The War Widow by Tara Moss

Author:Tara Moss [Moss, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-05-05T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Billie ventured to Circular Quay West and stepped into the shadows of the dark-brick and sandstone trimmed arches of the morgue on Mill Lane. The night was heavy and warm. It was after midnight.

She was overdue to visit Sydney City Morgue for this case, though the case itself seemed to have been keeping her from whatever it held within its walls. She sincerely hoped the missing boy, Adin Brown, would not be waiting on a slab as an unidentified guest, a tragic end to a calamitous day, sealing her latest case with a sad resolution on top of the growing violence it seemed to spawn. No, she hoped she wouldn’t find him here, for his family’s sake, but she couldn’t keep away no matter how battered she felt. In missing persons cases, such visits had become routine for her, and now, with the words of the meat-faced thug, she had another reason to be there, a reason she could not possibly have anticipated on Friday afternoon when Nettie Brown had first walked through the door of her office with a seemingly simple case of a runaway teenage son. The events that had unfolded since had made Billie restless in her bones and anxious for answers. Sleep seemed far away.

Billie paused, deep in thought, absentmindedly rubbing the bruise on her ribcage through the fabric of her dark clothing.

What did Con have to tell me that was worth killing him over?

Why is Moretti tailing me? And why the thugs outside the auction house?

Is he the one who spiked my drink? Did he kill Con? Why? For whom?

The many puzzle pieces had not come together yet, not by a long shot, but a couple of things were certain – foul play, and a strong desire to keep her away from the case.

Billie leaned against a sandstone arch. The facilities inside the city’s morgue were basic, with a receiving room, the main morgue, a post-mortem room and a small laboratory. It was considered a less than hygienic space – notoriously so. During the grave diggers’ strike of Christmas 1944, the place had been overflowing with ‘stinking dead bodies’, according to witnesses. Billie believed it. Two years on, the city morgue still lacked refrigeration and anything approaching adequate space, though she understood there were plans for an upgrade. Though still cramped, things here were, at least, an improvement on the pre-war setup at the morgue that rather unfortunately had allowed the guests aboard visiting cruise ships coming in and out of Sydney Harbour to see into the building and the bodies stacked there. Not good for tourism, to be sure.

In anticipation of this late visit, Billie had changed out of her ripped ensemble of the afternoon – yet more mending to be done – and donned dark blue cotton pants, an ivory silk blouse, a navy driving coat and old over-ankle leather-soled boots which could be easily cleaned. She usually preferred the quieter crepe or fabric soles, so the sharp sound of her feet on the stones in the dark had come as a surprise.

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