Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) (4 page)

It was almost funny, the way it had all come together one night at the Black Garter while she’d been sitting in the window watching the men outside. One of the girls had wandered in from the main hall with a sea captain’s hat on her head, tipping the brim in the closet mirror and tilting her naked hips. She’d snagged the hat from the leader of a bachelor party, the pack of drunken boys hollering from the back courtyard as other girls danced around the lazy-eyed groom.

‘What do you think?’ The girl had taken the cap off and sent it sailing across the room into Hope’s hands like a Frisbee. ‘Captain Hope, reporting for duty.’

Hope had stared at herself in the mirror after the girl had gone, the cap too big on her head, a tiny girl playing dress-up. She’d remembered sailing with her father, those few times he had indulged himself over the years and rented cruisers for a trot around the harbour. Pretending he owned them. Lies and make-believe. Hope was so tired of all the games – the ones the men made her play, the ones she played with herself. Captain Hope, Master of Her Own Destiny.

It would take a miracle to achieve something like that, she’d thought.

Or would it?

What exactly
would
it take?

Hope walked the length of the vessel now, examining the newly painted surface, and then climbed down the ladder onto the floor of the dry dock. When she’d acquired the
Dream Catcher
it had been a hideous wine-bottle green, but the guys she’d hired for the makeover had finished the last coat of the new colour – a chic, modern ash grey. Hope had started making lists of steps in her plan that very night as she’d huddled away in the back of the brothel, and once the list had been completed, she’d made a new one. She couldn’t remember how many lists it had taken, how many crossed or cancelled steps. Find a couple selling their yacht. Find an ally to comfort the couple as they enquired about the sale, someone cute and easy to manipulate, someone who knew how to act in a prescribed role. Hope had followed a recipe she found online for chloroform and cooked it in the brothel kitchen, whistling, as if she were baking a cake.

Picking out and commissioning the fresh paint job on the boat was one step she’d been looking forward to for a while. She stood now with her hand on the vessel and listened to the hull to see if there was any sign of the couple from within. Nothing. She wandered around the back of the boat in her sun hat and glasses and stood watching the men on the ladder as they applied the new name to the side.

‘Just in time for the big reveal,’ the tall one said. He was a stunning young man in a cut-off singlet, spattered all over with tiny spots of white paint. He looked as if he were covered in stars. He reached up and began peeling away the paper stencil around the lettering on the hull of the boat.

‘The
New Hope
,’ she read. She felt a dark stirring in her chest at the sight of the words. She’d had the boys paint them in a deep crimson. Her dream, written in blood.

TOX WAS ALREADY
in the interrogation room with Claudia’s parents. Not only was it one of the unfriendliest rooms in the station to speak to them, but I had no idea what he’d already said. I felt my stomach tighten as I spotted him sitting there in the cramped, musty room beyond the two-way mirror, their horrified faces. Mum and Dad had recently been crying. She was a heavy blonde woman, and their daughter’s lean features and dark hair came from her moustached father. I threw open the door just in time.

‘… breast implants?’ Tox was saying.

‘What?’ Mrs Burrows frowned. She glanced at me, her mouth twisted.

‘Yeah, what?’ I sat down beside Tox.

‘I was just asking Mr and Mrs Burrows here how long it had been since their daughter got those breast implants.’ He looked lazily at me. ‘You did notice the cadaver had breast implants, right?’

‘Mr and Mrs Burrows.’ I put my hands calmly on the table beside the handcuff hooks. ‘I must apologise for my partner here. Detective Barnes has been under a lot of stress and isn’t thinking clearly.’

Tox folded his hands on the table beside mine, imitating me. ‘Look, your daughter was found deceased this morning, and that’s very sad. But I’m sure that you’ll get over that sadness and want to catch whoever did this, eventually. Well, you know what?
We
want to catch whoever did this
now
. It’s our job, see. Now your daughter had fake tits—’

‘Tox!’ I yelped.

‘—and I’m putting together the exaggerated size of those tits, and her petite figure, and the approximate cost of such a surgical enhancement, and your obvious middle-classness – I’m going to take a leap and say she was a prostitute.’

‘Jesus!’ I clapped a hand over my eyes.

‘Actually, it’s not a leap at all,’ Tox confirmed. ‘She
was
a prostitute, wasn’t she?’

The Burrowses sat stunned. I got up and grabbed Tox’s arm and yanked him towards the door.

‘I’ll be back,’ I told the couple. ‘Just sit tight.’

Tox turned on me in the hallway.

‘What is it with you and wasting time?’ he grunted, almost irritated. ‘I was on a roll in there.’

‘You were
not
on a roll,’ I snapped. ‘You were on anything but a roll. You were traumatising the dead girl’s parents.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Tox threw his hands up, flapped them dramatically, trying to imitate my voice with his gravelly tones. ‘
You’re sticking your finger in the dead girl. You’re smoking near the dead girl. You’re traumatising the parents of the dead girl.
You sure you’re right for this job, Detective? You might find yourself better employed in undertaking. You’re in love with the dead girl.’

‘You just … You can’t talk to people this way.’ I was so horrified, the words wouldn’t come. ‘These parents are grieving. No, they’re probably not even grieving yet. They’re probably still in shock.’

‘Is the emotional state of these people really your priority right now?’ Tox shook his head in disbelief. ‘First you want me to slow down so that we can go through all the procedural bullshit surrounding the corpse. Now you want me to slow down so we can go through all the emotional crap with the parents. Do you actually want to solve this case or are you just trying to score overtime?’

‘It’s not crap, it’s … it’s life!’

‘Not my life,’ Tox snorted.

A pair of patrol cops were walking down the hall towards us, carrying folders full of papers. One bumped hard into my shoulder as she passed, causing me to drop my phone. My punishment had begun. Nearby, an older officer I knew, Chris Murray, was fielding a call and glaring at us, taking in the figure of my new partner with obvious distaste.

‘How long has the couple been missing?’ Murray was saying into his mobile. ‘And what’s the name of the boat?’

‘Listen,’ I pointed at Tox, ‘if we’re going to work together on this, there need to be rules. I think number one should be that I do all the talking, all the time.’

‘Geh,’ he grunted. ‘Sounds just like a woman. All the talking, all the time.’

He went back into the interrogation room. I held my face in my hands for a long moment, relishing the darkness. When I lifted my head there were about five people in the bullpen staring at me, each set of eyes more hateful than the last.

I CALLED MY
brother Sam from the ladies’ bathroom, leaning my forehead on the mirror. I knew that he’d probably be teaching his classes at university, but I dialled anyway.

‘What’s up?’ he answered.

‘I’m in crisis mode,’ I said. ‘I need a friendly voice.’

I explained the situation in a long, rambling stream. In the background of the call I could hear students rumbling through the halls of the university.

‘Being partnered up with this guy – is it going to make solving the case difficult?’

‘The case should be fine, but my social standing might take a hit.’

He laughed. I’d never had many friends to begin with, and he knew that. I was a loner. Hardly a cheerful spirit. I forgot people’s birthdays and didn’t turn up to work drinks. None of my colleagues tried to set me up on dates. They knew a romantic train wreck when they saw one.

‘If I stick with him too long, I might have to start chewing my lunch more carefully,’ I continued.

‘Cops,’ Sam said. ‘All that ancient brotherhood bullshit.’

‘I can see where everyone’s coming from,’ I sighed. ‘I mean, apart from what he’s supposed to have done, the guy is also a world-class arrogant dickhead.’

I told Sam about his treatment of Claudia’s body, about how he’d spoken to her parents.

‘He might just be out of practice on his behaviour with other people, if he’s such an outcast. He might have genuinely forgotten how people are supposed to talk to each other,’ Sam suggested.

‘You always think the best of people,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how. I’m about ready to kill him.’

‘Well, that might make things messier.’

‘You may be the only man I’m not prepared to strangle right now,’ I told him. ‘That detective Nigel Spader caught me at the door to the case room. I didn’t even get a peek.’

‘Ah yes, I’ve met that one. He was here yesterday doing interviews of the tutors, trying to find out if we know anything about the Georges River girls,’ Sam said. ‘I think we’re booked in for second interviews today. Two of the victims were students here.’

‘Second interviews?’

‘A couple of us, yeah,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Weird. Were the victims students of yours?’

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘But some of my students were friends with them. A girl rushed out of my morning class yesterday, crying. It’s hard to know what to say.’

My stomach felt mildly unsettled. I put the phone on speaker and washed my face under the tap.

‘Tell me how the second interview goes,’ I told Sam. I convinced myself it was just the stress of the new case and my new partner making me sick. If I kept on track, it would go away.

As I’d find often in my life, I should have listened to what my instincts were telling me.

TOX SMOKED IN
my car. As I drove, I tried to think of one thing about him that didn’t annoy me. I decided I didn’t mind Tox’s leather jacket. I had a similar one of my own. We stopped for coffee outside the station and then headed west towards Claudia Burrows’s apartment on Parramatta Road.

‘When you arrived at the crime scene last night, I saw you unwrapping your knuckles in your car,’ Tox said, putting one of his boots on the dashboard. ‘You box?’

‘I box, yes.’

‘Who’d you beat up?’

‘I didn’t beat anyone up.’

‘Boxers spar. There’s very little blood involved. Looked to me like you pounded on someone outside the ring, using your boxing skills to get the upper hand.’

‘See, this is what you do,’ I said. ‘You make microscopic observations and you blow them out into wild theories that make no sense.’

‘Like the tits.’

‘Stop saying “tits”! Christ, you sound like a fat, sleazy truck driver in a highway bar.’ I imitated his quiet, gravelly voice, grabbed my crotch: ‘
Look at those tits! I love tits! Urgghh!
’

‘Was that supposed to be me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to know why I sound like this?’ he rasped. I glanced over, and he pulled at the collar of his shirt, revealing a long pink scar at the base of his throat. ‘Drug dealer stabbed me in the neck during a raid. Went right through the windpipe and out the other side.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun.’

He stared at me. ‘What kind of a horrible person makes fun of someone with a physical disabil—’

‘Shut up!’ I shoved him into the car door. ‘Goddammit!’

‘All right, so. Mum and Dad claimed Claudia was a part-time waitress,’ Tox said. ‘She wasn’t paying for those knockers on a waitress’s salary, and even if she was, you don’t get them that size unless you’re in the sex industry.’

‘Maybe she got a loan,’ I said. ‘And maybe she got them that size because she liked them that size. Look, I work in sex crimes, OK? So I’m going to need you to get your brain out of the Dark Ages and stop making misogynistic assumptions about our victim.’

‘Meh.’ He sat back and flicked his cigarette ash out the window. ‘What does your girlfriend think about you working in sex crimes?’

‘My girlfriend?’ I looked at him. ‘I’m not gay.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘What made you think I was gay?’

He waved his cigarette at my head. ‘Your hair.’

We pulled into an old apartment block in Auburn and parked in the visitor’s space. I didn’t talk to Tox on the way up the damp concrete steps. If he was going to make me this mad every time we spoke, I was going to have a brain aneurism before we actually discovered what had happened to Claudia Burrows.

Tox’s sexism wasn’t helped by Nigel Spader and his team rebuffing me from the Georges River Killer case. The Australian police force had always been full of boys’ club antics, what Sam called the ‘ancient brotherhood bullshit’. I was disappointed to see it creeping into my own station. Pops was a good chief, and didn’t let even the most minor sexual harassment or favouritism play down between his staff. But I had the feeling Nigel and his boys didn’t want me on the task force because I was a woman, and that even if Claudia did turn out to be one of the Georges River victims, they’d take the case off me completely. This was going to be a history-making case. There would be books about it. Nigel wanted his face on one of those books. He oozed heroic smugness.

Tox opened Claudia’s door with the keys her parents had given us. He’d only prised it open a crack when it slammed back against him.

And someone inside yelled, ‘Go!
Go!
’

HOPE ANALYSED HER
reflection in the jewellery shop window, pulling the wig down slightly at the front and straightening her skirt-suit jacket. She’d kept only one of Jenny Spelling’s suits in a hideous mustard yellow, the closest fit and the most modern piece she could find. It looked as though Jenny hadn’t updated her wardrobe in decades. That irritated Hope. She couldn’t stand people who’d been lucky enough to grow up in the lap of luxury who refused to use the money they squirrelled away. She didn’t know much about Jenny, but she couldn’t understand how anyone respected her, dressed like this. She felt awkward in the slightly too-big heels, like a child playing dress-up.