Felicity Young - An Easeful Death

Angus and Stevie had been the principal detectives interviewing the friends and family. In the case of such a low-risk victim, family and close friends were always the first suspects. In this case, though, they’d felt the immediate family could be eliminated. Her twelve-year-old brother and her mother could not be considered, and her father, with his chronic heart problem, had been assessed as physically incapable of the murder.

Angus continued, ‘She wasn’t drunk, it’s not like she was desperate for a lift, the weather was fine and she had the bus money. Her mother said there was no way she would have accepted a lift from a stranger.’

‘Perhaps she was pulled into a car. Someone could have stopped to ask her directions then grabbed her. God knows it’s been done countless times before,’ Barry said.

‘Well, if that’s the case,’ Monty replied, ‘maybe someone saw some kind of a struggle.’

Stevie’s grip tightened on her pen.

She’d tried to run, but one of her heels had caught in the concrete slabs and she’d slammed head first onto the path. He was on her in an instant, ripping and tearing at her clothes.

She could see the scene as clearly in her mind’s eye as if she were watching it on TV. She screwed her eyes tight for a moment and willed herself to concentrate on Monty’s voice.

‘Maybe the re-enactment will jog a memory. Meanwhile, Angus, I want you to canvass the taxi companies. Get some uniform help and those seconded dees from Stirling. I want to know the whereabouts of every single cab between nine and eleven that Sunday night.’

Angus’s face fell. ‘That could take weeks.’

‘Which we don’t have. So make it days, preferably hours. So long as each cab has kept their required log, it’ll just be a case of slogging through each one.’

‘And speaking of slogging, Mont, I think I’ve been lucky with the trace on the bronze paint.’ Wayne leaned back in his chair, ‘Listen and weep, Angus, no more of the hard grind for me. A call came in just after the press conference last night. The owner of a hobby shop in Kensington said that his employee, a Mr Craig Thompson, mentioned selling a dozen cans of bronze fabric paint to a man last week. Not many people buy that much paint and it got him wondering.’

‘Kensington, isn’t that where the vic came from?’ Barry’s question was more of a statement and no one answered him.

‘What else did he say? Did you get a description of the man?’ Monty asked.

‘I thought this was too important for the phone,’ Wayne replied. ‘I’ve made an appointment to see Thompson early this afternoon.’

‘Good, keep me up to date.’

‘Do we know if Linda had a boyfriend?’ Barry asked Stevie.

‘Yes, about the same age as she was. According to the mother he’s been working on a farm in Meckering. They were saving up for a skiing holiday. He was in Meckering at the time of the murder. The farm manager vouched for him.’

‘Did she work?’ Wayne asked her.

‘Only part time—as a waitress at the Blue Fish, that trendy restaurant by the beach in Cottesloe. She was waiting for her big break into the modelling world. I’ve got people going through the staff statements now. I had them ask the usual questions: had she complained about any of the customers giving her a hard time, anyone following her or any of the other girls; had her demeanour changed over the days leading to the murder.’

‘And?’ Wayne queried.

Stevie looked down at her notebook. ‘One of the waitresses said a guy had eaten there several times the previous week and made sure he was served by her each time. They seemed to talk quite a bit. The waitress said Linda was flattered, told her it was nice to have a harmless flirt with an older guy, said they were just having a bit of fun.’

Wayne shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘A harmless flirt,’ he said as if to himself. ‘Description?’

‘Pretty vague. Late thirties, early forties, tall and that’s about it. I told the girl to ring me if she sees him again.’

‘We’re still trying to find out who this guy is,’ said Angus, ‘but on the whole, Mont, everything backs up what her parents and friends say. She was a popular girl with no apparent worries.’

‘And now she’s dead.’ Barry smoothed his palm across his shaved head and worried at one of his Mickey Mouse ears. ‘Why’s it always the nice girls?’ He answered his own question with a shrug. ‘Nice girls are more trusting, maybe?’

Stevie whipped up her head and balled her fists. ‘Bullshit, stop romanticising all this. Nice, nasty, it makes no difference to the killer. She didn’t ask for this, she just happened to fit his mould. The KP murder victims were prostitutes for God’s sake!’

‘I’m sure there are nice prostitutes too, Stevie,’ Barry said, unnerved by her sudden ferocity.

Monty held up his hands like a referee. ‘Stop the guesswork, people. Let’s leave the psychological stuff to the profiler and concentrate on what little physical evidence we have.’ He shot Stevie and Barry a look of warning before shuffling through his sheaves of papers and extracting one.

Stevie forced herself to unclench her fists.

‘I met up with the pathologist at the lab yesterday arvo,’ Monty said, looking over his reading glasses. ‘They found evidence of chloroform and Rohypnol in her system. Her lips were swollen and slightly blistered, which indicates that some kind of a chloroform-soaked rag or sponge was placed over her nose and mouth to knock her out. When she came to she was forced to drink a cocktail of roofies and orange juice to put her out again more heavily.’ He paused. ‘The only bright side to all this is that she would have been barely aware of what was going on.’

‘I’ll go talk to Robbery,’ Barry said, ‘get a list of recent pharmacy break-ins, enquire about missing chloroform.’

‘Didn’t Gull’s pharmacy in Hay Street get broken into recently?’ Wayne asked.

Barry nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll follow through.’

‘The roofies will be almost impossible to trace. They’re as easy to get as ecstasy in the clubs at the moment—date rape’s almost endemic these days,’ Wayne said.

‘And chloroform is fairly available if you know where to look. Not just pharmacies stock it—vets, science labs and the like,’ Barry added.

‘Was she raped?’ asked Wayne.

Monty shook his head.

Stevie whispered a silent prayer of thanks.

‘Not even an object rape?’ Barry sounded surprised.

‘No, nothing inserted and no seminal fluid on or around her. But if you ask me, the crime still has sexual overtones: stripped naked, the shaving, the spraying with the bronze paint, the roofies. I’m hoping our profiler will shed some light upon this strange set of contradictions.’ Monty leaned back in his chair, clearly relieved at their newly acquired expert help.

‘Wait a minute,’ Wayne said. ‘The paint would be a perfect medium to collect fibres, hairs and other traces. Don’t tell me they haven’t found anything?’

‘Apparently there was some contamination with dust, but they’ve been having trouble separating it from the paint to get an idea of its origins. They seem to think the chemicals in the paint would destroy most trace evidence anyway.’ Monty replied. ‘They spent hours removing the paint and found nothing. They think he shaved himself too, or else...’ he tapped a tattoo on the tabletop with his pen, flicking his tongue against his lower lip as he re-read the lab notes in front of him.

Wayne said, ‘C’mon Mont, spill it. The suspense is killing us.’

‘Minute traces of neoprene were found under the victim’s fingernails.’ Monty read the pertinent part of the lab report aloud to his team.