I turned towards Nigel and tried to signal that my conversation with him wasn’t for public consumption. But the other women in the holding cell were watching me with interest now.
‘If they’re going to lock me up, I want my notes on Sam’s case,’ I said. ‘They’re in my handbag. I’ll still be able to work on his defence.’
‘Harry.’ Nigel shifted closer to the bars. ‘Your brother is a killer. You’re going to have to move past the denial phase and wake up to what’s happening here. I know you and I have had our differences. But we didn’t lock him up to spite you. We locked him up because he murdered three girls.’
I grabbed a handful of the magazines from the stack beside me and hurled them at the bars. Nigel flinched. The girls in the cell around me cheered. I was shocked by the noise, brought suddenly out of my fury. I realised my jaw was clenched so tight that my teeth were clicking as they ground together.
‘I reckon you forced that confession out of him,’ I told Nigel, giving my fellow inmates a warning look. ‘There was a lot of pressure to catch the killer.’
Nigel shook his head. ‘Harry, you and Sam are violent people. I’ve experienced your family’s violence personally.’ He touched his brow, an old scar I’d given him about the seventh or eighth time he’d parked in my designated spot.
The girl on the floor had shifted closer to me, her grin spread wide.
‘Wait a minute,’ she chirped up. ‘You mean, you punched this guy, too?’ she said, flicking her chin at my colleague.
‘I did,’ I said. I looked at Nigel. ‘And he cried like a baby.’
Chapter 7
I WAS TEACHING the women in the cell how to land a left hook without fracturing their wrists when I noticed Pops standing at the door, waiting for the guard to unlock it.
My chief. My friend. My boxing trainer, a man who’d also seen the hair-trigger aggression that thrived in the very marrow of my bones. Pops said nothing as we walked down the sterile hall towards the offices. I tottered on my ridiculous heels. Eventually I stopped, reached down and pulled them off. We were standing between the row of holding cells and the doors to the bullpen where my colleagues worked, a corridor between two worlds. My brother existed in the world we’d just walked through, the criminal world. My own life, until then, had been ahead of us, in the swirling blue universe of police and their struggle against evil-doers. Here I was, balancing on the tightrope connecting the two.
‘I had a private chat to Judge Steiner,’ Pops said. ‘We went ahead and held the assault hearing in your absence.’
‘ What?’ I said. Suddenly, I could hardly find words, which was unusual for me.
‘Woolfmyer agreed not to push forward with an assault conviction, but he applied for an AVO, and Steiner granted it.’
Still no words came.
Pops raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Yeah. You’re banned from the trial. You’re banned from the entire courthouse, in fact. You’re not allowed to come within five hundred metres of Prosecutor Woolfmyer. Which means anywhere he regularly goes is off limits to you. The prison where your brother is, for example. Sam’s lawyer’s office.’
‘This is …’ I was shivering with rage.
‘This is perfectly reasonable.’ Pops shrugged, angry. ‘Judge Steiner could have recorded the conviction and granted Woolfmyer the apprehended violence order. But he didn’t. Because I convinced him you were going to get your arse out of town.’
A young probationary constable was walking up the hall with my handbag, confiscated from me when I was arrested. I snatched the stupid pink bag off him and started rummaging through it for cigarettes.
‘I told Steiner I’d find you a case. Send you off into the desert again for a couple of weeks so you can cool down.’
‘I’m not going back out there,’ I snapped. ‘I’m going to sit on the front steps of the courthouse. If I can’t go inside, I’ll still be there. I’m not leaving Sam.’
‘That’s exactly what Judge Steiner said you’d do.’ Pops shook his head. ‘He wanted to lock you up instead. I said you’re not going to be on the courthouse steps. You’ll be out in the desert, out of trouble, just like you were after they picked Sam up.’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not happening.’
I couldn’t find my cigarettes. My hands were shaking too badly.
‘Blue,’ Pops called as I walked towards the door, following at my heels. ‘This is not up for discussion. You get out of here or he’ll reverse his decision. And then you’ll be no good to Sam at all. You want to try working on his defence from a jail cell? You’ll be lucky if they give you paper and a pencil in there.’
I stopped by the big glass doors.
There was a certain appeal to what he was saying. I could go back out into the Australian badlands, out among the tiny towns where people who didn’t want to be recognised fled. I could run away from the horror of my brother’s situation. Blessed denial.
‘When does the order expire?’
‘Nine days.’
I bit my lip. I wanted so badly to cry. But I was not a crier. I was not weak. I squeezed the doorhandle, trying to hold on to some semblance of control.
‘You fucked up, Blue,’ Pops said. It was rare that he swore. I looked at his eyes. ‘You’re a hothead. And I love that about you. It’s half of what makes you a good cop. Your fearlessness. Your fire. But you need to get away from here before you do some real damage. This?’ He flipped the frilly collar of my blouse. ‘This is not working. When you’re not bashing prosecutors you’re standing around pissed as hell and doing a bad job hiding it. The princess get-up makes you look about as harmless as a hired assassin.’
I exhaled. I wanted a hug. But I was not a hugger, either.
‘It’s only nine days,’ he said. ‘How bad could things go in that time?’
Chapter 8
I LEANED MY head against the car window in the dark.
Beyond the glass, New South Wales desert rolled by, barren and hard. I was out here again. In exile for my own good, for the good of Sam’s case.
I was six hours from Sydney, four of them by plane, two of them by car, on the straight edge of the western border of New South Wales. Red dirt country. We were headed to a tiny, dim star in a constellation of sparse towns, most notably White Cliffs to the south of us (population 103) and Tibooburra to the west of us (population 262). My driver, a plump and pretty blonde woman wearing a dusty police uniform and standard-issue baseball cap, shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel. She’d been jibber-jabbering since we left the airstrip, about the region, its history, seasonal precautions about snakes. I was so angry at myself, so distracted, I’d hardly been answering her. I sighed quietly. She was gearing up to take a run at me about why I was there. How I could possibly explain what I’d done? I could feel it – the curiosity.
‘ So the papers said …’ She licked her lips, hesitated, as most people do. ‘They said that the lawyer made some derogatory remark towards you?’
‘My brother,’ I answered. ‘He made a joke about my brother being raped in prison. I work in Sex Crimes. Rape jokes aren’t funny.’
‘Struth! You’re right, they’re not. Plus, it’s your brother,’ the cop sympathised. ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter what he did. He’s still –’
‘He didn’t do anything. He’s innocent,’ I said.
I realised miserably that I didn’t even know this officer’s name. My mind was so tangled up in my personal life that I’d completely forgotten it as soon as she’d introduced herself. I reached down for the case file at my feet and pretended I was shifting it to the back seat so it wouldn’t get damaged. I glanced at the name on the cover. Senior Sergeant Victoria Snale.
‘I’ve got to say,’ – Snale’s voice was irrepressibly cheerful – ‘it made an amazing picture for the front pages. You standing over the lawyer. Him all splayed out on the concrete. It must have really been some punch.’
I felt microscopically uplifted. ‘It doesn’t have to be hard if it’s on target.’