Cooper fumed. “Murder is murder, Senior Constable. Who he was makes no difference. And besides, finding out what really happened in that apartment could help us find the missing woman.”
Davis said nothing, preferring to hide behind his coffee instead. The five detectives sat silent for a moment before Munro spoke.
“Shit,” he said. “We can’t afford to waste time. Who knows what condition the last victim could be in, if she's still alive. Davis, you two get back to his place and finish talking to the neighbours. The ones you missed could be home by now. Once you’ve done that, get working on his office files, and the ones from his home. He’s a real estate agent, so maybe he’s got a property somewhere. And Cooper—”
“I’ll get onto Missing Persons,” Cooper finished for him, before taking out his mobile phone.
“Right, but give Max a call first. Tell him what we know. See if he can come up with anything that could help identify our girl. Quinn’s with you. I’ll work on getting us some more manpower. We’re on this round the clock, people.”
4
“I’ve waited a long time for you,” he had said from a chair in the corner of the room.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Redundant questions. She’d known almost the instant she woke.
He’d smiled the same white-toothed grin she’d recognised in the bar. “Don’t worry, I’m going to help you, Sylvia.”
“My name’s not—”
“Shut up.” He’d lunged at her, slapping her hard. “You’ll speak when you’re spoken to. You belong to me now, Sylvia.”
* * *
That had been sometime on Sunday, she guessed. God knows what day it was now. It was impossible to tell night from day in this hell. She sat up again, rubbing her ankles as best she could beneath the chains. The right one was the worst. The chains were long enough to allow her to get to the chemical toilet next to the bed, but only just. If she fully extended her leg and twisted it in just the right way, she could avoid the pain, but at times she forgot and the right shackle cut deep.
* * *
“You stink,” the man had said. Taking a key from his pocket he’d unlocked the stainless steel tool trolley next to his chair. Scissors. She froze. He walked over to her, blades gleaming in his hand. She was still wearing the dress, the new one she’d bought on Friday. The man sliced it from her body with one efficient swipe.
“Take that off.” He indicated her bra.
Terrified, she undid it; let it slide down her arms. He looked at her, head cocked to the side, grin on his face. She shrank further back, as far as the chains allowed. It wasn’t far enough. He took another step. He was right up against the bed now, so close she could feel his breath on her shoulder.
“Stand up.”
She stood on the floor next to the bed. He lifted the scissors and, with the point, slowly traced a line from her throat down to her G-string. She dared not breathe. He opened the scissors, dug the point in and snipped the red lace.
“You stink,” he said again.
* * *
Three days, that was her best guess. There were no clocks in this room, no windows to watch the sun rise and set and rise again. But her hair felt three-day dirty. That first day, he’d made her wash it.
* * *
She watched as he turned his back on her. Tall and muscular, he would overpower her easily. After locking the scissors back in the tool trolley he opened a sliding door, revealing a small room with a shower and toilet. Hell had an en-suite. There was a long chain fixed at one end to a pipe. He picked up the other end and brought it over to her, shackling it to her ankle before removing the ones securing her to the bed.
“There’s soap in there, and shampoo. Clean yourself up.” She tried to slide the door closed on him, but he blocked it with a foot. “Uh uh, I don’t think so.” He took a seat on the toilet opposite the shower cubicle, hands folded behind his head. There was no shower curtain.
She turned to face the wall, trying to wash and cover herself at the same time. The man lost patience.
“Do it properly.” He got up and went to the tool trolley, returning with a scrubbing brush. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her. “I want you clean.”
* * *
The fluorescent light burned brightly in this prison cell. It illuminated the walls. It was how she’d known her fate so quickly that first day. The walls. Hundreds of photographs separated by straight lines of white masking tape in perfect rows like some kind of sick wallpaper. One of them she recognised. She’d taken it herself. It was her husband on their trip to the snow last year. He was holding up a drink and smiling at the camera, the area around his eyes white where the goggles had been. The rest of the photos were not so innocent.
The man raped her that first day — once she was clean to his satisfaction, her skin raw from the scrubbing. When he was done he made her scrub all over again. Finally, he gave her clean clothes, chained her back to the bed, and left.
Over the next hours and days she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her mind was clear enough to ration the bread and water he left, but she was losing strength. Now, sitting on the bed hugging her legs to her chest, not knowing when the man was going to return, she wondered how she was going to get out of here alive.
5
Cooper’s phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Somewhere along the way Andrew Fox, journalist with the Sydney Times and constant pain in the arse, had gotten hold of his mobile number. Cooper had been meaning to change it, but hadn’t got around to it. Now, having made the decision to leave Homicide, there didn’t seem much point — Andrew Fox was chasing the Adultery Killer, and once Cooper removed himself from that case the persistent prick would finally be out of his life. Of course, that was the assumption before the killer had turned up dead.
After ignoring the phone for as long as he could, Cooper finally answered.
“Detective, it’s Andrew Fox. Please don’t hang up, I need to talk to you.”
Manners. This was new. “I’ve told you before not to call me direct, Mr Fox. We have a media relations department; all enquiries should be going through them. You know that. God knows you’ve bothered them enough in the past.”
“My wife is missing.”
Pause.
“Since when?”
“I’m not sure, I’ve been away. I got home yesterday afternoon and she wasn’t here, but it looks like it could have been since Saturday. Listen, I know we’ve had our differences, but please, I need you to hear me now. They’ve been showing a picture of the guy you caught. It’s all over the news. Is that definitely him?”
Cooper needed to be careful here. News had somehow leaked that the Adultery Killer had been caught, and Fraser’s photo was accompanying all the internet and television reports. So far the fact that he was dead had stayed out of the media.
“Mr Fox, I sincerely hope you are not using a false missing persons claim to elicit information from me.”
“What? Fuck, Cooper. No, you don’t understand. That guy, he was here, in my house.”
“What the hell was he doing in your house?” Fox was right, he didn’t understand.
“Jesus, don’t you get it? I don’t know what he was doing. All I know is he was here, in my kitchen, having a cup of tea with my wife when I came home on Friday. I saw him. That guy was with her, and now she’s missing.”
Cooper was silent, his mind working overtime to process this new information.
“Are you still there?” Andrew’s voice came at him down the line. “Are you getting me now? The prick has my wife.”
“I’m still here. Give me your address. We need to talk.”
He put down the phone and almost ran the six steps to Munro’s office.
“We’ve got a possible victim,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.” Quinn had overheard and joined them as Cooper relayed the details of the phone conversation.
“Shit,” said Munro. “The journo’s wife. What do you make of that, then?”
“Good. Take Quinn.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cooper replied. “I was going to. Come on kid, grab your stuff. Let’s go.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Cooper and Quinn were in the kitchen of the Fox house, seated at the table where Fraser Grant had allegedly drunk tea with Amanda Fox five days earlier. Her husband sat on the edge of his chair opposite them, his left leg rapidly shaking up and down as if he were bouncing a small child on his knee. On the wall to the left was a montage of photos, mostly of the happy couple, some with what he guessed were family and friends. Cooper couldn’t be certain, not until he was able to make a proper comparison, but the build of the smiling, carefree woman in these pictures appeared to match the one he’d seen in Fraser Grant’s briefcase.
Cooper began the interview. “Mr Fox, you said on the phone that Fraser Grant was here when you came home on Friday afternoon. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
Andrew ignored the question. “Have you spoken to him? What are you doing to find my wife?”
“Sir, I can assure you we are doing everything we can to find her. But you need to help us. Tell me what happened on Friday.”
Andrew looked from one detective to the other. Cooper felt as if they were being sized up.
“Look, Cooper. I’m not trying to pump you for information, if that’s what you think. The game has changed. All I care about is getting Amanda back safely. So—”
“I know,” Cooper interrupted. “Believe me, we want to bring her home safe, too. But you have to let us do our jobs. Come on, mate. You’ve been around long enough to know how it works. I have to question you here, and if you want to help Amanda you need to cooperate. The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can get back out there. So, Friday?”
With a sigh, Andrew leaned back in his chair and began to recall the events of that afternoon.
“I arrived home earlier than usual. When I walked into the kitchen, he was sitting at the table with Amanda. She didn’t introduce him, but when I said hello she told me he’d found her purse in a car park in the city, and had driven out to our house to return it to her. I guess he got the address from her licence. I thanked him, and he seemed pleasant enough, but even so I was pissed at Amanda for letting him in the house. Anyway, I went upstairs to change and by the time I came back down he was gone.”
“Did Amanda say anything else about him?”
“Not really. I told her how dangerous it was to let a stranger into the house like that. She said he was harmless. He’d returned her purse with all the money she’d taken out of the ATM that morning still in it. Shit, that’s how he got her to trust him, isn’t it? I asked her why he brought it all the way out here to Mosman when he found it in the city. Why didn’t he just hand it in to the police if he was so honest? She said he was coming this way anyway for a meeting in the area. Apparently he had some time before he had to be at this meeting, so Amanda invited him in and made him a cup of tea.”
“And that’s when you arrived home?”
“That’s right. He left pretty quickly after I got there. Damn, he was right there in my kitchen.” Andrew slammed a fist down on the table. The shaking transferred to his right leg. “I’ve been writing about this guy for years, how could I have missed him?”
Cooper needed to get him back on track. “So she was still home after the suspect left on Friday. When did she go missing?”
“She was home on Saturday morning when I left, that was about six. When I got home yesterday afternoon there was no sign of her.”
“Where did you go?”
“Wagga. I went down to cover the floods.”
“Did you speak to Amanda at all while you were away?” Andrew shook his head. “Any texts, emails?” Again, the head shaking. Cooper’s brow creased as he did the calculation. “So you had no contact with her between Saturday morning and Tuesday afternoon. That’s a significant amount of time, Mr Fox. Would you normally go almost four days without speaking to your wife?”
Andrew stood and paced the room. “What’s that got to do with anything? Why are you asking me all these questions? You’ve got the guy in custody, don’t you? Why can’t you find out from him where Amanda is?”
Cooper ignored him and wrote in his notebook, which only served to agitate Andrew further.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Cooper? Do you hate me that much?”
Quinn intervened. “Mr Fox, we need to ascertain the facts, that’s all. There was no note when you returned home, nothing like that?”
“No. There were three messages on the answering machine. I’ve left them so you can listen.” He pressed play on the machine on the kitchen bench.
“Hi guys. Just wanting to know if you want join us at the pub for dinner tonight. Simon’s mum has the kids. Let me know soon, okay? Bye.”
“That was Jane, she and Simon live just around the corner. They’re good friends of ours,” explained Andrew. “I called Jane yesterday afternoon and she came straight over. She said she never heard back from Amanda on Saturday.”
He played the next message, which needed no explanation. It was obviously Amanda’s superior asking why she wasn’t at work.
“That was left on Monday afternoon,” said Andrew. “And then this one yesterday.”
“Amanda, where are you? Miles is going nuts. You’ve really landed us in it here. Call me.”
“A colleague?” asked Quinn.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know who until Jane got here. She said her name is Kate, one of the newer interns at the advertising agency. Jane said Amanda has been hanging out with this Kate and some of the other interns for a few months now.”
“It sounds like this was news to you,” said Cooper.
“Well, yeah. Look, Amanda and I sometimes have separate interests. There’s nothing wrong with that. But we don’t have secrets from each other. At least I thought we didn’t. I’ve never heard of anyone named Kate. I thought Amanda was hanging with the usual crowd, Jane and Simon and the other friends we have.”
“Any ideas why the change of scenery?” asked Cooper.
Andrew shrugged. “Kids, probably. All our friends have children, except us. Amanda keeps saying she’s not ready, she’s too young.”
“How old is your wife?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Andrew,” said Cooper, “you know I have to ask this. Do you think it’s possible your wife might be having an affair?”
Andrew sighed and sat back in the chair.
“I didn’t. Not before this morning. We’ve been married six years. We’ve had our differences — maybe more lately than usual — but I thought we were okay. But she’s been kidnapped by the Adultery Killer. We both know there’s only one reason that would happen.”
“Not necessarily,” said Quinn.
“What?” asked Andrew.
“I said, not necessarily. As I understand it, you were the journalist the killer sent copies of his crime scene photographs to. You’ve given him a lot of publicity over the years, haven’t you?”
Cooper kept quiet and tried not to register his surprise as the rookie took this different line.
“Through the paper, yes. He wrote to me after I did the story on the first murder. Said I was the only one who understood his ‘work’. I’ve covered it all since then: every kidnapping, every murder. I can’t help the fact he chose to send those pictures to me, and I have always told the police everything. But you know all this, or Detective Cooper here does. He’s not been very cooperative about it.”
“Jesus Christ, Fox,” said Cooper. “You write stories that question my investigation, put doubt and fear into the community. Hell, some of those stories almost urged the killer on, and you want cooperation?” It was all Cooper could do to stop himself from punching the guy right then and there
.
“The point I was trying to make,” Quinn continued, “is that maybe he took your wife because of his connection to you, rather than the adultery thing. Maybe you pissed him off somehow.”
“I haven’t run a story on him since the Hart woman last September.”
“So maybe he missed the publicity.” Quinn looked as if he was about to say more, but Cooper cut him off, having regained his own composure.
“It’s a possibility. Still, we have to look into everything. Andrew, I’m going to need a recent photograph, a list of all Amanda’s friends and family members, and it would be helpful if you could give us access to her bank records.”
Andrew looked back and forth between the two detectives.
“You’re still not telling me something. Again, if you’ve got the guy, why can’t you find out from him what he’s done with my wife?”
The detectives glanced sideways at each other. Quinn shook his head, but Cooper had already made the decision. He wanted to see Fox’s reaction.
“It’s going to get out sooner or later, Joey.”
“What’s going to get out? What the fuck are you keeping from me?”
Cooper looked him in the eye. “He’s dead, Andrew. The killer is dead.”
6
Eva entered the large room to find a dark figure waiting for her. As she walked forward, something was not right. Why was she walking?
“Eva, hon? It’s okay.”
“Dad?” Eva opened her eyes. Her father sat to her right, flicking through a magazine. Her mother dozed in a chair on the other side of the bed. “What time is it?”
“Just past four, Wednesday morning,” said Alan Matthews, putting down the magazine. “Bad dream?”
“Strange dream. The same as when I first woke from the surgery.” Eva’s mouth was as dry as a bad hangover without the fun of the night before. She reached toward the water cup next to the bed, but her arm was too heavy to lift that far.
The Dark Series Page 14