The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim

by Laurent Boulanger

  ‘What’s up David?’

  ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’

  I hesitated for a few seconds and said, ‘Have you got something to tell about the murder?’

  ‘No, I just thought I’d take you out somewhere.’

  ‘We’ve already gone through this yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I’d really like to know you better. I’m sorry if I’m being a bit forward, but I’m not much for keeping it all on the inside. What do you say? A little tête-à-tête over the best lamb couscous in Melbourne?’

  I smiled to myself. Since I’d stopped seeing Phillip a few months back, I missed the intimacy of a close relationship. Love made me feel whole, even though it always ended up with pain. I closed my eyes and pictured myself falling into David’s arms, unbuttoning his shirt and covering his chest with kisses. I could almost smell the citrus aroma of his aftershave.

  ‘Kristina?’ David interrupted.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sorry. Okay, sure, why not.’

  We agreed for him to pick me up at my place at 9.00 p.m.

  I hung up with a mixture of fear and excitement.

  I broke my number one rule, but I no longer cared.

  It was 5.32 p.m., and Frank and I were sitting across one another at the staff canteen of the VFSC, two mugs of coffee steaming and hardly touched. We were winding down a conversation relating to the investigation.

  ‘I’ve got Evelyn Carter’s address, flicking through his log book,’ Frank said. ‘When do you want to search her apartment?’

  ‘It’s an apartment, is it?’

  ‘Could be a flat. It’s got a lot number: 2-33.’ He scribbled the details on a small piece of paper and passed it over to me.

  I read the address and said, ‘We could head off now, if you’re not doing anything. I don’t want to wait tomorrow morning. The killer is still at large, and the last thing we need is him getting to her place before we do. If the killer is the boyfriend the cab driver mentioned, there might be incriminating evidence at her place he’d like to get his hands on before we do.’

  ‘You want to go now?’ Frank asked, raising one eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, but only if you’re not doing anything.’

  ‘Well, let me see... I don’t have kids, I’m not married, I have no one to go home to... I think I can find the time to fit you in.’ He grinned like an imbecile.

  His attempt at humour fell upon death ears. His seduction techniques were cliched and boring. I would never be romantically involved with this man. He knew it, and I knew it. So why did he persist so relentlessly? Was this part of the gene composition that came with being male?

  ‘Great,’ I said, ‘we’re also going to have to find out if she’s got any relatives. They need to be notified. She probably has a phone book at home with her friends listed. I’m going to conduct door-to-door interviews in her neighbourhood during the next few days.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said. He gathered his log book and pen. ‘Want to take my car?’

  ‘Sure, whatever.’

  We emptied our mugs and left the VFSC.

  Evelyn Carter’s apartment was in Richmond, a popular inner-city suburb of Melbourne. When we arrived, darkness had already fallen like a huge blanket over the city. I couldn’t see the stars in the sky, and it smelled like rain. The showers they had predicted that morning would be upon us any minute.

  Frank and I stepped from the white Ford Falcon and circled the car in order to gather the PERK and photographic equipment.

  Frank glanced towards the apartments where Evelyn supposedly lived. ‘Sure looks like she had a lot of money,’ Frank said.

  ‘If she owned the place.’

  ‘Even if she rented it.’

  Frank was right. The type of apartment I was looking would have cost her no less than $250 a week for a one-bedroom or a studio. The facades had strong, angular lines and an interesting combination of colour and materials - smooth, deep-blue walls contrasted with craggy, sandstone bricks. The crisp simplicity of the windows fashionably disagreed with the quirky art deco design of the steel balconies railing and the front security gate.

  Their security gate made it impossible for us to enter the courtyard, unless someone opened the gate for us, or we tampered with the locking mechanism.

  ‘How we’re going to get in?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Watch me.’

  At the gate, I rang the doorbell of apartment 1.

  In less than thirty seconds, a male voice came through the intercom, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Police,’ I said. ‘We need someone to open the gate for us.’

  Silence.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘Hold on a sec.’

  Nothing. We waited a full minute without saying a word.

  Frank was about to press the doorbell again, but I held his arm back. ‘Wait a minute.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just hold.’

  Fifteen seconds late, a man in his mid-thirties with thinning hair came towards us from the other side of the gate. ‘You’re the police, are you?’ he called out. His nose was long, and his chin was weak. He wore jeans and a blue tee-shirt, and looks as if we’d just woken him up.

  ‘Yes,’ I said as I unclipped my ID from my breast pocket.

  Frank did the same as the man approached us. We showed our Ids through the gate.

  ‘All right,’ the man said.

  He fiddled with a set of keys and opened the gate. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Could you tell us where apartment 2 is?’

  ‘Sure, let me show you the way.’

  We followed the man down the lane way and into the hallway of the apartment block. The hallway was painted a deep-blue, just like the outside walls of the apartments.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said when we reached apartment number 2. He stood there, as if we were going to invite him in.

  ‘We’ll be right now,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, sure, okay then,’ he said and left.

  I put on a pair of surgical gloves to avoid leaving my own fingerprints behind. As expected the door was locked, so I had to use my lock-picking kit. It took me a whole damn three minutes because the lock was jammed. Frank was standing behind me, checking if anyone was coming down the hallway.

  ‘The apartments are set close together,’ he said, ‘and with the security gate, surely someone would have noticed if she had a boyfriend. All we have to do is ask the neighbours.’

  ‘We’ll do that later,’ I said, while raising the pins of the lock to their opening point. The tension tool, placed directly under the pick, kept pressure on the pins while rotating. The pins were held in their open position by the pressure applied from the tension tool.

  Frank became agitated. ‘What’s taking you so long? The neighbours are going to think we’re breaking in.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Yes, but the last—

  ‘Shut up, Frank. I can’t hear what I’m doing.’ I could feel the vibration of the pins. I listened patiently for a distinctive click, and then pushed the door open. ‘Done.’

  ‘About time,’ he muttered.

  We moved inside the hallway. The place was plunged in darkness. I flicked the light-switch and was surprised at the cleanness of the apartment. At the opening from the entrance we’d just came through was a sitting room overlooking the front courtyard through a large bay window. Beyond a central staircase was an open-plan living and dining room filled with little, but expensive art deco furniture. The colour of the carpet throughout the apartment was what a floor-covering expert would call salmon. I noticed at the other end of the room, a wall of windows and sliding doors which lead to a large, private courtyard.

  ‘There’s a woman who really knew how to look after her place,’ I commented.

  Then, without warning, a black cat sneaked in on us and rubbed itself against my leg. It let out a cry of despair, probably because it hadn’t been fed for a few days.

  �
��Hi there,’ I said. ‘What’s your name little fellow?’

  I kneeled down and read its collar.

  Oscar.

  I always felt it strange when people gave animals human names.

  Oscar moved on to Frank.

  ‘Go away,’ Frank said, kicking the cat gently out of his way.

  ‘Don’t be mean,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t like cats. They’re lazy. All they want to do is eat and sleep all day. And they smell.’

  ‘You’re nasty.’

  ‘A dog considers you his master. A cat considers you his servant. And that’s a fact.’

  I walked to the kitchen and removed a milk cartoon from the fridge, smelling its contents to make sure it wasn’t out-of-date. I noticed a small, original still life painting, featuring a large loaf of bread and various salamis, above the kitchen table. It looked a bit tacky in the middle of the modern kitchen.

  I grabbed a breakfast bowl from the pantry and filled it with milk. I kneeled down and placed it next to the fridge. Oscar drank from it as if it was his last meal before execution.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to the poor thing now that the owner is dead,’ I said throwing Frank a pitied look.

  ‘Don’t look at me that way,’ he said, ‘I’m not taking fur ball with me. I hate cats.’

  ‘So you keep telling me. I wouldn’t expect you to have any compassion to bother saving an animal from starvation.’

  ‘Hey, come on, it’s not my goddamn cat. If you’re so holy, why don’t you pay a visit to the city pound and rescue all cats and dogs?’

  ‘You’re an idiot, Frank,’ I said matter-of-factly, not bothering with eye contact.

  ‘Thank you.’

  I noticed a telephone on a side-table next to a leather couch. Without saying a word, I picked up the receiver and pressed the redial button. That was one easy way to figure out whom Evelyn had been in touch with last. A series of touch-tone beeps were followed by a high-pitch sound, a bit like the one I normally get when I dial a facsimile number by accident. I placed the receiver back and looked around the room. No fax machine. That got me intrigued for the next sixty seconds.

  We began with a walk-through of the apartment while Oscar drank his milk. Upstairs, there was a study and two bedrooms, one turned into a home office, both open from a central landing. The bedrooms were at either end of the hallway, and separated by a large, clutter-free sitting area and a bathroom. First impression of the place was clinical tidiness, to the point that I felt we were visiting a display home. It was obvious Evelyn Carter had been making a comfortable living working as a prostitute. And maybe that was why she never let go of her job, even after working twenty years in the field. I wondered why she hadn’t bothered completing her studies and moving on. Maybe she realised that no matter what studies she would undertake, she would never match the money she was earning as a high-class prostitute. And even if she did, she’d have to work long hours and have little time left to enjoy her freedom. Who could really tell now that she was dead? Maybe she even learned to enjoy her work. But at what cost?

  The bedroom which she turned into a home office compromised a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet and a 686SX computer. There was no fax machine anywhere in sight. Her filing cabinet was unlocked. It was filled with empty files and folders.

  I called Frank from the bedroom, ‘Come and see this.’

  Five seconds later he appeared from somewhere in the house.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘What do you make of this?’ I asked, the top drawer of the filing cabinet open, my hand flicking through the empty folders.

  He took one look and puzzled for a few seconds. ‘Someone might have got there before us,’ he said.

  ‘I was thinking that too.’

  I flicked her computer on and waited sixty seconds for it to boot up. The Windows 98 display came up, followed by the usually icons associated with Microsoft programs. I checked her document folders under Microsoft Office, but it was empty.

  ‘Well,’ I said to Frank, who was standing next to me, ‘nothing in here either. Looks like somebody’s wiped out the whole lot.’

  I checked Access, Excell, PowerPoint and her File Manager. Everything was empty, as if she had never used the computer.

  I turned the computer off and resumed with the house search.

  By the time we finished the walk-through, we had collected absolutely nothing that was going to help with our investigation.

  Down on my knees, I was packing in my PERK and suggested to Frank, ‘We’ll have to dust for prints. Maybe her mysterious boyfriend has visited this place.’

  Frank was about to answer, but instead he turned his attention to the hallway.

  A short woman with dark hair stood at the door way. She wore faded jeans and a hand-knitted, green jumper. She looked about my age and was slightly overweight, but appeared to have spent most of her life in the country. Her face was speckled with freckles, and she wore little make-up. She looked at odds with the apartment we were standing in.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, surprise glowing on her face.

  Frank and I looked at each other for half a second.

  ‘Police,’ I said, pointing at my ID attached to my breast pocket. ‘And who are you?’

  She answered with a question, ‘Where’s Evelyn?’ The tone of her voice indicated that she knew something was wrong.

  I swallowed, knowing I would have to break the news to her. My first instinct was that she was a friend of Evelyn who’d just dropped in for one reason or another.

  I stood up and said dryly, ‘Evelyn Carter won’t be coming home. There’s been an accident.’ I paused for effect and went on, ‘What is your name?’

  She puzzled for a few seconds before answering. ‘Judith Kingman.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms Kingman, but Evelyn Carter was murdered last night.’

  Judith held on to the frame of the door. ‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped, ‘I knew this was going to happen one day. I told her to be careful.’ Her voice had gone up in pitch. ‘Why, what, what happened?’

  I hoped she wasn’t going to go completely hysterical on us. I wasn’t utterly at ease with having lost my long-time friend yet, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to morally support someone else over her death.

  ‘We don’t know what happened,’ I said. ‘All I can tell you is that she was killed. We’ve only begun the investigation.’

  All along, Frank was just standing by my side like a mute.

  I moved two steps forward.

  Judith was almost in tears.

  ‘Did you know Evelyn well?’ I asked.

  She looked at me, her eyes finally bursting into tears. ‘She was my neighbour. God, of course I knew her, she was a sister to me.’

  And when she said sister, tears welled from my eyes. Evelyn had been my best friend once, and although it was a long time ago, I could still feel how strong and important that friendship had been to me.

  I moved forward and hugged the stranger. She sobbed on my shoulder. No one said a word for a full minute. I could feel her pain weighing in my heart and soul. Something was tearing itself up inside me. I let tears stream down my face. Even know I had never met Judith Kingman before, hugging her felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was as if we were long-lost relatives, like in one of those exploitative American television shows, who had finally caught up with one another.

  Frank interrupted, ‘Maybe Judith would like to come to the station with us.’

  I separated myself from Judith, wiping my tears away.

  ‘I knew Evelyn too,’ I explained, ‘a long time ago. We went to school together. We were best friends. She meant a lot to me, and I guess she still does.’

  Judith nodded while sobbing.

  I gave a full minute to let it out of her system and to compose myself.

  ‘You don’t mind coming to the station with us?’ I asked.

  ‘I live three apartments down,’ she said.

  I looke
d at Frank, then back to Judith: ‘Okay, we can have a chat at your place, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Frank passed her a paper hanky from the PERK.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ten minutes later we were at Judith Kingman’s apartment, an exact layout replica of Evelyn’s dwelling, but a mirror image. It was as if we were in Evelyn’s kitchen, but the world had been turned back-to-front. The furniture, however, was more cane and country style rather than art deco. There was a vase of red carnations on the kitchen table.

  ‘Nice flowers,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Judith replied her back on me. ‘A gift from a friend.’

  Judith made put some water on the boil and grabbed three mugs from a cupboard next to the kitchen sink.

  ‘I told her to be careful,’ she went on, talking to us but commenting to herself at the same time. ‘How many times did I tell her to get a real job? How many times?’. She turned to me. ‘How do you have yours?’

  ‘Black, no sugar.’

  She turned to Frank.

  ‘Milk, two sugars,’ he said without waiting for the question.

  With her back on us, she continued her coffee making. ‘This is not a job fit for a woman, or for anyone for that matter,’ she said.

  ‘It’s wasn’t her fault,’ I said. ‘It’s never their fault.’

  ‘I know, but who’s fault is it then? Someone has to be blamed for her death.’

  Frank glanced at me and raised his eyebrows as if to say so, who’s going to ask the questions?

  I put my hand up, telling him to be patient.

  He rolled his eyes in return.

  I waited for Judith to finish making the coffees before getting into the questioning.

  She carried three hot mugs to the table, place one in front of me, one in front of Frank and one in front of an empty chair.

  I sipped from my mug and said, ‘How long have you know Evelyn for?’

  Evelyn sat on the empty chair, across the table from me and said, ‘Years. About ten years I think.’ She paused for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, she moved in only a couple of months after me. I thought she was very elegant. I would have never guessed she worked as a prostitute. Not that it really shocked me, but in my mind I had pictured prostitute differently.’ She sipped from her mug. ‘She was so elegant, always well dressed. I thought she was a professional of one sort or another. You know, one of these corporate executive women. Tends to be the trend these days. Women climbing the corporate ladder.’ She paused for a few seconds. ‘She wore expensive clothes, so that’s why I made that assumption. Of course, she could have also be self-employed as some type of consultant. My brother is a PR consultant, and he charges $150 an hour. It’s good money. She had the looks and the style. She could have gone into something like that.’