Inspector West Collection Two: Inspector West Collections, #2

Chapter One

On the Tuesday before Christmas, the board members of the Walker Group gathered for their final meeting of the year. As chairman, Peter Walker sat at the head of the table in the boardroom on the top floor of the group’s head office on East Terrace.

Seventy-year old Peter Walker, with thirty percent of the group’s shares, was the majority shareholder. He’d started the company in his early twenties, building sheds and warehouses, and had grown it into one of the most successful property developers in the country.

The board usually followed his advice on which projects to pursue, given his track record, and the fact that his connections still held enough shares to represent the majority in any vote, especially when his ex-wives followed their usual practice and voted with him.

To Peter’s right sat Mario Imbroglio. Mario had a twenty percent holding in the group, acquired as part of the finance package he had brought to the table when the group was facing insolvency at the height of the global financial crisis, when the banks had stopped lending.

Next to Mario sat Warren Hunter, who owned a fifteen percent interest. Warren had been with the company from the start as its accountant. He’d found ways to finance Peter’s dreams and had been rewarded with a significant stake in the company.

Opposite Mario, with his back to the window that opened on to a vista of the hills that stood on the eastern rim of the city, sat Dustin Walker, Peter’s grandson. Twenty-five year old Dustin had inherited a ten percent interest in the group following his father’s death in a skiing accident the previous year. Dustin did what his grandfather told him to do when they met for lunch before each board meeting started.

Next to Dustin sat Monica Webb and Rachel Foley, Peter’s first two wives, who held twenty-five percent of the group’s shares between them, thanks to their divorce settlements.

Peter shuffled the papers in front of him and took off his glasses, before placing them on the table. He looked across the table at his ex-wives. ‘I’ve decided to retire.’

‘As chairman?’ said Monica.

‘No, Monica. I mean retire as in stop work. I’ve been doing this for almost fifty years. I want to enjoy myself for a bit before it’s too late.’

‘You’re not thinking of asking Dustin to take over the business, are you? He’s only a boy,’ said Rachel.

‘Dustin and I have had a long chat. He’s not ready to take on that sort of responsibility.’ Peter looked down at his hands. ‘Things would be different if James was still alive. I’d planned on handing things over to him when I was ready to retire but, well, you know why that won’t be happening. So, I’ve had to make other arrangements.’

‘What other arrangements?’ said Rachel.

‘I’m selling to Mario.’

Peter watched the color drain from the faces of Monica and Rachel as they realised the impact of what he had said. He enjoyed witnessing their consternation bubble to the surface and repaint their faces with the red of anger. He hoped Mario would screw them like the bastard had screwed him. ‘We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Mario’s intervention when the banks wouldn’t help us. I’ve given him first option, and he’s made an offer I’m prepared to accept.’

‘That would give Mario fifty percent,’ said Monica.

‘Sixty, actually,’ said Dustin.

His grandmother and her successor turned to face him.

‘You don’t have to sell just because your grandfather tells you to,’ said Monica. ‘I don’t think your father would be pleased with that decision.’

‘My father’s not here, Grandma, and there are other things I can do with the money.’

‘When is this happening?’ said Monica.

‘As we speak. The papers were signed yesterday. I’d like to congratulate Mario on becoming the chairman of the Walker Group.’ Peter stood and offered his seat to Mario.

‘No need to be that formal, Peter, but thank you anyway.’ Mario faced Monica and Rachel. ‘I’d be happy to make you the same offer I made Peter and Dustin.’

‘What about you, Warren?’ said Monica.

‘I’ve accepted Mario’s offer,’ said Warren, without looking up.

‘And, what is your offer, Mario?’ said Rachel.

Mario opened the folder on the table in front of him and slid a sheet of paper across the table to her, and then slid one to Monica. ‘I think it would be best if you signed before you leave. That offer will not be on the table after today.’

Mario Imbroglio moved into what had been Peter Walker’s office during the first week of January. He’d been a board member of the Walker Group for six years, ever since the opportunity to insert himself into the business had presented itself during the global financial crisis, when he’d introduced himself to James Walker after receiving a tip-off that the group was in financial trouble.

The big banks had withdrawn from the financial facility backing one of Walker’s multi-million dollar projects when the group’s cash flow had suffered a sharp downturn. Mario had also been aware that James’ father, who controlled the group, had been living beyond his means for several years. The man’s ego was insufferable but Mario had been trained to manipulate the egos of powerful men.

After constructing a financial package with his backers, who were keen to find legitimate businesses for their money laundering purposes, Mario had persuaded James Walker to introduce him to his father as the group’s saviour, as the one who could pull them back from the brink of bankruptcy. His price had been a twenty percent stake in the business.

The old man had called him every name under the sun. He’d even threatened to disinherit James for bringing someone like Mario into the boardroom. But, in the end, he’d signed. His ego couldn’t face the prospect of bankruptcy and the exposure of his personal failings as a businessman.

Mario had joined the board and studied the way Peter Walker did things. He didn’t like the old man but he admired his way of doing business. Walker seemed to be able to create money out of thin air, provided he had the backing of someone’s money to finance his dreams. Mario was particularly amused when he learnt that one strategy the Walker Group used was to build office towers for gold-plated government tenants, sign contracts with the tenants to clean their offices, and then sell the buildings to superannuation funds, who liked the regular income government tenants provided. The group would then build another office tower in another city and repeat the process.

Over the years, Mario had developed a successful working relationship with James Walker, who had been slated to take over the business when Peter retired. But the Walker world had changed when James met with an accident during a skiing trip to Austria. The old man hadn’t been the same after his son’s death. He’d lost interest and within a year had offered the business to Mario and his backers.

He’d told Mario he didn’t have the time or patience to school Dustin, so that he could take over the business, and confided that it was probably just as well, since it was always the third generation, the grandchildren, that squandered a family’s fortune. Mario had reflected on that comment in light of what he knew, and concluded that Peter Walker was blind to his own failings and the cost of his extravagant lifestyle.

Mario’s backers were delighted. They liked the diversity of the group’s interests, which included ownership of two shopping malls, that would provide them with numerous opportunities for laundering their black market money.

By the time Mario had taken control of the group, several of his lieutenants, including Trevor Hunter, were already holding positions of influence within the group. He knew he’d have to keep the core group of executives in the property development division in place, the people who knew how to turn Peter Walker’s dreams into reality, but there was plenty of scope for expanding into operations that Peter Walker would never have considered, not even in his wildest dreams.

Peter Walker’s last useful role, prior to his retirement, had been to introduce Mario to his friend Richard Nelson, the Minister for Recreation and Sport. Nelson was another man with a big ego, which Mario planned to massage during negotiations to build and operate the city’s second casino.

Mario looked at the final plans for Long Street on the desk in front of him, and decided it was time to start working on the Minister.

Chapter Two

On the last Friday in April, John Drake sat at his desk in The Office of State Supply reading the agency’s whistleblowing guidelines, for what must have been the fifteenth time, waiting for four o’clock. John was convinced he was doing the right thing but he was also aware of what often happened to whistleblowers, despite all the words in the Act.

He also knew it was too late to regret looking at things he hadn’t been asked to investigate, even though he wished he hadn’t let his curiosity get the better of him during the slow period around Easter, when he’d started opening folders on the share drive and reading the contracts behind the payments he administered.

Initially, he’d thought it would be interesting to know the specific terms and conditions in the individual contracts. Then he’d decided it would be useful to understand the agency’s procurement policies and guidelines, since the agency was charged with getting the best value for the government’s dollars when buying products and services.

When he’d noticed that some of the more expensive cleaning contracts hadn’t been awarded to the companies that had submitted the most competitive tenders during the last round of contract reviews, he’d looked into the companies those contracts had gone to, and found a pattern of common ownership.

Aware that contract reviews were conducted by a three person committee of senior officers, that included Sonya Curtis, the head of the agency, he knew there was no way he would be confronting any of them directly. He was intimidated by every one of them, especially Sonya Curtis, who was known among officers at John’s level as ‘The Bitch’.

John knew he had to tell someone or he wouldn’t be living up to his obligations as a public servant. After a week of anxious deliberation, he’d decided to escalate his concerns to the Auditor General, which was one of the options available to him in the whistleblowing guidelines. But, because he would be reporting senior officers, he’d decided it would be prudent to discuss his concerns with Pam Watson, his immediate supervisor, just to be sure he hadn’t misunderstood something.

At four o’clock, he put two copies of the document he’d compiled into his bag, picked up the third copy he’d printed for Pam, and walked over to her office.

Pam smiled as he sat down with the document in his lap. ‘So, what’s on your mind, John?’

‘I’m not sure how to say this, but it looks like we might not have done the right thing when awarding some of the big dollar cleaning contracts.’

‘Oh? What makes you think that?’

John shifted in his seat. ‘Well, I thought I’d read some of the contracts I administer, so I had a look on the share drive. I ended up reading some of the tender documents, you know, to see how the whole process works.’ John could feel beads of perspiration forming on his brow. ‘Anyway, I reviewed the documents associated with the cleaning contracts I administer, and it looks like several of those contracts went to companies belonging to the Walker Group, even when they weren’t the most competitive tender.’ John looked up. ‘We’re supposed to accept the most competitive tender, aren’t we?’

Pam leant back into her chair. ‘Do you realise what you’re suggesting?’

‘Yeah, that’s the scary bit. If I’m right, it looks like we have a problem at the top. You know who’s on the contracts committee, don’t you?’

‘That’s a pretty serious allegation to make, John. And, it’s not like you’re experienced in these matters, is it? You’ve only been here a few months.’

Those words hit John like a backhander across the face. He stared at Pam. She didn’t intimidate him like the others.

‘I’ve been working in contracts administration for at least ten years, Pam. It’s what I was doing at Transport before I came here. I think I know what the rules are and I’ve studied the guidelines we’re supposed to be following, so I think I know what I’m talking about.’ John paused to regain his composure. He didn’t want to start an argument. ‘Sometimes a fresh set of eyes sees things that others have missed, but,’ he held his hands up in front of him, ‘I could be wrong. That’s why I thought I’d better discuss it with you before taking my concerns any further.’

‘Wise decision, John. So, what have you got there?’

‘It’s all in here.’ John passed her his document and watched the color drain from her face as she scanned its contents.

‘I don’t have time to study this now but I’ll read it and get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, I want you to keep this to yourself. If you’ve read the whistleblower guidelines, which I hope you have, you’ll know they offer you no protection if you leak anything to the media, even if you’re right.’

‘I intend to stick with the guidelines. Wouldn’t look too good if I didn’t, would it?’

‘If I agree with your findings, this will have to be escalated to the Auditor General. On the other hand, though, John,’ Pam flashed him a smile, ‘if I don’t agree with your interpretation of the data, I’ll be advising you to drop this. I’d hate to see you make a career ending mistake simply because you misinterpreted something outside your area of responsibility.’

John felt the wind being sucked from his sails. The tone in her words, along with her body language, told him he wouldn’t be getting any support from her.

‘Look, you’ve done the right thing bringing this to my attention.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll catch up with you on Monday, after I’ve had a chance to study this.’

John returned to his desk and decided that talking to Pam hadn’t been the mistake he’d thought it might be. She obviously didn’t want him to take his concerns any further, despite her words of support, but the look on her face when she’d scanned the report had told him what he’d wanted to know.

While he packed up his workstation, he decided to post a copy of his report to the Auditor General on the way home, and live with the consequences.

Pam slipped John’s document into her briefcase and watched him pack up his workstation and leave for the weekend. She admired him for wanting to know about the contracts he was administering. That was more than any of his predecessors had done. But, she wished he hadn’t been so inquisitive. Now they had a problem they would have to deal with before he did anything. She hoped to God he’d do as she’d asked him and wait for her to get back to him.

As John walked past her office on his way to the elevator lobby, Pam picked up her personal smartphone.

‘Sonya, we have a problem.’

Chapter Three

On the first Monday in May, DI Carl West was in his third floor office scrolling through the emails in his inbox. There was nothing terribly exciting: a reminder from DC Lisa Templar that she was on the pursuit drivers course this week, another from DC Wayne Paterson about being in court, and one from DCI Rankin, officially allocating DC Wayne Paterson and DC Nigel Beard to his team following DI Reid’s early retirement.

Carl smiled when he read the chief’s email and thought of his wife, DS Nina Strong, the other member of DI Reid’s team, at home on maternity leave, expecting their first child in about six weeks, if their dates were right.

He gazed out of his office window across the rooftops of the southern side of the city and wondered how she’d managed to talk him into becoming a father. His own father had been killed in Vietnam before he’d been born, so he’d had no modelling of what a father was supposed to be like. He’d been reluctant to take on the role, not sure that he would make a good father but, somehow, she’d persuaded him that he’d be good at it, pointing out how he’d mentored Harry and Peter James before him, and how his cousin’s children thought the world of him.

His thoughts turned to his maternal grandfather, who’d been like a father to him after his mother had taken ill and they’d moved in with her parents when Carl was in his early teens, and was the main reason Carl had become a policeman. Carl knew his grandfather would have encouraged him if he’d still been alive; he’d believed in him.

His attention settled on Peter James. He thought of Peter every day. He’d been standing next to Peter the day he’d been shot and killed when they’d gone to interview a suspect in a rape case. He hoped his child would not have to face what Peter’s children were living with.

He took a deep breath. He knew he couldn’t change history but that didn’t mean that history didn’t exist. He pushed down the reminder that was always just below his conscious awareness whenever he thought of Peter, that he’d also killed a man that day, and turned his attention to the overnight incident log. It was filled with the usual fights and disorderly behaviour stories. Some idiot had set fire to three bins outside the railway station, and a young man had been knifed in a drunken brawl in front of the Merlin on North Terrace. He thought there was nothing out of the ordinary until he noticed that another homeless man had been found dead inside 7 Long Street. That was the second one in a week.

The phone on Carl’s desk rang.

‘Got a minute, Carl?’ said Mike Jonas, the police pathologist.

‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve just finished the post mortem of the homeless guy they brought in from Long Street last night.’

‘Another overdose?’

‘That’s my problem, Carl. I don’t think these guys are druggies. I know the lab report says the body we picked up last week was full of high grade heroin and alcohol, and I suspect this one might very well be the same, but there’s only one needle mark on his body. If he was a user, he’d be marked up like a pin cushion.’

Carl got the feeling he wasn’t going to like where this was going. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Mike?’

‘I double checked my notes from the autopsy of the one they brought in last week. There was only one needle mark on his body as well.’

‘Do you think they could be first time users?’ said Carl.

‘I guess that’s possible, but it’s also possible someone injected these guys while they were comatose, given the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream of the first guy.’

‘Better send me your reports when you’re done, Mike.’

Carl called Forensics and asked for whatever they had collected from Long Street when the bodies had been picked up and taken to the morgue. If they’d followed protocol, Forensics would have at least photographed the bodies and the location, even if there had been no apparent signs of foul play.

He dialled DCI Rankin’s number.

‘Chief, I’ve just been talking with Mike Jonas. He doesn’t have a good feeling about these homeless men from Long Street. We might have a killer on our hands.’

‘What makes him think that, Carl?’

‘Mikes reckons they’re full of heroin and booze but he can only find one needle mark on their bodies. If they’d been injecting the stuff on a regular basis there should be a lot more puncture marks.’

‘First time users?’

‘Maybe, but they’d have to be bloody unlucky. The lab report is showing high grade heroin, not shit stuff. We need to consider the possibility someone’s knocking them off in their sleep.’

‘Look into it, Carl, but see if you can keep a lid on it. I don’t want the media knowing anything about Mike’s theory until we’ve got something a little more conclusive. There’ll be a shit storm if it gets out someone is knocking them off.’

Carl wondered just how many people would really care if someone was knocking off homeless men. Then he thought of Bishop Kerry. He knew the bishop would enjoy sticking one up the Commissioner, especially after the Church’s embarrassment over the Skinner case, and the Church was the major supplier of services to the homeless in the city.

When the evidence packages arrived from Forensics, Carl called DS Harry Fuller and DC Nigel Beard into the Incident Room.

‘What’s up, Boss’ said Harry, as he and Nigel took a seat in front of the whiteboard.

‘We need to take a look into the deaths of a couple of homeless guys Uniform have picked up in Long Street over the last week. Dr Jonas is not convinced they’re accidental overdoses. He thinks someone may have injected them with heroin while they were asleep.’

‘What makes him think that?’ said Harry.

‘There’s only one needle mark on their bodies.’

‘Perhaps they were unlucky first time users,’ said Nigel.

‘That’s a possibility, Nigel, but according to the lab report on Mark Tidler,’ Carl pointed to a photograph taken at the scene of Tidler’s death on the whiteboard, ‘it’s pretty high grade heroin. Not sure he’d have the money for that sort of stuff.’

‘See what you mean,’ said Harry, ‘unless there’s some new kid selling the stuff to these guys. You know, someone who doesn’t realise he’s supposed to cut the stuff.’

‘Either way, we need to find out what’s going on. Go and spend some time with the guys that hang around in Long Street. See what you can find out.’

‘Do we have a name for the second one, Boss?’

‘Richard Wentworth.’

7 Long Street was one of three derelict buildings on the block at the intersection of William and Long Streets in the south-western corner of the central business district. Everyone had been waiting for someone to redevelop the site ever since the collapse of the Nash Group in 2004. The papers had been full of proposed projects over the years but none of them had come to anything.

At some point, someone had smashed in the door to 7 Long Street and it had become a place of refuge for homeless men seeking shelter from the weather, and a place where the desperate came to trade their cash for a chemically induced high. The building was regularly visited by the police, who were only interested in interrupting the business of the drug dealers, not the squatting activities of the homeless.

The drug dealing happened on the ground floor, which provided the dealers with multiple exit points. Their lookouts stood in doorways on the opposite side of the street and around in William Street, from where they could communicate with their colleagues inside the building whenever a police patrol turned into the street. The homeless squatters preferred the third floor, away from the drug crowd and above the level of the street lights.

Harry parked their unmarked silver Ford in the car park of the men’s shelter at the western end of Long Street, where the homeless squatters came to shower and eat.

It was lunch time. The crowd sitting at the tables in the dining room on the ground floor, eating soup and bread rolls, was mostly older men dressed in ill-fitting, smelly clothes.

‘What do you fuckers want?’ said the man nearest the door when Harry and Nigel walked in.

Harry smiled. He knew they stood out like sore thumbs in their clean suits. He walked over to the elderly nun supervising the team of young people serving the meal. ‘Hello, Sister.’

‘What brings you here, Harry? Have they stopped feeding you down at the station?’ She beamed a smile at him. ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Sister Clare, this is Nigel Beard. He works with me.’

‘Well, I didn’t think he’d be your boyfriend, Harry. You’ve both got policeman written all over you, even if you’re not wearing uniforms. What brings you here today?’

Harry opened his iPad and showed her the photographs Forensics had given them. ‘Trying to find out what happened to these guys. We’re not so sure their deaths were from natural causes or accidental overdoses.’

‘Took your time working that out, didn’t you?’ said the old man standing next to Sister Clare.

‘Did you know them?’ said Harry.

The man looked over his shoulder at the men sitting at the table behind him. ‘Yeah, I knew them. They was in here all the time.’

‘Were they squatting up the street at number seven?’

The man didn’t say anything.

‘We’re not here to evict anybody. Just trying to find out what happened to them.’

‘There’s a few of us here that squat there. Not enough beds here and, besides,’ he winked at Sister Clare, ‘she won’t let us drink in here.’

‘That’s only because you don’t know when to stop, Gary.’

His smile revealed a set of nicotine stained teeth. ‘I always stop when I hit the floor, Sister.’

Sister Clare rolled her eyes. Harry wanted to laugh. He could see the smirk on Nigel’s face.

‘Do you think you could introduce us to the group that uses number seven?’ said Harry.

The man looked around the room. ‘I’ll ask if the boys want to talk to you.’

‘Thanks, Gary,’ said Harry. ‘Why don’t you enjoy your lunch while I talk to Sister? We can talk when you’re finished.’

The man grunted and shuffled away with his lunch. He sat down at the table behind them with his bowl of soup and buttered roll, and immediately engaged the other men sitting at the table in conversation. It wasn’t hard for Harry to work out who might be in the group.

‘What can you tell me about Mark and Richard, Sister? Were they into drugs?’

‘They were alcoholics, like Gary and his friends over there. We never saw them after lunch, just like we won’t see that lot until breakfast tomorrow. But I don’t think any of the older men are what you’d call drug users. They have to pester people on the streets to get the money to buy their booze, except for pension day. They don’t even turn up here on pension day. Sometimes we don’t see them for days.’

‘Were Mark and Richard regulars?’ said Harry.

‘They’d been coming in here for as long as I can remember, Harry, and I’ve been here since your father was a young constable. By the way, how is your father? I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘He’s good. Taken up golf. Reckons he’s practising for his retirement.’

Sister Clare laughed. ‘I hear you’ve taken up with Max Walsh’s girl. She should keep you on the straight and narrow.’

The twinkle in her eye told Harry she knew a thing or two about Jessika, who often looked after Sister Clare’s men in court.

‘What’s your mother think about your girlfriend?’

‘Keeps telling me to marry her before she changes her mind.’

‘I wouldn’t wait too long, Harry.’

Gary and two of his mates invited Harry to join them in the car park after lunch. Nigel got the message that the invitation didn’t include him and went to introduce himself to a couple of younger men sitting in a corner of the room playing cards.

Harry pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and passed it to Gary. His father had told him about cigarettes being the currency required to extract information from homeless men. He waited while the three men divided up the packet and then lit up.

‘Why are you here, mate?’ said the man Gary had introduced as Stan.

‘We think someone may have murdered your friends,’ said Harry.

‘How?’ said Stan. ‘I found Tids. There wasn’t a mark on him. Looked like he’d just died in his sleep.’

‘Yeah, same with Dicko,’ said the man Gary had introduced as Vince. ‘I found him when I got back last night.’ He held up his mobile phone. ‘I called it in. I’ve even got a picture of him laying there dead.’

‘Tids was full of heroin,’ said Harry. ‘He’s got a needle mark in his arm, here.’ Harry pointed to the inside of his elbow.

‘Bullshit! Tids didn’t do no drugs,’ said Stan.

‘I’m not saying he did but Dicko’s got a needle mark in his arm, in the same place.’

‘He wasn’t into that shit,’ said Vince. ‘Shiraz was Dicko’s poison of choice but he’d drink anything. Never seen him do heroin or any of that shit, and we’ve been mates for years.’

‘Have you seen anybody new hanging about the place?’

‘You know what it’s like downstairs. New idiots there every night,’ said Gary.

‘Anybody that’s come upstairs to where you guys sleep?’

The three men looked at each other, as if they were uncertain how much they could divulge about what went on downstairs.

‘The Westies control downstairs,’ said Vince, ‘and there’s one big guy that makes sure we keep out of their space. Reckons we scare the patrons.’ Vince laughed. ‘But he always makes sure we get upstairs if we get back late.’

‘What time do you boys usually bed down for the night?’

‘Hard to say, mate. We’re usually tanked by then but we like to get in before dark. There’s no bloody lights in that place.’

‘Where do you sleep?’

‘On the third floor. There’s a room up there where we can lock the door.’

‘What happens on the second floor?’ said Harry.

‘That’s where the shit-heads shoot up. We don’t go there.’

‘Where does this big guy leave you if he has to help you up the stairs?’

‘On the third floor landing. He props us up in a corner.’

‘Isn’t that where Dicko was found?’ said Gary.

‘Tids too,’ said Stan. ‘I went looking for him when he wasn’t back when I woke up. Thought he must have passed out on the stairs.’

‘Are you the only guys squatting down there?’

‘Nah, there’s a few others. They just don’t like talking to coppers,’ said Gary.

Harry keyed his number into Vince’s mobile phone. ‘If you remember anything else or see something you think I should know, or if you feel threatened by anyone, call me. If I can’t come myself, I’ll send help.’

‘Shit! You’re serious, aren’t you, mate? No copper’s ever given me his number before,’ said Vince.

‘I don’t want to see you on a slab in the morgue, Vince. Not you; not any of your friends. Maybe you should find somewhere else to sleep.’

‘There ain’t anywhere else, mate.’

Harry waited for Nigel to slip into the car and buckle up. ‘Find out anything?’

‘Got an earful on how useless we are at protecting them from gangs like the Westies. Seems they control access to that building in Long Street.’

Harry started the car and eased it out into the traffic in Long Street. ‘Yeah, the guys said the Westies are running the drug exchange on the ground floor but they claim there’s one gang member that makes sure they don’t interfere with the punters. Apparently, he even helps them upstairs when they’re drunk.’

‘Did they know anything, Sarge?’

‘They’re the guys who found the bodies. Thought their friends had simply died in their sleep.’

‘So, Uniform might have statements from them.’

‘Only if they’d hung around to be interviewed. Besides, doesn’t sound like they saw anything. They were probably all out to it when it happened.’

‘The guys I was talking to told me about ten or twelve of them sleep in or around that building. Not everybody goes inside if it’s not raining, and they’re not all drunks,’ said Nigel.

‘Did they see anything?’

‘No, but they said they’d ask around and meet up with me if I came back in a couple of days.’

‘Make sure you bring some cigarettes.’

‘Cigarettes?’

‘Secret my Dad told me. If you want information from these guys you’ll need to pay them, and the currency is cigarettes. Even if they don’t smoke they can always use cigarettes or, if you’re really feeling generous, buy them some metro tickets. Just don’t give them cash.’

‘Do you think the inspector will want us to talk to the Westies, Sarge?’

‘I’m sure he will. Thing is though, will they want to talk to us? We might have to raid the place and pull some of them off the street. Perhaps we should take a look at Long Street.’ Harry pulled into a parking space in front of the building, behind a white delivery van.

They were about to enter the building when a uniformed officer stepped out of the gloom and motioned them over. ‘Sorry, gents, mind telling me why you’re coming in here?’

Harry showed him his badge. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Sergeant Lang’s upstairs, Sergeant. They’re doing a discreet recheck of the stairwell and the landing where the bodies were found, in case they missed anything, seeing this is now a suspected crime scene.’

Harry decided he could catch up with Dean back at Police Headquarters. ‘Okay, we can come back later if we need to.’

Chapter Four

Black was his color of choice. He’d learnt a long time ago that nobody really noticed you when you wore black; you became an amorphous memory without detail. He pulled the hood of his jacket down over his eyes and slowly walked across the street, and into the building. A dark shape materialised in front of him as he entered. He knew what was about to happen. He’d had the same role himself in a similar place, in another city, at an earlier time in his life, and he’d studied the way this guy operated over the last few nights.

He let himself be patted down. He wasn’t carrying anything the door guard wouldn’t be expecting to find on someone coming to buy what his mates were selling.

The room off the entrance foyer, in which the Westies conducted their business, was dimly lit by the street light immediately outside its boarded-up windows. Transactions took place in the far corner of the room, illuminated by candle light and away from the wind that blew in through the open doorway.

As he approached the dealers, he noticed the door in the wall immediately behind the pile of boxes that served as the trading table. He knew that door would be unlocked and that there would be someone standing on the other side of it with a weapon. Every place like this that he’d worked in had an exit that the dealers, and their security detail, could use at short notice.

The dealers were a couple of skinny teenage kids. Expendables, like their mates on the doors and the lookouts outside in the street. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be armed and dangerous, and full of a bravado that would get them into more trouble than they could imagine if they challenged him. He knew the real power players didn’t work on the streets selling the shit these kids were pedalling.

‘What will it be, mate?’ said the kid working the table.

‘Looking for some ice.’ He looked around him as if he was nervous.

‘Starts at twenty bucks.’

He pulled out his wallet and passed over a hundred dollar bill. The boy slipped the bill into his pocket and pushed five small packets across the table towards him.

‘Upstairs if you want a hit before you go home, mate.’ The kid pointed to the entrance. ‘Back that way and up one.’

He picked up his packets and dropped them into the pocket of his coat. Then he walked back to the entrance foyer and made his way up the stairs. Three doors opened off the first landing he came to. There were several people slumped in various poses on the floor in the room closest to the street, which was illuminated by the street lights below. The other two rooms were in darkness, and empty as far as he could tell. He walked over to the nearest stoned body, a girl with long black hair and tattoos on her arms. She looked like she could use a decent meal. He slipped the packets of ice he’d purchased downstairs into the front of her bra. She didn’t notice.

He made his way up to the third level, where the homeless squatters spent the night. He’d spent the last three nights watching them stagger into the building. They usually arrived before the Westies, but sometimes there was a straggler or two that the guy on the door shepherded up the stairs.

The place smelt like a refuse dump. One of the three doors off the landing was locked. He listened silently at that door. He could hear the sound of snoring coming from the room behind it. The odour emanating from the room immediately next to their sleeping quarters strongly suggested to him that the squatters were using it as their latrine. The third room off the landing appeared to be their rubbish tip. He could see broken bottles spilling out of its doorway onto the landing.

He realised it was going to be relatively easy to fulfil the mission he had chosen for himself. All he would have to do was wait for one of them to come home late. He knew the kid on the door would shepherd him upstairs away from the customers, where he would be locked out on the landing by the others, and probably as drunk as a skunk to boot, going on what he’d seen over the last few nights.

He went downstairs and walked back out into the shadows, and waited until the Westies shut up shop. It looked like 3 am was closing time.

He went back to the building around four on Sunday afternoon. It was raining, so he settled into the doorway of the building diagonally opposite the entrance used by the homeless guys. On the previous three times he’d watched them shuffle or stagger along Long Street, he’d counted ten of them. By the time it was dark, he’d counted only eight. He felt a twinge of anticipation.

The rain stopped around eight o’clock, shortly before one of the stragglers made his unsteady way down from William Street and disappeared into number seven. He took out his thermos flask and poured himself a cup of coffee. When he’d finished his coffee, he moved further down the street away from the entrance to another doorway, from where he could still observe the footpath in front of the building while staying out of sight of the lookout when he arrived.

At nine, a grey van pulled up outside the building and six boys, each carrying a sports bag much like the one at his feet, climbed out before it moved away into the night. The Westies had arrived. He smiled to himself. They were a bunch of shopkeepers with fixed hours of business, with no apparent awareness of how obvious their movements were.

He noticed that a different guy was doing guard duty on the main entrance to the building, and that one of the lookouts had taken up position in the doorway he had abandoned shortly after eight, while his mate had disappeared around the corner into William Street.

He wondered if the police ever managed to catch anyone if they raided the place, and decided they probably didn’t care enough to worry about it. He certainly hadn’t seen any sign of them on the nights he’d watched the place.

He did some exercises on the spot, using the side of the doorway as a wall to support his body while he did his stretches.

The rain started again at ten. It was heavier than what it had been all day. It didn’t look like the Westies would be doing much business that night. At ten-thirty the grey van pulled up, and the boys called it a night.

He was almost ready to call it a night himself, when he noticed the last of the homeless guys slowly making his way down from William Street towards the entrance to number seven. The guy was using the building to keep himself upright.

He picked up his bag, ran across the street, and slipped inside the entrance. When the homeless guy staggered in he stepped out of the shadows, like he’d seen the door guard do it, and helped the old guy upstairs to the landing on the third floor. He let him slump to the floor. He stank of wet clothes permeated with urine. He pulled the old guy’s coat off him and placed it under his head as a pillow. The old guy was snoring within minutes.

He went downstairs and retrieved his bag. It was time to get down to business. He unzipped the bag, pulled out a short piece of rubber tubing and a screw driver, a syringe, a tablespoon, a small packet of off-white powder, a small bottle of water, and a pair of latex gloves. He placed his mobile phone on the floor and activated the torch. The landing filled with light.

He pulled on the gloves, tipped the powder into the tablespoon, added a couple of drops from the water bottle and then took out his cigarette lighter, and applied heat to the bottom of the tablespoon. When the mixture had liquified he placed the spoon on the floor, inserted the needle into the liquid and drew it into the syringe.

Then he undid the button on one of the old guy’s shirt sleeves and pulled the sleeve up to expose the lower part of the old man’s arm. Carefully, he slipped the piece of rubber tubing around the upper part of the old man’s arm, inserted the screwdriver and twisted it to apply pressure.

When the veins in the old man’s lower arm stood up, engorged with blood, he jammed the screwdriver into the old man’s armpit, picked up the syringe, inserted the needle into the vein inside the crook of the old man’s elbow, and emptied its contents into his bloodstream. He slowly released the pressure in the tourniquet. The old man stopped snoring.

He withdrew the needle and placed the syringe back into the plastic container lined with cotton wool that he used for carrying it. He removed the rubber tubing and placed it into his bag along with the screwdriver and the tablespoon. He checked that he’d put his lighter back in his pocket and picked up his phone.

He looked at the old man stretched out on the floor at his feet. He poked him in the leg with his foot. No response.

‘I hope you make some better choices next time, mate. You sure fucked up this life. Look at you. Pissed out of your brain, wearing stinking clothes and living in a hole full of shit. There’s no room here for idiots like you.’

He squatted beside the old man and placed two latex covered fingers on the carotid artery running through his neck. There was no pulse. He switched off the torch in his phone, pulled off the gloves and stuffed them into his bag.

He picked up his bag and went downstairs, where he used the exit into the laneway behind the building that the dealers used whenever they were forced to flee. It was still raining. He didn’t care. He’d started, and it felt good to be doing the work he knew had to be done.

He looked around him. The lane was deserted. He hadn’t expected to see anyone but old habits die hard. He shrugged off the memory that wanted to surface, and started walking to where he’d parked the Toyota earlier in the afternoon.

Chapter Five

Carl was chatting with DC Paterson about his morning in court when Harry and Nigel got back to Police Headquarters. He listened as Harry briefed them on their visit to the men’s shelter. What he heard reinforced his suspicion that Mike Jonas was right, but it also made him wonder why the Westies were looking out for the homeless men using the building. That was something he hadn’t expected to hear.

‘You know, Inspector,’ said DC Paterson, ‘something’s not stacking up for me here. I’ve been on the streets for around thirty years. I’ve seen a lot of druggies in that time and I’ve met a lot of homeless guys. Most of the homeless guys don’t do hard drugs, especially not the old guys. They spend their money on booze. It gives them an escape every day, and they only need a few bucks to slip into oblivion.’

Carl pictured the homeless men he saw about the city sitting in doorways or on park benches, or lying on footpaths and squares of council maintained lawn, oblivious to the world moving around them. Wayne was right. If they weren’t pestering passers-by for cash, the homeless were often drunk, which was why the State had changed the law and stopped processing them through the courts.

‘You may be right, Wayne, in which case we could have a serial killer on our hands. I think we need to talk to the gang running the drug exchange,’ said Carl. ‘They’re probably the most reliable witnesses to whatever is going on in that building.’

‘Do you think the chief would authorise a raid, Boss?’ said Harry.

‘We’ll have to coordinate that with the Drug Squad,’ said Carl, ‘otherwise they’ll be complaining that I’m working in their patch, and you know what the chief’s like when that happens.’

‘We could get them to raid the place and then talk to whoever they bring in,’ said Nigel.

‘That might work,’ said Carl. ‘Let me talk to the chief. By the way, Harry, can you catch up with Dean Lang when he gets back from Long Street? I asked him to treat the landing where the last body was found as a crime scene.’

‘We nearly walked in on him. I wanted to have a look at the place but he’s doing one of his discreet jobs, so I decided we’d take a look some other time.’

‘Yeah, well, going by the photos they took when they picked up the bodies, I’m not hopeful he’ll find anything. Place looks like a tip.’

The Drug Squad’s Tuesday night raid of the Long Street drug exchange netted five members of the Westies gang. Carl sent Harry back to the men’s shelter with photographs of the five, and decided to start by interviewing Gavin Potts, who Gary and his mates had identified as the one that made sure they got upstairs safely.

Carl studied Gavin Potts through the two-way mirror as he sat waiting in the interview room with his escort. He was a big boy with bulging muscles, which suggested he spent time working out. He’d been inside twice in the last ten years. Both times for dealing. Carl thought he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and wondered whether that was a mask or if Potts had found that centre he’d been reading about in Nina’s books on meditation.

As he entered the interview room with DC Wayne Paterson, Carl wondered if someone like Gavin Potts would care about what had happened to two homeless men.

‘Hello, Potts,’ said Wayne.

A grin spread across Gavins’ face as he stood and offered his hand to Wayne. ‘G’day, Wayne. Who’s your mate?’

‘This is my new boss, Inspector West.’

Gavin sat and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Aren’t you one of those detectives I see on the TV when some poor bastard’s been killed?’

‘Yes. I’m from Major Crimes,’ said Carl.

Gavin looked at DC Paterson. ‘Moving up in the world, Wayne?’

‘You could say that. What about you? Still doing the same shit?’

‘It’s a living.’ He looked at Carl. ‘I haven’t killed anyone, so why do you want to talk to me?’

‘We’re looking into the deaths of a couple of homeless men.’

‘Tids and Dicko, I suppose,’ said Gavin. ‘Vince said some of your boys had been around asking questions. From what I’d heard I thought they’d just died. God knows they drank enough. Can’t remember the number of times I’ve helped them up the stairs.’

‘Did you help them up the night they died?’ said Carl.

‘I don’t work Sundays.’

‘Anybody else take care of them like you do?’

‘I don’t think so. The arrangement we have with the old farts is that they go up before dark and they leave the punters alone.’

‘How come you look after them when they get home late?’ said Wayne.

Gavin uncrossed his arms. ‘Gary’s my grandfather.’

Carl didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like having to cope with that reality.

‘What makes you think they were murdered?’ said Gavin.

‘They were full of heroin, high grade stuff, and there’s no evidence they were users, apart from one needle mark in the arm,’ said Carl.

‘They certainly didn’t get any high grade anything from us. The stuff we’re selling is cut to shit.’

‘Anybody else operating around there?’ said Wayne.

‘You know the rules, Wayne. There’d be a bloody war going on if there was.’

‘When do you guys usually call it a night?’ said Carl.

‘Most nights we’re gone by three. There’s not much action after that. Most of the punters are gone by then or they’re spaced out upstairs.’

‘Know much about those punters, Gavin’ said Carl.

‘Only that they’re losers.’

‘Think any of them would be capable of killing a drunk?’

‘Who knows, mate? But they certainly didn’t do it with anything we sold ‘em, if you say it was high grade stuff. Most of them buy a hit and piss off. There’s only a few that shoot up on the second, and they’re mostly kids with nowhere to go.’

Carl nodded to DC Paterson.

‘Thanks, Potts. I’ll put in a good word for you,’ said Wayne.

‘Don’t do that, Wayne. Last time you did that I got five years. Just make sure no bastard kills my grandfather while I’m in here.’

After interviewing Gavin Potts, they interviewed the other four gang members. Only one of them, a skinny kid with a shaved head named William Hazel, according to his charge sheet, admitted to working Sundays. He claimed he was a lookout and hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary but he did admit to seeing Dicko stagger into the building around midnight the previous Sunday.

‘I wonder what he was doing before then,’ said Carl, as he and Wayne made their way back to the Incident Room.

‘Probably fell asleep someplace,’ said Wayne, ‘and only went home after waking up cold and wet. It rained Sunday night. I’m surprised more of them don’t die of pneumonia.’

‘Are there traffic cameras on that intersection, Wayne?’

‘Don’t know. I’ll ring Traffic, but you know there’s more than one way into that building, don’t you, Inspector?’

After a lengthy discussion with DCI Rankin, Carl was authorised to appeal to the public for help. Armed with photographs of Mark Tidler and Richard Wentworth, he held a media conference and asked anyone who had been in the vicinity of 7 Long Street on either of the last two Sunday nights or in the early hours of the following Monday mornings, and had seen a person or persons interfering with someone sleeping on the stairwell inside the building, to call Crime Stoppers.

Knowing what people were doing in that location, Carl didn’t hold out much hope of anyone coming forward but knew he owed it to the homeless to at least try and stop whoever it was that seemed intent on killing them.

After the media conference, DC Paterson informed him that there were traffic cameras mounted on the lights at every intersection on William Street.

Carl rang the Traffic Control Centre and asked them about the quality of the cameras and whether they could be set to record traffic in Long Street.

‘You’re in luck, Inspector. The cameras at that intersection are due for a service this week. I’ll get them reset for you.’

‘What’s the quality of their night images like?’

‘As long as the vehicle goes through the intersection and moves away from the camera we can get the registration plate.’

‘How far down the street will the camera capture at night?’

‘Depends on the light and the weather.’

‘Do you think you could capture things going on in front of number seven Long Street?’

‘Probably, especially with the new cameras.’

‘Got anything from last Sunday night, early Monday morning?’

‘I’ll have a look and let you know, Inspector.’

Carl went to see the chief inspector.

‘Chief, I’ve found a way to get some surveillance on that building in Long Street. There’s a traffic camera on the intersection, and the Traffic Centre has agreed to reset one for us to point down Long Street.’

‘They got any footage from last weekend?’

‘They’re having a look.’

Chapter Six

Around ten in the morning on Thursday, the fifth of May, PC Lily Chan and her partner, PC Adam Monks, responded to a call about a foul odour coming from a building in Sunshine Street, Bayside. When they arrived at the address, they discovered the building was a derelict warehouse behind the row of trendy shops on Jetty Road.

It didn’t take them long to establish the source of the odour: the body of a well-dressed, middle-aged man behind a pile of rubbish on the floor of the warehouse, just inside the door that opened from the laneway that separated the warehouse from the trendy shops.

They secured the scene and called it in to Operations.

Dr Mike Jonas was examining the body when Carl and Harry arrived at the scene just before midday. The place was filthy. Everything except the corpse was covered with a carpet of dust several centimetres deep. There were discarded syringes, crumpled cigarette packets and broken bottles scattered across the floor of the warehouse, and the smell of stale urine and fermenting shit competed with the odours escaping from the slightly bloated body at their feet.

The crime scene investigators had set up a battery powered floodlight to illuminate the area where the body lay, as there was no electricity in the building and very little sunlight reached inside the warehouse through its boarded-up windows.

It certainly doesn’t take long for an abandoned building to be taken over by people with base needs, thought Carl, as he surveyed the detritus in front of him.

‘Not your usual OD suspect, Carl,’ said Mike. ‘Check out the suit.’

Carl looked closely at the body. It looked like that of a businessman who’d lost his way and ended up in the wrong place.

‘Anything on the body to identify him?’

Dr Jonas slipped his latex covered fingers inside the pockets of the jacket and the trousers. ‘Nothing.’

Carl knew it certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone had rifled through the pockets of a corpse before reporting it.

‘What makes you think he’s a possible OD?

‘There’s a puncture mark on his left arm, inside the elbow, and that belt.’ Dr Jonas pointed to a black leather belt loosely wrapped around the upper portion of the victim’s left arm. ‘I’d say it was holding up his pants before being used as a tourniquet.’

‘Think he might be a first time user?’ said Carl.

‘I’ll have to check in the lab when we’ve stripped his clothes off him.’

‘Any sign of the syringe?’

‘No,’ said Mike.

‘Sounds similar to those two homeless guys,’ said Harry. ‘They only had one needle mark.’

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ said Mike, ‘but this guy certainly doesn’t look like he was homeless, unless he’d taken to the streets this week.’

‘How long do you think he’s been here?’ said Carl.

‘Hard to say, probably a few days.’

Carl watched as the crime scene investigators photographed the body and the location. He didn’t have much faith that they’d find anything helpful if this turned out not to be another overdose death.

Sgt Dean Lang from Forensics walked in from the laneway.

‘Anything useful, Dean?’

‘Nothing out there, Inspector. It’s been raining off and on for the last few days, and it looks like this door’s been open for ages. And, as you can see, everything’s covered in dust in here. The one thing I can tell you though, Inspector, is this guy didn’t walk in here. Look at the backs of his shoes, and those tracks there.’ Dean pointed to two lines that appeared in the dust a short distance in from the doorway. ‘Someone dragged him in here and, allowing for the patrol that found the body, I’d say there were enough footprints in the dust when we got here to suggest our friend was dragged in by at least two others.’

‘Any clear prints?’

‘One of them was wearing size sixteen sneakers, at least. I should be able to give you a brand once I’ve tested the tread pattern.’ He showed Carl the image on his camera. ‘Can’t tell what the other guy was wearing. Those prints there belong to PC Chan, and that lot that stops just inside the door are PC Monks.’

Carl looked down at the plastic bags on his shoes, and on the shoes of everyone else in the building, and said a silent thank you to PC Chan for knowing her job.

The post mortem started at four fifteen. Carl watched as Dr Jonas examined the naked body of a slightly built, balding, middle-aged man.

‘Looks like your victim was forcibly restrained. See that bruising.’ Dr Jonas pointed to the upper arms and the abdomen. ‘And, there’s abrasion to the back of the head, which suggests he may have been held down against his will. This is not looking like a self-administered injection to me, Carl.’

Carl pictured someone holding the victim down on the rubbish strewn cement floor of the warehouse, with a knee in his belly and hands wrapped around his upper arms, and wondered how he’d administered the fatal injection. Then he remembered that Dean Lang had mentioned two sets of footprints, so it was possible that one of his attackers had held him down while the other had pushed the needle into a vein in his left arm.

When Carl refocused, Dr Jonas was examining the body with a magnifying glass, looking closely at all the known spots that people used to inject themselves.

‘See any more needle marks, Mike?’

‘There’s only the one.’

This is looking more like an assassination than an accidental overdose, thought Carl. ‘When do you think he died, Mike?’

‘Be at least a couple of days ago.’

‘Any extraneous biology on the clothing?’

‘We’ve got a couple of drops of blood on the shirt but it’s too early to tell if they’re extraneous. Could be the victims. I’ll let you know.’

Carl watched in silence as Dr Jonas completed the procedure. By the time it was over it