‘In therapy, yes.’

‘Well,’ the boy hesitated. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, but you have to give me your word that you won’t tell anyone else.’

‘I think I can manage that.’

‘In your books you’re always talking about family backgrounds, the huge part they have to play in shaping the minds of killers. Well sometimes I worry about myself. I failed the aptitude tests for the academy, you see; they said I wasn’t psychologically suited for the police. They reckoned I had some ... er ... problems.’

‘A lot of people would find themselves unsuited to the police, Justin,’ De Vakey said gently.

‘But there’s other things too. I’ve been reading your latest book, it’s kept me awake. I see myself in so many of those cases you describe, and the more I read about them the more I feel like I’m cracking up. Since I was a kid I’ve wanted to be a cop, but now that chance has gone and I don’t know what to do any more, I feel lost...’

Monty peeped through the gap in the door. Mouth turned down, eyes fixed on twisting hands, the boy looked to be on the verge of tears. Shit, Justin was in more of a mess than he’d imagined. The kid was going to need some understanding and help from his friends, and Monty would make sure that he got it—but first he needed to see if the boy had any of the answers he was looking for.

Ask him about his father, ask him about his father, he endeavoured to transmit his subliminal message to De Vakey.

‘Do you ever have the urge to kill or torture anyone?’ De Vakey asked.

The boy shuddered. ‘Oh, God no, nothing like that. I hate violence.’

De Vakey smiled reassuringly. ‘Then I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.’ De Vakey’s allowed a long pause. ‘But I think you know that too, deep down, don’t you?’

Justin nodded.

‘I think you really just need someone to talk to, am I right?’

‘Mmmm.’ Justin stared at the floor.

De Vakey let the silence settle for a moment. ‘Justin, tell me about your family life, your father.’

At bloody last.

The kid gulped in a breath. ‘I hate him.’ He pressed his palms to his eyes. ‘He repulses me, but he’s still my father.’

‘Now, why would that be I wonder? Can you relate these feelings to any particular events or has it always been this way?’

De Vakey’s tone was soothing and calm, could have been lifted from a self-hypnosis tape. If I wasn’t feeling so bloody uptight, Monty thought, I might be fighting the urge to nod off myself.

After a moment’s hesitation Justin took a deep breath. ‘My mother left my father when I was about twelve for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time. I blamed her; she’d been cheating on him. She tried to get me to go and live down south with her but I refused—the new boyfriend was a creep.

‘Then about a year later I came home from school early one afternoon and found Dad in bed with a boy not much older than me.’

Monty saw a shudder pass through the kid’s body.

‘No wonder she left him,’ Justin said. ‘I was out of here; I went to live with Mum after that. I only came back here to go to uni. I thought Dad seemed a little better—at least I haven’t caught him with any more boys. But over the last few weeks he’s been acting really weird. Something’s going on, he’s edgy and frightened, he’s up to something illegal, I’m sure, but I don’t know what and I don’t know what I should do about it.’

Monty decided it was time to step into the lounge room. ‘It’s okay, son,’ he said. ‘I thought it might have been something like this. You haven’t given your father away, he’s given himself away.’

Justin looked at him with amazement. De Vakey jumped to his feet, taking in Monty’s appearance with a look of disgust, as if a tramp had just burst into one of his therapy sessions. In a way, one had.

‘Good God, what are you doing here?’

Monty shrugged. ‘Just needed a few more answers. I think I have them now.’

He sat on the sofa next to Justin and used the uncomfortable silence to regard De Vakey. He didn’t much like the man, but they were on the same side and for the sake of the case it was important to cooperate. ‘An ideal tool for blackmail, wouldn’t you agree, De Vakey?’

De Vakey tented his long fingers and nodded.

Monty turned to Justin. ‘I think the person responsible for the KP murders found out about your father’s weakness and blackmailed him into hindering the investigation.’

Justin shook his head and glanced at De Vakey whose eyes had perceptibly widened. ‘This is about the KP murders?’ Justin asked.

‘There were some bent cops working Vice at the time of the murders,’ Monty answered him. ‘I reckon they somehow picked up on this snippet of information about your father and coerced him into covering up for them. They were setting up their own prostitution racket, and when other cops started getting too close for comfort, they killed the prostitutes for fear of being grassed up.

‘I think your father coerced Inspector Sbresni into cooperating in the cover-up, using similar tactics as those being used on him. In Sbresni’s case, it was the affair he was conducting with the commissioner’s wife.’

Monty rubbed his chin and mused aloud to De Vakey, ‘But what I’d really like to know is how Martin Sparrow fits into all this—have you any idea?’

By the time De Vakey had finished recounting the Sparrow interview, it looked like all Monty’s speculations were on the money—the KP killings and the Poser murders were indubitably connected.

‘Well the book writing explains a lot,’ Monty said, ‘and it also explains why Michelle was killed—she knew things and wasn’t exactly being careful about it. I think she was about to expose the KP murderer.’ Monty reached for Baggly’s phone. ‘I need to call Stevie.’

***

Stevie dragged her feet into the kitchen, mind still whirling from the tension of the re-enactment. Her mother was asleep, thank God, in the lounge with the TV blaring. She couldn’t face talking to anyone at the moment, let alone Dot.

Sliding out of her jacket and flinging it on the chair, she glanced at the answering machine. No flashing light, no message from Monty. Everything’s all right, she said to herself as she put her mobile on the kitchen table near her bag. If something was wrong, I’d have heard about it by now—wouldn’t I?

Leftovers of last night’s fettuccine provided an easy meal and a stubbie of Swan finally put a stop to the shaking of her hands.

She was in Izzy’s room a little while later, tucking the quilt around her sleeping daughter’s shoulders, when she heard the jangle of her mobile phone. Monty! She spun on her heels to make a dash for the kitchen.

But the bedroom door seemed to have moved and she found herself slamming into a solid object as rough and hard as a brick wall. Before she could register what was happening, strong arms engulfed her and something soft and sickly sweet was pushed into her face. Waves of nausea and weakness swept over her. ‘Highway to Hell’ pulsed in her head, then petered into nothing.

***

The intensity of the rain had muffled the sound of Baggly’s car and his sudden burst into the room caught them all by surprise.

‘What are you doing in my house, McGuire?’ Baggly barked, then turned to his son. ‘Justin, what the hell’s going on?’

Justin leapt up from the sofa and stood there frozen, staring at his father in white-faced shock. De Vakey squeezed his arm.

Baggly pointed a stubby finger at Monty. ‘You, mister, are in a shit-load of trouble.’ But as Baggly reached into his jacket pocket for his phone, Justin’s horrified look finally registered on his father’s face. Baggly’s hand stopped. He stared at his son.

Then he lunged, hurling Justin onto the hard carpet squares, taking them all by surprise. Grabbing him by the hair, Baggly was about to slam the boy’s head into the floor when Monty’s kick sent him sprawling. He was on the superintendent in an instant, pinning him to the floor with an arm behind his back and a knee on his spine.