The Darkest Hour (26 page)

‘I’ll count to three.’

Felise threw the fat letter on the floor and stamped away.

‘Come back here and pick that up.’

Felise dropped onto the lounge and kicked her heels against the side.

‘Do you want to spend the rest of the day in bed?’

Lauren bent to pick the letter up, then hesitated. The brown envelope bore twelve fifty-cent stamps and was addressed to her. She didn’t recognise the stiff, stilted handwriting. She flipped the envelope over with the toe of her shoe. There was no return address.

‘Well?’

Lauren looked up to see Kristi watching her.

‘Who’s it from?’ Kristi said.

‘It doesn’t say.’

Kristi immediately went for the phone.

‘Wait a minute.’ Lauren flipped the envelope over again. ‘See if you recognise the handwriting.’

‘Yeah, that’d be what he wants,’ Kristi hissed. ‘Get us close to it then set off the bomb.’

‘It’s not a bomb.’ Lauren kept her voice low. Felise was still kicking the lounge.

‘You don’t know that. He could be outside with a mobile phone, biding his time before he triggers it.’

‘I’m going to pick it up.’

‘Don’t.’

‘You saw how hard she threw it down – wouldn’t it have gone off then?’

‘Maybe that primed it,’ Kristi said. ‘How come you’re so keen to get us killed? The detectives said if we got anything strange to call them. Why not just leave it there and ring?’

Lauren stepped back. ‘Fine. Ring them. It’ll turn out to be a sample of shampoo or something I forgot I wrote away for, and we’ll have wasted more of their time.’

‘Wasting their time I’m happy to do.’ Kristi dialled the number. ‘Ella, it’s Kristi. There’s a strange parcel here.’

‘It’s only a letter,’ Lauren said.

‘It’s a big fat envelope with something inside, and we don’t know the handwriting, and there’s no sender’s address,’ Kristi said. ‘Should we evacuate or – okay, yep, okay. Thanks. Will do. Bye.’ She put the phone down. ‘She’s going to send somebody around. She said just leave it alone.’

Lauren sat on the lounge and caught one stick-like ankle. ‘Enough kicking, Flea.’

Felise wrapped her thin arms around Lauren’s neck. ‘Can I watch Dora?’

Lauren looked at Kristi over her head. Kristi shrugged in a resigned way. Felise put the DVD in and sat on the floor.

There was a knock at the door. Lauren looked out the window. ‘It’s them.’

‘Already?’

Kristi went downstairs and returned with two smiling uniformed police officers. They pulled on gloves and picked the envelope up off the floor. Kristi took a few steps back as they began to open it.

They looked inside. ‘Hm,’ the male officer said.

Kristi leaned forward. ‘White powder?’

The female officer tipped up the envelope and let the contents slide out onto the table.

‘Oh my god.’ Kristi took a step back.

‘It’s just a toy,’ Lauren said.

‘With its head ripped off,’ Kristi snapped.

The headless koala hand puppet lay crumpled up on the table while the head rolled in a slow arc and came to rest against her pencils. Grey fluff settled on her sketches.

‘Get that thing off there,’ she said. ‘Get it off!’

The female officer checked inside the envelope before scooping the toy back in.

‘No note?’ Lauren said.

‘Nothing.’ She slipped the envelope into a plastic evidence bag.

The male officer said, ‘We’ll look for prints, and try to track down where it was posted and when, but it was probably put in a street postbox – hence all the stamps – and not through a post office.’

‘So no witnesses,’ Lauren said.

‘There could be prints,’ he said again.

There wouldn’t be.

‘We’ll let Detective Marconi know,’ the female officer said. ‘Are you all okay?’

‘No,’ Kristi said.

‘Yes, we are,’ Lauren said. ‘I mean, we’re on edge and upset, but there’s nothing more that you can do.’

The officers exchanged glances. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘Thanks.’ Lauren took them downstairs, watched them to their car, then locked the door.

‘We could’ve kept them here for a while.’ Kristi grasped the banister, her voice full of hurt. ‘What if he drops round to see how we liked his present?’

‘That’s what the surveillance people are there for.’

‘But how do we know they’re still out there? Have you seen them? Because I haven’t.’

Lauren climbed the stairs. ‘We can’t even be sure it was him.’

‘Are you crazy? Who else would send us that?’

Lauren didn’t want to talk about it any more. To think that he was still here made her feel weak, sick.
Please let the police find him, through the shoulder guy or the leak or somehow.
Otherwise, there was no telling where he might stop.

E
lla put the phone down. ‘It was a soft toy with its head torn off.’

‘Charming,’ Murray said.

‘They’re trying for prints.’ Ella frowned at her computer screen. The niggle about the phone number was still there in the back of her mind.

‘Good luck,’ Murray said. ‘Hey, did you ring that guy back?’

‘What guy?’

‘There was a note on your desk earlier.’ He pushed aside papers on her desk looking for it. ‘Must be here somewhere. It was that Sal guy. The note said he rang yesterday evening. You didn’t see it earlier?’

She shook her head. ‘Feel like a drive back out there?’

‘Nah. Got enough to do. Just phone him, then we’ll go and talk to Simon.’

Ella found the sheet with Sal Rios’s contact details and picked up the phone. While it was ringing she thought about the threats Thomas Werner was making.
Well, at least we know he’s still here.

‘Hello.’ The male voice was gruff, older.

‘I’m calling for Sal Rios, please. It’s Detective Marconi.’

The phone was dropped on a hard surface. She heard footsteps retreating then a voice bawled ‘Sal!’

She waited. She wished she could work out what the niggle was about. She hated the feeling of the answer being just out of reach.

‘Sal speaking.’

‘This is Detective Marconi,’ she said. ‘We’re looking into a phone call that was made from Rosie’s nightclub on Wednesday the fourth. Paul Davids told us you were there that evening.’

‘I work there,’ he said. ‘My family are part-owners. I keep an eye on things.’

‘Did you make any calls from the phone on the bar that night?’

‘You know how noisy that area can get? I’m surprised anyone makes calls from there.’

‘This was before opening,’ Ella said. ‘Davids told us there were only seven or so people present. We know the call was made from there – we need to know who made it.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘Who was the call made to?’

‘I can’t discuss that,’ she said. ‘Did you see anybody use the phone? Or even go near it?’

‘Nope. Everyone’s got mobiles these days. I’m always saying we should can that phone. Save the line rental money.’

‘Okay. Thanks for your time.’ She hung up.

Murray said, ‘Anything?’

‘Nah.’ Ella strained her brain. She was certain she’d seen Feng’s number somewhere other than on Kennedy’s list.

‘Ready to see Simon?’

‘Give me a minute.’

It was an itch she had to scratch. She grabbed the folders and started paging through the phone records. Murray huffed.

‘One minute.’ They’d already checked Kennedy’s. She ran her finger down Lauren’s. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘What?’

‘Remember how Werner called Lauren and threatened to burn her house down? He did it from Feng Xie’s mobile.’

Murray raised his eyebrows.

‘See for yourself.’ She handed the folder over.

His eyes widened. ‘This is–’

‘Huge,’ she said. ‘He’s a triple murderer.’

‘He might have picked the phone up in the street.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She grabbed her phone.

‘You’re sure?’ Simon Bradshaw said.

‘The call was made to Lauren last Wednesday,’ Ella said. ‘Feng was found in the water on Friday. You said the autopsy showed he’d been in there for a couple of days.’

‘They think,’ Murray put in.

She turned her back to him.

‘This is huge,’ Simon said.

Exactly, Ella thought.

‘Can you send over a photo of Werner?’ Simon asked. ‘We found a couple of people who saw a man come out of the water in full scuba kit near Hermit Bay. He took some of it off and got into the passenger side of a late model blue sedan. With a bit of luck they might be able to pick out his face.’

She went into her email program. ‘Sending.’

A moment later she heard his email ping. ‘Bewdy,’ he said. ‘Okay. I’m going to see if I can get this confirmed. I’ll ring you when I know.’

‘Cheers.’

Murray had the diagram spread out in front of him and was writing under Feng Xie’s name:
Phone used by Werner to threaten Lauren.

‘You know what the problem with all of this is,’ he said in a conversational manner.

She nodded. ‘We still can’t find him.’

‘The case against him gets bigger and bigger, but the jail cell remains empty.’

‘I’m hoping Mendelssohn and what’s-his-name are onto the leak and we’ll get him that way,’ Ella said.

She emailed Werner’s photo to Wayne Rhodes with the message:
This is him – any recognition from your widow?

After a moment’s thought she wrote him another email, and cc’d Simon.
Can you send me pics of your guys and I’ll see if Kennedy’s girlfriend’s seen them before?

She hit send with her fingers crossed.

‘Lemon tea cake,’ Wayne told Ella on the phone later that afternoon.

‘Never mind that. Did she recognise the picture?’

‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘She apologised about it too. A nicer lady one couldn’t hope to find. Get this: she says she wants me to find out what was going on because she needs to understand her husband’s death. I told her that it looks like we’re uncovering some bad things he was involved in, and she said that it didn’t matter, so long as we worked out what happened.’

‘So what have you found out?’

‘DNP Holdings exists only in the books of Adrian Nolan’s toy warehouse,’ Wayne said. ‘As I said, shenanigans.’

‘So it’s a dummy company?’

‘It’s not even that. It’s basically just a name and address. Not even an address really.’ He rustled papers. ‘Nolan took delivery of stacks of stuff from various companies throughout the world, many of them Chinese, and much of it belonging in what we’ll kindly call the lower end of the market.’

‘Plastic crap.’

‘In a word, yes,’ he said. ‘Nolan took this stuff, divvied it up and sold it on. DNP was made out to look like one of his customers. He shipped stuff to them on an average of every six to eight weeks.’

‘To where?’

‘It took a bit of hunting to find it,’ Wayne said, ‘considering Nolan’s normally detailed record-keeping. But DNP’s stuff went to 76 Hunter Lane, in Chinatown. There’s no such address. Nothing even close. But he’s written that Quiksmart delivered it.’

Ella’s scalp prickled. ‘Kennedy.’

‘That’s my guess,’ he said. ‘Under-the-table-type deliveries, so I doubt we’ll find proof.’

‘Does it say what the goods were?’

‘Snow domes,’ Wayne said. ‘Every single time.’

‘How weird is that?’

‘Not at all actually,’ he said. ‘Did you know there’s a step in the crystal meth manufacturing process at which operations can be suspended, keeping the substance in a liquid form?’

‘It was ice in the snow domes?’

‘Pretty funny, hey,’ he said. ‘Ice, snow, get it?’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘I haven’t narrowed it down yet,’ he said. ‘Looks like he bought snow domes from various Chinese companies, so which were the real thing and which were full of the drugs I don’t know yet. I’m about to start a search on those companies, see what I can find out.’

‘So,’ Ella said, thinking it through, ‘Nolan sent the druggie domes via Kennedy to Feng, who cooked it in his little lab there at the back of his craptastic flat. We need to find any witnesses who saw a Quiksmart van near his place.’ She scribbled a note. ‘And then what? Did Kennedy pick it up again? Did Feng drop it off somewhere?’

‘Or maybe Werner went and collected it himself.’

Ella made another note. ‘Have you got into the money side yet? Where it went, where it came from?’

‘Still working on that aspect,’ Wayne said. ‘Did you get the pic of Nolan I sent?’

‘Got one of Feng too. We’re planning a trip to see Helen Flinders shortly.’

She felt excited and pleased by the developments in the case, but wished they were getting closer to the man himself. Maybe once they had all the links worked out between these three dead men, they’d see then what they couldn’t see now.

‘Talk to you later, okay?’

Murray drove them across to Helen Flinders’s place in Double Bay. Ella knocked on the door next to the filigreed numbers. The corridor was bright with the late-morning sun.

The dog barked. They heard Helen Flinders’s voice: ‘Pepper, sit. Be quiet.’ The dog kept barking. Helen Flinders opened the door with her hands full of silver wire in complicated-looking knots and pushed the excited dog back with her foot. ‘Please, come in.’

She crossed the room to put the wires down as Pepper snuffled around the cuffs of Murray’s trouser legs.

‘We’d like to show you a couple of photographs,’ Ella said. ‘Could you tell us if you’ve seen these people before?’

Helen took the pictures. The first photo was of Feng Xie, and she handed it back with a shake of her head. The next one was of Nolan. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with tears. ‘This is the man I saw talking with James in the park on the night he died.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’ Helen stared at the photo. ‘Is this who killed him?’

‘It isn’t, I’m sorry,’ Ella said.
But the pieces of the puzzle are certainly starting to come together.

Ella rang Kuiper while Murray was driving them to Maroubra. She explained what Helen Flinders had said.

‘Interesting.’

‘I’ve let Wayne Rhodes know,’ she said. ‘He’s looking into the Chinese companies that sent snow globes to Nolan. I spoke to Simon Bradshaw too, and he’s talking to people in the vicinity of Feng Xie’s flat about Quiksmart vans stopping by.’ She took a breath. ‘We’re thinking we’ll go back to see Sal Rios again. We believe he’s worth another push. That call came from Rosie’s that evening, and he was a bit thingy about the phone, talking about how it costs money. Perhaps he does take notice of who uses it and just needs a bit of face-to-face time to help him remember.’

‘Let me know how you go,’ Kuiper said.

They reached Sal’s house in Maroubra twenty minutes later. Ella saw curtains move in a second-storey window. ‘Someone’s home.’

They walked up the path and Murray knocked. After a moment the door opened to reveal the sickest-looking man Ella had ever seen. His brown eyes were sunken above sharp cheeks covered with paper-thin skin. Murray made a small and startled sound.

‘Can I help you?’ the man said.

Ella gathered her composure and introduced herself. ‘Is Sal home?’

‘I’ll get him.’

He walked away into the house, leaving the screen door closed. Ella sneaked a hand up to test it. Locked.

When Sal appeared he unlocked it and stepped outside. He put out his hand then took it back, as if unsure what to do. Ella stuck hers out and they shook.

Ella said, ‘We wanted to talk again about the phone call made from Rosie’s.’

‘I still don’t know who made it.’ He looked past her down the drive. She glanced that way too but there was nothing to see.

‘We thought that as it’s your family’s club–’

‘Only partly,’ Sal said.

‘–then maybe you did take notice of who used the phone, without even realising it, because after all the money’s coming out of your pocket,’ Ella said.

‘What’s a call cost? Forty, fifty cents? I’m not likely to be worried about that.’

‘But it all adds up, doesn’t it,’ Murray said. ‘My parents had a business too and every cent counted. Way better in our pocket than somebody else’s, my dad used to say.’

Sal dug his hands into his pockets. ‘We’re not so fussy as that.’

‘Maybe so,’ Ella said. ‘But you wouldn’t mind having a look at this list, telling us what you know of these people? Whether you can recall them acting oddly that night?’

Sal took the page she held out. ‘When was this again?’

‘Wednesday the fourth,’ Ella said. ‘Six-thirty, seven, in the evening.’