Текст книги "Harum Scarum"
Автор книги: Felicity Young
Жанры:
Триллеры
,сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
‘Silly bitch,’ he said.
Stevie agreed. ‘This explains her transformation.’ The sergeant recorded the details of the find and Stevie returned to the family room and pulled Monty aside.
When he’d heard what she had to say, he held up the bottle of pills and rattled them in front of others. ‘Compressed cocaine,’ he said, ‘found in your bathroom, Mrs Breightling.’
Miranda’s mouth formed an ‘O’, which she covered delicately with one finger in a 1950’s ingenue gesture. Was she sending herself up?
Christopher Breightling looked angrily at his wife. ‘Miranda...’ he began and stopped. He loosened the knot of his tie, ‘Inspector, surely this is not the time or the place...’
‘Have some compassion, man,’ Stoppard interjected, large chin thrust forward with belligerence. Stevie made as if to look away, but continued to observe him through her peripheral vision. She might have been mistaken, but she could’ve sworn she saw a twinkle of amusement in those deep-set eyes.
Breightling clenched his fists.
Monty said nothing, merely slipped the pills into his pocket and began to pace the room. He stopped at the abstract objet d’art and touched one of the sharp points, his face briefly showing the same surprised look Stevie had seen—was it only yesterday?—on Izzy’s.
‘It’s an original Sienna-Pastor sculpture.’ Miranda swivelled around on the barstool to face Monty, her tanned legs crossed, one high-heeled sandal hanging from her foot and dangling seductively towards him. Already working hard at getting the possession charges dropped, Stevie thought. ‘It’s worth a lot of money,’ Miranda added.
Breightling palmed his forehead with exasperation. ‘Can we please return to the subject of my daughter’s disappearance, Inspector?’
‘Certainly, Mr Breightling, where were we?’ Monty knew very well where they were. ‘Ah yes, we were trying to ascertain your daughter’s frame of mind, wondering if she might have run away. Sergeant Hooper was under the impression that Emma was unhappy, that she didn’t want to go east to boarding school.’
‘I’m sorry, but that’s simply ridiculous. Emma is an extremely gifted child,’ Christopher Breightling told them. ‘She really finds it natural to want to learn, to achieve. The boarding school she’ll be going to has an extensive gifted program.’
Miranda said, ‘She couldn’t wait to go, she never shut up about it—that’s true isn’t it, Aidan?’ To Stoppard again, not the husband, Stevie noted.
Stoppard nodded. Stevie looked at Christopher Breightling. His knuckles were white, and a complex mixture of emotions played across his face.
‘Then is there something else she might have been unhappy about?’ Stevie’s look burned into Stoppard. He turned his palms to each parent and shrugged, as if to say, why’s she got it in for me?
They needed to separate Stoppard from Emma’s parents. It was creepy, it was downright unhealthy the way they sat together like that, three little dickie birds sitting on a wall. What was it between them? And just what were the ties that seemed to be binding them so uncomfortably together?
Monty must have been thinking along similar lines. ‘Mr Stoppard,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to come up to Emma’s room with me now and we’ll go over again what you told Sergeant Hooper.’
Stoppard let out an impatient sigh, looked at his watch, and told them he had things to do.
Before they could leave, a uniformed constable approached Monty and whispered something in his ear. Monty listened for a moment then addressed Breightling. ‘You have a gun safe in your garage?’
Breightling slid off the barstool. ‘What of it?’
‘We’d like to have a look inside it. We need the key.’
‘I’ve nothing to hide,’ Christopher said, moving towards a tall pantry cupboard. ‘I would have told you if you’d asked that I’m the owner of a licensed hand gun and a couple of shotguns.’ He positioned a small kitchen ladder next to the pantry and stood on it to reach the highest shelf, taking a set of keys from a hook.
‘Nothing to be alarmed about, sir,’ Monty said. ‘My officer has already confirmed with the database that you have a number of registered firearms. We just need to check them out.’
Stevie and Monty followed Christopher through a kitchen door leading into a three-car garage. Bolted to the floor next to Breightling’s Mercedes SLX they saw a heavy steel gun cabinet as tall as a change room locker.
Monty asked Breightling to open the cabinet. His hands shook; he was clearly upset over his daughter’s disappearance. He made a couple of unsuccessful attempts at slotting the key into the lock before the door swung open, showing the body of the locker. He passed Monty two Purdy over-and-under shotguns in wooden cases, explaining that they once belonged to his father and he used them for clay pigeon shooting. While Monty examined the guns, Breightling continued to grope around in the cabinet, struggling to reach something on the top shelf.
Monty handed the shotguns to a watching constable. ‘Allow me.’ He gently pushed Breightling aside and removed the bundles.
‘My wife’s jewels,’ Christopher said as Monty handed the two velvet bags to Stevie. ‘The handgun must be further back.’
Monty stuck his hand in, his fingers clanging on the metal at the back of the cabinet and came out with nothing.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Christopher exclaimed. He felt blindly towards the back of the cabinet, his panic mounting. ‘I can’t believe it, it’s gone!’
He spun around wildly, as if expecting to see the gun lying around in the garage somewhere.
‘When did you last see it, sir?’ Stevie asked as she replaced the rings and necklaces she’d been examining into their respective velvet pouches.
A muscle in Breightling’s cheek twitched. He drew his hands over his face as if trying to wipe it away. ‘A few weeks ago?
Maybe a month; I haven’t had much time for the firing range recently.’
‘The data base has it listed as a Glock 22,’ Monty said.
‘That’s right. I’ve been meaning to get into some competition shooting.’
‘Your keys weren’t in a particularly safe place, it wouldn’t be very hard for someone to get to the gun,’ Stevie said.
‘Well, I could hardly keep them with me, could I? Miranda needs easy access to her jewellery. Besides, no one else knows where they’re kept.’ Breightling took a breath, rubbed his cheek again. ‘Actually, there’s something else you should know, something else that’s missing from the safe. Frankly, I find this loss more disturbing than the gun’s.’ He paused.
‘Go on,’ Stevie said.
‘A set of antique scalpels, my great-grandfather’s from the Boer War.’ He paused for thought. ‘Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing the gun in the safe when I last cleaned them about three weeks ago. The scalpels need cleaning every month, you see. They’re made of high-carbonised steel and would rust if not regularly maintained. They haven’t been used for years, but they’re still as sharp as razors. They have a lot of sentimental value to me as well as being worth a small fortune.’
Monty and Stevie exchanged glances. ‘Why would someone take a handgun and scalpels, but leave the jewels and the shotguns?’ Monty thought aloud. ‘Make sure the cabinet gets dusted for prints,’ he told the uniformed officer as he strode back to the kitchen. Out of the corner of his mouth he said softly to Stevie. ‘He may be a surgeon, but did you see his hands shake when he was opening the safe? I wouldn’t trust him cutting a cake.’
Monty spoke again when they were once more congregated in the family room. ‘Now, I need Mr Stoppard to go over last night’s events in Emma’s bedroom with me.’
‘Is that necessary Inspector? I’ve already been over it with Sergeant Hooper and I do have business in the city.’
‘I’ll let you know when you can leave, sir. Besides, I’m sure the Breightlings could use the support of an old family friend such as yourself.’
Stevie watched Miranda swivel on her stool, her gaze never leaving Stoppard as he climbed the stairs behind Monty. Breightling’s eyes dropped to the breakfast bar, engrossed it seemed with the sparkles in the granite, the twitch in his cheek now a fully realised facial tic. Not only had Emma been telling her the truth about Stoppard and Miranda being lovers, Stevie thought, but Christopher Breightling knew it too. Why the hell, then, did he put up with it?
26
Stevie had still not recovered from the shock of Emma’s disappearance; she stood numbly waiting for Stella to answer the door. There had to be something Stella could tell her about Emma Breightling, she thought, something that could lead them to the girl’s whereabouts. It was impossible to believe that Stella had been as ignorant about Bianca’s Internet activities as she’d maintained. The emails saved on the iPod had already revealed that Stella had withheld information about an abusive relationship. Stevie couldn’t help but wonder what else she was covering up.
She gave one last desperate thump at the heavy door and was turning to leave when Stella’s sister opened it.
‘Oh hi Gail. Sorry to disturb you. Could I have a word with Stella?’
‘Stella’s still asleep love, I’d hate to wake her just now, she’s that washed out. Would you like a cuppa?’ Gail waved her in, covering a yawn with her other hand.
Stevie declined the offer of tea, but accepted the invitation to pull up a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Has Stella said anything more to you about the man who was harassing her in the park?’ she asked as Gail moved around the kitchen area, preparing her breakfast.
Gail shrugged. ‘Not a peep.’
‘And you’ve never seen him hanging around the flats before?’
A shake of the head.
Without mentioning the contents of Bianca’s emails, Stevie asked if she had any knowledge of her sister being involved in an abusive relationship.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about her at all. Stella left home about fifteen years ago and since then none of us really heard from her, she wasn’t very close to the family. As horrible as it sounds, this terrible business has drawn us together again.’
‘Do you believe her about how she broke her arm?’
‘That she fell down the stairs? Well, those stairs are pretty dangerous, especially when rain gets down the stairwell.’ Gail’s toast popped and she spread it with margarine and Vegemite. Stevie hadn’t had time for breakfast and the savoury aroma made her stomach rumble.
Gail smiled and put the plate of toast on the table in front of her. ‘Go on, be a devil, with a figure like yours I bet you can eat what you want.’
‘Thanks.’ Stevie took a slice, asking between mouthfuls, ‘Has she received any strange phone calls since you’ve been here with her, had any men call around?’
‘No. Look, you may as well have a cuppa with that.’ Gail handed Stevie the tea she’d made for herself.
The bedroom door creaked open and Stella appeared in a rumpled nightie. The plaster cast had been removed since Stevie had last seen her and her left arm looked frail as a plucked chicken wing. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said as she leaned wearily against the doorframe.
‘She thinks you knew that man who bothered you in the park, that he’s been beating you up,’ Gail said to her sister.
Shit. Stevie nearly choked on her toast. This wasn’t the approach she’d had in mind. She climbed to her feet and put a calming hand out to Stella, ‘Why don’t you come and sit down?’
‘I’ve had just about enough of you!’ Stella cried, shaking Stevie’s hand off. ‘Just get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!’
‘Stella, another girl has gone missing. This is important, I think Bianca knew her from the Internet...’
Stella spun back into her bedroom and slammed the door in her face.
Stevie counted to ten in her head before turning to the stunned sister. ‘Well, that went well didn’t it?’
What a day. Later that afternoon at Central, the team sat around a table in one of the conference rooms to swap notes and brainstorm. The air conditioning had conked out for the third time that week, faces glowed and tempers flared.
Stevie kicked off her trainers and pulled at her short-sleeved top, trying to invoke a non-existent breeze. Monty’s face was as red as it had been at the beach, his tie hung at his neck like a noose, and his white shirt was patterned with threads of sweat. He looked at his watch and scowled.
The door flung open and Tash hurried in, the banging and crashing from the air conditioning mechanics in the corridor trailing in behind her.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she gasped and thumped into the chair next to Stevie.
Monty made a point of getting up and closing the door. ‘Stevie, a brief summary for Constable Hayward, please,’ he ground out. While Stevie filled Tash in on Emma Breightling’s disappearance, he struggled to open a window, cursing under his breath when he discovered that no amount of heaving and thumping could break the seal.
‘No ransom note, no telephone message?’ Tash asked when Stevie had finished her rundown.
Stevie was almost certain they were dealing with a runaway and told Tash so. After pleas for information were broadcast on the radio a woman had reported picking up a girl matching Emma’s description and dropping her off in Mundaring in the early hours of the morning.
Despite this lead, Monty suggested it was best to humour the parents for the time being and continue to pursue the investigation as a possible kidnap—the kid on the highway might not have been Emma. Better to err on the side of caution, he told the team, than find themselves with a pile of litigation in their laps. For now they just had to suck it and see, hoping their questions would be answered when Clarissa had finished the post mortem on Emma’s PC.
Stevie asked Tash if she’d got hold of the photographer.
‘Yeah, that’s why I was late.’ From under dark brows Tash shot Monty a withering look. ‘Mr Holdsworth is waiting in the interview room downstairs.’ To the rest of the team she said, ‘We suspect him of supplying a paedophile ring with the photos he took for the modelling agency.’
‘Good one, let’s keep him sweating, we can talk to him later.’ Stevie returned to the topic of Emma Breightling. ‘I’ve discovered some interesting connections between Emma Breightling and Bianca Webster. Not only was Bianca turned down by Miranda Breightling’s modelling agency, but both girls were members of the same Internet message board/fan site that seems to be about supporting abused kids.’
‘So you think Bianca and Emma knew each other?’ Wayne asked.
‘Internet pals, I think so, but I don’t know if they ever met. Miranda said she couldn’t remember any Bianca Webster, but when I showed her the pic we got from Kusak’s computer, she admitted that the child looked vaguely familiar. I went to see Stella this morning, but before I could ask her about it, the meeting went south, she practically threw me out of the flat. I’ll call around later when she’s calmed down.’
‘Would you like me to come too?’
She threw Monty an appreciative smile; there was a chance his presence might make Stella more cooperative. Over the years she’d learned never to underestimate the effect of a sympathetic, attractive member of the opposite sex on a distraught witness.
‘Wait one,’ Wayne raised a finger. ‘Are you suggesting Emma’s disappearance and Bianca’s murder are related?’
Stevie let out a heavy sigh. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘So now you’re telling us that Emma might also have been snatched by Lolita and the Dream Team?’ Barry’s flippant tone made the group sound like a fifties rock band. ‘But you just said she was a runaway.’
Stevie poked at the papers in front of her with her pen, determined not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. And he’d wondered why his application for the Cyber Predator Team had been turned down.
‘If I hadn’t met Emma before, I’d say yes, it’s a possibility, but the girl I know seems too clever to allow herself to be trapped by someone like that. I think she’s run away because of abuse, most probably by “old family friend” Aidan Stoppard.’
‘Have you checked him out on the National Child Sex offender Register?’ Wayne asked.
‘Yes, and he’s not on it. I’ve made an appointment to see Emma’s school counsellor at her home this afternoon, she may be able to tell me something. The more I can find out about her, the more likely I can figure out what’s happened to her, why and where she might have gone.’
‘Angus, find out as much as you can about this Aidan Stoppard,’ Monty said.
Angus nodded and wrote himself a note. ‘How do you spell Aidan?’
Stevie reached into the pocket of her jeans and slid across the business card Stoppard had given her.
‘Thanks,’ Angus glanced at the scenic view on the front of the card and flipped to the business details on the back. ‘Importer of Mexican art with a hills showroom called Chateau-by-the-Lake, and an accountant too, with his own company and a St Georges Terrace office,’ he paraphrased. ‘Want me to check out Breightling as well, boss?’
Monty nodded.
‘Hang on a minute Angus.’ She held out her hand to him. ‘Let’s have another look at that card.’ After examining it for a moment she frowned and said to Monty. ‘This is the same picture as on the postcard in Emma’s room. I thought it must have been from Europe.’
Monty frowned. ‘I didn’t notice any postcard when I was in there with Stoppard. But hang on a minute.’ He delved into his briefcase, took out SOCO’s inventory of Emma’s room and shook his head. ‘Not listed.’
‘I don’t understand, what’s the big deal?’ Tash asked.
‘It was there, I saw it—I’m sure it was the same scene.’ Stevie looked to Monty to see if he could make sense of it. ‘The postcard was balanced on her teddy bear’s arms. I wonder if she’d done it deliberately, so it would be seen? At the time it didn’t occur to me that it was significant. But the picture is of Stoppard’s showroom, some kind of a European style castle in the hills. He must have taken it, don’t you see?’
‘Sure he could have—but it sounds a bit cloak and dagger.’
Stevie glanced at Barry, noticed the beginnings of a smirk. She was too tired to deal with this.
‘Look, can I get a word in, guys. I need to get out again,’ said Wayne. Stevie decided to keep her thoughts to herself for the moment, and responded to Monty’s raised eyebrows with a shrug.
Monty sighed and pointed his pen at Wayne. ‘Tell everyone what you’re up to at the moment.’
‘I’ve found the kid who’d been hanging around with Zhang Li. It seems he was with Li at the time he was killed. He told me he saw it happen, but then clammed up when I asked him for details. I’m waiting on a social worker now for the interview.’
‘So if we find Zhang Li’s killer, we’ll more than likely find Kusak’s killer. Some coup, eh?’ Barry beamed at the serious faces surrounding him.
‘Things are never as easy as they can look,’ Wayne cautioned.
27
With his curly blond hair, porn-star moustache and fish belly complexion, Julian Holdsworth was everything Stevie imagined a paedophile webmaster to be. Although he seemed genuinely shocked to hear of Emma’s disappearance, and Stevie felt inclined to believe him, she made no effort to hide the contempt in her voice.
‘You’ve been identified by staff at the Mt Lawley Internet cafe as a frequent visitor and your signature is scrawled all over the logs. You always choose to sit in the booth furthest away from the counter where no one can see your screen.’
‘Would you like a lawyer, Mr Holdsworth?’ Tash cut in.
Sweat gleamed on Holdsworth’s brow. He fidgeted with the collar of his open neck shirt and undid another button to reveal a glint of a gold chain through a tangle of dark chest hair.
‘Innocent men don’t need lawyers,’ he said.
Christ, how often had Stevie heard them say that? She reached for the file and opened it on the table, fanning the glossy hardcore photos before him. Tapping her pen on one of the photos, she said ‘For the benefit of the tape I am showing Mr Holdsworth exhibit C7.’
‘Oh God, that’s disgusting.’ Holdsworth turned away.
She pointed to another. ‘Look at this please sir. For the benefit of the tape I am showing Mr Holdsworth exhibit C3.’
He gave the photo a timid, sideways glance. ‘Christ,’ he put his hand over his mouth. ‘How can you even imagine I could be responsible for distributing these?’
He was a good actor; the man really did look as if he was about to puke, he’d turned as green as the interview room walls. Stevie scanned the room, wondering if there was a suitable receptacle available, but all she found was an empty coffee cup. She hoped it wouldn’t be needed.
She said, ‘These photos were sent from the Internet cafe you were logged in at, from your account, on two consecutive days last December.’
Holdsworth marshalled his strength, folded his arms and looked her in the eye. ‘I didn’t send them.’
‘What about these, these and these.’ Tash pointed out several more, reading out their identification numbers for the tape. ‘Coincidences don’t happen that often,’ she added.
‘They’re nothing to do with me.’
‘What about these photos, Mr Holdsworth, surely you don’t deny taking these?’ Stevie showed him the ‘art’ photos from Tall Poppies.
He glanced at them, gave a start then looked more closely. ‘Oh yeah, they’re mine, my God, where the hell did you get them from?’
‘These were sent from the same Internet cafe, the same account, on the very days you were logged in.’
‘I took them, yes, but I never distributed them on the Internet.’
‘Lolita,’ Tash said.
Holdsworth looked at her blankly, swallowed. ‘Wasn’t that a movie?’
‘All right Mr Holdsworth,’ Stevie said. ‘Let’s try something a bit easier. Tell me why someone like you, with a whole studio of computer equipment, needs to use the services of an Internet cafe?’
Holdsworth bit his lip and said nothing. He picked up the empty cup before him as if he were trying to read the tea leaves at the bottom.
‘Our experts are pulling your computer apart now,’ Stevie went on. ‘You may as well just save us all a great deal of bother. I’m afraid our techs aren’t always as gentle with impounded equipment as they could be.’
Holdsworth crumpled the cup in his hand. ‘Shit, okay, I’ll tell you, but you won’t find anything illegal on my computer, and certainly no porn.’
Tash who had been prowling around the room pulled up a chair next to him.
He took a breath. ‘Online gambling. I visit a US site that’s illegal in Australia. I use the cafe so no record is left on my computer. The gambling site is also riddled with viruses which I don’t want on my equipment.’
The detectives took their time to digest this, exchanging arch glances as they did so.
Tash straightened in her chair. ‘That’s not good enough, Mr Holdsworth, you’ll have to do better than that.’
‘I couldn’t go to prison for that, surely? A fine? Maybe I should call my lawyer after all?’
Neither detective responded.
He looked from one to the other of them, brow furrowed with thought as he undid another shirt button. ‘Christ it’s hot in here. Okay, there’s something else too.’ His eyes settled on Tash. ‘These kinds of pics are of no interest to me at all, not that they ever would be, even if I wasn’t ... gay.’
Tash slumped back in her chair.
Stevie slid a pen and paper toward him to write down names of people who could corroborate what he’d just said. What a waste of bloody time, she thought. The Dream Team site was devoted solely to the exploitation of underage girls, so it was highly unlikely that Lolita would be gay, or even bisexual. He might, of course, be running it as a purely business concern, but it was rare that people were into this kind of abuse just for the money.
Holdsworth scratched away with the pen for a while. ‘These guys will back me up.’
‘You’d have saved yourself a lot of bother if you’d told us that straight away,’ Stevie said, Tash’s expression hadn’t lost any of its early contempt. ‘Ashamed of being gay are you, Mr Holdsworth?’
Holdsworth placed a full stop after the last name and put the pen down. ‘No, but I work with children. It could easily be assumed by the ignorant masses that because I’m gay I’m into little boys, which I’m not. I keep my orientation to myself for the sake of my job.’
Stevie pushed the button of the tape recorder. ‘Stopping for a break at 12:45.’
Stevie and Tash pushed their way through the swinging doors into the operations room and made their way to Clarissa’s desk. ‘Is it possible to access someone’s Internet connection through a local area network in say an Internet cafe, and send stuff through it without the knowledge of the person who’s logged in?’ Stevie asked.
Clarissa squeezed her dimpled chin as she thought. ‘LAN sniff you mean? These cafes don’t tend to have the best security. Does it have a wireless connection?’
Stevie had no idea what LAN sniff might mean. She looked to Tash who’d been somewhat thoughtful and subdued since Holdsworth’s revelation. Tash nodded ‘yes’.
‘Then all it needs is someone in the know to be sitting in a car outside with a laptop to pick up signals from the cafe,’ Clarissa said. ‘He—or she—can log in from his own computer then log into a computer in the cafe to control it. If he deletes his system logs as he goes, it’s virtually untraceable.’
‘We think that might be what’s happened to Julian Holdsworth,’ Stevie said. ‘He visits the cafe several nights a week and logs in for a set time, regular as clockwork.’
‘Then it would be someone who knows his routine, knows him well enough to guess his password,’ Clarissa said.
‘But not well enough to know he’s gay,’ Tash said quietly.
Tash and Stevie split up, Tash to find out how the Emma Breightling search was going and follow up on Holdsworth’s friends, Stevie returning to Julian Holdsworth. If they were in an old movie, she thought as she stepped back into the interview room, the interrogatory spotlight would be dimmed, the swinging bulb now stilled.
Once he’d learned he was no longer under arrest, Holdsworth accepted her profuse apologies with as much alacrity as he did the free lunch she sent out for.
‘It was Miranda’s idea, that little scam in the Mall,’ he said through a mouthful of lamb kebab. Stevie’s serving still lay wrapped on the table in front of her. She picked away at the paper. If worry for Emma had diminished her appetite, revulsion at the sight of the gravy dripping from the side of Holdsworth’s butter yellow moustache killed it altogether.
‘To tell you the truth I’m glad you guys put a stop to it before too much harm was done,’ Holdsworth said, eager it seemed to restore some lost points.
Stevie thought back to the photo of the muslin-clad Bianca Webster and bit her lip. From where she stood, Bianca’s modelling session had kick-started the events that had ultimately led to her death.
‘I’ve never known such a greedy bitch as Miranda,’ Holdsworth went on. ‘Want, want, want, more, more, more.’ He drained his coffee and held out the cup, raised eyebrows indicating he’d like another.
Stevie took the cup and handed it to a uniformed constable passing by the open door and returned to her seat. She decided to capitalise on the distance Holdsworth seemed to want to put between himself and Miranda Breightling. Clasping her hands on the table in front of her she affected a tone of gossippy interest. ‘What about Miranda’s husband, Christopher?’
Julian Holdsworth finished chewing his kebab and dabbed at his mouth with the corner of a paper serviette, leaving small traces of gravy on his moustache. He licked his fingers and leaned conspiratorially towards her. With the metaphorical spotlight no longer shining in his eyes, she could see he was enjoying the drama.
‘Quite a bit older than she is, ten, fifteen years maybe. He’s a plastic surgeon, but dabbles in cosmetic surgery on the side—probably experiments on his wife, I mean have you seen her...’ he circled his hands around his chest area. ‘I think he used to be a bit of a philanthropist, one of those surgeons who was always flitting off to war zones to treat the unfortunate, correct deformities, patch up landmine victims—you know, the saintly type. His good deeds died somewhat of a death when he married Miranda—then the cosmetic side of things began to take over.’
‘More money in cosmetic surgery I suppose,’ Stevie commented, remembering Emma saying something similar. It was, after all, a lot easier to be a philanthropist when you were rich. ‘Do you think they might be having financial difficulties?’
‘You’d have to ask the accountant that, I wouldn’t know. She can be a bit slow settling her invoices, but that’s generally the way these days, isn’t it?’
‘Her accountant—would that be Aidan Stoppard?’
‘Yup.’
‘What do you know of him?’
‘Not much. He and Miranda were at school together, some high school or other on the wrong side of town. That’s part of Miranda’s problem, a huge chip on the shoulder. She told me once, after one bottle of bubbly too many, that when she first left school and started making new friends, she’d tell taxi drivers in a big loud voice to take her to an address in Claremont. Once she’d left the friends behind, she’d get the taxi to drop her off at a bus stop so she could bus it home to the outer suburbs with no one the wiser.’
‘A social climber.’
‘You can say that again, it’s obvious she only married Christopher for his money and social position. And he’s still besotted with her, I can’t see why, the silly bugger. He’s no dumb arse; he has to see through her—I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.’
‘And what do you think of Aidan Stoppard?’ she asked.
Holdsworth shrugged. ‘Okay, I suppose.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Do you know him well?’
‘Not really, only in passing. Enough to say hi when he drops in at the agency, sometimes work talk. Why the interest?’
‘With Emma missing, everything about the family and the agency is of interest.’ She explained the minimal details of the circumstances surrounding Bianca’s death, the paedophile ring that had somehow acquired copies of his photos, and why they had suspected him of supplying them.
He rubbed his moustache. ‘You think someone deliberately singled me out for this?’
‘Yes, someone who didn’t know you were a homosexual, I suspect.’
‘I told you I don’t advertise.’
‘But you do have a very predictable routine at the cafe.’ Stevie allowed a slight smile, which Holdsworth returned somewhat sheepishly.
