Private Oz (Private 7)

“Well, hey … looky here,” she said in a whisper. “Just looky here. I’d almost forgotten … Oh, that would be perfect!”

She leaned forward, the scrapbook on her lap, turned back to her pages listing the murdered women, flicked to a fresh page and wrote: “NUMBER FIVE.” Then a name.

Chapter 102

JULIE SMILED. “SOMETIMES,” she thought, “I can’t believe how easy all this has been.” She switched on a lamp with a pink shade she’d bought for two dollars from a charity shop, swung back round and saw Bruce on the TV screen.

She felt a shiver pass through her and quickly ramped up the sound.

“… the body has been identified as Bruce Frimmel,” the newsreader said, and the camera held the image of the dead man. “He is thought to have disappeared in November and was probably killed soon after …”

Julie jumped up at the sound of tires screeching outside. She dashed to the small window of her first-floor apartment and saw a white car pull up hard on the other side of a small scruffy courtyard.

She snatched up the scrapbook, ran into the bedroom, tossed it on the bed, scrambled in the bottom of her wardrobe for her backpack already prepared with the things she knew she would need sometime soon. In the kitchen she found a box of matches, darted back to the bedroom, struck a match and flicked the flame over the end of the scrapbook.

The paper resisted. It felt to Julie that seconds were passing as minutes. She had to quell the rising panic. The match expired without the flame catching properly. She’d just singed the edge of the flimsy cardboard cover. She struck another match and steadied her fingers by gripping her wrist with the other hand, blowing gently on the flame.

It caught. She couldn’t wait a second longer, dashed out of the room and into the hallway, leaving the door ajar. She could hear footsteps on the stairs, a woman’s voice. She sped up to the second level, round the bend and onto the next flight taking her to the top floor.

She leaned over the railings and saw two people, a man and a woman, approach the door to her apartment. As they slid along the wall and disappeared inside, Julie turned on her heel, pushed the exit door onto the roof.

She’d moved here after splitting with Bruce, it was cheaper. Within a week she’d explored every nook and cranny of the block and had quickly found the caretaker’s shed on the roof. He was always careful enough to keep it locked, but she knew where he hid a spare key.

The roof was eerily quiet, just the hum of traffic on the main road, the occasional squawk of a lorikeet. Julie crouched beside a utility pipe running along the edge of the roof, felt around for the brick she knew was there, found it, shifted it, plucked up the key.

She ran back to the shed, slotted the key into the lock, pulled open the door. After the glare of the midday sun the inside of the shed seemed almost black, but her eyes adjusted quickly. She scanned the shelves of jam jars filled with nails and screws, tins of paint, rolls of wire, bits of plastic tubing and a bench scattered with tools. On the floor stood a five-gallon plastic drum, “FLAMMABLE” written in large black letters around the middle. She locked the door from the inside and crouched down, keeping her breathing shallow and listening for approaching feet.

Chapter 103

SANDSVILLE IS PROBABLY the worst part of Sydney. Happen to be there at the wrong time, in the wrong gang in the wrong street and your life expectancy would make a mayfly proud.

Realizing that driving my Ferrari into Sandsville would be about as clever as vomiting over the Queen, Mary and I had taken a detour back to Private and switched to her sensible and unassuming white Toyota.

The apartment blocks of Neptune Court looked as though they would collapse any moment. I guessed they were mid-’80s vintage. There were three buildings clustered around a scrap of land, the grass worn to nothing.

The three buildings had six-foot-high digits written on their south-facing walls. Nos. 1-20, 21-40 and 41-60. We headed for the first.

We could hear a horrible clash of sounds. Kids screaming, a baby’s cry, several different TV shows, a rap track. From my right came a bass drum throb and the growl of some God-awful death metal band.

The door into Julie O’Connor’s block was closed, but the steel-reinforced glass had been smashed in. I climbed through the hole, Mary half a second behind me.

Number 6 was on the first floor, but I smelled the smoke before I’d reached halfway up the flight of stairs. Mary went ahead, leaned on the wall next to the door, then swung inside. I was right behind her. She turned into the living space, swept the room, proceeded to the only other part of the apartment, a tiny bedroom.

Yellow flames swirled up from blackened sheets. The fire was small – a pile of papers, but smoke had filled the room. We grabbed a pillow each and smacked at the fire, then I found a quilt on the floor, threw it over the small blaze and snuffed it out.

“This was just started,” Mary said.

“Must’ve missed her by seconds. You search the place. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I ran onto the landing. No one around. I noticed half the doors were boarded up. There were two more floors above this one. I ran up, saw no one, reached the top floor. There was a ROOF EXIT sticker on a door. The door had been pushed outward.

I approached it cautiously, eased out onto the roof. It was deserted. I spotted a workman’s shed in one corner, paced over to it slowly, carefully. I tried the handle. It was locked.

I did a three-sixty, saw the black metal railings of a ladder descending from one corner. Walking across the roof, I peered over the edge. The ladder dropped three floors to the ground. No one in sight.

Chapter 104

I FOUND MARY sitting at a kitchen table that was shoved up against the wall between the stove and an ancient fridge. She’d pulled on latex gloves and was leafing through a clutch of charred papers.