Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2)(52)

Falk didn’t ask for details. He knew some officers who worked in child protection. They all spoke in the same tight voice from time to time.

‘I stuck it out for a bit longer but started to do more on the technical side,’ Carmen went on. ‘Chasing them down through the transactions. I was pretty good at it, and eventually ended up here. This is better. I wasn’t sleeping by the end, over there.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘What about you?’

Falk sighed. ‘It wasn’t long after my dad died. I was on the drugs team for a couple of years when I started. Because, you know, you’re fresh and that’s where all the excitement is.’

‘So they tell me at the Christmas party.’

‘Anyway, we’d got a tip-off about this place in north Melbourne being used as a warehouse.’

Falk remembered pulling up outside a family bungalow on a run-down street. The paintwork was peeling and the grass out front was patchy and yellow, but at the end of the driveway sat a hand-made post box carved in the shape of a boat. Someone had cared enough about living in that house at one time to make or buy that, he had thought at the time.

One of his colleagues had banged on the door, then broken it open when there was no answer. It had gone down easily, the wood had aged over the years. Falk had caught a glimpse of himself in a dusty hall mirror, a dark shadow in his protective gear, and for a second had barely recognised himself. They’d rounded the corner into the living room, shouting, weapons raised, not sure what they’d find.

‘The owner was an old bloke with dementia.’ Falk could still picture him, tiny in his armchair, too confused to be frightened, his grubby clothes hanging off his frame.

‘There was no food in the house. His electricity was off and his cupboards were being used to store drugs. His nephew, or a bloke who he thought was his nephew, was heading up one of the local trafficking gangs. He and his mates had free run of the place.’

The house had been stinking, with graffiti scrawled across the floral wallpaper and mouldy takeaway cartons littering the carpet. Falk had sat with the man and talked about cricket, while the rest of the team had searched the house. The man had thought Falk was his grandson. Falk, who had buried his dad three months earlier, had not corrected him.

‘The thing is,’ Falk said. ‘They’d drained his bank accounts and his super. Taken out credit cards in his name and run up debts on things he never would have bought. He was a sick old man and they left him with nothing. Less than nothing. And it was all right there in his bank statements, waiting for someone to notice. Everything that was happening to him could have been picked up months earlier if someone had spotted the problem with the money.’

Falk had said as much in his report. Weeks later, an officer from the finance division had stopped by for a friendly chat. A few weeks after that, Falk had visited the old bloke in his care home. He’d seemed better, and they’d talked some more about cricket. When Falk had got back to the office he’d looked into the transfer requirements.

His decision had raised a few eyebrows at the time, but he knew he’d started to become disillusioned. The raids felt like a short-term fix. They were putting out one fire after another when the damage was already done. But money made the world go around for most of these people. Cut off the head and the rotten limbs withered and died.

At least, that was what he’d always thought about, every time he targeted someone in a white collar who thought their university education made them smart enough to get away with it. Like Daniel and Jill and Leo Bailey, who he knew probably believed they really weren’t doing anything all that bad. But when Falk looked at people like them, he saw all the other old blokes and struggling women and sad kids, sitting scared and alone in their unwashed clothes far away at the other end of the line. And he hoped that in some way, he could stop the rot before it ever reached them.

‘Don’t worry.’ Carmen said. ‘We’ll work something out. I know the Baileys think they’re good at this stuff after all these years, but they’re not as smart as us.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ She smiled. Even sitting down she was as tall as him. No need to tilt her head upwards for their eyes to meet. ‘For one thing, you and I know how to get away with laundering money.’

Falk couldn’t help but smile back. ‘How would you do it?’

‘Investment properties. Easy as. You?’

Falk, who had once written an in-depth study of the topic, knew exactly how he would do it, with two decent backup plans. Investment properties was one of them.

‘I don’t know. Casino, maybe.’

‘Bullshit. You’d have something more sophisticated.’

He grinned. ‘Don’t mess with the classics.’

Carmen laughed. ‘Maybe you’re not that smart after all. That would involve regularly kicking your heels up at the tables, and anyone who’s met you would see through that in a second. I should know. My fiancé puts in the hours down there. And he’s nothing like you.’

Truthfully, that was one reason why the casino wasn’t even in Falk’s top three. Too much legwork. But he just smiled. ‘I’d play the long game. Establish a pattern of behaviour. I can be a patient man.’

Carmen gave a small laugh. ‘I bet you can as well.’ She shifted on the bed, stretching out her legs in the pale light. All was quiet as they looked at each other.