. That’s when—’

  ‘Right, so a complete stranger enters your home for no reason and takes a shot at your friend?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Wiseman tipped her mouth down, flicked her eyebrows up. ‘And then what?’

  ‘Torrens went down and Sarge burst in—’

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘The bull-mastiff. Sarge. Short for Sergeant,’ said Clem.

  Sergeant Wiseman flinched slightly, as if the name was a personal insult. ‘Go on,’ she said, rocking back on her heels.

  ‘Well, Sarge burst through the dog door and latched onto the guy’s leg. He went down and I splashed metho on the guy’s face. Then we were able to get the gun off him.’

  ‘Metho?’

  ‘I didn’t have a weapon.’ She didn’t want to mention the water pistol or anything that indicated the whole thing was staged.

  Wiseman looked at Clem, her eyes searching for something. ‘And who is “we”?’

  Wiseman knew it was Torrens. Of course she knew. ‘Deliberately obtuse’ must be one of the techniques they train them in at cop school.

  ‘Matthew Torrens. You know him. You arrested him recently.’ Stupid cow can shove it up her arse. Oh settle down, Jones. Exhaustion and irritability went hand in hand for her, she knew that, but she had to fight it, try to be civil. ‘He was the one who was shot. He went to Barnforth Hospital to get checked out.’

  ‘Right, I think I’m getting the picture now. A complete stranger enters your home for no reason and shoots at your friend, who just happens to be a convicted felon. Don’t suppose it was him that put the two holes in this bloke’s head?’

  Clem felt a flush of anger and protectiveness.

  ‘No, he did not. And you’re out of touch, sergeant. Matthew Torrens has done his time,’ she snapped.

  ‘And so at this point you rang an ambulance for the wounded intruder?’

  ‘No. There was another man, we saw him coming. He had a gun, too, so we ran out the back and flagged down a guy in a boat.’ She missed out the phone call to Ralph and the note they’d stuck on the wall.

  ‘So who tied up this first guy, then?’

  ‘Don’t know. Must have been the second guy.’

  ‘A second man with a gun, also unknown to you?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘A boat? You got away in a boat. Sounds a bit James Bond.’

  ‘We live on a waterway, sergeant, there’s lots of boats pass our backyard. We called the ambulance once we got away from the shore. You can check it out,’ said Clem, defensively. ‘That was just before I rang you.’

  Constable Griffin scribbled a note in his pad, flicked over to another page.

  ‘Still, pretty lucky a boat just happened to be going by,’ said Wiseman, deadpan.

  ‘Yeah. Guess we were due a bit of luck after being shot at.’ Double-deadpan.

  ‘So the dead guy. Who is he?’

  ‘Like I said, never seen him before.’ That was true enough.

  ‘Any ideas why these random armed strangers just waltzed into your house?’

  The constable was eyeing Clementine off as well now, pen poised.

  ‘Not the first guy, no. I’m hoping you can tell me what the hell he was after. But the second guy, he’s after me because I know he killed Helen Westley.’

  The words crashed through Wiseman’s ice-cold surface like a rock. She wasn’t expecting that. Clem let the rock sink right to the bottom. Griffin checked across at his boss, looking just as shocked.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ said Wiseman.

  ‘His name’s Warwick Jackson and he’s a hitman—a paid assassin. Andrew Doncaster hired him to kill Helen and now that I know, they’re after me.’

  Wiseman almost rolled her eyes. This was not going well. The terror of being shot at, the exhausting swim, had left Clem tetchy, belligerent. Just when the police should be coming around to her way of thinking, she was pushing them away. She needed Wiseman on board, needed the full extent of police resources mobilised, looking for Helen’s killer. Bloody hell, she needed their protection, for Christ’s sake. Jackson would almost certainly be back for her.

  ‘Listen, Clementine, I know you’ve had a bad day, a really bad day, but…’

  ‘Don’t make it worse by patronising me,’ Clem snapped angrily. She was losing it, the threads starting to tear—fatigue, shock, desperation, it was about to tip her over the edge. She could cry. She might cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry in front of the cops. Clem looked away, stared at the sea, sucking the strength of it through her nostrils deep into her lungs.

  Wiseman lowered her eyes, sighed. ‘Look, how about we talk through all these details at the station?’ There was a hint of softness in her voice. ‘You can fill me in on all this stuff, okay, everything you’ve found out. I need to understand it.’

  Clem turned to face her with a tiny skerrick of hope in her heart, the tension in her jaw letting go. Someone on this planet wanted to know the truth about Helen. Someone was going to listen, and it was the officer in charge, Wiseman, the one person who could do something. She could have hugged her right there and then.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that would be great. Thank you,’ said Clem, her energy returning.

  ‘Good. I’ll take you back to the station as soon as forensics turn up. You okay to hang here for a bit till then?’

  Clem nodded, smiling for the first time that day. ‘No pressing engagements. But how about something to eat? You guys got some donuts, maybe?’

  The air conditioner in the police interview room was turned to full-clanking noise. They’d given her the oldest, most threadbare shirt she owned, the one she used for mucking about around the house, the one with the curry stain on the front. The embarrassment was one thing, but it was more the feeling of being out of control of her life: strangers selecting her clothing, telling her where she could go and where she must sit that got to her.

  Wiseman had been helpful and thorough, making sure she got all the detail. She was smart, too, immediately understanding the implications of Helen’s attempt to prot
ect Turtle Shores with a covenant. Constable Griffin had shown her a number of photographs and thankfully Clem had managed to pick out Warwick Jackson from the line-up.

  Then the two cops had left to go and type up her statement. She sat there in the empty room at the grey laminate table. Despite the chill and the smothering glare of the fluorescent light it was a relief to be on her own. She spread her elbows across the table and let her head fall onto her hands, closed her eyes. So tired. But now, finally, the police would take over. One man dead and the shooter on the loose. She wouldn’t have to put herself in danger anymore.

  Slumped on the table, she imagined Wiseman and Griffin arriving at the quarry and finding Helen’s body. She was looking over the edge of the cliff again, the sheer drop, Helen’s body at the bottom staring up from the tree. She pushed the image aside; thought about her last moments. No one was there with Helen when she died. She was alone. Had Jackson interfered with her, assaulted her sexually before he pushed her over? She’d never thought to ask. A tear rolled down her cheek onto the table and she didn’t have the will to stop it.

  The door opened. Griffin entered still carrying the folder with the photographs. Clem sat up, rubbed at her face, wiped the tear off the table.

  ‘Okay, Ms Jones,’ said Griffin sitting down and opening the folder. ‘If you could just have a read through your statement and make sure we’ve typed it up correctly, thanks?’ He pulled out a document fastened with a paperclip and pushed it across the desk.

  ‘Okay, but can I ask you something first?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Griffin. He’d taken the customer-service classes seriously at cop school, she could tell.

  ‘Was Helen sexually assaulted before her death?’

  ‘There were no signs of any sexual assault,’ he said.

  It was good news, but she wanted to make sure of it. ‘But you did check, right?’

  ‘If she’d been assaulted, that would have pointed to something other than suicide—so yes, we checked.’

  Clem was relieved. It sounded like the truth. But the lack of diligence in the investigation, the weeks of distrust, had left their mark. ‘So she was clothed? When you found her?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ said Griffin. ‘Well, except for the sandals obviously.’

  ‘Sandals?’ Helen only ever wore toe sandals with a strap across the heel. Wiseman entered the room, striding over to the chair opposite Clem. She was frowning, her mouth set in a tense line and her eyes locking on Clem as she sat, sending her a searing gaze. Clem was startled. She’d been wholly onside—had something changed?

  ‘Yeah, they must have come off on impact,’ said Griffin. ‘Took us a while to find one of them. It was a long way away from the body.’

  Clem took her eyes off Wiseman, looked back at Griffin. ‘And they were the toe sandals, right? With the strap at the back?’

  Even though he didn’t seem to notice the change in her demeanour, he looked uncomfortable now that Wiseman was back in the room. He could see where Clem was headed and seemed to be questioning whether he’d given up too much detail to a civilian. Griffin tapped the document in front of her. ‘If you could read through the statement please, Ms Jones?’

  She could tell from his expression she was right. ‘How on earth did they come off?’

  ‘The constable told you—impact,’ snapped Wiseman. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Clem. What was it? Something was wrong. Whatever it was, Clem didn’t want to get Wiseman offside. She was impressive. Stubborn at first, but switched on: clearly good at her job. If anyone was going to nail Doncaster, it would be her.

  Clem lowered her voice and tried for a helpful tone. ‘But being so far away from her body—couldn’t the killer have thrown them over the edge? Whoever it was that pushed her?’ Her mind was racing with this new information. She knew it was important. Somehow it was important that the sandals were off, one of them flung so far away they couldn’t find it. Yes, flung. It could not have been the impact. But why would Jackson do that?

  There was a silence in the room for a moment. Griffin looked like he might say something but then thought better of it—he’d said too much already. Wiseman was boring a hole in Clem’s head with an icy stare.

  ‘Ms Jones, you’ve been telling us how to do our job now for weeks. But you know what your job is?’ Clem looked at her blankly. ‘Your job is to tell the truth.’

  Oh God, she’d found a hole, a lie in her story.

  ‘Isn’t there something more you need to tell us?’ Wiseman spoke slowly, deliberately, each syllable loaded.

  ‘Ah, no,’ said Clem, all the confidence suddenly absent from her voice.

  Wiseman scowled. ‘How about the fact that Ralph Bennett didn’t just happen to be passing by? That you had time to ring him and ask him to come and collect you?’ All the muscles in Clem’s throat tightened, her tongue felt huge in the back of her mouth. ‘I’ve just been speaking with him. He rang us to make sure you’re okay.’

  Clem felt like she was falling—on the lip of the quarry with Wiseman at the top watching as she toppled backwards. Everything she had fought for was slipping away. She swallowed, tried to think of something to say, nothing came.

  ‘So why couldn’t you call an ambulance at that point, with Membrey on the ground, bleeding heavily from a dog bite? And if you had time to call Mr Bennett, perhaps you also had time to tie the guy up.’

  Wiseman’s challenge was clear and pointed. It triggered a kick of adrenaline and Clem felt the zing coursing through her body. Grab hold of the ledge and hang on, Jones.

  ‘Yeah, well…’ She cleared her throat, stalling for think time. ‘The bleeding…it didn’t look that bad, and he had the gun, he was crazy, attacking us. We had to tie him up first. By the time we’d done that, the second guy showed up out front. We ran out and I called Ralph at the same time.’

  ‘So the second guy—Jackson, you say?—he didn’t just run after you and shoot?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t get in…the door was locked.’ They would see there was no forced entry, but it didn’t matter, she just needed to keep them engaged, get them back on track for now.

  ‘And what else haven’t you told us, Ms Jones? How about not knowing the first guy, why he was there with a gun? Huh?’

  ‘Yeah, no. No idea.’ She shrugged feebly.

  Wiseman looked at her with contempt and shook her head. Both cops left the room again and came back with a revised version of the statement. Clem read through it under the sergeant’s disgusted gaze while a clock ticked behind her. The phone call to Ralph was in there, the lie about the locked front door. She had said nothing about Torrens’ gun and the water pistol though.

  ‘Yes, all good,’ she said.

  The room prickled with silence. Griffin reached for a nonexistent pen in his top pocket. He looked crestfallen—probably still stinging from his earlier stuff-up—as if this was a further sign of his lack of professionalism.

  ‘Ah, sarge, you got a pen?’

  Wiseman’s eyes were locked on Clem. She had a pen in her top pocket but didn’t move to retrieve it. Despite the air conditioning the room smelled of sweaty bodies from one or probably all of them. Clem had the perverse sense that Wiseman was quite happy about it.

  ‘So, before you sign, let’s just confirm,’ said Wiseman, slow, measured, like she thought there was still a chance of getting more information. ‘You know nothing about the dead man?’

  ‘No. Like I said, sergeant, I’ve given you everything.’

  ‘And the shooter doesn’t know you or Torrens?’

  ‘We’ve been through this. Torrens recognised him as Jackson.’

  ‘Let’s just hope your story lines up with what Torrens has to say then, eh? Wouldn’t want to find any more holes in it.’

  She emphasised, your story, as if it was a fairytale, a magic beanstalk and a unicorn rolled into one. Slowly, deliberately, Wiseman took the pen from her top pocket and placed it on the table, two fingers holding it there, clamped. Griffin looked on exp
ectantly, eyes widening as Wiseman pressed down hard on the pen, not moving, her knuckles white with the force. The show of power was enough to send a crack through Clem’s crumbling calm.

  ‘Look, sergeant, I’m the victim here. Isn’t being shot at enough, or do I actually have to get killed to prove that?’

  ‘Oh heavens no, we wouldn’t want you to go to those lengths,’ she scoffed. There was a long, tense pause. Finally, she released her fingers, held them suspended for a second then flicked the pen with her finger so it skidded across the table. Clem lunged at it before it toppled over the edge, she missed and bent reflexively, scrambling around on the floor to pick it up.

  Something pinged in Clem’s head then, like a guitar string snapping. Her shoulders ached from the swim, she was squeezed out and limp like a dishcloth, and it felt like Wiseman had just slapped her, but she had no strength to respond. She imagined lying down with a cup of tea and falling asleep to the sound of the waves. But she needed that one thing, just one thing first: to know that Helen’s murder investigation had finally begun.

  ‘So, you’re going to interview Doncaster now?’ she said.

  ‘Spoken to him. Rock-solid alibi,’ said Wiseman.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, sergeant. He hired a hitman to do it for him. Of course he has an alibi.’

  ‘He was in Sydney,’ she said without emotion, completely cold. ‘Oh, and by the way, he tells us you jumped off his boat of your own accord, got spooked by something—he had no idea what—and then you proceeded to smash up his property. What was it constable?’

  ‘Fuel filters and an inflatable dinghy, sarge.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Put a bloody great hole in the dinghy with a spear gun. Quite some damage, wasn’t it constable?’

  ‘Yes, sarge. Very nice dinghy, too: rigid inflatable, powder-coated aluminium hull, teak-finish deck. Even had a depth sounder.’

  Wiseman gave Clementine the shadow of a smile and Clem felt her mouth sag.

  ‘But you’re after Jackson, right?’

  ‘We’re after the shooter, yes. A man’s been killed and an old lady’s been shot at—we’ve got everyone on it.’ Wiseman spoke as if Clementine was holding them up.