Monty frowned ‘The power station?’
‘Dad has a key. The guy’s in demolition or something and was interested in looking around the building. Dad was hoping to get the council to contract Dixon into knocking it down once all the red tape has been cut through. He hates—hated—that power station.’
‘Can you tell me anything else about this Frank Dixon?’
Justin sniffed. ‘Dad used to act kind of funny when he came over, almost like he was scared of him. He had an old bomb of a car and sometimes Dad let him borrow his. Sometimes I had to let him use my van.’
‘When did you see him last?’
Justin was interrupted by De Vakey’s reappearance. ‘Phone call for you, Stevie’s mother.’ De Vakey handed Monty the phone and took his place on the sofa next to Justin. Monty stepped into the hallway.
‘Monty, is that you? You haven’t been answering your phone. Stevie’s was on the kitchen table and I got De Vakey’s number from it. I was hoping you’d be together.’ Dot spoke rapid fire, as if wanting to get the explanation over and done with.
‘Slow down, Dot. What’s the matter? Where’s Stevie?’
‘That’s the problem, I don’t know. I was asleep, she must have come home then gone out again, but she left her bag and phone behind. Her phone was switched off and the kitchen phone was off the hook. Tye came around earlier when she was out and said he’d return tomorrow. That’s all I remember. He’s trying to get custody of Izzy. Stevie didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to worry.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Monty’s hand flew to his forehead. ‘Listen Dot, everything’s going to be okay.’ He pressed the phone so tight to his ear it hurt. ‘You stay with Izzy. I’ll send an officer to keep you company. I think I know where Stevie is and I’ll bring her back home.’
‘You sound awfully worried, Monty. Are you sure everything’s all right?’
‘Of course it is, but look, I’ve got to go.’
He punched the off button and rang Wayne, explained the situation and requested a team be sent to Baggly’s and another to the power station.
After finishing with Wayne, he instructed De Vakey and Justin to stay in the house and wait for the police. The whisky bottle was empty and they’d started on the gin. De Vakey was lying sprawled across the sofa, in no better shape than Justin. Monty could only hope they’d both be coherent when the police arrived.
25
The word psychopath was once widely used, but these days sociopath is the preferred term. All serial killers are sociopaths, but not all sociopaths are serial killers or murderers. Their common ground is a complete lack of empathy for their victims. One needs only to look at some of the world’s top businessmen to see how this is true.
James L De Vakey, (PUV Press, Sydney, 2006). ‘One man’s best-selling account of the hunt for Australia’s most notorious multiple murderer.’
Stevie was staring at a map of the old British Empire, or so she thought as she willed her eyes to focus on the shapes in front of her. But when the fog of unconsciousness began to lift and the map of the world cleared, she found herself staring at a red brick and plaster wall, lying on her side on a concrete floor with her hands and feet bound with duct tape.
Oh God, let this be a nightmare. But nightmares took place in the dark and she was surrounded by light, light so bright it made the glare of the chipped plaster wall hurt her eyes. She became aware of loud male voices talking above the chesty vibrations of a generator, felt the bite of carbon fumes in her lungs. Rolling onto her other side to find the source, she found her view of the room partially blocked by a twisted hunk of metal. Through the gaps she could see the solid legs of a wooden table and three pairs of shuffling feet.
‘I can’t believe you got away with this, you’re a fucking genius!’ The voice was familiar and deep, one of the creeps who’d tossed Monty’s flat—the older one, Keyes was it?
‘Told you you could count on me, didn’t I?’
Her flesh crawled at the sound of the second man’s voice. Smooth and controlled to a casual listener, only she could tell by the slight inflection how close Tye was to snapping.
‘Beauty, let’s have a look.’ The third voice belonged to Thrummel, the younger partner. What the hell was going on? Some kind of racket, no doubt, but how she’d ended up stuck in the middle of it she had no idea. For a moment, curiosity overcame her fear. She managed to twist herself up into a sitting position so she could peer through a higher gap.
She watched, hardly daring to breathe, and saw Thrummel dig his hands into a plastic holdall on the table, and lift them, letting the contents fall through his fingers. The generator muted the clunking of the nuggets but the light spearing from the cascading gold was unmistakable and flashed rapaciously in the eyes of all three men.
‘I’ve never seen so much gold,’ Thrummel said in awe.
‘It’s yours. Keep your mouths shut and there’ll be more in another couple of months.’
‘But how—’ Thrummel began.
Keyes cut him off, ‘Shut it, Thrummel. We don’t want to know, okay?’ Then he turned to Tye. ‘No more killings, there’s been enough killings. I hope you’ve put that Hooper chick out of your mind now, you were pushing the envelope there.’
Stevie drew a silent breath. No, this couldn’t be. Tye wasn’t behind the killings, he had an alibi, she was hearing this wrong. Tye was a lot of things, gold thief, obviously, but not a murderer. She screwed up her eyes, attempting to block the thought: the father of my child is not a murderer.
Tye smiled. ‘Laid to rest, mate. Just a temporary moment of insanity.’
‘Yeah well, it’s too bad those others had to get knocked off before you came to your senses.’
‘The Birkby woman had to be silenced, you know that, she was about to pull the carpet right from under us,’ Tye said. ‘Hell, you bitched enough about the interrogation she put you through, the non stop hassling, the phone calls day and night.’
‘Yeah, but that other one, what was that about? She was just an innocent girl. I don’t mind doing your dirty work, that’s the deal, but I draw the line at unnecessary killing.’
‘Okay, mate, what’s done is done,’ Thrummel said. ‘Let’s just take the gold, see the fence and get what’s coming to us.’
The fearful realisation dawned on Stevie that they were leaving, that she would soon be alone with Tye. She heard the chalky sound of feet shuffling on a concrete floor as the men repacked the bag, a cough, the splat of a spit gob when they’d finished. She tried to cry out to them, but the generator swallowed the feeble sounds she managed to push through the duct tape. Please don’t go, please, she silently pleaded. With at least one unwilling participant in the room there was still a glimmer of hope she would hang onto her life. Through eyes stinging with tears she saw Tye lead the two men to the heavy wooden door and unlock it for them.
‘Oh, one more thing.’ Thrummel put his hand out to Tye. ‘You haven’t forgotten have you?’
‘The perks of the job? No worries, mate, of course not.’ Tye reached into his pocket and handed Thrummel a small silver packet.
‘Jesus Christ, Tye,’ Keyes complained. ‘He’s strung like piano wire as it is, he doesn’t need any more of the stuff.’
‘Just adds to the thrill factor, eh Thrummel?’ Tye nudged a grinning Thrummel in the ribs.
Keyes muttered something Stevie couldn’t hear. Tye called him an old woman and laughed.
He was laughing when he locked the door behind them, still laughing when he grabbed her by the ankles and slid her from behind the hunk of machinery. She closed her eyes and tried to will her breathing to calm down.
‘I know you’re awake, you’re shaking.’ He gave an amused snort. ‘You playing possum on me, Stevie?’
Rough hands flipped her onto her back and pulled her into a sitting position against the wall. The tape was ripped from her face with the sting of an exfoliation she didn’t need. He clasped her shoulders and peered intently into her face
for a moment.
And then he began to hum.
That song again.
He was mad, she thought, he had to be: mad or frighteningly sane.
He paused. ‘Our song, remember? Who’d have believed that rough, tough, Stevie Hooper was such an incurable romantic?’ The hum turned into words. He placed his mouth to her ear. ‘You must remember this ...’ The warmth of his breath on her skin had once caused tingles of desire. Now all she could feel was rippling shivers of fear. He pinched her earlobe between his teeth.
She gasped.
He pulled back to assess her reaction. Determined not to give him one, she tried to keep her face blank, though she couldn’t help the skittering of her eyes as she searched for a way of escape.
He grabbed her face in one hand and squeezed her cheeks. ‘C’mon baby, you love it rough, you know you do, tell me you love it, tell me!’
She resisted the urge to bite him on the hand. Now was not the time. She had to be patient, her life depended on it.
She pushed the words through his hands, ‘Okay, I fucking love it.’
‘Hmm...’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘You’ll be saying it for real soon. You’ll be begging for me.’ He appeared to be in deep thought. Humming softly to himself, he continued to stare unnervingly at her, his mouth curving with the play of a smile.
She took in her surroundings and tried to block out the sound of his humming, to think past her fear. She was in a cavernous, windowless room with heavy double doors in the centre of one wall. Another twisted hunk of metal, similar to the one she’d been stowed behind, grew from the floor nearby. Grainy shapes of other metal objects were lost in the shadows beyond. A theatrical spotlight, powered by a lurching generator and wired to one of the roof girders, bathed them in bright light as if they were the stars of the show. Near the generator stood a table laden with cardboard boxes and bits and pieces of hardware.
At last she managed to steady her gaze and focus on the tip of Tye’s nose. ‘Where am I?’
‘In one of the basement rooms of the old power station, one of the few that still lock—it’s virtually soundproof.’
She looked again at the hunks of machinery, realising they must be the heavy cradles on which the turbines had once rested. Two silhouettes of silver and bronze misted the floor nearby. Her throat clenched, her mouth went dry. It was a struggle to speak and when she found her voice, it was high and squeaky. ‘Is this where you killed them?’
‘Clever, eh?’
You can handle this, just keep him talking, don’t get him angry; just keep him talking.
‘Why? Why murder those women?’ she asked, unable to control the tremor in her voice.
He stretched his legs out on the floor, propped his back against the wall and spoke in a tone of restrained rationality. ‘I don’t like killing, but I don’t dislike it either. It was just something that had to be done, self-preservation if you like. You blowing the whistle on me started an investigation that would’ve unveiled a lot more than a few bribes. You got me sacked, but that was preferable to being an ex-cop spending years in the slammer.’ He continued on, matter-of-factly, ‘This is your fault, you know, all of it. If not for you, everyone would still be alive. If you hadn’t threatened me that night, none of this would have happened.’
‘You killed the prostitutes?’
‘With a little help from Keyes and Thrummel behind the scenes. They had as much to lose as me. We were in business together, setting up our own stable. Once you started things rolling it became obvious that the whores were going to grass us up, they had to be silenced.’
‘And you drew the short straw, you did the silencing?’
‘They’re more squeamish than me, it took me a while to persuade them that knocking the girls off was the only alternative.’
‘So you did the dirty work and carried the can, and they went on working.’
Tye laughed. ‘Not quite true, but I can see what you’re getting at. You want me to get all hot and bothered over them. You want me to smack myself on the head and say to myself, “Duh, Tye, she’s right, it’s the boys I should be blaming, not poor little innocent Stevie.” Good try.’ He leaned forward, chucked her under the chin and winked. ‘It was all worked out very amicably. I went from one business to another and in retrospect this one is working out a lot better than the first ever could. Keyes and Thrummel owe me big time, they’re only too happy to help me out.’
‘Some kind of gold scam, you’re into gold.’
‘You’d be amazed at how lax security is in the small mines. It doesn’t take long to remove a sizeable amount when you have an understanding supervisor.’ Tye rubbed his chin, musing. ‘Not sure how long he’ll last, but; the mine’s a dangerous place to work. He might find himself knocked on the head by a falling beam if he doesn’t pull himself together. Got in quite a panic after your lot questioned him.‘
‘He’s the one who gave you an alibi. Said you were working at the time of the Royce murder.’
‘Sure. He wouldn’t want the world to know I was in Perth fencing our mutual takings, would he?’ He paused and looked pensive. ‘Maybe I should be grateful to you for blowing the whistle on me after all. I always knew you’d make me my fortune one way or another.’
Stevie didn’t know what to say next and that proved to be a mistake. The short silence gave him time to brood.
He grabbed her face again and his voice rose. ‘But have you any idea what it’s been like for me over the past few years, being sacked, seeing the one who shafted me doing the job I loved, rising meteorically up through the ranks? Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?’
The pressure on her face increased. Gripped with panic, she tugged and twisted at the duct tape bindings. He let go of her face and clamped his hands around her shoulders, pinned her arms and buried his face into her neck, alternately sucking and nipping at her skin. She froze when she realised the effect her exertions were having on him and shrank as far back as the wall would allow. The skin of her neck continued to burn, long after he pulled away.
‘You and I have lots of catching up to do,’ he said, breathing heavily.
She flopped back against the wall, relieved to see his anger tempered again. ‘Tell me more about the murdered prostitutes.’ She had to keep the conversation away from herself.
‘I made the slappers look like the work of a sexual pervert. I even took “trophies”, like the book says, though I chucked the hair and jewellery into the river. It was touch and go for a while, my hair on that first one could have been my downfall. Just goes to show it’s not what you know. Baggly cleared that little glitch up for me and after that I used the wetsuit. The paint’s an added security, the chemical properties in it destroy just about anything else I might’ve left behind, skin cells, etcetera. I thought the commissioner’s hair on Royce’s body was a good touch too, don’t you? Keyes stole his hairbrush for me—my old partnership comes in very handy when I need things done from the inside. I’d’ve liked to have seen Baggly’s reaction to that little trick, I never told him about that, wanted to keep him on the edge of his seat, the cowardly perverted creep. He knew we had to cover up the KP murders, but he had no idea what else I was up to.’
‘So you’ve not only got Keyes and Thrummel in your pocket, you’ve got Baggly too. Clever,’ Stevie said.
Tye smiled. ‘Yeah. Then after years of thinking about you and the mess you’d got me into, I decided it was time for the so-called serial killer to make a return. There’ll be no one else after you, Stevie. What’s really funny is how easily you were all fooled, even the great De Vakey, and it was his books that gave me the idea in the first place.’
‘But why kill Royce, why Birkby?’
Stevie wondered if what she saw was a genuine shadow of regret passing over his face or just pretence. He shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to kill Linda, she was just a kid. I made sure it was quick and she didn’t suffer. I borrowed Baggly’s car, put on one of my old uniforms. Said her dad had taken
a turn for the worse; that I’d been asked to pick her up and take her to the hospital to see him. She was quite a talker when she wasn’t scared shitless, her uncle was a retired cop y’know, she was very proud of him. We’d got to know each other quite well. I visited her in the cafe whenever I could, always made sure she served me. She was flattered. I flirted with her, she was an easy target: flirtatious, naive and trusting. I needed to kill her you see, to disguise the identity of my true target.’ He paused and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘You.’
The pounding of her heart seemed to come to an abrupt halt. She felt light-headed, as if her blood had already started to pool at the lowest point of gravity. She had to keep him talking. ‘Easeful Death. I never knew you were into poetry.’
‘Came across it in a poetry book when I was at school and always remembered it. Believe it or not, I hate to see things suffer, hated what your dad went through.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Short and sharp, that’s what death should be. The girls were drugged up to their eyeballs, never knew what was going on. I did them a favour, I mean, who knows how they would’ve died when their time came.’ He paused. ‘See, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Stevie, I’m a deep thinker, I’m a sensitive kinda guy. You should have given me more of a chance.’
For a moment anger overcame the fear. ‘You knocked me around, you raped me for God’s sake! What was I supposed to do?’
‘Mitigating circumstances, you were threatening me, you had to be taught a lesson. But it didn’t do much good, did it? You still didn’t learn; you still dobbed me in.’ He brushed her face with fingers rough as hessian. ‘But we had some good times didn’t we, babe?’
‘Yeah, good times till you realised you couldn’t get hold of my house, till you started your corruption racket in Vice, till you heard about my pending promotion, wanted those kinky photographic sessions—what was that all about? An attempt to get some kind of power over me?’
SH01 - An Easeful Death Page 24
