Kathryn Fox - Without Consent

“Good thing I phoned first to calm you down.” Hayden put both hands up. “Hey, I wanted to protect you from any more of the crap Sorrenti pulls.”

Anya stopped and took a few deep breaths. “I don’t need protecting, thanks all the same. And you can sort whatever problem you have with her yourself. Leave me out of it.”

“There’s already been a lot of shit going on in the department, and Sorrenti’s under pressure to slam-dunk Willard and move on to any number of serial cases that are still on the books. After the photo scandal, it looks like she’ll be sacrificed to the media before the end of the week. The Commissioner’s already making moves.”

“But that was a Department of Health directive.”

“Yeah, but she’s in charge of protecting evidence in SA cases. And her arrest rate isn’t impressing anyone.”

Protecting digital photo images should have been a computing issue, but that was not Anya’s fight. “So why the secretive phone call?”

“Think about it. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating how those pictures got released. It’s tapping all our phones, so I rang the hospital switch. I could have been making an appointment to get my prostate checked. After Sorrenti’s rampage, I wasn’t sure whether it was safe for a cop to just walk in on you.”

Anya noticed the sunshine for the first time in days. It felt good to be outside, in a fresh breeze. “Let’s walk.”

They strolled along a path, down past the entrance to casualty. An ambulance rolled along the road, diverting to deliver its load. Hayden seemed more tense than normal. “We’ve had the dogs on Nick Hudson.”

“Sorrenti told me you’d ordered surveillance. She didn’t seem too happy about that either.”

“Yeah, well, I had to go over her head for approval. My butt’s on the line for this one.”

Great, Anya thought. Now her decisions affected someone else’s career. A blue-green parrot flew past them, barely missing a car slowing for a speed-bump. Students carried bags and textbooks on their way to lessons. An elderly man stood by a tree, smoking the last dregs of a hand-rolled cigarette. The sickly tobacco wafted uninvited in their direction.

Hayden seemed to pause to inhale.

“I forgot you’d given up.”

“It’s like being an alcoholic. You still take one day at a time, but sometimes the cravings get pretty strong.”

For the first time, Hayden appeared vulnerable, more human than ever. It made her a little uncomfortable.

“Anything on Nick turn up?”

“He fits the rapist’s profile. His aunt may look small, but she rules that household. She’s a domineering woman in his life. Apart from under-the-table pub work, he’s unemployed so has time to stalk and doesn’t have to be up early in the mornings. Lots of free time on his hands.”

Anya remembered the fingernails. “What about his hand?”

“His hand didn’t have two skin tones. I looked for that when we were at the house. He spends time with that woman Desiree and her husband, Luke Platt. And get this, Platt has a job. He’s a taxidermist. Stuffs fish for a living.”

Anya thought of Brown-Eye and the grotesque cat in attack-pose they’d seen on Liz Dorman’s mantelpiece. “What about dogs and cats?”

“I did some checking and the Dorman woman had hers done by a company Luke Platt used to work for.”

The breeze picked up, sending dust swirling in their pathway. Both turned their faces to avoid hurting their eyes. A car alarm sounded in the background, which everyone seemed to have no trouble ignoring.

“What about his skin?”

“Thought about that. He’s done time in prison for fraud and petty theft. Charge sheet says he’s got a tattoo of a dog’s head on his right hand. Pretty much rules him out. Besides, he’s used to working up and down the coast and surveillance has seen him with Hudson and says he’s pretty tanned. His credit-card records show he was away on a job the night of Dorman’s killing. He spent the night in a motel down the south coast. I’m beginning to think the eye-witness accounts are unreliable.”

“Not necessarily,” Anya said. In her experience, rape victims were incredibly aware and observant given the smallest window of opportunity. There had to be a logical explanation for what the women saw.

They veered off the path, past an emaciated woman in a wheelchair. The woman sat, eyes closed, in the sun. For a moment, Anya considered checking for a pulse until she saw one of the slippered feet move. The breezed picked up and another gust brought more dust. They waited until it settled.

Hayden began, “Nick Hudson is still my pick for being involved in the Dorman murder, if not the rapes as well. When Leonie Turnbull, that trainee doctor, was killed, he was visiting some mate up north, not far from where she died.”

“What’s the taxidermy link?”

“Maybe his friend, Platt, has a big mouth? Maybe Nick helped out in the business sometimes, for cash. No tax record of him ever working. Shit, we’ve got to be missing something here.”

“Who wrote the love-letter to Geoffrey Willard with Melanie’s photo? You still haven’t explained that.”

Hayden shrugged his shoulders and shoved his hands in his baggy trouser-pockets. From a couple of steps behind, it looked as though his backside lay flush with his spine.

“I know. There’s a lot I can’t explain.”

“When you searched the Willard home, did you find any packs of condoms?”

“We don’t usually put them on search warrants. It’s the used ones we’re after. Why do you ask?”

Anya chose an empty bench to stop at. They both sat and waited for a group of nurses to file past.

“This morning I phoned the lab, to chase the smears for each of our rape victims. The lab has matched the lubricant used in each case. If you can match the condom brand in the house, you’d have something stronger to go on.”

Hayden stared at his shoes. “Hang on, does this guy take time to use a lubricant during the rapes?”

“Sorry, I didn’t explain. Almost every condom sold in this country comes already lubricated. The manufacturers put it on to stop the latex getting stuck to itself. It also helps stop it perishing, but not indefinitely. That’s why the packs have use-by dates on them. The labs matched the lubricant in a brand called ‘Fluidity.’”

“Well, guess we’d better go condom-hunting.”

The pair stood and headed back toward the unit.

“Why the frown, doc? You still don’t look happy.”

Anya couldn’t understand why they had only seen three women who had been attacked in the same way. A serial rapist like this one usually performed many more assaults than this. However, it was possible that he had done, and many had gone unreported.

“I’ve checked with the other SA units in the state. If the rapist, whoever he is, has attacked at least three women in the last few weeks, why haven’t we seen a lot more cases, before and since? Has he just moved here? If so, where’s he been, and why haven’t we seen any more with the same pattern?”

Hayden nodded. “That’s bothering me, too. If Geoff Willard didn’t rape and kill that girl twenty years ago, then someone’s been out there for a long time cooling their heels, only to surface the same time Willard gets released.”

“Then the murder of that young doctor, Leonie Turnbull, when Willard was in prison, was the offender’s big mistake.”

“Yeah, at this rate it looks like it’s the only one he’s made. If finding a brand of condom in his house is the only evidence we can manage, we’re stuffed. Whoever raped and killed those girls is smart. And from where I stand, he’s way smart enough to get away with it.”