Elite cops link to torture killings
Ruskin knew much more about the careers of Kidd and Larter than he should. He said Larter had been involved in a covered-up incident in Afghanistan where four civilians were killed. He was also up to speed on the Ribarics and Vern Hudson, suggested that they’d been betrayed by other filth. It couldn’t have been done without Ordonez. But Ruskin had always had a better class of leaker, he was on a quality drip. In parliament someone once said his father Eric had not only been the minister for police, he was also the minister for the police, to the police, up and under and behind and on top of the police.
Without saying so, Ruskin suggested the Homicide Squad had done a remarkable job in identifying the Oakleigh killers. Unspecified acts of personal bravery by Homicide officers followed. The death crash meant the squad, through no fault of its own, was cheated of seeing the killers in court.
Barry, Gillam and Orong would be pleased. Now all that was needed was a weapon.
Rose Quirk’s street was jammed with cars, he had to park a block away, walked down the street, having a little squiz. Rose was on her verandah, pink tracksuit.
‘Stickyin,’ she said. She drank tea out of a glass beer mug. ‘Where the hell you bin?’
‘Few things on,’ said Villani. He opened the gate, closed it, the latch needed fixing. ‘Going all right?’
‘All right’s history, mate. Back’s gone. Had this massage, the cow touched somethin, musta learnt the trade on horses. Pain like you never seen. Into me head, down me legs.’
In the beginning, Rose’s street was mostly pensioners, everything spent on rent, cigarettes, the pokies, living on mince and battery-chicken pieces, the single mothers ringing for pizzas, drugging their children with sugar and salt, Coke, barbecue chips and chemical ice cream. Then one day Villani took notice and the street was Location, Location, Renovator’s Opportunity.
The cars changed. The rusting Commodores, Falcons, faded Renaults and Jap cars, all with skun tyres and chipped windscreens, coat-hanger aerials, wrecking-yard doors the wrong colour, all standing in oil stains that flashed iridescent on rainy days, they gave way to Subarus, VWs, Saabs, Volvos.
On a day, Villani counted twelve tradesmen’s utes and seven skips in the narrow street, the bins overloaded with ripped-out carpets and lino, baths, sinks, shower stalls, formica-topped kitchen cabinets, plastic light fittings, cattledog-brown gas heaters, embossed purple wallpaper, torn sheets of fibreboard, chipboard cupboards, tin pelmets, water heaters, dismembered Hills hoists, rotten fencing. On top of one skip sat an old dog kennel, neatly made, tin roof, the dog, the maker, the tools, the love, all gone, dead and gone.
Now he saw the beans he had planted broken, collapsed, as if an animal had been through them. ‘Jesus, what’s this?’
‘Number 17’s boy,’ said Rose. ‘Bit of a brat.’
The tomatoes. ‘Eating a lot of cherries, are you?’ he said.
‘Across the road. Sophie and someone. They come and introduce themselves. My fault, I said help yourself.’
Hands had also plucked miniature carrots, extracted potatoes, his Kennebecs and King Edwards, from the drum. They would still be pale balls no bigger than king marbles. He heard a car boot clunk across the street, a man with a polished bald head waved, his glasses caught the light like flashbulbs.
‘That’s David,’ said Rose.
‘Why don’t you get the prick over to do some gardening?’ Villani said.
‘You got the look,’ said Rose. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Not thrilled about providing Audi drivers with free vegies.’
Rose squinted at him. ‘Well, who said you bloody had to? Never worked out what was in it for you anyway.’
‘Nothing,’ Villani said. ‘Not a single thing.’
He had never spoken to anyone of his visits to Rose’s house. Laurie wouldn’t understand. His colleagues would think he was mad. He didn’t understand either, except that in the beginning he felt he owed her something and later, when he knew her, it was like being at his grandmother’s house, his only real childhood, the time before he carried the weight of Mark, Luke, the animals, no hour without a duty or a care until Bob came home. And always, every hour, every day, always the fear that one Friday Bob would not come home, he would stand outside in the closing day and wait for the sound of the big rig on the hill and for the airhorn and the world would fall dark and Bob would not come home, he would not be coming back that night or ever.
‘Lookin a bit pinched, son,’ said Rose now. ‘Want some brekkie? Got eggs from down the road.’
‘Down the road?’
‘The lezzies got chooks. I give em some vegies, I give em somethin, I forget.’
She wouldn’t meet Villani’s gaze.
‘Brekkie’d be good,’ he said. ‘What about bacon? The lezzies keeping pigs too?’
‘You’re such a smartarse.’
She touched him as she went by, ran a hand up his arm to the shoulder, stroked him as she would a cat.
THE MINISTER was a big man, early fifties, jowled, a chin-down pugnacious air. He sat behind a standard public-service desk, top of glass, bare except for his mobile.
‘What’s this in aid of?’ he said. He didn’t much resemble the jovial man talking to Paul Keogh at the AirLine launch,
Villani said, ‘We’re from the Homicide Squad, Mr Koenig.’
‘That’s clever? I know where you’re from.’
They were in an interview room, well away from the parliament, a room with a view of a grey rendered wall.
‘It’s about Thursday the eleventh, fortnight ago. The night of. Were you at home then?’
‘Why?’
‘We’d appreciate your cooperation.’
‘I don’t give a fuck what you’d appreciate. What’s the point of the question?’
‘A murder investigation. Your name has come up.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Distant connection,’ said Villani. ‘But we need your help.’
Koenig looked at Villani for a good while. Villani looked back. Koenig picked up his mobile and used his thumb, put it to his head.
‘Diary for eleventh of February. Evening. Where was I?’
He waited, he looked from Villani to Dove and back, looked hard, he was a man used to intimidating people.
‘Okay,’ he said to the phone, put it down. ‘I was at home in Kew.’
‘Any visitors?’ said Villani.
Koenig knew this was coming, he had always known, he didn’t need to have his diary checked.
‘I don’t understand the question,’ he said.
Villani said, ‘Tell us about the woman, Mr Koenig.’
‘What woman?’
‘The one who visited you.’
Koenig’s eyes said he knew he was stuffed.
‘A whore,’ he said. ‘Just a whore.’
‘Expensive?’
Some people you enjoyed asking for humiliating details. Koenig said, ‘What do you call expensive? On your wages? Fifty dollars?’
‘How much did you pay, Mr Koenig?’
‘Five hundred, from memory.’
‘Is that with the extras?’ said Dove, head down, round glasses glinting, writing in his notebook, he was the note-taker.
Koenig pinkened. ‘Who the fuck are you, sonny?
‘Who delivered her?’ said Villani. ‘She was delivered.’
‘I have no fucking idea,’ said Koenig. ‘She came, she went. Where’d you get this from? Who told you this?’
‘How did you arrange the visit?’ said Dove.
Koenig said, ‘I had a number, I forget where I got it.’
‘We’ll have to ask you for that,’ said Villani. ‘You’re not curious about who’s dead?’
‘Well, I’m assuming it’s her. What else could you assume? Am I wrong?’
‘Where were you last Thursday night, Mr Koenig?’
‘What is this shit? I was at the beach house in Portsea.’
Silence, the muted sounds of people passing in the corridor.
‘Are we done?’ said Koenig. ‘I’m a busy man.’