Pam Murphy was in Waterloo, the hospital carpark, waiting for Josh Brownlee. When he emerged she fell into step with him and said, ‘So, Josh, want to tell me about it?’
Josh blinked against the morning light. He was wearing jeans, T-shirt and sandals, clothing that Pam had bundled together from his motel room last night, after delivering him to the hospital. She’d searched the beach and foreshore but hadn’t found what he’d been wearing when he was ambushed.
And how had he been ambushed? ‘Josh!’ she snapped, to get his attention, ‘I saved your life last night. Now, tell me what happened.’
He’d showered but hadn’t shaved and the whiskers stood out like prickles. His eyes were red and his dazed air said that he still had drugs in his system. But what drugs, and had he taken them willingly? Last night she’d waited while the Casualty nurse took blood and urine samples and this morning she’d sent them to the lab for analysis. She suspected they’d find one of the date-rape drugs, like GHB, meaning he wouldn’t remember anything.
She’d also asked the lab to fast-track Brownlee’s DNA analysis. When the manager demurred, she lied and said it was related to the Lachlan Roe case, remembering that Inspector Challis had asked Ollie Hindmarsh to put pressure on the lab as a favour to him.
‘Mr Hindmarsh is keen for a result,’ she said.
‘That prick,’ said the lab guy.
‘You got it,’ said Pam.
She was hoping, betting, that Josh’s DNA would match the DNA found on the young woman who’d been sexually assaulted on Saturday night.
‘My car’s over here, Josh,’ she said now.
He followed her dumbly along the root-erupted bitumen paths. The air was heavily scented with eucalyptus from the young gum trees that surrounded the potholed carpark. ‘Hop in,’ she said, ‘and I’ll take you to your motel.’
Ensuring that he was strapped in, she started the car. ‘We haven’t been able to find the clothes you were wearing last night. Pity: they might have given us some evidence about what happened to you.’
His mouth hung open. That was pretty normal, Pam reflected. She’d been in close contact with eighteen-year-olds all week and they were all mouth-breathers. It made them look dumb. Many of them were dumb. She shook off this train of thought and said, ‘Who did you meet with last night, can you remember?’
His face twisted comically in concentration.
‘Friends?’ Pam prompted. ‘A girlfriend, maybe?’
‘I think so,’ he croaked.
‘Well, who? You said, when I found you, “The bitch poisoned me.” Who were you talking about, Josh?’
‘Don’t remember.’
‘Were you on anything, Josh? Ice? Ecstasy? It’s all right, I’m not from the Drug Squad.’
‘Nothing. Beer. Couple of vodkas.’
‘So it’s just a hangover you’re feeling?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Josh, someone took you to a lonely spot in the mangroves, stole your clothes and painted your balls with lipstick.’
He twisted in his seat, a twist that reached all the way through him. Not revealing her general glee, Pam said in a businesslike voice, ‘You don’t remember any of that?’
‘No.’
‘Sounds like revenge to me, Josh.’
‘No.’
‘Someone had it in for you.’
‘No.’
The voice and manner were sulky, Josh leaning against his door, wanting to get away from her.
‘Maybe-indulge me here, Josh-maybe you had an encounter with someone at Schoolies Week last year, or this year, and it got a bit out of hand, mistaken signals, she said no and you thought she was really saying yes.’
‘Didn’t happen.’
‘And she wanted to get back at you.’
‘No.’
‘Or it didn’t happen to her but to her friend.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Or maybe she was drugged unconscious, which makes it academic whether she said yes or no or gave mixed signals.’
‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’
Pam reached the roundabout by the post office and turned left, down to the bay and the holiday flats, motels and bed-and-breakfasts. ‘It would take a pretty special person to take that kind of revenge,’ she mused. ‘I can see her in my mind’s eye: clever, patient, determined, very, very brave.’ She turned her head. ‘How brave are you, Josh? Not very, I’d say.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘There’s nothing stopping you, Josh. And heaven knows, I wouldn’t want to hang around here much longer, not when there’s a vengeful female on the loose.’
‘Not,’ said Josh, not knowing what it was he wanted to say.
‘Someone like Caz Moon. You remember Caz, don’t you? Works in HangTen?’
Josh went rigid in the passenger seat, pointing agitatedly through the windscreen ahead. ‘That’s my motel.’
The Sea Breeze Holiday Apartments, dating from the 1960s, cheap, forlorn and barely viable at most times of the year. ‘I know Josh, I collected a change of clothes for you last night.’
He looked about in a hunted way that kept her smiling on the inside. ‘I found your stash, by the way. But like I said, I’m not Drug Squad.’
‘Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything.’
‘Why did you come here, Josh?’
‘Schoolies Week. I’m allowed.’
‘But you left school last year. Had such a good time you had to repeat it?’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Partying, drinking, drugs, sex, you had to come back for some of that good shit.’
There was a nasty flash in his eyes and his knuckles went white. Pam flinched: if he had an ice habit, he could be violent and unpredictable. ‘Steady, Josh.’
‘I’m reporting you.’
She decided to push a little more, tensing her body in case he struck out. ‘The sex, Josh. Cool dude like you, you always get lucky, right? You wouldn’t need to use a date-rape drug, would you?’
That nastiness came back, but then he piled out of the car and ran toward his room, a corner room on the ground floor. Pam watched him pat his pockets, saw him remember that his wallet and keys were missing, and change direction, scuffing slowly toward the manager’s office. He’d sort it out, Pam reflected. Mum and Dad would be there for him, just as they always were for kids like him. Her phone pinged. A text from Andy Cree.