by Simon Rowell
‘Screw you, Mayer. I’m going to make an official complaint and get you chucked out of here. You and your bloody therapy dog. For good, this time.’ He spun around and made for the door.
Garry hesitated, not sure what to do.
‘Go on, you run off too. Help Iain with the creative parts of his complaint.’
Garry glanced up at her, before he looked away again, turning to follow Iain.
Harry, still lying down, was watching her intently. Zoe realised the exchange had not made her anxious. She gave Harry a grin, then spotted Anjali standing frozen in the corner.
‘You okay?’ asked Anjali.
‘Yeah, no problem.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that angry. I thought he was going to keel over.’
‘Sorry about that. I promised myself I wasn’t ever going to mention what went on with him that day. Best forget you heard it. Anyhow, what did you find on the USB?’
‘The malware is there, buried in one of the folders. Ivan hid an old Yugoslavian movie from the 1960s among about twenty new movies. Doesn’t even have subtitles. I guess he thought no one would bother looking too closely at it.’
‘Ivan liked to amuse himself, didn’t he?’
‘I doubt he thought we’d get this close,’ Anjali said, ‘but this is good news. We’ve got proof that…’ She stopped short.
‘Exactly. We have proof that Ivan was spying on Ray’s and Dwayne’s computers, but that’s not proof of him killing Ray. It’s not enough.’
Anjali opened her folder. ‘I’ve got other news. I’ve been over the metadata from the phone tower near Yarra Junction. Marko didn’t pass through the town, according to his phone data. I checked the other most likely route he might have taken, going through Drouin, and the tower data shows him passing through on the way there and on the way home.’
‘Well, okay, but doesn’t that just back up Marko’s story?’
‘Sorry, there’s more,’ said Anjali. ‘I also found two other phone numbers that passed through at the exact same time as Marko, on the way there and the way back. The only reason…’
‘…would be if they were all in the same car,’ said Zoe. ‘Marko didn’t mention going with anyone else. Can we trace the numbers?’
‘Already done,’ said Anjali. ‘The numbers belong to William and Mary Rogers, a couple from Bentleigh. I’ve got their details here.’ She held out a piece of paper. ‘One other thing—they live next door to Marko.’
‘Anj, you’re a legend,’ said Zoe, grabbing her arm. She looked down at Harry. ‘Let’s go.’ She called Charlie on her way to the elevator.
Zoe parked a few doors away from the house, down a slight incline. Charlie was already getting out of his car. They walked up to a neat 1940s art deco house with a row of white roses along the front fence. The scent reminded Zoe of her grandmother. Charlie rang the bell before taking a step back.
A fit-looking woman in her sixties answered, her neat grey hair cut just above her shoulders. ‘Hello,’ she said cheerfully. She smiled at Harry. His tail wagged in response.
‘Mrs Rogers?’
‘Yes, call me Mary, please.’
‘Detectives Mayer and Shaw,’ said Zoe, holding up her badge. ‘And Harry. Can we have a word?’
‘Oh, come in,’ she said, looking flustered. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Just some general enquiries. Is it okay to bring Harry in?’
‘Of course, we love dogs here. What a beautiful boy.’
Zoe, Harry and Charlie walked into the living room. A man was standing next to a sofa, looking perplexed. Around six foot tall, with hair cut short, he had the bearing of a military officer. He wore fawn-coloured slacks and a blue polo shirt with a golf club insignia.
‘This is my husband, William.’ They shook hands and everyone sat down. Harry sat next to the sofa at Zoe’s feet.
‘We believe you took a trip between Saturday the first of February and Sunday the ninth—is that right?’
‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Were we speeding or something?’
‘No, nothing like that. Tell me, who did you travel with?’
‘No one, it was just the two of us,’ said Mary. ‘We do the same trip every year. We have some friends from Gippsland and we meet them each year for a week or so. Camping and bushwalking up at Mount Baw Baw.’
‘Sorry, I heard that your neighbour, Marko Raddich, went with you,’ said Zoe.
‘Marko? No, he didn’t come with us. Who said that?’
‘Ah, we must have our wires crossed. Someone up the road thought he’d gone with you,’ said Zoe, feigning confusion.
‘I mean, Marko is a good friend of ours. He helps us if we need a hand with something around the garden. He even helped us pack the car for the trip.’ Mary started to laugh. ‘That’s it—someone must have seen the three of us loading stuff into the car and assumed he was going with us. But no, Marko didn’t come.’
Zoe was trying to appear calm, but her heart was pumping. Harry turned his head towards her. ‘Does Marko live alone? I believe he’s got a brother?’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Mary, looking across at her husband, who was shaking his head. ‘He’s never mentioned having a brother. He lives alone. Doesn’t really socialise much, what with his big job with the government and all. No time for a girlfriend. He’s away a fair bit for his job, interstate for months on end sometimes. We keep an eye on his place when he’s away. William mows his lawns, that sort of thing.’
‘Sorry to have troubled you,’ said Zoe. ‘We’ll push on. Thanks for clearing that up.’ She stood up, causing everyone else to do the same.
‘But what’s all this about? Is Marko in trouble or something?’ asked William.
‘No, there was a burglary in the next street and we are just trying to work out who was around at the time. We’ve been talking to other people in the street. That’s where I got my bad information. Nothing to worry about. The suspect’s in custody,’ lied Zoe.
‘Oh, okay, that’s good. Thanks for everything you do,’ said Mary.
They said their goodbyes and walked out onto the footpath. Zoe glanced up towards Marko’s house. Her phone buzzed.
‘Mayer.’
‘Zoe, it’s Oliver Nunan from the morgue. We started working on Ivan Raddich’s body and there’s something strange going on. He did die from a heroin overdose, but not recently. His body has been frozen. When you found him in the bath, he had been defrosting for at least four days. He’s probably been dead for years.’
Zoe stopped. Charlie turned and stared at her.
‘Zoe, you there?’ said Oliver.
‘Yeah, sorry. Do you know where he died?’
‘I’d say he died in the bath, where you found him. The livor mortis, you know, where the blood pools after death, is consistent with him dying exactly the way you found him, but I think he was moved later when rigor had set in and his body was stiff. He was frozen and then he was moved back to the same place, probably four or five days ago.’
‘Oh, god. How sure are you about this?’
‘The frozen part? A hundred per cent. Freezing changes the cell structure through expansion and crystallisation.’
‘Thanks, Oliver.’
Zoe looked at Charlie. ‘It’s Marko,’ she said. Then she took off.
‘Wait, what?’ asked Charlie, but Zoe was already metres away, running with a heavy limp towards Marko’s house, Harry at her heels. Charlie took off after her.
The driveway was empty. Once they had climbed over the low fence, Zoe signalled for Harry to drop flat on the grass and to stay. She and Charlie then approached the house slowly. Zoe kept a hand on her holstered gun, watchful. She was conscious that Charlie had come straight from home, and was unarmed.
Zoe went to the front door, knocking twice, instinctively standing to the side, listening for any movement. Charlie peered into the window to the right of the door. Catching Zoe’s eye, he shook his head. Zoe peered in through a gap in the curtains
on the window to the left. The room was basic, with a television and two sofas. There were no pictures and no coffee table. She walked over to Charlie and saw an unmade double bed, and a wardrobe with one door open. It was stuffed with clothes. There were a number of small boxes below the clothes. Zoe strained to read the labels on the boxes.
Together they walked around the house. Zoe looked into the kitchen through the back window. A couple of dirty dishes were in the sink, but there was no sign of Marko.
They returned to the front of the house. Zoe called Harry over to her, before peering up and down the street, hoping somehow Marko would appear.
‘Okay,’ said Charlie. ‘You want to tell me what’s happening?’
4 PM, SATURDAY 15 FEBRUARY
Zoe was in the conference room, her head in her hands. Harry lay on the floor beside her, glumly mirroring her mood.
Rob entered, followed by Anjali. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Not sleeping, that’s all.’
Charlie came in. ‘I’ve checked Marko’s work history. He’s an independent IT contractor and has been the main guy the state government has used for cybersecurity for at least the last eight years. He’s gone from one department to another on projects, each usually lasting between six and eight months. The current project is for the Department of Justice. Apparently it has got three months left to run.’
‘So he can change his appearance,’ said Zoe, ‘and people don’t really notice because he’s moving between departments, working with different groups.’
‘That’s right,’ replied Charlie.
‘Speaking of changing appearances,’ said Rob, ‘you met Marko at the Department of Justice soon after you met Greg Enders on the peninsula. Didn’t you suspect they could have been the same person then?’
‘Marko resembled him,’ said Zoe, ‘but Enders looked a good three inches shorter, and had brown eyes. Marko’s were blue.’
‘How’d he manage all that?’
‘Enders was slouched, neck bent, apparently because of a work accident. Then, today, through Marko’s bedroom window, I saw boxes containing lifts—inserts to put in your shoes to give you more height. Plus, Marko had cut his hair and cleaned himself up when we saw him at the DoJ offices.’ ‘Okay,’ said Rob. ‘And the eye colour?’
‘Coloured contact lenses. I overheard Garry Burns whining to Iain Gillies about his girlfriend wearing them.’
Charlie opened his folder. ‘I also found out that he managed a big IT overhaul at VicRoads about four years ago. That’s how he was able to create his false identities so easily. He knew the back end of their system, so he was able to produce as many driver’s licences as he wanted, whenever he wanted. He still has access. He’d log in and enter his new details, upload a photo, and the system would automatically create and send him out a new licence.’
‘Any idea what he’s earning for this work?’ asked Zoe.
‘Based on what he’s charging the DoJ, I’d guess it’s well over half a million a year,’ said Charlie.
‘Now we know how he can afford six months’ rent in advance on these properties.’
‘Okay,’ said Rob. ‘Catch me up on your current thinking.’
‘Right,’ said Zoe, ‘here’s the chronology. After the parents die, Ivan, who’s already dysfunctional from being bullied at school, goes off the rails and gets involved in drugs. He dies from a heroin overdose at the family cabin at Three Bridges, probably around four years ago. Despite what Marko told us, I believe that the two brothers had remained close. Marko worries when he can’t contact Ivan, goes to the cabin and finds his body. He decides to avenge Ivan’s death, blaming the kids who bullied him and stuffed up his life.’
Zoe looked up at the photographs of the three victims lined up on the whiteboard. ‘The way he sees it, there are three pairs of bullies to deal with and he decides he’ll take out one pair per year. Marko puts his brother’s body in the large freezer in the cabin. It’s an insurance policy to use if we ever got too close to the truth. Marko finds the old school bullies using the VicRoads licence database and decides the order in which to deal with them. No one recognises him—he was a couple of years below them at school. He commutes to his job as normal, having gradually changed his look, growing his beard or his hair. He inches his way into each community, making friends, buying beers and handing out pirated movies. He uses malware to spy on them, and also finds a way to steal clothing from the person he’s going to frame, so he can plant it as evidence. Then one day he kills one of them and sets about framing the other, whom we arrest and charge. Easy—two birds, one stone. One bully dies; the other does twenty years. And he gives himself an alibi.’
‘How’s that?’ asked Rob.
‘The neighbours take holidays every year in February,’ said Zoe. ‘He plants his silenced phone in their car, probably stuffed up underneath their car seat, and they head off on their trip unaware. He knew we could check the pings from the phone towers, just in case we somehow linked him to all this, and that gives him the perfect alibi. He takes time off work and tells everyone that he’s going hiking in the mountains and will be out of contact. Then he does the killing and is around all week while we’re investigating, in disguise and under his assumed name, acting as the concerned friend, all the while calling in tips, planting evidence and waiting.’
‘And then he retrieves his phone when they return,’ said Charlie.
‘He thinks the chances of us linking him to this are maybe one in a thousand, but he creates the alibi, just in case. Then when his neighbours return, he helps them again, gets his phone back and then listens to the story of their trip. If he ever needs to, Marko can give a detailed account of a hiking holiday, even describing the weather.’
‘The guy’s a fricken genius,’ mumbled Charlie.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Zoe, ‘he thought of almost everything. The only thing he didn’t count on was Anjali searching for other phones pinging in sync with his phone.’
Rob turned to Anjali, sitting off to the side. ‘That’s great work, Anjali. Well done.’
Anjali half nodded, blushing and looking down. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘The other failsafe Marko had was Ivan’s frozen body. After Ray Carlson was killed, Marko would have headed out to the cabin, pulled his brother out of the freezer and put him back in the bath where he first found him. Ivan would thaw out over a couple of days. We’d eventually find out about the cabin—perhaps Marko would suddenly remember the cabin in a month or so and tell us himself—and go and find a decomposed brother who only looked recently deceased. Not the four years he’s actually been dead. The only thing he misjudged is that we found Ivan’s body too soon. After another few weeks of this heat, his body would have been too decomposed for us to determine that it had been frozen.’
‘Seems disrespectful to his brother. Leaving him out there rotting in a bathtub,’ said Rob.
‘It was the cost of Marko’s war against Ivan’s bullies,’ said Zoe. ‘Don’t forget, Marko found his body in the first place, so he knew that otherwise it would’ve been out there rotting anyway. Probably saw it as Ivan’s contribution to getting even with the past.’
‘It all works as a theory,’ said Rob, ‘but we need to find him and his computer. The DPP won’t want to know about any of this unless we’ve got a living, breathing criminal to put away.’
‘I’ve got surveillance watching Marko’s house. If he turns up there, they’ll call me.’
‘What about the neighbours? Might they tip him off?’
‘I spoke to them again before I left,’ said Zoe. ‘Told them that we were looking for Marko with regard to a homicide and to not tip him off, but to call me if they heard anything. The husband used to work as a prosecutor in Canberra. They’ll be fine.’
‘Should we put out an alert for him? Start speaking to his colleagues at work?’ asked Charlie.
‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘If he gets wind that we’re looking for him, he’ll be gone. He’ll
have a stack of licences with different versions of himself. This guy’s too organised. He’ll have contingencies in place.’
‘Have you thought about the possibility that he’s started working on another target?’ said Rob. ‘Maybe he’s already in some other town, preparing.’
‘Maybe, but after school Ivan went to work with his dad at their fruit shop,’ said Zoe. ‘If Marko has a vendetta against someone else, it won’t be to do with a high school Ivan attended.’
Charlie spoke up. ‘Plus, I’d say him putting Ivan’s body back in the bath tells us that he’s taken care of everyone on his list.’
Rob nodded. ‘Okay, let’s hope he either goes to work on Monday or shows up at Trevor Hill’s trial. We can pick him up at either place.’
‘I hope it’s that easy,’ said Zoe. ‘I need a warrant to search his house and his office. He may have kept his personal computer at work. I also want to get a warrant to triangulate his phone to at least tell us the area he is in. That’ll be better than nothing.’
‘Leave the warrants with me,’ said Rob. ‘I’ll try and yank some strings.’
‘Thanks, the sooner the better,’ said Zoe.
Rob stood up.
‘I think we have another problem,’ said Anjali softly from the end of the table.
They all turned to her. Anjali was staring at the screen of her laptop.
‘What is it?’ asked Zoe.
‘I…I think someone’s been in the case file archives, deleting stuff.’
Zoe moved around behind Anjali. Over her shoulder, she could see the open folders for all three cases.
‘The sub-folders containing the images and video from the funerals,’ said Anjali. ‘They’re all gone.’
Rob sat down again. ‘Charlie, give me your laptop for a second?’
Charlie passed it across. Rob quickly logged himself in. Everyone sat in silence as he worked. After thirty seconds, he looked up. ‘The sub-folders are in the back-up. Those files can’t be deleted without a higher clearance. I can view them, but I can’t trash them. Good news is that we’ll be able to get them back.’