An Easeful Death (3 page)

‘Michelle, what a pleasant surprise,’ he said, showing no pleasure at all. Tracking him through the rain and sacrificing an expensive coiffure was a sign of desperation for a woman like Michelle. He’d give her five minutes.

‘You obviously need to talk, though why you couldn’t ring for an appointment beats me.’ He took her elbow and guided her towards a cluster of potted ferns in the corner of the hotel lobby.

‘I should have known I’d find you in a hotel.’ She glanced at her image in the gilt-framed mirror on the wall and her look of scorn turned into a scowl as she attempted to fluff her hair.

Monty raised his eyebrows. ‘Haven’t I already warned you tonight about the folly of making assumptions?’

Her hand dropped. She faced him head on. ‘You made a fool of me at the press conference.’

‘I merely beat you to the punch.’

‘Someone has to speak in the public’s best interest. People are getting hysterical, Monty. Perth hasn’t been so traumatised since the Birney murders. The public want answers. They want to know that they can trust their safety to the police, that the killer will be caught.’

‘Rekindling public hysteria over the Kings Park murders isn’t going to help us catch this killer.’

With a soft smile and a hand on his arm she tried a different tack. ‘Come on, loosen up. You and I both know there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. I’m onto something, Monty, I’m nearly there, with just a little help from you—’

‘What are you onto? I’m in no mood for game playing.’

She dropped her hand and hardened her tone. ‘What I’ve discovered will stir up an ants’ nest for the police, but given the right incentive, I might be able to carry out the necessary damage control.’

‘And what might that incentive be?’

‘To-the-minute updates on the case.’

‘You get that anyway.’

‘Don’t give me that crap!’

‘Michelle, you know we have to be careful about the information we give out. We can’t warn the killer we’re onto him.’

And that wasn’t the only reason
, Monty thought. Once, in happier times and in a private moment, he’d speculated with her about the rumours he’d heard about the KP murders, only to find a distorted version of his words staring back at him from the paper the next morning. She must have waited for him to fall asleep before emailing the pressroom.

‘That old cliché?’ she said. ‘You know damn well they use it as a cover-up for their own corruption, incompetence at the very least. You hinted as much the last time.’

‘Okay, okay, maybe in the past, but with a new team...’

‘For God’s sake pull your head out of the sand, Monty. You still have the same moronic porker at the top of the pile!’

‘Things are different now.’

Her gaze fell to his feet, she gave an unladylike snort. ‘And I see you still have that same old pilot’s briefcase. I’m surprised you never threw it away, but I suppose if the catch still works, why bother—you were always a believer in function, not form.’

Michelle bent at the knees and flicked the catch. Monty watched her hand creep to the file he’d prepared for De Vakey, allowing her to get as far as caressing the edge with her fingertips.

‘What’s this about?’ she said, licking her lips like a lioness eyeing an antelope. His hand clamped around her wrist. She yelped. Heads turned in the lobby.

Michelle hissed her breath through her teeth. ‘Get your hands off me.’

A suited gentleman he presumed to be the hotel manager approached. Monty rose to his feet, pulling Michelle up with him and flicked his ID at the man. ‘Police,’ he said. ‘Please call security and have them escort this lady from the hotel. She’s a known troublemaker.’

Michelle’s eyes widened and Monty waited for the explosion. She didn’t disappoint. Whirling to face the manager she said, ‘That’s a pack of lies! You saw him, didn’t you? You saw what he did?’

The manager put a hand lightly on her arm and said something in a placatory tone before turning to Monty with a look of helplessness.

Monty shrugged and picked up his briefcase. ‘She’s your problem now, mate.’ He gave Michelle a calculated wink and turned in the direction of the hotel lounge.

***

Stevie seemed to be the only one in the lounge who noticed the ruckus coming from the lobby, and even to her it was no more than a minor rip in a tranquil sea. A woman’s agitated voice, gruff masculine tones, then Monty’s silhouette in the entrance. As he scanned the tables, the air around him was soothed by the gentle strains of Gershwin from the baby grand in the corner.

‘Inspector McGuire?’ De Vakey queried.

Stevie nodded and let out a silent sigh of relief. Waiting with the profiler had been awkward. She’d had just about enough of De Vakey’s penetrating gaze and invasive questioning for one night—now it was Monty’s turn.

Monty ordered from the bar then ambled over to join them. She made the introductions and they exchanged small talk until his drinks arrived: a beer and a tomato juice. He fumbled around in the pockets of his suit coat for a plastic bag of dried chilli and added a generous pinch to his Virgin Mary. He didn’t touch the beer.

De Vakey gave Monty a subtle nod of understanding, reinforcing Stevie’s earlier impression that there was a lot more to the man than a handsome face and a Geelong Grammar accent. Monty liked to practise his self-control—so what. But what else had De Vakey picked up on? She found her foot tapping a rhythm totally unrelated to the melody from the piano and had to force herself to stop.

‘Has DS Hooper filled you in on the details, Sir?’ Monty asked.

‘Please, call me James. I’m a civilian consultant, not a policeman. Let’s dispense with the formalities.’

‘Suits me,’ Monty said. He removed the file from his briefcase and glanced around the lounge as he did so, ready to keep it from prying eyes if necessary. ‘It’s all here,’ he said, sliding it across the table to De Vakey. ‘Bar a few test results we’re still waiting on.’

De Vakey flicked through the autopsy photographs as if looking at pictures from the
Woman’s Weekly
. ‘I’m going to have to keep these for a while. I’ll need time to study them.’

Monty leaned to the side and picked up a plastic bag by his seat. ‘I’d like you to look at these, too. They’re videotapes of the witness interviews. I’ve had an office at Central cleared for you and set up a TV and VCR.’

‘I plan on working in my hotel room,’ De Vakey said. ‘I’ll have the management install a VCR. I don’t want any distractions. I have to have quiet and plenty of time to think. He gestured to them both. ‘Have either of you worked with a criminal profiler before?’

Stevie said, ‘No, but I think most of our team have read your books. We know what you’re about.’

‘And we know about your research at Quantico,’ Monty added. ‘We’re going to need an accurate profile of this offender if we’re going to get him. This case is like nothing I’ve ever come across before.’ He let his hands drop in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It has me baffled.’

‘Well, I’m glad you called me in,’ De Vakey said.

Stevie wondered if De Vakey had any idea of the amount of red tape Monty had to cut through to get him here.

‘I’d imagine your more conservative colleagues would have baulked at the idea,’ De Vakey said.

He was a mind-reader too; she’d already guessed as much.

‘Criminal profiling is an art more than a science, some even see it as psychic quackery, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s not how I see it,’ Monty said. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of cases from the States that have been solved with the help of a profiler, and I know the Victorian police often use your services. I want this creep caught. I don’t care how unconventional your methods are, just so long as you help us get the bastard.’

‘I’m glad I have your confidence.’ De Vakey drained his glass and signalled the waitress for another. ‘Now,’ he rubbed his hands together, ‘I’ve heard Stevie’s account, let me hear yours.’

Monty tapped at the file with his finger. ‘It’s all here.’

‘Humour me,’ De Vakey said with the flash of a smile.

‘The body was discovered outside the bank by a security guard at six-thirty am, just as it was getting light.’

Stevie smiled to herself. Monty wouldn’t be getting away that easily.

The profiler held up his hand to prove her right. ‘I don’t want a standard police report. I want to hear it from your point of view and your point of view only. It helps me to put your account into the right perspective. Where were you when you heard the news?’

Monty shifted in his chair. ‘I was in bed.’

‘Were you sound asleep? Were you with someone or were you alone? Drinking a cup of tea, watching the early morning news?’ De Vakey asked.

Monty glanced at Stevie. Under the table she pressed the toe of her shoe into his shin. Hard. She hadn’t been able to wriggle out of it, and neither would he.

Monty sucked in a breath. ‘I was alone. I’d had a bad night. I was semi-awake when the phone rang. I was glad to have something to get out of bed for. I had no idea what the day had in store for me. All Central said was that a body had been discovered at the bank. I rang Stevie and we arrived at the same time.’

‘What did you see when you first arrived?’

‘Some uniforms were already at the scene. I was pleased to see that they’d taped off a wide area; there was already a crowd of early morning gawkers gathering around. I told the cop to call for reinforcements. I didn’t want any of the general public seeing the body, though I’m sure several already had.’ He grimaced. ‘It was hard to hide.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘The cop took us over to the body.’

‘Describe it. Tell me how you felt when you saw it,’ De Vakey coaxed, his voice soft and low, his deep grey eyes fixed steadily on Monty’s. The ability to extract information was a talent as rare and as specific as water divination. In the hands of a gifted interrogator such as De Vakey, the average witness gushed. Wise to the craft, Stevie and Monty were hardly your average witnesses, but she could see the technique working on Monty.

He took a slug of tomato juice and cooled it with a deep breath. ‘For a split second I didn’t think she was real. I thought she was a statue, kids playing a prank, maybe. When I looked at her face though, I realised that she was very real and very, very dead.’

Stevie had told De Vakey something similar, although she’d managed to hold back mentioning the dizziness, the urge to spew, then to cry—that in the flash of those first few seconds she’d seen her own dead face staring back at her.

‘More,’ De Vakey said to Monty.

‘She was sitting on the stone bench, directly outside and to the left of the bank’s front entrance. She was naked, her body was hairless and she’d been sprayed with bronze paint. She was posed in a provocative manner with her legs open, her chin resting in her hand and her elbow on the stone table in front of her. I think the intention was to make her look like she was some kind of nude supermodel or a mannequin even.’

Stevie’s foot recommenced its frenzied tapping. They were cops for God’s sake; the protective barriers they’d learned to erect were the only things that kept them on the job, and here this man was, pulling them all down. She forced herself to remain rigid in her chair. Her tights had twisted at her waist and were cutting into her thigh, but she couldn’t adjust them without squirming obscenely.

Monty wasn’t faring any better, unless it was the chilli making him sweat. He swiped his brow with a table napkin, reached for his cigarettes and offered one to Stevie. De Vakey declined.

Monty lit up, blew out smoke and leaned back in his chair until it creaked. Somewhere between the press conference and now, a greasy stain had materialised on his tie. ‘That’s about it,’ he said.

De Vakey looked from one of them to the other, deliberating, assessing, contemplating.

Stevie took a drag on her cigarette, determined to turn the conversation back to the bricks-and-mortar evidence. ‘Oh, there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘There was some writing down the side of her leg.’

‘Is it detailed here?’ De Vakey tapped the notes.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll read about it later. At this stage I’m more interested in your gut reactions than the concrete evidence.’ He held the champagne flute between his long sensuous fingers and took a sip. ‘I’m sorry to have to put you both through this again. You see, I not only have to understand the killer, but I have to understand the team sent out to catch him. You are understaffed, morale is low, you are already under extreme pressure from the press.’

‘You must have heard my ex in the lobby,’ Monty said, deciding to lighten the tone. ‘She writes a weekly column for our local rag called “Watching Big Brother”—meaning the police. The name says it all. She’s on a moral crusade—“To keep the bastards honest”—he drew quote marks in the air. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that of course, it’s just her timing that’s so lousy.’

‘How awkward for you,’ De Vakey said before draining his champagne with one swallow. ‘But jet lag’s catching up. I’d better get to bed and do some reading.’ He tapped at the file before pushing himself up from the table.

‘Pleasant dreams,’ Monty said, causing De Vakey to raise an ironic eyebrow.

Stevie climbed to her feet in anticipation of leaving, but flopped back down again when the men embarked on a series of extended goodnights. She reached for her phone; she’d let Dot know she’d be sleeping in her spare room, so at least Izzy would wake in the morning to find her there. She wouldn’t be able to walk her daughter to kindy because of the early briefing at Central, but maybe she’d make the special parents’ assembly later in the morning.

Monty shook the profiler’s hand. ‘I expect you’ll want to examine the scene tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Give Stevie a ring when you’re ready. She’ll pick you up and take you there.’

De Vakey nodded. ‘That’s fine, I should be ready mid morning.’

Stevie almost punched the speed dial button through the guts of her mobile. Behind the profiler’s back she glared at Monty and mouthed ‘How dare you!’