An Easeful Death (20 page)

He was distracted, and so was she, by the warmth of his minty breath on her cheek. Peering closely at the back of her head he said, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t got a couple of black eyes from that. It was a nasty blow.’

Stevie pushed her hand against his shoulder, enjoying the feel of his soft jumper under her fingers. ‘Stop fussing, James, I only needed ten stitches. Jeez, you and Monty are worse than my mother. Thanks for the flowers, they’re beautiful.’

De Vakey put his flowers on the windowsill where they dwarfed Monty’s, then took out a handkerchief and wiped the cigarette ash from her tray table. Glancing at the oxygen outlet above her head, he said, ‘You really shouldn’t be smoking in here.’

She took a final drag and handed the butt to Monty to flush down the ensuite toilet.

De Vakey settled into a chair and crossed his long legs. ‘I’m so glad you’re all right,’ he said softly.

She felt the heat rise to her face.

‘So, what’s your opinion about last night?’ Monty asked brusquely.

De Vakey thought for a moment and looked at Monty. ‘I don’t think the person who murdered Birkby and Royce attacked Stevie and Sparrow.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The method for one: our serial killer is meticulous and he doesn’t like blood and gore. The MO in the Birkby flat couldn’t be more different—the place looked like a slaughterhouse. That Sparrow came out alive after such savagery is nothing short of a miracle. There was real hatred in this attack. Our Poser, on the other hand, kills with an almost warped reverence for the victim, taking his time and savouring the moment.’

‘Wayne said the evidence suggested the assailant tried to clean up,’ Monty said.

‘A towel was taken from the bathroom and used to wipe away bloody footprints, yes.’

‘Was he successful?’

‘You mean were
they
successful.’

‘What? There were two of them?’ Monty exclaimed.

‘SOCO found two different tread patterns. They were hazy and smudged, not good enough to make reliable comparisons, but clear enough to see that they were from two different pairs of shoes.’

Monty leaned back in his chair. ‘Wayne didn’t mention that. Well I’ll be...’

‘I only found out on my way to the hospital.’

Stevie joined in the conversation. ‘For those few moments in the apartment, before I was attacked, I was absolutely sure Sparrow was our unsub, that he’d been wanking in the cupboard, reliving the Birkby murder.’

‘Wayne told me there was no sign of seminal fluid in the cupboard or on him,’ Monty said. ‘And he’d hardly be capable of hitting himself and you over the head while he was handcuffed. You never caught a glimpse of the guys who attacked you?’

Stevie shook her head and immediately regretted it now that the cushioning effect of the drugs was wearing off. ‘I had my back to the door. I think Sparrow saw them though.’

‘A fat lot of good that is at the moment,’ Monty said.

‘I got a brief look at the documents: some of them looked like copies of police files.’

‘Could they be the pages of Reece Harper’s missing alibi?’ Monty asked. ‘They were indexed in the original notes but I couldn’t find any sign of them.’

‘I don’t know, but whatever they were I’m pretty sure they were only copies. There must have been something important in them. First the files from your flat, Mont, now these. Someone really doesn’t want us to find something.’

Monty seemed to be considering what this could mean when De Vakey said, ‘Your Inspector Baggly seems to think that Sparrow is our Poser killer, that the attack on him and Stevie was merely a crime of opportunity committed by a couple of passing criminals.’

Monty snorted. ‘A couple of passing criminals, my arse. For a start, how would they get into that place? Shimmy five storeys up the outside wall? And I can’t see what a couple of passing criminals would want with a safe full of documents. Nothing else in the apartment was touched. Baggly’s hiding something, I know it. If you ask me it’s more likely to be a couple of passing cops.’

Stevie couldn’t have agreed more. It had to be Keyes and Thrummel—but how to prove it?

De Vakey frowned, looked at his hands and hesitated for a moment before saying, ‘I can see the problems you would have with a man like Baggly.’

He looked as if he was about to say something else. They waited expectantly. When nothing further was added, Monty threw his hands into the air. ‘Funny,’ he said, ‘how this is giving me a strange feeling of déjà vu.’

***

Although he was still unconscious, Sparrow’s condition had stabilised enough for him to be moved from the open ward of the ICU to a single room. Monty gave the police guard a gruff nod, producing the desired withering effect. The young constable made no effort to stop him.

A nurse was punching numbers into a machine attached to the patient by several drip lines. When she saw Monty, she smiled and looked down at the unconscious man.

‘It seems you have another visitor, Mr Sparrow, aren’t you the popular one?’

A toilet flushed. ‘Hey, Inspector.’ Justin Baggly stepped out from the small bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans, a shy smile on his face.

‘Justin, what the hell are you doing here?’ Monty demanded.

The smile disappeared. ‘Billy at the door said it would be okay. Martin and I are mates. I wanted to see how he was doing.’

‘Well, now you’ve seen. He’s under police guard, that means no non-police visitors, including you,’ Monty said. Justin couldn’t help being Baggly’s son, but right now he didn’t feel up to being polite to any member of the Baggly family.

‘Um, with all due respect, Inspector, neither should you.’

Well, maybe the kid was developing some guts after all. ‘You got me there.’ Monty sighed. ‘Okay, tell me about Martin Sparrow and your deep, meaningful friendship.’

Justin glanced at the young nurse then back to Monty and stammered, ‘I, I wouldn’t exactly say we were good mates but, you know I often go to Central at night to work on my assignments in the library and ... well ... um, we sometimes bump into each other and have a few words. He always wanted to join the police service but was turned down because of his albinism. Apart from his sensitive skin, his eyesight’s really bad. He reckons he’s going blind.’

‘Does he seem bitter about this?’

‘I don’t know. Our conversations have always been pretty superficial.’

‘Then I don’t think you really qualify as a mate, do you? Clear off.’

When the door had closed, the nurse looked at Monty and smiled, not at all intimidated by his brusque treatment of Justin. He squinted at her name badge. ‘Were you here when Justin came in, Ms McCarthy?’ She was a pretty young woman in her early twenties, with an hourglass figure and eyes as soft and green as moss.

‘Yes I was,’ she said, smiling as her gaze drifted from his shoes to the top of his head. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or alarmed by the fact that a girl almost young enough to be his daughter was eyeing him off.

‘He was only here for about ten minutes. Between you and me, I think it was me he’d come to see, not poor Mr Sparrow.’

Monty frowned. ‘You know Justin?’

‘From uni. Sometimes we go out.’

‘He’s your boyfriend?’

‘Well, not exactly.’ The way she stretched out the syllables suggested a relationship that Justin might be working towards but one that she had not yet made her mind up about.

‘I asked him in. The policeman at the door didn’t seem to mind. I hope I haven’t got either of them into trouble.’

That was a good enough explanation for Justin’s presence, Monty supposed, but what was the boy doing in the hospital in the first place? He’d have to get Wayne to make some discreet enquiries.

Monty turned his attention to the reason for his own visit. Martin Sparrow looked like something Mary Shelley might have dreamed up. Like a cocktail onion on a toothpick, his head seemed too large for his skinny neck. Even if he had been conscious, Monty doubted he would have had the strength to lift it from the pillow. No longer pale, his skin was a palette of blues, purples and reds, divided by lines of stitches. Dried blood had spiked his sparse hair into a thorny crown and his thin arms were extended with the palms facing outwards, as if to show stigmata.

The nurse broke into his thoughts. ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me why he dropped out, could you?’

Monty tore his eyes away from the unconscious man. Nurse McCarthy must have seen by his expression that he had no idea what she was talking about. She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I think I might have let the cat out of the bag,’ she said with a self-conscious giggle. ‘Justin hasn’t told you about dropping out of uni?’

Nor his father
, Monty thought. ‘When was this?’ he asked.

‘A few weeks ago. He failed the psych test for the academy apparently.’

Then the last assignment Justin was working on must have been a sham.
Why
, he wondered.
Too ashamed to tell his father?
He stored the question away for further musings and nodded to Sparrow on the bed. ‘Do they have any idea when or if he might wake up?’

‘So far the intra-cranial pressure hasn’t been bad enough to operate. They think the extra fluid might get re-absorbed naturally by the body. Hopefully he’ll be waking up in a couple of days.’

He gave the nurse his card. ‘If his condition changes, please call me.’

On his way out he spoke in a low voice to the constable guarding the door. ‘Don’t let anyone in who isn’t police or family. Not even Justin Baggly.’ He took a few steps down the corridor then backtracked. ‘Especially not Justin Baggly.’

The ability of the serial killer to manipulate friends, family and associates must never be underestimated.

De Vakey,
The Pursuit of Evil

With a strange feeling of liberation, Monty shed his best jeans and button-down shirt, exchanging them for some old clothes he’d not worn since Dot moved from the station.

He pulled himself into the torn, faded Levis and sucked in his stomach, pleased to see he could still do the button up, and even more pleased when it didn’t pop off when he breathed out. His polo shirt had faded to the same Kimberley red as his hair and the old army jacket could easily have belonged to a man down on his luck. But he shouldn’t have shaved this morning, he thought, as he rubbed his chin and stared into the full-length mirror. It had been a long time since he’d worked undercover and as he turned away from the mirror his heart thrummed in his chest, powered by the adrenaline rush that in the past had always accompanied the thrill of sanctioned deception.

Only this time, the deception wasn’t sanctioned.

He took the Great Eastern Highway out of the city, a right turn and then a left. Soon car dealerships and fancy offices gave way to small leafy holdings fortified with brick walls to muffle the traffic noise. The traffic thinned as the road wound its way into the blue eucalyptus haze he’d so often stared at with longing from the carbon-coated windows of Perth Central.

At last he found himself on the road he wanted. He slowed down so he could read the signs on the gates of the passing properties until he reached Pete and Gloria’s ‘Roses By Any Name’ nursery. Open seven days a week 9 to 5.

He drove through the open gateway and down the gentle gradient of a contoured valley. The road followed the path of a landscaped stream until it passed over a humpback bridge with wooden railings and an artificial pond where orange koi lolled.

Monty parked in the almost deserted car park beyond the pond, inhaling the damp earthy smells as he climbed out of his Land Rover. Above his head a cloud of black cockatoos whirled, squawking out the bushman’s herald of rain. He saw no sign of it in the azure sky, although the clouds looked as though they’d been whipped into frenzied slashes and streaks by a giant egg whisk. A cold wind made the sides of his army jacket flap and bit through the worn fabric of his jeans. He zipped up his jacket, plunged his hands into the pockets and began to explore.

Up ahead was a narrow rammed-earth building and a variety of squeaking advertising signs on frames, one of them saying ‘open.’ The verandah was crowded with terracotta pots and hanging baskets of early-blooming bulbs. A blackboard declaring today’s special of scones, jam and cream was nailed to one side of the front door. The lights were on inside, but Monty decided to try his luck at the nursery first.

Slippery wooden planks divided the strips of rose beds, each spiked with an identifying label. Soon he heard the sound of digging. He followed it, leaving the garden beds behind until he found himself standing among a collection of long tables holding pots of small roses with shivering price tags.

‘Can I help you, mate?’

Monty pivoted, looking for the person behind the voice. His gaze settled on a hole in the ground and the protruding head and shoulders of a man who appeared to be covered with mud.

‘I’ve been looking for the damned solenoid,’ the man in the hole said by way of explanation. ‘The reticulation plan of this place is cactus; it’s just as well we don’t need to water at the moment.’ His tone was friendly enough, but the lines that cut through his muddy face like erosion cracks suggested it wouldn’t take much for him to turn.

‘Um, I’m looking for a rose to take to a friend who’s in hospital. I can’t find any with flowers on ’em.’

The man chuckled and hauled himself out of his hole.

A fit-looking fifty, he was of average height and build, wearing a muddied windcheater, shorts and work boots. With his greying goatee beard and a receding V-shaped hairline, he looked as if he was emerging from the underworld.

‘This is the wrong time of the year to be buying roses in bloom, mate, though we do sell cut flowers in the gift shop. Maybe you should look there.’

Monty ran his tongue around the edge of his lip. ‘Yes, sure, thanks,’ but he didn’t move. His gaze dropped to his trainers. He’d taken the laces out before he’d left home and without socks they were beginning to feel scratchy and uncomfortable.