Tropic of Death Read online

  ‘Shit,’ said Rita. ‘That throws it wide open again. What about your New Caledonian pal, Jean-Paul Mistere - did he have a printout?’

  ‘He could have. The disk was in a drawer at the flat where we did business, so he had access and opportunity. And like I said, he was very enterprising.’

  ‘Where’s the disk now?’

  ‘Rockhampton - but don’t ask for the exact location.’

  Rita fell silent again. She watched the cockatoos squabbling in the tea-trees then rising in a mass of white feathers and raucous cries before swooping towards the other side of the island. As their squawking faded they left behind the calm of the day. A gentle breeze hissed through the leaves overhead. Out to sea a group of yachts, spinnakers bellying as they ran before the wind, cut a broad arc through the waves.

  Stonefish had leant his back against the trunk of an olive tree, observing her carefully. ‘Have you got your head around it yet?’

  he asked.

  She turned to him with a weary smile. ‘I’m getting there. You’ve filled in a lot of pieces. I’m glad I caught up with you at last.’

  ‘We’re dealing with some evil pricks, aren’t we?’

  ‘Absolutely. But I don’t know if they’re acting in tandem. I need to distinguish the pricks from the predators.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Spot the ones with blood on their hands.’

  ‘Well, serial killer or not,’ said Stonefish, ‘Bowers needs to be stopped.’

  ‘It’s hard to stomach,’ said Rita, ‘that he’s still putting on shows with dogs.’

  ‘Yeah, a girl was crying to me at the Diamond after a date with Tyson and Clay.’

  Rita grabbed his arm. ‘Those names - who are they?’

  Stonefish looked at her, startled. ‘Billy’s German shepherds,’

  he answered. ‘He named them after the boxers.’

  Rita climbed towards the high point of St Cedd’s Island past a goat enclosure and a water tank, then followed a rough track through clumps of wild fennel and blackberry brambles until her mobile registered a signal. She sat on a boulder beside a small graveyard, phone in hand, considering how much to tell Sutcliffe.

  The problem was she’d crossed a line. On one side of it were police officers, military commanders, government officials and procedural rules. On the other side was Rita. Morally she had no qualms about the methods she’d used to gain information. There was no choice for someone who put justice above institutional directives. She recalled Martin Luther’s defiance - ‘Here I stand, I can do no other!’ - and realised that Brother Ignatius might be right after all. The Protestant ethic, drummed into her as a child, could still be shaping her fate.

  Nevertheless, from a legal standpoint, she’d conducted herself less like a profiler or investigator than a rogue detective. To make her position even more perilous, she was acting against some of the very authorities who already perceived her as unreliable and wouldn’t hesitate to crush her. Again, she had no doubt she was in the right. They were exceeding their powers and acting like a star chamber or a gang of vigilantes. Her problem, of course, was to prove that they were breaking the law.

  As she pondered her next move, the sun dipped below the ranges on the far side of the tidal basin. The muted glow spread a soft light along the coast, shading the sky above the gums and palm trees with tints of old gold. High tide was peaking, the beaches all but submerged. Out to sea, among the scattered dots of the Whitsundays, the sun traced the texture of the waves in sparkles of silver filigree. From her vantage point Rita enjoyed an unhindered view of the eastern horizon, where the edge of the Pacific spanned the delicate curve of the planet. It occurred to her that she was looking at a perspective beyond human time. It was like a glimpse of eternity.

  Perhaps it was the beauty of the sunset that moved her. Or maybe it was the awareness of being perched on the elevated tip of a religious site, a holy island, where men had prayed for divine guidance for more than a century. Or it could simply have been what psychologists called an ‘oceanic feeling’ that was welling up in her. Whatever provoked her sense of wonder also heightened her resolve to go it alone.

  Rita had long ago rejected the religious ideology of God. The source of intelligence, however, remained a mystery to her, like a timeless presence, and it was the closest she came to religious belief. As such, it implied that no act of integrity should be seen in isolation, that each quest for justice reflected a universal drive within human beings. Therefore to seek the truth, no matter what the consequences, was not really to go it alone. It united her with all others who did the same.

  Having made up her mind, she was ready to speak to Sutcliffe.

  The screen on her mobile showed four missed calls from him, the most recent just half an hour ago. When she phoned he was relieved to hear from her.

  ‘You had me worried,’ he said. ‘I got a nasty feeling you’d had a run-in with Billy after bumping into him at the building site.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s nowhere to be found. Doesn’t make him look good.

  Especially as I’ve got more stuff to add to the case against him.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Rita. ‘But you first.’

  ‘My boys have done a good job,’ Sutcliffe told her. ‘I sent a couple of them to the Ridgeway site with their forensic kits after you called it in.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘They examined the workshop table and found blood on the legs,’ Sutcliffe went on. ‘That’s not all. They tested for residues on the table surface and revealed blood traces at one end. Get this.

  The spatter pattern was interrupted by objects in two places.’

  ‘What objects?’

  ‘Hands. The blood showed the outlines of two hands, flat on the table.’

  ‘He was tortured,’ said Rita.

  ‘It gets better. Now that table’s taken a lot of punishment over time, lots of nicks and scrapes, chips knocked out of it and so on. But my boys weren’t satisfied until they’d taken a closer look.

  In the middle of the hand outlines, right where the palms would be, were two round holes. They were consistent with puncture marks made by a nail gun.’

  ‘That would explain the vertical wound through his head, unlike the other nail-gun victims, including Rachel,’ said Rita.

  ‘He was shot through the top of the skull while sitting with his hands nailed to the table.’

  ‘That’s why I was calling you,’ explained Sutcliffe. ‘The basement garage is now taped off as a crime scene and the table’s on its way to the lab. DNA tests will confirm if the blood’s that of the man in the mud.’

  ‘Excellent. And I can put a name to him at last.’

  ‘How have you managed that?’

  ‘A tip-off from an informer,’ she answered evasively.

  ‘I get the feeling you’ve been flying under the radar.’

  ‘Not so much flying as rally-car racing.’

  ‘Via the golf club, by any chance?’

  ‘Let me fill you in,’ she said. ‘I was in Freddy Hopper’s Land Rover when he set off like a bat out of hell with Billy’s bouncers in hot pursuit. By the way, their cars need to be searched. Apparently they travel with shotguns.’

  ‘So noted,’ said Sutcliffe.

  ‘Freddy also needed to beat the tide. That’s why I’m currently watching the sunset from the top of St Cedd’s Island.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘A monastery.’ Right on cue, the chiming of a bell rose through the evening air. ‘That’s the angelus you can hear in the background.’

  ‘And you’re there because … ?’

  ‘With Billy after him, Freddy’s claiming sanctuary. And I’m stuck here for another few hours until the tide goes out. Freddy thinks he’s safe but I wouldn’t put it past Bowers and his goons to try something. I think we should post an officer by the causeway at low tide.’

  ‘I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Good. Now,
the true identity of the man in the mud.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I’m told the name he went by was Jean-Paul Mistere,’ she replied. ‘Known to the local underworld as Mr Mystery. He travelled on a French passport, issued in New Caledonia.’

  ‘What was he?’

  ‘A regional drug dealer, apparently, open to making a few fast bucks on the side. He was present when a member of the Monotti family told how Bowers earned his nickname, how he got the better of me, and how he was still getting away with it. Monsieur Mistere wrote down my name and filed it in his boot.’

  ‘For blackmail?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘If he tried to blackmail Billy,’ said Sutcliffe, ‘that could get him dead pretty quick.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Good work, Van Hassel.’ There was a jubilant note in Sutcliffe’s voice. ‘We can now positively link Billy to all the nail-gun attacks.

  Lawyers or not, he knows we’re closing in.’

  ‘And that will make him more dangerous than ever. One other thing. Looks like Vic Barrano was being straight about where to look for the drugs. Mike Tyson and Cassius Clay are the names of Billy’s dogs.’

  ‘Shit. We didn’t search the kennels. I’ll get onto it now.’

  44

  ‘This is a first for me,’ said Rita. It was after vespers and she was sharing supper with the monks in the refectory. The room had a stone floor and a low, vaulted ceiling. The only light came from candles, adding to the medieval aura of the setting, yet the mood was relaxed rather than reverential. The meal was a thick vegetable broth with fresh bread. Freddy and Stonefish were sitting opposite her, with Brother Ignatius on her left and the abbot, at the head of the table, on her right. He was a very old man, frail and stooped, with wrinkled, leathery skin.

  He hardly spoke, but he responded briefly to Rita.

  ‘It’s a first for me, too, my dear,’ he told her.

  ‘Breaking bread with a woman cop?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Supping with a psychologist.’

  She laughed. ‘I hope that’s better than supping with the Devil.’

  The abbot contemplated the remark. ‘Now that you mention it, I suppose the Devil must be the ultimate expert in human psychology. If I understand the subject, it requires a strong acquaintance with the dark forces inside us.’

  ‘Yes, the pathological side of our nature,’ said Rita. ‘A psychologist needs to eat freely from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.’

  ‘In disobedience to God,’ commented Ignatius. ‘Genesis 2:17.’

  ‘But in accordance with the imperatives of human consciousness,’

  she retorted. ‘Genesis 3:7.’

  Ignatius chuckled. ‘You cast a whole new light on the Devil quoting scripture.’

  Rita gave him a sideways look. ‘Don’t you mean she-devil?’

  ‘That would explain a few things,’ said Freddy.

  Stonefish told him to shut up.

  Then the abbot turned to her with a frown, his eyes sad, as if he carried a heavy burden.

  ‘Something has always troubled me,’ he confided. ‘Something that can leave me feeling bereft, despite my faith. I equate it with what St John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul”. As a psychologist, what would you call it? Depression?’

  Rita put down her soup spoon. ‘I need to think about that one,’ she admitted. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the phrase refer to a feeling of loneliness on the path of spiritual growth? A test of faith?’

  ‘That’s close to the traditional interpretation,’ agreed the abbot.

  ‘Psychologically I wouldn’t label it depression, no. I’d call it alienation. And that’s something that afflicts us all, at times. Ever since our expulsion from Eden.’

  The abbot nodded slowly. ‘Thank you, my dear.’ Then he added, ‘You may be an agnostic, but I have no doubt you’re doing God’s work.’

  He didn’t speak again for the rest of the evening.

  As they left the refectory at the end of supper, Stonefish told her, ‘People accuse me of being off the wall. But you’re the weirdest cop I’ve ever met.’

  There was no problem about a night crossing of the causeway, although low tide was still a couple of hours away. Freddy had no intention of leaving the island and told Rita as much before heading off through the orchard with Stonefish to ‘stretch his legs’.

  Get stoned was more like it, she thought. Ignatius, in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, insisted he would take her back to Whitley.

  He would enjoy her company on the drive, he said. After taking her on a tour of the neo-Gothic buildings, he showed her into the monastic library and switched on the lamps.

  The room was heavy with oak bookcases and rows of elevated desks with sloping surfaces and inkwells.

  ‘This was originally the scriptorium,’ explained Ignatius.

  ‘So the monastery produced its own manuscripts?’

  ‘A long time ago, yes.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Now we use the internet.’

  ‘The Holy Ghost of the twenty-first century,’ said Rita. ‘Or is that heresy?’

  ‘You’re less of a heretic than you make out,’ he replied. ‘Now, are you happy to browse in here while I attend to my devotions?’

  ‘I love books,’ she answered. ‘It’s the perfect place to chill out before I face the ungodly again.’

  ‘I’ll include you in my prayers.’

  ‘Thanks. A prayer for clarity wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  He withdrew, leaving her to an unnatural stillness and the musty odour of the past.

  She wandered along the bookcases, scanning the spines. There seemed to be endless shelves on biblical topics, Catholic philosophy, theology and scriptural exegesis. None of these grabbed her.

  The volumes on religious aesthetics and symbolism were more interesting and she leafed through a few of them before moving on to a collection of dusty old history books. Some were familiar to her, although the bulk of the texts had obviously been put together at the time the monastery had been founded. Very few editions had been added since the nineteenth century.

  Among the works of Victorian scholarship one caught her eye purely because of the name on the binding: Josiah Brodie.

  The title was the cumbersome Civilization and its War against the Barbarian Hordes. Could this be a book by Squatter Brodie, the man who had launched his own campaign in the frontier war against the Aborigines? She pulled it from the shelf and blew off the dust before opening the slim morocco-bound volume. A biographical note confirmed that the author was indeed the local squatter, although it made no mention of his role as leader of the notorious hunting party.

  Rita sat at the nearest desk, spread the book in front of her and began to read. The publication comprised one hundred pages of tightly printed text, dominated by a single theme expressed in the title. Brodie’s central thesis was that history, over nearly three millennia, embodied a life and death struggle between European civilisation and every other culture, which he perceived as tribal, pagan and hostile - essentially barbaric. His great model of civilisation was the Roman Empire.

  She scanned long passages arguing that the Romans were justified in their wars of aggression, suppression and occupation against all peoples alien to civilised values. The proof was the eventual collapse of the empire at the hands of the barbarian hordes when Rome weakened in its resolve, with classical civilisation vanishing into the Dark Ages. After such a cataclysmic setback it took a thousand years of medieval ignorance, during which the monasteries preserved ancient learning, before the next great flowering of civilisation: the emergence of the British Empire. But Brodie ended his book with a warning.

  There is no virtue in a weakness of the will when civilized men are confronted with the violence of savages. The British Empire spans the entire globe, with a much greater extent of territory to rule than even the Romans co
ntrolled, and therefore the threat is proportionately greater. Just as the Roman administrators did not hesitate to exert inexorable force to prevail over the bloodthirsty Celts of ancient Britain, likewise the British must prevail over the waves of barbarism that lap at the borders of the empire, whether it be in Africa or Asia or Australia. The war against savagery is neglected at our peril.

  Rita closed the book with a pessimistic thud. Brodie’s argument was simplistic and fanatical. She wanted to dismiss it as the idiosyncratic raving of a colonial maniac. But that was too easy.

  What was more disturbing was the implication of a universal mind-set - a ‘them and us’ interpretation of global dynamics, a reactionary vindication of killing in the so-called defence of western civilisation. It was a gloomy notion and the parallels leapt out at her - the war against barbarians, the war against savagery, the war on terror.

  It seemed that such strategies eroded the very values they were supposed to defend, something Rita had to deal with in her own investigation. The problem was an inherent contradiction and the Romans had put a name to it: exitus acta probat - the end justifies the means. Men in charge of the research base had embraced and applied it with the inevitable result. Death.

  45

  ‘Don’t assume Bowers will respect the sensibilities of the monks,’ warned Rita.

  Freddy and Stonefish observed her indolently. They were sitting under a fig tree outside the arched gate of the courtyard, smoking.

  The pungent smell of dope drifted around them.

  ‘You think he’ll try something?’ asked Stonefish.

  ‘If he wants Freddy badly enough, yes,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s rights.’ She was about to follow Brother Ignatius down a steep path to the car park. ‘A police officer will soon be posted by the causeway, but I suggest you keep watch here tonight.’

  ‘Good idea. We’ve got an uninterrupted view.’

  ‘As long as you don’t get stoned.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of blow,’ said Freddy. ‘To clear the cobwebs, calm the nerves.’