Blindside - By Gj Moffat Page 0,31

took a moment to warm up and then the logo for the phone company came on the screen. Logan paid the bills for Ellie’s phone and this one was on a different network. He frowned, not sure what he was looking at.

Ellie came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later in her robe with her hair piled up in a towel. Logan was on her bed, leaning back against the wall. She stopped when she saw him.

He held the phone up.

‘What’s this?’

Her eyes flicked to the phone.

‘It’s a phone.’

He raised his eyebrows at her.

‘I can see that, Ellie. I mean, why do you have it when I already pay for one? I’ve never seen this one.’

‘Becky got it for me.’

Logan sat forward, frowning.

‘What?’

Ellie came over and sat beside him, took the phone from him and started pressing buttons. He waited to see what it was she was going to show him, but when she was done she put it against his ear.

He heard her mother’s voice. Heard Penny.

‘Hi, baby. This is your mum calling to say congratulations on your very first phone. Hope you like it. Love you.’

Ellie took the phone and switched it off.

Logan blinked away blurred vision.

‘Becky said they were getting rid of the evidence in my mum’s case after Christmas. At the police station. And was there anything I wanted. She showed me a list.’

‘She never said.’

‘Told me it was our secret. Anyway, I knew that message was on my old phone. I never deleted it.’

‘And Becky knows about the message?’

‘No. I didn’t tell her why I wanted it. It was just for me.’

Logan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She didn’t resist, leaning her head on his shoulder and toying with the phone in her hands.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She shrugged in his embrace.

‘You’ve got Becky now,’ she said.

Logan gently eased her away from him and faced her.

‘Your mum was special to both of us,’ he said. ‘Becky knows that. You could have told me.’

She looked down at the phone and back at him. She surprised him by saying okay, leaning in and kissing his cheek before getting up to plug in her hairdryer.

She was stronger than him, that was for sure. And he loved her all the more for it.

2

Armstrong had left Pitt Street after the interview with the two uniforms – telling Irvine that he wanted to catch up on his other work. He promised to be back before five to go and see Suzie Murray with her.

Irvine typed up statements for the officers and filled out internal reports. She hated the paperwork and it took her more than three hours to finish all of it. Sometimes she thought that modern policing was more about documenting what was done – rather than actually doing it.

She called Jim Murphy at four in the afternoon to chase up the post-mortem results and to see if anything of note had turned up from the lab analysis of whatever was found at the locus.

‘I think the drug squad instincts are right,’ Murphy told her.

‘How so?’

‘Well, blood analysis isn’t back yet but I’m betting that she died from an overdose. I spoke to the pathologist and his preliminary view is that she wasn’t killed by someone. There are no signs of violence and no water in her lungs.’

‘She was dead when she went in the water?’

‘Yes.’

‘CCTV show up yet?’

‘No.’

‘Call over there and see if they can put a rush on it, will you.’

‘I’ll do it now. Talk later.’

Five o’clock came and went with no sign of Armstrong. The clock crept towards six, then past it. She called her mother to ask her to pick Connor up from the childminder and endured a lecture about parental responsibility. After that, she called Armstrong’s mobile and left a message on his voicemail to call her when he could.

Then it was six-thirty.

Her phone rang and she picked it up without looking to see who it was.

‘It’s about time,’ she said.

‘What?’

It was Logan.

‘I thought it was someone else.’

‘You waiting for a call? We can speak later if you like.’

‘No. No, it’s fine. I’m a bit frustrated. Are you still planning on coming over later?’

‘I am. It’s just that, well, I wanted to ask you about something. About the phone you got for Ellie.’

She’d forgotten about that.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Ellie asked me not to.’

‘She’s a kid, Becky. Did you not think I should have known about it? I could have helped her. I mean, who knew how she was