TUNA LIFE (44 page)

A. Brown.

“What does that mean?”

“A. Brown was one of my wife’s patients. A.B. was the person Mark Moss had an appointment with the day he was attacked.”

Vesna said nothing.

“Stop the car,” Scott said suddenly.

“Are you crazy?” Vesna asked.

“Andrew Engels, Andrew Engels is the killer,” Scott almost yelled.

“What are you talking about?” A bewildered Vesna asked. “Andrew Engels? There is no logic in that. Andrew is a successful businessman.”

“Stop the bloody car,” Scott said. This time his voice was almost breaking.

Vesna hit the indicator, and took the first exit from the Gold Coast Pacific Highway. She parked the car in a small pocket, squeezed in between two Toyotas.

“I need to borrow your car for a couple of hours,” Scott said, as he stepped out of the passenger seat and made his way for the driver’s seat.

“No way. You can drive. But I’m coming with you.”

“It’s too dangerous, Vesna. Andrew is a killer.”

Vesna fretted. “So call the police.”

“They’ll have the same attitude as you,” Scott said. “I had lunch with Andrew today. There was something really off about him. I think he might be planning his escape.”

“So you intend to stop him? You, a journalist, an injured journalist.”

“I may be just an average journalist to you, Vesna. But I know how to stop people,” Scott said, dragging Vesna out of the car by force. He was tired of her complaints. “If I’m right, then Andrew killed my wife.”

Vesna ran around the car and jumped into the passenger seat before Scott managed to close the door. What the hell, he thought, but he let her stay. And then he put the car in gear. He had the address to Andrew’s apartment in his leather bag. Andrew had purchased his fair share of expensive cars; a Tesla S and a Porsche Carrera, and he was known to be a big spender out on the town. But one thing had remained unchanged: He had continued to live in his small apartment in Robina. The apartment he had lived in since he started working in Avensis Accounting. It took Scott almost twenty minutes to drive there. He had called his brother and explained his theory. Wayne had said that there was no chance the police could issue an arrest warrant based solely on insinuations, and it was even unlikely he would be able to get a search warrant. But he would see what he could do. The best thing Scott could do was to stay away. If there turned out be something in his accusations, then the police would have to start looking at how they could build a case. If Scott revealed all his cards now, then Andrew could get spooked.

Scott ignored his brother’s advice. There was something about the way Andrew had acted during the interview, as if he knew something was about to happen, that the game was over.

Scott knew he had to get to Andrew before he got the chance to flee.

Scott parked outside the apartment complex where Andrew lived, and he and Vesna walked into the reception. A skinny teenager, with thin hair, greeted them. When they asked for Andrew the teenager shook his head. There would have to be several weeks since he had seen Andrew, he said. Andrew had been living in the complex for several years, but he was seldom there. Truth be told, weeks could go by between times the receptionist saw him. Scott peeked into the garage as they left. Neither of Andrew’s cars was there, neither the Tesla nor the Porsche. “Andrew Engels must have another place. A place not registered in his name,” he said.

“What did you say his parents’ names were?” Vesna asked.

“Ben and Sarah Brown. But his mum died when he was young, and his father died a few years ago.”

Vesna called the office and asked one of the journalists to check whether there were any properties registered to a Ben or Sarah Brown.

“There is a residence registered on a Ben Brown’s decedent estate. It’s in Nerang. I’ve got the address,” Vesna said.

Vesna and Scott jumped back into the car, and keyed in the address in the satnav. Thirty-five kilometres, Scott read on the screen. He turned the ignition key and sped out onto the road.

For the next twenty minutes Scott’s thoughts were racing inside his head. How had he managed to stay hidden for so long? Andrew Engels, a boring accountant who had almost stumbled into fortune. What would have happened if Andrew had never started Tuna Life? Would he have been able to continue as before? An invisible person, a killer no one noticed. Scott didn’t know what he was going to do when he got to Andrew’s house. That was what they had been discussing during lunch.
Was it ever right to kill someone?
Were there circumstances that made killing acceptable? Scott had felt uncomfortable during the discussion. At first he had wondered whether Andrew had alluded to when he killed Roman Bezhrev. But there had been something more, something lurking just under the surface, something just waiting to be unleashed, it had almost been as if Andrew was asking for permission to kill again.

“…..if you feel that you have to kill someone to get peace….if you just feel that you can’t go on living without doing it….does that make it right?” Scott Davis had been surprised by the question. There was nothing that could justify killing someone else.

Now he understood what Andrew had meant. This anxiousness he always felt, this constant want to be exposed as the fraud he was.

Andrew was a serial killer.

He murdered young women.

And he wanted Scott to expose him.

Vesna’s car screeched outside Andrew’s parents’ old weatherboard house. Both the Porsche and the Tesla were parked outside in the driveway.

Andrew was home.

Scott jumped out of the car. “Stay here until the police arrive,” he said to Vesna, before starting to move up the driveway. He had called his brother on the way. Told him it was an emergency.

“Scott, wait. They’ll be here soon,” Vesna said. She thought she could already hear the sirens.

But Scott was by now on his way. He walked up to the front of the house, and peeked through the window. The house looked old and worn-down. It didn’t look like anyone had touched it with a paintbrush for years. But the garden looked nice. Andrew had either green fingers or a gardener.

Scott moved back to the entrance door. He placed a hand on the doorhandle, and jiggled it. Just to check if it was locked. To his surprise it was not.

The stench of old closed up air hit him in the face as he pulled the door open.

“Andrew!” Scott called out Andrew’s name. But there was no answer.

The sound of the blazing sirens was now so close that Scott could hear them too. If Andrew was hiding inside the house, he would also have heard them by now. He would have understood that the game was over.

That he was laid bare.

“Andrew,” Scott called out his name one more time. When there was still no answer he took a step into the hallway. Scott squinted in the dark. He bent down to get a better view of the room beyond the hall. Was that the outline of a person he could see next to the dining table? Scott didn’t have time to think. He acted on pure reflex. As he heard the first police car screech on the asphalt outside the house, he went for the figure by the dining table.

When he reached the table he realised that there was no one sitting there. It was just a bundle of clothes, thrown over a chair. It looked like someone had been packing up in a rush. When Scott turned around, he saw a familiar face in front of him.

His brother, Wayne, was standing in the doorway.

“It looks like we are late,” Scott said.

“Relax. We’ve sent a car to the Tuna Life office, and one to his next in command.”

“Ken Speis?” Scott asked.

Wayne nodded. “Looks like Andrew was in a rush to get out of here,” he said, wandering around. He avoided touching anything, in case some of it would have to be used in a criminal case.

“What’s that in the middle of the table?” Wayne asked, pointing at an envelope leaning against an old pot plant.

Scott Davis stared at the envelope. It had Scott’s name written with block letters on the front. He leaned over the table and grabbed the envelope. Wayne turned around, pretending there was nothing to see. It wasn’t very smart that Scott tampered with potential evidence, but it had also been Scott who had figured out what Andrew had done. The envelope was addressed to him, and most importantly, Scott was his brother.

Scott opened the envelope, and read the first line.

“Dear Scott, this is my confession….”

91

The engine started with a loud mechanical clank. It was probably twenty years since someone had actually driven the dark blue Volkswagen minibus parked outside Frank Geitner’s house in Nimbin. Frank had said it came with the house. He had made sure to maintain the registration on it.

On the seat next to Andrew lay a bunch of cash and some passports. Frank Geitner’s escape kit. Andrew had booked the ticket a week ago. A one-way ticket to Monaco. He pulled the cap down on his face, and adjusted his sunglasses. In the rear mirror he could see his old Mazda 3 disappearing as Frank’s garage door closed. It would take him roughly ten hours to drive to Sydney, plenty of time to make his flight.

It was wistful to leave Australia, and he hadn’t made his decision lightly. But there was nothing that connected him to the Gold Coast anymore. Both his parents were dead, and he had no brothers or sisters. He didn’t really have any good friends. His friends from growing up and university had all left the Gold Coast a long time ago. The few friends he had acquired in Avensis Accounting, had turned out to be more colleagues than friends, he had hardly spoken to any of them since he’d left the firm.

The only friend who had remained constant had been Ken.

Ken, who had been his best friend since they had started kindergarten together.

Ken, the friend who had helped him through the tough period when he lost his mother and the love of his life dumped him.

Ken, the friend who had started up Tuna Life with him.

A car honked. Andrew turned on his indicator and entered the highway. He looked down at the seat. Frank Geitner’s laptop was still there. The laptop Andrew had used to return Roman’s money to his Gibraltar account. The problem was that Andrew had never pressed the enter key. He had never actually sent the money. It was still in an account, in one of Frank Geitner’s escape-kit-identities. Fifty-two million dollars. Fifty-two million dollars was sitting in the account of a dead man.

Andrew had given it a lot of thought. The new options and shares he had been given in Tuna Life was also worth a lot of money.

But it was all paper money.

Fleeting money.

Uncertain money.

Tuna Life still didn’t make any profits, hell, they hardly made any revenue. The entire value of the company was hinging on Andrew at some stage figuring out how to monetize their users. If he didn’t, the company was worthless.

Andrew didn’t dare gamble on that. It was better to have fifty-two million in the hand than a hundred on the roof – wasn’t that what Roman had always used to say? And Andrew would need lots of money during the coming years. He would be living a life on the run, always moving around, always in hiding. Frank had told him how it had been. It hadn’t been nice. But Andrew had had to make the choice. He had been stuck between a rock and a hard place; in the media’s spotlight, or being hunted by the police.

He would have chosen to be hunted by the police any day.

Scott Davis hadn’t gotten any further than the first line of Andrew’s confession when his mobile rang. It was the hospital. He lifted the phone to his ear. It was Mark Moss.

“You’re wrong,” Mark almost screamed into the other end of the phone line. “Roman is not the killer.”

Scott Davis looked at the piece of paper in front of him. “I know,” he said.

92

Wayne, Scott’s older brother, glanced at his watch. It was getting late. They had been there for three hours already, but they were far from finished. Homicide detectives in white coveralls carried out case after case with evidence. Experienced cops had broken out into spontaneous crying, and Wayne had never seen anything even remotely like it in his career. He hadn’t seen anything like it in horror movies.

“What creates such an animal?” Wayne’s colleague asked, “What drives such a monster.”

Wayne shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?”

“I was so certain that Russian guy was behind it all, that Roman guy. It just seemed so logical.”

“We’ve all been fooled” said Wayne. He could see Scott standing outside the police cordon, and walked over to him.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Have you got any idea where he’s gone?”

“No, not yet. But he’ll show up. And when he does, we will get him.”

“Does he deserve to go to jail for what he’s done?”

“He’s a murderer, Scott, a murderer who has to be brought to justice. And we have a witness. The girl says she saw everything.”

Scott nodded.

93

Scott Davis stared at the screen in front of him. It was dark in the room, but he knew it was a beautiful day outside the curtains of his deceased wife’s home office. In thirty-five years he had never brought work home. Today he had made an exception. He was almost finished with the article he had been writing for the last four days.

About the monster at Sovereign Island.

The monster who had fooled them all.

They had all fallen for the idea that the Russian Roman Bezhrev was a serial killer. He had all the traits of the worst of them.

The true killer had none.

He had been an invisible person, a person no one had had anything bad to say about.

Scott Davis had trawled all the subject material about serial killers. There was no profile that fit this one. This one was the exception.

Scott had considered it before. First when he suspected Frank Geitner to be the killer, later when he suspected Andrew Engels. Who were the serial killers whom no one caught? We only knew about the ones who got caught, the stupid ones, the ones who made mistakes.