Page 47 of The Soulmate

My mind is going a million miles an hour. First, I wonder if Detective Conroy could have been the man asking Mr Hegarty about us, but I quickly discount it. This man is a police officer. He would know exactly where we lived. Next, I think about the wording Tamil just used.Finalisethe suicide, she’d said. Surely, she wouldn’t have said that if new evidence or information had come to light.

‘Why don’t you have a seat?’ I say. ‘Can I offer you something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’

‘We’re fine,’ Tamil says, as they move towards the sofa.

The girls are bouncing around, thrilled by the unexpected visit. I know my role is to remove them, but I can’t bring myself to leave.

‘Girls,’ I say, ‘we need to speak to the police. If you and Freya go and put on your pyjamas, you can have a Tim Tam each from the pantry.’

The girls scamper off. Gabe and Tamil sit on the couch and I sit in an armchair. Conroy continues standing. He wanders over to the back sliding doors and looks out at the cliff. ‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ he says. ‘What is it you do for work?’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ I say, even though he’s looking at Gabe. ‘Wills and estates. Gabe looks after the girls.’

‘Awesome.’ He is still looking at Gabe. ‘I did that for a while when my kids were little. My youngest is a teenager now. It was pretty unusual to be a stay-at-home dad back then. How long have you been doing it?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘Bet your daughters love it.’ Conroy sits in the armchair opposite me, crossing his legs. ‘What did you do before that?’

Conroy sounds casual, friendly, and yet I sense an undertone that tells me this is more than friendly conversation.

‘I worked in investor relations,’ Gabe says. ‘Back in Melbourne.’

‘Investor relations.’ Detective Conroy smiles. ‘I’m not from the corporate world. What does that mean exactly?’

‘Well,’ Gabe says, ‘in a nutshell, I found people to give us money when we were looking to expand our business.’

‘“Our business”? Which business was that?’

Gabe hesitates.Act natural, Gabe, I urge silently.Act natural. At the same time, Freya appears with her pyjama top stuck around her head. Her timing couldn’t be more perfect.

‘I’m stuck!’ she cries.

I let Gabe rescue her, taking the opportunity to change the subject to the weather.

Once Freya is unstuck, the girls run to the kitchen to get their Tim Tam and Gabe returns to the sofa. Tamil gets out her notebook and, thankfully, the questioning takes a different turn. ‘Okay, I’m sorry to keep coming back to this but we need to go over your statement again.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Standard procedure,’ Tamil says. ‘Sometimes people remember things differently after a few days, when the adrenaline has settled.’

‘But it was a suicide.’

‘Even so, we are required to investigate all deaths with an open mind before we can rule it a suicide. So, we need to dot our i’s and cross our t’s.’

I wonder if she’s heard from Max.

‘Fine,’ Gabe says. ‘Go ahead.’

‘All right. Let’s go over what happened again. From the start.’

Gabe goes over the story again, with only a little prompting from Tamil. Conroy doesn’t speak at all. I wait for one of them to drop the bombshell –We know that you worked for Max Cameron– but neither of them mentions it.

‘All right,’ Tamil says, after Gabe has finished. ‘That’s it.’

Gabe and I exchange a glance.That’s it?I want to feel relieved – and I do a little – but the feeling of dread remains lodged inside me.

Tamil and her colleague rise to their feet. ‘Oh. Just one more thing.’