Take Out (26 page)

A pause while Stevie and Fowler considered this.

Stevie held up the knife to Pruitt. ‘Where was this found?’

‘Lying on the ground between him and the other male. The other guy was flung through the windscreen and died instantly from a broken neck.’ (Image 26.1)

Most of the flowers in the vases had died and the green tinge of stagnant water overrode the smell of disinfectant in the hospital room. ‘It’s a sign,’ Monty said, wrinkling his nose. ‘I knew it; I’ve outstayed my welcome.’

The surgeon, following closely on Stevie’s heels that morning, had announced that Monty could go home the next day.

Stevie had been waiting anxiously for days for Monty to be given the all clear. Now, after everything that had happened, she wished he could remain in hospital just a bit longer, out of harm’s way. At least until she could drag herself from the mire into which she felt she had sunk. It didn’t seem to worry him that they would have to stay with Dot, but it worried her. Despite her bricks and mortar mantra, it felt as if they’d taken a step back in their relationship.

While her mind had been shooting off at dozens of tangents ranging from people traffickers to medications, physios to paedophiles to pornographic magazines, house fires to change-of-address notifications, Monty’s thoughts were focused on the minibus crash. He turned from where he had been standing at the window watching the traffic crawling below, hands deep in his dressing gown pockets.

‘Any news about the two dead men from the bus?’ he asked, lowering himself gingerly onto the hard chair alongside Stevie’s.

‘The fingerprint results are back,’ Stevie said, rocking back with her feet resting on the bed, attempting a look of relaxed calm. ‘The one with the slashed throat was Rick Notting. He’d been in and out prison for most of his life for a variety of charges ranging from GBH, possession with intent to sell and, in later years, procurement. The other guy, Jimmy Jack Robinson, is a known pimp, but clever or lucky enough to have avoided doing time, so we don’t have much on him.’

‘Where are they from?’

‘Both of their driver’s licences list false names and addresses. But through their real names and social security records, Fowler has been able to trace their last known abode as a Northbridge address with Robinson’s name on the lease. When Fowler and his people arrived, the joint was being thoroughly gone over by a group of professional cleaners who told them a woman phoned the job in and paid by credit card. She said her name was Joyce Grenfell.’ That name. Stevie tugged at a thought that remained hidden. How many people out there, under a certain age, would even know who the old British actress was?

‘Someone was having a laugh at our expense?’ Monty said.

She frowned, still puzzled by the choice of alias. ‘Yeah, surprise, surprise—but the transaction did go through.’

‘Stolen card.’

‘Fowler’s following that lead too.’

‘What about the knife?’

‘We think it belonged to Robinson—his prints are all over it. Wayne put word out on the street for information and one of his sources came back to him saying they vaguely knew of this Robinson guy—Wayne said his informant was very careful about distancing himself—said that Robinson always carried a distinctive fishing knife...’ Stevie paused, pulled at her ponytail. ‘But another print, also isolated from the handle, belonged to one of the girls.’

Monty’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They think one of the girls might’ve done Rick Notting in?’

Stevie shrugged. ‘Melissa Hurst hasn’t finished the autopsy, but I guess when she examines the throat wound, she’ll be able to work out the angle of entry. We might be able to figure it out from there.’

‘Do you have a seating plan for the bus?’

‘No one was wearing seat belts, bodies were flung all over the place, with the two men and the body of a girl ending up outside. SOCO and MCI are dealing with the problem now.’

‘Wouldn’t the steering wheel have stopped the driver from going through the window?’

‘The bus door slid open, they think the driver fell out.’

Monty got up from his chair and began scooping up the get well cards that filled every available surface in the room. After glancing through them all, he put a handmade creation from Izzy into his pocket and tossed the others into the bin. ‘You and Fowler getting on a bit better these days?’

Stevie made a balancing motion with her hands.

‘Sounds like he’s doing a good job on all this following up. Angus was in to see me yesterday; he’s still pissed with you, even if Fowler isn’t.’

‘He’ll get over it.’ Stevie moved over to the bin, pulled out the discarded cards and shuffled through them before tucking them into her bag. Monty made no comment except to turn his eyes upwards.

‘Back to the Northbridge house,’ she said, thinking it was a good thing they still had so much to talk about; the last thing she wanted to discuss now was office politics. ‘It was obviously being used as a brothel, fitted out with several cubicles as well as a dormitory-like bedroom and a bar downstairs. Fowler managed to get hold of some prints before the cleaners wiped the place clean. Some of them matched those of Notting and Robinson; the others are still being compared to the dead and surviving girls. Which reminds me.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Fowler and I have a meeting with the interpreter in about five minutes. The doctors says one of the girls is well enough now to be questioned.’

Monty moved to follow Stevie from the room, but she stopped him with a hand upon his shoulder. ‘The girl’s been traumatised enough, Mont. She’s already going to have to face me, Col, Fowler and the interpreter—one more person will be one too many.’

Monty gave her one of his dog-in-the-pound looks. ‘Of course I wasn’t going to participate in the questioning. I was merely going to accompany you upstairs. I do need to exercise, you know.’

Stevie knew he would try get away with it if he could. No matter how much Monty had been talking about retirement, being a cop was as natural to him as breathing, and he couldn’t help himself.

He walked with her to the lifts where they met Fowler and Col and the pathologist, Melissa Hurst. Fowler explained that the interpreter was running late, but as they’d run into Hurst in the foyer just after she’d finished the autopsy on Rick Notting, they’d decided to hold an impromtu case conference. Wayne and Angus were to meet them shortly in the doctors’ common room downstairs.

‘I suppose I’d better get back to bed,’ Monty said, making no move other than to look expectantly from one face to another.

‘If I were your surgeon,’ Hurst regarded him sharply over her half-moon glasses,’ I wouldn’t want you wandering around the hospital, discharge tomorrow or not—there’s no resuss trolley in the common room, y’know.’

Monty looked down at the diminutive older woman, opened his mouth and closed it again. Turning on his slippered heel he muttered, ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’

Hurst shot Stevie a wink. They both watched as he made his way back to his room, growing taller and straighter with every step he took.

Hurst took them downstairs to the semi-deserted common room where they met with Angus and Wayne. Wayne acknowledged Stevie with a bear-like clap to her sore shoulder, which almost made her cry out. Angus gave her a smile, not quite as frosty as it could have been. ‘Sorry to hear about your house,’ he said, pulling up a chair beside her. ‘The arson squad seems to have it under control, but I still want to look into it.’

‘Me too, just as soon I come up for air. But please, Angus,’ she put her hand on his arm, ‘don’t tell Monty what caused it. He’s doing so well, a shock like this could set him back.’

‘He’ll need to know it was a deliberate attack.’

‘I’ll tell him when he’s fully recovered or when this case is wrapped, but not ’til then. Have you had any luck with tracing the man who gave the mag to Izzy?’

Angus frowned. ‘No one outside the school seems to remember seeing the man at all, can’t tell us anything...’

‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ Hurst broke in, addressing the team gathered around the table. ‘The Notting autopsy is the only one I’ve had the chance to complete so far, and I’ve still got a queue of trolleys in the basement waiting for me.’

‘Wish I was that popular,’ Wayne said.

Unsmiling, Hurst reached into her briefcase and handed out colour photos of the deceased, some taken at the scene and some from Notting’s autopsy itself.

Stevie examined the pictures, interior shots of the bus showing portions of dark-haired girls squeezed between crumpled seats and twisted metal, another girl thrown free and clearly dead. She focused mainly on a shot of Notting lying on his back outside the bus. In his case, the sadness she usually felt at viewing such scenes was absent. He reminded her of a wolf, his lupine grin eerily mimicked by the deep red slash in his throat, exposing slashed blood vessels and a gaping trachea. Flies spotted the pool of congealing blood in which he lay; the vivid stains of his shirt looked alive and creeping under her gaze. A limp male hand, presumably belonging to Jimmy Jack Robinson, was visible at the very edge of the frame, the knife on the ground between them.

Col put down the pile of photos he’d been leafing through. ‘The cause of death looks pretty obvious to me; what else have you got for us, Melissa?’

‘His blood contained a cocktail of chemicals—high doses of amphetamines, sedatives and marijuana, which could explain the randomness of the accident. The guy was as high as a kite and would have been totally out of control. And if he was the driver, well ... he was an accident waiting to happen.’

‘That makes sense,’ Angus said. ‘Pruitt’s report states there were no signs of brake marks on the bitumen. It was as if he deliberately drove straight over the ravine.’

‘But how do we know he was the driver?’ Stevie asked.

‘MCI are still busy working out body projectiles, but they think from the position he was lying in, he most probably fell out of the driver’s side door,’ Angus told her.

‘But they can’t be certain, surely,’ Wayne queried the pathologist. ‘If he was alive, might he not have moved or crawled away from where he landed when he first hit the dirt?’

‘Unlikely, Sergeant, given that his spinal cord was severed in the T3 and T4 region,’ Hurst said.

‘So he was paralysed?’

‘If he’d lived he’d have been a paraplegic from the lesion down. At the time of the accident, due to shock and swelling, he probably wouldn’t have been able to move a muscle.’

Everyone around the table paused to consider this.

‘Is it possible that someone cut his throat while he was still driving the bus?’ Stevie queried.

‘Only if someone had a death wish,’ Wayne scoffed.

‘These girls might not feel they had much to live for,’ Stevie said, exchanging a glance with Hurst, who agreed with a barely perceptible nod of her head.

‘Okay then, could Jimmy Jack have threatened him by putting the knife against his throat? It’s a sharp knife—his hand might have slipped if the bus hit a bump,’ Angus suggested.

Hurst allowed a slight smile; she enjoyed listening to the detectives trying to work it out for themselves. Stevie knew that she probably had the correct card up her sleeve, but wouldn’t produce it until she was sure every possibility had been covered, and then her word would be final. As well as Chief of Forensics, she lectured in pathology at UWA. She loved to teach, and could never let an opportunity pass her by. They had all learned a lot from Professor Melissa Hurst.

‘What about the angle of the wound?’ Angus asked.

‘Left to right slash,’ Hurst replied.

‘Left to right,’ he mused. ‘Meaning our offender was right handed.’

Stevie pushed away from the table and stood behind Wayne. ‘I need to get something clear here.’ Reaching for a butter knife from the table, she told him to hold still. With her left hand pulling back upon his forehead, she held the knife above his throat and made a left to right slashing motion.

Angus smacked his hands together. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for years.’

Stevie pulled a disconcerted Wayne to his feet. ‘Okay, now, lie on the ground,’ she commanded. Wayne looked around the empty common room to reassure himself no one else was watching and positioned himself on the hard carpet squares as if rigor mortis had already set in.

Stevie positioned herself behind his head and went through the same motions as when he was sitting. When she’d finished Wayne heaved himself from the floor returned to his seat and flexed his shoulders. ‘Well, I hope that was worth my pain and humiliation.’

‘It was, Wayne,’ Hurst said, ‘well done. Stevie was demonstrating how similar the throat cutting technique is, irrespective if the victim is lying or sitting when the attack is made from behind. The knife wounds would be almost identical too, which means we can’t rely on them.’

‘If Notting was driving, let us assume Robinson was in the passenger seat—he did go through the front window—so if he did the throat slashing surely the cut would have been more like a jab to the left side of the neck,’ Angus said.