Judgement day, p.17
Judgement Day, page 17
Funny that I’ve assumed they have separate rooms. Projecting much?
The judge nodded and led them up the staircase. The house had an eerie quality in the night. Long shadows gave the heavy carpets a muddy look and in the hanging photos on the staircase wall only portions of faces and bodies were illuminated. It looked to Jillian as though the gilded frames bore ransom notes constructed of disjointed body parts.
‘Harriet sleeps here,’ Grant said, stopping at the door of a bedroom overlooking the back of the house. He flicked the light switch, revealing windows with thin bars across them. ‘She made me put those in a few years ago,’ he said, following Jillian’s eyes. ‘She was paranoid about intruders, and that was before all this.’
The room reminded Jillian of one you’d find in a decaying country manor. It might once have been grand but now looked merely run-down and dated. Pale cream wallpaper, floral carpet, an old Queen Anne bed, neatly made. Jillian walked its perimeter, trying to imagine the miserable creature she had met occupying this space, presumably obtaining comfort from it. On a nightstand, Jillian recognised a packet of tablets that were the same as those she was prescribed.
Just antidepressants then?
Am I as mad as Harriet? Will I become like her?
She peered under the bed. It was perfectly clean, not a stray hairclip or speck of dust, nor any of the other things Jillian might have expected to reside in the gap between bed base and floor. The ensuite too was dated – a marble benchtop, a narrow medicine cabinet, a toothbrush sitting in an old glass tumbler. She took a moment to inspect the old-fashioned shower and bath behind a tulip-patterned shower curtain, just to be sure.
‘Is anything missing? Anything she might have taken if she was planning not to come back?’
The judge opened the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. ‘Don’t think so. Harriet’s fairly spartan, though.’
‘It would be good to have the CCTV,’ she said, ‘see if anyone has been scoping you out. Can you email us the footage for the past few days?’
‘Sure, I can do that right now.’
‘I’m going to do a quick scout outside,’ McClintock said, heading to the door.
Jillian and the judge returned to the sitting room and he opened his CCTV app.
‘Maybe show me this morning’s footage now, if you can?’
He dragged his finger along the bottom of the screen before handing the phone to Jillian. A clock in the bottom left corner of the image marked eight-fifty am. Jillian watched the Phillipses leaving the house together, Harriet trailing behind her husband as they walked into the garage. When the car emerged a moment later, the outline of both Phillipses could be discerned as the car backed out and the automatic gate swung open. Seeing this, Grant began to cry softly.
‘May I email this to myself?’ Jillian asked, gently. ‘How many days does it store at once?’
‘It deletes after seventy-two hours I think,’ the judge said, slumping back in his chair.
On the wall behind him was a photo of the judge, Harriet and their son. They were standing on the Alexandra Bridge, the city in the background beyond the curl of the Yarra. Having emailed herself the footage, Jillian went over to examine it more closely. The Harriet in this picture was younger, prettier, but still recognisably her. ‘Do you mind if I take this? Or is there a more recent shot?’ she asked. ‘We’ll need to put something out publicly, so people know we’re looking for her.’
Grant sighed. ‘Whatever you need to do, of course.’
‘That’s your son?’
‘Damien, yes. Did I mention he’s in the UK at the moment? I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Perhaps do that now?’
She left him alone and went to see how McClintock was getting on. She found him carefully examining the front fence with his phone torch.
‘Anything interesting?’
‘A very nice vintage Jag that hasn’t been driven in twenty-odd years and a Pinarello that’s worth a hefty sum. But nothing useful for us. It’s a real fortress, this place, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘It is,’ Jillian agreed. ‘The first time I saw it, I was reminded of Sleeping Beauty in the castle.’
‘What do you reckon?’ he asked. ‘She’s topped herself, right?’
‘I really don’t know. Her state of mind is definitely a worry, but who’s to say she isn’t victim number two in some sicko’s list? Warwick killed a wife, didn’t he? Or maybe Harriet did Bailey and she’s done a runner.’
‘You reckon she could have done it?’ McClintock was incredulous. ‘Why wait till now to run in that case? And would she really be able to manage a strangulation?’
‘Anything’s possible,’ Jillian said. ‘You said you thought Phillips had the hots for Bailey. Maybe Harriet got jealous? If she knew chambers was a free-for-all that night, what was to stop her turning up after hubby was asleep? Maybe this weird anxiety thing is a bit of a smoke screen?’
‘I still like O’Neil for Bailey,’ McClintock said.
‘Well, for the moment, they both look as guilty as each other. Which is to say, we don’t have much on either of them. Open minds, Mick,’ she added. ‘I would have thought that was the obvious way to progress.’
Chapter 20
Jillian had not intended to return home but to go straight from the Phillipses’ home to the office. However when she and McClintock arrived at the St Kilda Road station, Des, who was also just arriving and looking thoroughly irritated to be there so early, told them both to leave. ‘You’re useless to me at the moment,’ he said. ‘Go home and sleep, come back in a few hours. I’ll get Mossman and Hastie cracking on the usual stuff and see if I can round up a few other troops too.’
When McClintock didn’t argue with him, Jillian felt she also had no choice but to comply. It seemed opportune, too, to try and make up with Aaron, now that they had had some time to themselves. As she drove, she thought of him with increasing affection – he was so supportive, so good – he had carried her through the worst time in her life. By the time she had parked she was desperately conciliatory. However when she let herself into their old weatherboard, there was no sign of her husband or her son.
She went into the bedroom, drew the blinds and fell asleep fully clothed. When she woke at two pm, it was to an insistent vibrating next to her head. Uncharacteristically, she answered without checking.
‘Jillian, hi, it’s Ursula. You missed your appointment again the other day, so I just wanted to touch base and see how you were doing.’
It took her a moment to realise she was speaking to her psychologist. ‘I’m okay,’ she said, her voice hoarse, ‘just had a big day yesterday.’
‘Sure, of course.’ There was a pause. ‘Look, Jillian, I don’t mean to seem rude, but my books are full at the moment. If you aren’t ready to re-engage or you don’t want to, I’d really like to offer your appointments to someone else.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘I’m fine. Okay, bye.’
She eased herself into a standing position and went out into the kitchen. The kettle was still warm and there were dirty dishes in the sink, but no sign of Aaron. She showered, changed her clothes and drove back to work.
St Kilda Road was more crowded than it had been in the very early morning and there was an air of unified purpose evident amongst the Homicide team. Someone had moved a television onto a table outside Des’s office. On the screen was Harriet Phillips’ face interspersed with shots of a serious-looking reporter whose words were muted. A text ribbon across the base of the screen ran the message: ‘Police urgently seeking information about the whereabouts of Harriet Phillips, wife of family law judge, extreme concerns held for her welfare.’ In addition to dealing with the media, which he typically detested, Des had also spent much of the day moving crews around to accommodate the enlarged scope of the investigation. As Jillian approached her desk she noted that all of them seemed to be gathered around McClintock.
‘Nothing missing from the house, and she does have a history of mental illness,’ he was telling his enraptured audience. ‘They’ve got a pretty comprehensive CCTV system but it deletes after a few days. One of you can go through it, see if anyone was poking around.’
‘Hey,’ she said, feeling irrationally excluded, as though she had discovered all of her friends catching up without her.
‘Hey,’ he smiled at her, oblivious. ‘I was just figuring out what to do with our new and expanded crew.’
‘What’s been done so far?’
‘I spoke to the manager from the wine bar where they had the wake – they don’t have CCTV but a few of the other places in the vicinity do, so I’m going to go out and see what we can get,’ said Frank Donoghue, an older, sturdier presence within the squad.
‘Great.’
‘These two,’ McClintock gestured towards two detectives who Des kindly referred to as ‘legacy cops’ and who seemed to float from team to team, ‘are going to doorknock along the tram routes she’d have needed to take. See if anyone saw her, spoke to her, that type of thing.’
‘Good, yes.’
‘And we were just chatting about what Hastie and Mossman here could get to. The husband says she’s previously talked about drowning herself. I thought one of them could liaise with the divers, check the Yarra, other water bodies near her.’
‘Alright,’ Jillian said, her mind moving quickly. ‘Good idea. Liaise with them but let Donoghue be the main contact. I need you to focus on the commonalities between Bailey and Phillips, in two different ways. Hastie, we know that both judges heard cases about Brian Shanahan and we still haven’t had any luck locating him. Track him down. Paula, can you go through all Bailey’s records and tee them up against Grant Phillips’ – I want to know every other litigant that they’ve both dealt with. Once you’ve done every litigant at the court, find out who Judge Bailey’s clerk was when she was at the bar, plus the names of every client she had back then and when she was a solicitor. Do the same for Phillips and then compare those as well.’
‘Are they really going to have records going back that far?’ Mossman asked. ‘Wasn’t Bailey at the bar more than seven years ago? And Phillips must have been there even longer.’
‘They should have something, and even if the clerks don’t, Bailey and Phillips might have kept their own records.’
McClintock looked at her incredulously. ‘That’s a lot,’ he began, ‘given Harriet’s mental . . .’
She glared at him and he stopped talking.
‘What about the husband?’ Hastie asked. ‘He ties the two of them together. He might have topped them both.’
‘CCTV from a few places around the court shows him leaving the night Bailey was killed,’ Jillian said. ‘And not coming back as far as we can tell. Sure, he could be a suspect for his wife, but the quickest way to figure that out is going to be chatting to anyone who saw him and her in the later stages of the wake. He’s already told us a few people he spoke to and who helped him look. We’ll need to start verifying that too. We’ll regroup before we knock off tonight. Alright?’
She returned to her desk and to thirty-five unopened emails. ‘I’ve got data from Citylink,’ she called out to McClintock half an hour later, ‘that puts a car registered to Virginia Maiden and apparently driven by her husband en route from the city to Armadale at half past twelve the evening Bailey was killed and a shot of the two of them in the car.’ She sighed. ‘But that conversation with Meyers at the funeral was seriously suss. Even if she didn’t do it, she’s hiding something.’
McClintock grunted an acknowledgement.
‘And they’re still trying to rebuild all the data in Bailey’s phone. Not that I’m expecting much to be there.’
Her desk phone rang and she answered absently, still consumed by her inbox. ‘Hello?’
‘Yes hi,’ said a female voice, ‘this is Lisa Nettle, I left a message?’
‘Ms Nettle. Yes. How can I assist?’
‘I know what happened to the judge,’ the caller said, her voice rising into a hysterical giggle. ‘And the other one, the new missing one. And I’ve got proof.’
Lisa Nettle confirmed to Jillian that she and her children had vacated the property at which McClintock had tried to visit her. ‘It wasn’t safe,’ she whispered into the phone, ‘so we’re in an Airbnb nearby until everything cools down.’ This house was only three blocks away from her registered address which Jillian thought a curious choice. If she were that afraid of being located, why had she not changed suburb at the very least?
The new home was a freshly renovated Californian bungalow off Glen Huntly Road in Carnegie. ‘I lived in a share house in this street,’ McClintock said wistfully as he parked out the front. ‘Can’t remember what number. They’ve all been done up since then. God, it was a dump.’
That was a surprise. Jillian hadn’t picked him as the type to have lived in a share house, ever. She’d taken her colleague for the sort who remained within the protective arms of their parents until such time as they’d saved the deposit to purchase their own home.
‘When was this?’ she asked as they pushed open the gate.
‘Straight outta school, I did a few years at Monash.’ He gestured towards the monolith of the Caulfield campus, discernible in the distance.
The garden path was covered in chalk drawings of butterflies, and several layers of children’s shoes were piled untidily on either side of the front door, along with two scooters, three bicycle helmets and a skateboard. Jillian rang the doorbell and Lisa Nettle’s approaching shape was immediately visible through the stained glass. When she opened the door she was exactly what Jillian had expected from a brief examination of social media sites – a small blonde woman, thin but with muscular arms that suggested routine strength training. Her cheeks and lips were lightly plumped, but the underside of her eyes were a purple-grey and her nails had been bitten to the quick.
‘Come through,’ she said, ushering them down a hallway of miscellaneous mess to a large open-plan kitchen and living area. The unmistakable tang of wine followed in her wake. ‘Welcome to hell. He doesn’t know you’re coming, does he? I didn’t think you’d call him but I just want to check because –’
‘We don’t make a habit of advising members of the public who we might be meeting,’ Jillian said, assuming that the ‘he’ referred to was Lisa’s ex-husband.
In the living area every surface had items pertaining to the interests of children: dolls, Lego, puzzles, iPads, schoolwork, running shoes, all piled comically high wherever there was room for them. There were other signs of the children too, on the smudged walls, the windowpanes.
Something to look forward to. If Aaron doesn’t leave you.
McClintock assessed the mess with barely disguised distaste. ‘Lovely house,’ he said, nodding at the yard, where a swimming pool bobbled with children’s floaties and a cat lay sunning itself on the deck.
‘I hate it. The yard is the only good thing about it. None of us like it. The kids can’t sleep properly, I can’t sleep properly, but we can’t go back to the rental because he knows about it. He’s been trying to give me a nervous breakdown for ages. Another one, I mean.’ She gave a bitter little snort. ‘Sorry about the mess, but the cleaner doesn’t come until tomorrow. I used to have one every week but Rahul couldn’t cough up for that, could he? No, and he says he’s too depressed to work more . . .’
As she spoke she directed the detectives to a couch. McClintock sat down and shifted a school blazer to make room for Jillian, who instead moved to an adjacent chair.
‘No, I’m going to sit there,’ Lisa said, and added, ‘I’m deaf in my left ear, if I sit here I’ll be able to hear you both.’
She positioned herself in the chair and said, ‘I’ve been trying to get to talk to you since Judge Bailey was killed.’ She sounded petulant. ‘And now this other lady’s gone too.’
‘Why do you think your ex-husband might be involved?’ Jillian asked.
‘Because he’s a psychopath and he hated her,’ Lisa said, as though this were completely obvious. ‘We got told the judgement was coming down, my lawyer got a call saying we had to be there in the morning. Rahul would have got the same call. A few hours later someone’s killed her – not rocket science, is it?’
‘But is there something specific that he said or did that makes you think it was him?’
Lisa Nettle clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Well, it isn’t just a coincidence, is it? There are no real coincidences in the world and especially not with Rahul. I learned that the hard way.’ She gave another bitter laugh.
McClintock asked, ‘Is there a reason you think he might have been near the court that day?’ Jillian, whose patience with the woman was already wearing thin, was struck by how gentle he sounded and felt immediately guilty. Lisa Nettle was clearly under significant stress, albeit psychological rather than material. She deserved compassion.
You’ve been there too, remember.
‘All I know is the Wednesday night, he said he wanted to have dinner with the kids. I told him that was okay, not that I have a choice with the court orders, got them ready, and he never showed up.’
‘So he made an arrangement and then cancelled it?’ Jillian clarified.
‘Arrangement, that’s not what I’d call it. It’s not really an arrangement when you don’t give the other person any choice.’
‘Was it unusual for him to . . . make a plan with the children and then not follow through?’ asked McClintock.
‘Oh, he’d cancel on the kids all the time.’ Lisa Nettle sounded exasperated, as though the detectives were not understanding her. ‘One of his ways of getting to me, his little mind games. And then next time he saw them he’d tell them that I’d told his lawyer he wasn’t allowed to see them, or some rubbish like that.’
McClintock frowned. ‘Does he have a history of being violent towards people?’
