by Lee Winter
The breakthrough Alison was looking for came, like most things, when she was least expecting it, buried in the bottom of a file about the death of a meth lab cook called Collins.
The initial findings were inconclusive, which had kept the case open.
While the man had died after being overcome by toxic fumes—a by-product of what he was making—the coroner’s report noted in bemusement the perfectly functioning ventilation system and the fact Collins appeared to have been well protected by full-body coveralls. The coroner, duly baffled, left an open verdict.
Alison was a sucker for a good mystery.
She dug a little deeper and found an informant’s offhand comment on the death made to an undercover homicide detective, Stan Polaski. The canary in question, someone called Viktor Raven, had been singing for the price of a few beers at the Bear and Clover pub. He’d mainly been tossing around bull about how many underworld people he knew, but then he’d been asked about the drug cook’s death.
“Oh, that one,” Raven was reported as saying. “Yeah, a classic hit by Wreck. Sounds just like the sadistic asshole. Sneaky as fuck.”
Alison performed every type of search she could think of, but that was all that had been recorded of that conversation.
Someone was convinced the drug cook was murdered?
Alison pored over the Collins file. The Forensic Services Department hadn’t even been sent the man’s clothing for testing, presumably because it had seemed such an open-and-shut case. Drug cook dies of chemical fumes.
She found Collins’s clothes still bagged up in Evidence and sent them off for a full analysis. A few months later, due to the backlog of cases, the forensics report came back. A microscopic inspection found more than a thousand tiny pin pricks all over the coveralls, allowing the fumes to pass through the material and overcome Collins.
Death by a thousand cuts. Literally?
She really thought about that. One thousand pin pricks? Someone had sat down for hours and gone to the effort of pricking his outfit with that many holes?
The bastard had never stood a chance.
It was also clearly murder, and if the informant had been right about that, then he might have been right about the killer’s identity. The problem she had, though, was she highly doubted any woman would ever go by the name Wreck and certainly not a killer so subtle as hers.
She found Detective Polaski chewing on a steak and salad sandwich, spraying lettuce and carrot across his desk, while reading the sport pages. She slid a page from his report across the desk.
“Hey, Stan, remember this drug cook case from four years ago? One of Santos’s boys? How did you know how to spell this name? Did you ask?” She tapped the word “Wreck.”
Detective Polaski swallowed his mouthful and leaned forward, eyeballing the page. He screwed up his face and thought for a minute.
“No, I didn’t bloody get him to spell anything. That bastard was high as a kite. I just wrote down what he said so I could get my expenses back for the beers I bought him.”
“You got a tip on a killer and ignored it?” Alison stared at him in disbelief.
“Higher than a kite,” Polaski repeated. “You didn’t see Raven. And don’t forget that was an accidental death. There was no killer to be identified. Now can you chase your crap conspiracy theories on your own time? I’m busy.” He resumed eating.
“Actually it was an open case,” Alison corrected him. “Coroner didn’t rule on it either way.”
He grunted and dismissed her, returning to his sports results.
Alison took the page and returned to her desk, her mind buzzing. He’d just guessed. Her mind rolled over all the possible alternatives to spelling a word that sounded like “Wreck.”
Rick. Rec. Req. If she was right and the killer was female…she ruled out the first one. It sounded like a shortening for something. That favourite Aussie pastime of shortening long names and lengthening short ones came to mind. She looked up a dictionary, took out her pen and paper and began to write.
Her list ran to a thousand words by the time it was finished and she sighed, staring at Recruit, Requirement and Requisition, among all the others. It was useless. How would she narrow it down? She had no clue. Besides, maybe it didn’t mean anything at all and the name was just a code?
She flicked a look at her watch. Okay, she could make the orchestra tonight. The VPO had a new program and she wanted to hear what Amanda Marks would be playing in the solo. Alison still missed the beauty of hearing the violin, even though her fingers no longer twitched to play it.
* * *
Alison looked around the after-party for the VPO’s new season with wide eyes. Masks hung from the ceiling in some weird Phantom of the Opera theme, although what that had to do with anything was a mystery. She’d been enraptured by Tchaikovsky—and, as always, was brought to tears by the 6th Symphony.
She found herself on the periphery of Amanda Marks’s fans. She couldn’t quite see the appeal of the violinist, herself. Yes, Amanda was pretty in a pixie/Disney princess way. But how did that qualify her for so much fan swooning? If you wanted to single out talent for adulation, her picks for the evening were the elderly oboe player and the dark-haired cellist.
She must have been staring too long because Amanda’s gaze suddenly swung around and fell to her. “And what did you think?” she asked Alison.
Alison blinked out of her reverie and attempted to be diplomatic. By the time she’d waxed lyrical about tempo and the movements she had enjoyed (none of which involved Marks’s playing), the diva’s nearest groupies were looking alternately bored or ready to kill her.
The violinist, however, was not.
“You’re a professional then?” Marks asked curiously. “Which orchestra? Who are you? I believe I’ve seen you around at a number of VPO events over recent years.”
“Emily Ryan, although everyone calls me Alison, and no orchestra,” Alison said, nervous about having so many eyes on her. “I trained in violin at the Sydney Conservatorium for a little while but it didn’t happen. I’m actually a detective. Homicide Squad.”
Amanda studied her for a moment, a strange expression crossing her face. “How fascinating,” she said, and immediately turned back to her posse, and began to pose for photos.
Fascinating? Sure it was. Alison sighed. She got this reaction all the time from people leery of cops. Worse, she was in Homicide. To the general public, her job was only just one step up from abattoir head slaughterer.
She glanced around the room to discover the brown eyes of the cellist she’d been thinking about earlier looking right at her. Alison smiled automatically. The woman’s gaze drilled into hers for a second, flicked to the groupies surrounding her, and cooled noticeably, her lips pressing together in disapproval.
The cellist moved away in long, confident strides, with a grace not often seen off a runway. She seemed European. She wasn’t pretty or girly in the style of Marks but she was definitely striking. Alison couldn’t help but be impressed.
Intrigued, she pulled out her phone and typed in “VPO cellist.”
“Natalya Tsvetnenko” came up.
Alison studied the photo. She could see strength and charisma in her in a way that Marks could only dream of. And, there it was, in the set of the jaw and the steady, almost daring stare—power.
Marks was studying her again like a problem to be solved, so Alison ducked away behind a pillar, uncomfortable at being under so much scrutiny. She should probably head home anyway. She really wasn’t cut out to be a social butterfly.
Alison was unlocking her front door a short time later, pleasantly buzzed by the rare chance to be out of the house. The lights were off, so her mother had, mercifully, already gone to bed. She’d obviously found the dinner she’d left for her, or there would have been biting lectures about how she could have “starved to death.”
Honestly, Alison wasn’t sure why she put up with the vitriol. Initially she’d been too checked out to care about anything
much, let alone what her mother ranted at her. Now, though, she noticed it. There was a limit to her patience. Even so, a part of her knew how crushing it must have been for her mother to lose her independence, so she held her tongue.
Tchaikovsky was still running through her mind, and she found herself humming her favourite, his infamous, unofficial requiem. The 6th. It was a piece that captured the gravitas of death perfectly.
She almost dropped her keys at the connection. A song of death? The thought slammed into her so fast that she sagged against the doorframe.
Wreck was Req. Her killer’s name was Requiem.
And if it wasn’t, it damn well should be.
Chapter 21
Alison perched on the cream-coloured leather couch in Natalya’s home and regarded the astonished look on the assassin’s face as the question hung in the room.
Who had put the hit on her?
“I have been tracking Requiem for two years,” Alison told her. “Two years of spending every waking hour on my theory. Once I worked out that Req was short for Requiem, everything pointed to her being a musician. And not just any musician. One of extraordinary discipline to carry out the killings. There was subtlety there. Restraint. Also, a mocking playfulness. She was delicate yet powerful. Poetic, almost artistic. She killed and made it a message, like a mockery of her victim’s patheticness.
“A classical musician would perfectly match such a person. They have the drive and the discipline. They have the focus. They even have opportunity and access, mixing up close with many reclusive and powerful people. Many have god complexes. It fit.”
Natalya eyed her. “Interesting theory. But not easily proved.”
“It’s not hard to cross-match every orchestra in Victoria with every death I thought Requiem had committed,” Alison said. “It just takes time. In the end I was left with only one company’s name that had been in Melbourne at the time of every killing: The Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra.”
“Or, it was a coincidence,” Natalya countered.
Alison laughed. “Right. Every time in twenty-four years that the VPO toured, no gangland member died a poetic-justice death? Some coincidence.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Natalya murmured. “But how did you get from an orchestra full of suspects to one?”
I didn’t, Alison almost said, and the shame of her stupid mistake burned through her.
She thought back over the past three months. She’d pulled up biographies of all thirty female members of the VPO. She worked through the names methodically—dismissing as she went: Women too old. Too young. Too physically weak. Too pregnant.
She initially dismissed Amanda Marks as too sociable and outgoing to be involved in such a ruthless, bleak business. She was definitely not a loner. She loved attention and had to be the centre of any circle. But she was also undoubtedly a narcissist. And she clearly thought everyone who wasn’t her was a lesser being. She hid it well but Alison knew, given she lived with a narcissist, and she could see the signs a mile away.
There was also something so fake about Marks, just that little bit off, that she couldn’t quite dismiss her. After a long internal debate, the violinist’s name was added back to the list.
She then came to the cellist who’d caught her eye. Natalya Tsvetnenko certainly seemed strong enough physically. Her CV read like a European holiday itinerary but there was no reference to anything in her life beyond music. She fit the loner profile more than any other member of the VPO.
“Your name was on the top of my short list of suspects,” Alison told Natalya. “There was you and daylight behind you.”
“The top? Why?”
“You know, if you don’t want to be considered deadly you might want to work on that look,” Alison said with a snort. “Simply put, I thought you had a danger about you none of the others had.”
Natalya’s expression flattened out. “But you said I wasn’t your main suspect in the end.”
“No. No you weren’t.”
Alison reviewed her catastrophic error.
Two months had passed and her short list had been gradually whittled down to nine women who could be Requiem. It was far too many to tail. She didn’t have the time to do it herself in any meaningful way and the Homicide Squad didn’t have the resources, even if her boss was agreeable. Which he wouldn’t be.
So, Alison was pretty much screwed.
She’d gotten nowhere trying to rule more names out. She’d put the women’s VPO website photos up in her bedroom and would lie in bed looking at them each night, hoping to see something in the eyes of one that would give her a clue.
Their impassive, professionally posed faces stared back, revealing nothing.
It was frustrating. Maddening. Not to mention, as she often reminded herself, this was all just one theory stacked on another. It could teeter and crash if even one of her assumptions was wrong. God, what if Requiem wasn’t even a musician? What if her own bias in that field had seeped out into her work? That disturbing thought gave her more than a few sleepless nights.
To take a break, she started poking into Zebra again, the story of an allegedly corrupt homicide detective assaulting the poor and powerless, and taking bribes. She’d looked into the case on and off over the past few years without success.
New rumours had surfaced. She’d heard there might be security footage kicking around of him stomping a homeless man to death. Possibly a pair of men.
Everyone she’d spoken to so far on the force dismissed it as some bullshit story designed to make an already unpopular department look worse.
That could be true. After all she knew every detective in Homicide, and while most were cocky, arrogant, sexist pigs, she still had a hard time putting any of them in the picture for murder. Stan Polaski, for instance, would find killing unconscionable because he’d have to get off his lazy ass to do it. Greg Keating, meanwhile, would disdain anything that messed up his fine Italian shoes.
Nonetheless she would have found it easier to dismiss entirely if she hadn’t kept getting blocked every time she did a bit of digging.
She did, though, finally discover someone who knew someone who might have a copy of that mythical video. She made a few calls and one visit. Her informant told her she must have a death wish, but he didn’t actually say no to getting it for her.
She grinned as she left his workplace. She’d try him again in a few days.
* * *
Moore was watching Alison through his glass-walled office when she returned to work. He pointed at her and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, a thunderous look on his face. She detoured towards him, wondering who’d died.
He slammed the door shut and pushed some paperwork over the desk.
“Do you know which state has the worst homicide rate in Australia?” he asked abruptly.
She looked at him in confusion and tried to peer at the papers in front of him. He shoved a beefy forearm over it. “Well?”
“Um, here? Gangland killing capital is Victoria.”
His face twisted. “No, it’s flaming well not us. The Northern Territory. Six times higher than the national average. They got problems with family violence you wouldn’t believe. Two-thirds of all homicides up there are domestic related.”
“Uh, okay.” Alison stared at him.
“A mate of mine’s up there now. He’s been put in charge of getting those stats down. He sent me an email last month looking for recruits Australia-wide. He’s desperate and the problem is that no one wants to go to the Top End, even with a bump in pay and bonuses. He wanted to know if I knew of any likely candidates.”
Moore pushed the paperwork over. “Congratulations. You’ve requested a job at the Darwin Major Crime Squad,” he said.
“I rang Doug half an hour ago and he was over the bloody moon to hear you love sticking your nose into gang crap. Says he has a Hells Angels organised crime problem giving him an ulcer, just for starters. I gave you a glowing reference. You’re outta here in four weeks.
Best of all you can take that bad-tempered bitch of a mother with you.”
“You can’t force me to move interstate,” Alison protested. “What the hell is this, Barry? My record’s impeccable. What’s going on?”
“Your mutt I’ve been looking after all these years is, what, fifteen?” he said, squinting at her. He leaned back in his chair. “You know, no one would even blink if it ended up in doggy heaven before breakfast tomorrow.”
“What?” Alison gasped.
“I know some people who’d make sure you had a permanent accident as well. And, I’m seriously thinking of withdrawing your visitor privileges, too, if you kick up about this. My wife and kid will be off limits to you at my home or on the phone for the rest of your damn life.”
“You can’t! Susan won’t put up with that!”
He laughed. “We both know your sister has the backbone of a jellyfish. So, yes, I can and will. Don’t think whining to her about any of this will achieve jack. She won’t believe you. So bottom line is this: just keep your mouth shut, stop digging into things that don’t concern you, and sign on the dotted line right here for a long and happy life. The deal is non-negotiable.”
His tone was calm, his bloated face neutral, but his eyes were burning—furious and intense. She could practically feel the waves of hatred. There was something genuinely creepy, though, about the way he looked right through her. And that was the moment Alison realised two things:
Barry Moore was Zebra.
And her sister had married a sociopath.
With her jaw clenched, she reached for the page and signed.
* * *
Alison lay in bed that night sorting through a mess of emotions. She’d tried to call Susan, but her sister wasn’t answering. Or she’d been told not to.
Her mind shifted to Charlotte. She loved her dog more than life itself. Alison had begged her mother to take allergy meds when she’d first returned to Melbourne with Charlotte so the red heeler could stay with them. Her mother had refused, saying it would conflict with her medicine.
Now she had this insane hostage situation.