Liar Liar: (Harriet Blue 3) (Detective Harriet Blue Series) Read online

  He was backing up towards the exit. I couldn’t let him get there. I made a leap for the bed and that encouraged him. He came forward, grabbing at my legs while I tucked into a roll and landed on the other side of the mattress.

  His arm came around my shoulders. I jutted my elbow hard into his ribs, got nowhere, kicked the wall and shoved myself backwards, propelling him onto the mattress. The shock of it was enough to loosen his grip.

  The motel owner, a squat, hairy man, was standing helplessly just outside the doorway as I sprinted out into the night.

  Chapter 5

  CHIEF TREVOR MORRIS sat at his cluttered desk and gripped his head, looking at the report from two patrol officers in Lidcombe. In the early hours of the morning the pair had briefly encountered his rogue detective, Harriet Blue, and predictably failed to bring her in. In five weeks, it had been the only confirmed contact.

  Oh, Harry, he thought. I’m so sorry.

  He should have been the one to tell her that her brother was dead. He had a special kind of relationship with the unpredict-able, hot-headed officer he’d found in his local boxing gym fifteen years earlier. The new kid on the block in Sex Crimes, his only female detective in that department. Chief Morris had agreed to train her in the boxing ring. She’d started calling him Pops and, yes, he’d felt almost like her father. He’d found she could already hold her own in a fight. It had been her fury he’d had to tame, her fast, clumsy rage.

  It hadn’t been much of a leap for Harry’s rage to evolve into a need for revenge.

  He turned in his chair and perused a collection of articles he’d pinned to a nearby corkboard detailing the city’s reaction to Regan Banks’s escape.

  Police bungle Regan Banks arrest, deadly serial killer still at large.

  Two found dead; scene suggests Regan Banks alive and well.

  Where is Harriet Blue? Speculation rife detective is in league with killer.

  The public had never liked Harry. Had never believed that a Sex Crimes detective didn’t know her brother was a serial killer. Sam Blue had been in the middle of his trial when Regan Banks had surfaced. Harry and her few supporters had been claiming Sam was being framed by a tall, broad-shouldered man with a shaved head. They knew Regan was a killer. He’d killed as a teen, and now a woman had only barely escaped his clutches, telling investigators Regan had spoken about Sam Blue. Had Sam been innocent all along, the victim of a set-up? Or was the Georges River Killer actually a two-man team? The answers weren’t coming any time soon.

  ‘What a mess.’ Morris shook his head as he turned and looked at another corkboard, the various crime scenes touched by Regan’s hand. The pictures of his pretty victims, pale and still on morgue tables. ‘What a fucking mess.’

  ‘Yes, it is an incredible mess,’ someone said.

  Pops looked towards the doorway. Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Woods stood there with his hat in hand, the various buckles and attachments to his jacket gleaming in the harsh overhead light.

  Pops stood, smoothing down his tie, feeling sweat already beading beneath his shirt. Before he could begin the necessary greetings, Woods cut over him.

  ‘Get your things together,’ Woods said. ‘You’re out, Morris. I’m taking over.’

  Chapter 6

  THERE WERE NO words. Pops eased the air from his lungs.

  ‘I’ll need this office as an operations centre for the Banks case,’ Woods continued. ‘You can start working on that after we brief the crew about the command change.’

  ‘Deputy Commissioner Woods,’ Pops said finally. ‘This is my investigation. You can’t take it over without approval from –’

  ‘All the approvals have been given, Morris.’ Woods patted the smaller man on the shoulder, the gesture stiff and devoid of warmth. ‘You’ve done your best, I’m sure. But this –’ he waved at the corkboard ‘– this isn’t just a mess. It’s a fucking catastrophe. It has to be taken in hand immediately by someone with suitable experience.’

  Pops’s eyes widened. ‘Joe, nothing like this has ever –’

  ‘You’ve got a vicious killer on the loose.’ Woods leaned on the edge of the desk. ‘Eight dead. A rogue policewoman running amok, refusing to come in. Another rogue officer in a coma. Am I missing anyone?’

  ‘Detective Barnes is out of his coma,’ Pops said. ‘And he never –’

  ‘Don’t try to defend him, Morris. Tox Barnes is a lunatic. Always has been. He wanted to play with Regan a bit before handing him in – be a hero. He almost became a casualty. Well, that’s not how we do things in this job. We don’t take matters into our own hands, no matter how good it feels. I’m here to make sure that Blue woman doesn’t do the same as Barnes and add herself to the already numerous body count.’

  The two men glared at each other. Morris and Woods had been at the academy together, more than thirty years earlier. It was precisely these interactions that had got Woods to the rank of Deputy Commissioner while Morris remained at Chief Superintendent. Woods railroaded people. When he spoke. When he acted. When he went for promotions. He was a tall, thick-bodied battering ram of a man, charging in and taking over when he decided good publicity might be available.

  Pops felt a pain in his chest, scratched at the anxiety creeping up his insides.

  ‘Detective Blue is refusing to come in,’ Woods said. ‘To me, that’s not only professionally unacceptable, but it’s deeply suspicious.’

  ‘She’s not in league with Banks.’

  ‘Then why won’t she come in?’

  Morris didn’t answer.

  ‘Because she wants to kill him,’ Woods said. ‘If she’s not in league with him she must be hunting him. That’s premeditated murder. It’s just as critical for us to bring her in to save Banks’s life as it is to investigate her involvement in his past crimes.We don’t condone vigilantism, Morris. I want her found and arrested.’

  ‘That’s a big mistake.’ Morris shook his head. ‘You cannot approach her with force. She will kick arses, Joe. I’m telling you. If you try to bully her, you better prepare to clean up the mess. I’ve been trying to establish contact so I can lure her in. I had two officers early this morning who found her, and they were supposed to call me. Instead they went in, and they’re lucky they didn’t get hurt.’

  ‘All the more reason to get her into custody.’

  ‘No.’ Morris said. ‘I won’t support an arrest warrant without a criminal charge.’ He shrugged stiffly. ‘And you have nothing to charge her with. She was not in league with her brother. She’s not in league with Banks. Right now, she’s an official missing person, and we have concerns for her welfare. End of story.’

  ‘This is not your decision,’ Woods said. ‘There has been a change of command. It’s out of your hands.’

  Pops grimaced, turned away.

  ‘I’ll offer a reward,’ he said suddenly.

  Woods gave a quizzical frown.

  ‘I have a hundred grand in my personal savings account,’ Pops went on. ‘You continue to play her to the media as a missing person, as a good cop we have grave concerns for, and I’ll offer the money as a reward for her whereabouts.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘I guarantee you’ll find her faster that way. If the public thinks she’s dangerous they’ll run from her. If they think she’s one of us, and better yet, their ticket to a fat pile of cash, they’ll be drawn to her. You’ll get more hits with a reward.’

  Woods looked down at the man beside him.

  ‘I’ll hand over the investigation to you, no questions asked.’ Pops put his hands up in surrender. ‘But I’m asking you now not to put out a warrant on Harry. Don’t do that to her. She doesn’t deserve it.’

  Woods snorted, unconvinced. ‘When we get her in, we’ll see what she deserves.’

  Chapter 7

  DETECTIVE EDWARD WHITTACKER barely made the briefing on time, jogging to the mirrored door to the boardroom and stopping to tuck in a loose corner of his shirt. He hated to be late. Actu
ally felt a burning anger in his throat at the thought of it. He opened the door and walked stiffly to the back of the room, determined not to react to the eyes of other officers following him. As he took a seat, a detective he knew from Robbery turned and leaned over the back of the chair in front of Whitt.

  ‘How’s Barnes?’ the younger detective asked. ‘Still kickin’?’

  Whitt felt his face flushing. His former unofficial partner, Detective Tate ‘Tox’ Barnes, was deeply reviled across the Sydney metropolitan police department. His grievous wounding in a fight with Regan Banks was hardly tragic news. Whitt knew it wouldn’t be long before this hatred for Tox, and for Whitt’s partner before him, Harriet Blue, would turn on him.

  ‘Detective Barnes is recovering well,’ Whitt said. ‘He’s not receiving visitors. But the doctors tell me he’ll likely be up and about in a couple of weeks.’

  The young Robbery/Homicide detective gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Well, you know what they say. Only the good die young.’

  The officers around them sniggered.

  A senior detective came in and began the progress check on the Banks investigation. There were sightings of Banks all over the city to run through. Most were unsubstantiated, panicked calls from elderly women after hearing bumps and thumps in their yards in the early hours. There were a few legitimate, interesting calls about big men with shaved heads acting suspiciously, but they were not clustered in any particular place. It seemed that, like Harry, Regan had gone to ground since his last killings: the vicious slaughter of a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter in a Mosman plastic surgery clinic.

  Whitt took a file out of his bag and selected his manila folder on the Parish murders. There were crime scene photographs of the once-immaculate surgery room, bloodstains and spatters found to be from Isobel and Samantha Parish. And some blood that matched the DNA profile of Regan Banks. The detectives had determined that Banks had abducted Doctor Parish and her daughter, and forced the skilled plastic surgeon to attend to wounds Banks had acquired in a shootout with police.

  Whitt had been there when Regan was shot by police, had heard Regan’s cry as the bullets tore through him. It didn’t escape Whitt that if he’d just been faster, smarter, more prepared, he might have been the one to take Regan down before he escaped. Before he killed the mother and child.

  Whitt flipped quickly through the photographs of the bodies, the mother curled in a corner of the surgery, her throat cut. The little girl still in her dance leotard, her arms splayed and head twisted back at an unnatural angle. The killings had been swift but violent. Whitt wondered whether Doctor Parish had known when she was helping Banks with his wounds that he planned to kill her. There were indications the woman and the child had both put up a vigorous fight, completely trashing the surgery room. They’d died at opposite ends of the building, the child making it all the way down the hall to the front reception room and grabbing the phone off the hook. No call to emergency services had come through.

  Whitt looked at the photographs of the mangled bullet Doctor Parish had removed from Regan’s body, the clippings of stitches that had fallen on the floor after the surgery table was upturned. Doctor Samantha Parish had got a broken killing machine up and running again and paid for it with her life. And her daughter’s life.

  Whitt wondered how many more names he would have to write on identical folders before the killing machine was taken out of operation for good.

  Chapter 8

  WHEN THE BRIEFING was done, Whitt walked across the busy bullpen to his desk, coffee in hand. The desk was new, a delay in his official transfer from Perth meaning he had spent his first couple of weeks at the department working out of his car or a briefing room. A group of detectives was gathered nearby, watching the large glass window of Chief Morris’s office with interest.

  Whitt looked over to see what they were all focused on.

  ‘It’s him,’ a detective said, his arms folded, leaning on Whitt’s desk. ‘It’s Big Joe Woods.’

  ‘That’s the guy who caught Elizabeth Crassbord’s killer?’

  ‘And Reece Smart, the Farmhouse Killer,’ another detective said, nodding. ‘Dude’s a big-case bandit. Swoops in after all the hard work is done, trying to get the press. He’s got a lot to prove. You hear about his daughter?’

  Whitt scoured his desk for his folder. He thought he’d just put it down on the desk when he passed to get his coffee, but now it was gone. He straightened and turned to the group of men beside him still focused on the office across the room.

  ‘Did someone take my …?’

  The detectives turned towards him and smiled. Whitt sighed. One of the woes of being associated with Tox Barnes was that other detectives in the department were given licence to harass, belittle and prank any detective partnered with him. It was a tradition dating back to Tox’s entry into the force. Rumours spread, almost as soon as he was badged, about violent killings in his childhood. Tox had been responsible for the death of a mother and son, but it was a freak accident that got the pair killed. The police didn’t want a murderer in their midst, and punished anyone who aligned themselves with Detective Barnes. Tox might have cleared up the rumours about his past, but he wasn’t the world’s most social guy. He liked to work alone, and his reputation, however false, kept people away.

  Even with Tox holed up in hospital, out of sight and out of mind, Whitt was still being messed with for befriending the department’s most hated detective.

  ‘Seriously? That’s my only copy of the Banks case file in its entirety,’ he said.

  ‘Well then!’ the nearest detective said cheerfully. ‘We know how you’ll be spending your morning.’

  Whitt appreciated the prank for its subtly and effectiveness. He would have to go down to ‘the dungeon’, the records department in the bowels of the building, and print himself a whole new file. He took his coffee to the sink and poured it out without drinking it. He knew by the time he returned it would be unsafe to drink.

  He rode the clunking, shuddering elevator down to the darkened car park and traversed the concrete floor lined with police vehicles to another elevator down to the lowest floor of the building. Records was housed where the command centre held its armoury, and it had the added benefit of being a suitably dark, damp and cold place for insubordinate officers to be sent as punishment. Officers who stepped out of line were sent to do time either in records, where they could wither away filing paperwork, or in the armoury, where cleaning and servicing the weapons would allow them sufficient time to think about what they had done.

  Whitt knew who was in the records department now – a young patrol officer named Karmichael, who had been filmed dancing suggestively in uniform with a couple of ladies in a nightclub in Kings Cross. Constable Karmichael’s movie had made it onto YouTube and, inevitably, to the top brass’s email inbox. And then there was a long-term inmate of the dungeon, Inspector Mia Fables. Fables was in her fifties, and had clawed her way to Inspector through decades of shoddy police work and bad attitude.

  Whitt exited the elevator and pushed open the door of the long hall leading to the lowest floor of the building.

  The lights were off. It was his first clue that something was amiss.

  Chapter 9

  WHITT STOOD HOLDING open the heavy door. He seemed to recall that there had been some mention of the lights and electrics on the dungeon floor playing up. He called out into the infinite blackness and received no reply. Surely Karmichael and Fables weren’t working in pure blackness? The door at the other end of the hall must have been shut. Whitt let the door close behind him, sealing him in the dark. The sound of his shoes on the concrete as he walked seemed so loud now his eardrums pulsed.

  A smell. Gunpowder. Not the lingering reek of the armoury up ahead, but a whiff of it, a cloud suddenly enveloping him. Whitt felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He stopped short, his hand reaching instinctively for the gun in his shoulder holster.

  ‘Hello?’

 
; No answer. Whitt wouldn’t have put it past his colleagues to try to give him a fright in the dark down here. He cleared his throat, trying to ease a little of the fear out of his words. ‘Is someone here?’

  Nothing. He kept walking and, with relief, opened the door at the other end of the hall.

  He would have looked back, just to check, to see if the strange sense that someone was in the hall behind him had been correct. That in the blackness someone had waited as he passed.

  But he didn’t check.

  He was distracted by the blood.

  Chapter 10

  JUST ONE DROP. A big drop, searing red in the fluorescent light.

  Whitt looked back into the hall. No one. He crouched, squinted at the bloodstain. It was wet. He pulled out his weapon but didn’t call out this time.

  It was only one drop of blood, but the feeling he’d experienced in the dark hall had put him on edge. His back teeth were locked, muscles tense.

  Whitt walked silently to a T-intersection in the hallway and peered around the corner. To the right of him, the door to the armoury. To the left, the door to the records room. He looked down before he reached for the records room doorknob. He noticed another drop of blood on the floor.

  From inside the room, a moan.

  Whitt threw open the door. The small reception space before the caged records room was empty. He went to the barred door and peered in, saw a pair of legs jutting from behind a filing cabinet.

  ‘Karmichael?’ Whitt tried to see more, but there was only blood – not single drops of it now but smears and streaks, a dark pool. He rattled the door. There was no sign of Mia Fables. He climbed atop the counter and slid his body through the gap across which the records were usually handed, landing almost on top of Constable Karmichael.