Текст книги "An Easeful Death"

The investigator must examine the killer’s life within the context of cause and effect. Psychologists call this ‘Psychological determinism’.

De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

The van headlights swept across Baggly’s driveway through a mist of rain. Monty shrank behind the hibiscus bush to avoid the sliding beams, grateful for the camouflage his army jacket provided. After his altercation with Keyes and Thrummel, he’d spent the night under the freeway bridge near the river, barefoot and semiconscious. The first thing he’d done on waking was to find a public phone and ring Stevie. Then he’d called Wayne, who told him about the APB. He’d hung up immediately, realising that for the moment he’d have to give his friends, including Stevie, a wide berth. Until he could prove his suspicions correct, anyone found helping him would be putting their careers on the line.

Next he’d made his way to Dot’s where he explained only enough to convince her to tell no one of his visit. She let him use her shower and gave him a set of her husband’s clothes.

The borrowed boots pinched and Monty was stiff and sore from waiting for Baggly to come home. His muscles screamed in protest as he struggled to maintain his crouch, anxious to discover the identity of the van’s driver.

At last the lights clicked off, the van door opened, and Justin stepped into the carport. Monty unfolded his stiffening limbs and stood up as Justin was putting his key to the front door. Then the crunch of gravel in the driveway alerted him to the arrival of another car. He ducked back behind the bush and watched as Justin tentatively approached the visitor. Despite the uncharacteristically dishevelled hairstyle, there was no mistaking the angles of the face and the long, lean figure of James De Vakey illuminated by the front porch light.

Monty heard Justin say, ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr De Vakey. I’m afraid Dad’s not home yet, he’s still busy with the reenactment.’ ‘It’s all right, Justin, it’s you I wanted to see.’ De Vakey’s shadow loomed over the younger man.

‘Me?’ Justin’s voice cracked.

De Vakey patted him on the shoulder. ‘I got the impression from you the other day that there was something you wanted to discuss with me, something more important than just signing your books.’

‘Oh, that, yes, maybe. But now isn’t really a good time. Dad could be home any minute.’

‘Well, I think this problem you wanted to discuss might involve him anyway, am I right? Let’s go inside, out of the rain. We need to talk.’

Monty decided to hover in the darkness a while longer. De Vakey’s psychic antennae must have picked up on a problem with Justin that might provide Monty with some of the answers he needed. And Justin would probably find De Vakey easier to spill to than himself. The man was a pro, after all.

He waited for the front door to close before extracting himself once more. A light came on in the front room and he glimpsed them behind the net curtains before Justin drew the heavier drapes. Moving towards the window Monty pressed his ear against the glass, but could hear only the occasional word. This was getting him nowhere. He had to find a way to get in.

Baggly’s security system proved to be almost non-existent. Within seconds Monty had crept around the house, tripped the back door lock with his credit card and tiptoed through the kitchen to the front hallway.

He’d never been in the superintendent’s home before and was surprised at the contrast between this and his office. Here were no cabinets of fine china, leather Chesterfields and antique furniture. The furnishings were old and faded, a collection of odds and ends that could have come from an op-shop. The house had an unlived-in feel, the slight chemical tang in the air reminiscent more of an institution than a home. He’d suspected earlier that the fruits of Baggly’s corruption were not those of material gain and now he saw it for himself.

The voices of the men in the living room were clear now. He hugged the wall near the half-open door and listened.

De Vakey was saying, ‘It’s always encouraging for an author to get such positive feedback, but I feel your interest in my books is not just professional, maybe it involves something more personal. Am I correct?’

Monty could feel the magnetic pull of De Vakey’s voice even from where he stood.

The boy shifted in the stiff-backed chair. ‘You’re a psychologist. What people say to you is confidential?’

‘In therapy, yes.’

‘Well,’ the boy hesitated. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, but you have to give me your word that you won’t tell anyone else.’

‘I think I can manage that.’

‘In your books you’re always talking about family backgrounds, the huge part they have to play in shaping the minds of killers. Well sometimes I worry about myself. I failed the aptitude tests for the academy, you see; they said I wasn’t psychologically suited for the police. They reckoned I had some ... er ... problems.’

‘A lot of people would find themselves unsuited to the police, Justin,’ De Vakey said gently.

‘But there’s other things too. I’ve been reading your latest book, it’s kept me awake. I see myself in so many of those cases you describe, and the more I read about them the more I feel like I’m cracking up. Since I was a kid I’ve wanted to be a cop, but now that chance has gone and I don’t know what to do any more, I feel lost...’

Monty peeped through the gap in the door. Mouth turned down, eyes fixed on twisting hands, the boy looked to be on the verge of tears. Shit, Justin was in more of a mess than he’d imagined. The kid was going to need some understanding and help from his friends, and Monty would make sure that he got it—but first he needed to see if the boy had any of the answers he was looking for.

Ask him about his father, ask him about his father, he endeavoured to transmit his subliminal message to De Vakey.

‘Do you ever have the urge to kill or torture anyone?’ De Vakey asked.

The boy shuddered. ‘Oh, God no, nothing like that. I hate violence.’

De Vakey smiled reassuringly. ‘Then I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.’ De Vakey’s allowed a long pause. ‘But I think you know that too, deep down, don’t you?’

Justin nodded.

‘I think you really just need someone to talk to, am I right?’

‘Mmmm.’ Justin stared at the floor.

De Vakey let the silence settle for a moment. ‘Justin, tell me about your family life, your father.’

At bloody last.

The kid gulped in a breath. ‘I hate him.’ He pressed his palms to his eyes. ‘He repulses me, but he’s still my father.’

‘Now, why would that be I wonder? Can you relate these feelings to any particular events or has it always been this way?’

De Vakey’s tone was soothing and calm, could have been lifted from a self-hypnosis tape. If I wasn’t feeling so bloody uptight, Monty thought, I might be fighting the urge to nod off myself.

After a moment’s hesitation Justin took a deep breath. ‘My mother left my father when I was about twelve for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time. I blamed her; she’d been cheating on him. She tried to get me to go and live down south with her but I refused—the new boyfriend was a creep.

‘Then about a year later I came home from school early one afternoon and found Dad in bed with a boy not much older than me.’

Monty saw a shudder pass through the kid’s body.

‘No wonder she left him,’ Justin said. ‘I was out of here; I went to live with Mum after that. I only came back here to go to uni. I thought Dad seemed a little better—at least I haven’t caught him with any more boys. But over the last few weeks he’s been acting really weird. Something’s going on, he’s edgy and frightened, he’s up to something illegal, I’m sure, but I don’t know what and I don’t know what I should do about it.’

Monty decided it was time to step into the lounge room. ‘It’s okay, son,’ he said. ‘I thought it might have been something like this. You haven’t given your father away, he’s given himself away.’

Justin looked at him with amazement. De Vakey jumped to his feet, taking in Monty’s appearance with a look of disgust, as if a tramp had just burst into one of his therapy sessions. In a way, one had.

‘Good God, what are you doing here?’

Monty shrugged. ‘Just needed a few more answers. I think I have them now.’

He sat on the sofa next to Justin and used the uncomfortable silence to regard De Vakey. He didn’t much like the man, but they were on the same side and for the sake of the case it was important to cooperate. ‘An ideal tool for blackmail, wouldn’t you agree, De Vakey?’

De Vakey tented his long fingers and nodded.

Monty turned to Justin. ‘I think the person responsible for the KP murders found out about your father’s weakness and blackmailed him into hindering the investigation.’

Justin shook his head and glanced at De Vakey whose eyes had perceptibly widened. ‘This is about the KP murders?’ Justin asked.

‘There were some bent cops working Vice at the time of the murders,’ Monty answered him. ‘I reckon they somehow picked up on this snippet of information about your father and coerced him into covering up for them. They were setting up their own prostitution racket, and when other cops started getting too close for comfort, they killed the prostitutes for fear of being grassed up.

‘I think your father coerced Inspector Sbresni into cooperating in the cover-up, using similar tactics as those being used on him. In Sbresni’s case, it was the affair he was conducting with the commissioner’s wife.’

Monty rubbed his chin and mused aloud to De Vakey, ‘But what I’d really like to know is how Martin Sparrow fits into all this—have you any idea?’

By the time De Vakey had finished recounting the Sparrow interview, it looked like all Monty’s speculations were on the money—the KP killings and the Poser murders were indubitably connected.

‘Well the book writing explains a lot,’ Monty said, ‘and it also explains why Michelle was killed—she knew things and wasn’t exactly being careful about it. I think she was about to expose the KP murderer.’ Monty reached for Baggly’s phone. ‘I need to call Stevie.’

***

Stevie dragged her feet into the kitchen, mind still whirling from the tension of the re-enactment. Her mother was asleep, thank God, in the lounge with the TV blaring. She couldn’t face talking to anyone at the moment, let alone Dot.

Sliding out of her jacket and flinging it on the chair, she glanced at the answering machine. No flashing light, no message from Monty. Everything’s all right, she said to herself as she put her mobile on the kitchen table near her bag. If something was wrong, I’d have heard about it by now—wouldn’t I?

Leftovers of last night’s fettuccine provided an easy meal and a stubbie of Swan finally put a stop to the shaking of her hands.

She was in Izzy’s room a little while later, tucking the quilt around her sleeping daughter’s shoulders, when she heard the jangle of her mobile phone. Monty! She spun on her heels to make a dash for the kitchen.

But the bedroom door seemed to have moved and she found herself slamming into a solid object as rough and hard as a brick wall. Before she could register what was happening, strong arms engulfed her and something soft and sickly sweet was pushed into her face. Waves of nausea and weakness swept over her. ‘Highway to Hell’ pulsed in her head, then petered into nothing.

***

The intensity of the rain had muffled the sound of Baggly’s car and his sudden burst into the room caught them all by surprise.

‘What are you doing in my house, McGuire?’ Baggly barked, then turned to his son. ‘Justin, what the hell’s going on?’

Justin leapt up from the sofa and stood there frozen, staring at his father in white-faced shock. De Vakey squeezed his arm.

Baggly pointed a stubby finger at Monty. ‘You, mister, are in a shit-load of trouble.’ But as Baggly reached into his jacket pocket for his phone, Justin’s horrified look finally registered on his father’s face. Baggly’s hand stopped. He stared at his son.

Then he lunged, hurling Justin onto the hard carpet squares, taking them all by surprise. Grabbing him by the hair, Baggly was about to slam the boy’s head into the floor when Monty’s kick sent him sprawling. He was on the superintendent in an instant, pinning him to the floor with an arm behind his back and a knee on his spine.

‘What’s he been saying? I’ll kill him! I’ll kill the weaselly little bastard, I’ll—’ Baggly’s words were choked off as Monty pushed his bulbous face into the carpet.

De Vakey touched the knot of his tie and took a breath. ‘Now calm down, John. Let’s be rational about this.’ He moved to help the shaken Justin from the floor and guided him back to the sofa.

Monty released some of the pressure from Baggly’s head. It was like opening a steam vent. ‘Rational? How do you expect me to be bloody rational with this gorilla sitting on top of me!’

Monty spoke through clenched teeth. ‘If you behave I’ll let you up and you can have a drink and talk. If you don’t, I’ll call for back-up and have you dragged out of here so fast you’ll have carpet burns on your arse.’

Baggly struggled for a breath. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, McGuire? You always did have your eye on my job. Reckon you’ve got it now, do you?’

His words sounded as if they were being pushed through a bicycle pump. Monty knew how he felt, having been in a similar position himself the previous night. His other knee joined the one already on Baggly’s back and he adjusted his weight.

‘Okay, okay! Just get the hell off me and I’ll cooperate,’ Baggly gasped.

Monty pulled him to his feet and shoved him into one of the armchairs.

De Vakey looked from Baggly to Monty as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The profiler’s skin was pale, his lips parted. It dawned on Monty that the analysis of violent acts must be quite different from witnessing them live.

He pointed to Baggly’s cheap whisky on the plastic drinks trolley. ‘Top yourself up, De Vakey, them too.’

Despite his more comfortable position in the chair, Baggly’s face was still an unhealthy puce. He pointed an accusing finger at his son. ‘You’ve ruined me, haven’t you? How does it feel to ruin your father? Are you satisfied now?’

Justin shrank back into the sofa, his fingers gripping his refilled glass as if he might break it.

‘Don’t take it out on the kid, Baggly, you’ve ruined yourself. Justin’s only confirmed what I already suspected, that you were being blackmailed.’ Monty paced the floor. ‘They threatened to reveal your penchant for boys and forced you into helping them cover up the KP murders. And now two more women have been murdered, and you were involved in those, too, as well as my frame-up. It was you who took the watch from my desk, wasn’t it? And were Keyes and Thrummel acting on your orders when they stole the files from my flat or are you all taking orders from someone else?’

‘I didn’t murder anyone.’

‘No, you didn’t, but you were an accessory after the fact. I want you to go to Central and make a statement.’

Baggly drained his glass in one swallow then fixed Monty with gimlet eyes. ‘And if I refuse?’

‘Depends if you want this news let out officially or through the tabloids. It’s your choice. You and I both know the tabloids will make this even worse than it already is. You’ll have boys’ bodies in your cellar by the time they’ve finished with you. True or not, the other inmates won’t care. In prison you’ll be dubbed the murdering cop paedophile. Could be interesting.’

Baggly nervously smoothed down his moustache. The light caught the shimmer of sweat on his forehead as he looked desperately from Monty to De Vakey. ‘I’m no paedophile. They were never under age.’

‘The rags won’t give a shit: fifteen, sixteen, not much in it, is there?’

De Vakey stepped over to refill Baggly’s glass. Monty allowed Baggly to toss down another gulp before going to the phone on the side table. He lifted the receiver and started punching in the numbers.

‘Wait,’ Baggly said in panic. ‘You’ve no evidence! This is all conjecture!’

Monty put his hand over the receiver. ‘The press don’t need evidence, it’s just another juicy scandal for them. I’m ringing one of Michelle’s old journalist friends, telling her my suspicions. She can do what she likes with them.’

‘No!’ Baggly cried, putting his head in his hands and rocking from side to side in his chair.

‘Is that you, Sherrie?’ Monty said into the phone.

‘Wait, put it down, I’ll tell you what I know. Please, no press,’ Baggly begged.

‘Sorry, Sherrie, something’s come up, I can’t talk now.’ He put down the receiver and turned to Baggly. ‘Are you ready to talk? You’ll need to go to Central, I’ll get someone over to escort you.’

Baggly blew out a shuddering breath. ‘You’ve been plying me with booze. Nothing I say will be admissible.’

Monty found himself filled with a sudden, uncontrollable rage. He grabbed one of the bottles from the drinks trolley and hurled it at the wall. Baggly almost fell off his chair as the glass shattered behind him. Monty grabbed him by the shirt and yelled into his face, buttons popping under his fists. ‘You don’t get it, do you, you quivering lump of lard! Right at this moment I don’t give a shit what’s admissible and what’s not. I just want some fucking answers and I want them now!’

Monty felt De Vakey’s hand on his arm. He let go of Baggly and stepped back, breathing heavily, but calm again.

When Baggly found his voice he touched his gaping shirtfront. ‘I need to change.’

Monty reluctantly agreed; he didn’t want the roughing up of a suspect added to the other somewhat dodgy circumstances surrounding Baggly’s arrest. He watched Baggly haul himself unsteadily to his feet and said to De Vakey, ‘Go with him, keep a close eye on him. I have to make a phone call.’

De Vakey nodded and followed Baggly into his bedroom.

Monty used Baggly’s lounge-room phone to call Wayne. He gave him a summary of events and asked him to collect Baggly and arrange the interview at Central.

‘By the way, Mont,’ Wayne said. ‘I suppose it’s not important now, but for the record, I followed up on Justin’s hospital visit to Martin Sparrow.’

‘Shoot.’

‘It seems he has a thing going for Sparrow’s nurse—used Sparrow as an excuse for going to see her. That was the sole reason for his visit to the hospital.’

Monty glanced at Justin sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands.

‘Poor kid. It’s not been his day has it?’ Wayne added.

‘How did the re-enactment go?’

‘The dero said he recognised Baggly’s car. I thought it all seemed a bit far-fetched until now.’

‘How’s Stevie? Is she okay?’

‘I haven’t been able to reach her and I need to tell her something important. I had someone double-check Tye’s alibi and it turns out the mine supervisor was lying through his arse. Tye—’

A shot cracked out from Baggly’s room. ‘Oh God, no!’ Justin sprang from the sofa in a panic.

Monty’s stomach flipped. ‘I’ll ring you back.’ He slammed down the phone, grabbed Justin by the shoulders and pushed him towards the door. ‘Get the hell out of here. Go to the neighbour’s and wait there.’

The urgency of his tone had the desired effect; the boy bolted.

Monty found De Vakey standing in the doorway of Baggly’s bedroom, mouth open, hands outstretched as if he might still be able to stop what had already happened.

Baggly’s body lay sprawled on its back near an open chest of drawers, a pistol on the floor near his outstretched arm. It looked as if he’d already started his own autopsy, the single shot through the mouth having lifted the top of his skull like the lid of a hard-boiled egg. The frozen look of surprise on his face suggested that even he had not expected to make such a good clean job of it.

De Vakey stayed where he was, shaking his head from side to side like a man coming out of a trance. ‘The gun was in his top drawer, it happened so quickly...’

Monty felt for Baggly’s carotid pulse out of instinct and shook his head. He rocked back on his heels. The wound looked surgically neat, but the mess must have landed somewhere.

A shuddering sigh drew his attention back to De Vakey who was slowly sinking down the wall into a sitting position.

‘Oh Christ,’ Monty whispered, knowing the image of the gore-splattered profiler would stay with him for the rest of his life. He took De Vakey by the arms and pulled him to his feet. ‘You need to go to the bathroom and clean up,’ he said.

‘I should have stopped him,’ De Vakey gasped, pale with shock.

‘You couldn’t have stopped him, neither of us could. Now go and clean up. It’s obvious what happened here, we don’t need any more evidence.’

Monty turned away to find himself confronted by an equally disturbing sight. Justin was walking rigidly towards him up the hall with all the grace of a zombie.

‘Go wash up,’ Monty said to De Vakey before focusing his attention on Justin. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He looked at the boy and softened his voice. ‘I’m sorry, your father’s dead, son.’ Taking him by the arm, he guided him back into the living room.

‘It’s my fault, it’s my fault,’ Justin repeated over and over.

Monty sat next to him on the sofa, ready to hold him back if necessary. ‘I know this is a terrible shock for you,’ he began, ‘and it’s not over yet. I need to ask you some important questions. You have to clear your mind of this mess and answer me as best you can.’

Justin dropped his head in his hands. Monty took him by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. ‘Do you hear me, Justin?’

He took the choked sigh to indicate a yes and handed Justin his handkerchief. After allowing a few seconds for nose blowing, he took from his wallet a photo he’d found at Dot’s. ‘Do you know this man?’

Justin looked at the picture of Tye Davis for a moment, closed his eyes and nodded.

‘Who is he and how do you know him?’

‘Frank Dixon, he’s a friend of Dad’s. He sometimes comes over to the house. Sometimes Dad meets him at the old power station.’

Monty frowned ‘The power station?’

‘Dad has a key. The guy’s in demolition or something and was interested in looking around the building. Dad was hoping to get the council to contract Dixon into knocking it down once all the red tape has been cut through. He hates—hated—that power station.’

‘Can you tell me anything else about this Frank Dixon?’

Justin sniffed. ‘Dad used to act kind of funny when he came over, almost like he was scared of him. He had an old bomb of a car and sometimes Dad let him borrow his. Sometimes I had to let him use my van.’

‘When did you see him last?’

Justin was interrupted by De Vakey’s reappearance. ‘Phone call for you, Stevie’s mother.’ De Vakey handed Monty the phone and took his place on the sofa next to Justin. Monty stepped into the hallway.

‘Monty, is that you? You haven’t been answering your phone. Stevie’s was on the kitchen table and I got De Vakey’s number from it. I was hoping you’d be together.’ Dot spoke rapid fire, as if wanting to get the explanation over and done with.

‘Slow down, Dot. What’s the matter? Where’s Stevie?’

‘That’s the problem, I don’t know. I was asleep, she must have come home then gone out again, but she left her bag and phone behind. Her phone was switched off and the kitchen phone was off the hook. Tye came around earlier when she was out and said he’d return tomorrow. That’s all I remember. He’s trying to get custody of Izzy. Stevie didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to worry.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Monty’s hand flew to his forehead. ‘Listen Dot, everything’s going to be okay.’ He pressed the phone so tight to his ear it hurt. ‘You stay with Izzy. I’ll send an officer to keep you company. I think I know where Stevie is and I’ll bring her back home.’

‘You sound awfully worried, Monty. Are you sure everything’s all right?’

‘Of course it is, but look, I’ve got to go.’

He punched the off button and rang Wayne, explained the situation and requested a team be sent to Baggly’s and another to the power station.

After finishing with Wayne, he instructed De Vakey and Justin to stay in the house and wait for the police. The whisky bottle was empty and they’d started on the gin. De Vakey was lying sprawled across the sofa, in no better shape than Justin. Monty could only hope they’d both be coherent when the police arrived.