So at least these two members of the home invasion gang went back a long way. The thought gave Jill an idea. She pushed her already cooling coffee aside and bent back over the computer.
Cutter tucked his lucky socks into a drawer inside his wardrobe. Head on an angle, he peered into his black eyes in the mirror stuck inside the wardrobe door. He closed it and lowered himself onto his carefully made single bed. It and the wardrobe were the only furniture he'd moved over from Cabramatta. Same bed he'd had since he was a boy. In fact, his grandfather used to sit just about there, as he taught him the needle lessons. Cutter's orange towelling bedspread was so worn it was transparent in patches. So soft. He smoothed it over and over under his palm.
He felt very pleased with this basement room. The door was heavy, made of metal for some reason, and when he closed it, the small window, and the curtain covering it, he could hear nothing at all from outside. He felt certain that no one outside could hear him in here, either. The walls were double brick, coated in thick white paint, and he sniffed in the dirt-tang of mildew that bubbled underneath. He loved that smell. His grandmother had not. No, she had told him, you cannot live here! The water is stagnant. Your luck cannot flow. Your cold will be worse! Come home with us where you belong, she'd entreated in Vietnamese as he signed the simple, single-page contract that his new landlord, Mrs Miceh, had produced.
Karen Miceh. So sweet. He'd had to almost pull the piece of paper from her grip, as though she'd changed her mind at the last minute. Face to face when he'd handed it back again, he'd quickened his breathing to match her own, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with hers, listening for the sound of her pulse, hypnotised.
The sound of a dog barking blew in with the breeze from his open window. He frowned, rose from the bed and stepped into some slippers. He walked around the clothesline and the wading pool, passing the squat lemon tree, thick with bees sipping at its blossoms.
Just past three p.m. in Baulkham Hills. He loved this hour. On weekdays at this time, mums, dads and nanas would wait at bus stops and pedestrian crossings outside the schools, lined up in Taragos and four-wheel drives. When the weather warmed up, it would be straight to the local pool and then to pick up a barbecued chook on the way home. Today, it would be softball tryouts and piano lessons, maths tutoring or karate class. When living here as a child, he'd seen these routines as a pantomime just for him – a whole cast of humans playing sugar and spice, frantically ignoring the rot and disease that was born within all of them, that was feasting away as they grew older.
He had reached the back of the large suburban garden. Behind the huge, netted fig tree, a low wire fence hid behind feral camellia bushes, marking the boundary between Karen Miceh's home and her neighbour's. The barking stopped with Cutter's last footstep and was replaced by a pleading whine, a snuffling whimper. The dog wanted a pat. Cutter manoeuvred through the scented bushes and a wet, yellow nose pushed through the mesh of the wire barrier.
'Good doggie,' Cutter crooned, hand outstretched. The golden Labrador thumped the lawn behind the fence in delight, strained to get closer for a good scratch.
'That's a good boy,' said Cutter softly, reaching over the fence.
Jill absently wiped the back of her hand across her nose. Ugh. She reached for a tissue, and then picked up the phone on the desk.
'Gabe, where are you?' she said into the handset.
'At the hospital,' he said.
'Have you interviewed her yet?'
'Nope. Three o'clock.'
'I'll meet you out there.'
She printed out a single page and shut down the computer. She'd finished earlier than she'd thought, and was glad to have the opportunity to watch Gabriel interviewing another victim. She gathered up her bag and the case-file, and stood to leave the squadroom. At the last moment, she grabbed the phone again and left a message for Lawrence Last to let him know her movements.
She jogged down four flights of stairs to the basement carpark and threw her bag in the backseat of her issued Commodore. It wasn't until the M5 on-ramp that she pushed the dashboard vents away from her face and turned the heater down, realising she was now stifling hot. Nudging the bumper of her vehicle into the near-stationary traffic, she waved to pretend that she was grateful to the driver behind for letting her in. She knew she'd be still sitting waiting to merge if that motorist had had anything to do with it. It was dog-eat-dog on this motorway.
Too late, she realised that it would've been far quicker to take the Hume Highway to Burwood. She thumped the steering wheel with the heel of her hand and settled in to wait in the traffic.
Her hot nose throbbed.
'So, guess who used to hang with Henry Nguyen back in the day?' she said to Gabriel in greeting when they met in the foyer of the hospital. There were still twenty minutes before they were due to meet with Donna Moser.
'Joss Preston-Jones,' he said.
'Well, yeah,' she said. 'Good guess. Also, Mr Chew and Spew – Dang Huynh.'
'Hmm.'
Gabriel led her to a tiny cafeteria just off the entrance. 'You want something to drink?' he asked her, gesturing to a half-finished milkshake and hamburger at a table. He'd obviously started before she got there.
She walked to a fridge at the back of the cafe, selected a glass bottle of orange juice and pressed it, cold, against her cheeks. At the counter, she paid for it and a six-capsule box of Panadol, and walked back to join Gabriel, popping two of the tablets and draining half the juice before she reached the table.
He watched her, eyebrows lifted, as he ate his hamburger. It smelled pretty good.
'Joss was arrested, age twelve, in company with Nguyen, a couple of other juveniles and a nineteen-year-old,' she told him. 'The North Sydney cops caught them stealing petrol from a caryard. The yard had a single fuel pump for its own use and the kids decided to stock up. They filled their car and a couple of containers in the boot. The North Sydney boys released Joss and Henry and the other kids, but the adult copped a charge.'
Gabriel slurped his shake.
'So all these years later, Henry and Joss meet again,' she said. 'Or had they been hanging out all along? Joss has no adult sheet, but maybe he's been in touch with this gang since he was a kid. What if he knew all about the thing at Andy Wu's? What if that's what he and his wife are hiding?'
Gabriel raised one dark eyebrow.
'I know,' she said. 'Just brainstorming. They're not the type. And if it was the case that Nguyen and Joss are still mates, why would Joss and Isobel tip us off about Nguyen?'
He nodded.
'So, what: they're just at this dinner party and it all goes down just as they said? But then somehow Joss recognises Cutter and tells his wife, and she tells us?'
Gabriel shrugged.
'What, are we playing charades here or something?' Jill rubbed at her eyes in irritation. They felt hot and itchy. She took another sip of juice. She thought she didn't have a lot of words to say to others. Gabriel was so odd sometimes. She sighed and continued. 'Why didn't they just tell all this to Tran and Reid when they interviewed them the first time? Why did they keep Nguyen's name from us when we interviewed them?'
'Scared.'
'Yeah, I get that. But they're gonna be better off with him locked up, aren't they? Wouldn't it be better for them to help us catch him?'
Gabriel shrugged again. Jill finished her juice.
'Are you ready?' She looked down at her watch. Already three p.m., and they hadn't even begun the interview with Donna Moser. She wanted to be at home in a bath.