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  “Will do.” Mary walked out, turned left, headed for the elevator. Emerging on the third floor, she saw Darlene waiting by the door to No. 16 already prepped in plastic overalls and holding her metal box.

  Mary unlocked the door, eased it inwards. The place was a pigsty.

  “Probably best if you leave me here for an hour, Mary,” Darlene said as she began to pick through the trash lying everywhere.

  “Leave you alone around here? You mad?”

  “Alright, but if you’re going to nose around, at least put these on.” She plucked a pair of latex gloves from her box of tricks.

  Mary went into the tiny kitchen as Darlene busied herself with a pile of detritus on a coffee table in front of a ripped gray velour sofa dotted with cigarette burns. The carpet stank of feet and fried food.

  The power had been cut off. In the kitchen the only light came from a tiny window over the sink. She heard a crunching sound underfoot and could make out dried noodles scattered on the cheap tiles.

  She walked back into the living-room. Darlene was bagging some cardboard cartons of leftover food, a pair of chopsticks lay against the corner of one. She emptied the ashtray into another bag, sealed it.

  “Odd they’ve been so carefree,” Darlene remarked, looking up.

  “Show of arrogance,” Mary replied. “Think they’re above the law.”

  “In some places they are.”

  “Not in my city, they aren’t!” Mary snapped and turned to search the bedroom.

  Moments later she called from the doorway, “Darlene?”

  “Yep?” She stopped a foot inside the room. Mary had opened the curtains. The sheets were caked in dried blood. “I think we’ve found where Ho Chang’s eye surgery was carried out.”

  Chapter 46

  GEOFF HEWES PACED around the ten-foot square cellar, swearing to no one, the words echoing back to him.

  “That asshole … That fucking bastard, Loretto!” he screamed. “You think you can tell me what I can and can’t do? Me? Geoff Fitzgerald Hewes? I’m a bona fide genius compared to you! You just got lucky, you wop shit. Then you think you can abuse me?” He looked up to the ceiling, imagined Loretto in his wicker chair.

  Then he began to weep, the tears streaming down his face.

  Chapter 47

  Three Months Ago.

  JULIE O’CONNOR AND Bruce Frimmel lived in a fleapit, a project apartment in Sandsville in the Western Suburbs – no-man’s land for any respectable Sydneysider. It was a two-room place, cramped living area with a kitchen in the corner, next to that a bedroom, toilet and shower leading off one end. There were bars at the windows, bars at the front door.

  Bruce Frimmel was a big guy, six-three, thick arms, hair vibrant red. Julie O’Connor stood five-nine in stockings, big-boned and flabby with straggly bleached blonde hair courtesy of a bottle lifted from the local 7-Eleven. She had bad skin, and six months ago, after seeing a picture of Angie Bowie in the seventies, she’d shaved off her eyebrows. David Bowie had been her idol as a girl.

  And Julie loved Bruce. But everything had gone awry.

  They wanted a kid, desperately. But nothing was working. So a month ago Julie had gone for an op, an op that had gone spectacularly wrong. She was left infertile, completely and utterly barren. She would never, ever have kids.

  Bruce had taken it badly. Very badly.

  “What’ya doin’, babe?” Julie asked. She’d just arrived back from her job at the supermarket across the city. Bruce was in the bedroom bent over a ratty old suitcase on the bed. “We win the lottery?” she chuckled nervously.

  Bruce ignored her.

  “Babe?”

  He turned, face hard.

  She sank to the bed. Seemed to age a dozen years.

  Bruce tossed a singlet into the case. It landed on top of his footy DVD and Muscle Car mag. “I’m movin’ out,” he announced, hands on hips.

  “Moving out … why?” Julie’s face was twisted. “Someone else?”

  Bruce nodded. He made to sit next to Julie on the bed but decided against it.

  “Who? That slut from the video store?”

  Bruce looked down between his trainers at the worn red carpet. Shook his head.

  “Who then?” Julie’s voice was far too calm. Then she screamed …. “WHO?”

  Bruce was shocked for a second.

  She pulled up from the bed, rushed toward him. He was six inches taller than her, seventy-five pounds heavier, but he stepped back, thought she was about to cry. He’d never seen her cry and an odd thrill rattled through him. A strange moment of pride that even he was a little ashamed of. But she didn’t.

  “YOU SHIT!” Julie howled and went straight for his throat.

  Before the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound hulk of a man could pull her off, she’d drawn blood – deep nail drags across his neck. He caught a glimpse of her expression. She looked like a wild beast.

  Then she smacked him across the face. It stung, but it also knocked him into reality. He hit back, made contact with something hard, Julie’s jaw. He almost lost his balance, but caught himself, straightened and really went for her.

  She stumbled, landing hard on her back. Her head hit the rough carpet. Bruce dived on her, swung his fist round and smacked her in the face.

  “Useless bitch!” he screamed. “Can’t even do the business … Well thank Christ! Who’d wanna have a kid with you?”

  He smashed his fist into her face again, pulled himself up. Looked down at the red mess, blood streaming from Julie’s nose, her lip split open.

  Bruce turned back to his suitcase and finished packing, listening to Julie’s rasping breath and the blood gurgling in her throat.

  Chapter 48

  HE SLAMMED THE front door. Julie lay semiconscious, blood drying on her face.

  In her mind she saw her father. He would have sorted Bruce out. She’d always loved her father, Jim. Loved him as much as she’d loathed her mother, Sheila.

  Dad had been a cop. Julie’s favorite memory of him was the day he took her to work and showed her around the police station in Sandsville. She was ten and very proud of her dad.

  They’d gone to the forensics labs in the basement. A man in a white lab coat had shown her the glistening machines and racks of test tubes, told her about fingerprinting and a new thing – DNA profiling. She hadn’t really understood much of it. But the next day she took a book from the local library. It was called Forensic Investigation and she couldn’t put it down.

  Julie began to hate her mother when she realized her mother didn’t love her dad. There was another man. Julie wasn’t sure if Jim knew about him, but she overheard her mother talking to her lover on the phone when her dad was out. And once, she followed her and saw her kissing a heavily set man with a beard.

  Then had come the worst day of her life. A policeman came to the door of their house and told them her dad had been killed on duty – knifed trying to stop a burglar. He was only thirty-four.

  Chapter 49

  JULIE BEGAN TO plot Bruce’s murder two days after he walked out on her. She planned everything meticulously. And, as she took one step after the other on the road to killing her ex, she started to enjoy herself.

  Bruce was a sex pig. All men thought with their dicks, but Bruce’s sex drive was more powerful than most. She knew she could use that.

  The first time Julie sent an anonymous email to Bruce’s phone she was sure he wouldn’t reply. She couldn’t afford a computer of her own of course, and besides, emails could be traced. Instead, she’d gone to an internet café in the CBD and written Bruce a flirtatious message under the name Sabrina. Bruce always had a yen for what he referred to as “class ass”. And the name “Sabrina” had just the right ring to it.

  At first, he was cautious, but after half a dozen messages all sent from different computers, Sabrina ensnared him and the exchanges became more pornographic. He was soon begging to meet her in person.

  She coaxed and teased like a pro, made it clear she liked
to be screwed rough in filthy places. The more depraved, the more it turned her on. She had him salivating.

  She called in at an internet café in Balmain and typed a message: “I want you … TONIGHT!”

  “When? Where?” he responded almost immediately.

  She gave him the place and time, then added, “My panties are getting wet just thinking about it.”

  Chapter 50

  JULIE, OR “SABRINA”, arrived at the address she’d given Bruce an hour early. It was a condemned house, fenced off with wire mesh. On the perimeter of the garden stood a large notice-board detailing the new development planned for the site. Other signs told the public to KEEP OUT.

  The windows and the front door were boarded up but she made short work of a couple of planks securing the entrance to the decaying old house. Every window was smashed. The hall was strewn with newspapers and pigeon shit.

  She’d found everything she needed in the local hardware store, and now it was all neatly arranged in the corner of the dilapidated bathroom – a powerful battery-powered lamp, a hammer and a new knife. She surveyed her purchases, hands on hips. “Not bad,” she said to herself.

  She waited patiently. The minutes ticked away. She heard someone approach the door, recognized Bruce’s sounds as though he had left yesterday. He was a big oaf and moved like one.

  “Sabrina?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Sabrina?” There was a nervous edge to his voice, Julie thought.

  “In here,” she called from the bathroom down the hall and flicked on the battery-powered lamp. She stood behind the half-opened door.

  Julie let him take two steps into the room, crept up behind him, swung her new hammer low and said one word: “Bruce.” He made a half-turn and she smashed him behind the right knee with the hammer.

  He yelled and stumbled grabbing the edge of the tub. She leapt on him, screaming and bringing the hammer down hard on his head, his neck, his back. She rolled him over, smashing the hammer into his face. His nose shattered, blood plumed into the air, hit the white wall tiles. He put his hands up to protect himself. She raised the weapon again, plowing it into the back of his hands. Bruce tried to scramble away, but she kept hitting him, blow after blow … like crushing a roach.

  Her face was covered with Bruce’s blood. She paused and wiped it away from her eyes. Her ex looked like a sack of potatoes, and he was making a pitiful whining sound. He began to pull himself up. Julie picked up the knife.

  Bruce had just managed to shuffle into a seated position, his ginger mullet matted with his blood. He looked up into her eyes as she stood over him.

  “Julie!” he gasped.

  “Hah!” She leaned forward, grabbed his hair and sliced through his throat with the blade. Blood spewed from the wound hitting her full in the face. She grabbed him, rolled him onto his front and plowed the knife into his back, over and over again.

  Julie lowered the knife and crouched down, pulling Bruce over onto his back. His dead eyes open. She brought her face close to his. “Oh, Bruce! You look so pale!” she giggled. “Where’s your manly, ruddy face, Bruce?” She pulled his pants down to his knees. “Where’s your hard-on, babe?” And she flicked his flaccid, shrunken penis. “What’s a girl supposed to do with this?”

  Chapter 51

  MARY CLARKE SAUNTERED into the bar in Campbelltown as though she owned the place. That was her style and she wouldn’t change it for anyone, not even the latest Triad gang to hit Sydney.

  She was wearing cargo pants, heavy boots, a black, sleeveless top and a bandana. Heads turned as she pulled up a stool and ordered a drink. For a second, it was like a scene from an old Western, the gunslinger sashaying into the room, the place going deathly quiet.

  “Coke, please.”

  The Chinese bartender looked a little confused. “You sure you in right place, miss?” he asked.

  Mary smiled sweetly. “Pretty sure. Now … Coke?”

  The bartender walked to the fridge. Mary scanned the room. The cops had a pretty thick file on the new Triads, and she recognized some of the patrons from the documents Thorogood had shared with Private. There were two main gangs, one more important than the other. Latest Intel was that they tolerated each other because each was run by siblings who’d once fallen out, but were currently friends. So apparently, the gangs were working together … for the moment.

  Mary’s concentration was broken by the bartender. “Six dollar.”

  She put the coins on the counter, lifted her glass and continued surveying the room brazenly. One of the brothers was here, she noted. Lin Sung. An ugly bastard. She had studied his mug shot sent over from Hong Kong that morning. When she’d seen his picture and Craig told her the guy was one of the two brothers leading the Sydney Triads, she’d joked that the poor bugger had obviously gotten the bad genes. Then she saw the image of Sung’s brother, Jing, and laughed out loud.

  She felt a familiar ripple of power as she looked around. They knew she was either a cop or a PI, none of this lot was dumb. Well maybe some of them were, but they all had street smarts. And at the same time, she was who she was and there was no disguising it. None of them would dare lay a finger on her, at least not yet.

  A man got up from a table. It was Lin Sung. He was all smiles, wire thin, snappily dressed, if you happen to go for shiny fabrics and narrow ties, circa 1979.

  “Do I know you?” he asked. “What’re you drinking?” He flicked a glance at the bartender.

  “I don’t think you do, Mr. Lin,” she said. “And I’m enjoying this Coke … don’t need another, thanks all the same.”

  Lin gave a very faint bow. When he looked at her again, some of the pretense had slipped. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Nope!” Mary said, smacking her lips, an edge of mockery in her voice. “Just here to have a Coke. Seemed like a nice place … from the outside.”

  Lin straightened, the fake smile gone. He turned and walked.

  But Mary was sure it wasn’t the end of it.

  Chapter 52

  SHE DRAINED HER glass, pulled herself off the stool and paced over to the restroom, fancied a peek around the back of the dive, see what she could find.

  It was not the nicest bathroom she’d seen, but she hadn’t expected much. There was a square window over the cracked brown-stained washbasin. Stuck fast. She moved a palm over the frame, found just the right spot, hit it with the flat of her hand. It gave and she climbed through.

  Outside, behind the bar, it was pretty much as anticipated – stinking, overloaded bins, empty steel beer barrels, a fish skeleton ground into the dirt.

  There was a door across the alley. She tried the handle. Locked. A solid kick knocked it in, the bolt snapped, clunked to the ground.

  It was a storeroom piled high with large cartons. Chinese writing on the sides. She heaved one down, plucked a Swiss Army Knife from her pants and slit it open. Inside, filled with bags. She moved one aside, sliced along the seam. Rice spilled out over her heavy boots. She closed the knife, pocketed it.

  A sound from outside. She ducked down beside a tower of boxes.

  The storeroom door began to pivot inwards. Mary charged at it, heard a muffled cry from the other side. Then she was in the open, two men to her left, one on the floor.

  She kicked the guy on the floor square in the temple. Severe concussion guaranteed. Spun toward the other two.

  One had a knife in his hand, the other, a baseball bat. The one with the knife charged. Mary sidestepped and he stumbled away behind her. She felt a sting of pain in her left hand, ignored it, didn’t waste a second on the one with the baseball bat. She was trained in the martial art of Krav Maga, took two graceful paces forward. He ran at her. She lifted her leg and kicked the man in the throat just hard enough to put him in hospital for a couple of days.

  Mary heard the guy with the knife pull up and run at her from behind. She was so much faster than him. Did a one-eighty, chopped his legs from under him, leaned forward and with a
single blow sent him to La La Land.

  Straightening, Mary looked down and saw her flesh ripped open across the back of her hand, a line of blood, white bone. There was a sound from the end of the alley. She looked up, saw Lin Sung standing close to the back door, a faint smile playing across his lips. He’d started to clap.

  Mary had her knife out and open in a split second. Lin barely had time to move a muscle before he was pushed up hard against the wall. His smile was still there as he looked down at the point of Mary’s blade an inch from his Adam’s apple.

  “Look at me.”

  Lin lifted his head a little.

  “Who killed the Ho boy?” Mary asked quietly, eyes fixed on Lin.

  “Who is Ho?”

  Mary stamped on the man’s foot, hard.

  He did well to cover his pain, kept the smile.

  “I would slash your face open,” Mary hissed, “but it would do your looks a favor.”

  Lin chuckled. “What do you people say? Sticks and stones …”

  Mary kneed him in the testicles, very hard.

  This time he screeched, gasped for air. The smile gone.

  She did it again, even harder. “Who killed the kid?”

  Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, pain clear in his black eyes. “You’ll kill me before I speak,” he growled.

  Mary stared him out for ten, twenty seconds, becoming more and more aware of her own pain, her hand throbbing. She flicked a glance downward and saw a puddle of blood. Pulling away the knife, she turned on her heel and walked away, Lin’s laughter echoing in her ears.

  Chapter 53