Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) Page 10

  I was sickened, suddenly, by how familiar I was with it all. Being the outsider. Pushing people away. I had to change his mind. I had to convince him to get his story out there.

  ‘You take pride in what you do. Don’t your victims deserve the best from you?’ I said. ‘Your colleagues hate you. They throw up barriers every time you try to make a move on cases. If people knew the truth about you, you’d be a more effective cop.’

  He actually laughed.

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I’d end up being a cop like you.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Oh man, you have no idea how ineffective you are,’ he said. ‘Waiting for autopsy reports. Calling the lab. Talking to colleagues. Hugging the victim’s parents. You’re a part of the system, mate. I’m outside the system. No one wants to take responsibility for me, so I do what I want. Skip the procedural bullshit. Makes me a better cop than you, I’ll tell you that much.’

  I shook my head at him. It hurt, but I understood. He was pushing me away now, trying to annoy me so I’d leave him alone. I’d done the same thing all my life. Whenever someone uncovered the truth, made me vulnerable, I’d shut them down as hard and as fast as I could.

  I walked back to the front of the boat and left him alone.

  CHAPTER 61

  I’D SLEPT WELL. The first night, it had been sheer physical exhaustion. Every limb had hurt. After I’d been checked over at the hospital, I’d gone home and crashed on my bed face first and slept until the next afternoon.

  A couple of nights later I’d followed Matthew Demper and Alex Loris to a bar in Paddington and waited all night while the Kings Cross police officers got themselves nice and tipsy playing pool and betting on the horses. When they returned to their car, I’d given them a few seconds to remember me as the detective they’d made jump out of a police van with her hands cuffed behind her back. When their memory was jogged, I’d broken Demper’s nose and given Loris a sound kick to the nuts. I slept even better after that.

  I was all ready to take my place on the Georges River task force. It was the perfect moment, and I’d make sure Pops knew that. Nigel had called a press conference with the national media, telling them he had some big announcement with regard to the case. I walked into the station, planning to tell him that he could announce that he was adding me to the task force while he was at it. How could they refuse me now? The newspapers were lauding me as a national hero. For once in my career I was in the position to make demands. And I was going to demand a spot on the hunt for that killer.

  I strode across the bullpen on the way to Pops’s office, knowing Nigel would be in there being briefed about the press conference. I veered off my path slightly when I saw Tox standing by the coffee machine, half his face swathed in bandages, scratching at the bottom of a jar of coffee with a spoon. I marched up and slapped his arm.

  ‘I’m about to burst in and put myself on the Georges River task force,’ I said. ‘Did you hear there’s going to be some kind of announcement?’

  Tox looked at me. His characteristic blankness had lifted slightly. There was a look in his eyes that was almost concern.

  ‘You haven’t met with the Chief yet? Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong? Is it the announcement? Do you know what it is?’

  Tox looked over my shoulder. The Chief was heading towards me, fast. The way he put his hand gently on my shoulder sent my stomach plunging. This was a man who’d broken my tooth in the boxing ring. He didn’t touch me that way. No one did.

  ‘I need to see you,’ Pops said. ‘Could you give me a few minutes, and then come sit down? We need to talk.’

  ‘In your office?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘In the interrogation room.’

  CHAPTER 62

  IT WAS THE hardest thing he’d ever had to do. And that was a hell of a statement, because what was ‘hard’ in the job had changed incredibly over Chief Morris’s career. When he had been a young patrol cop back in the seventies he’d thought the hours were hard, sneaking into the house late at night so he didn’t wake the kids. When he’d first made detective he’d thought finding the bodies of stupid young gang members with their throats cut was hard. It got to be so that the old man had seen such wicked stuff in his time …

  But sitting his best detective down and telling her this news, now that was a whole new level.

  Detective Harriet Blue sat across from him in the interrogation room, the lights making her look even more tired than she was, her angular head of scruffy hair balanced in one palm. She looked this way in the boxing ring. On the verge. Wired. Ready for the next strike, whether it was his or hers.

  The Chief had a tough time trying not to think like her father sometimes. If he’d been her father he’d have kicked her out of the force a long time ago. Got her into something that suited that brilliant mind but wouldn’t leave her a bitter, damaged old woman at the end of her career. He’d have dragged her out of the academy by her hair if he’d had to. But he wasn’t her father.

  The words came out slowly. He danced around the issue for a bit. Then he laid it on her straight, the way she deserved.

  ‘We found the Georges River Killer,’ he said.

  He looked at her eyes.

  ‘It’s your brother, Blue. It’s Sam.’

  Harriet twitched, just once, the way she would do when he’d smack her good and hard in the boxing ring. She was trying to work out what had just happened.

  Her sharp, cold eyes examined his.

  Then she got up and left.

  CHAPTER 63

  HE FOUND HER in the Georges River Killer task force room, of course. She’d finally busted her way in. When Chief Morris came through the door, he saw exactly what he expected. The short, wiry Detective Blue was going at her nemesis Nigel Spader with all the blind ferocity of a Jack Russell terrier. Above her on the case board the evidence she’d been blind to in the months since the killings had started fluttering a little in the fray. All the officers in the room were silent. Some were half-heartedly trying to pull the woman off her victim.

  ‘How could you be so completely wrong?’ Blue howled. ‘How could you be so completely, completely useless! You pathetic piece of—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Chief Morris stepped forward, took Blue’s arm. He felt her shaking. ‘Detective Blue, you get a hold of yourself right now or I’ll have the boys escort you out onto the street.’

  Blue whirled around and looked at him. The shock and heartache of a betrayed kid, eyes wide, disbelieving, all the exhaustion of the former case now vanished from her features. Her cheeks were flushed and her teeth gritted. Just as she did when she came around from a near-knockout in the boxing ring, Chief Morris watched as she shook it off and set her mind to what she’d do next to survive. She shoved past him. He felt the gentle brush of her shoulder like the slam of a sledgehammer.

  That’s it, Blue, he thought. You’re not done yet.

  When she’d gone, the case room was sombre. The men standing there looked silently at him, waiting for direction. Yes, none of them had ever been on the friendliest of terms with the little firecracker in their station. Harriet Blue was too determined, too brash, too obsessed with the job to fit in with these guys. But they still didn’t like having to do this to her. How could anyone? A sex crimes detective’s brother turns out to be the worst homicidal sexual predator in decades, maybe ever. Pops felt the humiliation. It was thick as smoke in the air.

  He went to the case board and looked at the photographs there, interior shots of Samuel Jacob Blue’s apartment taken during the search. Grainy surveillance images of the beloved brother walking in the street on the night of the first victim’s murder, hundreds of metres down from her apartment, a dark ball cap pulled down over his face. The Chief absent-mindedly pulled down fingerprint analysis from the first two victims. Turned it over and over in his hands, uncertain.

  ‘We’re right, aren’t we?’ he said aloud, his e
yes wandering over the huge collection of evidence. He found that his throat was tight. This was really hitting him. It had been years since he’d felt this troubled.

  ‘We’re right,’ Spader said, taking the sheet from him and pinning it back on the board. ‘It’s him. He’s the killer. We checked and double-checked. And after we make an arrest, we’ll get a confession. It won’t take long. There’s nothing you can say in the face of this stuff.’ He gestured to the board. ‘It’s open and shut.’

  ‘It better be,’ Chief Morris said. If it was all a mistake, and they’d brought in an innocent man, the Chief was sure he’d have lost one of the greatest investigative minds he’d seen in his policing career. Blue wouldn’t come back to the force that had turned against her. She wouldn’t trust him any more, his people. It had been enough of a mission to get her settled in the first place. She wasn’t good with institutions. They’d mishandled her as far back as she could remember.

  But worse than all that, all the embarrassment and mistrust, all the heartache and accusations and damage it would do to Blue and her relationship with the force, if they were wrong about Samuel Jacob Blue, it would mean one thing. That the monster was still out there. And they had no idea who he was.

  Harry had taken down the central picture in the case board, a happy-snap of her and the brother, their faces pressed together. It would be puzzling for her, how her brother could be such an evil being when every cell in her own body was inherently good. The Chief knew the answer. It wasn’t about good and evil – it was about fire. It took a white-hot flame in a sick, terrible mind to drive Sam Blue to do what he did. So much energy. So much destruction. The Chief had seen that fire in the eyes of plenty of horrible men. He’d seen it most in the ghouls who lurked in the back of prison cells, those vicious dogs who were deemed unfit to ever re-enter society. He’d seen it burning too in the eyes of heroes he’d worked with in the job, the cops who got up and rushed towards the sounds of screaming when everyone else was taking cover.

  That same fire burned in Detective Harriet Blue. The Chief knew her brother’s arrest wouldn’t put it out. It would make it burn brighter.

  If you enjoyed BLACK & BLUE, read Detective Harriet Blue’s next thrilling case

  Coming August 2016

  I’VE HAD TWO cigarettes in the last ten years. Both of them I smoked outside the funeral home where a fallen colleague’s body was being laid to rest. I stood now in the alleyway behind headquarters, finishing off my third. I chain-lit the fourth, sucked hard, exhaled into the icy morning. Despite the chill, my shirt was sticking to me with sweat. I tried to call my brother’s phone three times. No answer.

  The Chief emerged from the fire exit beside me. I held a hand up. Not only did I not want to talk – I wasn’t sure that I could if I tried. The old man stood watching as I smoked. My hands were shaking.

  ‘That … that rat … that stain on humanity Nigel Spader is going to go down for this,’ I said. ‘If it’s my last act, I’m going to make sure he—’

  ‘I’ve overseen the entire operation,’ the Chief said. ‘I couldn’t tell you it was going on, or you might have alerted Sam. We let you carry on, business as usual. Nigel and his team have done a very good job. They’ve been on to your brother for about three weeks now.’

  I looked at my chief. My trainer. My friend.

  ‘I’ve thought you’ve been looking tired,’ I sneered. ‘Can’t sleep at night, boss?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I can’t. I haven’t slept since the morning the homicide team told me of their suspicions. I hated lying to you, Blue.’

  He ground a piece of asphalt into the dirt with his heel. He looked ancient in the reflected light of the towering city blocks around us.

  ‘Where is my brother?’

  ‘They picked him up this morning,’ he said. ‘He’s being interrogated by the feds over at the Parramatta station.’

  ‘I need to get over there.’

  ‘You won’t get anywhere near him at this stage.’ The Chief took me by the shoulders before I could barge past him through the fire door. ‘He’s in processing. Depending on whether he’s cooperative, he may not be approved for visitors for a week. Two, even.’

  ‘Sam didn’t do this,’ I said. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Nigel’s got it wrong. I need to be here to straighten all this out.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ the old man said. ‘You need to get some stuff together and get out of here.’

  ‘What, just abandon him?’

  ‘Harry, Sam is about to go down as one of the nastiest sexual sadists since the Backpacker Murders. Whether you think he did it or not, you’re public enemy number two right now. If the press gets a hold of you, they’re going to eat you alive.’

  I shook another cigarette out of the packet I’d swiped from Nigel’s desk. My thoughts were racing.

  ‘You aren’t going to do yourself any favours here, Harry. If you go around shouting in front of the cameras the way you did in that case room right now, you’re going to look like a lunatic.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what I look like!’

  ‘You should,’ the Chief said. ‘The entire country is going to tune in for this on the six o’clock news. People are angry. If they can’t get at Sam, they’re going to want to get at you. Think about it. It’s fucking poetry. The killer’s sister is a short-tempered, frequently violent cop with a mouth like a sailor. Better yet, she’s in sex crimes, and has somehow managed to remain completely oblivious to the sexual predator at the family barbecue.’

  He took a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. It was a printout of a flight itinerary. He put the slim folder tucked under his arm into my hands. I opened it and saw it was a case brief, but couldn’t get my eyes to settle on it for more than a few seconds. I felt sick with fear, uncertainty.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s an unexplained death case out on a mining camp in the desert near Kalgoorlie,’ the Chief said. ‘I pulled some strings with some old mates in Perth. The case itself is bullshit, but the area is so isolated, it’ll make the perfect hideout.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to fucking Kalgoorlie! Are you nuts?’

  ‘You don’t get a choice, Detective. Even if you don’t know what’s best for you right now, I do. I’m giving you a direct order as your superior officer. You don’t go, I’ll have you locked up for interrogative purposes. I’ll tell a local judge I want to know if you knew anything about the murders and I’ll throw away the key until this shitstorm is over. You want that?’

  I tried to walk away. The Chief grabbed my arm again.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said.

  I didn’t look.

  ‘There is nothing you can do to help your brother, Blue,’ the old man said. ‘It’s over.’

  I DON’T KNOW which genius from Sydney Metro packed my bags for me, but they’d managed not to find the suitcases in the wardrobe of my tiny apartment in Woolloomooloo. I exited the baggage claim area in Kalgoorlie airport with three black garbage bags of possessions in tow. From what I could see in the pale light of the car-hire lot, some of the items I’d asked for were there, and quite a few I hadn’t, too. I recognised my television remote among the fingerprint-dusted mess.

  The numbness that had descended on me at my brother’s arrest had begun after my first glass of wine on the flight. Now it was affecting my movements. I realised I had been standing at the car-hire counter in a silent daze when the attendant clicked his fingers loudly in my face, snapping me back to reality.

  ‘Miss? Hey! Miss!’

  I frowned, reached out, and pushed over a canister of pencils standing on the edge of the counter. The pencils scattered over the keyboard.

  ‘So you’re awake then,’ he sighed dramatically, gathering up the pencils.

  ‘I’m awake.’

  ‘What’s the name?’

  ‘Blue.’

  He did some tapping on the keyboard. Printed and presented me
with a demoralisingly long form to fill in and a set of car keys.

  ‘Blue and Whittacker. You’ve got the little red Camry.’

  ‘Who’s Whittacker?’

  ‘I am,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned around as a lean, broad-shouldered man was carefully setting down two immaculate leather Armani suitcases on their little golden feet. He put out a long-fingered hand. ‘Edward. You must be Harriet?’

  ‘Harry. You’re the driver?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m your partner, actually,’ he smiled.

  I CALLED THE Chief first to tell him I’d arrived and to see if there was any more news on Sam, sitting in the back seat of the car. There was no word on my brother. I called a contact I knew in the feds, and when that route failed, I called some journalists I could trust to see if they had the inside scoop. A cocoon of silence had descended around Sam. By the time I gave up calling his friends and neighbours, Whittacker had driven us out of the town and onto the highway.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘You just mind the road, Whitt, and leave me to me.’

  ‘Actually, I prefer Edward,’ he said.

  ‘You say “actually” a lot.’

  His brow creased in the rear-view mirror. I leaned on the windowsill and watched the featureless desert rolling by. When I couldn’t stand the thought of my brother in prison any longer, I climbed through the gap between the seats and landed in the front beside Whitt. On the floor I found his copy of the case brief, which was bigger than mine.

  ‘Remind me why I’m working with a partner,’ I said. ‘I never requested a partner.’