Crucifixion Creek (8 page)

They talk about the best way to handle this, who to get advice from.

‘You'll have to prepare Nicole for the worst, Harry,' Sam says. ‘This is going to
get ugly, I can feel it. The terms of those loans were extortionate. Greg must have
been out of his mind.'

When he gets home he tells Jenny, and she turns away from him, shocked, her face
tilted up as if straining for some light she cannot see. ‘No,' she says, ‘it can't
be that bad. Even her jewellery? How could Greg let that happen?'

‘I think it may be worse than that, love,' and he grips her hand and tells her about
the killer's last words.

He watches tears forming in her eyes. Then her mouth sets and
she turns back to face
him. ‘What can we do?'

‘Not much by the sound of it. All Greg's records have gone in the fire. We should
get a lawyer for Nicole, and—'

‘No,' she interrupts. ‘I mean, what can we
do
…to protect Nicole and the girls from
these people?'

‘I don't know, maybe find out what Bluereef have been up to. They're crooks. There
must be smoking guns if we knew where to look.'

‘Can't the police do that?'

‘I can try, but…The Queensland police had a crack, and ASIC. Neither of them got
anywhere. I've just been stood down for a week because I got too involved. They're
not going to listen to me pushing for action just because he was a mug, there'd have
to be some pretty concrete evidence of a crime.'

Harry's memories of Greg are crumbling. He no longer has a real handle on who Greg
actually was. He remembers a scene in this room, when his parents still lived in
this house. Greg and Harry's father were sitting together over there at the front
window, playing chess. Engrossed in the game, they barely acknowledged him as he
came in. He had recently returned from overseas, Afghanistan or maybe earlier, Iraq,
and was feeling suspended, not fitting in. The sight of them together pierced him,
as if Greg now occupied a place that should have been his, if he hadn't gone off
soldiering in two wars with which both his mother and father thoroughly disagreed.

Not that they hadn't been interested. They'd asked. But when he tried to describe
it their faces had clouded over with distaste and disapproval.

11

The next day he returns to work, day shift. The second padlock has been removed from
his locker and he senses the relief on the others' faces as they nod and mutter their
welcome back, mates. Toby Wagstaff gives him a wink and Bob the Job himself comes
to Harry's desk and shakes his hand.

He settles down. He has to make a case to the Crime Commission in favour of planting
bugs and tapping phones in the houses of a number of people peripherally connected
to a suspected murderer called Victor Nguyen. The idea is to trawl for incriminating
material against these people on other matters, so then the police can squeeze them
for evidence against the main target, Nguyen.

In between gathering and composing his submission, Harry makes searches on Bluereef,
Kristich and the lawyer Nathaniel Horn. The solicitor's past clients include a star
list of socialites, politicians, footballers and celebrity crooks, charged with
everything from acts of indecency to drugs, fraud and murder. Kristich is much as
Jenny said. Harry sends requests to Queensland for information on the deaths of Krstić's
wife and of the man who went public with
claims of fraud. In the middle of this he
gets a call from the central switchboard saying there's a Kelly Pool on the line
for him. His first impulse is to say he's not available, but then he relents and
takes the call.

She is brisk and businesslike, in the manner of someone giving it one last shot.
‘Thanks for speaking to me Harry. I'm not pestering you for no good reason. I believe
I have information that will be of interest to you. I think you should give me twenty
minutes to explain.' She suggests a pub, a good choice. Not too far from headquarters
but not too close.

‘Ten,' he says.

In the event it takes somewhat longer. For a start she keeps him waiting, and he's
on the point of leaving when she bursts into the bar, coat flapping, threatening
to send glasses flying from the tables. ‘Sorry, sorry! Bloody traffic. What are you
drinking?' He holds up his glass, ‘Fizzy mineral water.'

She comes back with the drinks and subsides onto a stool. ‘Well.' She takes a deep
breath and a gulp of the house shiraz. ‘Harry, there's something going on at Crucifixion
Creek. That siege, the builder's murder, the fire—a lot of coincidence, don't you
think?'

Ah. She wants there to be a conspiracy. ‘The last two may be related, but it's hard
to see what they've got to do with the siege.'

‘Agreed, but the gunman was a former Crow, yes?'

That hasn't been made public. ‘Where did you get that from?'

‘I told you, I know my turf. And the Crows are definitely Creek turf. And there's
something else. Do you remember that old couple who died together in a café at Balmoral
Beach a week or so back?'

Harry frowns, wondering if she's a little mad. ‘Yeah? So?'

‘They owned property—three houses—on Mortimer Street, in the Creek.'

‘I thought they were from the North Shore somewhere.'

‘Yes, that's where they lived, but they also had these investment properties. And
the woman who found them lives in one of those
houses, and that's how I became interested
in that strange story.'

Harry drinks his beer and glances at his watch. ‘Anything else?'

‘Well, yes. Our local Councillor Potgeiter, who thinks the Shooters Party are a pack
of bleeding heart lefties, wants to erect a memorial to Aboriginal reconciliation
in the Civic Centre…'

Harry looks at her.

‘…thereby making possible the removal of the memorial in Bidjigal Park in the Creek.'

‘Yeah, well,' Harry drains his glass. ‘It'll make an interesting article in your
paper, I'm sure. I'll keep a look-out for it.' He starts to get to his feet.

‘Harry!' she almost yells, ‘That old couple were murdered!'

Heads turn. Harry stares at her. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘That old couple.' She leans in to him, willing him back into his seat. ‘A couple
of months ago they were rich. Then they got tangled up with some finance company
who turned them into paupers, in connivance with their son. He's very cagey about
the whole thing.'

‘What finance company?'

‘I don't know, I've just got a name, Crosstitch, but I can't track him down.' She
sees the expression on his face. ‘You've heard of him?'

‘Kristich,' he says, and spells it out. ‘Alexander Kristich. Previously Sandi Krstić
from the Gold Coast. You'd better tell me the whole story.'

So she does.

‘You went and spoke to the son?'

‘Yes. He wouldn't see me at first, then he changed his mind.'

‘How did he explain what had happened to his folks?'

‘Dementia. But I don't believe him. Mrs Bulwer-Knight says there was nothing wrong
with them when she last saw them a month ago.'

Harry has made enquiries about Kelly Pool. He's picked up the story of her run-in
with the Murdoch editor. Now he wonders just
how desperate she is for a second chance,
a redeeming scoop. How likely she is to find it working for the
Bankstown Chronicle
.

‘Then he threatened me.'

‘Oh?'

‘I think that was the real reason he agreed to see me. He said his lawyer will go
for me—and the paper—if we print anything about his parents he doesn't like.'

‘Did he say who his lawyer is?'

‘No. So what do you know about this Kristich character?'

‘He's just one of those names that comes across the desk from time to time. An elusive
man, from all accounts. You can look him up.'

He was aware of her searching look. ‘Come on, Harry. There's more, isn't there?'

‘Kristich's lawyer is Nathaniel Horn. Heard of him?'

‘Of course! I've seen him on TV.'

‘It'd be interesting to know if he's also the lawyer for the old couple's son.'

‘Yes.'

‘But the odds are he isn't. The thing is, Kelly, crimes don't come evenly spread
across the city. They come in clusters, and sometimes the clusters just happen. No
reason, just coincidence. If you want to start a fire somewhere, what better place
than a run-down dump like the Creek? Maybe you read in the
Bankstown Chronicle
that
that's where the guy who got stabbed nearby had a business.'

‘No, we didn't print that.'

‘But you take my point. Coincidences happen all the time in the real world. They
don't necessarily mean anything.'

Kelly glares at him. ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third
time it's enemy action.'

‘Who said that?'

She blushes. ‘Goldfinger.'

He laughs and gets to his feet.

‘But what are you going to do?' she says.

‘Nothing. You haven't given me any grounds. What are you going to do?'

‘I'm going to write a story, Harry, and it'd be great if you could help me. If you
could find out that the son's lawyer is Horn, say, I'd write you up as the great
detective. It would do you good.'

No, it really wouldn't. That's the last thing it would do. ‘No, Kelly,' he says.
‘You're not going to mention my name and you're not going to contact me again, okay?'

As he walks back to headquarters he phones Garry Roberts the pathologist. Yes, Garry
did the post-mortems on the old couple and yes, he did specifically examine their
brains for signs of Alzheimer degeneration.

‘And?'

‘Nothing,' says Garry.

Harry then phones Jenny and asks if she can hack into Justin Waterford's computer,
find out if he knows Kristich or Horn. She says she'll try.

When he arrives home there is a small pile of computer printouts on the kitchen
table. Since neither Jenny nor her whispering electronic friend has any use for hard
copies, he realises they are for him. First he pours two glasses of wine and asks
Jenny about her day, and turns the roasting chicken over for her.

‘I got into Waterford's computer all right,' she says. ‘There's some copies for you
over there.' He sways back as she points over her shoulder with the knife in her
hand, dangerously close to his face. ‘Oops,' she says. ‘Was that near you? Sorry.'

He picks up the papers. First some pages from websites referencing Alexander Kristich
and Bluereef Financial Services. They are all from a two-day period, four months
ago.

‘That's all there was on Kristich,' she says. ‘Waterford just looked him up that
time, then nothing.'

‘Right.' There are more Google searches, this time for Nathaniel
Horn, all within
the past week, and an exchange of emails with the lawyer's office, confirming the
time of a meeting.

‘Not much,' Jenny says.

‘It's enough. He knows them.' And he tells her about his meeting with Kelly Pool.

‘You didn't tell her about Greg and Kristich, did you?'

‘No.'

‘That's the most important thing, isn't it? What did he do to Greg, and how can we
now protect Nicole?'

‘Yes.'

‘If I could get into his computer I might find a record of their transactions, and
then we could have them looked at by our lawyer.'

So after dinner she sits down with her little spy and gets to work. Harry sits with
her for a while, reading, until he suddenly lurches upright and realises he's been
asleep. She hears his grunt and tells him to go to bed, that she'll join him soon.
But she doesn't, and when he wakes in the morning the bed beside him is empty, and
she's still in the front room, working.

‘I can't bloody do it,' she says wearily. ‘He's got some new NGFW with IPS I've never
seen before.'

Harry has no idea what that means. ‘You've been at it all night?'

‘Yes. I'll get some sleep now and try again later, but I really don't think I'm going
to get anywhere. I also tried getting in through Horn's computer, but it's equally
well protected.'

Later, when he gets home, he can tell from her expression that she's failed. ‘I'm
sorry,' she says, despairing. ‘It's hopeless. I can't do it.'

‘What if you had his computer?'

‘What?'

‘I mean, physically here in front of you. Could you get into it then?'

‘I…' She's staring right at him. ‘I know someone who could probably help me.'

‘Okay. So could you bypass the security systems in the Gipps Tower—cameras, locks?'

‘What? I don't know.'

‘Why don't you try?'

‘Harry…I don't want you to do that.'

‘Just try.'

By midnight she's worked out how to do it. She can give him the master entry code
for all the electronic locks in the tower, and can pause the cameras and freeze the
images on the monitors in the security centre for a limited period. ‘Thirty minutes,
Harry. No more than an hour.'

‘Right, I'll go and get changed.'

‘You're going now?' She looks terrified. ‘If they catch you you'll lose your job,
everything. You'll go to jail. It's not worth it, Harry.'

He kisses her and she clings to him and finally he has to ease out of her grip. ‘Don't
worry.'

Jenny closes the front door after him and turns back into the house, feeling sick
with foreboding. What if they arrest him? She has to try to block this feeling of
helplessness every time he goes off to work, to face who knows what. She hates feeling
so vulnerable.