Crucifixion Creek (10 page)

They discuss where they should hide the files, how they should clean Harry's clothes,
dispose of the plastic gloves. He has a long shower, scrubbing his wrists and head
thoroughly to remove any gunshot residue.

He's trying not to dwell on what happened tonight, but he feels strung tight as he
dries himself, and when he gets to the bedroom he wraps his arms around Jenny and
holds her to him. Her mouth, her body are like a narcotic, erasing the tension that
grips his shoulders, his stomach. He is overwhelmed by a surge of desperate need
for her and they tumble onto the bed. It is the first time they have made love for
weeks, months even.

13

In the transition from sleep to waking he sees the woman on the bed. Her face is
different, more alert, with huge frightened eyes. Not surprising, since he is covered
in blood.

Jenny is already awake, and at her desk setting her little friend to work on the
black box. Prying out its secrets. Harry makes her a cup of tea and leaves for work.

At headquarters he finds Deb all fired up.

‘Harry! Get your gear quick. We're on our way. Double homicide in the city.'

‘For us?'

‘Sure.'

He feels like a robot as he picks up his things from his locker and follows her down
to the basement car park.

She fills him in as he drives. ‘Little over an hour ago a woman came out of one of
the lifts in the entrance foyer of the Gipps Tower wearing a dressing gown. She walked
over to the enquiries desk, leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the marble floor.
She said to the guy, “Sandy and Benji are both dead,” then she passed out.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Still there, with security. They knew her, regular visitor…' Deb checks her notes,
‘Chloe Anastos, record for soliciting and drug use. Ambulance came and checked her
out, then a doctor who gave her the all-clear apart from a hangover. Attending officers
went up with security to the offices of her
companion
, Alexander Kristich, on the
twenty-third floor and found his body inside with that of another man, who security
identified as Benjamin Lavulo, also known to them as an associate of Kristich. Kristich
has no record, Lavulo convictions for assault and drugs. Suspected involvement in
two unsolved murder cases.'

‘Somebody killed them both?'

‘Looks like it. Crime scene are there now.'

As he drives along familiar streets, Harry sees them with a fresh eye, registering
details—two women pushing a pram, graffiti on a billboard, a vacant shop unit—as
if he may never see them again.

When they arrive they are directed down the ramp to the basement, and Harry recognises
the door through which he entered last night. He sees the camera overhead, an implacable
eye, and he feels a tightening in his chest, wondering if Jenny did really fix the
system. Maybe he and Deb will see his face come up on the security footage. It is
as if he is being drawn remorselessly into a trap of his own making.

The security man leads them down the ramp and points them to a reserved parking space,
then takes them into the security suite. A local area detective is there with updates
for them. Uniforms have sealed off the twenty-third floor for the crime-scene team
who have also examined Anastos. Drug use is indicated, probably heroin, but she has
refused a blood test. They go into the small office next door and a female detective
gets to her feet as they come in. Anastos is sitting hunched under a blanket. Crime
scene have taken her dressing gown and given her disposable slippers and tunic.

Deb introduces herself and Harry, and Anastos barely glances
up. But then her eye
catches on Harry's face, and she frowns and peers at him.

‘Don't I know you?' Her voice is hoarse.

‘Probably,' he says. ‘Scooters at the Cross?'

She looks confused. ‘Oh…'

Deb takes charge of getting her story. She and Kristich went out for a meal at the
Hilton then returned here, had a few drinks and went to bed some time between ten
and twelve, she can't be more exact. She can't remember Benji arriving. She didn't
hear anything. She had no idea anything was wrong until she woke up and went looking
for Sandy and found them both on the floor.

‘He has a bed up there in his office?' Deb demands.

He converted part of the office into a flat, Chloe explains. It's where he lives.
Lived.

Deb snorts doubtfully and goes out to check with the security people. While they
wait for her to return, Chloe sneaks another look at Harry, surreptitiously, peering
through her blonde fringe. Harry looks back at her and nods. She says, ‘Scooters?'

‘Yeah, I reckon that's where it was.'

‘Unbelievable.' Deb is back. ‘This is an office building. He made a nest for himself
up there, a little apartment. Against all the regulations but everyone turned a blind
eye.'

‘So he doesn't have another address?'

‘Not that anybody knows of. And nothing about family members, next of kin.'

A nest is right, Harry thinks, an eyrie, somewhere he could fly from at a moment's
notice.

Deb questions Chloe Anastos about Kristich, about his business, and about his relationship
with Lavulo. The exchanges are laboured, yielding little but mumbled claims of ignorance.
It's an act, Harry decides. She is a smart woman who has been interviewed by the
police many times before. Eventually they are interrupted by a call on the local
detective's phone. He murmurs to Deb that
crime scene are clearing the twenty-third
floor and they can go up. They finish the interview and go back outside to the security
control room, where Deb asks the staff for the camera tapes and other security records
for the past twenty-four hours, and a list of tenants of the building. She and Harry
take the lift up to the twenty-third floor.

As they give their names to the uniform at the door of Kristich's suite and go inside,
Harry looks around, eyes searching for some sign of himself, something he overlooked.
They pass through the reception area and into the inner office, where two men are
standing in conversation. The pathologist, Garry Roberts, looks up and gives a cheery
smile. He and the crime-scene guy step back to give them a clear view of the bodies
on the floor.

Harry and Deb take it in, squat, peer at the knife and gun, the shell casing lying
to one side. Harry stares at their hands, wondering if he bruised them when he gripped.
He can't see any marks.

‘Okay,' Deb says, puzzled, ‘what happened?'

Roberts answers in his clipped way, pointing. ‘Kristich—Lavulo. Kristich's prints
on the handle of the knife in Lavulo's chest. Lavulo's prints on the gun.'

‘So…' Deb still doesn't buy it. ‘They what…killed each other?'

‘That's how it looks.'

‘Who first?'

‘Must have been pretty much simultaneous. Kristich couldn't have stabbed Lavulo with
that wound in his chest, and vice-versa.'

‘Or someone else set it up?'

The two men don't like that idea. ‘Hard to see how,' Roberts says. ‘I'll have a close
look at them on the table, but there's no sign of them being restrained before the
event or moved afterwards. It definitely happened right here, as you see it. No
obvious signs anyone else was present.' He points to some blood smears on the carpet
leading to the door. ‘Assuming those are the girlfriend's footprints.'

‘When did it happen?'

‘Hm, between midnight and three?'

‘That's a big pistol,' Deb persists. ‘A forty-five. Noisy. Anastos didn't hear a
thing?'

‘She'd taken heroin. And the gun was definitely fired in here—the bullet passed clean
through Kristich's body and into that wall over there.' He points to a marker across
the room.

Deb, frowning, turns to Harry. ‘What do you think?'

He shrugs. ‘No sign of an argument?'

The two experts shake their heads. ‘Furniture undisturbed. No bruises, scratches.
Nothing. It's like they were both standing here, close together, when something flared
up, bang-bang, that's it.'

Harry says, ‘The lights were off?'

The crime-scene man says, ‘They were on when we arrived, but Anastos may have done
that. You're thinking Kristich surprised Lavulo here in the dark and mistook him
for an intruder? Maybe he
was
an intruder. Yeah, that's what my money's on.'

‘Makes sense,' Harry says neutrally.

Deb seems unconvinced. ‘Let's look around.'

Harry hangs back, letting Deb discover things while the crime-scene unit finish up,
removing the bodies and the last of the bagged items. Roberts puts his head around
the door of Kristich's den to tell them he's leaving.

‘Incidentally, Lavulo was a bikie. He has a Crow tat on his left arm. Either of you
coming to the post-mortem? About midday.'

Deb says, ‘Will you go, Harry?'

He nods. It seems only right.

A little later they hear a commotion from the outer office. The uniformed officer
at the door is arguing with a tall thin man in a dark suit.

‘What's the problem?' Deb asks.

The man looks over the officer's shoulder and says, ‘Are you in charge?'

Harry recognises the face, deeply—perhaps prematurely—lined,
the severely cut black
hair. He's seen him on TV outside courtrooms, making statements on behalf of clients.

‘Detective Inspector Deborah Velasco.' Deb shows her ID. Harry is sure that she must
recognise him, but she says, ‘And you are?'

‘Nathaniel Horn, solicitor. My offices are on this floor. What's happened? They told
me downstairs there's been a fatality.'

‘We're investigating that now, sir. I'll accompany you to your offices.'

Horn doesn't move. ‘These are Alexander Kristich's rooms. He's a client of mine.
What's happened?'

‘Mr Kristich is dead, sir. We're anxious to contact his next of kin. Can you help
us?'

‘How is he dead? I saw him yesterday evening. He was quite fit then.'

‘What time was that?'

‘About six. I was leaving. We had a brief conversation.'

‘Did he tell you his plans for the evening?'

‘No he did not. I do have an address for family members in Croatia, not here. Perhaps
if you could tell me what happened I might be able to help you.'

‘We believe he died in the early hours of this morning, and we're treating his death
as suspicious.'

‘An intruder?' For the first time Horn's face expresses something like alarm.

‘Why would you say that?'

Horn's face closes down again. ‘What else would you mean? Now look, I am Mr Kristich's
executor, and as such I need to secure his personal papers.'

He makes to move forward into the room, but Deb stands in his way. ‘This is a crime
scene, sir. You can't come in.'

‘I can advise you,' he says impatiently, ‘if anything is disturbed or missing.'

‘Yes, we'll need to speak to you again. In the meantime
Detective Sergeant Belltree
will escort you to your rooms to make sure everything is in order there.'

Horn peers at Harry, then turns on his heel. As he opens his office door he looks
back over his shoulder and says, ‘Belltree? Are you related to the judge?'

‘His son.'

‘Really?' Horn stares at him for a long moment, registering his face. ‘Well…' he
makes a theatrical sweep of his arm, ‘be my guest, Sergeant Belltree.'

Harry has a quick look through the offices, then gets Horn to check the Croatian
address of Kristich's relatives. ‘You didn't really expect to find anyone here, did
you?' says Horn as he writes it down. Then, ‘It wasn't suicide was it?'

‘No.'

‘Was it the whore? Chloe, did she kill him?'

Harry looks at him. ‘You think that's likely?'

‘Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You never can tell.'

When he returns to Kristich's suite Deb is examining a box of bullets. ‘Forty-fives,
in a drawer in the bedroom. Does that mean the gun was Kristich's? How did it end
up in Lavulo's fist?'

‘Or Chloe's? Horn just asked me if she killed Kristich.'

‘Did he? There's traces of heroin in the bedroom and a few other stashes hidden away
in various places—ecstasy and ice, I'd say. Looks to me like Kristich was dealing.'

‘Phone records and computer then.'

‘Right. And there's documents in the filing cabinets in the outer office.'

They search for a while longer, then Harry suggests he take Chloe Anastos to the
local station for a formal interview, and then start checking the CCTV disks. It's
a relief to get out of Kristich's nest and wind down the car window and smell the
fumy morning air of the city. Chloe has had a friend bring her clothes, and she is
more alert. He lets her light up in the car; she sits in silence, blowing
smoke out
of the window. In the interview he gets her to fill in some background on her relationship
with Kristich and Lavulo, then releases her.

He settles down to play the CCTV recordings, wondering what he will do if he sees
himself appear. After an hour he relaxes. Jenny's intervention appears to have been
faultless, with each camera showing an unvarying, eventless image between 1:46 and
2:46 that morning. He calls Deb to let her know that he hasn't been able to find
any record of Lavulo entering the building and is sending the disks down to tech
support for a more thorough search, then he sets off for the Glebe morgue.

Garry Roberts carries out the two post-mortems at his usual steady pace. There are
no surprises, no unexplained bruises. Roberts' only comment is mild surprise at the
force that Kristich must have applied to drive the knife so deep into Lavulo's chest.
They will have to wait for results from the toxicology lab to find about drugs.