Poison Orchids: A darkly compelling psychological thriller Read online

  Poison Orchids

  Sarah A.Denzil & Anni Taylor

  Copyright

  POISON ORCHIDS

  Copyright © 2019 by Sarah A.Denzil and Anni Taylor

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are the product of the authors’ imaginations, else used fictitiously. Any resemblance to the above or resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems. Brief quotations are allowed. Permission in writing must be sought for any longer reproductions.

  Cover design © Sarah Dalton

  Original photo © Sarah Dalton

  Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Epilogue

  To our readers

  About Sarah A.Denzil

  About Anni Taylor

  Acknowledgements

  ‘ONE FOR SORROW’ excerpt

  ‘THE SIX’ excerpt

  Part I

  1

  The Driver

  The long-haul driver squints at the milky haze created by his headlights and spots two teenage girls. But the figures are swallowed up by the dark again.

  His eyes are playing tricks—surely. He's been on the road too long tonight. No one would be out here in the middle of this lonely highway. Must have been an effect of the heat and rain. The bucketing showers of the past hour have subsided to a drizzle, and he can almost hear steam hissing from the hot road. January is in the wet season in Australia's Northern Territory.

  This is the kind of night his wife worries about the most. She hates the thought of his petrol tanker being out on a slippery, obscured road. The Stuart Highway stretches for almost three thousand kilometres across the dead centre of the country, from top to bottom. Right now, he's somewhere near Kakadu, at the top end.

  Just as he has himself convinced he saw a mirage, two figures tear away from a deep, black patch beside the glow of his headlights.

  The girls.

  Running straight for his tanker.

  Cuts and bruises on their faces. Blood spattered on their short white dresses. There’s a man too. Chasing them.

  Hell.

  He can’t stop—

  He swings the tanker off-road, the tons of fuel-laden steel behind his cab jackknifing and skidding on the uneven ground and rocks. Then comes an unholy grinding noise as the tanker rolls hard on its side.

  Five hundred litres of fuel explode into an orange fire that mushrooms into the sky.

  The next thing he sees is an abbreviated view of rocky ground through the only clear spot in his smashed windscreen, and two pairs of bare female legs racing towards him.

  2

  Megan

  Psychologist Megan Arlotti walked along the hospital corridor, pausing briefly as she passed rooms 43 and 44. Through the plate glass sections of the doors, she glimpsed each of the two girls she’d been asked to come here and see.

  Hayley, a fair-haired English girl from York, slept while a daytime soap ran on the TV. She was tanned for a Brit, with a golden glow across her forehead and freckles clustered around her nose and cheeks. And Gemma, an Australian girl from Sydney, was curled up tightly on the bed, chocolate-brown hair strewn across her face.

  All Megan knew about them was that they’d been picked up on the highway late last night by emergency services and that a tanker had gone up in flames near them. Both girls were suffering from smoke inhalation, cuts, and minor burns. Hayley had suffered a blow to the head, resulting in a concussion and some memory loss.

  Megan poked her head inside a small office that was shared between the psychologists and counsellors who visited patients at the hospital. She was there to meet with the two detectives who would be briefing her before she spoke with the girls. This situation must be very different to the usual, as she wasn’t normally asked to come in so early on a case. As a clinical psychologist working in a local practice, she normally saw victims of crime only after the police were done with their questioning.

  Detective Bronwen McKay and Detective Joe Kouros stood to shake hands with her. She’d known them both for over a year.

  As a pair of detectives, they were an odd couple. Bronwen was smallish, her bronze skin coming from her Aboriginal mother, her eyes sharp and inquisitive. Joe was a mountain of a guy with permanently flushed skin and a weary expression. “Have you seen the news about the girls, Megan?” Bronwen asked.

  Megan gave a half shake of her head as she sat in an exhausted heap on the nearest chair. “Only what you told me over the phone. I just flew in half an hour ago. My sister had a baby last night—a home birth. I was her support person.”

  Bronwen’s eyebrows shot up almost comically. “Hell. Hope my sister never asks me to do that. How’d it go?”

  “It was damned terrifying,” Megan conceded. “But incredible at the same time. She had a little girl.”

  “That’s great. Huge congrats to your sis’.” Joe handed Megan his computer tablet. “We’d better catch you up.”

  A news page displayed photos of the two girls she’d just seen in their hospital beds. The story’s headline was gaudy: Backpacker Girls Escape Murder Plot.

  The news site was known for its sensationalist headlines. But as Megan read on, her shoulders sank and her brow furrowed, and she had to admit that for once, the headline matched the story:

  Backpackers Hayley Edwards and Gemma Lucas, both 19, allege they were held captive by Rodney White in a large bird aviary at his home in Bowman’s Creek, Northern Territory, for the past two-and-a-half months. The girls say that late last night, Mr White drove them to a remote spot alongside the Stuart Highway to carry out his plan to murder and bury them.

  Managing to escape from Mr White, the girls fled onto the highway to flag down the only vehicle on the road at that time—a fuel tanker driven by a Mr Adam Johnson. Mr Johnson blindly drove the tanker off-road to avoid hitting the girls. The tanker rolled and exploded into flames. Allegedly, Mr Johnson managed to crawl out of the cab of his tanker, only to be set upon by Rodney White. The two men wrestled for a short period, before ending up close to the blaze. Mr White’s clothing caught on fire, and he died shortly after of heart failure due to his third-degree burns.

  Hayley and Gemma are recovering in hospital after their ordeal. Rescue services found the girls covered in cuts, bruises, and blood. Tanker driver Adam Johnson lapsed into unconsciousness before the rescue services arrived and remains in a coma at present time.

  Megan raised her eyes to the two detectives, struggling through several layers of disbelief and astonishment before speaking. “That’s… shocking. The media are going to have a field day with this.”

  “They already are,” Joe muttered, taking back his tablet and handing her a cup of coffee. “That’s why I’ve instructed hospital staff not to let anyone visit the girls without clearance from us. We don’t want anyone talking with them before we finish our questioning.”

  “How are they?” Megan gave Joe a smile for the coffee. He always remembered how she took it. Milk with no sugar.

  “Doing okay, considering,” said Joe. “The English girl had a concussion. That’s the worst of it.”

  A flash of anger heated Megan’s skin. That man—Rodney White—had kept two girls imprisoned for months and then coldly tried to murder them. Megan’s sister had just given birth to a tiny girl, and the thought of someone in the future wanting to hurt her like that was hideous. Wit
hout thinking she took a gulp of hot coffee. The liquid burned all the way from her throat to her stomach.

  Megan spluttered for a moment then asked, “And the trucker—is he still in a coma?”

  “Yeah,” Joe told her.

  “He’s a hero, right?” said Megan. “Crawls out of a burning wreckage and then wrestles with a murderer?”

  “We don’t know if Rodney White has ever gotten to the point of actually murdering anyone,” Bronwen stressed. “But yes, you could call the driver a hero, I guess. He certainly showed up at the right time.”

  “Okay.” Megan slowly exhaled, gathering herself mentally. “You have to wonder if these girls are his first victims.”

  “Things are pointing to him being a serial rapist,” Joe told her. “Last night, Bron and I did a check of his house to make sure he didn’t have any other girls locked up there. We sighted quite a few items—rope, duct tape, blindfolds. And also underwear and wallets.”

  “Oh, God.” Megan shook her head.

  “Yeah.” Joe’s heavily lidded eyes squeezed shut for a moment. “I think we’re at the tip of the iceberg. Right now, we’re waiting on forensics to go over everything, then we’ll be heading back over there.”

  “I don’t envy you.” Megan suppressed a shudder. “Okay, so, is there any area you want me to focus on specifically when I talk to the girls? I think I have enough background information to begin.”

  Megan sensed a hitch in the air, hesitation brewing in the eyes of the detectives. “There’s something else I should know, right?”

  Bronwen bent her head in affirmation then shot Megan her trademark direct gaze. “The girls are basically telling two different stories. Probably due to mental trauma and memory loss. We don’t know which story is the right one yet. But we don’t want to push too hard. I’ve had victims completely shut down on me before. We’re hoping you can untangle the knots a bit, and then we’ll take over.”

  “You say their stories aren't adding up?” Megan queried. “You mean just small things? Or—?”

  “No, that's the trouble.” Bronwen puffed up her cheeks and blew out a breath. “The main discrepancy is not a small thing. Hayley's very fuzzy, but she seems to think that they only spent a couple of weeks as a captive of Rodney White. She claims that they spent most of the three months on some fruit farm, working alongside a large group of backpackers. But she’s not totally certain.” Bronwen raised her eyebrows. “Very hazy. Gemma, on the other hand, says they were only at the farm for two weeks, and then they met Rodney—while hitchhiking from the farm into town. Gemma says he locked them away in the cage for a period of two-and-a-half months.”

  “Hmmm, okay.” Megan flicked her gaze over to Joe, who was shaking his head.

  “And here’s the rest of it,” he told Megan. “Hayley's hands don’t match her claim of picking mangoes for over two months straight. I’ve seen what the hands and arms of mango pickers look like—mango sap is very acidic, and the skin tends to get a bit beat up. Burns and blisters. Even when they’re careful and wear gloves, just a slip up now and again does that kind of damage. But Hayley’s hands look pretty pristine. It’s Gemma’s hands that look beat up. The other thing is that the girls both have good tans. And tans don't come from being locked away in a dark shed for over two months. Gemma’s story doesn’t match with those tans, but hers is the story that the media is running with—probably because it sounds more dramatic if the girls were locked up for two months rather than two weeks.”

  Megan gave them both a tight smile, already reeling—how was she going to unravel this? “Shall I get started?”

  3

  Hayley

  Hayley drew circles with her finger over the surface of the table next to her hospital bed. They started small, stretching wider and faster until her fingernail grazed the edge. It was bright under the fluorescent lights and white walls. Everything was colorless and sterile, including the bedsheets. How long had she been here? For some reason she kept losing track of time. Had she slept here one night or two?

  When the door opened, her circling stopped and her head snapped up to see the woman gently closing the door behind her. It wasn’t the female detective, Hayley knew that much, but it also wasn’t anyone from the hospital because the woman wasn’t wearing a uniform or white coat. Whoever it was, Hayley felt herself shrink into the sheets away from her, away from yet another stranger. She was sick of strangers by now.

  “Hi, Hayley, my name is Megan Arlotti, and I’m a psychologist. I’m here to have a chat.”

  Hayley watched with suspicion as the psychologist gave her a friendly smile. The woman, Megan, was dressed smartly in black trousers and a white blouse. She was blond, perhaps thirty-five or so, and carried a coffee cup in one hand and a file in the other. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her blouse, though clearly expensive silk, was a little crumpled.

  You have to look hard to find the imperfections, but they’re always there. The words had popped into Hayley's mind from a place she didn’t recognise, and that alarmed her.

  Hayley tried to pull her thoughts back as Megan grabbed a chair on the far side of the room and dragged it closer. Megan set her coffee cup down on the table and opened a file.

  What was in that file? Was it about her?

  “Are you here to ask me more questions?” Hayley asked. Her voice croaked towards the end of the sentence, forcing her to clear her throat to speak again. “I’ve told the police everything I know.”

  “Would you like some water?” Megan reached across to the jug, but Hayley snatched it out of her reach.

  “I can manage, thanks.” Hayley poured the water into the plastic cup and avoided the psychologist’s gaze.

  “Of course,” Megan replied. “I have the statement you gave to Detectives McKay and Kouros here. What you’ve been able to tell us so far is really good, Hayley, but there are a few gaps, and I wanted to go over them with you. Maybe we can retrace your steps, if that’s okay?”

  Even though Megan had posed the question in a relaxed, informal way, Hayley got the impression that the ‘chat’ would go ahead whether Hayley was okay with it or not, so she nodded. She sipped on her water, more to give her hands something to do than because of a pressing thirst.

  “What brought you to Australia, Hayley?” Megan crossed her legs and smiled encouragingly. Her voice was soft, gentle from sympathy, and she tilted her head slightly to the right. Hayley got the distinct impression that Megan was a hugger, and she’d never quite known what to do with people who were demonstrative in that way. Growing up with reserved parents made her uncomfortable around people who showed their emotions and carried their hearts on their sleeves.

  “I was travelling with my boyfriend.” Hayley licked her lips and stared out of the hospital window. “We started in Tokyo then went to Seoul.” She paused. She didn’t really want to tell this stranger all of this, especially not the part where everything had gone wrong after Seoul. “Then we went to Thailand. David stayed in Thailand, and I came to Sydney on my own.”

  “Why was that?” Megan asked, her voice soft and kind.

  “He dumped me,” Hayley replied, still staring out of the window. She sighed. “I was running out of money, and we were working in bars to pay for our hotel rooms. David got bored of me and called the whole thing off. I didn’t have enough money to go home, but I had enough to get me here, so here I am.” She smiled bitterly at the psychologist, wishing for her to go away and leave her alone.

  What she hadn’t told Megan was how David had found her a job in a back-alley massage parlour and expected Hayley to prostitute herself to earn extra money. “Just give them a happy ending,” he’d told her. “You’ll earn triple what you’re earning from the bar.” But she’d refused, and he’d turned psycho, hitting her across the face and throwing her out of their dingy little room into the street, her suitcase falling open with her belongings spilling out next to the sandaled feet of passers-by.

  “That was around three-and-a-half
months ago, wasn’t it?” Megan asked.

  Hayley shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Don’t you remember the day you got here? Don’t you remember the date of your flight?”

  “It’s… blurry. The doctors said I have memory loss or something.” She shrugged and looked down at the bedsheets. Not remembering things made her feel strange and not herself. It was almost like someone had altered her mind and she didn’t know how to make it normal again.

  “Okay, well, the detectives can check the flights to ascertain your arrival here.”

  “What does it matter?” Hayley asked. “Don’t you just want to know about Rodney White?”

  “We’re going to build a timeline together,” Megan replied. “Which will come to Rodney White. Don’t worry, everything helps towards the case, and you can take as much time as you need. How long had you been in Sydney before you met Gemma Lucas?”

  “Pretty much the next day. I needed money, so I went around a few bars and asked for work. Gemma was working in a place called Sam’s. Before we took off, I worked there for a few days. But it turned out Sam was a dick. I walked in on him trying to cop a feel of Gemma, so we stole the money from the till and got out of there. We found out about this farm next to the most beautiful waterfalls and landscapes. We followed the directions on the leaflet and went there.”

  “Let’s just back up a moment. Did you take off right after you witnessed Sam sexually assault Gemma?”

  Hayley shook her head. “No. He stopped when he saw me and passed it off as though it was nothing. We didn’t do anything at first, but later on during my shift, I asked Gemma if she wanted to go to the police. She didn’t want to, and that was when I found the advert about the farm near Kakadu. The next day, we met at the bar, legged it with the cash from the register, and hitched.”