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

  I held tight to the phone.

  ‘When I left prison, I was raw. Real. Reborn. It was a beautiful thing. I was so grateful. I thought the only way I could pay Sam back would be to do the same for him,’ Regan said. ‘I took his perfect little life. Sam had as many lies wrapped around him as you do. He was all bundled up in them. You should have seen him walking around the university campus. Mr Design Professor. I wanted to take his pride. I wanted to strip away his friends, his colleagues, his stupid little apartment. Show him how free he could be. Give him back the gift.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting to hear every last word but unable to bear much more.

  ‘The process had just begun,’ Regan said. ‘I wanted to take everything from Sam. I’d never planned for him to be arrested. He was going to join me on a journey, an unravelling. I had a girl waiting for him. It was going to be the two of us, discovering the real him together.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ I covered my eyes.

  ‘I never got that chance,’ Regan continued. He sounded on the verge of tears. Mourning my brother. ‘When Sam died, everything that he could have been died with him.’

  ‘You …’ I struggled to find words.

  ‘I thought it was all over,’ Regan said. ‘But then I discovered you.’

  ‘Don’t do this,’ I said. ‘Don’t play this game. Just confront me. Don’t take any more innocent lives.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Because when I look you in the eyes for the first time, Harry, I want you to really see me. And I want you to have the gift of seeing yourself.’

  ‘Tell me where you are and I’ll see whatever you fucking want me to,’ I snarled. ‘I’ll gaze appreciatively upon all the magnificent horseshit you’ve constructed before I feed your internal organs to you one at a time.’

  ‘We can’t meet yet,’ Regan said. ‘When we do, it’s going to be in a place that helps you understand me, but along the way, you’ve got to learn to understand yourself.’

  ‘You’ve got a mystical fucking journey of self-discovery all worked out for me,’ I said. ‘But you’re going to be sorely disappointed at the end when you realise that Sam was a good person, and so am I.’

  ‘We’re going to find out,’ Regan said. ‘I think you’ll be surprised. You’re not a good cop, Harry. I took that away from you. I’m going to keep taking layers away, and we’re going to see what we find inside.’

  Chapter 36

  WHITT STOOD BEFORE the mirrors in the men’s room, bracing himself against the sink. Reflected in the glass, he saw a failure. A man in pieces, wandering along the precipice of a gigantic fall. He took the packet of Dexedrines from his back pocket and threw a couple more into his mouth. Yes, he was over the 24-hour mark of his relapse. But he needed to keep his blood pumping and mind sharp for as long as Regan was on his rampage. He would have to postpone his comedown at least until they had Banks cornered. Whitt could handle his addiction until then. He’d got sober before. It might even be easier this time.

  He shouldered open the door to the bathroom and walked back down the hospital corridor to where Vada was waiting at the elevators, having escorted Bonnie Risdale’s body to the morgue.

  The press on the footpath outside the Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital emergency room didn’t recognise Vada, but they recognised Whitt.

  Vada turned away from the cameras, slipping unnoticed towards the back of the crowd as the group assembled in front of Whitt, blocking his path.

  ‘Detective Whittacker! Can you tell us about the woman killed in Nowra today? Is it him? Is Regan Banks in our community?’

  ‘I can’t comment on the case.’ He tried to wave them off. ‘Investigations are pending.’

  ‘Who was she?’ The calls were defiant. The huddle of reporters followed him down the footpath. ‘Did Banks know her? Did Detective Blue know her? Do people have cause to be worried?’

  ‘Members of the public are advised to take all usual precautions,’ Whitt said. It was an old line he rattled off with ease, but not something he easily believed. He was worried for the women here. For the men too, for that matter. Regan was out there, probably moving onto his next target.

  ‘Was Harry with Regan Banks?’ someone asked. Whitt felt a chill run up his spine. ‘Are they in league with each other?’

  ‘Who asked that?’ Whitt snapped, looking at the faces around him, the polished countenances of the nation’s news media. No one answered. He spied Vada looking guilty for having left him to the hounds.

  ‘Detective Harriet Blue is trying to find Regan Banks,’ Whitt said, his face flushing as he felt himself wandering out of the bounds of professional conduct with the media. ‘She’s a good police officer. She’s on our side, and if any of you want to argue with me about it, you can put the cameras down and I’ll meet you in the fucking parking lot.’

  There was a ripple of surprise from the crowd. The journalists turned to face each other, glancing uncomfortably at Whitt’s clenched fists. The Chief Superintendent from Nowra police station exited the emergency room doors and most of the gaggle ran towards him, microphones at the ready.

  Vada came to Whitt’s side as he walked to their car.

  ‘You were really willing to punch a news journalist to defend Harry’s honour?’ she asked.

  ‘It was never going to come to that.’ Whitt yanked open the door of the car. ‘At least I said something.’

  ‘You’re right. I should have stood by you.’ Vada slid into the car beside him. ‘I’m really camera-shy. I get all tongue-tied.’

  Whitt’s phone rang. He picked it up quickly when he saw the unidentified number. ‘Harry?’

  ‘She was one of mine,’ Harry said.

  Chapter 37

  IT WAS WINDY where she was. Her voice was uncharacteristically shaky, and she sounded like she was walking fast. ‘Bonnie Risdale was a victim in one of my Sex Crimes cases a few years ago.’

  ‘Shit,’ Whitt seethed. ‘Are you here? Are you in town? Did he call you?’

  ‘He called me. And I went to the crime scene.’

  ‘She what?’ Vada’s eyes widened. In the closeness of the car she could hear Harry’s voice over Whitt’s phone. He frowned at her.

  ‘How did you get into the crime scene?’ Whitt asked. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Whitt, I need you to look back through all my case files, get a readout of every victim I’ve ever dealt with. Prioritise the women – we know he likes them young. Brunettes, late teens to mid-twenties. But, Whitt, I have children whose cases I’ve handled. Maybe their mothers … We have to warn these people.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Whitt said. He wanted to reach through the phone and grab Harry, draw her to safety.

  ‘Do you have any guesses at all about who Regan might go after next?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know why he chose Bonnie. I’ve had hundreds of cases. He would have had the pick of any of the dozens of young women living in and around Sydney. Why risk travelling two hours south to kill her?’

  ‘He didn’t say?’

  ‘He said when we come together it’s going to be somewhere that shows me the real him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘He’s probably got a fucking dungeon somewhere full of victims he wants to show me. He wants me to see what he can do. He’s called me a few times, rambling bullshit about discovering the real me.’

  ‘Did he tell you why he’s doing this?’

  ‘He said Sam was responsible for him going to prison,’ Harry said.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she struggled for words.‘Sam never told me anything about it. I think the two of them knew each other. Regan said he’d come after Sam when he left prison, and now he’s after me. He said that this is my unravelling,’ Harry said. ‘He’s pulling me apart. He’s trying to undo everything good I’ve ever done in this life, Whitt. He’s trying to hold a mirror up to me, to show m
e that deep down inside we’re the same.’

  ‘You’re not the same, Harry. You’re –’

  ‘I’m a good person,’ she insisted. ‘I’m a good cop, and a good human being. Maybe I do bad things sometimes, and I enjoy doing bad things, and I wasn’t the best kid in the world. And no, I don’t have many friends. I’m weird. People don’t like me …’

  She didn’t seem to be able to go on. The only sound on the line between them was the howling of the wind.

  ‘His plan is not going to work,’ Harry said.

  Whitt thought she sounded deeply uncertain.

  Chapter 38

  I RAN, THE backpack thumping on my shoulders, back through the forest behind Bonnie’s house and along a dark, deserted road. The rain had come and gone, but my shoes were soon drenched. Between the clouds, the moon was occasionally revealed, lighting the fields.

  After the call with Regan, I’d turned on Bonnie’s home computer and logged into the police database. It was an old computer, her laptop having been removed to search for evidence about her death. My case file list was twenty-seven pages long. I’d only had the nerve to stay for the printing of twenty pages, watching through the front windows of the house as one of the officers guarding the crime scene patrolled the rear of the house again. I packed my bag and left through the back door, knowing that within seconds of my login to the police personnel system an alert would have been raised at headquarters in Sydney. They would have tracked my login to Bonnie’s IP address, known I was there. I called Whitt briefly at the edge of the forest and then sprinted into the dark.

  As I’d predicted, after ten minutes of jogging down the road I heard the sound of sirens on the wind. It would have been too risky to return to the car I’d stolen and drive it to the crime scene. Looking back across the darkened plains, I saw a police helicopter hovering over the distant highway, a searchlight picking through the trees. I’d once again lifted my criminal game. I’d lied. I’d hurt people. I’d stolen a car. Now I had breached an active crime scene and tampered with evidence.

  I tried to call Pops, but someone unfamiliar answered his phone. A man with a hard, unyielding voice. I didn’t speak. He sounded superior and annoyed, though he couldn’t possibly have known who I was. I wondered if this was Deputy Commissioner Woods. If he had taken Chief Morris’s phone in case I called.

  When I was sure I was out of the search zone, I turned south and started heading back towards the highway in a long, slow curve. Luminescent eyes appeared now and then in the fields, watching me go by, some low and slanted – foxes or feral cats – others higher and wider – kangaroos. As the hours passed, I kept up a good pace, my body warmed by the adrenaline still pumping through my system from the walk through the crime scene. I turned Regan’s words over and over in my mind.

  When Sam died, everything that he could have been died with him.

  … everything that he could have been …

  Regan thought he was going to teach me something. Help me to find the real Harry buried deep inside, the thing he’d seen in Sam that he’d never had a chance to bring out. Regan thought I was a monster like him, and that by killing my case victims, undoing my good work, he was going to help me embrace what I truly was.

  I was sure he didn’t know it, but Regan was right on the money.

  I’d always wondered if, deep down inside, there was a different me waiting to come out. A Harry that relished causing pain to others. I did get a kick out of hurting people sometimes. I’d only ever turned my violence on the rapists and molesters and abusers I encountered in my work …

  But no, even that wasn’t exactly true, was it? I had, in my time, hurt innocent people. I’d punched Nigel Spader a couple of times, just because he pissed me off. And now and then when a witness connected to a case stood in my way, I got rough before I put in the time and the effort to get what I wanted gently and professionally. I was known for it.

  I felt a terror creeping over me as I trudged through the wet, windy night. If Regan did scratch deep enough below my surface, what would he find?

  Chapter 39

  WHEN I FINALLY reached the highway again I was exhausted. I rested on the roadside barrier beneath the huge concrete base of a street light and tried to focus. Whether or not I was evil was a question that could be answered later. For now, there were lives in my hands. I stood and pulled the papers I’d printed at Bonnie Risdale’s house out of my backpack and held them in the light.

  I had no addresses or telephone numbers, but I did have names and case file numbers, beginning and concluding dates of investigations. To get any more would have risked staying logged in to the police database too long. I looked helplessly at the hundreds of names, memories rising here and there. A teenager groped by a man in a darkened cinema. A young boy abused by his uncle. A middle-aged woman assaulted at work after hours. Rain was falling on the paper in my hands. Losing hope, I was about to pack the pages back into my bag when I stopped at the sight of a name.

  Melina Tredwell.

  That had been a bad one. She had been confronted by her attacker in a public toilet in a park on a rainy night just like the one swirling around me now. I’d thought she’d been mad to go into the cold, isolated building at all, but she’d been driving home from Sydney and had a long journey ahead of her. Melina had lived in Narooma, another two hours south of Nowra.

  Melina had been brunette, a striking beauty. I remembered complaining to Pops about the three- or four-hour drives I’d had to make down to Narooma to interview her. The incident had happened in my jurisdiction, and I’d not wanted to conduct probably trauma-inducing interviews with Melina over the phone.

  Regan wanted my victims. And for some reason, he’d chosen Bonnie Risdale, two hours south of Sydney. The highways between Sydney and Nowra would be littered with roadblocks now, looking for the tall, broad-shouldered killer. Would he risk doubling back to the city, or would Regan continue south? Was Melina his next victim?

  I started jogging down the shadowy grass strip along the side of the highway, ducking into the dark every time a car rushed by, trying to convince myself I was on the right path. For all I knew, there were dozens of my old victims in the area, and I had no guarantee that after all this time Melina still lived in Narooma.

  I had no firm idea of where Regan would strike next. But I had to try to find him before he killed again.

  Chapter 40

  POPS STOOD AT the side of the briefing room, barely listening to Deputy Commissioner Woods’s pep talk to the command centre team about the Bonnie Risdale murder. Detective Nigel Spader sat in the front row of the briefing, nodding thought-fully at Woods’s points. While Woods entertained the gathered officers, Pops was discreetly sending a text on a mobile he had borrowed from the communications office. He directed his one and only text to Edward Whittacker.

  Chief Morris here. Old number is now operational under DC Woods. Give this one to Harry if she calls.

  Whitt came back almost instantly.

  She called last night. Will give it to her if I hear again.

  Woods had pictures of the Risdale house on the projector in front of a captivated crew, walking them through the scene like he’d been there himself.

  ‘So now we’ll get protection on all Harry’s past Sex Crimes victims,’ Pops broke in, just as Woods was wrapping up. ‘We’ll send out a call to every woman on her case list and warn them.’

  Woods dropped the hand that had been gesturing to the screen and looked at the chief.

  ‘No, we won’t,’ Woods said with an icy smile. ‘We’ll instead direct the substantial manpower that rather naive course of action would take towards bringing in Harriet Blue. If Blue is indeed Regan’s target, then having her in custody will draw the killer to us.’

  ‘Wherever we direct our physical resources, we will at least warn the people on the list,’ Pops said. ‘A phone call. Anything.’

  The officers in the room were looking worriedly from one superior to another. Nigel Spader looked i
ncensed.

  Woods sighed. ‘No, we won’t,’ he said again. ‘Warning past victims of crime that they might be in danger will only cause mass panic. Harriet Blue’s connection to Bonnie Risdale will come out in the media in time. It’ll leak. It always does. Harry’s past case victims can get the information from there. I will not be held responsible for traumatising possibly hundreds of –’

  ‘An excellent initiative.’ Pops gave an exaggerated nod. ‘Let the media keep everyone calm. They’re good at that.’

  The Deputy Commissioner’s neck was turning purple.

  A couple of the officers nearby sniggered. The big man turned his burning gaze on them, then stormed through the door beside Pops. The chief followed as expected, letting the glass door swing shut behind him.

  ‘I’ve allowed you to remain as second in charge on the Banks case,’ Woods began through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve even resisted reporting you on clear breaches of protocol that I’ve observed in your past handling of this investigation. Don’t make me put you on a suspension.’

  ‘You couldn’t put me on suspension if you tried,’ Pops said. ‘You’d send the paperwork over to admin and they’d think it was a joke and bin it.’

  ‘If you don’t agree with my approach to this case, the professional thing to do would be to stand aside, Morris, not to put up roadblocks. But you’re not going to do that, are you? Because you know I’ll have Banks in custody by the end of the week.’

  ‘What, with your ingenious honeypot scheme?’ Pops snorted. He’d glanced over Woods’s notes while he stood waiting for the briefing to begin. Woods planned to have Harriet’s mother, Julia, give a public appeal for her daughter to make contact with police. During the televised appeal, carefully scripted by the police, Julia would ‘accidentally’ make it clear exactly where she was staying. Woods obviously hoped that if Regan was going after the people Harriet loved, he wouldn’t be able to resist the bait of her only remaining family member.