The Shadow Maker

by Robert Sims

  She sidled up to him and said, ‘I know we’ve got our differences, but we’re on the same wavelength. We’ve got a hell of a lot in common.’

  He grimaced. ‘Hell being the operative word.’

  ‘So what? A boring, peaceful life - who needs it!’

  ‘Let’s face it,’ he sighed. ‘We’re bad people, Curtis. We each need a steadying influence in our lives. Together we become too destructive.’

  She pressed against the balcony rail. ‘But I miss having you around - even just for a fight. Everyone else is such a pushover.’

  ‘You’ll soon be CEO. That’ll keep you occupied.’

  ‘And what about you, Mr Millionaire? You’ve come a long way since your first attempts to crack the business side of the media. It used to give me a buzz listening to your evil plans. Have they all paid off ?’

  ‘Nearly all.’

  ‘What about Plato’s Cave?’ she asked.

  He gazed out over the ocean to the dark blue rim that curved along the horizon. ‘Plato’s Cave,’ he said cryptically. ‘Of all my plans, that was the killer.’

  It felt like she was emerging from hibernation. After sleeping un interrupted for fifteen hours, Rita awoke feeling relaxed and refreshed. It was what she needed after living on caffeine and adrenalin for the best part of a week in which she’d confronted the worst violence of her life. Now she could put it behind her.

  It was after nine a.m. as she drank orange juice in Byron Huxley’s kitchen, with its view into the depths of the eucalypt forest. He’d come and gone last night and this morning without disturbing her, his hospitality faultless in his effort to provide a quiet haven. It was a type of devotion she hadn’t experienced before, and if this was the beginning of a relationship she had to think carefully about what happened next. Whatever developed, it was essential to maintain her independence, and with Lola due to return today that meant moving back into town. Rita sent her best friend a text message.

  Then there was work. As much as she was enjoying a well-earned rest, she needed to stay up to speed, so she phoned Jack Loftus.

  ‘Don’t come in today,’ he told her. ‘It’s chaos.’

  ‘What about the fallout over Kavella and Moyle?’ Rita asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ said Loftus. ‘The media’s all over it and everybody’s getting in on the act, from the Commissioner down. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.’

  ‘Don’t you need O’Keefe and me on deck?’

  ‘No,’ insisted Loftus. ‘I’ve told Nash I want the pair of you to keep a low profile today, and he agrees. When you get back tomorrow we’ll start going through all the legal formalities. For today, your initial reports are enough.’

  ‘That’s good, I’m enjoying the break. It means I can catch up on some sleep,’ she admitted. ‘What about the Hacker taskforce?’

  ‘That’s on the back burner till next week,’ said Loftus. ‘There’s nothing new to work on, no fresh leads and no viable suspect who owns both an MX-5 and a black ute. Anyway, the decks have been cleared to deal with the aftermath of Proctor’s raids.’

  ‘Any more smartcards turn up at the club?’

  ‘What’s left of them, yeah. And the computer boys say Kavella’s electronic fortress was definitely rigged for a virtual private network, accessible globally, but most of the data’s been trashed. He actually installed a floor of satellite-linked studios in there. He wasn’t setting up a city-wide consortium, he was going international.’

  ‘Jack,’ she interrupted, ‘any Plato’s Cave cards?’

  ‘That’s what I’m getting to,’ he explained. ‘The crime lab people have been going through a basement incinerator full of burnt discs, molten silicon and God knows what. Looks like Kavella had a bonfire to cover his tracks. They’ve retrieved the remains of smartcards with Delos Club on them, but that’s it. It’s possible any Plato’s Cave cards may have been reduced to a pool of melted plastic. Anyway they’re doing their best to analyse what’s there.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Rita. ‘If they could just partially identify one card, it would narrow the search for the Hacker.’

  ‘Forget the Hacker for the time being,’ Loftus advised her. ‘You won’t be able to work on the case properly till next week. In the meantime, I need you and O’Keefe back on board tomorrow, focusing on what went down in and around the church. I need statements, reports, interviews, all clear and consistent. I don’t want any comebacks from the family lawyers waiting in the wings. Have you seen the coverage this morning?’

  ‘No, and I think I’ll give it a miss.’

  ‘Probably a good idea,’ agreed Loftus. ‘So what will you do with your day off ?’

  ‘Something I haven’t been able to do for a while - just chill out.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said.

  Rita showered, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and wandered into the village, past wooden shopfronts and craft centres, till she found a restaurant with outdoor tables. She was eating a breakfast of pancakes when she got a phone call from Lola, who’d just flown in.

  ‘I’ve been reading all about you on the flight down!’ Lola shrieked.

  ‘I can’t believe what a hero you are!’

  ‘So they don’t get any news up in the Whitsundays,’ said Rita.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding, they’re too busy partying. I swear I was drunk for four days, but I’ll tell you later. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m having breakfast in Olinda.’

  ‘What are you doing in the Dandenongs?’ asked Lola. ‘Have you gone bush?’

  ‘I’ve been staying at Byron Huxley’s place.’

  ‘I can’t believe it’s all happened while I’ve been away!’ Lola was beside herself with excitement. ‘I’m dumping my things and driving up to see you.’

  They arranged to meet at a tourist cafe in the forest.

  After finishing breakfast, Rita strolled back to Huxley’s cottage, got in her car and drove to the cafe, arriving with time to spare.

  She decided to stretch her legs.

  It was peaceful to walk here, therapeutic, the scent of eucalyptus heavy in the air among the gum trees and towering stands of mountain ash. The ringing calls of bellbirds chimed against the raucous sounds of the kookaburras and the squawking of parrots that dived in flocks of crimson shapes, flashing among the branches.

  The occasional scuttle of a lizard rustled the undergrowth on the forest trail strewn with bark and overhung by the fronds of tree ferns. In the musty quiet of a fern-lined gully, she stopped to lean on the wooden rail of a footbridge, gazing distractedly at the muddy water of a creek, before strolling back to the cafe in time to see Lola arrive.

  They sat on the wooden verandah and chatted over coffees. Rita was reluctant to talk about her recent brush with violence - she’d be doing that officially over the next couple of days - but what details she did reveal simply horrified Lola.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re so brave!’ she said, clasping Rita’s hand.

  ‘And I wasn’t even here for you. I was too busy being chased around a sundeck by a randy lesbian.’

  Rita laughed. ‘So tell me, how’s your new girlfriend - I thought she was supposed to be hot?’

  ‘Hot, flash and mad as a fruit bat,’ said Lola. ‘Whenever we were alone I spent most of the time fending her off.’

  ‘Successfully, I hope.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I was so paralytic a couple of nights, I can’t actually remember what, or who, I did!’

  Rita chuckled. ‘So you might be a designer dyke?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’ said Lola, tossing back her long hair.

  ‘I’d rather not think about it.’ She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. ‘Let’s change the subject. Enjoy the scenery. Watch the parrots crap on the tourists.’

  A coach had just pulled up, spilling out a party of Japanese sightseers, cameras clicking. Right on cue, a flock of rosellas descended on the picnic tables, with sulphur-crested coc
katoos waiting in the wings.

  ‘What’s far more interesting,’ resumed Lola, ‘is what you’ve been getting up to with the hunky professor. Have you had sex yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh my God, you cold-hearted bitch! You’ve been sharing his bed without letting him bang you!’

  ‘He’s been on the sofa,’ Rita explained, ‘while I’ve been in his bed alone - sleeping! Lots of sleeping.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you’ve got an excuse.’

  ‘Thank you. But you’re right, I’ve imposed on him enough.’

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of going back to your house,’ said Lola, blowing out a stream of smoke. ‘Not after what happened there.’

  ‘No,’ sighed Rita. ‘I’ll put it on the market.’

  ‘Good. Then you’re moving in with me.’

  ‘I was counting on that,’ said Rita. ‘And it should be an interesting experiment. We’re complete opposites.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Lola said, flicking ash on the wooden floor. ‘I’ll leave a mess, you’ll tidy up. We’ll be perfect flatmates!’

  As Lola drove back to the city and a belated return to her duties at the magazine, Rita headed back to Olinda and the cottage she now thought of as the Byron Huxley Retreat. She packed her bag, left him an effusive thankyou note and took a leisurely drive along the freeway to Lola’s place in South Yarra.

  The apartment was in a converted Victorian house set in a garden among hibiscus plants and old oak trees, with a view down a steep road to the river. It had two bedrooms, a spacious kitchen and an old-fashioned parlour strewn with magazines, fashion accessories, bags, shoes and more shoes. Despite the chaos, Rita felt at home straightaway. Within hours of moving in, her bedroom was the tidiest space in the apartment.

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re anal,’ was Lola’s comment when she got home that night.

  They opened a bottle of wine and slumped down on the sofa, gossiping busily, not paying much attention to the news program on the TV until the late-night preview of the next morning’s first editions.

  ‘My God!’ screamed Lola, grabbing the remote and boosting the volume. ‘Look at that!’

  Rita stared at the TV screen to see a photo of herself - a provocative full-length shot in a purple bikini - filling the front page of tomorrow’s tabloid under the headline police siren.

  She was speechless.

  But Lola wasn’t. ‘How on earth did they get hold of that?’ she shouted.

  Rita found her voice. ‘From Mike Cassidy,’ she said hoarsely. ‘It’s from our holiday last year. I’m going to kill him.’

  Rita turned up at police headquarters next morning in a sober grey outfit, making a vain attempt to counter the image of her in a bikini plastered across the front pages. Kevin O’Keefe arrived in camouflage pants and on crutches. They sat next to each other outside the office of Superintendent Gordon Nash, waiting to be summoned inside.

  A secretary sat at a desk, tapping placidly on a keyboard beside a vase of cornflowers and a murmuring TV monitor.

  ‘I’ve got to admit it,’ said O’Keefe, a twinkle in his eye. ‘As bosses go, you’re a bit of a beach babe.’

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Rita warned him.

  ‘I assume your ex did the dirty on you.’

  ‘He’s an odious prick, but don’t get me started,’ she growled.

  ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘The bullet tore a hole through my flexor muscles and buggered my hamstring,’ O’Keefe grumbled. ‘It could wreck my swimming style.’

  ‘And let’s face it, that’s more important than your career.’

  ‘Too right,’ said O’Keefe, as Mike Cassidy’s face appeared on TV.

  ‘Speak of the devil.’

  Cassidy was standing outside court buildings, with a ‘Breaking News’ caption flashing across the screen.

  Rita swore under her breath as she stooped over the secretary and turned up the volume.

  In the latest dramatic development over the death of crime baron Tony Kavella, his family have announced they’re suing the police. Lawyers acting for his younger brothers, Theo and Nikos Kavella, claim detectives were operating a shoot-to-kill policy in one of the state’s biggest-ever manhunts for the high-profile fugitive. I spoke to the Kavella family solicitor, Clayton Pearce, a short time ago.

  Video of Pearce: If we set aside the sensational headlines, there are clear grounds for filing a lawsuit. The post-mortem examination shows Mr Kavella was hit by bullets discharged from weapons held by two police officers, even though he didn’t fire a shot. The fact that he was gunned down in front of his mother, inside a church, only adds weight to evidence that he was the victim of an execution-style killing - or, as his brothers put it, the target of a police assassination.

  Cassidy: Senior officers at police headquarters are yet to officially respond, although a spokesman for the Police Association has dismissed the accusations as ‘cynical and groundless’. Lawyers acting for the sister of gangland figure Brendan Moyle are also preparing to take legal action, claiming his neck was broken and his body dumped in a chicken coop after he’d been disarmed. Meanwhile, the Kavella family have announced plans for one of the most ostentatious underworld funerals likely to be seen in this city. In a final irony, the funeral will be held in the same church where Tony Kavella was baptised, attended services as a boy, and lay bleeding to death after being shot.

  Now back to the studio.

  Rita turned down the volume as the bulletin moved on to other news.

  ‘Your ex has got a brutal way with words,’ observed O’Keefe.

  ‘Maybe I should wring his neck as well.’

  ‘That’s too good for him,’ she said. ‘You know what all this means?’

  ‘We’ve got a long, gruelling day ahead of us.’

  ‘And instead of being heroes, we’re going to face an inquisition.’

  Rita and O’Keefe sat in front of Nash’s desk while he regarded them over his steel-rimmed glasses. To their left sat Jack Loftus, to their right a three-man team of legal advisers. The atmosphere was heavy with accountability.

  ‘I toyed with the idea of suspending both of you but I was talked out of it,’ said Nash, throwing an accusing glance at Loftus. ‘As it is, you’re going to spend the next two days dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” so those predatory lawyers won’t get to first base with any court action. At the same time we’ve got to go through our internal procedures. That means by tomorrow evening I want all reports - witness, crime scene and ballistic - formal statements, interview transcripts, the lot, processed, triple-checked, finalised and on my desk. Understand?’

  They nodded.

  ‘That means,’ he continued, ‘your sick leave doesn’t resume until Saturday, O’Keefe. And you, Van Hassel, are off all other duties until next week. While I’m sure you acted courageously, if precipitously, out in the field, I don’t want either of you to get carried away with feelings that you’re not accountable. The reputation of the force has taken a battering recently, and it’s down to both of you to make sure the lawyers, the press and the Office of Police Integrity don’t have any fresh ammunition to fire at us. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they both said.

  ‘And we could do without this!’ he snapped, tossing the morning newspaper onto his desk. ‘With the sort of tacky publicity you’ve been getting lately,’ he fixed Rita with a glare, ‘your career as a profiler could become untenable.’

  She decided not to argue. ‘Point taken, sir,’ she said.

  ‘All right. Now both of you, get on with it.’

  They stood up and left Nash’s office, closing the door behind them.

  ‘Mike Cassidy’s arse is grass,’ Rita muttered as she headed towards the lifts, O’Keefe clomping along on his crutches beside her.

  ‘You know how we blew it?’ he said. ‘We made the wrong call.’

  ‘In what way?’ she asked.

  ‘We should have let
the bastards kill us!’

  A full twenty-four hours had elapsed since Barbie’s return from Sydney and he was feeling tense. Giselle was overdue from Japan, having phoned from Tokyo to warn of delays. There’d been an underwater quake off Honshu causing structural damage, scores of injuries, disruption to flight schedules at Narita International and a tsunami alert.

  ‘Sounds serious,’ he’d said, though it was structural damage to his business plans that really concerned him.

  With the deadline for the VR deal now only one day away, Jojima’s failure to say whether it was on or off was driving Barbie into a state of nervous agitation. When he’d asked Giselle about her time with Jojima she’d said, ‘It was like a field trip in anthropology.’

  He couldn’t tell from her tone if that was good or bad and she’d refused to go into details over the phone. Now he was on edge, with her return flight due in the early afternoon. He was in no mood for the office, nor could he bring himself to eat. Breakfast was chilled orange juice. Unable to settle he wandered around the house, finally forcing himself to sit down on the sundeck by his swimming pool.

  There he went through the morning papers.

  To his continuing amazement Marita Van Hassel was still front-page news. Monday’s headlines about her deadly duel with the Duck had been sensational enough, allowing the nation’s tabloids to express their sentiments over the killing of the hit-man with customary zeal: duck shoot and quack quack, you’re whacked! Yesterday’s coverage on the aftermath of the Kavella shoot-out went further -

  holy bloodbath and death rites in church - while a sober-minded broadsheet noted greek tragedy. This morning, though, her page-one image capped the rest, showing her in a brief bikini that exposed her copious charms under the inspired headline police siren .

  To anyone in the publicity business it was awe-inspiring. From heroic crime-buster to pin-up within three days. What a scoop. And what an opportunity. Any PR agent who got her on his books would be laughing.