Chapter 61

chapter sixty-one

Caro Azinovic sat in the front room of her house, drinking a cup of tea while she enjoyed an overdue telephone call with her daughter in Denmark.

She watched a white car pull up outside the Delaneys’ house and a man and a woman emerge. They both wore suits. There was something purposeful and foreboding about the way they walked towards the front door.

She thought of the security camera footage she and her son had given to the police.

‘Oh dear God,’ her son had said as they watched it together.

‘You can’t actually see what he’s carrying,’ Caro had said.

‘At that time of night?’ said Jacob. ‘It doesn’t look good, Mum.’

Caro and her daughter had only exchanged a few brief emails since she’d been in Sydney last month and they were overdue for a catch-up. Petra was up very late on the other side of the world because she was upset about a complicated issue regarding her son’s school and Caro listened sympathetically. She’d thought the Danish were so socially advanced that there wouldn’t be such a thing as schoolyard politics over there, but apparently it was universal.

‘I think the police might be at Joy’s house right now,’ she told Petra when she finally finished her story.

‘Why would the police be there?’

Caro filled her in on the dreadful details.

Her daughter sounded panicked. ‘But, Mum, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

‘Well, this is the first time we’ve properly talked since you went back, so it didn’t even occur to me. To be honest I’ve been so het up about it all I –’

‘Mum, you need to tell me the name of whoever is in charge of the investigation. Right now.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I saw Joy Delaney on Valentine’s Day.’