Web of Deceit by Katherine Howell Read Free Book Online Page A

racing of their hearts and the sweat on their skin proved something that couldn’t be proved any other way.
    *
    Ella squatted on the track in front of the stationary train and studied the mangledbody of Marko Meixner underneath, a warm wind pushing at her back as a train approached on the other platform. Murray stood beside her with one shiny shoe on the rail. A crime scene officer lay on the black rocks and took photos, and a fire rescue team waited in silence on the platform for the go-ahead to begin extrication.
    The scene officer got up. ‘I’m all done.’
    Ella stood too.
    Murray said, ‘Okay. He can come out.’
    The rescue team climbed down with their equipment and a clean unfolded body bag. Ella scrambled back onto the platform, having no wish to watch Meixner being pulled from around the wheels, but Murray stayed.
    She walked back towards the stairs, studying the platform edge. It was hard tiles overlaid with textured plastic squares patterned insuch a way as to be recognisable to people with poor sight using a cane. She thought back to the CCTV and moved to the point from which she estimated Meixner had fallen, now two-thirds of the way along the first carriage. There were no signs on the ground to indicate what had happened, no scuff marks like you might see on a cliff edge if somebody resisted being pushed over. She looked into the carriage’sdark and empty windows, then along to the front, trying not to imagine how it might feel to fall and know that this was probably it; how it might’ve felt if the force that put him there wasn’t his own mind but a shove in the back.
    ‘Ella,’ Murray said, down on the track. He held a wallet open in a plastic evidence bag. ‘The driver’s licence says he’s thirty-six and lives in Ryde.’
    Ella flipped through her notebook to the details she’d copied off the paramedic’s case sheet. Thirty-five, North Sydney. ‘Maybe he did hit his head in the accident and lost a year.’
    ‘The licence is three years old, and there’s no change of address sticker on the back.’ Murray clambered up onto the platform. ‘Makes sense that he might’ve lied to the ambos. If he was as terrified as they describe,he might’ve worried who might overhear, who could get access to their paperwork.’
    But terrified of who? Ella thought. The man in the cap? The voices in his head? Or something – or someone – else altogether?
    *
    They came out of the stairwell to fresh air and the flash of passing headlights. Full darkness had fallen while they were underground. The ambulances had gone and just onefire truck remained, the crew now helping the overall-clad government contractors load Marko’s bagged body into their plain white van. Marked police cars with flashing hazard lights blocked the kerbside lane, their own unmarked one at the end of the line.
    As they walked towards it, Murray handed Ella the bagged wallet and scrubbed at his palms with a handkerchief. In the plastic window shesaw a photo of a smiling dark-haired woman – a woman who, no doubt, was wondering where Marko was. Years and years on the job, and it still made her uneasy to see pictures like this and know that in the next couple of hours they’d be knocking on the person’s door, turning an ordinary day into the worst one imaginable and leaving nothing but devastation and questions in their wake.
    They gotin the car. Ella put the keys in the ignition but didn’t start it. ‘You going to call Langley?’
    Murray refolded the handkerchief and wiped his fingers. ‘I think this stuff’s permanent.’
    He dropped the cloth on the floor, then reached delicately into his pocket for his mobile. Ella heard Langley answer and ask where they’d been.
    ‘We just got out of there,’ Murray said. He gavetheir new boss a quick run-down. ‘We’re heading to the hospital now.’
    ‘So you’re thinking suicide?’ Ella heard Langley say down the line. ‘Classic paranoid-type thing?’
    ‘Not necessarily,’