‘What?’
‘Well, indirectly. You know about my brother-in-law, of course. Well, I’m one of his executors, and I’ve had to look into his business dealings. It seems his building business was in financial trouble and he’d taken out a big loan from Kristich’s company Bluereef on crippling terms. It’ll probably leave my sister-in-law on the breadline, so I had a look into Kristich’s background. He had a previous life as Sandi Krstić in Queensland. Sailed pretty close to the wind—I spoke to one of the cops up there who investigated him, and he was into fraud, dubious business practices. Implicated in the death of his wife, who fell from a Surfers tower block, and a man he’d ripped off who was causing trouble. Never charged. He fled to Vanuatu then reappeared down here with a change of spelling. His pattern seems to be to ingratiate himself with influential people who ease his way.’
Deb frowns, staring at him. ‘Jeez, Harry, why didn’t you tell me this before? When we were going to the Gipps Tower scene?’
‘Yeah, I was surprised when you mentioned his name. I wondered if there could be another Kristich, so I didn’t say anything until I was certain, but I’m telling you now. It’s him all right, and I’m sure there’s plenty of dirt to be dug. Maybe we should go up to Brisbane and talk to the guys there.’
Deb looks thoughtful.
‘Or I could withdraw from the investigation if you think I’m compromised. I’ve already been in enough trouble about getting involved in Greg’s murder.’
She thinks, then says, ‘I’ll talk to Bob Marshall. See what he says.’
‘Right.’ He stands. ‘I’ll get back to the Nguyen case, yes?’
She nods.
An hour later Deb comes to his desk. She looks happy. ‘Bob agrees about hitting the Crows. In fact he wants to be in on it personally.’ She grins. Detective Superintendent Bob Marshall did a number of years in SWAT teams before the TOU was formed. He makes no secret of his nostalgia for the days of more exciting policing.
‘Good. Did you mention my problem?’
‘Yes. He says it’s okay, as long as you let us know of anything relevant in connection with your brother-in-law’s dealings. He wants you on the team, Harry. So do I.’
‘Thanks, Deb, I appreciate it.’
‘There is one strange thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The tech guys can’t find any trace of Lavulo going into the Gipps Tower.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The only thing I can think is that he was able to tamper with the system. It seems he knew some of the security people on duty last night.’
*
When he gets home that evening he tells Jenny about his strange day, investigating his own crime. She listens closely, her mood swinging from horror to relief. He senses something else too, a kind of suppressed elation perhaps, that they are doing something to put things right for Greg and those he’s left behind. He can’t share that feeling. I killed two men. It’s the first time he’s allowed himself to articulate that thought.
He wants to talk about something else. ‘Any luck with the hard drive?’
‘Yes. Most of the files are password protected, but I’ve had some successes. I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to open them all eventually. And there’s one in particular…’ Her face lights up. ‘It’s some kind of trust fund that Kristich was managing in the name of Tubby Bell. It’s worth over two million dollars. I think I can access it.’
‘Oh? Who’s Tubby Bell?’
‘I assume it was a code name he was using. And I was thinking I could divert it into another account, one that we control, for Nicole and the girls.’
He stares at her, watching his beautiful damaged wife turn into a thief. It’s more shocking than recognising himself as a murderer.
‘He owes it to them, Harry,’ she insists. ‘I can’t see Sam Peck getting anything for them, can you?’
He has to agree with that.
‘Just think about it.’ she says. Then, ‘Dance with me.’
He puts on one of her favourites, Sting, ‘When We Dance’, and holds her close, thinking.
At the end of the song, still holding her, he whispers, ‘Kristich’s lawyer’s persuaded a magistrate to block our access to his computers and documents. I think there are people with influence who are worried about what we’ll find. If they’re successful, we could end up with the only record.’
‘Tell me the magistrate’s name. I’ll do a search for it on the hard drive.’
‘Yes, but Jenny, be careful. If you access anything outside of this room, transfer any moneys, whatever, you’ve got to be a hundred and ten per cent sure no one can trace it back to us.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I understand that very well.’
16
‘So they physically dumped her in the gutter, did they?’
Kelly Pool’s editor, Bernie Westergard, peers at the blurry enlargement of the picture of the big bikie that she took on her phone.
‘Well not literally, no. It’s a figure of speech.’
‘Not in a court of law it’s not, Kelly.’
‘Come on, Bernie, they were forcibly evicting a confused old lady with a day’s notice to quit. She’s lived there for forty years, for God’s sake.’
‘You have studied the notice to quit, I take it? Passed it through to legal?’
‘No, but—’
‘This is no good. You don’t really know what was going on. You’ve gone off half-cocked here.’ He shoves her article and the photo back at her across his desk. ‘Come on, Kelly, you’re an experienced reporter. This is what I’d expect from an intern.’
She gathers up her work and walks stiffly away, fuming. But by the time she gets to her own desk her anger has died and doubt has seeped in to take its place. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps she’s regressed. There is a story there, but perhaps she’s just not capable of pinning it down anymore. If she ever was. Christ! She thumps her fist on the desk in frustration. Yes, Bernie was absolutely right, it was a hopeless, sloppy, amateurish piece of work.
She packs up her things and heads off home.
Home is a ground-floor two-bedroom flat that she shares with a schoolteacher, Wendy. The other occupants in the block probably think that they’re a couple, but they’re not, just two middle-aged professional women who live together without too many dramas. Wendy moved in temporarily five years ago after a divorce, and stayed. She has a grown-up son who occasionally looks in. Now she is sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of white wine and a pile of school essays that she is in the process of marking.
‘Hi,’ she says, scanning Kelly’s face. ‘Shitty day?’
‘I was manhandled by two thugs and humiliated by my editor. Otherwise fine. You?’
‘The usual, staving off chaos. Why did Bernie humiliate you?’ Just like Wendy to focus on the work drama and not the thugs.
‘Don’t want to talk about it.’ Kelly gets the bottle out of the fridge and pours herself a big one. She sits down with a sigh and kicks off her shoes. It’s comforting to watch someone else working. Then, when the last essay is marked, she
tells Wendy about her run-in with Bernie.
‘Hm.’ Wendy thinks about it in her methodical way. ‘Maybe he was right, but you were right too, weren’t you? I could hear it in your voice. You know something stinks, and you want to go after it.’
Wendy sometimes—no, often—has this very annoying school-teacherly way of pointing out the bleeding obvious and its inevitable consequences. It makes Kelly feel like she’s back in year ten. ‘I think,’ Kelly says, refilling their glasses, ‘that I’ll steer well clear of stinks for a while. There’s a very exciting unveiling of a new set of traffic lights tomorrow that I can’t wait to lavish my purple prose on.’
‘No you won’t. I’ve been watching you this past week. You’ve got something big brewing, haven’t you? This was just a little setback. You’ll bounce back.’
‘Jeez, Wendy, sometimes you’re a real pain, you know that?’
‘Yes, but an honest pain. I’m usually right, aren’t I?’
And Kelly subsides and starts to tell her about the big thing.
‘Wow,’ Wendy says finally. ‘My kids would say that was awesome. And that was the guy in the Gipps Tower last night?’
‘Yes, it’s like it’s erupting all around me and I’m the only one to really be able to put it all together. Except that I can’t, not yet.’
‘You need to talk to the detective again, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, but he told me not to, and he’ll be in the thick of this new enquiry.’
‘All the more reason to try.’
‘I can’t ring him at work again, he’ll go ballistic.’
‘What about home? Is he in the book?’
‘Doubt it. But I do have his home number.’
‘Well go on then, try it.’
Kelly does. A pleasant female voice invites her to leave a message, and after a hesitation she says, ‘Hello? I’d like to leave a message for Harry, if I’ve got the right number. It’s Kelly Pool, Harry. Sorry to have to contact you again, but it’s important I speak to you.’ She gives her number and hangs up.
In the darkened room, the song comes to an end. Harry and Jenny become still, holding each other, and Harry thinks of the fairytale that haunted him as a child, the two babes lost, dying together in the wood, their bodies covered with leaves by robins. The mood is broken by the ringing of the phone, then the voice of Kelly Pool.
When the message finishes Jenny asks who she is, and Harry explains. ‘I don’t know whether she’s a loose cannon, or someone who could help us.’
‘How?’
‘If you find something on the hard drive that they don’t release, she might be one way we could get it out.’
Jenny thinks about that. ‘Depends on whether we could rely on her to protect her sources.’ Then, ‘Invite her over.’
‘What, here?’
‘I want to meet her.’
So Harry returns the call. He hears the rising tone of relief and excitement in Kelly’s voice as he tells her the Surry Hills address. ‘But Kelly, no one else can know about this. No one, you understand?’
‘Um, yes, yes of course, Harry.’
But Harry catches the slight hesitation. There is a background noise. Is someone with her? He starts to ask, but she hangs up.
Forty minutes later there is a knock on the door. Harry takes Kelly’s coat and introduces her to Jenny. He watches the realisation grow in Kelly’s expression as it does with everyone meeting Jenny for the first time. ‘Jenny lost her sight three years ago in the same car crash that killed my parents,’ he explains.
‘Oh that’s terrible, I remember that so well. I’d forgotten there was a third person in the accident though.’
‘If that’s what it was,’ Harry says, then cuts her off as she begins to form a question. ‘Sit down, Kelly. What did you want to talk to me about?’
She takes out a recorder and he says, ‘No recordings. You can take notes, but no mention of our names.’
‘Right.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s about Kristich, obviously, but more than that. I’ve brought you a copy of an exposé of Sandi Krstić. A reporter with an affiliate of ours on the Gold Coast wrote this but it was never published. There may be something in there that you haven’t got from your sources. At any rate, you know that he was a white-collar crook with connections to the rich and powerful, and I think that recently he has been involved in events in Crucifixion Creek. Too many weird things have been happening—the Waterfords’ suicide, the murder of the builder and fire at his depot, Councillor Potgeiter’s motion—and they…’
‘Hang on,’ Jenny says. ‘Councillor who?’
‘Sorry.’ Kelly explains about the council resolution. ‘It’s just that if you knew Potgeiter, the last man on earth to have an interest in Aboriginal history, you’d see how crazy it is, him proposing to erect a monument in the new civic centre.’
‘Yes, so?’
‘So I think he wants to free up Bidjigal Park for the council to sell. I think the common link in all of these things is properties in the Creek. Earlier today I was down there and I found the old lady who discovered the Balmoral Beach couple, and who was living in one of their Mortimer Street houses, being evicted by Crow gang members—thrown out onto the street after living there for decades. I think that Kristich was working to clear people out of the Creek. Probably acting as an agent for someone else, one of his rich mates, probably a property developer. Someone who has plans for the place.’
‘You sure they were Crows?’ Harry asks.
‘Oh yes, covered in badges and tatts. Bloody thugs, they physically threw me out. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Crows are part of it. I mean, even that siege, Harry. That was an ex-Crow wasn’t it?’
‘But how would that be related to what you’re talking about?’
‘I don’t know. The woman who was murdered there owned that house. Maybe he’d been sent in to make her sell up. Sounds farfetched, doesn’t it? I can’t find any connection between Kristich and the Crows, or between him and the builder, but something dirty was going on down there and Kristich was in the thick of it. I can smell it.’
Harry sits back, glancing at Jenny. He can read nothing from her expression. ‘So what are you going to do now?’
Kelly sighs. ‘Nothing. Not unless I can find something more. I wrote a piece for the paper about the Crows evicting the old lady and my editor threw it out. Said there was no evidence to back up the accusations I was making, and he was right. But I wondered if you’ve got anything on Kristich’s death, something that might relate to what I’m saying? A link to a property developer maybe?’
Harry shakes his head. ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Oh. Oh well…’
‘Tell me, Kelly,’ Harry says, ‘if someone gave you something, someone who had to remain anonymous, could you protect their identity?’
‘Yes, yes of course.’
‘I mean, would you protect their identity, no matter what they threw at you?’
‘Yes. I’d go to jail, anything. I would never reveal it.’
Again Harry looks at Jenny, who turns her face towards them s
uddenly and says, ‘Kelly, would you do me a favour? Would you go next door to the kitchen and make us all a pot of tea while Harry and I talk about this? You’ll find everything you need in the cupboard above the sink. There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge if you want that.’
‘Okay…’ Kelly looks at them both and gets to her feet. ‘Sure.’
When she’s gone, closing the door behind her, Jenny says, ‘I like her. I think she really cares about all this.’
‘Not just because she’s desperate?’
‘She wants the story all right, but that may not be a bad thing. I think we should help her.’
‘Okay. But first a test.’ He gets to his feet and goes through to the kitchen, where Kelly is waiting for the kettle to boil. She has taken the bottle of wine out of the fridge but hasn’t poured it. He picks it up and gets three glasses. ‘Forget about the tea. Come through.’
They return to Jenny and Harry pours the wine. ‘Does anyone else know you’re here, Kelly?’ he asks.
She hesitates a moment. ‘Yes. I share my flat with a friend, a schoolteacher. When I got home this evening I told her about what a frustrating day I’d had, and it was she who suggested I ring you. She was there when you called back, and I told her where I was going.’
‘Well, thanks for telling us; I don’t think we can go on without being honest with each other.’
‘Right. Does that mean I’ve blown it?’
‘Not necessarily. But when you get home, tell her I wasn’t able to help you and I’ve made you promise never to contact me again. You’ll need to convince her that’s true, okay?’
‘All right.’
‘I don’t know if you appreciate how vulnerable you’ll be if you publish a story about Kristich and Crucifixion Creek. If the police think you have an inside source they will throw the kitchen sink at you. Track your phone, bug your flat, investigate your contacts… And that’s just the good guys.’
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