RILEY ARRIVED FROM the east with the dawn. Crime Scene were underway, processing the ground where Patel had been attacked and an area around the front door of Preston’s house. She parked and got out and a Satyr detective logged her in through the police tape. Annie Tran was overseeing the canvass. On the gravel, O’Neil was talking on his phone.
‘We need to check Opal cards,’ he was saying, ‘plus CCTV on buses and trains—stops and stations everywhere. Clyde, Dundas, Telopea, Carlingford, Epping, Beecroft, Parramatta. The whole network, the Northwest Metro. He might have got off somewhere and walked for an hour. He could have come down on the RiverCat last night. Check Rydalmere.’
O’Neil hung up and looked at Riley. ‘He had two and a half hours before we got mobilised,’ he said. ‘Could be past Wollongong, Newcastle if he bolted. Goulburn, Canberra, Bathurst. It’s too late for a cordon. Chopper’s up, Highway Patrol the whole way through. We’re looking at speed cameras, red lights, servos on the main arteries out. He might be sleeping in a van around the corner. He could have come in two days ago, and be ready to sit it out for a week.’
‘What about if he came down on his own boat?’ Riley said.
‘We’re looking.’ There was CCTV at the wharves all the way down the river.
‘Where’s Priya?’
‘Westmead. Brain scan.’
Riley stared at him.
‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘He only gave her a tap. If he’d wanted to kill her, she’d be dead.’
‘Same place Marguerite was hit?’
O’Neil’s hand went to his skull. ‘Bit further back.’
‘She made the call to Preston and then got hit?’
‘Yeah, I haven’t got it crystal clear yet. I called Preston, said there’d been an incident and to stay inside until further notice. He didn’t say a word, just hung up. He hasn’t tried to come out.’
Riley studied the house. The area under the portico had been taped off and two forensic investigators were at work in bunny suits. O’Neil had briefed her quickly when he woke her. The t-shaped symbol had been carved in the wood of the headmaster’s front door.
‘You said he left the knife?’ she said.
O’Neil handed her paper boots and they scrunched across the drive and under the bunting to the door.
Riley’s breath caught and her head went back, the hairs on her neck standing on end. The knife had been stabbed into the door at the centre of the symbol. A piece of thin leather ran through a hole at the end of the orange handle, tied in a loop.
She swivelled away under the police tape and stood on the drive. Bowman’s words came back. Shitting in his own nest. Wouldn’t it be weird? Drunk locals at The Commercial.
Bowman’s knife? There was no logic to it. She tried to control her breathing …
They weren’t his prints on the bench.
O’Neil was watching, giving her space. She pulled out her phone.
Bowman had woken early, first light. A sticky sea mist had settled on the harbour and a foghorn had sounded for longer than he’d ever heard, almost a full minute—a leviathan’s bellow dragging him from sleep.
He’d had a coffee and decided against a second one. He put the kettle on, pulled down a tin of tea and pinched leaves into his orange pot. Canberra Breakfast Loose Leaf Tea, made to taste like an Anzac Biscuit. Canberra … Bishop must be the conduit to the old man. Alexander had assumed business, but it was politics. Had Beat-Up Benny worked in Canberra? Alexander had worked in the gallery—what did he know about Bishop? Politicians and journalists, backscratching away in their bubble. Bowman would take a cop over the lot of them any day. The kettle clicked off as his phone rang. Riley.
‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You’re awake?’
‘Course,’ he said. ‘Been for a jog. I’m on my second cup.’
‘In the kitchen?’
He caught the warning note. ‘Yeah.’
‘You’ve got an orange knife,’ she said. ‘Hanging from a nail on the wall by the bench.’
‘What?’
‘Just tell me,’ she said, ‘the knife, is it still there?’
Bowman looked at the nail where his father’s sailing knife hung. A remembrance of things past. He hadn’t noticed it was missing. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Adam,’ Riley said. ‘You have to listen and do exactly as I say.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Get a clean cloth, a Chux, whatever.’
He opened a drawer. ‘Okay.’
‘Now tread carefully to the front door, don’t touch anything.’
He moved through the hall.
‘Open the door with the cloth,’ she said, ‘and pull it closed in the same way.’
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I’m outside. What’s going on?’
‘Go to that cafe down from the pub and wait there. Don’t move. I’m sending Crime Scene to your house. I’ll see you in an hour.’
They wanted Farquhar to view the knife on Preston’s door in situ, before it was bagged and barcoded and removed to the lab. O’Neil handed the doctor paper boots, gloves and a mask and the two men went under the tape. Riley waited on the drive. After a minute, they were back.
Farquhar pulled down his mask. ‘Two triggers, I think. The murderer of Marguerite trying to impersonate him and then Steve’s comments about impotence to the press.’
‘He thinks Preston killed the girl?’ O’Neil said.
‘He’s just following the coverage,’ Farquhar said. ‘Reading the tea leaves.’
‘We haven’t said anything in the media about Preston,’ Riley said.
‘The NeedFeed story,’ Farquhar said. ‘It mentioned Preston’s house. And we know from Priya that Gladesville referenced you after he attacked her. The story had a picture of you and the journalist in Preston’s garden.’
Riley nodded at O’Neil.
‘The knife belongs to Adam Bowman,’ O’Neil said. ‘Rose saw it in his house. He kept it hung in his kitchen.’
‘Really?’ Farquhar’s eyes grew wide. ‘He brings in Bowman?’
Riley toed gravel.
‘What if this is Bowman bringing himself in?’ O’Neil said.
Farquhar’s face puckered. ‘There’s nothing to link Bowman to any of this. And why use his own knife?’
‘He likes to play games?’ O’Neil gave his scalp a halfhearted rub. He was siding with the doctor. Bowman was a blind alley—they had no evidence, it didn’t make sense.
‘It’s too far-fetched,’ Farquhar said. ‘Keep it simple. We prodded him on impotence and he saw the gossip story. Rose?’
She shrugged. It lined up: Gladesville was playing off the NeedFeed story.
‘It shows some swagger,’ O’Neil said.
‘More than that,’ Farquhar said. ‘Insouciance. He goes into Bowman’s house. And the attack on Priya, it must have been spontaneous, he didn’t know she would be here. He’s saying he can go anywhere, do anything, he’s the opposite of impotent.’
‘But there’s weakness too, in the arrogance,’ O’Neil said. ‘For the first time, we called the shots.’
‘Indeed,’ Farquhar said. ‘He’s malleable, we provoked him.’
‘What’s it do for the geographic profile?’ Riley said.
Farquhar held up his palms. ‘I don’t think it’s relevant. He’s following us. We brought him here—as Steve says, we called the shots. The school itself isn’t important, it could have been anywhere.’
Riley bit her cheek. The school wasn’t relevant? It sure felt relevant. ‘Steve?’ she said.
‘I think Wayne’s right,’ O’Neil said. ‘You know it too. It’s flowing from the NeedFeed story. It’s logical.’
Riley knew what O’Neil thought about logic. ‘He feels pretty comfortable, here at the school,’ she said. ‘You both noted it. Spontaneous swagger.’
Farquhar stroked his beard.
‘You need to make the leap,’ she said. ‘Have a look at the map, get out of your comfort zone. We kept the school out of the geographic profile after Marguerite, fair enough. Now we’re going to do it again?’
‘Leave it for now,’ O’Neil said. ‘What do we do with Bowman?’
‘He can’t stay in his house,’ Farquhar said. ‘Rose, you neither. Gladesville’s directly threatened you.’
‘Alright,’ O’Neil said. ‘Rose, you go to Bowman, get a statement, check in with Crime Scene. Annie will oversee the manhunt.’
‘You still going to bring Preston in?’ Riley said.
O’Neil looked at the headmaster’s house. Riley knew he wouldn’t want to waste Patel’s work. Gladesville in Preston’s garden with Bowman’s knife. Nausea stirred. It made no sense … weird was normal. Fuck logic—you had to think past it.
O’Neil motioned Farquhar to follow him behind the house. He called Preston’s mobile as he walked and asked him to meet them at the back door.
Preston hung up without speaking and O’Neil and Farquhar waited on the patio. After a minute, with no sign of the headmaster, Farquhar tried the door. It was unlocked, and opened into a big kitchen, dark and tangy like a teenager’s bedroom. O’Neil turned on a light. There was dirty crockery around the sink and the plastic packaging of microwave meals.
‘Even Riley wouldn’t eat that,’ O’Neil said. He heard a noise further back in the house and put a finger up. ‘Incoming.’
Preston walked in, his bloodshot eyes registering no surprise at finding them in his kitchen. ‘What now?’ he said.
‘Now we go for a little drive,’ O’Neil said.
Preston poured three fingers of Scotch into a glass from a bottle on the bench.
‘We need you to accompany us to Parramatta,’ O’Neil said. ‘We’ve got some questions to clear up.’
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘What would we arrest you for?’ O’Neil said.
Preston drank the whisky in two slugs. ‘Alright.’
They went out the patio door and around to the Prado. Preston got in the back and looked out at the forensic investigators as O’Neil drove.
‘Shuffle along to the middle and keep your head down,’ O’Neil said. ‘There’s media at the exit.’ He slowed as he went through the police checkpoint. At the gate television cameramen and photographers swarmed the car. The light onto the main road was red, but O’Neil eased out and swung right.
‘All clear,’ he said.
Preston brought his head up from between his knees. ‘Who tipped them off?’
‘It’s a goat rodeo,’ O’Neil said. ‘They pick up on the ruckus.’
They took Preston to the interview room they’d used for Kevin Lynch. The headmaster looked half blotto, rheumy eyes in a grey face. O’Neil gave silent thanks to Patel.
‘Philip,’ he said, ‘there’s something troubling us. It’s to do with your original statement. Specifically, your movements on Wednesday the twenty-eighth.’
Preston twitched a shoulder.
‘That’s the day Marguerite Dunlop was killed. Remember her? Bludgeoned to death at your school?’
‘Get to the point.’ Dutch courage.
‘In your statement, you said you worked at home and didn’t leave the house,’ O’Neil said. ‘The problem is, other people say they saw you out around the school that day.’
‘What other people?’
‘You were seen driving your car through the school on Wednesday. The CCTV footage corroborates the statements we have regarding this. Why did you tell us you didn’t leave the house?’
‘You didn’t see me on the CCTV,’ Preston said.
‘Now, Philip,’ O’Neil said, ‘why would you say that?’
‘If you say you have CCTV footage showing me driving in the school on Wednesday then I say you’re lying.’
‘Whoa,’ O’Neil said. ‘I didn’t say we had CCTV footage of you. I said we have CCTV footage corroborating the statements of others.’
‘What others?’
‘You’re quite certain there’s no CCTV footage of you around the school on the Wednesday?’
‘I just said that.’ Preston looked at Farquhar. ‘Did I not just say that?’
‘Is that because you maintain your statement is true?’ O’Neil said. ‘You didn’t leave the house?’
Preston shook his head. ‘You think I killed Marguerite?’
‘There are anomalies in your statement,’ O’Neil said. ‘Someone is not telling us the truth.’
‘I need to change my statement,’ Preston said.
O’Neil kept his face blank. ‘Okay.’
‘I drove through the school on that Wednesday.’
‘At what time?’ O’Neil said.
Preston didn’t need to think. ‘Just before two. I was home by four.’
‘Where did you drive?’ O’Neil said.
‘To the Spratts’ house.’
O’Neil missed a beat. ‘Why didn’t we see you on the CCTV? There are cameras on the route.’
‘I avoided the cameras.’
‘Why?’ O’Neil said.
‘Habit. Spratt monitors the footage. I don’t like him watching me.’
‘It’s his job to keep an eye on things. Why don’t you like it?’
‘Because I’ve been sleeping with his wife.’
O’Neil stared at the table. He turned to Farquhar and the two of them stood and headed for the door.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ O’Neil said in the corridor.
Farquhar cleared his throat. ‘Cognitive dissonance.’
O’Neil made a fist and tapped the wall. ‘Just say it,’ he said.
‘The drunkenness amplifies the resignation,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘He knows we’re onto his secret life. He also knows he’s in the frame for Marguerite. The only way out is to tell the truth.’
O’Neil already knew it—Preston was cutting his losses. ‘The affair explains his reaction to the drone footage,’ he said. ‘He was sweating on the possibility it captured him beating a path to Jenny Spratt’s door.’
‘His response is understandable,’ Farquhar said. ‘How would the school board react if news of this liaison were to become public?’
O’Neil lifted his phone to call Riley. She needed to confirm Preston’s statement with Jenny Spratt.
They left Preston to find his own way home and drove to Westmead.
Patel’s brain scan was clear. The concussion had been slight. She’d discharged herself and was waiting in an ambulance bay when O’Neil and Farquhar pulled up. Both men got out to help her into the Prado but she shrugged them off.
‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m fine.’
She wanted to talk through the attack as they drove, but O’Neil stopped her. ‘Let’s wait,’ he said. ‘Rose needs to hear it too.’
Patel handed O’Neil the burner phone and, at a strip of shops in Ermington, O’Neil pulled over. He took a wet wipe from the glovebox, got out and snapped the sim and ground the mobile into the pavement under his heel. He picked it up, wiped everything down and threw it into a bin.
‘Forensic sophistication,’ he said as he buckled his seatbelt and merged with the traffic.
The strike force room was humming with the hunt for Gladesville. O’Neil ordered in food and coffee and Tran briefed them while they waited for Riley. Forensics had got nothing from the scene where Patel had been attacked, and nothing from around Preston’s door or driveway.
‘No prints, no fibre, no hair,’ Tran said. ‘No shoe impressions—he’s in booties and the ground’s too hard where he hits Priya. He’s on gravel on the drive. So just the knife, wiped clean. The tape and cable ties used on Priya were pristine and he’d poured bleach and ammonia on them for good measure. And he was at it with the wet wipes.’
‘What about Bowman’s house?’ O’Neil said.
‘Mixed DNA. Prints everywhere.’
‘How’d he get in?’
‘Side window, we think.’
Tran went back to her desk and O’Neil and Farquhar drank tea and coffee. Riley came in and embraced Patel. The four of them sat at the round table.
‘Priya,’ O’Neil said, ‘start from when you left this room last night. Every detail, nothing is too small. He might have followed you, he might have been watching your place.’
Patel took a breath. She’d driven straight to her unit at Harris Park. ‘I resisted an open bottle of wine in the fridge. It was nine. I counted how many hours until I was on the road again—four hours—so I didn’t have a drink.’
‘Go on,’ O’Neil said.
She’d showered, eaten a light meal, slept three hours, woken before her alarm. The patrol car was waiting across from her building as arranged, at one a.m., interior light on. There wasn’t a soul on the street. Two general duties constables sat in the front, one male, one female, both young. Patel had got in the back. The female constable had turned and looked at her as the car pulled away. Patel had met her eyes but said nothing.
‘As agreed,’ she said to O’Neil, ‘no chit-chat in the car.’
O’Neil nodded. Strings had been pulled, the trip had never happened.
A police car had been parked at the gate to the school and they’d pulled up beside it. The constables had been told Patel wouldn’t be long, twenty minutes. She got out, acknowledged the officers in the second car, and started up the slope towards Preston’s house, two hundred metres away. The ground was lightly wooded and it had been completely dark, no moon. She had moved slowly, picking her way through the trees. There was a night-light mounted on the corner of the garage, throwing a glow over the drive and the portico. At the edge of the lawn, next to the rosebed, she had stopped and listened. Nothing. She had pulled the disposable phone out of her pocket and pressed it into life. Preston’s number had been programmed. He had taken a while to pick up.
She had just said, ‘It’s me,’ and waited. Preston’s voice had been thick with sleep, saying, Who is this? She had said ‘It’s me, Marguerite,’ and left him dangling on the line for ten seconds and hung up.
A light had come on upstairs, then more lights across the top floor and then downstairs as well. ‘He was moving through the house,’ Patel said.
‘Probably looking for a bottle of Joey Vino’s best Scotch,’ Riley said.
Patel smiled. She’d stayed watching the place to see whether Preston was going to leave. The lights had remained on and he hadn’t come out. After fifteen minutes, she had headed back into the trees, debating whether to use the flashlight on her phone to navigate, but decided against it. She had been in the thickest group of trees when she’d sensed something.
‘You saw something, or heard something?’ O’Neil said.
‘I couldn’t see a thing, it was that black. And it wasn’t a noise. It was more I felt it, like a ripple. My skin crawled, my training kicked in, my hand went to my Glock. And that was it. Next thing I know I’m lying on my side, bound hand and foot and gagged. I could taste tape and bleach. My head was aching.’
She had managed to wriggle onto her back, the bindings cutting into her skin and she had known they were cable ties. She had felt twigs under her and heard a truck gearing down, airbrakes. A red light.
‘I thought, It’s the road, Pennant Hills Road, so I knew I was still in the school. Then I thought, Cable ties, bleach. There was another smell and I realised what it was. Ammonia. I lay still, concentrated on my breathing, through my nose. My heart was thumping.’
Then he had been there, his face a foot from hers, a balaclava, goggles.
‘Night vision?’ O’Neil said.
‘Yes.’
‘Had he spoken yet?’ O’Neil said.
‘Not at this stage. He pricked my throat with a knife.’ She touched her jugular notch. ‘And then he was gone.’
She’d lain on her back, completely still, listening, for a long time, several minutes. The muscles in her arms had started to relax and her fists, clenched tight, had loosened. She had moved slightly. ‘That’s when he put the toe of his boot into my ribs.’
‘His particular sadism,’ Farquhar said. ‘He enjoyed taking away your hope.’
‘He was back with the blade, across my stomach, my chest. He turned it on my pubic bone.’
‘You felt he was making a decision?’ Farquhar said.
‘He was weighing it,’ Patel said. ‘Whether to kill me.’
The psychiatrist nodded. ‘But that would have been a departure.’
‘Too random?’ Riley said.
‘He’s assiduous,’ Farquhar said. ‘He surveils, he’s obsessive with the choosing of the victim, the planning, the scene.’
‘But he was tempted?’ Riley said.
‘Of course,’ Farquhar said. ‘Priya is desirable, she’s vulnerable, she’s available. But he’s methodical, not impulsive. He wants to do things at his pace, with time to watch, even record it, so he can relive it. That’s the whole point.’
‘He knows there’s police at the gates,’ O’Neil said. ‘It’s too risky to try and move Priya.’
‘Yes,’ Farquhar said. ‘But also, she’s nothing to him. He builds a fantasy around whomever he’s chosen.’
‘You don’t think he followed Priya?’ O’Neil said.
‘Certainly not. I think he stumbled on her. He was there to put the knife in Preston’s door. We know that was premeditated—he had to go to Bowman’s house and take the knife. That’s why he was at the school. Priya was random.’
‘And the knife is a response to us?’ Riley said. ‘To our provocation?’
‘Theatrics,’ O’Neil said. ‘A flourish. He’s inserting himself into the investigation.’
‘Correct,’ Farquhar said. ‘But it’s a retaliation as well. To kill in the way he does takes severe rage. His arrogance is wrapped up with anger—power and control—but it’s also a mask for his insecurity, his total inadequacy. They’re the buttons we push.’
O’Neil nodded at Patel. ‘Can you finish? He has the knife on you …’
‘He stood up and that was when he spoke. He said, I left something in Preston’s door. Then he said, Tell Detective Riley we’ll play. That was all. He was gone. Eventually the constables found me after you called my phone.’
‘His voice,’ Riley said. ‘Can you describe it?’
‘Muffled. There was the mask but something else too, in the mouth, to disguise it. Deliberately flat and low.’
‘Think on it,’ Riley said. ‘If there’s anything that chimes with a voice you’ve heard.’
‘Sleep on it,’ O’Neil said. She needed to get some rest.
‘I don’t like the focus on Rose,’ Farquhar said. ‘That’s not random. But I think we need to move Priya too, for safekeeping.’
O’Neil sighed and stretched a shoulder. Homicide had the lease on two apartments in a secure block near police headquarters in Parramatta. They used them for sources and snitches and visits from interstate colleagues. Bowman could go in one, Rose and Priya could share the other.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Riley said.
‘And you need to swap out of the Calais,’ O’Neil said. ‘There’s a white SS in the carpark.’ He tossed her a key. ‘Tell us about Jenny Spratt.’
Riley turned the fob in her fingers. ‘I went to meet her in Darling Harbour, before she started a shift on a party boat. I put Preston’s claim to her and she got flustered. Wanted to know how we knew—and she wanted to know if Craig knew. I told her he didn’t, and there was no reason he would have to if she was truthful and told me everything.’
Jenny Spratt had corroborated Preston’s story. ‘She said Preston had been at her house from two till four p.m. and they’d had sex and a couple of vodkas. She was certain of the time because it was arranged around Craig’s medical appointment.’
‘That fits?’ O’Neil said.
Riley nodded. Craig Spratt had mentioned his appointment in his original statement and it had been confirmed by his GP. It was while driving to the doctor that Spratt had seen Preston’s car. Spratt had run slightly late, so their paths had crossed.
‘You believe her?’ O’Neil said.
‘There was nothing to suggest she was lying,’ Riley said.
‘How long’s it been going on?’
‘Couple of months. Jenny had noticed Preston eyeing her off for a while. She was pissed one night after a school function and he came on pretty strong and she went along with it. It’s very casual—when they’re bored and the coast is clear. She didn’t react to the mention of Orange, but she said she knew Preston would have others on the side.’
O’Neil frowned at Farquhar. ‘Does it ring true?’
‘With Preston, yes. He’s an opportunist. Sexually compulsive. He’d try it on with any female anywhere. A secretary in his office, a maid in a hotel, a cleaner at his house, the mother of a son at the school, a teacher in an empty classroom, a waiter in a restaurant, the wife of a friend—’
‘The seventeen-year-old daughter of his colleague,’ Riley said.
‘Indeed,’ Farquhar said. ‘Striving, seeking, conquering.’
‘A hard dog to keep on the porch,’ O’Neil said.