‘Kensington, isn’t that where the vic came from?’ Barry’s question was more of a statement and no one answered him.

‘What else did he say? Did you get a description of the man?’ Monty asked.

‘I thought this was too important for the phone,’ Wayne replied. ‘I’ve made an appointment to see Thompson early this afternoon.’

‘Good, keep me up to date.’

‘Do we know if Linda had a boyfriend?’ Barry asked Stevie.

‘Yes, about the same age as she was. According to the mother he’s been working on a farm in Meckering. They were saving up for a skiing holiday. He was in Meckering at the time of the murder. The farm manager vouched for him.’

‘Did she work?’ Wayne asked her.

‘Only part time—as a waitress at the Blue Fish, that trendy restaurant by the beach in Cottesloe. She was waiting for her big break into the modelling world. I’ve got people going through the staff statements now. I had them ask the usual questions: had she complained about any of the customers giving her a hard time, anyone following her or any of the other girls; had her demeanour changed over the days leading to the murder.’

‘And?’ Wayne queried.

Stevie looked down at her notebook. ‘One of the waitresses said a guy had eaten there several times the previous week and made sure he was served by her each time. They seemed to talk quite a bit. The waitress said Linda was flattered, told her it was nice to have a harmless flirt with an older guy, said they were just having a bit of fun.’

Wayne shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘A harmless flirt,’ he said as if to himself. ‘Description?’

‘Pretty vague. Late thirties, early forties, tall and that’s about it. I told the girl to ring me if she sees him again.’

‘We’re still trying to find out who this guy is,’ said Angus, ‘but on the whole, Mont, everything backs up what her parents and friends say. She was a popular girl with no apparent worries.’

‘And now she’s dead.’ Barry smoothed his palm across his shaved head and worried at one of his Mickey Mouse ears. ‘Why’s it always the nice girls?’ He answered his own question with a shrug. ‘Nice girls are more trusting, maybe?’

Stevie whipped up her head and balled her fists. ‘Bullshit, stop romanticising all this. Nice, nasty, it makes no difference to the killer. She didn’t ask for this, she just happened to fit his mould. The KP murder victims were prostitutes for God’s sake!’

‘I’m sure there are nice prostitutes too, Stevie,’ Barry said, unnerved by her sudden ferocity.

Monty held up his hands like a referee. ‘Stop the guesswork, people. Let’s leave the psychological stuff to the profiler and concentrate on what little physical evidence we have.’ He shot Stevie and Barry a look of warning before shuffling through his sheaves of papers and extracting one.

Stevie forced herself to unclench her fists.

‘I met up with the pathologist at the lab yesterday arvo,’ Monty said, looking over his reading glasses. ‘They found evidence of chloroform and Rohypnol in her system. Her lips were swollen and slightly blistered, which indicates that some kind of a chloroform-soaked rag or sponge was placed over her nose and mouth to knock her out. When she came to she was forced to drink a cocktail of roofies and orange juice to put her out again more heavily.’ He paused. ‘The only bright side to all this is that she would have been barely aware of what was going on.’

‘I’ll go talk to Robbery,’ Barry said, ‘get a list of recent pharmacy break-ins, enquire about missing chloroform.’

‘Didn’t Gull’s pharmacy in Hay Street get broken into recently?’ Wayne asked.

Barry nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll follow through.’

‘The roofies will be almost impossible to trace. They’re as easy to get as ecstasy in the clubs at the moment—date rape’s almost endemic these days,’ Wayne said.

‘And chloroform is fairly available if you know where to look. Not just pharmacies stock it—vets, science labs and the like,’ Barry added.

‘Was she raped?’ asked Wayne.

Monty shook his head.

Stevie whispered a silent prayer of thanks.

‘Not even an object rape?’ Barry sounded surprised.

‘No, nothing inserted and no seminal fluid on or around her. But if you ask me, the crime still has sexual overtones: stripped naked, the shaving, the spraying with the bronze paint, the roofies. I’m hoping our profiler will shed some light upon this strange set of contradictions.’ Monty leaned back in his chair, clearly relieved at their newly acquired expert help.

‘Wait a minute,’ Wayne said. ‘The paint would be a perfect medium to collect fibres, hairs and other traces. Don’t tell me they haven’t found anything?’

‘Apparently there was some contamination with dust, but they’ve been having trouble separating it from the paint to get an idea of its origins. They seem to think the chemicals in the paint would destroy most trace evidence anyway.’ Monty replied. ‘They spent hours removing the paint and found nothing. They think he shaved himself too, or else...’ he tapped a tattoo on the tabletop with his pen, flicking his tongue against his lower lip as he re-read the lab notes in front of him.

Wayne said, ‘C’mon Mont, spill it. The suspense is killing us.’

‘Minute traces of neoprene were found under the victim’s fingernails.’ Monty read the pertinent part of the lab report aloud to his team.

‘Neoprene?’ Barry queried.

Monty shifted his gaze to Stevie. She’d have the answer to that.

‘Neoprene as in wetsuit material?’ she asked him.

Monty dashed her a smile.

‘So, if he’d covered her in paint while in a wetsuit, he’d be doubly certain not to leave any part of himself behind. He could have been wearing one of those diver’s hoods too,’ she added.

‘And I thought we were going to be looking for a hairless man.’ Barry sounded disappointed.

‘An old wetty splattered with bronze paint would be a lot more incriminating than a hairless body,’ Angus said.

Nods all round as this was digested.

Stevie said, ‘She was supposed to be drugged, but the evidence of neoprene under her fingernails would suggest a struggle.’

Monty shrugged. ‘Maybe she woke up in the middle of the painting?’

Something inside her tightened again. Keep your distance from the victim, she said to herself, don’t personalise this.

‘There’s something else, and it’s a lot more concrete than the wetsuit possibility,’ Monty continued. ‘A single grey hair was found on her left buttock.’

Murmurs of excitement rippled through the group gathered around.

‘Was there a clean skin tag? Has it been matched?’ Stevie asked.

‘Yes, but the lab hasn’t finished running through the DNA comparisons. There’s nothing in the standard database so I’ve asked them to widen the search. I’m expecting a call any minute now.’

‘All that painting must have caused one hell of a mess. It must have been done in a very secluded spot, a garage, warehouse...’ Stevie turned to Wayne. ‘What about the photographer’s place?’

‘I supervised the search myself. Nothing.’

‘Or,’ Angus said, ‘one of those self-lock storage sheds perhaps.’ He sighed and rubbed his thin face. ‘We’d get a lot further ahead with this if we could find the location.’

Monty gestured to Wayne. ‘Well, maybe Wayne’s hobby shop employee will point us in the right direction.’ He returned to his notes. ‘The lab guy said she was covered in three coats of paint, and around the throat area there were four. Her actual cause of death was strangulation. They reckon the hand pressure on the throat might have smudged the drying paint so he applied another coat to tidy the area up.’

Barry said, ‘But he must have left something else of himself behind other than that single hair. When he shifted her he wouldn’t have been wearing the wetsuit, surely.’

Angus shrugged. ‘Maybe he was? It was dark. A dark wetsuit would be good camouflage.’