“Had you ever received packages from this man before?”
“I told you, I don’t know who he is! Maybe Martin does.”
“Martin is missing, Ellie,” Lozza said.
Ellie raised a hand to wipe her mouth. She was shaking. She looked even more pale. Lozza felt the clock ticking. Any minute a doc or nurse was going to barge in and shut this questioning down.
“How do you think you got back from the boat, Ellie?” Gregg pressed again.
“I don’t know!” She glowered at Gregg. “I told you. Do you have any idea how this feels—to have you guys telling me all this, to think I might have been raped or something, and have absolutely no recall? Do you know how vulnerable this makes me feel?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cresswell-Smith,” Lozza said firmly. “But your husband is missing and you’ve been in a coma. We need to ask you these things now. If Martin is still alive somewhere, his life could be in grave danger. Time is critical.”
Ellie’s gaze locked on Lozza’s. Her jaw tightened and her eyes turned feverish beneath the bandage on her brow. “I hope you don’t find him. And if you do, I hope he’s dead and that he suffered.”
Silence slammed into the room.
Lozza took in a deep, slow breath. She heard Gregg making notes in his notepad.
“Why do you say this, Ellie?”
“Because . . . I hate him.”
She waited. Ellie offered nothing more.
“Do you hate him because you found out that he was having an affair? Or because you felt he married you for your money?”
Something in Ellie’s eyes shuttered. Her hands fisted the sheets. “I need you to leave. Now,” she said through clenched teeth. “I . . . I’m tired. I’m going to be sick. I—”
Quickly, before Ellie could reach for her buzzer and summon medical personnel, Lozza said, “Can we at least try and go back to the last point you do remember, Ellie? Do you recall meeting me on the beach? We swam together with my daughter.”
“Yes,” Ellie whispered. “I remember.”
Lozza cleared her throat. “And then while we were in the water, you saw Martin up on the beach.”
She nodded.
“You looked terrified.”
“I . . . He wasn’t supposed to be home. He’d been on a business trip to Sydney. I wasn’t expecting him home for several days.”
“And this frightened you?”
She looked puzzled, as if she really was trying to remember something.
“What happened after Maya and I left you and Martin in the dunes?”
“I . . . We . . .” She appeared confused again and trailed off.
“Take your time,” Lozza said softly.
“I was afraid, but I don’t remember why.”
“Martin had brought an esky and wineglasses to the beach. You had a sundowner after I left, maybe?” Lozza said.
“Maybe.”
“What did Martin bring to drink for this sundowner?” Gregg asked.
“White wine, I think.”
Gregg made more notes. “How did you feel after the wine?” he asked.
“Um . . . buzzy, I suppose. I . . . I was very stressed. Perhaps . . . I had a bit more than I should have. To . . . to take the edge off.”
“Why did you need to take the edge off?” Lozza asked. “Why did you feel so stressed that day?”
Ellie moistened her lips again and closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under her lashes. Very quietly, her jaw tight, she said, “I. Can’t. Recall. Things.”
“Can you recall packing your suitcases?”
“Nothing. I can’t remember . . . what happened before.” Ellie suddenly lunged for the call button and pressed it to summon a nurse.
“Ellie, please, quickly, think, just one more time—do you have any idea where Martin might have gone?”
“No,” she said, eyes still closed.
A nurse entered the room. She took one look at Ellie and said, “Okay, you guys need to leave. Now.”
THEN
LOZZA
“She’s lying,” Gregg said to Lozza as she drove them to the Puggo to interview Rabz. “That retrograde-amnesia thing is suspiciously convenient.”
“I agree—she’s holding something back,” Lozza said, turning into the street that led to the pub. She pulled into a parking space right outside the Puggo and switched off the engine. Gregg unbuckled his seat belt.
“Even if some of her memory does return,” he said, “how do we know if she’s going to share anything she’s recalled? And we have no way of knowing for certain just how far back—or how selective—this ‘retrograde’ thing is, either.” He got out of the vehicle. Lozza followed suit and slammed her door shut.
“Plus, there’s the weird shit with the Corolla you said you heard bolting from their house.”
“Yeah.” Lozza glanced up at the CCTV camera as they passed under it.
And the bikie with the drug package, and the Queensland plates.
Rabz sat behind her desk in her office and twisted the strings of her apron. Her complexion was bloodless, her eyes puffy. Lozza and Gregg sat facing her on the other side of her desk.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve been seeing Martin.”
“How long?” Lozza asked.
“Is this relevant? I understand you need whatever help you can get to find him, but—”
Lozz leaned forward. “The more comprehensive a profile of a missing person is, the more we can know about his or her state of mind, motivation, recent movements—it gives us more tools with which to find the person.”
“Lozz is right,” Gregg said. “If Martin has had an accident out at sea, or if he washed up somewhere, a good profile—knowing his state of mind—will give us ideas of how he might react, where he might go, what he might do.”
Rabz looked down at her hands. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?” asked Lozza, watching Rabz’s eyes carefully.
The woman’s face reddened. “Before his wife arrived here.”
Lozza said, “His wife’s name is Ellie.”
Rabz swallowed, nodded. “Before Ellie arrived in Jarrawarra.”
“How long before Ellie moved to Jarra?” Gregg asked.
Silence.
“Rabz?”
A tear slid down the side of her face. She quickly swiped it away. “Since October last year. We met when Martin first came to look for land up at Agnes.”
Lozza frowned, recalling Willow’s words about the Vegas wedding. “I thought the Cresswell-Smiths were more recently married? Like in May
