Whispering Death

11

Grace’s Sandy Bay break-ins might have gone unnoticed until early evening, except that the owner of the Sydney Long aquatint happened to slip home at lunchtime. He worked in downtown Hobart, he told the attending police constables, and discovered, late morning, that he’d left his mobile phone on the kitchen bench. ‘Still plugged into the charger,’ he said. ‘Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, but I needed a couple of numbers.’

He told the story again when the detectives arrived, taking their sweet time about it. Eventually those detectives arranged a door knock, and so a second break-in was discovered, and the owner was notified, and, in halting and not very urgent stages, an investigation was mounted as the day progressed, a detective senior constable named Wilmot in charge.

Wilmot was making a sketch of the loft house grounds late that afternoon, the front door in relation to the driveway, garden beds and street, and noticed a man watching him from the other side of the road. A thin, taut wire of a man. Contained, snidely amused. Charcoal jacket, white shirt, jeans, walking shoes. Casual, but costly, and worn with assurance. Wilmot was thinking Sandy Bay toff, someone idle and pointless, when the stranger headed towards him across the road and came through the gateway, not a care in the world.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Wilmot said, ‘this is a crime scene. I must ask you to leave.’

‘She was wearing a tennis dress,’ the man said, ‘carrying a gym bag.’

Wilmot’s mind scouted around for guidance and direction. ‘Er, who was?’

‘Your burglar.’

Before he could tell himself not to engage, Wilmot said decisively, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but it was a guy, he trod all over the garden in size elevens.’

The man offered a mild grin but there was a snake in it. ‘It’s what our girl does.’

‘If you know anything about a crime, sir, I must ask you to-’

The newcomer wasn’t listening. He turned side-on and gestured towards the end of the street. ‘Check the pub on the corner. Their car-park camera. It catches her walking past the entrance at 8.37 this morning, wearing tennis gear and carrying a gym bag. The cute, bouncy type. At 9.15 she came by again, heading out.’

‘You checked their CCTV? On what authority?’

The guy spun around, shot out his hand. ‘Andy Towne. Got in at four-thirty.’

He gave Wilmot the kind of grin that means nothing at all.

‘Don’t fly Virgin Blue, by the way.’

Hostility rose in Wilmot and he ignored the hand. ‘I don’t give a rat’s arse who you are or how you got here. Why you’re here and what I’m going to do about it is another matter.’

Towne creased his face good-naturedly but the eyes stayed flat. He struck Wilmot as someone on whom everything had an equal impact: small children, chaos, a visit to the dentist, blood letting.

‘Mate? You hear me? How about you piss off and let me do my job.’

Slipping a slender hand into an inside pocket, Towne waved identification at Wilmot, still wearing the smile. Wilmot saw a likeness of Towne and the words ‘National Crime Commission’ before the ID was secreted again.

Wilmot flushed. ‘Whoopy do.’ He felt inept and tongue-tangled. Andrew Towne, he sensed, had summed him up at first sight as a time-server. Or the cunt treated everyone with barely concealed contempt.

Wilmot looked away. The Derwent River had been flat and grey under the morning fog, then glinted briefly when the sun banded it. But the afternoon was drawing to a close now, the sun losing the fight to the mountains and a new fog shroud.

He turned to Towne again. ‘Mate, all I’m looking at is a couple of simple burglaries. What makes it federal?’

Towne looked bored. ‘We’ve been tracking this bitch for the past two years. She operates all over the country, always where the money is-Noosa, Port Douglas, North Shore, Adelaide Hills.’ He nodded. ‘Here in Sandy Bay.’

Wilmot absorbed that. ‘You got here pretty quick.’

Towne offered one of his arid smiles. ‘Our intel is good.’

Any information system could be programmed to raise a red flag, Wilmot knew. Depending on the parameters. ‘She work alone?’

‘Let’s just say she’s part of something loose and shadowy,’ Towne said. ‘ATM skimming, credit cards, identity theft, burglary to order, shoplifting raids.’

‘Foreign gang?’ said Wilmot.

Towne bared his teeth.

Wilmot snapped. ‘So what do I do now?’ Irritated. ‘Kiss your sweet arse and go home?’

Towne crinkled his eyes again, but they remained as flat and fogged as the river.