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  The phone rang.

  ‘Hey, Harry, it’s Phil, from Queensland Police Media Unit.’

  ‘Hey, Phil! How’s things? It’s been ages.’

  ‘Yeah, too long. I’m not bad, not bad. You?’

  ‘Ah, y’know, keeping my head above water… just.’

  The line fell silent, and Harry heard the traffic in the background. Phil wasn’t calling from the office. Harry imagined him standing outside Police Headquarters on Roma St, trying to shield the phone from noise as cars and buses belted past. When Harry had been at the Chronicle, they used to talk every week.

  ‘Erm… I may have some work for you… kinda…’

  ‘Oh yeah? Always keen for some work.’ Even though he was sitting in front of the keyboard, Harry reached for his notebook and pen. Old habits die hard. He flipped to a new page and put Phil’s name and the date at the top. Despite being known for his investigative journalism, Harry half expected Phil to come out with a pitch for some Queensland Police fundraiser.

  ‘I’m not speaking to you on an official level, if you get me.’

  Harry was conflicted. If it wasn’t official, that probably meant Queensland Police wouldn’t be signing the cheque. But this sounded like it could be interesting.

  ‘That’s cool. What’s up?’

  ‘I don’t really want to talk about it over the phone. Can we meet? I’ll buy you a coffee.’

  ‘Sure. Sure thing.’ Harry checked his calendar. ‘How’s Friday for you?’

  ‘Perfect. You right to come into the city?’

  Harry laughed. ‘Yeah, I can just about afford the bus fare.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at Java Coast. How’s ten a.m.?’

  ‘Yep, good. I’ll see you then.’

  ‘See ya, mate.’

  Harry hung up and added the appointment to his calendar.

  He checked his emails. Scanned social media. When he’d used up all his standard procrastination techniques, he returned to the story he’d been working on.

  Harry had received an email a couple of weeks earlier from someone calling himself ‘Johnny’. Every day, emails dropped into Harry’s inbox. He checked out the ones he could. Most turned out to be cranks, or scams. Still others just went unread, because Harry didn’t have time. But there was something about this one. Harry’s hunches weren’t always right, but he’d learnt to trust them anyway. Johnny said he’d been molested by the former headmaster of one of Brisbane’s most prestigious schools. Multiple times. Johnny said the headmaster was involved in a paedophile ring that included several high-profile identities. He’d been spurred into action after hearing that the ring was still active.

  Harry had started collecting notes about the headmaster. Not surprisingly, Johnny wasn’t using his full name on his email. He could have been using a fake name, for all Harry knew. Harry cross-referenced what he could – namely that the headmaster was at Johnny’s school when he said he was victimised. That all checked out, but that wasn’t saying much. He’d sent Johnny an email, but was yet to receive a response. Maybe his instincts were wrong this time. Or maybe it had all got a little bit too real for Johnny when Harry’s email arrived.

  Harry sighed, opened his paedophilia file again and stared at it for a moment. He pulled up his background notes on the school. St Therese, Brisbane, for years six to twelve. One of the richest schools in Brisbane. He scanned the website. Boys with straw hats and blazers grinning at the camera. Lush playing fields, kept green all year by artesian bore water. World-class IT and science facilities. Drama department headed by an Academy Award nominee. Rowing club, of course, on the river. Shit, they even had a shooting range. Past students included business leaders, world-renowned scientists, politicians at the state and federal level.

  Harry pushed the laptop away from him. He felt like a cup of tea. No, he felt like a walk. He switched off the heater, grabbed his keys and phone and headed out the door. The winter wind had a real bite to it. He thrust his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground as he strode up the hill towards the water tower. It loomed above him, fresh white paint against the blue sky. In the wake of his investigation, after the police had finished with it, the government had stepped in and finally granted it heritage listing. Harry’s old mate’s campaign to save the tower snowballed into a campaign to restore the tower, and now Paddington’s old dame stood proud, peering down on the poor plebs below.

  At the top of the hill, Harry turned left, away from the main road. He had barely raised a sweat. It was hard to believe that not even a year ago, when Bill had taken him up to the tower that first time, Harry had been gasping for breath at this point. He watched the pavement cracks disappearing under his feet. Weeds in the gutter. An old Coke can. Above him, clouds skated across the sky. He saw the water tower every day, and every day he thought of those last terrifying moments, when the wind howled and his life hung by a thread.

  He walked into the park and found the bench that looked over the city. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and tapped the screen without looking at it.

  ‘Harry Hendrick.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Harry. It’s Rebecca.’

  ‘Bec?’

  ‘Yeah. How are you? Are you okay to talk?’

  ‘Um… sure. Yeah, getting there. I’m sorry I haven’t returned your call. I…’

  ‘That’s okay. Really. I know you’ve… you’ve been busy.’

  For a moment Harry thought that was going to be all it was – a shallow conversation. Two people who’d once travelled together, lived together, ate and slept and fucked together, trying to find common ground.

  ‘Did you hear that I split up with Paul?’

  ‘No. I… No.’

  Paul. Paul from Queensland Health. Paul who’d been the guy good enough to get engaged to, right after she’d told Harry she couldn’t see them spending the rest of their lives together. He should have felt angry, but there was no anger left in him.

  ‘Yeah. A couple of months ago. We… I don’t know…’

  Another pause. Harry didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Harry, I miss you.’

  Harry felt his heart lurch. He wanted to tell her he missed her too, but worried it would sound shallow, coming right after her declaration. But he did miss her. He rubbed his face. Stared at the ground, where ants moved in sluggish circles in the weak winter sun.

  He was lonely. There was the work, but there was little else. His best friend Dave was busy with his final year of med school, Sandy the psychic was taking on clients again. All the people who’d rallied around him in his time of crisis were getting on with their lives. And now here was Bec. Harry had thought it was all over until her message the night before.

  ‘Do you want to go out for a coffee or something sometime?’

  Harry nodded, then realised she couldn’t see him. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do.’

  ‘Oh… oh, okay,’ Bec said. She sounded surprised, like she expected the opposite answer – expected anger. ‘Um… are you still at Paddington?’

  ‘Yep. In the shade of the water tower.’

  ‘How about Black Cat? Ten. Saturday morning.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Bec laughed. Harry smiled. He’d missed that sound. ‘I’ll see you then, unless you want to keep saying okay to each other?’

  ‘Yep. Okay. See you, Harry.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Harry sat on the bus, gazing out at the inner-city landscape but not really seeing it. Bec’s call on Wednesday had knocked him for six, so much so that he hadn’t really thought much about Phil’s cryptic request for help. Until now. Phil hadn’t wanted to talk about it on the phone. He didn’t want Harry to come to Police Headquarters. Harry stared through the dirty glass, watching people pulling coats tight around themselves, beanies over their ears, trying to keep out the westerlies.

  He got off the bus at Roma St, right outside the monolithic Police Headquarters, and crossed the road, shivering slightly. G
eorge St was crowded with grim faces. Brisbane wasn’t a winter city and, although these were hardly arctic conditions, its citizens weren’t built for it. Harry was relieved when he could duck out of the path of the icy wind into the alleyway that led to the coffee shop. He couldn’t also help noticing that Phil had chosen somewhere off the main road, a place where they could talk without much fear of being overheard.

  Brick walls covered in faux antique tin signs and posters for upcoming gigs rose on every side, fencing off the coffee shop’s courtyard. Despite being open to the blue sky above, strategically placed heaters made the space almost cosy.

  Even though they’d known each other for years, Harry had only met Phil a handful of times – the last time had been at a Chermside Chronicle Christmas party the year before last – so he was a little surprised by how much older Phil looked. His hair was greyer, the lines around his eyes deeper. His Queensland Police Media Unit ID was clipped to his belt, barely visible under his middle-aged paunch and charcoal suit jacket.

  ‘Harry Hendrick!’ Phil pulled himself from the booth he’d taken over and offered his hand. His grip was ironclad as ever. Harry had once asked if Phil had ever considered joining the police force proper, and Phil had told him he was too much of a coward for that. But hanging around cops all the time had rubbed off on him, because he carried himself like a cop: square-shouldered; direct eye contact.

  Harry squeezed into the seat across from Phil. They shook hands and caught up. A waitress came and took their order.

  ‘So, what’s up?’ Harry said.

  There was an iPad on the table. Phil pulled it over and Harry felt butterflies in his stomach, similar to when he’d decided to take on the paedophilia story.

  Phil cleared his throat. ‘I need to show you some crime scene photos, you’ll understand why shortly. Can you handle that?’

  Harry nodded. Phil handed him the iPad.

  The first picture, mercifully, was just a photo of a piece of paper, with the address of the crime scene, the name of the victim, the date – last week. Harry swiped.

  A broken mirror in what looked like a dining room. The long, black table had been dusted for prints. Swipe. A lounge room, covered in footprints the colour of maroon paint. Harry guessed it wasn’t paint. Whoever it was, they had a lot of money, or a lot of debt – the lounge room was lorded over by one of the biggest TVs he’d ever seen. Swipe. Bathroom mirror, also smashed. Blood all over the counter. Fingerprints, smears. More fingerprint dust. The basin contained so much blood it looked like black marble. Swipe. A girl’s room, bloody footprints tracking in and out. Swipe. A close-up of a girl’s hand mirror, smashed. Swipe. A king-sized bed, blood smears all over it. More bloody footprints on the floor. Harry’s stomach did a slow loop. The dressing table mirror had been smashed. Harry suddenly realised what was wrong with these photos. He swiped back through them to check. The glass from the mirrors – it wasn’t in any of the photos. Not a splinter. Plenty of blood, but no glass.

  Swipe. The bathroom again, but this time the camera was pointed at the bath. There was a pasty-skinned man in there. Long cuts crisscrossed his feet. His knees were a mess of pulped flesh. The bath itself was black with blood. His lips looked as though someone had put them in a blender.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Harry said.

  Phil nodded. ‘He died from massive internal bleeding. The coroner found shards of mirror wedged in his mouth, his throat. You’d be surprised how much he ate before he died.’

  Harry handed back the iPad. Shook his head. ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a note.’ Phil picked up the iPad and swiped through more pictures. Harry thought he was going to hand it back to him, and somehow seeing that handwritten note would have been worse than everything else. But to his relief, Phil just read it out.

  ‘“I have sinned. I give my life for the Goddess.” We checked his record – thought maybe he’d done something bad. Was overcome by guilt. But nope. Just the usual speeding tickets, that sort of thing.’

  Harry stared at the peeling posters on the brick wall for a minute or so. The pictures kept playing in his mind. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.

  ‘So who was this guy?’

  ‘Zak Godwin. Well-paid executive with the state government. But not so high up the chain you’d consider him into anything serious.’ He flicked his eyes from the iPad to Harry. ‘You know, corruption. He’s sitting on a couple of boards. Wife, daughter. Wife says he’s been mostly happy. No massive arguments. No inkling that this was coming.’

  Harry went to say, But there often isn’t, with suicides, but stopped himself. This wasn’t your standard suicide. Godwin killed himself by eating shards of mirror.

  ‘Do you want me to write a story on this? This would be right up the Brisbane Mail’s alley, you know.’

  ‘God, no. No story. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Then why…’

  ‘I’m not finished.’

  The waitress returned with their coffees. Phil played around with the iPad until she had returned to the bar, then handed it back to Harry. With dread, Harry took it. He realised he was getting to see the letter after all. But not just one letter – four. I have sinned. I give my life for the Goddess. Harry’s eyes flicked from one to the next. Cream writing paper. A scrap torn from a cereal box. A shorthand notebook. A piece of white A4 printer paper, the top half of which featured a printed ticket for the next Brisbane Roar game. The writing on this one was so bad Harry wouldn’t have been able to interpret it if not for the other letters.

  ‘Did they all die the same way?’

  Phil shook his head. ‘One of them threw himself in front of a train. One gassed himself in his garage. The other shot himself with his service pistol.’ Phil saw Harry’s eyes widen and answered the unspoken question. ‘Yeah. A cop. Constable Brad Brooks.’

  ‘So is that why…’

  Phil shook his head. ‘That’s part of it. But not all of it. Swipe to the next one.’

  Harry looked back down at the next photo. Again, it was a montage of four photos. Four victims. These photos were well lit though. The photos zoomed in on the victim’s backs. Harry could just make out the aluminium surface of the coroner’s examination table on either side of the bodies. It was easy to pick out Godwin’s body – the back was a mess of black blood and cuts, some still with glass in them. Harry was pretty sure he could make out the train victim’s too: the body seemed out of proportion, and was mottled with bruising. But that wasn’t what stood out to him. Even though Phil hadn’t directed him to it, he noticed the incisions in the men’s backs. Five small lines: one on each shoulder blade; one on either side at the bottom of the rib cage; one at the base of the spine. Harry squinted, pulled in for a close look.

  ‘Coroner said they’re not new wounds. Says they were made by a scalpel, and scar tissue suggests they were made over the course of a few months.’

  Harry nodded and handed the iPad back. ‘I’m still not sure what you want from me.’

  Phil looked nervous now for the first time. ‘Harry, I remember last year you asked me to look into that SAS guy, Rob Johnson.’

  ‘Yeah, so what?’

  ‘I was looking at the photos we had on file of him. The tattoos. You try and hide it with that long hair, and it’s faded, but I know you’ve got the same tattoo on the back of your neck.’

  Harry tried to get a hold of his anger. His hand involuntarily went to his neck, where his last tattoo remained, and he forced it back onto the table. ‘So?’

  ‘So. What is it, a tribute tattoo?’

  Harry looked down and realised he was gripping the table so hard his knuckles were white. He let go and got up to leave.

  Phil reached out and grabbed Harry’s forearm. Harry could have easily twisted out of the grip. Could have left Phil on the ground, gasping for breath. But something in Phil’s eyes stopped him.

  ‘Please, Harry. Sit down.’

  Harry sat.

  ‘Your scars are healing well,’ Phil said. ‘Pretty incredible, what h
appened last year. You surviving the lightning strike like that.’

  Harry nodded. ‘I have a lot to be thankful for.’

  ‘It’s kind of strange though, the way your scars directly correlate with where Rob was tattooed.’

  ‘Are you going somewhere with this?’

  ‘Harry, this didn’t make it into the press, but there’s a theory being bandied around HQ that there was an aborted attempt on Andrew Cardinal’s life on the day of his campaign launch.’

  Harry’s blood ran cold. He struggled to keep his face impassive. Phil was gone. All he could see was crosshairs converging on Cardinal’s head.

  ‘Someone broke into an office across the river. They’d cut a hole in the window. We’ve got footage of a man walking down Queen St, holding a case that we believe was used to carry a sniper’s rifle. It’s not enough to go to court with. Jesus, we haven’t even got a suspect.’ He stared into Harry’s eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘And, you know, Cardinal wasn’t exactly the golden child he made himself out to be. Given what you discovered about him, if the guy had pulled the trigger, he would have been doing the world a favour, right?’

  Harry sighed. ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘Look, I’m not really a believer in ghosts or UFOs or any of that shit, and my bosses certainly aren’t,’ Phil said. ‘But I can’t help think that… something, I dunno, weird happened last year. And that you were at the centre of it.’

  He tapped the iPad. ‘We need help. Despite the fact the methods of death were different, there’s an obvious link here, which leads the detectives to believe there could be more deaths.’