Chapter 10

chapter ten

‘Joy Delaney. Sixty-nine years old. Last contact was nine days ago when she sent a garbled text saying she was going “off-grid”. She didn’t take her phone with her.’

Detective Senior Constable Christina Khoury read from her notes as Ethan drove them to interview the missing woman’s husband. Ethan’s full title was Plain Clothes Constable Ethan Lim but there was nothing plain about his clothes. Today’s shirt appeared to be mulberry silk. (Could it truly be silk?) His shoes had the lustre of a grand piano. Christina tucked her own shoes back out of sight. They could do with a polish.

She said, ‘The phone was found by the cleaning lady under the bed.’

‘I guess if you’re going off-grid you leave your phone behind?’ She heard him try to suppress the question mark.

She’d been Ethan’s designated detective for only a few weeks, and she was still trying to find the right rhythm for their working relationship. He seemed nervous around her, and she didn’t know whether to embrace that – keep the kid on his toes! – or try to help him relax.

She wasn’t great at relaxing people. She’d been told all her life that she didn’t smile enough, and she hated small talk. Her fiancée, Nico, now handled all the small-talk requirements of their relationship, chatting to chatty cab drivers and chatty aunts with ease. Christina sometimes fretted she wasn’t bringing enough to the table. ‘A relationship isn’t a bill you split down the middle,’ Nico always told her. He was wrong. It was exactly like that. She’d keep an eye on it.

When she’d been in Ethan’s position, her designated detective had taken a kind of avuncular approach that left no-one in any doubt as to where they stood. ‘Remember your ABC?’ he’d ask, so often it got irritating.

‘Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything,’ Christina would answer.

But she couldn’t pull off avuncular. (Was there even a female version of the word?) ‘Just be yourself,’ Nico told her. He said, ‘The guy wants to learn from you.’ Nico never had any trouble being anyone else but Nico.

‘Two of Joy’s adult children reported her missing yesterday,’ she continued. ‘A general duties police officer went to interview the missing woman’s husband and observed scratch marks on his face.’

Ethan winced.

‘The husband is cooperating but not saying much. He did confirm to the officer that he and his wife had argued the last time they spoke. So.’ She sighed. Her throat felt itchy. ‘Obviously a lot of red flags.’

She could not get sick right now. In addition to this potentially suspicious missing person job, she was handling one street assault, two domestic assaults, a service station armed robbery, a wannabe schoolboy arsonist, a break and enter and a bridesmaid dress fitting.

The bridesmaid dress fitting was after work today and the way her four cousins were arguing over waistlines and necklines, a third domestic assault was possible. Her wedding was still six months away but apparently that was no time, according to her cousins, who specialised in weddings. Christina had thought she handled stress well until she had to organise a wedding. ‘Just keep it small and casual,’ said her friends who did not belong to big Lebanese-Australian families and therefore did not understand the implausibility of this.

‘Need a throat lozenge?’ asked Ethan.

‘No,’ said Christina. She cleared her throat. ‘No, thank you.’

She pulled a tiny speck of lint off her suit jacket and discreetly checked that the buttons on her shirt weren’t gaping. Her cup size didn’t suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot. If the police force hadn’t abolished height requirements in the late nineties, little Chrissie Khoury, the shortest kid in every single class photo throughout her school years, would never have got this job.

No lint on Ethan’s suit, of course. It looked bespoke. He came from old money, apparently. Private school boy. Christina tried not to hold it against him. She didn’t come from old money or new money but from never-quite-enough money.

They pulled up at a traffic light behind an SUV with three children’s bikes tied to the back, the number plate responsibly visible. These shady, leafy streets with their manicured lawns had little in common with the neighbourhood out west where she’d grown up, except for the dead bat hanging from the powerline above them. Still, she was happy not to be working in her old neighbourhood like when she first started out and was forced to lock up people she knew. The very first person she ever arrested used to sit next to her in biology. ‘Little Chrissie Khoury is arresting me!’ he’d cried with drunken delight as she cuffed him.

‘Did she take anything with her?’ asked Ethan.

‘She took her wallet, house keys and nothing else. No luggage. No clothes. No sign of activity on her bank accounts or social media.’

Christina pulled out the colour photo of Joy Delaney provided by the family. She looked like a sweet, tiny lady, younger than sixty-nine, smiling on a beach, one hand on her head to stop a straw hat from flying away in the wind. A photo of someone wearing a hat wasn’t great for identification purposes. She would ask the family to provide another one. At least two or three. In this one Joy wore a t-shirt over a swimming costume. The t-shirt was white with three flowers in a row across the chest: red, yellow and orange. The flowers were gerberas. Christina had only recently become aware of the names of flowers. The bridal bouquet was next on her list. She’d honestly rather solve a murder than choose a bridal bouquet.

‘Looks like a nice lady,’ she said to Ethan, flicking the photo against her knee.

‘Any history of domestic violence?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ said Christina.

They pulled into the driveway of a large, well-tended family home. Silver Volvo in the driveway. Pink, purple and white flowers (which she could now identify as hydrangeas) spilled from garden beds. A tiny grey cat streaked across the front lawn and through a fence. The white edge of a letter poked out from a wrought-iron letterbox with the house number, the word ‘POST’ and an engraving of two birds, beak to beak, as if they were kissing. This was a neighbourhood of family pets and garden sprinklers, paid-off mortgages and nicely modulated voices.

She said, ‘But just because it wasn’t reported –’

‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ finished Ethan.

He listened. Rare for a private school boy.

‘Remember your ABC?’ she said suddenly, on impulse, as Ethan turned off the car ignition.

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything.’

Her mood elevated. Maybe they had their rhythm.

She gave him an avuncular thumbs-up, opened the car door, got out, straightened her jacket and tugged hard on her shirt.

Somewhere in the distance an ice-cream truck played its familiar tinkling chords.

*

Two hours later the house no longer looked quite so benign. Blue and white checked police tape hung from the letterbox and ended at the side fence.

Christina had put in a request for a crime scene warrant and sealed the house immediately following her interview with Mr Stanley Delaney.

The interview had told her both nothing new and everything she needed to know. This evening’s bridesmaid dress fitting was going to have to go ahead without the bride. Her phone was aquiver with outraged texts from outraged cousins.

Christina didn’t care. She was reserving her outrage for Mrs Joy Delaney, because her husband was a liar.