“There’re five copy shops within a two-mile radius of Bellevue Hill. First three drew a complete blank. Guys there had no idea what I was talking about when I asked them if any suspicious-looking women had been in. Made me feel bloody stupid, actually!” He grinned endearingly.
“What about the others?”
“Fourth shop was on New South Head Road, about a mile from Bellevue Hill. The manager was a nice guy. Said he’d seen one particular woman come in a few times during the past three weeks. She didn’t look ‘suspicious’ exactly, just miserable, rundown. But get this. He described her. Above average height, well-built, bleached blonde.”
I rubbed my hand over my chin and stared at Johnny silently. “And the fifth shop?”
“Jackpot! A very sweet girl running the place.”
“Yeah, yeah …”
“She’d seen the same woman at least twice during the past month.”
“There’s more. I can tell by your tone.”
“The last shop keeps surveillance records for a month at a time. I gave the girl a hundred bucks and she ran off a copy of the disc for me.”
Chapter 94
IT WAS A poor-quality recording, but good enough. It showed a woman coming into the copy shop, moving from the counter to a self-service machine. She placed something indistinct on the machine’s tray and watched as half a dozen copies emerged. She then paid for them and left.
“Quite a powerful-looking woman,” I said.
“And piss ugly!” Johnny remarked.
I exhaled.
“Sorry!”
“Can’t see much of her. But she definitely has bleached her hair.”
“First thing I noticed,” Johnny replied.
“Take it through to Darlene. See if she can do anything with her souped-up imaging equipment.”
Chapter 95
DARLENE WATCHED THE short clip taken at the copy shop. Johnny was leaning on the back of her chair peering at the screen over her shoulder.
“It’s pretty crappy,” she mumbled.
Johnny said nothing.
“But, thanks to my new buddy, Software Sam, I might get something out of this. It works just as well for video as it does for still images.”
She ran her hands over the control panel of the image enhancer. Then she turned back to the computer keyboard and slithered her fingers over the keys.
The screen went blank for a second and then the film spooled back to the start. Darlene tapped another couple of keys. The clip was 500 per cent clearer.
The woman came into the shop. She was wearing a shapeless blue sweat top, handbag on her right shoulder. They could see her straight-on. She had a wide face, flat nose, small eyes. Her shoulder-length hair looked greasy. It was bleached blonde. Not dyed well – a bottle from a pharmacy. She wasn’t wearing make-up and she’d shaved her eyebrows.
“Not the prettiest specimen,” Johnny remarked, a little more diplomatically this time. “What would you say? Five-seven, five-eight? Hundred and seventy pounds?”
“Five-nine, one seventy-five.”
“I bow to your superior skills,” Johnny retorted.
They continued watching as the woman walked over to the photocopier.