Private Oz (12 page)

ANTHONY HILARY WAS feeling really horny. Everything had been arranged with Karen. He would surf at 6 am with his buddies, Trent and Frankie, and then he would meet her at the empty old house he’d found the day before. When he’d first suggested it, Karen was reluctant, but he’d eventually persuaded her.

“I can promise you the most comfortable and cleanest sleeping bag in Sydney,” he’d told her with a grin.

“Oh! I’m touched!” she’d responded. “I must remember to mention that to my parents when they quiz me over why I’m leaving the house an hour early for school.” But then she had shaken her head and smiled. “Okay, Ant. 7 am.”

The surf was good this morning, but Anthony’s mind wasn’t on it. Frankie and Trent noticed. “Dude, what’s with you? You totally wasted that wave.”

“Yeah, sorry, man,” Ant responded. “Look, I’m gonna bail.”

“What?”

“Can’t focus. I’ll put the board in your car, right, Frankie?”

His friend waved and slipped back into the surf.

Half an hour later, Anthony was standing outside the house on Ernest Street, Bondi, watching the shifting morning light
on the roofs across the road. He didn’t normally do this sort of thing. He and Karen were good kids from the same co-ed school. But he loved her and he believed she loved him. They were seventeen, Year 12. Some kids their age were parents already, but he and Karen could never be alone together, watched over 24/7. It pissed him off no end.

Karen was fifteen minutes late and Ant was growing increasingly frustrated as the seconds passed. When she arrived, he just managed to stay cool.

“Okay, lover boy,” she said sexily, sidling up to him and reaching on tiptoes to kiss him full on the mouth. He looked down at her gorgeous tanned face ringed with dark curls, feeling himself harden almost instantly.

“Come on,” he said, and took her hand.

The front door was broken and hung half off its hinges. Ant escorted her along a narrow passage to the second room on the left. She could hear music drifting along the hall and glanced at her boyfriend as she recognized the tune, Angus and Julia Stone’s
Big Jet Plane
.

Karen stood at the entrance to the room, holding Ant’s hand, entranced. He had cleaned it up, swept the floor, made a bed of sleeping bags. The curtains were drawn, two dozen candles glowed. An iPod played softly through a portable speaker system. The song ended and was followed by Karen’s favorite,
No One
by Alicia Keys.

“Oh! Ant. This is … just lovely.” She turned and kissed him again, sliding her tongue between his teeth and producing a low moan in the back of her throat. Ant felt he would burst there and then. He swept her up, lowered her gently to the soft layers of the sleeping bags.

The music flowed over them, and when it was over, they lay together, looking up at the shabby, pitted ceiling.

“Back in a sec,” Karen said softly, pecked Anthony on the cheek, and pulled herself up. “Bathroom!”

“Hey, take this.” Ant reached into his bag for a large bottle of water. “No mains supply!”

Karen looked pained and then crouched down to kiss Anthony again. “That’s very thoughtful,” she purred.

He watched the girl’s naked form in the candlelight and threw his head back onto the makeshift pillow. He thought that this was the high point of his life. That things could never be better than this.

Then he heard Karen scream.

INSPECTOR MARK TALBOT felt unwell, and days like today, the ones that started out really crappy, were almost impossible to bear.

He’d woken up at 6 am with a sore head from a big night out with his buddies and had dragged himself into the station by seven-thirty. Forty minutes later the call had come in – another grisly find. It was all getting a bit ridiculous.

The traffic was terrible all the way to Bondi, and about eight o’clock it turned stormy – black clouds rolling in over the ocean. He switched on the radio, pushed the button for Classic Rock FM and felt better as Steely Dan’s
Reeling in the Years
filled the car.

“Alright, what’s the story?” Talbot said as he got out of his car and a sergeant led him to the empty house, the rain crashing down around them.

“Best see for yourself, sir.”

Talbot dashed into the hall, his jacket soaked. Forensics were everywhere. Huge spots blazed, powered by a portable generator. None of it did his head much good. At the end of a corridor there was a bathroom, two officers in plastic suits
crouching down. The tub, toilet, floor and white walls were splashed with pints of dried blood. A lab guy was photographing the scene. Talbot saw a line of dry red-black dots leading from the room out toward the kitchen and the rear of the property.

The stench hit him as he entered the yard. The smell of death. He knew it well.

The blood trail stopped one side of the back garden. There was a large stain on the patio close to the fence. His team had already lifted the pavers and dug away some soil. Talbot, hand over his mouth, could see part of a corpse, a woman, face-up in the dirt.

He waved over one of his sergeants standing the other side of the shallow grave. “The basics,” the Inspector insisted, his voice phlegmy.

“Young guy called us about seven-thirty. By the time we got here, the place was deserted.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Looks like the kid was a vagrant … evidence someone had slept in the front room last night.”

“Obviously wasn’t here long. Probably nothing to do with the crime. Needs checking out though.”

The body lay no more than a couple of feet beneath the surface. Three men in blue forensics suits lifted the dead woman out of the opening and laid her on plastic sheeting.

Talbot and his sergeant took two paces toward the body.

One of the forensics officers leaned in and brushed away some soil.

Most of the woman’s clothes had rotted away. Her flesh barely clung to her bones.

“Dead for weeks,” the forensics guy muttered, his voice muffled by his mask.

“Clear the soil from her pubic region,” Talbot said.

The officer moved the brush down the dead body, swept away the sand and grains of soil. Some skin and flesh came away with it. A roll of fifty-dollar bills had been wedged into her vagina.

“You want me to call Private?” the sergeant asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Talbot responded without looking round. “Not this time.”

COLETTE POKED HER head around the door into the Private lab.

“What’s up?” Darlene asked. She saw a tall, skinny guy with hair like a giant bird’s nest standing just outside the room trying to peek inside.

“Er … this is … What did you say your name was again?” Colette asked, turning and deliberately obstructing the doorway.

“I-I-I’m, S-S-Sam,” the man stammered.

Darlene looked at him blankly for a second and then the name registered. “Software Sam? Micky’s friend?”

“The very s-s-same.”

Colette glanced at Darlene, then at the tall guy and stepped aside.

“Micky reckons you’re a whiz with computers,” Darlene said leading Sam into the room.

He was gazing around, taking it all in approvingly. “Yeah … I-I-I am. So, w-w-what’s your problem?”

“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but this equipment … Well, it’s all pretty new. Most of it’s one-off stuff, custom-made. I wouldn’t expect you to be able to help with it.”

“I could g-g-give it a go.”

Darlene studied him. “You look ridiculous,” she thought. “But then so did Einstein!”

“Okay. I’m having a problem with my image-enhancing software.” She led him across the room. “I’m working on some blurred images from a security camera.” She pointed to a large Mac screen, sat and tapped at the keyboard. Sam stood beside her chair.

A pair of indistinct faces came up.

“Th-th-they’re the o-o-originals, r-r-right?”

Darlene looked up. “No, Sam. They are the best I can get.”

He whistled. “Wh-wh-what software package you using?”

“It’s a custom-made one from a friend of mine in LA. He calls it FOCUS.”

“Yeah, well it’s c-c-rap, isn’t it?”

Darlene produced a pained laugh.

“C-c-can you open up the p-p-program for me?”

Darlene shrugged. “Okay.” She brought up the appropriate screen, then offered her chair to Sam.

The screen filled with symbols and lines of computer code.

“I’ll c-c-clone this first,” Sam said. “As a b-b-backup.” He tapped at the keyboard with lightning speed. Darlene watched as the algorithms and rows of letters and numbers shifted subtly. Sam paused for a second, peered at the screen, then his staccato key-stabbing started up again.

Two minutes of concentrated effort and the visitor pushed back Darlene’s chair. “Th-th-that sh-sh-should do it,” he declared.

“What’ve you done?”

“B-b-boosted the r-r-response parameters, r-r-realigned the
enhancement s-s-software to concentrate on th-th-the contrast and the w-w-warmth c-c-components.”

Darlene returned to her chair and clicked the mouse a couple of times to bring back the main screen. She opened the FOCUS software package, clicked on the image from the security camera and pressed “import”. A new screen opened showing a crisp, sharp image of two Asian men, the picture so clear you could almost make out individual pores.

“That’s incredible!”

“I-i-it is pretty c-c-cool, i-i-isn’t it?”

Darlene stood up. “I’m so sorry I ever doubted you.”

“No probs.” Software Sam looked a little embarrassed. “Oh! Almost forgot. M-M-Micky gave me these.” He held out a bunch of invitations. “H-h-half a dozen p-p-passes to his b-b-birthday bash tomorrow night at The V-V-Venue.”

Darlene was stunned. “Fantastic!” she said.

I WAS STARING at the monitor on the desk in front of Darlene.

“That’s just amazing!” I exclaimed as the image of the two men who’d killed Ho Chang came up.

“I’d like to take credit for it,” Darlene said, “but it was Micky Stevens’ buddy, the guy they call Software Sam.”

“Yeah, Colette told me he’d been here – some sort of weirdo.”

“A genius more like. So what do we do now? We going to share this with the cops?”

I contemplated the image. “Oh, I don’t think so … not yet, anyway.”

Darlene gave me a quizzical look.

“If we do that,” I went on, “someone will blab, and these bastards …” I waved a hand at the monitor, “will vanish into thin air. No, this is ours, Darlene. At least for the moment. You been able to do anything with it?”

“I’ve tried. Spent all afternoon attempting to match up facial characteristics with databases all over the world. Not getting very far. Same old problem. The Triads bribe the authorities in Hong Kong so nothing’s on record. If there’s nothing on the two men, then the CIA, MI6, the Australian
Intelligence Agency can’t get a handle on them. These guys have no DNA records, no fingerprint or photo presence at all. As far as the investigative agencies are concerned, they don’t exist.”

I DIDN’T HAVE a problem with brothels, per se, but this one bothered me. They all stank of deceit and hypocrisy, but this one was smack bang in the middle of a wealthy suburb bordering Neutral Bay, where the Hewes lived. It seemed to me the locals at Loretto’s brothel might actually get off on the idea they were shitting on their own doorstep.

I’d made a booking through a website called “Kinkies” and chosen a girl, Ruthie.

The house stood in Chester Street off Military Road, the main highway running through the Lower North Shore. It was a totally nondescript building. I rang the bell and a woman in a business suit opened the door. I gave her the password I’d been sent online.

“Okay, sweetheart,” she said and I followed her up a narrow staircase.

Ruthie was a petite girl with long black hair and a plain face, wearing a see-through camisole and a lot of make-up. I guessed she was no more than twenty.

I was experienced with surveillance, so I knew right off where to look, spotted the camera in five seconds.

Ruthie got up from the end of the bed. “Pop your clothes off, honey,” she said, her voice bored, flat. “Back in a sec.”

She stepped behind a curtain and I saw a red light come on over the lens of the camcorder, pulled up a chair with my back to the machine and when Ruthie returned she looked a bit surprised to see me still fully dressed. Her expression changed. “Oh, a talker, are we?”

“Sorry?”

“Just wanna cosy chat … Bitch about the wife, the job, life in general? Still costs the same.”

“S’pose I am. Just feel lonely. I’m a bus driver. Need some company.”

She gave me a blank look, stood up again and tottered back to the curtained area. The red light went off.

Ruthie sat on the bed again, cross-legged.

I glanced over toward a small stereo on a low table. “Can you put on some music?”

The girl obliged, bending over provocatively as she pushed “Play”. When she turned back, she saw I had a roll of fifty-dollar bills clenched in my right hand. I peeled two from the top of the wad. “Need some info,” I said very quietly.

Ruthie looked confused for a moment, then frightened. “What … sort of … information?”

“About the set-up here.”

Blood drained from her face. “I don’t know …”

“Of course you do.” I separated a third fifty and held out the notes.

Ruthie eyed them. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

“No. I’m a private investigator.”

She snatched at the bills but I pulled them back. Her
fingers grasped air.

“Ah, ah,” I tutted. “What’re the cameras for?”

She looked at her feet, black high heels with fluffy balls over her toes. “We record everything important. We’re told to turn on the machine before the client … you know …”

“Who’ve you filmed?”

Ruthie stared at the money. I handed her two of the fifties, peeled off a fourth and held out the two notes.

“Shit! I dunno. Dozens of blokes.”

“Anyone you recognized? Anyone you’ve seen on TV, for example?”

I handed her a fifty. Kept the other. “Okay, so what happens to the tapes?”

“How should I know?”

I nodded and stood up pocketing the rest of the money. “Alright, Ruthie. If you do manage to recall anything useful, ring this number.” I handed her a slip of paper. “It’s a secure line.”