Feeling herself beginning to sag, Stevie made an effort to straighten in her chair. ‘Sounds fascinating, Mark, but I mustn’t take up any more of your time.’ She stood to leave. Mark’s look of disappointment provoked a twang of guilt. Jeez, recently she’d been on enough guilt trips to open a travel agency. ‘So, the bottom line is can you tell me the exact make and model of the suspect car from this paint sample here?’
‘Provided it’s in the database. Vintage cars and custom jobs aren’t. Individual layers can be identified, though they are of course not necessarily an indication of model and make...’
Stevie cut him off. ‘And when will I have the results?’
‘Within the week.’
‘Sooner?’
‘I have to liaise with the PDQ in Canada.’ He smiled; dimples pricked both cheeks and she remembered her attraction to him all those years ago. ‘But I’ll do my best.’
He escorted her to the exit, turned as they passed through the heavy door. ‘I got married a couple of months ago. Jane’s a blood-spatter specialist in E wing.’
‘Congratulations,’ Stevie said and pecked him on the cheek. She hoped he’d be happy. He was a nice guy; he deserved it. (Image 13.1)
Image 13.1
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Something was crushing her, she couldn’t breathe. She fought for air, arms flailing, striking flesh and provoking a sharp cry of pain. ‘Jesus Christ, Stevie, be careful, you nearly cracked me in two!’
Monty! Christ , what was she doing? She sat up, pushed the hair from her face, and looked around, trying to get orientated. She was in the chair next to Monty’s bed, alongside a bunch of green curtains. She must have dozed off, head resting on the bed. With a hand against her chest, she willed her heart to stop pounding.
‘I’d give you some of this,’ Monty pointed to the morphine pump by his side. ‘But with you thumping around on top of me like that, I think I’ll need every last drop.’ To prove his point he pressed the button and administered another relieving dose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she shook her head and tried to shake the memory of the bad dream. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Better than you I’d say.’
She looked at her watch; she’d been at the hospital about two hours. One of the last things she remembered was helping the nurse assist Monty to the bathroom, supporting his elbow with one hand, the other pushing his drip, while the nurse carried the drains. The ordeal had been too much for him—and her too. She’d eased him back into bed and must have fallen asleep too.
‘Bad dream?’ he asked.
She nodded, passing him a glass of water from the bedside locker. ‘You’ve been told to drink more water,’ she reminded him.
‘Then bring me something to flavour it with.’ He sipped from the bent straw, examining it longingly. ‘Christ, I’d kill for a cigarette.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Stevie took the glass from him and drained the rest of the water.
‘You were talking in your sleep,’ he said.
‘Was I?’
She said nothing more, concentrated on the noises from the passageway. A rattle, a rumble and a clink of spoons on china told her the tea trolley wasn’t far off. She was about to welcome the interruption when the sound continued past Monty’s room, receding into the background.
‘The trolley lady’s passed you by. You must have really pissed her off,’ she tried to joke.
Monty looked at her for a moment, unsmiling, then tilted his head to a rumpled newspaper on the visitor’s chair. ‘The accident was written up in Saturday’s paper.’ He collapsed back upon his pillows with a heavy sigh. ‘What a waste,’ he murmured, closing his eyes as if a wave had broken over him. ‘And here am I, old enough to be her father with years to go before my use-by date—if my surgeon is to be believed.’
Depression was a common side effect of heart surgery, and one of the reasons she had been sheltering Monty from the news. She searched his face, looking for signs of grief beyond grief. Thankfully at that moment, the morphine kicked in and he fell into a light doze. She continued to study his face, pale and drawn. Her gaze fell to the dressing down the centre of his shaved chest. As she envisioned the zipper- fdlike scar beneath, crusted with dried blood, she began to tremble uncontrollably.
And then, as if from a blow to the stomach, she couldn’t seem to find her breath. With difficulty she tried to concentrate on drawing a steady stream of air into her lungs, but it seemed to slam against an invisible, impenetrable barrier.
Is this how it was for Skye during the last moments of her life?
Stevie panicked as she fought for air. Slipping off the bed, she bent at the waist, one hand on Monty’s mattress, and struggled to breathe. A paper bag, she needed a paper bag. She found one on the tray table, grabbed it with shaking hands and tipped the grapes from it. Several rolled to the floor. After a couple of inhalations the relief was almost instantaneous.
‘Are you all right, Mrs McGuire?’ A nurse carrying a clipboard strode to the end of Monty’s bed and inspected his chart. Stevie didn’t care about the incorrect title, said she was fine despite feeling like a popped balloon.
‘I sometimes think this is harder for the loved ones than it is for the patients,’ the nurse said as she checked Monty’s vital signs on the monitor, glancing down as a grape popped under her foot.
‘Sorry, I’ll clear those up,’ Stevie said, dropping to her knees to pick up the grapes and bumping the side of the bed as she did so. Monty woke up with a startled grunt. The nurse smiled and placed the thermometer in his ear. Stevie would have liked a longer delay, wanted the nurse to stay longer, but the thing didn’t take long to cook, beeping after only a couple of seconds. Monty’s eyes met hers, his searching expression telling her he’d not forgotten their earlier conversation.
When the nurse left the room, he said, ‘So, what you going to do about it?’
Stevie feigned ignorance. She sat on the side of the bed and gave him a puzzled shrug.
‘Skye’s death. Tell me what the hell’s going on and stop treating me like a piece of cut crystal.’
As it happened, talking to Monty provided as much relief as breathing through the paper bag. She told him she thought Skye’s death was connected to the death of Delia Pavel and the disappearance of Jon and Ralph. In trying to protect Monty from this, she reflected, she’d been damaging herself. The more she spoke the more objective she became. The spark of interest she saw in his eyes jumped into her own, re-kindling the old investigative feelings on which she thrived: the flutter of nerves through the stomach, the thrill of the chase.
She explained what she’d discovered from the MCI officer, Tony Pruitt, and the streak of green paint on Skye’s car. ‘With Pruitt otherwise occupied and Fowler in the office, I went back to Skye’s smashed car and took a paint scraping and dropped it off at the lab on the way over here.’
‘That’ll cost money.’
‘I’ll pay from my own pocket. Even if it can’t be used as evidence in court, it’ll help guide me in the right direction. The guy in the lab reckons he should be able to get the make and maybe even the model of the car.’
Monty paused. ‘That guy at the lab—that wouldn’t be Mark Douglas would it?’
Stevie looked away. ‘Maybe.’
‘Jesus, Stevie, despite evidence to the contrary, you’re not above using your feminine wiles, are you?’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘And then what?’
‘I’ll do my best to help out.’
‘You mean you’ll go round treading on people’s toes, pissing them off and carrying out your own investigation. Angus won’t go with it. You know how he plays by the book.’
‘Me? Tread on people’s toes?’
Stevie slid from the bed and kissed his cheek. ‘I’ve got to go, have a date.’
Some of the sleepiness left Monty’s eyes; he straightened in the bed as much as he was able. ‘What, where, who?’
‘Clubbi
ng.’ She turned from the door and shot him a Marilyn Monroe wink. He was muttering about feminine wiles when she left the room.
Fowler opened his door wearing a torn rag of a T-shirt and faded, baggy board shorts. For a moment Stevie thought she’d stumbled upon the wrong apartment.
‘Hi there,’ she said, masking her surprise at his more than casual attire. ‘Can I come in?’ His eyes widened. If the startled look was anything to go on, he was as surprised at her change in image as she was of his.
She loomed above him in her seldom worn, thigh-high boots. She’d had to lie on the floor to do up her straight-legged jeans. A hip-hugging broad white belt and a see-through flimsy shirt and diamante camisole completed the outfit. This wasn’t her usual style of comfortable grunge, but it had been appreciated by the various men she’d come across on her journey across the city: the overly attentive cashier, the leering man in the queue at the counter, and the guy in the flash wheels who’d crawled the kerb to get a better look when she alighted from her car.
She heard the roar of laughter from a TV in the room behind, eased her way past him and turned the sound down. The apartment was clean with minimal furniture, mostly white and mostly Ikea. An ironing board with a white shirt draped across it stood next to a basket of more crumpled white shirts. The iron clicked, it was on and the air was tinged with the fresh odour of spray-on starch.
‘What do you want?’ Fowler said with more puzzlement than hostility.
‘How about grabbing something groovy from your wardrobe and hitting the town with me?’
He looked from the pile of ironing to Stevie. ‘Groovy? But I only have these white shirts.’
He was joking; he had to be. She looked at his mask-like face and tried to search for some humour in it. About to give up, she noticed the corners of his mouth rise with the flicker of a smile.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as he headed to a closed door off the main room.
‘You mentioned you were going to reinterview the staff at Pavel’s restaurants and club,’ Stevie said. ‘I thought now would be a good time to do it, when the staff are preoccupied and not concentrating so much on their answers.’
He thought for a moment, agreed, then disappeared into his room for about five minutes. He re-emerged in suit pants and a cream shirt with no tie.
When he saw Stevie’s barely concealed amusement he said, ‘I didn’t think they’d let me in wearing jeans.’
Shit, he hadn’t been joking. (Image 14.1)
Image 14.1
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Like many inner city venues on a weeknight, the two Pavel restaurants, one Thai and the other French, were less than half full. ‘You can see why this town gets called Dullsville,’ Fowler said. An interesting comment from Mr Dullsville himself, Stevie thought.
They spoke to the managers in each restaurant, receiving no new information, just repetitions of what the previous investigating officers had been told: that Jon Pavel rarely put in an appearance at these establishments, his interests were more focused on his Fremantle nightclub. Both managers stressed that highly respected certified accountants managed their books. Fowler told them not to worry, that the confiscated books would soon be speaking for themselves. At the mention of an audit, the male and female managers had respectively squirmed inside their business suits.
‘Come on, let’s go find some action. We might have more luck at the hip-hop club in Fremantle,’ Fowler said as they crammed themselves back into his highly polished white WRX. ‘Pavel runs his businesses from an office in the same complex and spends most of his time there.’
‘Has the office been searched?’ Stevie asked.
‘Yeah, some papers and a computer were confiscated, but I’m not sure what they’re about yet. There’s a team briefing tomorrow at Central.’ Fowler hesitated before taking off from the curb and turned to her. ‘Why don’t you come? With your contacts you should be able to wangle yourself in.’
Was he being sarcastic? If he was she decided to ignore him. ‘Thanks, Sergeant, I will.’ That’d teach him. ‘Any more news about Ralph Hardegan?’
‘Same thing. His home and businesses have been searched and his records are being combed, but there’s still no sign of him. A couple of his staff at the veg shop in Mosman Park—where he has his main office—did mention how he’d seemed unusually anxious recently, though they couldn’t say why. SOCO found blood traces in his apartment. Someone had attempted to clean it up with bleach, but missed a few spots.’ He eased his car into a patchy line of traffic.
‘What do we know about him?’
‘Divorced, no current lady-friend, expensive unit in East Perth. Established the Fresh’n’Tasty chain about ten years ago. Met Jon Pavel when he was setting up one of his restaurants. The men hit it off and began investing in each other’s businesses. Both businesses boomed with the new input on both sides. According to the neighbours, Ralph Hardegan found the house for the Pavels next door to his mother. The neighbour, Mrs Blakeman, reckons he must have seen Delia as a soft touch, getting her to keep an eye on his mum and easing his own conscience—he apparently hardly ever visited her.’
‘A man with his own key visited the other night,’ Stevie said, thoughtfully. ‘Do we have a picture of Hardegan?’
‘In the glove box.’
The photo showed a man in his fifties, good looking in a designer way, with a neat beard and wavy hair—not Stevie’s type at all. ‘How tall is he?’
‘About six foot.’
Stevie replaced the picture and thought back to the shadowy figure she’d seen from the window when she was trapped in the room. ‘About the right height, it could’ve been him.’
They crossed the bridge. Lights bobbed on the water below. Hulking silhouettes of docked cargo ships were lit up like apartment blocks. Unlike Perth on a weeknight, these city streets throbbed. There was always something to do around Fremantle provided you had the money for it, and those that didn’t had plenty of ways of getting it. Like its neighbour, Perth, Freo was bright by day, but once night fell its shadows were long and dark.
Parking spots were scarce, but eventually they pulled down a one-way street, not much wider than an alley, and parked with two wheels on the curb. It was a short walk to the club.
Crowds wearing arty black spilled from a nearby cinema. A group of youths in torn jeans lounged on fold-up chairs outside the market’s entrance, selling their wares: cheesecloth skirts and kaftans, brass water pipes and tinkling wind chimes made from knives and forks.
A living statue of Captain Cook spookily illuminated by lamplight shot Stevie a cheeky wink as she walked past. Next to him a bearded busker sang duets with his howling dog. Stevie flipped a dollar into the busker’s hat; the dog stopped howling and wagged its tail.
Situated in the middle of a busy street, the Vertex offered more than hip-hop and expensive drinks. Enticing smells wafted from the Italian restaurant below where well-dressed groups of young people dined and drank before heading for the club upstairs. The dining area was filled with rattan chairs and tables with polished glass tops; one wall taken up with a bad imitation of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Fowler went to find the club’s manager while Stevie scrutinised the menu tacked to the rag-washed pillar at the restaurant’s entrance, her stomach growling at the thought of peppered squid and Mediterranean salad.
‘Can’t get a decent feed anywhere these days,’ Fowler said, looking over her shoulder at the menu. ‘All grease and garlic.’
‘Looks great to me—I missed out on dinner.’
‘Won’t do you any harm.’
Prick. Stevie spun to face him, saw he was holding up a key. ‘Mr Marius told us to wait in his office,’ he said, oblivious to her clamped jaw and narrowed eyes. ‘Said he’d join us when he’d finished dealing with some customers.’
Fowler led the way up the stairs to a closed safety glass door where bright colours flashed, shadows bobbed and weaved. A couple of men in black muscle shirts stood outside. Fowler s
howed them his ID and Stevie beamed her best Colgate smile—she wasn’t technically supposed to be here and didn’t want anyone making a note of her name. Fowler showed them the key and asked where the office was.
‘Down the corridor, on the right,’ the smaller man pointed. They followed his instructions, the odours indicating they were also heading in the direction of the toilets.
Fowler opened up a door next to the gents and turned on the light. The office was decked out in a style befitting a successful young businessman: antique partner’s desk, framed hunting prints, a silk oriental rug.
‘Doesn’t look very Romanian to me,’ Stevie remarked, realising as she said it that she wasn’t quite sure what a Romanian’s office was supposed to look like. Gothic towers and screeching bats sprang to mind: strings of garlic, wooden stakes and men with very pale faces.
Stevie examined a picture of the mousy Delia on the desk. Fowler said, ‘We’ve already taken his computer and account books, there’s not much left in here to go through, but I think it’s worth talking to the manager again. He said about five minutes.’
Dominic Marius arrived sooner than expected. Stevie replaced the picture of Delia Pavel and turned to face him. He was as short as he was broad, his laboured respiration from climbing the stairs causing the pinstripes of his waistcoat to wave to and fro. Tiny droplets of sweat burst along his hairline. He mopped his brow Pavarotti style, and indicated a studded leather couch to the detectives. He relaxed more as he settled into the matching seat behind the desk and his eyes lit with a small, satisfied gleam: he looked very much at home in his boss’s chair.
Marius looked from one to the other of them and opened up his hands. ‘I really don’t think I can help you any further. I’ve told you everything I know about Jon Pavel.’
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