Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(76)

‘What a perfect place for this,’ she said. There was a strange self-consciousness to her now. Her plan materialising. How could it be this perfect? Surely something would bring it down. She was so used to her dreams being tugged back to Earth. ‘The pub, huh, Harry? We’ll do it here. This is where people come to forget about things, isn’t it? This is where we come to be together. Let’s all be together for this.’

‘Get down.’ Kash was waving people from the tables, directing them away from the stage. He kept his gun trained on Bella, his eyes never leaving her for long. ‘Stay calm, everyone. Move towards the exits.’

‘Do not move towards the fucking exits,’ Bella snapped, pointing my weapon at a group of people crouched by the door. ‘I’m running this show, you pathetic meathead. Get that fucking gun off me before I push this button and end your partner’s life.’

‘That device isn’t big enough to hurt anyone here but Harry.’ Kash pointed at me. ‘If you kill her, I’ll shoot you, and it’ll be over.’

‘Mmm.’ Bella nodded. Her bravado returned. ‘See, that’s where the plan gets interesting. This isn’t the only bomb in town.’





Chapter 120


WHITT KNEW HE was wrong when he turned the corner and came up against the blockade at the fork in the road. Huge red plastic barriers diverted cars off to the right, away from the river along Henry Lawson Drive. He pulled in slowly behind a driver who was checked and directed away, then flipped his badge open for the patrol cop manning the checkpoint. A light rain was beginning to fall.

‘Detective Whittacker,’ the cop read, shone the torch in Whitt’s face. ‘How can I help?’

‘I just want to do a quick check of the riverside. See if he’s out and about.’

‘He’s not.’ The young cop smiled. ‘We’ve got it blocked off from here to Timbuktu. They’re doing regular sweeps. But you’re welcome to go have a look.’

Whitt waved and rolled on, disappointed. Of course, someone got the idea before him that the killer might return to the Georges River, a place that obviously meant something to him. He got out and looked down the long, narrow stretch of parkland lining the black water. There were police everywhere, plain-clothes and patrollies leaning on trees, looking over maps, shining their torches along the muddy sand beyond the grey brick breakwall.

The stretch of river where the bodies of the girls had been found was no more than three hundred metres long. But Whitt thought that didn’t necessarily mean only that stretch was important to the killer. Much of the police presence was focused here, where the girls had been lain on the beach. Beyond this part of the river there was more parkland dotted with the occasional clearing where picnic tables and public toilet blocks stood, jungle gyms for the kids, public bins surrounded by thousands of beer-bottle caps and cigarette butts.

What was it about this place that meant so much to the killer? Whitt wondered as he walked in the dark between the trees, beyond the reach of the lights. He thought about critical places in his own life from his home in Perth, places that he could smell when he thought about them. Where the ghost of his child self still played on beaches, huddled into big armchairs in libraries and sifted through the crowded tables of treasures in public markets, his mother’s hand in his. Indeed, the only places he could think of that had any deep spiritual meaning for him had cemented themselves in his psyche during his childhood. The Georges River really was a boys’ wonderland. Dark forests that stretched for kilometres. Huge sandstone rock formations perfect for clambering on, hiding in and having secret conversations. The park was large enough that wild goats and deer populated its deeper parts, appearing on the road now and then. It would be a haven for teens smoking, making out, lighting fires.

Sam Blue had been fairly nonplussed about the place when Nigel’s team had asked him what associations he had with it. He said he’d hung out there now and then as a kid when placed with foster families in the area. He hadn’t been back in his adult years. It hadn’t struck the investigators as odd that the place where the three bodies of his victims had been found hadn’t meant much to their prime suspect. They’d assumed he was lying.

Whitt’s phone buzzed and he looked at the screen. A text message from the lab. He opened the image and looked at a face, one of the bearded men from the collection of photographs of suspects from the abandoned hotel. Regan Banks. Number eight. His DNA had matched the samples taken from under Tox’s fingernails.

Whitt spied a dark pier ahead reaching out into the water. There was a small boatshed near it. He headed that way, thinking he’d get out of the wind to make a phone call to Pops. He’d lost faith in his idea that the killer might be here at the river, with all the police presence nearby. He was only thinking now of his next angle of attack. The danger lying ahead escaped him.





Chapter 121


‘SIT HERE, HARRY.’ Bella smiled, drawing a chair from the edge of the stage. I all but fell into it. My legs were weak, my mind spinning. It wasn’t just the bomb strapped to my throat. It was the stage, its height above the people cowering under tables and huddling in corners, unable to look away from me and my captor. We were a grotesque pantomime, a Punch and Judy show. It was all playing out exactly as she had intended it – better, in fact. Her spectacle was drawing people in from the street to the front windows, crowded at the glass, talking to each other, relaying events inside to those behind who couldn’t see. She drew another chair close to me, so that our knees were almost touching. I thought about the bomb, and how if it detonated now it would probably injure her grievously, maybe kill her. But like the spree killers she idolised, the girl beside me was probably suicidal. All her mental effort over the last few months, or years, had gone into the planning of this event. There was nothing beyond today, Day Zero, that really mattered. Everything had to go perfectly now.