Fifty Fifty: (Harriet Blue 2) (Detective Harriet Blue Series) Read online

  The truth was, Kash was right to be wary of me. Most of my life I’d wavered over a very thin line between light and dark sides of my being. There were things in me that were frightening. How quick I was to anger. How much I liked hurting people sometimes. My mind was full of shadowy places where violent fantasies lived, sickening things that sometimes came out in my dreams. Vengeance I played out mentally against bad people from my past. Most of the time, my light half won out, and the shadows and smoke were sent recoiling to where they belonged, not completely driven out, but controlled.

  But sometimes, the halves collided. The score came down fifty fifty, and everyone was left guessing what I might do.

  Even me.

  Chapter 53

  WHITT HAD DECIDED he wasn’t comfortable with Tox Barnes at all. A Sydney colleague had warned him that he’d suffer consequences from associating himself with the shaggy, despondent detective. That a deep, hidden sin in Tox’s past, a double murder, some said, meant that he was an enemy within the ranks of the police, and that he was to be avoided at all costs.

  It wasn’t just that, though. To be in the man’s presence felt hazardous, like a journey along a frozen road at night with rain battering the windscreen. The man spoke little, laughed almost never, and caused people who didn’t even know him to shift out of his path. He was stale-smelling and dusty all the time, as though when he went home at night to wherever in the world that might be, he simply tucked himself into an old cupboard and closed the door. Whitt’s own terrible history had caused him to become almost obsessed with freshness and newness, the cleanliness and orderliness of packaged things. He changed his toothbrush on the first of every month. He littered his sock drawer with moisture absorbers. If things weren’t exactly right, they were deeply, inexcusably wrong.

  Whitt was having those familiar nervous palpitations as he approached Tox on the third floor of the University of Sydney west car park.

  ‘I got the CCTV,’ Whitt said, drawing a sheet of paper from the folder tucked under his arm. He handed Tox a grainy photograph printed from the security system of a hock shop in Bondi Junction. Whitt had managed to track down footage of the purchase of the video camera found in Sam Blue’s apartment, originally stolen from an apartment in Elizabeth Bay. The still showed a man in a cap exiting the front doors of the store.

  ‘It’s not a great picture,’ Whitt said.

  ‘No. It’s not,’ Tox sighed. ‘Could be Sam Blue. Could be his grandmother.’

  ‘I’m going to get it analysed,’ Whitt said. ‘See if we can measure the man’s dimensions against the angle of the camera and the doorway. He seems taller than Blue to me.’

  ‘You talk to the Simpson girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Convinced?’

  Whitt struggled. ‘She maintains everything from her last statement. The white van. The screaming. Caitlyn standing there as she ran past.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ Tox said.

  Whitt took a deep breath and looked around at the car park. They walked to the door to the fire stairs. Was this where Caitlyn McBeal had taken her last breaths of free air?

  And if it was, would she ever take any again?

  Chapter 54

  ‘THIS IS WHERE both girls allegedly entered,’ Whitt said, walking through the fire-escape door. He glanced down the stairwell. ‘I suppose the abductor might have seen Linny coming up the stairs. Decided she was his type. Thought he’d stand here, wait for her to come through.’ He walked back through the door and leaned against the wall, made like he was ready to pounce. ‘Linny comes through. He grabs her, drags her that way, over to where that white van is sitting.’

  Whitt pointed to a car space fifty metres away where a white van sat with the side door open. He paused, puzzled at the sight of it sitting there, the very same make and model of vehicle the witness had described in her interviews. Tox had his hands in his pockets. He looked nonchalantly towards the van.

  ‘So what we want to know is,’ Tox said, ‘how likely is Linny’s story? Why did no one hear her screams and then Caitlyn being abducted? Would the attacker have been able to drag Caitlyn fifty metres to the van? Where and how might he have left traces of the crime if he did?’

  Whitt was still puzzled by the van. He looked at Tox. ‘That’s the same kind of van Linny reported seeing at the abduction,’ Whitt said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Tox nodded. ‘It’s my van. I brought it here for the purposes of our experiment.’

  ‘What experiment?’

  Tox didn’t answer. He was watching a woman walking towards them up the slope of the ramp, her enormous spike heels clopping like horseshoes on the asphalt. Whitt’s first thought was that university students sure dressed differently now to the way they did when he studied. As she got closer, however, Whitt began to notice bruises on her slender white legs, climbing all the way to the hem of the tiny miniskirt. The long blonde ponytail was clearly fake – clipped-in extensions. She put the phone she’d been texting on away in a small faux-fur handbag and smiled broadly at Tox.

  ‘Detective Barnes,’ she said, hardly glancing at Whitt. ‘It’s been a long time, honey.’

  ‘Sure has.’ Tox looked warm and friendly, Whitt thought. A sudden transformation of his usually dark being. Something was not right. ‘Whitt, this is Sandy. Sandy, Whitt.’

  ‘This is a bit of a weird place for a two-on-one,’ Sandy smirked uneasily, looking around the car park. ‘Are we getting out of here, or …?’

  ‘Oh no, we’ll play our game right here,’ Tox said. He checked his watch. There was a strange, tight pause as the man simply stood there, smiling at the girl’s face. Whitt opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but before he could Tox lunged at the girl, grabbing her by both arms, yanking her towards him.

  ‘You’re coming with me, girly!’ Tox snarled.

  ‘Whoa!’ Whitt stumbled backwards. ‘Whoa! Whoa!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sandy screamed. ‘What are you doing! Help! Help!’

  The girl in Tox’s arms suddenly sprang to life, bucking and twisting in his grip. The two of them fell into the side of a parked car.

  Whitt launched himself forwards, trying to wrestle the girl from Tox’s grip as he dragged her towards the van. Her screaming was so loud up close that his eardrums pulsed.

  ‘Please! Stop! Help me!’

  ‘Stop, Tox! Let her go!’

  Tox threw his weight sideways, knocking Whitt into another car, sending his glasses skidding across the asphalt. Sandy twisted in Tox’s arms, bashed at his head with her forearms. He stopped and adjusted his grip, hugged her to him like a child and loped in the direction of the van with her howling against his chest.

  ‘In you go!’ he laughed triumphantly, placing Sandy in the cabin of the van and slamming the door. Sandy was screaming, beating on the door with her fists. Whitt limped towards Tox, his lower back aching from slamming into the side mirror of a nearby Toyota.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Let her out of there!’

  ‘Fifty seconds,’ Tox said, glancing at his watch. He pushed the door of the van open and Sandy got out. She slapped Tox hard across the side of the head.

  ‘You arsehole!’ she panted. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

  ‘It was just a game, sweetheart.’ Tox reached out and took her shoulders in his big, calloused hands, smoothed her arms. ‘That’s all. No need to get your pretty feathers all ruffled.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Sandy huffed and tried to assess the damage the struggle had done to her artificial hair. ‘You’ve always been a crazy fuck.’ She slapped him again, hard, across the face.

  Tox peeled a couple of hundreds off of a roll he produced from his pocket. Sandy snatched the bills and tucked them into her bra, held her hand out for more. Tox sighed and peeled again. Sandy frowned at Whitt.

  ‘Great load of help you were,’ she snapped, jutting her chin at Whitt. ‘Was this your idea? You some kinda freak who likes to watch abductions?’

>   ‘No, no,’ Whitt protested. ‘I really –’

  ‘What the hell was that all for?’

  ‘I needed a screamer,’ Tox said. ‘A real screamer. Not someone faking it. We’re being scientists today, darling.’

  Sandy looked unconvinced. A man in a grey uniform was running up the slope towards them, his hand on his belt.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He wiped at a sweaty head of black hair. ‘Who’s in trouble?’

  ‘You are,’ Tox said.

  Chapter 55

  ‘I’M DETECTIVE INSPECTOR Tate Barnes and this is Detective Inspector Edward Whittacker.’ Tox paused when he got to Sandy. ‘And this is … our associate. We’re investigating the abduction of Caitlyn McBeal.’

  ‘Oh,’ the man said. He brushed at the front of his grey uniform, fiddled with a name badge that read Bill Perkins: Security.

  ‘William Perkins. You’re the security guard who gave police a statement about that day, aren’t you?’ Tox folded his arms.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Tox glanced at the sunshine streaming in through the side of the lot. ‘Same day of the week. Same hour of the day that Caitlyn was apparently abducted. Wind direction seems to be more or less the same. You hear the screams of a woman, screams that last fifty seconds and you come running.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bill shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘You were down there in your little security guard’s hut on the first floor just now, were you?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Bill cleared his throat.

  ‘That’s where you said you were at the time of Caitlyn’s alleged abduction.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So all the variables are the same as they were on that day. But you said in your statement that you didn’t hear any screams,’ Tox said. ‘You said you heard no screams, no scuffle on the third floor. You said you didn’t see a white van exit the driveway anywhere around that time.’

  The security guard looked intently at Sandy. She was the safe place to look. Whitt and Tox’s eyes bored into the man’s face, assessing every muscle twitch.

  ‘Were you where you were supposed to be on that day, Mr Perkins?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bill straightened. ‘I was.’

  ‘Really?’ Whitt raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What if, for example …’ Tox mused. ‘What if I took your head, Bill Perkins, and I put it in the gap of the sliding door of my van here.’ He gestured to the van. ‘And I slammed the door closed, over and over?’

  Bill swallowed, looked at Whitt for help. There was none.

  ‘Would your answer still be the same?’ Tox asked.

  Bill started to back up, then turned and ran.

  ‘Answer the question!’ Tox called. The security guard put his head down and ran for his life. Tox sighed, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.

  ‘He wasn’t in the guard hut that day,’ he exhaled. ‘I don’t know where he was, but he wasn’t there.’

  Chapter 56

  AFTER SANDY LEFT them, the two men walked to the edge of the car park and leaned on the concrete wall, Tox smoking, Whitt trying to contain his inner horror at his partner’s ‘experiment’. They looked over the edge and across a wide, empty netball court to a narrow green lawn where students were filming interviews with handycams, sitting on wooden benches, now and then glancing at written notes as they narrated their works.

  ‘Maybe Bill the Security Idiot was in the bathroom,’ Tox mused. ‘Maybe he has a girlfriend on campus he was visiting. Maybe he was listening to music. Whatever the case, it’s possible Linny Simpson was telling the truth. Someone did try to abduct her, and she screamed her head off, and no one heard her.’

  Whitt didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse.

  ‘But the van doesn’t make sense,’ Whitt reminded him. ‘No white van came or went during the times Caitlyn would have been taken.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Tox growled. ‘If we could just find her, this would all make sense.’

  The two men watched the people on the lawn below them.

  ‘What are these chumps up to?’ Tox wondered aloud. Whitt looked across the lot at the young people with their cameras.

  ‘Film class, looks like.’

  ‘Maybe they have some footage from that day.’ Tox blew smoke into the wind.

  ‘They’d have heard the screaming though,’ Whitt said. ‘Wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Not with those headphones on,’ Tox said.

  Whitt followed nervously as Tox descended the concrete stairs to the little garden. The students stopped their filming and assessed Tox as he arrived among them. Four of them were gathered around a single camera, thick headphones clamped to their heads. They took down the headphones.

  ‘S’up?’ Tox jutted his chin at the leader of the group, a lanky late-teenager with a shaving rash and long, greasy dreadlocks.

  ‘Nothing much,’ the boy answered.

  ‘What’s this?’ Tox gestured to the group, the cameras.

  ‘Film assignment.’

  ‘Been doing it long?’

  ‘A few months. It’s our major assessment task. It’s due next week.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tox rocked on his heels. ‘Let me look at it.’ ‘What?’

  ‘I want to look at it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I said so.’ Tox shrugged, the gentle, menacing shrug of a dangerous man. ‘Let me look at it.’

  Whitt cleared his throat. He understood why Tox was being mysterious with the youths. If there was footage relevant to the abduction of Caitlyn McBeal, Tox and Whitt would need to confiscate it. And that would take a warrant, and a warrant would take time. A search of the students’ footage was technically illegal. Whitt didn’t like all the muscling Tox was doing. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop what was about to happen. His personal and professional ethics were slowly, slowly degrading.

  ‘We don’t have to show you anything,’ the dreadlocked boy said. Tox didn’t reply. He reached out and grabbed the nearest handycam, plucking it from the grip of a young woman with green hair. He stood in the sun and started pushing buttons on the screen, flipping through dates on the digital files. The students exchanged glances, wide-eyed. Whitt held his hand out apologetically to another handycam holder. The young man gave a confused glance to their leader and then handed over the camera.

  ‘Who are these guys?’ someone whispered.

  ‘Should we … call someone?’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ one of the girls asked Whitt. ‘We’ve got permits. We’re not doing anything wrong.’

  ‘We’ll just be a minute,’ Whitt said gently. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Any footage of drug-taking on those cameras is strictly staged,’ one of the young people said, eyes on the sky. ‘We’re making a … public awareness film.’

  ‘Got it.’ Tox showed Whitt his camcorder screen. ‘Ten July. Three pm.’

  The two men huddled together, watching the students’ interview on the tiny screen. The camera faced the car park exit, the driveway at the corner of the image. Anticipation churned in Whitt’s chest.

  Tox fast-forwarded the footage. The girl on the screen twisted and shivered, her mouth jabbering silently. She was wearing headphones too, doing a sound check. A dark green sedan exited the car park. The footage ended.

  The two men exhaled. The students around them seemed to sense that whatever they were looking for was not on their footage. Tox handed the tiny camera back to the girl he’d taken it from.

  ‘Thanks, guys.’ Whitt smiled. They turned and started wandering away, but after only a few steps he stopped. There was a zinging feeling creeping up from his fingertips. A flush of heat in his throat that even he didn’t know the cause of at first. Suddenly, he realised. It all fell into place. He gripped his partner’s arm.

  Chapter 57

  ‘WHAT?’ TOX GRUNTED.

  Whitt’s mind was rushing. He struggled to form words.

  �
�What?’ Tox repeated.

  ‘How do we know it was a white van?’ Whitt asked.

  ‘Linny Simpson said the guy tried to drag her into a white van.’

  ‘But has anyone else ever said that? Has there ever been a white van connected with the other missing girls?’

  ‘Well …’ Tox thought about it. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s always a white van, isn’t it?’ Whitt’s heart was beginning to race in his chest. ‘In the movies. People are always abducted into black or white vans. What if Linny Simpson was right about everything that happened to her except the vehicle?’

  Whitt closed his eyes. Remembered Linny sitting before him at the cafe table.

  ‘She said the van door was closed,’ he looked at Tox. ‘When the guy, the abductor dragged her over to the van, he didn’t manage to get her into the back of the vehicle. It was closed. That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’d have left it open. Surely he didn’t plan to grab her, drag her all the way over to the van, drop her on the ground and expect her to lie there while he pulled the door open.’

  ‘How sure was she that the van door was closed?’ Tox asked. ‘She took a blow to the head. She fainted afterwards. That’s one of the main reasons the police rejected her story, because they think she was confused.’

  Whitt shrugged helplessly. Tox considered Whitt’s words. Then he walked back to the group of students and plucked up the camera again.

  ‘Hey, we need that!’ one of the girls cried. ‘It’s due next week!’

  ‘It’s worth a shot,’ Tox said. ‘Let’s get a BOLO on the green sedan. See what turns up.’

  Whitt was rubbing the bridge of his nose as they ascended the fire stairs, a headache pulsing behind his eyes.

  ‘Oh shit!’ he said. ‘My glasses!’

  He jogged up the stairs, remembering the clatter of his glasses as Tox knocked him sideways in the struggle for Sandy. He searched between the cars, bent low and looked under greasy tyres. He spotted them deep under a blue Camry. Before he could get down, Tox put a hand on his chest.