Who Killed Jimbo Jameson? (12 page)

“There must be someone who's missing her,” murmured Jack. “I just hope she doesn't have kids.”

He's sensitive, too.

Suzie came back with a print-out of her contacts. “These might come in handy, detective. And please let me know if you need to talk to me again. I hope you don't mind, but I'm feeling so ghastly with this cold that all I want to do is crawl back into bed and pull the blanket over my head. I just wish this would all go away.” She looked terrible, but she was a good sport.

“And if it won't go away, I'd like to jump on a plane to somewhere. Anywhere. I just don't want to be around when Vanessa realises what he's done to her. I just can't go through that again.”

“What do you mean?”

“She thought that Jim was about to announce that he was leaving Jacqueline and moving in with her and they would marry when the divorce was final. What she doesn't know is that Jim took a lease on a house in Mosman and he was moving in with Brooke.”

“Who is Brooke?” Her name hadn't come up yet.

“She's a flight attendant. On the company jet. Has been for a couple of years. She's old enough to know better but stupid enough to get involved with the boss.” She rolled her eyes. “She's been living it up in Mosman, and I hear has even joined the same gym as Anna because the Amex bill for the membership fees hit my desk last month. I just hope that Brooke hasn't taken any phone shots of Anna sweating in a leotard. Or in the shower. If Anna finds out about this – and she will find out – she'll implode. Because according to Anna, Mosman belongs to her. She's the skim decaf soy latte queen of Mosman.”

“Can you give me Brooke's contact details? We'll have to add her to the list. What's she like?”

“Different. Jim's women are always different. This one's twenty-nine, and has known Jim all his life. She thinks the sun shines out of his arse.” She rubbed her neck. “And I don't want to be around when Sam Bradley finds out that she's been sleeping with Jim.”

“Why?”

“Because she's Brooke Bradley. Because she's Sam Bradley's daughter.”

chapter twenty.

What did we have for thirteen days of investigation since the murder?

Two bodies. Three bullets. An entire pharmacopoeia of drugs, a few which were illegal in most countries. So far, the Task Force had interviewed sixty-three people. The ME kept saying he should be able to release the body for burial “soon”.

We finally found the widow Jacqueline holed up in a serviced apartment in Bondi Junction where she went to recover from a touch of laser freshening-up. She looked pretty good now that the redness had subsided, and had been hard at work with her agent, the Saint Peter person, happily planning a huge funeral with her as the tragic star of the day, followed by a Jimbo's Last Long Lunch at his favourite Paddington pub. If the body was released before Tuesday, the funeral should have been able to go ahead the following Thursday.

The Skype interview with Olivia Jameson was pretty useless and according to her, life was just lovely in Livvy-land. She was a paraplegic as a result of a skiing accident and wouldn't be attending the funeral. Hadn't been back to Australia in twenty years. She denied any knowledge of anyone who would want to harm her ex-husband. She said she didn't know anything about a fatwah, even though it had been started when he was married to her. Didn't know anything about death threats while she was married to him. She was either on industrial-strength anti-depressants or she wasn't telling us something. She claimed that the skiing accident that left her in a wheelchair was just that – a terrible accident – and that Jimbo had led the rescue party that brought her down off the mountain.

Except…when asked about her son, Gabbie, she was evasive and said that she didn't know where he was. I didn't believe her. She confirmed that the father and son had had many arguments about Gabbie's lifestyle and they had not talked for many years. I didn't believe her. I felt we needed to find Gabbie.

Every lead was coming up zilch. Zero. Yes, there were a lot of people who had wanted him dead, but they all had alibis and/or really good lawyers. At one point it was thought that a specialist could have come down from Hong Kong, but the Federal Police couldn't get their act
together for a couple of days and no-one of interest came up on the passport reports.

Dominique, the French daughter, was in Australia and Saint Peter had advised us that she would be attending the funeral, but she was only eighteen and had never met her father. She arrived in Melbourne one day before he was killed, and she was in Melbourne with a friend's family when it happened. I thought she was just staying around for a look at her half-brothers and sisters and to show off a bit.

Suzie the secretary quit after a big argument with Anna and Sam Bradley, and Lynnette was still in Bangkok. According to our people in Thailand, she was out of hospital and was staying at the Bangkok Intercontinental. There was also something about her being on crutches for a while because of an operation on her foot and it was doubtful if she would be back in Sydney in time for the funeral.

Tessa, who was wife number six, had been located by DFAT and she'd turned out to be a vegan Buddhist super-doctor who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières and talked to trees. She didn't take Jimbo to the cleaners because she was already loaded before she met him. She was flying back from Somalia for the funeral.

We managed to locate the first girl from the hotel. The one who left first. Her name was Taylah Riker. She was only nineteen and was completely out of her depth. She said that she got scared when she realised who Jimbo was and when she saw the cocaine. She must be the only hooker in Sydney who doesn't use, but anyway she said that she called it quits after a bit of a fiddle and an incomplete blow job. Jimbo didn't come and told her that he wanted to switch to anal. Taylah told him that she didn't do that, and he told her to get out. The redheaded woman, who she knew only as Chelsea, had watched from the lounge room where she had eaten her lunch from a brown paper bag. She told Taylah that she'd take over, Jimbo gave the girl $500 and he was alive when she left.

She remembered seeing a cleaner in the hallway and a pilot wheeling his cabin bag walking towards her. She couldn't describe the pilot. Medium everything. The hotel is used by a couple of airlines for their flight crews; seventeen airline pilots had been identified and all had checked out.

There had been two women in the room with Jimbo. One was scared stiff. One was dead. Sam Bradley was still a logical suspect, but he was surrounded by lawyers and had a pretty
good alibi. He and Jacqueline had the most to win. Could they have hired someone to kill Jimbo? Why was it so important to Jimbo that his financial settlement with Jacqueline had to be completed by the day before?

Bradley wouldn't talk, and neither would the lawyers. Jacqueline was the widow, not just another ex-wife, so I assumed that she expected to get more money through the estate. Was that why Jacqueline had said “I win” when she identified the body?

And what was Jimbo's surprise for Vinnie the Pole-Dancer's birthday?

My brain was so tired that it hurt, but I laced on my running shoes as soon as I got home and ran around Centennial Park until I threw up. That always helps. But at least I was able to crawl into bed with a Four Seasons pizza and was asleep before I finished the fifth piece.

chapter twenty one.

The weight on my chest was crushing. I couldn't breathe, there was a loud roar in my ears and an eye-watering stench filled my nostrils. I was pinned to the bed by red-hot pokers that stabbed at my heart when I tried to move. I was in hell. I'd definitely been warned about this in Sunday School. Please, I begged, if this is a dream, let me wake up now and I'll change my ways.

Bad move. I opened my eyes, and looked into the eyes of the devil.

Burning, orange, devil eyes. Staring into my soul. The roaring in my ears lessened to a robust rumble and the stabbing became multiple pinpricks of razor claws kneading through my t-shirt. The eyes blinked. The rumble moved up ten octaves to a full-throated shriek.

Screaming was impossible because of lack of air, but I managed a thin squeak of terror. The devil opened its mouth, revealing huge fangs and releasing a burst of rank, fetid air as the head moved towards my face. I struggled to sit up, to get away from the fiend, but my hand pushed against something small and furry and soft and wet. And moving.

That did it for me. I threw myself sideways off the bed then scurried across the room on all fours until I was safely against the sofa in the living room. Whimpering, I reached my hand to the table lamp, and welcome light flooded the room. My gun was locked away, out of reach. Bugger. I crawled back to the bedroom door and peeked around, heart thumping. Sitting on my bed was the devil in the form of a huge black cat with orange eyes. He had a rat clenched in his jaws, and he was staring straight at me.

He was possibly the largest cat I'd ever seen. Was he the product of some mad zoological experimental lab? Huge head. Broken ear. And those mad eyes.

We stared at each other until he broke the spell by leaping off my bed and walking towards me. Dropping the dead rat at my feet, he sat back. But the rat wasn't quite dead, and tried to crawl away, which prompted the cat to give it a swipe that sent it bouncing off my leg. The rat squeaked. So did I. The cat pounced, grabbed the rat by the head and shook hard. I heard a sharp crack, then a soft thud as the rat was once again presented for my appreciation. This time the rat was still.

The creature sat back and started to clean himself. Carefully, he buffed his devil face and
thoroughly scraped his claws clean of rat blood and fur. I felt my pulse slow down as he transformed himself from a scruffy, wet and rumpled nightmare to a sleek, well-fed miniature panther. He paid special attention to his plumed tail. Somewhere in his alley-cat genes there was a cute, fluffy, little kitten with a flat face, but that was a long time ago; now he was a grown-up assassin alley cat.

“So who are you, big boy?” I whispered. He looked at me and trilled, then gave the rodent a playful pat. It didn't move. He hit it harder.

“Oh, no you don't. That has to go.” I jumped up and grabbed a pile of tissues, but when I tried to pick up the body a black paw flashed to bat it away from me. “We are not going to argue about this. The rat is going and I'd appreciate it if you stopped bringing me presents.” He hissed at me. I felt sorry for the rat, and at least now I knew what had been responsible for Bert's murder.

I walked out to the backyard and threw the body over the fence into the park. The rain was gone, and the air was sharp with a first hint of autumn – that clean, crisp air from the Snowy Mountains that blows away the last of Sydney's summer. I shivered. Time to get out the Ugg boots.

Turning back to my living room, I could see the cat sitting on my coffee table. He looked up at me, yawned, and wrapped his tail around himself. He seemed perfectly at home.

“Where did you come from?” He ignored me.

“How did you get in?” He blinked.

“Well, it's time you left, big boy.” He settled down and wrapped his tail around his nose. “You don't live here.” The tip of his tail twitched.

“OK. It really is time to go.” But how did he get in? The doors were deadlocked. Ditto the windows. No chimney access. No rubbish chute.

One eye watched me as I walked back into my bedroom to find my jeans and retrieve my slippers from the mess of bedding on the floor. “Bloody cat,” I muttered. “I don't need this shit.”

I shuffled back to the cat. That wasn't there. “Fucking hell, where are you?” I flicked on the lights, and checked all the dark corners and under stuff. The kitchen cupboards were all shut, but I checked them anyway. This was ridiculous. The cat had either disappeared or was
playing with me, and I don't like being stuffed around by anyone or anything. And I was too tired to care about a mysterious murderous moggie, no matter how big he was.

The thought of returning to my dead-ratty bed wasn't appealing, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and flaked out on the couch. Sleep was out of the question, but at least I could lie there and listen to the garbos yelling and banging bins. And think.

I should have been thinking about solving the Jimbo problem, but my brain had other ideas. Constable Jack. I had to find a way to get my hands on him. Just for a while. I had to have a Plan.

And finally, just before I fell asleep to the soothing sounds of a dog-fight, I found my solution.