Private Sydney (Private 12)

tive. He said Sigrid had ripped off the wrong person. I figured the police had finally caught up with her.’

‘How long ago was this?’ I pressured.

‘About an hour.’

‘Can you give me the address? This is important!’

The ex-husband didn’t hesitate. ‘Gladly. 17/22 Rolfe Street in Manly. I can’t wait to see that bitch finally pay.’

Chapter 99

JOHNNY AND I RACED to the address Tony Hall gave us. In the car I phoned Mary to fill her in.

‘Don’t spook her yet,’ she suggested. ‘We don’t know if she has the baby, and can’t afford for her to do a runner. Wait,’ Mary said, ‘Darlene just came in. I’ll put you on speaker phone.’

‘Where’s Eliza?’ I asked.

‘Working from your office. She can’t hear us.’

I sped through an orange light as Johnny gave details. ‘Sigrid Hall is Norwegian. Blonde. Scammer, pretends to be pregnant to get money, according to her very angry ex. She’s familiar with X-ray equipment and had the contract for cleaning at the Manly radiologist.’

‘I’m on my way,’ Mary said. ‘Where are you now?’

‘Turning into the street. We’ll wait for you.’ Mary was invaluable in a confrontational situation. If there was time, she was worth waiting for. There were no cars parked near the home.

‘Be careful,’ Darlene warned.

‘We will be. Martyrdom never ended well,’ Johnny replied.

I asked Darlene where we were at with the IP address used for the emails our imposter sent to the Wallaces.

‘We’ve narrowed it down to Manly. It’s the closest I could get for now.’

‘So far we’ve only got circumstantial evidence. Anything specific I can use for leverage will help.’

‘I’ll try to get the account name, but it may take time,’ she said.

‘Do what you can from there and keep an eye on Eliza.’

As I hung up, Johnny frowned. ‘Do you think it was a detective ahead of us?’

That’s what bothered me. Neither Hall nor the receptionist asked to see our IDs and had merely assumed we were police.

‘We need to be careful how we play this.’ I referred to the GPS for directions. ‘If the police arrest her, she’ll lawyer up and is likely to use what she knows to bargain with the prosecutors.’ I was talking to myself as much as to Johnny. ‘That could take days. And we don’t have time to mess around.’

We finally had the chance to find Zoe and Louise Simpson’s killer. If the man claiming to be a detective hadn’t beaten us there.

Chapter 100

I PARKED A good two blocks from the house and didn’t have to wait long for Mary. A caravan and trees along the kerbside obscured the view of my car from Sigrid Hall’s house.

I told Johnny to sit tight and call the police if there was trouble. Mary and I walked towards the gate.

So far it was quiet apart from cockatoos squealing in the trees.

Mary scouted around the side of the house. I did up my suit coat and knocked three times on the front door.

A small woman opened the chained door, revealing only half her face in the gap. She was blonde, as Johnny had described.