AMY IS IN HER apartment when she hears the radio call-out. It comes in over her illegal police scanner. Robbery in progress at the South Beach Building Society. It’s half a mile away as the crow flies. She figures Bill Webber might show and hits the footpath, hearing alarms ringing. A thin column of smoke rises up over the Strip.
An ambulance roars past.
Fire engines.
Minutes later, she’s standing across the street from the mayhem.
A giant hole in the bank where the doors used to be.
A burning ute dragged onto the street.
Women in blood-soaked dresses.
Bodies in the glass.
Dazed cops, pale faces.
Bill Webber appears from the throng. He looks around, like all this mayhem is just more of the same. Amy locks onto his face—that thousand-yard stare of his—and feels an odd heat coming off him.
Who is this fucking guy?
Webber steps into the bank through the jagged hole. He crouches by a body on the floor, then gets up and disappears into the shadows.
Allan Watts owns a place on the Esplanade and Amy hasn’t had a look at him, face to face, since Colleen put her on the case. She takes the lift up to the Silver Fish restaurant where the dinner trade is filling in. If the crime scene down the road is news, it isn’t bothering anyone up here.
Amy sits at the bar and nurses a coke. Down the other end of the room, a dozen men are piled up around the entryway to the bathrooms. Some of Colleen’s girls are with them. The men are cops. That stink is all over them. Not local guys, though. City cops. Five minutes in, one of them peels off and comes over. A sweaty body piled into a blue silk shirt. ‘Hey, babe,’ he says, hammered.
Amy shakes her head and tells him to get lost.
To his credit, he takes the hint.
She stirs her drink and thinks about how her father owns a piece of this place. Something about it doesn’t figure. Old Victor’s a toff. It’s hard to imagine him in here, sitting shoulder to shoulder with cashed-up coppers and callgirls. In fact, it’s hard to imagine him anywhere these days, except in that haunted house of his. He’s weak now and doesn’t want everyone knowing it. Amy can’t remember the last time she saw him out in public. It’s a blessing.
Two Japanese women come into the bar and try to chat with her about the coast. ‘Girls, it’s been a day,’ Amy says, by way of piss off.
To ward off everyone else, she reviews the day’s notes: her photos. That safe in Bill Webber’s garage. A follow-up with Dirty Doug. Her sister.
Amy takes an iced water to the public payphone in the corner and calls a man called Mr Sally. He’s a shonky locksmith from Main Beach. A real piece of shit.
‘Yes?’ Mr Sally says, but it’s just the machine playing tricks.
Amy shakes her head. ‘I have work for you. Call me back.’
She hangs up and lights a smoke. Still standing there by the phone, she clocks Allan Watts walking through the bar area carrying a tray of beers like the world’s most expensive wait staff. Amy slips in behind him, trailing Allan through the dining area to a small unmarked door. Amy waits a beat, then follows him inside. There’s a quiet hallway beyond. Doors leading off, a glass portal on each. All of them dark except for one down the far end.
Amy makes her way over and looks in.
Men in a private lounge. She knows the faces.
Police Commissioner Terry Lewis.
Deputy Commissioner Arthur Sorensen.
Inspector Harry Bower.
It seems Allan Watts is hosting the absolute apex of the Queensland Police Force in his private room. They sit in front-row seats up against the window glass, watching the Strip go to hell in the streets below.
Harry Bower points down at the South Beach Building Society and says something.
Lewis nods robotically.
Allan tops up Sorensen’s drink and the man barely notices, so intent is he on the scene below. Red siren lights flash in Sorensen’s glasses. He sneers at the world outside. Amber flame-light across his face.