The Shadow Maker (9 page)

He’s also intelligent and au fait with the latest computer technology, quite possibly working in or dealing with the hi-tech sector. Whatever work he does, he’s in a senior position. Also like us, he has to endure constant stress. But this man is unstable - which isn’t as obvious as it sounds. We’ve all questioned criminals who can lie through their teeth without losing their composure - many of them psychopaths.

This offender isn’t like that. If he’s defied, he loses it. He’s also a regular customer of prostitutes.’ She turned to Strickland. ‘That’s as much as I can say. The rest is too speculative at this stage.’

Her comments brought a muted response from her colleagues

- a mixture of quizzical stares and murmurs of acknowledgement.

The jury’s still out, she thought. As she resumed her position beside Erin, Strickland echoed Loftus’s moral support - or at least pretended to.

‘I think that proves we can get some valuable input from profiling,’

he said, before addressing Rita directly. ‘In fact, I’m going to ask you to go through the interview tapes we’ve already got - just to double-check he hasn’t slipped through. You might spot something we’ve missed.’

Rita nodded her agreement, then he went on. ‘One point though

- the hi-tech connection. For the benefit of the other officers could you explain how you arrived at that?’

‘His comments to the victim,’ she said, then added carefully, ‘and an encrypted smartcard he left at the crime scene which we’re yet to decipher.’

‘Okay. Good,’ said Strickland, nodding with something like approval, before turning back to his team. ‘Let’s keep that in mind.

We’ll also continue with checks on any security cameras that might have picked up the car. Nothing’s turned up at the casino, but we tracked down the owners of two Mazda MX-5s coming off the CityLink in the right timeframe. Unfortunately one was a private female nurse on a night call, the other was a middle-aged businessman who didn’t match the victim’s description - though what he’s up to in a sports car in the early hours sounds like funny business to me.’

That got some chuckles. ‘I think that brings us up to date.’

‘There’s just one other thing,’ added Loftus. ‘You’ll see from the crime report the victim left the Plato’s Cave nightclub about an hour before she was picked up and attacked.’ His words provoked a reaction, laced with cursing and swearing, to which Loftus raised his voice. ‘Yeah, well we’d all like to take another crack at Kavella, but this isn’t the occasion. At this stage we haven’t established a connection with the club. Although the smartcard mentioned by Van Hassel has got Plato’s Cave printed on it, the card appears to prove nothing either way. It may be just a coincidence, so I’m telling you now: this is not - repeat
not
- a line of investigation. And Plato’s Cave stays off the agenda or you’ll answer to me. We’ve got enough on our hands without that litigious creep distracting us. So let’s get on with it.’

As they dispersed, chairs scraping, voices grumbling, Loftus moved over to Rita.

‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For dropping me in it.’

‘No sweat,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘Anyway, you more than handled it. If profiling’s going to play a significant role we’ve got to beat the drum a bit.’

‘Is that what I was doing?’

‘Yes. And you’ve also given the case a little more focus.’

‘Maybe.’ Unconvinced, she changed the subject. ‘And now there’s a general health warning against Plato’s Cave, what do I put in my report on Kavella?’

Loftus gave a weary sigh. ‘You don’t write it,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Is there any chance of finding out more about the card?’

‘Yes, but I want to look my seductive best.’

He fixed her with a suspicious stare, before relenting. ‘Okay, I’ll bite. What are you talking about?’

‘The crime lab says there’s a young cybernetics professor at Monash who might be able to help,’ Rita replied. ‘I’ll go out there tomorrow. What do you reckon, Jack - you think I can charm him with my academic prowess?’

Loftus just shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough to think about today.’

Rita’s work was over for the day, and all in all it had been a bad one, thanks to internal politics. She took the lift down to the basement car park, cursing her miscalculation over Kavella and wondering if her career in the force would soon be blocked by Nash.

As she approached her car she could see a figure leaning against it.

Strickland. He was smoking a cigarette. He straightened up when he saw her coming, an embarrassed look on his face, the look of someone wrestling with an apology.

‘How’d it go with Loftus after the meeting with Nash?’ he asked awkwardly.

‘I got another lecture,’ she said, giving him a sour stare.

‘Shit.’ He dropped the cigarette and ground it with his heel. ‘One way or another we’ve all chewed you out today.’

The belated sympathy didn’t impress her. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

‘I might be a hard bastard but I try to be fair. You don’t deserve what you got from Nash. But that’s not what I wanted to say.’ He looked at her squarely. ‘I owe you a favour for what happened in there with Nash. You could’ve fed me to the wolves.’

This was unexpected - Strickland admitting he was in her debt.

Rita wasn’t quite sure what to say. ‘Well, I wasn’t being noble. They just got my back up,’ she said eventually.

‘Doesn’t matter. I appreciate it anyway. Just wanted you to know.’

He glanced away, uncomfortable with himself. It was something she hadn’t seen before.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘And maybe you can drop the macho bullshit occasionally.’

‘No chance of that.’ He started to walk away. ‘I’m still a hard bastard.’

‘Mike’s great company when you’re out on the town,’ Rita was saying.

‘But that’s not enough, is it?’

‘My God! You need to ask?’ said Lola, looking at her in amazement.

Rita and Lola Iglesias had been friends since their late teens. They’d met at a seminar on the psychology of cultural icons. Rita was setting out on her degree course at a time Lola was exploring screenwriting as an option. She’d become the arts critic on a women’s magazine instead. Their temperaments were as divergent as their careers. It’s why they clicked. Each found the other highly entertaining and a little mad, but there was also deep mutual trust. Family pressures, relationships, break-ups - they always had each other to talk out the crisis with and provide a lateral perspective and creative advice.

They were to each other what no woman should be without.

‘He says I’m sinful and hard-edged.’ Rita was a little drunk. ‘But I doubt he can sustain a relationship. He’s unreliable.’

‘No wonder, with all that Irish blood in his veins.’ Lola’s family was from Ecuador. ‘Even worse, he’s a journalist. They’re brilliant at partying but useless at commitment.’

‘I just can’t deal with his lies and his egocentric attitude,’ Rita continued. ‘He’s like a little boy.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Erin feelingly - her son was going through the terrible twos. ‘Boys are born with high levels of testosterone. It makes them so demanding. And when they grow up they think with their dicks.’

Lola flicked her hand at the general surroundings. ‘In fact, so much in life’s hormonal. Like PMT - or fucking in elevators.’

That got a laugh, since she’d once been caught at it.

‘Oh my God, you’ll never guess,’ Lola went on. ‘I’m getting flowers at work. And I don’t have a clue who’s sending them.’

‘Make the most of it,’ said Erin, reaching into her handbag for cigarettes, a plastic rattle falling out in the process. ‘Secret admirers are good for two things, champagne sex and five-star room service.’

Erin’s foray into wife-and motherhood was relatively recent, preceded by a time in which she drank hard, swore loudly and slept around. An impressive tally of male colleagues had tried to keep pace with her alcohol intake and promptly fallen prey to her provocations and sturdy physique. In the end one of them - an inspector in the uniform branch - got her pregnant and married her. With a hyperactive toddler, the marriage was under strain. In public Erin joked about it. In private she threw crockery at the wall and wondered if her husband was screwing someone else.

‘I used to get flowers,’ she said wistfully. ‘Now I’ve got piles of nappies and a man who grunts at me while he watches the footy.’

Erin emptied her glass. ‘Another bottle of cab sav?’

The other two nodded and she got up and made her way towards the counter.

They were drinking at the wine bar that had become their regular haunt. Its mood was reassuring. Oak casks behind the bar. Dusty wine bottles on the shelves. Vases of freesias. And in the small back garden where they were sitting, tables shaded by the leafy lacework of ferns and bamboo.

‘So how was your day?’ asked Rita.

‘Tedious,’ said Lola. ‘The magazine sent me to interview a self-satisfied bitch with a size six figure and legs up to her neck. Yet another C-list celebrity turned crime writer.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s the market. No-talents cashing in on what’s become the biggest mainstream genre.’

‘Wasn’t it always?’ asked Rita.

‘No. Thrillers used to be cheap pulp written by middle-aged alcoholics for semi-literates. And no one tried to be clever about it.’

‘Shakespeare was a crime writer.’

‘There you go - not listening to me again!’

‘His best plays are psychological thrillers -
Macbeth
,
Othello
,
Hamlet
.’

‘Do I
look
like I believe you?’

‘I could even argue Hamlet’s a flawed and reluctant detective who was a forerunner to the heroes of film noir. All the elements are there.’

‘Oh, how convincing. Not!’

‘Then there’s Dostoyevsky,’ Rita persisted. ‘The greatest novelist of all, and a genius on the psychology of crime.’

‘No wonder you’re a profiler,’ said Lola. ‘You keep getting intellectual bees in your bonnet!’

Erin came back with a fresh bottle and sat down purposefully.

‘Do you know how nice it is to have a night out and actually have a conversation with an adult? Tristan’s gorgeous but the little bugger never gives me a break. When I’m out with him I end up with wine knocked over, every sentence interrupted and stains on my skirt.’

‘Sounds like my last date,’ said Lola.

Erin refilled the glasses. ‘So don’t get broody too soon. And in the meantime fuck around.’

Rita shrugged. ‘Part of me agrees. The best way to put Mike behind me is to get plastered and get laid.’ She drank deeply from her glass, the wine blurring the edges of her thoughts. ‘But another part of me thinks about consequences.’

‘Listen to me, Rita,’ Lola said insistently. ‘I love you madly but you have a bad habit of observing your own life. You should get on with living it.’

‘Hang on, I’m supposed to be the shrink here.’

‘You know very well all women are sex therapists,’ retorted Lola.

‘And I agree with Erin, you’ve got to find a bright new hunk. It’ll take your mind off everything else.’

Rita laughed. ‘When you put it
that
way, how can I disagree?’

She gave a wicked smile. ‘It so happens I’m meeting a hunk tomorrow morning, a young professor. I’ve checked out the photo on his website. He’s very cute.’

Rita hugged and kissed her friends goodbye before they settled into a taxi to go south of the river. She waved them off feeling very different from when she’d met them a couple of hours earlier in a mood of frustration and despondency. Now she was feeling distinctly mellow as she got in her car and decided she was sober enough to drive the short distance to her house in Abbotsford.

Light was softening in the evening sky as she drove past the terraced rows of the old inner suburbs. She turned down a road hooded by the leafy sprawl of plane trees, then into a quiet side street. Home was a compact weatherboard with a corrugated iron roof, a narrow wooden verandah, and a tiny front garden with a couple of hydrangea bushes.

Rita drove her car into the cobbled bluestone alley that ran behind the houses, then stopped, unlocked her back gate and pulled into her backyard, which had just enough room for a shed, an almond tree and a parking space. It wasn’t until she was climbing the back step that her senses went on to high alert. Something was wrong.

What was it? A sound came from inside her house. It was the static of voices and applause. The TV was on. But she was certain she’d switched it off.

Steadying her breathing, she slid the key into the backdoor lock and silently opened it. After easing the door shut behind her, she stood motionless, listening. Then, over the inane banter of the game show, came the distinct rattle of the venetian blind beside her. The kitchen window was wide open and there were scratches in the paintwork where someone had prised it open.

Reaching out with her right hand, she drew the carving knife from its metal scabbard, crept out of the kitchen, and walked softly down the passage to the open doorway of the lounge. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in the air. Rita tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.

Focusing her attention, she drew a deep breath, raised the knife and moved swiftly into the room to confront the intruder, but there was no one there. She moved quickly through the rest of the house, and when she was sure it was empty she returned to the lounge, put down the knife and switched off the TV, her blood still pumping fiercely. As her eyes adjusted to the light filtering through the venetian blinds, she noticed a dab of cigarette ash on the coffee table next to her armchair. It lay there like a subtle token of menace.

That night a storm blew in from the west. The air was still humid but the sudden downpour eased the heat. Rita lay in her bath listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof. The sound was comforting but she still couldn’t relax. There was too much adrenalin in her system. Her brain wouldn’t switch off.

She’d locked and bolted the doors, wedged shut the windows, and collected her police-issue gun which had been stowed in the floor safe. Then she’d cooked herself a meal which she’d thrown out half-eaten. Later she ran herself a bath, lit candles around it and drank some Scotch while she soaked in the soft glow. It didn’t work.