by P. J. Nash
Alchemy Investigations Office, Victoria Police HQ, Melbourne
‘So, it seems brown is the new ice, according to Ari,’ said James. ‘His feedback is backed up by Victoria PD’s drugs squad guys. Their informants are telling them that the street dealers who worked for the Plantagenets are being run off their pitches. And the supply of glass quality methamphetamine is quickly drying up. The dealers are offering a “buy one, get one free” offer on bags of brown. Tests from the lab are confirming what we thought. This heroin is not your average street junk full of shit. It’s straight from Helmand in Afghanistan.’
The team were assembled in the conference room. James, Marsh and Sandersen sat around the small conference table. Johnson and Hamilton were still staking out Goldfinga’s.
‘There’s only one person with the wherewithal to put this into operation, and that’s Bain.’ added Sandersen, looking at her laptop.
‘I’ll believe that, but where’s he getting his supply from?’ asked Marsh.
‘Flown in by our very own air force, it would seem,’ said James, putting a pile of eight by ten prints on the table. ‘Hamilton and Johnson snapped this guy outside Goldfinga’s. He didn’t seem the usual punter. Had more than a whiff of the military about him. So, we whizzed the pictures off to AFDIS and the Feds.’
‘AFDIS?’ asked Marsh. ‘That’s a new one on me,’ he laughed.
‘The Australian Defence Force Investigative Service, basically the Australian form of the Red Caps, SIB,’ said James.
‘Roger that,’ said Marsh with a mocking salute.
‘So, the search flagged up one Martin Scudamore, the guy in the snaps. He’s a Loadmaster on an RAAF C17. His record is squeaky clean. The only fishy thing is that he volunteered to go another tour of Afghan when he was due leave,’ said James.
‘So, you think he is Bain’s delivery boy?’
James nodded. ‘Well, it’s all circumstantial as of yet, but it seems that way. After we wrap up here, we’re meeting some people from the Feds and AFDIS. It’s a bit of a jurisdictional nightmare, to be honest, but were going to see what kind of joint strategy we can work out. The first thing we’re going to do is a “drains up” investigation on Scudamore’s bank accounts and home life. If we think we’ve got grounds, the Feds will get round the clock surveillance on him,’
Marsh nodded. ‘Good luck with the Feds. They don’t like sharing their sweeties.’
Marsh had a low opinion of the Australian Federal Police over their handling of several cases he had reported on in his day as a journalist. While each Australian state had its own force, the AFP worked to protect the country as a whole.
‘So, you’re off to the NT to catch our killer. What you got in there?’ asked James, looking at a roll along suitcase.
‘Guns, lots of guns,’ said Marsh, without a trace of a smile. ‘What do you think I’m up against with Alice?’ he asked, referring to Alice Havilland the daughter of the “Dingo” killer.
‘Well, in layperson’s terms, it’s a kind of gaslighting. Like the Patrick Hamilton play,’ said Sandersen.
‘Yeah, I know that one. Someone got inside her head and she’s off on a rampage,’ said Marsh.
‘Pretty much. It’s like someone’s reinstalled her software. They’ve used regressive hypnotherapy or similar to plant a series of false memories and she’s acting on them,’ said Sandersen.
‘So, why Vukasin and the others?’ asked Marsh.
‘Well, we never got to the bottom of who the plane bombing and who paid Tyler Smith, but my money is still on Bain,’ said James.
‘Well, whoever’s behind it she’ll pay first, and I’m writing a cheque I’m going to cash it too,’ said Marsh, wheeling his case out of the office without another word.
Sandersen and James packed their stuff away and made their way out to the underground car park where the specialised VW Transporter Van was parked. James pressed the key fob, and the rear ramp opened, and he rolled himself into the rear cab. Sandersen got it the driving seat and pressed the starter button. The van was engulfed in a ball of flames as a cataclysmic boom echoed through the cavernous space.
Undisclosed House, Melbourne
Cyrus Bain hit the play button again on the digital recorder attached to his encrypted landline phone. He’d been there when the original conversation had taken place. But the adrenaline that had surged through him had caused his senses to be stunted. Collin Jarvis’ voice sounded loud and clear.
‘It’s your daughter, she’s…she’s been killed in an RTA in Broome. Her foster dad pulled out in front of a truck. Tess was in the front passenger seat and took the full force of the impact… The dad was drunk, he’s in ICU with a whole host of injuries, but looks like he’ll pull through. We’ll get you the name of the hospital, and believe me, we’ll make him pay.’
The recording went silent. Bain poured another hefty slug of Remy Martin into his glass then swigged it. He had lost all sense of time since the call earlier that morning. The booze had nullified the pain for now. Powerlessness was not something Bain had ever felt before. The unbearable heaviness of being was now sat on him. Tears wouldn’t come. He just sat, refilled his glass, drank and said, ‘Tess … Tess’ softly to himself.
Marsh Ranch, Northern Territory
Marsh had forgotten the harsh heat of the NT having spent most of his time in Melbourne. His shirt was sticking to his back as he opened the veranda doors. He put the pitcher of Pimm’s and glasses down on the table. Seated on the other side was Sarah Kinsella, a thirty-year-old ex-reporter from Darwin, who was now Alchemy Investigations’ latest employee. She looked up from the files she had been reading.
‘Well what do you think?’ asked Marsh.
‘I think you all did an amazing job catching this monster, and then, the authorities released his daughter and put lots of people in danger.’
‘Well, thanks, but I meant about catching Alice,’ said Marsh, pouring out two glasses of Pimm’s.
‘I’d say she’s working her way down a pre-programmed list and then. And this is my two cents. She’ll pick up her dead father’s unfinished business,’ said Kinsella, taking a sip of Pimm’s.
‘Sounds like were on the same page,’ said Marsh.
‘The unfinished business being Catholic priests. Havilland only stopped because you, Sandersen and James caught up with him,’
Marsh clapped his hands and made a small bow towards her. ‘And that’s why we hired you,’ he exclaimed. ‘A fresh pair of eyes makes all the difference. I’m just going inside to find something. Be back in a tick,’ Marsh said.
Kinsella went back to reading the reports from ‘The Dingo’ case.
‘Tada,’ said Marsh, flourishing a thick book. ‘The original Catholic Diocesan Directory. Now we need to see who might be on Alice Havilland’s list in the priest’s Yellow Pages.’
St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne.
‘I’m afraid we’ve had to amputate her right arm from the elbow down,’ said the surgeon.
James was in a small ante room next the operating theatre. ‘Well, that’s shit, but we’re both alive. So, thanks, Doc.’
The surgeon left the room and was replaced by a detective from Victoria Police.
‘Hi, mate, glad to hear she’s going to make it,’ he said.
‘Thanks, mate, so what you got?’
The detective pulled a notebook from his jacket. ‘Well, this might not be the right time to say you were lucky, but you were. The bomb that went off was a crude primary charge a bit like a big firework. There was a half kilo of plastic explosive wired up in the back that failed to detonate. If it had gone off, we’d have been picking up what’s left you both in a bucket. Thankfully, our bombmaker was a bit of an amateur. The batteries on the detonator were duff.’
James exhaled loudly. ‘Thank fuck.’
The detective looked at his pad. ‘There’s more good news,’ he said.
James took a sip of tepid hospital coffee. ‘Which is?’
T
he detective flipped a page of his notebook. ‘Because the main device didn’t go off and the disposal boys managed to defuse it, we’ve got a whole smorgasbord of forensics.’
James looked pensive. ‘Every contact leaves a trace.’
The detective nodded. ‘Locard’s Exchange principle. The bombmaker anticipates most of the evidence will be destroyed, so they don’t take much care over DNA or fingerprints. And we’ve got some partials. Nothing from the databases, but we’re pretty sure they’re from a female.’
James turned white. ‘Shit, she’s here in the city.’
But she wasn’t. Hours after she’d planted the device, Casey Jones had caught a flight to Darwin.
Palmerston Hospital, Broome, Western Australia
Constable Don Cassidy nodded to the man in the green surgical scrubs as he entered the ICU ward. He had been on hospital watch for over ten hours. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was on guard. All he knew was that the sarge had told him to get his arse down to the hospital and keep an eye out on the ICU ward. Collin Jarvis smiled to himself as he walked down the corridor to Tim Hogan’s room. The stupid copper had fallen for the oldest ruse in the book. He hadn’t even got a hospital ID. Going into the room, he saw the prone form of Tim Hogan. Wired up to a plethora of whirring, beeping machines, he looked more cyborg than man. Jarvis soon saw what he was looking for, the butterfly canula, attached to Hogan’s arm. He unzipped the case he had in his scrubs pocket and selected one of the syringes. Inserting the syringe into the canula, he pushed the plunger and sent a lethal dose of potassium chloride straight into Tim Hogan.
‘Sweet dreams, cunt,’ he murmured, replacing the syringe in the case and back in his pocket.
Don Cassidy was jolted awake as the door to ICU opened again. It was the same doc coming back from his rounds.
‘Sleeping like a baby,’ said Jarvis to Cassidy as he walked past.
Cassidy decided it was time for a coffee. He had just inserted his change and collected the gloop-like something from the machine, when all hell broke loose.
Maple Cross, Retirement Home. Northern Territory
The Maple Cross retirement home seemed a pleasant enough place to spend your autumn years to Marsh. It avoided all the normal clichés of these places – the smell of wee and neglected old people left in front of the television in overheated rooms. Each resident had their own suite of rooms with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Marah and Kinsella were here to meet Father Peter Griffiths. The lead had come from Kinsella’s idea to look at the computer of Martin Havilland, the “Dingo” killer. After his death and the incarceration of his daughter, the investigation had been wrapped up. Kinsella had suggested they took a “cold case” type review and got everything out of the evidence locker. Havilland’s computer had been handed over to the digital forensic investigators. They had flagged up a deleted MS Word document which they had managed to recover. It was a simple list of names and addresses of priests and others. And it had bought them here.
‘Take a seat,’ said Father Peter, sprightly looking man in his late seventies, still sporting a good head of salt and pepper hair and dressed in the black suit and dog collar of an off-duty priest.
‘Margaret will bring us some tea,’ he said.
Marsh and Kinsella seated themselves.
‘I take it this about Martin Havilland and Moleshill,’ he said, cutting to the chase.
‘In that, you would be spot on,’ said Marsh.
‘Well, it’s a shameful part of my career and for the church as a whole,’ said the priest.
A woman appeared carrying a tea tray and placed it on the table.
‘Thanks Margaret,’ he added.
She left as she discreetly as she had arrived.
‘I’ll be frank, your name was on a list compiled by Martin Havilland. He was working his way through that list. And he wasn’t paying social calls. Now, on any other day, if I thought you’d been involved in child sex abuse, I’d drag you to the cops by your hair, but the stakes now are even higher. We’re here to get answers, and anything you may tell us will not go any further,’ said Marsh.
The priest began shaking and tears ran down his cheeks. Kinsella passed him a tissue.
‘I…I never touched any of the boys at the home. I was, however, involved in a shameful cover up. I’ve asked Our Lord for his forgiveness, but I know that if there’s no punishment for me in this life, I will receive it in the next,’ he said.
Kinsella poured the tea, put in a couple of sugars and handed it to the priest.
‘Look, Father, I’ve made some grievous mistakes in my life. I’m not sitting here in moral judgement. Just take your time and tell us what you know,’ said Marsh.
The priest regained his composure a little. ‘I was a parish priest tipped for great things. I was given a job. Essentially to act as a rubbish collector to tidy up the mess. The Archbishop asked me to buy the silence of the people who were in the know and make those involved disappear. Which meant I arranged for priests who had been involved in the abuse of young boys and the pimping of those boys to skip the country to a new life as if nothing happened. Father Neil Fitzpatrick, amongst others,’ he said.
Marsh placed a list on the table. Father Peter put down his teacup and took out a pair of reading glasses. He picked up the list and read it carefully. ‘Most of these are either dead of natural causes or were killed by Havilland. There’s only two names that stand out.; Father Derek Thompson and Father Ted Hanson,’ said Father Peter.
‘Where are they now?’ asked Kinsella.
‘Well, I couldn’t give you precise addresses, but I believe they are living in establishments similar to this here in the Northern Territory. I can make a few calls and have the information in a few hours,’ said Father Peter.
Marsh stood up. ‘Okay, Father, you make your calls. My colleague and I will hit the internet and see what we can drag up and come back and meet you later this afternoon.’
The priest nodded but seemed to have gone into some sort of fugue state.
‘Nuremburg … Just following orders… It’s no excuse, wasn’t then, isn’t now… We must all assume responsibilities for own actions.’
Marsh and Kinsella left the room and went to the car to find their laptops.
Big Joe’s Coffee, Melbourne
Business was brisk at Big Joe’s. Munu had received his one-kilo shipment. None of the gear was on the premises, and he knew he could spot the Narc squad a mile off. No amount of imaginative disguise could create the wasted thinness of a proper junkie. There were four in the coffee shop now, sitting at a table. They shifted uneasily in their seats, hands rubbing their upper arms and their stomachs as the cramps took hold. Munu had served them coffees and given them their special receipts.
It was just simple fact of demand outstripping supply. The two pushers outside needed to keep the brown coming, but they didn’t want to be caught by the cops with enough for five years in Barwon on a dealing rap. Neither did they want rolling by another crew. Bain had prevented any of his crews from going tooled up. Muni glanced up as a bagman walked in with his cut. The system was set up so that the gear and the cash were never in one place. Cops busting the dealers with a sizeable quantity of brown divided up into wraps could make a try to convict them for dealing. Catching them with a big wedge of cash bumped up the evidential circumstances. But the true reality was that Bain knew any cash seized by the cops for which the person arrested had no legitimate explanation, could be seized by the cops as coming from “the proceeds of crime”. He couldn’t give two shits if a couple of ratbag dealers got caught and sent down for a stretch. But he did give a shit about his cash.
‘Double espresso, please,’ said the bagman.
As Munu placed the man’s coffee on the counter, the bagman slipped over a small USB stick. This contained the access details to an electronic wallet containing Bitcoins. The man picked up his coffee and went to a table. Munu picked up the USB stick and pocketed it. Tonight, he would go to an ATM
machine in the city and change the Bitcoin for cash. In the two weeks he had been operating like this, Munu had amassed something akin to fifteen times his annual salary as a police detective. James hadn’t said anything about where the proceeds of his dealing had to go, so Munu was keeping it. Eighteen months in prison for a crime he didn’t commit had seen his moral compass smashed underfoot. When he’d spoken to Hudson, he’d been in a role, but now he had truly come to believe it. If these losers wanted to kill themselves with opiates, then so be it. He knew the harsh reality was that if he wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be pushing the shit. Munu knew he was riding the tiger, all this wouldn’t last. It was just a matter of knowing when to dismount and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Undisclosed Location, Northern Territory
Geoff was coming! He’d WhatsApp’d her.
Hi babe, just do this one last thing, and then, I’ll take us somewhere a long way away from here. I’ve emailed the details of the creeps who hurt your dad. Kill them! Then, we can be together. Love you lots, G XXX
Casey Jones deleted the message and then went back to rooting through the suitcase looking for an outfit. She had bought a nurse’s smock and some fake ID badges with her picture on. The two evil old bastards would get it. She had thought about something sophisticated, like drugs in a syringe. But she wanted these bastards to die knowing what they had died for and who had done it. So, she was going old school. Earlier that day, she had bought two Stanley knives. The sharp blade would slit their old turkey throats like parchment. Then, she’d leave them to bleed out. Planning the killings gave her an inner sense of peace. She wasn’t sure what would happen after it was all done. Geoff said he’d take her away from here. Maybe they could make a real life together.