Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

CHAPTER 38

The water had been heart-stoppingly cold when I went into the lake, remember? Juliette had to resuscitate me with CPR. It’s a technicality, sure, but an honest one.

‘Let’s think about what we know,’ I said. ‘We all know that Michael killed a man named Alan Holton. Some of us know that Alan Holton is the man who shot my father, Robert. Very few of us know that the reason my father was killed was because he was working undercover for the police. His last snitch, his final message to deliver to Detective Humphreys—’

‘Did you say Humph—’ Erin started, quick to assemble the pieces I was laying out, the name ringing a bell as one of the Black Tongue’s victims.

‘I did. Try not to get ahead of me.’ I smiled. ‘Robert’s last message was incriminating photographs of a murder, which we’ll get to. They were never found, despite both Alan and Audrey’s best efforts. And then three years ago Alan suddenly has them, and they’re for sale. Marcelo, you’re the one who tried to stop me finding out about it.’

Marcelo’s fingers squeaked against the leather arm of the chair as his grip tightened. He didn’t speak. He was letting me get it all out, seeing how much I knew. He didn’t want to come in early and fill in any blanks for me, in case he needed to call my bluff. It didn’t matter, I knew I was right.

‘Marcelo, you’re the one who set up Robert’s deal with Detective Humphreys, and you saw firsthand how that went wrong. Audrey had also told you about what the Sabres did to Jeremy when you helped finalise the legal side of his death. This meant you knew just how dangerous whatever Michael had could be for whoever had it.’ Most of the room didn’t know what I was referring to, but I was focused on speaking only to Marcelo. ‘When you saw Michael’s filthy hands, his ridiculous choice of vehicle, you suspected he’d dug something up. And you’d always suspected this had something to do with Rebecca McAuley. You didn’t know what Michael had, but you were worried that people were about to start dying for the same reason Robert did all those years ago. You wanted to get rid of whatever he had.’ I let that sink in. ‘But . . . you didn’t do it to cover your own tracks. You did it to protect Michael, didn’t you?’

Marcelo sunk deeper into his chair. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted it to roll down the hill. I thought it would look like an accident,’ he admitted. ‘It was an old model, so I could get in with a coathanger through the window and lift the handbrake, but I didn’t have the keys to start the engine, so I poured some hot coffee under the wheels to melt the snow. I was interrupted by Crawford running up to get you lot out of the maintenance shed, so I had to leave it before I could push it down the slope.’

I heard Erin’s voice in my head – There’s some brown shit on the ground, maybe brake fluid – and remembered the empty coffee cup sitting on the lip of the rear door. ‘I didn’t think anyone would get in the back and jump around. I’m sorry about your hand. I swear, I was just trying to stop you from knowing what was really in there. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was! I was scared by the body on the slope that morning, and when you asked me about Humphreys, I knew something was coming. I wanted to be able to wash our hands of it, for whoever this was to feel their secret was hidden and safe. I just wanted it to end. I swear on my life.’

‘Or mine, as it would happen.’

‘I sat with you until you woke up,’ Marcelo said, looking more embarrassed at having his kindness revealed than when I was accusing him of covering up a murder. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Who’s Rebecca McAuley again?’ Andy actually put his hand up. ‘Is this something to do with that old couple with all the cash?’ He looked around sheepishly. ‘What? I’m confused!’

‘I’m getting ahead of myself.’ I decided to leave Marcelo alone. ‘Again, let’s ask ourselves why we’re here. A reunion, sure. One big happy family.’ The sarcasm dripped through my teeth. ‘But we’re here because one of us picked it. Isn’t that right, Katherine?’ I turned to her. ‘You deliberately chose the most isolated place you could find. No getting out of here easily. And you’ve been outspoken that we should stay – sure, we all know how you feel about non-refundable deposits, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’

‘Not in front of everyone, Ern,’ Katherine said, but her tone wasn’t guilty or threatening; it sounded compassionate – embarrassed even – on behalf of someone else. ‘Come on.’

‘Katherine, if this doesn’t make sense, nothing does. It’s time to put everything on the table. And that includes you. Because you broke into Sofia’s chalet the night that Green Boots died. You or Andy. It doesn’t matter who, but let’s just say it was you for the sake of reason. I initially thought it very good luck that the snow cam didn’t catch whoever broke into Sofia’s chalet. That camera takes a photo every three minutes, so it would require a conscious effort, and good timing, to avoid it. Of course, you’re the type of person who checks the weather for the weekend. You’re the most organised here, you would have looked at that website fifty times before leaving home. Which means that you knew there was a snow cam, and you knew to time your movements around it so you didn’t get caught.’

Katherine swapped a guilty look with Andy.

‘So why break in? You were looking for something in Sofia’s chalet. And when you found it, you dialled Andy to tell him you had it, or perhaps so he could tell you the time, so you’d know when the snow cam refreshed and you could make a break for it. But you forgot we’d switched cabins, so you called the wrong room. So the question is, what were you looking for?’ I held up my oven mitt. ‘Those pills are dynamite, by the way. Oxycodone, was it?’

Katherine shot an apologetic look over to Sofia.

‘You don’t take painkillers, Katherine – you never have since your car crash. Your personal pain is a penance for the hurt you’ve caused, and you wouldn’t fall off the wagon so easily. So why do you have a bottle of powerful painkillers? I’m thankful for them, by the way, but they’re not yours. Oxy is the drug most doctors get hooked on, right? It’s powerful and it’s not too hard to get in a hospital.’ I shook the bottle and the pills clattered accusingly.

‘I took them from Sofia’s chalet,’ Katherine said. ‘I don’t give a rat’s about refunds. We couldn’t leave early because Sofia needs to be here. And she needs all four days. She’s detoxing.’

Everyone turned to look at Sofia, pale and tired. She simply hung her head in shame.

‘Her health has been deteriorating the longer she’s gone without the pills. Her hands have been shaking, for one thing,’ I said, recalling her rattling coffee cup in the bar. ‘She’s been vomiting, pale and sweaty since yesterday morning.’

I’ll interrupt myself here to head off a possible complaint. I’ll clarify that I never said you shouldn’t pay attention to Sofia’s vomiting in Chapter 7. I just told you it didn’t mean she was pregnant. I will not be accused of hoodwinking.

‘I’m guessing, Sofia, that you’re a high-functioning addict. After all, you continued to work, even operate. And you told me yourself they don’t test doctors like they test athletes, that even after a death it’s not mandatory. But you got scared after that surgery went wrong. And you were flagged – for the wrong reason, a glass of wine at a bar, but flagged all the same. Because what the coroner does look for is patterns. Maybe there are other incidents, smaller, everyday ones that can’t be helped, around you. Maybe, like each individual fleck of snow that falls on this mountain, they are not so damning on their own, but together, a picture starts to build. So Sofia approached you, Katherine, because her addiction was spiralling, and she knew she was under a closer watch and that she’d fail a drug test if the coroner called for one,’ I continued. ‘If she shows up to court next week with oxy in her system, she’ll stand no chance.’ Sofia had jokingly asked me if I was free next week, when I was planning out how to be Michael’s faux-lawyer, inadvertently revealing the timing. ‘So this weekend is her last chance to get clean. That’s why you’ve been so snappy with her. That first breakfast you went out of your way to enforce that she wasn’t a doctor, because by then you’d already searched her room and found the pills. You were upset that she’d hidden them from you, but you were also trying to scare her into understanding what’s on the line: her whole career, her whole identity. You asked Marcelo to cut her off too – that’s why he’s refusing to help her. Though he will if he has to, we all know that. But for this weekend, you needed to scare her straight. You tried to get me to doubt her too. She had to feel like she was on her own.’

Marcelo gave a gentle, apologetic nod to Sofia. I’d figured that one out because of what he’d admitted when I’d accused him of playing favourites between Michael and Sofia. He’d stammered out: that’s not entirely true. Michael had told me that Robert and Audrey had used the same tactic on Katherine all those years ago: cutting her off. It was also the advice Katherine had given Michael to try on Lucy’s financial issues. A last resort.

‘Back to the pills, Katherine. You locked them in your car to keep them safe. But Sofia’—she was still looking down at her lap, shoulders shuddering with silent tears—‘wasn’t done. She tried to get the pills back. Sofia, when you told me you saw someone at the maintenance shed, you couldn’t have seen them from the bar. That storm was a whiteout: I’d been sitting by the window myself and couldn’t see into the car park. Which means you had to be in the parking lot to see Erin go into the maintenance shed. Katherine’s window wasn’t broken by the storm, it was broken by you, desperately trying to get the pill bottle you thought she’d locked in her car. But Katherine had sent Andy out into the storm to get her bag earlier. She suspected you’d try something like that, so she changed her mind and wanted them on her at all times. Which is also why she wouldn’t let me keep the bottle overnight.’

I knelt in front of Sofia and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘I’m not saying all this for no reason, Sofia. We will help you through this. But I need you to be honest with me with this next question.’

She looked up at me, eyes bloodshot, and dragged her forearm under her nose. ‘I swear. I did that surgery the same way I would have done any other. It’s like the story of the drunk pilot who lands the plane, you know? I didn’t’—she hiccupped—‘I don’t know what happened. It just went wrong. Since then, Katherine’s been helping me. I want to get better.’

‘I know.’ I gave her a hug and whispered in her ear. ‘You’re a good surgeon. You let your addiction get out of control, but we can fix things. I just need you to be honest here, and help me find the real killer. For Michael and Lucy. You’re strong enough to give this up and you’re strong enough to help me, even if you might be embarrassed at first.’ I felt her nose brush against my neck, up and down. A nod. I stood. It wasn’t fair that I was hanging everyone else’s laundry out to dry and not my own. It was my turn.

‘Sofia asked me for fifty thousand dollars two nights ago. Here’s my confession: I have much more than that in cash on me. About two hundred and fifty – well, forty-five. It was the money Michael was supposed to pay Alan Holton with. He asked me to look after it after everything went south, and I didn’t tell the police. Partly because it never came up, and partly because . . . well . . . I didn’t want to. I’ll admit it’—I put my hands up, hoping it made me look just as fallible as the rest of them, seeing as I was going around the room pointing fingers—‘I brought the money with me in case Michael wanted it back. I told Sofia what I was doing, and she asked me for some, saying it would help her out.’ I changed tone to address Sofia sympathetically. ‘And now that I know you’re here to try and overcome your addiction, I understand that a little better. Because money troubles are common for addicts, but when you asked me, it didn’t seem desperate, your life didn’t depend on it. You asked me because it was easy, because the money was untraceable and because it was in front of you. A fifty grand debt wasn’t going to ruin your life – you have a house, if it really got down to it – but it’s true that you were spending too much money on oxycodone, and that, seeing as what you were doing could end your career more easily than if you were, say, an accountant, untraceable cash was important. Money problems are common for addicts, and so is stealing. You stole something from one of us to get some fast cash, didn’t you?’

Sofia gave a sniffling nod.

‘I’m a fan of rules – some of you know this. And Step 9 in AA is to make amends.’ I looked over at Katherine, who nodded confirmation, and turned back to Sofia. ‘You brought the pills, yes, but just as a safety net. You fully intended to follow the program this weekend. That’s why you asked me for cash. It wasn’t a debt, but it was something you felt you needed to repay, even if no one else knew.’

‘I think someone might have noticed if Sofia had stolen fifty grand.’ Marcelo raised his voice. ‘She’s admitted it. You need to lay off.’

‘Sofia can stop me if I’m wrong.’

‘If it’s important to Michael and Lucy . . .’ Sofia took a deep breath. ‘I needed the money to buy back what I stole: a fifty-thousand-dollar platinum Presidential Rolex watch.’

Marcelo’s jaw dropped in horror. He checked his watch, tapped it a few times, then eventually managed to close his mouth.

Sofia looked exhausted by the confession, so I picked up the thread again. ‘Marcelo never takes his watch off, we all know this. Except when he underwent a shoulder reconstruction. A surgery that Sofia conducted. She used the surgery as an excuse to swap his watch with a fake. I noticed because Marcelo punched me in the jaw earlier and I still have all my teeth. That model of Rolex, with the platinum chain, is supposed to weigh just shy of half a kilogram. A punch, even from an old man – no offence – should have floored me like he was wearing knuckle dusters.’

‘He would have noticed the difference,’ Juliette scoffed. ‘Surely. If the fake was so light.’

‘You’re right. But Marcelo was recovering from surgery. Anything would have felt like a brick on his wrist at first, and so he grew accustomed to the lighter weight, thinking his arm was growing stronger in recovery instead.’ I saw Marcelo lift some invisible weights with his right arm, testing the heft, confusion plastered across his face. ‘But the problem was, it wasn’t any old wristwatch. I’ll admit, I’ve always been a little bit jealous of the thing. I’ve googled how much it was worth on occasion, so imagine my surprise when Marcelo tells me the watch belonged to my father. He was a criminal, sure, but not a showy one. He never bought flashy jewellery or souped-up cars. That seemed strange to me. I assume it was stolen in the first place, but even so, Dad wouldn’t have been the guy to take it from a haul. And then I learned about the photographs. Which everyone wanted and no one ever found, even though the gang’s thugs turned over the very bank his wife worked at to get to his safety deposit box.’

‘Robert left the watch to Jeremy,’ my mother muttered.

‘Rolexes are designed to last – their whole marketing campaign is based on them being handed down through generations. In particular, a platinum Rolex is so heavy because it’s so robust: it’s even got bulletproof glass.’ SAFE AS A BANK VAULT shouted one of the ads that had peppered my social media feed. ‘So, it’s going to last a long time and be protected. There’s no better place to keep something vital. Provided it’s small enough to fit under the glass, right?’ I took the loupe out of my pocket and held it up. ‘Juliette, toss me Frank’s medal, will you?’

Juliette frowned in confusion, but obliged and tossed the glass case in a careful, underarm lob.

I caught it. I’d already checked; it was the one thing I’d done to confirm my suspicions, and so I knew how important it was. As I said in Chapter 15, I didn’t spend eighty words describing the damn thing for nothing.

‘Juliette told me that F-287, or Frank – that’s the dead bird above the fireplace – carried a map, infantry locations, coordinates and other vital information across enemy lines. But, even in code, the map alone would be enough to weigh down a bird. I didn’t realise that your father had framed the actual life-saving message too, Juliette.’ I held the loupe underneath the medal, where the small slip of paper with the meaningless dots on it had been mounted. It was obvious, even without peering into the lens itself, that it was magnifying out of the tiny dot a detailed map. We’re moving into le Carré over Christie here – ‘spy shit’ as my father called it – but stick with me. Though my how-to book on it hadn’t sold very many copies, it was about to pay dividends. ‘They’re called microdots. It’s a technique used to shrink information. An entire A4 sheet of paper, or an image, like a map, for example, can fit on a dot the size of a full stop. Spies were quite fond of these in the Second World War – they’d put them on the back of postage stamps. This’—I held up the loupe again—‘was rattling around in Michael’s car when he buried Alan. He also brought it with him here. Erin took it when Crawford arrested him. It’s a jeweller’s magnifying thingy.’ (Remember, I only learned the word ‘loupe’ while writing this book, so it would be disingenuous to fake my dialogue.) ‘Marcelo, your watch, the real one, had a microdot under the glass. Robert never used drugs. The needle they found on his body, which led to the conclusion that he was high and trying to stick up a petrol station, wasn’t for injecting. Microdots are so small that I assume you need something fine like a syringe or the tip of a pen to apply them to a surface.’

I held up the loupe.

‘But every pawnbroker has one of these, or something better. Anyone would have seen the dot straight away when inspecting the quality. Sofia thought she was just selling a watch, but she was selling much more. I doubt Sofia had the bad luck to sell it to him directly, but Michael told me that stolen goods in Sydney tend to make their way through Alan’s shop. Sofia would have had to go someplace dodgy. Maybe your oxy dealer pointed you in the right direction, or maybe you traded it for drugs and they sold it on. I’m not ignoring that Alan might even be in the photographs himself and someone tipped him off. I have no idea. Either way, this is the butterfly that flaps its wings in Turkey and causes a tornado in Brazil. The short version is that the wrong watch landed with the wrong person. Alan knew the value of what he had, and, more importantly, he knew who would want it. That’s why Michael met him that night, a bag of cash in tow. He was trying to buy the microdot.’ I had everyone’s rapt attention. ‘Does anyone care to fill in some gaps here, or should I keep going?’

You call something like a microdot in a book like this one a MacGuffin. It doesn’t matter exactly what it is, it just matters that people will kill over it. You know, the thing that James Bond is always chasing after: a USB with a world-destroying virus; bank account passwords; nuclear launch codes. Or, in our case, photographs.

‘I have a question,’ Audrey offered, putting her hands out in a don’t shoot gesture. ‘Ernest, everything you’re telling us is about how small what we’re chasing is. Michael brought a furniture truck. For a tiny photograph?’

I realised that everyone in the room except for Audrey and Katherine knew there was a coffin in the truck – Erin from digging it up; Sofia and Crawford from chasing after it; Andy and Juliette from our conversation with the McAuleys; and Marcelo because I’d told him.

‘Michael needed the truck to bring Brian Clarke’s coffin with him, which he and Erin had dug up the night before. Brian is the policeman my father shot the night he died, Alan Holton’s partner. Marcelo didn’t know what he was getting rid of in the truck, but I saw what Michael wanted me to see. Brian’s coffin had two bodies in it: one of them a child.’ This, I’m pleased to report, drew my first unanimous gasp. ‘Andy, if it helps, this is Rebecca McAuley. She was kidnapped thirty-five years ago. Her parents tried to deceive the kidnappers to save a few bucks and it backfired: they never saw their daughter again.’

‘And Robert had photos of it,’ Erin said. ‘That’s what you think is on the microdot. Evidence of her murder?’

‘Exactly. Alan was delighted to have the watch fall into his hands, because he knew the McAuleys would pay handsomely for the evidence it contained. This next part is guesswork, but I’m ruling out Alan as Rebecca’s killer, because Marcelo told me he was too soft, and because otherwise he would have destroyed the photos instead of selling them. And because he’s selling them, I figure that thirty-five years is long enough and Alan has burned enough bridges that he figures it’s no longer worth protecting whoever he was protecting back then.’

I took a second to see if most of the room agreed this was reasonable. Some were nodding along. Sofia looked like she was about to vomit. Andy looked befuddled, as if I were explaining quantum physics. Good enough.

‘But Alan’s got a problem. He might not have killed Rebecca, but he’s not innocent: he was working for the Sabres. He targeted Robert and helped hide Rebecca’s body, at the very least, and it’s likely he interfered with the ransom drop too. So he can’t just show up on the McAuleys’ doorstep. They’d hold him just as responsible. So he needs a middleman.’

‘Why Michael?’ Katherine asked.

‘It took me a while to figure this out. I think that Alan wanted someone else with something to gain, to be sure that he could trust them to deliver such a large amount of money. A Cunningham had plenty to gain from the photographs, and from what else Alan knew from his involvement. The most obvious is learning the truth about Robert, of course. I suspect that’s only half of it, but we’re getting there. Michael seems like the right choice – Marcelo, you were Robert’s lawyer; Katherine, you’re straight as an ice skate; Audrey, your age puts the odds against you here, no offence. But this was Alan’s mistake. The personal connection he thought would guarantee the deal turned out to be the reason Michael killed him.

‘And the deal itself is the simple part. Alan’s price tag is the original ransom amount: three hundred thousand dollars. So Alan gives Michael enough information to rope him and the McAuleys in, Michael gets the money from the McAuleys to buy the microdot from Alan, Alan gives him a cut, and then Michael delivers the photographs back. It’s all so simple. Except, of course, Michael ends up killing Alan and keeping the cash.’

‘Because Michael didn’t have three hundred thousand dollars,’ Sofia slurred, surprising me with her attention. ‘You told me he gave you two sixty-seven.’

‘Bingo,’ I said. ‘Michael took out some of the money before he gave it to Alan. The reason he did this?’ If I’m honest, I really had nothing to back this up except gut feel, but I was pretty confident. And I was on a roll, so wasn’t keen to slow down. ‘Lucy was having trouble with her business. She was losing money and she was stuck with a car she couldn’t afford under the brutal lease conditions. When she told you it was paid off over breakfast, Marcelo, most of us thought it was her usual indignant defensiveness. But it turns out she wasn’t lying. Michael used the money to pay off her debts, including her car, before he went to meet Alan. He probably did this to make sure she’d be okay if something went wrong.’ And because he needed a clean break to leave her for Erin. I was glad Lucy wasn’t there to hear that part. ‘But he didn’t realise the effect that skimming off the top would have. Alan’s not stupid – he counts the money, finds it under, so he pulls a gun. They fight over it . . . and you know the rest.’

‘This is all very entertaining.’ Andy couldn’t contain himself. ‘But what about the Black Tongue?’

‘I haven’t got through everyone else yet. Erin, Sofia, Marcelo, you don’t know that Rebecca McAuley’s parents are here – they’re staying in the resort over the ridge. Seeing as Michael’s now got the microdot and knows where the body is buried, he writes to the McAuleys from prison, asking for them to double the payment.’ Siobhan McAuley had revealed this to me at SuperShred when she’d said, ‘He wants more money again.’ Michael had told me in the Drying Room that what he had was ‘worth a whole lot more’ than the three hundred grand Alan had originally priced it at. ‘Michael was planning to meet the McAuleys over the ridge to sell them both the photos and their daughter’s body – that’s why he brought it up here. He told you this was his plan, didn’t he, Audrey?’

‘I warned him against it,’ Audrey confirmed. ‘And when he insisted, I went up there to warn them myself.’

‘I’m sorry’—it was Andy again, showing no respect for the building of suspense—‘but Ernest, all this gangland kidnapping stuff is from thirty-five years ago. What does this have to do with the damn ash?’

‘All right.’ I put up a hand. ‘I get the message. Let’s go back to Green Boots. Our unidentified victim, or at least unidentified to most of us. Lucy actually solved it first.’

‘If you’re suggesting she was killed because she figured it all out . . .’ Sofia used her palm to lift her head, gave a small shake. ‘We know she fell – there wasn’t any ash on her and she had several broken bones. There was no sign of a struggle.’

‘No. She did jump,’ I agreed, recalling Lucy’s finger gun when we were talking on the roof: I’d rather . . . ‘But she told me yesterday that she’d rather kill herself than choke to death under the Black Tongue’s torture. She threw herself off the roof, but only as an escape from what was about to happen. I think she went up to google something, to double-check her suspicions. Our killer got scared and confronted her up there, after we’d all left the bar. Remember the fear in her face when she looked at the photo of Green Boots? I thought she was just horrified at seeing what had really happened to Michael, especially since she thought it had been partly her fault. But I was wrong. She was scared because she recognised him.’

‘None of us have ever seen him before. How the hell does Lucy know the dead guy?’ That was Andy. He was still the most confused. Everyone else looked like they understood parts, but had brows furrowed, still working to understand the whole. Only one person had their jaw set, poker face on. With every statement, it was like I was cranking a winch, tightening the muscles in that person’s neck.

‘I didn’t say she knew him,’ I said. ‘I said she recognised him. She’d only met him once – he gave her a speeding ticket on the way up here.’

I let it sink in. People swivelled to look behind them, everyone’s gaze settling on someone standing at the back of the room.

‘Crawford, those stripes of blood on the inside of your uniform’s cuffs, they aren’t from carrying the body down the mountain. They’re on the inside of the wrists. Whoever made those stains got them from clutching at their own throat.’ I mimicked clawing at an imaginary zip-tie around my neck. ‘You’re wearing a dead man’s coat.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Crawford asked.

I gave Juliette a knowing smile ahead of what I was about to say, which I’m proud I haven’t embellished in the slightest here, before turning my attention back to Crawford. ‘I’m saying that even Arthur Conan Doyle believed in ghosts. Isn’t that right, Jeremy?’