Private Oz Read online

  “Yeah, but I can’t get past the relationship angle. You said it – bored women, husbands never there. Perfect recipe.”

  “Sure. Look, Craig, Greta told me stuff. Half the women she knows are having affairs with their personal trainers, tennis coaches, you name it. But she reckons Stacy and David weren’t like that.”

  “She’s sure?”

  Justine nodded.

  “So we check out David Friel’s associates. See if any of his enemies hate him enough to kill his wife.”

  “Find out if he’s been a ‘naughty boy’ you mean?”

  “Oh don’t even question that!” I said. “The guy lives in a five-million-dollar mansion and earns a seven-figure salary. As he more or less told me himself, he’s definitely been a ‘naughty boy’.”

  Justine gazed out at the view across Middle Harbour, checked her watch. “I’d better go.”

  As I led her to the door she turned suddenly. “Nearly forgot … Would you like to come to my sister’s fortieth?”

  I was startled for a second. “Well … er … yeah.”

  “It’s at a restaurant called Icebergs at Bondi. Greta raves about it.” She took a breath. “She almost called the whole thing off, but Brett and I talked her round. When I pointed out that she couldn’t let the bastard who murdered Stacy rule her life, it got her blood up. She can be quite fierce when she’s riled!”

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Well, I’m honored.”

  Justine held my eyes and grinned mischievously. “Don’t be. You’re the only man I know in Sydney!” Then she pecked me on the cheek and left.

  Chapter 34

  JOHNNY HAD THE smallest office at Private HQ and shared it with the photocopier, which in effect meant he shared the space with the receptionist, Colette. But he didn’t seem to mind. Johnny was an expert at filtering out noise and distraction and just getting on with things. It was a skill he’d picked up as a kid. He had to do his homework in a tiny living-room while his father watched the racing, his mother did the ironing and his older brother argued with his younger sister. He still managed to get straight As in his exams.

  Now he was staring at the monitor, his coffee ignored on the desk beside the keyboard. He’d been following a paper trail, well a cyber trail, to find anything juicy he could on Graham Parker. But the facts were scant.

  He looked away from the screen for a few moments to survey what he had written on a legal notepad next to the coffee cup.

  Parker was fifty-six, American, born in Utah. Went to Brigham Young University, studied Economics. He dropped out after two years and became a minor pop star himself. Played on the New York CBGBs scene in the late seventies fronting a band called Venison. Then he became a manager for Toys and, later, Rough Cut, who were pretty successful. He left America in 2010, hooked up with Micky Stevens as the singer was leaving his old boy band Fun Park six months later and turned the guy into a huge solo star.

  Johnny returned to the computer and tapped a few keys. The screen showed sales figures for Micky Stevens’ three solo albums. He’d peaked with his first, Love Box, which had made the US Billboard Top 10. But since then his career had begun to falter. His last CD, Much 2 Much, was a flop except in Australia.

  “So, there’s your motive,” Johnny said under his breath. “If Stevens is right and the manager is trying to have him snuffed out, it’s because his career is on the ropes. Parker’s going for the ‘dead pop star revenue’.” He spanned back to the screen and began to type.

  The next ten minutes were a waste. He went through all the official sites linked to Stevens, Fun Park, old material on the bands Parker had managed in the ’80s. Nothing. Well something … Parker had been a junkie, had served six months for possession in 1979, spent time in rehab … pretty de rigueur.

  He was about to give up when he found a blog thread about Micky’s old band. From there he stumbled upon a chat exchange between half a dozen fans of Fun Park and a couple of people who evidently detested them. Most of it was inane garbage and Johnny began to scroll down faster and faster, until a sentence jumped out … Parker’s bankruptcy was the best thing that ever happened to Micky Stevens. What would the useless son of a bitch have done after Fun Park if Parker hadn’t left the States to start again?

  Johnny stopped scrolling and reread the two sentences. Then he checked the responses. There were no more comments, they’d just moved on. He threw himself back in his chair, a tingle of excitement passing through him. It was the first chink in the investigation and he was determined to prise it open.

  Chapter 35

  ELSPETH LAMPARD HAS put the kids to bed and is walking down the stairs when she realizes just how much she needs a glass of Shiraz.

  Her husband, Ralph, is away in Europe and won’t be back until next week. She feels lonely at this time of the evening – after the kids are in bed and before she falls asleep in front of the TV.

  She goes to the wine rack. Nothing. “Damn it,” she says aloud. She considers taking something from the wine cellar, but Ralph would hit the roof if he found one of his treasured wines had gone missing. There isn’t a bottle in there worth under five hundred bucks.

  Dusk is descending over Bellevue Hill as Elspeth walks to the liquor store two streets away. Five minutes later, she is forty yards from her house with a decent thirty-dollar quaffing wine.

  It’s quiet, sticky hot. Most of Elspeth’s neighbors are indoors watching TV or lounging by their blue-lit pools with a cocktail in hand.

  She hears a click from behind. Ignores it. Then comes a shuffling sound. She turns. Nothing. Sidewalk clear. Elspeth spins back again.

  The blow comes from behind.

  She falls to her knees, confused.

  There’s a blur of houses, concrete, darkening sky. She hits the sidewalk hard. The wine bottle smashes – red liquid everywhere. Pain shoots up her neck, streaks across the left side of her face. She tries to turn, makes it halfway and sees a figure in an anorak leaning over her. Elspeth can smell her assailant’s breath.

  She has no time to get up. Her attacker is bigger, stronger. She feels herself being dragged into a narrow alleyway between two gardens. She tries to scream, but as soon as she opens her mouth, a gloved hand comes over it, grips her lips, crushes the flesh about her mouth. Elspeth feels a tooth snap inward. More pain. Terrible pain. It spreads out across her face and around her skull.

  She’s pushed up against a fence, a cloth comes up against her mouth. The attacker is leaning over her, knotting the material behind her neck. She struggles, but she’s drained and the assailant is too strong. Elspeth feels a wire being wrapped about her wrists pinned behind her back.

  She can’t resist anymore. Her vision is bleary. She sees a head appear in front of her. No detail. The face is in shadow, hooded. She sees a match light, a cigarette lit. The flame illuminates part of the hooded face, but only the mouth … pale, thin lips.

  Elspeth screams as the cigarette burns her face, but the sound is soaked up in the gag. She can smell her own burned flesh and screeches, helpless, as the cigarette is pushed into her again, just beneath her left eye. She starts to cry, tears streaming down her face. The pain sears her insides. It feels as though her head is going to explode. She vomits into the cloth in her mouth and starts to choke on it.

  The attacker grabs her, spins her over onto her front, Elspeth’s disfigured face hits the sandy ground of the lane.

  Next comes the knife. Elspeth doesn’t know it’s a knife. She just knows something has pierced her back. She feels a strange dislocation in her spine. In her confused state, submerged in agony, she imagines she’s a puppet and her strings have been cut.

  The knife goes in again and Elspeth convulses and gasps. But now the pain has gone. She’s moved beyond it.

  Her assailant turns her over. Peers down into her face, pulls back the hood. Elspeth is almost totally blind, but she feels another shock, a new revulsion. Her life is fading away, but she knows the attac
ker is pulling up her skirt, spreading her legs.

  Chapter 36

  TONY MACKENZIE WAS coming to the end of his five-mile run. He always felt a sense of euphoria build at this point in his circuit. He ran the same route at the same time every weekday, and entering Wentworth Avenue marked the final hundred-yard stretch before the wind down.

  This morning, he felt energized. The sun was coming up, casting orange light all over the place. He passed the end of an alleyway leading off the sidewalk and kept running. But then something began to play on his mind. Something was wrong. He couldn’t figure out what it was, but it nagged him. He tried to push it aside, but it kept niggling him.

  Forty yards past the alley, Tony Mackenzie finally stopped. He’d seen something. Something wasn’t quite right.

  He turned and jogged back toward the entrance to the alley. Looking down the narrow lane, hands on hips, he steadied his breathing. Ten yards ahead, to the side of the alley, lay a dark object, vaguely human in shape. It could have been a bundle of rags. But something in Tony’s brain was telling him it wasn’t.

  He walked toward the object, sweat dripping off him. As he drew closer he realized it was a human being. He thought it might be a homeless person. He stepped forward cautiously, walking past the prone form close to the fence alongside the lane, his eyes fixed on the shape. He half expected it to jump up and attack him at any moment.

  Three steps past the strange figure, Tony could finally make sense of it and felt a surge of terror in the pit of his stomach. Then nerves all over his body seemed to fire simultaneously. He jolted, stumbling back against the fence.

  Chapter 37

  I WAS JUST pulling onto the Harbour Bridge. Glanced at the dash clock. It was 6.59 am. I felt like shit – I’d hardly slept at all last night. In my nightmares and half-sleep I kept going over Stacy Friel’s murder. And you know the worst of it? She looked like my dead wife, Becky.

  I’d had two strong coffees before leaving the house and had stopped for a Red Bull at my regular gas station in Mosman. The Ferrari is a thirsty bastard, and so was I this morning.

  I moved my thumb to switch on the ABC News with the remote control on the steering wheel when my cell rang. I pushed the “Receive” button and heard Justine’s voice. “Craig?”

  “That’s me! Hi, Justine.”

  “We’ve got a second murder.”

  I glanced in the mirror, sped into a gap to my left. “Any details?”

  “No. Brett’s there now. It’s a street away from Greta’s.”

  “No way!” I changed lanes and accelerated along the Cahill Expressway. The traffic was building, but still okay. “Where’s the body, exactly?”

  “Wentworth Avenue. Runs parallel to Greta’s street.”

  “Know it. How did you learn of the murder?”

  “I’m at Greta and Brett’s. Stayed over last night. Brett got the call just as he was leaving for HQ.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen … hopefully.”

  It was pretty much a straight run and I was there in twelve, stopped ten yards from the police cordon and walked briskly toward the tape. A constable was guarding the sidewalk. I showed him my ID and I was relieved when he let me through without any arguments. Maybe this liaison with the cops could actually work after all, I thought, as I ducked under the yellow tape and paced over to where the forensics team were poking around.

  Brett Thorogood spotted me and waved me over. I saw Mark a few yards away, his back to me. He was talking to a man in lycra.

  “Runner found the body,” Thorogood explained, his expression grim.

  I followed the DC over to where the victim lay – another woman, about forty, shoulder-length blonde hair. She was dressed in a blood-soaked Dolce & Gabbana dress. The soil under her and around her was discolored. Her face had been mutilated – cigarette burns.

  Her dress had been hitched up over her hips, legs splayed. The end of a roll of fifty-dollar bills could just be seen protruding from between her legs. Blood had dried on the insides of her thighs.

  “Same MO,” I said unnecessarily. Thorogood just stared at the dead woman.

  I turned to see Justine at the tape. The cop who’d let me through was questioning her. I strode over and just as I reached them, he let her under the barrier.

  “Same thing as before,” I told her as we walked along the alley. Thorogood had moved to one of the police cars on the street. Justine put a hand to her mouth, but as I went to turn her away, she shook me off. “It’s okay, Craig!” she said sharply. “Not much shocks me anymore.”

  I saw Talbot finish up questioning the jogger and decided to leave Justine to it. I walked over to Mark just as another cop escorted the runner toward Wentworth Avenue.

  “Oh … how nice!” he said.

  “History repeating itself.”

  He nodded toward the dead woman. “Doesn’t help that poor thing.”

  “Might help us though. What do you have?”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “Jogger found her about 5.45. The woman had been stabbed repeatedly in the back. We don’t know if she was raped before …”

  “The first victim wasn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Do we know who she is?”

  “Name’s Elspeth Lampard. Address: 44 Wentworth Avenue.”

  “That’s just two houses away.” I nodded back toward the main road. “Any idea how long she’s been here?”

  “Ten or eleven hours.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. She’d probably have been spotted sooner if she’d been killed earlier. So after … what?… 8 pm?”

  Talbot didn’t answer, had started to turn away when he caught sight of Darlene walking toward us with her forensics kit.

  “Your turn to poke around,” he said sardonically.

  Chapter 38

  AS DARLENE SET to work, I left Justine behind, plucked out my iPhone and started toward Wentworth Avenue.

  I tapped “Elspeth Lampard Australia” into Google and a couple of weblinks came up. She was the daughter of Norman Ruschent, a wealthy mining entrepreneur in Western Australia. And she’d married well too. Her husband was CFO of Buttress Finance Group – a big, global player. Made a name for himself on the Australian stock exchange in the early nineties, served time in London, a big city firm. They’d met over there.

  Personal background: the Lampards had two boys, nine and eleven, both at Cranbrook School. I lifted my eyes from the screen of the iPhone as I passed the end of the alley, emerging onto Wentworth Avenue, saw a policewoman a couple of houses down. She was walking toward a squad car with two young boys. The Lampard kids, I realized … poor little buggers. I felt for them, I’d lost my own mother when I was around their age.

  Leaning against a low wall, I returned my gaze to the screen. So a second victim linked to the financial sector found dead with fake banknotes stuffed inside her body. I wondered if Elspeth knew the first victim, Stacy Friel … or indeed, David Friel? Must have done, I concluded. He was a senior cog at Citigroup. The Friels and the Lampards lived one street apart.

  What other links could there be? I started to think laterally. Called Greta.

  “Hey,” I said gently.

  “Is that Craig? Hi.”

  “Look, I’m calling about the latest …”

  “Yep,” she said. She was clearly trying to keep herself together.

  “The dead woman is Elspeth Lampard.” I heard a sudden intake of breath. Paused for second. “You know her?”

  There was a delay. “Um … not that well, Craig. But yeah, I knew her.”

  “I’m trying to find links, Greta. Links with …”

  “Okay …” Another sharp inhalation. “Er … let me … let me think. Ralph, her husband … he knows David well, David Friel.”

  “Through work?”

  “Yeah, and socially. They’re practically neighbors. They play tennis together. Stace … she played too. Same club as us … down the road. And … er … the gym. Yeah, Elspeth goes to my gym … a
nd Stacy’s.”

  “Okay.”

  “You think this is some sex thing, don’t you?”

  “No, Greta. I don’t.”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m just …”

  I kept quiet for a few beats. Then: “Can you think of anything? Anything unusual? Anything going on? I don’t mean tossing the keys into the bowl.”

  “What do you mean then?”

  “Elspeth’s husband is in finance. So is David Friel. They work for different companies, but could the husbands be working together on something?”

  “Craig. I have no idea.” She paused for several seconds. “All I know is that Stacy and Elspeth were just nice, normal women … until someone killed them.”

  Chapter 39

  THEY’D TAKEN EVERYTHING from Geoff Hewes’ pockets – money, cell phone, car keys. Then the man who’d jumped on him had smacked him over the head with something hard and heavy and shoved him into a blacked-out room. When he came to, he could taste blood in his mouth.

  Hewes pulled himself up, wincing and cursing, then he felt incredibly sick and vomited copiously, touched his face, it was crusty with blood. His jaw was agonizing.

  There was a chink of light from a window high up and he could just hear traffic far off. He recalled Loretto’s last words and knew where he was … in the basement of the bastard’s huge house at Point Piper.

  What the hell was Loretto doing? Was he trying to make him cack himself before punching a bullet through his skull? It would be just like him: after all, why just kill someone when you can play with them first?

  “Well you’re not going to get me you bastard!” Hewes yelled into the empty blackness. Then he slumped to the floor, head in hands.