by Amos, Gina
‘Do you have to smoke? It’s such a filthy habit.’
Chisca drew in a lung-full of nicotine and crossed his legs. ‘Sit down Calida, no need to stand on my account.’ He blew a ring of smoke towards her.
‘What do you want?’ Calida sat down. ‘You’ve already taken everything that was important to me: my sister, my home, my career.’ She knew Dorin Chisca was a violent, unpredictable man, but whatever he wanted from her, she knew she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. She would face him head on and not scamper away like she did the last time she came up against him.
‘Your sister was trying to double cross me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She was trying to outsmart me. She had you paint an innuendo of North Coast Summers and then she substituted it for the original. She was going to resell it, take from me what was rightfully mine.’
‘Impossible. Freddie wouldn’t do such of thing. She asked me to paint her a copy because it had been sold. It was a painting she admired; she was disappointed she hadn’t bought it. And let’s get things quite clear from the start. I had no idea she’d taken up with you after the fire. The fire you started.’
‘That was just a little misunderstanding.’
‘It was a warning. And it worked, didn’t it? I signed over the business to Freddie and left Sydney for good. Far away from all your dirty secrets.’
Calida pulled open the top drawer of the desk. Vladu reached inside his coat pocket but dropped his hands to his side when she pulled out a tall bottle of whiskey and two glass tumblers. She thumped them down on the desk in front of her. Freddie always liked to keep the whiskey in her desk drawer in case of emergencies. Calida regarded this an emergency.
‘Want a drink?’
Chisca nodded and uncrossed his legs in a feminine way.
She poured out a generous amount of whiskey and handed him a glass. She poured a drink for herself, swirled the whiskey around, tossed her head back and gulped it down in one mouthful. She poured herself another and leant back and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she stared at him.
‘So, when did you get Freddie involved? You said you would kill her if I ever told her what was going on between the two of us, or if I went to the police about the forgeries, the drugs, or the fire. I kept my side of the bargain. What about you, Dorin?’ She slammed her glass down on the desk. ‘Was it you? Did you kill her?’ Calida was on her feet now. Her head was spinning from the emotion and from the whiskey.
‘Of course not, it is not my style. You insult me by even accusing me of such a thing.’ Chisca leant forward and flicked cigarette ash onto the desk.
‘Well, who did then? Was it you?’ she said to Vladu.
Vladu took a step forward. Chisca waved him back.
‘No, it wasn’t Nicolae. I have no idea who killed Freddie.’
‘Why are you here then? What do you want from me? The police think Freddie was involved in money laundering. Is this what all this is about?’
‘No, I am here for the watercolour. I paid Kevin Taggart good money for North Coast Summers. I could have simply taken it, but it was meant as a gift for my parents. The gift would have been insincere if I had stolen it from him.’ Chisca drained his glass and helped himself to more whiskey. ‘Someone has cheated me, Calida. I cannot say who it was. Perhaps it was Freddie, or Kevin Taggart himself. The frame was filled with a kilo of cocaine. Someone took the original from the storeroom in my warehouse and replaced it with your innuendo.
‘I would like to compliment you, by the way. It was very good. It had me fooled until I picked it up and looked closely at the signature. It was not right. You really should take more care with your signatures.’ Chisca slammed his glass on the desk and the contents spilled. His face darkened.
‘Where is it? Where’s the original? I have had enough of playing these games.’
Calida sat rigid in her chair and avoided his wild, dark eyes. ‘I don’t know where it is. Freddie didn’t tell me anything about what happened to the innuendos after I painted them, and I never asked.’
Chisca glared at her. ‘I hope you are telling me the truth, Calida, because Vladu is going to pay a call on Mr Taggart. If he does not find the painting, he will come back here to tear this place apart and while he is at it, he might just do the same to you.’
The lock mechanism was simple. Vladu leaned up against the door, listened for the click and pushed it open with his shoulder. He stood in the middle of Kevin’s empty apartment and looked about him. The blood drained from his face. He wasn’t expecting this. He wasn’t used to this kind of evil. He was here to find the watercolour and return it to its rightful owner. The women’s faces were pinched, shrivelled, bloodless. Red, swollen eyes followed him around the room. He stopped to look at each individual painting. The same woman, with different feverish expressions. Every canvas had one thing in common: words painted across the face. For the wages of sin is death.
Vladu didn’t have much time, he knew the sooner he was out of here the better. In the bedroom he searched under the bed, ran his hand under the mattress. He found nothing. He opened the wardrobe and came face to face with its emptiness. The wire clothes hangers were all bare. In the bathroom, he pushed the shower curtain to one side. Nothing.
He dialled Chisca’s number. ‘There is nothing here, Sef,’ he said, using the Romanian word for boss.
‘What, no painting?’
‘I have bad feeling about this guy. I think he is one sick bastard. He is gone, taken everything with him. No clothes, nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘There are some paintings here, but they are not worth bothering with. What is it you want me to do?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Calida unlocked the front door to Freddie’s apartment with the keys Rimis had handed back to her after Forensics had finished. She walked around the apartment searching for the watercolour even though she was convinced it wasn’t here. When she walked into Freddie’s bedroom, she saw a kaftan lying across the bed. She picked it up and hoped to smell some trace of Freddie on it, but there was none. She collapsed onto the bed and thought of what Dorin Chisca was going to do to her if he didn’t find the painting. She should have told Freddie about the Romanian. If she had, she would have known to avoid him. She was a fool to think he wouldn’t prey on her sister like he had on her.
The next morning, Cal woke with a start. Sleep had come to her, two hours before sunrise. She changed out of her clothes and dragged Freddie’s kaftan over her head. She looked in the full-length mirror and was surprised by what she saw. The kaftan was cool and comfortable.
In the bathroom she threw handfuls of cold water on her face. She was frightened when she saw the image in the mirror looking back at her. She found herself thinking of Ted and hoped he would understand what she was about to do.
Halfway down Liverpool Street, she walked past a Vietnamese bakery with its tantalising smells of freshly baked bread and pastries. But she knew there would be plenty of time afterwards to eat. She walked to Town Hall station and struggled with the steep stairs down to the North Shore Line platform. It was only a few minutes until the next train to Chatswood was due to arrive.
Rimis and Brennan were about to take the stairs down to the canteen when Jenny Choi came up behind them.
‘Boss.’
Rimis turned around. ‘What is it?’
‘We have a development.’
‘Don’t talk in riddles, Choi.’
‘Calida Winfred is downstairs in interview room two. She wants to speak to you. Says she’s come to confess to the murders of her sister and Paloma Browne.’
‘Christ. You better bring her up to my office. Is she on her own?’
‘Yeah.’
Calida walked into Rimis’s office with Choi at her side. Brennan and Rimis got to their feet.
‘What’s all this about a confession, Cal? Come in and sit down.’ Rimis was surprised to see her
wearing one of her sister’s kaftans. The colour suited her, but it was two sizes too large for her small frame.
‘Has anyone offered you something to drink?’ Brennan asked.
‘No, they haven’t dear, but I don’t want anything.’
Rimis pulled a chair out and Calida sat down.
‘It’s all my fault, Inspector.’ Her hands were trembling. ‘Why didn’t I just open my stupid mouth and tell her? If I had, she would still be alive, and so would that poor girl. If I had come to you after the fire and not run off with my tail between my legs, Dorin Chisca would be behind bars now and none of this would have happened.’
‘Hold on, Cal. What’s this all about?’
Calida’s face crumpled. The full force of her grief filled the room. ‘By remaining silent I might as well have killed them both with my own two hands.’
Rimis was relieved. He realised what she was telling him. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘None of this is your fault.’ He handed her a clean handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Take your time and, when you’re ready, you can tell me everything.’
‘It all started with that awful man,’ she said as she dabbed at her eyes. Rimis grabbed a chair and sat down next to her.
‘I wasn’t completely honest with you when you showed me the photos. One of the men was Dorin Chisca, the other was Nicolae Vladu, his assistant. I met Dorin about twelve months ago. He came into the gallery and we struck up a conversation. We talked about the Heidelberg School and I told him I was an artist and painted in their style. At the time, the Gallery was struggling. I was trying to make ends meet.’
‘Go on.’
‘Dorin is a charming, good-looking man. I can’t tell you how many years it had been since a man paid me as much attention as he did that day. We talked for some time and over lunch he told me he wanted to get into the decorative art business. He said there was a market for innuendos of Heidelberg and contemporary Australian artists among investors and collectors. I couldn’t see any harm in it and he assured me he would be only selling the art to friends and business acquaintances. There was never any hint of passing them off as originals.’
‘So you went ahead with it.’
‘Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?’ She wiped her nose on Rimis’s handkerchief. ‘I would have been mad not to. Dorin paid me well and he made me feel as if I was painting to please him. I decided to keep what I was doing from Freddie, not because I thought there was anything wrong with it, but because of the money. I loved my sister dearly Inspector, but she was an extravagant type of person. She was drawn to the dollar.’
‘Did Freddie know what was going on between you and Chisca?’
‘No, not as far as I know. He collected the paintings from the gallery and paid me in cash on Freddie’s day off. One day, a painting was left behind. I ran out onto the street to flag him down, but I was too late – he was already pulling away, but I saw the name on the side of the van. Chisca Plumbing Supplies. I found the address in the phone directory and drove to his warehouse. I was surprised by how little stock there was; only a few aisles of toilets, wash basins. You know, the usual plumbing fittings. It was only afterwards I realised what was really going on.’
‘And what was going on?’ Rimis asked.
She leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Drugs, Inspector. Drugs.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rimis marched into the Major Incident Room. ‘I want everyone in here for a briefing in five minutes, and I mean five minutes.’ He stepped out of the way of two uniformed officers carrying dusty archive boxes into the room, then walked back down the corridor to his office.
Brennan got up from her desk and took the stairs down to the canteen to tell Jenny and Matt to get back upstairs. The boss was on a rampage.
Less than five minutes later, Rimis was back in the Incident Room. He looked at the uniformed officers and the detectives who had been assigned to the Winfred and Browne cases. The Super had managed to borrow four DCs from Gladesville LAC, but it wasn’t a big team, nowhere big enough for the investigation into two homicides everyone knew were linked. Serious faces looked back at him. A few of the officers were drinking coffee from take-away cups; others had a look about them that said they’d seen and heard it all before.
‘Alright boys and girls, listen up,’ Rimis said. ‘I’ll dispense with the pleasantries and get right to it. Freddie Winfred’s PM results are in.’ He passed copies of the report to Matt Chapman and he handed them out. ‘The report confirms it: blunt force trauma. She was still alive when her head hit the toilet bowl in Chisca’s warehouse. She may have lost consciousness soon afterwards. After the toilet bowl was filled with water from a bucket, a towel was lodged in the neck of the bowl and her head was rammed into it. Whoever did this to her, was strong enough to hold her down until she drowned. There’s a whole lot of anger and rage here. We’ve got blood samples from the scene, but there are no matching results so far.’
‘What about Freddie’s apartment, Boss?’ Rawlings asked.
‘Forensics didn’t find anything significant, just a few finger prints which we’re in the process of eliminating.’ Rimis looked at Brennan standing at the back of the room.
‘We’ve ruled Dorin Chisca out. He’s got an alibi for the time of both murders. Both as tight as a duck’s proverbial. I’ve got a gut feeling Taggart’s involved somehow, so I’ve decided to re-visit the deaths of Nora Taggart and Edi and Rhoda Blake. Choi, I want you on this. Come and see me in my office after we’ve finished here.’ Choi nodded and scribbled in her notebook.
‘In case some of you haven’t done your homework, neither Edi, Rhoda Blake or Nora Taggart’s deaths were considered suspicious; natural causes in the case of Nora, accidental with the Blakes. Worth noting, though, all three women had two things in common; their association with Kevin Taggart and the day of the week they died. Sunday. As most of you are aware, I’ve had my suspicions about Taggart’s involvement in the Blake sisters’ deaths.
‘Brennan tells me Taggart had an unhealthy fascination for Freddie Winfred, so if she stuffed up or did something to disappoint him, he may have retaliated. At least it won’t hurt to start with him, ask him a few questions.’ Rimis looked out at the sea of faces and cleared his throat.
‘Folks, Taggart’s life story isn’t one you want to be reading to your kiddies at bedtime. His father died in a car accident on Taggart’s fifth birthday. The mother blamed him. Worth noting, Nora Taggart was never in the running for Australian Mum of the Year. She was a neurotic alcoholic who seemed to enjoy punishing and humiliating Kevin whenever he displeased her. This is the only useful link we have to Freddie’s death. If I’m right about Taggart, he committed these murders on a Sunday based on his childhood experiences.’
‘Do we know what day Paloma was murdered boss?’ Choi asked.
‘Friday, so the pattern doesn’t fit. I don’t believe he had anything to do with her death. Drugs and young girls aren’t Taggart’s thing.’
‘Do we know where Taggart is now?’ Rawlings asked.
‘Brennan tells me he’s gone to ground. It’s important we find him before he does any more damage. Don’t be fooled by this guy, he’s a creepy little bastard. Just because he looks ordinary, don’t underestimate him. Chapman, I want an APB out on him. I want every point of departure alerted: trains, airports, buses, and highway patrols. Brennan, I want you and Rawlings to go around to his apartment, check with his neighbours again to see if they’ve seen him. Anybody have anything to add?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was a knock at the door. Morrissey slouched into Rimis’s office and took a seat across from him. ‘Heard about Chisca. Good result.’
‘Yeah.’ Rimis looked up from his crossword puzzle. ‘He’s been charged with supply and dealing. He’s in remand waiting bail application.’
‘Was he importing?’
‘No, strictly wholesale. Even so, he’s looking at a hefty sentence and it doesn’t look like he�
��ll be visiting his folks back home any time soon. He had a network of buyers around the country and a system of codes. Depending on what artist you bought, you got amphetamines, cannabis, or cocaine.’ Rimis drained his coffee cup. ‘He was clever, I’ll give him that. When the Drug Squad removed the frames from the paintings in his warehouse storeroom, they found heroin with a street value of around two hundred and eighty grand. They also found cash in his apartment, along with some jewellery.’
‘Selling up before heading back home,’ Morrissey said. ‘So what’s happening with the Paloma Browne case?’ He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs.
‘Still ours, but not much to go on. Chisca’s got an alibi for the night she was murdered; he was at a trivia night, at least twenty people at the Great Northern Hotel can vouch for him.’
‘What about Vladu?’ Morrissey asked.
‘Gone back to the motherland, skipped before we had a chance to ask him any questions. He has disappeared for now, but he’ll turn up. Chisca’s parents have moved from their run-down flat in a tower block in Pitesti to a modern nursing home in Constanta. I’ve got a feeling Vladu was acting on instructions. He murders Paloma, skips the country, takes care of Chisca’s parents for him, and holds onto what’s left of the money.’
Rimis’s mobile phone rang. He checked the caller ID. He decided not to answer it. ‘Thought you’d want to know, I had a visit from Calida Winfred. She blames herself for what happened to Freddie and Paloma.’
Morrissey looked surprised. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
‘Put them away, Col.’
Morrissey shrugged and returned the cigarettes and lighter to his pocket.
‘She was involved with Chisca from the start. When she found out he was using her innuendos to traffic drugs, she threatened him with going to the police. Before she had a chance to do or say anything, he set fire to her house. It did the trick, scared her off and she kept her mouth shut.’
