Blood Work (32 page)

“Wait!” She
held her breath, hoping he hadn’t hung up.

He
grunted.

Uncooperative
prick. “I was wondering if you could help me out with a lead. I
tracked down a woman Hawkins had dealings with. Her last known
place of residence was the Mentis Institute, but they won’t come to
the party about her stay there.”

“No, because
that would be breaking the confidentiality agreement they have with
their patients and even if they told you, you wouldn’t respect them
afterward.”

Erin pinched
the bridge of her nose. “This is why I really didn’t want to call
you, Courey. I knew you had the look of an arse-biter about you.
Come on, be a pal and help me out here. Otherwise, let me talk to
your captain.”

“Nasty,” he
muttered. “Right, what’s this woman’s name.”

“Jane
Doe.”

“Oh, that’s
going to be an easy one.”

She glared at
the phone. “I can give you an admission date, moron.”

“Fire away.”
If the insult had upset him, he didn’t show it.

Erin told him
everything she knew about Jane Doe, he mumbled something about
getting back to her and hung up. She thought bad thoughts about him
for a minute but was eventually distracted by music coming from the
outer office. She didn’t mind Ivan playing music, but this didn’t
sound like his usual choice.

His computer
screen was visible from her office. It showed the YouTube web site
and a clip was playing. Frowning, Erin wandered out to see what it
was about.

The song was
something she didn’t recognise, a fast paced, guitar heavy piece
with a classic rock rhythm. The title of the clip named the song as
Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ as covered by Nasty Kitten.

Ivan pushed
back from the computer to give Erin more room. She perched on the
arm of his chair and studied the clip. It was grainy and shaky, but
there was no denying the tiny figure in front of the band. She wore
a plaid skirt, tight white blouse and knee high socks. Her hair was
black and straight, falling to her waist, when she wasn’t flinging
it back over her shoulder. She moved with the music, a languid
strut across the front of the stage that turned into an extremely
sensual challenge to the audience as she belted out the lyrics. Her
voice was, as Erin had been told, very powerful, but exquisitely
controlled. She didn’t scream, didn’t whine, didn’t waver. When she
turned on the audience and pointed to some lucky person who was
going to ‘take me out’, Erin’s back gave a little, involuntary
shiver.

“See?” Ivan
said as the clip ended.

“She’s got a
big stage presence, that’s for sure.”

Erin looked
down the list of other clips. There were several more of Nasty
Kitten. They watched them all. It seemed the band preferred
covering rock, but a few softer songs had leaked in. The slower
songs were as imbued with sex as the harder ones. It was just more
seductive than aggressive or possessive, but no less effective.

“I almost need
a cigarette after that,” Erin said when the last song finished.

“Me too.” Ivan
clicked on another window and pulled up an article about the band.
“It says here that Nasty Kitten broke up because Mercy got messed
up with a crowd the other band members didn’t like. A couple of
months before our Mr Hawkins reportedly went off his rocker in the
lab.” He raised speculative eyebrows. “You think he was the bad
crowd?”

Erin scanned
the article for herself. “I’m not sure. And that’s what bothers me
the most about this case. So much of it just doesn’t seem to add
up. Yes, he’s got a violent past but for some reason I don’t think
he’s an essentially violent person.”

Ivan didn’t
comment, but his expression showed his scepticism well enough.

“See if you
can track down one of the other band members,” she told him.

“Now?”

“Got anything
else to do?”

“Do you want
me looking into that when he’s due here in five minutes? He might
get the wrong idea about the case being closed.”

Erin glanced
at her watch. Ivan was right. “Shit. Okay, after the meeting then,
unless something happens that reveals all.”

The next few
minutes were spent getting ready. Erin tidied her office and Ivan
made fresh coffee. On the dot of noon, Mrs Veilchen swept in,
elegant and cool, nothing showing her eagerness to finally meet
Matthew Hawkins. Erin led her into her office and left her there.
The client, at this stage, usually demanded a full run down on how
the missing person was found. Mrs Veilchen, however, wasn’t usual.
She just sat down and waited silently. Didn’t even thank Erin for
her hard work.

“She’s
freaky,” Ivan whispered as they waited in the outer office.

“She’s the
client. Be respectful.” But Erin couldn’t stop feeling very
nervous.

It didn’t get
any better the further around the dial the minute hand got and
Hawkins didn’t appear.

“You gave him
a card, right? He knows the address?”

“Of
course.”

She didn’t
believe it. The bastard had said he would show. She’d trusted him.
God damn it.

In her office,
Mrs Veilchen remained unmoving, still as a statue. That was
unnerving. Hawkins’ no-show was rage inducing. Erin wanted to
strangle something. Either Veilchen or Hawkins would do nicely.

“What do we
do?” Ivan asked after five more minutes had gone by.

“Kill
Hawkins,” she muttered and pushed away from the desk. She knocked
on the door to her office then went in. “Mrs Veilchen, I’m so
sorry. Something must have held him up.”

The woman
lifted her head enough to point her sunglasses at Erin. “You don’t
believe that. He’s not coming.”

Erin swallowed
the lump of nerves trying to escape through her mouth. “When I met
with him last night I believed he would honour this meeting.
Anything could have happened between then and now that made him
incapable of reaching the office.”

“You have no
means of contacting him to find out?”

“No. As you
may have guessed, he’s a very secretive person. He has all my
details so he can get in touch with me whenever he’s able. The best
I can offer you is to wait until he does so, and then try to set up
another meeting.”

Mrs Veilchen
rose and stood before Erin, thin and tall, given colour only by her
red blouse and cream slacks. “Please close the blinds on the
windows,” she said softly. “I have very sensitive eyes, but I would
like to look at you without my glasses.”

Erin’s stomach
quivered. Strange, but she did as asked. It was the least she could
do since Hawkins had made her look so bad. When the office was
darkened considerably, Mrs Veilchen took off her glasses with slow
deliberation. She blinked several times then faced Erin.

Breath caught
in her chest, Erin couldn’t help but stare. The woman’s eyes were
pure white but for the black pupil.

“It’s a rare
condition,” Mrs Veilchen said. She lifted a slender, long fingered
hand, showing her milky skin. “Loss of pigmentation.” Her lips
curled into something that resembled a smile but wasn’t one
really.

“I’m sorry,”
was all Erin could manage.

“You don’t
need to be. I’ve lived with it for a very long time.”

“I don’t
understand. Does this have something to do with the case?”

Mrs Veilchen
shook her head, once and very precisely. “I only tell you because
you’ve been wondering about me. Perhaps if I share this with you,
you will share with me the name of the man I seek.”

Erin still
hadn’t revealed Hawkins’ name to the woman. There was the strong
possibility of Mrs Veilchen rushing off and doing something rash.
No matter what Erin thought of Hawkins, she wasn’t about to be a
party to anything illegal. Trusting her instincts had got her
through her years in the police force and she wasn’t about to
abandon them.

“I’m sorry,
Mrs Veilchen, but I won’t do that. We’ve already discussed his
desire to remain under the radar. In a missing persons case such as
this, I also have a responsibility to that person, to protect them
from wrong doing. You haven’t given me any definite reason to think
he’s done anything wrong toward you. Until you do, he has my
protection.”

Mrs Veilchen
pulled in a deep breath, her narrow shoulders lifting with the
action. When she let it out, her shoulders didn’t drop. Her white
eyes bored into Erin’s. Cold air rolled over her, like a sudden
blast from an air-conditioner.

“Tell me his
name,” Mrs Veilchen whispered.

Erin shivered.
“I’ve already said I—”

“Tell me his
name.”

The words
coiled around Erin, slinked across her skin and burrowed in at her
mouth and nose and eyes and ears—a hundred spiders crawling all
over her. Erin shook so hard her teeth clattered together. Her
stomach churned.

Losing the
battle, Erin spun around and threw up into the waste bin.

Mrs Veilchen
swore. It wasn’t English, but Erin knew the tone of it
regardless.

Wiping her
mouth with a tissue, Erin steadied herself and turned to face her
client again. Except Mrs Veilchen wasn’t there. She was already at
the outer door, stalking out of the office. Ivan huddled behind his
desk, looking between the open door to Erin’s office and the
quickly closing outer door. When it was shut, he shot to his feet
and rushed to Erin.

“What
happened? Are you okay?”

Erin staggered
to her chair and sat down heavily. “I don’t know what happened. She
demanded I tell her Hawkins’ name, but I wouldn’t. She got angry
and left.”

Ivan wrinkled
his nose. “Maybe it was the puke that did it. Are you feeling sick?
Maybe you got slipped something last night.”

“No one
slipped me anything,” she snapped. At least she tried to snap. It
came out a bit weaker than that. Actually, a lot weaker. It sounded
doubtful to even her own ears.

Maybe someone
had dropped something into her water when she’d been distracted,
but she couldn’t imagine why. And then there had been Hawkins
looking right into her eyes and she’d felt… something. Had it been
him? Whatever Martin had done to her, Hawkins had stopped it. Had
he also stopped Veilchen from doing something to her?

Either way,
nothing had been resolved. The case was as active as ever.

“Come on,” she
said to Ivan. “Let’s keep looking. I know we’re going to find
something much more interesting if we just keep going.”

Ivan didn’t
look convinced but he settled down again.

Erin went to
the toilet to rinse her mouth out and wash her face. Staring at
herself in the mirror, she was horrified to see how pale she was.
Like Mrs Veilchen, except that thought put two spots of pink into
her cheeks. Loss of pigmentation? It sounded credible.

Then she
remembered Mercy Belique, not as she’d been in the internet clips,
but as she’d been last night. Pale as moonlight.

“Dear
God.”

Erin went back to the office
feeling a little lightheaded. She’d wondered right at the start if
it had been a daughter or son Hawkins had ‘stolen’ from Veilchen,
but she hadn’t really believed it. Maybe it was time to contemplate
even the scary prospects. They said Ted Bundy was charming,
too.

“Scored,” Ivan
announced when she walked in. “Got the drummer from Nasty Kitten.
She’s agreed to meet us for a late lunch.”

The mere
suggestion of food turned Erin’s stomach. She didn’t know whether
it was the lingering effects of Veilchen or the thought Hawkins
might be a kidnapper. Didn’t really know which was better.

“Okay, let’s
go.”

Ivan stood.
“You all right?”

Erin nodded.
“Just a bit nauseous.”

“You’re not
pregnant, are you?”

“You’ve got to
have sex for that.” She snatched up her shoulder rig, gun and coat.
“Come on.”

They met Kelly
Unwin at a café in Toowong where she worked as a chef. She sat them
at a private table in a courtyard behind the café and helped Ivan
decide what he wanted off the gourmet menu. Erin had a mineral
water and Panadol for her growing headache. Kelly brought out
Ivan’s spinach and ricotta ravioli herself and sat down with
them.

“You’re
looking for Mercy, are you?” Kelly tugged her long brown hair out
of its braid and shook it out. “I haven’t seen or heard from her
in, wow, must be over two years now.”

“We’re not
actually looking for Mercy, but a man she was sighted with last
night.”

Kelly sat
forward. “She was seen last night? I thought she’d left town ages
ago. No one at all has seen her, and she used to be very popular.
Not someone you could just forget in a couple of years.”

Erin could
believe that. She could still see the footage of Mercy on stage,
entrancing her audience. “Can you tell me about her? How you met,
what she was like, why you parted ways?”

“It will help
you find this man she was with?”

“It will.
Please, anything you think might be important.”

Kelly played
with a glass of chilled water. “Me and three other girls had
decided to form a band, just for fun. I could drum, Mel could play
rhythm and Delia could learn anything like that.” She snapped her
fingers. “So she took up base. Mel’s cousin, Katrina, or Kat as she
wanted to be known, claimed she could sing. Didn’t take us long to
work out she couldn’t. She could hold a tune, sure, but there
wasn’t anything special about her voice, you know. But she was all
we had. And we got a few gigs playing school dances and fetes. Then
somehow we ended up in this little shit hole… sorry, dive, playing
to a room of people who looked like they’d rather shove knives in
our instruments than listen to us play.”

Ivan waved his
fork knowingly, almost losing a piece of ravioli. “Been to a place
like that. Lovely atmosphere. Never run so fast in my entire life
as I did getting out of there.”