Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘Exactly!’ Olga slapped the tabletop, causing another couple of diners next to them to look over. ‘Perfect cover.’

It would be easy, Tom reasoned, to get Ebony’s mobile phone records and find out if she had been called. He presumed Morris and Burnett would have done this as a matter of course, so he wasn’t as convinced by this theory as Olga was.

‘But what makes you so sure that Fisher had anything to do with her death?’

She shrugged. ‘Is hard to tell you — to explain. I see lots of men in that place, and I know the looks in their eyes. There are the drunk ones, out looking for fun; there are the desperate ones who could never get look at naked girl any other way; there are the chauvinist ones who like the power of having girl do what they tell them… and there are the scary ones.’

‘Scary ones? The stalkers, you mean?’

She nodded. ‘The ones who are there with something else on their mind. You can see it in their eyes. Fisher was one of these. He was man on mission, and I think that mission was Ebony.’

Tom regarded Olga. She was bright — she had to be in order even to be admitted to study medicine — and she knew men. He thought she was being a little paranoid, but there was obviously something going on between Fisher and Ebony — aka Precious — that transcended the normal ogler-stripper dynamic. It was worth a closer look. He pulled his notebook out of his suit pocket.

‘Presumably you told Detective Morris all this?’

She nodded. ‘Morris — he is your friend?’

‘None of your business. He is a colleague, though.’

‘He is ignoramus.’

Tom kept the smile at bay. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said he would call Fisher, but his eyes told me that he thought I was crackpot.’

Tom let the next smile through.

‘Don’t mock me. You are smarter than Morris.’

Flattery would get her nowhere. He said nothing.

‘Morris and other policeman came back to club yesterday and tell all girls and management that no one is to talk to media. I tell them, again, that media is where they should be looking and that Fisher came back to club again asking about Ebony and police investigation. Morris says to me, “You let me worry about Mr Fisher, darling.” Pah! I give him, “darling”. Creep.’

Tom held up a hand. ‘Sounds like they’ve checked him out at least.’

‘What happened to your policeman friend, the one you were looking for in first place.’

‘He’s dead.’

Olga placed a hand on the table and for a second Tom thought she might be about to reach out and touch him, in the same way Sannie had done on a couple of occasions. Perhaps there was something about him that inspired pity. ‘How did he die?’

‘He was tortured to death by terrorists. The same people who abducted Robert Greeves, the defence procurement minister, in Africa.’

Olga frowned, and Tom could see she was processing the information he’d just given her. She shook her head. ‘Ebony not working for Islamic terrorists. You were looking at wrong girl for that if you think she was involved in kidnap plot.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘She was devout Christian.’

‘Christian stripper?’

Olga looked offended again and folded her arms with an ‘harrumph’. ‘I am trainee doctor exotic dancer. Why not Christian stripper?’

Tom was stumped. Olga resumed her defence of the dead girl. ‘She was more Christian than any other person I know. Church every Sunday and sent money home to Africa to mission where she was educated. Of course, she don’t tell missionaries what she was doing in England. She tell people in Africa she was working as nurse’s aide. I was trying to help her get job like this in hospital.’

Tom’s gut feeling was still that Ebony, having played her part in luring Nick Roberts to a location where he could be abducted, had been killed by the people who had used her. ‘Perhaps she did it for money.’

Olga shook her head vigorously. Most of her burger was untouched and she wrapped it up in the paper bag it had come in. Tom looked down at her hands. He figured he didn’t have to give a medical student a lecture about eating disorders. It did make him wonder, however, if Olga had some psychological problems.

‘Ebony was good person,’ she continued. ‘Fisher was up to something with her, though, and that’s where you should be looking.’

‘I’ll talk to Morris again,’ Tom said, pushing back his chair. ‘Did you find anything else in her diary?’

‘Not much. It looked new — like she had only been keeping it for last two weeks.’ Olga pulled a scrap of paper out of her handbag. ‘I found one other name, on same page as number for “Michael”. Other name was D Carney.’

She passed the paper over, and Tom copied the name and cell phone number into his phone book. He’d seen the name Carney before, but couldn’t quite remember where. He knew that once he had a few moments to himself it would come to him.

‘Thanks for your time, Olga. Do you know who this Carney is?’ Even as he asked the question he remembered where he had seen the name and number before.

She shook her head. ‘Talk to Fisher. He is one you need to put this puzzle together, Mr Policeman.’

Tom stood. ‘You probably know enough about my situation and police procedure to understand that Fisher has already been questioned and that it would be highly inappropriate for me to go harassing him when I’m suspended.’

She nodded. ‘But I know you will anyway. You are good person. Morris, Fisher, they are creeps.’ Olga tucked the remains of the burger in her day pack, shook Tom’s hand and started to walk out the door. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Maybe I see you in club again some time?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Maybe I’ll see you in a hospital one day.’

She laughed. ‘Maybe my turn to see you naked.’

What Tom couldn’t tell Olga, of course, was that there was a definite link between Nick and Ebony in the form of the message the dancer had left on Nick’s answering machine. Somehow he doubted that Nick had been planning to go to the club to hand over a donation to a Christian mission in South Africa.

After Olga left the restaurant, Tom stayed at the table and took out his notebook and pen. He wrote the name Ebony in the centre of a page and circled it. He drew a line off to the left to Nick and then extended out further to another circle containing Greeves. Off to the right of the stripper’s stage name he wrote Fisher. He tapped his chin with the pen and then returned to the page and linked the journalist and the politician with a stroke of his pen. A circle. But was it mere coincidence that the dancer had something going on with the reporter as well as with the minister’s protection officer?

There was only one way for Tom to find out — two, if he went through official channels but he doubted the latter would work. Dan Morris would be suspicious now, and Tom wouldn’t put it past him to grass on him to Shuttleworth. Either way, he was unlikely to cough up the notes of his interview with Fisher.

As the train clattered back towards the city, Tom took out his mobile phone and notebook. He called the number for D Carney, though he recalled now that it was a man and his name was Daniel. A recorded voice answered the phone, though it wasn’t Carney: it was a message telling him the phone was switched off or out of range.

Next he dialled directory assistance. ‘Could I have the number for the World newspaper, editorial department, please?’

Tom tuned out from the image of the British Prime Minister on the widescreen plasma television monitor in the World ’s foyer, which was broadcasting a satellite news channel owned by the same man who controlled the newspaper in whose offices he was waiting. The receptionist looked up from her computer and nodded to him. ‘Michael’s off the phone now, Mr Carney. He’ll be down in a mo.’