Double Take (27 page)

After a while, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the business card the parole officer had given him.
Kenneth Riley, Solicitor, Specialising in Wills.
Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to visit Riley first. Not that he thought his brother would've left much. He was still furious that he hadn't been able to attend his funeral. Not much of a brother he'd turned out to be.

The bus arrived at the Queen Street Mall and Jack stepped off it and straight into bustling crowds that were hell-bent on going somewhere fast. He managed to ease out of the throng. As he leant against a large glass window, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. The changes in the last decade were astounding. It was hard to believe he was standing in the same city street he'd previously frequented nearly every day.

He stumbled across Hungry Jack's in the middle of the mall and, unable to ignore his grumbling stomach, entered the crowded building. He fiddled with the $200 he'd been allocated as he waited in line with a crowd of giggling Japanese schoolgirls.

Jack ordered the biggest burger on the menu but the delivered product looked nothing like the picture above the counter. He chose a window seat and lost an hour just watching people go by. Skirts had become shorter, cleavages had grown bigger and everybody had someone to talk to on their portable phones. It was only when he spied an information booth that he finally got up. The bronze-skinned young woman behind the counter was fiddling with a computer keyboard. She didn't bother to look up to ask what he wanted.

“Can you tell me how to get a bus to Carina?”

* * *

Within an hour he found the office of Kenneth Riley. The bell above the door tinkled as he walked in and he was immediately greeted by a small round man in a crinkled grey suit.

“Hello.” The man offered his hand. “Kenneth Riley, how can I help you?”

Jack shook his hand and smiled. It felt good. “My name's Jackson Rich and apparently you hold my brother's will.”

“What was his name?”

“James Thomas Rich. We called him Jimmy.”

“Mmm, I don't remember that name. When did he pass away?” Big bushy eyebrows dragged together on his forehead.

“About five years ago.”

The man's frown deepened and Jack figured he was trying to form the next question. Jack saved him the trouble. “I was released from jail this morning.”

“I see… Come this way.”

Jack followed him into a small room, declining the offer of coffee. Kenneth disappeared and for the third time that day he sat alone. It was a further twenty minutes before Riley returned with a copy of the will and began detailing his brother's final wishes.

As Jack had thought, there wasn't much left.

Kenneth cleared his throat. “Your brother died with nearly $1,200 in his bank account. However, after his rent was paid, along with his funeral costs, there was only $176 remaining. I placed the money in an interest-bearing deposit on your behalf.” He shrugged. “I knew you wouldn't need it for a while.”

Jack nodded as Kenneth slid a cheque across the table.

Kenneth then passed over a small envelope. Jack frowned as he opened it. The single item inside nearly made his heart stop. It was an unclaimed TAB ticket. As Jack read the details of the bet, images of Jimmy standing on that bank counter urging on his horses came flooding back. Jack remembered being so pissed off at his brother. The last time he'd seen Jimmy was in the van escorting them to their first day of trial. They'd barely said a word to each other. At the time Jack hadn't discounted Jimmy as the one who'd doublecrossed them. No doubt Jimmy had been thinking the same thing. And then his brother died in jail, apparently after tangling with the wrong guy. Jack wasn't surprised. Jimmy was always a hothead. He never knew when to back down.

Jack remembered his silly gloating about winning the trifecta. That was the last time he ever saw his brother smiling. He flicked the ticket in his hand. Could it be some form of redemption? He turned it over and squinted to read the fine print. Point four was the one that shattered his short-lived excitement. Twelve months. That was how long the ticket was valid for. Jack huffed. He shouldn't have been surprised—this outcome was pretty much the story of his life.

When Jack left Mr Riley's office, he tucked the trust account cheque into his back pocket and walked back to the bus station.

He arrived at the place he was to call home for the next couple of weeks just as the sun was setting. The colours on the horizon were intense shades of pink and purple and Jack took a moment to take in the view. It was like the sky was celebrating his freedom. He walked through the doorway and up to a bench that looked like it was ready to break off at any moment. Refraining from leaning on it, he reached for the bell. Moments later, a middle-aged man with his pants pulled up to his armpits approached the counter.

“Hello, my name is Jackson Rich.”

“Yes, Mr Rich, I was expecting you. Wait here, I'll grab your keys.”

The manager reappeared from a door further down the hallway and directed Jack to follow him. He led him up a narrow set of stairs to a door with a number four burned onto the front.

The manager handed over a single key attached to a large wooden paddle with the number four also burned into it. “There's a small set of toiletries in the bathroom. When that runs out you'll have to buy your own. Breakfast is between six and eight. Lights out by midnight.” The manager nodded and then left.

Upon entering, Jack closed the door, walked to the bed and sat down. It creaked under his weight. He flopped back and smiled at the peeling paint on the ceiling. It was a nice change after looking at the same cell ceiling for years. He reached for the remote on the bedside table and turned on the small freestanding television at the end of the bed. He flicked from channel to channel, blissfully happy despite the distinct smells of body odour and stale cigarette smoke lingering in the room.

A
fter three weeks of leave, mostly spent sorting through his father's belongings, Trent was grateful to be back amongst the order and discipline of his work. But within twenty-four hours something happened to him that had never happened before. He couldn't decide which file to work on first. The decision itself wasn't life or death; it wasn't huge by any means. But the fact that he couldn't make it was practically life-changing.

The reason behind his indecisiveness was obvious. Trent never left anything unfinished. And as far as he was concerned, the mystery behind the money in his dad's closet was far from finished.

But now he was in a quandary. Informing his sergeant of his father's likely involvement in the 1992 bank heist might be the right thing to do. But if it turned out that Murray had no part in the robbery—other than his involvement with the woman who
did
steal the money—then he would be drawing attention to himself unnecessarily. The last thing he wanted was for his peers to think his father was a criminal. At worst he was an accessory after the fact.

He developed a plan that allowed him to be discreet with his inquiries. With the decision made, Trent felt normal again. Somehow the fact that he would be lying seemed justified, and it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. It required several days of research to locate the department handling the case. Once he had the information, he waited for a moment when he was the only person in the room. He didn't want anyone querying what he was doing. He snatched up the phone and dialled the number.

Trent introduced himself to the man on the end of the line and explained that he was interested in an old case. He went on to tell him that he found a box of newspaper clippings in a suspected felon's property, and that he needed to establish if the cases were related. The detective on the other end of the line seemed interested in helping, but when he requested Trent's contact details and said he'd call back, Trent wasn't so sure. Not a single person he'd met on the force so far shared the same sense of urgency he did.

The next couple of days were brutal. In order to focus less on the ticking clock he increased his productivity output by approximately ten percent. He cut out meal breaks and reduced his water intake, thereby reducing his toilet breaks. And he avoided the corridors. This in turn eliminated chance encounters with fellow employees. Idle banter was not Trent's thing at the best of times. Finally a sealed evidence box landed on his desk.

To say he was surprised at the size of the box was an understatement. Nearly ten years of inquiry evidence reduced to a small archive box. He was reluctant to open it, and yet at the same time he was eager to read every last detail of its contents. Trent stood up and scanned the room. Benson was on the phone and Kineely and Papageorgiou were deep in conversation. No-one seemed even remotely interested in the box that had arrived by courier just moments ago.

He gulped a large mouthful of water, trying to soothe his dry throat, then lifted the lid and peered inside. It was only half full. He removed a newspaper with a front page article covering the fifth anniversary of the robbery. Trent read the article then studied the photo. The caption read:
1992 Melbourne Cup day bank heist lead investigator, Superintendent Montgomery Steel, still faces investigation over bungled police operation.
Trent instantly felt sorry for the man. He could imagine the frustration Steel would've suffered over the missing money.

There had been sensational accusations from within the police department and the media over who had the opportunity and inside knowledge to steal it. As Steel was the only police officer whose whereabouts was unaccounted for between the robbery and the arrest, his name was at the top of the list. Internal Affairs would have grilled him over the operational procedure, too. Steel claimed all along that he'd had no choice; that—constrained by lack of resources—he'd set a trap to catch the gang after the fact. But in retrospect, letting the robbery happen didn't seem like the most intelligent strategy. It had ruined his career.

Despite the yellowing paper, Steel's anger was evident in the photo.

As Trent examined the evidence box, he was intrigued by the photos. They weren't official police photos of the criminals. The shots were taken from an elevated position, some distance from the subjects. In the background was a building. Trent recognised it instantly. It was the old boatshed. In the foreground was each of the bank robbers, exactly as he remembered them nine years ago. There were six photos of each of them. Trent paused to scrutinise the pictures of the woman. She was stunning and he could still remember being shocked that a knockout like her was messed up with a bunch of robbers. The guy with the tattoos looked as mean in the photos as he recalled. After studying all thirty-six pictures, Trent was fairly sure his dad or Gemma had taken these photos after Trent told them of the robbers' hideout.

Trent shuffled the photos back into an evidence envelope. He reached for the next envelope. It contained a cassette tape labelled ‘Tiffany Black tape 1'. His heart leapt to his throat. He had a horrible feeling this tape would be the very tape he and Max had recorded when they hid under the boatshed. Trent glanced around the room. His colleagues were still distracted, but it would be risky listening to the tape here. Someone would question it. He slotted it back into the envelope and sat it on top of the growing forms of evidence on his desk.

He returned to the report files and by the end he'd learnt one significant piece of the case that he didn't know. The day before the Melbourne Cup race, late in the afternoon, a woman had tipped the police off about the robbery. She had furnished them with tape recordings of the gang's planning sessions, as well as photographs of each of the suspects. The woman had given the name Tiffany Black, but it later transpired that she had given a false identity. After seeing the photos, Trent was sure that once he listened to the tapes he'd know for certain that Tiffany Black and Gemma were one and the same.

There was just one thing that didn't make sense. If Tiffany Black AKA Gemma planned to steal the money from the robbers all along, then why had she come to the police with all this evidence beforehand?

He jotted down the facts of the case.

Now he jotted down some of the information he had that wasn't in the case file.

There was one question that still needed to be answered: was someone still looking for the money?

That last question was an interesting one. If someone was still looking for the money, how close had they come to Murray and Gemma?

Trent felt obliged to contact Steel. It would be the decent thing to do.

Trent procrastinated for an entire day before he finally made the call. He couldn't believe he was about to admit to a complete stranger that his recently deceased father might have been a thief. He paced back and forth between his lounge and kitchen, trying to establish the appropriate approach to Montgomery Steel. Finally, unable to procrastinate any longer, he carried the phone to his lounge room along with an unopened bottle of red wine. He'd refrain from pouring a glass until after the call. No doubt he'd need it then. Trent dialled the number.