Apples Never Fall

He saw her catch her breath.

Chapter 60

“Does this change anything?” Ethan frowned. “That Joy talked to Savannah on the day she disappeared? And that was also the last day Dr. Edgeworth had contact with Savannah?”

They’d stopped at an intersection, and he looked over at Christina, his hands on the wheel, trust and respect in his eyes, as if this was a question with a right or wrong answer, and that Christina, with her years of experience, would know the answer, and all he had to do was ask for it. He thought she had some special knowledge and that one day he would attain that knowledge, and for a vertiginous moment she felt like a kid, pretending she was an experienced detective. I’m just little Chrissie Khoury, Ethan, what the hell would I know?

“What do you think?” she said. Good mentoring.

“Well,” said Ethan. “Is it possible that Joy and Savannah are somewhere together?”

“It’s possible,” said Christina. “Anything is possible without a body.”

“Call us when you’ve got a body,” the guys in Homicide said.

Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything. Should they turn around?

“It doesn’t change the evidence,” she said. “The scratch marks, the bloodied T-shirt, the CCTV footage, the motive. We’ve got plenty.”

Their interview with Savannah’s famous brother had told them exactly nothing. Harry Haddad spoke with fond respect of his former coaches, Joy and Stan Delaney, but said he hadn’t spoken to his sister in many years. He thought his father might have once had an email address for her, but he wasn’t sure. Harry was estranged from his mother, and had no contact details for her either. “My mother remarried multiple times,” he said. “I’m not even sure what surname she’s decided to use these days.” His tone, initially warm and helpful, had begun to fray as he discussed his complicated family history.

Savannah was an optical illusion. A distraction. Her only relevance was that she’d given Stan a motive to murder his wife.

“So we’re still going to arrest him,” said Ethan.

“We’re still going to arrest him,” said Christina. “And then we’re going to track down this Savannah, whoever the fuck she is, and arrest her too.”

“For what?”

“For pissing me off,” said Christina.

Ethan grinned. “Fair enough.”

Chapter 61

Caro Azinovic sat in the front room of her house, drinking a cup of tea while she enjoyed an overdue telephone call with her daughter in Denmark.

She watched a white car pull up outside the Delaneys’ house and a man and a woman emerge. They both wore suits. There was something purposeful and foreboding about the way they walked toward the front door.

She thought of the security camera footage she and her son had given to the police.

“Oh dear God,” her son had said as they watched it together.

“You can’t actually see what he’s carrying,” Caro had said.

“At that time of night?” said Jacob. “It doesn’t look good, Mum.”

Caro and her daughter had only exchanged a few brief emails since she’d been in Sydney last month and they were overdue for a catch-up. Petra was up very late on the other side of the world because she was upset about a complicated issue regarding her son’s school, and Caro listened sympathetically. She’d thought the Danish were so socially advanced that there wouldn’t be such a thing as schoolyard politics over there, but apparently it was universal.

“I think the police might be at Joy’s house right now,” she told Petra when she finally finished her story.

“Why would the police be there?”

Caro filled her in on the dreadful details.

Her daughter sounded panicked. “But, Mum, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“Well, this is the first time we’ve properly talked since you went back, so it didn’t even occur to me. To be honest I’ve been so het up about it all I—”