Private Oz (4 page)

Three Years Ago.

I WAS TRYING to focus but the florescent strip in the ceiling was too bright. A face swam into view a couple of feet above me. It was probably the last face I wanted to see.

Then it all came flooding back.

Smack.

Filling my world, sending me reeling.

And there was the face.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Craig.”

I heard the words but they didn’t really register. I managed to turn my head a little to the left, then the right. Tubes, machines, a hospital. Yeah – that would figure.

“I do worry about your temper though, mate.”

I looked at the face, focused. Mark Fucking Talbot. My cousin Mark.

But I felt nothing, and I didn’t care. Mark didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Becky and Cal were dead. I was alive, but I wanted to be dead.

“You smashed that driver’s face to a pulp,” Talbot went on.

I didn’t care what he said. I didn’t care.

“You know how I felt about Becky.” His face was expressionless, but he knew how to turn the screw. “I never met little Cal …” Then his face thawed. For a second, he looked genuinely upset. “They deserved better.”

I didn’t care what he said. I didn’t care.

My cousin had no idea. He must have thought he was really hurting me.

He sighed. “In one way you’re lucky, Craig. Sure, you smashed the guy’s face up. But …” He lifted a thin beige folder into view. “Forensics report. He died on impact.”

I didn’t care what he said. I was alive but I wanted to be dead.

He started to turn. Stopped. Walked back and leaned in close to my ear. “You got what you deserved, you fuck. And you’ll go to hell.”

And he was gone.

I didn’t care.

“WELL, YOU ALL know the gist of it,” I said, walking into the conference room. “A close friend of Greta Thorogood was tortured and killed a few yards from her front door. Bizarre MO.”

I looked around the table. I’d called in everyone … the team, plus Justine.

They already knew the basics of the homicide. Bad news travels fast.

I flicked a remote and the blinds closed. A second touch on the rubber pad and a flat screen lit up at the far end of the room. “I shot this on my phone.”

It was jumbled up at first but settled down as I’d steadied my hand and set the phone to “Stabilize video”.

The inside of the victim’s car.

“Stacy Friel,” I said flatly, as the horrific image of the dead woman’s face appeared. “She was murdered sometime around 5.30 yesterday evening in an alley close to her house in Bellevue Hill. Facially disfigured and stabbed four times in the back as she got out of her vehicle. She was then returned to the car … postmortem.” The camera moved to show the dead woman straight-on. I had panned down, zoomed in.

There was an intake of breath from the women in the room.

Understandable, I thought, imagining an equivalent for guys.

The victim’s lower garments had been removed, her legs spread wide. A bunch of money had been inserted into her vagina. You could see the golden yellow of Australian fifty-dollar bills.

The film stopped. The blinds came up. No one spoke.

I looked round the room. Darlene was staring straight at me. Justine studied the table. Mary was still glaring at where the image had been a few seconds ago. Johnny was counting his shoes.

“Not nice, I know, but there you have it.”

“Pretty fucking sick, actually,” Mary said with a steely look.

“Yep. Certainly is.”

“What’ve the police found out?” Darlene asked.

“Not a lot. Their forensics people have promised to get a complete set of crime scene samples over to you by mid-morning. Thorogood’s being very cooperative. I guess Greta is putting pressure on him to keep us fully involved.”

“So am I, Craig,” Justine remarked. “Brett’s subscribing to the idea that two heads are better than one. He knew Stacy too. He’s genuinely upset.”

“So what now?” It was Mary.

“Darlene, you work on the samples soon as they arrive,” I said.

She nodded.

“Justine, you and me should take a trip to the police morgue. Find out anything we can.”

“I’ve got a very nasty feeling the unfortunate Stacy Friel is only the first victim,” Johnny said suddenly.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, swiveling my chair.

“Because, and Justine will verify this,” Johnny began, glancing over to where she sat, “the murder was ritualistic.”

Justine nodded solemnly.

“So?” I persisted.

“One-off murders are a type – the most common sort,” Justine explained. “Someone dies in a violent crime – a bank raid, a gang killing – collateral damage. Or people are murdered in a moment of passion, or slaughtered clinically – revenge, jealousy. A woman who is tortured, killed, dumped in her car and has her vagina stuffed with banknotes is not the victim of a spontaneous act. It was planned and everything about it has meaning. I hope it’s not the case, but I think Johnny’s right – Stacy Friel is just the first.”

“MARY?” I CALLED her over as the team filed out.

“What’s up?”

“The Ho murder. Darlene’s found some interesting stuff.”

“Yeah, I heard … Triads. You’re thinking drugs?”

“Possibly, but from what Ho Meng said, his kid was hardly the sort.

Darlene found no evidence he was using.”

“May’ve been dealing.”

“Well, yeah. But anyway, it’s speculation. It might not be drugs, the Triads are involved in all sorts of shit.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the kid,” Mary replied. “What about the father, Meng? I’d be surprised, but we have to consider it.”

“It’d crossed my mind. I don’t think he gave us everything he had yesterday.”

“I agree.”

I looked at Mary. I’d known her for years and I knew she had a soft side, but I think only a handful of people in the world had ever seen it and two of those were her mom and dad.

“You know the guy a little. Reach out to him,” I suggested. “Find out if he has connections with the Triads.”

“He must have. But he won’t like us probing.”

“No, he won’t,” I replied. “But he needs reminding if he wants us to find his son’s killer that we have to have everything he can give us – not just about Chang, but about himself too.”

She nodded and looked straight into my eyes.

“You okay with that, Mary? The Triads are not nice.”

“Oh, please! I’m a big girl and I thrive on ‘not nice’.”

THE NEW SOUTH Wales police morgue was part of a modern building in Surry Hills, a couple of miles from the CBD. It was like all morgues everywhere – pristine, clinical, and it stank of chemicals and death.

A tall, well-built man with a graying beard and wearing round tortoiseshell spectacles met us in a small, overlit ante-room. A pass was pinned to his lapel – photo and name, Dr. Hugh Gravely.

He was friendly enough and showed Justine and me into the main part of the morgue. It was low-ceilinged, fluorescent strips. The stink was much worse here.

Stacy Friel lay on the slab. Gray skin, wet hair pulled back, a red, crudely sown up Y-shaped incision dominating her upper half. She would have been a very handsome woman yesterday, I thought. And suddenly a horrible pain hit me in the chest. I almost let it show, but reined it in. I knew what this was. I had been to a very similar morgue … after the crash. I had to see Becky and Cal. But later, I wished I hadn’t.

“Victim was thirty-nine,” Dr. Gravely said, his voice emotionless. “Died from multiple stab wounds. Two distinct thrusts to
the thoracic, two more to the lumbar. Each one deep. The knife had a serrated blade approximately eight inches in length. It punctured her liver and right kidney. The lumbar penetrations perforated the large intestine. The victim almost certainly died from heart failure precipitated by shock.”

Justine stepped forward and inspected Stacy’s lower half. “You’ve removed the banknotes.”

“They’ve gone to Police Forensics along with the woman’s clothes, jewelry – everything on her person.”

Justine nodded.

“I did examine them first, of course. But you’ll know about them from the police … right?”

“No,” Justine and I said in unison. “What about them?” I added slowly.

“Well the fact they’re fake notes … photocopies.”

THE MOMENT THE woman in the $900 Jimmy Choo shoes walked into the offices of Private, I knew something interesting would come of it. I noticed things such as expensive shoes and I knew that women of this type didn’t come to places like Private unless there was something serious on their minds.

Before she said a word, I’d profiled her. Lower North Shore Yummy Mummy, maybe Eastern Suburbs, but she looked a little too cool. Professional – once upon a time. Maybe a lawyer back in the day before the kids came along. She’d probably parked a BMW X5 downstairs, almost certainly had a personalized number plate. Kids would be at Shore School or Redlands. Husband … let’s think, either a stockbroker or a senior exec at one of the big banks.

She exuded confidence as she crossed the floor toward me. “Hi, my name’s Pam Hewes,” she said, smiled briefly, a New Zealand twang to her voice. “I need advice.”

“Well, you’ve come to precisely the right place. Craig Gisto.” I waved her toward the conference room.

I pulled up a chair for her and walked around the table, sat down, my back to the window, waited for her to start.

“Oh God! I don’t know where to begin!” She broke eye contact. “My husband … his name’s Geoff. He didn’t return home last night. There’s no response to his cell or his office numbers. He didn’t show up at home this morning. I went to his office in the CBD. No one’s heard from him.”

“I imagine this must be unusual or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, yeah. Geoff works hard, and … he plays hard. I knew that about him before we were married.
Quid pro quo
and all that, but he’s always kept some sort of balance – even if it was only for the sake of the kids. He has always come home each evening and if there was some emergency and he has to go somewhere suddenly he
always
calls.”

“And you haven’t heard a word from him?”

“No.”

“You haven’t contacted the police. Why?”

“Because … I’m not one hundred per cent sure that everything my husband does is absolutely legal.”

“What does he do, Mrs. Hewes?”

“Please, call me Pam … Geoff has fingers in all sorts of pies. Always has some new business scheme. He lends money, he invests in businesses. I find it hard to keep up.”

I looked her directly in the eye. “And you, Pam? What do you do?”

“I’m in real estate. I work at H and F Realty on the Lower North Shore.”

“Do you have anything to go on? Any leads? Are you familiar with your husband’s associates, friends?”

Pam shook her head and looked down at the carpet. “My husband plays his cards close to his chest. He tells me things,
but I know it’s the tip of the iceberg. But, Mr. Gisto, to answer your previous question, there’s one thing you should know about my husband. Geoff does have associates – many of them – but when it comes to friends they’re pretty thin on the ground.”

“GOOD MORNING,” HO said, standing and extending a hand.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me,” Mary said.

They were in the bar of the Blue Hotel in Woolloomooloo, all oversized concrete buffet counters, post-modern piping and metal grills. She ordered a coffee.

“I wasn’t being entirely straight with you and Mr. Gisto yesterday,” Ho began. “I don’t know Mr. Gisto, but I’ve done some checking and he seems like a worthy man. And besides,” he added with a small smile, “you obviously trust him and that is good enough for me.”

Mary kept buttoned up, searched his black eyes.

“The fact is, I believe my son was kidnapped and killed by the Triads.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Our forensics expert found compelling evidence to support the idea.”

“I see. Well I have a lot of experience with the gangs, going back years. I know how they operate.”

“Your time in the Hong Kong Police Force?”

“I was one of the senior officers involved with breaking up the Huang gang in ’94. I then headed up the task force that smashed two other big Triad teams in Kowloon and Macau. I emigrated to Australia with my family, a few years before I met you at the Military Police Training Academy.”

“And you think this attack on your family was some sort of revenge?”

“I’m convinced of it.”

“Why?”

Ho was silent for a few moments, gazing around the huge, almost empty bar. “I was sent a ransom note.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we should start at the beginning, Meng.”

“I told you yesterday the last time I saw Chang was on Thursday. I reported him missing the following day. Late that night, Friday, I received a package. A note demanding that I cooperate with a gang who are planning to smuggle heroin from Hong Kong. The note came in a box with one of my son’s eyes.”

“And you didn’t go to the police with this information?”

Ho shook his head. “No, I told you …”

“You don’t trust the cops … Why?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Mary rested an elbow on the table and rubbed her forehead. “Okay,” she said, a little exasperated. “What happened next?”

“Saturday night I received a call from the gang leader. He said I had twenty-four hours to agree to their ‘request’, or my son would be killed.”

“That would give you until Sunday night. And they
did
murder him.” Mary shook her head slowly.

“I’ve concluded they were going to kill Chang in the car and dump his body in a public car park.”

“But why?” Mary said. “Surely they would have been more discreet.”

“Quite the opposite, Mary. They would have wanted to advertise it. I’m not the only Asian businessman in this city. If I keep refusing they could go elsewhere. They wanted to broadcast the murder, as a warning to others – that’s how they operate – fear and arrogance.”

“But you did refuse them,” Mary said.

“I could not agree to their demands. They are targeting me because of my past. Helping them smuggle heroin would go against everything I believe in.” He stared her out. “You may seem outraged, Mary. But believe me, I will live with that decision for the rest of my life. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”