***
The lights dimming signalled that the ‘world’s longest meeting’ was about to reconvene, so they all took their seats about the table, Mike planting himself between Ronda and Toby. He knew they were only acting like lovers at the pub, but why take any chances?
“Ok, victim number four,” said Thurlow, as a series of photos of Dickinson appeared on the Power Point screen, “was Brent Dickinson, a 38-year old pommy migrant, who hailed from Perth. A second generation racist – his old man did 20 years for manslaughter after killing a Kenyan man in a pub brawl in Leeds in the nineties – he was killed by a Death Adder in March.
“Now if it hadn’t been for the snakebite deaths that preceded and followed this attack, this story would hardly have caused a stir. A guy gets bitten by a snake while mowing his back yard near a reserve. If a snake was going to bite someone, that’d probably be the logical place, right? It’s only when you look at it in context with the others that the alarm bells start ring...”
“Those arseholes!”
Everyone turned to look at Ronda, who was searching through her knapsack.
“Sorry, Brian,” she said, red-faced and on the verge of tears, “didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that I was going through my bag looking for some notes I took on Australian Death Adders… and I’ve been frigging robbed! I know they were there yesterday at the pub…it must have been when we were leaving, I think Toby. It was getting real crowded and we were jerked around a bit on the way out and my bag wasn’t fully closed…”
Mike put his hand on her shoulder to calm her down.
“Whoa, relax Ronda,” he said, “it was just some notes. No need to get worked up.”
She looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language, before she cottoned on.
“No, not my notes. My antivenins. The whole goddam box…all gone.”
***
Grainy CCTV footage of George Somerville’s wake showed Ronda and Toby leaving the Australian Arms. As Ronda had pointed out, the mourners – full of booze and bad manners – had increased in number as the afternoon progressed. With Toby leading the way (he’d untucked his shirt and mussed up his hair a little for effect – well, they were supposed to be pissed), they had to excuse and bump their way past an unruly group of wide boys loitering near the exit. A few were comparing tatts, some bumping chests, all pouring booze down their throats with gusto, and getting loud and obnoxious.
Everyone in the war room agreed, that must have been when her box of antivenins had been lifted. It was too crowded to see conclusively who had stolen them – plus the three-quarter camera angle was all wrong – but one of the biggest men did seem to shadow her for several metres before peeling off and heading towards the Men’s. As he spun around, the camera caught his face. Thurlow paused the frame.
“Well, what do you know,” he said, “the man who loves getting his dial on camera, our friend Eddy Van Heerden.
Chapter 24
Model assassins.
“What the fuck are they?” Caldwell asked as Van Heerden lifted the lid on the antique wooden cigar box.
They were in the penthouse suite of the boutique hotel Caldwell was calling home for the next week or so. Ironically – or maybe the prick had a warped sense of humour – The Benefactor had chosen The Medusa Hotel in Darlinghurst as Caldwell’s residence while they counted down the days to the closely guarded event the boss had originally called ‘Operation Fight Back’, and recently renamed ‘The Counter Attack’.
“Vials of antivenom,” Van Heerden replied, setting the open box down on the ultra-contemporary table near the antique fireplace. Above the red brick mantle was an oversize circular plate, its diameter well over a metre, from which Medusa herself stared out with a sneer on her purple lips, and her long brown hair a tangled nest of writhing serpents.
“WTF, Ed!? You went out and bought some snake juice?” Caldwell asked, reading some of the labels: Taipan, Tiger Snake, Fierce Snake, etcetera.
Van Heerden shook his big boxy head.
“No mate. You know that blonde bitch with the long legs and big tits that was sitting behind us at the wake with her tall, dark and hamstrung stud? Well, the longer they hung around, I got a real bad feeling about them; thought they may have been the filth after all. So when they got up to leave, I leant over and checked out their three empty bottles of wine…”
“Yeah, those lovebirds were sure putting it away. Pissed as parrots they were.”
Again the big man shook his head. “Sans Alcool it said on the labels.”
Caldwell looked him blankly, none the wiser.
“French for ‘alcohol free’,” his 2-IC explained. “Which means they were just acting like they were hammered. Fucken coppers! I thought, so I did a bit of quiet digging around in the bitch’s bag as she was walking out. Didn’t see a badge or a gun or nothing, but I did lift these. They’re Exhibit A.”
Caldwell stared at the 12 little rubber-stoppered glass vials set into their moulded foam cushioning. There was also a coiled length of surgical latex tubing clipped at the base and two hermetically-sealed syringes down each side of the cigar box.
“Don’t tell me pigs carry fucken snake venom with them now?” he said.
Van Heerden had cruised over to check out the finer detail in the Medusa plate painting.
“No, Col. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They’re not pigs,” he replied, turning around to watch the expression on his mate’s face. “They’re the cunts that have been killing our guys. Looks like they’re after you and me next.”
“What!? Those two? They look more like models than assassins.”
“Yeah, be that as it may, Col. But think about it. Someone’s been helping these snakes. I mean how do the fuckers know where we all live? And that we’ll be in a church, or at the airport at a certain time? Plus someone sure as hell is helping the snakes get up and down elevators, in and out of hotel rooms, locked airport offices, and so forth. It’s them, mate. 100%. They’re the snakes’ handlers, that’s why they carry antivenins.”
Caldwell was almost swayed. “How can you be so sure? She might just be a doctor, or a vet or some such shit.”
It was time for Van Heerden to play the trump card. “Well, here’s Exhibit B, Col. Something else I lifted from the bitch’s bag.”
He lay a sheet of glossy A5 size paper, folded in half, down next to the cigar box.
Caldwell picked it up and opened it out to reveal a ‘With Compliments’ slip. On it was a familiar logo and the following text.
Welcome to the Desert Gardens Hotel,
Uluru, Central Australia.
Underneath that, a hand-written note: Mike 0490 555 663
Ed watched the expression on Caldwell’s face change as the stark realization dawned.
“Do they still look like models, Col?” he asked.
“No mate, they do not,” came the reply. “They don’t look terribly black to me either. But I’ll tell you what they do look like…” he said, opening his jacket to reveal the Glock 9mm Compact shoved in his waistband.
“…they look like dead scum walking.”
Chapter 25
Bad vibrations.
“We will of course reimburse you,” Thurlow was saying, “you were on an official AFP assignment at the time after all.”
Ronda looked relieved. “That’d be great, Brian,” she said.
He sat back and picked up his coffee. “How much were they worth by the way?” he said as he took a large sip.
“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Ronda replied and just managed to duck the spray of caffeine.
“Fifteen thousand!?” he repeated, mopping up the spilled coffee with a Hilton Hotel coaster. “Are you kidding me?” he asked as he looked around at the rest of the team. They were as shellshocked as he was; even Mike had never bothered to ask how much the serums were worth.
“Welcome to my world,” Ronda said. “They’re all frigging expensive, literally worth their weight in gold. That’s why I
was so bloody upset when I realized they’d been pinched.”
Brian was speechless, so Eric asked the obvious question.
“But why are they so expensive? Seriously, fifteen grand.”
“Yeah, and that’s with the 33% discount I get via my research grant as well as mates’ rates, plus the odd bout of begging, eye fluttering and loosening a few top buttons on my blouse. You guys are such suckers for a bit of boob. Anyway, they average out at around one thousand eight hundred a pop for a single dose and I had a dozen of them. Just supply and demand I guess.”
Toby joined in. “What a rip-off!” he said.
“Maybe,” she replied. “Producing antivenin is a long, complicated process. It’s got to be pure or it won’t work. Oh sure, you can get Polyvalent Snake Antivenom which is a generic serum. It might stop you from dying, just. But hey, if I’m dealing with a Taipan, I need to know I’ve got Taipan antivenin handy, not the home brand.”
“Anyway, if you think that’s bad, get this. About a year ago in the States, in the same area where Veejay Presad happens to be at the moment by the way, a 9-year old girl on a camping trip got bitten by a Copperhead and her antivenin treatment ended up costing her parents a cool $68,000. That’s US dollars. Still, it sure beats the alternative.”
By now, Brian had regained his speech. “But what would Van Heerden do with them? He wouldn’t really know what they are, or how valuable they are. You never know, he might eventually dump them and you might get them back down the track.”
Ronda sighed and shook her head.
“Hmmm. Hopefully not too far down the track,” she replied. “Because they’re biological products, they lose their efficacy real quick. Even though venom itself doesn’t have a use-by date, antivenins only have a shelf life of between one and three years.”
Mike cut in. “And there was nothing else stolen? Purse? Phone? Credit cards?”
“No, Mike,” she replied, “I just checked. Everything else seems to be there… keys, sunnies, lipstick, perfume, hairbrush, tampons…”
Brian coughed and quickly picked up his remote ready to reconvene the investigation.
“Oh well, I’m sure the AFP’s bean counters will be more than happy to reimburse you…after we threaten them with a Red Belly Black of course!
Right, moving along we have Vics number 5 and 6…”
He pressed a button and the screen filled with ongoing images of Muir and Bellotti.
“…Matthew Muir and Marco Bellotti, two of our most shocking deaths. Bellotti by fatal snakebite and birthday boy Muir by apparent suicide having leapt from the 15th floor of the Greenland Centre. Let’s start with Bellotti. You want to walk us through that one, Ronda – a Tiger Snake right?”
Ronda had her notes already open at the right page.
“Yes, Brian,” she said, “a notechis scutatus and no prizes for guessing it was a large male, 2.2 metres long. As you can see from that shot…”
On screen were extreme close ups of the fang marks on Bellotti’s penis taken from different angles by the forensic photographer.
“…the massive snake bit him on the old feller. Now Tigers don’t produce a lot of venom compared to other snakes – they can usually only milk around 40mg out of the big ones, tops – yet the autopsy revealed that the victim had been envenomed with 79mg. As with the other attacks, that snake wanted that prick dead!”
There was a bit of involuntary schoolboy smirking at her mention of the word ‘prick’ in this situation. Even the mature Super had to suppress a grin.
“Er…yes, moving right along, we have Muir’s apparent suicide.”
Ronda raised a finger to indicate she isn’t done yet.
“Wait, Brian. There’s something else I have to add. So far all the snakes have had 3 things in common. They’ve all been large, male and vicious.
But they’ve also been... well, let’s say lucky.”
“Lucky to have gotten away?” Thurlow asked.
“No, lucky to have struck a vein every time, injecting venom straight into the bloodstream.”
Mike was confused. “Isn’t that what happens with all snake bites?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “That’s a common misconception. In fact, very rarely does a snake hit a vein. They don’t have to. The venom is carried through your body via the lymphatic system, not the blood system. The lymphs eventually transport the venom to your blood stream – if you move around too much – but it’s a long slow process.
However, if the snake is lucky enough to score a direct hit on a vein or, better still, an artery, the venom is pumped straight to your heart, lungs and brain.
So, if a snake strikes the meat of your limb, it can take hours and hours to kill you, if you haven’t embarked on an anti-venin protocol. In the veins, it can be minutes.”
The group is silent for a moment as they process this latest information. Mike is the first to break the silence.
“So you think the snakes are actually targeting the victim’s veins?”
“As strange as it sounds, it would appear so. There are too many ‘lucky strikes’ for it to be a coincidence. Plus most veins are too deep within the skin for a snake’s fans to reach, so it would have to know where the most vulnerable surface veins are.”
“They’re that smart?” Eric asked.
“Maybe. Look at Spitting Cobras. They’ve learnt to target people’s eyes with deadly accuracy. So if a snake wanted to hit a vein, it would.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it looks like our snakes are going for the quick kill.”
Everyone was incredulous as they contemplated this new information. Winslow summed up how they were all thinking.
“Fuck me. This case.”
Everyone nodded their heads in agreement, before Thurlow got them back on agenda via the Powerpoint.
The vision showed shots of a thankfully covered Muir, on the concrete portico near the imposing entrance to The Greenland. He had missed the glass porte cochere by less than a metre. Most photos of his dramatic exit were taken from street level, with a few looking down from the balcony. There had also been ultra-graphic dashcam footage, captured by a passing Uber driver, of Muir hitting the tarmac, but Brian had decided not to use it. If the team really wanted to see that gory stuff, they could always go to You Tube.
“At first, given the highly suspicious nature of the other deaths and the fact that the balcony door was damaged, foul play was suspected. However a young couple in a nearby high rise saw the balcony light come on, then clearly witnessed him come out, look around, climb up onto the railing and then throw himself off. They’re still having bad dreams about it, like watching 9-11 all over again, they said.”
Mike raised a finger and Brian gave him the nod.
“Well there are two ways of looking at that,” he said. “Either he was out of the apartment for some obscure reason when Bellotti was killed, and he was so distraught when he returned and found his boyfriend dead that he couldn’t take it anymore and topped himself. Or he was present – along with the snake – and opted for a quick death rather than a slow painful one.”
“Well, if it’s the latter,” Ronda pointed out, “then he really stuffed up. Knowing what we know now, that Tiger wouldn’t have had enough venom left in its sacs to make a bandicoot crook.”
Eric Weiss had been reading ahead through the notes Brian had supplied.
“And as always, there were no unaccounted-for prints, or clues, or any ideas about how the snake got in and out of one of Sydney’s busiest residential hotels. But what about this bodyguard chap who was in the interconnecting room?”
“He was downstairs in the hotel gym at the time, Eric.”
“Ha!” he scoffed. “Some bodyguard!”
***
They had covered all pertinent points about the Muir-Bellotti deaths, so after a quick break, Thurlow had moved the presentation onto the next casualty, David Johansen.
“Right, next we come to the mysterious death of victim number
7, David Johansen from Melbourne. Now you’d think that at a busy metropolitan airport like Tullamarine, with thousands of people coming and going, you’d be safe from…”
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Although the ringtone on Mike’s mobile was muted – he’d turned the sound off at the start of the meeting – he still had it on vibrate and had inadvertently left it on the table under one of his files. By the time he located the noisy buzzing thing, he had already interrupted the meeting.
“Sorry about that guys,” Mike said, answering it red-faced. “I’ll tell whoever it is to call back. Hello, Mike here, listen can you please…”
“HEY, MIKE…TELL THAT BLONDE BITCH SHE’S DEAD!”
Overkill : Pure Venom Page 15
