Col had continued to fill her in once Monty’s malfunctioning machine had been seen to. The organisation sounded huge, efficient and structured like a business with primary producers, retailers, suppliers and middlemen. The various hierarchical levels weren’t arranged in a logical pattern though, but via a confusing maze of passageways and dead ends, with members linked to those immediately below and above them on a need-to-know basis only. It was unlikely that even Mamasan and The Crow would know who was at the very heart of the labyrinth.

How could their under-resourced authorities cope with something like that, she wondered as she wound her way through the obstacle course of parked cars. How could she cope?

And Monty seemed to think that now the Feds were involved, she could simply step back and withdraw. He obviously didn’t know her as well as he liked to think he did; didn’t know that the only way she could shake this overwhelming feeling of helplessness was to fight it. First the baby and now Skye; she couldn’t just get up and leave now even if she wanted to.

Sorry, Mont.

Her first task was to discover the truth behind Skye’s death. With the evidence as it stood, they had virtually nothing to prove she had been murdered at all, let alone by whom. There was even a chance that the people traffickers weren’t involved at all, that her death was just a fluke accident. All she had to fuel her suspicions were a dysphasic old woman, an unused Ventolin inhaler, and a paint scrape that could have been caused by a carpark bingle.

A carpark bingle. Stevie thought back to the conversation with Fowler when she’d been dressing his head wound in her kitchen. He’d mentioned that his father’s green vintage car was at the panel beater because of a ‘carpark bingle.’ Could Fowler have run Skye off the road that night? Surely not. He may have had an axe to grind with Skye, but he wouldn’t have killed her because of it—would he? His father’s vintage was green, but so was Pavel’s Jag. She shook her head; amazed at how her mind could wander when she was tired and overwrought; this was hardly a logical thought process.

The wind scythed through her thin jacket, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with cold. She turned up her collar. A distant streetlight illuminated the roof of Monty’s pitted Land Rover near the back fence. Monty’s car was also green. Note to self: never buy a green car.

She increased her pace.

A man climbed out of a car on her right. She couldn’t see his face.

His door slammed.

Instinctively she pulled her keys from her pocket and held one like a shank in her hand. The man beeped his car locked and turned. His face was still indistinct in the darkness. In the next instant he was looming over her. She saw him lifting a blunt object, ready to strike. She made a feint toward him with the key, stopped and drew up short. ‘Fowler, what the hell!’

Out of the shadows, the blunt object became a bunch of broken-necked daffodils. Fowler took a step back. ‘Jesus, Hooper, you’re not going to stab me are you?’

Stevie’s smacked a hand against her thigh. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you. Your phone was off so I figured you’d be at the hospital. I was heading up to the ward, hoping to catch you, when I saw your car over there.’ He indicated the far fence with the drooping daffodils and must have sensed her incredulity. ‘Oh, these are for the Inspector,’ he explained.

Stevie pressed a palm to her forehead and gritted her teeth. ‘Shit.’

‘Jittery, huh?’

‘I think we both have reason to be, don’t you?’ She unlocked the Land Rover, hurled her bag onto the passenger seat and turned to face him.

‘ You’re okay,’ Fowler said, carefully placing the flowers on the bonnet of the car. ‘It’s not your name all over the papers and in the case notes—it’s me that should be worried.’

Stevie paused and tried to compose herself. ‘So ... what is it you want?’

Something in Fowler seemed to deflate. He leaned back against the car. ‘Hooper, please—I need you to come with me to see Mrs Hardegan.’

She folded her arms and regarded him coolly. ‘I’m not used to this humility; it doesn’t suit you.’ Then a thought struck her. She looked back at him with surprise. ‘Wait a minute. You mean you haven’t even told the old lady about her son yet?’

‘No. That’s why I wanted to catch you here.’ He pointed to his car. ‘This is a hire car, we don’t have any spare in the pool,’ he said as if that somehow explained everything. His eyes dropped to his shiny shoes. ‘I don’t think the old lady likes me much. I’m not sure what to say, how to handle her—you’re, er, quicker on your feet than I am.’

This was the nearest he’d got to sheepish about their near miss the other night. Guess I should be grateful for what I can get, she thought, rolling her eyes in much the same way Skye might have done. ‘And why might she not like you, I wonder?’

Fowler plunged his hands into his pockets and looked toward the railway track. A train hooted and the ground beneath them shook as it slowed toward the station.

‘Well?’ Stevie prompted.

‘I think she knows. Knows about Skye and me, how we used to, er, go out. Skye must have told her about the assault, that I didn’t do anything about it.’

Stevie said nothing.

‘I’d do anything to make up for that now, you know that?’ Fowler shook his head at her lack of reaction, waved a questioning hand. ‘You don’t seem very surprised about any of this.’

Stevie expelled a breath. ‘That’s because I already knew.’

‘You knew?’

‘I’m a detective.

‘How...?’

‘I detected it.’ She didn’t want to go into what she’d discovered from Skye’s mother, not when there was still that other niggling matter to sort out. ‘Wait here a moment. I need to make a phone call.’

Out of Fowler’s earshot, she called Mark Douglas on his mobile number. ‘That paint sample,’ she said when he picked up.

‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a terrier, Stevie?’

‘Frequently.’

‘I thought it could have at least waited till office hours.’ A woman laughed in the background—Blood-Spatter Jane?

‘Does that mean the results are through?’

‘Faxed to me from Canada just before I left work this evening.’

Shit, he knew this was urgent, he could have at least texted her. It was gratifying to know he was at last getting a life—but did it have to be right now?’ Mark laughed down the phone as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Green Jag XK.’

‘Definitely not a vintage?’ She looked to where Fowler sat slumped against the bonnet of his hire car.

‘No,’ he said.

Stevie felt her shoulders sag with relief. ‘John Pavel had a green Jag,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘and it’s still missing.’

‘Same model?’

‘Can’t remember. I’ll have to look it up.’

‘Mark, the movie’s starting,’ the woman called out.

Stevie thanked him, unable to keep the smile from her face. Still smiling she returned to Fowler and tapped him on the arm. ‘C’mon, we may as well go together. I’ll drop you back here for your car when we’ve seen Mrs Hardegan.’

As she drove she told Fowler about the paint results and he reminded her of the model of Pavel’s Jag, an XK convertible, 2006. ‘A match.’ Stevie said. ‘Pavel might be alive after all.’

‘If he is, and he thought Skye was onto him, he’d have reason enough to kill her, wouldn’t he? But surely the car would have been spotted by now? There’s a statewide search going on for it.’

Stevie shrugged. Number plates were easy enough to swap. A cop would only run a check of the plates if he had cause to be suspicious of the vehicle. ‘I’ll have to contact Angus, get him to trace every 2006 convertible Jag in the state—no make it country, irrespective of plates.’

‘You’ll be popular.’

‘I’m hardly flavour of the month right now.’