Bright City Deep Shadows Page 10

  The suggestion was a surprise, although I don’t know why it should have been. For some reason the reality that we were dealing with a killer just wouldn’t sink in.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do any of what you said on our own.”

  “Let me worry about that. Meanwhile...” He grinned and took a swig of his beer. “Remember that thermos flask I made you buy? Well I hope you didn’t throw it away, ’cause you’re going on a stakeout.”

  Chapter Ten

  I was at Reid’s office at ten AM sharp, looking neat and presentable and ready to face whatever idiotic grilling he had in mind. My hatchet-faced lawyer met me in the lobby looking small and dapper. He shook my hand and gave me an approving look. A young woman collected us with a “Hi, I’m Julie,” and led us to a meeting room on one of the upper floors. There was a view across one of the coils of the Brisbane River to the Botanic Gardens. By standing up against the glass, I could see Kangaroo Point and the Story Bridge on the left. Julie disappeared with a, “Trevor will be along in a minute,” leaving us to enjoy the ambience.

  “Just follow my lead,” Marchant said. “Cooperate, tell the truth, and there’ll be no problems.” I wondered if he said that to all his criminal clients.

  Reid came in with an older, balding man in tow. We introduced ourselves all round. The sidekick was called Bronski and was a Senior Detective Constable. I made a note to myself to find out what all the ranks meant. For all I knew, Senior Detective Constable was a higher rank than Detective Inspector, even though Bronski clearly deferred to Reid. When we were seated, Reid made a little speech to the effect that this was a formal interview and that it would be recorded. I looked around and found at least two cameras. In reply, Marchant gave his own little speech to the effect that “his client” was here to cooperate fully and to help the police.

  Reid smiled. It was all very polite and friendly.

  “We just have a few questions, Mr. Kelly,” he said, addressing me directly for the first time. “Tell me about your relationship with Ms Kazima Abbas.”

  It was annoying and impertinent but I kept my cool. “I don’t have a relationship with her. She worked with Chelsea. I met her a couple of times at functions.”

  “You weren’t on more intimate terms with her?”

  “My client answered your question,” Marchant said as my temper began to rise.

  Reid looked at him for a moment with a blank expression before turning back to me. “Can you explain why Kazima Abbas recently transferred a large sum of money from Chelsea’s company account to your personal account?”

  This one was so ridiculous, I could hardly believe it was serious. “You’re really getting desperate, aren’t you?” I said. “Is that really the best you’ve got?”

  “You should confine yourself to answering the questions,” Marchant said.

  I turned on him sharply. “This is a farce. These people have no idea what they’re doing.”

  “Even so,” said Marchant, gently.

  I drew a deep breath. To Reid I said, “It’s my company now and I’ll draw as much money from it as I like, up to and including the full sixty-two per cent of my share.” I really needed to read up on Australian company law because I had no idea whether that was true. “Kazima is an employee of the company and does what I tell her.”

  “She’s also an equity holder, is she not?”

  “So?”

  “So, after you took control of the company, you gave her an increased equity holding, out of your own share. You also appointed her the new CEO. A woman you’d just met a couple of times at functions. What was all this extraordinary generosity in return for, Mr. Kelly?”

  While I reeled at how such innocent decisions could be so misconstrued, Marchant spoke up. “While my client is more than happy to cooperate, Detective Inspector, this looks to me as if you are on a fishing expedition. Do you have any actual evidence of a relationship between Mr. Kelly and Ms Abbas?”

  Reid seemed to ignore him but his next question to me was, “Tell me about the overcoat?”

  I immediately knew which overcoat he meant. “What about it?”

  “How did you know the killer brought an overcoat to the restaurant the night Chelsea Campbell died?”

  “I – Well, I didn’t. Ronnie worked it out. I mean Mr. Walker.”

  “We never told the press about the coat. Funny you knew all about it.”

  “I told you, Mr. Walker worked it out. Don’t tell me that makes Ronnie a suspect too!”

  He turned to his sidekick, who had been silent throughout, and nodded. The balding man opened a folder that was in front of him on the table. My heart stopped. If he was going to show me pictures of Chelsea’s body… But he didn’t. He pulled out a photograph but it was of a dark haired man with a beard. He placed it on the table between me and Reid and turned it one-eighty degrees so it was oriented for my viewing. I studied it carefully. It was a photo of a man in his mid-thirties, the beard was short and neatly trimmed.

  “Is this…?” I began but stopped myself blurting out Anning’s name.

  “Do you know this man?” Reid asked.

  “No. Who is it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know him. Is this the man who…?” Killed Chelsea. I couldn’t say the words.

  “Take a closer look.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say. I couldn’t have stared more intently at that photo if I’d tried. “Is this him? Is this the murderer?”

  Reid gave Bronski another nod and the policeman took the photo back and returned it to his folder. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “We’ll find the connection. You’re not as clever as you think you are.”

  “I think we’re done here,” Marchant said, firmly.

  “I’ll say when we’re done.”

  Reid sounded like he meant it but Marchant was completely unimpressed. He stood up and packed his notebook into his briefcase. I stood up too. So did the two cops. Would they try to stop us if we left? To be honest, I had no idea what my rights were. Fortunately, Marchant seemed completely relaxed and confident. He stood his briefcase on the table and rested his hands on top of it. In a pleasant tone, he addressed Reid.

  “My client will not subject himself to any further harassment or threats, Detective Inspector. I’m sure you understand. Perhaps, when you’ve developed your case a little farther, I’ll be willing to recommend that he continues to cooperate. Until then, I feel it is in his best interest to decline to comment on any matters you care to put to him.”

  Reid stood like a boulder between us and the door. “It’s in your client’s best interest to come clean, right now, and you know it.”

  “If he were guilty, I would agree. There’s no need to show us out, I’m quite familiar with the building.”

  Reid turned his gaze on me for a moment, looking like he was sizing me up ready to toss me through the big windows. “Wait here. I’ll send someone.” He flicked his head at Bronski and they left without goodbyes.

  “He’s not usually this bad,” Marchant said, when Reid was gone. “I’ve encountered him several times before, of course, and he’s usually quite pleasant. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have his usual amanuensis with him. She seems to be his better angel, so to speak.”

  “That photograph,” I said. I didn’t give a damn about Reid’s temperament. “Can we get hold of a copy? Can we find out who the man is?”

  Marchant chuckled. “I’m afraid not. Why do you want it?”

  “Because he matches the description of the killer. Reid must think he’s the one who did it.”

  He put his head on one side and looked at me with a sad expression. “In my experience – and it’s quite extensive – trying to exact some kind of vigilante justice is never a good idea. The police can be slow and, indeed, frustrating at times, but they mostly come to the right answer in the end. I had a case a few years ago...”

  I wasn’t really listening as he rambled on about some loser who’d gone
after the wrong guy and ended up doing more time than the actual criminal. I was wishing I’d spent some time online that morning finding out what Simon Anning looked like. Because, if the cops had also realised he was the killer, my vigilante days were over. I’d still have the problem of Reid trying to frame me, but at least I’d be done with all the rest. If the man in the picture wasn’t Anning, however, then the cops had focused on some random bloke and were trying to pin the murder on both of us. More time wasted. More need than ever for me to catch Anning.

  “Hi. Me again.” It was Julie at the door. “If you’d just follow me.” We did. “Have a good meeting?” she asked in her sing-song tone, leading us along the corridors. My mind wandered off to Wittgenstein and the purpose of language as Marchant engaged in cheerful small talk.

  * * * *

  Two hours later, I was in my car with a box of chicken and chips stinking it up. There were half-a-dozen packs of snack foods and two plastic bottles of water on the passenger seat, and a jumbo cup of undrinkable coffee growing cold in the cup holder. I was parked fifty metres down the street from Simon Anning’s house, a semi-detached brick house in a suburban street of similar buildings, just two blocks away from Torville street, where Anning had burned the evidence of the murder. I could see Anning’s front door. With the binoculars on the dash, I could see the pattern of the wallpaper in his lounge room.

  I was on a stakeout.

  After leaving the police station, I’d gone straight to the Jindalee Hotel to meet Ronnie. As I knew he would, he had a folder in his phone that contained everything he knew about Simon Anning – including photos.

  “It wasn’t him,” I said, crestfallen. I wanted it to be over.

  Ronnie pulled a disgusted face. “Probably got young Jase from the restaurant to look at mugshots and then pulled some poor random crim in from the street to be their new prime suspect – I mean, accomplice of the real prime suspect, the evil mastermind, Luke Kelly.”

  “Yeah, not funny, mate.”

  Ronnie was grinning. “Bit funny.”

  We didn’t stay for lunch. I filled him in on the interview as we drove out to Anning’s place.

  “Jeez, you gotta love that fella,” he said in admiration of Terry Marchant. “Pull in there.” He was pointing to a fried chicken franchise. When I parked, he asked me for fifty bucks.

  “What for?”

  “Supplies.”

  He ducked out and came back with an armload of stuff and no change. At Anning’s place, he told me where to park and gave me a few pointers on being inconspicuous. Sitting there in a big white SUV in plain sight of Anning’s windows, occasionally peering at the house through binoculars, my car littered with junk food and reeking of fried chicken, I felt anything but inconspicuous.

  “You’ll do great,” he said, getting out. “Remember, you’re only here to watch. If he spots you, or anyone else challenges you, just drive away.”

  The chicken was depressing me. Chelsea had been a vegetarian. She hated animal suffering. I was too, when we were together, but on my own, I ate meat. She knew it and didn’t mind, reckoning every little helped and that she’d convert me in the end. The plastic bottles of water were depressing, too. Chelsea had hated the wanton pollution of the world for the sake of a little extra convenience. “They deliver fresh, clean water to every building in the city,” she used to say. “It’s yours for the effort of turning a tap. Why would anybody want to buy indestructible litter just to get a drink of water?” As with most of her crusades to save the planet, I was happy to go along. And now look at me; bottled water, dead factory-farmed chickens, plastic bags full of snack foods I couldn’t eat because every time I looked at them I heard Chelsea saying, “They kill orang utans to grow the palm oil that goes into all that junk food, you know.” Even though it had been Ronnie who’d bought it all, I still felt guilty. Even though I was out here trying to catch Chelsea’s killer, I knew she’d rather that poor chicken hadn’t died in “some mechanised death factory” than I brought her killer to justice. “Justice is just one of your abstractions,” she might have said. “Death and suffering are real.”

  Even with all the windows open, the inside of the car was hot and the smell of the chicken was overpowering. I could see in the rear-view mirror that someone had left their wheelie bin out in the street after the last rubbish collection. They were probably out and they probably wouldn’t mind anyway, I told myself. So I gathered up all the plastic and junk food and carried it up the road to the bin. I stared at the house it belonged to for long enough to be sure no irate owner was going to run out and defend the sanctity of his wheelie bin, and quickly dumped the lot.

  Feeling better, I turned to go back to the car and stopped dead. Another car was driving past mine, moving slowly; a black, Jeep Cherokee. Its windows were down and a bearded man with long hair was leaning out of the back, staring into my car as they passed. The car pulled up in front of Anning’s house and two men got out, leaving the driver behind. One was the bearded guy with long hair. The other had a shaven head. They both wore jeans and T-shirts. They looked all around before heading off up the street. As the shaven-headed guy looked my way, I grabbed the wheelie bin and pulled it after me through the gate of the house. I’m just a harmless local brining in my bin, I told the universe. Nothing to see here. I kept my head turned away until I was at the garage and sheltered by a large hakea. I let go of the bin and peered round the bush. The two men were through Anning’s gate and walking up his short drive. I thought about sneaking back to my car and getting the binoculars but the Jeep was right there and the driver would have seen me for sure.

  They knocked at the front door and waited, for all the world like a couple of scruffy, burly Mormons. Did these people know Anning? Did they work with him? Or for him? When I’d asked Ronnie what the point of a stakeout was, he’d said, “We need to know where he goes and who he sees. His social media and workmates will only tell us part of the picture. Something has turned this games developer into a murderer and we’ll only find out what that is by putting his life under a microscope.”

  The front door opened a crack. I couldn’t see who was inside but I was very surprised there was anyone at all. Anning should have been at work. He wasn’t married, according to Ronnie. The door started closing. With a sudden, violent speed, the bearded guy pushed his way inside, followed quickly by the other one. Whoever had been in the doorway must have been sent flying. In a moment, the door was closed again and the street showed no sign of anything amiss. What the hell was going on?

  I kept my eye on the house, pressing myself into the stiff, unyielding bush. Should I phone the police. What I’d just seen was two thugs forcing their way into Anning’s house and it did not look like they meant to be gentle with the occupant. Someone was going to get hurt. But, if it was Anning, did I care? Was the enemy of my enemy really my friend? Come to that, were the cops my friend? If someone was beating up Anning and I called the police to lock them up, wouldn’t they just say I was complicit, somehow? And wasn’t I? Morally? In some convoluted way? It was hard to see myself as outside of it all, hiding in a bush on someone else’s property, spying on everyone. With fumbling fingers, I dialled Ronnie, my eyes fixed on the distant doorway.

  “If you’re selling anything, fuck off. Otherwise, if you really think I’ll be interested, leave a message. Don’t expect an answer.”

  I stifled a cry of anger. “Ronnie, you bastard, get over here right now. Someone’s just pushed their way into Anning’s home – and I think he’s in there. I don’t know whether to call the cops.” I hung up. I was so agitated, I could barely keep still.

  Sod it, I thought. I’m calling the police. They don’t have to know it was me. I typed in triple-zero and stopped with my finger half-way to the send button. Of course they’d know it was me. They’d see my number on the call. There was probably some way I could stop the phone sending my number. I got sales calls all the time from “unknown caller”. But did that really hide your number complet
ely? From the police? From the phone company?

  As I stood there pondering my options the door to Anning’s house opened again. The two men walked out and closed it after them. They walked briskly back to their car, looking all around as they went. The engine was running by the time they reached it and the car was moving before they’d even closed the doors. Again, the street returned to its slumbering, suburban state.

  I stepped out of the bush and walked carefully to the gate. There was no sight of the black Jeep. I went back to my car but didn’t get in. What if they’d hurt him? What if he had broken bones or internal bleeding? What if he couldn’t get to a phone to call for help? I began walking towards the house, each step debated, tentative. This was Anning, after all; the man who killed Chelsea. Why shouldn’t he suffer? Why should I, of all people, help him? I stopped, in the middle of the road. He deserved to suffer. He deserved to be beaten by thugs and left coughing on broken ribs, peering through swollen eyes. I took another step and another, shocked into motion by my own imagination of his battered state. I couldn’t just leave him. Chelsea would understand. Of all the people I’d ever known, she was the most tender-hearted. She’d have called the ambulance for Hitler himself. Besides, I reminded myself, I wanted Anning to face trial. I wanted him to be prosecuted and made to face what he’d done. A two-minute beating by a couple of blokes wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  I went through Anning’s gate and up to the door. I tried to open it but it was locked. If Ronnie had been there, he could have picked the lock, I was sure. But he wasn’t. Not knowing what else to do, I knocked. There was no answer. I put my ear against the door and could hear no movement within. Somebody had been there to answer the door earlier. Were they hiding now, or injured?

  “Anning?” I called, as loudly as I dared. I didn’t want nosy neighbours attracted to the sound of shouting. Of course, anybody could have seen me walking up the street, standing like a lemon in the middle of the road. The cops could be on their way right now.