An Easeful Death (30 page)

‘By the way, Mont,’ Wayne said. ‘I suppose it’s not important now, but for the record, I followed up on Justin’s hospital visit to Martin Sparrow.’

‘Shoot.’

‘It seems he has a thing going for Sparrow’s nurse—used Sparrow as an excuse for going to see her. That was the sole reason for his visit to the hospital.’

Monty glanced at Justin sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands.

‘Poor kid. It’s not been his day has it?’ Wayne added.

‘How did the re-enactment go?’

‘The dero said he recognised Baggly’s car. I thought it all seemed a bit far-fetched until now.’

‘How’s Stevie? Is she okay?’

‘I haven’t been able to reach her and I need to tell her something important. I had someone double-check Tye’s alibi and it turns out the mine supervisor was lying through his arse. Tye—’

A shot cracked out from Baggly’s room. ‘Oh God, no!’ Justin sprang from the sofa in a panic.

Monty’s stomach flipped. ‘I’ll ring you back.’ He slammed down the phone, grabbed Justin by the shoulders and pushed him towards the door. ‘Get the hell out of here. Go to the neighbour’s and wait there.’

The urgency of his tone had the desired effect; the boy bolted.

Monty found De Vakey standing in the doorway of Baggly’s bedroom, mouth open, hands outstretched as if he might still be able to stop what had already happened.

Baggly’s body lay sprawled on its back near an open chest of drawers, a pistol on the floor near his outstretched arm. It looked as if he’d already started his own autopsy, the single shot through the mouth having lifted the top of his skull like the lid of a hard-boiled egg. The frozen look of surprise on his face suggested that even he had not expected to make such a good clean job of it.

De Vakey stayed where he was, shaking his head from side to side like a man coming out of a trance. ‘The gun was in his top drawer, it happened so quickly...’

Monty felt for Baggly’s carotid pulse out of instinct and shook his head. He rocked back on his heels. The wound looked surgically neat, but the mess must have landed somewhere.

A shuddering sigh drew his attention back to De Vakey who was slowly sinking down the wall into a sitting position.

‘Oh Christ,’ Monty whispered, knowing the image of the gore-splattered profiler would stay with him for the rest of his life. He took De Vakey by the arms and pulled him to his feet. ‘You need to go to the bathroom and clean up,’ he said.

‘I should have stopped him,’ De Vakey gasped, pale with shock.

‘You couldn’t have stopped him, neither of us could. Now go and clean up. It’s obvious what happened here, we don’t need any more evidence.’

Monty turned away to find himself confronted by an equally disturbing sight. Justin was walking rigidly towards him up the hall with all the grace of a zombie.

‘Go wash up,’ Monty said to De Vakey before focusing his attention on Justin. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He looked at the boy and softened his voice. ‘I’m sorry, your father’s dead, son.’ Taking him by the arm, he guided him back into the living room.

‘It’s my fault, it’s my fault,’ Justin repeated over and over.

Monty sat next to him on the sofa, ready to hold him back if necessary. ‘I know this is a terrible shock for you,’ he began, ‘and it’s not over yet. I need to ask you some important questions. You have to clear your mind of this mess and answer me as best you can.’

Justin dropped his head in his hands. Monty took him by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. ‘Do you hear me, Justin?’

He took the choked sigh to indicate a yes and handed Justin his handkerchief. After allowing a few seconds for nose blowing, he took from his wallet a photo he’d found at Dot’s. ‘Do you know this man?’

Justin looked at the picture of Tye Davis for a moment, closed his eyes and nodded.

‘Who is he and how do you know him?’

‘Frank Dixon, he’s a friend of Dad’s. He sometimes comes over to the house. Sometimes Dad meets him at the old power station.’

Monty frowned ‘The power station?’

‘Dad has a key. The guy’s in demolition or something and was interested in looking around the building. Dad was hoping to get the council to contract Dixon into knocking it down once all the red tape has been cut through. He hates—hated—that power station.’

‘Can you tell me anything else about this Frank Dixon?’

Justin sniffed. ‘Dad used to act kind of funny when he came over, almost like he was scared of him. He had an old bomb of a car and sometimes Dad let him borrow his. Sometimes I had to let him use my van.’

‘When did you see him last?’

Justin was interrupted by De Vakey’s reappearance. ‘Phone call for you, Stevie’s mother.’ De Vakey handed Monty the phone and took his place on the sofa next to Justin. Monty stepped into the hallway.

‘Monty, is that you? You haven’t been answering your phone. Stevie’s was on the kitchen table and I got De Vakey’s number from it. I was hoping you’d be together.’ Dot spoke rapid fire, as if wanting to get the explanation over and done with.

‘Slow down, Dot. What’s the matter? Where’s Stevie?’

‘That’s the problem, I don’t know. I was asleep, she must have come home then gone out again, but she left her bag and phone behind. Her phone was switched off and the kitchen phone was off the hook. Tye came around earlier when she was out and said he’d return tomorrow. That’s all I remember. He’s trying to get custody of Izzy. Stevie didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to worry.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Monty’s hand flew to his forehead. ‘Listen Dot, everything’s going to be okay.’ He pressed the phone so tight to his ear it hurt. ‘You stay with Izzy. I’ll send an officer to keep you company. I think I know where Stevie is and I’ll bring her back home.’

‘You sound awfully worried, Monty. Are you sure everything’s all right?’

‘Of course it is, but look, I’ve got to go.’

He punched the off button and rang Wayne, explained the situation and requested a team be sent to Baggly’s and another to the power station.

After finishing with Wayne, he instructed De Vakey and Justin to stay in the house and wait for the police. The whisky bottle was empty and they’d started on the gin. De Vakey was lying sprawled across the sofa, in no better shape than Justin. Monty could only hope they’d both be coherent when the police arrived.

The word psychopath was once widely used, but these days sociopath is the preferred term. All serial killers are sociopaths, but not all sociopaths are serial killers or murderers. Their common ground is a complete lack of empathy for their victims. One needs only to look at some of the world’s top businessmen to see how this is true.

James L De Vakey, (PUV Press, Sydney, 2006).
‘One man’s best-selling account of the hunt for Australia’s most notorious multiple murderer.’

Stevie was staring at a map of the old British Empire, or so she thought as she willed her eyes to focus on the shapes in front of her. But when the fog of unconsciousness began to lift and the map of the world cleared, she found herself staring at a red brick and plaster wall, lying on her side on a concrete floor with her hands and feet bound with duct tape.

Oh God, let this be a nightmare. But nightmares took place in the dark and she was surrounded by light, light so bright it made the glare of the chipped plaster wall hurt her eyes. She became aware of loud male voices talking above the chesty vibrations of a generator, felt the bite of carbon fumes in her lungs. Rolling onto her other side to find the source, she found her view of the room partially blocked by a twisted hunk of metal. Through the gaps she could see the solid legs of a wooden table and three pairs of shuffling feet.

‘I can’t believe you got away with this, you’re a fucking genius!’ The voice was familiar and deep, one of the creeps who’d tossed Monty’s flat—the older one, Keyes was it?

‘Told you you could count on me, didn’t I?’

Her flesh crawled at the sound of the second man’s voice. Smooth and controlled to a casual listener, only she could tell by the slight inflection how close Tye was to snapping.

‘Beauty, let’s have a look.’ The third voice belonged to Thrummel, the younger partner. What the hell was going on? Some kind of racket, no doubt, but how she’d ended up stuck in the middle of it she had no idea. For a moment, curiosity overcame her fear. She managed to twist herself up into a sitting position so she could peer through a higher gap.

She watched, hardly daring to breathe, and saw Thrummel dig his hands into a plastic holdall on the table, and lift them, letting the contents fall through his fingers. The generator muted the clunking of the nuggets but the light spearing from the cascading gold was unmistakable and flashed rapaciously in the eyes of all three men.

‘I’ve never seen so much gold,’ Thrummel said in awe.

‘It’s yours. Keep your mouths shut and there’ll be more in another couple of months.’

‘But how—’ Thrummel began.

Keyes cut him off, ‘Shut it, Thrummel. We don’t want to know, okay?’ Then he turned to Tye. ‘No more killings, there’s been enough killings. I hope you’ve put that Hooper chick out of your mind now, you were pushing the envelope there.’

Stevie drew a silent breath. No, this couldn’t be. Tye wasn’t behind the killings, he had an alibi, she was hearing this wrong. Tye was a lot of things, gold thief, obviously, but not a murderer. She screwed up her eyes, attempting to block the thought:
the father of my child is not a murderer.

Tye smiled. ‘Laid to rest, mate. Just a temporary moment of insanity.’

‘Yeah well, it’s too bad those others had to get knocked off before you came to your senses.’

‘The Birkby woman had to be silenced, you know that, she was about to pull the carpet right from under us,’ Tye said. ‘Hell, you bitched enough about the interrogation she put you through, the non stop hassling, the phone calls day and night.’

‘Yeah, but that other one, what was that about? She was just an innocent girl. I don’t mind doing your dirty work, that’s the deal, but I draw the line at unnecessary killing.’

‘Okay, mate, what’s done is done,’ Thrummel said. ‘Let’s just take the gold, see the fence and get what’s coming to us.’

The fearful realisation dawned on Stevie that they were leaving, that she would soon be alone with Tye. She heard the chalky sound of feet shuffling on a concrete floor as the men repacked the bag, a cough, the splat of a spit gob when they’d finished. She tried to cry out to them, but the generator swallowed the feeble sounds she managed to push through the duct tape.
Please don’t go, please
, she silently pleaded. With at least one unwilling participant in the room there was still a glimmer of hope she would hang onto her life. Through eyes stinging with tears she saw Tye lead the two men to the heavy wooden door and unlock it for them.

‘Oh, one more thing.’ Thrummel put his hand out to Tye. ‘You haven’t forgotten have you?’

‘The perks of the job? No worries, mate, of course not.’ Tye reached into his pocket and handed Thrummel a small silver packet.

‘Jesus Christ, Tye,’ Keyes complained. ‘He’s strung like piano wire as it is, he doesn’t need any more of the stuff.’

‘Just adds to the thrill factor, eh Thrummel?’ Tye nudged a grinning Thrummel in the ribs.

Keyes muttered something Stevie couldn’t hear. Tye called him an old woman and laughed.

He was laughing when he locked the door behind them, still laughing when he grabbed her by the ankles and slid her from behind the hunk of machinery. She closed her eyes and tried to will her breathing to calm down.

‘I know you’re awake, you’re shaking.’ He gave an amused snort. ‘You playing possum on me, Stevie?’

Rough hands flipped her onto her back and pulled her into a sitting position against the wall. The tape was ripped from her face with the sting of an exfoliation she didn’t need. He clasped her shoulders and peered intently into her face for a moment.

And then he began to hum.

That song again.

He was mad
, she thought,
he had to be: mad or frighteningly sane.

He paused. ‘Our song, remember? Who’d have believed that rough, tough, Stevie Hooper was such an incurable romantic?’ The hum turned into words. He placed his mouth to her ear. ‘
You must remember this
...’ The warmth of his breath on her skin had once caused tingles of desire. Now all she could feel was rippling shivers of fear. He pinched her earlobe between his teeth.

She gasped.

He pulled back to assess her reaction. Determined not to give him one, she tried to keep her face blank, though she couldn’t help the skittering of her eyes as she searched for a way of escape.

He grabbed her face in one hand and squeezed her cheeks. ‘C’mon baby, you love it rough, you know you do, tell me you love it, tell me!’

She resisted the urge to bite him on the hand. Now was not the time. She had to be patient, her life depended on it.

She pushed the words through his hands, ‘Okay, I fucking love it.’

‘Hmm...’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘You’ll be saying it for real soon. You’ll be begging for me.’ He appeared to be in deep thought. Humming softly to himself, he continued to stare unnervingly at her, his mouth curving with the play of a smile.

She took in her surroundings and tried to block out the sound of his humming, to think past her fear. She was in a cavernous, windowless room with heavy double doors in the centre of one wall. Another twisted hunk of metal, similar to the one she’d been stowed behind, grew from the floor nearby. Grainy shapes of other metal objects were lost in the shadows beyond. A theatrical spotlight, powered by a lurching generator and wired to one of the roof girders, bathed them in bright light as if they were the stars of the show. Near the generator stood a table laden with cardboard boxes and bits and pieces of hardware.

At last she managed to steady her gaze and focus on the tip of Tye’s nose. ‘Where am I?’