Feeding the Demons (27 page)

The girl staggered up the embankment, blackberry hoops tearing at her naked thighs. She didn’t care, any more than she cared that she was only wearing a filthy shirt. Almost blind from twenty-four hours in the dark, she squinted towards where she could hear the roar of the freeway. She had no idea how far she’d struggled. All she knew was that she must put as much distance between herself and that place and the men as quickly as possible. It had been a miracle that she’d been able to get away at all and only because her unconsciousness had lightened just enough for her to realise he’d gone. When she was certain he’d left the house, she’d fumbled until she’d torn the bandage from her eyes. This was the only chance she had. She’d been able to rouse herself from the stupor and, still with her wrists bound in front of her, had managed to climb out of the window and half fall, half jump from the upper storey through the tree which had both cut her badly and broken her fall. Winded and sobbing, she’d crawled away. But she was free. Away from the horror and the nightmare. Through the swirling instability of her mind, the thought of his return fuelled her with preternatural strength, so that now she was clawing her way up the steep rise where she could just see the tops of big rigs whooshing past through the slits of her swollen eyes. Someone would stop for her, she prayed. Someone would take her home.

•

Kevin Jansen, chatting on his CB to his mate, Mad Dog, noticed something small and pale a couple of hundred metres down the Liverpool highway.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a girl. On the road. In the fucken road.’

‘What’s she doing?’

‘She’s waving. In the middle of the road.
Mate, I’m doing a hundred and ten
!’ The huge brakes smacked onto the eighteen wheeler. The scream of metal on metal drowned Kevin’s curses and the rig swerved as he fought to control it. ‘Get off the road!
Get off the road you stupid fucken kid
!’
It seemed to Kevin that the half-naked girl was rushing towards him, as if on a conveyor belt, ever closer to the rig’s massive front end. He leaned on the horn, and the sound of it deafened him.

‘
Please get off the road
!’ Kevin screamed as the girl’s terrified eyes rushed towards him. The girl fell back and the rig screeched past her, sliding to a halt fifty metres away, just off the road. Kevin put his hazard lights on and jumped out of the cabin. He could hardly see through the thick dust cloud churning around him. Coughing and blinking, he ran back to where the girl lay. As he came closer, he started tearing off his jacket to cover her. ‘Jesus Christ, girlie,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

In a few minutes, with the fainting girl beside him, now wrapped in a blanket, Kevin radioed to base. ‘Call the police,’ he said. ‘Tell them I’m bringing a girl with me to Campbelltown police station. She’s in a terrible state. She says her name’s Amy Perrault.’

•

Angie waited impatiently while outside Mr and Mrs Perrault stayed in the room with Amy and the doctor. She hated the stench of hospitals; blood and disinfectant mixed with an air freshener that smelled of plastic peaches and fake vanilla. She turned away into a corner and rang Gemma.

‘We’ve got Amy Perrault. Somehow, she got away.’

‘Who took her?’

‘Can’t say yet. We’ve hardly spoken. She’s still in shock. The doctor says we can talk to her soon, if she stays stable. She’s been vomiting and they’re worried about dehydration. Especially after what she’s gone through the last twenty-four hours.’

‘Thank God,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s really good of you to let me know.’

‘There’s another thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You were right. There
are
two offenders involved.’

‘Who?’

‘That’s the problem. She only saw one face. Ken will go through the FACE system with her as soon as possible. She was blindfolded and out of it a lot of the time. Doctor says an opiate’s been used. Possibly codeine.’

It was nearly six o’clock before Angie played the videoed record of interview for the members of the Strike Force. Gemma, Colin, Bruno and several other divisional detectives watched the image on the monitor of Amy Perrault sitting up in bed, her parents on each side, giving an account of her abduction and the murder of her boyfriend. Mrs Perrault held her daughter’s hand. With her hair pulled back from her face and her pale blue nightie, Amy looked about twelve, thought Gemma.

‘Amy,’ Angie was saying on the monitor, ‘we want to let you rest as soon as possible. You’ve been through a terrific ordeal. I just want to say on behalf of the investigation team how impressed we are with your courage and endurance.’ The girl closed her eyes. ‘I just want to read you this statement that you’ve given us, and if any little extra thing comes to your mind, tell me. The more you can tell us, the quicker we can get the men responsible for what happened to you.’

The girl nodded. Both the swelling on one side of her face and the sedative slowed her responses. ‘I will,’ she whispered.

Angie stood up and walked over to the monitor. ‘Okay, everyone,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard what happened. How Amy and her boyfriend were pulled over by two men posing as plainclothes police officers in a vehicle using a flashing blue light. Those lights can be obtained fairly easily through security outlets. Then Amy was forced into the back seat of the other car with a blanket over her head, her boyfriend was shot, and the offenders took her to a house somewhere south of Sydney that we’re desperately trying to locate.’ She looked around at the group. ‘Amy thinks they drove for about an hour, but her perception could be way out. At that house, Amy was blindfolded and raped by one offender. We’re working on the fact that Killer Two has got to have a record somewhere. He’s aware of forensic law. He hasn’t revealed his face and he hardly speaks. When he does, it’s in this rasping whisper. All these factors indicate a history of criminality. He’s aware of police procedures. The Liverpool cops are pulling in all their known sexual criminals. Amy is an amazing young woman,’ she added. ‘She had no doubts about what her fate was going to be, and asked if she could write a last letter to her family. The offender agreed to this.’

•

‘Yes,’ said Kit when Gemma relayed the details to her shortly after in Kit’s kitchen. ‘It would play into his sense of the family connection. He would like that. From his position of domination and power, he is granting her a request concerning the family that he feels some connection with. He feels in a very powerful position.’

‘So,’ said Gemma, ‘she was given a notepad and a pencil and the blindfold was taken off. She wrote the letter. It is absolutely beautiful. So innocent. It is the last will and testament of a courageous young woman who demanded some sort of dignity from her tormentor. She’s given a good description of one of the offenders. Garry Copeland calls him “the subordinate personality”. But he’s the one we know as Killer One. She didn’t see the other man, Killer Two.’ Kit waited for her sister to continue. ‘She’s been shown pictures of Clive Mindell, but she says that the offender she saw definitely wasn’t him.’

‘He’s not involved, Gemma. He rang. He’s terrified, not homicidal.’

‘Angie still thinks he could be the one Amy didn’t see,’ said Gemma, ‘because of the physical evidence linking him to Bianca. They’ve extended the statewide search. Mindell had a friend from Melbourne.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kit. ‘He told me about an outing with him. They went to the Blue Mountains.’

‘Angie’s mob is asking around trying to locate him.’ Gemma sat at the kitchen table and picked at a dish of nuts. Kit faced her, leaning her back against the oven, warm from breadmaking.

‘The truck driver who picked her up,’ said Gemma, ‘told the cops Amy just appeared on the road out of nowhere. Some local uniforms checked that spot and not far away is a smaller road that used to feed onto the freeway. Amy thinks she crossed that road at some stage while she was getting away. She wasn’t sure how long she was on foot. We’ve got Liverpool police looking for a half-built boat.’

Kit’s eyebrow went up. ‘I’ll explain in a minute,’ said Gemma. ‘Fortunately, Amy tripped on the pathway on the way up to the house she was held at. The blindfold came off her face for a second. The house the cops are looking for is set back off the road and has a pathway with a gate leading from the road to the front of the house. We got Devlin the forensic hypnotist to work with Amy and he turned up a lot of very helpful detail about the house. Angie didn’t play the hypnosis video because it’s too slow.’ Kit nodded, understanding. It could take hours to elicit information from a witness. ‘Amy noticed a wire gate with some wrought-iron curls in the middle and a part of a letterbox. It’s dark red. Shaped like a little house. There’s a number on it that looks like sixty-two. Or sixty-five.’

‘I wonder,’ said Kit, moving away from the stove, ‘how many houses there are numbered sixty-two or sixty-five in the Liverpool area?’

‘There are two steps going up onto a verandah of very weathered wood. There is a door mat with “welcome” written on it. And there’s another step at the front door that is dark blue, with paint coming away in little strips. There’s a long, narrow opening for mail with brass around it. Very tarnished. However,’ Gemma continued, ‘the best thing is that there’s a partly built boat just visible over the fence on the right-hand side of the house we’re looking for.’ She stood up. ‘So there’s a good chance we can find this place. But now, I’ve got to get home. I’m feeding a kestrel.’

Gemma looked more closely at her sister. In her excitement about the new break in the investigation, she hadn’t really looked at Kit. ‘You’ve been crying,’ she said, noticing the red-rimmed eyes.

‘Will’s come back,’ Kit said. ‘He got my letter and he’s gone into Rehab.’

‘Oh Kittycat.’ Gemma held her sister close. ‘I’m so pleased. I’m so happy for you.’

‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ Kit said. She pulled out a hankie and blew her nose. ‘He’s not out of the woods by any means,’ she said. ‘I must remember that the figures for recovery from heroin addiction aren’t the best. But at least he’s in with a chance.’

‘Funny thing,’ said Gemma. ‘I was only remembering the other day how he used to come round to my place and just hang around. I never knew why he did that. We didn’t have much in common. Not that I minded him being there,’ she added. ‘I just never understood why he’d want to spend time with me.’

Kit looked at her with eyes bright with tears. ‘Because you didn’t judge him.’ She looked away. ‘Like I did. Like his father did,’ she said. ‘You loved him as he was. He had nowhere else to go.’

•

A large police search ended when the State Protection Group busted 62 Overland Street, Kimberly Vale, Liverpool early the following morning. Next door to the large, unfinished boat in the driveway, they found a completely vacant house. Investigations into the owners of the house proved fruitless. They were a Hong Kong couple who lived overseas and the real estate agents who handled the letting said that the rent was paid monthly by postal orders from a Mr Smith.

The place was sealed off and searched from top to bottom. Boxloads of items were taken out for examination, including a notepad and pencil. But the letter written by Amy to her parents was gone.

Angie’s phone rang late in the afternoon at the police centre. She was checking the progress of the investigation on the computer, noting whatever was still outstanding when Jason, one of the young detectives with Crime Scene, popped in. ‘Just went to an autoerotic out at Liverpool. All done up in suspenders and girdle. Still not a pretty sight. Especially with a knife sticking out of his chest.’

Angie nodded absently and went back to her work. She noted that Bruno still hadn’t reported the results of the doorknock at South Coogee. Then something made her stop checking the progress reports. Liverpool. A knife. She put her pen down. The two together may mean nothing, she thought, but some instinct alerted her. She went to the door. ‘Jason,’ she called. ‘Who’s handling it?’

‘Mark Condon. Liverpool detectives.’

‘Good,’ said Angie. ‘I’ve worked with him a few times.’ She immediately rang Mark, who wasn’t available, but she heard something that made her very interested indeed. ‘We’ve got a knife here,’ the policewoman on the other end of the line told her, ‘with a very distinctive hook at the end.’

‘I sent out a description of a knife like that,’ said Angie. ‘In connection with the murder investigation of the woman at Maroubra.’

‘You know how many of those come in?’ said the policewoman on the other end. ‘We haven’t got the time or the staff to follow up our own investigations properly, let alone chase after stuff from other areas.’

Angie knew it was true. ‘Where’s Mark?’ she asked.

‘He’s with the others still at the crime scene. Unless he’s gone to the morgue.’

‘What’s the address of the dead’un? I’ll be there,’ Angie said, scribbling it down. ‘Soon as I can.’

•

She picked up Gemma in her car, and in less than two hours they pulled up outside the address Mark had given her. Gemma and Angie got out and walked past the police car outside and up the side passage to the main entrance. It was a square, ugly block of four flats. Angie knocked on the door of number three upstairs. A young constable wearing disposable overalls let them in.

‘We’re just about to cut him down,’ said Mark, turning round to them, smiling as they walked into the flat. ‘We left him up for a while. He’s been a bit of a teaching aid.’ His squat body looked overdressed in a dark suit and tie and his hair was much greyer than last time Angie had see him. He wore pink rubber gloves rather than thin disposable ones. ‘Just about everyone’s been and gone,’ he paused, ‘except for him.’ He indicated a Crime Scene detective from Liverpool who was still squatting over his little suitcase, putting his phials and specimens away. Mark turned his attention back to the reason they were all gathered in the small flat with worn floral carpet and anonymous furniture. ‘Don’t see many deaths like this out here so I’ve been bringing people in to have a look before the contractors arrive.’

Gemma looked over her friend’s shoulder and into the room. The grotesque figure, shocking in lace garter belt and panties, dangled right in the centre of a large square doorway, turning slightly on the rope from which he hung, his head bowed onto his chest, over a large-cupped bra. One of his stockinged legs wore a high-heeled shoe; the other lay on the floor beneath him in a pool of blood. Just behind the hanging feet, a chair lay on its side. In the middle of his chest was a deep wound.

‘Who is he?’ Gemma asked.

‘Fellow called Adrian Adams,’ said Mark. ‘He’s been in and out of psych institutions for years. The local Mobile Treatment team know him very well.’

‘Adrian Adams!’ said Gemma, turning to her friend.

‘Yes,’ said Angie. ‘The fruit loop with the baby in the bath. It’s a small world.’ Gemma remembered the boxes of photographs of Kit. ‘Another one of your sister’s
clients.
’ Gemma didn’t respond.

‘At this stage, the doc doesn’t like to say what killed him,’ Mark was saying. ‘We’ll have a better idea after the PM.’

‘I’m no doctor,’ said Gemma, ‘but may I draw your attention to a bloody great stab wound in his chest?’

‘The doc isn’t sure whether it’s suicide or something else,’ Mark explained. ‘We’re still treating it as a suspicious death at this stage.’

‘It sure looks like homicide,’ said Gemma. ‘What do you think?’

Mark answered her by turning to Angie. ‘Remember that young bloke we were called out to at Padstow? The one we found with a bloody great knife sticking out of his chest and the local guys were treating it as murder?’

Angie nodded, explaining to Gemma. ‘It turned out he’d done it himself,’ she said. ‘Mark and me found the different attempts at the suicide note screwed up in his bedroom wastepaper bin.’

‘When you’ve been in the game for as long as I have,’ said Mark, ‘you find that all the things they say in the books about how it’s impossible for people to kill themselves in certain ways are wrong. I’ve seen everything. Talking of stabbings,’ he added, pointing with a pale-gloved finger. ‘That’s what came out of that hole in his chest.’

Angie walked over to a table where a bloody knife lay on a piece of fabric. She leaned closer to see it better. The serrations on one side of its blade ended in a little turned-up point. ‘
That’s my knife
!’ she said. ‘I’ll lay any odds that’s the one that killed Bianca Perrault.’ She felt a thrill of recognition and satisfaction that her instincts had been on track.

‘We can’t be sure of that,’ said Mark.

Angie hardly heard him as he picked up his mobile to ring the contractors again. Angie tried to make sense of it. ‘We’ve got this knife here with one man, and her pink panties with another one.’ She shook her head and pulled out a cigarette. ‘Killers One and Two? I don’t know what’s going on here. The Turkish water cats start looking better.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Gemma. ‘Think about it. If this joker in the high heels is one of them, he’s Killer One, the little creep with the camera and the perving who only killed when he was interrupted. Then he teams up with someone very nasty and now they’ve split up because Amy got away. Adrian Adams has offed himself like a third of all murderers do. And the other one’s still out there.’

‘Don’t you contaminate my crime scene,’ Mark said as Angie lit up.

She ignored him. ‘I want the details on that knife asap,’ she said. ‘When’s the post-mortem?’

‘Probably this afternoon. I don’t think we’ve got a backlog.’ He pulled his gloves off. ‘We’re talking to everyone in the building. He only had one visitor. A man who came here a couple of times.’ Angie and Gemma looked at each other. Killer Two? ‘We’re working on a description at the moment,’ Mark continued. ‘Someone’s talking to his mother, trying to get names from her. He doesn’t seem to have had any friends or acquaintances.’

‘No,’ said Angie. ‘He does—did—his socialising around four in the morning. Let me know the result of the PM the minute you get it.’ She considered. ‘It could be a self-administered knife blow just prior to toppling off the chair or it’s possible someone stabbed him and then strung him up.’ She considered further. ‘Or after he strung himself up.’

‘Not for us to say really. But look around you,’ said Mark. ‘Everything’s hunky dory. No sign of a struggle. Would you let someone do that to you without a fight?’ Gemma surveyed the place. The yellow lounge and chairs, the television, a formica table with four chairs still around it, the fifth now lying on its side near the dead man. Neat, bland, perfectly in order. Except for the extraordinary grotesque hanging from the door jamb.

The Liverpool Crime Scene detective slipped the knife into a labelled cardboard cylinder, pressed the lid on firmly and stood up. ‘We were called out to a guy once that the water police hauled out of Glebe Bay,’ he said. ‘He’d taken rat poison, weighed himself down with chains, shot himself and then toppled off the end of the wharf.’

‘Let me guess,’ Angie exhaled. ‘Could it be suicide?’

‘Actually, no,’ said the detective. ‘He practically fell into the water police boat. They raced him to the nearest ICU and he was up and out in a few days.’

•

Garry Copeland walked into Angie’s office two hours later, just as Gemma was about to leave. ‘Mark Condon rang from Liverpool while you were out,’ he said to Angie. ‘And I’ve just been talking to the PM doctor. There’s no doubt that the knife they found stuck in the chest of the suspicious death down Liverpool way is the same one that killed Bianca Perrault. Amy gave us a positive ID on Adrian Adams. She says he was the man she saw. Poor girl started shaking and crying the minute she saw the photograph, even when we told her he was well and truly dead. The boss wants us to wind down the investigation. We’ve got the murder weapon. We’ve got one killer accounted for. We keep looking for Clive Mindell and grab him when he shows up. It’s only a matter of time.’

But Angie shook her head. ‘What if the doctor comes up with murder rather than suicide?’

‘Well,’ said Garry. ‘Funny you should mention that. The doctor said the heart can keep going for a while. That he could have got himself all rigged up in his lace, stabbed himself, and bled a lot after he’d jumped off the chair. Or that someone else could have stabbed him while he was hanging—taking advantage of the situation as it were. The angle of the injury is ambiguous—could have been self-inflicted. Or not. The only prints on the knife are his.’

‘In either case that’d be expected.’

‘Yes,’ Garry Copeland agreed. ‘But I feel we’ve broken its back. The case, I mean.’

Gemma shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure,’ she said.

Angie frowned. ‘The boss’s already told me to wind down the investigation.’

On the way out of the room, Copeland stopped in his tracks. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Mark Condon told me to tell you that they found boxes of stuff when they went through Adrian Adams’ things. Photographs of women taken with long range cameras.’

Gemma felt the hairs on the back of her neck stiffen. ‘He had an obsession with my sister,’ she said. ‘We found boxes of her all over another flat of his.’

‘Maybe you should go and look through them, see if there’s anyone you know.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll do that.’