‘Relax, I’m not bulimic. See! That’s why I don’t tell people I had therapy. People assume I’m a complete nutcase.’
‘I don’t think that!’
‘Sure, sure. So a coffee then? Latte?’
‘Thanks.’
While she went to order I pondered what she’d said. I didn’t want to be a victim. I certainly didn’t want to go around being afraid of my own shadow. I’d spent a lifetime hiding away. Those days were over. Nothing and no one was going to make me go back to that way of life. I wasn’t going to let them win. I was in control of my gift and my life for the first time in years and it was going to stay that way.
I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Ed and Dave the day before. When I’d suggested going to see the guy in Hampstead, Ed hadn’t liked the idea. He’d told me there was no way I’d be allowed in to see him. The nurses wouldn’t even let him and Dave go in. But who said it had to be official?
Claire chose that moment to slip back into her seat. She looked at me with raised eyebrows. The sight of her and the memory of what she’d said was enough to snap me out of my inertia. I was not a victim. I was a kick-arse psychic who helped put murderers behind bars.
‘How do you feel about a bit of unofficial detective work?’ I said.
CHAPTER
30
I hung back while Claire started chatting with the solitary nurse behind the desk. She was probably in her mid-thirties. She looked bored. Claire spoke to her briefly, then the nurse turned to a computer and started tapping away at the keyboard. I sprung into action and walked briskly and purposefully past the desk. The nurse didn’t even look up.
I hurried down the corridor following the signs to Room 17. The receptionist had been very helpful in telling us where Rod Strauss was located when we’d asked him, posing as Rod’s nieces. We would have kept up the ruse but we weren’t sure if it would work. Claire thought there might be restrictions or even a list of who could see patients in his condition. We didn’t know the rules or how strict the nurses would be.
I still couldn’t believe we were actually doing it. When I’d suggested visiting Hampstead at lunch I’d half expected Claire to think the whole idea was disgusting. She hadn’t. In fact she’d almost bowled me over with enthusiasm. Over our coffees we’d nutted out a plan that relied on her ability to distract any nurses and me not losing my nerve and running in the opposite direction.
So far, so good.
I slipped into Rod’s room and looked across at the bed. His slight frame didn’t make much of a bump. He looked withered: shrunken and yellow against the white sheets. He was hooked up to a machine that was breathing for him as well as an assortment of other machines that beeped and whirred. I shivered. It was a horrible half-existence.
I picked up a chair and walked over to the bed. I sat as close as I could. My stomach clenched. His chest rose and fell with each click of the ventilator. I looked at his face. Underneath all the equipment he was still a person. It was hard to imagine what he might have looked like when he was fit and well. His face was shrunken with the skin drawn tight over the bones beneath. Wispy grey hair stood up in a halo around his head.
Was I violating his rights by being here? Now that I was ready to act out my plan it suddenly felt wrong. I was about to stand up and slip back out of the room when I heard a noise behind me.
I swung around, mentally scrabbling for excuses.
‘Hi. It’s just me,’ Claire whispered.
‘What are you doing here?’ I whispered back. Claire coming into the room with me hadn’t been part of the plan.
‘The nurse had to go and see to a patient; alarms started to go off. I took the opportunity to come and see how you were doing. So?’
‘I haven’t touched him yet.’
‘How come? You’d better not wait too long, they could check the rooms regularly for all we know.’
‘I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do.’
‘Of course it is! You could help put away a killer. You said yourself that Ed and Dave didn’t have much to go on. What if this makes all the difference?’
I nodded. She was right. I reached out and touched Rod’s hand. His skin was cool and dry. I closed my eyes. Nothing happened. I was about to let go when a wave of dizziness swept over me. It felt like the room was spinning around. My brain started to fire at a million miles an hour. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. I realised there was something over my head. A bag? Pinpoints of faint light showed through the weave of the fabric.
‘You can take the bag off, you arsehole. I know it’s you,’ I said.
Nobody replied.
‘Answer me! I want to know why you’ve done this. I trusted you.’
The silence wrapped around me. I heard a faint rustle off to my left and swung my head in that direction.
‘You’re a sick bastard, you know that? I can’t believe I was the one who introduced you to the centre. How many are there? Is it just Ben and Roslyn, or are there more?’
‘Shhh,’ a voice whispered close to my ear. I jumped. Cool fingers touched my arm and I tried to jerk away but my arms and legs were tied. My heart started to hammer.
‘No! Wait! No more drugs. Do whatever you want but no more!’ I thrashed against the chair, fighting desperately. I couldn’t have any more heroin. I couldn’t go back. Despair filled me as I remembered the days of agony in withdrawal: the anxiety, the twitching and crawling skin and wanting to scratch the flesh from my bones. I’d fought too hard to give up. I couldn’t do it again. It would kill me.
I felt a sharp sting as the needle entered my left arm, felt the warmth and tingling as the drug coursed up my veins. Numbness spread through my limbs and across my chest. Vinegary sourness filled my mouth. Colour exploded behind my eyes with random images. My mind went into hyper-drive. I was everywhere and everything. I was God.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
The words penetrated my consciousness and I forced my eyes open, trying to find the source of the voice.
‘Seeing God,’ I mumbled. I was struggling to remember who I was and where I was and why.
‘What?’ the nurse said.
‘Seeing Rod. Cass here was just visiting her Uncle Rod,’ Claire said, grabbing my arm and forcing me to stand up. ‘Come on, Cass, it’s time we left.’
‘Wait a minute. Uncle? Mr Strauss doesn’t have any nieces. What are you doing in here? This is all highly irregular. This patient is on life-support. His family would be most distressed to find strangers in his room. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you both to come with me.’
PART III
VICI
CHAPTER
31
Ed spent the evening after their field trip to see Smythe wandering around his apartment, absently doing household chores and watching rubbish TV. What he really wanted to do was pick up the phone and call Cass. Dave’s presence during the day meant he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her properly.
He tried to kid himself that he wanted to call her because he was worried about her and needed to make sure she was safe. That was only part of it. Like a smitten teenager, he wanted to hear her voice and know every thought that was going through her head. On a less ridiculous note, he also wanted to tell her about the guy from her vision who’d bumped off his wife in the bathtub.
He’d taken down the address of the apartment and looked it up when he got back to the office. It wasn’t hard to work out who the guy was. His wife’s death had been investigated and ruled accidental by the coroner. That all lined up with what Cass’d told him. The pleasing bit was what he’d discovered about the happy widower. The guy had met his end in true karmic style. A few months after his wife’s death he’d become a road statistic. At least it was one thing Ed could tie up in a bow.
By sheer force of will he resisted the urge to call Cass to tell her. It could wait a day or two. He’d only called her twice since their session at his place, once when her mum was still in town and then
again to arrange the visit to see Smythe. Both times her reaction to him had been inscrutably sphinx-like. His instincts told him that being too needy might blow any chance he had of getting her back.
He didn’t understand why he was so obsessed. He’d managed without seeing her for almost three months after he’d left Fairfield. He’d been busy settling into the new job and he’d convinced himself that he was doing fine without her and that his feelings would pass. It had taken less than five minutes in her company to shatter the glasshouse he’d built around his emotions.
Since that first night in the university car park she’d been on his mind constantly. He was surprised that she was still so angry and hurt. The sex aside, she seemed determined to keep him at arm’s length. It was all a terrible mess and what made it worse was that he was solely responsible for making it that way. He’d been a first-class idiot.
After several hours of mental torture and a half-arsed impersonation of Martha Stewart, Ed managed about five hours of broken sleep filled with dreams of Cass: happy Cass, sad Cass, Cass lying bloodied on the ground after someone had attacked her. The last image had been the end of a particularly bad nightmare in which Cass was caught and tortured by her stalker. He’d woken from that dream bathed in sweat and ready to rip the guy’s head off. He would never recover if another woman he loved fell victim to some crazy son of a bitch. It didn’t bear thinking about.
He punished himself with a jog and a cold shower to clear his mind. By 9am Tuesday morning he was glued to his PC trying to focus on the case. He was convinced they had missed a key point. It was like something was teasing his peripheral vision but every time he tried to look straight at it there was nothing there. Lack of sleep played havoc with his ability to concentrate and compounded the problem. He looked and felt like shit. His chin was dotted with stubble and his eyes were red and raw. He took a swig of his near-cold coffee and grimaced.
‘What’s crawled up your butt today? You look like someone’s peed in your coffee cup.’ Dave broke into his musing.
‘There’s something off about this case. I like the NA angle. Jones’ reaction yesterday tells me we’re on the right track but something’s wrong about it all.’
‘So, what’s bothering you?’
‘It’s the way the vics died.’
‘Yeah, we said that yesterday, they’re all different. That’s weird if they were killed by the same person.’
‘No, it’s more than that. The way that Taylor was killed was really personal. The killer was tormenting him. It wasn’t a quick or convenient way to kill him.’
‘So? That just means our killer’s a sick fuck.’
‘Yeah, but if we assume the same person killed the others, I want to know why he killed them the way he did. Why drown one and throw another off a balcony? It can’t be convenience.’
‘No, it’s gotta be personal to the victims, you’re right.’
‘Remember what Jenkins’ neighbour said? He was terrified of heights. What if the others were killed in ways that terrified them as well?’
‘Man, that’s sick. You think the killer’s working out what they’re scared of and using that to kill them?’
‘And remember what Cass heard the killer say to Taylor? “The meek shall not inherit the earth?” I think our killer’s got a thing about people who are afraid, but what’s bothering me is that MacDonald was an excellent swimmer according to her mother, so why drown her?’
‘Yeah, it may be worth checking with the mother in case there was something going on there.’
‘But assuming they were all afraid of something, how would the killer have known?’ Ed said.
‘It has to be the NA thing. Everything comes back to that. Would they talk about that sort of thing in the weekly meetings?’
‘I dunno. If they did and Smythe’s really our man, how would he know about it? He didn’t take Tuesdays. I’m thinking maybe the group sessions Metzger runs might be more likely,’ Ed said.
‘All right, we’ll check with him and see what they talk about in those groups.’
‘And if Smythe went along to them.’
‘And Taylor and Monaghan,’ Dave said.
‘And them.’
‘Did Janice put out the alert for Monaghan in other states?’
‘She did. Nothing so far. She also checked his bank accounts. They’re all inactive and there’s no social security being paid in his name.’ Ed sighed, leaning back and kneading the aching muscles at the back of his neck.
‘That can’t be good.’
‘No, he’s either a master at creating a new identity or he’s dead as well.’
‘What about Metzger? Does that put him back in the frame?’ Dave asked.
‘He doesn’t seem physically able to be hurling and carrying bodies around but it might be worth checking where he was on the night Jenkins took a dive and showing his photo to a few of the neighbours to see if anyone recognises him,’ Ed said.
‘Maybe we should also try and talk to his treating doctor to see if he’s really as sick as he appears to be.’
‘They probably won’t say, patient confidentiality and all that. His partner, Young, seemed convinced he was pretty fragile but I think we keep Metzger on our list for now.’
‘We can get Janice to make the calls to follow up on Metzger and Rebecca MacDonald. Uniform can do the photo check at Jenkins’ apartment block but for now I think we follow the Jenkins/Smythe link and see where that leads us,’ Dave said.
They finally got lucky later that morning. There was one prison guard they hadn’t been able to contact. They swung past the bloke’s house to see if they could catch him in. He opened the door in his jocks. His belly hung over them, pale and pendulous.
‘What?’
‘Norman Stanley? We’re detectives from the Major Crime –’ Dave started to say.
‘I don’t give a shit who you are, I’ve just come off night duty and I need some sleep. I’ve got to be back at work in less than ten hours.’
‘We’re investigating a murder. We only need a few minutes of your time,’ Ed said, shoving his ID wallet under Norman’s nose.
Norman squinted at it for long moments before rolling his eyes. ‘Five minutes,’ he said, turning and walking back inside and leaving them to follow him.
They walked into a shabby lounge room that stank of stale cigarette smoke. Norman sat down in an aged recliner and reached for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Ed and Dave perched on the edge of a faded Aztec-patterned couch that had been in its prime sometime in the eighties.
‘You were working at Yatala eight years ago when a Billy Smythe was an inmate?’ Ed said, passing him a picture.
A wave of cigarette smoke floated across the room as Norman dragged then exhaled. He squinted at the picture and frowned. ‘Yeah, I remember him.’
‘We want to know if you remember him having anything to do with another inmate, Paul Jenkins?’ Dave said, passing another photo.
‘Remember? Fuck, I’m not likely to forget. He and Billy got into a fight. I was the mug who tried to break it up. Smythe broke my bloody cheekbone. He got another six months for his efforts. He was a nasty piece of work. Had a vile temper. I should have let them kill each other; wouldn’t have been any loss.’
‘So the two of them were associates?’ Ed said.
‘Nah. They hated each other’s guts.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Who knows? It could have been anything. It doesn’t take much. Prisoners’ll fight over someone pissing in the wrong place.’
‘Is there anything else you can remember about either of them?’
‘Nah, they weren’t anything special.’
Ed handed him a card and made a beeline for the front door and the fresh air on the other side.
They nearly broke their necks to get back to the office. Janice grabbed them the minute they got out of the lift. Her smile told them she’d got lucky too.
‘So who’s going to buy me dinne
r?’ She waved a piece of paper at them, snatching it back as Dave reached to take it.
‘Come on Janice, just tell us what you’ve got!’ Dave said.
‘Gee, you’re no fun today. I hit the trifecta for you, boys. Metzger’s sessions at NA? They definitely talked about their fears and phobias. He specialises in anxiety disorders.’ She mimicked Metzger’s faintly nasal, snobby tones.
‘And did Smythe go to the sessions?’
‘He did go to them. He and the other leader, Strauss, used to take it in turns. Ben Taylor went to the groups and your other guy, Monaghan, was a frequent flyer at them too. Metzger wanted to know if Monaghan and Smythe were suspects.’
‘Janice, you’re a miracle worker,’ Dave said.
‘Ah, but that’s not all! I have steak knives for you too.’ She laughed. ‘I asked Rebecca MacDonald whether her daughter was afraid of the water. Turns out she was an excellent swimmer as a child, did Little Nippers with the local surf life-saving club for years.’
‘But that changed?’
‘It did. She had an accident when she was twelve. A surf ski clocked her on the head and knocked her out. No one realised she was in trouble until it was almost too late. Her mother said she quit the club after that. Nothing they could say would make her change her mind.’
‘Janice, you’re incredible. Thanks,’ Ed said.
‘I know. What would you do without me, right? On a less positive note, uniform got diddly squat. I asked them to flash photos of Metzger, Monaghan and Smythe around Jenkins’ neighbours. No joy. I also rang the hospital where Metzger was treated after Monaghan attacked him. They wouldn’t tell me anything about his condition but they did give me the name of a rehab clinic where he went for treatment after he was released. The nurse there would only tell me that the doctor’s injuries were severe and that he would never make a full recovery.’
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