‘What time’s the game?’ Charlie said into the phone. ‘Any of the other kids need a lift?…Okay, no worries…see you then.’
He turned to Zoe. ‘That was Jane. Alex has cricket tomorrow. Even in this heat. What I wouldn’t give for a few hours of rain to cool this city down.’
Zoe was only half listening.
‘What’s up?’ asked Charlie. ‘Five days from crime to charge. That’s a pretty good result for your first case back.’ He tossed a ball of scrunched-up paper into the air, caught it and threw it hard into the bin. ‘The guy’s guilty. It’s a slam dunk.’
‘Something’s not right.’ She was going to say something but stopped herself. She knew that once what she was thinking was out in the open, anything might happen.
‘Look,’ said Charlie, ‘maybe your instincts are a bit off. Maybe you’re not back in your groove yet.’
In her peripheral vision Zoe noticed several detectives stop working and look their way. She turned to her partner. ‘Which squad are you working in?’ she asked, her voice so low he had to lean in to hear.
‘Come on, Zoe. I didn’t mean—’ Charlie said.
‘Which squad?’
From under the desk, Harry got up and walked around next to Zoe. He sat down, watching her.
‘Homicide.’ Charlie looked left and right, his face turning dark red.
‘And where do you want to be working next week?’
‘I wasn’t trying to offend you. I’m sorry.’
‘Charlie, I don’t appreciate your attitude,’ she said, her volume back to normal. ‘We don’t just need to prove a case, we need to prove it entirely without doubt. That’s the only way to stop cases falling to pieces at trial when your evidence is put under the torch by some highly paid barrister who was born angry. If there’s an acquittal, the heat is on us. I test my cases from every angle to make sure they can’t be pulled apart. That’s why my cases don’t turn to shit in front of a jury, you got that?’
‘I understand. Zoe, look, I was out of line.’
‘You’re dead right there. And while we’re at it, I don’t appreciate you reporting back to the boss on how you think I’m travelling. If you’re worried about that sort of thing, get a fucking transfer. I’ve got no time, and even less respect, for that bullshit. Do we understand each other?’
The veins on Charlie’s neck were bulging. ‘Yes, absolutely. It won’t happen again. Okay?’
Two desks down, Iain Gillies was chuckling.
‘And you can shut the fuck up, too,’ growled Zoe, standing up. ‘Right, come on,’ she said, grabbing a folder from her desk. She headed for Rob’s office, Harry at her side.
‘Wait—what?’
Zoe knocked and walked in without waiting. Rob looked up as Charlie caught up, almost falling through the doorway.
‘What do you need, Zoe?’
‘The Carlson case. I think we’ve got an issue.’
Zoe brought Rob and Charlie up to speed on her meeting with Sarah Westbrook, her review of the murders at Hastings and Frankston, and the parallels with the Portsea case. Rob and Charlie listened in silence.
‘Okay,’ said Rob, when she had finished. ‘But they are just similarities. The motive and evidence both stand up and that’s what’s important. Plus, we have stabbing homicides every week.’
‘I hear you, but look at this.’ Zoe opened her folder and put a print-out of a photograph on his desk. ‘This is from the Frankston murder two years ago, for which Aaron Smyth was convicted. It was taken at Ben Jennings’ funeral. See this guy?’ Zoe pointed out the slim, fortyish man with the dark beard and the cane.
Rob nodded.
‘Okay,’ said Zoe, placing the other photograph on the desk. ‘The case from Hastings. A year later. Eric Drum’s funeral. That guy is Trevor Hill, who’s charged and in custody.’ She pointed at a tall man who was openly weeping.
‘That’s Iain and Garry’s case,’ said Rob. ‘The trial starts in just over a week’s time, yeah?’
‘That’s the one. See this guy?’ Zoe pointed to the solidly built man standing next to Trevor. He was clean-shaven, with neatly cut, dark auburn hair, and looked to be in his mid-thirties.
‘Can’t see it. What are you saying?’ asked Rob.
‘I think it could be the same person.’
Rob shot her a look, shaking his head.
‘It’s easier if you see it on the videos. Can you pull it up on your screen?’
‘Sure,’ said Rob. ‘Come around.’
Zoe and Charlie walked around to the DI’s side of the desk.
‘You drive—you know what you’re looking for,’ said Rob, standing up.
Zoe sat down and grabbed the mouse. She found the two video files and opened them up next to each other. Then she hit play. They watched people milling around the grave. Zoe forwarded the first video to a specific spot and paused it. Then she did the same with the second video.
‘Watch this part,’ she said, before clicking play on each of the videos. In the videos, both men looked directly at the camera for a second or two, narrowing their eyes. ‘See it?’
‘I do,’ said Rob. ‘It’s a similar expression, but it’s not the same guy. They look about ten years apart in age, for a start.’
Zoe glanced up in time to see Rob give Charlie a baffled look.
She opened her folder and pulled out a third photograph. ‘This is from Ray Carlson’s funeral yesterday.’ She pointed at a scruffy-haired man in the photo, his head tilted to one side. ‘That guy’s name is Greg Enders. He was friends with Ray and Dwayne Harley.’
‘What? You think that he is the same person as the other two?’ asked Rob incredulously.
‘Maybe,’ said Zoe. ‘Have a look at this.’ She opened the video from Ray Carlson’s funeral, found the right place and let it play. Greg’s neck was tilted and his shoulders were pulled back. He was wearing a loose shirt, barely tucked in over a small pot belly. His hair was messy, covering his ears, and he had a new beard, probably about two weeks old. He was standing next to Dwayne, who was also looking towards the camera.
‘See the time stamp,’ she said, as she held up her phone. ‘At this exact moment Anjali was calling me to tell me about the Crime Stoppers tip.’ In the video, Greg Enders was looking towards the camera, but off to one side, to where Zoe was standing. ‘He’s looking right at me.’
In the video Greg narrowed his eyes, and then returned his gaze to the funeral. ‘He could’ve phoned in the tip just before the funeral. If so, he knew I’d be getting the call right then.’
‘Whoa, hold on,’ said Rob. ‘This is all very coincidental. You sure you’re not trying to retrofit a scenario from the information you’re finding? To my eyes, there’s three different people at three separate funerals, with one of them looking in your direction when you received a call. That’s it. Dwayne Harley is staring across at you as well. Perhaps they heard your phone ring and were pissed off since they were at a funeral.’
Zoe made an effort to remain calm. ‘We noticed Dwayne staring at us. We weren’t paying any attention to Greg Enders. And my phone was on silent. Plus, I walked way back and was whispering. Look, I feel like there’s something there. It’s something in that look,’ said Zoe.
‘What do you think, Charlie?’ asked Rob.
Charlie sucked in a breath before responding. ‘Honestly? I see three different people. So the expression at that moment looks similar, but they still look like different people to me. Maybe Enders was pissed off because we were taking phone calls during his mate’s funeral. Who knows? Sorry, Zoe,’ said Charlie.
There was a knock at the door. Zoe gathered the photographs together and turned them over.
‘Come in,’ said Rob.
Two men entered. They looked like brothers, tall and fit, with the same blank expression on their faces. The older of the two was just under six foot tall and had short dark hair, while the younger man was slightly taller with a full head of auburn hair. They both wore blue business shirts and dark pants, their Victoria Police lanyards hanging from their necks.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ said the older one. ‘You Zoe Mayer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Doug Strong and this is Frankie Chambers from the Drug Squad,’ he said, tilting his head towards his partner. ‘We need to chat about Dwayne Harley.’
‘What about him?’ asked Zoe, standing up from Rob’s chair.
‘We’re charging him with methamphetamine production,’ said Doug. ‘Dwayne and his mate Ray Carlson have been renting a house outside of Somers, on the eastern side of the Mornington Peninsula. We’ve had the house under surveillance, inside and out, for the last couple of months. Dwayne and Ray are, or were, cooking meth. Big time. We were due to pick them up this week, once we had all the proof we needed about their supply chain. We’ve got a mountain of evidence on Dwayne, so our visit is just a professional courtesy.’
Zoe remembered the tattooed men at Ray’s funeral.
‘We dug up a stack of cash in Ray Carlson’s backyard,’ said Charlie. ‘Over seven hundred and fifty thousand. I think we’ve just found our motive for Ray’s murder.’
‘Could be,’ said Frankie. ‘Seen it happen before. One guy gets greedy. These two have been at it a while, much longer than we’ve had them on our radar. They’ve been selling through a middle man, a mate of theirs from high school, who’s connected to a bikie gang. It’s a fairly low-risk operation, as far as this sort of thing goes. Sell to one trusted buyer only. We’ve just arrested the middle man.’
‘Joshua Priest?’ asked Zoe.
Doug nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s the one. We’ve had him under surveillance for a while. We were watching when you chased him the other day.’
Zoe had a thought. ‘Did you have Dwayne under surveillance on the day that Ray was murdered?’
‘No,’ said Doug. ‘We had plenty of evidence on Dwayne and Ray. We were focused on Joshua and the rest of the supply chain downstream. Sorry.’
Zoe nodded. ‘You have audio with the surveillance in the house where Dwayne and Ray were cooking?’
‘Yeah,’ said Frankie.
‘Did you pick up any disputes between them?’
‘Nothing. They were a professional unit, as far as drug cooks go. Careful, organised. They weren’t users as far as we could tell. That cash you dug up would be a small amount of the money they’ve been making. They’ve been smart operators until now. Keeping most of their money hidden away, continuing to pay off mortgages, not buying Ferraris, that sort of thing. We only found out about them because we were following Priest around, trying to work out where he was getting his supplies. We’ll be doing a lot of digging over the next few days. Dwayne’s backyard is probably full of bags of cash as well. Anyway, he’s going to be charged this arvo. Even if he cooperates, he’ll do a minimum of ten years on that charge. Hopefully longer.’
‘Okay, thanks for letting us know,’ said Zoe.
‘No worries. But we’re gonna need the cash. It’s evidence in our case.’
‘Sure. We’ll get the paperwork sorted and it’s all yours.’
‘Thanks, and we’ll give you a call if Dwayne gives us any information that involves your murder charge,’ said Doug, as he and Frankie turned towards the door.
‘Now we’ve got two motives,’ said Charlie. ‘Dwayne decides he wants all the cooking duties for himself. Knocks Ray off. Maybe greed combined with finding out about his wife doing Ray was enough for him.’
‘Charlie’s right,’ said Rob.
‘I understand that,’ said Zoe, ‘but I still want to investigate these mystery men.’
‘Let it go,’ Rob said. ‘The three men are three different guys. You’ve been out of the game. Sorry, but you’re off base on this one.’
Zoe silently fumed as she collected the photographs from Rob’s desk.