‘Is it?’ asked Gemma.
Naomi roared with laughter. ‘When you know who the father is!’
Four
Gemma waited on the corner just outside the café where Angie had suggested they meet, and it wasn’t long before she saw Angie climbing out of her car, swinging her briefcase out after her. Her friend hurried towards her, waving, her navy suit showing her slender figure to advantage. Although mostly focused on Gemma, Angie’s eyes darted around as she automatically reviewed the street and its occupants.
‘Gems, sorry you’ve had to wait. Just ducked out of working CPP for a politician’s family. I can’t do close personal protection and the job. Not right now. I’ve been seconded to the strike force investigating the Killara killings. How are you feeling today?’
‘Things seem to be staying down so far,’ said Gemma cautiously. ‘So which pollie’s family were you prepared to lay your life down for?’
Angie shrugged. ‘You know the rules. I’ve signed an NDA. Have you contacted Steve yet?’
‘No. But I will,’ said Gemma, recalling the acronym – non-disclosure agreement.
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘Angie, stop riding me like this. Just back off, will you?’
‘Okay, okay.’
Gemma, relieved to change the subject, told Angie the story of the missing prefect as they entered the café near the fountain and put their jackets on the chairs of a table near the windows.
‘Right,’ said Gemma. ‘What’s going on with Natalie Sutherland?’
‘Natalie Finn, now,’ said Angie. ‘Natalie married Bryson Finn, the man who was shot dead last night.’
Gemma gasped. ‘Finn the superintendent somewhere in the northern area?’
Angie nodded. ‘That’s him. Superintendent at Manly.’
‘What about the other people involved?’
‘The other fatality was his sister-in-law, Bettina Finn – married to Bryson’s brother.’
‘And the little boy?’
‘Natalie and Bryson’s nine-year-old son, Donovan. He’s hanging on in a critical condition. He only survived because Natalie arrived almost immediately after the shootings and was able to stop the haemorrhaging. He’s in intensive care at North Shore hospital with neck and head injuries. Critical, but stable.’
Angie made herself more comfortable on the café chair. ‘So you can imagine what it’s been like at work. We’ve got to drop everything and throw our energy into tracking down this cop killer. Usually I reckon too many senior police officers are only interested in protecting their careers and keeping their desks clean. Fighting crime is a distant priority. But this case has really got them going. The crime scene people were practically ordered to give exclusion DNA samples so as to eliminate everything except foreign genetic material – despite the Police Association threatening a walk-out over it. Even I let them do a buccal swab because I’d attended the scene. Rumours are flying all over the place. I’m glad to get away from the joint for a while.’
‘I vaguely remember Bryson Finn – from when he was just an acting inspector,’ Gemma said, trying to recall his face from thirteen years ago.
‘I don’t know a great deal about him yet either,’ said Angie. ‘But I’m working on it.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘He was gunned down at his sister-in-law’s front door. Just like she was. You don’t expect things like that to happen in quiet cul-de-sacs in posh suburbs like Killara.’
‘Poor Natalie,’ said Gemma, remembering Natalie Sutherland’s wide face, aquiline nose and intelligent grey eyes. ‘She must be beside herself. Three members of her family shot like that. Does she have any other kids?’
‘An older daughter. About seventeen, I think.’
Gemma looked around for a waiter, suddenly ravenous. ‘Any ideas?’ she asked Angie.
‘Everybody has a theory about what happened,’ said Angie. ‘People think they know something. Generally they don’t. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve heard that I’m about to be sacked, or that I’m supposed to be gay, or that I’m about to run away with somebody’s husband – or wife – or I’m in some crim’s pocket. It’s pathetic.’
They placed their orders with the hovering waiter.
‘Bryson Finn was involved in that big drug operation last year,’ Gemma said. ‘Operation Skylark. It was in all the newspapers.’
‘You’re right. Skylark was a big joint operation with AFP involvement and undercover dogs and all sorts of funny business,’ Angie said. ‘Involving Louis Fayed.’
‘Related to George Fayed?’ Gemma asked, remembering her previous involvement in an investigation into the late Lebanese drug lord.
‘His cousin,’ said Angie. ‘They’re a big crim family. Even got a couple of the youngsters into the cops for a while. Once Cousin George left the scene, Louis’s pretty well taken over Sydney drug distribution.’
‘Are you thinking that Bryson Finn died because of something related to Skylark?’ Gemma asked.
Angie shrugged. ‘It’s possible. It’s one of the things people are saying at work. There’s a whisper that Finn was corruptly involved with Louis Fayed.’
‘And was he?’
Angie looked up as the waiter arrived with a pot of tea and a cup of coffee. ‘Not as far as we know. Fayed would know that killing a senior police officer and members of his family would make his life very complicated, to say the least. His usual procedure is corruption. And if Finn was corrupt, why kill him? Much better to have him in place, and on the payroll. Unless he’d turned – or was about to – and wanted to get Fayed off the streets.’
‘It’s complicated,’ said Gemma, considering. ‘Because you can’t assume one hundred per cent that Bryson Finn was the target. You said the killing happened at his sister-in-law’s place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Bryson Finn’s brother live there too?’
‘Yes, but he was away from the premises until after the shootings.’
‘That’s convenient,’ said Gemma, ‘for a potential prime suspect.’
‘It’s early days yet,’ said Angie. ‘And all these things need verification. In some ways, this incident looks like a contract killing. But it didn’t happen at Finn’s place, where you’d think a professional would be watching and waiting. Natalie didn’t realise her husband was at his brother’s place – until she walked in on him dead.’
‘What were the superintendent’s movements that day?’
Angie consulted her notes. ‘He was at work at Manly till about 7.00 p.m.’
‘Hard worker,’ said Gemma.
‘Ambitious,’ said Angie. ‘Then he made a phone call to his brother’s place at 7.43 p.m., and shortly after that he drove to Killara.’
Gemma took a sip of tea, flinching at the heat of it. She put her cup down, deep in thought. ‘If I was going to kill a senior police officer,’ she said finally, ‘especially one like Bryson Finn, with a public profile and no doubt an extremely well-fortified house, that’s exactly how I’d do it. Be on his tail and wait till he was somewhere quiet and less secured.’
‘Gemster, you’re an evil woman,’ Angie said. ‘And you’re right. Bryson and Natalie Finn’s home is like Fort Knox according to Julie Cooper who’s been there. There’s no way he’d meekly open his front door at night to a stranger carrying a semi-automatic rifle.’
‘But,’ said Gemma, ‘there’s still the possibility that the target was the person who lived there rather than Bryson Finn – either Bettina Finn or her husband.’ She frowned, trying to remember what a semi-automatic rifle could deliver. She had a guess. ‘Nine shots?’
‘That’s right. We recovered all the cartridges and they’re still digging around for the bullets at the morgue. Tw
o ended up in the wall near the staircase – probably aimed at little Donovan. The third one did all the damage.’
Gemma’s heart ached at the thought of the little boy fighting for his life, his distraught mother waiting for him to return to consciousness. What horrors might he remember about the death of his father and aunt if and when he recovered?
‘I wonder if he saw the shooter,’ she said. There was just a chance, she thought, that the killer would come after the boy. Make sure there were no witnesses left. She shivered and turned her attention to something else. ‘You’d expect a professional to use a shottie so there’s no ballistic evidence. Not a rifle.’
‘That’s something I’ve been thinking about too,’ said Angie. ‘It doesn’t feel like a Fayed set-up. There were nine shots – nine cartridges to account for. They were all left at the scene. Why?’
‘It takes time to gather them up,’ said Gemma. ‘The adrenaline would be pumping. The killer would just want to be out of there. Or maybe he was interrupted.’
‘Or is an amateur,’ Angie suggested. ‘We’ve got a pile of exhibits. We gathered up all these glass fragments and broken beads from Bettina Finn’s necklace. They were everywhere. You could see where tiny bits of glass had become embedded in the fabric of Bettina’s clothes. The killer will have traces in his clothes too.’
A loud crash behind them made Gemma jump. She turned. The waiter had dropped a full cup of coffee on the floor.
‘They brought the dog handler around this morning but the grounds have been washed out with that heavy rain last night. This is shaping up to be a difficult case,’ said Angie, sipping her coffee. ‘With three possible targets – Bryson Finn, his sister-in-law, Bettina, and his brother, Findlay.’
She dived into her bag to check her mobile, read a text message, frowned, then put it away again.
‘It was Bryson Finn’s brother’s house after all,’ she continued, ‘and Findlay might have been the real target. Maybe the killer hadn’t realised there were two men of roughly the same appearance connected to that address.’
‘I’ve had the occasional problem like that,’ Gemma admitted. ‘Two brothers living at the same address and court papers to serve on one of them.’
‘Mix-ups happen,’ said Angie. ‘From the way the bodies were found, it’s pretty clear that Bettina went down first, then Bryson fell partly across her.’
‘Bettina opened the front door,’ said Gemma.
‘It was her house,’ Angie agreed. ‘And she was shot first.’
‘So she could have been the intended victim,’ Gemma said.
‘Yes.’
‘And then young Donovan suddenly appeared and surprised the shooter.’
‘Not before Bryson had also come to the entrance area. And been shot.’
‘Where was Donovan? Do you know?’
‘Looks like he was upstairs and heard something,’ Angie replied. ‘He came down to investigate, saw the killer and that was it. The blood splash evidence down the wall beside the staircase shows that he was about halfway down the stairs when he was shot. Then he tumbled downstairs to the floor.’
As Angie spoke, Gemma constructed the scene in her mind. ‘Poor little kid. Thank goodness his mother got there as quickly as she did.’
Gemma paused to take a bite of her just arrived sandwich. Despite the gruesome topic of conversation, she felt cautiously confident it would stay down. ‘What do we know about Bryson’s brother and his late wife, Bettina?’ she asked.
Angie frowned, leafing through a folder. ‘Bettina Finn was a freelance medical writer–editor working with different medical and scientific groups and writing copy for advertising agencies. She worked mostly from a home office.’
‘Any idea about what she was working on?’ Gemma asked.
‘That’s being looked at now,’ said Angie. ‘Her hard disk and files are with the technical people.’
‘Maybe she’d offended someone in the pharmaceuticals industry,’ Gemma said, considering. ‘Or the medical industry. With the money to be made from drugs these days that’s a possibility.’
‘I’m not discounting anything at this stage,’ said Angie. ‘Those drug companies are as ruthless as any other corporation.’
‘And Findlay Finn?’ asked Gemma. ‘What do you know about him so far?’
‘Ah,’ said Angie, ‘he’s an artist.’
‘You make it sound like that’s a reason for murder.’
Angie raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘You should see the stuff in the gallery I walk past on the way to work,’ she said. ‘Some of those artists deserve shooting – the crap they turn out and the prices they charge!’
Gemma grinned, then got back to business. ‘If it is a professional hit,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ll probably get to hear something about it around the traps.’ Then she thought of something else. ‘If Natalie arrived only minutes after the shootings, and it’s a cul-de-sac, the chances are that she passed the killer’s vehicle on the road.’
‘She says she remembers a vehicle driving the other way. With the headlights on high beam.’
‘That could have been the killer,’ said Gemma. ‘Does she have any idea what sort of car it was?’
‘No,’ said Angie. ‘She was too busy signalling with her own lights. But it might be worth trying hypnosis further down the track.’
‘What about tyre tracks?’
‘Nothing doing there. And none of the neighbours saw or heard anything out of the usual. But the rain would have muted things.’
‘I keep thinking of that little boy,’ Gemma said. ‘How vulnerable he is. And I wonder just how much he might be able to tell us about the killer.’
‘He’s in intensive care, which is pretty secure anyway; you have to be buzzed in. And Natalie hasn’t left his bedside since it happened. I’d like to put someone there full-time – to keep an eye on him. But the boss says we haven’t got the resources. He wants everyone on the streets looking for the killer.’
Gemma stirred more sugar into her tea while glancing outside at a pregnant woman walking past, protruding belly proudly sailing before her, belly-button piercing apparent beneath her skintight sweater. Women bring babies into this world, she thought, and then some hell-head takes them out of it without a second’s hesitation.
‘Since when did you have sugar in your tea?’ Angie asked, noticing her stirring.
‘Since this,’ Gemma said, pointing to her belly. ‘I nearly started crying just then, in a public place, about someone I don’t even know. This shooting has touched me in a way that surprises me.’
‘Hormones, Gemster. They can do that to a girl.’ Angie sipped her second strong black. ‘I remember one girl I worked with at Parramatta – the meanest street fighter in the world, tougher than any of the men in state protection. She got herself pregnant and turned into a marshmallow – drooling over babies in the street, buying toys and bringing little fluffy ducks to work. The only ducks she’d taken any interest in before were the ones she used to blast out of the sky each year in the hunting season.’
Angie leaned across the table and softly patted Gemma’s hand. ‘This case isn’t just a job to me, Gems. I know the people involved too – I briefly worked with Bryson Finn, and Natalie was like a mother hen to us young women in the early days. You remember – helping us survive the brotherhood mentality.’
Gemma did. She’d met Angie in her first year in the job and their friendship had blossomed from there. In those days long past, Natalie had been like an older sister to them.
‘The boss has pulled in some of the best people from the other divisions. We’ve got three people following up connections with Operation Skylark. There’s always the possibility that the super had found out something he shouldn’t know. Or even that he was corrupt,’ she added, after a pause.
‘Was Skylark
successful?’ Gemma asked.
‘Depends on how you look at it. It started off as an intelligence gathering operation. We just wanted to poke sharp sticks down dark holes and see what came running out. Then when some corrupt drug squad detectives crawled out, they were used to trap bigger players – cops and crims. They wore wires, put in covert cameras – all that undercover stuff. Steve was involved with George Fayed, remember. He was involved in Skylark too. Although I’m not supposed to know that. Forget I said it.’
Gemma felt her heart catch at Steve’s name.
‘The duds were allowed to resign or other arrangements were made for them to go away quietly. So they had a few wins out of it. Although losing experienced people is always a problem, even if they’re corrupt. Crooked or not, some of them are hard to replace. The information channels they operated were lost too, when they went. And we’re sure not winning this so-called war on drugs. Anyone involved in the drug industry can tell you that. In fact, we’re losing. Big time.’
Angie ate the tiny piece of almond toast that came with the coffee, chewing it slowly.
‘There are also other rumours going round,’ she continued, ‘that it’s a cop-on-cop killing. There’s another superintendent, Dan Galleone, whose name keeps coming up whenever Bryson Finn’s gets mentioned. Some long-term feud. I’m chasing it up. But it’s all hearsay and innuendo so far. People claiming they heard something about it from someone, you know how it goes.’
Gemma finished her food and Angie glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘I want to suggest something to you,’ she went on. ‘Don’t know what you might think about it, but I’d like to register you as an informant.’
‘What?’
‘Think about it. It makes sense. It stops people from grizzling if I’m seen doing something like this,’ she indicated the coffee, the food. ‘You’d be surprised how many eyes there are out there. Word gets around. Plus you could do a bit of digging around for me. You know how being a cop has its drawbacks when it comes to getting information out of certain types of people. Sometimes a civilian gets a much better result. You could ask about the sister-in-law – talk to the surviving brother. I could even get some money for you, pay for your time. Not a lot,’ she hastened, noticing the expression on Gemma’s face. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it, will you?’
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