Chapter 26
Every picture tells a story.
Marr had an app that recorded conversations, and he’d had it on earlier. The AFP officers had replayed the six-second call dozens of time, but to no avail. The male caller had not only deepened his voice to disguise it, but also had placed something – a folded hanky? a scrunched-up aloha shirt? – over the microphone to further muffle it. Toby traced the call and discovered it was made on a pre-paid phone that was bought at a busy 7-11 in Bondi Junction, but the buyer had paid cash and the trail had pretty much ended.
Mike looked at Ronda. She was outwardly calm and laughing it off (“Hey, it mightn’t be me… most of Mike’s friends are blonde bitches. Besides B.I.T.C.H is an anagram for Babe In Total Control of Herself…that’s me. ”) but he knew she was a little bit rattled. They all were. How did this guy know Mike and Ronda were an item? Why was he threatening her? How did he get this number? Ronda assured them she didn’t even have her own mobile number written in or on her cigar box, let alone Mike’s.
It was a damn good bet – odds on – that it was one of two people, Van Heerden or Caldwell. Who else could it possibly be? Van Heerden’s accent probably ruled him out. Brian and Mike agreed that it sounded vaguely like Caldwell, but that could have just been them wanting it to be him. Mike would ask him next time they met; he’d know in a flash if he was guilty or not. In the meantime, he wouldn’t let his girl out of his sight.
“Well, there’s yet another thing we can add to our ever-growing list of mysteries,” Brian said after they’d exhausted all possibilities, “so let’s push on. Please feel free to leave your phone on, Mike, in case our gutless friend calls back. Now, where were we? Ah, that’s right, David Johansen.”
The Powerpoint screen kicked back into life, and on it came a still shot of the man himself taken in the bar at Uluru. He had a stupid grin on his face and was talking to someone out of frame. As Brian slowly zoomed in on the picture, you could see that he was holding his trademark rum and coke in one hand, while a Winnie Blue smouldered away in the other.
“Like I was about to say before we were rudely interrupted, you’d think a busy international airport would be the last place you’d find a killer snake…”
On screen, the grinning Johansen morphed into a dead version with agony etched right across his face.
“…however you’d be dead wrong. His contorted body was discovered by construction workers refurbishing offices in an administration section of Tullamarine Airport.”
The screen showed the relevant offices. In the foreground was the “Closed for Renovations – No Public Entry” banner.
“What he was doing, or who he was seeing in this disused office is anyone’s guess,” Brian said as the vision moved on to the actual office. Long gone was the Operations sign and A. Brown’s name plaque. “However it was here that he was attacked – savagely attacked, right Ronda? – by a Brown Snake.”
“Absolutely Brian,” Ronda answered. “Western Brown Snakes – scientific name, Pseudonaja mengdeni – can be very aggressive, which is probably why they kill more people in Australia than any other snake. However this one was right over the frigging top, hitting him a ridiculous seven times. It kept on striking this poor bastard even when its venom sacs were completely voided. Like it had totally lost its cool.”
Eric made an observation.
“The way he’s curled up there looks like he died in a bit of pain.”
“Shit yeah!” she answered. “You’d probably never guess from looking at them, they’re such skinny snakes really, but Brown Snake venom is, in my humble opinion, the most potent on the planet, in terms of both neurotoxins – they’re the ones that cause paralysis – and procoagulants, that result in major internal bleeding. With that much envenoming, once again straight into his blood stream, most of his organs including his kidneys would have shut down and he would have been dead, or wished he was, in about twenty minutes.
I can’t think of many worse ways to go. I know everyone claims that one snake or another is the most venomous – most people would say the King Cobra or the Krait – but believe you me, that’s the snake I’d least like to get tagged by.”
There were quite a few shudders around the table at that comment, most noticeably from Mike. He decided to change the subject.
“Brian, you said that he was found by builders doing some renos. They didn’t perhaps hear anyone screaming their bloody lungs out, or banging on walls for grim death, or anything.”
Brian flicked through some photos till he came to some showing the wide angles of the office itself.
“No mate, as you can see, it was pretty well insulated. Plus the guys on the tools were working with sanders, nail guns and the like and were wearing their PPE. They heard bugger all.”
The final shots, taken by a bored airport paparazzi awaiting the arrival of anyone mildly famous, were of Johansen on a gurney being wheeled back through the airport proper and out a side door into a waiting ambulance.
“And that, my friends,” concluded Brian, turning off the Power Point, “ends the sad tale of David Johansen. It also ends this very long re-cap of victims, because as you know victim number eight was confirmed suicide George Somerville and there’s not much we don’t know about Mr Somerville. All that and we’re still no closer to working out why. What wrong, Mike?”
Mike had his hand up to his brow and what looked like a pained expression on his face, but there was nothing wrong. He wasn’t certain. but he just may have had an epiphany.
“Mate, can you go back to the third last shot again, just as the ambos are opening the side door?”
“Sure thing, Mike,” Brian replied, powering up the presentation again. He pushed a button on his remote which took him right to the end, then clicked back three pages.
Everyone strained their eyes to see what had got Mike so excited. It was nothing spectacular, nothing they hadn’t seen before, just the vic being pushed through the airport, with arrivals and departees and their entourages stepping aside to let the medical team through and a busy airport scene playing out in the background.
“Aha,” Mike said keeping them all in suspense, “now can you mark that and go back to one of the ground shots of Matthew Muir.”
Brian sped back through the vision until he found one showing Muir lying covered up on the ground. They hadn’t really noticed before, they were too focused on the dead body in the foreground, but in the background behind a police barrier, was a slightly out-of-focus bunch of ghouls, rubber-neckers and passers-by being herded around the obstruction. All up maybe 60 people.
“No, not that one…”
Brian kept his thumb on the ‘back’ button. From memory, there were five or six shots in this series, all taken from slightly different angles.
“Not that one…”
“Not that one…”
“There! Can you drag that one up and put it alongside the other one I asked you to mark?”
“You mean like a split screen?” Brian said, cracking his knuckles. Mike’s excitement was contagious. “Yeah, I can do that. They have to be landscape format though, otherwise they’ll be too compressed.”
He cut and pasted both shots onto a single frame, one above the other.
“There you go. Now what are we looking at?”
“You want me to tell you?” Mike asked playfully, “C’mon, I thought you Feds were the best in the biz.”
Challenge accepted, Eric and Toby also stood up to take a closer look at the two photos. Eyebrows knitted, eyes scanning the two shots, they were the picture of concentration.
“I’ll give you a hint,” Mike said, breaking the silence. “You know those ‘Spot The Difference’ pictures? Well, this is more like ‘Spot the Similarity’ with a bit of ‘Where’s Wally’ thrown in.”
Now that they knew what they were looking for, Mike watched as the penny dropped for all three policemen, with Ronda, to her credit, not far behind.
“The one-legged aborigine an
d his son!”
“Grandson or nephew, I think you’ll find,” Mike came back with. He forgave them for not being quicker to work it out. You had to really study the crowds in both shots to see them. In the top photo, Muir’s, they were fairly well covered up. The old guy was partially obscured by one of the portico columns, however you could make out the shock of wiry white hair, the left trouser leg pinned up, and the wooden crutch. Behind him, also partially concealed – this time by a rotund woman bystander – came a super-fit young aboriginal man carrying a Gladstone bag (the old man’s?) and a large, beautifully wrapped gift with bright red lips all over it.
In the second photo, among the distant background crowd at the airport, the pair’s images were slightly blurred and only just in frame. You had to know what you were looking for, or you could easily have missed them. In the very next photo, they were gone. This time, the young guy, who appeared to be wearing some type of generic uniform, was pushing the one-legged elder along in a Virgin Airlines courtesy wheelchair, his crutch strapped to the side. They looked like they were in a hurry.
Mike swivelled around in his chair and looked at the noticeboard, his eyes drawn to the ‘Sonofabitch’ headline. The others followed suit.
“I think we’ve found him,” he said. “Now all we have to do is track him down and find out why.”
Chapter 27
Out of harm’s way.
Over the phone, Van Heerden had agreed to meet Caldwell at a bar in Chatswood, eight kilometres north of the city. That’s why he was sitting on the beach at Coogee. You had to have a code these days, you never knew who was listening in to your private conversations. The Feds had eyes and ears everywhere. He’d taken two trains, a bus and a cab to get here too. Couldn’t be too careful either, with Caldwell about to disclose a little more about the Counter Attack.
Here he came now, strolling up the beach, his Tasmanian tan sticking out like a sore thumb amidst the bronzed surfers and sun-worshippers of Sydney’s south east. Van Heerden on the other hand fitted right in, like he lived on the beach, ever-ready to kick sand into some seven stone weakling’s face.
Caldwell spread his towel out a few metres away and sat himself down. The ranga applied SPF 50+ liberally all over his arms, face and neck, and watched a couple of young bikini-clad bleached blondes walk by before saying g’day.
“So how’s your blonde, Ed? Seen much of her lately?”
“Only in my dreams, Col,” he replied, “but she doesn’t say too much with my cock in her mouth. Now that her box of tricks has gone AWOL, she probably realizes that we’re onto her and her partner, and is laying low.”
Caldwell watched a young surfer, he couldn’t’ve been more than 12 or 13, explode out of a freakishly big barrel, his hands behind his back. Kids, eh? Totally fearless.
“Just watch your back, mate. As we’ve seen over the past 9 months, she’s downright dangerous that bitch.”
Van Heerden ripped the ring-pull off a can of coke he was holding and took a huge swig before replying.
“And as I keep telling you mate,” he said, punctuating his comment with an impossibly loud burp, “it’s them that had better fear me. In fact, I’m thinking about going after them.”
Caldwell looked at his mate sharply.
“Well don’t do anything stupid,” he advised him, “it’d be best to cool your jets and stay out of harm’s way for two weeks. The Benefactor has brought in a fair bit of hired help from the States, Germany and England over the past few months, but we’re still going to need frontline locals like yourself to pull this coup off.”
Van Heerden tossed the empty can over his shoulder.
“Two weeks, eh?” he said, more an observation than a question.
“Yeah, but I can’t tell you much more than that. I trust you with my life, Ed, you know that. But the man has made it 100% clear that the less people who know the finer deets, the better. Loose lips and all that.”
“Not a problem, Col. I understand perfectly. Just be good to know whether the hardware has turned up yet.”
Caldwell gave him his trademark smirk.
“The shipment, brought in with a batch of Audi spare parts, may or may not have cleared customs a week ago,” he said, “and it may or may not now be stored in a Weatherill Park warehouse awaiting distribution. Plus you may or may not be invited out to a farm outside Orange for a private practice session in about, oh five or six days’ time.”
Van Heerden stood up and dusted the sand from his cargo pants.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” he said, “I should be back by then. See you later, Col.”
Caldwell started getting his things together too.
“Wait. Back from where, mate?”
The big man was giving nothing away.
“Out west,” was all he said.
“But you will be back for the practice, won’t you?”
“A practice would be good, Col,” he said as he strode away down the beach.
“But I don’t really need one. I know high powered semi-automatics like the back of my hands.”
Chapter 28
Big night in Uluru.
The landline phone was only a few more rings short of ringing out. Mike was just about to hang up when…
“Uluru Police station. Sergeant McPhee speakin’.”
“Come on, Gordo. I’m a busy man. More important things to do than wait for you to finish reading the damn paper. Or get your beauty sleep, although heaven knows you need it.”
“Mike! G’day, mate. Yair, tell me about it. I’m busier than a one-legged man at a bum-kickin’ comp.”
“Ha!” Mike scoffed. “What could possibly be keeping you busy in sleepy old Uluru at 9 o’clock in the morning?”
“How long ya got, mate?” the sergeant replied. “Been a massive night. Two bucks nights took a dislikin’ to one another last night…big punch-up… the lockup’s chockers…then a coupla pissed fools decided to drive their beaten-up mate to hospital…ended up arse over in a flamin’ ditch…meanwhile, another dickhead gets bit by two wild bloody dingos he’s feedin’, yep actually feedin’… next a Chinese tourist claims she’s had $10,000 pinched out of her backpack…can you believe that, she’s carryin’ ten grand cash around with her…then, bugger me dead, there’s…”
“Whoa, Gordo,” Mike said. “You win, hands down. I better let you get back to that madhouse. Just a few quick questions first, OK?”
“Sure thing, mate. Fire away.” Then remembering their last phone conversation, “You got two minutes. I’ll talk, you walk.”
“Ha. Yeah, good one, Gordo,” he laughed, before getting down to business. “First of all, have those female remains been ID’ed yet? You said you thought it may have been Cassandra Guttuk.”
“I still think that, Mike,” McPhee responded. “She’s been missin’ since mid-January so the timin’s spot on, tick. Roughly the same age as the deceased, tick. Last seen in that vicinity, tick. But her whole family – Christ, the entire aboriginal community of Mutitjulu where she lived east of The Rock – all 300 of ’em – swear blind that she’s just visitin’ some rellies on a remote reserve down near Coober Pedy. Sounds legit, but yeah, I’ve got me some serious doubts. If I wasn’t so bloody flat chat, I’d drive down meself and check it out.”
Mike let all that sink in for a moment before he moved on.
“Cause of death? he asked.
“Yeah, nah. Didn’t find the complete skeleton,” the seasoned copper replied. “Mainly just the skull and a coupla the larger bones – bloody dingos and buzzards woulda scoffed the rest – so jury’s still out on the C.O.D. As they say, there’s 1000 ways to die in the desert…
HOY! KEEP IT DOWN TO A DULL ROAR BACK THERE!”
“Mate, I can hear the lockup’s getting restless,” Mike noted, “so just a few more, OK?”
“Sure, ask away.”
“Her grandfather, Billy and brother, Joe,” Mike asked, “they gone too?”
“Yep, same story. Coober Pedy-ish.”
“And how many legs does Billy have?”
There was a pause while McPhee wondered if he’d heard right, or if Mike was taking the piss.
“Er…two I guess. Was that a trick question?”
“No, I just took a punt that he only had one.”
Another pause as Gordo waited for the punchline – maybe one relating to the ‘bum-kicking’ line he’d used earlier – before realising that there wasn’t one forthcoming.
“No definitely two, Mike,” he said, then as an after-thought, “be a bit hard catchin’ snakes, hoppin’ around on one bloody leg.”
“What!?”
“Oh yeah, didn’t I tell ya? Billy’s the local snake catcher. When he’s not scammin’ tourists out of petrol money, he’s draggin’ snakes out of people’s tents, cars, knapsacks, whatever…we actually use ’im a fair bit…he’s a real snake whisperer…”
Overkill : Pure Venom Page 16
