“What about Ellie Hartley?”
“Her intent was still to dispose of Ellie in the channel—both bodies in the channel at that point, once she’d gotten the account information out of Martin.”
“Was it Mrs. Cresswell-Smith who tortured Martin?”
He swallows. I feel sick. I know this is the end. Lorrington looks at me. I can see it dawning on him. I feel Ellie in the gallery looking at me. I feel all the cops staring at me. And the reporters and jurors. I sense the cameras outside, hovering.
“Mr. Barker,” says the judge again.
“Yes. She cut off his fingers while I went to get Ellie.”
“And did you ‘get Ellie’—Mr. Barker?”
“The cop—Constable Bianchi—arrived and surprised me. I was inside the house. I managed to flee out the glass sliding door with the clock cameras and the framed photo from the studio that Sabrina ordered me to get as well, but I didn’t have time to get Ellie.”
“What did you find when you arrived back at the abandoned house empty-handed?”
“She’d killed him.”
Gasps come from the gallery. Lorrington fires a look at me. I meet his gaze and do not blink. He’s vibrating.
“And did Mrs. Cresswell-Smith get the account information out of her husband?”
“He told her Ellie had taken the money.”
“Had she?”
“I don’t know. Sabrina killed him in a blind rage.”
“Is that why Sabrina went back to abduct Ellie?”
“Yes, and also because Ellie had phoned her friend and was acquiring a copy of the photograph. That photo was proof Sabrina had been in on the con from the day Ellie met Martin at the Hartley Plaza Hotel. She still had the mirroring app on Ellie’s phone. She could see and hear everything Ellie did with that phone. She’d heard Ellie tell Dana she was going to tell the cops right away. She was afraid she’d be exposed, and now for murder.”
“What happened after you saw that Mrs. Cresswell-Smith—Sabrina—had killed her husband, Mr. Barker?”
“I helped her put his body in the channel. She went back to Jarrawarra. I took the boat on the trailer north to Queensland and laid low.”
“One more question, Mr. Barker—you seem to be familiar with boats, in that you were able to take the helm of the Abracadabra and navigate her up the coast and into the inlet?”
He leans toward the mike. “I mentioned already that I was in the navy. I know boats. And the sea.”
Silence swells loud into the room. It shimmers and crackles at the edges like a dry forest waiting for a spark.
“Mr. Barker,” says Konikova slowly, quietly, “why are you telling all this to the court?”
“Because I didn’t kill Martin Cresswell-Smith. Sabrina Cresswell-Smith claimed to her lawyer that I had. And now I’ve been caught, I don’t want to take her rap.” He flicks a glance at me. “A friend doesn’t ask another to serve life for something he didn’t do.”
Lorrington glowers at me. His face is bloodless. His eyes are hot. He knows me for what I am now. A liar. A con.
You, too, should have watched those shells more closely, Mr. Lorrington, I say in my head, channeling my father’s voice. Life is a shell game, and in a shell game only the tosser wins. You’re either the tosser or the loser.
NOW
ELLIE
February. The Bigwig Pub, New South Wales.
Dana and Gregg are with me. We’re gathered in the dark, cool, intimate pub across from the courthouse with some of Gregg’s fellow police officers, some reporters, friends.
Jugs of beer and sparkling water and bottles of wine are brought to the table along with plates of food. The big television screen behind the bar has the volume turned up so we can all hear. On the screen we can see Melody Watts in the newsroom at a table with one of the SBC-9 News anchors, and he’s quizzing her on the “stunning” turnabout in the Martin Cresswell-Smith murder trial and the record-quick and unanimous verdict from the jury that found Mrs. Sabrina Cresswell-Smith, a.k.a. Willow Larsen, guilty on all counts.
“The matter has now been stood over for sentencing at a date to be fixed,” Melody Watts tells the anchor. “Negotiations around extradition proceedings will also likely begin because Mrs. Cresswell-Smith faces additional fraud charges in the EU, the UK, the States, and in Canada.”
The anchor turns to the camera. “And this brings to a close our coverage of a murder trial that has mesmerized television audiences not only here in Australia, but also in Canada and the US, where the Cresswell-Smiths had strong ties and left a legacy of victims in their wakes. The battle between Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell-Smith ended ignominiously in a house of horrors in the dark mangrove swamps of the Agnes Basin estuary. The proposed marina development is now dead, and the land has been ceded to the state for a nature reserve on behalf of the Chloe Foundation created by Ellie Hartley in honor of her daughter, who drowned in an accident at age three in Hawaii.”
Everyone looks at me suddenly. I feel my cheeks heat. Gregg’s eyes are alive with emotion, hot with it. I give an embarrassed shrug. “Something good has to come of it all.”
Gregg kisses me fiercely on the cheek. He whispers in my ear, “You rock, you know that, Ellie Hartley?”
“This is Melody Watts signing off for SBC-9 News. Thank you for listening.”
And with that, it’s over. A whole violent and terrifying chapter of my life as a victim. But I fought back. I dug deeper than I could possibly have imagined, and here I am. My injuries from the car accident during my abduction
