by Ann Michaels
Chapter 16
Monday Morning 21th November, 1988
Harry de Groot.
Fast Women
I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I was feeling both elated, and a bit out-of-it, as I headed out early Monday morning to drop by those city boutiques, where June Roze’s credit card had been used, to purchase some very expensive clothing items.
What I subsequently learned, was that some people think that it is a normal thing to buy a $3000 jacket, which may only be worn once. I couldn’t relate to this myself, as I always picked my suits up at Fletcher Jones, and they last me years.
An older woman who had reminded me of a very toothy, race horse, had been serving at the last boutique, I visited in Skygarden. She told me that the woman, who had used June Roze’s card, had been wearing a green dress, a hat, and sun glasses; this tallied with the CCTV film footage of the woman using the credit card at the Regent Hotel. She was the only shop assistant who seemed to remember anything at all about the customer of this credit card, which surprised me, considering how most women analyse the outfits and hair-dos of other women.
I wondered: could this woman of the green dress really be June Roze?
I headed out to Parramatta to take a look at the rest of the CCTV footage; the traffic was a nightmare, but eventually, I found an empty parking spot and headed into the office. As I sat down at my desk, a pile of phone messages greeted me, many shrieking their urgency. There was one from Dana saying that she had forgotten to tell me about a woman, who she had seen at Ruslen’s place, who resembled June Roze. Interesting. Dana didn’t mention this last night. Another message made me sit up straight away; it seemed that Lee Lin had been traced leaving Australia, using a false passport. She had landed in Indonesia, and then, her trail had gone cold. Was Lee Lin fleeing for her life? Or, was she just getting out while the going was good? I felt a bit of relief that at least one - maybe two, of these women was alive and kicking.
I could see one of the secretaries coming toward me, with another stack of messages and a serious look about her mouth. I jumped up; all this stuff could wait for the time being, as I really needed to take a look at the rest of that CCTV footage. I grabbed the heavy bag of VCR tapes and headed to a room with a videocassette recorder and TV.
Two hours later, my eyes were falling out of my head; So far, I’d seen a few minor celebrities check into the hotel and a couple of well-known lawyers and judges, dining out and later, heading up to a hotel room, with women…and men.. who were not their wives. This was bloody tedious! I really needed to get a coffee from that Italian café down the road, and perhaps, one or two creamed filled cannoli. But I pushed on, watching videos, almost as if I was unable to stop watching now that I had got started. This film showed the fire exit of the hotel, at about 3am in the morning. Nobody was using this fire exit much at this point, as the kitchen toaster fire, had been resolved hours ago and the fire brigade had long since left.
I was still staring at the unchanging scene an hour later, when I jumped up, Hell! this was getting beyond boring. My finger reached for the pause button; but, then, I saw something: a woman wearing a green dress dragging a small suitcase, on wheels, down the stairs. She hadn’t bothered to put on her hat, and sunglasses, and I could clearly see that this person was in fact Kristina Ruslen. ‘Silly move, sweetheart’, I said out loud, feeling pleased with her stupidity.
I looked at my watch; Peter Ruslen had been going to pick up Dana this morning at 10am. Now, it was 3 o’clock. How could I let Dana know this new information about Kristina Ruslen? Then a more terrifying thought hit me: perhaps Dana was already in trouble.
I ran back to my office, only to be met by The Sarg who was pacing about almost pulling his hair out.
‘Didn’t you get my messages, de Groot?’ ‘Were you wearing your pager?’
I wasn’t.
‘……Sorry Sarg, I was urgently viewing some CCTV footage…..And, now, I know that, Mrs Kristina Ruslen has been impersonating June Roze and using her credit card. And even worse, I think that Dana is at this moment, in that mansion, with Peter Ruslen’.
‘You are right, this is bad. But if you had come to my office, as my multiple messages directed, I could have told you the latest intelligence from The Australian Federal Police’. He paused, as I gaped at him, feeling like an axe was about to fall.
‘We have learned that Kristina Ruslen was a Russian 50 metre pistol and sprint running athlete, in her youth. She fled the Soviet Union by swimming across the Black Sea in 1956 and managed to make it to Turkey. From there, she stowed away on a ship and made it to Cyprus, where she was easily able to learn the Greek language; as supposedly, both languages have some similarities and they use the Cyrillic script.’
‘They also share a religion’, I added.
‘Yes, it seems that the religion was the key’, Sargent Obrien continued, giving me a sharp look as he knew that I was agitated about Dana.
‘AFP say that Kristina Roze, as her name was back then, approached a group of peasant women in a potato field, who seeing the Byzantine cross hanging around her neck, took the lost woman under their wing.’
‘Kristina Roze you say?’ Obviously there is a connection with June Roze, the missing woman’, I cut in.
‘Yes, the AFP also found out that June Roze, is Kristina Ruslen’s niece. After Kristina Ruslen escaped Russia, her brother experienced what they call Refusenik; denial of the right to emigrate, by the soviet authorities. It was not until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, a few years ago, that he and his family could leave. And when he did, it appears that he immediately became involved with Russian mafia in New York, as did his daughter, June Roze. The AFP also says that, there is evidence that this family have experienced discrimination and ostracism, particularly under Khrushchev, and that their crime links have ensured their survival. It is, as they say: complicated.’
‘Sarg, this is all very enlightening, but we need to extract Detective Roberts from the clutches of Peter Ruslen’, I said, somewhat desperately; then filling Sargent O’Brien in on Ruslen’s job offer to Dana and how he had been planning to take her to his mansion, Palais Royale, this morning.
Sargent O’Brien looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, ‘Yes, I know about this de Groot, Roberts has been reporting to me every morning from a public phone box. But don’t worry, I sent her one of our Telecom Walkabout mobile phones this morning, which has a ‘roving bug’ feature. ….And, she’s been instructed to look after the damn thing as each phone costs over $5000 bucks!’
‘But who is currently listening to this bug’s transmission?’ I exploded.
‘There’s a car located near Ruslen’s mansion and the crew are transmitting the conversation. But don’t worry, nothing has happened yet. Ruslen has been quite the gentleman.’ The Sarg said, mimicking Ruslen’s more upmarket speech.
‘So how did Kristina Ruslen get out of Cyprus?’ I asked, mollified for the moment.
‘Smuggled out on a Cyprus Airways flight’, he said, looking at his watch’. ‘She also fell in with the Russian mafia soon afterwards. Married her boss and had two children. She didn’t meet Philip Ruslen for a few years after this; apparently at a party on his yacht. By this time, Kristina Roze was affecting a British accent and had invented an exciting new history for herself’.
‘I think there are links to Asian triads too’, I added, but before The Sarg could speak, one of the uniform boys nipped in the door and said, ‘Sarg, I think that you better come and listen to what Ruslen has been saying to Detective Roberts.’
We all took off down the hallway, toward a small room, where Dana’s roving bug was being transmitted, by the car crew. The policeman, whose name was Constable Barry, rewound a tape and this is what we heard:
‘So the job that I am offering you, Dana, would require you to work for me as a personal assistant. You would collect my clothes from the dry cleaners, make sure that my bills were paid and that I always have petrol in my cars. It
is not a difficult or arduous job; although you may have to attend to my mother as well, sometimes. What do you say?’
‘I am very interested, of course, Peter, but may I ask why you have favoured me in this way’.
Bloody hell, she is starting to sound like him! I thought.
‘From the beginning, from the first, you reminded me of my fiancé, who is now lost to me…………..She is also my cousin, an excellent business woman…. and it was my mother’s dearest wish that we marry……but she was not all that she appeared……… She had to go.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to ask how his fiancé was lost to him, but somehow, I thought that subject might be a dangerous one’.
‘You are also the sort of girl that I would like to marry. I am very interested in you, but I cannot go against my mother’s wishes…..Especially now that my sources of income have dried up so suddenly.’ He said this last bit as though he was talking to himself.
‘So your mother is mostly in control of business, then’, Dana said.
‘I took over business eight years ago after …..my… father’s accident, but things went badly, and then, my mother assumed control. She is the one who saved us. All this would have been lost if it was not for her. ……..Though, lately it has begun to trouble me that my mother has no absolutely no scruples. She will even do deals with the dictators of newly rich oil countries, who funnel the money out of their own countries, buying luxury cars, jewellery, watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, of course, real estate in stable and generally law abiding countries, like Australia. Their own people are dying in the street from poverty…..’
‘You are involved in the property market aren’t you?’
Ruslen laughed. ‘My mother selects the rundown buildings, lets me play in them for a while, with my lady friends, and then, we bring them back to life……the buildings that is….. and sell the renovated buildings off at a big profit.
‘What do you mean ‘play in them’ with your lady friends?’
‘Leave that to me Dana. These women are none of your concern. These women come and they go; they are not marriage or mother material and you should not concern yourself with them’.
‘What about your fiancé?’
‘You look so much like her you know’.
‘But where is she?’
‘June is still here, but she is not well, and please don’t ask me any more questions’.
Sargent Berry switched off the tape.
The Sarg looked grave. ‘It could be that June Roze is alive and a prisoner in that house….. I would like to give orders to storm the place, but we don’t have enough evidence……..and we don’t have any clues about the whereabouts of Tabra Hayden.’
He looked grimly at me. ‘I want you, de Groot, to get yourself, right now, onto the Ruslen’s yacht and see if you can dig up some dirt’. He handed me one of those brick-like mobile phones and eyeing me with intensity, said, ‘this is to be used only in an emergency and for god’s sake, don’t lose it ’.
‘What about Dana, I mean Detective Roberts, Sarg?’
She seems to be safe enough…….for now. Now go.