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  They provided no information she didn’t already know, apart from the year of the car’s manufacture-1988. That meant no airbags or power steering, which would have made controlling the vehicle in an emergency more difficult, especially with a broken arm. She couldn’t imagine why Savannah had chosen to drive that night, at that time, with the fractured, unplastered arm.

  Unless she had gone back to the family home to make sure her younger sisters were fed and safely in bed.

  The police van appeared behind, and she led the way. About fifty meters from the site, Hollis stopped and switched on a POLICE ALERT flashing sign on his roof. He placed a series of emergency cones along the road, and gave Anya a fluorescent protective vest when she met him halfway.

  “The skid marks are recorded as twenty meters long, but that’s only the visible ones.”

  Anya didn’t know there were more than one type. “How can you differentiate between marks that are and aren’t visible?”

  He took photos of the unmarked road from various angles and again laid out a distance-designed tape measure. Anya had no idea what he was documenting.

  “There is always a shadow skid. Skid marks happen when the driver brakes hard and the tires stop rotating. They start light and typically get darker as the skid progresses, until the car stops. It also takes time for the tire to heat up enough against the road to leave visible marks. With sudden braking, the wheels begin to slow and don’t lock up the instant the brakes are applied. That’s when very faint shadow marks appear, before the black skid marks.”

  “But do they help determine the speed or if the car was forced to change direction, say by being bumped or forced off the road by another car?”

  “If the car had anti-lock brakes, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The problem is that when the wheels lock, it’s impossible to steer. But if the car were hit by something else, it could have forced a change in direction. In this case, however, the skid marks are all in a straight line. Looks like the driver braked, locked the wheels and couldn’t steer around the bend and so ran off the verge, down into the tree. Pretty straightforward.”

  A furniture truck drove around them and Anya felt the gust of wind. She instinctively turned her back to avoid the dust in her face. Hollis did the same.

  “In terms of speed,” he continued, “there is a multitude of variables to factor into calculations. Things like road surface, level, defects, drag factors, wind conditions. If you’re wondering about the speed of impact in this instance, it could have been as little as forty miles an hour, the limit for this particular road.”

  Anya was aware that even speeds that low could be fatal, particularly when small cars hit solid objects like trees. If only more people understood that.

  A car sped past, clearly exceeding the speed limit.

  The question that remained in Anya’s mind was, why did Savannah brake that hard, fifty meters back, on a straight stretch of road?

  There had to be another car on the road with her. The fragments of plastic had to hold the key to who ran into her before she crashed.

  24

  With two separate court appearances in the next two weeks and reports to write, Anya planned to hibernate in her office the rest of the day.

  She would review Violet Yardley’s file, in case there was anything that could help the police further. But the first priority was to document everything she could remember about Savannah Harbourn. What she had said, how she had acted, her state of mind, her injuries. From what she had said, her life was spent trying hard not to draw attention to herself.

  Violet had even described her as “straight-edged,” drug-and alcohol-free. So the toxicology report should come back negative.

  This was a woman who went back to the family home to make sure her younger siblings were being fed, looked after, and even helped with their homework. She feared for what would happen to them if she left.

  Anya did, too, now the sisters had lost their only protector.

  The broken arm would have been a significant hazard driving, though. Without the strength of one arm, she had little control if she needed to swerve or avoid an accident. That word again. The term “car accident” was completely misleading when most involved substance abuse, speed or breaking road rules-all illegal acts. Working in the morgue had proven that more often than not, innocent people were victim to what was nothing less than criminal behavior.

  Paperwork filled the rest of the working day. After a hot bath and a plate of pasta, Anya settled in to watch some television, to get her mind off work and sort through some of the photos from the trip. They’d make a great scrapbook for Ben.

  Just before nine, Kate Farrer knocked on the door.

  “Slimy bastards!” she said, storming into the hallway with a thick file in her hands.

  “Who?” Anya followed Kate to the kitchen.

  “The bastard Harbourns. The ringleader, Gary, the one with the mole. He’s admitted himself to a private psychiatric hospital and the shrink there thinks he’s too unwell to be interviewed about Rachel Goodwin’s murder.”

  Kate threw down the file, shoved the sleeves on her shirt to her elbows and slapped both hands on the counter.

  Anya considered the possibilities. If the police had physical evidence from the scene and Sophie’s statement, it could be a stunt to avoid being arrested. “What’s the reason for admission. Is he claiming to be suicidal or depressed?”

  “He’s already going for an insanity defense. He drove himself over there and walked in the door saying he’s hearing voices telling him to hurt people.”

  Schizophrenia wasn’t an easy state to fake, although some criminals assumed it was. Anya flicked on the kettle. “You can’t just wake up one day, say you have schizophrenia and deny responsibility for all your actions, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Want to bet? He’s already got one psychiatrist convinced.” Kate stretched and cracked her neck. “This has got to be a bad joke. What are we supposed to tell Ned Goodwin? ‘We know who raped your daughters, killed one and left the other barely breathing, but he’s hiding in a hospital and we can’t get to him.’”

  Anya could see Kate’s point of view, but hiding in a psychiatric facility was risky. “You can ask for an independent assessment-”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Anya should have known this wasn’t a social visit. She grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and began to make a pot of tea.

  Kate hauled herself up to sit on the bench. “As one of our favorite forensic physicians, the department formally requests you assess Gary Harbourn for any injuries he could have sustained when he attacked the Goodwin girls, and tell us if you think he’s fit to be interviewed.” She grabbed the last apple and placed a card in the now empty fruit bowl. On it was the hospital’s contact details and the name of the treating psychiatrist.

  “The doctor says Harbourn’s not going anywhere, so you can go any time tomorrow if that suits.”

  “I can do a physical assessment and look for injuries, but my usual role is to make sure a suspect isn’t intoxicated, suffering drug withdrawal or some physical or mental illness that will impair his ability to answer questions at that time. A diagnosis of schizophrenia, even if he has it, doesn’t automatically mean insanity. Incidentally, ‘insanity’ is a legal, not a medical term.”

  Kate groaned. “As far as I’m concerned it’s an insult to the victims’ family to have that bastard parading as someone with a real mental illness. He’s gutless and can’t even face up to what he’s done. He’s taking the piss out of all of us. It’s just a bloody great game to him and his family. All you have to do is catch him out faking it.”

  No pressure then, Anya thought. The timing of the hospital admission was highly suspicious, given Savannah’s death, but she had to maintain an open mind. When Kate left, she’d have to brush up on everything she had on schizophrenia.

  Even so, a diagnosis could explain Gary’s rapid escalation in violence. Progressing from thug
to rapist was one thing, but as far as they were aware, there had been no gradual increase in aggression in his sexual crimes. More violence could have been a natural progression if each rape didn’t live up to his fantasies, but the number of stab wounds in the Goodwin girls suggested something dramatic had occurred.

  “What did the forensics show from the evidence you collected in their home?”

  Kate chomped into the apple, juice trickling down her chin, which she caught with the back of her hand. “Gary’s prints were on the knife handle. When questioned, they said that Gary was off his head on drugs and alcohol and Rick and Patrick followed and two of the brothers tried to stop him hurting anyone, but he was too strong. Gotta love the imaginative lies these guys come up with. Oh yeah, and the ‘invisible man’ who mysteriously does all their crimes was at the Goodwin house and raped the girls. The underwear was Rachel’s and both girls’ blood was on the knife. We’ve got Gary but we need to nail down the others. We have three other possible suspects. It’ll come down to whether or not Sophie can ID her attackers, even though she said she didn’t see the face or eyes of at least one of them.”

  Anya couldn’t forget what four of the brothers had done to Giverny. “What about the red paint on the kids’ shirt?”

  “It came from the same batch as the paint on Giverny’s car. But the best we’ve got is a shirt belonging to Rick that was used while he was in jail. Nothing was stolen from the Hart house so we’ve got nothing but vandalism given the post-mortem findings. Even if we find out who wore that shirt, it wouldn’t be worth prosecuting.”

  Kate jumped down and headed for the door, chomping into the apple as she left. With a full mouth she managed, “I’ve got to go. We can tie Gary to Sophie and Rachel with the knife and underwear. Somehow we’ve got to put a wedge between the Harbourn brothers and get one to crack.”

  Anya closed and deadlocked the door. At least the department would eventually pay her for the assessment. She poured a cup of strong black tea and traipsed upstairs to change into her pajamas. She returned and curled up on her comfy lounge to read the file Kate had left.

  It resembled a hospital file on someone with a lifetime of admissions. A series of charge sheets outlined a litany of offenses. By eighteen, Gary had spent four years in and out of juvenile detention for armed robbery, breaking and entering and assault.

  Kate had summarized a number of incidents and outcomes. At eighteen, he was arrested for sexual assault, but was acquitted at trial. The victim suffered from agoraphobia and was terrified of leaving her home. She gave her evidence by video link and had an anxiety attack in front of the jury. According to Kate’s notes, the jury thought she was mentally unstable and an unreliable witness.

  It was possible that Gary targeted women with a mental illness. They were among the most vulnerable, and their credibility could be shattered in court, if they were even capable of testifying. It was easy to pick up the basics about psychiatric disorders through prison and defense lawyers.

  By nineteen, he was in court again, with Ian, one of his younger brothers. This time the charge was ram-raiding a gun shop with a stolen car. Each claimed they had been framed by a third person, Simon Vine, who had committed the robbery and planted guns at their home. The complete cache was never retrieved.

  A witness said one of the men had a beard during the robbery, but couldn’t identify Gary or his brother, who Kate had noted were both clean-shaven for the court appearance.

  Despite the doubt, Gary was convicted and served eighteen months. Ian Harbourn spent seven months in prison.

  Anya rubbed her eyes. The words began to blur, with charges and trials all reading alike. Simon Vine was named as the mastermind in most of the family’s crimes, but the police had been unable to locate anyone by that name. She doubted they ever would. This was Kate’s “invisible man.”

  Flicking through the medical history proved more interesting. Four years prior, Gary was admitted to the same psych facility for depression and suicidal ideation, claiming fugue-like episodes in which he supposedly “lost” periods of time.

  This defense failed when he used it to fight a charge of grievous bodily harm. He had bashed a former employer with a baseball bat, and set fire to his business. She underlined the words baseball bat.

  Anya recalled what Savannah had said. The night she was beaten, Gary wanted her to find the baseball bat and then flew into a rage when he found out two of the brothers had taken it out. The bat was for bashing victims. Ironically, the fact that the brothers had taken it might just have saved Savannah from being killed by Gary, who had only his fists and feet to lash out with. Then again, if the bat were home, Savannah may never have been hit at all. That night.

  The episode with the employer scored him a four-year sentence, of which he served two. The record stated that he had agreed to be treated with antidepressants and attend regular counseling and anger management sessions in jail. Anya suspected it was a criminal’s career move, bargaining for a more lenient sentence.

  She dropped the pen on the floor and put the papers back into the file. It was almost incomprehensible how many times family members had been in and out of prison with short penalties given the severity of the crimes. They were beyond rehabilitation. And yet had all been released, to rape, torture and kill without any fear of the consequences. No wonder they weren’t threatened by the justice system.

  The pendulum had swung in favor of offenders, to the detriment of victims. By benefiting recidivists like the Harbourns, it had failed to protect Giverny Hart or the Goodwin sisters and even one of their own, Savannah. She couldn’t begin to estimate the number of people who continued to be affected by their crimes.

  Despite being limited in the scope of her interview and examination, if Gary was faking psychosis she was determined to catch him.

  25

  The following morning, Anya arrived at Saint Stephen’s Private Clinic. The entrance, with its marbled floors and floral centerpiece, resembled an expensive hotel rather than an acute psych facility.

  The “client liaison officer” sat at a desk and greeted her. Within minutes of being buzzed, Doctor Kyle Temple appeared in the foyer. No white coat in sight, the young psychiatrist wore an open-neck business shirt and tailored trousers.

  He extended his hand. “I hoped we might have a brief chat before you see our patient.”

  Our patient? she thought. This was a short assessment to determine whether Gary Harbourn had physical injuries to connect him to the Goodwins. Her questions would be limited, and in the presence of a member of staff. She had no role in his management.

  They headed along a corridor that featured an indoor rainforest along one side and the piped sound of birds punctuated by a rhythm of flowing water. Presumably the rainforest provided a calm and private environment, but Anya was struck by how extravagant the setting was, and how expensive it must be to maintain. With the state of public psychiatric wards, this place must have a long waiting list for admission.

  She wondered how Gary Harbourn could afford to stay here, or how he had managed to secure a bed at short notice. Drugs, robberies and standover tactics were clearly more profitable than unemployment benefits.

  They walked past an empty communal area with a large plasma screen television. That room was empty. Further along was a double door marked Theaterette.

  “We have a holistic approach to treatment and try to give our clients the most relaxing, least pressured routine. In the evenings we show movies and encourage families to come along on themed weekends.”

  The place was more like a luxury resort than a mental health facility.

  “This is quite impressive. How many beds do you have?”

  The doctor ran his hands through his fringe and smiled. “We can accommodate up to seventy, but at the moment we’ve thirty-one inpatients partaking in programs which include alcohol and substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Then, of course, we have our section for those wi
th acute psychosis. Naturally, a large part of our business comprises regular outpatients, often after an intensive program.”

  They passed a glassed area comprising a gymnasium and massage therapy center. A man and a woman worked out on treadmills to the sound of Britney Spears.

  “The economic downturn and increased unemployment rates have left many people reconsidering private health insurance, but we refuse to cut back our services. Our programs achieve excellent results.”

  Whoever believed crime didn’t pay should have visited Gary Harbourn in this luxurious setting.

  Doctor Temple stopped at a door and scanned his ID. They entered the consulting room, which contained a desk and office chair, an examination bed behind a curtain and two armchairs facing each other. The psychiatrist chose to sit at the desk, as if interviewing Anya. So much for the brief chat.

  “I’ve treated Gary Harbourn for a couple of years now and am very familiar with his case. This latest tragedy, the death of his sister, has really rocked him. He isn’t coping well at all.”

  Having been through the extensive file last night, Anya felt familiar with his history as well. “Am I able to see him?”

  “Yes, of course, but there are some things that concern me about the timing of your visit. At the moment he is in a very fragile state.”

  “In what way?” Anya was interested to hear about Gary’s behavior up until now, and the doctor’s reasons for concern about her presence.

  “He was brought here by his mother the night before last in a terrible state, around three in the morning. He had felt under stress, it seems, and had smoked a fair amount of cannabis and drunk a lot of alcohol over the preceding weeks. He had also neglected to take his antidepressants over this period.” The doctor swept his hair to one side. “As you know, the combination of a pre-existing mental illness and intoxication can precipitate a psychotic episode. When he arrived he was talking about voices in his head telling him to kill women. He was convinced that he would harm someone so his mother brought him in.”