“What?” I pressed my hand to my damp brow. I couldn’t process. I couldn’t remember.
“Put your damn life jacket on.” He reversed away from the dock, bubbles churning up from the propeller. “A bottle and a half? You’re going to feel it in the morning. And look at you covered with bites. Not even sober enough to put on the repellent I gave you.”
“But I . . . didn’t drink—”
He reached down, snagged the rosé bottle up from the deck, held it up for me to see, wiggled it at my face. “Empty to the last drop.”
My mouth indeed tasted sour with old wine. I felt drunk. He stuck the empty bottle and goblet into a compartment along the side of the boat, right next to an aggressive-looking fishing gaff that had the name Abracadabra down the side. He angled the bow back into the channel. Martin increased speed, the dark water swelling into a V behind us. Trees reached out to grab us. Bats swirled and filled the vermilion sky. Shrieks and screams tore through the air.
My gaze dropped to the signboards near my feet.
STOP MARINA DEVELOPER.
KILL MARTIN.
“Fucking protesters,” he mumbled. “They’ve been inside that old homestead. That’s private property—my property. If I get my hands on them, I . . . I’ll cut those fuckers to shreds, cut ’em with a knife. Stick my gaff in them. Make them bleed and feed ’em to the muddies.”
I cringed at the rawness of his anger, at his cursing. It was frightening because it seemed directed at me as much as the protesters.
“I didn’t drink all of that wine, Martin,” I said softly. I’d only had a few sips that I could recall. I had no memory of what had happened next. I’d just woken up at the bottom of the boat. He didn’t reply.
I tried to reconstruct the events of the day. But I could barely even remember starting to eat the chicken and salad.
The boat entered the basin. Martin swung it around sharply. I lost balance and fell against the side. Pain sparked through my knee.
I pulled myself back up and sat gingerly on the rear seat. “I know I didn’t drink all that wine, Martin.”
He said nothing, didn’t even look at me.
“I know I didn’t,” I said louder. But I wasn’t sure. A soft panic swelled inside me. This had happened before. A couple of times. In that dark space between Chloe’s drowning and my attacking Doug with a knife in the restaurant when I’d seen him through the window dining with his mistress, the woman with whom he’d been cheating on me. I’d tried to slice them both. It was the public breakdown that had precipitated my hospitalization. I suddenly lurched for the gunwale and threw up over the side.
“Fuck, Ellie!” He wiped something off his sleeve. “Downwind next time, please.”
THE MURDER TRIAL
Now, February. Supreme Court, New South Wales.
Barrister Peter Lorrington rises for cross-examination. Lozza’s stomach fists. She has described to the court how she and Gregg arrived to find Martin’s body. And while the prosecution is not permitted to ask leading questions at this stage, a defense barrister can—and will—in the cross. Lorrington will need to seed his defense strategy early, either directly or indirectly, and Lozza knows she’s vulnerable. She and Gregg are the weak links in the Crown’s case. Lorrington will grill her mercilessly right out of the gate in an effort to undercut the integrity of the entire homicide investigation and seed reasonable doubt. She can feel the gazes of her fellow officers in the packed gallery.
Lorrington consults his notes, then glances up. Lozza faces him squarely and swallows.
Silence in the courtroom grows heavy.
Lorrington’s words come suddenly, like machine-gun fire. “Senior Constable Bianchi, did you touch the body prior to the forensic unit and pathologist’s arrival—did you move it in any way?”
Lozza hesitates. “The body had already been moved—cut free by a teen diver.”
“But did you touch it?”
“Constable Abbott slipped into the water,” she says carefully, unwilling to throw her partner under the bus. “He accidentally bumped the body, and the decedent rolled onto his back.”
Lorrington rubs his chin pensively. “So this is how you determined it was a homicide?”
Irritation sparks through Lozza. She calms herself. The barrister is stirring, winding her up, trying to make law enforcement look guilty of something.
“This is how I came to see the gaff stuck into the chest, and the other puncture wounds, ligature marks, plus the rope tied around the decedent’s ankles.”
Konikova rises. “Your Honor, I fail to see the relevance—”
“I’ll come straight to the point, Your Honor,” Lorrington barks. “Detective Bianchi, you and Constable Abbott were the first officers on the scene, is that correct? The first officers to lay eyes on the body of Martin Cresswell-Smith?”
“Me, Constable Abbott, and Constable Mac McGonigle, who skippered the launch to the site, yes, sir,” Lozza says.
“So just to be clear, the body was moved by an ordinary duty officer before a properly designated detective and a qualified forensics team from State Crime Command could arrive, is that correct?”
Lozza clears her throat. “As I stated, Constable Abbott slipped and bumped the body.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “But I am a trained detective, sir. I served on the State Crime Command homicide squad for five years.” As Lozza spoke, she saw the trap. She’d walked right into it. Lorrington would circle back to her legacy on the murder squad later in the trial. He was going to drag her personally through the muck to save his client from a guilty verdict. Her chest cramps. She forces herself to keep her gaze locked on Lorrington’s.
“And how long was the wait before Detective Sergeant Corneil Tremayne and the rest of the forensic team from State Crime Command did arrive?”
“Two hours and twenty-three minutes,” says Lozza. “They deployed from the Sydney area, flew into Agnes Basin
