‘You said she sent you a video, but it didn’t play? You want to forward that on to me? I can try to get it playing for you.’
‘I thought I’d already done that,’ Judith said. ‘I’ll send it through now.’ She picked up her mobile and forwarded the email.
‘I’ll get to it as soon as I can,’ Claire said. ‘I have a couple of urgent requests on my desk is the only thing.’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a video of Walker getting a blowjob in his office,’ Judith said. ‘If I’m right, I’ve already seen it.’
‘Charming,’ Claire said.
‘Yep. This is the job that keeps on giving.’ Judith was about to hang up.
‘Hang in there,’ Claire said, quietly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Everyone knows the shit that’s going on. I’m just saying. You have a lot of friends. Just keep your head down and hang in there. Everything will be fine.’
* * *
Judith decided to take Claire’s advice on board. She went back to her desk and worked her way through the Haddad reports. At the end of the day she met the bike repair guy, wheeled her bike out from the secure car park, and handed it over. The best loaner they could give her in return was a Honda PCX 150, a glorified scooter with fifteen horsepower. Judith immediately agreed to pay extra to get the repairs expedited.
After she dropped the scooter to her apartment, she went for a long run to try to work out some of her agitation. It didn’t work particularly well. She doomscrolled for hours on her phone and finally fell asleep around one a.m.
As she slept, she dreamed.
She drove her bike through dark, empty Melbourne streets to Robert Walker’s house in Hawthorn. The dream was disjointed and uneven, as if she was in a video that someone had cut together, with facts and circumstances changing as she moved, as if someone was ahead of her every step of the way, smoothing away obstacles. In the dream, the pedestrian gate at the house was locked, then unlocked. As she walked up the path to the house, the window to Walker’s study slid itself open. As she climbed through the window, she was at first bare-handed, then wearing gloves and a balaclava. She approached the desk and her gun was in her hands though she had never made the decision to draw it. Robert Walker was there, working late under the warm yellow light of a desk lamp. In the dream, he didn’t seem to notice her climbing through his window, or walking to his side, and he never looked up as she put her gun to his head. He was still writing when she pulled the trigger.
And then the scene shifted. The blood on Walker’s desk and the floor and the wall behind him became her stepfather’s blood, the heritage wooden floor of Walker’s study became the worn lino of her mother’s kitchen, and the gun she held in her hands became the handle of a golf club, which she brought down on her stepfather’s head, again and again, until he finally stopped moving.
In the dream she threw the club aside and grabbed Gerry by the shoulders. She ignored the blood seeping from his head and tried to pull his weight off her mother. In the dream, just as they had been in life, Gerry’s hands were still around Linda’s throat, though they were slack now, and Judith could pull them away. Gerry was a big man. Six foot three. More than a hundred kilos. She rolled him off. Finally.
‘Mum.Mum!’Livid bruises ringed Linda’s throat. Judith tried to wake her mother. Linda’s eyes blinked open. She tried to focus.
‘Jude?’ Her voice was a rasp. ‘He didn’t mean it. You know he didn’t.’
* * *
Judith woke up on Saturday with a headache and a nauseous stomach. She stood under the shower for a long time, then turned the water to cold and held her face under the spray for longer. She emerged, shivering and feeling little better. She dressed in soft old jeans and an older T-shirt, then made coffee and carried it to the couch. She should eat, she knew that, but she never could, after the dream. Instead she tried to take comfort in her apartment.
She loved it. Loved the high ceilings and the big windows and the fact that it was almost in the city but still had a big street tree right outside the living room window. She’d scrimped and saved and bought it twelve years earlier—when it was a shithole—and then she’d saved again and done most of the work herself. Stripped and repaired and polished the floors. Painted the brick walls. Lived with it for six months until she could afford to get the plumbing sorted. It was another year before she could afford to redo the wiring. She loved her furniture. Half of it had been picked up from a verge and refurbished by her own hands, or bought at a garage sale or on Gumtree. But it was all hers. Part of her. Surrounded by her stuff, Judith felt safer in this precious place than anywhere in the world.
But not that day.
Judith picked up her phone and called Katy.
‘Hello?’ Katy’s voice was a croak. ‘I’m dying. I legitimately think I might be dying. I am too old for this shit. I should know better.’
Judith hesitated. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure she wanted to talk.
‘Jude? Everything okay?’
‘I had the dream again.’
There was a pause. ‘Oh god. Really?’ Another pause. ‘Is it a case? A new case?’
Suddenly Judith didn’t want to talk.
‘Jude?’
