Authors: James Patterson
ELSPETH LAMPARD HAS put the kids to bed and is walking down the stairs when she realizes just how much she needs a glass of Shiraz.
Her husband, Ralph, is away in Europe and won’t be back until next week. She feels lonely at this time of the evening – after the kids are in bed and before she falls asleep in front of the TV.
She goes to the wine rack. Nothing. “Damn it,” she says aloud. She considers taking something from the wine cellar, but Ralph would hit the roof if he found one of his treasured wines had gone missing. There isn’t a bottle in there worth under five hundred bucks.
Dusk is descending over Bellevue Hill as Elspeth walks to the liquor store two streets away. Five minutes later, she is forty yards from her house with a decent thirty-dollar quaffing wine.
It’s quiet, sticky hot. Most of Elspeth’s neighbors are indoors watching TV or lounging by their blue-lit pools with a cocktail in hand.
She hears a click from behind. Ignores it. Then comes a
shuffling sound. She turns. Nothing. Sidewalk clear. Elspeth spins back again.
The blow comes from behind.
She falls to her knees, confused.
There’s a blur of houses, concrete, darkening sky. She hits the sidewalk hard. The wine bottle smashes – red liquid everywhere. Pain shoots up her neck, streaks across the left side of her face. She tries to turn, makes it halfway and sees a figure in an anorak leaning over her. Elspeth can smell her assailant’s breath.
She has no time to get up. Her attacker is bigger, stronger. She feels herself being dragged into a narrow alleyway between two gardens. She tries to scream, but as soon as she opens her mouth, a gloved hand comes over it, grips her lips, crushes the flesh about her mouth. Elspeth feels a tooth snap inward. More pain. Terrible pain. It spreads out across her face and around her skull.
She’s pushed up against a fence, a cloth comes up against her mouth. The attacker is leaning over her, knotting the material behind her neck. She struggles, but she’s drained and the assailant is too strong. Elspeth feels a wire being wrapped about her wrists pinned behind her back.
She can’t resist anymore. Her vision is bleary. She sees a head appear in front of her. No detail. The face is in shadow, hooded. She sees a match light, a cigarette lit. The flame illuminates part of the hooded face, but only the mouth … pale, thin lips.
Elspeth screams as the cigarette burns her face, but the sound is soaked up in the gag. She can smell her own burned flesh and screeches, helpless, as the cigarette is pushed into her
again, just beneath her left eye. She starts to cry, tears streaming down her face. The pain sears her insides. It feels as though her head is going to explode. She vomits into the cloth in her mouth and starts to choke on it.
The attacker grabs her, spins her over onto her front, Elspeth’s disfigured face hits the sandy ground of the lane.
Next comes the knife. Elspeth doesn’t know it’s a knife. She just knows something has pierced her back. She feels a strange dislocation in her spine. In her confused state, submerged in agony, she imagines she’s a puppet and her strings have been cut.
The knife goes in again and Elspeth convulses and gasps. But now the pain has gone. She’s moved beyond it.
Her assailant turns her over. Peers down into her face, pulls back the hood. Elspeth is almost totally blind, but she feels another shock, a new revulsion. Her life is fading away, but she knows the attacker is pulling up her skirt, spreading her legs.
TONY MACKENZIE WAS coming to the end of his five-mile run. He always felt a sense of euphoria build at this point in his circuit. He ran the same route at the same time every weekday, and entering Wentworth Avenue marked the final hundred-yard stretch before the wind down.
This morning, he felt energized. The sun was coming up, casting orange light all over the place. He passed the end of an alleyway leading off the sidewalk and kept running. But then something began to play on his mind. Something was wrong. He couldn’t figure out what it was, but it nagged him. He tried to push it aside, but it kept niggling him.
Forty yards past the alley, Tony Mackenzie finally stopped. He’d seen something. Something wasn’t quite right.
He turned and jogged back toward the entrance to the alley. Looking down the narrow lane, hands on hips, he steadied his breathing. Ten yards ahead, to the side of the alley, lay a dark object, vaguely human in shape. It could have been a bundle of rags. But something in Tony’s brain was telling him it wasn’t.
He walked toward the object, sweat dripping off him. As he drew closer he realized it was a human being. He thought it
might be a homeless person. He stepped forward cautiously, walking past the prone form close to the fence alongside the lane, his eyes fixed on the shape. He half expected it to jump up and attack him at any moment.
Three steps past the strange figure, Tony could finally make sense of it and felt a surge of terror in the pit of his stomach. Then nerves all over his body seemed to fire simultaneously. He jolted, stumbling back against the fence.
I WAS JUST pulling onto the Harbour Bridge. Glanced at the dash clock. It was 6.59 am. I felt like shit – I’d hardly slept at all last night. In my nightmares and half-sleep I kept going over Stacy Friel’s murder. And you know the worst of it? She looked like my dead wife, Becky.
I’d had two strong coffees before leaving the house and had stopped for a Red Bull at my regular gas station in Mosman. The Ferrari is a thirsty bastard, and so was I this morning.
I moved my thumb to switch on the ABC News with the remote control on the steering wheel when my cell rang. I pushed the “Receive” button and heard Justine’s voice. “Craig?”
“That’s me! Hi, Justine.”
“We’ve got a second murder.”
I glanced in the mirror, sped into a gap to my left. “Any details?”
“No. Brett’s there now. It’s a street away from Greta’s.”
“No way!” I changed lanes and accelerated along the Cahill Expressway. The traffic was building, but still okay. “Where’s the body, exactly?”
“Wentworth Avenue. Runs parallel to Greta’s street.”
“Know it. How did you learn of the murder?”
“I’m at Greta and Brett’s. Stayed over last night. Brett got the call just as he was leaving for HQ.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen … hopefully.”
It was pretty much a straight run and I was there in twelve, stopped ten yards from the police cordon and walked briskly toward the tape. A constable was guarding the sidewalk. I showed him my ID and I was relieved when he let me through without any arguments. Maybe this liaison with the cops could actually work after all, I thought, as I ducked under the yellow tape and paced over to where the forensics team were poking around.
Brett Thorogood spotted me and waved me over. I saw Mark a few yards away, his back to me. He was talking to a man in lycra.
“Runner found the body,” Thorogood explained, his expression grim.
I followed the DC over to where the victim lay – another woman, about forty, shoulder-length blonde hair. She was dressed in a blood-soaked Dolce & Gabbana dress. The soil under her and around her was discolored. Her face had been mutilated – cigarette burns.
Her dress had been hitched up over her hips, legs splayed. The end of a roll of fifty-dollar bills could just be seen protruding from between her legs. Blood had dried on the insides of her thighs.
“Same MO,” I said unnecessarily. Thorogood just stared at the dead woman.
I turned to see Justine at the tape. The cop who’d let me through was questioning her. I strode over and just as I reached them, he let her under the barrier.
“Same thing as before,” I told her as we walked along the alley. Thorogood had moved to one of the police cars on the street. Justine put a hand to her mouth, but as I went to turn her away, she shook me off. “It’s okay, Craig!” she said sharply. “Not much shocks me anymore.”
I saw Talbot finish up questioning the jogger and decided to leave Justine to it. I walked over to Mark just as another cop escorted the runner toward Wentworth Avenue.
“Oh … how nice!” he said.
“History repeating itself.”
He nodded toward the dead woman. “Doesn’t help that poor thing.”
“Might help us though. What do you have?”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Jogger found her about 5.45. The woman had been stabbed repeatedly in the back. We don’t know if she was raped before …”
“The first victim wasn’t.”
“No.”
“Do we know who she is?”
“Name’s Elspeth Lampard. Address: 44 Wentworth Avenue.”
“That’s just two houses away.” I nodded back toward the main road. “Any idea how long she’s been here?”
“Ten or eleven hours.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. She’d probably have been spotted sooner if she’d been killed earlier. So after … what?… 8 pm?”
Talbot didn’t answer, had started to turn away when he caught sight of Darlene walking toward us with her forensics kit.
“Your turn to poke around,” he said sardonically.
AS DARLENE SET to work, I left Justine behind, plucked out my iPhone and started toward Wentworth Avenue.
I tapped “Elspeth Lampard Australia” into Google and a couple of weblinks came up. She was the daughter of Norman Ruschent, a wealthy mining entrepreneur in Western Australia. And she’d married well too. Her husband was CFO of Buttress Finance Group – a big, global player. Made a name for himself on the Australian stock exchange in the early nineties, served time in London, a big city firm. They’d met over there.
Personal background: the Lampards had two boys, nine and eleven, both at Cranbrook School. I lifted my eyes from the screen of the iPhone as I passed the end of the alley, emerging onto Wentworth Avenue, saw a policewoman a couple of houses down. She was walking toward a squad car with two young boys. The Lampard kids, I realized … poor little buggers. I felt for them, I’d lost my own mother when I was around their age.
Leaning against a low wall, I returned my gaze to the screen. So a second victim linked to the financial sector found dead with fake banknotes stuffed inside her body. I wondered if
Elspeth knew the first victim, Stacy Friel … or indeed, David Friel? Must have done, I concluded. He was a senior cog at Citigroup. The Friels and the Lampards lived one street apart.
What other links could there be? I started to think laterally. Called Greta.
“Hey,” I said gently.
“Is that Craig? Hi.”
“Look, I’m calling about the latest …”
“Yep,” she said. She was clearly trying to keep herself together.
“The dead woman is Elspeth Lampard.” I heard a sudden intake of breath. Paused for second. “You know her?”
There was a delay. “Um … not that well, Craig. But yeah, I knew her.”
“I’m trying to find links, Greta. Links with …”
“Okay …” Another sharp inhalation. “Er … let me … let me think. Ralph, her husband … he knows David well, David Friel.”
“Through work?”
“Yeah, and socially. They’re practically neighbors. They play tennis together. Stace … she played too. Same club as us … down the road. And … er … the gym. Yeah, Elspeth goes to my gym … and Stacy’s.”
“Okay.”
“You think this is some sex thing, don’t you?”
“No, Greta. I don’t.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m just …”
I kept quiet for a few beats. Then: “Can you think of anything? Anything unusual? Anything going on? I don’t mean tossing the keys into the bowl.”
“What
do
you mean then?”
“Elspeth’s husband is in finance. So is David Friel. They work for different companies, but could the husbands be working together on something?”
“Craig. I have no idea.” She paused for several seconds. “All I know is that Stacy and Elspeth were just nice, normal women … until someone killed them.”
THEY’D TAKEN EVERYTHING from Geoff Hewes’ pockets – money, cell phone, car keys. Then the man who’d jumped on him had smacked him over the head with something hard and heavy and shoved him into a blacked-out room. When he came to, he could taste blood in his mouth.
Hewes pulled himself up, wincing and cursing, then he felt incredibly sick and vomited copiously, touched his face, it was crusty with blood. His jaw was agonizing.
There was a chink of light from a window high up and he could just hear traffic far off. He recalled Loretto’s last words and knew where he was … in the basement of the bastard’s huge house at Point Piper.
What the hell was Loretto doing? Was he trying to make him cack himself before punching a bullet through his skull? It would be just like him: after all, why just kill someone when you can play with them first?
“Well you’re not going to get me you bastard!” Hewes yelled into the empty blackness. Then he slumped to the floor, head in hands.
“ALRIGHT GUYS, SO, let’s take it case by case,” I said and surveyed the conference room back at Private. “First, the Ho murder. Darlene has isolated DNA samples but they don’t tally with any records. Ho Meng is convinced the police can’t help and he’s certain the Triads want him to coordinate a smuggling operation.”
“There’s also the fact,” Mary said, “that Ho Meng is sure the Triads are out for revenge. That’s why they’ve targeted him, killed his son. He believes they murdered his wife soon after the family arrived in Australia a dozen years ago.”
“So, Mary.” I turned in my chair. “You have to dig further. Ho thinks he knows the gang, we have some DNA, but that’s it. We need names, we need to know where the gang hangs out. For the moment, Ho refuses to work with the cops, but I don’t feel comfortable with that.”
“We can’t force him to,” Johnny commented.
“No, we can’t.” I scanned the faces around the table. “Okay, Darlene … What’s your latest?”
She looked down at a short stack of papers. Cleared her throat. “Dead woman: Elspeth Lampard, forty-one. Multiple
stab wounds, fatal one to the heart. Tortured, face disfigured. She must have died pretty quick. I’ve found no sign of sexual assault, no prints, no alien DNA other than background stuff. There are, though, some long hairs that don’t match Elspeth’s. I found those on her dress. Doesn’t mean much. She could’ve picked them up walking along the road, or at work. The banknotes are photocopies.”
“The victim’s husband, Ralph Lampard, is CFO of Buttress Finance Group,” I said. “So, I’m wondering if there’s a link with big-time corporate money.” I looked at Justine and then Johnny before taking in the other two.
“Obviously, our first touchstone has to be money, doesn’t it?” Johnny replied. “Both husbands work in the financial sector. Banknotes placed ritualistically.”
“But what about the elephant in the room? The fact that the money is fake.”
“In
both
murders,” Mary added.
“But it seems too much of a coincidence that the husbands are in finance,
and
the two dead women were both abused the same way,” Johnny insisted.
“Unless the killer is trying to trick us,” Justine commented.
“Yeah, okay, all things are possible.” I took a deep breath. “But money
is
the most obvious link we have at the moment, isn’t it?”
“No,” Justine said emphatically.
“No?” We all looked to her.
“Geography. The two women lived a couple of streets apart in Bellevue Hill. That’s as strong a link as the financial one.”
“So you really think it’s more to do with the fact that the victims lived in the same suburb?” I asked.
“You don’t think that’s a tangible connection?”
It suddenly seemed obvious. “Well, yeah … of course it is.” I shook my head. “We have to think outside the box.” The others were staring at me. “What if,” I went on enthusiastically, “we have some lucky murderer? He’s killing women randomly, except for the fact they live within a few streets of each other … Bellevue Hill must be teeming with banker types, stockbrokers. It’s that sort of area.”
“I’ve experienced this sort of thing in LA,” Justine interjected and swept her eyes around the table. “The guy could be going for women with the same hair color … Stacy Friel and Elspeth Lampard were both blonde. He could be targeting women of a particular age. Friel was thirty-nine, Lampard forty-one. It could be someone at their gym, the tennis club, the local coffee shop.”
“Okay. So basically, what you two are saying is that we’ve got nowhere, because the financial link could well be absolutely spurious,” Johnny shot back.
“Guess we are,” I said, glancing at Justine.