by Peter Cotton
Before I could ask a follow-up question, there was an urgent knock at the door and Peter Kemp stepped into the room, his face as pale as his disposable overalls.
‘Sorry to interrupt, inspector,’ he said, ‘But there’s something in the staff offices I think you should see.’
McHenry’s eyes narrowed as he assessed Kemp for a moment, then he got to his feet and said that only Bolton and I should accompany him so as to minimise traffic through the crime scene. The three of us followed Kemp through reception and down a corridor to a large room full of work stations. The southern wall of the room was dominated by a bank of windows that looked out onto the Prime Minister’s Courtyard. The other three walls were lined with small private offices. Kemp led us past a crush of desks, and into an office that had a frosted-glass frontage and Penny Lomax’s name on the door.
Two of Kemp’s men were kneeling on the floor beside Lomax’s desk. One of them gently buffed the carpet with a wide brush, forcing fluff and some grit into a dust pan. The other held a small vacuum cleaner, ready to suck up anything that remained in the carpet pile. A line of heavy steel cabinets stood open along the back wall, exposing files and red boxes of various sizes.
‘I profiled some of the material we got from deep in this carpet,’ said Kemp, patting a small machine that he had set up on the desk, ‘And that material reads as a high explosive — TNT, to be precise. We’ll confirm it back at the lab, but I’d say it’s industrial grade. And it’s spotted all around here. But that’s not …’
‘TNT?’ said McHenry, talking over him. ‘Are you sure?’
‘The reading’s about 98 per cent accurate, sir,’ said Kemp, showing a hint of irritation. ‘I could give a more definitive answer, but I don’t have a lighter on me. Anyway, it wasn’t the powder I brought you around here to see. It was these.’
He reached into his kit and carefully removed a couple of evidence bags. One bag contained a length of three-centimetre PVC piping. A few nails rattled around inside the other bag.
‘This stuff was loose on the floor in the middle cabinet,’ he said.
‘So why’s some piping and a few nails of interest?’ said McHenry, transfixed by the bags that Kemp was swinging in front of our eyes.
‘Given the quantity of residue we’ve collected,’ said Kemp. ‘I’d say someone’s been handling a fair amount of explosives in here. This pipe and these nails are presumably part of the same effort. And what do you get if you put explosives, PVC pipe, and a good number of nails together? Pipe bombs are one possibility. But then, how would a pipe bomb or two advance things for Lomax? I don’t think they would. No, I think these components are leftovers from something far more complicated and much more lethal than simple pipe bombs. A step up, in fact.’
‘And that would be?’ I said, dreading the answer.
‘A step up from pipe bombs?’ said Kemp, eyeballing me over the top of the evidence bags. ‘That would be a suicide vest, wouldn’t it?’
Channel Four Live Cam
Thursday 8 August, 4.45pm
Good afternoon, Jean Acheson here, and following the shock abduction of Prime Minister Michael Lansdowne, Canberra is getting its first taste of life under a State of Emergency.
All parliamentary staffers and press gallery workers are being cleared from Parliament House, while Acting Prime Minister Redding meets his cabinet in a bunker below the building. The abduction is the only item on the agenda.
From my vantage point up here on Red Hill, I can see some of the hundreds of fully armed troops who will soon be on active patrol in the parliamentary triangle. All access to the Hill has been blocked, and an army command post is being set up on the sports field just below the Senate side door.
Meanwhile, we’re yet to hear whether Saturday’s election will proceed without the prime minister. We’ll let you know as soon as we’re told. This is Jean Acheson.
34
KEMP’S VEST THEORY accounted for both the residue in Lomax’s office and the BlackBerry in her hand when she got into the PM’s car. Sure, she might have had the BlackBerry out to call an accomplice; but if Kemp was right, that phone had a much more sinister purpose.
McHenry led us back to the lounge room without comment. Davies was pocketing his mobile as we re-entered the room. The PM’s driver was still unconscious, he said, and the doctors who were tending him had no idea when he’d come to. McHenry shook his head and asked me to resume the interview.
‘So what about the school where they left the car?’ I said, directing this question at Davies. ‘Did anyone up there see the transfer to the getaway vehicle?’
‘The school’s got an athletics carnival off-site today,’ said Davies. ‘So the place was deserted.’
McHenry raised his hand and called Ruth Marginson. He told her to organise an immediate door-to-door in the streets around the school, and to get some of our people over to Harry’s bedside for when he regained consciousness.
‘Okay,’ he said, closing his phone. ‘Continue.’
‘Mr Filandia,’ I said, ‘the office out the back with Lomax’s name on the door — was it for her use exclusively?’
‘Yes, it was,’ he said.
‘Did she work with the door closed?’
‘Yes. Usually. She even locked it sometimes. But Proctor did as well, and it was a reasonable thing to do, given the nature of the material they worked with.’
So she’d had privacy, a place to store contraband, and somewhere to turn it into who knew what. But how did she get the explosives and the gun past House security?
‘Back to these early mornings at The Lodge,’ I said. ‘What are the security arrangements for the staffers who do them?’
‘It’s like I told you,’ said Filandia. ‘Harry takes you down to The Lodge. The Protective Services people there check your ID, and in you go.’
‘Do they put your stuff through a scanner, or search your bags?’
‘They all know us very well,’ he said, ‘so things aren’t that stringent. But let me tell you, there’s no way Penny Lomax got a gun into this building via The Lodge. Just think about it — the sequence involved in early mornings. When it was her turn, Lomax would have come in here first to put a folder together for the PM, and she had to go through House security to do that. Then she would have gone down to The Lodge with Harry, and she would have stayed inside the walls down there till the PM was ready to bring her back. She therefore had no opportunity to smuggle anything illicit in here, believe you me.’
‘Mr Filandia, there are only two ways you can get into this place without going through a metal detector. You either get yourself elected prime minister so that you’re driven straight past security and into that courtyard out there. Or you join the PM’s staff, and you drive in here with him.’
Filandia shook his head and his eyes narrowed. He was getting impatient with me and my line of questioning, and he didn’t mind showing it.
‘She travelled from Parliament House to The Lodge and back to Parliament House,’ he said. ‘It’s a closed loop, and it can’t be compromised in the way you’re suggesting.’
Filandia’s unyielding defence of House security had me mystified, but I was finished with him for now. I nodded at McHenry, and he thanked everyone and told them that we’d call if we had more questions.
Bolton remained in his seat while the Parliament House people shuffled from the room. Before the door could close behind them, a big guy poked his head in and gave McHenry, Smeaton, and me the once-over. Bolton nodded at the interloper, and he disappeared. Then Bolton stood up and smiled down at McHenry.
‘Thanks for letting me sit in, assistant commissioner,’ he said, pocketing his notebook and pen. ‘And thanks for your insights. As you’ve probably guessed, the Centre’s about to become much more involved in this investigation, and that’ll start with a city-wide lockdown
. Then we’ll search every room in every house and building in Canberra until we find the PM. And when he’s found, if he’s wearing a vest, we’ll deal with it. There are ways, as you know. So, thanks again.’
After the door had closed behind Bolton, McHenry waited a few seconds and then let out a frustrated growl.
‘His mob might have the muscle and the manpower,’ he said. ‘But if they’re sidelining us, they’d best start organising Lansdowne’s funeral.’
He got up and stamped out of the room, and Smeaton and I waited a few seconds before we headed off after him. On the way over to Lomax’s apartment, I called Marginson to ask who she’d sent to Harry’s bedside. Then I got onto the detective doing the job, and told him about the gun and the other contraband that Lomax had smuggled into Parliament House. I also explained how early mornings at The Lodge worked. Finally, I said that Filandia might be right. It might be a closed loop; but if Harry had made any diversions while driving Lomax on ‘early mornings’, we needed the details from him as soon as he woke up.
If Lomax had found a way to get contraband past House security, she could easily have got the components for a simple vest into the place in one go. A mobile phone wired to a detonator. Some explosives. A few short lengths of PVC pipe. Some nails to maximise the impact of the blast. And the vest itself.
Once she’d smuggled the components inside, assembling the vest would have been easy, especially since she had complete privacy. She would have attached a mobile phone to the detonator, wired it up to the explosives, and then packed it all into the vest. A call to the mobile would send a charge to the detonator. And she could blow the vest from anywhere in the world. As long as the mobile had decent coverage.
‘So, boss,’ I said, as I swung the car into Brisbane Avenue, ‘what do you think of Kemp’s vest theory?’
‘Not much,’ said McHenry. ‘Yes, there are traces of explosive in Lomax’s office, but she could have got them on her shoes at any mine site in the country. And these pollies and their people visit plenty of those places. And if Kemp went through my garden shed, I’m sure he’d come up with a similar theory about me — I’ve got fertiliser in there, and fuel for the mower. Combine them the right way, and you could blow anything up. And answer me this. Why would Lomax bother with a vest when she’d already smuggled a gun into the House?’
‘Why would she bother?’ I said. ‘Well, assuming she has a vest, I think we can safely say that the PM would now be wearing it. She would have forced him into it just before they left his office, to ensure he was compliant. Why bother? Well, if we back her into a corner, it allows her to kill him with certainty. Or she can use the threat of it for her ticket out.’
McHenry responded with a growl, and we completed the drive in silence.
Lomax’s place was in a block of units in Blackall Street, overlooking the lake. We took the lift to the third floor, where a guy from Forensics handed each of us a pair of white plastic overalls and overshoes. When we were togged up, we were ushered down a short entrance hall and into Lomax’s lounge room.
The unit looked a bit more lived in than Joe’s places in Yarralumla and Red Hill. A couple of spindly chairs bookended an old wooden table. A small television sat on the floor in the corner. And five of Joe’s landscapes hung on the walls. They included a vista of the Tinderrys, Lake George full of water, and the Alps under a dusting of snow.
The place had three bedrooms, but only one of them showed any sign of occupation. It was where Lomax had slept when she’d overnighted here. Her bed was a mattress on the floor, neatly made up with a matching pillowslip, undersheet, and doona cover.
The room also had a makeshift wardrobe: a broomstick suspended from the ceiling by a couple of pieces of thick plastic twine. Half-a-dozen conservative suits hung from the broomstick, along with double that number of identical white blouses.
There’d been nothing in the kitchen cupboards, except some plates and a few coffee mugs. There were no cans of food, and no rotting onions or sprouting potatoes. And no spices, either. Usually, an otherwise empty kitchen had salt and pepper dispensers sitting next to the stove. But not this one. Like Joe’s places, Lomax’s unit was little more than a crash pad. We’d do a title search, but I didn’t expect it to reveal anything other than the date she’d bought it and who she’d bought it from.
Then it occurred to me that the killers’ other places had all been doss houses like this one. Maybe there was somewhere else that Lomax called home. And in that place, maybe she’d prepared a room fit for a prime minister.
When I emerged from the unit, McHenry and Smeaton were already out of their protective gear, and the boss was itching to leave.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
I peeled out of the overalls and overshoes, and just managed to squeeze into the lift as the doors closed.
‘Is the photo for the door-to-door here yet?’ said McHenry, hitting the button for the ground floor.
‘Yep,’ said Smeaton. ‘But none of the residents they’ve shown it to have ever seen her. Makes you wonder what happened to all those old biddies who used to sit by the window all day watching the world go by.’
‘They’re on the internet as we speak,’ said McHenry. ‘Stalking each other in some porno chatroom.’
Smeaton and I managed a smile, but not even a joke from the boss could extract a laugh.
On the way back to the station, McHenry turned on the car radio for the seven o’clock news. It naturally led with the abduction and the State of Emergency. Next story up was Redding’s swearing-in as caretaker prime minister. They used a grab of him warning Canberrans about random and repeated searches in coming days. Asked about Saturday’s election, Redding said Lansdowne would have wanted it to go ahead, and so it would. There was nothing in the bulletin about any new role for the Centre in the investigation.
When we got back to the station, McHenry postponed a scheduled team meeting, saying it was best we talk in the morning when we had everything in from Forensics. While that sounded like a reprieve, it was anything but, and we all grabbed coffees and dug in for the night.
I had work numbers for the three most senior people in the Titles Office, but no after-hours contacts. I eventually found a home number for one of them, and she agreed to go back to work and look up the title for the Blackall Street unit.
I reviewed the transcript of the Feathers and Filandia interviews, but found nothing new. There was also a transcript of an interview with Sheik Khalid el Sheik up on PROMIS, but there was no more in it than what Filandia had told us. In other words, the contact between the PM and the Sheik would have benefited both men, had it happened.
Jean called just before eleven to see how I was getting on. We were flat out, I said, and we’d be at it all night. She was about to do her last cross, and then she was going home to get some sleep. I told her I’d call her in the morning.
All the news programs throughout the night followed the abduction story. Every time I glanced up at the silent TV in the corner, it featured another scene from the emergency gripping Canberra and the nation. There were wide shots of heavily armed troops manning the roadblocks that ringed the capital, and over-the-shoulder shots of officers from the Centre knocking on doors and talking to residents. There was also extensive coverage of the thousands of all-night vigils that had sprung up spontaneously in towns and cities across the country, with everyone praying for the prime minister’s deliverance. And there was footage of bewildered-looking people being bundled into unmarked vans. Most of the detainees were either crims with a history of violence, fruitloops, or serial complainers. If the Centre didn’t get a breakthrough from that lot, I expected them to round up the greenies next, and any other fringe politicos with an axe to grind.
Just before four, McHenry called me over to say that he’d spoken to the pysch — the one we’d lined up to assess Tom Hanley. She’d confirmed that she’
d be out at Lake George at three o’clock that afternoon. McHenry said he’d decided to send Smeaton out to meet her. He then swiveled in his chair and re-focused on his screen. I waited a moment, expecting him to say something about the arrests we’d been witnessing on TV all night, but he waved me away. I headed off for a few hours’ sleep, knowing that the investigation would probably be out of our hands by the time I woke up.
Blood Oath subscription news
Friday 9 August, 7.45am
The price of saving Prime Minister Lansdowne
by Simon Rolfe
Coming home from work last night, did you spend an hour or more sitting in your car at an army checkpoint? I did. If you got home okay, were you stopped by people in khaki when you went out for the evening? Or maybe they knocked on your door after midnight and had a quick look around. They only spent twenty minutes at my place, but the experience cost me four hours sleep.
We all want to find Michael Lansdowne. And we want to get our hands on Penny Lomax, too. But I’m wondering if this State of Emergency and the consequent roll out of troops across Canberra is helping or hurting that effort.
Yes, I know what Mr Redding says. The AFP used all of its powers and yet it failed to get to the heart of this widening conspiracy. And time is tight, and cracking this thing may require a heavy hand.
What I’d say to Mr Redding is this. The people of Canberra are feeling very insecure in the wake of these murders and abductions. They’re also very angry with the perpetrators. Combine anger and insecurity, and what do you get? Hysteria, of course, and the symptoms of it are everywhere in this town. The cops saw more rage on our roads last night than they’d usually encounter in a month. Hospitals are reporting a dramatic spike in drug ODs. And Lifelink’s phone system went into meltdown this morning. So, Mr Redding, as you consider your next move, please be mindful of the impact it’ll have out here in Australia-land.