Private Oz (Private 7)

The surf was good this morning, but Anthony’s mind wasn’t on it. Frankie and Trent noticed. “Dude, what’s with you? You totally wasted that wave.”

“Yeah, sorry, man,” Ant responded. “Look, I’m gonna bail.”

“What?”

“Can’t focus. I’ll put the board in your car, right, Frankie?”

His friend waved and slipped back into the surf.

Half an hour later, Anthony was standing outside the house on Ernest Street, Bondi, watching the shifting morning light on the roofs across the road. He didn’t normally do this sort of thing. He and Karen were good kids from the same co-ed school. But he loved her and he believed she loved him. They were seventeen, Year 12. Some kids their age were parents already, but he and Karen could never be alone together, watched over 24/7. It pissed him off no end.

Karen was fifteen minutes late and Ant was growing increasingly frustrated as the seconds passed. When she arrived, he just managed to stay cool.

“Okay, lover boy,” she said sexily, sidling up to him and reaching on tiptoes to kiss him full on the mouth. He looked down at her gorgeous tanned face ringed with dark curls, feeling himself harden almost instantly.

“Come on,” he said, and took her hand.

The front door was broken and hung half off its hinges. Ant escorted her along a narrow passage to the second room on the left. She could hear music drifting along the hall and glanced at her boyfriend as she recognized the tune, Angus and Julia Stone’s Big Jet Plane.

Karen stood at the entrance to the room, holding Ant’s hand, entranced. He had cleaned it up, swept the floor, made a bed of sleeping bags. The curtains were drawn, two dozen candles glowed. An iPod played softly through a portable speaker system. The song ended and was followed by Karen’s favorite, No One by Alicia Keys.

“Oh! Ant. This is … just lovely.” She turned and kissed him again, sliding her tongue between his teeth and producing a low moan in the back of her throat. Ant felt he would burst there and then. He swept her up, lowered her gently to the soft layers of the sleeping bags.

The music flowed over them, and when it was over, they lay together, looking up at the shabby, pitted ceiling.

“Back in a sec,” Karen said softly, pecked Anthony on the cheek, and pulled herself up. “Bathroom!”

“Hey, take this.” Ant reached into his bag for a large bottle of water. “No mains supply!”

Karen looked pained and then crouched down to kiss Anthony again. “That’s very thoughtful,” she purred.

He watched the girl’s naked form in the candlelight and threw his head back onto the makeshift pillow. He thought that this was the high point of his life. That things could never be better than this.

Then he heard Karen scream.

Chapter 65

INSPECTOR M

ARK TALBOT felt unwell, and days like today, the ones that started out really crappy, were almost impossible to bear.

He’d woken up at 6 am with a sore head from a big night out with his buddies and had dragged himself into the station by seven-thirty. Forty minutes later the call had come in – another grisly find. It was all getting a bit ridiculous.

The traffic was terrible all the way to Bondi, and about eight o’clock it turned stormy – black clouds rolling in over the ocean. He switched on the radio, pushed the button for Classic Rock FM and felt better as Steely Dan’s Reeling in the Years filled the car.

“Alright, what’s the story?” Talbot said as he got out of his car and a sergeant led him to the empty house, the rain crashing down around them.

“Best see for yourself, sir.”

Talbot dashed into the hall, his jacket soaked. Forensics were everywhere. Huge spots blazed, powered by a portable generator. None of it did his head much good. At the end of a corridor there was a bathroom, two officers in plastic suits crouching down. The tub, toilet, floor and white walls were splashed with pints of dried blood. A lab guy was photographing the scene. Talbot saw a line of dry red-black dots leading from the room out toward the kitchen and the rear of the property.

The stench hit him as he entered the yard. The smell of death. He knew it well.

The blood trail stopped one side of the back garden. There was a large stain on the patio close to the fence. His team had already lifted the pavers and dug away some soil. Talbot, hand over his mouth, could see part of a corpse, a woman, face-up in the dirt.

He waved over one of his sergeants standing the other side of the shallow grave. “The basics,” the Inspector insisted, his voice phlegmy.

“Young guy called us about seven-thirty. By the time we got here, the place was deserted.”