The Shadow Maker (7 page)

‘If you’re this touchy, something must be bothering you.’

‘
You
bother me with your psycho-babble diploma. But as for this …’ he gestured dismissively at the card and photo, ‘you’re just trying to set me up.’

‘Now why would I want to do that?’

‘Because you can’t get me legitimately. Because your last attempt ended in failure. Because you want to impress the men who push you around at work and treat you like a pair of tits on a stick.’

Rita felt the bile rise within her. He’d done this to her before, while she was interrogating him after his arrest. Needling her, baiting her, till she lost her temper. It didn’t happen often, but this man could do it. Partly because of the obscene crimes he’d committed and partly because he could recognise her frustrations.

‘I read about you recently in
Police Life
magazine,’ he went on.

‘All that bullshit about profiling, studying with the FBI, a woman with a golden future in the force. Boy you must piss off your fellow cops.’

‘Let’s get back to the prostitute,’ she said angrily.

‘Let’s not. Let’s stick with you and whether I should put in a complaint of harassment,’ said Kavella.

‘You’ve got no grounds,’ said Rita.

‘I could think of something.’

‘I’m being civil, you shit,’ she said, immediately regretting it.

‘That’s more like it.’ His jaw came forward with contempt. ‘You should lose your cool more often. Makes you seem less like a cold-blooded bitch. Maybe you’re worth a grudge-fuck after all.’

Rita didn’t say anything, but the look in her eyes was enough.

He dropped the smile abruptly. ‘Look. I don’t want to piss around anymore. This woman is nothing to me. And as for the card, it’s not mine.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘That’s your problem,’ he said.

‘Yours too, if I come back with a warrant,’ Rita countered.

‘You’d be wasting your time, yet again. I’m telling you the card is from somewhere else.’

‘Another Plato’s Cave?’

‘Why not? I didn’t invent the name. It’s been around for a few thousand years.’

‘Yes, but yours has the underworld connections. Hardly surprising a vice case should lead me straight here.’

‘Surprising or not, you’ve picked the wrong cave, Van Hassel. You’ve begun your descent into the underworld in the wrong place.’

He picked up his phone, ignoring her.

She watched him send a brief text message, and a moment later Kavella’s right-hand man, Brendan Moyle, was at her side.

Rita tensed.

Moyle was thick-set and intimidating. A former debt collector, he didn’t hesitate to use violence. He liked to get up close when he inflicted pain and had served time for knee-capping a man with an ice pick.

‘Remember our old friend?’ said Kavella.

‘I don’t see a friend,’ answered Moyle. ‘But I can smell something.’ He pushed his face close to Rita and sniffed loudly. ‘It’s rotting fish.’

It took all Rita’s self-control to avoid reacting.

Moyle laughed.

Kavella remained stony-faced. ‘We’re done,’ he said. ‘For now.’

It was an implied threat and a taunt, but she couldn’t let herself be provoked. She stood up, collected the card and photo, and walked out. Anything else and she’d be suspended.

3

Walking away from Tony Kavella’s office, Rita felt certain that he was assuming a more powerful role in the city’s criminal elite. She’d seen first-hand that he was expanding his influence and reinventing himself with an image makeover, while equipping himself with expensive hi-tech resources. It was entirely possible that Emma Schultz was a casualty of his new initiatives.

As soon as Rita got back to the squad room, Strickland appeared beside her.

His face was tight, but he spoke quietly. ‘Looks like we’re both in for a carpeting.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, though she had a sinking feeling that she’d just overstepped the mark.

‘We’ve been summoned to a meeting in Nash’s office. I get the feeling we’ve trodden on somebody’s toes.’

This was all she needed, thought Rita, as she headed for the lifts and the office of Superintendent Gordon Nash.

‘Is this about today’s headlines?’ she asked Strickland, feigning ignorance.

‘Could be.’ His worry lines were in sharp relief. ‘Maybe Nash has seen a tape of my presser.’

‘How did it go?’

‘It just went.’

They rode up three floors in the lift and then walked down a long corridor towards Nash’s office.

‘Whatever it is, he sounds pissed off.’ Strickland gave a heavy sigh.

‘One way or another, you seem to have ruined my entire day.’

Nash sat at his desk with his hands clasped and his sharp eyes staring over the rims of his glasses. To Nash’s right sat Jack Loftus.

To his left was Detective Inspector Jim Proctor from the Organised Crime Squad. Behind him leant two of his detectives. Strickland and Rita stood in front of the desk like truants before a headmaster.

There was a feeling of inquisition, and Rita was suddenly aware of being the lowest-ranking officer in the room, not to mention the only woman.

Nash looked down at the report sheets spread in front of him, frowned, took off his glasses and waved them impatiently. ‘This case you’re working on - the blind prostitute - are you getting anywhere with it?’

‘We’re narrowing the field,’ answered Strickland carefully.

Nash’s gaze focused on him. ‘And what exactly does that mean?’

‘While we’re waiting for the DNA results, we’re getting through a lot of interviews, eliminating potential suspects. As you know, we’ve only got a vague description to go on. We’re also chasing what leads we’ve got - the car, T-shirt, bondage gear, and so on.’

Nash knew the sound of evasion when he heard it. ‘So would you say you’re making progress?’

Strickland hesitated, sensing a procedural pitfall in front of him.

‘It’s early days yet, but I’d say we are. The DNA should make all the difference.’

‘Let’s hope so. The longer this goes on, the longer we have the media on our backs. And that’s just the first cock-up in your investigation.’

Strickland swallowed hard and said nothing. He stood rebuked.

Nash was more than just a high-ranking officer, he was also an accomplished bureaucrat and an expert at internal politics. Assigning blame was part of his expertise. The cold-hearted stare over his steel-rimmed glasses had curtailed more than one career.

Nash turned his unsmiling gaze on Rita and said, ‘Which brings us to a cock-up of monumental proportions. What on earth possessed you to go barging in on Tony Kavella?’

‘I was following a lead,’ she said, puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what the problem is.’

Nash answered with a sigh of irritation. ‘The
problem
is that Kavella’s out of bounds. He has been for three months. Since his acquittal, in fact. That’s how long the Taskforce Nero surveillance operation has been in place.’

‘Surveillance?’

‘You’ve jeopardised that entire investigation. A huge amount of work and police hours could now be wasted. And worse still, if you’ve alerted Kavella, he may actually achieve what we’re trying to prevent.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Rita feebly.

‘He’s putting together an alliance of rival organisations on a scale we’ve never had to deal with before. A sophisticated partnership of criminal gangs - diversified through drug smuggling, distribution, counterfeiting, tax fraud, illegal immigration, money laundering, extortion. It’s an extremely clever move in the wake of Melbourne’s underground wars, given their high body count. And it poses a huge threat. Get the picture?’

Rita had a sudden feeling of nausea, realising she’d committed a career-wrecking blunder. She wanted to believe it wasn’t her fault

- that she wasn’t to blame because she’d been told nothing of the surveillance. But in her heart she knew she’d been too eager to go after Kavella again. Revenge had clouded her judgement.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could think to say. ‘I didn’t know about the operation.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Nash brutally. ‘It was on a need-to-know basis. But in any case there are procedures to follow before questioning a suspect. Professional discipline must always come before inspired guesswork.’

Like Strickland, she stood rebuked. But she knew that last comment - about guesswork - had a malicious undertone. It was personal, and she knew it. Nash set no store by criminal profiling and disapproved of her psychological training. To him it was a distraction and, more to the point, foreign to the process of real police work. In his opinion she was being indulged as a woman and pampered because of her academic background. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone in that view.

‘Did you check with your senior officer before you went barging in?’ he barked.

The question was loaded. Nash was giving Rita the chance to pass the blame onto Strickland, knowing that whichever way she answered it would be held against her. Fuck it, she thought. It was too late to undo the damage, so she might as well stand her ground.

Besides, she wasn’t prepared to grovel.

After an apologetic glance at Loftus she looked Nash in the eye and said, ‘It seemed like a good lead. I made my own judgement call.’

Nash threw his steel-rimmed glasses onto the desk in a gesture of disgust, but Rita continued, almost abrasive now. ‘If you’re worried about Kavella, you can relax. He has the same opinion of me as you.’

‘And what’s that?’ asked Nash.

‘That I deal in psycho-babble.’

‘So you don’t think he’s been alerted?’ he asked, his voice still harsh, but clearly more concerned with the continued viability of the operation.

‘Like you, he thinks I’m on a revenge mission.’

Proctor leant forward in his chair. ‘This is very important, Van Hassel. We haven’t been able to bug his office or do long-range eavesdropping. He’s got electronic defences in there, so he assumes he’s being watched. But did he give any hint of suspecting a major operation’s being mounted against him?’

‘Just the opposite. He’s more confident than ever.’

Proctor turned to Nash and said, ‘Maybe it’s not blown after all.’

‘I don’t like playing hunches,’ said Nash, then turned to Jack Loftus, who’d sat through the proceedings with a long-suffering look on his face. ‘What do you reckon, Jack?’

Loftus took his time answering, scratching his ear and shrugging.

‘She ought to know,’ he said at last. ‘She’s got a degree in it.’

Nash sat back, unconvinced. ‘I must say I’m in a quandary. Kavella will be seeking feedback on our reaction, possibly right now. If I discipline her, he’ll suspect we’re onto him. But if we let Sex Crimes focus on him, he’ll batten down the hatches and the surveillance operation will be a waste of time, money and resources.’

Proctor folded his arms. ‘Maybe there’s an alternative way to deal with this.’ He was a different species of cop to the others in the room. He was tall and patrician, with a steady gaze and an air of being permanently at ease. His professional detachment was legendary - no one had ever seen him flustered - and he tended to view crimes as intellectual puzzles. ‘Maybe we can turn Van Hassel’s headstrong behaviour to our advantage.’

Nash was doubtful. ‘What are you suggesting, Jim?’

‘That she’s
not
disciplined, and that her line of inquiry is officially ruled out, for all to hear, in Jack’s briefing this afternoon. That way Kavella gets the feedback we want.’

‘What feedback?’ Rita asked impatiently.

‘From the police detectives who are in Kavella’s pocket,’ Proctor explained.

An abrupt silence followed, as if he’d let slip unmentionable information.

Morale had already hit a new low with the disbanding of two squads at Melbourne police headquarters amid headlines such as rough justice and dirty rotten cops
.
The reputation for beatings and drug deals was thanks to overzealous interrogations and the jail sentences for detectives doing business with gangland figures.

The murky image of cops operating on both sides of the law in the city’s underworld wars was something no one wanted to revisit.

Nash sighed. ‘What are you doing, Jim? The more who know about your unit’s remit, the more it risks being compromised.’

‘Van Hassel’s now in the loop,’ Proctor replied. ‘So I’m suggesting we use her. Instead of spooking Kavella, she may be a way of forcing his hand.’

‘Wait just a minute,’ butted in Loftus. ‘I don’t want her used as a cat’s paw. Kavella’s far too dangerous.’

‘Calm down, Jack,’ said Proctor. ‘I’m talking disinformation, not provocation.’

‘But there’s history between them and he doesn’t need further reminding. We know he’s killed before to settle a score.’

Proctor ignored him and turned to Rita. ‘What exactly was the lead you were following today?’

‘A smartcard embossed with the name Plato’s Cave,’ she said, taking it from her pocket and handing it to him. ‘I spoke to the victim, Emma Schultz, again this morning. She said the attacker showed her the card and talked about cyber sex games. In light of her visit to the club, and Kavella’s track record in organising sexual sadism, I decided to question him.’

‘There’s clear logic there,’ conceded Proctor, turning the card over in his hand. ‘And Kavella’s response?’

‘He told me to stick it up my arse, but didn’t immediately deny the card was from his club.’

‘What’s it for, precisely?’ Proctor wanted to know.

Rita shrugged. ‘The crime lab can’t tell us, other than to say it’s some sort of super-smartcard. It’s heavily encrypted.’

Proctor sat back, rubbing his chin. ‘It’s quite possible you’ve stumbled onto something we’ve failed to pin down in three months’

work. We know he’s invested in a big hi-tech system housed next to his office. He bought the adjoining building from Victor Yang - it used to be a Chinese laundry. Then he reinforced and soundproofed the walls and, apart from fire escapes, sealed the exterior entrances, with access only from his premises. He got planning permission for office suites, but what he really uses it for, we don’t know.’

‘I saw a connecting door,’ put in Rita. ‘Steel-plated.’