Jill showered, put on a tracksuit and made herself a strong coffee. She was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. When she first started working with Rimis he had told her she would have to learn detachment or else she would burn out. Great advice coming from him, she thought. She had noticed a change in him recently, the way he behaved around her was different from the way he had been when she first met him. She wondered what his interests were and if they had anything in common apart from the job. One thing she did know about him, he was like a dog with a bone when it came to a case.
The lamps came on automatically in the lounge-room. It was almost seven-thirty. She picked up her car keys and shoulder bag from the table beside the front door and left.
She hadn’t felt like cooking tonight and had decided on pizza instead. She couldn’t believe her luck when she found a parking space on Campbell Parade right outside Papa Giovanni’s. She ordered a small marinara pizza with extra cheese and crossed the road to the park opposite, content to wait the twenty minutes until her order was ready.
She sat down on a slatted timber bench and kicked off her shoes. A group of seagulls were fighting over a split bag of chips in front of her. She shooed them away.
The wind whipped back her hair; her eyes watered and the seagulls squalled overhead. She stretched her bare feet out in front of her and watched the passers-by enjoying the remnants of what had been a perfect day. Dog-walkers, joggers, people of all ages, young and old, all levels of fitness passed in front of her. A small white dog ran over to her, panting. It sniffed at the chips, wagged its tail. She reached down and scratched his head. He licked her hand and bounded off.
Jill couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She had surfed here with her father. Most weekends they would just hang out, eat greasy fish and chips from waxy, white paper wrappings. Images came back to her: waves pounding against the shore, her father hauling her up onto his strong shoulders, lumps of sand in her swimming costume at the end of the day. She blinked back the tears. Whoever said time heals all wounds didn’t know what they were talking about. Memories, even the good ones, hurt.
She walked up the stairs to her apartment and the smell of pizza trailed behind her. She unlocked the front door, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. An opened bottle of her favourite Pinot Grigio was lying on its side on the middle shelf. It was a good drop for the money; dry and cool. She unscrewed the lid and poured. Against the window sill was an empty line of wine bottles. She had meant to take them down to the recycling bin before she had gone out for pizza.
A voice inside her head told her she was drinking too much. The National Health Guidelines recommended one standard drink a day for women and two alcohol free days a week. She opened the kitchen windows. She was hoping for a sea breeze to cool the apartment. A party was in full swing on the floor below; muffled voices, thumping music. There was a loud knock at the front door.
She threw the last piece of pizza crust into the box and reached for the bottle to refill her glass. She checked the time on her watch. It was close to eight-thirty. She hoped it wasn’t her neighbours downstairs, come to invite her to their party. She put her wine glass down and walked out of the kitchen to the front door.
The building didn’t have a security intercom system. She had spoken to the strata managers about it when she’d first moved in, but they had told her there wasn’t enough money in the building fund to cover it. She pulled back the security chain and wondered if it was William. She realised she hadn’t phoned him to thank him for the flowers.
Kevin Taggart was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a heavy coat. She looked into his watery eyes.
‘Are you going to invite me in? I need to speak to you,’ he said.
Jill wondered if she should call Rimis but knew this was her chance to speak to Kevin alone. If anyone could find out what was going on his life, it was her. She closed the door. The brass security chain rattled when she opened it again. She looked at the scratches on his face. ‘What happened to you?’
Kevin ignored her. ‘I need to talk.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead and pushed past her.
Jill sat down on the ottoman and fidgeted with her hair. ‘You okay?’
Kevin sat down opposite her in the middle of the sofa. His knees were twitching; he looked pale and drawn as if he hadn't slept for days. Then the expression on his face changed. A faint smile appeared on his lips. He sat back on the sofa, as if he expected to stay there for some time. ‘Your boss, Nick Rimis, he’s a good copper that one. Sharp as a tack. From the first time we met, I knew he’d made up his mind about me.’
Jill shifted on the ottoman and placed her hands on her knees. ‘Inspector Rimis would like to speak to you. I, we…’
He was staring past her with glazed eyes and Jill realised she was looking at madness, plain and simple.
‘Kevin?’ Jill frowned. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’
When he spoke to her, he lowered his voice; it was almost a whisper. ‘After Edi and Rhoda, I thought it was the end of it. I went back to living my life and I didn’t think about them again. With the money they left me, I was going to disappear. I wanted to start a new life, escape the past, leave the bad memories behind.’
Jill’s heart was in her throat.
‘No one was more shocked than me when I won the Wynne. People, important people, noticed me for the first time in my life. I had a chance to do something decent for once. Then I met Freddie Winfred.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, empty syringe, held it between his thumb and index finger and tapped it lightly against his leg. His hands were shaking. He looked around him, over his shoulder, towards the front door. The music and noise from downstairs were getting louder. The party was in full swing.
Jill had thought Rimis had it all wrong about Kevin, but he was right. She looked at the scratch marks on his face and knew she had to stay calm.
There was a knock at the door.
‘See who it is and get rid of them.’
Kevin followed her to the door and whispered, ‘I’ll be standing right behind you with this.’ Kevin traced the point of the syringe against her neck and edged closer to her.
Jill opened the door as wide as the brass chain would allow. ‘William. What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been thinking about what happened the other night and —’
Jill heard the conciliatory tone in his voice. ‘It’s not me you should be saying sorry to,’ she said. ‘Go and phone him. I don’t want to talk to you, it’s Sunday! Do you hear me? It’s Sunday!’ Jill slammed the door in his face and waited for the sound of him leaving. She stepped back. Kevin flipped the catch, locking them in. The madness was gone, at least for the moment. Perhaps she had imagined the whole thing and he was playing some sick, cruel joke on her. He told her to come away from the door and they walked back into the middle of the room.
‘Boyfriend trouble?’
‘Why are you here, Kevin? Why are you doing this?’
Kevin wasn’t listening. He scratched his arms through his coat. He was pacing backwards and forwards. He turned to her. ‘I want to explain everything to you before I leave,’ he said. There was a silent pause. ‘My mother was a very troubled woman. Can you believe a son could hate his mother enough to kill her?’
‘Some sons could,’ Jill said.
Kevin slumped down onto the lounge, threw his head back and stared at Jill. ‘I was in the back seat when a truck ran a red light. It crashed into the driver’s side of the family’s station wagon. It was my fifth birthday. Ever heard that song, Right or Left at Oak Street?’
‘No.’ Jill edged herself onto the ottoman. If she could only keep him talking there may be a way out of this.
‘It’s about making choices. Turn right, turn left?’ He hummed a few bars of the song.
‘Your mother blamed you for your father’s death, didn’t she?’
He stopped humming and looked at her as if she was mad. ‘I blamed myself. He took the long way home; he was going to take me to the park so I could play on the equipment. I remember I had been pestering him all day. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been at that intersection. That’s why I never stood up to my mother. I took whatever she dished out, all the punishments, all the abuse. All those wasted years.’ Kevin shook his head. ‘But then, I couldn’t take it anymore.’
Kevin pulled out a worn, brown leather diary from the inside of his coat pocket and threw it on the coffee table in front of her. ‘Take a look if you want, they’re all there; she wrote all the punishments down in that book. I keep it to remind myself of how evil she was. My mother was filled with feelings that ate away at her. In the end they destroyed her, just like they destroyed me.’
She flicked through the diary and when she handed the diary back to him, she watched his paw-like hands caress the cover, as if it was in some way holy. His breathing was more even now and he closed his eyes. When he didn’t speak, Jill wondered if he had fallen asleep. She shifted on the ottoman and tried to stand.
His eyes flicked open and he leant forward and returned the diary to his coat pocket. ‘Don’t you want to know how I did it? How I killed her?’
‘You’re going to tell me anyway.’
‘Chest pains. She got me to take her to see her doctor. When I was in the waiting room, I picked up a medical journal on venous embolisms. Never heard of them before then. These embolism things got me thinking. I read up on how to find an artery.
‘It was a Sunday, I put the kettle on as usual and after she dozed off on the sofa, I took an empty hypodermic syringe, ran my fingers slowly down her neck until I felt her pulse and injected it into the artery. The carotid artery, you heard of it? It only took a few minutes. She never said a word.’
‘What about Edi and Rhoda Blake?’
Kevin frowned. ‘Those two were too proud for their own good. And they were like me, nobody cared whether they lived or died. I did them a favour. Edi was losing her marbles anyway, and Rhoda wasn’t far behind.’
‘But didn’t you feel anything, after you’d killed them?’
Kevin spoke in a small voice. ‘I returned to my life without another thought. Locked the memories away in a little black box in my head.’
Jill had to lean forward to hear his words. She knew that if she got out of this alive, she would never doubt Nick Rimis’s instincts again. She drew in a deep breath. ‘Tell me about Freddie.’
‘Freddie?’ His mood changed and he laughed. ‘I liked her at first, then I found out what sort of woman she really was.’
'What do you mean?'
'You’ve met her. She was always showing herself off, flaunting herself. Mutton dressed up as lamb.’
Jill looked puzzled. ‘The way she dressed was no reason to kill her.’
‘She rang me, wanted me to come and pick her up from her gallery. The battery in her van had died and she wanted to drop off a painting at Chisca’s warehouse. She told me she wanted to take one last look at North Coast Summers before it left the country. I knew Chisca was going back to Romania for good and was taking my watercolour with him. She was flustered when I picked her up and couldn’t stop talking about the painting, or Chisca. I got the feeling she was infatuated with him. We got to the warehouse and she became agitated when she realised she’d left her phone at the gallery.
‘We went inside. Freddie unlocked the storeroom and unwrapped the painting she'd brought with her. I was shocked when I saw it. It was an innuendo of North Coast Summers. At first, I didn’t know whether to be flattered or angry, so I told her it was a good copy and we both had a laugh.’
‘So why did she take you to the warehouse?’
Kevin squirmed in his seat. ‘She wanted to swap the original. At first, I thought she was joking, and then I saw the greed in her eyes and knew she was serious. I thought she appreciated my talent, liked me for who I was, but it was the money she was after. Freddie was all fired up and tried to convince me Chisca wouldn’t notice, but I wasn’t so sure. He’d told me the painting reminded him of a place in Romania where he’d spent family holidays when he was a boy. I even looked it up on Google Earth, but I think he saw something in it that I didn’t, because it looked nothing like the place.’
‘What was Freddie going to do with the original?’
‘She was going to sell it and share the spoils with me. She wanted me to take over from where Chisca left off and use my reputation to push her sister’s innuendos. I tried to talk her out of it. She asked me what the harm in it was, if he was leaving the country. She said Chisca would be long gone before he noticed the difference. Her plan was to sell them on the overseas market, but I told her I wasn’t interested. A lot of time and effort had gone into painting North Coast Summers. Then she laughed at me, told me I was a fool because I could make good money. Said she had made a killing with Chisca and she didn’t want it to stop. She started talking about money laundering. I didn’t get what she was on about and told her I wouldn’t be part of it. Then she laughed at me again. It was that laugh of hers that did it. When I first heard it at the Archibald, it reminded me of the way my mother laughed at me, and when I heard it again at the warehouse, something came over me. I snapped. I was surprised, she put up a good fight.’ Kevin ran his fingers over the welts on his cheek.
‘Did her sister know what she was up to with Chisca?’
‘Who? Calida? No,’ he laughed. ‘Freddie told me she didn’t have any idea what was going on.’
‘So what happened to the original?’
‘After I killed Freddie, I thought about what she had said. I took it and left the copy. I was surprised when I picked up the painting, I didn’t remember it being so heavy. I pulled part of the frame away. It all made sense then. It was the drugs Chisca’s clients were after, not the art. I don’t know what happened to the paintings once the drugs were removed from the frames; I suppose they were sold on eBay or used for land fill.’
‘Did Freddie know what Chisca was up to?’
‘I don’t think it would have entered her stupid little head. Chisca was paying her good money for the innuendos.’
‘Kevin, let’s talk to Nick Rimis. I’m sure —’
‘I’m tired of talking.’ He moved closer to her and ran his open hand down her face. His expression changed. He looked as if he’d woken up in the middle of a nightmare. Perspiration was streaming down the side of his face.
Jill had bought herself some time, but she knew she had to keep him talking at least until she worked out what she was going to do next. Before the undercover assignment took her away from general duties police work, she’d come up against men like Kevin Taggart; men who were out of control, either from drugs, alcohol or mental illness. There was no way to stop them because they had nothing left to lose. Kevin was menacing her with the syringe, trying to unnerve her.
‘Kevin you don’t need to do this. I thought we were friends,’ Jill said as a knot of fear pushed up from her throat.
‘Friends? Some friend. You’re boring me now.’
‘It was Freddie we were after, Kevin. I went undercover to —’
‘I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any of it.’
Jill tried to imagine what Rimis would do if he was here in this room with them now.’
Kevin started to sing the song, ‘Turn left…’
Jill was thinking hard now, trying to come up with ways to distract him. Isn't that what Rimis had taught her? Her service revolver was in the bedroom.
Kevin stepped closer. ‘Don’t get any ideas.’ The staleness of his breath was overpowering.
She considered her options. Kevin was solidly built with heavy shoulders, but he wasn’t particularly fit. She wasn’t sure what his reflexes were like, but after three glasses of wine, she knew she couldn’t rely on hers. Whatever she decided to do, she had to act quickly. She wondered what he was waiting for. Why didn’t he just jab her and be done with it?
‘You know why I have to kill you?’ Kevin spat flecks of saliva at her.
Jill shook her head.
Kevin wiped his hands on his shirt and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘You lied to me about leaving the police; you told me you liked my paintings, but you were only using me to get to Freddie. I trusted you, liked you, but you’re just like all the rest.’ He rushed towards her.
Jill dropped to the floor, rolled onto her side and stood up again in time to deliver a swift kick. He buckled over. The look on his face told her that, like most men, he had underestimated her. Service revolver. She ran towards the bedroom.
Eyes wide with pain, he followed after her, grabbed her from behind and delivered a swift punch to the side of her head. She staggered, moaned and stumbled forwards. He grabbed her hair and slammed her face into the floorboards. Crack. Bloodied nose, stinging eyes, legs folded beneath her. A kick to her ribs.
Kevin gritted his teeth. Another kick to her ribs. He straddled her, pinned her down with his full weight. Bright lights, taste of blood, thumping in her head. Get the fuck off me, Jill opened her mouth to scream. Get the fuck off me! But the words didn’t come.