You’ll probably find my fingerprints on the fishing knife and gaff, too, because I picked them up with my bloodied hands that day.”
“How do you know about the gaff?”
“It was in one of the photos Detective Constable Sybil Grant showed me in order to identify the body.”
Lozza leaned forward. “Ellie, how did your jacket and cap end up in the derelict farmhouse at Agnes?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were wearing these items when you were seen going out with Martin on the Abracadabra on November seventeen.”
“I . . . I didn’t go out with him again. I wouldn’t have.”
“I told you—you were seen by several witnesses, including Constable Abbott.”
“Well, then, I can’t remember it. And I really can’t understand why I would have gone out with him again. I hated the boat. The first incident terrified me. Martin wanted it to terrify me. He won.”
Lozza said slowly, “So how do you think your jacket and cap with Martin’s and your blood got to the abandoned house in the mangroves at Agnes Basin where Martin was killed?”
“I have no idea.”
Gregg said, “Had you ever been to that abandoned farmhouse, Ellie?”
Her gaze ticked nervously to Gregg. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” asked Lozza.
She inhaled deeply. “The day I arrived in Jarrawarra, Martin drove me up to Agnes and took me into Agnes Basin and into that channel on the Abracadabra. We had lunch and I . . . I passed out in the boat. In retrospect I think he might have spiked my wine or my water, and maybe even the cider he gave me right after I landed, because I kept on having these episodes. I think he was gaslighting me—trying to make me go mad, or feel like I was going mad, so it would look normal if I overdosed on drugs or something. Then he’d cash in on the insurance he took out on me, plus he’d own everything I’d invested in Agnes Holdings.”
Lozza clicked the back of her pen in and out. “Okay, let’s go back to that day Martin took you down the channel. Did you moor the boat somewhere?”
“Next to a dock. There was a path from the dock to an abandoned house. He told me that. We had lunch in the boat, and I passed out, then woke up in the bottom of the boat when it was getting dark. He was furious and he had protest banners which he said he’d found in the old house. He said the ‘greenies’ had been on our private property.” She glanced at the camera again. Lozza had a sense Ellie was playing to it. Perhaps she was playing all of them. Rabz’s words sifted into her mind.
“That kind of woman can be the most dangerous when betrayed or wronged, because you least expect it. They can be deadly.”
“Up until that point I’d never seen Martin so furious. He said if he got his hands on those greenies, he’d . . .” Ellie paled as she appeared to recall something. She cleared her throat. “He said he’d cut ‘those fuckers’ with a knife, stick his gaff in them, and feed them to the muddies.”
Gregg and Lozza stared at her. The air in the room grew thick. An invisible energy crackled around them. Very quietly, Lozza said, “You remember this, yet you can’t recall if you might have gone along that trail and into the old farmhouse with Martin?”
Ellie swallowed. “I not only passed out, I blacked out, Detective. With my blackouts I can be doing things, but I don’t know what I did. I have no recall because the events that occurred during a blackout-drunk period are not encoded into memories in my brain. My doctor told me this once. I blacked out on the boat, then I woke up on the bottom. That’s all I know. And that’s when Martin said those things. It shocked me . . . to think that the man I’d married had turned so mean. I’d not until that point in our relationship witnessed this very, very ugly side to Martin. He was one man back home in Canada, and another man entirely in Australia. It was like he’d hooked me, and he no longer had to pretend.”
“Your doctor told you this about the blackouts?” Gregg asked.
“My therapist.”
“Why were you seeing a therapist?” Lozza asked.
“I could tell you that’s personal, and privileged. I could also tell you it was because my daughter drowned when she was three years old, and I couldn’t bear the grief.