‘I’ll take that as a no.’

‘I haven’t had the chance to tell her yet.’ Monty felt a sudden need to change the subject. ‘Okay, so the paedophile and the loan shark were killed by the same gun, and I want you to find the connection.’

Wayne’s jaw dropped. ‘Me? how...’

‘The Vietnamese girl in the herbalist shop?’

‘It was just a gut feeling of mine, don’t set your hopes on it. Angus still has some more digging to do.’

Monty steepled his fingers and tapped at his teeth. Those who didn’t know Wayne well would be excused for seeing in his face nothing but a wall of rock split by a million year old frost. Monty knew better.

‘Wayne,’ he said. ‘Far be it to teach my grandfather how to suck eggs, but I hope Barry’s wrong about all this...’ He waved his hand trying to find the right words. ‘I mean, you’re not getting too involved here, are you? Not letting your personal feelings get in the way of the case?’

Monty grunted to himself—he could talk. Again he thought he detected a faint blush in the face of older man. ‘Shit, Wayne, an old codger like you should have more sense.’

Wayne pushed himself up from the desk and attempted to pull the frayed cuffs of his mustard coloured shirt further down his hairy wrists. Rumour had it that Wayne had not bought new clothes since the death of his wife twenty years ago.

‘Nah Monty, it’s nothing like that, I just feel like looking out for the girl, that’s all. Now is there anything else?’ Wayne said, his face back to its usual wall of granite.

19

EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 260107

HARUM SCARUM: u shld nvr meet up wit some1 u don’t no

BETTYBO: bt hes soooooo nice!

HARUM SCARUM: u need anotha KE story. U need her powa. U don’t need a boy 2 giv u that

BETTYBO: I want KE to kill some1 this time

HARUM SCARUM: okaaaaaaaay ... lets see what she’s got

The high temperature in the van hadn’t hurt Miro Kusak’s hard drive as much as they’d feared. In Central’s operations room Clarissa explained in a steady stream of techno-babble how she’d managed to extract the valuable information. Unfortunately none of Kusak’s correspondence with Bianca had shown up yet. Stevie loved her new job, but found the technical side of it a bit of a stretch. She rubbed her gritty eyes and did her best to focus on the screen, but without much success.

This was like no incident room she’d ever worked from before. No cigarette smoke in here, no fusty odours of unwashed clothes and sweaty sandshoes, cheap bourbon and cheaper aftershave. Someone had received a bunch of roses for her birthday and put them on the windowsill, and the scent mingled with the different perfumes of the room’s occupants. A collection of cuddly toys stood sentry in the workstation next to Clarissa’s, while the partitioning of its neighbour was papered with children’s colourful artwork.

‘Okay, I can see by your blank expressions that the details of my cyber investigations are less to you plebs than pearls before swine. In a nutshell...’ Clarissa stopped for a moment to see if anyone was listening and let out a martyr’s sigh when she realised they were all looking vacant.

Stevie dragged herself back from her mental wandering. Tash, who’d been hovering over an open box of chocolates on Clarissa’s desk, looked up and pointed to herself. ‘You talking to me?’

Clarissa turned her eyes to the ceiling.

Stevie put the lid on the chocolates, pushing them out of Tash’s reach. ‘Bad for your migraine. You were saying?’ she reminded Clarissa.

‘Yes, sorry, I’ll translate. Miro Kusak and Robert Mason were both members of the Dream Team paedophile ring. Kusak’s hard drive and flash disk contained similar photos to Mason’s, which they’d both purchased from the webmaster who may also be the photographer—I’ve found email correspondence that suggests this. The webmaster calls himself Lolita and sends his picture files from an Internet cafe in Mt Lawley.’

‘That wouldn’t be very private would it?’ Stevie queried.

‘No one would be able to see the files if they weren’t open on the screen. He probably wouldn’t use the cafe for everything, maybe just the most sensitive stuff, like the jpegs,’ Tash said.

‘There’s something else,’ Clarissa said. ‘It’s not as obvious as it was in the so-called art shots, but I think several of the hard core pics were taken in a common location.’

‘What, in the same place as the art shots?’

‘No. Have a look at these.’ Clarissa tapped some keys and the screen filled with a photograph of a young girl lying naked and in a degrading position on a bed. Stevie swallowed, and was glad to let her gaze follow the cursor to the rough plaster wall behind the bed. There was something hanging on the wall.

Stevie squinted at the screen. ‘A crucifix? Can you make it any clearer?’ She tried to remember the last time she’d noticed a crucifix on a wall. It was in Mrs Kusak’s house, but this one was more ornate, and did not bear the figure of Christ. There seemed to be some kind of filament hanging from it.

‘What is that, a crack in the wall, a piece of string?’ Stevie tapped the screen.

‘Sorry, that’s as good as it gets.’ Clarissa tapped the keys again, bringing up other images taken in the same room. Some of the shots were taken at different angles and showed several unidentifiable objects on the walls, just visible within the frames.

‘So, where do you go with these?’ Tash asked Clarissa.

‘I should be able to get the dates of the transactions from Miro’s computer, so that’ll help you narrow your search down. You’ll need to look at the cafe’s records, see who was on line when the pictures were sent and start grinding through the names. After that, it’ll be a question of how easily we can subpoena the bank accounts of those we think might be involved. It’s a bummer Bianca’s laptop never turned up.’

‘Oh but it has,’ Tash said with a triumphant grin.

‘Where?’

‘At the bottom of Mundaring reservoir.’

Clarissa scowled at Tash. ‘You love building people up just to cut them down, don’t you?’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Stevie said. ‘Clarissa, get us a report typed up in plain English, summarising everything we need to ask and be looking out for at the cafe.’

‘Give me an hour or so to get it organised,’ Clarissa said.

‘Time for us to grab a bite of lunch,’ Stevie said to Tash. If she was ever to get a decent night’s sleep again, she and Tash needed to talk. ‘Also,’ she added to Clarissa, ‘print out all the photos of the art girls on Mason’s and Kusak’s computers and start trying to ID them.’

‘Was Bianca Webster’s picture among them?’ Tash asked.

A phone rang from a few workstations down and was answered.

‘Not so far, but I’m not through all of them yet,’ Clarissa said.

Stevie jumped down from the desk. ‘Then finish that first, even before you get those reports typed.’ She thumped Tash on the shoulder. ‘Ready for lunch?’

‘All right for some,’ Clarissa grumbled.

From further down the line, a young man’s voice called, ‘Hey, Stevie! Dolly wants a word in her office. Now.’

Stevie’s stomach back-flipped. ‘Shit.’

‘Guilty conscience?’ Tash teased.

‘Don’t ask, you really don’t want to know. We’ll have to skip lunch.’

Tash shrugged, ‘I’ve got plenty to do. I’ll gather the troops and start on the Internet cafe.’

Stevie reached for Tash’s elbow before she could leave the room. ‘We really do need to talk, Tash.’

‘Come over this evening if you can bear to drag yourself away from your fella.’

Stevie was used to Tash’s jibes, they usually didn’t worry her, but now she prickled. ‘It’s not that, it’s a question of whether Mont can be there with Izzy or not.’