12

WE SPENT THE night and most of the next morning pulling Alan Proctor’s house apart. For all its slick artwork and furnishings, the place turned out to be little more than a crash pad where he kept a few changes of clothes and some basics in the fridge, and not much else. There were certainly no significant documents in his study. And no computer, either. We found no sign that he’d made it home from the airport, and nothing to indicate what had become of him.

As I helped process Proctor’s place, my increasing sense of foreboding about his fate caused a knot to take hold of my guts. I was certain that the pair from the lake were also behind his disappearance, and that they weren’t just doubling up on their crime. They were issuing a challenge to us, and a warning to all senior ministers and their staff. No one was safe, they were saying; everyone was fair game. Their sheer bloodlessness was perplexing in the extreme. What could have led them to this? What had motivated their outrage? And how profoundly committed would they have to be to plan and execute these high-profile crimes in the way that they had?

Of course, not everyone had such a dire take on things. Initially, there was even talk around that Proctor had done a bunk — disappeared himself, believing that the government was on the way out. But when we canvassed that thought with the party people he’d been working with up in Sydney, they all said he’d been very upbeat about the government’s chances.

By mid-morning, I was back in the room scrolling through PROMIS. I opened a just-posted Forensics file on Proctor’s Audi; but the car, like the house, told us nothing about its owner’s fate.

Then I went to CCTV footage of Proctor from the airport. It had been captured at six-fifteen the previous evening, as he walked through the terminal concourse. He was carrying a briefcase, and wearing a funny little short-brimmed hat — the sort favoured by Swiss yodellers.

The other vision of Proctor on the system was of him driving out of the long-stay carpark at the airport. And a traffic camera had snapped him as he ran a red light on Kings Avenue. Somewhere between that camera, and the meeting in Parliament House where he’d been heading, Alan Proctor had fallen off the face of the earth. His disappearance had sent the room into overdrive — people now moved in and out of the place at a clip, keyboards clattered with a new urgency, and every phone conversation sounded sharp and to the point. Given Susan Wright’s fate, we all assumed that Alan Proctor’s time was running out. I turned back to my screen and continued to scroll.

Also up on PROMIS was a Forensics report on the documents that Jean Acheson had received from the European. They turned out to be two receipts from the treasurer’s American addiction clinic, and there were three sets of fingerprints on them. One set belonged to the treasurer. The second was from the accounts person at the clinic. The third were Acheson’s — and her prints were the only ones on the opaque plastic sleeve that had held the receipts.

As well as Acheson’s prints, Forensics had found a small, oblong impression freshly etched into the bottom edge of the plastic sleeve. Their report said that the impression had been made when the sleeve was stored in a tight space next to an object the same size as a small audiocassette case. The plastic sleeve had most recently spent time in the dirt file that Susan Wright had ‘pinched’ the night she disappeared. If the impression on the sleeve was from a cassette case, and if that case and the sleeve had been together in Proctor’s dirt file, it raised a number of questions.

Assuming the cassette case had contained a cassette, what was recorded on it that needed to be secured with Proctor’s dirt? Did the recording relate to the treasurer’s clinic visits, or was there altogether different dirt on it? Maybe something related to Susan Wright? Stuff so damaging that when she got the chance, she’d felt compelled to nick it and do a runner?

Only two people knew the answers to these questions. One of them was dead, and the other was missing. But maybe Proctor’s staffers, Penny Lomax and Janet Wilson, knew something about the cassette, if indeed there had been one in the file. Lomax was in Adelaide with the prime minister and wasn’t due back in Canberra for at least twenty-four hours. I’d been planning to talk to her about Proctor again, anyway, but now I thought I’d get both her and Janet Wilson down to the station for something a bit more wide-ranging and intensive.

I ducked out at lunchtime for a shish tawook from the Lebanese on Northbourne Avenue. As I carried the food back to the station, I put all thoughts of Proctor aside, and instead tried to think through arguments for why we should be talking to the prime minister. They were all pretty obvious, really. His most popular minister had been murdered, right at the business end of an election campaign, and now his closest confidante had disappeared. Surely that was enough for us to seek a face-to-face with the man. Then again, if he agreed to it, he’d probably just spout the same pious rubbish he’d given me over the phone.

For some reason, my thoughts then turned to Jean Acheson. I pictured her smiling at me from behind the crime-scene tape, and sitting in the green room, nailing me with those eyes of hers. But I didn’t get any pleasure from these images. Instead, they added to my sense of foreboding. The nub of it was, the more I thought about the killers’ choice of Acheson to publicise the treasurer’s drug problem, the more I worried about her safety.

These people were careful and considered in the way they went about things, so they were hardly likely to have dropped the treasurer’s drug story on a random journo. So why had they chosen Acheson? Sure, she had a high profile, but so did lots of her colleagues. And some of them had much bigger audiences than hers. It could be that the killers were big fans, or maybe they were fixated on her. Whatever it was, I figured that, having achieved a good run for the story nailing the treasurer, they’d use her again when they next had something to air. And that was a danger for Acheson, as I saw it. If she irritated them in the way she handled one of their stories — or, worse, if she made them angry — they might react in an extreme way, and we’d already seen what they could do. So although I had no evidence to support my fears, I made straight for McHenry’s desk when I got back to the room.

‘What’s on your mind, Glass?’ he said, his eyes on me, but his fingers poised over his keyboard.

‘There’s a few things, actually,’ I said. ‘So I’ll wait till you’re finished there before I go through them.’

I took a seat beside his desk, and unwrapped my tawook and took a big bite out of it. McHenry hated people eating in front of him, and he soon pushed his chair away from his desk and told me to get on with it.

‘First, why don’t we get some European accents on tape?’ I said, still chewing. ‘Down at the Migrant Resource Centre or somewhere? Then run them past Acheson for a possible ID?’

‘Good idea,’ he said, writing the suggestion on a pad next to his keyboard. ‘Next.’

‘I’ve been thinking about the plastic sleeve that Acheson’s documents came in. And the cassette case that might’ve been stored with it. Janet Wilson’s the only one we can talk to now who handled Proctor’s file on the night of the party, and she says the thing was closed all the time it was with her. But I think we should assemble the CCTV footage, just to be sure she didn’t have a peek inside.’

‘Good. I’ll get Audio-Visual on to it. Next.’

‘You’ve got the profiler coming in tomorrow. Can I just say that, even without a psych degree, it’s clear to me that we’re not looking for serial killers here. There’s nothing random about what’s happening. These people have murdered a cabinet minister. And it’s a fair bet they’ve now got Proctor — the prime minister’s top advisor.’

‘That’s not right,’ said McHenry, his voice full of challenge. ‘Just think about it for a minute. No one knows where Proctor is, but, given what happened to Wright, we have to assume that he’s been taken by the same people. That’s safety first. But to take it as fact? That’s just sloppy.’

I wasn’t sure if McHenry was prosecuting an argument, or if he really thought that Proctor could be anywhere other than with Wright’s killers. He must have seen the doubt in my eyes because he proceeded to clear that one up for me.

‘Look, Glass, let’s assume that Proctor didn’t do a runner and that he’s being held against his will. How do we know it’s the same people who killed Wright? Mightn’t we be dealing with a copycat here? Or maybe Proctor killed Wright, and now someone’s doing a vengeance job on him. Or if Proctor was in on the Wright murder, maybe his accomplices have decided to do him in for some reason? There’s any number of possibilities, so let’s leave speculation to the journos. We operate in the real world, and we’ve got to work this through as though he’s been abducted. But don’t close yourself off to anything. What else?’

‘I think we should interview Lansdowne,’ I said — a suggestion that drew a groan from McHenry. ‘If you assume for a moment that Proctor is being held by Wright’s killers, then their real target in all of this is obvious. It’s the prime minister. And if he wasn’t so well protected, I reckon he would have been their first kill, and probably their only one.’

‘And why do you say that?’

‘Who’s the common link between Wright and Proctor? It’s Lansdowne. Who was the source of their power? He was. Were they up to anything that he didn’t know about? Probably not. Lansdowne’s a control freak. I mean, he is the prime minister, so by definition he’s into control, but from what I understand …’

‘From your mate Stevo …’

‘No, not from Stevo — from listening to the political commentators and reading what they say. All of them reckon that Lansdowne likes his hand on the tiller. At all times. He’s a micro-manager who doesn’t let go. So, assuming he knows what’s going on in his government, shouldn’t we be fronting him as a matter of priority?’

‘Anything else?’ said McHenry, his eyes flitting between me and his screen.

‘I’m also convinced we should be putting surveillance on Jean Acheson. She’s spoken to one of the killers, or someone pretty close to them. That makes her the only person with that sort of link. There’s also the fact that when they wanted her to have those receipts, they left them in a fairly obscure place, but one that she knows well. That says to me they’re keeping an eye on her, and, as you know, predatory killers often end up targeting people they’re fixated on. If I was drawing up a list of their possible next targets, I’d put Acheson right up there.’

‘Along with Lansdowne,’ said McHenry.

‘He’d be their number one, as I say.’

‘So, surveillance on Acheson, eh?’ he said, smiling wearily. ‘And if we did tail her, we’d have to tap her phone, too, I guess. And monitor her emails. The question is, where are you going to find a Federal Court justice who’ll approve a fishing expedition like that? And even if you found one, you saw how Acheson’s colleagues went off when we just wanted to talk to her. Commissioner Brady wouldn’t want a repeat of that — not unless we could guarantee him something.’

‘Okay, okay. It was just a thought. And what about Lansdowne?’

‘Brady’s one step ahead of you there. He raised it with the PM’s people this morning, and he expects to hear back from them first thing tomorrow. As for who’ll be in on it, the commissioner tells me you ruffled the PM’s feathers the other day, and he’s not keen on a repeat. So, if and when we speak to the prime minister, you should consider yourself a doubtful starter. Now, if there’s nothing else …’

There was plenty else, but I restrained myself. My run-in with the PM was always going to come back to bite me, but using it to ban me from the team that would interview him was vindictive and ridiculous. McHenry went back to his screen, but all I could do was sit there, trying to calm myself. There were two other things I’d planned to raise with him. The first was to push him again for access to Proctor’s dirt files. But, as I was in no mood for another backhander, I held fire on that one, and moved on to the second thing — getting a psych out to Lake George to have a chat to Tom Hanley.

McHenry said he’d read the Hanley interview, and seen my recommendation, and he agreed a psych assessment was warranted. He said he’d organise it.

Back at my desk, I let the full implications of what McHenry had said sink in. The Lansdowne interview could be crucial to the case, but it looked like I’d be excluded from it, all on the whim of that pumped-up little bastard Brady. The thought of it made me furious. Yes, I’d stuffed up, to a degree, but not so badly that it should limit my role in the investigation.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to put a cap on my anger. But I was too worked up. I went to the kitchen and got a coffee, hoping that the activity and another dose of caffeine would help. But they didn’t. In fact, by the time I got back to my desk, my emotions were bubbling close to the surface.

I sat and did more deep breathing, telling myself that my anger would dissipate. It always took time. I had a mantra: these thoughts weren’t me; they were external to me; they did not control me; they were mine to control. I knew I could do whatever I chose to do — and, to show it, I gritted my teeth and pushed on with my work. I called Tony McManus, the police liaison at Foreign Affairs, and asked him for a check on Sylvie Hanley. Essentially, I was after confirmation that she was dead. While it was possible that Tom Hanley was one of our killers, he seemed barely organised enough to feed himself. If I could establish with certainty that Sylvie Hanley had died in Thailand, we could probably rule a line under the whole Mondrian business, and Tom Hanley as well, and forget about taking a psych out to see him.

Next, I began writing up the Acheson interview. It was a pretty straightforward account of our contact with her; but the further I got into it, the more it became clear to me that McHenry was making a huge mistake in not backing surveillance on her. If the killers were watching her, our doing the same would get us closer to them. It would also give her some protection.

As the afternoon wore on, my anger at missing the Lansdowne interview melded with my growing anger at McHenry over his refusal to keep an eye on Acheson. The boss was pandering to Brady’s fear of negative publicity. And Brady was being far too sensitive to the needs of his political masters. Especially when it came to who might best interview the PM. These festering thoughts got such a hold on me that I was forced to put the Acheson write-up aside a few times. And by late afternoon, I was furious with Brady, and ropeable with McHenry for having done his bidding.

Then it dawned on me — there was a way of getting around McHenry’s ruling. Maybe I could keep an eye on Acheson. At night. In my off hours. It would be limited protection, but better than nothing. And the killers moved at night, so if our paths crossed while I was shadowing her, I could nab them, or call in the troops. And even if I just spotted them from a distance, it would at least give us something to go on, which was more than we had now. And whatever way it played out, I was sure I could handle myself.

The main risk was, Acheson might spring me. If she did, I’d no doubt be kicked off the case. Or, worse, it could mean my job. But I was confident I could shadow her undetected. Then it struck me that I’d never risked my career like this before. So why was I considering such a dire move? Did I really think that a limited tail on Acheson could help us solve the case, or was my anger at McHenry and Brady clouding my judgment? And what about Acheson? Was my fascination with her the real reason I was considering this half-baked mission? I mulled it all over a bit more, then I resolved that, despite my misgivings, I had to put some time into watching her. And I felt much better having reached that decision.

I got the make and plates of Acheson’s vehicle from motor registry, and took a note of her Kingston address. I was back to reading the latest entries on PROMIS when Tony McManus called with the details on Sylvie Hanley.

‘She left Australia thirteen years ago,’ he said. ‘Almost to the day. She was down as a temporary resident of Thailand. Then she was listed as missing in the north of the country. There was a search for her, and then the file was amended to “Missing, presumed dead”. I guess by now we’d say she’s definitely dead.’

‘Why “definitely”?’ I said, taking the photo of the Hanley children out of its plastic sleeve. ‘People disappear themselves all the time and change their identities. Why not her?’

‘We did look into that, but we found no reason for Sylvie Hanley to slip out of sight. She had no police record. No outstanding fines. She didn’t have a family she wanted to escape from. Both her parents were deceased, and the dispersal of their assets didn’t cause any dispute between her and her brother Thomas. It seems they were very close. And there was no bank acquittal in the end, which made her debt-free. The thing is, parts of Thailand were very, very dangerous at that time. She was just one of the unlucky ones.’

So, Sylvie Hanley was shaping as another doubtful lead. Then again, a suspected death without a body left a lot of questions hanging, especially when a live Sylvie Hanley had a strong motive for murdering Susan Wright. If our other leads didn’t start producing soon, McHenry would have to dispatch a team to Thailand to try to establish Sylvie’s fate. It would probably prove a futile effort, given the time that had elapsed, and I hoped like hell that if he did send a team over there, he’d leave me at home.

Jean Acheson’s face filled the mute TV screen at the front of the room, and then the program credits rolled. She was signing off for the day. I packed my papers away and told McHenry I was taking a few hours off. Then I raced to my car.

It was dark by the time I reached Parliament House. I used a police pass to gain access to the underground carpark on the Senate side of the building, and reversed my old sedan between two media vehicles parked near the boom gates. Fifteen minutes later, Acheson drove by in a black VW hatch, the boom gate lifted, and she turned left onto Parliament Drive. I gave her a ten-second start, and then I followed her.

Acheson drove off the Hill and turned left onto State Circle. She looked to be heading home to Kingston. I slipped in behind a van and changed lanes at the last minute as she turned right onto Canberra Avenue. My only previous experience of tailing a vehicle had been as part of a team, but going solo seemed easy enough. I slowed and followed her into Giles Street, then watched as she disappeared under an apartment block fifty metres further up. I stopped the car a few doors past her place, got out, and saw the lights come on in the penthouse suite.

I needed a hide from which to observe Acheson’s building for a few hours. The most obvious place was a native garden fronting a tall brick wall about twenty metres up the road from her block. It had a good view of both the entrance to the building and the penthouse. I slipped in behind the bushes, leaned against the wall, and resigned myself to a couple of hours standing stock-still in the cold.

However, twenty minutes later, the lights in the penthouse went out. A minute or so after that, Acheson came down the stairs at the front of the block. She looked up and down the street before heading off towards the Kingston shops. I gave her a thirty-metre start, and then I followed her through the shadows, avoiding the light of street lamps. I paused regularly to assess the street for any threat, but saw nothing.

From the way she stepped it out, it seemed that Acheson knew where she was going. She slowed when she got to the shopping strip, and paused at a real estate agent’s window. After a few minutes, she moved down Kennedy Street, past the gift shops and restaurants. I shadowed her from the opposite side of the street, using an unbroken line of parked cars for cover.

I figured she must be heading around to Green Square, but near the end of Kennedy Street she stopped outside an Italian restaurant. She read a menu tacked next to the door, and went in. Luckily, the Bella Roma had an all-glass frontage, so I was able to watch the skinny waiter show Acheson to a table. She ordered, and then took a paperback from her bag and read it while she waited for her food.

Two groups of celebrity spotters saw her through the glass, and stopped to stare, but she stayed hunched over her book, ignoring them. During the weeks that parliament sat, the better eateries around Kingston and Manuka fed a lot of Australia’s most powerful people. These cabinet ministers and senior journos were able to eat and socialise without the locals staring at them. Only tourists did that.

When her pasta dish arrived, Acheson had the waiter bring her a glass of white wine. She made short work of both, paid the bill, and was soon back out on the footpath. She walked to the end of Kennedy, and I lost sight of her as she went around the corner into Eyre Street.

She had to be heading for Green Square this time, probably to a coffee joint. I jogged across the road and raced around the corner into Eyre Street. Then my guts went into freefall — there was no one on the footpath ahead of me. I ran down the street, hit the brakes, and scanned a service lane that ran through the middle of the block of shops. But she wasn’t down there, either. Could she really have been abducted right under my nose? Was that even possible? Then came a voice that hit me like a whack on the head.

‘Looking for me, detective?’ said Acheson, her tone more accusing than questioning.

I swung around and there she was, peering out from behind one of the fat white pillars that framed the entrance to the lane. My goose was cooked.

Blood Oath subscription news

Friday 2 August, 8.00pm

Did Feeney really go the fiddle?

by Simon Rolfe

Having been a victim of false rumours myself, I know how damaging they can be. The subtle rumour eats away at your reputation, reducing it to rusty fragments that blow away on the wind. The massive rumour is like a pipe-bomb that takes your head off.

Well, I can now reveal that someone has lobbed a highly explosive rumour at Opposition Leader Lou Feeney. According to this rumour, when Mr Feeney was at St Phillip’s College in Brisbane, he introduced some junior boys to a novel form of show-and-tell that involved fire, dance, and general nakedness.

Given that we’re a week out from polling day, with contenders who are almost neck-and-neck, there’s no prize for guessing the motivation of the rumour-mongers.

So now I ask you, dear readers, if you’ve heard details of this Feeney rumour, please contact me. I’d like to know where you heard it, who told you, and where you were when you were told. I make this request, not only to advance the story, but also to uncover the dirty-tricks department that’s just reared its ugly head in this campaign.