Private Oz (13 page)

WHEN THE DOOR opened, Geoff Hewes had no idea how long he’d been in Al Loretto’s basement.

They’d given him water and some bread. They left a bucket in the corner for him. It stank. He’d slept, on and off.

The big guy who’d smashed in his face came for him. Hewes heard a series of strange sounds, then suddenly felt water blasting his face and chest. He panicked for a second then realized the big guy was hosing him down, like a dog.

The force of the water pinned him to the wall. He struggled to get away but he couldn’t.

“Strip off you idiot!” the big guy bellowed and Hewes felt something hit him in the guts. He looked down and saw a bar of soap on the concrete floor.

He took off his filthy clothes, used the soap, and a couple of minutes later the water stopped. He was flung a towel and some old clothes, jeans and a tee.

“Get those on and get out of my house, Hewes.”

Geoff followed the sound and saw Loretto at the top of the stairs into the basement. “I’m only having you washed because I don’t want you messing up my carpets. Show your face again and I’ll have it blown off.”

I WAS IN the NSW Police Path Lab with Darlene. She was leaning over the dreadful remains of the dead woman discovered in the old house in Bondi. I watched her work methodically, felt a growing anger we hadn’t learned about the corpse for at least five hours after it was found. Even then it was only because Darlene heard about it third-hand from a friendly cop at Police HQ. In the time since then she’d caught up pretty fast.

The victim was Jennifer Granger, thirty-eight, of Newmore Avenue, a street perpendicular to Wentworth Avenue in Bellevue Hill where Elspeth Lampard had been found. It was within spitting distance of the other victims’ homes.

“I spoke to one of the sergeants at the station in the CBD,” I said. “Jennifer Granger was reported missing three weeks ago, December 15.”

Darlene didn’t look up. “Who reported it?”

“Her husband. She was supposed to be on a girls’ weekend in Melbourne, but didn’t show. Her girlfriends didn’t tell her husband, a gynecologist called Dr. Cameron Granger, until the Sunday morning.”

Darlene lifted her head at that.

“Two of them knew Jennifer was having an affair. They
concluded she had used the weekend as a cover without telling them. The same two women tried to SMS her. When they got no reply, they phoned her cell. No response. Straight to voicemail. We’ve followed up on the calls, their story holds up.”

“Probably dead at least twenty-four hours by then.”

I stared at the mess of rancid flesh that stank of newly applied chemicals. I tried and failed to imagine her as a beautiful wealthy woman engaged in an affair.

“What’s the husband been doing all this time?” Darlene asked.

“The sergeant at the station told me that Dr. Granger called them at least once a day,” I said. “Went to the station half a dozen times, offered a reward of ten grand for any info. That was all in the first week after she vanished. One of Jennifer Granger’s friends finally enlightened her husband about the affair. But he still kept up the pressure on the cops. In fact, he doubled the reward.”

Darlene raised an eyebrow. “I reckon this poor woman is the first victim.”

“Is that based on anything empirical? Apart from the fact that she died three weeks ago?”

“No, just a hunch. The murder is a bit different to the others … done with less confidence.”

I tilted my head.

“The murderer got the woman to come to him … in a derelict house, away from Bellevue Hill. Now though, he’s literally on the victims’ doorstep.”

“He was you mean … What about Yasmin Trent?”

“I’m convinced she was snatched. Probably close to where she lived. The cops found her car fifty yards from her body.”

It was my turn to look surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

“They checked the odometer. The last journey in the car was thirty-one miles. Precisely the distance from Bellevue Hill to where Yasmin Trent’s corpse was discovered in Sandsville. I reckon our killer is beginning to feel the heat in Bellevue Hill and mixing it up to keep us off his scent.”

I was about to reply when the door opened and Mark Talbot walked in.

“Just passing,” my cousin smirked.

“We need to talk,” I said through gritted teeth.

“WHY THE HELL didn’t you tell us about this woman?” We were in a deserted storage area at the back of the building.

“One of my officers caught a pickpocket in Darling Harbour this morning, Craig,” Talbot said. “Should I have told you about that?” He took a step toward me, intruding into my personal space. “Oh, and that pesky graffiti artist who keeps daubing a wall just off George Street in the CBD? Got him too. Sorry … forgot to mention …”

“You may think you’re being very clever, Mark,” I said with robotic calm, “but we have a deal with the police, don’t we?”

“
You
have a ‘deal’ with the Deputy Commissioner.”

“And you have to abide by it.”

Talbot came even closer. He was about my height. We were eye-to-eye.

“This morning I used my professional discretion.”

“No you didn’t. You did this deliberately to screw me over. And you just showed up here to gloat.”

He shrugged. “Well, yeah, maybe I did.”

“Thanks to you, we lost five hours of precious investigation time.”

He laughed in my face. I could feel his breath. “Just listen to you … You fucking smart-ass … ‘Precious investigation time!’ Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a PI, dear cousin! You can fool the Deputy Commissioner, but you don’t pull the wool over my eyes.”

“I’m very disappointed.”

“You what?”

“I’m disappointed.”

He leaned in, his eyes narrow. “Disappointed! You cocksucker! Who do you think you’re talking to?”

I went to gently push him back. And that’s when he took a swing at me.

I blocked his fist and he stumbled back a step, went for me again, his right arm swinging round.

But he wasn’t in the best of shape. I dodged his fist so easily it was embarrassing … which enraged him more. His left fist came up, slower, but at an oblique angle. It grazed my shoulder. I grabbed his wrist and bent his hand back.

“Don’t, Mark!” I said in his ear.

His breath was on me again, hot, his mouth close to my left cheek. I bent his hand a little more and sensed him shift position, his right knee moving up toward my groin. I turned my body away and his knee hit me in the hip. It stung. Still gripping my cousin with my left hand, I swung round, sending a right hook to his face.

He fell back and landed heavily on the floor, blood streaming from a cut just below his left eye. He made to get up.

“Stop!” I hollered, but he wouldn’t listen.

“Asshole! You always have been …!” He growled, got to his feet with surprising speed and rushed me. I whirled round,
elbow out, and he ran straight into it, nose first. I heard the cartilage crunch. He spun, hit the floor again, lay still for a few moments, face down. I heard him groan, crouched beside him, keeping my guard up. He glared at me with a look of pure hatred, blood streaming from his nostrils. His left eye was already puffed up.

I offered him a hand but he spat at it. His saliva landing on the floor between us.

“Suit yourself,” I said and walked away.

I TRIED MY best to look composed as I returned to the morgue.

“You alright?” Darlene asked, concerned.

“Yeah, fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” She dusted my shoulder.

“You found anything?”

She pointed to Jennifer Granger’s corpse. “It’s very similar to all the others,” Darlene said gravely. “Face burned and cut, stabbed in the back repeatedly. The same money dump …
fake
money dump. No sign of sexual assault. No DNA.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“You’ve found something, haven’t you?”

She smiled. “You should be a detective! I’ve found a partial print on one of the photocopies.”

“Oh.”

“Which convinces me even more that Jennifer Granger was the first victim. The killer was less practiced. He made a mistake.”

DR. CAMERON GRANGER was wearing an open-neck shirt, loafers and an expensive suit. I knew because I’d seen it up-close in Armani the week before.

He was tall, broad shouldered, strong jawed. He had a big house in the Eastern Suburbs, probably a million-dollar yacht moored somewhere exclusive and used maybe twice a year.

He indicated a plush suede sofa, sat one end, me the other. He looked suitably morose.

“I’ve been to the morgue. Been briefed. Given my report to the cops.”

“You seem very calm and collected.”

“What can you do? I’ve had some time to absorb it all. After Jennifer failed to show up with her friends, I assumed she’d either run off with her lover or she was dead.”

I appraised the man again. Was he using bravado to overcome his grief?

“You had no idea your wife was having an affair?”

“Oh, right … What more traditional motive for murder is there than being cuckolded?”

I held his eyes and he looked away.

“Strikes me as odd,” I said provocatively. “Why would a wife risk losing such a lavish lifestyle by messing around?”

Granger surprised me by simply shrugging. “You tell me, Mr. Gisto. Maybe she thought she’d never be caught.”

“When did you see your wife last?”

“I went through this with the police.” He sighed. “I kissed her goodbye in the hallway of our home. Waved as she got into her car. She was leaving for the airport – apparently – to see her girlfriends in Melbourne.”

“Then, later, you got a call from one of them.”

“Yes, Helene Fromes, over thirty-six hours later actually. She’d tried and failed to reach Jen by phone … got worried … Stupid bitch.”

“You sound pretty angry. Wasn’t this Helene Fromes doing you a favor?”

“Oh yeah! The sisterhood keeping my wife’s infidelity a secret … Great. I’m touched!”

“Right,” I said evenly, thinking about all the times men had closed ranks and kept their buddies’ secrets to themselves. “Well, you obviously would like the killer brought to justice … you’ve doubled the reward.”

“I doubled it again earlier this afternoon.”

“Is there anything you can think of that might help us … and the police?”

“Look, Mr. Gisto, I’ve told the police everything I know. I saw Jennifer leave the house. I assumed she was doing what she said she was going to do and meet her mates in Melbourne. I didn’t hear a thing until Helene called. That was three weeks ago. Maybe you should speak to the guy Jennifer was seeing.”

“We’ve only just tracked him down. My colleague is with him as we speak.”

“Oh, do wish the man well, won’t you …”

JUSTINE STUDIED THE man sitting in front of her and wondered how any woman could find him attractive. Nick Grant was Jennifer Granger’s lover. He was tall, thin, in a vest and shorts, his left arm a full-sleeve tattoo. He’d agreed to meet on neutral ground – a pub on Napoleon Street, Bondi.

“Look,” he said, fixing Justine with a confident gaze. “Me and Jen … it was a casual thing, right? She was getting quotes for an extension on her house in Bellevue Hill. Took a shine to me right off.” He gulped his beer, gave Justine a faintly flirtatious smile. Then his expression turned serious. “I was sorry to hear what happened …”

“She was with you the weekend she was murdered?”

“No! That’s just it. I hadn’t seen her for weeks. As I said, it was casual. I think we only did it three, four times. She’d arrange everything – swanky hotels in the city, call me up with half-an-hour notice. Tell me to put on something clean … that she was in Room 131 at the Four Seasons, or Room 42 at the Hyatt, wearing nothing but high heels.” He grinned stupidly. “Well, what do you do?”

“And the weekend of December 14th/15th? You were in Sydney?”

“No.” Nick Grant shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

“So where were you?”

“In Melbourne.”

“Melbourne?”

“Yeah … you look surprised.”

“No, no go on.”

“Rugby piss-up. Me and the lads. We went to see the Waratahs at the AAMI Park. Fantastic game … and afterwards! Sunday … whoa!… a complete blur. Took Monday off. Went back to work Tuesday. We’re on a big job in Mona Vale.” He nodded toward the Northern Beaches.

“So when did you hear that Jennifer Granger had gone missing?”

“One of her friends called me out of the blue. I didn’t know what the woman was talking about at first. She was another stuck-up bitch … Sorry. I mean she was … Oh fuck! You know what I mean!”

Justine simply stared at the man.

“This woman,” he went on. “Helene? She said Jennifer hadn’t shown up for a girls’ weekend. Why you telling me? I said. Apparently, Jen had mentioned my name and the company I worked for and this Helene tracked me down. Cheeky bitch. I got a bit pissed off with her. Told her she’d better not tell anyone where to find me, especially Jen’s bloody husband.”

“And nothing else happened?”

“No. Not another word ’til this morning.”

“So when was the last time you saw Jennifer Granger?”

Nick Grant took another gulp of beer and pondered the
table top. “Well, let me think … Must have been two weeks before the Melbourne weekend. Yeah … early December … at the Sheraton.”

Justine shivered. “What a terrible mess some people create for themselves,” she thought, recalling the gruesome photographs of the woman’s shallow grave.

THE PARTIAL PRINT from Jennifer Granger’s body appeared two feet wide on the flat screen. Darlene studied the lines, what analysts called “whorls” and “loops”. Darlene remembered a stat from college – a one in sixty-four billion chance of any two people sharing fingerprints.

The partial on the screen looked completely unremarkable. It was perhaps two-thirds of a full print, limited in value, but better than nothing.

Darlene double-clicked the mouse and highlighted the image, then moved the picture to an icon on the screen. The file disappeared and a box came up with the words: “Global Database Analysis in Progress.” Beneath this, a line, a tiny red dot to the left and the words: “Estimated time remaining: 42 minutes” – the time it would take for the powerful computer system at Private to compare the partial print with every database it was linked to throughout the world, some two billion records.

She pushed her chair back, ran her fingers through her hair. She felt incredibly frustrated. Here she was with some of the best forensics equipment in the world and she’d spent three
days drawing a blank on four connected murders. At the back of her mind something was nagging her. It’d been needling her for at least twenty-four hours, but she couldn’t pinpoint it.

She got up and walked across the lab to a bench. She’d filed away every piece of data she had on the four murders. Most of the info was on the computer and there were a few written reports kept in a filing cabinet. Here on the bench stood ninety-six test tubes in a dozen racks. Each one was carefully labeled. Each contained something from the murder scenes.

She scanned along the racks. There were slithers of cloth, particles of soil, fragments of body tissue, blood-soaked fabrics, hairs. Hairs! She moved the racks forward, one after the other, taking care to keep everything in the correct order. Then she saw what she was looking for … a test tube containing a single whitish-blonde human hair.

Darlene felt her heart pounding. She strode over to a powerful drive that stored all crime scene photos. Tapped the mouse. Brought up the photo collections from the past three days. Clicked a folder entitled: “Yasmin Trent.” Scrolling down, she stopped over Image No. 233. A smile spread across her face.