Third Victim Read online

  CHAPTER ONE

  'She was found thrown over a high-steel fence, in the back courtyard of a group of flats, her armpit impaled on a spike,’ explained Senior Sergeant Frank Moore when I questioned him about the location of the victim.

  One elbow propped up on my blue pillow, lying in bed, the receiver tucked between my right shoulder and chin, I was scribbling down details, more from habit than reason, in a small spiral-bound notebook.

  It was 6.26 a.m. on a grey, rainy June morning, and my head was heavy from lack of sleep. I’d given up my city apartment for a three-bedroom, brick-veneer house in Craigieburn, a small rural town thirty kilometres north of Melbourne.

  In my new life, I had become accustomed to long lazy mornings, where the only urgency in getting up was to collect the mail from my postal box and make myself a cup of coffee. Thus, I was mildly irritated when Frank woke me up with his phone call, especially when I’d stopped being contracted to the Victorian Forensic Science Centre (VFSC) and the police six months prior. After my son Michael nearly died in a previous investigation, I’d threw in the towel and decided to work as a private investigator. Missing persons, insurance fraud, marital problems and white collar crimes were my bread and butter, but occasionally I also handled security, collection and child custody. Business was slow in the first two months, but now my income was steady enough to keep food on the table and to meet the mortgage repayment on my new dwelling.

  The move to Craigieburn did me a hell of good, especially after having spent three years in the city. Noisy neighbours, tramways and emergency vehicles travelling up and down Chapel Street at all hours had contaminated my sleep to a point that no matter how many hours I spent in bed, I never managed a good night rest.

  My first night in Craigieburn had been heaven-sent. I slept ten hours straight, and the only thing I heard when I woke up was the sound of my own breathing. Vast hills dotted with cattle and sheep adorned my bedroom window. I loved this town. Shop owners called me by my first name, the local bank tellers trusted my identity without asking for proof, and librarians engaged in private conversations as if they had known me all their lives. My faith in human nature was slowly being restored.

  When I began my career in law-enforcement, armed with a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice and an eighteen-months training stint at the FBI in Quantico, USA, I had acquired the arrogance to think I could change the world. Years later, I realised that in fact the world was changing me, and I abhorred what I was experiencing. I was a forty-year-old, single mother with a teenage boy, who saw me mostly in newspapers when a crime of public interest had been committed. For two long years I contracted myself to the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) and the VFSC as an investigator and crime-scene examiner. I teamed up with Senior Sergeant Frank Moore on many cases, two of which nearly ended my life.

  For the record, my name is Kristina Melina, born Kristina Dos Oliveira Melina, but I dropped the middle names of my Brazilian ancestors when I moved from my parents’ home. I’m Kristina to friends and family, but Dr Melina to everyone else whom I need to impress, for one reason or another. I’m around one-seventy tall and grade an eight out of ten in looks, so I’m told.

  I threw my pen and notebook on the side-table, nearly cramping one the muscles in my neck from yawning.

  ‘Okay, Frank, I understand the situation,’ I said, irritation creeping in my voice, ‘but you know I’m no longer under contract with you guys, so unless you have something better to offer me than a trip to the city at six-thirty in the morning when it’s pissing out there, I think I’ll give it a miss.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Okay, fine, I’ll tell you now.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘What school did you attend?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ever heard of someone named Evelyn Carter?’

  The receiver slipped from my chin and shoulder, but I caught it with my right hand. The name was as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice. Evelyn and I spent most of our last year of high school in the same classes and did our first year at university together. And although she had occupied only a small portion of my life, to cut it short, she was the sister I never had. I had mentioned her enough times to Frank over the years. Why was he asking me if I’d heard her name before?

  ‘What are you saying, Frank?’

  ‘The girl we found bears the same name as your bum-chum from high school. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.’

  I experienced an acute pain in my breastbone, which I eased with an applied pressure from the palm of my left hand. Fully awake, my pulse racing at double-speed, the ceiling in my bedroom seemed to have just caved in on me. My clammy fingers gripped the telephone receiver tightly.

  I tried to say something, but no words came out.

  ‘Kristina, are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I muttered. ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m at the scene. I’ve sealed the area off, taken names down and spoke to a few people in the neighbourhood. I’m going to begin collecting evidence, but I can keep the area under my control until you get here.’

  ‘You’ve done well.’

  ‘Don’t make me wait too long. With this weather, it’s hell. I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘You do that. I’m on my way.’

  I smashed the receiver down, stumbled out of bed and raced to the bathroom.

  Down on my knees, hugging the toilet bowl, I regurgitated last night’s chicken Florentine and three veggies

  Forty-five minutes later I was in Toorak, an inner-Melbourne suburb just seven kilometres east of the city centre. Houses in the area cost more than ten factory workers could make in a lifetime. Toorak, along with its adjoining suburbs, South Yarra and Prahran, were the Beverly Hills of Melbourne. Some streets were adorned with three-to-four-storey mansions, Mercedes Benz and BMWs, and contractors constantly renovating someone’s swimming pool, staircase or front yard Highly successful business people, movie stars, television personalities, lawyers, doctors and anyone who never had to worry about getting a job if they suddenly stopped working lived there.

  I rode the recently-completed West Ring Road freeway, pushing my new white Hyundai Excell to 150Km/h in the pouring rain. The traffic was better-than-average at 6.46 a.m., but it was building up city-bound. The sky was painted in grey and white tones with no hint of blue whatsoever. It was as if God was mourning the death of my long-lost friend.

  Tears streamed down my face during the entire trip, and I didn’t try to stop them. Better to cry now then when I got to the crime scene. There was a lump the size of a ping-pong ball stuck in my throat at the realisation that part of my life and my childhood had been savagely ripped away from me. Even though I hadn’t seen Evelyn Carter for nearly twenty years, her face was still fresh in my mind like the headlines in this morning’s paper. She had been a pretty girl with freckles, green eyes and long blond hair, who later turned into a gorgeous woman with a voluptuous body and a personality to melt your heart. I had lost contact with her at university when she discovered she could make more in an hour’s work as a high-class prostitute than in a week as a office worker. We kept in touch for a little while via phone, but then I got too engrossed in my studies, and she in her clients. Our vocations had taken us on different paths.

  As I stepped out of the car and into the pouring rain, memories of times I spent with Evelyn over the years flashed in front of my eyes. We used to have lunch together at the same High School, and even dated and kissed boys for the first time on the same night. We spent endless hours talking about sex, and who we would become when we’d grow up - we both wanted to become famous painters like Picasso or Van Gogh. Sometimes, we skipped classes to go to the National Art Ga
llery and spent endless hours in front of the one painting. We closed and open our eyes for various period of time, and got ourselves in a trance until the painting became as real as the world around us. Sometimes we would get drunk and laugh so much, we thought our bladders would burst. We hugged and walked hand-in-hand and told each other than no matter what tomorrow would bring we would always be friends, always be there for one another, no matter how far apart we would find ourselves later in life. In fact, there was little in my youth that wasn’t associated with her. When eventually our lives drifted apart, I sometimes wondered what she would be like if I met her again. Never had I expected, not even in my worse nightmares, to find her in the condition I was about to.

  Her body was found in a lane way, behind some shops and the back courtyard of high-rise flats, away from on-looking traffic. Two marked police cars, blue and red lights flashing like someone Christmas’s decorations, blocked both entries to the back alley, much to the annoyance of shop owners and delivery vans who had lost access to the rear of the premises for early deliveries.

  I spotted Frank in the distance, busy talking to a local wearing a wool-blend sports jacket, but Frank didn’t see me.

  Frank was head of the Crime Scene Division at the VFSC. He joined the Forensic Branch in 1975, straight out of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) with a Bachelor in Criminal Justice Administration. He was tall and had little hair to speak of. He had a crush of me for years, which drove the both of us insane at times, but for different reasons.

  Grey cobblestones filled the back alley. The rain had created puddles between the cobblestones, and rubbish was scattered at random. Cans of Coke, bottle of beer, food wrappers. There was even a squashed, bloody pigeon metres from the body.

  As I circled the car, careful not to lose balance on the slippery cobblestones, I dreaded going through collecting evidence in that weather. If you must commit a murder, this was the way to do it. In the rain where all trace evidence is washed away, leaving investigators little to go on with, other than witnesses.

  I opened the boot. Carefully, I removed my Physical Evidence Recover Kit (PERK) - the necessary scissors, scalpels, brushes, tweezers and packages needed to recover evidence at a crime scene - in the shape of one large black carry-case. I also took with me a Minolta SLR camera with various lenses and filters to record the situation before too many people had the chance to contaminate the scene.

  I clipped my pale green photo ID, which I had never returned after my last investigative job with the VFSC, to my breast pocket and proceeded along the lane way, rainwater dripping down my face. The scenery was grey with a purgatory-like ambience, which reminded me of one of the opening scenes of a serial killer movie I had recently seen on video.

  I took in a deep breath, my mind alert but not ready to face the cruelty life inflicted on a chosen few.

  Half way up the lane way, Frank noticed me.

  I didn’t immediately figure out what it was, but there was something changed about him since I’d seen him the previous Easter. It took me a full thirty seconds to realise he had shaved off his moustache.

  He came towards me, a solemn smile on his face, eyes filled with grief and anger all at once.

  ‘You look good without the moustache,’ I said instead of greetings.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he replied, as if his moustache had been nothing more than a blackhead. ‘How are you coping? You sure you want to go through with this?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure, Frank. Did you manage to give me clearance?’

  ‘Yep, Trevor Mitchell is authorising it on paper this very minute.’

  Trevor Mitchell was the Director at the VFSC. He had strong connections with the CIB and the Minister of Police and Emergencies. He had the authority to appoint whomever he deemed necessary in order to proceed with an investigation.

  Frank went on: ‘As of this minute, you’re authorised to conduct collection of evidence and take control over the investigation.’

  ‘What about the fact that I knew the victim?’

  ‘Haven’t told anyone. Thought I’d leave that to you.’

  I balanced from one foot to the other and said, ‘You knew I was going to agree with this, didn’t you?’

  He gave me a forced smile and raised his eyebrows as a reply.

  I changed subject: ‘What have we got so far?’

  ‘Fuck all. I’ve spoken to a few people in the area. They haven’t seen or heard anything.’

  ‘Who was that guy you were talking to before?’

  His eyebrows crossed.

  I went on, ‘The guy with the sports jacket? I saw you talking to him when I got out of the car.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that was the owner of a bookshop on the other side of the lane way Just wanted to know what was going on. You know what it’s like? Can’t keep curious minds away.’

  ‘Did he know the girl?’

  ‘Nope. No one did. It looks as if she’s been dumped here for convenience. Nobody around in the early hours of the morning. Perfect place to dispose of a body.’ He shifted half a turn. ‘You want to see her?’

  ‘Not really, but I guess I’ll have to.’

  We walked side-by-side towards a high-steel fence which separated the back of the flats and the lane way There was a mass hunched over the spikes of the fence, something which I knew had to be Evelyn Carter.

  ‘Is that how you found her?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t actually climb the fence to toss her across it.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not thinking straight.’

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. Let’s just go and see.’

  We got within half a metre from the body.

  Evelyn Carter was so battered that I didn’t recognise her. Sure, the last time I saw her was some twenty years ago, but how much can a person change in twenty years?

  Her body was hanging on the fence, her right armpit impaled on a spike, exactly the way Frank had described it. Rainwater was dripping from her long blond hair, forming a small pool of water and blood at the foot of the fence. If there were any fingerprints or other trace evidence on her skin, it would have washed away by now.

  I half-circled the body with my hands behind my back, wondering how in the world she got there.

  And why.

  ‘How did you identify her?’ I asked Frank, who was standing a metre to my right, observing my reaction.

  ‘Found her car down the end of the lane way A ‘95 Saab. Ran the plates and her name came up. Also found a set of keys to the car down the far end of the lane way House keys, postal box, a whole collection attached to one ring.’

  ‘How do we know it’s really her? All you’ve got is a car.’

  ‘Ninety-five percent sure. We’ll have to run fingerprints, dental checks, you know, the works.’

  ‘The Saab could be a coincidence.’

  ‘Could be, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to the various shop owners in the area. No one knows an Evelyn Carter. Also her residential address on her driver’s licence is in Richmond, so what the hell is her car doing in Toorak at six in the morning?’

  ‘Visiting someone.’

  ‘Kristina...’

  ‘You never know, Frank. There’s been stranger coincidences in life.’

  ‘Sure, with that kind of attitude, anything is possible. But let’s try to stick to the obvious.’

  Okay, now I was desperately hoping it wasn’t Evelyn Carter after all. The body hunched in front of me could have been anyone. Her teeth were knocked out, and her face a bloody mess of bruises and blood smears. If not for the long blond hair and the lack of a penis attached to the body, it could have been a man. Flashes of the Evelyn I used to know came to mind. I tried to conjure similarities between her and the body in front of me. Her eyes were blacked and puffed as if they’d been filled with air and drawn on with a charcoal pencil. I couldn’t even tell if this person had crystal blue eyes like Evelyn did. In the state s
he was in, I wasn’t the one who was going to make a positive ID.

  I swallowed hard, deciding it was time to put my emotions aside, not matter how disturbed I felt, and get on with the job.

  As the team leader, I had a lot on my plate. First I had to ensure the safety of personnel and security at the scene, which included monitoring the use of protective wear and the handling of blood or other human body fluid. And since Evelyn Carter seemed to be leaking from everywhere, my eyes would have to be kept right open. The last thing I needed was a police officer or forensic specialist suing me for negligence.

  ‘We going to have to removed her from here,’ I said. ‘Have you called for backup yet?’

  ‘I knew you were going to come. And I didn’t see what difference it would make to wait an extra half hour, especially when the body has probably been here all night anyway.’

  ‘Okay, we’re going to have to change into our overalls and protective equipment. She’s still bleeding, and I don’t want to catch some damn disease.’

  ‘It’s in the car.’

  ‘I want lighting assistance and a shelter build around the body large enough for us to be able to remove it with minimum fuss.’

  ‘I’ll call the State Emergency Services immediately.’

  ‘Chances are we’re going to be here all day. Can you arrange a post outside the crime scene with enough coffee and munchies to avoid any specialists or journalists infesting the area with their rubbish?’

  ‘As good as done.’

  I glanced around the front and back of the lane way There seemed to be a lot of people present at the scene.

  ‘Did you seal the entire area?’ I asked.

  ‘Front and back of the lane way are guarded by two uniformed officers. They have instructions to not let anyone in the scene. Not easy since most of the shop-owners need access to the back of the shops either to park their cars or to bring in their goods for the day.’

  ‘They can wait. It’s not going to kill their business to close for one day. And no damn politicians at the scene. I don’t care who they are or who they answer to.’

  From the smile Frank gave me, he must have known I had Goosh in mind. The Deputy Commissioner of Police made it a habit to walk into a crime scene without warning, chain-smoking and contaminating everything in sight. Somehow that sonofabitch thought he was above the law, but in my books he stood where everyone else did. Behind the police line.