"You ended your marriage to Angelo Rosetta because of Sgt Buckton, didn't you?" Robertson demanded to know from Joey.
Nothing like getting straight into it, thought Joey as she sat opposite the two detectives, with Morag right by her side.
"Well?" he said.
"I ended my marriage because I wasn't happy," Joey answered.
"Are you saying it had nothing to do with your feelings for Sgt Buckton?"
"I married Angelo because I believed my father was ill and it was his dying wish that I be with Angelo," she explained. "I did care for Angelo and so I was happy at first, at least I thought I was."
"Then you came to Summer Bay and something or someone made you realise that wasn't the case, didn't it?"
"Perhaps you could let her answer one question at a time," Morag said. "Without you trying to lead her to the answers you want to hear."
Robertson tilted his head to Morag and made a hand gesture to Joey for her to continue.
"Coming to Summer Bay was meant to be a new start for us," she said. "But all it did was have me start to question my marriage and who Angelo really was."
"Charlie, are you free?" Watson asked her cousin when she arrived for work.
"I should actually be doing some work, but Joey's in there with Robertson and Graves, so I'm not really getting a lot done anyway," replied Charlie. "I could do with a distraction actually," she said. "So tell me, how did Martha take the news about the gun link?"
"Hard," she murmured. "And Tony wasn't much better," Watson said with a heavy sigh. "It's all just brought all the pain and heartache all up again and is making us relive it all."
"You all got through it then and you'll all get through it now," Charlie assured her.
"Yeah, I know," muttered Watson. "You don't mind another houseguest do you, because Martha insists on leaving the hospital tomorrow and I don't have the heart to argue against it any longer," she said.
"The more the merrier," said Charlie. "I thought you had said Martha would be in hospital for a little longer though."
"Rachel wanted her to stay a few more days, but Martha wants to be with her family and on a purely selfish level, I can't wait to be sharing a bed with her again. I've become so used to being with her, that I struggle to sleep unless she's by my side."
"I can certainly understand that," Charlie said. "In fact, I'm starting to feel the same with Joey."
At the mention of her girlfriend, Charlie glanced in the direction of the interview room.
"I'm sure she'll be fine," Watson told her. "Morag will look out for her."
"Yeah, I know, I just wish it wasn't necessary," she murmured. "Oh, by the way, before I forget, your sister was just here asking after you."
"Belle was here?"
"No, Shandi was."
"Oh."
"She's really worried about you, Georgie," Charlie told her cousin. "And so is your father."
Watson shrugged.
"I'd even say that Shandi was worried about you in the same way you'd be worried for Belle if she was in your place right now."
Watson slumped into the chair. "I know that Shandi and I share the same half of the bloodline, but Belle is far more my sister than Shandi has ever been."
"Shandi has never really been given much chance to be your sister," Charlie gently pointed out to her. "But she's trying Georgie and you could use all the support you can get."
Watson just shrugged her shoulders again.
"Georgie, you've been under a lot of stress lately, what with Martha's accident and now this whole Angelo mess, so I understand that Shandi and John are probably the furthest thing from your mind right now, but if you gave them the opportunity, they would be there for you," she said. "Georgie, this isn't about putting pressure on you to accept them, they're just offering a helping hand and I honestly think you should consider taking it."
"If someone had told me in school that one of my biggest tormentors would be going out of her way to be nice to me and offering her support, I'd have laughed at them and asked them what they'd been smoking," she murmured softly.
"Shandi's changed a lot since high school," Charlie said. "And she deeply regrets her past behaviour."
"So she's told me."
"You've changed from those days as well."
"Some might argue with you on that."
"I might have been one of those people not too long ago," admitted Charlie. "But now, I can truly see how you've matured and grown as a person," she said. "Georgie, you've become a responsible and effective police officer, a loving partner and a wonderful mother to a son who absolutely adores her." She smiled at her cousin. "Not bad for someone who still thinks she's a screw up, despite so many people believing in her."
"Not long after we arrived in the Bay, I began to realise that I wasn't happy in my marriage, but it wasn't all to do with Charlie," Joey explained. "Seeing her again was just a catalyst for that."
"You knew Charlie before you arrived in the Bay?" asked Graves.
"We had met six months prior and got to know each other a bit," replied Joey, choosing not to add any further details as to just what getting to know each other had entailed, unless they asked for it.
"And then you came face-to-face with each other once more and pretty soon, you're ending your marriage to Angelo and living with Sgt Buckton," Robertson said.
"Like I said, Charlie was a catalyst but she wasn't the sole reason for my marriage problems or for me ending it," she said.
"Did you have an affair with Sgt Buckton while you were still with Angelo?" he asked.
"No, I never slept with Charlie until after I had ended my marriage," replied Joey. "Angelo was the one who was having an affair, not me."
"He was certainly the one conducting a physical affair with Bianca Scott, but you'd long since switched off emotionally from your marriage before you had even left him and engaged in an emotional affair with Sgt Buckton."
Morag laughed at him from the sidelines. "You really are getting desperate," she said.
He ignored Morag, his concentration solely on Joey. "If not for Charlie, would you have left Angelo or not?" Robertson asked of her.
"For some time now, I've been asking myself a lot of questions, like if things might have been different had we not moved to the Bay," she said.
"And what conclusion to that question did you reach?"
"I think eventually, I still would have come to realise that I wasn't happy in my marriage, I'm just not sure what I would have done about it," admitted Joey. "Our marriage problems weren't just because of Charlie, they were about Angelo and my perception of him. I'd known him for a long time and thought he was this charming, considerate and good person, but then after we moved here, it was as if he became a different person and now, I'm not sure if I ever knew who Angelo was," she said.
"So your perception of him had changed?" said Graves.
"Yeah, the man I thought I knew wouldn't ever have been cruel to someone just because he didn't like them, yet he seemed to take an instant dislike to Const. Watson and he picked on her. That's not the Angelo I thought I knew," she said. "And then there's his infidelity and the nastiness that he started to show toward others."
"What do you think changed him?" she asked.
"Maybe nothing at all," Joey said. "Maybe this was the real him that was showing through and I was finally able to see it."
"Or maybe your leaving him for his work subordinate was the catalyst for this change in his behaviour," Robertson argued back.
"His affair started before I left him, as did his poor treatment to others," she reminded him. "And aren't we all meant to be responsible for our own actions?" said Joey. "Angelo was a grown man who was in a position of great responsibility as a police officer, yet by the end, he was acting like a nasty, spoilt brat and that is all on him."
"If he was still alive, maybe he would have started to accept responsibility," he said, though he strongly doubted that. Angelo just wasn't a man who took responsibility for his own actions; he was more the type who preferred to lay that blame on others. "Too bad he's dead though."
"I never wanted to see him hurt and I certainly didn't want him dead."
"His death eases the way for you and Charlie to be together though."
"We were already together."
"Yet Angelo had made it known he wanted you back and would fight any divorce proceedings, thereby prolonging the situation for as long as possible and given his recent behaviour, he could have caused untold problems for you and your new girlfriend in that time."
"And Charlie and I would have dealt with that."
"Maybe you did," he said. "Outside that nightclub. We've already established you had no alibi at the time of his murder."
"So now it's Joey who killed Angelo?" said Morag. "First it was Const. Watson, then Sgt Buckton, now Joey, who will it be tomorrow?"
"Isn't representing all three suspects a conflict of interest."
"No," she stated emphatically and without explanation. "Joey was legally separated from her husband and had moved on," she told him. "She had no intention of going back to Angelo, no matter how hard he intended to fight for her and as for the divorce, well yes, by law, it would have taken at least a year to come through, but beyond that, Angelo had little chance of fighting or delaying proceedings. He was the one conducting an affair before any legal separation occurred and it would be clear to any judge, that the marriage was over without any hope of reconciliation," said Morag. "And despite what the Police always like to think, divorce isn't always a motive for murder."
"It's a pretty good one though."
"Not in this case," she replied. "Perhaps you would be better served by looking for a suspect who has a connection to both Jack Holden's and Angelo's murders, because that surely isn't Joey."
"My, that bit of news travelled fast."
"Georgie called me just before I arrived at the station and told me."
"Did she also tell you that we haven't yet concluded that the murders were committed by the same person and so at this stage, it's only the gun that links the two murders?"
"Yes she did, but how would Joey then have gotten access to that gun to use it on Angelo?"
"If Sgt Buckton picked up the gun that night as a way to protect her cousin, then it's quite possible it was still in her possession and that is how Joey gained access to it."
"You really do enjoy your fanciful stories, don't you Detective?" Morag sarcastically said.
"I enjoy fishing more."
"Well this fishing expedition is over," Morag informed him. "And I suggest that in future, if you wish to talk to any of my clients again, that you get some solid evidence first, because right now, you have nothing and you are just wasting our time," she said. "Come along Joey, we're done here."
"She's right," Graves said after Morag and Joey had left the room. "We still have nothing concrete against any of our suspects."
"For the moment."