D-I RAPSEY: And with hindsight?
DSS FARADAY: With hindsight, I should have spent twenty-four hours a day on the job instead of just twenty.
D-I RAPSEY: Let’s go on. Mackie rang you.
DSS FARADAY: Correct. I was asleep.
D-I RAPSEY: What did he say?
DSS FARADAY: He said Dennis’d turned up.
D-I RAPSEY: And you said?
DSS FARADAY: I said: So?
D-I RAPSEY: Mackie suggested a tail on Dennis when he left. What was your response?
DSS FARADAY: I said no.
D-I RAPSEY: Didn’t even consider it? Five kilos of smack up there, brother shows up on short notice.
DSS FARADAY: Dennis is clean, no history, no connections. Rotary clean. In the time we covered him, he did nothing. He thinks Howie made his money on the stockmarket. He’s not going to courier smack for Howie.
D-I RAPSEY: So Dennis drives off. When did Mackie call you again?
DSS FARADAY: Nine o’clock. Just after.
D-I RAPSEY: The reason?
DSS FARADAY: He was worried about a call Howie made as Dennis came out.
D-I RAPSEY: Listened to it?
DSS FARADAY: I’ve listened to it.
D-I RAPSEY: Howard’s voice.
DSS FARADAY: Howie’s voice.
D-I RAPSEY: Sound a bit stagey?
DSS FARADAY: Yes.
D-I RAPSEY: Know the person on the other end?
DSS FARADAY: As you know, the person doesn’t say anything.
D-I RAPSEY: One-way conversation.
DSS FARADAY: Not unusual for Howie. They pick up the phone, he talks.
D-I RAPSEY: Never raised a doubt in your mind?
DSS FARADAY: Not when Mackie described it, no.
D-I RAPSEY: What did you tell Mackie?
DSS FARADAY: Told him I’d listen the next day.
D-I RAPSEY: Ten minutes later, he rings you again. What did he say this time?
DSS FARADAY: Someone rang Howie. Howie didn’t make any sense, didn’t answer questions, said goodbye in the middle of something the guy was saying.
D-I RAPSEY: That didn’t alarm you? Didn’t interest you?
DSS FARADAY: No. Sounded like vintage Howie.
D-I RAPSEY: And when you listened to the tape?
DSS FARADAY: I had the benefit of hindsight.
D-I RAPSEY: Would you have picked it if you’d been there?
DSS FARADAY: Yes.
D-I RAPSEY: And exactly when did you listen to the tape?
DSS FARADAY: The next day.
D-I RAPSEY: Mackie says he asked you to come back and listen. Is that right?
DSS FARADAY: He did.
D-I RAPSEY: And you didn’t.
DSS FARADAY: I didn’t see any reason to.
D-I RAPSEY: So let’s get this straight. Lefroy is sitting in his flat with five kilos. You believe that a pick-up could take place at any time. He gets a visit from his brother. Something that hasn’t happened before. Your man calls you to suggest a tail because he didn’t get a good look at Dennis. You say no. Howard makes a phone call to someone who doesn’t talk back. Your man calls you. Forget it, you say. Then someone calls Howard. and it sounds weird to your man. He calls you. You say, I’ll listen tomorrow. Is that a fair account?
DSS FARADAY: You have to understand, Mackie was new on Howie. I’ve listened to hundreds of Howie’s conversations. This stuff wasn’t weird for him.
D-I RAPSEY: Nothing else happened that night?
DSS FARADAY: No. Loud music. Stopped about midnight. Often that way.
D-I RAPSEY: No more calls.
DSS FARADAY: No.
D-I RAPSEY: Let’s go to the morning. What kind of routine did Lefroy have?
DSS FARADAY: Call to his broker. Six forty-five, Monday to Friday.
D-I RAPSEY: This Thursday he didn’t.
DSS FARADAY: No.
D-I RAPSEY: What else did he always do?
DSS FARADAY: Open all the curtains. Make coffee. Walk around naked. Phone people.
D-I RAPSEY: Didn’t happen either.
DSS FARADAY: No.
D-I RAPSEY: Who was on duty?
DSS FARADAY: O’Meara. Stand-in.
D-I RAPSEY: Briefed on Lefroy’s habits? Knew what to expect? Shown the log?
DSS FARADAY: He was a stand-in. He was covering for two hours.
D-I RAPSEY: What time did you show up?
DSS FARADAY: Just after seven am.
D-I RAPSEY: Was that late?
DSS FARADAY: Depends. I had a flat. Happens.
D-I RAPSEY: What did you do when you finally arrived?
DSS FARADAY: Listened to the tape. Two minutes. We went straight in.
Howard Lefroy was in the wide hallway, near the sitting room door. He was wearing one of his big fluffy cotton bathrobes, the one with navy blue trim. The carpet was pale pink, the colour of a sexual blush. Except around Howie’s head and upper body, where it was dark with his blood. He’d been killed where he lay, his head pulled back by the ponytail and his throat cut. More than cut. He was almost decapitated. The bathrobe was bunched around his waist, displaying his short hairy legs and big buttocks.
Carlie Mance was in the bathroom, naked. She had tape on her mouth and her wrists were taped to the chrome legs of the washbasin. The man had been behind her when he cut her throat, kneeling between her legs, a fistful of her dark, shiny hair in his right hand, dragging her head back.
Her blood went halfway up the mirror over the basin, a great jet that hit the glass and ran down in neat parallel lines.
I should have stayed to ID Dennis. Or I could have put Mackie in a car right outside the garage to ID him. Or we could have had Traffic Operations pull him over nearby and had a good look at him. Carlie would have been alive. Lefroy too, not that I cared about that: cheated, that’s all I felt when I saw him.
But I didn’t do any of those things…And I didn’t put a tail on the car. Thirteen years on the job and I didn’t do any of those things.
The portable phone had a device that looked like a dictation machine attached to it. Howard Lefroy was on the tape, the two phone calls that had made Mackie suspicious. They were composites.
D-I RAPSEY: Tell us about this lockup of yours.
DSS FARADAY: As I’ve said about twelve times, it’s not my lockup. I hired it for my wife. I took some of her stuff there. Once. I gave her the key.
D-I RAPSEY: We’re assuming here that it would be out of character for your wife to keep 100 grams of smack and $20 000 in cash in her lockup. Fair assumption?
DSS FARADAY: I’d go with it.
D-I RAPSEY: So it would belong to someone else. Right?
DSS FARADAY: Jesus, charge me, why don’t you?
D-I RAPSEY: In good time. You’ve had dealings with Howard Lefroy, haven’t you?
DSS FARADAY: Dealings? I don’t know about dealings. I was on a job where we tried to get in touch with him. Seven, eight years ago.
D-I RAPSEY: You tried to roll a bloke. One of Lefroy’s runners.
DSS FARADAY: We rolled him.
D-I RAPSEY: But it didn’t work out.
DSS FARADAY: No. We put him in a safe house and somebody came around and took him away.
D-I RAPSEY: Dead, would you say?
DSS FARADAY: I would say.
D-I RAPSEY: You aware the talk was Lefroy was tipped off?
DSS FARADAY: That is what generally happens in Sydney. People get tipped off.
D-I RAPSEY: By you?
DSS FARADAY: I’ll say yes? I’m supposed to say yes, am I? Trick question, is it?
D-I RAPSEY: So first Lefroy gets lucky with you around and then he gets unlucky.
DSS FARADAY: I’m sorry, is that a question?
D-I RAPSEY: It’s the central question on my mind, Detective Faraday. It’s the central question on many people’s minds. And we’ll answer it before we’re finished. Interview terminated at three twenty-five pm.
That wasn’t the last interview, not by a long way. But as I had sat there, looking at the men who weren’t looking at me, I had known without doubt that I wasn’t one of them anymore. It was the end of that life. Thirteen years. Thirteen years of belief and self-respect. Pride, even. Come to an end in a grubby little formica-lined office reeking of disbelief.