else really.’ She studied my face. She was on full alert. ‘Why?’
I wasn’t going to tell her about the little bleeds Smithy had found.
‘No reason. I just wondered if she’d made any enemies who might have wanted to have her killed.’
Vex shrugged. If she knew or suspected anyone, she wasn’t going to tell me. ‘Did you find the daughter?’
I hesitated. Was this a trap? Was it possible Vex was the danger to Sunny? I kept my response on safe ground. ‘Karen never got to meet her.’ Vex waggled her head. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a gesture of sympathy. ‘Did Karen ever talk to you about her husband? Justin.’
‘What about him?’
‘Karen was worried about Sunny. She seemed to think there was some threat to her, but I never got to the bottom of it.’ I waited, thinking she might give me something. Just when I’d given up, she spoke.
‘I used to wonder if it was him who drove the car into the river. Not her. The husband, I mean. She just didn’t seem to have it in her.’ My mouth was suddenly dry. ‘But, you know, when drugs are involved, people can do anything. Only idiots take drugs.’ It was a not so subtle reference to Niki. My sister had been an addict and Vex had been her supplier. She gave me another of those long looks. ‘I asked Karen once.’
‘What did she say?’
Vex shrugged. ‘She said it was her. That she did it.’ She looked around the room. Some of the women returned her gaze. ‘You know, in the men’s prison, they all claim they’re innocent. But not here. No one here says that. We all know what we did.’
No one smiled in response to Vex’s gaze, but the looks they returned to her weren’t threatening either. There was something that passed along the lines of sight between these women; some shared emotion that I couldn’t quite decipher. Vex turned that look directly on me. And that’s when I got it. It was pride. That’s what these women felt; what they communicated with each other. They were proud of what they’d done. ‘Most of us would do it again if we had to,’ Vex said, confirming what I’d sensed. Niki’s silent ghost rose up between us. I swallowed bile. I refused to be baited.
‘Did you believe Karen? When she said she did it?’
Vex looked away from me towards the guard who was now watching her closely. ‘I don’t believe what anyone here tells me.’ It seemed to be aimed at the guard as much as a reference to Karen.
The air outside felt fresh and cold and clean. Since the prison is right on the shoulder of the motorway, that’s saying something. I sucked it in anyway; petrol fumes, sheep truck effluent and all, relishing the freedom of it. Was it possible, as Vex claimed to believe, that it was Justin who had killed Falcon and attempted to kill Sunny and not Karen? Was that why Karen believed Sunny was in danger? Is that what Karen confronted Justin with in Wellington? Is that why Justin killed her?
I was already swinging the car around the last roundabout to the airport, picturing Wolf as I’d left him: gnawing contentedly on the bones I’d picked up for him on the way back from the prison while he waited for Robbie to collect him, when I remembered Norma’s phone was still in the bottom of my overnight bag. In fear of wiping Karen’s message, rather than attempt to dismantle the phone I’d ended up throwing the whole thing in with my luggage. It would be cutting it fine, but I figured there was just enough time, if I got lucky with the lights, to drop the phone off to Inspector Fanshaw at the Wellington police station and still be back at the airport in time to catch my flight.
The uniformed cop behind the desk eyed me suspiciously. It might have been because of my urgency. More likely he was wary of the phone I was handing over, wires and battery pack dangling suspiciously. When I viewed it with the sceptical eye he was trained to look at things with, I had to admit it appeared not dissimilar to a home-made explosive device. He kept his eyes riveted on it as I repeated several times that I wanted him to give the phone to Detective Inspector Aaron Fanshaw and tell him to listen to the message from Karen Mackie that she