Daughters of Eve, page 4
I watched Helen snap on a fresh pair of gloves before I spoke. ‘There’s a lot of expertise in that room.’
Robbo looked at me. ‘What do you mean?’
I nodded towards the autopsy table. ‘That’s the new ME conducting the autopsy, the one I met at the courthouse. That’s Williams, another qualified pathologist assisting, and Helen is the senior pathologist.’
‘Seems like overkill for a gun death,’ Robbo observed.
I nodded. ‘Either they don’t trust Johnson yet, or the coroner’s office is covering their arse.’
Walking back to the car, I wondered if I’d fought my way to the head of the wrong investigation. Willoughby had made it clear any blowback would hit me, not Robbo and definitely not him. Now it seemed he wasn’t the only senior person worried about the Griffith-Jones murder investigation.
I walked back into the squad room juggling a cardboard tray with two coffees and a couple of bags from Bennies on Oxford Street. Robbo had dropped me off with his order and gone to park the car.
I was barely out of the lift when Peterson scurried towards me. I stepped left to avoid him and then right when he followed me, thinking he must be heading for the toilet he was in such a rush.
‘We’ve found shell casings, boss.’ I could hear it in Peterson’s drawl, in the way he punched the B in ‘boss’.
Derision. Doubt. In me. My abilities. But most of all in the decision-making process that had made me co-lead with Robbo instead of him. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Willoughby broke the bad news to him.
‘Where?’ I went to my desk to put lunch down and Peterson dropped an evidence bag containing three spent shell casings beside it.
I flexed my fingers and counted to ten. It had been Robbo’s idea to send him out to supervise the searches. I’d been happy to leave it in Thommo’s capable hands.
‘Where were they?’ I hoped the derision rang as clear in my voice as it had in his.
Peterson’s eyes dropped to the tiny plastic bag on my desk.
Too right you should hang your head. You know better than to take evidence from a crime scene without talking to the lead.
‘Rooftop of a building on Oxford Street.’ His eyes stayed glued to the bag.
‘Please tell me you let Forensics process the scene before you took these.’ I picked up the bag and examined its contents.
He couldn’t be this desperate to sabotage my career, could he? Any other case and I could probably have massaged a mistake like that away, but not this one. With Willoughby and the coroner both nervous, there were too many eyes on us. Too much heat.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘Pictures?’
He pulled the phone from his pocket, swiped the screen and handed it over.
Three shell casings nestled in the gutter of a corrugated-iron roof. The number matched the victim’s wounds, but something felt wrong. It was sloppy. The shooter would have to be good to get three shots in before Griffiths-Jones fell, but a professional would have taken the casings.
I swiped the screen and another picture came up. This one showing the position of the casings in the gutter as well as the back of the heritage facade that would have provided cover to the shooter.
The top of the facade was less than a metre above the roof, a good height to balance a sniper rifle. I could see the blurred sandstone columns of the courthouse beyond it.
I swiped again.
Top of the wall, looking down at the courthouse.
I closed my eyes and put myself back at the scene. Lunchtime yesterday. I was hungry as I walked out into the car park with people jostling me. It was crowded. At least two, maybe three courts must have adjourned around the same time.
Opening my eyes, I looked at the picture of the deserted car park and imagined people spilling out over the tarmac, heading for the two sets of gates that lead onto Oxford Street.
What would it take to single out one person, to line up a shot while they were walking, to put three bullets in them before they fell? This was professional. Maybe a sniper? We should talk to Defence as well as local gun clubs.
Another swipe and I scowled and passed the phone back.
‘Not on the work phone, idiot.’
Peterson’s cheeks coloured as he fumbled with the phone and deleted the picture. Then two more that he clearly didn’t want me to see.
It wasn’t that I had a problem with women showing their breasts to the world. I’d gone topless on the beach before because tan lines were a bitch. But it was his work phone, and the breasts in question were well in excess of my own double Ds. Peterson’s wife, Linda, she was an A cup. Maybe a B when she was pregnant and breastfeeding their two sons. Unless she’d had surgery since I’d seen her a week ago …
‘Sorry, boss.’ At least he’d dropped the derision.
My phone buzzed and I handed the shell casings to Peterson before checking it.
‘Get those back to Forensics. And it’s not me you need to apologise to, you jackass.’
Forensics had taped off the laneway that ran behind the second crime scene, much to the annoyance of the woman in an Audi who was berating the uniform standing between her and her expensive inner-city address.
‘I don’t envy him, poor bastard,’ Robbo said as he ducked under the tape and held it for me to follow. The alley had an industrial feel for the first hundred metres or so that was intensified by the dark storm clouds gathering overhead. It was battered brick walls and business-sized bins to the left and right until picket-fenced terrace houses started down one side. After that, household wheelie bins and car spaces were interspersed with potted ferns, geraniums and a couple of trees.
Opposite the tiny terrace houses were the roller doors, shed walls and fences of a standard Sydney lane, much like the one I drove up each night to get home. Leaning against one of those fences was an aluminium ladder with a forensics van parked up beside it.
‘Can you grab the ladder, please?’
I looked up to see a young forensics lad waving down.
‘My boss went to get a coffee but he’s taking forever.’
Robbo and I held the ladder firmly as he clattered down.
‘Thanks,’ he said when he got to the bottom. ‘OH&S says someone needs to hold the ladder.’
I smiled; his boss was probably sitting in a cafe laughing, picturing the poor kid waiting dutifully on the roof.
Robbo and I flashed our warrant cards and the lad’s eyes went wide for a moment before he started stripping off his clean suit. ‘Um, we’re done here, but I can leave the ladder while I get some lunch if you want to look around up there.’
Robbo tested the ladder with a shake before starting up it.
‘Any idea how the shooter got up there?’ I asked as the forensics lad slammed the van door shut and locked it.
‘Best guess is that he used a bin to haul himself up somewhere along the lane and then made his way along the roofs to the place he took the shot.’
I looked up and down the lane at the yellow, red and green topped bins pushed hard up against fences so the cars could get around.
‘We dusted all the bins and I’ve pulled a lot of prints for our records. Boss says we can take comparison prints from the locals down the track if we need to.’
‘What about the fences? Any usable prints?’
He shook his head. ‘They’re mostly brick, wood and cement; not much to hold a print, especially overnight.’
‘Anything up there?’ I pointed to the roof, where Robbo was stomping around.
‘Honestly?’ the kid said with a shrug. ‘If uniform hadn’t found the casings up there, I wouldn’t have picked it as a crime scene. It’s quite public.’ He gestured left and right at the windows and doors that lined the opposite side of the street. ‘You’d have to be game to start scaling fences in broad daylight carrying a gun.’
And there it was. He’d nailed the thing that had been troubling me since we’d arrived. Everything about the shooting screamed professional hit except the location. Was this guy just starting out or was he some sort of ninja?
I made a mental note to check all the CCTV from the area and talk to Thommo. Uniform needed to doorknock every house and business on either side of the lane as well as the surrounding area. Someone must have seen something.
I looked up the ladder just as Robbo leaned over the edge. He shook his head.
‘Nothing up here worth seeing.’ He turned and started down the ladder.
I waited till he had two feet on the ground before I gripped the icy rungs and started up.
‘Come on, Hart, you’re wasting your time,’ Robbo called, but I wasn’t taking anyone’s word for anything. Something about this location felt wrong. I needed to stand where the shooter stood and see it for myself.
CCTV footage from the three street-safety cameras around the courthouse was waiting when we got back to the squad room around one-thirty that afternoon. Two hours later, my vision was beginning to blur.
I hit pause and stretched before looking around. Robbo’s elbows were on his desk, his head on his hands and his eyes on the screen.
‘Anything?’ I asked and he looked up, then shook his head.
I looked past him to Peterson’s empty desk.
Three cameras—three officers, I’d said and Peterson had grudgingly agreed, with a bit of a nudge from Robbo. I wondered how long he’d stayed.
Robbo rose and stretched, clicking his spine. ‘I need a coffee. Want one?’
I looked at the time stamp. I’d begun watching three hours before the shooting. Now it read an hour after. In four hours of footage I’d seen nothing to make me slow it down from double time. No-one carrying suspicious packages. No-one looking over their shoulder. No-one walking in that weird way we do when we don’t want to attract attention.
‘Sure. Might keep me awake.’
I followed Robbo into the kitchen and started spooning coffee and sugar into a mug.
‘Did you see where Peterson went?’ Robbo’s desk was closer to his so there was a chance he had, but he shook his head. Like me, he must have been totally focused.
‘Anyone on his camera would probably have passed mine anyway.’
Robbo was right, but that wasn’t the point. Peterson had wheedled his way onto the investigation but all he’d delivered so far was a lot of attitude and an unnecessary step in the chain of custody for the bullet casings.
‘Have you got enough coffee there, Hart?’
Looking down, I shook my head, as much to clear it as to answer his question. I’d put in one spoon of sugar and three of coffee instead of the reverse. I upended the contents into the bin and started again.
After a couple of fortifying mouthfuls my mind came back into focus.
‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ I clutched the cup as if I could consume caffeine by osmosis, directly into my fingertips.
‘What’s weird?’ Robbo was almost finished. He tipped the dregs into the sink, filled the cup with water, and I swear he was going to put it down on the draining board until I tapped a finger against the sign I’d taped to the cupboard last week.
Your mother doesn’t work here. Do your own dishes.
He turned the tap back on, rinsed the cup in cold water and dried it with a tea towel, leaving a brown stain on the cloth that I knew I’d end up taking home to wash.
‘There. Happy now?’ He slipped the cup back into the overhead cupboard.
I sighed and fought the urge to roll my eyes. ‘Ecstatic.’
I followed him out of the kitchen, still nursing my half-full cup.
Robbo sank into his chair and reached for the mouse but stopped. He swivelled around in his chair until he was facing me. ‘What’s weird, Hart?’
It took me a second to retrace my train of thought as I sat.
‘We’ve got a high-profile barrister gunned down in front of a courthouse. His client list reads like a who’s who of the underworld and the shot looks professional, right?’
Robbo nodded.
‘So why the rookie location? Why would a professional hitman climb onto a rooftop at midday in full view of a lane full of houses to take the shot?’
‘He wouldn’t.’
I nodded. ‘So, why are we sitting here trawling through CCTV? Forensics haven’t finished processing the bullet casings so we don’t know how old they are. They could be from some local crackpot climbing out onto the roof in the middle of the night to take pot shots at pigeons or possums. Let’s go back to the client list, look for anyone who might have had an axe to grind. We should start with convictions, people who might feel they didn’t get what they paid for.’
Robbo sat back in his seat. ‘Still waiting on that warrant—don’t want to dump my mate in the shit.’
‘We won’t talk to anyone until the paperwork’s through, but you got the printout to get a jump on the investigation—so let’s jump.’
Robbo unlocked his top drawer, pulled out a manila folder and gestured towards the conference room.
I picked up a notepad and pen and followed him, pausing only for a moment to look back at my computer. What if the killer was the next person to walk into the frame? But something in my gut told me we’d been barking up the wrong tree, that the key to solving this case lay in good old-fashioned police work—and I couldn’t wait to get my eyes on that list.
The client list was a gift that just kept giving as Robbo and I sat in the conference room consolidating the information we had into a single spreadsheet on my laptop.
Robbo had called in a favour from a mate in the Organised Crime Squad, who’d sent over a list of crime syndicates and gang affiliations. Comparing the two, Robbo and I had built a better picture of Griffith-Jones’s connections in Sydney’s underworld.
‘That’s all of it.’ Robbo lifted his finger from the last name on the client list.
Patterns had begun to emerge.
‘There’s only two syndicates Griffith-Jones doesn’t represent,’ I observed.
‘And it’s the bosses he’s mostly working with.’ Robbo pointed down to the affiliate list.
‘It wouldn’t be hard to tread on some dangerous toes, given how quickly things change in gangland.’
Robbo nodded.
‘And look at these dates.’ I pointed to the column of start dates for representation that I’d listed beside the names. It looked like Griffith-Jones had only recently started representing the members of one gang.
Robbo picked up his mobile and hit redial. When his mate in Organised Crime answered, he put the phone on speaker and sat it between us.
‘Mitchell, mate. What can you tell me about Fabrig8?’
The phone was silent.
‘Mate. Are you there?’
‘How about you tell me what this is about, Robbo?’ The voice that boomed from the phone sounded snaky and suspicious.
‘I told you: it’s background to a murder inquiry.’
‘Is this about that shit-bag lawyer who got shot?’
I caught Robbo’s eye and he shrugged. ‘You know the score, Mitchell. I’ll tell you when I can tell you.’
The phone went quiet again.
‘How about Jess and I bring a couple of cartons to the barbecue on Sunday, mate?’ Robbo suggested.
A heavy sigh came over the line. ‘How about you call me when you’re ready to share some info.’
The call terminated.
‘What the hell was that?’ I tried not to sound as annoyed as I felt.
Robbo drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘Something was off. He’s never needed to know why I’m asking before.’
I went back over the conversation in my head. The guy had been cagey from the get-go.
‘Fabrig8.’ We both said the word at the same time.
‘Who the fuck are they?’ Robbo ran his fingers down the organised crime lists while I did a bog-standard online search.
Nothing came up under ‘Fabrig8’, but ‘Fabrigate’ brought up a flashy website for a mining supply company. I swivelled the laptop around to show Robbo just as his finger paused, hovering over a name that snagged something in my brain.
‘Warrant’s here.’ I looked up, startled. Peterson was leaning around the conference room door. ‘I’ve put it on your desk, Hart.’
Robbo slid the manila folder over the pages we’d printed from the Organised Crime Squad.
‘Any reason you can’t serve it yourself?’ I asked, looking at the clock on the wall. It was barely four o’clock.
Peterson smiled, his eyes darting from me to the manila folder and back. I suspect he was weighing up the inconvenience of having to serve a warrant with curiosity about what we were hiding.
‘I’ve got something I’ve got to er …’
I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence as Peterson’s head disappeared. I watched him through the glass wall as he hurried to his desk, grabbed his trademark trench coat and briefcase, and headed for the lifts.
‘When did he get back?’ I asked as Robbo pushed the manila folder back and ran his finger down the list again.
‘Seriously? It doesn’t annoy you that he’s a body assigned to this case but he doesn’t do a damn thing?’
Robbo shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do? He’s Willoughby’s pet project. Just be glad he didn’t get lead.’
The thought sent a chill through me as my phone buzzed like a shiver in my pocket.
I pulled it out and checked the screen before putting the phone to my ear. ‘What is it, Grace?’
I caught Robbo’s eye and smiled apologetically.
‘Something’s happened, Mum. Can you pick me up?’ His forehead creased and his head tilted as the smile slid from my lips.
‘Where are you?’
‘Ben Livingston Park.’
I recognised the name, it was near her school. ‘I’m on my way.’
I hung up and was out of the chair when I felt his hand on my arm.
‘Everything okay?’
I heard his words but I didn’t have an answer. It wasn’t what Grace had said; it was the way she sounded. Brittle and broken. Like a seven-year-old child.
‘Cover for me.’ It was all I could think to say as I hurried out of the conference room. I grabbed my bag and coat and headed for the lift at double speed.
