by Anita Bell
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But Mum was keen to see if it helped. She gave it to me as soon as she got it. She was taking photos of it for insurance the night she … the night she …’
‘Earned the wings of an angel,’ Parry suggested.
‘Yeah,’ Nikki said, smiling with red eyes. ‘Thanks.’
‘Insurance photos, yes!’ Burkett said to Parry. ‘Fletcher had them devoloped the day after his wife died, remember?’
Parry nodded. ‘He said he took them before he gave it to her for their anniversary.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Nikki spat. ‘Their wedding anniversary isn’t for another month. Mum had them made for me! He suspected she’d been sneaking around organising something and he just thought it was for him. Mum tried to tell him she’d only spent it out of the inheritance that Dad left for me, but he wanted to control it all. He got madder than I’ve ever seen him. He said Mum had wasted a fortune on me and started throwing things. Mum sent me to my room and then I heard her scream.’
‘Did she know if he was trying to defraud her art gallery’s insurance company over the paintings that went missing for a short time a few months ago?’
‘I don’t think so. Mum was always careful of doing everything the right way. Her party was even thinking of endorsing her to run for PM next election, you know because she was so clean.’
‘Just as I thought,’ Burkett told Parry. ‘Her party closed ranks around her when they smelled insurance fraud. They wanted to keep her clean.’
‘The first I heard about fraud was when you mentioned it,’ Nikki said. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past him. Aaron was always ducking out at weird hours, paranoid about his privacy, that sort of thing. He told us it was because Mum led such a public life that he liked to keep to himself, but he always managed to mingle with the other ministers whenever they came over.’
‘He’s been careful, all right,’ Burkett said. ‘We haven’t been able to pin a single thing on him yet.’
Or maybe you haven’t wanted to, Parry thought still unsure if Burkett was the dirty cop.
Burkett looked at Nikki unaware of Parry’s accusing stare. ‘What did your mother ever see in him?’ he asked.
‘He was smooth,’ she said. ‘Really nice to her face and really foul-tempered as soon as her back was turned, only he didn’t even try to be nice to me unless Mum was around. I guess he figured he controlled my inheritance when he controlled Mum’s finances.’
‘I knew there had to be a lot of rage involved when I saw the photos of the crime scene,’ Burkett said to Parry. ‘We should find at least a few partial prints that are his when they piece the church back together.’
‘You’re putting it back together?’
‘We’re trying,’ Parry answered. ‘It won’t be good enough to sit on your dresser again, but it might give us a few clues as to how he held it, when he did it.’
‘Then you really do believe me?’ Nikki said, chewing her lip. ‘That other cop — Underpants or something — he wouldn’t even listen.’
‘Well, there is a lot of evidence pointing to you,’ Burkett said. ‘If it wasn’t for Senior Detective Parry here, pulling a few hunches together between his smuggling case, my file on the stolen paintings and your mum’s murder, we wouldn’t even be here and the church would stay in pieces.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, smiling at Parry as Thorna opened the window and leaned out to look around. The scarlet thicket of bougainvillea was still between the men and the house, so Thorna probably hadn’t seen them yet, but leaning out the window like that, she couldn’t miss seeing the Falcon parked at her back steps.
‘I have to go now,’ Nikki said. ‘My boss is looking for me. It won’t worry me though, if you don’t fix the church. I just want the earrings back.’
Burkett looked at Parry and smiled. ‘I think we can arrange that,’ he said, walking with her back towards the house. ‘If you help us find them.’
Parry nodded, knowing he was putting the girl at risk by agreeing to use her as bait. Now that he’d met her, he felt even more uncomfortable about doing it. But, he reminded himself that she’d be in a whole lot more trouble if he didn’t find out who the dirty cop was that was keeping Fletcher ahead of him at every stage. And if it was Burkett, he felt certain things would come to a head now that he’d tracked her down.
What he didn’t realise, was how soon.
Helen stepped over the power cord that linked her laptop on the dining-room table to the wall socket while it charged and set her cup of coffee down beside two Tim Tarn biscuits. Sitting close to the table was getting more challenging every day. The baby kicked her all the time now, which meant it didn’t appreciate the cramped conditions inside her tummy any more than she did.
‘Come out then,’ she challenged it, but only playfully, since the birth was still about eight weeks away. She reached for her cup, but an old wrinkled hand whisked it away and dumped it into the sink.
‘Gran, I was drinking that!’
A shrivelled woman with a limp splashed boiling water over a teabag and put it down on the table near Helen’s hand. ‘Tea, for two,’ she rasped. ‘It’s better for the baby. You’ll thank me in eight weeks.’
‘I’d thank you right now,’ Helen said, ‘if you let me have coffee.’ She wasn’t really upset, it was just a game, but it was one that Helen wished she could win a round or two in occasionally.
She sipped her tea and watched lines of data scroll down the screen as her Trojan Horse program did all the hard work looking for Fletcher Corporation subsidiaries around the world. Not quite a virus, the program had been accepted as a ‘gift’ that allowed her practically full access each time a Fletcher Corp subsidiary came online.
The problem was there were so many sites that had the keyword Fletcher in them. The word was as common on the internet as the surname Smith was in the local phone directory. Her buffer could only handle about fifty at a time, which meant the process of investigating them had become painstaking.
She took a break for a minute and uploaded the images of the crystal coffin and jewellery that she’d taken at the boathouse with her digital camera. Then she double clicked on the icon that filled her screen with the Trojan’s progress again. She narrowed her keyword search to limit results to companies that shared different combinations of the words Fletcher, Sydney and Nicole. But she still came up with thousands of choices to check up on.
One of the first to catch her interest was in Italy, a company that she’d looked at and passed over before. They dealt in second-hand light aircraft and had only one reference to Sydney on their site, but it was a link to a second-hand sales agent who also dealt in corporate yachts and Mercedes, and it had been a Mercedes that Scott had said he’d seen leaving the boathouse the day her father had been found dead. By itself, the connection was too weak to make her suspicious the first time round, but when it appeared again as it had the night before, she had included the company in the first batch that she’d emailed her Trojan to.
PEEKABOO I C U responded the server in Italy, and she smiled. It meant the user had just come online — an odd time for Italy, as it was the middle of the night for them.
LIST PASSWORDS, she entered, which sent an instruction to search the Internet Explorer password cache on that company’s PC. If any of their staff had ever used the ‘remember my password’ query, she’d be able to import the codes and get access to everything. She wouldn’t need a password cracker, which she didn’t have anyway.
Unlucky this time, she slid a gold-tabbed 120Mb super-disc for data into her A-drive and entered the command LOG KEYSTROKES … A:/KEYSTROKES1/
Now she’d get a record of every keystroke entered by the user as well as details of all the windows they were working in at the time. It wouldn’t help her today, but over the next few days, she could log on to get updates on a very clear picture of what they got up to inside their files.
PEEKABOO I C U her screen blipped again as another target company came online. This one wa
s a Sydney florist that she’d been watching for a week, doing a little poking around even before Jayson had asked her to. She felt sorry for this one actually, a woman who struggled hard to keep the business afloat while her husband used a secret email account to keep in touch with other women.
Helen smiled, searching her miscellaneous files and found him the perfect parting gift, a program that would forward copies of all his private emails, incoming as well as outgoing, on to his wife’s business email address where she could read them without his knowledge.
Then she entered the command UNINSTALL (D:UtilitiesPeekaboo.exe) and watched the florist’s server delete the system administration file that she’d imbedded in their utilities directory eight days earlier when she’d emailed it to them on the back of a dummy greeting card.
UNINSTALL COMPLETE the screen blipped four minutes later, and 122Kb of memory was restored to its owner.
Two seconds later, Helen’s screen blipped again.
PEEKABOO I C U.
Time to get busy, she thought, scrolling her mouse down the list to find out who had come online this time. Then her screen filled with blips, going wild.
PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U PEEKABOO I C U
She pressed the escape key, but her screen kept blipping. She held down the control, alt and delete keys to reboot her system and still got no response. She tapped out REBOOT SERVER and LOCK-UP MACHINE, both without response. Then she typed KILL PROCESS and her screen went blank.
The command was supposed to abruptly terminate whatever process was running and prompt her for the ID of the target server that she wished to kill the link to. Instead, Windows kicked her out into DOS and the cursor flashed at the top left-hand corner of the black page, waiting for input.
She took a long breath, feeling the baby kick after the rush of adrenaline and typed in the abbreviation WIN to return to windows mode.
There was a pause, longer than usual, and the cursor started moving by itself.
NO YOU DON’T, it typed. I WIN.
Helen stared at the words, her fingers frozen.
The screen went black again as Windows reloaded and then large hot pink letters scrolled across the middle. A computer voice came through her internal speaker, reading the words aloud.
HELLO, MS HM MACLEOD, it said, as if amused. I’M WATCHING YOU TOO.
Images from her electronic photo album started loading at random onto the screen around the words I’M WATCHING YOU. Jayson and Scott were there at a Christmas party, Gran and Father Connolly standing outside with the ostriches, and a picture of her with her fiancé Mark and Jayson before they left for East Timor. Every second shot seemed to be a photograph of her at various stages of pregnancy. The name it called her was the name she’d entered on her electronic program licences. Whoever it was, was using her own information against her. She pulled the disk from the hard drive, shoving it in her pocket as she panicked. Forgetting the power-off key on the side of her laptop, which was sticky at the best of times anyway, she reached straight for the power outlet on the wall behind her.
She couldn’t reach.
Her hard drive whirred and clicked as files started downloading at someone else’s request. Each filename blipped onto her screen, with the message HAR HAR DELETED. And each one deleted from her files as it transmitted across the net. She shoved her chair back against the wall and a computer voice laughed as if it could see her. She grappled for the power outlet, tugging hard on the cord to release it from an old socket, but she overbalanced as it dislodged.
Her stomach caught the corner of the chair on her way to the floor, and her screen and the room went black together.
‘What do you need me to do?’ Nikki asked as she walked with the detectives back to their car.
‘We believe he sent you here for a reason, Nikola,’ Parry said. ‘My guess is, he’s got contacts close by that are keeping an eye on you.’ His head turned just enough in Locklin’s direction to suggest exactly how close. ‘Obviously your stepfather wants you out of the way, perhaps until you’re healed enough that he can leak your whereabouts either to the press or maybe straight to us, so we can arrest you on that murder charge without rebounding suspicions back on himself. In the meantime, your stepfather must have some pretty serious business going down to want you so far out of his way.’
‘We’re going to have to stir things up a bit,’ Burkett suggested. ‘Force his hand so he’s more likely to make a mistake.’
‘We need you to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary,’ Parry cut in. ‘Stick close to that friend of yours on the horse.’
‘If he’s the one watching you,’ Burkett added, ‘you probably won’t be able to shake him anyway. He’s probably got orders to keep you safe until they’re ready to hand you over.’
Perspiration oozed from her temple as she tried to process what they were telling her. Caution told her the two cops might be the ones she had to beware of, but logic couldn’t guess what game they were playing if they were. And Jayson Locklin had gone out of his way to help her. He’d looked at her from the beginning as if he knew all about her, been callous and yet observant of her health at the same time. And he’d helped her to heal faster.
‘If he tries anything,’ she said, ‘how do I shout for help?’
‘With this,’ Parry said, handing her a business card that was blank except for a mobile phone number. ‘Detective Burkett here is going to loan you his mobile phone.’
‘I am?’ Burkett said, unclipping it from his belt.
‘You can sign out another one when you get back to Sydney.’
‘I thought you’d want to be the one to go back to Sydney and I’d stay to keep an eye on her?’
‘You don’t mind?’ Parry asked, subtly challenging him.
‘Makes no difference to me,’ Burkett said, handing Nikki his cellular phone. He entered the unlock password and explained the buttons.
‘I can read,’ she said, clipping it onto the waist of her skirt and pulling her blouse out just enough to cover it. ‘How do I recharge it?’
‘So long as you don’t ring all your friends you won’t have to,’ Burkett said as they neared the car. ‘The battery’s got a hundred hours in it. Just don’t —’
‘What’s going on here?’ Thorna demanded, clomping down the steps.
Uh oh, the trio thought.
‘You’d be Thorna Maitland,’ Burkett said, intercepting her. ‘Nik’s told us how welcome you’ve made her feel.’ He took her hand gently but determinedly. ‘We appreciate that,’ he added. ‘This is her first job away from home. It’s good to know she’s in good hands.’
‘And you are?’ Thorna asked, her tone softening.
‘Friends of her mother,’ Parry said, only stretching the truth a little. ‘We’re passing through on business and popped in to make sure she’s settled in okay.’
‘My husband doesn’t like strangers just popping in,’ Thorna said. ‘You’ll have to ring first if you want to come again.’
‘We’ll remember that, ma’am,’ Parry said in his disarming tone.
‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ Burkett added, opening his door as Parry slipped behind the wheel. ‘See ya later, kid.’
Yeah, Nikki thought, following Thorna upstairs. She hoped they would.
Allen smiled as he left Private Harvey’s wardroom, looking forward to sending the boy back to Darwin for proper treatment now that he was stabilised.
He checked his watch, realising that his shift had finished hours ago and that back home his wife would be collecting canteen orders for the day at Toowoomba East Primary. His four young daughters were probably already on parade in their little blue-and-white chequered pinafores, with thoughts of Daddy as the last thing on their minds. At home, their daschund Harry would be sitting at their gate, waiting to chase the postman, while back at Dili hospital, it was Nurse Carroll who waited at the nurses station to chase him.
‘Are you still here?’ she asked with her perpetually bubbly tone and disarming smile. ‘I thought we sent you home twice already?’
‘That was yesterday, Doris.’
‘Yes, and the day before. You’ll never keep up with us nurses. You might as well give up trying.’
Allen smiled, as appreciative of her good humour at odd hours as the patients were, but unwilling to admit it. ‘I’m going now,’ he said and she picked the pen from his hand before he forgot to return it. He’d borrowed it for filling in the patients’ charts and was notorious for not returning pens.
‘Oh, can you chase up another couple of tents to set up outside?’ Allen said, remembering what had been bugging him all shift. ‘It’s going to take a while to get the roof back on the museum annex and I want to start a clinic for civilians as soon as possible.’
‘Gary Fritz was doing that before he knocked off,’ Nurse Carroll said. ‘I think he said they’ll be here tomorrow.’
‘Corporal Fritz?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I thought Matron Thorpe sent him to Brisbane to make sure they send the right supplies this time.’
‘He got sick,’ Nurse Carroll said, still smiling. ‘Last minute. He swapped with someone else.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Yes, Lockhead, Lockwood … something like that.’
‘Locklin?’ Allen suggested as his gut twisted over.
‘Yeah, that’s it. Must be one of his day-shift mates. I’ve never heard of him.’
Allen rubbed his forehead, sure that he was sweating.
‘Hey, that’s not the way out!’ Nurse Carroll teased as he headed for his office. ‘Don’t think catching up on sleep in there counts!’
He had no intention of sleeping. ‘Switchboard, get me Lieutenant Colonel Chang please,’ he said, sitting at his phone. ‘Wherever he is — this is urgent.’
Twelve minutes later he was talking to Chang over the pilot’s intercom of a C130 Hercules that was taking off from Darwin air base bound for Amberley.
