The pathology table was Doris’s natural element. Her awkwardness disappeared and she moved surely, stepping confidently through a familiar dance. She dictated as she went, and her findings were piped through speakers into the viewing room from which Jackie observed the scene. Doris went into granular detail about positioning, angles, damage done. Finally she sighed, said, ‘Balance of evidence points to Mr Curran committing suicide by shooting himself from under his chin.’

  ***

  Jackie waited for Doris to finish, grabbed her as she came out of the lab. ‘Balance of evidence? You’re not positive he killed himself?’

  They faced each other in the corridor, Jackie in her work outfit of black pants and white shirt, Doris still in her protective gear, mask pulled down under her chin. Doris thought about it, said, ‘I’m a scientist and I deal in facts. The facts tell me Trevor Curran committed suicide. But sometimes – do you ever get that? When your waters tell you something’s not right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Jackie. ‘I call it my cop’s gut.’

  Doris nodded understanding. ‘I’ve got that feeling here. Nothing specific, nothing that can’t be explained. He was lying down when he shot himself, his head more or less flat on the pillow. Not impossible, but harder to do than if he’d sat up straight.’ She waggled a hand. ‘The gun, just a bit off where it should be. Couple of inches.’ Then she seemed to pull herself together. ‘Both of those things are quite reasonable. So I’m coming down on the side of me getting older and fussier. Suicide.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jackie.

  Doris turned away, turned back. ‘You’ve got it too, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘That feeling?’

  Jackie laughed it off. ‘As you said, older and fussier. See you later.’

  ***

  Still no closure. Outside in the car park, a late-rising kookaburra marked its territory with fierce cackling laughter. Jackie looked up at the tree but couldn’t see the bird. What to do? She drew out her key to unlock the car, and as she did, the image of Rae Callanan doing the same thing with her device on its pink leather tag came to mind and she knew with startling clarity what it was she’d missed. She drove home and logged on again to the CCTV monitoring section, this time to check the rego of the silver Audi going to and from Rainbow Street on Thursday night. There it was, at half past midnight. RAESIE. Stanton must have waited until Rae was asleep, then used her car in a clumsy attempt to hide his movements. So now Jackie knew both the extent of her father’s ruthlessness and of her own compromise. Problem was, there was nothing she could do about it.

  ***

  When Jackie took her phone off silent she saw people had been trying to reach her. Two more missed calls from her father and two voice messages from Harwood, who barked, Where are you? and Make contact immediately. A couple of messages from media hounds and a text from Kinsella: Call me.

  She answered Kinsella first, with Later. Then she texted Harwood. Family emergency. First thing tomorrow. He must have had the phone in his hand because the reply came back instantly: 8.30 my office.

  There was only one person she needed to speak to, and that was her father. He took a while to answer, and when he did, his voice was hearty. ‘Jacks! I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Where did you run off to last night?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ Jackie said.

  ‘Dinner at the pub?’

  Was it only a week since she’d met him there with Rae? Hard to believe. Jackie said, ‘Just us? Or is there a woman you want me to meet?’

  If he picked the sarcasm, he chose to ignore it. ‘No, Jacks, just us. I thought we should clear the air.’

  ‘That’s what I want as well,’ Jackie said. ‘We’d be better doing this in private. You come to me this time. My house. Five-thirty.’ There was no way she’d willingly enter his home again, that place of misery.

  ‘Okay,’ said Stanton. ‘Maybe we can have a drink there first and after, if we feel like it, wander down the road?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jackie said, ‘if we feel like it.’

  ***

  Hours to kill. Jackie spent the time cleaning, attacking the house with a fury that had nothing to do with efficiency. Then suddenly she’d had enough. She packed away the cleaning gear and surveyed her living room, trying to see it with fresh eyes. The mismatched furniture, the art that spoke to her, the colourful rugs. The effect was warm and comfortable. Luke liked this room. Oh Lord, Luke. She’d promised to phone him.

  He answered on the second ring. ‘Mum. I saw the show. You were outstanding.’ Jackie could hear the question in his voice, the hope of conciliation.

  She gave it to him. ‘Sorry I haven’t got back to you before,’ she said. ‘My fault. I had to think things through. And the case blew up. Are you free tomorrow night? There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  Now Luke became combative. ‘Someone to tell me why I shouldn’t go to London?’

  ‘Nothing like that. In fact, I was wrong. You’re over eighteen, and I won’t stop you living your life. You need to make your own mistakes.’

  ‘It isn’t a mistake!’ Then he retreated. ‘Okay.’ Then, bitterly, ‘Danni leaves tomorrow so I’ll be alone.’

  Yes! At last, something going right. Jackie pulled a fist down in victory, said mildly, ‘My place, tomorrow. Around six?’

  ‘See you then.’

  ***

  But first, her father. At exactly five-thirty that evening the small ship’s bell outside Jackie’s front door clanged and Stanton, without waiting, unlocked the door and stepped inside, brandishing, of all things, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. He was uneasy; she could tell by the awkward way he stepped forward for a kiss, stopped when she pulled back.

  ‘Hey!’ He saw her looking at the champagne. ‘I know you like this. Thought we should drink to last night? Or something else if you …’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, brushing past him to the kitchen to find two flutes. He put the bottle on the counter. She waved away his offer to open it and was aware of him watching while she gave care to unwrapping the foil cap, removing the wire frame, holding the neck with one hand and easing out the cork with the other, anticipating the celebratory pop as it came free. Tilting each glass at an angle, she poured.

  Her father hadn’t taken a seat. He stood in the middle of the room, looking around him as she had done earlier. He said, ‘I should sign this place over to you. Been meaning to do it for ages.’

  Jackie didn’t respond. Stanton settled himself on the couch and she took the armchair opposite, the coffee table between them. She lifted her glass in a toast. ‘What are we drinking to?’ she asked him. ‘Your political career? Fathers and daughters? Telling the truth?’

  This time he bit. ‘I don’t blame you for being upset,’ he said, ‘after I – well, you know now I didn’t … do anything to Belle. It was stupid of me to say I did.’ He sipped from his glass, set it on the coffee table. Looked up at Jackie, his face a mask of contrition. ‘I wanted to stop you talking to your mother. I wanted to spare you the grief.’

  As if on cue, the bell sounded again. Jackie, glass in hand, opened the door to admit Frankie, unwinding a cotton scarf from her neck. ‘Hope I’m not late –’ she began. She caught sight of Stanton and her head went back. ‘Oh.’

  Stanton, ensconced in the sofa, blinked. He pushed forward to rise, fell back, gave up. Frankie, meanwhile, had recovered. She dipped her head at Stanton, who stared at her, slack-mouthed. She raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jackie who, concerned her mother would refuse to come, hadn’t told her Stanton would be there.

  Jackie motioned her mother to the armchair she’d just vacated, went to the kitchen and retrieved another champagne flute. Frankie held up a hand. ‘Thanks, no. Water would be good? Tap water.’

  Jackie filled a glass and brought it over. She stayed standing, looking down at her parents in her small lounge room. She addressed Frankie. ‘Daddy here was reminding me that he confessed to killing Belle Fitzgerald when in fact he hadn’t. Apparently he didn’t want me to talk to you. I was about to tell him I did talk to you and you filled me in on why he threw you out.’

  ‘She –’ Stanton spluttered. ‘She shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Yes, she should. I asked Frankie to come because I want things sorted out.’ Jackie looked down at her father. ‘Do you have any idea what you did when you sent her away? I can only imagine how she suffered.’ Jackie gestured towards Frankie as she spoke. ‘We haven’t had time to talk about that yet. But as far as I’m concerned, you ruined my childhood. You condemned me to growing up without a mother. You made me believe she’d abandoned me. Then you fed me the story of how she didn’t love us and how it was just the two of us against the world. I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed you.’ She stopped, shook her head. ‘I can’t find words to tell you the damage you’ve done.’

  Stanton pushed himself to standing. It brought him almost against Jackie. He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, retracting them when she flinched. He said, ‘You don’t understand. All the evidence, everything, pointed to Frankie. She was harassing Belle, phoning and threatening her. Belle told me herself. Frankie set up a meeting with her the day she died. What was I supposed to believe?’

  From her armchair, Frankie, calm, said, ‘You were supposed to believe me. When I told you she didn’t show up. That I had nothing to do with her disappearance.’

  Stanton swung around to face her. In the small room he loomed over her. ‘You have any idea the lengths I went to, to hide your connection to Belle from Penney and the others? I was protecting you, Frankie. I was saving you. And I was saving you, too, Jackie, from someone I believed was a killer.’

  Before Frankie could answer, Jackie broke in. ‘For once in your life, cut the I did it for you bullshit. You were saving yourself. Like you did on Thursday night when you broke into Trevor Curran’s house and shot him.’

  Stanton reared backwards, came up against the couch. Stumbled, righted himself. Pointed a finger at Jackie. ‘What are you –?’

  ‘See? You’re doing exactly what I expected. Working out ways to weasel out of your crimes. Congratulations, by the way, on your performance last night. You must have been beside yourself when you couldn’t find the photos in Curran’s house. So you thought up Plan B and used it to get yourself a spot in Macquarie Street. Well done. World class.’

  ‘No. I –’

  ‘Don’t give me excuses. There are none. I went to Curran’s place on Friday night, to try to persuade him not to use the photos. I found the body, and I knew things weren’t right from the get-go. All the lights in the place were off. Who shoots themselves in the dark? So I switched the bedside lamp on. And left it on. Against every single thing a cop should do. Any idea how dirty that made me feel?’

  Jackie heard the catch in her voice, tamped it down. ‘I did it to protect you, by the way, same as I held back the receipt book. But I had a problem: I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain you’d killed Curran. Sort of couldn’t believe it. Silly me. So I went looking, and guess what? There’s CCTV footage of your girlfriend Rae’s car in the area around the time Curran died. Clever of you to use her car, but not clever enough. You might not have killed Belle, but fuck me dead, Daddy, you’re still a murderer.’

  ‘Why would I want to kill Curran? You just said I used the photos to my advantage. I knew I could make them go away, so why –?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to work that out. I think the photos are only part of the story. It’s what else Curran had. He told me, and I told you, he was planning to write a book about what you really got up to when you were supposed to be undercover in the Cross. Like he had with the photos, he’d kept quiet while Bensimon was alive. But when Bensimon died, Curran thought his moment had come. He’d been waiting for decades to expose you, and he was going to do it on national TV. You didn’t know what he was going to reveal and you had to stop him.’

  Stanton said, ‘You’ve got it arse-backwards. You don’t understand. I did nothing in the Cross back then I’m ashamed of now. Nothing.’ Stanton’s face was red with anger, the words spitting out. ‘And I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of since then, either. Okay, yes, you’re right. I killed Curran. So what? He deserved to die because of what he did to Belle. He killed her and I got her the justice she never had.’

  Jackie said, ‘Oh, come on! We didn’t know he killed Belle till yesterday.’

  ‘Maybe you didn’t. I did. I knew he was the one. As soon as you showed me the photos and I realised Curran had been stalking us, Belle and me, I knew what had happened. I didn’t have concrete proof, but I was as sure as if I’d heard it from his own mouth. After that, I thought about how I’d been wrong about your mother –’ Stanton raised a hand in Frankie’s direction ‘– and how that dog made me suffer. He had to go.’

  ‘He had to go? Who do you think you are? God? What about the law?’

  Stanton clenched his fists, thundered, ‘The law? Jesus, Jacks, don’t you understand? I am the law! I’m the one who stands between order and anarchy. If it wasn’t for me, this city would have been lost long ago!’

  There was a silence. Stanton broke it. His body loosened. He sat back on the sofa, crossed one knee over the other, said, ‘What happens now?’

  Jackie was surprised to hear her voice even. ‘Now? Now I take what I know to Harwood.’ She picked up her champagne glass, drained it, walked into the kitchen and refilled it. ‘You could get away with killing Curran,’ she said, ‘because the pathologist is going to rule suicide. Forensics will fall in behind her. But even if I wanted to, I can’t let it slide. For one thing, Harwood knows I held back the receipt book. I have to go in tomorrow and explain. Your signature won’t mean anything, because they’ve swallowed your explanation about why you slept with Belle, but as far as I’m concerned, I withheld evidence. There’s no getting around it. And you know what? Even if I could keep quiet, I wouldn’t. It’s not good enough. You need to answer for what you’ve done, the mess you’ve made of our lives.’

  Stanton interrupted, his face turned hard. ‘You realise if you pull me down, you and Luke go down with me? How can you do that to your own son?’

  Jackie’s calm deserted her. She wailed, ‘Because I don’t know what else to do! I’ve spent my life believing in you. I became a cop because of you, tried to live up to what I thought you stood for. And all the time, you were – were made of straw! Don’t you see? Everything you taught me, about justice, about being on the side of the law, you’ve turned it upside down. I can’t let you get away with it!’ She slammed her champagne flute down on the counter so hard the stem snapped. Champagne sprayed across the floor.

  Frankie, who until now had listened silently, said, ‘Stop. Jackie, you’re mistaken.’

  Jackie looked down at her hand. Her palm was bleeding. Frankie said, ‘There’s more than one kind of justice, love. If you keep what you know to yourself, Stanton will escape official punishment. He’ll go on being the people’s hero, get into parliament, live in the spotlight. But look at him, Jackie. He’s lost everything he loves. He lost Belle Fitzgerald. He lost me. And now he’s lost his family. He’s going to die alone. He’s pathetic.’

  ‘Are you saying I should tell Luke about his grandfather?’ Jackie asked.

  Stanton made a sound in the back of his throat.

  ‘That’s up to you,’ Frankie said. ‘On my side, I hope to meet Luke, and when I do, I will tell him why I’ve been missing from his life.’ Chin raised, she regarded Stanton. ‘I think I’ve earned the right to do that. Luke’s nineteen, I believe. Old enough to decide what he wants to do with the information.’ She got up and went to the kitchen, where Jackie stood holding her bleeding palm. ‘Let me see.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Jackie said. ‘A small cut.’

  Frankie took a tissue out of her pocket, held it against Jackie’s palm, closed her own hands around it, and spoke quietly, directly to her daughter. ‘The decision’s yours. But if you take what you know about your father to the police, you continue to tie yourself to him. His fate becomes yours. Look at him! Isn’t it time you set yourself free?’

  With her mother’s hands around hers, Jackie asked, ‘What do you mean? Don’t you want him to pay for what he did to you?’

  ‘If I’d let my life be driven by revenge, I’d be dead now,’ said Frankie softly. She let out a breath. ‘I had to learn to let go.’

  From the couch, Stanton said, ‘I’ll fix this. What can I do to fix this?’ He cast his eyes around the room, as if the answer were hiding inside it.

  Jackie and Frankie looked at each other in disbelief, and then both burst out laughing. It was a complete release of tension. Stanton, sitting by himself on the couch, smiled uncertainly.

  ‘You should leave,’ Jackie told him.

  She and Frankie watched her father walk out of the house.

  ***

  Jackie and her mother talked long into the night. They ordered Thai food, which they ate sitting side by side on the couch. Frankie wanted to know everything about Jackie. She listened with rapacious intensity. Jackie told her about Luke and invited her to meet him the following night. She told her mother about growing up, her job, her life. There were omissions. Frankie homed in on them.

  ‘No love interest?’ she asked.

  Jackie blew out her cheeks. ‘Complicated.’ She reached for the last of the champagne. ‘Sure you don’t want this?’

  Frankie clicked her tongue. ‘I’ll stick to water. I lost a couple of years to drink,’ she said, matter-of-fact, ‘before I found my way.’

  ‘What do you mean, found your way? And that stuff about me being tied to my father?’ Jackie returned to what she’d been grappling with all week. ‘Because even though he is my father, if he gets off scot-free, it’ll be like …’ She tried to find the right words. ‘I’ll be pulling down the structure that holds me together. Until now, to me, there’s been a right and a wrong, and choosing between them has always been clear. You follow the rules, and you get there. Now I have to find a new … I don’t know how to describe it. I’ll have to start all over again.’