You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll (best fiction novels .TXT) 📕

of convictions for rape cases. ‘I want people to know my name,’ said Laura Dundas. ‘I want people to see my face and my body. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am telling the truth.’

The accompanying photograph shows a young woman standing outside the Downing Centre District Court, wearing a bikini. She’s holding a placard, I’M NOT A LIAR in red block capitals. Her gaze is unflinching, even though she must be shivering with the cold; it’s the middle of winter. Her bravery and vulnerability bring a hard lump to Megan’s throat. She feels her pain, the powerlessness that drove her to these lengths. William Newson up to his old tricks, calling girls liars. Roslyn would have gone ballistic on reading this.

Megan taps on the next page that’s been left open: a map, with a red location pin. Killara! She uses her fingers to widen the zoom. William Newson’s street address.

The kettle whistles as it comes to the boil.

Why has Roslyn been looking at this map? How does she know Newson’s exact address? She must have found it somewhere on the internet. But why? Some sort of macabre desire to see where it actually happened?

Then a nauseating, treacherous thought: what if this map, with its ominous red pin, has been open since before the shooting?

20

JESS

The youth class is winding up and the serious fighters are trickling in. Billy arrives in his suit, looking every inch the lawyer from the city. He disappears into the changing room and emerges a few minutes later in black shorts and grey T-shirt. He smiles at Jess while he wraps his hands with protective strapping. He has a nice smile and knows it. She bets he uses it a thousand times a day as he tells his clients things they don’t want to hear.

‘Hey, Jess.’

‘Hello, Billy.’ It’s a struggle to be friendly. She can’t get over the fact that he’s a lawyer, one of them. ‘How’s your day been?’

He pulls a face. ‘Pretty crap, actually.’

‘Well, you’re in the right place to release some frustration. Go extra hard on the bags.’

Vince runs the warm-up session – a twenty-minute routine of punching, skipping and squatting – while Jess catches up on admin at the desk. Music pumps through the sound system. Fists pummel the punching bags. Vince, hands stuffed in the pockets of his track-suit pants, yells out orders. He’s tough on this group. If they want to fight at an amateur or semi-professional level, they’ve got to put in the work.

The warm-up finishes. Jess is needed at the ring for the sparring. The first duo is Billy and Matt. Jess positions herself in Billy’s corner. He’s the first person she has coached to this level, from complete novice to the precipice of being an amateur fighter. Despite her personal misgivings, she’s proud of his progress and work ethic. She helps him on with his gloves.

Vince presses the buzzer and it starts the thirty-second countdown. Dua Lipa is playing on the sound system: ‘Don’t Start Now’. Billy and Matt are bouncing around, readying themselves. The buzzer sounds.

‘Find your range, Billy … Jab to the body, set it up …

‘Don’t put yourself on the ropes, get out of there … Good work.

‘Great defence, mate. Yep, that’s the way … Move to your right … Lean on the back foot.’

Billy’s posture looks good today; he seems to be making a concentrated effort to sit lower. His defence has been faultless so far.

‘Keep him away from you. Don’t let him dominate. This is bread and butter, mate. Get in there. Nice jab. One more. Go for it.’

The round finishes. Matt and Billy touch gloves before retreating to their respective corners.

‘You’re boxing really well, mate.’ Billy deserves the praise. She needs to treat him like any other member of the club.

‘Thanks, Jess.’

‘Vince has a fight lined up in a couple of weeks. He’ll talk to you about it later. We’ll need to get blood tests organised and stuff.’

Billy’s first official fight. He beams with pleasure.

Dylan O’Shea had a nice smile, too. It transformed his pale unhealthy face into something altogether more attractive. Jess remembers saying so to Megan at the party.

‘He’s much nicer when he smiles.’

‘Doesn’t make a difference,’ Megan said flatly. ‘I’m not into him.’

Jess’s attraction to Thomas Malouf had also waned. His arm felt heavy around her shoulders. She had noticed his eyes assessing other girls at the party, checking if there were any better options.

Dylan had got them drinks. Another big smile as he shoved glasses into their hands. ‘House s-s-s-special.’

The readiness of Dylan’s smile could have been an unconscious compensation for the fact that his words were so hesitant.

Now Dylan O’Shea has got hold of her phone number – probably from the gym’s website or Facebook page – and he wants to talk. Well, Jess wants to talk too. She wants to know if he remembers practically forcing those drinks into their hands. She wants to know if he remembers Megan pushing him away when he tried to kiss her. She wants to know if his guilty conscience has caught up with him, or if he is still pleading a terrible misunderstanding.

‘Lachlan and Jordy, you’re up next,’ she calls out, forcing her thoughts away from Dylan O’Shea and into the here and now.

The industrial park seems darker and more ominous tonight. Jess hurries, her breathing loud and sharp, her fists clenched in preparation. The night has echoes from two weeks ago, when she got that shocking text from Megan. Do the police have a suspect by now? What was the motivation? Some kind of moral issue? Money? Revenge? A family feud? There have been ongoing appeals for information, members of the public urged to come forward. Are the police floundering or hiding how much they really know? Jess hasn’t heard anything from the detective who went to see Megan. She didn’t really expect to. There must be plenty of other, more recent, lines of inquiry. Still, Jess wouldn’t have minded asking the detective