had been muted. At the time sound hadn’t seemed necessary, but something about what I’d seen on the tape didn’t add up. If what I was now thinking was true, I’d made possibly the biggest oversight in my career as a detective, one I wasn’t sure I’d recover from.
I turned up the volume and immediately the traffic on Fitzroy Street and the echoing sound of the convenience store filled my lounge room. I skipped past Dallas Boyd and Tammy York entering the store, knowing what I wanted was further on. I watched the clock on screen tick quickly over and let it play until just after midnight, when Will Novak entered the store to purchase the cigarettes he’d told me about.
I leant forward on the couch as Novak walked through the doors and approached the counter. Just as the clock on the screen read 12.17 a.m., the exact time Sparks had called Dallas Boyd to ask where he was, a phone started ringing. Novak took a mobile out of his shirt pocket, pressed a button and the ringing stopped.
‘You bastard,’ I said.
My hands trembled as I burnt a copy of the DVD, retrieved the Colt .45 from under my bed, then gathered up the documents I needed and headed down to the car park. By the time I arrived at the Carlisle Accommodation & Recovery Service, it was just on 9 a.m. and my eyes were stinging with fatigue as the painkillers the nurses had given me wore off.
I parked across the road and hobbled towards the hostel’s porch, noticing the blue glow of a computer screen through the last window on the left. Will Novak’s office. The front door creaked as I entered the foyer. A young girl sat behind the reception desk.
‘Will in?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, sure,’ said the girl, picking up the phone. ‘Your name, please?’
Holding open my badge case, I said there was no need to call him. Before she could protest, I made my way down the hall. Novak’s door was half-open, as if to invite entry, but I still knocked.
He swivelled on his chair. ‘Jesus,’ he said, eyes widening at the sight of me. Then, nodding to his computer, he added, ‘I’ve just been reading the news reports online. You okay? How’s Ella?’
‘She’s still under, but she’ll be fine.’
‘Thank God.’
The headline COP TANGLED IN SPIDER WEB spread across the top of the screen, an article underneath.
‘Didn’t realise it was in the news so soon.’
‘That’s the internet for you,’ said Novak, gesturing to a chair by his desk. ‘Come in, please. Sit down.’
I eased into the chair.
‘You want a coffee?’ he asked.
‘No, I just wanted to stop by and let you know how it all panned out, like I said I would. That was the deal.’
‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’
I read from my daybook even though I knew it all ad lib.
‘As you’ve probably read in the press, a man named Gervas Kirzek was shot and killed early this morning by one of our members. Off the record, we believe Kirzek was responsible for at least two of the recent murders.’
‘Two?’
‘We think he killed Justin Quinn in the Talbot Reserve and Stuart Parks outside the squat behind Acland Street. As to why he killed them, my view is that he learnt they were all involved in a scam to blackmail him.’
‘Blackmail?’
I gave him a quick rundown on how Dallas had hired Sparks to burgle the house and steal the laptop.
‘I think he also hired Justin Quinn to star in a porn movie so they could use it as leverage,’ I said. ‘That’s why Justin had to go. Same with Tammy York, only she got lucky and Fletch came to her rescue just as Kirzek was about to kill her.’
Novak nodded thoughtfully. ‘So Kirzek was the guy who attacked her, the rich prick she told us about?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘But hang on,’ Novak said, ‘Tammy said Dallas wasn’t into making porn, just selling it.’
‘She said he didn’t do kiddie porn. What he did do was . . . I don’t know, in the middle somewhere, I suppose.’
Novak looked confused.
‘Anyway, as for Sparks, well, somehow Kirzek must’ve known he was either helping me with the case or in on the scam,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise him at the time, but I saw Kirzek outside the squat before the killing, dressed like a trannie. He was staking it out, waiting for Sparks.’
‘So anyone connected with the scam had to go?’ Novak said.
‘Basically, yes.’
‘Including Dallas Boyd?’
I flipped to the back