“Well, about that,” I mumble, trying hard not to look in his direction.
“Abigail.” He’s mad—his tone says more than his word.
I purse my lips and swing my head in his direction. “Hey, I got side-tracked, okay?”
“Okay.” He throws his head back and runs his fingers through his hair.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He rubs hard into his eye sockets before blowing out a noisy breath of air. “It’s going to be a long night. I need you up to speed.”
“Okay.” I’m angry at myself.
“Did you read any of it?” he questions hopefully.
“I’d like to say yes.”
He stabs a piece of meat from his plate with a singular chopstick and removes it like a hungry wolf. His lips quiver from what I assume is anger and not sadness, and I decide now is the time for me to stay quiet. After he finishes chewing, he takes a mouthful of water and places the cup down forcefully.
The sound of glass hitting wood makes me jump.
“The case is Tumbling versus Macintosh. We’re here to get justice after three long years. We need to win. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“Good. See those boxes?” He points at the four cardboard boxes sitting on the table in the other room. “Everything in those boxes has been my work on this case for the last three years. Before I moved to Queensland a month ago, I lived here and worked at our Sydney office. This was my case, and I’ve come back to make sure it ends the right way.”
I nod again, too scared to say a word.
“Stephanie Tumbling was an eight-year-old schoolgirl who lived in Waverley and attended a nearby primary school. On the tenth of June, Stephanie’s parents, Patricia and Garth, tucked her and her brother into bed at seven p.m., as they did every night. The children had separate bedrooms on either end of the house. Stephanie’s was the one farthest from her parents’, whose bedroom was down the hall.” He stops, his gaze lost, tortured.
“What happened to her?”
“If you’d read the fucking binder, you’d know.”
I shelter myself like a frightened dog.
He must see my fear and takes a lengthy inhale. “Sorry. This case is just rough for me.”
“I can see that.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He gazes at me for far too long before continuing. “Anthony, her younger brother, was four at the time. The home was a single-storey three-bedder, with a double lockable garage. It was modest, neat, and filled with love.
“Sometime, they believe around midnight, Stephanie was abducted from that house as her family slept. She was wearing pink flannels and was cuddled up with a rainbow-coloured elephant. At around four on the morning of June eleventh, her father, Garth, woke to use the toilet. Because it was cold, he checked on the children to ensure they were still under their doonas. Anthony’s room was the closest, so naturally he checked him first. When he got to his daughter’s room, the door was ajar. When he pressed it open, he discovered Stephanie was no longer in there. Garth turned every light on in that house, checking every inch. It wasn’t until he walked into the kitchen he noticed the back door was wide open and a bloody smudge had seeped into the white frame.”
Marcus stops talking again. He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. The room is eerily quiet. My heart beats frantically. I don’t know if I want to hear another word. But I stay, waiting for him to continue.
“Her father called triple zero.” Marcus speaks quietly, running his hand through his hair. “For three years, I’ve been working to get justice.”
“For Stephanie.”
He nods.
“Is she alive?” I whisper.
He shakes his head.
My eyes strain under the pressure of tears. “What happened to her?”
Marcus stands before pacing back and forth, his fingers disappearing under his dark locks. “She was beaten, raped repeatedly, and then placed into a brown leather suitcase and dumped out to sea. She washed up onto Bondi Beach three weeks’ later. Her rainbow elephant was in the case with her, along with a sheet from her bed and four cement blocks.”
“Oh my gosh.” I gasp. “How did she die? The beatings?” I choke out in a shaky voice, not sure if I really want to know.
“The gutless pig didn’t do it with his own hands. He let the ocean do it. She was still alive when he put her in that suitcase and alive when her body hit iced water. She drowned, Abigail. Alone, cold, and frightened in the middle of the ocean. The coroner’s report shows even though she had sustained multiple and horrible injuries, she had survived them. Frankly, I can’t imagine anything more terrifying,” he adds, placing his hands on the table before leaning into me.
“They got the prick, though. They fucking got him. He tried to take another girl one week later, only four blocks away from Stephanie’s house. That scum of the earth was going to do it again. He climbed through a window to gain entry into her room, but the dumb fuck chose the wrong night to do it. Her father was asleep on a sofa beside her. She’d been having issues with asthma that day, and he wanted to be there if she needed him. The father restrained him before his grubby mitts ever touched her.”
My lips quiver before I choke out. “Those poor little girls.”
“Hey, we’re going to get justice for Stephanie and Silvia. Silvia never had a hand laid on her, but I’m sure her family have never been the same since. Nathan Macintosh is going to spend the remainder of his life behind bars. I will see to it.” His tone is filled with hatred as he straightens from his hunched posture, takes a few steps, and rests his hand onto my shoulder. “This is going to be a tough case, but I need you to have the documents ready. I need you to make sure everything is where it needs to be and every file, call, and measure is taken to assist me. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” I’m unsure if I really can, because this is so much bigger than I could have imagined.
“Good girl.” He kisses me on the top of my head as if he’s done it a million times before, and then he takes the containers and plates from the table.
“What happens tomorrow?”
“We do our final run-through at the office in the city, and Tuesday we’ll be in court.”
I swallow hard, trying to dislodge the lump forming in my throat.
“You better get to bed. Tomorrow, you can read more. You’ll have some files to copy, so you can go through a lot of the stuff then.”
I nod, hesitantly, before pushing my chair out and walking straight for the stairs.
“Good night, Abigail.”
I don’t reply, for tears have already begun streaming down my cheeks, and my throat hurts so much that any words would be too difficult to speak.
I sob as warm water washes away the long day from my skin. The body wash smells of strawberries as I try to lather and rinse. Such a sweet and innocent smell. Innocent, like Stephanie. Thoughts of what her last moments on this earth would have been like play on a repeated loop, making me physically ill. My Chinese dinner no longer sits in the pit of my stomach. It glugs down the shower drain. My legs are heavy as I towel myself and slip into the black negligee Marcus’s money bought me. Even though it feels soft against my skin, it doesn’t lighten the heaviness that weighs down my heart.