Harum Scarum (4 page)

Monty remained at the table. ‘Izzy needs more stability. She doesn’t even have her own bedroom here. If you can’t bring yourself to set a date for the wedding, we could at least live together.’

He was persistent, she had to give him that—it was one of the things that made him such a good detective. She looked to their sleeping daughter as she carried their dirty dishes to the sink. ‘She loves it here, she loves sleeping on your couch.’

‘She won’t always, I’m going to have to find a bigger place.’

‘But you won’t be able to afford anywhere bigger and stay this close to the beach.’

‘I can compromise.’ Monty rose from the table, reached out and pulled her away from the sink. It wasn’t hard, surrendering to his embrace, and she wondered, not for the first time, what was wrong with her. He was all she’d ever wanted. Hell, she’d been in love with him since she was ten years old, when her older brother had brought him home to the family station. Still, this didn’t stop her feeling like a marathon runner at the end of the last gruelling race of her career, stopping just before the finish line to look behind her. She glanced at her ring. She loved the autonomy of the single cut stone in its simple no-frills setting, but there were times when she felt another ring next to it would spoil its effect, that two rings upon the same finger would be nothing but an encumbrance. It was a stupid thought and she knew she shouldn’t have it; Monty was everything to her.

He nuzzled her neck. ‘Things are different now, time to write a new script.’

His breath on her skin made her back arch with anticipation. ‘You been watching Oprah again?’ she managed. He undid her ponytail and ran his fingers through her hair, sending a wave of pleasure up her neck and into her scalp.

‘My mother was on the phone again yesterday, wanting some idea of a date. If you don’t want to commit to one just yet, fine, we can tell her that, but we can’t just leave her in the air about this.’ Monty’s mother lived in Scotland. ‘She’s old, she’s not well, a trip here is a major military operation for her. She needs plenty of time to organise herself.’

Stevie moved over to the fridge with the magnetised calendar on its door, twirled around in one spot until she was dizzy and stabbed her finger at a random date. ‘Okay, next year: July 14.’

There, she’d set a date, no promises of living together yet, but at least she’d shown that she could compromise too.

He rumbled a deep belly laugh, the first she’d heard from him in days. ‘You want us to get married on Bastille Day?’

Shit, talk about the power of the subconscious. She went through the twirling routine again. ‘There, March 15th.’

‘The Ides of March? I’d rather take Bastille Day, release you from your prison.’

‘Oh, you assume it’s you who does the rescuing? Maybe I should be the one releasing you from
your
prison?’ she said with as much sass as she could muster.

‘Fine. I’m more than happy to be rescued. My only worry is that you won’t be able to pick me up and throw me over the saddle of your white charger.’

She patted him on the stomach. ‘Better do something about this then.’ There wasn’t much fat there, he was solid as a brick dunny, but teasing him made her feel better.

Monty refilled their glasses but the phone interrupted them before they could seal the date with a toast. He listened for a moment then swore. Stevie deduced from the conversation that a girl’s body matching the description of the missing schoolgirl had been found. Barry was on his way to pick up Monty; in fact he was pulling in to the apartment car park as he spoke.

Monty was in the bedroom changing into a suit when Barry pounded on the door. ‘Hey stranger, long time no see,’ he beamed at Stevie when she opened it, bringing a salty tang into the flat and the rumbling sound of breakers.

‘Never long enough,’ she said, having no trouble keeping her face straight.

‘How’s everything in the chick squad?’

‘If you mean the Cyber Predator Team, everything’s fine.’

‘Bloody discriminatory if you ask me, a female only squad.’

‘It’s not a female only squad, that would be ridiculous. Often boys are more comfortable talking to males than females; we’ve just not had that many guys apply for the job.’

‘Well,’ he puffed himself up like a rooster. ‘What do you reckon on my chances?’

Stevie pinched her thumb and forefinger into a zero.

Barry didn’t skip a beat. ‘That partner of yours, Tash, is she available?’

She hid her smile. ‘Fancy her do you?’ He certainly wouldn’t be the first.

Barry didn’t respond straight away. He looked at Stevie and then stepped back as if he’d just discovered she’d been in contact with a contagious disease. ‘She’s not gay is she?’

Stevie flicked him a shrug. ‘She’s never tried to crack on to me.’

Barry relaxed, rubbed his hands together. ‘Good. So here’s hoping we combine forces on this case, then. Where’s the boss?’ He moved over to the closed bedroom door, was about to thump on it when Stevie grabbed him by the arm and pointed to Izzy, putting her finger to her lips.

‘Sorry,’ Barry said in a stage whisper, plonking himself on the other end of the couch. She looked at his face as he regarded the child and sensed a crack peeping through the brash schoolboy veneer.

‘Barry, is it really bad?’ she asked softly.

He nodded, smoothed his shaved scalp, dashed her a smile and turned back to face Izzy before she could read it. ‘One of those times when I wonder how we do this,’ he said in a voice barely audible.

Monty emerged from his room and Barry sprang to his feet. ‘Ready boss?’ he boomed. Izzy stirred on the couch and mumbled in her sleep. Stevie shot him another scowl.

Monty kissed her goodbye. As he opened the door to leave the distant breakers greeted her like the sound of giant guns pounding the shore.

EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 200107

BETTYBO: Danil says Im sexy and cute
HARUM SCARUM: did u send photo?
BETTYBO: no im not that dum!
HARUM SCARUM: then how does he know?
BETTYBO: Ooo ... ur jelos!
HARUM SCARUM has left the room.

Barry pulled up alongside the several police cars parked on the perimeter of the floodlit building site, jumping from the car before the blue light on the unmarked stopped whizzing. Monty stayed where he was for a moment, closed his eyes and counted to ten. He should be used to this, but he wasn’t. He’d lost count of the body dumpsites he’d been to, men, women and kids, their bodies hidden in ways that made the desecration even more monstrous, one more stab of the knife into the flesh of those grieving their loved ones.

The scene could have been a movie set and he the director, summoned now the props and the actors were in place. Portable lights shone from newly erected scaffolds, the rubbish skip centre stage, like a World War One tank stuck in the mud. Monty changed his mind. This wasn’t like a film set at all, this was a battleground. He donned overalls, took another deep breath and stepped into the fray.

A police photographer circled the skip, let off a few flashes and retreated to make room for the scene of crime officers. One man was dusting the bin for prints. When he’d finished with one side of the bin, another hauled himself into it and began clambering around. He pointed out the protruding limb to Monty, as if he could have missed it. The leg emerged from the rubble like a spindly tree from a barren hillside, twisted, small and naked.

Her head was also exposed. Someone had already wiped away much of the dust and debris from the small waxy face. He mentally compared the features with the file photo of ten year old Bianca Webster: hamster cheeks, badly dyed hair. Just a runaway he’d hoped, until he’d been told about the missing computer. It was still early, they might find her yet, he had thought at the time. Jesus, his own optimism surprised him sometimes.

The mortuary chief, Henry Grebe, arrived in his white van. Funny, Monty thought, child abductors had a propensity for white vans too. The rings on Grebe’s fingers flashed under the lights as he rubbed his hands, addressing his band of body snatchers who rattled the gurney along the rough ground beside him. His voice carried to Monty across no man’s land. ‘Come on lads, chop, chop. If we get rid of this one good and fast we might still catch the end of the test.’

Monty caught the eye of the pathologist, Melissa Hurst. She beckoned him over. ‘I thought you were supposed to be doing something about that odious man.’ She’d pulled the hood of her overalls off and powdered cement covered her short wavy hair, making it appear greyer than it was.

‘That’s just what I was about to say to you,’ Monty said.

‘He’s been at the mortuary twenty years, it’s easier said than done.’

‘Can we take it now?’ the object of their dislike called out.

Monty clenched his fists. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘Doctor Hurst and I aren’t finished. Go back to the van and wait till you’re called.’ To the doctor he said, ‘C’mon, I’m sure you’ve got something to show me, let’s stretch this out.’

The doctor spoke from the side of her mouth. ‘A grebe is a bird that under certain circumstances will eat its own young—did you know that?’

For a moment Monty forgot his misery and smiled. ‘You going David Attenborough on me?’

Someone had fashioned some loose bricks into a crude set of steps for the doctor to stand on, but Monty was tall enough to view the body without aids. He forced himself to follow Doctor Hurst’s gloved fingers as she manipulated the jaw like the star of one of those American forensic shows. ‘She’s not been dead long, no signs of rigor yet. And look at the eyes,’ she pointed.

Monty recognised in them the glaze of the newly dead.

‘At a rough guess, I’d say she’s been dead no more than a couple of hours. I’ll be able to tell you more when I examine her at the mortuary.’

‘Any idea of the cause?’ Monty asked.

‘Nothing confirmed, but it looks like the preliminary cause could be asphyxiation.’ She extracted a paintbrush from her overall pocket, flicked away more dust and shone the beam of a penlight up the child’s nose. ‘Look at her nose, can you see the congestion?’

Monty put on his glasses, held his breath and peered as closely as his position allowed, not seeing a thing, not wanting to see a thing; he’d take the doctor’s word for it.

‘The poor kid had a bad cold, lethal when combined with a duct-tape gag.’ Doctor Hurst circled a finger above the child’s mouth. ‘There are sticky marks around her mouth from the glue, see how the brick dust has adhered to it? And look at the petechial haemorrhage in the whites of the eyes—a sure sign of asphyxiation. At this stage I’d hazard a guess that murder might not have been intentional.’

Small comfort, as if that would make it easier for the wretched mother, Monty thought. ‘That’ll do for now, get the ball rolling,’ he said, holding his hand out to her and helping her down from the wobbly brick steps, something he would never have dared do for Stevie. Then again, Stevie wasn’t sixty years old and five feet tall. He beckoned to the men from the mortuary van and told them they could collect the body.

Standing well back from the taped area, he lit a cigarette. He turned his back on the body snatchers and took a deep drag as if it might mask the odour of every crime scene he’d ever attended. And this wasn’t even bad; he’d detected nothing but the smell of brick dust from the skip. Imagination can be a powerful thing.

‘I thought you’d given up,’ the doctor said.

‘I have.’

‘I’ll spare you the lecture then. Did you get my fax? I’m afraid I didn’t send it till late.’

‘Don’t tell me the blood tests on the floater have finally come back?’

‘No, not the blood, better than blood, it’s the tissue tests.’

‘Yes, you suspected some kind of kidney problem?’

‘Our John Doe was suffering from a kidney disease called IgA nephropathy. One of its symptoms is blood in the urine, something very few people would choose to ignore.’

Monty felt his spirits lift. It was breaks like this that kept him on the job. ‘Which means a sweep of doctors’ surgeries and clinics might well lead us to the identification of our mystery man—you beauty!’ Monty clapped her on the shoulder, forcing her to step back to keep her balance.

‘Steady on there, King Kong.’

He walked her back to her car and then joined Barry who was standing with Wayne Pickering at the edge of the underground car park of the half finished shopping centre.

DS Wayne Pickering introduced him to Geoffrey Browne, a stick-thin old man wearing a security officer’s uniform.

‘You found the body, yeah?’ Monty asked him.

‘Not only found it, he saw it dumped,’ Wayne said.

‘Really?’ Monty raised his eyebrows. ‘Tell me what you saw...’

‘I’ve already gone through it all with these fellas,’ the security man said with a nasal whine.

‘And you’re more than likely going to have to go over it again another dozen times I’m afraid, sir,’ Monty said.

The old man sighed deeply. Monty met Wayne’s look of concern with one of his own, wondering just how much they could rely on him.

‘I was boilin’ up some tea over there, see?’ Browne pointed a crooked finger to a card table and folding chair set up alongside one of the car park’s concrete pillars. A kettle sat on the table with an industrial length extension cord trailing into the shadows.

Monty scuffed his way over the concrete slab to the makeshift tearoom and gazed between the pillars to the clear view of the floodlit skip. It was hard to ascertain quite what the old man might have seen earlier in the grainy darkness and the dazzle of car headlights.

‘Go on then, what did you see?’ he asked when he returned.

‘I heard it first, the squeal of brakes, then I saw a four-wheel drive crash through the fence and fishtail across the building site.’

He peered in the direction the man was pointing. One section of the cyclone fence had been knocked down and the supporting poles bent out of shape. A police officer was taping up the gap. Traffic on the highway beyond the fence-line had slowed to a crawl as motorists sought to take in the drama. Bloody ghouls, he thought.