Harum Scarum (16 page)

‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve been flat out,’ Wayne said, a faint blush circling his collar line.

‘Turned into quite a softy in your old age ... You should have seen him, Mont, carrying on and laughing with this babe, making bad jokes about herbal aphrodisiacs...’

Monty had had enough. He slammed his hand down on his desk, forgetting it was the one he’s damaged on Henry Grebe, and let out a blue streak of obscenities. When he’d recovered he pointed to the door and snapped, ‘Shut it or just swivel out of here, Barry.’

Barry touched his chest, ‘Who, me?’ but he still didn’t make a move.

Angus climbed to his feet. ‘I need to go, I have some leads to follow on the kid running around with Zhang Li.’ He flicked his hand at Wayne. ‘Keep your phone on, I think I might have you a name soon.’

When Angus had gone, Monty said to Barry, ‘I’m sure you can find something to do. Go over the statements from the Kusak neighbours and chase SOCO up over the evidence reports we’re still waiting on. Oh yeah, and check Mrs K’s bank statements too.’

Barry nodded complacently, but the only move he made was to take another bite of his doughnut. Monty gave him a heated look, and even that didn’t penetrate the kid’s thick skin until he registered the flexing of the fingers on Monty’s left hand.

Barry wiped sugary fingers down the legs of his pants. ‘Okay, keep your hair on, I’m going.’

When he’d gone, Monty leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

‘He can’t bear to miss out on anything, the nosy little prick.’ Wayne looked with concern at Monty. ‘You okay?’

‘No.’ Monty wondered if Wayne had heard about his altercation with Henry Grebe. It was unlikely that Grebe would have reported it, given that he had behaved so atrociously. The fear that had been gripping Monty didn’t have anything to do with the possible fall-out, it was more about his own lack of control, a control that seemed at the moment to be increasingly shaky.

Monty opened his eyes at the sound of the loosening of a screw cap, cocked an eyebrow at Wayne’s hip flask, but said nothing. Wayne took two glasses from the tray, poured a generous measure of scotch into each, and added water from the jug on Monty’s desk.

They clinked. Wayne took a sip and said, ‘You going to tell me about this morning’s appointment?’ Wayne was the only person Monty had told about his chest pain and subsequent visit to the doctor.

Monty leaned back in his chair and scowled, keeping his eyes focused on something invisible above the office door. ‘Bloody scare-mongering doctors.’

‘I take it it didn’t go so well?’

Monty swirled the whisky in his glass and put it down without a taste. ‘Did a few simple tests in the surgery, doesn’t think it’s too critical, but wants to book me in for an angiogram ASAP. I said I couldn’t possibly take time out at the moment, not with my current caseload, at which he got rather shitty with me. My caseload, huh!’ he threw his hands into the air. ‘The murder of two low lifes who, truth be known, I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about.’ He patted his chest. ‘High blood pressure and some problems with the old heart too, thinks it’s stress related. He’s given me some pills and a spray pump thing to tide me over.’

‘Does Stevie know?’

The crowd roared from the WACA and a flock of parrots jetted passed the office window as if fired from a cannon. ‘Bloody cricket,’ Monty grumbled.

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

‘I haven’t had the chance to tell her yet.’ Monty felt a sudden need to change the subject. ‘Okay, so the paedophile and the loan shark were killed by the same gun, and I want you to find the connection.’

Wayne’s jaw dropped. ‘Me? how...’

‘The Vietnamese girl in the herbalist shop?’

‘It was just a gut feeling of mine, don’t set your hopes on it. Angus still has some more digging to do.’

Monty steepled his fingers and tapped at his teeth. Those who didn’t know Wayne well would be excused for seeing in his face nothing but a wall of rock split by a million year old frost. Monty knew better.

‘Wayne,’ he said. ‘Far be it to teach my grandfather how to suck eggs, but I hope Barry’s wrong about all this...’ He waved his hand trying to find the right words. ‘I mean, you’re not getting too involved here, are you? Not letting your personal feelings get in the way of the case?’

Monty grunted to himself—he could talk. Again he thought he detected a faint blush in the face of older man. ‘Shit, Wayne, an old codger like you should have more sense.’

Wayne pushed himself up from the desk and attempted to pull the frayed cuffs of his mustard coloured shirt further down his hairy wrists. Rumour had it that Wayne had not bought new clothes since the death of his wife twenty years ago.

‘Nah Monty, it’s nothing like that, I just feel like looking out for the girl, that’s all. Now is there anything else?’ Wayne said, his face back to its usual wall of granite.

EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 260107

HARUM SCARUM: u shld nvr meet up wit some1 u don’t no
BETTYBO: bt hes soooooo nice!
HARUM SCARUM: u need anotha KE story. U need her powa. U don’t need a boy 2 giv u that
BETTYBO: I want KE to kill some1 this time
HARUM SCARUM: okaaaaaaaay ... lets see what she’s got

The high temperature in the van hadn’t hurt Miro Kusak’s hard drive as much as they’d feared. In Central’s operations room Clarissa explained in a steady stream of techno-babble how she’d managed to extract the valuable information. Unfortunately none of Kusak’s correspondence with Bianca had shown up yet. Stevie loved her new job, but found the technical side of it a bit of a stretch. She rubbed her gritty eyes and did her best to focus on the screen, but without much success.

This was like no incident room she’d ever worked from before. No cigarette smoke in here, no fusty odours of unwashed clothes and sweaty sandshoes, cheap bourbon and cheaper aftershave. Someone had received a bunch of roses for her birthday and put them on the windowsill, and the scent mingled with the different perfumes of the room’s occupants. A collection of cuddly toys stood sentry in the workstation next to Clarissa’s, while the partitioning of its neighbour was papered with children’s colourful artwork.

‘Okay, I can see by your blank expressions that the details of my cyber investigations are less to you plebs than pearls before swine. In a nutshell...’ Clarissa stopped for a moment to see if anyone was listening and let out a martyr’s sigh when she realised they were all looking vacant.

Stevie dragged herself back from her mental wandering. Tash, who’d been hovering over an open box of chocolates on Clarissa’s desk, looked up and pointed to herself. ‘You talking to me?’

Clarissa turned her eyes to the ceiling.

Stevie put the lid on the chocolates, pushing them out of Tash’s reach. ‘Bad for your migraine. You were saying?’ she reminded Clarissa.

‘Yes, sorry, I’ll translate. Miro Kusak and Robert Mason were both members of the Dream Team paedophile ring. Kusak’s hard drive and flash disk contained similar photos to Mason’s, which they’d both purchased from the webmaster who may also be the photographer—I’ve found email correspondence that suggests this. The webmaster calls himself Lolita and sends his picture files from an Internet cafe in Mt Lawley.’

‘That wouldn’t be very private would it?’ Stevie queried.

‘No one would be able to see the files if they weren’t open on the screen. He probably wouldn’t use the cafe for everything, maybe just the most sensitive stuff, like the jpegs,’ Tash said.

‘There’s something else,’ Clarissa said. ‘It’s not as obvious as it was in the so-called
art
shots, but I think several of the hard core pics were taken in a common location.’

‘What, in the same place as the art shots?’

‘No. Have a look at these.’ Clarissa tapped some keys and the screen filled with a photograph of a young girl lying naked and in a degrading position on a bed. Stevie swallowed, and was glad to let her gaze follow the cursor to the rough plaster wall behind the bed. There was something hanging on the wall.

Stevie squinted at the screen. ‘A crucifix? Can you make it any clearer?’ She tried to remember the last time she’d noticed a crucifix on a wall. It was in Mrs Kusak’s house, but this one was more ornate, and did not bear the figure of Christ. There seemed to be some kind of filament hanging from it.

‘What is that, a crack in the wall, a piece of string?’ Stevie tapped the screen.

‘Sorry, that’s as good as it gets.’ Clarissa tapped the keys again, bringing up other images taken in the same room. Some of the shots were taken at different angles and showed several unidentifiable objects on the walls, just visible within the frames.

‘So, where do you go with these?’ Tash asked Clarissa.

‘I should be able to get the dates of the transactions from Miro’s computer, so that’ll help you narrow your search down. You’ll need to look at the cafe’s records, see who was on line when the pictures were sent and start grinding through the names. After that, it’ll be a question of how easily we can subpoena the bank accounts of those we think might be involved. It’s a bummer Bianca’s laptop never turned up.’

‘Oh but it has,’ Tash said with a triumphant grin.

‘Where?’

‘At the bottom of Mundaring reservoir.’

Clarissa scowled at Tash. ‘You love building people up just to cut them down, don’t you?’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Stevie said. ‘Clarissa, get us a report typed up in plain English, summarising everything we need to ask and be looking out for at the cafe.’

‘Give me an hour or so to get it organised,’ Clarissa said.

‘Time for us to grab a bite of lunch,’ Stevie said to Tash. If she was ever to get a decent night’s sleep again, she and Tash needed to talk. ‘Also,’ she added to Clarissa, ‘print out all the photos of the
art
girls on Mason’s and Kusak’s computers and start trying to ID them.’

‘Was Bianca Webster’s picture among them?’ Tash asked.

A phone rang from a few workstations down and was answered.

‘Not so far, but I’m not through all of them yet,’ Clarissa said.

Stevie jumped down from the desk. ‘Then finish that first, even before you get those reports typed.’ She thumped Tash on the shoulder. ‘Ready for lunch?’

‘All right for some,’ Clarissa grumbled.

From further down the line, a young man’s voice called, ‘Hey, Stevie! Dolly wants a word in her office. Now.’

Stevie’s stomach back-flipped. ‘Shit.’

‘Guilty conscience?’ Tash teased.

‘Don’t ask, you really don’t want to know. We’ll have to skip lunch.’

Tash shrugged, ‘I’ve got plenty to do. I’ll gather the troops and start on the Internet cafe.’

Stevie reached for Tash’s elbow before she could leave the room. ‘We really do need to talk, Tash.’

‘Come over this evening if you can bear to drag yourself away from your fella.’

Stevie was used to Tash’s jibes, they usually didn’t worry her, but now she prickled. ‘It’s not that, it’s a question of whether Mont can be there with Izzy or not.’

‘Of course it is, Sweets. Bring over a bottle of red.’ And she was gone.

Inspector Dolly Veitch smiled and indicated the spare office chair to Stevie. ‘Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said as she finished filing some documents.

Stevie liked her inspector. Fair and popular with the officers under her, Dolly was the prime reason Sex Crimes was considered such a plum appointment. The ghastly reality of the job was more bearable with a respected boss behind you and the moral support of contented colleagues.

Dolly lowered herself into her desk chair as if she had a sore back, which she didn’t as far as Stevie knew. It was just that everything she did she performed with slow and deliberate care; the fine linen pantsuit she took off at the end of the day was doubtless as clean and crease-free as it was when put on that morning. If she hadn’t been a police officer, Stevie could have imagined Dolly as the editor of a stylish woman’s magazine. Tash often joked that ‘when she grew up’ she wanted to be just like Dolly Veitch.

Putting on a pair of metallic-framed designer specs, Dolly picked up the complaint form in front of her. Stevie’s stomach fluttered as she tried to interpret what was going on behind the unflappable visage.

Dolly finished reading and handed the report to Stevie. ‘Read what Mason said and tell me if this is a fair account of what happened.’

Stevie’s mouth dried when she first started to read, but by the time she’d finished, she was smiling. ‘This is ridiculous, she did not kick him when he was on the ground,’ she said. She might have placed her heel upon his head but she didn’t kick him. ‘And the water pistol was so obviously a fake, he would have known that.’

‘But she was out of order with it.’

‘Yes she was ma’am and I’ve had a firm word with her.’

‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

‘She won’t be doing it again. I don’t think she realised quite how stupid it was; to her it was just a joke.’

Dolly leaned back in her chair and took her glasses off. ‘I can’t really see that there’s anything to worry about, Stevie, or any need to mount an internal investigation. I spoke to the boss of the remand centre earlier this morning and was told that Mason has also lodged complaints against the staff there, ridiculous accusations. They’re all getting a proper going over of course, but lucky for us he’s lost any credibility he might have started out with.’

Stevie sank back in the chair; she could hardly believe they were getting off so lightly

‘It looks like Natasha is off the hook for the time being, but I’m concerned about her attitude...’

Stevie held her breath.

‘She needs to be watched, there are times when that girl plays too close to the edge. It’s hard dealing with friends, I understand that, especially when everything is new and you’re still finding your way. If anything like this happens again, you’re to file a report and send it straight through to me, is that understood? What happened to the water pistol after she threatened Mason with it?’