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

Jess checks her watch again. Time is ticking on. ‘What am I going to do? Should I ring Vince? He’ll understand, won’t he? Billy will be on the back foot, though. Typical lawyer – he’ll baulk at any change in plans.’

Alex stops moving and stares at her as though she’s mad. ‘This fight means the world to you, Jess. You’ve been training that dude for months. Are you going to let O’Shea ruin this as well?’

He’s right. Not going tonight means that she is the one losing out. But how can she coach Billy like this? She’ll be a liability to him, unless she can get her shit together.

‘Will you come with me?’ she whispers, looking up at him beseechingly. ‘Please, Alex?’

‘Aw, babe, I just want to stay home and get pissed. It’s been a crap day. Last night too, getting grilled by the fuckin’ cops.’

Their eyes lock. He sighs and yields.

‘All right, all right, but we’re going out afterwards and getting drunk.’

He disappears to shower and get changed. Jess stays on the sofa, hands clasped tightly together. She admits it: she wanted to kill William Newson when he said all those derogatory things, when he obscured the truth with his lies and innuendo. She was furious, and she wanted to hurt him, really badly. But once the trial was over, those feelings didn’t linger beyond a couple of months. Who killed him? Why? Where is Dylan O’Shea?

Jess shakes her head violently. She can’t solve this now. Billy is her priority for the next few hours. He has worked hard for this fight; he deserves her best.

Alex reappears; it never takes him long to get ready. But seeing him in his fresh shirt and jeans sends her into another spin. The shirt is the same one he was wearing the night he picked her up from the train station, the night Thomas Malouf died. She noticed then because she’d never seen it before.

‘Is that a new shirt?’ she asks tremulously.

He glances down at it, as though he has only just noticed it himself. ‘Got it a few weeks ago.’

He lied about the puffer jacket. Is he lying about this, too? Where did it come from? Alex doesn’t shop for clothes very frequently.

It strikes Jess that her boyfriend could have known all along about her plans to meet Dylan, because he knows the passcode for her phone. His anger last night: was it because he was genuinely concerned about her meeting Dylan, or a front for something far more disturbing? He’d been out with Ramsey – supposedly – on the night William Newson was shot, that bloodstained jacket turning up soon afterwards. And why had he been wearing a brand-new shirt on the night Thomas Malouf died? Had he needed to change clothes urgently?

Fuck! Enough! She is not going there. This is Alex. He has her back. To the extent of going to Billy’s fight tonight after having the twenty-four hours from hell.

She stands up, and hugs him hard. He smells of shower gel and safety.

56

BRIDGET

The clock on the dash turns over to 5 p.m. just as Bridget cuts the engine on the car. It’s still bright: the days are starting to lengthen. Bridget and Sasha attract furtive glances from a dodgy-looking group gathered across the street. Bridget blanks out what they might be up to – drug taking or dealing, most likely – and the two women walk quickly towards the entrance of the Redfern high-rise where Hayley Webster lives.

‘What are the chances she’s home?’ Sasha asks, as the lift whizzes them upwards. Another resident – clearly not very security conscious – held the front door open on his way out. Hayley has no idea they’re on their way.

‘Who knows?’ Bridget shrugs. ‘We’ll wait, if need be.’

Bridget’s weariness is forgotten. She’s buzzing with adrenalin; this is the breakthrough she’s been waiting for. The question that niggled since day one: how Megan Lowe found herself at the deathbed of William Newson. Bridget never believed it to be coincidence, or fate.

Bridget thumps the door with the ball of her hand. ‘Hayley, are you in there? Open up, please. It’s Detective Sergeant Kennedy.’

Movement can be heard on the other side. A rustle of clothes. Light footsteps. A pause, perhaps to look through the peephole. Then the security chain being unhooked.

Hayley Webster is in uniform. Blue short-sleeved shirt with a crest on the arm: Ambulance NSW, Control Centre.

‘I’m on my way out to work,’ she says feebly, unable to meet their eyes. ‘My shift starts at five thirty.’

‘Well, you’d better call and let them know you’re running late,’ Bridget retorts and steps inside.

The flat is compact and feminine, as she remembers it. Hayley’s handbag is perched on the arm of one of the matching sofas. The young woman picks it up, extracts her phone, and makes a call.

‘Robert, it’s Hayley. I’m going to be late.’ Bridget detects a tremor in her hand as she holds the phone to her ear. ‘Hopefully no longer than an hour. Sorry … I’m helping police with an investigation … I’ll explain when I get in.’

They sit down in the same positions as before, Bridget and Sasha on one of the sofas and Hayley on the other. The young woman’s composure is rapidly deteriorating. The game is up and she knows it.

‘Here we are again.’ Bridget adopts her sternest tone; she can afford no more time wasting. ‘You left some things out the last time we spoke, Hayley. No more skirting around the facts or I’ll have you charged with aiding and abetting a crime, at the very least … Did you receive a triple-zero call on the night of August twentieth relating to the shooting of William Newson?’

Hayley shakes her head. ‘I’m in dispatch, I don’t receive the calls.’

‘Did you dispatch the ambulance to the scene, then?’

‘The system dispatches the ambulance … But I used the override function.’

Bridget takes a moment to acknowledge the admission. ‘Why did you use the override function, Hayley? Did Megan request