‘What does Kalageris think?’ Jackie asked.

  ‘Hasn’t said yet,’ Abdi answered. ‘You know how she is.’

  Jackie’s heart sank. If ever she didn’t want Doris Kalageris’s professional thoroughness, it was now. ‘So, you find anything here?’ she asked Abdi, surveying the study as if seeing it for the first time.

  ‘Have a look at this,’ said Abdi, motioning them to the open wardrobe.

  Jackie and Kinsella stood side by side, taking in the photos pasted inside. After a long moment, Kinsella said, ‘Jesus Christ. The man was …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Disturbed, at the least,’ offered Abdi, coming to stand next to Jackie.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, keeping her voice neutral. ‘But he was the expert on Belle Fitzgerald. Wrote a book about her. So, you know –’

  ‘By expert, I take it you mean creepy fucking stalker,’ said Kinsella, who’d lit up his phone and was videoing the photos. ‘This is seriously weird stuff.’

  Jackie felt a thrill of unease. What if Kinsella were to see the photos she’d taken last night? She left her phone in her bag, said, ‘Thanks, Kinsella,’ and then to Abdi, ‘Any sign of a note?’

  ‘Nothing so far,’ he said. ‘Maybe something on the laptop.’

  Kinsella pointed to the wooden box on the floor of the wardrobe. ‘Have a look?’

  Abdi picked it up, opened it, showed them the pile of trinkets. Kinsella held out his phone, took photos.

  Jackie asked Abdi, as if she didn’t know, ‘Laptop password-protected?’

  Abdi nodded. ‘Yeah. Phone as well. Face recognition won’t do much good now –’

  She interrupted him. ‘We can get into it faster than your mob. Can we take it? And his phone?’

  Before Abdi could reply, there was a throat-clearing and they looked up to see Les Murphy, Doris Kalageris’s sidekick, at the door, his large square spectacles reflecting light. That, together with his stick-insect limbs in their white overalls, made him look like an alien fallen to earth. He said, ‘Thought I could hear hobnailed boots,’ and giggled at his own incomprehensible joke. Then he bowed his head so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone. ‘She wants to see you,’ he told Jackie.

  The anxiety bubbling inside Jackie grew intense, made her hesitate. Kinsella picked up the vibe, misunderstood. ‘We’ve seen worse,’ he whispered. She didn’t answer, took a deep breath, walked down the passage and stopped at the same place she’d stood the night before. Tried to ignore the stench.

  Doris Kalageris had been bending over the bed. Now she straightened and turned to acknowledge Jackie and Kinsella. The movement gave them a clear view of Curran’s body and though Jackie knew what to expect, looking at him made her jaw clench. She fought to remain professional, couldn’t stop herself. ‘Suicide?’ she asked, then, ‘Any idea of time of death? And he definitely killed himself?’

  Doris pushed down her mask. She was frowning. ‘Hmm. He’s been dead a couple of days, but I’ll know more when I take a closer look.’ She meant the post-mortem.

  ‘Something wrong?’ This time it was Kinsella. Doris was famous for not jumping the gun, and equally famous for playing favourites. She liked Jackie, but Kinsella was definitely a favourite.

  She said, ‘Nothing I can put my finger on. Splatter matches, everything works, just … something about it, the way of it. Who lies down in bed to commit suicide?’

  Jackie couldn’t find words. Kinsella saved her, even if he didn’t know he had. ‘You should see the set-up in the front room,’ he told Doris. ‘The bloke made a whole shrine to Belle Fitzgerald. Apparently they were an item once, and it looks like he devoted himself to her. Then she turns up, we reopen the case, and it’s all too much. He wakes up in the night, decides life’s not worth living, gets the gun out of – where? The drawer? –’ Kinsella indicated the bedside table ‘– and doesn’t overthink it. Wham!’

  Doris waggled her head from side to side in an I’ll consider it movement. ‘Okay. Possible. Likely, even. As I said, I’ll know more in a few days.’ Then to Les, ‘Good to go.’ Les went off to organise getting the body to the morgue. Doris snapped her medical bag shut. Speaking to Kinsella, she asked, ‘They told me this guy’s mother raised the alarm?’

  Kinsella nodded. ‘Yup.’

  ‘Some people live too long,’ Doris said.

  ***

  The body had been taken away but Forensics were still absorbed in their meticulous work. Again, Jackie asked Abdi if she could use Homicide’s resources to examine the laptop. Abdi refused. Evidence protocol. Don’t talk to me about evidence protocol, she thought sourly. I’ve been ignoring evidence protocol all week. She was about to argue with him when her phone rang. Her heart leapt as, for a crazy moment, she was sure it was her mother.

  Harwood. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Still in Curran’s house.’

  Harwood said, ‘You alone? Can you talk privately?’

  Kinsella looked at Jackie enquiringly. She waved him out, held up a finger to say she’d be a minute, showed him the phone, mouthed Harwood. He gave a thumbs-up and left, shutting the door behind him. Abdi and his crew had moved to the bedroom. Jackie perched on Curran’s office chair. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.

  Harwood tried to keep his voice under control. ‘I’ve just come from Commissioner Liddell. I was in her office when she got a call from Alan Grant, warning her to expect fireworks in the interview tomorrow night. When she heard that, she put the call on speakerphone. Grant said Trevor Curran sent him, and I quote, “never-before-seen photos involving Belle Fitzgerald which are going to turn the case upside down and, more than that, will place certain people in the hot seat”.’

  Oh, Christ, thought Jackie. It’s happened. He knows. She waited for what was to come.

  As Harwood continued, his anger grew, his voice rising as he relived the conversation. ‘Grant, that sanctimonious fucking creep, repeated what he’d told her but wouldn’t say what the photos showed. So Liddell broke the news about Curran’s death, and reminded Grant they had a deal – no landmines. Grant said that’s why he’d phoned her in the first place, to keep his side of the bargain. Oh, and by the way, he said, he’d already heard about Curran. Bastard put on a sad voice. “Very tragic, of course, but wow, incredible timing as far as the show’s concerned!”

  ‘Then it turned into a free-for-all. Liddell insisted Grant produce the photos. Grant refused, claiming it would dilute their impact, but he assured her they’d rock the country. Liddell threatened to withdraw from the interview. Grant reminded her about the massive publicity already out there. He knew he had us over a barrel. Liddell had one more try, told Grant if he had evidence pertaining to the Belle Fitzgerald case he was legally bound to hand it over. Grant just laughed and said the lawyers could fight about that after the show. And he hung up.’

  Harwood paused, took a deep breath in, snorted it out. ‘So what I want to know is if you can shed light on what Grant meant, and who the people are he mentioned, the certain people in the hot seat.’

  Jackie was surprised at how easily the lie came. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely no idea.’ She wanted to slump forward, lay her head on Curran’s desk, sleep for days. She was tired to her bones. It had all been for nothing: the receipt, the cover-up, everything. She thought of Luke as she’d last seen him, leaving the restaurant with Danni. Defiant, because he’d stood up to his mother, was going to throw in everything safe and secure and change his life completely. What did it matter now what he did with his life? In fact, she should encourage his going to London with Danni, however much she disliked the girl. Better to have Luke as far away from this as possible.

  She returned her attention to Harwood. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to arrive at the TV studio with an answer to who killed the girl. Pick somebody, anybody. Organised crime, Bensimon, little green men from Mars, I don’t give a fuck. It doesn’t matter. We need to win this one.’ Harwood sounded hoarse. ‘We – the commissioner and I – spoke to your father a minute ago. He said he’d see what he could do. So maybe get in touch with him and you can work together. Just bring the goods tomorrow night. Clear?’

  He took Jackie’s silence for assent and continued, ‘Mean­while, you and Kinsella go through Curran’s stuff, see if you can turn up anything that tells us what to expect tomorrow. Ring me later to let me know what you find.’

  ‘It’s still a crime scene,’ said Jackie. ‘Forensics –’

  ‘I’ll clear it with Forensics.’ And Harwood was gone.

  ***

  Jackie didn’t know how long she’d been sitting in Curran’s study, in his chair, staring at her phone. It might have been minutes or hours. She came out of her fugue state when Kinsella tapped her shoulder, saying, ‘What’s up? When you didn’t show …’

  She kept her eyes on her phone. ‘Harwood,’ she said. ‘That was Harwood.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Jackie told him. Kinsella listened in silence, leaning against the desk in his usual folded-arms position. Now he lifted his head, stroked his neck, addressed the ceiling. ‘Blimey. Curran’s about to go on national TV with evidence blowing up what we know about the case, and then he goes and shoots himself? Hard to believe.’ He looked down at Jackie. ‘How come I feel I’m getting half a story?’

  Jackie raised her shoulders in a don’t ask me gesture. Kinsella gave her a sharp stare, but didn’t comment. She went to find Abdi, brought him in and told him and Kinsella about Harwood wanting her to check Curran’s house again. Abdi wasn’t amused. He strode out of the room and they could hear him on the veranda, talking on his phone. He returned and, with a lack of expression that screamed disapproval, gave them permission to access the laptop and phone. Told them to leave everything else in place. No chance of a warm extended handshake this time.

  Kinsella sat in Curran’s chair, pulled it close to the desk and angled the laptop to face him. Jackie was about to tell him to leave that to the IT guys when he lifted the lid, waited for the prompt and keyed in a word. Belle. The screen lit up. Inwardly, Jackie groaned. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that last night? ‘I’ll fetch another chair,’ she said. ‘We’ll be here a while.’

  ***

  It didn’t take them as long as they expected. They ignored the phone, which needed a numerical passcode and which was synced to the laptop in any case. Slowly, Curran’s life revealed itself. He had few friends, all male. A sister and a brother, both living in Adelaide. Emails to them concerned his mother, the cost of her care, what would happen to the house when she died. Other emails centred on work. His texts, too, exposed a solitary life. Once a month he met a group of retired journos for drinks. He shared Wordle results with someone called Geoff Springer. He used his laptop as a writing tool, nothing more. His documents folder held drafts and final copies of articles, information about their publication and copies of contracts. Nothing yet about the new book. Curran had recently cleared his browsing history, but IT would be able to recover it.

  They went through his photos. Jackie’s heart was in her mouth, but there was no sign of his obsession with Belle. Most of the photos were of Curran at various journalistic functions, others of him with an old woman. They dated from 2020, when he had probably bought the laptop and phone. Curran belonged to a generation which used technology only when they had to.

  They moved to his filing cabinet. As Jackie had seen the night before, the top drawer held neatly labelled hanging files containing personal information, the lower one material for the relatively few articles Curran had written as a freelance journalist, going back to 2015. Jackie and Kinsella turned to look at the archive boxes stacked against the walls.

  Kinsella was appalled. ‘Harwood expects us to go through all that crap?’

  ‘Not all of them. We focus on the Fitzgerald ones.’ It had been on the tip of Jackie’s tongue to tell Kinsella to take the files to Parramatta and work on them with Bennie Wang, but what if they included more of Curran’s stalking photos? ‘Come on,’ she said, nudging him with her shoulder. ‘Saturday afternoon. We’ll do them together.’

  They located two boxes they thought were relevant and sat side by side sorting through them. They contained all Curran’s material for Five Belles. There were photographs of Belle Fitzgerald, but Jackie recognised some of them as having been reproduced in the book. There were pages of typed-up notes and drafts of chapters. Printed-out articles on corruption in the Cross, most with imprints from TV channels or newspapers. No mention of Stanton Rose and no copies of incriminating photos.

  They finished the job. Jackie thought how comforting it was to have Kinsella next to her. She touched his arm, said, ‘Tonight?’

  Kinsella looked at his watch. ‘I need to see Tess,’ he said. ‘I can come after. How about I bring food?’

  ‘Great,’ Jackie said. ‘We’ll load these boxes in my car. Bennie can have another look. Ask him to come in tomorrow, just in case. Overtime.’

  Kinsella got out his phone, texted. ‘I’ve asked him to check whether Curran had a gun licence.’

  ‘Good thinking.’

  They went outside. The local cops they’d met that morning had returned. While Kinsella and the ginger cop, Starling, took care of the boxes, Jackie asked the woman, Tarigan, what they’d learned from the neighbours, and specifically if any of them had heard unusual noises the night before last. She longed to ask about last night as well but bit her tongue. Tarigan shook her head. ‘Even had a go at the street behind,’ she said. ‘There’s a house that overlooks this one. They didn’t see anything either.’ Then, before Jackie could bring it up, she added, ‘I asked my boss about CCTV. He said not to bother unless the pathologist comes up with murder, but we got login access for Randwick Council, just in case. You want the details?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Jackie, trying to sound indifferent. ‘Might as well text them to me. Here’s my card. And call me if you think there’s anything else I should know.’

  ***

  The first thing Jackie did when she got home was open her laptop and log in to the CCTV records for Randwick. It took her only an hour to confirm that, unless he’d chosen a particularly obscure route, her father’s dark blue Subaru hadn’t come or gone from Rainbow Street on Thursday night, when she guessed Trevor Curran had died.

  She closed the laptop and tapped its lid with a fingernail. Not an exhaustive search by any means, but it implied she’d been wrong. Curran must have committed suicide after all. Still, it niggled. She had the feeling she’d overlooked something she should have noticed. She gave a grunt of displeasure, ran upstairs, dumped her clothes and stood in the shower for a long time. It made no difference; her brain refused to leave her in peace. Tomorrow Alan Grant would produce the photos and her father would emerge as a direct suspect in Belle Fitzgerald’s death. No matter what excuses he came up with, he was trapped. If he said it was part of his act as an undercover cop pretending to work for Bensimon, then the natural conclusion would be that the pretence went as far as murder. If he said he and Belle were in love, then why hadn’t he come forward earlier? What had he been hiding?

  He’d be exposed as a liar and a cheat. And Harwood, held responsible for the investigation, would be desperate to save face. He’d get other cops in, start again, revisit the steps Jackie had taken, interview the same people. They’d come up with Nelson and Margie Solon, and of course, Levy the jeweller. She’d probably be drummed out of the force. With good reason. She didn’t want to think about what it would do to the rest of her life.

  This is it, she told herself. The end. She tried to force out tears, but they wouldn’t come. Then she imagined how stupid she must look. The picture of herself, naked and wet, seeking pity like some chick in a movie, it was too much. Who did she think was going to help her? No, face it, she was on her own, and weakness wasn’t an option.

  She yearned to talk to Schalk Lourens. She needed him to tell her that although she’d compromised every belief she held dear, she was still a good person. He’d understand, given his own history, how you can do wrong things for the right reasons, or what you think is right at the time. But Schalk was half a world away. What she needed was human contact, a few hours of forgetting. Kinsella. She wrapped a towel around herself and checked her phone. A text from him. Time? She answered Now.

  He must have been close because she’d only just dressed when the doorbell rang and there he was, in a leather jacket, carrying a pizza box. He saw her wet hair, saw something in her face, deposited the box on the floor and drew her in close. ‘Bed?’ he asked. ‘Or food?’

  ‘Bed.’

  The sex was wild. Jackie demanded it and if Kinsella was surprised, he didn’t show it. He was eager, did what she wanted, sweated with her until they were satisfied. Then he held her tight. And later they went downstairs and sat on the floor, their backs against the couch, eating cold pizza and drinking beer.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Kinsella said.

  ‘Okay.’ Jackie brought over a roll of kitchen towels to use as serviettes, sat back down.

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled her close, stroked hair away from her forehead. ‘There’s a job going in Perth,’ he said. ‘Homicide sergeant. Mine if I want it.’

  Jackie leaned into him. ‘Going to take it?’

  ‘Depends on you.’

  She stiffened. ‘What do you mean depends on me? I’ll miss you, but –’

  Holding her shoulders, he moved her an arm’s length away, looked into her eyes. ‘I’m asking if you want me to stay.’

  She gazed back at him. And saw what he was trying to tell her. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. I have, as the Americans say, feelings for you.’

  Despite herself, Jackie chuckled, a short breath. ‘Jesus, Kinsella, get a grip.’

  He shrugged and waggled his head at the same time. He looked happy. ‘Sorry. But there it is.’