by Tara Moss
‘I think Kelley wants to see you off…your last day and all.’ Detective Inspector Roderick Kelley. ‘You’re his golden boy.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
It was partially true, though. Kelley had protected Andy as best he could when things had got bad. When Andy solved the major Stiletto Murder case, it had vindicated Kelley’s position; but Andy had let him down on occasion too. If he was a golden boy, it was tarnished gold.
The coffees arrived and Jimmy dumped three packets of sugar into his cup. ‘Sometimes I wish I was going with you. Things are starting to suck around here,’ he complained. ‘It won’t be the same. I can already tell.’
‘Good morning,’ Detective Inspector Roderick Kelley said, interrupting their banter before Jimmy could continue. They were both caught by surprise, and Andy wondered if Inspector Kelley had overheard Jimmy’s comments.
Jimmy stopped his babbling and wiped coffee from the corner of his mouth. ‘Hey, sir,’ he said clumsily.
‘Good morning, Inspector.’ Andy stood and shook Kelley’s hand.
‘Getting my morning coffee,’ Kelley said. ‘Say, can you drop in to my office this morning?’ he asked Andy. ‘There’re a few things I would like to discuss.’
Andy nodded.
The Detective Inspector was someone Andy admired enormously. He wasn’t one of the political paper-pushers who were so often in jobs like his these days. He was old school, the kind of cop who had actually spent his time learning on the street and not in a classroom. There was not one whiff of bullshit or political aspiration about him. And what about Andy? With all Andy’s talk about the unit, he was beginning to feel like the men he had always abhorred. He wished he could get back to doing his job instead of talking about it. But he wouldn’t have to wait much longer, which was good, because he doubted he had much more patience.
Kelley took his coffee and a muesli bar to go, and returned to headquarters across the street.
‘Golden boy,’ Jimmy griped.
Andy rolled his eyes.
Jimmy persisted. ‘You have been the golden boy since the Stiletto Murder case and you know it.’
The case had been the most high-profile of Andy’s career, and a major turning point for him both professionally and personally. The killer had cut a swathe of violence through Sydney, and had become obsessed with Andy, the profiler leading the investigation. Andy’s ex-wife had been murdered, and he’d met Makedde, a witness. Everything in his world had changed. And when he had cracked the case and found the killer, a successful career had been assured. Jimmy was right: in some ways he was Kelley’s protégé. But Andy had paid a heavy price for his success in that case.
Fifteen minutes later, Andy and Jimmy entered HQ together. Kelley approached Andy, and several of the other detectives looked up to watch the interaction, probably wishing their careers were also on Kelley’s radar.
‘My office,’ Kelley said. His invitation did not extend to Jimmy.
‘Yes, sir.’
Jimmy took a seat at his measly desk, and pretended to look through some paperwork. He was used to being excluded. Kelley and Andy walked across the floor, passing constables at their desks, many of whom looked up as they went by. Andy could feel their eyes on him.
They reached Kelley’s office.
‘Shut the door. Take a seat.’
Andy did.
Inspector Kelley remained standing, looking out through his well-earned window to a view of Hyde Park, where fairy lights decorated the trees. After dark, bats would fly out of those trees by the thousands, just some of the creatures that ventured out into the city at night.
‘I’m putting Deller on leave for a couple of weeks.’
Andy flexed his jaw. Deller would be disappointed, but he understood Kelley’s logic. ‘Will there be an investigation?’
‘Yes. Routine.’
Andy nodded. Deller would have to take trauma counselling after the incident. Andy had been there himself from time to time; he knew the concept was a good one. Police officers dealt with death and violence all the time and they needed help to relieve the stress of their jobs. But Andy was not always convinced that a psychologist was the best person to assist. Not that he would ever admit this to Mak, of course.
Inspector Kelley kept his back to Andy, his hands folded neatly in the small of his back; Andy waited until he was addressed. The inspector was always economical in both word and action. When he spoke his words had great weight, especially to Andy. Kelley wasn’t the type who wanted the air filled with nonsense talk. He wasn’t the type for any kind of nonsense at all.
Finally he turned. ‘Pleased with your new post?’ he asked, those sharp slate-grey eyes unreadable. Was he happy about Andy’s post? Unhappy? Surely his recommendation had helped Andy get it. Was there something he knew about the project that Andy didn’t? The set-up for the unit was experimental in some ways, but Kelley was one of those who had strongly supported the idea.
I’ll be more excited about it when I finally get to do something, instead of talk about it.
‘Yes,’ Andy admitted. ‘It’s been a long time coming.’ He’d spent frustrating years pushing it along with politicians who seemed to change position for or against on the whims of popular opinion.
Kelley took the comment in with a slight smile, as if he knew from experience just how slowly the wheels of progress moved with such projects. He then took a seat in his leather chair, and it creaked under his weight. He was a tall man, and fit for his age—or, indeed, any age. He was less than five years from retirement, but he was still in more formidable shape than half of the department.
‘I’ll miss it here, though, I think.’
‘Well, don’t you go missing us just yet. You don’t leave till tomorrow. You can still make yourself useful.’ Andy opened his mouth to say that he would be delighted to be made useful, but Kelley was already busy explaining what needed doing. ‘A girl was found behind a dumpster this morning in Surry Hills. She’d been there a few days. It looks like a sexual homicide. Maybe a serial. I’ll have you take a look. Talk the boys through it if you can. They could learn from you while we still have you.’
Consulting on cases was what Andy’s future held. He would no longer be part of the same team.
‘Thank you, sir. Who found her?’
If the body was a few days old—the smell would be very bad, especially in the high February summer temperatures.
‘Go with Cassimatis to check it out. Peterson’s there—he’ll have the details.’
Kelley slid a piece of paper across to him with an address on it.
‘Oh, and try to get some sleep on that plane tomorrow. You look tired.’
Andy nodded. He’d been burning the candle at both ends, and that was hardly about to stop. ‘Um, sir, will Deller be all right?’ he asked before he left. Deller was not a friend, but he was a colleague, and Andy wanted to see that Deller would not be demoted for a situation that had been beyond his control.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Kelley said. ‘You have your own problems.’
Andy and Jimmy pulled up on a side road near the mouth of a lane blocked off with crime-scene tape. Andy killed the engine, and opened the glove box. Damn bloody headaches. He popped two tablets of aspirin into his hand and swallowed them dry.
‘Okay, let’s check this out,’ he said and stepped out of their unmarked car.
The filthy back lane where all the activity was smelled terribly, not only of foul garbage, but also of death. Andy was glad he wasn’t planning on eating a big lunch. He ducked under blue-and-white chequered crime-scene tape, Jimmy at his heels. Though they’d just eaten breakfast, Jimmy was already chewing on a Mars Bar. He grumbled something about the stench.
Jimmy had worked with Andy for many years, and the two had become nearly inseparable, despite some of Jimmy’s less popular qualities. It wasn’t Jimmy’s colourful way with words—his speech peppered with Greek and the expletives he sometimes called ‘French’—that Andy d
isliked, and it wasn’t his sometimes destructive lack of ambition. It was his way with food. Surrounded by filth and the stench of decay, Jimmy continued to eat his Mars Bar unfazed, the chocolate all over his fingers. Andy gave him a look and Jimmy pocketed the bar. He licked his fingers clean.
The centre of activity was a garbage dumpster in the lane. The crime-scene team was already there in Hazmat suits, collecting evidence. Just behind the dumpster, the body of a young woman lay decomposing. A photographer’s flash illuminated the victim. Her bare legs were splayed out, dappled with rot and filth. She appeared to be naked except for a hot-pink garter belt around her hips. It looked to Andy like a sexual homicide.
‘No ID as yet,’ Detective Peterson said. ‘I’ve checked on the garbage runs. Last pick-up was Sunday. She must have been dumped after that.’
‘Has anyone touched her?’ Andy asked. It didn’t matter how many times they were briefed on crime-scene procedure, there was always a risk of someone—usually a rookie—contaminating something. This victim looked tampered with.
‘No one touched her until the team arrived. They’ve lifted garbage off her, that’s it.’
Dammit. Perhaps no one had known he was on his way. Andy would examine the crime-scene photographs; hopefully there was adequate coverage of her original position, as found.
‘She’s still in situ, apart from the garbage,’ Peterson continued.
‘Who found her?’ said Andy.
The girl had been discovered by a homeless man as he scrounged through the heaps of cardboard next to the dumpster to find something worth keeping, perhaps as shelter. The man, who called himself Barney, was occupying a couple of constables with his rambling account of the discovery.
‘…my wife, she don’t see me no more…’
‘Yes, Barney,’ the constable pressed. ‘But tell us again about how you found the body.’
Barney’s eyes rolled back and popped forwards again. He had a long beard and deeply lined skin. ‘I was jus’ looking round. I thought I smelled somethin’. I thought it might be rotten fruit. I thought I could find somethin’ to eat.’
Andy grimaced. He would let the constables deal with Barney.
‘Skata,’ Jimmy offered. ‘She’s ripe, all right.’
The autopsy would give a better idea of the time of death, but Andy guessed that the remains were a couple of days old, perhaps accelerated by the weather. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand and moved closer to her. The girl looked Asian, and young, though given the state of the body it was difficult to tell whether she was in her teens or twenties. He noticed lacerations around her wrists. She had been tied up, but there were no binds on her now.
Andy wondered what could have happened for her to end up in a back lane like this, becoming his last gruesome case as part of the team he had worked with for so many years.
CHAPTER 4
Simon Aston walked across one of the vast living rooms of the Cavanagh house, his sneakers treading on a giant, cream fur rug that stretched metres across the hardwood floor. Through the glass doors that opened out to the harbour, Damien was laid out on a sun lounge, wearing silk shorts as he baked himself on the balcony. An exotic silk robe hung over the lounge at his back and a newspaper lay in sections beside him.
‘So, man, how are you?’ said Simon.
Despite Damien’s relaxed surroundings, he didn’t seem settled. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced than usual. He looked up when Simon approached, but said nothing.
‘Yo,’ Simon said, ‘I brought you a coffee from your favourite. Double shot.’
Damien snatched it without thanking him. ‘This new maid makes shit coffee,’ he murmured.
Simon nodded and pulled up a lounge next to his friend. ‘So, how are plans for the party coming?’
‘I dunno,’ Damien said dismissively and looked out at the water. He sipped the coffee from its cardboard cup.
Simon took a furtive glance at his watch; it was approaching eleven. He wanted to call Warwick O’Connor well before one o’clock, just to be on the safe side. It would be best if he knew whether or not he would have any cash to negotiate with before he called. In Simon’s experience, cash had a great way of solving problems. In fact, he couldn’t think of any problem that money couldn’t solve. It just depended on how much you had to throw at it.
‘Look, buddy, I hate to bring it up,’ he said nervously, now wringing his hands. ‘But, uh, I’m going to need a bit more money to wrap this thing up.’
Damien looked over at him. ‘Is it that guy Lee?’
‘No, Lee is fine.’
‘So what is it, then?’ he said with audible impatience.
One million dollars. I want an answer by tomorrow at one, or I’ll contact the big man myself…
Simon couldn’t tell Damien about the trouble with Warwick. There was no way he could tell Damien that some lowlife wanted one million dollars of his money and was threatening to blackmail his father. What if it was seen as Simon’s fault? He would quickly become persona non grata, not just with the Cavanaghs but the whole of Sydney’s A-list.
‘Nothing,’ Simon lied. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just a little extra to cover all the bases.’
Surely Warwick was bluffing. Surely he wouldn’t really contact Jack Cavanagh himself? He doesn’t have the balls, does he?
Damien dropped a hand over the side of the lounge, the cup of coffee dangling. He let go, and it dropped the few inches to the floor and fell on its side. Simon dived in to right it again, but the remaining coffee had spilled.
‘Leave it,’ Damien said and turned his head. ‘Estelle!’ He began fumbling through the pockets of the silk robe for his cigarettes. ‘Did Lee say anything?’ he asked, still searching. ‘Estelle!’ he yelled again. ‘Where the fuck are my cigarettes?’
Estelle instantaneously appeared with a packet and placed it in Damien’s open hand. She was the new maid; lithe, pale and beautiful, with cascading locks of raven hair tied in a loose ponytail at her nape. Her eyes were huge and doelike. Estelle was gorgeous and French. Only the Cavanaghs would have a French maid who was actually French, probably to try to appear more cultured. They went through a maid once or twice a year it seemed. Damien drove the ugly ones away, and messed with the pretty ones. He wondered if Damien had fucked her already or not, or if he’d be okay with him making a try.
Damien put a cigarette in his lips and Estelle lit it. In a flash she had mopped up the coffee and disappeared again.
Simon watched the exchange with fascination. ‘Lee’s fine. It’s nothing,’ he continued, getting the conversation back on track. Time was ticking on. ‘He doesn’t have a problem at all. It’s just a bit of extra dough to smooth things out.’
Even if he was foolish enough to ask for it, Simon knew that Damien didn’t have access to a million dollars. Not liquid, anyway. His father, Jack, controlled the family fortune, and what Damien himself actually had in his name was a mere drop in the ocean compared to his mighty father’s personal wealth, or compared to what Cavanagh Incorporated was worth, with all its various interests. Simon wouldn’t dream of getting them to cough up a cool mill for the likes of Warwick O’Connor. That would be outrageous, a rip-off, and probably the end of his friendship with Damien. Anyway, O’Connor was probably bluffing about what he knew.
Simon was sure that if he could meet with him face to face and show him what another twenty grand in cash looked like, he would stop his quibbling and take the money. Warwick was no big-timer; all that cash was bound to look good to him. And then this thing would be over…
‘I want a new personal trainer,’ Damien said out of the blue, pinching one of his oiled-up browned biceps.
‘You look good, man,’ Simon told him, though he didn’t really think so. His friend was already starting to look a bit drug ravaged. Besides, Damien never worked hard enough to get the muscles he wanted. He had a slim build and he was slightly concave chested. There wasn’t much to him. He’d gone through four or fi
ve trainers in the past year but always ended up dumping them. He’d sacked his last trainer, Dave, two weeks before. Simon wondered why Damien bothered with training at all, when he obviously didn’t like being told what to do.
‘Who’s that guy Will keeps talking about?’ Will Smith. ‘The guy who got him in shape for that film?’ Damien asked. ‘You know the one?’
‘I dunno. I’ll ask him.’
Damien dragged on his cigarette and watched the boats. ‘How much do you need for this thing to go away?’ he said.
‘Thirty-five,’ Simon found himself saying. He’d planned to ask for twenty, but he’d decided that he needed the extra fifteen for his own spending money. He was broke again after the last party. It could get expensive being a friend of the rich.
Damien nodded. ‘I’ll organise it.’
‘It would be good if I could have it, uh…soon.’
Damien seemed unperturbed by the demand. He dragged on his cigarette. ‘I think we’ve got that in the safe.’
Simon was quietly relieved. If Damien hurried, Simon might still have time to get to Warwick with some tempting cash at one o’clock.
Damien flicked the waistband of his black silk shorts, making a snapping sound. ‘Do you like these?’ The waistband announced that they were a Prada design.
‘They look good on you, man. Super cool,’ Simon told him, nodding.
Damien sighed at Simon’s comment, and gave a sneer at them. ‘I dunno…’
And with that, the subject had been changed.
CHAPTER 5
At twelve-thirty Makedde Vanderwall’s mobile phone rang. She turned The Monster Show by David J Skal face down and snatched the phone off the coffee table. She’d spent the morning reading through a psychology journal on advancements in the experimental treatment of violent psychopathic inmates in Canada and had eventually moved on to lighter fare—and different monsters.
