She looked around, searching for nearby cameras. The parking garage was secure. There was no way in without a security pass, no way in without driving or walking under a camera, but there was no camera pointing directly at the motorbike parking, she realised. The cameras were at the entrances and the exits, and at the lifts, but there were none monitoring the vehicles themselves. Which meant that anyone who had accessed the garage in the eight hours she’d been inside the station could have been the one to mess with her bike, and she had no way to rule any of them out.
Which of course they’d known. A cop had done this. Someone under Eddie Fraser’s thumb, or some friend of Luke’s? Luke had made a lot of enemies in his short time as a police officer, but he’d made a few friends too, because even in the force there were weak people who were easily impressed by a blowhard arsehole with more muscle than character.
Judith was shocked to discover that she had tears in her eyes. She blinked them away rapidly. God. She’d better pull herself together. It was just a motorbike. It was fixable. She couldn’t let them get to her so easily.
Judith left the bike where it was and took the lift back up to the ground floor and the fleet management desk. She knew the guy on duty.
‘No bike today?’ he asked.
She cut him a look, but the expression on his face was open and friendly.
‘Not today,’ she said.
He handed her a set of keys. ‘This is the best I’ve got today. Two years old. Just been cleaned.’
‘Thanks.’
He lowered his voice. ‘I heard about Fraser. That was good work. I hope you’re not getting any shit for it.’
That was too close to the bone. She glared at him, suspecting that he was making a thinly veiled swipe about the damage done to her bike, but the look he gave her in return was one of confusion. Damn it, she was being paranoid. They were making her paranoid.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Yeah. Welcome,’ he said, but he looked unsettled.
Judith gave herself a lecture as she walked away. If she jumped at every shadow, she was handing Eddie Fraser the win. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to do that.
* * *
Nadia Haddad was staying with her aunt Layla in Bayside. Layla and Nadia met with Judith in the kitchen of Layla’s prettily decorated and extremely tidy three-bedroom home. Nadia was a beautiful girl with very dark eyes and a septum piercing. She looked Judith straight in the eye and told her that she had no idea who’d killed her mum and dad, and if she did, the last person she’d tell would be a fucking copper. After that she shut her mouth and refused to say a word.
Judith did her best to break through, but got nowhere. She wasn’t helped by the fact that Layla hovered over her niece, breaking into tears at regular intervals, and interrupting the one and only time Judith thought she might have been getting close to provoking a response. The tears were not a tactic. It was obvious that Layla was completely freaked out by her sister’s murder. Judith had no sympathy for the woman. The weeping and the shock struck her as hypocritical, in the circumstances. Not to mention weak. Shit, Nadia was fifteen years old and she’d just lost both parents, but she was holding it together better than her aunt.
Judith’s mood darkened further when she left the house, turned off her Do Not Disturb and her phone buzzed three times in rapid succession. She’d missed another call from her mother, who had left a new voicemail and sent a text message—both of them asking her to drop by the house. She groped in her pocket for a cigarette and found only the gum. Christ. She really needed a smoke. Judith put the gum in her mouth and chewed, slowly and begrudgingly. Her jaw still ached. She told herself it was getting better.
She sat in the car but didn’t start the engine. There was no way out. If she didn’t take the time to see her mother, Linda would keep calling, she’d call Rocky again, and after that, she’d start calling the station. Judith checked her watch. It was after five. She’d go there now, get it done before Linda escalated, and before she had a chance to change her own mind.
Judith pulled up outside her mother’s house in Brighton East at five-thirty p.m. Linda had lived in the same home for twenty-eight years, during which time the suburb had gentrified around her. Most of the neighbours who’d lived there when Judith was a child had long since sold up and moved, and their houses had been knocked down to make room for gleaming contemporary two-storeys with electric gates and manicured landscaping, but Linda lived on quietly in her little red-brick bungalow with its ragged edged lawn and brightly coloured bedding plants.
Judith took a breath and steeled herself. There was no car in the driveway, but that didn’t mean anything. Linda usually parked it in the otherwise empty garage. Judith walked to the front door and rang the bell. Her heart sank when she heard the click of heels coming from the kitchen. Linda opened the door.
‘Jude! What a surprise. How lovely to see you.’ Linda was wearing her usual uniform, a pair of pastel-coloured slacks—today it was pale blue—and a matching twinset. Her silver-grey hair had been neatly blow-dried into a tidy bob, and her make-up was, as always, immaculate. She didn’t look directly at Judith, but past her to the street, as if she was checking to see whether or not they had an audience.
‘Mum.’
They hugged, a single arm from Judith, quickly released, and a two arm wrap-around from Linda which sent a sharp crack of pain through Judith’s ribs. Linda’s perfume was in Judith’s nose: citrus and jasmine. On anyone else it would have been a pleasant scent. Judith felt sweat break out on her lower back.
‘Come in. You’re in luck. I just happened to be doing some baking. The school is having their art show—you remember the art show—and I said I’d drop down a slice to Mrs Reynard. They never could get enough bakers, you know, and these days all the mothers are working. Mind you, we worked in my day too, of course we did. People seem to forget that.’
Judith followed her mother into the kitchen, which was filled with the smell of baking.
‘Sit, sit,’ Linda said. ‘I’ll make tea.’ She filled the kettle. There were baking racks spread out across the benchtop, all of them covered with cakes that were fresh out of the oven. Two chocolate, two raspberry and coconut. Part of her mother’s wide repertoire. That much made sense. But why she was still baking for a school Judith hadn’t attended since she was twelve years old was a question only Linda could answer. Linda took a teapot out of the cupboard. She added teabags, then while the kettle was boiling, filled a little jug with milk and found a matching sugar bowl. ‘So, tell me all your news. How’s work?’
‘Work’s work,’ Judith said. She knew from experience that Linda wouldn’t ask any follow-up questions. The fact that Judith worked as a homicide detective was one of the many facts about Judith’s life that Linda chose to ignore.
‘Lovely!’ Linda said. The kettle switched itself off. She filled the teapot with freshly boiled water. ‘I must say, you’re looking wonderful.’ But her eyes went to Judith’s buzz cut and then to the bruises on her face and her bright smile disappeared.
Judith went to the window that overlooked the back garden. Her childhood swing set was still there, rusting its way to a slow, lopsided death.
