‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘Because he’s convinced I killed her. That’s why he threw me out.’

  ***

  The morning was nearly gone now, and they were home. When Frankie heard what Jackie had to say, she got up from the bench and began to pace, then insisted they keep walking, striding along as if propelled by some internal fire. She talked as she walked, stopping sometimes to emphasise points, but unable to stay still for long. They made an extended loop around Broadway, ending back in Campbell Street. Now Jackie stood at the counter, watching as Frankie poured boiling water on the last desiccated peppermint teabag. My mother, she thought, my mother, in my kitchen.

  On the way Frankie had explained how, when Stanton told her of the affair, she’d tried to talk to Belle, begged Belle to give him up.

  ‘You have to understand,’ Frankie said, ‘I loved Stanton. I could see the thing with this woman, Belle, was a kind of fairytale. It was exciting for him, part of the world of danger he dealt with back then, the exact opposite of everyday life with mortgages and dentists and electricity bills. At first I thought it would blow over. She’d get tired of him, or the other way around. I thought I could persuade him to see that.’ She waved a hand. ‘It’s complicated. I know better now, of course, but at the time I believed I couldn’t live without him. And I had to consider you. You needed a father.’

  ‘I’ve been told Stanton only went with her because Maurie Bensimon ordered it.’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘No. Bensimon may have been in on it at the start, or maybe his offsider Russell Monroe, but not by the time he came to me. I can assure you, it was all Stanton. He was totally infatuated.’

  ‘Did you know Belle was pregnant?’

  Frankie tightened her lips. ‘Yes. That’s when he told me about her. He wanted a divorce so he could marry her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was the last straw. I phoned her. I told her I had to see her. I wanted to show her the damage she was causing and ask her to break it off with Stanton. She refused to see me, but I kept phoning and phoning until eventually she agreed to meet me that day, the day she went missing, the Monday, at midday. I remember I had to find a babysitter for you, because you weren’t at school. You had a cold.’

  ‘Where were you supposed to meet?’

  ‘At the Tropicana. Her idea. I suppose she chose somewhere public in case I decided to make a fuss. But she didn’t turn up. Between the time she left her house and the time she was supposed to meet me, she disappeared.’ Frankie tried the tea, grimaced.

  Jackie said, speaking slowly, thinking things through, ‘So when she went missing, and because Stanton was close enough to Bensimon and Monroe to know it wasn’t them –’

  ‘He thought it had to be me.’

  ‘How could he possibly jump to that conclusion? How could he even consider you doing something so terrible?’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that a million times? The only answer I can come up with is he was under such stress, so off the planet with the undercover operation, not to mention with Belle, that he believed everyone was as capable of evil as the people he worked with. I didn’t do myself any favours, either. I did tell him Belle hadn’t turned up to our meeting, but I’d made some stupid threats in the weeks before. I was upset, nearly hysterical. Then, when the hunt for her was all people could talk about, I came home one day and my bags were packed and waiting. He’d changed the locks.’

  Frankie was still holding her mug. Now she set it down carefully, as if it was fragile. She spoke dispassionately, her expression neutral. ‘I fronted him about it, of course. Rang the doorbell, bashed on the door. Kept it up so long he had to answer it. Any longer and the neighbours would’ve called the cops. So he pulled me inside, told me he knew I’d killed the woman he loved –’ Frankie put woman he loved in air quotes ‘– and I’d never see him, or you, again. If I tried, or if I got lawyers involved, you’d end up in foster care, and as for me, well, he reminded me he had friends. I had an idea of what he was doing in the Cross, so I knew what he meant by friends.’ She checked to see Jackie understood.

  Jackie nodded briefly. Frankie stayed where she was, head up, in that straight-backed posture Jackie had noticed on the walk. With the kitchen counter in front of her, she could have been giving evidence in a court of law. She said, ‘I don’t want you to think I didn’t try. I phoned. I wrote letters, to him, to you. Nothing. You know I wrote to you, don’t you? For years. You know I didn’t give up?’

  Jackie shook her head no. She wanted to believe, couldn’t. What about when I left home? she silently screamed. You just dropped it?

  ‘You didn’t get my letters? My birthday presents?’ Frankie had come around the counter, was in front of Jackie now. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Just that you’d gone away,’ Jackie said. ‘And it was just the two of us now, him and me, and we had to stick together. We’d be a team.’ She paused to consider what she’d said. That was the received wisdom, the mantra she’d held on to all her life. The reality, she recognised now, and with a shock that made her feel physically ill, was that her father had hardly ever been there. Whatever the cause of his absence, work or something else, her childhood had been a succession of nannies, of lonely prize-givings, school concerts. The enormity of what she’d lost hit Jackie, and she drew in a shuddering breath. She waited until she was calm enough to continue. ‘He wouldn’t talk about you. When I kept pestering, he told me you’d left us because you didn’t love us anymore and that I wasn’t allowed to say your name ever again.’

  ‘You were seven years old!’ Frankie spoke with a kind of wonder. ‘Oh, my poor child. I used to watch you at school, you know,’ Frankie said, ‘from across the road. Until a cop I didn’t know showed up at my flat in Ryde. Said it would be better for me, and for you, if I left town.’ When Jackie didn’t answer she flung out her arms, said with great ferocity, ‘You have no idea!’

  Jackie had stopped listening. She was putting facts together. Her father hadn’t killed Belle Fitzgerald. He’d lied to her to protect her mother.

  So where to go from there? Given her father’s actions, it was highly unlikely that Bensimon and/or Monroe had killed Belle. Richter, the developer, was out as well. He wouldn’t have acted without approval from Bensimon or the cops from the Cross. Moreover, she reminded herself, none of the professionals would have arranged Belle’s body with such care.

  Belle had been killed by someone who loved her. Loved her to the point of obsession, beyond reason. Beyond sanity.

  Frankie was still there, still with arms outstretched. It was too much. She wasn’t ready to embrace her mother yet. If ever. She said, ‘I have to go. There’s something I have to do, and it’s urgent. We can talk some more, but not now.’

  She didn’t wait to explain. There wasn’t time.

  ***

  Kinsella was waiting on the front porch of Trevor Curran’s house, talking to Tarigan, the female constable, the cluey one. Tarigan was there to give them access because the place was still a crime scene, but Jackie felt a spike of something seeing the two of them close together. Jealousy? Oh, please. She pushed the idea away. Instead, she thanked Tarigan for providing the CCTV details. She handed Kinsella a pair of gloves and the two of them went inside.

  The day was bright and with a slight breeze, yet the house felt sullen, as if it was ashamed of itself. The bodily smells of death had diminished, but there was a sense that the house itself was being claimed by something primeval, dark and rotten. Kinsella seemed to feel it, gave a small shiver. ‘Okay. What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Why did you call me in?’

  Jackie walked past him into the study and sat in Curran’s office chair. ‘You’re here because I don’t want anyone to say I’ve planted evidence,’ she said, flatly. ‘That is, if there’s evidence to find. Kinsella, I’ve been thinking. Received wisdom is Belle was killed on Bensimon’s orders, or Richter’s –’

  ‘Which doesn’t explain the body.’

  ‘Exactly. As you keep pointing out. Whoever killed Belle cared enough to lay her body out respectfully.’

  ‘Like someone who bought her a ring,’ Kinsella said. ‘Your father, for example. That story about buying the ring on Russell Monroe’s behalf, you don’t believe that, do you?’ He came in closer, touched a stack of boxes with his foot. ‘You’ve been protecting him all the way through this. He was shagging her, wasn’t he?’

  After a long moment, Jackie said, ‘Yeah. He was. Alan Grant has proof, and he’s going to bring it out tonight. My father and Belle were having an affair. But, Kinsella, that doesn’t mean he killed her.’

  ‘Jackie.’ Kinsella sighed, and Jackie saw the shadows under his eyes and realised how tired he must be. He said, ‘Was that what last night was about? I know you think the world of your father, but maybe it’s time –’

  ‘Time for what?’ Jackie snapped. ‘He –’ She stopped herself. She was about to do what she’d always done, make excuses for her father.

  ‘Time to accept he’s not perfect. Nobody is.’

  If Kinsella only knew how not perfect her father actually was. ‘I know. Believe me, Kinsella, I know. Meanwhile, talking of time, we’ve only got a few hours until tonight and you need to hear me out.’

  Kinsella dipped his head in defeat. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We have another suspect. Trevor Curran was obsessed with Belle Fitzgerald. Why haven’t we considered him?’

  ‘Because he spent the past however many years devoting himself to keeping her story alive. He wrote a book about her, for Christ’s sake. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d killed her.’

  ‘Unless he was totally obsessed.’ Jackie pointed at the cupboard. ‘Check that out.’

  ‘All due respect,’ Kinsella said wearily, ‘and sorry to repeat myself. Yes, those photos are seriously creepy. But that doesn’t prove anything –’

  ‘Kinsella. Please. Humour me here.’

  Something in her desperation got through, because Kinsella waved his blue-gloved hands like a minstrel in a show and said, ‘You’re the boss. What are we looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked Bennie to go in to work too, to double-check those files we went through yesterday. In case. Meanwhile, maybe there’s something we missed.’ She waved a hand at the room. ‘We’ll start with the wardrobe. You take the far side, I’ll go from the left.’

  One by one, they examined the photos. All they found was the sad extent of Trevor Curran’s fixation. Every photo was of Belle, very much alive and unaware of the stalker tracking her every move. Most captured her in the street, though some showed her in a café, a couple in the grounds of a sandstone building, probably East Sydney Tech. At least five shots had been taken through a window, possibly from outside her house. There was no discernible order here, except that, apart from a few of Belle with Trevor, all the photos were of Belle alone. Curran must have destroyed those of her with other people, or else, like those with Stanton, kept them for later use.

  Jackie came to the end of her survey. The wooden box was still sitting on the floor of the wardrobe, next to the withered bunch of yellow roses. She carried the box to the desk. It was Trevor’s repository of mementos, things Belle had discarded or thought she’d lost. A red leather glove, its fingertips dirty. A champagne cork. A small square scarf, silk, with a pattern of dark green roses. A yellowed, folded menu from Diethnes Greek restaurant. Two mismatched clip-on earrings, a gold chain. Jackie hooked the chain with a forefinger and held it up. It was fine, and suspended from it was a gold St Christopher medal. She turned the medal over. It was engraved with the letters M and G, entwined, the engraving loopingly old fashioned. A pretty thing. As Jackie examined it, she felt a sensation, a shiver in the air around her. Jackie didn’t believe in ghosts, but it was as if Belle Fitzgerald had floated in, touched her shoulder, whispered, Yes, yes this is it. Yes.

  Kinsella must have felt something too, because although Jackie hadn’t spoken, he appeared next to her. ‘What?’ he asked.

  But Jackie was scrabbling for her phone, texting, telling Bennie she was on her way in.

  ***

  Two hours later Jackie sat in Harwood’s office. Kinsella had left to spend time with his daughter. The tension between them hadn’t been resolved, but that could definitely wait. Jackie met Bennie in the office, and now that they knew what to look for, it didn’t take them long. At which point Jackie phoned Harwood, who arrived dressed in top-to-toe lycra and cycle shoes. ‘Biked in,’ he announced. Harwood was fit, his body good. He should have been sexy, but there was something clerical in him, a missionary flavour, which made him repellent.

  Jackie laid out what she and Bennie Wang had found. ‘Dick Wardle was the first cop in charge of investigating Belle Fitzgerald’s disappearance. Wardle was straight, as in incorruptible. After a couple of days on the case, he was pushed out by other, crooked cops, who must have thought Bensimon or Richter were involved with Belle’s disappearance and didn’t want Wardle finding anything out. But Wardle had by then interviewed a few people. He held on to his notebooks, and he gave them to me.’

  Jackie showed Harwood a small shorthand notebook, flipped it open to reveal Wardle’s cramped handwriting. ‘Look at this. It’s a report of Wardle’s interview with Narelle Docherty, Belle’s neighbour. Mrs Docherty describes everything Belle was wearing, including her jewellery. She mentions a St Christopher medal on a chain, because Belle showed it off to her. Belle told her a friend had given it to her a couple of days earlier. And Belle’s friend Nelson Green, who used to be Nelson Guthrie, told me the last time he saw Belle he gave her a St Christopher that had belonged to his mother.’ Jackie drew from her pocket a clear plastic evidence bag containing the chain. She flattened the plastic to show the engraving on the back of the medal. ‘See?’ said Jackie. ‘An M and a G. I’ve just phoned Nelson. His mother’s name was Moira Guthrie.’

  Harwood bent in close. Jackie gave him a few moments to examine the charm, then continued. ‘A couple of years after Belle disappeared, Trevor Curran interviewed Dick Wardle for the book he was writing. Wardle told him what he’d found out, but didn’t give Curran access to his notebooks. Now look here.’ Jackie took up Bennie’s library copy of Five Belles, opened it at the prologue. ‘In Curran’s book, he describes what Belle was wearing the morning she went missing, but he doesn’t mention the chain. And now we’ve found that exact chain, in a box where he kept mementos of Belle.’

  ‘Spell out your logic,’ said Harwood, who looked confused. ‘Curran didn’t have to mention every little detail in his book.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. That’s not the point. We know Belle had the St Christopher chain when she left home that morning. She showed it to her neighbour. Yet it wasn’t with her body. Now we’ve found it in in a sort of shrine Curran made to Belle’s memory. The only way it could have got there is if Curran took it, or she gave it to him, on the last day anyone saw her. Which makes him the most likely killer.’

  Harwood rolled his head around, thinking. ‘Which means organised crime, Bensimon and so on, they weren’t responsible. Still, it’s a pretty thin thread.’

  ‘Not when you take into account the body, and why it was laid out so carefully,’ said Jackie. ‘Then it makes sense. A professional killer would have dumped her in the country somewhere, or under concrete. Or in the sea. What we found was as near to a proper burial as possible. Trevor Curran makes sense. They’d been an item. A few days before she disap­peared Belle told her friend, Nelson, she was going to talk to Trevor about an article she wanted him to write. And remember, Belle told her neighbour she was off to a meeting.’

  Jackie had no compunction about the lie. That meeting, she knew now, had been with Frankie, but Frankie wasn’t the killer and this way her name could be kept out of things.

  Harwood had his faults, but he wasn’t a fool. Tapping a tattoo with a pen on his desk, he said, ‘Still. Iffy.’

  ‘It’s solid evidence,’ countered Jackie, adding, ‘It could explain his suicide. They find the bones, the case is reopened, it brings Curran’s past deeds front and centre. He can’t sleep, he’s despairing, he decides to end it all.’

  Still not convinced, Harwood said, ‘He’s about to go on national TV, getting attention by presenting evidence which will point the finger at someone else. Have you spoken to your father? Can he shine any light?’

  ‘He has no idea about this,’ said Jackie. Which was true in its way. Stanton Rose had punished his ex-wife for a crime she hadn’t committed. He certainly hadn’t suspected Trevor Curran, at least not at the time.

  Harwood interrupted her thought. ‘I’ll take this to the commissioner.’ Suddenly he slackened in his chair. His shoulders dropped. ‘Between us, Rose,’ he said, ‘I’m not looking forward to tonight.’

  Jackie nodded. ‘Yeah.’ She checked her watch. Half past three. ‘We’re running out of time. I have to go home and change.’

  ***

  Jackie threw on her navy pants suit and, realising she hadn’t eaten all day, wolfed down the croissant she’d bought – was it only this morning? She arrived at the TV studio a little before five. Parking had been arranged, and she took the lift from the car park to a reception area dominated by a long, curved counter and an oversupply of security guards. The guards were outfitted in black and though they looked like extras from a spy film, they weren’t window dressing. They were the real thing, alert and vested for action. Even the man behind the counter had eyes that had seen things. He cast them over Jackie, picked her as a cop, said, ‘Reinforcements at last.’

  ‘You expecting trouble?’

  His face creased into a gap-toothed grin. ‘You’d be amazed at the crazies who try to get in here. And death threats, of course, against the talent. Now, who should I say is calling?’ He asked her to tap her details into a waiting screen and waved her to a grey-upholstered couch against the far wall. ‘EP will be down in a jiff.’