by Garry Disher
When he got off the phone, Muecke ran both names. Maxstead and Snell were marina rats from Cairns, originally. Named but not charged when a coral reef cruise operator was prosecuted for running ice and cocaine to shore from outlying cargo ships. Things must’ve got too hot for them, Muecke thought, so they headed south.
He checked his email. SA Police still hadn’t sent photos of Dirk and Missy van Horen. He sent a reminder, and then a constable was knocking on his door: he was wanted upstairs.
THE ROBBERY AND SERIOUS Crimes inspector gave Muecke a bone-cracking handshake intended to demonstrate his sincerity, before telling him to sit. Sam Henderson was there, looking satisfied, squeezing out a meaningless smile as Muecke caught his eye.
Muecke turned back to the RSC inspector. ‘Sir?’
‘A heads-up,’ the inspector said. Another fast-track graduate, ten years younger than Muecke, but balding. Flushed, as if he spent his lunchtimes celebrating successful raids.
‘Okay,’ said Muecke, wondering what fresh hell was coming his way.
‘I’ve spoken to your boss. My officers were pleased to work alongside yours in your investigation into Samuel Kramer’s suspected ongoing activities, and we appreciate your general input into possibly related matters, but, going forward, my department cannot justify continued time, effort or expenditure on what seems to be, frankly, a wild goose chase.’
He came to the end of this with a briskly indifferent smile. Then Henderson chipped in. ‘But you might like to know, with pressure from us the prison will be revoking Kramer’s day-release privileges, which will put a spanner in the works if he is up to anything.’
Meaning Henderson didn’t think it very likely, the smug shit. ‘Sir,’ Muecke said, hating the tremor in his voice, ‘you’ve just shut down my only chance of finding who he’s working with.’
He looked past the inspector’s shoulder at the dismal blurred buildings outside. It was like looking into another dimension. He shook himself inwardly to pay attention as the inspector droned on.
‘But there are tried and tested channels, Detective Sergeant Muecke. Informants. Receivers of stolen goods. The family’s phone and banking records. Meanwhile my squad needs to action inquiries and operations that lead to tangible results.’
‘Like arrests,’ Henderson said.
The inspector shot him an appraising scowl, then turned back to Muecke. ‘Look at it this way: with Kramer restricted now, he’s likely to make a mistake or rely overmuch on his people coming to him. Monitor his calls. Watch who visits. That’s more likely to lead to a result than trying to locate one person of interest in a city of five million—one who might not exist or is quite innocent.’
He folded his arms. A warning note of authority on his big-boned face. ‘Clear, sergeant?’
‘Sir.’
‘Speak to your inspector. I know if he’s anything like me, he’s snowed under with reports, leads and case files. New cases coming in all the time. There’ll be plenty for you to do.’
Muecke said, ‘Sir,’ again, not meaning it, and left the room, heading for Property Crimes. His inspector was there, but his door was closed. He knows I was called to the Robbers, he thought, knows I’m disappointed and pissed off. Doesn’t want to face me just now.
He swivelled in his chair and eyed the photographs arranged at the edge of his desk. His wife, Meg: absorbed in her arts degree these days, leaving him behind now that the kids were gone. His daughters, one at uni in Melbourne, one on a gap year in London. His dog, dead three months. The dog had loved him unreservedly. Wife and daughters continued to love him, he thought. If not unreservedly.
There were pitfalls in thinking too much. He snapped out of it by attending to emails, then slogged through the printed material scattered over his desk. A health and safety memo, a time-share brochure, a Police Credit Union leaflet. Still the Kramer case crept back in. Henderson’s inspector was right: all Muecke had was rumours. Surveillance photos. A mystery man. Shading, not hard facts. His own boss was going to pull the plug, too, Muecke could feel his intention seeping under his door and spreading through the squad room. For a moment, he felt a pinch of panic.
He dealt with it. Took himself in hand and decided on a course of action. First, appear to go along with whatever shit had come, would come, his way. Second, keep tabs on Kramer’s wife, daughter and son. Third, show the Centennial Park image to a wider range of contacts. Fourth, have another crack at Bradley Salter. And Carl Ayliffe. What could he promise them, though? What clout did he have anymore?
He continued with the paperwork. When the surface gumf had been cleared away, Muecke saw that someone—probably his inspector—had dumped a handful of files on his desk. New and ongoing cases. Jesus, he was tired of life.
He flicked through them. Nothing new: a motor vehicle theft and rebirthing ring in Bankstown; an investigation into a Rural Fire Service probationer who’d been lighting fires near Cessnock; odometer tampering at used car dealerships in the Camden area; an aggravated break-and-enter at a shopping centre in the Hunter region.
No, a couple he didn’t know. Strike Force Nimbus, involving Property Crimes and the Marine Area Command, looking into a suspicious fire that had destroyed three luxury cruisers at Morrisons Bay Marina. Strike Force Stratus, involving Property Crimes, the Fraud Squad and Newcastle City Local Area Command, investigating cases of investors lured into paying for non-existent houses, flats and blocks of land in and around Newcastle. Once of his colleagues, a Property Crimes senior sergeant named Brenner, had just returned from there.
Muecke hated arson cases. The smell, the messy forensics, the twisted wiring in the brain of your typical pyromaniac. But he’d spent some time working fraud cases and he quite enjoyed them. Maybe he could work the Newcastle case with Brenner?
He leafed through the material more thoroughly, and realised the case was bigger than it looked. An adjunct to a big Ponzi scheme investigation. Reports, statements, interview summaries, phone and email transcripts, banking records; photographs of the main players taken from social media, newspaper archives and surveillance operations. Names were attached, with notes appended: dates, addresses, phone numbers, suspected crimes, links to the other players.
One surveillance photo showed an unidentified man, ‘Do we know who this is?’ scribbled on a yellow Post-it note attached to an envelope containing two photographs. Muecke felt a stir in his veins as he took in the long, hard limbs, the face inscrutable in one shot, showing a single look of scepticism and readiness in the second. Casually dressed, walking along a street in an area of Newcastle known as The Hill.
Sorry, can’t tell you his name, thought Muecke. But oh, yes, I know who he is and what he does—kind of. And it’s nice to know where he is right now.
HE KNOCKED ON THE senior sergeant’s office door.
Kitty Brenner had her back to him and was writing on a small whiteboard. A list of daily actions, Muecke thought. She turned, a tall, sleek blonde of forty or so who had already edged past Muecke in the promotion stakes and would soon leave him far behind. Ambitious in a lean and hungry way. Not all that good at her job, according to canteen gossip.
‘Greg. Can I help you with something?’
Muecke entered the room. He saw a flicker of irritation, a brief furrow between her pencilled brows: he should have waited for her to extend an invitation. But the annoyance was there and gone again and she capped the whiteboard marker, set it on top of a filing cabinet, and slipped with a graceful movement into the chair behind her desk. Gestured for him to sit.
‘Strike Force Stratus,’ he said.
‘I’m just wrapping that up,’ she said. ‘No longer our concern.’
Damn. ‘Can I ask why?’
She shrugged. ‘Word from on high. Everything’s been handed over to the Probity Commission, part of a wider ongoing investigation.’
‘Tremayne and Roden.’
Brenner aimed her gaunt cheekbones at him, dry hair swinging about her shoulders. ‘Your interest?�
�
‘What do you know about either of them?’
‘Roden’s in jail, Tremayne’s next. Again, your interest?’
‘Where did they put Roden?’
‘Watervale,’ Brenner said, self-assured but testy now, a still, tense figure on the other side of her desk.
Muecke hoped she wouldn’t register the current tingling through him: Watervale.
She said, ‘I’m waiting, Greg.’
‘No interest in particular,’ Muecke said. ‘The boss put a few files on my desk, that’s all, one of them being preliminary notes on Stratus.’
Brenner seemed irritated. Started to say something and thought better of it. She runs into inefficiencies every day, Muecke thought, and it drives her nuts.
‘Ignore it,’ she said. ‘Like I said, it’s in the past as far as we’re concerned.’
18
TUESDAY EVENING, WYATT WAS back in his Airbnb cabin, running a Google search on Mark Benedict Impey. Impey had grown up in regional New South Wales; boarding school in Sydney; inherited an abattoir when his father died. A few years later he bought two more, then parlayed that into a chain of rural butcher shops and meat supplies to country supermarkets. Divorced, no children. Active in National Party politics; golf, charity functions. Internet images showed him at a ball, on a farm, cutting the ribbon at the opening of a supermarket. He was pink, slightly porcine. People probably underestimated him.
Impey met Jack Tremayne and Kyle Roden in 2015, invested heavily—shares and real estate—made a solid profit, then withdrew it all one year later. Apparently he was not as rapturously gullible as Tremayne’s other investors. He went on to buy a cattle property, a yacht, the house in Merewether Beach. Remained friends with Tremayne and Roden and was on the record saying Tremayne was a financial genius, terrible what had happened to him, such a shame Mr Roden had proven to be a bad apple.
Jack Tremayne belonged to Impey’s golf and yacht clubs, which probably counted for something in that social circle. Tremayne had made Impey a lot of money, which counted for more. The cool blonde beauty Tremayne was married to probably helped too. Wyatt found a society photograph, Tremayne beaming as he handed a cheque the size of a tabletop to a hospital CEO, Lynx Tremayne and Mark Impey off to one side, Impey looking not at the camera but at the wife. Wyatt thought his way into the man. Lynx Tremayne was unattainable; deep down Impey knew it but couldn’t admit it. Meanwhile, remaining friends with Tremayne meant remaining close to the wife, and who knew what might eventuate?
Wyatt wondered: given that the authorities hadn’t found Tremayne’s nest egg, and it wasn’t at the end of a paper or a digital trail, perhaps a trusted friend was holding onto it? Like me with Sam Kramer? He tried to picture it, Tremayne convincing someone—Impey, his lawyer—that he was the victim of impatient investors and a vindictive corporate watchdog. He’d done his best, selling up, clearing debts, but still the bastards were coming. So here’s my last bit of cash, he’d tell this friend or colleague. I’ll need it to live on, pay some bills, keep Lynx happy; eventually trade out of difficulties. It wouldn’t be fair if government hacks got hold of the lot.
Or he’d hidden it, and only he knew where.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING the white Caprice shadowed Tremayne again, and Wyatt shadowed the Caprice in a Kia he rented in an outer suburb of Newcastle. Tremayne took him to a gym, a coffee shop, the lawyer’s office, lunch at an outside eatery on the waterfront.
Then a second team took over, a man and a woman in a white Falcon. Tremayne went home. Mid-afternoon he played nine holes of golf, finishing with drinks in the clubhouse, where Wyatt took a table and watched the surveillance team, at another table, masquerading as a loving couple while the woman watched Tremayne over her partner’s shoulder.
Tremayne sat alone at the bar. In the space of thirty minutes, he drained five beers. Passing club members said tight, well-mannered hellos, but didn’t linger. The ostracism weighed on Tremayne. He would swing around and face the room, rake it belligerently, then turn back to the barman and order another glass.
He’s bad luck, Wyatt thought. Tainted. If this whole exercise wasn’t a waste of time—if Tremayne did have the money to run—he was the kind of man to delay for as long as possible, hoping his luck would turn. Today’s itinerary, the golf, the drink in the clubhouse afterwards, wasn’t cover for a bit of wheeling and dealing. It was a need to be loved.
So, a wasted surveillance, from the point of view of the man and the woman who’d tailed him here. But not wasted from Wyatt’s point of view.
He watched and waited in that depressing room—poker machines, sticky floral carpet, shouts, too much noise and the stink of aftershave—and by early evening every table was full. As expected, he began to sense the resentment of recent arrivals who had nowhere to sit, a trio of women in particular. How selfish—a man alone at a table with empty chairs going begging. Their good manners held for a while, then turned. Suddenly they were sitting across from him, thumping down their glasses—‘May we?’—and daring him to protest. Wyatt gestured graciously, they smirked. Then, one after the other, they took in his thin, remote smile and unreadable eyes. Felt the chill of his interest in them and fell silent. Unable to look at him or each other.
That’s when Wyatt stood. He nodded, picked up his beer glass and began to weave through the tables as if looking for somewhere else to sit. Unsteady on his feet, a few drinks under his belt. And suddenly he was blocking the view of the agent watching Tremayne at the bar. She blinked. She refocused on this drunk waving his glass in the air and reaching for the empty chair at their table.
‘Anyone sitting here?’
‘We’re busy,’ she said.
Wyatt thumped into the chair, fixed the tabletop with fierce concentration and aimed the base of his glass at it. A wave of foam slopped onto the male agent’s lap.
Shot to his feet. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Oh God, sorry,’ Wyatt said, standing, tugging out a handkerchief and dabbing at the guy.
‘Jesus Christ, just fuck off, okay?’
Wyatt screwed sozzled regret onto his face, leaned in, continued to dab. ‘Mate, I’m really sorry.’
‘Piss off,’ the woman said.
Wyatt shoved the beer-damp handkerchief back in his pocket and tugged at his dishevelled clothing. ‘Can I at least buy you guys a drink?’
‘Piss off.’
He left. His face hadn’t registered with them, only his behaviour. But he didn’t linger.
He was down on the coast road before he retrieved the black wallet from inside the handkerchief and rifled through it.
IT WAS DOUBTFUL THAT Tremayne’s wider circle of friends were subject to wiretaps, bugs or surveillance. Costly, wasteful and unlikely to have been approved in the first place. But the lawyer was a different matter. Wyatt would need to get DeLacey away from the snoops.
Calling the office number for Anderson, Grieve and Mott, he was told that Mr DeLacey was currently with a client and would soon be leaving for the day. Did he have a specific matter in mind? Divorce, Wyatt said, and was told with great regret that Mr DeLacey handled commercial matters, but if he’d care to call the next day an appointment could be arranged with one of the other lawyers.
Letting the car screen him from view, he changed into a dark suit. White shirt, black shoes, blue tie; the heavy-rimmed glasses to soften the hard planes of his face. He drove to Honeysuckle Drive and parked in a side street half a block from Corris House; walked briskly back, swinging a briefcase. Late afternoon, the sun a molten ball a short time earlier but dimming now, the sky steel grey where it wasn’t tinged red and purple. If surveillance had been placed on the building, Wyatt would pass as someone’s client, maybe here to see his accountant. The last appointment of the day, entering a building where lights burned into the evening five days a week.
He found himself in a small foyer. No reception desk, just a greasy aspidistra in a silvery pot, a name board, a staircase, a lift and a service corridor leading to
the back door. Listening for footsteps, voices, doors, Wyatt hurried down the corridor and out into the carpark at the rear, a space distorted by shapes and shadows—DeLacey’s bronze Lexus, four crammed recycle bins, a small dumpster on wheels; ragged shrubs in narrow beds on three sides.
He stood in the darkest mass of shadows and waited, his eyes wide and unfocused. If he were to focus on one spot, followed by another, he risked missing the movement that might bring him down. Time passed. A rat twitched in a corner, a cat crept along a fence rail. Otherwise he was alone with his thoughts.
How to bullshit a lawyer? Maybe he didn’t need to? It was only necessary to unsettle DeLacey, after all. If he did have control of Tremayne’s money, and was sufficiently unnerved, then he might consciously or unconsciously reveal that fact. Even, potentially, the location.
Wyatt waited. He’d identified his exit points. He had nothing to fear from the wildlife. He felt sharp. It was good to be working. And it was good to work alone. It might be quicker if he had a team to strongarm Tremayne and his friends, but Wyatt knew from bitter experience what could go wrong when others were involved. Useful expertise—safecracking, electronics, driving skills—always had to be measured against the possibility of impatience, greed, deceit, unreliability. The guy who boasted to impress his girlfriend afterwards; who turned out to be an addict or a stooge for another gang. Amateurs or idiots; shortcut takers and risk-takers. Other people, generally speaking, were a liability.
The thing to do about the great messiness of existence was read it, not be endangered by it. Read how a man like William DeLacey might react to a random life event—like, for example, a man stepping out of the shadows and showing him the ID of a Probity Commission agent.
‘MR DELACEY?’
The lawyer, tie loose and suit wrinkled after a day of meetings and paperwork, gave a jumpy squeak. ‘Who the hell are you?’
