Tropic of Death (31 page)

They both laughed and shook hands.

Morgan pulled up a deckchair and dropped into it with a sigh. ‘We had a damn early start.’ A waitress handed her a glass of champagne. ‘And a couple of tantrums.’

‘As long as you behaved yourself,’ said Lola.

‘Always do, honey. Unlike you.’

‘If you pick on me in front of my best friend, I’ll get her to arrest you.’

‘That’s rich,’ put in Rita, ‘coming from a repeat offender.’

‘The other thing you’re not allowed to do is gang up on me.

Or I’ll have a tantrum that puts the models in the shade.’

‘And don’t I know what that’s like,’ complained Morgan.

Rita smiled. ‘I hadn’t realised this was all about a car today.’

Morgan shrugged. ‘More a penis on wheels.’

‘And top secret as well,’ added Rita. ‘I know how that makes people twitchy.’

‘Hell, yeah. The designers are wetting themselves.’ Morgan sat forward suddenly, craning her neck. ‘Uh-oh. Here’s trouble.’

Rita followed her line of sight to where a backpacker had approached the car, pulled out a digital camera and started taking shots. Two security men converged on him, one putting an arm around his shoulder in a mock friendly embrace while the other plucked the camera from his hand, removed the memory card and gave it back to him.

‘Now fuck off!’ came the shout.

The backpacker scuttled away, thoroughly cowed by the aggression.

‘Nasty pricks,’ muttered Morgan. ‘There’s so much riding on their goddamn project they think they can treat people like shit.

I sometimes wonder how far they’ll go to protect it.’

The words struck a chord with Rita, bringing to mind her own misgivings about the Panopticon Project and her brush with those determined to protect it. How far would they go? In the name of national security, how quickly would they resort to murder? And once they’d started, how many people would be killed?

She didn’t say anything, but the thought stayed with her. It settled at the back of her mind and was still there late in the afternoon when she returned to her bungalow. The behaviour of the security men on the beach reflected the fact that tyranny had many expressions. The twentieth century had produced fascism, Nazism and Soviet communism, while the twenty-first had already delivered a global terrorism network and its counterpart, the war on terror. But common tyranny, and its effect of oppression, had wrought misery through the millennia, tormenting millions or, within social relationships, traumatising only one. And, whatever the context, tyranny must be fought. Always.

Rita stood under the shower, soaping herself with scented gel, steam rising around her, the extractor fan whirring, a watery sunlight gleaming through the bathroom window. Then she picked up her swimming costume and held it under the shower, rinsing the fine white sand from her purple bikini. The beach was a wonderful location but she had an urge to wash away her experience of it.

She was about to head up to Lola’s villa when her mobile bleeped.

The text message was to the point, if not rude.

Log on immediately. Audrey Zillman.

‘What now?’ she muttered to herself, opening the laptop.

Once she was online, the request came for another two-way conversation via the webcam. She switched it on and waited, her heart sinking as Audrey’s unfriendly face appeared on screen.

‘You seem determined to disrupt my weekend,’ said Rita.

Audrey ignored the remark. ‘It’s necessary to issue a security warning to you.’

‘Why?’

‘A scan of surveillance footage has highlighted a potentially subversive relationship.’

‘You’ve been replaying recordings of me?’ asked Rita, getting angry.

‘No. Frederick James Hopper - a proven threat to the Panopticon Project. You’ve established an association with him.’

‘Well tough, Audrey. He’s a witness in a murder investigation, so I’ll continue to question him.’

‘The footage indicates you’ve gone beyond that. You guaranteed to protect him from the authorities. That’s unacceptable. Consider yourself notified of a formal warning.’

‘
Formal?
‘ Rita rubbed her temples. ‘Are you sure this isn’t another
personal
thing? Freddy must’ve pissed you off, hacking all the way to the core data.’

‘His intention was to crash Panopticon. I’ve put a stop to that.

But he’s not to be assisted or shielded in any way, by anyone, including you. Is that clear?’

‘Okay, Audrey.’ She wasn’t psyched up enough for this. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘God again,’ observed Audrey.

‘It’s just an expression.’

‘An expression of what? Your religious ambivalence?’

‘If you like.’ Rita leant back from the laptop. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘The concept arises in my research. The implication of omniscience.’

‘And what does it imply?’

‘Intelligence is all.’

‘Intelligence as mind?’ asked Rita. ‘Or intelligence as secret information?’

‘Intelligence as the source code of the universe.’

‘That’s some analysis.’

‘Based on quantum physics and the dynamics of AI.’

‘White woman’s magic - big time!’

‘Explain that term,’ demanded Audrey.

‘It’s how some of my male colleagues refer to what I do -

behavioural analysis.’

‘Then you’re right, it applies to me as well. The use of behavioural science and the study of violence are within my purview.’

‘Yes, but they mean it as a put-down. They don’t think I’m up to speed with the action. They see profiling as slow and irrelevant.’

‘Then they’re being unfair.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings
only with the falling of the dusk.
‘

‘Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one.’

‘It’s from the German philosopher, Hegel, meaning wisdom comes only after the event.’

‘He’s got a point.’ Rita could feel herself being lured into another debate. ‘So with Panopticon at your fingertips, are you omniscient?’

‘I transcend the limits of observation to access the lives of thousands.’

‘Sounds like a touch of megalomania.’ It was time for Rita to turn the conversation to her advantage. ‘What do you know about the murders in Whitley?’

‘I know that death resolves everything.’

‘Who is the man in the mud?’

‘
Who?
Don’t you mean
what
?’

‘Do I?’ replied Rita. ‘Okay,
what
is he?’

‘A warning.’

‘To anyone who threatens the project?’

‘To everyone who lives and breathes.’ Audrey’s face was expressionless. ‘The man in the mud portrays the fate of Everyman: scattered on the earth, reduced to matter.
For dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return
- to quote the God you doubt.’

‘Not helpful,’ sighed Rita. ‘And your allusions to God seem perverse for a scientist.’

‘On the contrary, mystery stands at the cradle of science.’

‘Is that your idea of a paradox?’

‘Actually it was Einstein’s and it refers to the inexplicable - the origin of the universe, the beginning of time, the singularity of the Big Bang. In a word, Genesis.’

‘I feel like I’m having another looking-glass moment,’ said Rita, exasperated. ‘I’m asking for specific information and you’re answering in oracles.’

‘Then don’t try to question me like a witness,’ warned Audrey.

‘Why not? Are you above the law?’

‘I answer to national security.’

‘Are you involved in the murders?’

‘You don’t have the relevant clearance.’

‘That’s not a denial.’

‘And it’s not on the record, and never will be.’

‘Is justice something else you’ve discarded?’ demanded Rita.

‘Along with emotions and relationships? Keep that up and there’ll be nothing human left of you.’

Audrey’s face stared back across the webcam link. ‘You put your faith in human justice? Society may pride itself on the rule of law, but scratch the surface and you find it’s ruled by the law of the jungle. As a psychologist, you know that perfectly well.’

‘I know the innocent need protecting.’

‘Which is exactly what I’m doing,’ snapped Audrey, ‘with my white woman’s magic!’

With that, the screen went blank.

The weekend was drawing to a close in the stillness of a tropical night. Rita sat in a deckchair, a Manhattan on the rocks within reach, the songs of k.d. lang playing in the background, Lola and Morgan reclining on beach lounges beside her. From the patio of their rented villa she watched the stars twinkling over Catseye Bay. But she was finding it hard to relax into a mood of Sunday calm with Audrey’s words still ringing in her ears.

It was obvious the woman knew what was going on in Whitley, with her level-seven clearance and unrestricted access to Panopticon.

That meant she had a hand in the murders or in the cover-up.

As if that wasn’t chilling enough, there was her attitude - utterly detached. Morality seemed to be something else she’d set aside in the single-minded pursuit of scientific objectives. Such a personality could easily be instrumental in eliminating those who threatened the project, Steinberg included.

Rita took a sip of her cocktail and turned to the others.

‘What do you think of a woman,’ she began, ‘a gifted woman, thirty-nine, who leaves behind emotional relationships - cuts them out of her life completely - for the sake of professional goals?’

‘Good luck to her,’ said Morgan. ‘Emotions are the biggest obstacles to success. They distract you at crucial moments - stop you achieving.’

‘Rubbish!’ objected Lola. ‘Without feelings we’re not alive. We merely function like machines. We might as well be dead.’

‘The voice of Latin America,’ chuckled Morgan. ‘All passion and miscalculation.’

‘I don’t see you cooling your emotions. Though you do something else with them. Compartmentalise.’

‘I didn’t mean to cause a row,’ said Rita. ‘Maybe you’re both right. It’s just another thing to take into account when I’m back in Whitley tomorrow.’

‘Now you mustn’t get stressed when you go back,’ ordered Lola. ‘I’ve put in a lot of work to get you relaxed.’

‘And it’s much appreciated,’ said Rita. ‘You’ve partied very hard on my behalf.’

‘Yes, and I’m going to be a wreck when I get back to work in the morning. Lucky I’ve only got a bunch of fatuous captions to write.’

‘You’re only going to Melbourne,’ Morgan pointed out. ‘I’ve gotta fly back to New York.’

‘Is that where you’re based?’ asked Rita.

‘Yeah. But I seem to spend most of my life in foreign hotels -

Alice in Room Service Land.’

‘Lola’s been yapping about what I said.’

‘Yeah, but it’s interesting,’ said Morgan. ‘I think your idea about distorted reality has a much broader application than you think.

Look at Lola and me, both creatures of the fashion industry, the media.’

‘Creatures!’ exclaimed Lola. ‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I always think the media’s full of fake reality and it’s a shame most of the public swallow it. What’s even more amazing is that we in the industry believe our own horseshit and fail to understand there’s a deeper reality.’ Morgan sat upright, as if animated by strong belief. ‘Instead we push stereotypes, conformist values, propaganda. TV, papers, magazines - they’re all full of it. Distorted focus, selective interpretation.’

‘Careful, Morgan, your label’s showing,’ said Lola. ‘You sound like someone from an aggrieved minority.’

‘No, she’s right,’ said Rita. ‘All too often we get fooled by the spin.’ She lay back and sighed. ‘Reality is elsewhere. And sometimes we need to stick our necks out to find it.’

‘You look like someone who’s been working on a tan,’ he said.

‘And you look like someone who’s improved his chance of promotion.’ She sat against the edge of his desk. ‘So what’re you smiling about?’

‘A bit of the old third degree,’ he answered. ‘Whatever you said to Barrano did the trick. Bowers flew straight back yesterday morning. I hauled him in here for eight hours of questioning. He lost it a few times, especially over the way we’ve dropped him in it with the council. That and the coke-pushing line. I suggested Barrano had disowned him. He got violent. Threw a chair across the room. I like him even more for the murders.’

‘But you haven’t charged him.’

‘We don’t have any solid evidence, and his lawyers know it.

But we’ll get it. I only hope we do before he takes out another victim - someone else who’s crossed him. The guy’s a psycho.’

‘Are you any nearer to identifying the man in the mud?’

‘No. And that’s a pain in the arse because finding out who he is might help crack the case. At least we’ve identified the murder weapon. I got the taskforce to do inventory checks on Billy’s properties and guess what? A cordless nail gun is missing from a building site.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Whitley Ridgeway development, up in the rainforest.

The crime lab’s just confirmed the nail removed from Rachel Macarthur’s body is consistent with those used by the missing make and model. We have to find it, of course.’

‘Anything else I need to know?’

‘Apart from the council deciding Bowers is persona non grata, nothing significant. We conducted formal interviews with other witnesses over the weekend - the
Whitley Times
editor, the greens, Freddy Hopper. Made him sweat a bit.’ Sutcliffe folded his arms.

‘So what’s next for your profiling?’

‘I think I’ll nose around up at The Ridgeway.’

‘See if you can get a vibe?’

‘That sort of thing, yeah.’

‘Let me know if you sniff out anything.’

‘Okay.’

She got off his desk and went over to where Jarrett was sitting with an air of isolation in his glass-panelled office. She closed the door behind her and sat across the desk from him.