The washup, p.5
The Washup, page 5
The pills had kicked in fully now and her limbs felt strange, like they were only loosely attached to her body and might float away. She made a fist with her hand to check she could still do it. Her mind was retreating from the events of the day. A terrible thing had happened, she knew, but it had stopped feeling urgent, like it had happened to someone else, like she had seen it on the news rather than lived it.
Matt went to the hall cupboard and pulled out a white blanket, and Eve stumbled into the bedroom. Everything in there was white: the sheets, the rug, an expensive-looking Chesterfield armchair in the corner. It was like a hotel bedroom. She tried to care but couldn’t. She felt light and warm.
The whole thing was almost funny if you thought about it: first her parents and now her only sibling. What were the chances of two fatal accidents happening to the one family in the space of less than three years? Low, definitely. So low that Eve wondered if she might be cursed. She fell asleep hugging a white pillow to her chest.
4
Eve woke to a sharp knocking. She winced and rolled over. It felt like the noise was coming from inside her skull. ‘Stop,’ she moaned but it came again, louder this time.
It took her a second to realise where she was and why she was there. When she remembered, she had to fight the urge to throw up. Her head throbbed. Reaching for her phone to check the time, she saw five missed calls from her friend Sandra. Shit, she thought. Word had gone round the island. The lasagnes would start showing up soon. The phone lit up and started ringing. It was Sandra. Six missed calls, she thought, and swiped decline.
The knocking again. It was coming from the front door and whoever was out there was not going away. ‘Matt,’ she shouted at the bedroom door.
No response. Just more knocking. ‘Alright.’ Eve rolled out of the bed and stuck her head into the hall. The flat was empty. Matt was nowhere to be seen.
‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice outside. ‘Mr Henderson, are you home?’
Eve ran down the hallway and unlocked the door. Squinting into the glare, she saw a woman dressed in a pantsuit. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail and her makeup was sparse, utilitarian. Beside her stood a man in a police uniform.
‘Eve?’ He took a step forward. ‘Is that you?’
It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the light and another for her to recognise his face, older than she remembered. ‘Shane?’ And suddenly she was propelled back to Year Twelve, to the hot day on the oval where she’d watched him come first in the high jump, then the long jump, and after that the one-hundred-metre sprint. More of a sit-on-the-sidelines-with-a-book kind of person, Eve had never been good at sport, but she’d always watched Shane. All the girls had watched Shane. The teachers, too. It was as if his arms and legs were spring-loaded, and with his broad shoulders and lean torso he was the great hope of their graduating year. Shane Morris would go on to great things. Everybody said it. He was a natural sportsman, sweeping up ribbons and trophies on that athletics day without breaking a sweat. But now it had been how many years since she’d seen him? Eleven? She’d run into him a few times at the nightclub strip when she was finishing up her degree but hadn’t had a chance to have a conversation. His face had a few lines now, and his hair was a salt-and-pepper grey, but she could see that he was as well proportioned and painfully robust as he had been that day on the oval.
‘The hospital told us you’d be here. Eve, I’m so sorry.’ Shane took off his hat. ‘It’s such a horrible tragedy. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard this is for you.’
Eve’s thoughts were taking longer than usual to surface, swimming up through the fog of last night’s sleeping pills. ‘Why have you got a cop’s hat?’ she said. ‘Are you a cop? I thought you joined the army.’
‘I did,’ he said and then shrugged. ‘For a few years. And now I’m a cop.’
‘Eve Wilkinson?’ It was the woman’s turn to step forward. ‘My name is Detective Julie Dennis, and you seem to already know my colleague, Sergeant Shane Morris.’ She held out her hand and, without thinking, Eve shook it. ‘Do you mind if we come in for a minute?’
‘Oh, shit.’ It was a shock, two cops in Tilly’s doorway. Eve moved back to let them in. ‘Of course. Come in. You need to, like, take a witness statement or something, don’t you?’
‘Is Matthew Henderson here?’
‘He was.’ Eve glanced over her shoulder to the couch. There was a blanket folded neatly on the arm rest. ‘I don’t know where he is now, though.’
There were footsteps and Matt appeared in running gear. Sweat shone on his forehead and dark patches had formed on his shirt under the arms and around the neck. ‘Hi, sorry,’ he said and took out his earbuds. ‘I thought I should go for a run before it got too hot. Are you guys here to take statements?’ He shook hands with Shane and Detective Dennis. ‘Please, officers, sit down.’ He led them to the small dining table. ‘Can I offer you any tea or water?’
‘No, thank you,’ Detective Dennis said and pulled out a chair. ‘We’d like to start by saying we’re very sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’ He went to the kitchen and filled two glasses of water. ‘It was a terrible shock. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of skydiving.’ Bringing the glasses over, he kept one for himself and put the other down in front of Eve. ‘So, this is a formality, right? CASA is conducting the investigation.’
Eve pushed her water aside. Deliberately, hoping the cops would see it as an act of resistance. She had backup now. The police always had questions, good ones. They probably had them all written down in little books tucked into their clothes. Cops didn’t put up with non-answers like the ones Matt had been dishing out so far. The pill fog was subsiding now, and Eve cleared her throat. ‘I keep hearing this “CASA” word,’ she said. ‘I assume it’s some government aviation body?’
Detective Dennis reached into a trouser pocket and brought out a notepad and a pen. ‘It stands for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.’ She flicked to a blank page. ‘They’re responsible for investigating aircraft and skydiving crashes. The reason we’re here is to get Matthew’s and, of course, your recollections, Eve, if you have some, of Matilda’s movements in the twenty-four hours leading up to the incident.’ With her pen ready, she looked at Matt. ‘So, Matthew, you were Matilda’s de facto?’
‘Fiancé,’ Eve corrected her. ‘They got engaged last week.’
Detective Dennis’ eyebrows went up and she made a note in her pad. Good, Eve thought. It wasn’t just her. The whole thing was suspicious. She wondered if the detective had picked up on the chemical smell of new furniture and thought it was strange. Had Shane told her anything about what Tilly had been like in school, how she’d tie-dyed her clothes and painted her hands and feet with henna? Detective Dennis’ face gave nothing away. ‘Okay, Matthew, can you tell us a bit about Matilda’s movements in the twenty-four hours leading up to the incident?’
Matt took a breath and glanced at the corner of the ceiling. ‘Of course,’ he said, brightly. ‘You’ll have to give me a second to remember.’ Bullshit, Eve thought. ‘On Friday morning she left for work around seven, and I was home when she got back at about four. Then we went to Cactus Jack’s for drinks and got home at around seven pm. Yesterday I took her to the NQ Skydive office at the airport. That was about one o’clock for her two o’clock jump.’
The detective nodded. ‘Did she seem nervous or out of sorts in any way?’
Eve tried to read her face, but it was blank. Shane’s face also gave her nothing. All that time in the army and now police force had trained him well.
‘She was great, actually,’ Matt said. ‘She wasn’t nervous at all. I was really proud of her.’
Detective Dennis didn’t look up from her notebook. ‘And you used to work for the skydiving company, NQ Skydive, yes? You knew Jack?’
‘Yes. We worked together until I hurt my back and had to take some time off.’
‘And Jack and Tilly knew one other?’
‘They were at school together.’
‘Right.’ She licked her thumb and turned a page. ‘Did you notice anything unusual in Jack’s behaviour leading up to the … jump? You call it a jump, don’t you?’
‘Jack seemed fine.’
‘He’d been drinking the night before,’ Eve interjected, and Matt put a hand up.
‘He wasn’t drunk or hungover. He was fine. Look.’ He let out a long, weary sigh. ‘If I had to guess I would say it was an AAD malfunction.’ Three blank looks and he went on to explain. ‘It stands for Automatic Activation Device. It’s a computer attached to the chest section of the parachute. It pulls the reserve chute if there’s a problem, like if the canopy doesn’t work or if there’s a mid-air collision and a skydiver gets knocked out.’
Finally, a real answer to something. ‘Okay.’ Eve cut him off. ‘If it’s equipment failure, you should be talking to Murray.’ She’d seen enough cop shows to know that time was of the essence. Murray could be in his office right now shredding paperwork and destroying evidence that linked him to the crash. ‘He’s the boss. And Jack said he doesn’t maintain his gear properly. It could be negligence.’
‘It’s okay, Eve.’ Shane had both elbows on the table. He knotted his fingers and looked at Eve with complete focus. ‘We absolutely will be talking to Murray, and everyone else at NQ Skydive.’ Eve had never noticed his eyes before. They were huge, ocean green, with a border of long black lashes. And they were steady, without a hint of distraction or insecurity. He wasn’t sizing her up in any way. He saw her for what she was, an unwashed, terrified woman who had just lost the last surviving member of her family. ‘Everything you can tell us is valuable,’ he went on. ‘And you’re doing really well. I don’t know if I could be as strong as you in this situation.’
And with that the tears started. All it took was one kind word, one genuine show of concern for her wellbeing, and they hit her like a tsunami, drenching her face and pouring out of her nose. ‘Oh god.’ She put her hands up, tried to physically hold them back, but it was no use. They wouldn’t stop. She hadn’t cried like this the day after her parents’ crash. That day she’d been numb, wandering between the three rooms of her little flat in Hermit Park and overwatering her potted herbs until Tilly made her stop. Now she had no one left, and the weight of her loss was unbearable. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her throat was so constricted the words came out in a whisper.
‘It’s okay.’ Shane pulled out a packet of tissues from a pocket in his vest and held one out to her.
Eve didn’t want a tissue, and she didn’t want to take her hands off her face. She knew what she looked like, the crying woman who had to be pitied and cared for, and she didn’t need it. Tilly and Jack didn’t need it. They needed her to keep her shit together and find out what the fuck had happened with that parachute. But her face was a mess, and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She glared at the tissue before taking it. ‘The police force gets you to carry tissues for crying women?’
‘No.’ The big eyes blinked. ‘We’re not required to carry tissues. I have them because sometimes people need them.’
Detective Dennis waited for Eve to finish blowing her nose. ‘Shane’s vest is full of wonders,’ she said and smiled. ‘Have you got a packet of Minties in there too, Shane? He usually has Minties. I wouldn’t eat them though, they’re probably melted.’
‘Julie’s joking,’ Shane said. ‘They’re jelly babies, not Minties.’
The moment of levity, Eve thought as she dried her eyes. Designed to distract the crying woman so she can get it together. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt watching her. Eve was the ‘emotional woman’ now, to be taken care of. She’d ruined her chances of being taken seriously, and she hated herself for it.
Shane slid the tissue packet across the table. ‘Keep it. I’ve got more in the car.’
‘Sorry, I just can’t …’ Eve blew her nose a second time.
‘I know this is hard,’ Detective Dennis said. ‘We’ve only got a few more questions and then we’ll be out of your hair.’
Eve squeezed the tissue into a ball. She could feel Matt’s eyes on her.
‘You need to talk to Murray today,’ she said slowly. ‘Jack basically called him negligent. He said they’d be lucky if the place didn’t get shut down by CASA. Jack never worried about much, but he was worried about that plane. And if the plane wasn’t up to scratch, what else has Murray been cheaping out on? Do you have other people working on this? Is someone at his office right now?’
‘CASA is out there,’ Shane said. ‘Their work is very similar to ours, so you don’t need to worry.’
A beat while Eve dabbed the tissue ball to her nose, and then Detective Dennis said, ‘Can you think of any reasons why a person might want to do Tilly or Jack harm?’
‘What?’ Eve took a second to process the question. Harm? Why would anyone want to harm them? When it hit her, it took the wind out of her lungs. She looked from Detective Dennis to Shane and back to Detective Dennis. ‘It was an accident,’ she said quietly and saw herself from the other side of the room in an out of body experience, sitting like a stunned child at this brown table in this charmless room. This wasn’t her life. It couldn’t be.
Silence. Then in a languid movement like he’d just finished a large meal, Matt leaned into the back of his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘No.’
Eve barely heard him. She looked to Shane. ‘You think they could have been murdered?’ Her face felt like it was on fire. She couldn’t breathe. Nausea rose up from what felt like her feet, and she lowered her head onto the table. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no.’ She was back on the beach again, watching the lifeguard pound on the chest of her little sister. She could almost smell the sand. ‘She didn’t have any enemies. Nobody wanted to hurt her. It was an accident.’ Then she felt a hand on her back. It was Matt.
‘Don’t you touch me.’ She stood up from her chair so fast she nearly sent it flying.
‘Whoa!’ He put his palms out. ‘Sorry.’ Then he looked at the officers. ‘I was just trying to help.’
‘It’s alright, Eve.’ Shane was on his feet now. ‘At this stage all our questions are a formality.’
‘She’ll be okay.’ Matt picked up Eve’s glass. ‘You really should drink something,’ he said in a tone so paternal it made her want to scream. She shook her head, and he took it into the kitchen. ‘Nobody wanted to do either of them harm, but I think it might be better for us to pick this up again later, when Eve’s feeling more up to it.’
‘No,’ Eve said. ‘You need to know about the switch. Tilly was supposed to jump with Aiden, but she got switched to Jack at the last minute.’
‘That’s not really relevant, Eve.’ Matt began to wash her glass.
‘They want recollections, Matt.’ She had to shout over the thunder of the tap. ‘So that’s what I’m giving them. If Tilly had jumped with Aiden like she was supposed to, she’d still be alive.’
Detective Dennis made another note in her book. ‘We’re going to look into every piece of information we get, Eve. And the crash investigators are extremely thorough so we should have a more concrete idea about what happened in the next couple of days at the latest.’ She stood up and motioned to Shane that they were leaving. ‘Thank you for your time, and we’ll be in touch.’
‘That’s no problem at all.’ Matt turned off the tap and followed the officers to the door, leaving Eve at the table. ‘And thank you for understanding. I’m sure you both appreciate this is especially difficult for Eve considering what happened to her parents. I’ll make sure she gets some proper rest.’
Realising she was about to be left alone with him, Eve ran to the door. ‘Wait.’ She almost grabbed Shane by the taser at his belt. ‘Can I get a lift to the ferry?’
‘Yeah, absolutely.’
‘Okay.’ It took her less than fifteen seconds to sweep the flat for her stuff. She scooped up her shoes on the way out the front door. Matt got nothing from her. Not a thank you or a goodbye. Not even a fuck you.
Out in the street, the heat was already making waves above the bitumen. ‘Thank you,’ Eve said as she got into the back of the car. The daylight had her feeling slightly more sane. ‘I couldn’t spend another second trapped in that horrible flat with him.’
‘You don’t like him?’ Shane was in the front passenger seat.
‘God, no.’ She slid across to the middle so she could put her head between the front seats and talk. She had a lot of talking to do. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with him, but he’s not right.’
‘In what way?’ Detective Dennis steered the car out of the driveway into the road.
‘Okay.’ Eve had to be quick. It was only ten minutes to the ferry. ‘For a start, what kind of person goes out for a run the morning after his fiancée dies?’
‘That was a bit strange,’ Shane said.
‘It’s not strange, Shane, it’s fucked up.’ Eve realised she’d just said ‘fucked’ to a pair of police officers. That was probably an offence, but she didn’t have time to care. Her sister was dead. Her whole fucking family was dead, so that should give her some liberty. ‘And that whole engagement thing? That happened last week.’ She paused for a reaction, but the officers had obviously seen a lot. Neither one blinked. ‘And did you see how patronising he was in there when I said Tilly got swapped out for Jack at the last minute? That shit’s relevant, right?’
‘At this stage everything is relevant,’ Detective Dennis said.
‘And you need to speak to Aiden. I know Matt said it’s standard for people to get swapped around before a jump, but Aiden’s gone AWOL. Have you spoken to him?’
Detective Dennis said ‘no,’ and Shane said he was on their list to contact.
‘Okay, well, you might want to find out why he didn’t come to the hospital. He was supposedly Jack’s friend, but he didn’t show up. He didn’t even call. And Murray, the boss? He wasn’t there either. Wouldn’t you guys show up to the hospital to see that the guy you work with is okay?’
