Kill Shot

by Blair Denholm

  ‘OK, son. It’s plain you still have some love left for your dad, despite what’s happened. Let’s go back to the drug question. Would he be taking anything for mental health problems, for example? Rumour has it he took the break up with your mother hard. Perhaps he’s been popping prescription antidepressants?’

  Charlie let out a deep laugh that reverberated off the walls. ‘He’s pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes if they think he’s been moping about, sad his marriage broke up. He’d hook up with any woman who smiled at him.’

  Time to try another tack. ‘You’ve got a lot of resentment against your father for another reason, don’t you, mate? Humiliation in the ring, his disappointment you couldn’t live up to his high expectations. I bet he never imagined you turning out like…this.’ Jack stared unflinchingly at the barber, spread his hands wide as if demonstrating how fat Charlie had become. Taylor shot Jack a vicious side-eye that said he’d overstepped the mark. If she thought that was overstepping, she wouldn’t like the next bit. ‘I’m gonna come clean with you, son. There’s a body on the slab in Yorkville morgue right now. We’re pretty sure it’s your father. Can you account for your movements over the last two days?’

  ‘Hang on, you’re asking me for a…a fucking alibi…for I don’t know what, and you’ve never even introduced yourself properly.’ Charlie waved his hands about in front of his face, eyes darting all over the place. ‘You barge in here, throwing questions at me. What’s your name, you arrogant bastard?’

  ‘Do forgive me. I’m Detective Sergeant Jack Lisbon and this is Detective Constable Claudia Taylor, Yorkville Police. I’ll repeat the question, can you account for–’

  ‘YES! I’ve been flat out at the salon and for the last two nights, no, make that five nights, I’ve been at home with my partner Jeremy.’

  ‘I see.’ Jeremy?

  ‘I’m always exhausted at the end of a day’s work. I close up shop, maybe drop in at the supermarket, but it’s straight home after that.’

  ‘We’ll be confirming that claim with your partner later.’ Jack retrieved his mobile.

  ‘What, are you going to call him now?’

  ‘Sorry? Oh no. I wanted to show you a photo of the body we recovered by the Boustead River.’

  Taylor grabbed his hand. ‘No, Jack! Enough. Put it away.’

  ‘No, no. You can’t start something and then finish it,’ Charlie’s eyes were ablaze. ‘Show me the damn picture. If he’s dead, I wanna see it.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re going to want to see this, Charlie.’ Jack shifted into nice guy gear. ‘Perhaps we’ll wait for the autopsy to confirm against the dental records or the DNA.’

  A beefy hand darted, snatched the phone out of the detective’s grip. ‘Fuck that.’ Charlie’s hand shook as he scrolled through the photos. ‘Holy shit. What happened?’ His face turned ashen. ‘Jesus, I hated him but he didn’t deserve that.’ Tears pooled in the corners of Charlie’s soft brown eyes, his plaited beard quivered.

  A fist pounded on the door. ‘You OK in there? I heard shouting?’ called one of the other barbers. ‘Your 4 o’clock appointment’s here and getting impatient.’

  ‘All under control,’ reassured Taylor. ‘We’ll be out in a moment.’

  ‘Is it him, Charlie?’ said Jack, leaning in close and looking at the last photo over Charlie’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Charlie sniffed back tears, bent closer to the image.

  ‘Look at the tattoo. See the dragon? The writing?’

  Charlie handed the phone back to Jack. ‘No, it’s not him.’ He expelled a long, relieved breath.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Definitely. He hates tattoos. He can take a beating but he’s been scared of needles all his life. No way that’s my father.’

  It was Taylor’s turn to show Charlie something on her phone. ‘Look at this Facebook post. He’s asking his followers their opinion about getting this very design. He must’ve changed his mind and decided to get a tatt.’

  A slow shake of the head from Charlie. ‘That’s not even dad in the photo. He’s got a big broad scar from his surgery, it runs all the way down the shoulder blade. You can see there’s no scar here.’

  ‘But it’s his page,’ Taylor insisted.

  ‘Look closer,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a guest post by someone else. Dad just left it there without comment or deleting it. He’s not a huge user of social media, he probably never even knew it was there.’

  ‘You know who it is?’ pressed Taylor. ‘Do you recognise anything in the photo?’

  London Calling erupted in the small room, made everyone jump. Jack let the call go to voicemail. A weird silence fell for a few moments.

  ‘Well?’ said Jack. ‘Do you know who that man is?’

  A tiny nod from Charlie. ‘Yep.’ He jabbed a forefinger at the mobile screen. ‘It’s Owen fucking Kennedy.’

  An SMS message alert lit up the screen of Jack’s phone. He didn’t have to check it. Preview mode confirmed Charlie’s words. He held up the mobile for Taylor to see the text. URGENT: DNA analysis confirms body is not that of Terry Bartlett.

  Chapter 9

  The antiseptic odour of the city morgue delivered Jack a kick in the guts, set off bad memories. It propelled him back to a London hospital, three and a half years ago. Two thugs beat the living shit out of him in a dark alley after he’d pissed off a particularly nasty and vindictive boxing trainer, the late and not-much-lamented Alex Gallagher. Lying in a hospital bed for weeks, Jack somehow made a full recovery from his horrific injuries. Today it was only a tiny niggle in the lower leg. Later, Jack exacted righteous and violent revenge against Gallagher. He also separated the trainer from a large sum of cash, money owed to Jack for keeping the trainer safe from the law. Back to the wall and desperate, Jack had little choice but to despatch Gallagher to meet His Maker.

  At the end of that nightmare, Jack made a hasty getaway to the other end of the Earth, to a new job, a new life. Every day since the final fatal showdown with Gallagher, Jack had been looking over his shoulder. The trainer’s death was marked as unsolved, but you never knew. There was always the chance a determined London Met copper could re-open the investigation. One thing in Jack’s favour – Gallagher was scum and, as far as Jack knew via the grapevine, many were glad to learn he’d been bumped off.

  All those memories reignited by a simple smell. Didn’t matter, though. It was all about the here and now, the living people sharing the immediate space with him and the body on the slab; solving this case.

  Doctor Margaret Proctor, appearing more relaxed in blue scrubs than she did dressed as a terrestrial astronaut at the crime scene, pulled back the white sheet to reveal what was left of the champion boxer. Bones and torn meat, like the carcass of a beast slaughtered in an abattoir. Jack leaned in for a closer look, Taylor’s posture remained ramrod straight, eyes fluttering and nose pointed up.

  ‘Is there anything in the database to confirm this is Owen Kennedy?’ said Jack. He and Taylor agreed not to approach any family members until they were 100 percent sure they had the right person.

  ‘Yes. There were no DNA records in the criminal justice system, so I took a print from the only finger remaining on the left hand.’ Proctor carefully held up the corpse’s hand by the wrist. ‘As you can see, it’s swollen and putrefied, but there was just enough print left to be useful. Owen Kennedy was finger-and-palm printed after being arrested for a mid-range DUI a couple of years ago.’

  ‘He would’ve given blood for the drink driving arrest,’ said Taylor. ‘Was there DNA taken from that?’

  ‘No, the sample was only tested for blood alcohol content, not DNA. But the fingerprint was sufficient. It’s a match.’ Proctor again held up the putrefied hand.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t have to demonstrate everything,’ said Taylor, gaze averted towards a wall of steel-grey filing cabinets. ‘We require your conclusions, we don’t need to see all the gory bits.’

  ‘How you ever progr
essed beyond uniformed constable baffles me, DC Taylor. You need to harden up.’ Jack turned to address the pathologist, smiled as if apologising for his partner’s oversensitivity. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘If you look closely at the base of the finger here.’ As Proctor spoke, Jack saw Taylor gritting her teeth, angling her head for a better look. Doing her best to tough it out, bless her. ‘There’s an indentation, like you get from wearing a ring over a long period. See it?’

  ‘Yes,’ the detectives said together.

  ‘It could be one of those championship rings,’ said Jack. ‘MMA associations around the world have been introducing them to replace belts. They’re a more personal reward than a belt that gets shared around.’

  ‘Perhaps it slipped off while he was in the water?’ Claudia suggested.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Proctor. ‘If you consider how deep the indentation is among all that swelling, I’d say the likelihood of the ring falling off is low.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Jack, straightening up. ‘Someone forcibly removed it. Those bad boys can be worth a couple of grand or more. Anything else?’

  ‘Apart from the missing fingers, the body is remarkably intact, considering. You’d think there’d be even less of him after a crocodile attack, wouldn’t you?’ Proctor’s tangential remark hung in the air like a thought balloon in a cartoon until Jack caught it, turned it over in his mind, and formulated the only response he could think of.

  ‘Yeah, you would ‘n all.’

  Taylor said nothing.

  ‘But like you mentioned before,’ Jack continued. ‘Maybe the animal got spooked by something while it was chowing down on the dearly departed and did a runner or a slither or whatever it is crocs do.’

  ‘It’s interesting with crocodiles, you know.’ The pathologist droned with haughty authority, lecturing the ignorant in subjects esoteric. ‘For what amounts to prehistoric monsters with brains smaller than the average house cat, crocodiles, including the saltwater species Crocodylus porosus, can behave in the most unexpected ways.’ As the woman spoke, Jack was reminded of a quiz show host famous for savaging dopey contestants unable to answer simple questions. The eyeroll he copped from Taylor told him the coroner was giving her the shits. On the other hand, now Proctor had started, he had to know.

  ‘Unexpected how?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked.’ She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. ‘There was a case in the Northern Territory a few years back. A local psychic, can you believe it, told the police she thought a crocodile was guarding the dead body of an unfortunate tourist, protecting the cadaver from other crocodiles. Perhaps to eat it later, perhaps for some other purpose we can only guess at.’

  ‘Yes, very interesting.’ Taylor snuck a glance at her watch. ‘Perhaps we can get to the matter in hand.’

  ‘Oh, do forgive me.’ The big woman gave a dainty titter that didn’t match her Amazon proportions. ‘I’m fascinated by the role animals can play in pathology work. Shark and dog bites are another area that–’

  ‘Please,’ Jack interrupted, gestured with his head towards the body. ‘Tell us what killed him.’ It took all his will to choke off the words “for fuck’s sake”.

  ‘Yes, of course. The body has sustained enormous damage. He was a professional athlete, is that correct?’

  The detectives nodded together. ‘Mixed martial arts,’ said Jack.

  ‘First, there’s no involvement of firearms, as I assessed at the crime scene. No evidence of hacking with a sharp implement or stabbing with a non-serrated blade. I cannot rule out the use of a serrated knife or even a saw.’

  ‘Right, right.’ Jack tapped his foot underneath the gurney. ‘We don’t wanna know what didn’t kill him.’

  Proctor cleared her throat loudly, like she was about to let loose with a reprimand, however maintained her cool. ‘Please be patient. I’m getting to that. So, there are many pre-existing injuries from his sporting activities. However, it’s easy to see old scarring and healed broken bones, dental posts where he’s had teeth knocked out. There’s been massive amounts of tissue torn and bones crushed by the crocodile, the skull too. However, if you see this hollow here.’ She pointed with a scalpel at the very top of what was left of Kennedy’s cranium. ‘The even round indentation is evidence of blunt force trauma. I also found bruising on the brain itself. All of this preceded any mauling by the crocodile. The blow to the head is a possible cause of death, and I’d place the timing somewhere between two days and a week ago, erring towards the latter taking into account decomposition.’

  ‘That’s a big window.’ Jack pulled at a loose thread on his shirtsleeve. ‘Can’t you narrow it down?’

  ‘Sorry.’ A headshake from Proctor. ‘Once they’ve been in the water, determining an accurate time of death is difficult. With changes to salt content, PH and water temperatures, it can be a guessing game.’

  The detectives exchanged a knowing look. ‘So someone’s coshed him,’ said Jack. ‘Would death have been quick?’

  ‘Impossible to say. However, you’ll note I said possible cause, not likely. Look here.’ Proctor pointed at a narrow pinkish line on the victim’s neck. ‘I found tiny blue flecks of soft plastic embedded in the flesh of Owen Kennedy’s neck, all the way around the throat.’

  ‘What kind of plastic?’ asked Taylor.

  ‘HDPR, or high-density polyethylene.’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ said Jack.

  ‘Among other things, it’s used to make various kinds of shopping bags.’ Proctor blinked rapidly.

  ‘Put over his head.’ Jack mused aloud.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Proctor. ‘Meaning the cause of death could also be suffocation inside a plastic bag prior to or after being bashed on the head with a blunt instrument. Absence of water in the remaining right lung tells me he was dead before ending up in the water.’

  ‘Preferable to being fed alive to the crocs, I guess,’ said Taylor. ‘What can you tell us about blood and toxicology?’

  ‘I’ve compared the man’s blood with that of the smaller sample from Terry Bartlett’s vehicle. It belongs to the man lying here before us. As for illegal substances, the guy was clean. No anabolic steroids, no HGH.’

  Jack scratched his cheek, prickly stubble poking through in the late afternoon. ‘Kennedy was likely transported in the boot of Bartlett’s car and then dumped somewhere with a plastic bag over his head. We’d better get ready for a briefing with the rest of the team, Claudia. And it’s time for a media release. Run it by Inspector Batista. We can’t keep this shtum for much longer. Maguire and Peroni have left a ton of messages on my phone, demanding a statement.’

  ‘Mine, too.’ Taylor pursed her lips. ‘They’re bloody persistent.’

  ‘Looks like a missing person’s gone from a dead person to a…murder person, ah, victim.’

  Taylor shook her head. ‘Dear oh dear, what a way with words you have, DS Lisbon. I’m surprised you haven’t been made head of the PR department with language skills like that.’ Jack smiled; the Detective Constable pointing out his ineloquence was apt revenge for him taunting her about her weak stomach.

  ‘Finding Terry Bartlett is even more urgent. He’s now a suspect and a potential second victim.’

  ‘I agree. The only problem is, how?’

  DC Taylor typed the final full stop on her draft press release. She made sure to include the appeal Jack suggested – bring in the public. She hit send and the email message was gone to the press officer for circulation to the media, with copies to Jack and Inspector Batista. She reread the case notes for fifteen minutes and was about to head for home when an alert beeped and a small envelope appeared in the bottom left of her computer screen. Come and see me please. Batista.

  ‘Good work on the press release. Hopefully some members of the public will come forward with something.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Taylor scanned Batista’s desk, somewhere between Jack’s chaos and her orderliness. Middle of the road
, like the Inspector himself. Rumour had it he got his job by patiently waiting his turn and not making waves, never actively sought promotion. By nature he was a relaxed, hands-off boss, and she liked it that way.

  ‘Have you and DS Lisbon got this thing covered?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘I’ve been reviewing the material you’ve gathered, the lab reports. Lots of ground to be covered, maybe too much for you and Lisbon on your own. If you need extra resources, let me know.’ The boss’s old swivel chair creaked as he leaned forward. ‘This is the biggest case to hit our town in a long time. People are going to be worried, looking to us to solve the crime fast. I mean, if a trained professional fighter can’t defend himself, how’s the average citizen going to feel? Women walking alone at night?’

  Taylor nodded. ‘I agree entirely.’ She handed Batista a list of clients from The Iron Horse. ‘If Sergeant Wilson and the other uniforms could get on the phone and talk to these people, that’d save me and Jack a ton of legwork.’ She smiled hopefully.

  The inspector scanned the list. ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘It’s not all Bartlett’s clients. The press release might flush out a few more. One of them might know something. Our priority is locating Terry Bartlett, it’s his blood in the abandoned vehicle after all. He could’ve killed his protégé’s nemesis, got himself injured and done a runner.’

  ‘Either that or he’s another victim yet to be found. What about the assistant trainer, what’s his name again?’

  ‘Andy Harlow.’

  ‘Yeah. Could he be involved?’

  ‘Maybe. We can’t get hold of him. Carl Masiker says he doesn’t know where in Sydney Harlow took his family. We’ve checked social media, all the usual stuff. Nada.’

  ‘You think Masiker’s telling the truth?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not sure.’

  The Inspector absently tugged on his shirt cuffs. ‘And that leaves Danny Sharpe, the dead man’s main opponent in the ring. Frustrated by continued defeats, in a bad head space with the drug infringement and dropped by his trainer. He’s the key.’