Freeman: What are you going to do about Ambro’s kids, mate?
Cassatt: I’ll work that out when I get there. Why?
Freeman: Because if she ends up dead, and maybe her kids too, is Sean’s dad going to start asking questions?
Baby Tooth: You’re not going to shoot the kids, are you?
Cassatt: I’m not planning on it, but I don’t know what’ll happen.
Baby Tooth: It’d be one way of making sure Dad never asks any questions.
Cassatt: Whatever. She’s going to be fucking sorry, that’s for sure.
The tape finished. Harrigan hit the Stop button with relief. He debated whether to copy the tape then decided against it. Somewhere out there an unknown person had Cassatt’s original tape of Eddie Lee’s murder in their possession. Harrigan didn’t want to create a second one that corroborated the first. He had already downloaded the CD onto his computer. That would be enough for the moment.
Freeman had been surprisingly methodical, labelling the tape with a series of numbers. When Harrigan loaded the CD onto his computer, he saw that the numbers matched the photographs of the meetings. Freeman had put together his own sound and light show. The pictures were as sordid as the tape had been. No one could have described the Ice Cream Man and his friends as eye candy. At least they showed why Beck hadn’t turned up on Harrigan’s radar despite several months of association with the Ice Cream Man and Freeman. They had been very careful about where they met in public, usually in out-of-the-way hotels or multistorey car parks. Interspersed with these pictures were encounters between various sex workers and members of the syndicate, including Baby Tooth. Curiously Beck didn’t feature in any of these photographs. Maybe he had no taste for that kind of group activity.
Harrigan slowed when he reached the sequences attached to the single tape he had. The Ice Cream Man and Beck sat at the table together with half-empty glasses in front of them. The camera had taken in the rest of the room behind them, which held only a few scattered drinkers. A woman sat at the bar, supposedly having a drink and reading a newspaper but in fact looking towards the men at the table. The bitch at the bar doing her business. Harrigan recognised Sam Jonas. She couldn’t have known she was on camera. A very professional, skilled agent. Professional enough to get on to Beck’s connection to Freeman and Cassatt when none of his people had managed to. It wasn’t an observation that made him happy.
Harrigan reached over and picked up the LPS brochure, reading Elena Calvo’s biography once again. Daughter of renowned industrialist Jean Calvo. Elena was God’s daughter; Calvo was God, or at least according to Beck’s estimation of how he saw himself. Jonas was tracking Beck, presumably keeping an eye on him for Elena Calvo and her father. Given what had happened with the Ice Cream Man, it had been a shrewd move.
Harrigan googled the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The information confirmed much of what he already knew. It was a country riven by years of civil war and invasions, with UN reports of war crimes in the east of the country, specifically in Kisangani, which was also a well-known illegal diamond market. The capital was Kinshasa, which could also be a centre of conflict. A place where someone could hide any illegal activity, including murder.
Harrigan went back to Freeman’s photographs and looked again at the picture of Beck sitting at the table with Sam watching him. Had he made things too dangerous for Sam’s boss? Proved to be too much of a wild card? What could be more provocative than taking the Ice Cream Man on a tour of her premises? Did Sam kill him and the others? Harrigan decided no. If Elena Calvo was behind the Pittwater murders, she wouldn’t have used as her killer someone who then introduced herself as her employee to the police officer in charge of the investigation. But it would explain why Sam had offered him a bribe. If she was behind these killings, Elena Calvo had a lot to conceal. Apart from any other consideration, such as gaol, if the minister made a connection between her and his son’s death, her company would be finished here.
Harrigan was deep in these thoughts when his landline phone rang. He glanced at the number on the display but didn’t recognise it.
‘Paul,’ a familiar voice said. ‘It’s Marvin here. How are you tonight?’
Of course Marvin could get his home telephone number. He had access to everyone’s personnel records, paper or automated.
‘I’m fine, Marvin. To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘It’s business. You were at Jerry Freeman’s house today. You and your companion, as I believe she’s called. Freeman’s murder will affect the entire Pittwater investigation. I’ll have to give the commissioner an updated budgetary figure as soon as possible. I need an estimate from you of the operational impact of today’s events.’
‘I don’t think I can give you one just like that,’ Harrigan said. ‘I’ll have to work it out with Trevor. There’s no point me giving you a figure that’s inaccurate.’
‘Surely you can give me a ballpark.’ Marvin spoke sharply. ‘For example, did you find any evidence in Freeman’s house that could affect the progress of this investigation? Something Freeman may possibly have given your companion. Just knowing that would be enough for me to make an estimate.’
‘Any new evidence,’ Harrigan repeated. ‘What sort of evidence would that be, mate?’
‘Anything relating to Freeman’s murder, obviously. The kind of information a man like him would collect. Tapes, photographs.’
‘All that will be logged.’
‘There may be something you haven’t recorded yet.’
Grace’s information was in Harrigan’s mind while Marvin was speaking. Today’s gunman is the person who turned over Freeman’s house and killed the Ice Cream Man. He didn’t find the tape but he did find copies of the photos on the CD. He glanced at the photograph on his desk that Freeman had given Grace on Bondi beach that morning: Baby Tooth at dinner with the Ice Cream Man, pills on the table. He flicked through the images on his computer screen, stopping when he found another picture of Baby Tooth, this time athletically entwined with a willing sex worker.
‘Paul, are you there?’
‘I don’t think you’ve ever rung me at home before, Marvin,’ Harrigan said. ‘There’s never been an emergency that’s made you pick up the phone.’
‘I’m sorry to intrude but it’s urgent. The commissioner needs to know.’
‘Does he?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Again a pause.
‘How’s your boy, mate?’
‘What?’
‘Your boy. Sean. Didn’t he just go over to Perth with his wife and kids? He upped and left overnight. Surprised everyone.’
‘Sean’s doing very well over there, as you’d expect. Marie and the children are happy. Why are you asking?’
‘I just wondered why he felt like a change of scene so quickly.’
Harrigan listened to the silence. Marvin didn’t even seem to be breathing.
‘What’s your point?’ he finally asked.
‘You spent some time this morning giving my inspector grief. You tried to get the both of us dumped from this investigation. You keep pushing your nose in where no one wants it. I don’t think you should try any of that again if you know what’s good for you and your boy. I think you should take a very hands-off attitude from now on. Because if you don’t,’ Harrigan twisted the knife, ‘maybe you won’t ever get to be commissioner. Because maybe you and your boy will be looking for new jobs together.’
Again, silence.
‘What are you talking about?’ Marvin said eventually.
‘What fell into my hands today from Freeman. He had it in for you, mate. Even more than he did for me. He wanted to get you and your boy and he thought I might help.’
‘Tell me what you’re talking about.’