BRUNO AND REYNOLDS GRIND through a morning of dead ends. No bodies, no murder weapon. Phillip O’Grady is a magistrate, a bloke with a thousand enemies. But no one jumps out. No family grievances (they call around), and no busted business deals. No money owed. Samson O’Grady—the sole child—is a private school kid. He teaches tennis for a living. An hour ago, Reynolds posted an APB for the family’s missing car: a dark blue Holden Commodore. It’s a Hail Mary because everyone is focused elsewhere. The bank heists have all the juice.
Out of ideas, Bruno and Reynolds sit in silence at Bruno’s desk, reheating the paperwork.
They trawl through bank records.
They look at recent parolees that Phillip locked up.
Not much is said.
The detective branch secretary sidles up. ‘Reynolds, you’ve got a call.’
He takes it over at his desk.
Reynolds comes back smiling. He pulls his chair close. ‘You’re not going to believe this. The print work came in on the bloke you beheaded in the bank. There’s a match.’
‘You’re fucking joking?’
‘Nope. His name is Seth Blackwell. Ring any bells?’
It doesn’t. The two detectives take the name to the records room. Blackwell has a file. Reynolds opens it up and scans the pages. ‘There you go. Look.’
Seth Blackwell has an outstanding warrant and an aggravated assault charge dating back to ’79. He beat a man unconscious in the carpark of the Beenleigh rum distillery.
‘It’s a start,’ says Bruno.
Seth Blackwell lived with his grandmother in a timber-board house behind Miami Beach. The place looks safe enough from the outside. Just the one car in the carport. The windows and blinds are wide open. If the other two robbers are inside, they’re taking a relaxed approach to lying low.
Bruno watches the place through the windscreen of their unmarked. ‘Should we call it in?’
‘Let’s have a look,’ says Reynolds.
Blackwell’s grandmother is home and she’s a salty old bint. ‘What do you two want?’ she says, peering down at them from a window. She lets them in, and it turns out she’s not aiding and abetting anyone. Nor are there any tears for her wayward grandson. Could be the shock, but when she hears about Seth’s passing, her response is, ‘I bloody well said he’d wind up dead if he didn’t quit being such a dickhead.’
They search Seth’s room and find evidence.
A bag of smack.
An illegal firearm.
A black wig and a pair of blue trackpants worn to a previous robbery.
‘This is good,’ says Reynolds. ‘One down, three to go.’
‘Three?’ says Bruno, thinking of the trio in the building society.
‘Someone’s driving them.’
Bruno calls it in via the landline in the kitchen while Reynolds makes the old lady a cup of tea. As the water heats, he says, ‘How’d this happen, Mrs Blackwell?’
‘It’s the family business,’ says the old woman.
As told, Seth comes from a long line of deadbeats. His grandfather, his father and his brother are all in the joint. The mother’s long gone, but not much better. She did time for fraud. ‘It’s just me left now,’ says the old woman. ‘He’ll be the last of them.’
‘Anywhere else he stays when he’s not around here?’
‘Nah.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘He has women come and go. There’s one that was around a bit, a while back. Chloe something.’ The old woman gets up and checks the nooks of a desk by the phone. She produces a notepad and says, ‘Chloe Kennedy. That’s it.’
Bruno asks if he can look through the notepad. ‘You write everything down, ma’am?’
‘Everything I want to remember.’
‘Why’d you write her name down?’ says Reynolds.
The woman thinks on it, eyes blank. She looks at the pad in Bruno’s hands. ‘Did I write it down? It could have been Seth.’
Bruno looks at the page. It’s just the girl’s name with the word cunt pencilled underneath. He turns the page around to show her.
‘Oh yeah, that’s me. There you go,’ she says, by way of explanation.
For a few minutes, Reynolds gently quizzes her about the various dates of the previous robberies. He gets absolutely nowhere. She can’t remember any of it.
‘Reynolds?’ says Bruno quietly.
The detective walks around the table and stands beside him. He looks down at the open page in Bruno’s hand. It reads, O’Grady.
Bruno turns the page around and shows her.
‘That’s not my writing. That’s Seth’s.’
Bruno turns more pages. There’s a list in the same handwriting.
A list of names, some of them crossed out.
Wally Stewart
Michael Miller
Alfie Baker
Jeffrey Chapman
Walter Pronzini
Bruno looks up at Reynolds. ‘You recognise any of these?’
‘Not off the cuff,’ he says, transcribing them into his own notebook.
Sirens announce themselves in the distance, followed by the sound of cars pulling up in the street.
‘I’m not in any trouble, am I?’ says the old woman.
‘No, luv,’ says Reynolds. ‘You’ve been a big help, but this place is about to be crawling with police. How about you come down to the station with me for a spot of late lunch? I can help you with the calls, if you need to make any.’
‘I could use a shandy.’
‘Whatever you need, luv.’
‘They’re not going to wreck the place, are they?’
‘I’ll tell them to go easy,’ says Reynolds. He helps her up.
Bruno’s surprised. Reynolds is unflinchingly gentle with the old woman. It’s not an act, either. Absolutely nothing about the man’s grim demeanour flickers. He just helps her.
‘You got your purse now?’
Bruno clears away a chair so they can pass by.
‘Here we go,’ says Reynolds.
Halfway along the hall, the woman stops. ‘He’s dead, right? You told me that, didn’t you? My grandson is dead.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ says Reynolds.