Death Delights (28 page)

‘An escape?’ I was incredulous. ‘How can you say that?’

‘I think your obsession with this woman is a way to occupy your mind with something that’s non-essential. It stops you focusing on the real issues. Your failed marriage. Your kids.’ He finished another sausage and wiped his hands on some kitchen paper. ‘It’s a distraction.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I’m not blaming you. It’s what we humans do. I do it all the time.’

‘She’s not a distraction, she’s a suspect,’ I said, ‘in a series of violent and horrible killings.’

‘Jack,’ said Charlie in his conciliatory voice, ‘I didn’t mean to rub you up the wrong way. I agree there’s
some
basis for your interest in her. But I think she’s also carrying a heavy load. Your projections.’

He had a point and the subject was disturbing me so I looked for a way out and a way forward at the same time.

‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘will you come to Springbrook with me? See if you can identify that wall in the photograph of Rosie?’

‘What if I can?’ he said.

‘If we find out where the pictures were taken,’ I said, ‘it might give us something. It’s a place to start from. Rosie was
at
that place, wherever it is, sometime in the three days before she disappeared.’

I could see my brother metaphorically shaking his head over me, as I tried to solve the impossible. But his good heart won the day. ‘Day after tomorrow?’ said Charlie. ‘Siya and I were going to take a picnic to Centennial Park and feed the ducks.’ He looked dejected at the thought.

‘No ducks,’ I said, ‘but you can still pack a picnic.’

Greg was lying in a clearing on the floor when I got home, watching a video. He sprawled, seeming to take up much more room than was possible, inside a circle of school books, cassette covers, empty plates and containers and items of clothing pushed out of the way around him. He nodded when I came in, and turned his attention back to the movie.

‘Charlie and I are driving up to Springbrook day after tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Wanna come?’

He paused the movie and two frozen lovers shimmered on the screen. ‘I’ve got a history test and the swimming carnival day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’d go with you.’

‘Can you do something about that crop circle you’ve created?’ I indicated the messy circumference. Greg reluctantly started gathering plastic containers together and picking up empty packets, the lovers on the screen went back to their engagement and I looked around for something to eat.

As the hours passed, I was getting more and more nervous about the date I’d be keeping with ‘Rosie.’

•

I went with Bob and the 2IC of the State Protection Group, ‘Flat Line’ Floyd, for a drive to Coogee next morning because Ross Llewellyn was otherwise engaged at a seige. Flat Line looked around, local map spread out on his knees, first from the car, driving along the streets that enclose the north end of the beach, and then on foot. He was very excited to find the solid little fishing clubhouse.

‘Find the key holder of that,’ he said, ‘and we’re laughing.’ It was a small, well-built structure, a little bunker, with a door and barred windows high up, reminding me of Goulburn Gaol. ‘And a few blokes up here,’ he said, indicating the small hillock that rose behind it, with a brick amenities block off to one side, dotted with gnarled banksias, deformed from the prevailing wind. Wattlebirds rattled and scolded each other and a pair of crows called. ‘Those boats are a possibility, too,’ he said, squinting in the hot sun, indicating the upturned fishing boats beached some distance away from the low stone wall that separated the sand from the grassy verge. He walked across the park, checked buildings, made notes and eventually rejoined us. We drove away, with me in the back seat and Bob and Flat Line in the front.

‘Unusual nickname,’ said Bob, turning to Flat Line.

‘I was killed in an operation about eight years ago,’ said Floyd.

I noticed the wide scar that tracked through his hair and down his neck and vanished beneath the collar and I remembered my father had a scar like that.

‘I was on the table with all the surgeons poking around like they do. Then they saw the flat line on that heart screen. I was just lying there dead. But they brought me back. When my mates heard about it, one of them said hey, how could they tell the difference?’

I was sweating, and it wasn’t only the heat of the November day. I hoped Flat Line’s mate was referring to his leader’s
sang-froid
, rather than his intelligence. I looked back at the beach as the car climbed the hill and thought how in a few short hours I’d be here. And, if all went according to plan, so would ‘Rosie’.

•

Midnight found Bob and me sitting in the dark in the deserted upper bar of the Beach Palace, surrounded by empty tables, watching the northern end of Coogee Beach, familiar companions to this sort of silence and each other. Bob had found this spot earlier in the day before meeting Flat Line and me, and we’d already been there for a couple of hours. Opposite us, and nestled in the curve of the rise, the little fishing club building showed as a pale outline against the darker wooded knoll behind. Time passed slowly. Occasionally, we’d say something to each other, but mostly we sat in silence. Sometimes Bob’s portable spoke, as Flat Line and his mates checked in. Sometimes, I stood up and walked around the long room. It was times like these, I wished I smoked again. Anything to help pass the time, although it wasn’t unpleasant being in this upper room which smelt of food and cigarette smoke. Occasionally a figure would walk along the path from the dark headland, coming out of the banksias and low heath brush of the small public park. I knew that many people took the path around the foreshores and these days, a person could walk from Bondi almost as far as Maroubra. Adjacent to the park were the outlines of flats and houses, the bright windows of insomniacs or shift workers.

Bob’s portable crackled and Floyd’s voice made me jump. ‘Flat Line and company standing by. Five minutes to countdown. Copy that.’ Bob acknowledged the call and I glanced at my watch. It was one twenty-five. Now the beach and its surroundings were deserted. The lights along the tiled promenade frosted the small waves as they uncurled along the sand. Gulls appeared brilliant white in their light, then vanished as if by magic into the darkness as they flew out of the powerful beams.

‘You’d better start wandering down,’ Bob said.

I picked up the coat and cap on the table. In case our target had studied the countenance and physique of Anton Francini, I dressed myself to look bulky, and I hunched myself, pushing my head forward, losing a couple of inches in height. I wore the cap that I’d been told was Francini’s habitual headgear and a longish coat.

‘How do I look?’ I said to Bob, my voice hoarse with tension.

‘Like a first class A-grade perv,’ he said. I turned to go out the door.

Bob walked with me, touching my shoulder. ‘There are a dozen blokes to make sure you don’t come to grief.’

I’d felt this racing heart before exams, when waiting for a target to show, and, many years ago, sitting at the kitchen table in the old house at Springbrook waiting for my mother to come out of her room, knowing how nasty her mood swings could be. As I walked downstairs, I couldn’t help recalling that someone handy with a knife can be faster and deadlier than someone armed with a gun. I tried not to think of that as I left the building and crossed the road, keeping my steps shorter and slower than my habitual gait. How would Anton Francini feel and behave, I asked myself. But I couldn’t answer my own question, because, unlike the previous men who’d gone to meet ‘Rosie’, I knew what to expect. I wondered if I was going to see her hurrying across the sand to me, her red jacket covering her powerful body and the long, blonde wig hiding her dark hair. The low surf pulsed in and out and I could just discern the horizon line between the sky and ocean.

I shuffled over the paved promenade, heading for the fishing club, hoping I looked like a newly released murderer on his way to keep a hot date. It was in keeping with my role that I look around and I certainly did, more alert than I’d felt in ages, my eyes scanning the promenade and the darker area behind the fishing club house. Someone was walking straight towards me. I stiffened in fear, but it was a man. He had his head down and took no notice of me. We passed each other and I heard his footsteps moving away behind me. I knew that a dozen pairs of eyes were watching him, watching me. Somehow, this knowledge failed to keep me from feeling exposed and vulnerable out here alone.

I was leaving the beach now, stepping up onto the grass, heading towards the club house. I could see it clearly now, and I knew that there were armed men inside the locked door, waiting. An odd noise stopped me in my tracks and I looked around. There it was again, a low moan.

Then something like a scuffle. I tried to look unconcerned as I kept heading for the club house, but the noise was coming from near the group of upturned fishing boats. As I got closer, the sound stopped. Two heads bobbed up. A couple of kids were going for it in the relative privacy that the boats provided. They didn’t move until I’d walked past and then they went back to what they were doing.

It was a perfect warm summer night, and overdressed as I was, sweat poured down my back and itched my skin. A wooden bench near the fish-cleaning sinks on the western side of the club gave me a place to sit and wait. My watch said it was right on one thirty, the time the spurious club dancer claimed she would meet me. I hadn’t realised until I stopped moving how hard and fast my heart was beating. I moved away from the bench and walked around the little club house, climbing the rise behind it, looking warily at the brick toilet block, as if I was checking it out thoroughly, concerned that I might be waiting on the wrong side. Something moved in the bushes opposite the toilets and I stopped dead.

‘Rosie?’ I said in a low voice, ‘is that you?’

Whatever had moved was completely still, but I had the sense of something waiting, biding its time. Even though it was probably one of Flat Line’s boys, it spooked me and I backed away from the source of the noise, a long low bank of heath bush, and took up my place again near the fish-cleaning bench. Fishing knives became uppermost in my imagination and I stepped away from the shadow of the building so that the SPG people hiding in cars or up trees or in drains or wherever the hell they were could easily see me. Then I wondered if the movement I’d heard was one of the warriors adjusting his automatic weapon. This thought was not a comfort to me. I didn’t want to become a casualty of some muscle-head’s hyper-vigilance.

I peered over to the top of the Beach Palace building, where I knew Bob was watching and then I heard a car driving up towards me, along the short dead-end road that runs east–west along the northern edge of the beach. A small, late model white sedan was moving slowly and I walked up the path to where I could see better. The car had backed into a space and my heart started pounding even louder in the silence, as the driver’s door opened and a tall figure stepped out. Red jacket, harem pants and long blonde hair. ‘Rosie’ was right on time.

All around me, the air was charged as hidden men held their breath and watched as ‘Rosie’, standing under a street light, slammed the door behind her, adjusted her hair and paused a moment, as if taking in the fresh air and the warm night. She took a couple of steps in my direction. I realised I was holding my breath. I exhaled and as I did, I heard something. From somewhere came the sound of a mobile phone. The figure in the red jacket heard it, too, stopped midstep and with a speed that took us all by surprise, jumped back in the car. Several men, including Flat Line, emerged from their hiding places, I joined them and we started running towards the roadside. The door of the fishing club house opened and three heavily tacked SPG men spilled out. But the small white car had already screamed away from the kerb, raced down the road, made a fast right-hand turn and was halfway up the hill before anyone reached a vehicle.

‘What happened?’ I yelled. ‘Whose fucking phone was that?’

One of the heavily tacked figures ran up to Flat Line. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked his leader.

‘Someone’s mobile rang,’ I said, furious and frustrated. I pulled the cap off and threw it to the ground. I tore off layers of clothing and the heavy coat.

Bob ran up out of the darkness. ‘“Rosie” was on her way,’ he said. ‘Then her mobile rang.’

‘
Hers?
’ I said.

The three of us looked at each other. Then Bob kicked sand in one of the only displays of frustration I’d seen in over twenty years of working with him.

‘We were
that
close,’ he said. ‘It was all going so well.’

I walked over to the light of the promenade area, and saw a police car returning. As it pulled up, I saw the driver shake his head. ‘Lost the bastard,’ he said.

Bob came over to me. ‘If I hadn’t had you under my nose,’ he said, and he was only half joking, ‘I might start thinking it was you who tipped her off.’

I was speechless. I stared out at the sea. My feelings were very confused. We were no closer than we’d ever been to finding ‘Rosie’. She’d come so close. Bob’s jokey suggestion had touched a raw nerve. Somewhere, was I pleased that our target had escaped?

‘We shoulda grabbed her the minute she stepped out of the car,’ said Flat Line at next day’s debrief at the Police Centre. ‘Not waited. Searched her, found the knife. Charged her with carrying a concealed weapon. Once you’ve got her, it’s just a matter of finding the evidence.’

‘It mightn’t have been her at all,’ said Bob. ‘Just some woman coming home. There’re a lot of blondes in Sydney. And a lot of red jackets.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you think, Jack? Do you think it was her?’

I looked up from where I’d been doodling a flower pattern on the pad in front of me. ‘It seems like too much of a coincidence,’ I said, ‘that someone wearing a red jacket and blonde hair shows up right at the time “Rosie” arranged to meet Francini. I’d have to say the probabilities are that yes, it was her. Whoever that is,’ I added.

As we left the room, Bob came close to me. ‘Was it
her
?’

I replayed the memory of the woman stepping out of the white car, standing a moment in the streetlight, adjusting her hair—or was it a wig?—then jumping back in as the mobile rang.

‘I can’t say whether it was or it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘There was nothing familiar. But, on the other hand, it could have been her. Same height and weight.’ As we walked down the hall, I was aware of Bruce Geldorf, now Team Leader of Crime Scene personnel, coming towards us with his box of tricks and a camera slung over his shoulder.

‘Neil Pritchard was after you,’ Bob told him. ‘I said you were at Rushcutters Bay.’

‘I was. He found me,’ said Geldorf.

‘What were you doing at Rushcutters Bay?’ some sixth sense made me ask.

‘Young moll,’ said Bruce, walking into his office and offloading camera and case. ‘Bashed to death in her apartment.’

I stood there, thinking what a fool I’d been. I already knew who it was. And I knew why. Two hundred and thirty-three thousand reasons and an accounts book.

‘Renee Miller,’ I said. ‘That was the name, wasn’t it?’

‘She’s right here, starring in this,’ said Bruce, surprised. He tapped his equipment.

‘I’d like to see that,’ I said.

Bruce unloaded the video cassette to prepare it for screening.

A little while later, in a narrow room with banks of screens, and with the slow-moving Crime Scene tape fast-forwarded on one of them, I saw Renee’s slight, battered body lying on the floor of the apartment where I’d found my daughter. Her head was black with bloody contusions, arms bruised and reddened, slender fingers blue-white under the blood. She lay on her back with her legs half under the bed, her bloody face turned to one side. Around her, the slow, silent and methodical panning of the tape showed the destruction of her apartment, furnishings ripped and overturned, light fittings torn out, mirror smashed, bedclothes tattered, mattress ripped open to expose the springs. A chair had been thrown through the glass partition between the bar and the lounge room.

I pressed rewind, and the machine purred into fast action. ‘I should have seen it coming,’ I said to Bob, who’d stood by the door watching. ‘Should’ve warned her to get out of the place.’

‘No one could have seen it coming,’ Bob said. ‘And do you really think she would have taken any notice of any warning you might give her?’ I remembered the skinny, cranky little kid only a few years older than Jacinta and I felt an overwhelming sadness that she’d died like that.

‘Your daughter was the one involved,’ Bob was saying as we walked into his office, ‘and she’d moved out. And,’ he added in his methodical, logical way, ‘this murder may not even be related to that particular package. The package!’ Bob reiterated. ‘Where is it now?’

‘I’m dealing with that,’ I said, wondering how long it would take Renee’s killer to work out who was next in the chain of custody.

Bob’s desk phone rang. ‘Send him up to me,’ he said into the mouthpiece.

‘Smiley Davis from Fingerprints,’ he told me. ‘On his way up.’

A moment later, Smiley came into Bob’s office and stuck his hand out. ‘Haven’t seen you round for a while,’ he said to me.

‘I don’t work here anymore,’ I told him.

He nodded. ‘I got a result for you,’ he said, ‘on that partial.’

I’d almost forgotten the partial handprint Crime Scene had found on the base of the brass firedog in the impressive study of Jeremy Guildthorpe, doctor of theology and other things. ‘Anyone we know?’ I asked.

‘He’s got a record,’ said Smiley. ‘Mostly drug offences. Some B and E’s way back. Couple of soliciting convictions.’

I took the computer enhancement and analysis with its twelve matching points from him and stared at them, dazed, while my mind tried to absorb the name under it. ‘All that fancy DNA stuff,’ Smiley was saying with triumph as I stared at the name, ‘and it’s old-fashioned fingerprints that get your man.’

I was aware of Bob frowning at me. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’ve you got?’ He put his hand out for the fingerprint enhancement I was holding.

Slowly, I passed it to him. This was the palm print of a person I’d worked with for nearly two decades, bought drinks for, listened to, formed whatever bond it is that develops within the confines of our strange, not quite professional relationship. I still found it hard to believe.

‘Robin Anthony Dowzer,’ I said to him. Staro.

‘He’s got the form,’ said Bob, ‘if you look into it. Kids who end up selling their arses at the Wall don’t come from your average happy family.’ He turned to me. ‘You know him, Jacko. And it makes perfect sense when I think about it. Someone like Staro, on the fringes, drug user, small-time crook, decides to get even with the men—as he sees it—who abuse children. Someone stuck it to him when he was a little kid, so he blames that for his horrible life and then gets all stirred up about the short sentences handed down to these guys, guys who’ve done a lot worse, and then he decides to punish them. All he had to do was find a way of setting them up.’

I shook my head. It just didn’t sit right with me.

Bob continued. ‘He’s talking about himself when he describes the nightclub dancer. He’s done things in clubs over the years. You’re the link. Remember how he idealised you. You’ve said something about your sister Rosie. That gives him another incident he feels he needs to avenge. That’s where he’s got the name he uses in the set-up letters. ’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘I’ve never discussed my family with Staro. You can forget that idea.’

‘He would’ve known about Jacinta.’

‘All of New South Wales knows about Jacinta. That’s quite different. I’ve never discussed my sister with him.’

‘I know how it is with informers,’ said Bob. ‘A few drinks and the boundaries get a bit blurred.’

‘You don’t blur on mineral water,’ I said. ‘It’s not Staro.’

Bob tapped the enhanced print. ‘We’ve got him. There’s no way round this. This puts him at the scene. With his grubby hands around the murder weapon.’

I considered. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll rephrase that. Staro must have been at Jeremy Guildthorpe’s address at some stage and I’m willing to concede that Staro could have killed him. Maybe something happened between them that upset Staro. He lashes out, strikes Guildthorpe with the firedog, panics, thinks of the mutilation killings because he saw Carmody’s murder at Centennial Park, so he whips out a knife and tries to make it look like another one in that series.’

Bob jabbed the print enhancement on his desk. ‘We can put him at the scene of the Carmody murder not as a witness, but a killer,’ he said. ‘He rang you to say he was following Carmody into the park. Of course he was! He set up the meeting in the first place. He kills Carmody, knows that you’re on the way. He can’t be caught with blood all over him, so he bolts.’

‘Sounds neat, Bob. But it doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘If you were about to meet someone and kill them, would you phone one of the investigators and tell him where it was about to happen?’

‘It’s damn good cover,’ Bob said. ‘Especially if I knew I’d have it done and be out of there before he arrived on the scene.’

‘It’s crediting Staro with a complexity that he just doesn’t have,’ I said. ‘I’ve worked with him for a long time. He doesn’t think like that. The only forward planning an addict makes is about chasing it.’

‘You told me he was clean at the moment.’

‘If he’s stayed that way, he’d be off his face with anxiety. He wouldn’t be able to think straight, let alone plan and execute something like you’re suggesting.’

‘We’ve got him at two of the crime scenes,’ Bob said. ‘And a strung-out addict is capable of anything.’

‘It’s beyond any probability theory,’ I said, exasperated, ‘that of all the people in New South Wales I could ask to help me cover Carmody I end up asking the killer himself!’

‘Don’t let the coincidental aspects of it blind you. Weirder things have happened.’

‘Bob, come
on.
We’re looking at completely different crimes!’

‘Killers change their MO,’ said Bob. ‘We know that. You know that.’

‘Not in this case. I know you’d love to wrap Staro around these four killings, but it’s not on. Someone killed Nesbitt, Gumley and Carmody. Staro saw who it was, and he’s been on the run ever since.’

‘He’s been on the run ever since because he’s the killer,’ said Bob. ‘He used to wear women’s clothing. That could have been him we saw last night in the red jacket and blonde wig.’

‘Could’ve been anyone,’ I said. ‘I
know
it’s not Staro.’

‘Like you know your wife? Like you know your kids? Like you know whoever it is that’s sending you anonymous letters?’ He moved closer and lowered his voice. ‘Like you know Iona Seymour?’

‘If you bring Staro in—’ I started to say.

‘—
When
I bring Staro in,’ Bob finished for me, ‘I’ll call you.’ He dismissed me by picking up his phone. I heard him putting out the bulletin on Staro and I knew the manhunt would be on. I wondered how long someone like Staro could stay hidden.

On the way to the hospital, I thought a lot about a lot of things. I’d been wounded by Bob’s gibe about my lack of perception. Only once or twice in our long career as mates and partners had his mild nature been stirred sufficiently for him to talk to me like that. It was true I hadn’t known what Genevieve was up to. I’d withdrawn, because that was easier for me. In many ways, I’d done the same with the kids. I thought of my daughter still lying unconscious a few suburbs away. What did I know about her? What had I ever known about her? And Greg? It was only in the last few weeks that I’d attempted to enter
his
world. I’d always expected that the kids would enter
my
world, value what
I
held dear, admire what
I
admired. I hadn’t really allowed for them to be completely different from me in every way. And in someone else who I also didn’t know, I’d aroused sufficient malice for them to carry out an anonymous hate-mail campaign against me. So, painful as it was for me to admit it, Bob was very right to question my judgment in these matters.

I went over the odds and ends I’d gleaned from Staro’s rambling conversations. I knew he was a country boy originally who’d run away from various institutions and tried his luck in the big city. He’d gone the way of too many youngsters without a sane family. By the time I’d met him and we’d done the deal that roped in the drug dealers, Staro had worked as a rent boy, a drag queen, a courier for a dealer, had fathered a child, been locked up several times, and was trying to lose a very expensive heroin habit. But I couldn’t imagine him as a killer. If he’d killed Jeremy Guildthorpe, there must have been strong provocation. Why would a person like Staro kill a man like that? In the last few years, men who were pillars of the community had turned out to be vicious pedophiles. We’d only found out about their secret habits when they were murdered by killers who turned out to be earlier victims. That set me thinking. Staro had been trying to get clean the last time I’d seen him, claiming the only drug he was using was nicotine. Someone like me, who’s been there and done that, remembers what those early days are like. It’s the time when all the reasons that a person drank or drugged in the first place start raising their ugly heads. And this time the erstwhile addict has to deal with them without the usual anaesthetic. At a time of minimum inner resources, we have to deal with maximum stress. It’s the reason so few people get straight.

As I was stepping out of the lift in the hospital, my mind sparked and the connection fused. My imagination played the scene for me: Staro, in hiding in Centennial Park, petrified, waiting for me to arrive, witnessing the death of Frank Carmody at the hands of a killer in a red jacket with long blonde hair, Carmody sliding down the wall behind him, his life’s blood spurting, his killer straightening up, the wig perhaps slipping, and enough light for Staro to realise he’s looking straight at someone whose face he already knows from Twelve Step meetings. The same face filled my imagination: Iona Seymour. I saw the scar across the top of her breasts in my mind’s eye as I hurried along the hospital corridor. Someone had hurt her once. Maybe a sexual assault. So she’d be set on revenge. But I knew I’d need more than this surmise for her to be charged. She would be smart enough to know that she’s got the best cover of all for this sort of crime, I thought. Everyone will be looking for a man.

I looked into Jacinta’s room. She seemed a fraction better today, I thought, with a faint colour in her cheeks. ‘I’m here, Jass,’ I whispered, taking her cool, light hand. ‘I know I wasn’t here much before. But I’m right here now.’ Did I imagine it, or was there the slightest smile touching the edge of her lips?

•

I got home and checked the mail. The minute I saw the envelope, I ripped it open, no longer caring to keep evidence pristine.
Men are losing their balls in Sydney lately
, I read,
but you never had any. Now you’re doing the same thing that you did to me to someone else. Watch your back, arsehole
. I put it back in its envelope. What on earth was I doing to someone else that I’d done to the writer? I stopped walking and stood, trying to work out what this person might mean. Then I got angry. I wasn’t going to give this stupid, anonymous, spiteful person any more of my time. I scrunched up the letter and threw it in the recycle bin. I made a vow that in future I wouldn’t even open the pathetic things, but throw them straight out. I took a deep breath and was feeling pleased with this decision until I saw that the door to my house was open.