Darkening Skies Read Online Free PDF Page B

into Birraga with them on the night of the accident?’
    ‘No, I didn’t.’ Clear and truthful, and she could give him a legitimate reason why, even if she kept the real reason to herself. ‘A friend of Paula’s was playing in a band at the Royal Hotel and she wanted to see him. I wasn’t eighteen, and anyway, I had other things to do.’
    ‘Did you see them before they left?’
    She recognised the real question: Did she know if Mark had been drinking? ‘No.’ Another truthful answer. ‘I saw him about five o’clock that afternoon. But I was out when he came to pick up Paula around eight o’clock.’ Out on purpose. Sitting by her mother’s grave in the Dungirri cemetery, walking home afterwards in the last light of the long summer day.
    ‘You lived with Mick andhis wife?’
    ‘Yes. They were my guardians after my parents died.’
    Fraser grimaced in a show of silent sympathy. Clearly he knew Mick. ‘Why Mick and not Jim?’
    The explanation she’d been given, time and again, remained carved in her memory. ‘A single father with two teenage sons was not considered a suitable placement for a twelve-year-old girl.’
    ‘Was Mick as wrecked then as he is now?’
    More sympathy, or a leading question to assess her and establish her history in the district? ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to him since I left Dungirri after Paula’s funeral. I’d have described him then as a bitter non-achiever who blamed his lack of success on everyone and everything but his own weaknesses.’
    Damn it, a little more emotion there than she’d intended to reveal. Yes, she was bitter, too. But she’d left it mostly behind her, hadn’t let it hold her back from achieving her goals.
    Fraser had to have noticed, but kept his expression bland. ‘What about Mick’s wife? I’ve not heard much about her.’
    ‘Shotgun wedding, hopeless marriage,’ Jenn answered without emotion. ‘Doctor Russell had half the women in Dungirri doped to oblivion on anti-depressants, and Freda was one of them. Paula remembered her when she was younger, more together, but I only knew her as a vague, absent woman. She died some years ago.’ Unmourned, as far as Jenn was concerned. She’d sent flowers to the funeral out of respect for Paula’s memory. That was it. She shoved away the unexpected spike of old anger and pinned the detective with a firm gaze. ‘I don’t see how these questions are relevant to your current investigation, Detective.’
    He shrugged off therebuff. ‘As a result of the new information Mark provided to the Police Commissioner yesterday, the investigation into your cousin’s death has been reopened and I’m preparing a brief for the Assistant Commissioner. Given Mark’s public announcement this morning, I have to consider that the fire may be connected. So, everything is relevant.’
    Especially the presence of two of Paula’s relatives at the scene before witnesses arrived. Oh, yes, she could read him. The sympathy, the soft approach. He wanted her to slip up, to incriminate herself or Jim.
    ‘My uncle has suffered a head injury, presumably inflicted by the man I saw. Jim’s worked for the Strelitz family for many years. There is no way he would have lit that fire.’
    Fraser lounged against the back of the bench. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t tell you how often I hear friends and family protest that so-and-so
couldn’t
have committed a crime. Jim was there, he has motive, and he also has a history – he and his boys laid into Gil Gillespie when he first came back to town a few months ago.’
    Oh, that very deliberate
sweetheart
annoyed her. Exactly as he intended. She unclenched her teeth and aimed to correct the record.
    ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Detective. It was Sean and his mafia mates who assaulted Gillespie. Not Jim and Paul.’
    He dismissed her objection with a shake of his head. ‘You obviously aren’t up to date with all the family news. Days before Sean’s “mafia mates” got hold