‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve been flat out,’ Wayne said, a faint blush circling his collar line.
‘Turned into quite a softy in your old age ... You should have seen him, Mont, carrying on and laughing with this babe, making bad jokes about herbal aphrodisiacs...’
Monty had had enough. He slammed his hand down on his desk, forgetting it was the one he’s damaged on Henry Grebe, and let out a blue streak of obscenities. When he’d recovered he pointed to the door and snapped, ‘Shut it or just swivel out of here, Barry.’
Barry touched his chest, ‘Who, me?’ but he still didn’t make a move.
Angus climbed to his feet. ‘I need to go, I have some leads to follow on the kid running around with Zhang Li.’ He flicked his hand at Wayne. ‘Keep your phone on, I think I might have you a name soon.’
When Angus had gone, Monty said to Barry, ‘I’m sure you can find something to do. Go over the statements from the Kusak neighbours and chase SOCO up over the evidence reports we’re still waiting on. Oh yeah, and check Mrs K’s bank statements too.’
Barry nodded complacently, but the only move he made was to take another bite of his doughnut. Monty gave him a heated look, and even that didn’t penetrate the kid’s thick skin until he registered the flexing of the fingers on Monty’s left hand.
Barry wiped sugary fingers down the legs of his pants. ‘Okay, keep your hair on, I’m going.’
When he’d gone, Monty leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a few seconds.
‘He can’t bear to miss out on anything, the nosy little prick.’ Wayne looked with concern at Monty. ‘You okay?’
‘No.’ Monty wondered if Wayne had heard about his altercation with Henry Grebe. It was unlikely that Grebe would have reported it, given that he had behaved so atrociously. The fear that had been gripping Monty didn’t have anything to do with the possible fall-out, it was more about his own lack of control, a control that seemed at the moment to be increasingly shaky.
Monty opened his eyes at the sound of the loosening of a screw cap, cocked an eyebrow at Wayne’s hip flask, but said nothing. Wayne took two glasses from the tray, poured a generous measure of scotch into each, and added water from the jug on Monty’s desk.
They clinked. Wayne took a sip and said, ‘You going to tell me about this morning’s appointment?’ Wayne was the only person Monty had told about his chest pain and subsequent visit to the doctor.
Monty leaned back in his chair and scowled, keeping his eyes focused on something invisible above the office door. ‘Bloody scare-mongering doctors.’
‘I take it it didn’t go so well?’
Monty swirled the whisky in his glass and put it down without a taste. ‘Did a few simple tests in the surgery, doesn’t think it’s too critical, but wants to book me in for an angiogram ASAP. I said I couldn’t possibly take time out at the moment, not with my current caseload, at which he got rather shitty with me. My caseload, huh!’ he threw his hands into the air. ‘The murder of two low lifes who, truth be known, I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about.’ He patted his chest. ‘High blood pressure and some problems with the old heart too, thinks it’s stress related. He’s given me some pills and a spray pump thing to tide me over.’
‘Does Stevie know?’
The crowd roared from the WACA and a flock of parrots jetted passed the office window as if fired from a cannon. ‘Bloody cricket,’ Monty grumbled.
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
‘I haven’t had the chance to tell her yet.’ Monty felt a sudden need to change the subject. ‘Okay, so the paedophile and the loan shark were killed by the same gun, and I want you to find the connection.’
Wayne’s jaw dropped. ‘Me? how...’
‘The Vietnamese girl in the herbalist shop?’
‘It was just a gut feeling of mine, don’t set your hopes on it. Angus still has some more digging to do.’
Monty steepled his fingers and tapped at his teeth. Those who didn’t know Wayne well would be excused for seeing in his face nothing but a wall of rock split by a million year old frost. Monty knew better.
‘Wayne,’ he said. ‘Far be it to teach my grandfather how to suck eggs, but I hope Barry’s wrong about all this...’ He waved his hand trying to find the right words. ‘I mean, you’re not getting too involved here, are you? Not letting your personal feelings get in the way of the case?’
Monty grunted to himself—he could talk. Again he thought he detected a faint blush in the face of older man. ‘Shit, Wayne, an old codger like you should have more sense.’
Wayne pushed himself up from the desk and attempted to pull the frayed cuffs of his mustard coloured shirt further down his hairy wrists. Rumour had it that Wayne had not bought new clothes since the death of his wife twenty years ago.
‘Nah Monty, it’s nothing like that, I just feel like looking out for the girl, that’s all. Now is there anything else?’ Wayne said, his face back to its usual wall of granite.
19
EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 260107
HARUM SCARUM: u shld nvr meet up wit some1 u don’t no
BETTYBO: bt hes soooooo nice!
HARUM SCARUM: u need anotha KE story. U need her powa. U don’t need a boy 2 giv u that
BETTYBO: I want KE to kill some1 this time
HARUM SCARUM: okaaaaaaaay ... lets see what she’s got
The high temperature in the van hadn’t hurt Miro Kusak’s hard drive as much as they’d feared. In Central’s operations room Clarissa explained in a steady stream of techno-babble how she’d managed to extract the valuable information. Unfortunately none of Kusak’s correspondence with Bianca had shown up yet. Stevie loved her new job, but found the technical side of it a bit of a stretch. She rubbed her gritty eyes and did her best to focus on the screen, but without much success.
This was like no incident room she’d ever worked from before. No cigarette smoke in here, no fusty odours of unwashed clothes and sweaty sandshoes, cheap bourbon and cheaper aftershave. Someone had received a bunch of roses for her birthday and put them on the windowsill, and the scent mingled with the different perfumes of the room’s occupants. A collection of cuddly toys stood sentry in the workstation next to Clarissa’s, while the partitioning of its neighbour was papered with children’s colourful artwork.
‘Okay, I can see by your blank expressions that the details of my cyber investigations are less to you plebs than pearls before swine. In a nutshell...’ Clarissa stopped for a moment to see if anyone was listening and let out a martyr’s sigh when she realised they were all looking vacant.
Stevie dragged herself back from her mental wandering. Tash, who’d been hovering over an open box of chocolates on Clarissa’s desk, looked up and pointed to herself. ‘You talking to me?’
Clarissa turned her eyes to the ceiling.
Stevie put the lid on the chocolates, pushing them out of Tash’s reach. ‘Bad for your migraine. You were saying?’ she reminded Clarissa.
‘Yes, sorry, I’ll translate. Miro Kusak and Robert Mason were both members of the Dream Team paedophile ring. Kusak’s hard drive and flash disk contained similar photos to Mason’s, which they’d both purchased from the webmaster who may also be the photographer—I’ve found email correspondence that suggests this. The webmaster calls himself Lolita and sends his picture files from an Internet cafe in Mt Lawley.’