Kate heard the knocking and had no idea what time it was. After falling asleep on the couch, she had staggered to her bed sometime before dawn. The room was dim and for a moment she felt disorientated.
The knocking grew louder.
Still in her clothes, she blinked at the alarm clock. The time was 3 pm. She had slept nearly thirteen hours straight.
‘I’m coming,’ she called, her voice husky from sleeping with her mouth open, which she did when she was overtired.
The knocking continued. This time, whoever it was decided to tap out an annoying tune.
She looked through the peephole and saw Oliver on her doorstep. He was out of hospital and looked well, despite his face being distorted by the wide-angle view.
He had something behind his back but she couldn’t make out what. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I want to thank you for saving my life.’
She pressed her head on the glass. ‘Just a minute.’ She found her keys and opened the door.
He swung a large bunch of deep purple irises around to his front and had a contrite look on his face.
Kate took the flowers but had no idea what to say.
‘I know it hasn’t been easy partnering me, but I need to explain what I’ve been up to.’
‘Stop.’ She stepped back. ‘Thanks for the flowers but I was just doing my job. I think you’d better go. I don’t think we should meet outside work.’ Kate had no intention of being compromised by listening to his confession, or worse, being accused of corruption herself. Oliver had no right to place her in this situation.
‘Hold on.’ He put up both hands as if surrendering. ‘I’m not who or what you think.’
‘Yeah, I figured that. Look, I don’t want to have anything to do with your scams. I want you to leave.’ She slammed the door but his foot was wedged in it.
‘Please hear me out. I need you to understand that I know the money in the drawer wasn’t yours.’
‘Because you put it there. You weren’t looking for a pen, you were trying to plant evidence. You always carry a damn pen in your pocket. It even fell out right after you lied to me.’
‘It wasn’t like that. I’m sorry, but I had to know whether or not you could be trusted.’
Kate felt anger rise in her body. ‘I don’t get involved in anything crooked. Move your foot before I break it.’
‘Fine.’
He backed away and she closed the door.
‘But I’m not leaving,’ he called out. ‘There’s something you need to see. And it isn’t money.’
A bright yellow A4 envelope slid under the door. Kate stared at the unmarked stationery. Part of her wanted to destroy it, the other craved to see what was inside, to know once and for all if her partner was crooked, and if anyone else she knew was involved.
Kate bent down and opened the envelope. Inside was a report on corruption in homicide compiled by Detective Constable Oliver Parke, for the anti-corruption unit. Kate froze and re-read the title.
She stood up and opened the door to find Oliver sitting in a chair on her porch. He looked as though he had no intention of leaving. She ushered him in without speaking. As he stepped into the lounge room, she kicked his shin with all the strength she could muster and cursed when pain shot through her foot.
‘Serves you right,’ he said, clutching his leg, ‘but I guess I probably deserved that.’
‘You bastard! You lied and made me think you were rotten. Now you expect to waltz in here with flowers and be forgiven?’ Her foot throbbed more than she cared to admit.
‘If you’re finished, I’ll make you a coffee and we can discuss this like adults.’ He glanced around at the newspapers and plates on the floor. ‘You needn’t have bothered tidying up before I came.’
Kate jabbed her foot at his leg again, but he was too quick and side-stepped her.
‘What else did you lie about?’ she asked. ‘Let me guess. You’re not married and don’t have any children?’
‘No, that part is mostly true. I’ve actually got two kids and another on the way. Lucy’s taken them away on a holiday for a while, for their own protection. Threats from drug dealers have to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, that’s a big downside to my work sometimes. The other is that I don’t make many friends once people find out what I do.’
Kate understood. She had never been kind about internal investigators. Despite the fact that they were doing honest police a favour by weeding out the bad ones, they were still perceived as the enemy. It couldn’t have been an easy job. Kate cleared a space on the lounge and begrudgingly offered him a seat.
She returned from the kitchen with two opened beers. ‘It’s not organic, but obviously I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I really am sorry for invading your privacy. I think I understand what this means for you.’
He was right. It didn’t look like much, but it was home and privacy was important, like the most comforting blanket in the cold. It occurred to Kate that this was the first time she had been alone in her home with a man since her abduction. So far, she felt OK. Her breathing and heart-rate were normal and she seemed in no danger of having a panic attack. Oliver crossed the room and bent down to look at some CDs in a pile on the floor.
‘Powderfinger, John Butler Trio, Silverchair. They all fit, but what about the Michael Bublé? Didn’t pick you as a fan of crooners.’
‘Yeah, well, we’re all full of little surprises.’
Kate grabbed the disc from his hands. It had been given to her as a Kris Kringle gift and the truth was, it had become one of her favourite albums. It was the type of music her mother had loved, apparently, and now Kate understood why. She had since bought albums by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Dean Martin, but preferred Bublé’s voice.
She put the CD in the player and sat on the lounge, cross-legged, after collecting the envelope from the floor. She turned over the title page of the report as Oliver spoke.
‘This is why I moved to homicide,’ he explained. ‘There’s a leak in the drug squad and someone in your unit is accessing that information via the intranet. News about drug raids or arrests is passed on so that when the drug squad gets there, the house is clean or there’s no target in sight. Dobbie’s dealer was one of my informants.’
That was why the dealer had accused Oliver of betraying him, she realised.
Further into the report there were two photographs, one of Rench, the other of Fiskars.
‘They’ve complained to the Police Association about being part of an internal investigation. Seems your colleagues think they’re being investigated for sexual harassment of female staff, which in my opinion they should be. Anyhow, the Association advised them to take some time off. Both of them now have doctors’ certificates citing the need for stress-leave, so they’re on full pay. They’re milking the system, but they aren’t the focus of the investigation.’
‘It’s someone else?’ Suddenly, Russo came to mind. She hoped it was anyone but the inspector.
‘Check the financial statements for Laurie Sheehan.’
Glancing down the numbers, nothing seemed out of place. The salary went into his account fortnightly and small amounts were regularly withdrawn. ‘I don’t get it. It could be any one of our accounts.’
‘Exactly, except that Sheehan has renovated four homes over the last three years. Each one has made a profit at resale of up to $200 000.’
She had to admit that it was a decent amount of money, but it wasn’t necessarily expensive to renovate a house. There were plenty of television programs that showed how a quick and superficial makeover could raise a property’s value by up to $50 000. Structural improvements would surely increase the value by even more than that?
‘So he buys dumps and does them up himself,’ Kate said finally. ‘Real estate prices have rocketed in that time. It makes sense to me.’
Oliver shook his head. ‘Renovating isn’t cheap. A bathroom costs thousands just for the materials, and have you ever seen him with paint on his hands or plaster under his nails?’
Kate had to admit that Laurie had never complained of a sore back, knees, arms or any other body part from a weekend of hard labour.
‘There are no purchases from hardware shops, tiling places or bathroom suppliers on his credit cards, either.’
Kate checked the accounts again. ‘Maybe he pays cash.’
Oliver took a swig of beer. ‘He doesn’t pay at all. In exchange for tip-offs, guys like Dobbie’s supplier send their mates around to do the renovations in lieu of payment. It’s a tidy little addition to your superannuation if you make a profit on each house.’
‘And you can prove it?’ Kate still found it difficult to believe that quiet, polite Laurie, the father-figure of the office, was corrupt.
‘We’ve had his phones tapped for a while and he’s clever. Instead of asking for payments, he complains about the cost of things. Just recently he was talking to a dealer’s brother and whinged about the cost of private school education for his grandkids. Within a week they were both enrolled in an exclusive school with fees of $50 000 a year. There’s been a scholarship set up for these kids, paid by multiple small anonymous donations. Sheehan and the parents aren’t paying a cent.’
Kate was stunned by the audacity of it. She wondered how Oliver had managed to track the money trail. That had to be why he was always in the office so early and stayed so late at night. The homicide cases were just a sideline for him. Despite Kate’s anger about his deceit, she acknowledged that Oliver made a very good investigator. She sipped her beer.
‘This probably sounds crazy, but I actually feel sorry for the old bloke. He’s been in the service all his working life,’ she said.
‘That’s hardly an excuse for lying and cheating.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s pretty rich coming from you.’ Kate bit her lip, regretting the comment. Her partner didn’t seem comfortable with having to be dishonest, and she understood that when you’re dealing with criminal behaviour, sometimes you have to bend rules.
She suddenly saw Oliver in another light. He was not only a logical thinker, he was calculating too. By setting himself up as a father with a large family, he had an instant bond with Liz Gould because he could discuss any aspect of parenting with her. It also gave him a good opening to talk to Laurie Sheehan about the cost of a good education. What parent didn’t worry about where to send their kids to school? And if there was a tribe of them, advice about fees became even more important. She thought of Sheehan happily volunteering information to Oliver, oblivious to the harm he was doing himself. And Oliver could even whinge to Fiskars and Rench about being under the thumb. They would have listened willingly and contributed their own brand of advice, making their misogynist views plain. Oliver had managed to elicit personal information from just about everyone in the department.
‘Don’t feel sorry for Sheehan,’ he said. ‘When rumours started that the unit was under investigation, he set you up to take the blame.’
Kate’s fingers tightened around her drink.
‘A few weeks ago we installed closed circuit cameras in the office. We have footage of him putting that money in your drawer. And he used your computer to access the drug squad info as well. If it weren’t for the cameras, you would have had a lot of explaining to do.’
Kate tried to absorb the seriousness of what she had just been told. ‘Sorry I kicked you,’ she managed.
‘No hard feelings. Now, we’re still officially partners until tomorrow afternoon and we have one more job to do. Russo wants us to go and see Robert Penfold.’
Kate checked her mobile phone, which had fallen down the side of the lounge. The battery was flat.
‘Russo tried to call you with the DNA results,’ Oliver explained, ‘but your home number was disconnected and your mobile didn’t answer. I volunteered to come into the lion’s den.’
She had forgotten that she changed her phone number after the abduction. It suited her that no one at work knew it. Even so, she had fallen asleep without even thinking about recharging the mobile battery.
‘You were stalling for time when you told Janine Penfold about Dobbie or one of his mates being the baby’s father. So is Robert the real father?’
‘No. And thanks to Dobbie rolling over, we know who it is. The guy was a mate of his and Spender’s who worked as a barman at the resorts they went to. That’s why they chose those places to holiday, so they had someone on the inside spiking the girls’ drinks. In between jobs, he’d come down and stay with Dobbie. He was with them the night they raped Candice Penfold, although Dobbie swears blind it was Spender and Brown who raped her.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Calls himself Elvis, but his real name’s Aaron Brown. He was on the DNA database because of a previous assault conviction.’
The name was familiar. He had been on the list of people Brett Spender had emailed with his epiphany about karma, just before his death.
‘Can you tie him to the Spender murder?’
‘That’s the good thing. His fingerprint matches the whopping great print they found on the melted smoke detector. Like Dobbie, he’s got more brawn than brains and assumed the fire would destroy his fingerprints. He’s pleading guilty to try to cut a deal with the prosecutor. Oh, and the hair sample you collected from Candice’s brush has been analysed. Hair grows at about a centimetre a month so the lab tested it in sections. The section from around ten months ago contained GHB, the date-rape drug. With Dobbie’s evidence, Brown is pleading guilty to raping Candy to get a shorter sentence.’
The cold beer warmed Kate’s veins, along with the knowledge that Spender’s killer and another of Candy’s rapists would be brought to justice.
‘Is that what we need to go and tell Robert and Lesley?’
Oliver nodded. ‘I thought you might also want to see the little boy. I hear you got quite fond of him. I’ll wait outside while you shower and change, if you like.’
Kate felt her cheeks burn. Hospital staff gossiped more than police. At least Robert and Lesley would have closure, if nothing else. She wondered how they had taken the revelation that Janine had killed Candice. And as Oliver had guessed, she was keen to see the little boy again, just to make sure he was being well cared for.
‘What’s going to happen to Janine Penfold?’
‘She’s confessed and she’s refused a psych assessment so she’ll be sentenced in the next few weeks. Don’t think she could cope with admitting she’d been wrong about Candy and Robert, and that she’d killed her daughter for nothing, so she’s sticking to her story about Candy being a seductress. Now, go get ready. We’ve got work to do.’
The shower was hot and cleansing and the world felt as right as it could be. When she was dressed and ready to go, Oliver greeted her like a gentleman, opening the car door for her. It was a shame he was leaving homicide, she thought. They made a pretty good team.