Roman nodded to Andrej, who walked over to the table.
“I want to be alone for half an hour,” he said. “Frisk Andrew, and make sure the room is clean.”
Andrej looked with surprise at his boss. Normally he would have objected. He was hired to protect Roman, and it was not safe to leave him alone in this room. But the events of the last day had changed everything. Andrej had started to question things. If it was correct that Roman was a serial killer, a killer who killed young women for fun and sexual pleasure, then he wasn’t that person Andrej had signed up to protect anymore. It was different to hurt someone who owed you money – that was business. To murder innocent teenagers, that wasn’t business. Andrej nodded and pulled out a metal detector from Vladimir’s backpack. Andrew rose and extended his arms to the side. Andrej took his time as he swiped Andrew’s entire body.
Vladimir started to go through the pub methodically, checking for listening devices or hidden weapons. After five minutes he declared the room clean.
Andrew grabbed the walkie-talkie from the table. “He is willing to talk.”
“Ok,” was the short answer.
A few minutes later Frank came walking through the main entrance of the pub, accompanied by two elderly men with sawn-off shotguns. They looked like old hippies. But there was something with the way they carried themselves that told Roman they had to be watched. It wasn’t the first time they held a weapon. When this escalated they had to be eliminated first.
Andrej held up the metal detector and repeated the exercise with Frank. Made sure he didn’t have any concealed listening devices or weapons on his body. Andrew then did a quick sweep on Roman’s body.
When everybody in the room was satisfied there were no listening devices or concealed weapons around, the two hippies asked Vladimir and Andrej to follow them to the next-door building, the Hemp Embassy. The agreement was that Frank, Roman and Andrew were to be left alone for the next half an hour.
Everything was going as planned, Roman thought. He had considered this scenario, a scenario where Frank was expecting him, a scenario in which Frank had set a trap. And Frank had been predictable. He had done exactly as Roman had expected – placed Roman in a room, alone with him, while Andrej and Vladimir were taken to a different location. The only unexpected element was that Andrew had been there too. But how big of a danger could an unfit accountant be? Not much, Roman thought to himself.
“Is she still alive?” Frank asked.
Roman looked confused. “Who? Is who alive?”
“My daughter, Heidi. Is she still alive?” Frank repeated.
“I don’t understand what you are talking about,” Roman said. “I haven’t touched your daughter. I’ve got no idea who she is.”
Frank laughed, resigned. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“I know exactly who you are. You are the one who has taken my money. And you will soon learn that that is not a smart thing to do,” Roman replied.
Frank looked down at the table when he started to talk. “Five years ago my daughter disappeared from the Gold Coast. She started working at one of your nightclubs the week before she vanished. During the last five years nine other women have suffered the same fate. Are you trying to tell me this is a coincidence?” Frank asked.
“Is that what this is about? The missing girls? Do you think I have something to do with the disappearance of your daughter?” Roman laughed. “”I have never even met your daughter. I have several hundred people working for me. I have no idea who they all are. I’m a businessman. I run a hard line in my business. But I’m not a serial killer. This bullshit they broadcast on the news will be gone in a few days.”
“They’ve found traces of human remains inside your house,” Frank said.
Roman shrugged his shoulders. “Believe what you want. I have never touched a hair on any of those girls.”
“Is it all coincidences? Is it a coincidence that you went to a psychologist the day my daughter disappeared, the same psychologist she went to?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Roman said. Andrew could see his anger building up.
Frank threw a small plastic bag, containing a ripped piece of paper, onto the table in front of them. “I’ve got the pages from the psychologist’s day planner. You had an appointment the same day as Heidi did. What was the problem? Did she see you at the psychologist? Were you afraid that she would tell, tell people at work that the big scary Roman Bezhrev went to a psychologist?”
Roman shook his head. “I’ve got a problem. I’ve got a big temper, and I’ve been seeing psychologists for years to deal with it. It’s no secret. People know about it.”
Frank disregarded Roman’s attempt at trivialising the fact that he was seeing psychologists. Instead he continued. “Several of these women went to psychologists. Did they also spot you? Was that the reason they had to die?”
Roman looked disdainfully at the pathetic person sitting in front of him. Frank was desperate. Roman could see it in his eyes. Frank had worked himself up to this moment, the moment when Roman would confess everything. He needed an answer. An answer to what had happened to his daughter. Who did he think he was anyway? Roman had had a tough upbringing. He had killed his first adversary aged only fifteen. A sucker punch that had cracked the other boy’s skull when it hit the curb. Now this old computer nerd, and this boring accountant, sat there attempting to pressure him into admitting a murder. He had gone to Nimbin to get his money back and kill this pathetic figure called Frank Geitner.
He had looked forward to doing both.
And it was now time.
85
Scott Davis squinted out the car window. He didn’t use glasses, but his night vision wasn’t what it used to be. He could see the outline of Nimbin Rocks rise towards the sky outside his left side window. He would be there in five minutes. He knew the road well, it was only a few weeks since he had last been there. He made the drive on a regular basis to stay in touch with some of his old contacts, his contacts from his time on the crime desk of the paper.
It was actually one of his old contacts who had called him. Frank Geitner had been observed in Nimbin. Scott Davis wasn’t quite sure why Frank would be holed up in Nimbin. But he was sure of one thing: The police were searching for the wrong man. Roman Bezhrev wasn’t the serial killer. The serial killer was Frank Geitner.
Scott Davis had been reading up on serial killers when doing research for a feature article several years ago, and he discovered that serial killers shared many traits. Frank Geitner had them all, in spades. Out of nowhere he had one day just appeared on the Gold Coast, and women had started to go missing. Frank Geitner didn’t even exist; it was a fictitious identity he had constructed. The scary thing was that most serial killers were of average intelligence. Even Ted Bundy, the infamous law student who had murdered women in his spare time, had admitted that he didn’t understand much of what was being taught at lectures. Serial killers murdered to elevate themselves, they were the losers of society. Frank Geitner, on the other hand, was as close to a genius as you could come. And it appeared that he had unlimited financial resources. Scott Davis had done a property search on him, and it had turned out Frank Geitner owned two properties. Both unencumbered, bought with cash. A smart serial killer, with unlimited financial resources. No wonder the police hadn’t had any suspicions. But Scott had solved the case. As he was driving the last few kilometres into Nimbin he reminisced about how he had unmasked Frank Geitner. Scott had asked his brother Wayne for a last favour. He had asked Wayne if he could check some fingerprints for him. Wayne had of course refused. He could potentially lose his job in the police force if he was found out. But he had eventually folded, and promised to do it within a week. Scott had given his brother a page from his deceased wife’s day planner. He had been careful and removed any information that could lead back to himself and his wife. He had cut out the upper left corner of the page immediately before the ones that had been ripped out. He had assumed that whoever ripped out the pages would have had to hold onto the day planner with one hand to be able to rip the other pages out. He had been correct. There was a perfect print of a thumb up in the left hand corner, and he had quite quickly, with a basic detective set he had bought on the net, been able to verify that the print didn’t belong to himself or his dead wife. Thus it had to belong to the killer. Heidi Voog’s killer. It had taken Wayne almost seven days to get the print checked out. But this morning he had called. He had found a perfect match. It had, however, not been who Scott Davis had been expecting. It hadn’t been Roman Bezhrev’s finger print. Instead it had been the fingerprint of a wanted criminal, a Dutch citizen who had been on the run from Interpol since the early 1990s. Wayne had been quite pushing, and almost demanded to know where Scott had gotten hold of the fingerprint. But Scott had managed to keep his mouth shut. He had told Wayne he had a source to protect, and promised that Wayne would be the first to know if it led to anything more. There were, however, a few things Scott had to check out himself. Reluctantly, Wayne had accepted to keep a lid on the case.
Scott had studied the mugshot Wayne had sent of Frank Geitner, or Frank Voser, which was his real name. There had been something strangely familiar with his face, but Scott hadn’t been able to pinpoint where he had seen him before. Not until Pradya called, and asked if Scott had found anything on Heidi Voog’s Facebook account. Heidi Voog, the first victim, who was also from the Netherlands. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence. Scott had still not had time to check Heidi’s Facebook account when Pradya had called, but he had driven straight to one of the few remaining internet cafés, one of those that had survived the build-out of free WIFI zones and smartphones. He assumed that the police would keep tabs on it. The only ones with a reason to use internet cafés and phone booths in today’s world were the ones with something to hide, but it would still be better than using his own computer. It didn’t take long to go through Heidi Voog’s Facebook comments. She had only been active for a few months before she disappeared, and this had also been in the early days of the Facebook era. She had one hundred and forty-three friends, but had only published a few short comments. She had evidently not been one of those who needed to broadcast every single little thing they did. Chewing on a sandwich, Scott had started to go through all the pictures she had posted. It had mostly been pictures of sunny beaches; Heidi had after all been a European girl on the trip of her lifetime to Asia and Australia. Scott had almost given up when a picture caught his attention. It had been a picture from a beach in Thailand. Heidi had held the camera and taken a selfie, a self-portrait. But it hadn’t been the self-portrait that caught Scott’s attention; it had been the person in the background. A person Scott had seen before. It had been Frank Geitner, Tuna Life’s mysterious Chief of Technology. Or rather, former Chief of Technology. He had apparently been fired not long ago. Why was he in a picture with the missing girl, Heidi Voog? Scott had felt his heart start beating faster. With shaking hands he had located the printout he had taken of the Interpol poster. He had compared the pictures. There were many years between them. Several decades. But Scott knew it was the same man. Frank Geitner and Frank Voser were the same man. It had taken a few seconds before he had realised what he had figured out. Roman Bezhrev hadn’t murdered Heidi Voog; Frank Geitner was the killer. It was Frank Geitner’s prints he had found in his wife’s day planner, it was Frank Geitner who had some kind of relation to Heidi Voog – maybe he had been a summer flirt in Thailand, a summer flirt who didn’t want to accept that things were over when Heidi travelled on to Australia? Maybe he had followed her to Australia and killed her? Frank Geitner, a person who had been on the run from police since the early 1990s. He would have known how to hide his tracks. Perhaps he had viewed Australia as a new place to set up base? He would have had every opportunity to make it seem like Roman Bezhrev was the serial killer. He had worked with Roman in Tuna Life for the past six months, and had most likely been at his home numerous times. Ample opportunities to plant those murder trophies the police all too easily had found when searching Roman’s house. According to the Interpol notice he had been a hacker, and he had of course also been the CTO of Tuna Life. That placed him squarely at the top of the list of suspects of who had made the Tuna Life app spread all the rumours about Roman Bezhrev’s shady business dealings. It didn’t matter how much Scott disliked Roman Bezhrev, it didn’t matter how much the guy deserved to rot in prison; the police were hunting the wrong man.
Frank Geitner was the man responsible for the murder of Heidi Voog.
Frank Geitner was the serial killer.
Scott Davis had taken a deep breath.
And maybe, maybe Scott’s wife had not committed suicide.
Maybe Frank Geitner was responsible for her death as well.
86
Andrej, Vladimir and the two hippies were sitting inside the Hemp Embassy in silence. The mood was strained. When Andrej heard a sound, he turned to face the stairs, his knuckles clenched, ready for whatever was coming.
“Relax, dude,” one of the hippies said. “It’s just Yvonne. She has something she wants to show you.”
Yvonne, Tuna Life’s secretary came walking down the stairs. Andrej gave her a quick nod. He had met her a few times bringing Roman to Tuna Life’s board meetings. She usually organised the refreshments.
Andrej didn’t like the way things were developing. Fair enough, Roman had planned for this to happen, for Frank to split Roman and themselves. But both Andrej and Vladimir had now been identified by several people. There would be a whole lot of witnesses to get rid of if they wanted to have their backs clear.
Yvonne came over, and placed a laptop on the table in front of Andrej and Vladimir.
“What’s this?” Andrej asked.
“I want to see how far your loyalty to Roman goes,” Yvonne answered.