Take Out (20 page)

She nodded.

‘It’s quite possible he stayed clean for a couple of years,’ Col said, ‘until he was headhunted by an Asian human-trafficking syndicate looking for Australian-based middlemen.’

‘So we have an Asian mob recruiting Australians and Romanians?’ Stevie queried. ‘I thought these gangs stuck with their own kind?’

‘They have in the past; this is a new development,’ Monty said. Stevie sensed from his animated expression that this was in the paper he was writing. ‘If there are two or three cultures to contend with, it makes it harder for us to understand how they’re working. It’s happening in the UK now, with Lithuanians, Chinese and Albanians working together. The Lithuanians bring the girls in and sell them to the Albanians who set the brothels up. The Chinese organise the affiliated drug shipments. This is huge business. According to estimates by UNIFEM, the numbers of women and children trafficked in South-East Asia could be around 225,000 out of a global figure of over 700,000 annually.’

‘Good God,’ Stevie said. ‘And the powers that be think that little old Perth can stay clear of this? Or are they just ignoring the situation over here?’

Monty and Col exchanged glances. ‘Not if we can help it,’ Monty said.

‘Are the girls always kept locked up?’ Stevie asked.

‘Not necessarily,’ Col said. ‘Often psychological control and threats to harm loved ones are enough. The more difficult girls are forcibly hooked on drugs and controlled that way.’

‘Pavel had a prison-like room at the top of his house,’ said Stevie.

Col nodded. ‘Pavel had all the necessary skills and experience and was obviously ready and eager to oblige in any way he could. Perhaps he found life in Perth too dreary and missed the action, could be he just needed the money. He was put in touch with a couple who ran the WA side of the operation, a mother and son team.’

Monty raised his eyebrows. ‘You never mentioned them before.’

‘We don’t know much about them. The woman was originally called Jennifer Granger. She was the daughter of an Australian diplomat who worked at our embassy in Bangkok. She was snatched as a thirteen-year-old when she was out shopping at the local markets with one of the embassy maids.’

‘I think I remember reading about it—early seventies, right?’ Monty asked.

‘Correct. There was a huge furore, an international search, but she never resurfaced and was presumed dead. Years later she was identified through fingerprints as the Mamasan of a Thai brothel where a large stash of heroin was found. By then she was a powerful underworld identity. She escaped prosecution by bribing and threatening the arresting officers. Like Pavel she got hold of false papers and sought sanctuary in Australia. She came into the country under the name of Marion Godwin, though she’d have changed it since. As in Bangkok, her fingerprints were lifted from a Kings Cross brothel during a drug bust a couple of years back. No one the police questioned at the time admitted to having seen or known anything about an Australian Mamasan. She slipped away again and is believed to be in Perth.’

‘How old would Granger be now?’ Stevie asked, already doing the maths.

‘Fifty-one—I have a graphic artist working on it. The last photo we have is of her as a thirteen-year-old, just before she was snatched. The artist is putting together a picture using a computer program that’ll give us an idea of how she might have aged. It might take some time though—we have to dig up photos of her parents too and merge them with the last known photos of her as a child.’

Stevie glanced at Monty. Like her, he was probably dwelling on the hell the parents went through.

Col must have read it in their faces. ‘Jennifer’s parents split up a year after she went missing, both blaming the other for what happened. The father eventually committed suicide and the mother died of natural causes about five years ago in Sydney. We think Jennifer was back in Australia by then, though she never made contact with her mother. She is now believed to be an important player in the people-trafficking syndicate that recruited Pavel. Like many groups of this type they have other interests too...’

‘The big four: guns, girls, gambling and ganja,’ Monty said.

‘Not heroin?’ Stevie said.

‘The works; ganja just makes for better alliteration.’

Stevie flicked her eyes toward the ceiling.

‘But despite her various makeovers,’ Col continued, ‘Granger was getting too well known in Thailand to travel backwards and forwards, so she employed Pavel to go on her shopping trips for her.’

‘And once Pavel was established within the organisation, he recruited Ralph Hardegan?’ Stevie asked.

‘That’s what it looks like. Through their businesses they got to know each other. I guess Pavel must have figured Hardegan as a like-minded kind of guy.’

‘A sociopath.’

‘Could be. With their newly formed partnership, they had all the reason in the world to make frequent business trips to Thailand and procure girls for Australian brothels.’

‘“Fresh’n’Tasty,”’ Monty said, dryly.

‘What about Granger’s son?’ Stevie asked. ‘What do we have on him?’

‘He’s Eurasian, goes by the name of The Crow, but we don’t know much about him.’ Col paused, ran his tongue over his lips. ‘Other than that he enjoys burning people alive.’

Monty shifted in his bed and reached for Stevie’s hand. ‘Nice guy.’

‘We suspect the pair are probably running some kind of legitimate business in the Perth area, lying low and reaping the rewards while others do the dirty work for them,’ Col said.

Monty thought for a moment. ‘The Crow, as in “blackbirder?”’ he asked Col.

‘Top of the form, Mont.’

Stevie raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘It’s what the old-time slavers used to be called,’ Monty explained, shifting further up his pillows, but still clinging tightly to her hand. ‘Now, they call ’em snakeheads.’

Stevie knew the term. She turned to Col. ‘And you think this mother and son team murdered the Pavels as well as Ralph Hardegan?’

Col paused for thought. ‘Jon Pavel’s body still hasn’t been found, has it?’

Stevie shook her head.

‘He’s probably copped it too, then. If those two guys were trying to pull a swifty over Mamasan and The Crow, I doubt they’d get away with their lives, they were taken out I reckon. You should hear some of the stories about them from Bangkok. Mamasan is utterly ruthless, and as for her son, well...’

Stevie looked from one to the other of the men. Col seemed to be waiting for some kind of reaction from her. Monty fiddled with a button on his pyjama jacket. His silence suggested he was trying to think up a tactful way of saying something she might not want to hear.

‘So, that’s my warning?’ she said after a pause. ‘You think this Jennifer Granger might have been behind our attempted murder?’

Col nodded. ‘Quite possibly.’

‘Stevie, I want you to stay at your mother’s tonight,’ Monty said.

The gentle tone didn’t work. Stevie felt herself flush with irritation. ‘Oh come off it. I just happened to be with Fowler at the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the investigating officers don’t even know of my involvement in the case, not to mention the possible offenders—not once have I given my name to anyone I’ve spoken to.’

Monty’s voice rose. ‘Stevie, it’s not only about you. There’s Izzy’s safety too—’

The beep of the monitor cut off his words, the squiggly green line jumping into a frenzy of jagged movement. Monty groaned and collapsed back onto his pillows.

Stevie’s heart almost stopped too. She jumped to her feet and shook Monty by the shoulder, crying desperately, ‘Monty, what is it, what’s the matter?’

‘Christ, where’s the nurse?’ Col yelled.

It was over within a few seconds, the heart monitor once more showing a regular pattern of beats by the time the nurse rushed into the room.

‘Is the machine playing up again, Mr McGuire?’ the nurse asked.

Monty casually opened one eye. ‘Guess it must be.’ (Image 20.1)

The evening was damp and breezy. Stevie buttoned up her denim jacket and trudged toward her car at the farthest end of the hospital carpark, towards the railway track. Considering how packed the carparks were, there were surprisingly few people about. The lights of the hospital dimmed as she left them behind, the occasional street lamp impotent in the grainy light of dusk. Several years ago a series of attacks on hospital staff had prompted increased security patrols, but she’d seen no sign of them so far this evening.

As she walked, she thought back to the conversation with Col and Monty. Col thought that the Pavels had been the victims of some kind of gangland revenge killing, something to do with their involvement in a people-trafficking racket. It seemed her suspicions about an internal power struggle had been close, but on a much larger scale than any she had imagined.

Col had continued to fill her in once Monty’s malfunctioning machine had been seen to. The organisation sounded huge, efficient and structured like a business with primary producers, retailers, suppliers and middlemen. The various hierarchical levels weren’t arranged in a logical pattern though, but via a confusing maze of passageways and dead ends, with members linked to those immediately below and above them on a need-to-know basis only. It was unlikely that even Mamasan and The Crow would know who was at the very heart of the labyrinth.

How could their under-resourced authorities cope with something like that, she wondered as she wound her way through the obstacle course of parked cars. How could
she
cope?

And Monty seemed to think that now the Feds were involved, she could simply step back and withdraw. He obviously didn’t know her as well as he liked to think he did; didn’t know that the only way she could shake this overwhelming feeling of helplessness was to fight it. First the baby and now Skye; she couldn’t just get up and leave now even if she wanted to.

Sorry, Mont.

Her first task was to discover the truth behind Skye’s death. With the evidence as it stood, they had virtually nothing to prove she had been murdered at all, let alone by whom. There was even a chance that the people traffickers weren’t involved at all, that her death was just a fluke accident. All she had to fuel her suspicions were a dysphasic old woman, an unused Ventolin inhaler, and a paint scrape that could have been caused by a carpark bingle.

A carpark bingle. Stevie thought back to the conversation with Fowler when she’d been dressing his head wound in her kitchen. He’d mentioned that his father’s green vintage car was at the panel beater because of a ‘carpark bingle.’ Could Fowler have run Skye off the road that night? Surely not. He may have had an axe to grind with Skye, but he wouldn’t have killed her because of it—would he? His father’s vintage was green, but so was Pavel’s Jag. She shook her head; amazed at how her mind could wander when she was tired and overwrought; this was hardly a logical thought process.

The wind scythed through her thin jacket, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with cold. She turned up her collar. A distant streetlight illuminated the roof of Monty’s pitted Land Rover near the back fence. Monty’s car was also green. Note to self: never buy a green car.

She increased her pace.

A man climbed out of a car on her right. She couldn’t see his face.

His door slammed.

Instinctively she pulled her keys from her pocket and held one like a shank in her hand. The man beeped his car locked and turned. His face was still indistinct in the darkness. In the next instant he was looming over her. She saw him lifting a blunt object, ready to strike. She made a feint toward him with the key, stopped and drew up short. ‘Fowler, what the hell!’

Out of the shadows, the blunt object became a bunch of broken-necked daffodils. Fowler took a step back. ‘Jesus, Hooper, you’re not going to stab me are you?’

Stevie’s smacked a hand against her thigh. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you. Your phone was off so I figured you’d be at the hospital. I was heading up to the ward, hoping to catch you, when I saw your car over there.’ He indicated the far fence with the drooping daffodils and must have sensed her incredulity. ‘Oh, these are for the Inspector,’ he explained.

Stevie pressed a palm to her forehead and gritted her teeth. ‘Shit.’

‘Jittery, huh?’

‘I think we both have reason to be, don’t you?’ She unlocked the Land Rover, hurled her bag onto the passenger seat and turned to face him.

‘
You’re
okay,’ Fowler said, carefully placing the flowers on the bonnet of the car. ‘It’s not your name all over the papers and in the case notes—it’s me that should be worried.’

Stevie paused and tried to compose herself. ‘So ... what is it you want?’

Something in Fowler seemed to deflate. He leaned back against the car. ‘Hooper, please—I need you to come with me to see Mrs Hardegan.’

She folded her arms and regarded him coolly. ‘I’m not used to this humility; it doesn’t suit you.’ Then a thought struck her. She looked back at him with surprise. ‘Wait a minute. You mean you haven’t even
told
the old lady about her son yet?’