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

a guilty verdict. Laura protested outside the courthouse for a few days. You might remember it on the news. She was in a bikini, holding a placard saying, “I’m not a liar”. Early one morning, she managed to gain entry to Newson’s office and spray-painted the reception wall. She was charged with damaging property and trespassing.’

‘Did she ever directly threaten him?’

‘Several witnesses heard her screaming all sorts of threats. The court imposed a community service order and there was another AVO.’

Katrina looks appalled. ‘Good God! You’ve got to ask, why did he keep taking those cases? How could it be worth it?’

Bridget shudders. It wasn’t worth it. Very possibly cost him his life.

‘Then there’s his executive assistant, Emily Wickham. Away on honeymoon when the shooting happened. Something about her is not sitting right. Preliminary investigations about her salary and career trajectory set off alarm bells. She’s paid thirty per cent more than the going rate for someone of her experience. She’s half Newson’s age, very beautiful and newly married. I don’t think they were having an affair but something was going on.’

Katrina adds Emily’s name to the second half of the board.

Bridget exhales loudly. ‘Not forgetting the bizarre coincidence of Megan Lowe being the first responder, which I can’t get my head around.’

Katrina is across the Malouf–O’Shea case. Bridget discussed it with her boss early on, when prioritising resources. She hasn’t pursued this line of inquiry beyond some cursory checks. Megan – obviously – was at work at the time of the shooting and so was Jessica Foster. Besides, what are the chances of a twelve-year-old case still being relevant? Nevertheless, the two women – Girls A and B – still hover on the periphery of Bridget’s thoughts.

Katrina adds Megan Lowe and Jessica Foster to the list, leaving a gap before their names.

The detective inspector flops down on her seat. Both women stare at the whiteboard. William Newson was a wealthy man. A multi-million-dollar house, hefty super-annuation balance, high-performing share portfolio, and various investment properties dotted strategically around the city. Wealth complicates things. There’s more to gain, especially for family members. Contract killing becomes an option, and with that alibis become decidedly less relevant.

‘Are we sure it’s not a case of mistaken identity?’ Katrina murmurs.

It’s a fair question. The wrong house was targeted in a drive-by shooting in the western suburbs last month. Bullets peppered the lounge window of a terrified single mother, who, quite miraculously, wasn’t hurt even though the sofa she was sitting on absorbed six of the bullets. Her children’s bedrooms were at the back of the house, thank God, all four kids sound asleep. Extensive investigation found no links between the woman and organised crime. Her ex-partner was quickly cleared of suspicion. Everyone was bewildered until a note was left in the mailbox the following week.

Sorry. Wrong house. Hope your kids are okay.

This doesn’t feel remotely the same. Bridget isn’t bewildered with nowhere left to turn. Suzanne Newson, Joshua Newson, Fergus Herrmann, Laura Dundas, Emily Wickham: these names are legitimately on the board. Megan Lowe and Jessica Foster might look like an afterthought, with that gap before their names, but they have motive, too: it could even be argued that the passing of time has intensified their sense of injustice.

The problem is Bridget has too many directions to turn in.

She looks her boss straight in the eye. ‘I’m one hundred per cent sure that the person who shot William Newson didn’t make a mistake.’

‘What are we searching for, exactly?’ Dave enquires when he meets her outside William Newson’s house in Killara.

‘Inspiration,’ Bridget replies sarcastically.

She’s holding the crime-scene photographs. She studies them before positioning herself on the driveway, on the spot where Newson fell. Her eyes scan from left to right. Front lawn on the left, driveway straight ahead, wooden fence on the right, garage directly behind.

‘So, he hid over there?’

She is using ‘he’ for convenience; a female is very possible. Tyre marks on the night suggested that the killer (and motorbike) were hidden behind the large gum tree. Wouldn’t have worked in the daylight, but more than ample screening for a dark night. According to the timeline, and allowing for travel time from the 7-Eleven at Lindfield – where the suspected vehicle was captured on CCTV – the killer waited for up to fifteen minutes.

What did William Newson notice when he walked down the driveway, the wheelie bin rumbling behind him?

Did he see a silhouette emerging from the shadows?

Did the killer say something before pulling the trigger?

Afterwards, he, or she, mounted the bike and drove it over the lawn, down the driveway and along the street at high speed. No CCTV images for afterwards, implying that the driver didn’t go very far, or managed to replace the registration plates somewhere close by. No trace of the weapon or clothing being discarded anywhere in the local area.

Bridget strides across the lawn, towards the gum tree. The grass is dry, the ground unyielding. The tree is enormous, with the potential to wreak untold damage if it were to come down in a storm. A slight movement catches the corner of her eye. She stops in her tracks, looking up, her eyes training on one of the upstairs windows of the house next door. There’s someone there, watching. A partially obscured face. Blonde hair. Bridget catches the woman’s eye and she moves out of sight.

‘What did you say the neighbour’s name was again?’

‘Diana Simon. Why?’

‘She’s having a stickybeak at us.’

Bridget recalls the very specific information Mrs Simon supplied about Joshua, who conversed with her on the Sunday before his father’s murder; when he was apparently distracted and looked over his shoulder several times. Cold hard fact: being specific doesn’t mean one is telling the truth. Is there an ulterior motive lurking behind those twitching curtains?

Bridget takes hold of herself. Mrs Simon was not home on the night of the shooting and her daughter has corroborated this fact. The woman is being nosy, and that – unfortunately – is not