Читать книгу The Dragon's Skin - Ross Gray - Страница 14

‘Did your Halifax put together a profile?’ Damn! She knew it was a mistake as soon as she said it. The flip terminology gave him a wedge to drive between their dialogue and its subject.

‘Halifax?’

‘Forensic psychologist.’

‘Ah. Huh, huh, huh. I get it.’ He smiled – a zebra crossing with no black stripes. He tilted his head to one side and studied her face through hooded eyes. ‘You know you could be Rebecca Gibney.’

‘I know. I tried to be once, but Becky threw a hissy fit. Seems to think she has first dibs.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘And she’s blonde.’

The smile stayed right where it was, just under his nose. She was impressed. ‘No, really,’ he persisted. ‘Have you ever considered peroxide?’

‘Often. But only when I’m depressed.’ Bloody hell. Stop the twee banter, he thinks you’re flirting.

He had to think about that one. Even though his expression said he didn’t get it, he was alerted to change tack. He gave a clipped stagey laugh and ploughed ahead. ‘And what sort of things could possibly depress a beautiful, intelligent girl like you?’

She shrugged and pouted her plump pink bottom lip. ‘Global warming, patronising male colleagues, the paucity of creative pickup lines.’

He got that. The zebra crossing closed to traffic. He disguised it reasonably well though, with a pull on what was left of his beer and a scan around the crowded bar for a tardy friend. She felt a little sorry for him.

‘My round,’ she said cheerily, even though she didn’t want another drink. He looked at her closely. She immediately regretted her words. Bugger, he’s going to make another run.

‘I think, my dear constable,’ he said with sage pomposity – she was unsure if it was feigned or sincere – ‘that you feel ill-treated by the male of the species.’ Maybe he didn’t get the last bit. ‘It’s clear that one of the bastards in our brethren has not paid you the respect and adoration that is clearly your due.’

Nope, he wasn’t joking; he meant it. You can’t verbalise diarrhoea with your tongue in your cheek. She had best nip this in the bud.

‘You’re very perceptive,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ve made a vow not to become involved with a colleague. Or,’ and she tickled his retinas with her green lasers, ‘a married man.’

‘Well there’s one strike against me,’ he grinned, dropping the older and wiser act.

‘Sergeant!’ she said in the tone of a kindergarten teacher admonishing her favourite naughty boy. She looked up under her lashes in a way that usually made men put their hands in their pocket or cross their legs. He crossed his legs and his grin became sheepish.

‘Awright. Two strikes.’

‘Three, I’m afraid.’ May as well nail it down.

Abruptly, he conceded the match. And seemed relieved. Why the hell do men do that? she wondered.

‘How did you know?’ he asked, after downing half his beer. ‘About being married?’

She pointed to his left hand. He had his elbow on the bar and his hand dangled over the edge. His right thumb and forefinger were rubbing his ring finger at its base with a twisting motion, as if tightening a nut.

‘You did that every time you handed me a compliment today,’ she said. ‘Or looked at me in a … certain way.’

‘Well, I won’t apologise for my compliments,’ he said. ‘You’re – and I mean this, it isn’t a come on – you’re the prettiest cop I’ve laid eyes on. Believe me.’

‘Unfortunately I do.’

He scoffed a brief low laugh and stared at her sceptically. ‘You can’t tell me you regret being a looker?’

She offered a deadpan, parchment dry, response. ‘I’d trade beauty, brilliance, success and wealth, just to be loved for what I am.’

‘Huh – huh – huh,’ he chortled uncertainly. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘No. If you really think about it, it doesn’t.’ She glanced across his shoulder. ‘There’s a big bloke just come in. Lots of dark curly hair, dressed like a vet from the Yorkshire Moors. He’s looking for someone.’

‘That’s him,’ he said without checking. ‘Say something nice about his jumper. His wife knitted it.’ He turned around and waved his arm, ‘Nev, mate, over here.’

Good, she thought. She was finally getting close to what she’d been seeking all afternoon.

Her drinking companion, Detective Sergeant Frank Ricciardelli, was enrolled in one of the units she was taking at the Detective Training School. When he heard she had the ‘Jogger Murders’ for homework, he had volunteered to take her on a tour of the crime scenes. She thought she’d detected that look in his eye at the start, but his behaviour had been strictly professional, out there on the tracks.

The tracks were shared walking and bicycle paths that spidered the city, mostly following creeks and rivers and connecting green belts and parks.

‘This was where the second one was found,’ he’d said earlier that day, as they stood in a wide smooth path of packed clay and fine gravel where it swerved away from the creek bank and climbed steeply to the adjacent bushland reserve. ‘As you can see this spot is out of sight of the park, unless someone’s standing right on the edge of the slope there. And someone coming along the path beside the creek, or on the footbridge, can’t see you.’

She walked back to the bend. The footbridge was a couple of hundred metres away. The rear of commercial premises and blocks of flats overlooked the opposite bank. They were separated from the creek by a long high chain-link fence.

‘But he didn’t do her here,’ he said. Do her: she cringed inwardly. ‘There wasn’t a scrap of forensic evidence found at any of the scenes that suggested he killed them on site.’

Her eyes swept around and probed between the dense shrubs and trees that bordered the path on the landward side.

‘The bush around here was scoured a kilometre both ways,’ he said in anticipation of her thoughts. ‘You can see it’s real thick. You couldn’t drag anything in there without leaving signs. There were places near the other sites where he could have done it without trace – if he was lucky. But no evidence was discovered. The conclusion was that he raped and killed them somewhere else and brought their bodies to the places they were found.’

‘But this was the track she ran on? She ran past this point?’

‘You’ve read what I’ve read. Regular as clockwork. Three or four times a week. Never missed Tuesdays and Thursdays. That was one thing they all had in common: a very regular routine.’

‘And a tendency to work late and run after nightfall,’ she contributed. ‘Plus big boobs, long legs and natural blonde hair.’

‘They all looked like Barbie,’ he agreed. ‘Oh, and they were left near water. The psychologist was fond of that point.’

‘The coroner’s report said they had abrasions and bruises indicating they put up a fight. They died of strangulation immediately after or perhaps during sexual penetration. There was no seminal fluid found.’

‘There were traces of the same condom lubricant found in the vaginas of all three. The first victim had been a virgin. The only odd thing about this one was that two different types of lubricant were detected. He either raped her more than once and changed brands, or she had a boyfriend who never came forward.’ Ricciardelli was wearing gloves but he worried the root of his ring finger with a nervous winding motion. ‘You’ve just read a copy of the summary report,’ he said. ‘I was able to look at the files. Believe me, the report’s very detailed and thorough. As an investigation it was textbook. That’s why it’s used as an example. An investigation carried out according to Hoyle – about as close as you can get to procedural perfection. It’s meant to teach us that you can do everything right but still get no result.’

‘Do you agree with the conclusions?’

‘It’s hard to imagine any other possibilities.’

‘If it was a serial psychopath, how do you explain the sudden cessation after the third murder?’

He shrugged. ‘It happens. He got scared. Maybe we got close and didn’t know. A bus ran over him. He left the country.’

‘There was a dissenting voice,’ she said. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the footbridge and the block of flats that bordered the path that connected to it.

‘The report acknowledged that. But I’m a fan of Occam’s razor,’ he said dismissively.

‘What about Sherlock’s razor?’ she grinned. ‘Once you’ve eliminated the possible, whatever’s left, no matter how improbable, must be the answer.’

‘No facts or evidence were produced to support that hypothesis.’

‘Desmond Poynter died and the murders stopped.’

‘A lot of crims died or got put behind bars that month. Are they all suspects?’

‘This is where Poynter’s body was found, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a school assignment, Constable. You’re not meant to solve the case,’ he said in fluent pedant. She faintly recalled saying something like that herself once. ‘Poynter was a professional. Pros keep their kills simple and plain. They use Occam’s razor.’ He grinned at his own joke. ‘Less can go wrong that way.’ The addendum suggested he’d been tempted, at least momentarily, by the idea.

‘A lot of psychopaths are professionals of one kind or another,’ she had said.

Now she watched the approach of the man he’d promised to introduce her to. He weaved towards them around crowded tables, high and low, stools and chairs and boisterous, happy-hour knots of humanity. He was surprisingly agile for such a large, bear-like individual. He deftly hooked a vacant chair from a nearby table as he passed and dropped into it beside Ricciardelli, dwarfing him.

‘G’day,’ he said. His dark eyes glittered with some private mischief. ‘You must be the cute copper from Broome I’ve heard about.’ He thrust a huge paw at her across the table. ‘Nev,’ he said, grinning. ‘Nev Marks.’

‘Carol Porter,’ she replied with a smile as she was almost lifted from her chair by the ripple effect of his handshake.

‘Right,’ he said cocking an eye at Ricciardelli. ‘Y’re draggin’ the chain, father.’

‘A pot, Nev?’ asked Ricciardelli with a wry twist of the lips. He glanced at her. ‘Another one, Carol?’

‘I’ll nurse this,’ she said.

He made his way to the bar. Marks slouched back in his chair and regarded her with that hint of amusement still in his eyes. His glossy jowls were thick slabs of gunmetal blue. ‘Ricky Ricardo tells me y’ve met Dave,’ he said, with a sideways nod in Ricciardelli’s direction.

‘Briefly. I arrested him.’

‘He escape?’ Marks grinned, the muscles in his jaw flexing his face into a pear shape.

‘I let him go. He was innocent.’

‘Dave’s anything but that,’ said Marks dryly. ‘We have a mutual friend, I reckon.’ She arched a quizzical brow. ‘Gaylord Kiss. Met ’im a coupla years back.’

‘Oh,’ she said. It sounded like punctuation: a period.

‘Oh-h-h,’ he said. Dialogue by inflection. He smiled down at his hands resting on his belly. ‘M’wife’s a Carol, too,’ he said looking up again. ‘She was a cop. Worked on the case y’re interested in. She’s the one y’should talk to. Y’gotta lot in common.’

‘What? We’re cops and Carols?’ She smiled. She was getting to like this bloke.

‘Nah,’ said Marks. ‘Much more than that.’

She stared into the dark eyes. What was flickering in their depths? And what in hell did he mean by that?

‘Wanna meet Carol, Carol?’