She looked at her friend. ‘I’m so sorry. I never thought she would go after you. And I should have. I should have seen it coming.’
Katy waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘There’s no way you could have known what she was going to do. No possible way. And you’re not going to take responsibility for it. I’m not having that shit. It’s just self-flagellation. It doesn’t help me, or you, or anyone.’
‘Yes, boss.’ Judith closed her eyes. She couldn’t let it go that easily. She should have seen Ruth for what she was from the start.
‘I didn’t mean for you to do that, you know,’ Katy said.
‘Do what?’
‘When I said you should be brave for other people, I didn’t mean that you should follow a psychopath into a cave, unarmed.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Can we just agree, though, that that kind of thing is not a good idea?’
‘Shut up, Katy.’
Katy made a sound of mock outrage, and Judith smiled to herself, her eyes still closed. She could sleep there, easily. A minute passed, and she very nearly drifted off.
‘What about Ruth?’ Katy said, and all the humour was gone from her voice. ‘There’s still no sign of her?’
Some of Judith’s ease left her. ‘She’s in the wind.’
‘And what about your job?’
‘I don’t know. Still to be decided, I think.’ Judith had already received the notice. She was being called before a full disciplinary board. The process had been postponed while she was recovering from her leg injury, but it would happen, sometime in the next couple of weeks. It was hard to know what the outcome would be. Ruth had sent the audio recording and the video to three different journalists, and there had been articles published and questions raised, but there had also been articles published about how she had rescued Cameron from the cave, about how she’d finally solved the murders of five missing women. No one, it seemed, knew quite what to think. Victoria Police had yet to make a statement.
‘Right,’ Katy said.
‘It’ll be all right,’ Judith said.
The prospect of losing her job was not as terrifying as it once would have been. The attack on Katy, that journey down the side of the cliff and what had followed afterwards had put a lot of things in perspective. Judith was a fighter. She had savings. One way or another, she’d survive. And she might hold on to her job yet. It helped that she was being credited for the Charlie Palmer solves. It helped too that Rocky was going to bat for her. She owed him so much.
‘I suppose it will be,’ Katy said, but she sounded dissatisfied.
Judith opened her eyes. ‘She sent me something.’
‘What?’
‘Ruth sent me a letter.’
Katy leaned forward in her chair, her eyes wide. ‘Are you serious? You never told me!’
‘It only arrived this morning. No personal delivery, she’s finished with that trick. It came by Australia Post. In a plain envelope. I called the station, they sent someone over to collect it.’
‘Well, what did it say?’
‘It wasn’t from Ruth, not really. It was a letter from Miriam. She wrote it before she died, sent it to Ruth as a kind of apology, I suppose. She was trying to explain why she’d made the decision to die. That letter was the basis for everything. Ruth pulled quotes from it and sent one to each of us—Walker, Jack, Elsa and me. Everyone she blamed for her sister’s death.’
‘And now Ruth’s sent that letter to you. Does that mean she’s done with you? Not done with you? Which?’
Judith sank back into the chair. She didn’t know the answer to that question, but she knew that whatever Ruth’s intentions, Judith was going to find her and put her behind bars. There was already a nationwide manhunt. Hundreds of cops were already looking for Ruth Hall, and soon Judith would join them, officially, or unofficially.
But not right that minute. For a minute, for an hour even, Judith wanted to lie back in this big, ridiculously comfortable chair, her best friend safely nearby, to rest her head and her tired body, and maybe even sleep.
