Bright Air - Barry Maitland [108]
It was late when Maddox released us, his final words being a rather Old Testament admonition to reflect before we met again. He clearly wasn’t convinced by what we’d told him.
25
We were both exhausted the next morning when we got up after a brief sleep. There was nothing in the papers. We had a quick breakfast and Anna said she had to get home to go to work. I told her she should call in sick for the day, but she said she couldn’t and I drove her out to Blacktown. There was a very brief news item on the radio, police refusing to release the name of a man found dead in a Castlecrag home the previous night. Foul play was not being ruled out.
‘They’re waiting for the pathology results,’ I said, still not quite free of my TV character.
Anna said, ‘I wonder how Damien is?’ She looked very tired and drawn.
‘I’ll find out when I get back, and ring you.’
‘Thanks.’ When we reached her flat, she got out of the car and walked to the front door with all the animation of a zombie.
I phoned the Chatswood police station when I returned, and they told me which hospital Damien had been taken to. The hospital would only say that he was in intensive care, so presumably he was still alive. Then, mid-morning, the front doorbell of the hotel tinkled and Lauren walked in. There were dark rings under her eyes, her hair looked lank and she had on the party frock she’d been wearing the previous evening.
I took her into Mary’s sitting room and we sat down. I told her I’d tried to call the hospital to ask how he was.
‘He’s in a coma, Josh. His heart stopped twice before they got him to the hospital. They’re not sure at the moment whether he’ll live.’
She was obviously desperately tired, but her voice was calm and level and she seemed very focused.
‘I’m sorry. We called for help as soon as we could. I had no idea that was going to happen.’ I also had no idea what she had been told of the situation.
‘The reason I’ve come is because I want to know exactly what happened. I want you to tell me everything.’
The way she said this gave me pause. The young woman gushing over the news of her baby had gone. This was the lawyer, determined to get what she wanted from a potentially hostile witness. I remembered Damien saying that she was brighter than he was. I had the feeling she was considerably brighter than both Maddox and me, too.
‘Of course. I don’t know how much Damien has told you about the death of Luce, and then Curtis and Owen, but when I came back from London, I met Anna, who told me a disturbing thing that Owen had told her the night he died.’ I went on to give her the sanitised version that Anna and I had told Maddox the previous night.
She listened in silence, concentrating on every word, her eyes following each gesture and shift of expression I made, and when I finished she sat back, still watching me, and said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘What?’
‘You’re saying that Damien attacked Anna, then barricaded himself in the house and tried to take his own life, because a hysterical Marcus had taken the blame for Luce’s death?’
I felt my eyes blinking too rapidly, some TV director in my head warning me that I was looking shifty. ‘I believe he had just discovered Marcus, dead, and reacted with shock.’
‘No one commits suicide out of shock, Josh, Damien least of all.’ She leaned forward again, drilling me with those deadly dark eyes. ‘I want to know why my husband felt compelled to try to kill himself last night. You know, don’t you?’
She was amazing. She’d be fantastic in the courtroom, or on TV. The eyes, the voice. I had no choice, really. She held me with those eyes, and I whispered, ‘Yes, Lauren. I believe I do.’
‘Then tell me.’
So I did. I told her everything.
When I got to the end I said,