Tropic of Death

by Robert Sims

  Audrey continued to watch Rita. At the same time, the split vision input from the Tracker showed a man who was arriving at Rita’s hotel with a specific purpose. He planned to kill her.

  49

  Rita woke from a deep sleep, startled and disoriented. She sat bolt upright in bed, staring around wildly, only to realise the hotel phone was ringing. She snatched it up. ‘Hello, who’s that?’

  But there was no one on the line. Noise was coming from her open laptop and from her mobile phone too. Both were pumping out ring tones and flashing the same message: Security alert: code red!

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, clambering out of bed and pulling on some clothes without knowing what the message actually meant.

  She tried calling Sutcliffe, then the police station, without getting an answer. Then the alert on the laptop promptly vanished.

  She did a quick check of her emails but there was no indication of what was going on. Suspicious now, sensing danger, she pocketed her mobile and car keys, and collected her gun. Flicking the safety catch, she crept to the door of her hotel room, took a deep breath and flung it open. But the hallway was deserted.

  She looked at her watch - ten past four - and as she walked to the lifts tried to think who could tell her what was happening.

  Peter Luker’s number was on her mobile. She selected it and called him.

  He answered immediately, his voice thick and rough.

  ‘Van Hassel?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘The code red?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve got a security alert. My mobile, my laptop. What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about any alert. Where are you?’

  ‘The hotel.’

  ‘Our hotel, the Whitsunday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said, his voice tense. ‘I’ll get dressed and meet you down in the lobby. Have you got your gun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Be prepared to use it.’

  As he hung up, Rita noticed the lift had just left the reception level and was coming up. She watched the lights as it rose steadily floor by floor until it halted, right in front of her, on the fifth.

  Pulse racing, she gripped the Glock 22 in both hands, pointing it at the lift doors. There was an agonising pause before they opened to reveal Billy Bowers. With a delayed reflex, the gun in his hand jerked upwards as Rita squeezed the trigger of the semi-automatic, firing four bullets into his chest.

  Billy’s arm fell limply, his gun discharging a round through the top of his running shoe, as he hit the back of the lift, keeled over and collapsed on the floor, blood pooling out from the bullet holes in his heart. Rita stood rigid, knowing she’d killed him, the smell of the gunshots in her nostrils. The doors closed and Billy was gone.

  By the time Rita got down to the lobby to wedge the lift doors open and check the body, Sutcliffe was returning her phone call.

  ‘My phone’s bleeping with a missed call from you,’ he said sleepily. ‘I hope it doesn’t mean I have to get out of bed at this hour of the morning.’

  ‘I just shot Bowers.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a big yes,’ he said. ‘Dead?’

  ‘With five bullets in him, four of them mine.’

  ‘Right. Where are you?’

  ‘Whitsunday Hotel.’

  ‘I’ll call in the team, leave it to me. I’m on my way.’

  As Sutcliffe rang off, she found Luker standing beside her, bleary-eyed and badly dressed in a T-shirt that highlighted his paunch and canvas shorts that clung to spindly white legs.

  16/2/09 10:02:46 AM

  ‘So you took my advice,’ he said, eyeing the corpse. ‘I thought you must’ve when I heard the shots.’

  Standing behind him, a wide-eyed receptionist craned his neck to see, while a few curious guests wandered over from the stairs to see what the noise was about. Luker moved swiftly to shoo them off before ordering the receptionist to keep everyone away from the scene. With the lobby cleared he was back at Rita’s side.

  ‘Billy “The Beast” Bowers,’ he muttered. ‘This is big.’

  ‘Are you talking as a spook or a hack?’ asked Rita.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I can do without any media coverage.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Luker. ‘Let me handle it. There are strings I can start pulling. Your name won’t come out.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand - I’m doing it for security reasons, and Maddox has done us a favour by signing you up. I can argue you’re effectively on call.’

  ‘All I feel is out on a limb,’ she sighed, ‘with crocodiles waiting below.’

  ‘Including me?’ He grunted. ‘You may not like or trust me, but at the moment I’m your only ally.’

  ‘Well, you’re half right,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust you but I like you.’

  ‘Good for my ego, bad for my credibility.’

  ‘So what the fuck is going on? Who sent the alert? Who’s yanking my chain?’

  Luker shook his head. ‘I’m working on it.’

  By the time Rita held a debriefing session with Sutcliffe, Bryce and Jarrett, her cover story was in place. She told them everything, from the time she received the security alert to the moment she gunned down Bowers in the lift. But the full details would never go into a police file. They were classified, thanks to Luker.

  Officially Billy Bowers was shot dead in a confrontation with undercover taskforce officers, whose identities would not be disclosed. Rita was a witness to the aftermath. It suited all concerned and for once Rita was glad to be on the business side of a cover-up.

  By the time the squad detectives, in tandem with Jarrett and his officers, had done their crime-scene work, a comprehensive version of events had emerged. Bowers, a drug dealer who hid a large supply of cocaine under his dog kennels, was the prime suspect in multiple homicides. He’d turned fugitive overnight after murdering two more victims - the prostitute Marilyn Eisler and an underworld software dealer known as Stonefish. He’d also put a third in hospital with multiple injuries, local hacker Freddy Hopper. Everything was consistent. Case closed. The serial killer had been stopped.

  The investigation was over but the public sensation was only just beginning. A police press conference, conducted by taskforce head DSS Bob Sutcliffe, was held in time to hit the lunchtime bulletins, with TV newsrooms rolling out archive footage of Billy Bowers in the boxing ring and screening background packages on the gruesome murders for which he would be remembered.

  And that was just the opening barrage of saturation coverage as the media started descending on Whitley en masse - reporters, photographers, camera crews, broadcasters, satellite vans; and Rita was relieved she could slip away unnoticed.

  By mid afternoon her immediate input was no longer required by the Queensland Police.

  ‘You’re off-duty,’ Jarrett told her. ‘We can pack everything up tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  ‘Shit, yeah, after what you’ve been through. Go have a drink, a swim, whatever. Don’t come back in till you’ve had a good sleep.’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll take you up on that.’

  50

  Rita enjoyed the rare luxury of a long sleep-in and woke with a renewed sense of vigour. She took a dip in the hotel pool, ate a late breakfast in the terrace restaurant and phoned Byron while she sipped coffee. She told him the police investigation was being wrapped up.

  ‘It’s all over the news,’ he said. ‘I assume you had a hand in it.’

  ‘I can’t talk about it over the phone. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re on your way?’

  ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘The case is closed but there are a couple of loose ends I need to think about.’

  ‘Rita, come home. I miss you.’

  ‘Soon,’ she promised. ‘I miss you too.’


  It was almost noon by the time she pulled over and parked at a discreet distance from the police station, where a media scrum had gathered for a press conference update. Sutcliffe was thriv ing on the publicity, his star on the rise, his career prospects blossoming.

  Rita slipped in through the watch-house entrance and climbed the stairs to the exhibit room. Her makeshift office felt quiet and detached from the swarm of journalists and the air of hype surrounding the detectives next door. With a sigh of resignation, she began filing away the paperwork and taking down the rows of crime-scene photos. The loose ends were still bothering her, but with the Queensland force releasing her from secondment there wasn’t much she could do about it. Billy Bowers was the nail-gun killer - that was official. His brutality and his motives were obvious. Everything else could be dismissed as peripheral, with the involvement of the base authorities, the death of Steinberg and the elusive Rheingold disk receding behind a veil of national security where they would remain.

  The door opened and Jarrett strolled in with a file under his arm.

  ‘I’ll be sad to see you go,’ he said, ‘though you’ve probably had enough of us.’

  ‘It’s been … instructive.’

  ‘Not the profiling assignment you expected, huh?’

  ‘It’s like no other case I’ve worked on,’ she replied. ‘And there’s too much I don’t have answers to. But, hey, everyone’s got a sort of closure.’

  ‘Now you’re worrying me. You sound like you’ve still got doubts.’

  ‘Relax, Jarrett. Anyway, why aren’t you down in front of the microphones?’

  ‘Too crowded already. Bryce is having trouble squeezing in beside the taskforce boys. I told you Sutcliffe was ambitious. He’s flying out in the next hour for a big presser in Brisbane. He knows how to handle the limelight.’

  ‘He’s welcome to it.’ She glanced at the file he was carrying.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Something for your collection,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘The Eisler killing - forensic report and photos. With the case closed, Sutcliffe let me and my detectives back on board with this one.

  Thought you might as well have the full set.’

  ‘Thanks. How’s Freddy?’

  ‘Broken ribs, his jaw’s wired up and he’s lost a kidney. But he’ll live.’

  ‘At least he fared better than his friend.’

  ‘Yeah - and we’ve found out who Stonefish was,’ he added.

  ‘His prints and photos got hits from police databanks in New Zealand and the States. A lot of electronic crime, gang-related, and a warrant for manslaughter in Wellington. Various aliases, but his real name was Otto Krautschneider.’

  ‘That explains the German beer compulsion.’

  ‘Something else. The passport check came back from New Caledonia. There’s no such person as Jean-Paul Mistere. The ID

  must’ve been fake.’

  ‘So we still don’t know who the man in the mud really was.

  Any other cheery news?’ Rita asked.

  ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear the security review at Whitley Sands has been curtailed. No further attendance required.’

  ‘Doesn’t that strike you as an odd coincidence?’

  ‘Everything about the base strikes me as odd. And the terrorist alert has been downgraded. We’re no longer hot on the trail of the four suspects.’

  ‘It makes you wonder about the so-called war on terror.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jarrett agreed. ‘What we really need is a war on bullshit.’

  Rita was sitting at the desk, opening the crime-scene report, when she was interrupted by a gentle knock on the door.

  ‘Yeah?’ she called out, closing the folder.

  Ronsard leant into the room, camera in hand, a concerned look on his face.

  ‘I thought I’d drop by to see how you are,’ he said.

  ‘Come on in,’ said Rita, surprised to see him. ‘Grab a chair.’

  He closed the door behind him, pulled up a chair and placed his camera on the desk, glancing around. ‘Unusual office. More like a black museum.’

  ‘Something of the sort,’ she agreed, smiling. ‘You’ve had enough of the press conference?’

  ‘It’s nauseating,’ he said. ‘All this triumphalism by the authorities.’

  ‘I can see your point.’

  ‘I don’t believe Rachel Macarthur’s murder, or the others, were simply the work of Bowers. You and I both know there’s more to it than that.’

  ‘There are unanswered questions, you’re right.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve kept away from the media?’

  ‘One of the reasons, yes.’

  ‘Blaming Bowers for everything lets the research base off the hook,’ Ronsard went on. ‘It also distracts the public from the valid criticism being made by the Anti-War Coalition. This isn’t how I want to cover the story.’

  ‘Well, I can’t give you a steer on it,’ said Rita. ‘I’m still in the dark myself.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here. I was worried about you after the other night. You were under a lot of pressure. Then that young girl was murdered, the one who sent the email.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to freak you out. And I’m sorry if I ruined the atmosphere.’

  ‘Not at all,’ smiled Ronsard. ‘The mood was already detendu, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘I do.’ She laughed. ‘So I don’t feel so bad.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded, serious again. ‘So much madness in the world.

  So many apparently normal people walking around insane.’

  ‘It’s not the number of mad people that amazes me,’ said Rita.

  ‘It’s the number who manage to keep their sanity.’

  ‘But of course. In western society, schizophrenia is a normal condition. Each person develops as an outsider to himself.

  L’etranger. ‘

  ‘In a way we’re all schizoid,’ Rita agreed. ‘Each one of us split into at least two people - the person who reacts and the person who observes the reaction. Or, if you prefer Freud’s theory of the psyche, there’s the person who lusts, the person who manipulates and the person who contemplates.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Ronsard. ‘The id, the ego and superego.

  Interesting spin.’ He picked up his camera. ‘Anyway, I’m glad to see you’re okay.’ He stood up. ‘I should get back to the press conference in case they come out with some outrageous piece of mendacity I should know about.’

  ‘Thanks for the concern.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said, opening the door. ‘I can see why you’re no ordinary detective.’

  ‘Thank you,’ responded Rita, enjoying his flattery. ‘I wish a few more senior officers felt the same way.’

  *

  The crime-scene photos from Ice’s killing were more depressing than the others. This wasn’t simply a dead victim. This was a young woman Rita had been talking to less than forty-eight hours ago.

  What made it worse was that she might have prevented the murder.

  With hindsight she could have been more forceful, more insistent on getting the girl out of the apartment to somewhere safer, though the email to Eve had distracted her, changed priorities. In reality, Ice’s obstinacy, her refusal to listen, had sealed her fate.

  The glossy images spread across Rita’s desk told the story, more or less. There were shots of the girl’s naked torso sprawled in the doorway of her bedroom, and close-ups of her severed head planted in the ice bucket. The symbolism was clear. Her face, glassy-eyed and rigid with an expression of fear, also showed the puncture wound in her forehead where the nail had penetrated her brain. Others showed the bloodied stumps of her wrists where the hands had been severed.

  Rita sat back and stared across the room, plagued by nagging doubts. Why the hands? What purpose did they serve - souvenirs, fantasy, what? For all his loathsome brutality, Rita couldn’t picture Billy Bowers removing the hands of his victims, unless he was fulfilling an
agenda other than his own. But that brought her back to the notion of a conspiracy and the role of the research base.

  Better not go there, she thought. Not much that could be done about it now.

  She flipped through photos of the penthouse interior, most notably the empty space where Ice’s computer had been. Only the unplugged screen and keyboard were left, wires dangling. The CPU was gone. At least that fitted with Billy’s motives. The stilted testimony provided in hospital by Freddy confirmed that Bowers desperately wanted what was on the Rheingold disk, because he was conducting some sort of auction for cash. That meant at least two other parties wanted the disk. If the base was one, who was the other? The Anti-War Coalition? That seemed unlikely.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Sutcliffe striding into the room, a businesslike brio in his step, a broad smile on his face.

  He reached out and shook her hand. ‘Got a plane to catch, but I wanted to say a quick thanks for all your help.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

  ‘And when you’re next in Brisbane, look me up. We’ll have a beer.’

  ‘By then you’ll be Detective Inspector Sutcliffe.’

  ‘If not Commissioner!’ He laughed, heading out again. ‘Good work, Van Hassel.’

  Rita sat for a moment, savouring the compliment. Then she opened the crime-scene report compiled by Jarrett and his officers and began reading through it. The competence and efficiency of his work impressed her again. For all his laidback stance, he was a good detective … very good. One small detail leapt out at her.

  She picked up her phone and called him.

  ‘You calling from the watch-house?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I need to double-check something.’

  ‘You want me to come up?’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I just need to be absolutely sure about one item in your report on Marilyn Eisler. The timings on the penthouse door. Are you positive they’re correct?’