“Target terminated. Mission complete.”
He walked down the embankment into the dark.
Chapter 4
IT WAS Chief Morris who called me into the interrogation room. He was sitting on the left side of the table, in one of the investigator’s chairs, and motioned for me to sit on the right, where the perps sit.
“What?” I said. “What’s this all about, Pops? I’ve got work to do.”
His face was grave. I hadn’t seen him look that way since the last time I punched Nigel over in Homicide for taking my parking spot. The Chief had been forced to give me a serious reprimand, on paper, and it hurt him.
“Sit down, Detective Blue,” he said.
Holy crap, I thought. This is bad. I know I’m in trouble when the Chief calls me by my official title.
The truth is, most of our time together is spent far from the busy halls of the Sydney Police Center in Surry Hills.
I was twenty-one when I started working Sex Crimes. It was my first assignment after two years on street patrol, so I moved into the Sydney Metro offices with more than a little terror in my heart at my new role and the responsibility that came with it. I’d been told I was the first woman in the Sex Crimes department in half a decade. It was up to me to show the boys how to handle women in crisis. The department was broken; I needed to fix it, fast. The Chief had grunted a demoralised hello at me a few times in the coffee room in those early weeks, and that had been it. I’d lain awake plenty of nights thinking about his obvious lack of faith in me, wondering how I could prove him wrong.
After a first month punctuated by a couple of violent rape cases and three or four aggravated assaults, I’d signed up for one-on-one boxing training at a gym near my apartment. From what I’d seen, I figured it was a good idea for a woman in this city to know how to land a swift uppercut. I’d waited outside the gym office that night sure that the young, muscle-bound woman wrapping her knuckles by the lockers was my trainer.
But it was Chief Morris in a sweaty grey singlet who tapped me on the shoulder and told me to get into the ring.
Inside the ropes, the Chief called me “Blue.” Inside the office, he grunted.
Here in the interrogation room there was none of the warmth and trust we shared in the ring. The Chief’s eyes were cold. I felt a little of that old terror from my first days on the job.
“Pops,” I said. “What’s the deal?”
He took the statement notepad and a pencil from beside the interview recorder and pushed them towards me.
“Make a list of items from your apartment that you’ll need while you’re away. It may be for weeks,” he said. “Toiletries. Clothes. That sort of stuff.”
“Where am I going?”
“As far away as you can get,” he sighed.
“Chief, you’re talking crazy,” I said. “Why can’t I go home and get this stuff myself?”
“Because right now your apartment is crawling with Forensics officers. Patrol have blockaded the street. They’ve impounded your car, Detective Blue,” he said. “You’re not going home.”
Chapter 5
I LAUGHED, hard, in the Chief’s face.
“Good work, Pops,” I said, standing up so that my chair scraped loudly on the tiles. “Look, I like a good prank as much as anyone, but I’m busier than a one-armed bricklayer out there. I can’t believe they roped you into this one. Good work, mate. Now open this door.”
“This isn’t a joke, Harriet. Sit back down.”
I laughed again. That’s what I do when I’m nervous. I laugh, and I grin. “I’ve got cases.”
“Your apartment and car are being forensically examined in connection with the Georges River Three case,” the Chief said. He slapped a thick manila folder on the table between us. It was bursting with papers and photographs, yellow witness reports, and pink forensics sheets.
I knew the folder well. I’d watched it as it was carried around by the Homicide guys, back and forth, hand to hand, a bible of horror. Three beautiful university students, all brunettes, all found along the same stretch of the muddy Georges River. Their deaths, exactly thirty days apart, had been violent, drawn-out horrors. The stuff of mothers’ nightmares. Of my nightmares. I’d wanted the Georges River Three case badly, at least to consult on it due to the sexual violence the women had endured. I’d hungered for that case. But it had been given to the parking-spot thief Detective Nigel Spader and his team of Homicide hounds. For weeks I’d sat at my desk seething at the closed door of their case room before the rage finally dissipated.
I sank back into my chair.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“It’s routine, Blue,” the Chief said gently. He reached out and put his hand on mine. “They’re just making sure you didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“We found the Georges River Killer,” he said. He looked at my eyes. “It’s your brother, Blue. It’s Sam.”
Chapter 6