Sleight Malice (26 page)

She turned the
antenna around in her hands. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look any different.”

“Precisely.
Your original antenna was replaced with that one, which has a miniature pinhole
camera and transmitters inbuilt.”

“But I don’t
get it. What would anyone hope to gain from filming me? What did they expect to
see?” She huffed. “Wild, rampant sex?”

Again, he
avoided her gaze. How bad could it be? “What exactly did you see, Fergus?”

He tugged at
his shirt collar. “It’s probably best you see for yourself.” He fished in his
pocket and came out with a black-and-silver memory stick. “I received an email
today with it attached.”

“From who,
though?” she asked, palming the memory stick. “And why send it to you?”

“No one I know;
or at least no one upfront enough to identify themselves. I’m sure it was a
fictitious email address. And why they chose me to send it to? I’m still
working on that.”

He followed her
down the stairs, but then excused himself to go the toilet. Convenient call of
nature or otherwise, she offered a silent thanks and detoured into her office.
She plugged the memory stick into one of her computer’s free USB ports and
double-clicked the file titled PB00013.WMV. In the seconds it took for the
media player to boot-up, she wondered if that meant there were twelve other
files out there somewhere.

The video
started with her peeling off her boots, then her socks. She watched herself
undressing, and though furious her privacy had been breached, felt it was
innocent enough. After all, she wasn’t doing anything lewd and her mother had
always told her the human body was nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, it wasn’t
the way she intended Fergus seeing her naked for the first time…

She leaned
forward, her eyes widening.
No, don’t bend over
, she willed the image on
the screen.
Too late
. She clapped her hands over her eyes, peering
through her fingers, an embarrassed titter escaping her lips. No wonder Fergus
had been reticent. He had seen parts of her body, she had never seen – until
now, that is. Thank God, she hadn’t insisted on Fergus telling all in Brandon’s
presence. To make sure she hadn’t been mistaken, she replayed the clip. Twice.

Shaking her
head, she copied the file to her hard drive and, removing the memory stick,
went to check Fergus hadn’t flushed himself down the toilet.

“Come out, come
out, wherever you are,” she sang out, in an effort to lighten an awkward
situation.

Fergus emerged
from the kitchen, beer in hand, his mouth twisting into a nervous smile. “As
they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

“And some.” She
handed him the memory stick. “Now you know what I look like with my clothes on…
and off. I’m really pleased you didn’t try to keep it from me. And you’d tell
me if there were any more, right?”

His head
jerked. “Definitely.”

“Sorry, I had
to ask. I don’t know if you noticed, but the file is number thirteen of God
knows how many. Of course, the rest of them could be so boring they were
scrapped…” Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh no, I hope whoever’s behind this
hasn’t thought to post any clips on the Internet for all and sundry to see.”

“Surely not,”
he said, his face and tone reflecting her own anxiety. “Is there any way you
can check? Do a search of some sort?”

She shook her
head. “Even if I knew what to search on, it’s probably too soon to have been
picked up by the various search engines’ spiders and bots.” She buried her face
in her hands, smothering a frustrated scream. Who was doing this to her? And
why? She dropped her hands and looked up. “None of this makes any sense. You’re
the detective; what are we missing?”

“Do you have a
notepad and pen? If we put our heads together and lay out everything we know on
paper, who knows what we’ll come up with.”

Anything was
better than doing nothing
, she thought, as
collecting her glass of wine from the bench, she motioned for Fergus to follow
her through to her office. Pushing her ergonomic computer chair his way, she
rolled her pink exercise ball over to the desk and perched on it, gripping the
edge of the desk for support. Exercise in itself.

Fergus had
picked up a pen and was studying the notepad lying next to her keyboard. She
lunged for it, almost sending the exercise ball hurtling one way and she across
Fergus’s lap. “Potential clients.”

“They’re all
Perth numbers.”

“So?”

“If you want my
help with this, you have to be honest with me.”

“Even if it
means incriminating myself?”

“I’m not about
to arrest you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m a civilian now, not a
cop.”

“Yes, but Kim
is.”

“And you think
I would dob you in?”

She lowered her
gaze, peering at him through half-closed lids.

“Fair enough,”
he said. “But you know I’ve always had your best interests at heart and I would
never pass on information that could be used against you in any shape or form.
I haven’t told Kim or anyone else about the video clip, because I wanted to
talk to you first—”

“What?” She
baulked at the idea of Kim and Grant seeing her stark naked and more. She’d
never be able to look either of them in the eye again.

“Think about it
logically: the police have resources and powers we don’t. Don’t you want to
find out who’s behind this?”

She bounced to
her feet. “Not at the expense of my dignity.”

“If it ends up
on the Internet, don’t you think that will be the least of your worries?”

“So this
putting our heads together is all for what if you’re just going to hand the
video file over to the police?”

“We’re all on
the same side: it’s not an us and them thing.” His mouth twitched. “Even if
Grant does give that impression.”

Fergus was
right, of course, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. “If you swear to me
you won’t pass on that video to anyone until I say it’s okay, then I’ll tell
you what those phone numbers are.” Not a fair trade she knew, but it would buy
her time. Although she was the subject of the video, Fergus had been the
recipient, which gave him every right – with or without her approval – to take
it straight to the police. “Deal?”

His mouth moved
from side to side, his gaze sweeping her face. “Deal.”

She nudged the
exercise ball aside, taking its place at the desk. Standing gave her a height
advantage, if only marginal, and a sense of being in control, false as it was.
Anything to help her from collapsing into a quivering mess. Fergus didn’t
intimidate her, the situation did. It all felt so surreal, as if she had
slipped through a time dimension into a different reality from which she
couldn’t escape.

“Okay, here
goes,” she said before she could change her mind. “Don’t say I didn’t warn
you.” She leaned down and extracted Laura’s personnel file from the desk’s
bottom drawer, Coyne Systems’ crisp-blue logo prominent on the front cover, and
tossed it on the desk.

Fergus’s
eyebrows rose. “What’s this?”

“Exactly what
it looks like.”

He picked it up
and flicked through a few pages. “Maybe the question should’ve been, how did
you come by it?”

“You don’t want
to know. Let’s just say this is the part where I invoke my right to be silent
for fear of incriminating myself.”

He didn’t say
anything for a moment, continuing to thumb through the file. “But what did you
expect to find?”

Taking a swig
of wine, then another, she found herself babbling, her words running together
as she tried to explain her reasoning: the disillusionment with the police,
their lack of progress; the article on victimology; her need to do something.
“If we can track someone down from Laura’s past, they may be able to help us
locate a family member. Isn’t that the least we can do?” She took a breath.
“And, as remote as it is, it might also provide a clue to why someone would
want to harm Laura, if indeed it was her and not Ryan who was the primary target.
We have to try. I have to try.”

“And the list
of phone numbers?”

“From the White
Pages: possible matches for Ted Ansell, the man Laura gave as her referee.”

“That’s if he’s
still living in Western Australia,” Fergus said. “I get the impression Laura didn’t
talk much about her past.”

“Neither of
them did. Occasionally they would let something slip, but they had this
philosophy about always looking forward and never back. Laura used to say the
past is where it belonged: in the past.”

“Or maybe it
was because their past held something they would rather forget.”

Crossing her
arms, she shifted her weight from one leg to the other and back again.
“Cynicism might well be a prerequisite for your line of work, but you forget
they met less than four years ago. Laura and I had already been friends for two
years by then.”

“Maybe so, but
doesn’t it seem the least bit odd to you that they both heralded from Perth,
had no family to speak of, and were secretive about their past?”

“No, not
really. Just the same as I don’t think it’s odd you and Kim were both born in
Victoria, became police officers and are secretive about your past.”

Fergus laughed.
“Point taken. All the same, in my game you soon learn not to take everything at
face value.” He picked up the notepad. “How many of these numbers have you
tried?”

“None. Brandon
turned up before I could get that far. And I certainly didn’t need him giving
me the third degree about what I was up to after the day I had.”

“What are we
waiting for? Perth’s two hours behind, so it’s not too late.” He tore the page
with the phone numbers in half. “Here, you try those and I’ll phone these,” he
said, already punching numbers into his mobile phone.

Her jaw
dropped. One minute he seemed to be brick-walling her, the next he was helping
her. As she left the room, taking her list of three numbers, she heard him ask
if he was speaking to the Ted Ansell who used to work for MSRH Consulting. She
paused, waiting for the outcome.

Silence then,
“Thank you for your time. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

One down
, Desley thought, continuing on through to the kitchen,
four to
go
.

Her call to the
first number on her list went straight to an answering machine: “Hi, this is
Edwina. Sorry I can’t take your call right now. You know the drill.” Unless Ted
had undergone a sex change operation, Edwina wasn’t her man. She waited for the
beep anyway, leaving a message on the off chance Edwina knew of or was related
to a Ted.

The next number
rang out.

She rang the
last number on her list: “You have reached Telstra home messages 101 service
for a private number.” She hung up and, in case she had misdialed the first
time, rekeyed the numbers.

“Do you want
the good news or the bad news?”

She
disconnected her call and swung around. “Always the good news.”

“The good news,”
Fergus said, “is I know where Ted Ansell is.” He must have read her face.
“Don’t worry, he’s alive and well.”

She rocked
forward on her elbows, her clenched fists pressed against her forehead. “So
what’s the bad news then?”

“He’s trekking
in the Himalayas. His sister says he’ll be out of contact for at least another
fortnight, but she’s given me an email address.” He pulled out one the stools
next to her and sat down. “Don’t look so glum; it could have been worse.”

“I know. It
just seems we run into one dead end after another, as if the universe is
conspiring against us…” She laughed. “Listen to me. I’m into conspiracy
theories now. What will I be thinking of next? That aliens abducted Laura and
Ryan, and torched their home to get rid of any evidence?”

“Works for me.”

She lifted her
head to look at him. His body angled toward her, one forearm resting on the
breakfast bar, the other in his lap. She caught a whiff of citrus and warm
spice. He smiled, his green eyes twinkling, and all she could think of was how
his naked body would feel against hers. That confirmed it: she was delirious.
She gave her head a quick, sharp shake and stood up. “Caffeine, I need
caffeine,” she said, stepping in a wide arc past Fergus.

“Make that
two.” He stared at the notepad on the breakfast bar in front of him, the pen
see-sawing between his right hand’s index and middle fingers. “You’re right: we
are missing something, but what? You didn’t receive that anonymous email until
after you started your search for the Howqua cottage’s owner – cause and
effect. But what prompted the woman, whoever she is, to break into your home,
go upstairs, plant the hidden camera, wait until you came home, steal your car,
make the hoax call to me, dump the car and finally, email me footage of you in your
bedroom?”

“I don’t think
stealing my car was part of the original plan,” Desley said, locking the
espresso machine’s filter into place. “The woman couldn’t have known I’d leave
it in the driveway with the keys in it, or even what time I’d get home. In
fact, I think she could’ve still been in the house when I arrived back, and
that’s why the front door was ajar. She couldn’t go back out the way she came,
so had to make her escape through the garage.”