Private Sydney (Private 12)

There were only occasional calls made to or from the phone after eight-thirty at night. All online activity usually ceased by ten.

Supermarket groceries were home-delivered every Wednesday. A single mother, she kept a routine. Good for the kids, but it made her predictable. And as a result, an easier target for a killer.

The husband, Vincent, had fallen from scaffolding on a construction site and died from a brain haemorrhage two days later. The insurance company alleged that a pre-existing medical condition contributed to his death. Vincent Simpson ha

d contracted hepatitis A while on holiday in New Guinea years before. His liver function was slightly raised at the time of admission. It sounded like a stretch to me, but insurance companies paid doctors big dollars to mitigate payments on medical grounds.

However, their strategy was more likely to be to wear down a widow pursuing a claim. Not torture and murder her.

Still, the payout could exceed three million. Johnny had included a printout of a newspaper article that mentioned the potential amount. That could have made Louise a target for extortion. What if the killer thought the baby was really Louise’s and the plan changed when she revealed Zoe wasn’t her child?

Possibilities raced through my mind.

Her internet settings were private, and she had less than a hundred ‘friends’ on social media.

I logged in with the password Johnny had guessed. The kids’ names and years of birth.

Photos of two smiling kids filled the posts, taken at parties, swimming and day care. In every one, she held the children close.

One image stood out. Her husband kissing her expanded belly. The comment beneath read ‘Missing Vince so much. Happiest time of our lives’.

I went straight in to Darlene to see if she had any results.

She was magnifying images on an electron microscope.

‘This hair sample is different from Louise’s. They’re both brown.’ She enlarged the slide further so I could compare them. ‘The longer one was broken off. No root. We could only get mitochondrial DNA from it. I took the other from Louise’s head. It will take a couple of days to extract.’

I studied the hairs. The broken one was more coarse, and thicker in diameter.

At this stage any DNA was better than none. If we could narrow it down to members of the one family, we’d exclude about four million people in the city.

‘Good pick-up,’ I said and meant it.

Darlene had managed to enhance a partial print on the aglet from the hoodie and had a striking image of the palm print from the back fence. She was still working on one of the prints from Louise’s neck.

‘Rex called a few minutes ago,’ she said. ‘Gross examination’s done but the histopathology will be a while longer.’

I braced for what I suspected was coming.

‘His first impressions were right. She died of acute blood loss. The stab wound was deep and severed an artery on the way through. It entered above the pubic bone and perforated the uterus, passing above the bladder.’

I said what Darlene didn’t. ‘Chances are, whoever did this knew what they were aiming for.’

This was no random killing. Louise’s murder was deliberate and extremely personal.

Chapter 40

AFTER GOING OVER the files again hoping to find something we’d missed, I managed an hour of fitful sleep on the couch in my office.

Darlene woke me at six am. She was heading home for a shower. As she let herself out, Brett Thorogood slipped in. The deputy commissioner was in dress uniform, cap in his hand, ready for a press conference.

‘Rough night for everyone,’ he said, knocking my socked feet off the couch and sitting in their place.

I sat up slowly. ‘Please tell me you’ve got good news.’

His face was stony. ‘Radio and TV stations are putting out hourly bulletins. Crimestoppers has been flooded with calls overnight after people saw the couple’s composite pictures.’

I knew that wasn’t all positive news. There would be hundreds, possibly thousands of false leads to keep the police busy for months. Valuable time would be lost chasing crank calls.