Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) (13 page)

‘How could you be so completely wrong?’ Blue howled. ‘How could you be so completely, completely
useless
! You pathetic piece of—’

‘That’s enough!’ Chief Morris stepped forward, took Blue’s arm. He felt her shaking. ‘Detective Blue, you get a hold of yourself right now or I’ll have the boys escort you out onto the street.’

Blue whirled around and looked at him. The shock and heartache of a betrayed kid, eyes wide, disbelieving, all the exhaustion of the former case now vanished from her features. Her cheeks were flushed and her teeth gritted. Just as she did when she came around from a near-knockout in the boxing ring, Chief Morris watched as she shook it off and set her mind to what she’d do next to survive. She shoved past him. He felt the gentle brush of her shoulder like the slam of a sledgehammer.

That’s it, Blue
, he thought.
You’re not done yet.

When she’d gone, the case room was sombre. The men standing there looked silently at him, waiting for direction. Yes, none of them had ever been on the friendliest of terms with the little firecracker in their station. Harriet Blue was too determined, too brash, too obsessed with the job to fit in with these guys. But they still didn’t like having to do this to her. How could anyone? A sex crimes detective’s brother turns out to be the worst homicidal sexual predator in decades, maybe ever. Pops felt the humiliation. It was thick as smoke in the air.

He went to the case board and looked at the photographs there, interior shots of Samuel Jacob Blue’s apartment taken during the search. Grainy surveillance images of the beloved brother walking in the street on the night of the first victim’s murder, hundreds of metres down from her apartment, a dark ball cap pulled down over his face. The Chief absent-mindedly pulled down fingerprint analysis from the first two victims. Turned it over and over in his hands, uncertain.

‘We’re right, aren’t we?’ he said aloud, his eyes wandering over the huge collection of evidence. He found that his throat was tight. This was really hitting him. It had been years since he’d felt this troubled.

‘We’re right,’ Spader said, taking the sheet from him and pinning it back on the board. ‘It’s him. He’s the killer. We checked and double-checked. And after we make an arrest, we’ll get a confession. It won’t take long. There’s nothing you can say in the face of this stuff.’ He gestured to the board. ‘It’s open and shut.’

‘It better be,’ Chief Morris said. If it was all a mistake, and they’d brought in an innocent man, the Chief was sure he’d have lost one of the greatest investigative minds he’d seen in his policing career. Blue wouldn’t come back to the force that had turned against her. She wouldn’t trust him any more, his people. It had been enough of a mission to get her settled in the first place. She wasn’t good with institutions. They’d mishandled her as far back as she could remember.

But worse than all that, all the embarrassment and mistrust, all the heartache and accusations and damage it would do to Blue and her relationship with the force, if they were wrong about Samuel Jacob Blue, it would mean one thing. That the monster was still out there. And they had no idea who he was.

Harry had taken down the central picture in the case board, a happy-snap of her and the brother, their faces pressed together. It would be puzzling for her, how her brother could be such an evil being when every cell in her own body was inherently good. The Chief knew the answer. It wasn’t about good and evil – it was about fire. It took a white-hot flame in a sick, terrible mind to drive Sam Blue to do what he did. So much energy. So much destruction. The Chief had seen that fire in the eyes of plenty of horrible men. He’d seen it most in the ghouls who lurked in the back of prison cells, those vicious dogs who were deemed unfit to ever re-enter society. He’d seen it burning too in the eyes of heroes he’d worked with in the job, the cops who got up and rushed towards the sounds of screaming when everyone else was taking cover.

That same fire burned in Detective Harriet Blue. The Chief knew her brother’s arrest wouldn’t put it out. It would make it burn brighter.

If you enjoyed BLACK & BLUE, read Detective Harriet Blue’s next thrilling case

Coming August 2016

I’VE HAD TWO
cigarettes in the last ten years. Both of them I smoked outside the funeral home where a fallen colleague’s body was being laid to rest. I stood now in the alleyway behind headquarters, finishing off my third. I chain-lit the fourth, sucked hard, exhaled into the icy morning. Despite the chill, my shirt was sticking to me with sweat. I tried to call my brother’s phone three times. No answer.

The Chief emerged from the fire exit beside me. I held a hand up. Not only did I not want to talk – I wasn’t sure that I could if I tried. The old man stood watching as I smoked. My hands were shaking.

‘That … that rat … that stain on humanity Nigel Spader is going to go down for this,’ I said. ‘If it’s my last act, I’m going to make sure he—’

‘I’ve overseen the entire operation,’ the Chief said. ‘I couldn’t tell you it was going on, or you might have alerted Sam. We let you carry on, business as usual. Nigel and his team have done a very good job. They’ve been on to your brother for about three weeks now.’

I looked at my chief. My trainer. My friend.

‘I’ve thought you’ve been looking tired,’ I sneered. ‘Can’t sleep at night, boss?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I can’t. I haven’t slept since the morning the homicide team told me of their suspicions. I hated lying to you, Blue.’

He ground a piece of asphalt into the dirt with his heel. He looked ancient in the reflected light of the towering city blocks around us.

‘Where is my brother?’

‘They picked him up this morning,’ he said. ‘He’s being interrogated by the feds over at the Parramatta station.’

‘I need to get over there.’

‘You won’t get anywhere near him at this stage.’ The Chief took me by the shoulders before I could barge past him through the fire door. ‘He’s in processing. Depending on whether he’s cooperative, he may not be approved for visitors for a week. Two, even.’

‘Sam didn’t do this,’ I said. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Nigel’s got it wrong. I need to be here to straighten all this out.’

‘No, you don’t,’ the old man said. ‘You need to get some stuff together and get out of here.’

‘What, just abandon him?’

‘Harry, Sam is about to go down as one of the nastiest sexual sadists since the Backpacker Murders. Whether you think he did it or not, you’re public enemy number two right now. If the press gets a hold of you, they’re going to eat you alive.’

I shook another cigarette out of the packet I’d swiped from Nigel’s desk. My thoughts were racing.

‘You aren’t going to do yourself any favours here, Harry. If you go around shouting in front of the cameras the way you did in that case room right now, you’re going to look like a lunatic.’

‘I don’t give a shit what I look like!’

‘You should,’ the Chief said. ‘The entire country is going to tune in for this on the six o’clock news. People are angry. If they can’t get at Sam, they’re going to want to get at you. Think about it. It’s fucking poetry. The killer’s sister is a short-tempered, frequently violent cop with a mouth like a sailor. Better yet, she’s in sex crimes, and has somehow managed to remain completely oblivious to the sexual predator at the family barbecue.’

He took a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. It was a printout of a flight itinerary. He put the slim folder tucked under his arm into my hands. I opened it and saw it was a case brief, but couldn’t get my eyes to settle on it for more than a few seconds. I felt sick with fear, uncertainty.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘It’s an unexplained death case out on a mining camp in the desert near Kalgoorlie,’ the Chief said. ‘I pulled some strings with some old mates in Perth. The case itself is bullshit, but the area is so isolated, it’ll make the perfect hideout.’

‘I don’t want to go to fucking Kalgoorlie! Are you nuts?’

‘You don’t get a choice, Detective. Even if you don’t know what’s best for you right now, I do. I’m giving you a direct order as your superior officer. You don’t go, I’ll have you locked up for interrogative purposes. I’ll tell a local judge I want to know if you knew anything about the murders and I’ll throw away the key until this shitstorm is over. You want that?’

I tried to walk away. The Chief grabbed my arm again.

‘Look at me,’ he said.

I didn’t look.

‘There is nothing you can do to help your brother, Blue,’ the old man said. ‘It’s over.’

I DON’T KNOW
which genius from Sydney Metro packed my bags for me, but they’d managed not to find the suitcases in the wardrobe of my tiny apartment in Woolloomooloo. I exited the baggage claim area in Kalgoorlie airport with three black garbage bags of possessions in tow. From what I could see in the pale light of the car-hire lot, some of the items I’d asked for were there, and quite a few I hadn’t, too. I recognised my television remote among the fingerprint-dusted mess.

The numbness that had descended on me at my brother’s arrest had begun after my first glass of wine on the flight. Now it was affecting my movements. I realised I had been standing at the car-hire counter in a silent daze when the attendant clicked his fingers loudly in my face, snapping me back to reality.

‘Miss? Hey! Miss!’

I frowned, reached out, and pushed over a canister of pencils standing on the edge of the counter. The pencils scattered over the keyboard.

‘So you’re awake then,’ he sighed dramatically, gathering up the pencils.

‘I’m awake.’

‘What’s the name?’

‘Blue.’

He did some tapping on the keyboard. Printed and presented me with a demoralisingly long form to fill in and a set of car keys.

‘Blue and Whittacker. You’ve got the little red Camry.’

‘Who’s Whittacker?’

‘I am,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned around as a lean, broad-shouldered man was carefully setting down two immaculate leather Armani suitcases on their little golden feet. He put out a long-fingered hand. ‘Edward. You must be Harriet?’

‘Harry. You’re the driver?’ I asked.

‘I’m your partner, actually,’ he smiled.

I CALLED THE
Chief first to tell him I’d arrived and to see if there was any more news on Sam, sitting in the back seat of the car. There was no word on my brother. I called a contact I knew in the feds, and when that route failed, I called some journalists I could trust to see if they had the inside scoop. A cocoon of silence had descended around Sam. By the time I gave up calling his friends and neighbours, Whittacker had driven us out of the town and onto the highway.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘You just mind the road, Whitt, and leave me to me.’

‘Actually, I prefer Edward,’ he said.

‘You say “actually” a lot.’

His brow creased in the rear-view mirror. I leaned on the windowsill and watched the featureless desert rolling by. When I couldn’t stand the thought of my brother in prison any longer, I climbed through the gap between the seats and landed in the front beside Whitt. On the floor I found his copy of the case brief, which was bigger than mine.

‘Remind me why I’m working with a partner,’ I said. ‘I never requested a partner.’

‘I had a back injury about a month ago. Compressed a disc in my lower spine. So I’m on light duties. I used to be drug squad, but there’s a lot of kicking down doors in drug squad, as you can imagine.’ He smiled.

‘Give me the rundown on this case, Whitt,’ I said. ‘Where are we headed?’

‘To the very edge of nowhere.’

‘We were just there.’ I jerked my thumb towards the highway behind us, the tiny town in the middle of a sandy abyss.

‘Oh no, there’s plenty more oblivion to come. Right now we’re on the edge of the Great Victorian Desert. It’s as big as California, and largely uninhabited. Bandya Uranium Mine is smack bang in the middle of it. It’ll be another five hours of this.’ He gestured to the bare landscape.

‘Five hours? Christ Almighty.’ I slumped back in my seat.

‘We’re on the hunt for one Daniel Stanton, twenty-one years old.’

I opened the file and found a photograph of a tanned young man with blond, shaggy hair. A big infectious smile. In the picture, he had his arm slung around the neck of a black Labrador.

‘Cute. What did he do?’

‘He died.’

‘Well, that was a poor choice,’ I sighed.

‘His divisional manager at Bandya reported Stanton missing about eleven days ago,’ Whitt said. ‘It wasn’t a huge deal at first. Guys go missing from the mine all the time, so he tells me.’

‘They do?’

‘Well, I mean, they usually turn up. These mines are so isolated that they’re operated by workers who fly in from cities all over the country. They work three weeks, then they fly out again and get a week off back in their home town. The young guys sign up to do it because the money is incredible.’

‘How incredible?’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’