There was a knock at the door. Morrissey slouched into Rimis’s office and took a seat across from him. ‘Heard about Chisca. Good result.’
‘Yeah.’ Rimis looked up from his crossword puzzle. ‘He’s been charged with supply and dealing. He’s in remand waiting bail application.’
‘Was he importing?’
‘No, strictly wholesale. Even so, he’s looking at a hefty sentence and it doesn’t look like he’ll be visiting his folks back home any time soon. He had a network of buyers around the country and a system of codes. Depending on what artist you bought, you got amphetamines, cannabis, or cocaine.’ Rimis drained his coffee cup. ‘He was clever, I’ll give him that. When the Drug Squad removed the frames from the paintings in his warehouse storeroom, they found heroin with a street value of around two hundred and eighty grand. They also found cash in his apartment, along with some jewellery.’
‘Selling up before heading back home,’ Morrissey said. ‘So what’s happening with the Paloma Browne case?’ He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs.
‘Still ours, but not much to go on. Chisca’s got an alibi for the night she was murdered; he was at a trivia night, at least twenty people at the Great Northern Hotel can vouch for him.’
‘What about Vladu?’ Morrissey asked.
‘Gone back to the motherland, skipped before we had a chance to ask him any questions. He has disappeared for now, but he’ll turn up. Chisca’s parents have moved from their run-down flat in a tower block in Pitesti to a modern nursing home in Constanta. I’ve got a feeling Vladu was acting on instructions. He murders Paloma, skips the country, takes care of Chisca’s parents for him, and holds onto what’s left of the money.’
Rimis’s mobile phone rang. He checked the caller ID. He decided not to answer it. ‘Thought you’d want to know, I had a visit from Calida Winfred. She blames herself for what happened to Freddie and Paloma.’
Morrissey looked surprised. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
‘Put them away, Col.’
Morrissey shrugged and returned the cigarettes and lighter to his pocket.
‘She was involved with Chisca from the start. When she found out he was using her innuendos to traffic drugs, she threatened him with going to the police. Before she had a chance to do or say anything, he set fire to her house. It did the trick, scared her off and she kept her mouth shut.’
‘So the old girl didn’t suspect the innuendos she painted for Freddie had something to do with Chisca?’ Morrissey asked.
‘She thought he’d moved on to bigger and better things. Calida had no idea Freddie was involved with him.’
Morrissey shook his head.
‘Listen, I need to talk to you, Col. People are beginning to notice.’
‘Notice what?’
‘Your attitude.’ Rimis gave him a frosty look.
‘It’s Chapman isn’t it? He’s a fucking girl. I just had a bit of a joke with him.’
‘It’s not only Chapman.’ Rimis sat back in his chair. ‘Everyone’s sick of your outbursts, and your crude jokes. And you stink of ciggies and booze.’
‘Jesus Christ, Nick, nag, nag, nag. You sound like Sophie when I’ve forgotten to take out the wheelie bin.’
Rimis leaned forward over his desk. ‘I don’t know what your problem is but you better pull yourself together or the complaints are going to become official.’
Morrissey stared angrily at Rimis. ‘And I suppose you agree with them?’ Morrissey stood up to leave.
‘I’m just warning you, that’s all. As your boss and as a friend.’
Morrissey’s phone rang. He stood up and took it from his hip pocket and looked at the screen. He was about to answer it, when he saw the look on Rimis’s face.
‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about. Sit down.’
‘Well what is it?’
‘Mickey Brennan,’ Rimis said. ‘You were with him the night he got shot. I’ve been looking through the case notes and there are a few things that don’t add up about that night. I thought you might be able to shed some light.’
‘It was four years ago Nick, the memory’s not what it was. Look I have to take this call.’
‘Try,’ Rimis insisted.
Morrissey pressed the decline button on his phone and put it back in his pocket. He sat down.
‘Look, the scum who went down for Brennan’s murder were all Romanian,’ Rimis said. ‘The guy who pulled the trigger had an IQ with a minus sign in front of it, so I can’t see him being the guy in charge. There were mumblings at the time that there was someone in the background, pulling the strings. Dorin Chisca’s name popped up. What do you remember about that night? It would mean a lot to Brennan if we could lay some ghosts to rest.’
Morrissey shifted in his chair, stood up and closed the door. He walked back to Rimis's desk. His face was flushed. ‘All I can tell you is, at the time, there was a spate of home invasions in Lakemba. There was talk Romanian drug dealers from Melbourne had come into the area and were trying to muscle in on the local Middle Eastern gangs. They were linked to all sorts of things, not just drugs but social security fraud and extortion. Brennan, Carver, Peruzzi and I were assigned to the case. We had an anonymous tip off, something was going down that night.’
‘Go on,’ Rimis said.
‘We turned up at this address in Wattle Street. It was late, almost midnight. The street was quiet, no traffic, not even a barking dog. Carver and Peruzzi parked fifty metres down the street and stayed in the car while Brennan and I parked around the corner and went to take a look. We jumped two youths after they came out from the house. One of them was carrying two pouches of heroin. We took them back to Carver and Peruzzi. Carver stayed in the car with them, Peruzzi came with Brennan and me.’ Morrissey rubbed the back of his neck.
‘Go on,’ Rimis said.
‘We were going to call in for back-up, but for some crazy reason, Brennan decided to make a fake drug buy so he could get the door open. We watched him walk up the front steps from the bushes by the front fence. Still to this day, I don’t know what got into him. Everyone who knew Mickey knew he had a temper on him and took risks. He pushed against the door like a madman and the chain must have snapped because he managed to wedge part of his body in. There was a scuffle. Peruzzi and I ran up to the house, but it was too late by the time we got there; Brennan was lying on the verandah with a bullet to the head.’
‘So, what did you do then?’
‘We called for an ambulance and back up, like we should have done in the first place. Too late for an ambulance. We dragged his body out onto the street.’
‘Did you see Chisca?’
‘No, I didn’t see him. He could have been there. I heard his name used a couple of times, but mostly they were talking gibberish. I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. There was plenty of confusion, screaming and yelling going on. Most of them managed to scamper off out the back door. We nabbed the scum who shot Brennan, but he never told us who else was there that night. I wasn’t even sure he was the one who pulled the trigger, even though his prints were all over the gun.’
‘Why did Brennan go in alone?’
‘I can’t give you an answer to that. He was the senior officer. We were waiting for instructions. It all happened so fast. Look, Nick, this is fucking upsetting, dragging all of this up now. It’s history. Mickey Brennan’s history. Leave it alone. If you want to pin something on Chisca, maybe you can do a deal with him or something, get him to fess up to being there that night.’
‘I’ve already given him a drilling but he’s keeping his mouth shut.’
Morrissey stood up. ‘Well, that’s the end of it then. If Chisca doesn’t spill his guts, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Yeah, nothing we can do.’ Rimis put the file away in his top drawer. He looked at Morrissey and wondered about him. Was the stress of the job getting to him? He seemed preoccupied lately. Rimis knew the combination of the job and personal life was a fine balance. Or was there something else bothering him? Gambling debts? Alcohol problems? A woman on the side causing him grief? ‘You going to Otto’s Bar tonight? I’ve got a meeting, so I won’t be there till late.’
‘No. I'll have to give it a miss. Sophie wants me home, you know what women are like.’
Rimis nodded, but he didn’t have the faintest idea what women were like. He had never taken the time to understand them, and until recently, he had never felt the need to.
The first thing Morrissey did when he arrived home was turn on the air con. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen dressed only in a pair of blue and white striped boxer shorts. He snapped the lid off a bottle of a cold beer and took a deep gulp.
It was just after seven and there was no sign of Sophie. She had been working late all week, pulling lots of overtime at the accountant’s office where she worked in the city.
He walked over to the fridge and opened it. Left-over roasted chicken, a paper bag of mushrooms, a plastic container of low-fat cream. He didn’t usually do the cooking, but tonight he decided he would surprise her. He checked the recipe on the back of a pasta pack then pulled out a saucepan. Spaghetti Carbonara. How hard could it be?
He chopped mushrooms and onions, added a little oil to the frypan. He checked the recipe again, stirred in the cream and went to the fridge and opened another beer.
He leaned back against the bench and watched the sauce simmer. Bloody Rimis. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had a hide, lecturing him about his attitude and his drinking. He should talk. How many times had Nick Rimis turned up at the station hung-over from a night on the piss?
Hypocrite.