SH01 - An Easeful Death

by Felicity Young

  Angus and Stevie had been the principal detectives interviewing the friends and family. In the case of such a low-risk victim, family and close friends were always the first suspects. In this case, though, they’d felt the immediate family could be eliminated. Her twelve-year-old brother and her mother could not be considered, and her father, with his chronic heart problem, had been assessed as physically incapable of the murder.

  Angus continued, ‘She wasn’t drunk, it’s not like she was desperate for a lift, the weather was fine and she had the bus money. Her mother said there was no way she would have accepted a lift from a stranger.’

  ‘Perhaps she was pulled into a car. Someone could have stopped to ask her directions then grabbed her. God knows it’s been done countless times before,’ Barry said.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case,’ Monty replied, ‘maybe someone saw some kind of a struggle.’

  Stevie’s grip tightened on her pen.

  She’d tried to run, but one of her heels had caught in the concrete slabs and she’d slammed head first onto the path. He was on her in an instant, ripping and tearing at her clothes.

  She could see the scene as clearly in her mind’s eye as if she were watching it on TV. She screwed her eyes tight for a moment and willed herself to concentrate on Monty’s voice.

  ‘Maybe the re-enactment will jog a memory. Meanwhile, Angus, I want you to canvass the taxi companies. Get some uniform help and those seconded dees from Stirling. I want to know the whereabouts of every single cab between nine and eleven that Sunday night.’

  Angus’s face fell. ‘That could take weeks.’

  ‘Which we don’t have. So make it days, preferably hours. So long as each cab has kept their required log, it’ll just be a case of slogging through each one.’

  ‘And speaking of slogging, Mont, I think I’ve been lucky with the trace on the bronze paint.’ Wayne leaned back in his chair, ‘Listen and weep, Angus, no more of the hard grind for me. A call came in just after the press conference last night. The owner of a hobby shop in Kensington said that his employee, a Mr Craig Thompson, mentioned selling a dozen cans of bronze fabric paint to a man last week. Not many people buy that much paint and it got him wondering.’

  ‘Kensington, isn’t that where the vic came from?’ Barry’s question was more of a statement and no one answered him.

  ‘What else did he say? Did you get a description of the man?’ Monty asked.

  ‘I thought this was too important for the phone,’ Wayne replied. ‘I’ve made an appointment to see Thompson early this afternoon.’

  ‘Good, keep me up to date.’

  ‘Do we know if Linda had a boyfriend?’ Barry asked Stevie.

  ‘Yes, about the same age as she was. According to the mother he’s been working on a farm in Meckering. They were saving up for a skiing holiday. He was in Meckering at the time of the murder. The farm manager vouched for him.’

  ‘Did she work?’ Wayne asked her.

  ‘Only part time—as a waitress at the Blue Fish, that trendy restaurant by the beach in Cottesloe. She was waiting for her big break into the modelling world. I’ve got people going through the staff statements now. I had them ask the usual questions: had she complained about any of the customers giving her a hard time, anyone following her or any of the other girls; had her demeanour changed over the days leading to the murder.’

  ‘And?’ Wayne queried.

  Stevie looked down at her notebook. ‘One of the waitresses said a guy had eaten there several times the previous week and made sure he was served by her each time. They seemed to talk quite a bit. The waitress said Linda was flattered, told her it was nice to have a harmless flirt with an older guy, said they were just having a bit of fun.’

  Wayne shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘A harmless flirt,’ he said as if to himself. ‘Description?’

  ‘Pretty vague. Late thirties, early forties, tall and that’s about it. I told the girl to ring me if she sees him again.’

  ‘We’re still trying to find out who this guy is,’ said Angus, ‘but on the whole, Mont, everything backs up what her parents and friends say. She was a popular girl with no apparent worries.’

  ‘And now she’s dead.’ Barry smoothed his palm across his shaved head and worried at one of his Mickey Mouse ears. ‘Why’s it always the nice girls?’ He answered his own question with a shrug. ‘Nice girls are more trusting, maybe?’

  Stevie whipped up her head and balled her fists. ‘Bullshit, stop romanticising all this. Nice, nasty, it makes no difference to the killer. She didn’t ask for this, she just happened to fit his mould. The KP murder victims were prostitutes for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sure there are nice prostitutes too, Stevie,’ Barry said, unnerved by her sudden ferocity.

  Monty held up his hands like a referee. ‘Stop the guesswork, people. Let’s leave the psychological stuff to the profiler and concentrate on what little physical evidence we have.’ He shot Stevie and Barry a look of warning before shuffling through his sheaves of papers and extracting one.

  Stevie forced herself to unclench her fists.

  ‘I met up with the pathologist at the lab yesterday arvo,’ Monty said, looking over his reading glasses. ‘They found evidence of chloroform and Rohypnol in her system. Her lips were swollen and slightly blistered, which indicates that some kind of a chloroform-soaked rag or sponge was placed over her nose and mouth to knock her out. When she came to she was forced to drink a cocktail of roofies and orange juice to put her out again more heavily.’ He paused. ‘The only bright side to all this is that she would have been barely aware of what was going on.’

  ‘I’ll go talk to Robbery,’ Barry said, ‘get a list of recent pharmacy break-ins, enquire about missing chloroform.’

  ‘Didn’t Gull’s pharmacy in Hay Street get broken into recently?’ Wayne asked.

  Barry nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll follow through.’

  ‘The roofies will be almost impossible to trace. They’re as easy to get as ecstasy in the clubs at the moment—date rape’s almost endemic these days,’ Wayne said.

  ‘And chloroform is fairly available if you know where to look. Not just pharmacies stock it—vets, science labs and the like,’ Barry added.

  ‘Was she raped?’ asked Wayne.

  Monty shook his head.

  Stevie whispered a silent prayer of thanks.

  ‘Not even an object rape?’ Barry sounded surprised.

  ‘No, nothing inserted and no seminal fluid on or around her. But if you ask me, the crime still has sexual overtones: stripped naked, the shaving, the spraying with the bronze paint, the roofies. I’m hoping our profiler will shed some light upon this strange set of contradictions.’ Monty leaned back in his chair, clearly relieved at their newly acquired expert help.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Wayne said. ‘The paint would be a perfect medium to collect fibres, hairs and other traces. Don’t tell me they haven’t found anything?’

  ‘Apparently there was some contamination with dust, but they’ve been having trouble separating it from the paint to get an idea of its origins. They seem to think the chemicals in the paint would destroy most trace evidence anyway.’ Monty replied. ‘They spent hours removing the paint and found nothing. They think he shaved himself too, or else...’ he tapped a tattoo on the tabletop with his pen, flicking his tongue against his lower lip as he re-read the lab notes in front of him.

  Wayne said, ‘C’mon Mont, spill it. The suspense is killing us.’

  ‘Minute traces of neoprene were found under the victim’s fingernails.’ Monty read the pertinent part of the lab report aloud to his team.

  ‘Neoprene?’ Barry queried.

  Monty shifted his gaze to Stevie. She’d have the answer to that.

  ‘Neoprene as in wetsuit material?’ she asked him.

  Monty dashed her a smile.

  ‘So, if he’d covered her in paint while in a wetsuit, he’d be doubly certain not to leave any part of him
self behind. He could have been wearing one of those diver’s hoods too,’ she added.

  ‘And I thought we were going to be looking for a hairless man.’ Barry sounded disappointed.

  ‘An old wetty splattered with bronze paint would be a lot more incriminating than a hairless body,’ Angus said.

  Nods all round as this was digested.

  Stevie said, ‘She was supposed to be drugged, but the evidence of neoprene under her fingernails would suggest a struggle.’

  Monty shrugged. ‘Maybe she woke up in the middle of the painting?’

  Something inside her tightened again. Keep your distance from the victim, she said to herself, don’t personalise this.

  ‘There’s something else, and it’s a lot more concrete than the wetsuit possibility,’ Monty continued. ‘A single grey hair was found on her left buttock.’

  Murmurs of excitement rippled through the group gathered around.

  ‘Was there a clean skin tag? Has it been matched?’ Stevie asked.

  ‘Yes, but the lab hasn’t finished running through the DNA comparisons. There’s nothing in the standard database so I’ve asked them to widen the search. I’m expecting a call any minute now.’

  ‘All that painting must have caused one hell of a mess. It must have been done in a very secluded spot, a garage, warehouse...’ Stevie turned to Wayne. ‘What about the photographer’s place?’

  ‘I supervised the search myself. Nothing.’

  ‘Or,’ Angus said, ‘one of those self-lock storage sheds perhaps.’ He sighed and rubbed his thin face. ‘We’d get a lot further ahead with this if we could find the location.’

  Monty gestured to Wayne. ‘Well, maybe Wayne’s hobby shop employee will point us in the right direction.’ He returned to his notes. ‘The lab guy said she was covered in three coats of paint, and around the throat area there were four. Her actual cause of death was strangulation. They reckon the hand pressure on the throat might have smudged the drying paint so he applied another coat to tidy the area up.’

  Barry said, ‘But he must have left something else of himself behind other than that single hair. When he shifted her he wouldn’t have been wearing the wetsuit, surely.’

  Angus shrugged. ‘Maybe he was? It was dark. A dark wetsuit would be good camouflage.’

  Everyone was thinking about this when Angus added, ‘I’ve got something on the slogan, too.’ He was referring to the words ‘Easeful Death’ printed down the victim’s right thigh, a detail they’d been able to keep from the press. It gave them leverage should someone confess, or a comparison should they have a copycat.

  ‘I think it’s an allusion to Keats, part of a line from his poem, “Ode to a Nightingale”. I mean it’s not the kind of phrase that gets tossed around on a regular basis; I reckon it has to be from that poem. The whole line reads, Half in love with easeful Death. I should have twigged it straightaway. Keats is one of my favourite poets.’

  Barry slapped his head with his hand. ‘Damn. I must have slept through all those poetry appreciation classes at the academy.’

  Angus tossed down his pen and let out a long-suffering sigh.

  ‘Okay, so what the hell’s it supposed to mean?’ Barry persisted.

  Angus answered, patient as ever, ‘Keats was dying from consumption. He was musing that an easeful death might be preferable to what he was going through.’

  ‘There was nothing easeful about what Linda Royce went through,’ Wayne said quietly, his gaze fixed on the notes in front of him.

  Barry shrugged. ‘Yeah, but maybe it could’ve been even worse.’

  Monty must have sensed Stevie’s suppressed shiver. He said, ‘Okay, that’s enough. For now let’s just concentrate on the message itself. Evenly spaced capitals in black marker pen, written after the paint had dried. I talked to the experts in Documents about the writing. Unlike ordinary writing, carefully hand-printed capitals are very hard to match to a particular individual, so the writing itself is a dead end.’

  ‘But why kill her after the paint and not before?’ Barry asked.

  Stevie looked at Monty. ‘So he could pose her? Rigor mortis can start as early as two hours after death.’

  Monty nodded. ‘That’s what the lab boys think, that he wanted to pose her before rigor set in. A lot of care was taken over the paint; it would’ve taken a while. Killing her after the paint job would have given him a bit more time to transport her, put the props in and pose her before she stiffened up. They surmise that he came back later and took the props away when she’d stiffened into the required position. There was a slight indentation on each forearm containing minute splinters of wood. They think she was propped up with wooden dowels.’

  A sombre silence followed this macabre theory.

  Barry shook his head. ‘Boy, are we dealing with one sick individual here. Have we any idea what he used to transport the body?’

  ‘A van would make sense; more room than a car,’ Wayne suggested.

  ‘Whatever he used, there has to be some kind of paint evidence left behind. Even dry paint will leave traces,’ Angus mused.

  ‘We’re jumping the gun here, folks,’ Monty said. ‘We haven’t even found the vehicle yet. For the moment everything rests on Wayne’s hobby shop man.’

  Wayne pushed his chair back and climbed to his feet. ‘If that’s it, Mont, I’d like to get cracking now.’

  Monty stood and began to scoop up his mess of papers. ‘All of you have plenty to keep you busy. Let me know any developments. I’ll pass on the news of the hair when I hear back from the lab.’ He turned to Stevie who was gathering her own gear together.

  ‘Have you heard from De Vakey yet?’ he asked her.

  She looked at her oversized watch, the only jewellery she wore. ‘Yeah, I suppose it’s time I picked him up and took him to the scene,’ she said without enthusiasm. The kids would soon be filing into the assembly hall, Izzy and the other little ones waiting behind the curtains, ready to go on stage. She wondered if Dot had scored a seat in the front row. The last time Izzy had waved at her in the middle of the performance and made the audience laugh.

  ‘Before you go, I want a word,’ Monty said.

  Stevie followed him into his office and closed the door. He didn’t mince his words. ‘Stevie, what’s got into you lately? You’ve been looking like a fart that can’t get out. Barry was only thinking aloud; it’s called brainstorming, we do it all the time. You didn’t need to snap his head off like that.’

  ‘That was the last straw, he asked for it, you know he did.’

  Monty said nothing but rubbed his face as if to say warring detectives were the last thing he needed right now.

  She wanted to tell him that Tye was back in town, that he was seeking custody of Izzy, that the case was affecting her personally, more than any other she’d been involved with. He was her best mate; she should be able to tell him. But he was also her boss and he would take her off the case if he knew. This was another thing he didn’t need to hear right now.

  Instead she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mont, I’m just tired,’

  He gave her a sympathetic look. ‘It’s an ugly case.’

  She prickled, realising how close she’d come to giving herself away. ‘I don’t think my sensibilities are affected any more than anyone else’s; I’m sure the guys are just as disturbed by this as I am.’

  ‘Yes they are, but I don’t want the battle of the sexes brought into this, okay?’ His face softened. ‘Look, I know it’s been a hard grind, but it’s over now, Stevie, you’ve arrived. Just try and loosen up and cut the guys some slack.’

  She nodded and remained silent. Anything more from her and he was likely to launch into one of his every-member-of-his-team-was-chosen-on-merit speeches.

  ‘I want you to knock off early today. Be home for Izzy when she comes in from kindy.’

  She was about to object, but he held up a hand before she could start.

  ‘No, this isn’t preferential treatment. I’ll bring over Chinese t
onight. You can fill me in on De Vakey’s progress and I’ll tell you how the rest of us have gone. I’ll just bring the work to you instead of you staying at Central for it—how does that sound?’

  She felt herself relax. ‘Nothing too spicy.’

  He grinned back at her, shaking his head. Just then, the phone rang. He mouthed a silent stream of curses as he listened to the voice on the other end.

  5

  An individual from a neglected, deprived or abused background may find comfort in the newly dead; the dead are no threat, they are his to control.

  De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

  Monty usually enjoyed passing the time with the super’s attractive secretary, but this morning not even Christine’s subtle flirtation could get his mind off what he was going to have to tell his superior.

  ‘Coffee, Monty?’ she asked in a last-ditch effort at amicability.

  ‘No thank you,’ he said and began to riffle through one of the police union mags from the coffee table in an effort to avoid any more of the one-sided conversation.

  The sound of muffled voices had been filtering through the closed office door during Monty’s long wait. Now a sudden crescendo got the better of his curiosity. He caught Christine’s eye and jabbed his thumb at the closed door. ‘Who’s the hapless victim?’

  She laughed. ‘I think the superintendent might be the victim this time. It’s Justin.’

  Monty had always got on well with Baggly’s son. The kid was studying criminal justice in the hope that it would give him an edge when applying to the increasingly competitive police academy. Monty had no doubt he’d make the grades academically, but could only hope that with time and maybe some encouragement, he’d lose some of his reserve. There was no such thing as a shy cop. As things were, he had trouble imagining how a distraught victim of crime would glean any kind of reassurance from the young man he knew, with his lonely eyes and shuffling feet.

  Baggly’s door burst open and Monty found himself face to face with the subject of his musings. Justin did a double take when he saw Monty and flushed.