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‘All the more reason to get her into custody.’

‘No.’ Morris said. ‘I won’t support an arrest warrant without a criminal charge.’ He shrugged stiffly. ‘And you have nothing to charge her with. She was not in league with her brother. She’s not in league with Banks. Right now, she’s an official missing person, and we have concerns for her welfare. End of story.’

‘This is not your decision,’ Woods said. ‘There has been a change of command. It’s out of your hands.’

Pops grimaced, turned away.

‘I’ll offer a reward,’ he said suddenly.

Woods gave a quizzical frown.

‘I have a hundred grand in my personal savings account,’ Pops went on. ‘You continue to play her to the media as a missing person, as a good cop we have grave concerns for, and I’ll offer the money as a reward for her whereabouts.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘I guarantee you’ll find her faster that way. If the public thinks she’s dangerous they’ll run from her. If they think she’s one of us, and better yet, their ticket to a fat pile of cash, they’ll be drawn to her. You’ll get more hits with a reward.’

Woods looked down at the man beside him.

‘I’ll hand over the investigation to you, no questions asked.’ Pops put his hands up in surrender. ‘But I’m asking you now not to put out a warrant on Harry. Don’t do that to her. She doesn’t deserve it.’

Woods snorted, unconvinced. ‘When we get her in, we’ll see what she deserves.’

Chapter

7

DETECTIVE EDWARD WHITTACKER barely made the briefing on time, jogging to the mirrored door to the boardroom and stopping to tuck in a loose corner of his shirt. He hated to be late. Actually felt a burning anger in his throat at the thought of it. He opened the door and walked stiffly to the back of the room, determined not to react to the eyes of other officers following him. As he took a seat, a detective he knew from Robbery turned and leaned over the back of the chair in front of Whitt.

‘How’s Barnes?’ the younger detective asked. ‘Still kickin’?’

Whitt felt his face flushing. His former unofficial partner, Detective Tate ‘Tox’ Barnes, was deeply reviled across the Sydney metropolitan police department. His grievous wounding in a fight with Regan Banks was hardly tragic news. Whitt knew it wouldn’t be long before this hatred for Tox, and for Whitt’s partner before him, Harriet Blue, would turn on him.

‘Detective Barnes is recovering well,’ Whitt said. ‘He’s not receiving visitors. But the doctors tell me he’ll likely be up and about in a couple of weeks.’

The young Robbery/Homicide detective gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Well, you know what they say. Only the good die young.’

The officers around them sniggered.

A senior detective came in and began the progress check on the Banks investigation. There were sightings of Banks all over the city to run through. Most were unsubstantiated, panicked calls from elderly women after hearing bumps and thumps in their yards in the early hours. There were a few legitimate, interesting calls about big men with shaved heads acting suspiciously, but they were not clustered in any particular place. It seemed that, like Harry, Regan had gone to ground since his last killings: the vicious slaughter of a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter in a Mosman plastic surgery clinic.

Whitt took a file out of his bag and selected his manila folder on the Parish murders. There were crime scene photographs of the once-immaculate surgery room, bloodstains and spatters found to be from Isobel and Samantha Parish. And some blood that matched the DNA profile of Regan Banks. The detectives had determined that Banks had abducted Doctor Parish and her daughter, and forced the skilled plastic surgeon to attend to wounds Banks had acquired in a shootout with police.

Whitt had been there when Regan was shot by police, had heard Regan’s cry as the bullets tore through him. It didn’t escape Whitt that if he’d just been faster, smarter, more prepared, he might have been the one to take Regan down before he escaped. Before he killed the mother and child.

Whitt flipped quickly through the photographs of the bodies, the mother curled in a corner of the surgery, her throat cut. The little girl still in her dance leotard, her arms splayed and head twisted back at an unnatural angle. The killings had been swift but violent. Whitt wondered whether Doctor Parish had known when she was helping Banks with his wounds that he planned to kill her. There were indications the woman and the child had both put up a vigorous fight, completely trashing the surgery room. They’d died at opposite ends of the building, the child making it all the way down the hall to the front reception room and grabbing the phone off the hook. No call to emergency services had come through.

Whitt looked at the photographs of the mangled bullet Doctor Parish had removed from Regan’s body, the clippings of stitches that had fallen on the floor after the surgery table was upturned. Doctor Samantha Parish had got a broken killing machine up and running again and paid for it with her life. And her daughter’s life.

Whitt wondered how many more names he would have to write on identical folders before the killing machine was taken out of operation for good.

Chapter

8

WHEN THE BRIEFING was done, Whitt walked across the busy bullpen to his desk, coffee in hand. The desk was new, a delay in his official transfer from Perth meaning he had spent his first couple of weeks at the department working out of his car or a briefing room. A group of detectives was gathered nearby, watching the large glass window of Chief Morris’s office with interest.

Whitt looked over to see what they were all focused on.

‘It’s him,’ a detective said, his arms folded, leaning on Whitt’s desk. ‘It’s Big Joe Woods.’

‘That’s the guy who caught Elizabeth Crassbord’s killer?’

‘And Reece Smart, the Farmhouse Killer,’ another detective said, nodding. ‘Dude’s a big-case bandit. Swoops in after all the hard work is done, trying to get the press. He’s got a lot to prove. You hear about his daughter?’

Whitt scoured his desk for his folder. He thought he’d just put it down on the desk when he passed to get his coffee, but now it was gone. He straightened and turned to the group of men beside him still focused on the office across the room.

‘Did someone take my …?’

The detectives turned towards him and smiled. Whitt sighed. One of the woes of being associated with Tox Barnes was that other detectives in the department were given licence to harass, belittle and prank any detective partnered with him. It was a tradition dating back to Tox’s entry into the force. Rumours spread, almost as soon as he was badged, about violent killings in his childhood. Tox had been responsible for the death of a mother and son, but it was a freak accident that got the pair killed. The police didn’t want a murderer in their midst, and punished anyone who aligned themselves with Detective Barnes. Tox might have cleared up the rumours about his past, but he wasn’t the world’s most social guy. He liked to work alone, and his reputation, however false, kept people away.

Even with Tox holed up in hospital, out of sight and out of mind, Whitt was still being messed with for befriending the department’s most hated detective.

‘Seriously? That’s my only copy of the Banks case file in its entirety,’ he said.

‘Well then!’ the nearest detective said cheerfully. ‘We know how you’ll be spending your morning.’

Whitt appreciated the prank for its subtly and effectiveness. He would have to go down to ‘the dungeon’, the records department in the bowels of the building, and print himself a whole new file. He took his coffee to the sink and poured it out without drinking it. He knew by the time he returned it would be unsafe to drink.