by Jenny Spence
“The fact that Carlos is involved suggests it could be something high-tech. Also when he ordered that pizza, someone must have been listening in. And Carlos would have had all sorts of security to prevent that – he was so paranoid – so they’ve circumvented that. That’s how they got to him. Someone pretended to be the delivery guy, and Carlos opened the door.”
“What do the police think?”
“Well, there’s this female detective who wanted to implicate me in his murder, despite all the glaring improbabilities, because it was statistically likely. Then they noticed that Carlos had all these fortifications and security systems, so they seem to think: pimped-up place, must be a drug dealer. Carlos! We’ve told them the hard disks from all the computers were taken, but they don’t seem terribly interested. I guess when they do get around to looking at his backup they’ll be expecting to see nice neat lists of his customers, or suppliers.”
“And what do you think is there? On the backup?”
“No idea, really. A clue, if we’re lucky. It’s just a theory – that he was digging somewhere he shouldn’t have been digging.”
“But – you know – what happens then? If you and your tech-head friends dig in the same place?”
“We’ve just got to be very, very discreet, and if we find anything, we tell the cops straight away.”
“I don’t know.” She’s worried. “I just wish you could stay out of it.”
“So do I. But I’m already in it.”
“Hey, you want to write, Elly. Here’s your plot, if you can solve the mystery.”
“I want to write serious books. Not detective stories.”
“Oh, like Vermeer time travelling?” says Carol.
“That was just an idea I was playing with! A sort of allegory,” I reply.
“Oh, an allegory,” says Carol.
“It’s about sensibility. Come on, Vermeer had a fascination for technology. Who wouldn’t want to give him a look at our world, see what he thought?”
“He’d be bowled over,” Carol agrees. “But I reckon he’d throw away his paintbrushes and become a cinematographer. Think what a loss to the world that would be.”
“Well, who’s to say it would be a loss?” I ask, playing devil’s advocate.
“You, for one,” she says, grinning.
“Oh, all right.”
“But maybe that’s it,” she says. “Carlos knew what you were interested in. Maybe he tracked down a lost Vermeer for you? Got too close?”
She’s trying to cheer me up, but I go along with it.
“Yes, the one that was stolen from Boston must be somewhere. There’s still a multi-million dollar reward on it. That’s the sort of money people kill for.”
“I’ve got one word for you,” she says. “Michelangelo.”
“How do you mean?”
“I read an article on the net about how in his early days, Michelangelo was a bit of a forger. He’d make pretend classical sculptures and bury them, then have someone dig them up and ‘discover’ them.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that. The irony being that those statues are worth a whole lot more nowadays if they’re recognised as being his.”
“So,” she says, smiling. “What if someone bought a job lot of statues looted from old Europe for one of those bad-taste nouveau mansions, and it turned out one of the statues was a Michelangelo?”
I laugh. “Let’s both move to the country and write books. You’ve got a good start on your plot there.”
The subject moves on to our kids until we finish our food.
“Come up and I’ll do your arm,” she says.
“I just feel so bad about Mabel,” I say in the lift. “I want to go to her funeral, but I don’t know how I can face her family.”
“Nobody’s going to blame you!”
“They should. Whatever this is all about, that bullet was meant for me.”
“Elly, Mabel’s innocence doesn’t make you guilty. The only guilty person is whoever pulled that trigger. You didn’t contribute to that.”
Carol unpacks a pair of thin surgical gloves and puts them on. She peers into the first aid kit for the other things she’ll need, then peels off the bandage. Underneath my arm looks swollen, bruised and seeping pus, but Carol nods with satisfaction.
Before touching the wound, she puts another pair of sterile gloves over the first pair. All the instruments she uses are in special sealed packs and she handles them delicately, making sure nothing touches a sullied surface. Her gentle handling hurts, but I keep my mouth shut and think of it as a penance.
“They did this for Mum,” I say. “In the hospital.”
“What injuries did she have?”
“Her legs were all ulcerated,” I say. “Bad circulation, once her lungs started closing down. I watched the nurse give her morphine, then she changed the dressings, like this. So scrupulous. Not one germ could have got in.”
“It makes you feel better, seeing them treat her well.” Carol works carefully. No morphine for me.
“She died that night.”
“Even so.” She smiles and finishes wrapping my arm, nice and neat.
14
I leave Carol’s building by the back entrance, the scarf over my head again, and go to one of those tiny phone shops to buy myself a cheap pre-pay phone. At another little shop I pick up a couple of pairs of thick socks.
When I get to the narrow café, there’s no sign of Lewis. I take a seat in a booth with my back to the wall, and almost immediately he slides in beside me. We order coffees.
“You okay?” he asks.
I give him a suspicious sidelong glance, wishing he’d sat opposite, not next to me. If he gets too friendly I won’t respect him. I can’t even find a role for him in any of my fantasies, unfortunately. Now I know about the saintly wife, I’d have to cast myself as the villain.
“I’ve been better,” I allow.
“I need to warn you,” he says. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep the media off you.”
“So you’re keeping them off me?”
“Well, yeah, in that we’re playing down your involvement and not telling them anything about you.”
“Thanks. Why are you doing that?”
“Well, once some journalist twigs that you were connected with two murders on consecutive days they’ll be all over it, and that’s going to impede our investigation. It’s just self-interest, Elly.”
“Ah. Well, some of them might be on to me already,” I say, pulling out the list of messages and putting it on the table in front of us.
“What’s this?”
“I’ve been bombarded with messages about this, and some of them are from people I don’t know. I thought you might like to go through them.”
“Haven’t you got a PA or something?”
“Ha bloody ha,” I say, unsmiling. “No, what I was thinking was, in among the journalists trying to dig for their stories, what if there’s someone . . . you know . . . If the shooter’s still after me, wouldn’t it be a good way to try to make contact? Maybe trick me into meeting somewhere? Or even just checking to see where I am?”
He frowns. “That’s a bit far-fetched.”
“But you could check out those numbers, couldn’t you? See who they belong to? If it’s not a legitimate journalist, you might follow it up.”
“Hmmm.” He doesn’t seem keen. “We don’t really have a lot of resources.”
“Lewis, I’m scared to go home. You are taking that seriously, aren’t you?”
“You can call me Mike, you know.”
There’s a sudden stunning crash. Before I know it he’s pushed me down and half risen. I see his other hand go under his jacket. Then there’s a babble of raised voices and a laugh. Lewis subsides as a waiter kneels to pick up a steel tray and gather broken china.
“Yeah, I’m taking it seriously.”
I laugh with relief. Now I know why he sat next to me, both with our backs to the wall.
“So whe
re have you got, with Mabel?”
“There’s not much I can tell you,” he says. “It’s what’s not there that’s interesting. As you might remember, we found a stolen car a couple of streets away. It matched the descriptions a couple of your neighbours gave – not very reliable descriptions, I might add – but it was clean. Really clean. Whoever drove it wore gloves and was very careful not to leave any trace. It’s not that easy to do that.”
“When was it stolen?”
“Only that day, from North Carlton, while the owner was at work.
Moving on. There were two shots. Sure you want to hear this?”
I nod.
“The first bullet went into the back of Mabel’s head and stayed there. That one was enough to kill her. The second shot went through her left lung from the back, passed through her body, grazed your right arm, then embedded itself in the wall of your house. He fired the two shots very close together, so we knew it was what we call a semi-automatic, and the tests confirmed that. And there are signs that he used a silencer.”
“What does all that tell you?”
“I guess just that he knew what he was doing.”
“And can you trace the gun?”
“Well, the way it works, if we had the gun we could prove the bullets came from it. But just having the bullets doesn’t get us far.”
“He’d get rid of the gun, wouldn’t he?”
“That depends how confident he is.”
“So you do think he’s a hit man?”
“I’d be happier about that if you or Mabel were a more likely target. This whole Carlos thing, Elly. Have you got any other strange friends you haven’t told me about?”
“No, I swear. Carlos is the key. Whoever killed him, they must think he told me something. But the trouble is he didn’t.”
“So if you did know something damaging you’d be telling other people right now, wouldn’t you? So there’d be no point in killing you after all this time.”
“I can see the logic of that,” I say. “But can I count on him to see it?”
“I wish we could say we’ll catch him for you,” he says. “But this kind of guy is slippery. I’d rather it was one of the other kinds.”
“The other kinds?”
“You know. Jealous lovers. Thrill killers. Cheap crims. Our usual customers. They haven’t got two brains between them and they leave a trail a mile wide.”
“More what you’d have expected in Brunswick.”
“Hey, don’t underestimate Brunswick. Epicentre of the whole Moran war, for a start.”
“I guess that’s so. But those people tend to leave innocent bystanders alone, don’t they?”
“Usually. My colleagues did hope that Mabel might have some connections. Her brother was a graduate from the Bluestone University.”
“Aha. I often wondered if her husband had been inside. She never talked about him.”
“No, apparently he shot through with a younger woman. Local scandal about twenty years ago. Living in Broome under another name until ’05 or thereabouts. Dead now. Her nephews are known to us, but nothing major.”
“Yes, they seem decent types. They used to come around occasionally, take her out. She’d sit out the front all dressed up for hours, waiting for them.” I study my hands, wrapped around the warm coffee cup.
“Are you going to the funeral?” I ask. “Do real-life police do that?”
“Yes, we do. It can be interesting to see who turns up. I don’t suppose you’ll be there?”
“I want to. I owe her that.”
“It should be safe enough. Obvious police presence, and all that.”
“And how’s the Carlos case going?” I ask. “Are you involved with that?”
He nods. “Well, strangely enough, it’s also a very clean killer.” I keep my mouth shut. “No fingerprints, no hairs or skin samples.”
“He went into the backyard,” I say. “Were there footprints?”
“The old size ten boot?” He smiles. “There were, actually. Size eleven gumboots. Prints right through the flat. We found the boots in the next street, in a wheelie bin, with a pizza delivery cap and jacket.”
“Blood-stained?”
“Of course. No fingerprints. No gloves either – they could have traces of DNA, so he’d burn them somewhere else.”
I think of the nurse, tending my mother’s legs with her thin white gloves. So patient, so tender.
“So you know he takes size eleven.”
“Or less. Why make things easy for us?”
“And you know it’s the same person.”
“What was that thing you mentioned, Elly? Ockham’s Razor? Well, that, or common sense if you like, tells us the two cases are linked, but we have to look at the evidence. And we haven’t got any evidence of the link yet, except the fact that you were in both places.”
“Carlos did mention something,” I tell him. “He was interested in that guy who went missing on the mountain last year.”
“Which one?”
“You know . . . Peter Talbot? He went bushwalking up near Warburton on his own, and he disappeared. It was in the news for days. They tried to trace him through his mobile phone signals, then they found his pack in a gully months later. Didn’t you guys investigate that?”
“Well no, because it wasn’t a homicide. What would that have to do with Carlos?”
“He was just nosy. He thought there was something wrong with the way they searched. ‘An anomaly,’ he said.”
“But what was his interest? Did he know Peter Talbot?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. He had all these conspiracy theories that just seemed wacky to me – always looking for cover-ups. And he loved data, the more obscure the better. If he came across something about those mobile phone signals he would have gone over it, looking for anything that wasn’t quite right.”
“Weird guy.”
“Sure. But could you look into it? It’s the only thing he mentioned when I saw him.”
“Well . . . okay,” he says, though I wonder if he really will.
“Is there any chance you could give me a lift back to my office?”
I ask. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Sure.”
We pay and go out. His car is parked in an outrageously illegal spot in Little Collins Street. Bloody police. Bloody Lewis. I hate the feeling I have that I’m safe when I’m with him. I’ve built a life where I’m not dependent on anyone. Even in the fantasy life I dream about I don’t need anyone, happy in my solitude. He’d better not open the car door for me.
He doesn’t.
15
Back at the office, Luke, Steve and Ravi are closeted in the small meeting room. I knock on the door and go in without waiting for an answer. Luke and Steve look up with uncanny synchronicity. People make jokes about them being conjoined twins. They look very different, obviously, but their voices are almost the same – not that Steve’s is heard much. This is probably because they went through school together, one of those very academic private boys’ schools – Melbourne Grammar or Scotch College or somewhere. I think they may have boarded together from an early age. Steve’s parents live in Singapore and Luke’s family are anything from squattocracy to Riverina Mafia, depending on who you listen to.
“You’d better watch out for Derek,” I say to Steve. “You’re not supposed to get involved with this until you’ve finished Synergy.”
“It’s okay,” says Steve. “He’s gone out to see a client.”
“Great. So where are you up to? What’s on the CD?”
“Well, a whole lot of stuff,” says Luke. “Hard to say what’s worth looking at. Some of it’s personal, so we’re putting that to one side. Some of it’s databases, which is good, but it’ll take a bit of work to sort out what they are because he’s lumped them all together. He saved a few emails, so that’s good news.”
“Could we get into his other emails?” I ask.
“Hello!” says Luke. “Have you met Carlos?
Do you think he’d have let anyone know his password?”
“I know I’m kind of like your granny,” I say, “but even I’m aware that Carlos used our mail server for a couple of his addresses. It occurs to me that there might be something in our general backups that would help. Wouldn’t there be metadata on the emails he’s saved? If we put that next to our data, maybe Steve could do some reverse engineering and identify his stuff in the traffic that’s gone through?”
Steve’s already out of the room, which I take as an affirmative response.
“Meanwhile,” I say, “I think Carlos was investigating the disappearance of Peter Talbot while he was bushwalking in the Warburton Ranges last year. I don’t know if you remember it? He was from Water Conservation and Catchment, and there was a big search for him. Carlos said there was an anomaly in the triangulation data for his phone. Can you see if you’ve got anything on that?”
“What else did he say?” asks Ravi.
I recount my conversation with Carlos, word for word. Having a retentive memory is useful sometimes, though my brain can feel awfully cluttered by the end of the day.
“Hunting an asp when they know you need an anaconda?” says Ravi. “Is that really what he said?”
“It’s a bit literary for Carlos, isn’t it?” says Luke.
“Ah well, he thought of me as literary,” I say, not adding that Carlos was always looking for ways to impress me.
“What’s literary about asps and anacondas?” demands Ravi.
“Shakespeare,” I explain. “Cleopatra. She supposedly killed herself with an asp. He seemed to be suggesting that Talbot didn’t kill himself – i.e. that it wasn’t his own carelessness that killed him – but that there was some sort of predator involved. The anaconda.”
“A predator!” Ravi’s eyes light up.
“The human sort,” I add hastily.
Sunny puts her head around the door.
“Derek alert!” she says.
“It’s okay,” says Ravi. “Steve’s back at his desk.”
“Just swing by there, would you Sunny?” says Luke. “Make sure Steve’s got the right things showing on his screen?”
