Private Oz (Private 7) - Page 69
Geoff smiled. He hadn’t expected anything more. “Okay. Could you please tell Mr. Boston I’ve called about Chester Street. He’ll know what I mean.”
A pause. “And what was your name again, Mr …?”
“Hewes. Geoff Hewes. My number is …”
Chapter 100
I CHECKED MY watch as we drew up outside the branch of SupaMart in Bellevue Hill. It was just past noon. Mary stood on the sidewalk, pulled on her shades and waited a moment for me to get out of the car and lock it. I led the way to the store, keeping the keys in my hand.
The manager’s office was at the back. A girl standing on some steps filling shelves pointed the way.
“Take a seat, take a seat,” the manager, Matt Jones, said enthusiastically.
“Obviously bored,” I concluded. “Slow day in Bellevue Hill.”
“We’re looking for Julie O’Connor. Understand she works here.”
“Julie? Yeah, she does. Should be here now, but isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t turn up for her shift this morning.” He frowned. “So what’s this all about? You cops?”
“No,” Mary said. “We’re from an investigative agency. We’ve had a call from one of Julie’s relatives,” she lied. “An old aunt has died and the family wants to reach Julie.”
“Really? So she might be in for an inheritance!”
“Maybe.”
“Well of course … I understand … Mustn’t assume anything.”
“No,” I responded. “You couldn’t give us Julie’s address, could you? And maybe a phone number?”
Jones looked doubtful for a few moments. “That might not be possible. There’s a certain confidentiality …”
“Sure,” Mary said in her sweetest voice. “It’s just the family is desperate to get in touch with Julie. She apparently left her relatives in Queensland under a cloud, years back.”
“I didn’t know that,” Jones responded. “Might explain a thing or two.”
I gave the guy a questioning look.
“I like Julie, but she’s never been the most … communicative of my staff. Never made friends with the others. She’s a bloody good worker though – that’s why I kept her on.” He paused. “Okay, I can’t give you her number – she doesn’t have a phone. But the address …” He turned toward a mini filing cabinet on top of his desk. Flicked through the cards. “Yeah, here it is: 6 Neptune Court, Impala Road, Sandsville. Let me know what the outcome is, will you? It would be good to know if Julie will ever be coming back!”
Chapter 101
JULIE WAS SITTING on her threadbare sofa. The TV on, sound off. Beside her lay her scrapbook and a notebook. She picked up the notebook first. She kept this in her overall pocket at work. In many ways, she had the perfect job for her purposes. Working at the checkout of SupaMart in Bellevue Hill each day she would see potential victims. Each day, a parade of spoiled wives of successful Eastern Suburbs bankers, brokers and doctors passed by. These women came into SupaMart Gucci-clad and dripping Tiffany to buy zero-fat milk and goat’s cheese with their private-school-uniformed brats. To them, she was either invisible or an object of contempt. She loathed them.
But she had access to their personal details. She had their credit card data, she caught their names when they bumped into their snooty friends and had a little “chat” at the checkout. She noted down everything she heard. The same women, perhaps fifty of them, came in each week, often several times a week. A month of listening and note-taking and she knew a great deal about Samantha, Sarah, Donna, and dozens of others including Yasmin Trent, Stacy Friel, Elspeth Lampard and, of course, Jennifer
Granger, the wife of the bastard who’d started it all.
Returning the notebook to the top pocket of the lumberjack shirt she was wearing, she picked up her scrapbook. She’d devoted a double page to each of the murders, numbered them. 1. JENNIFER GRANGER. 2. STACY FRIEL. 3. ELSPETH LAMPARD. 4. YASMIN TRENT. Beneath these, descriptions of each murder recounted in her scratchy handwriting, every other word misspelled. Interspersed with the words, Julie had pasted in pictures of babies taken from magazines.
In the middle pages, she’d itemized everything she’d learned at SupaMart … credit card numbers, addresses, friends’ names, husbands’ details, where they worked, kids’ schools. All of it had been routinely transferred from the notebook, keeping the original as a backup.
She flicked through the pages of the scrapbook, studying all the information she’d transferred over the months. “Tabatha,” Julie said aloud. “Married to Simon, a ‘very handsome’ broker at Stanton Winslow. Address: 8 Frink Parade. Four kids … Shit! Busy girl!” Turning the page … “Mary, ah, nice Catholic girl, Mary. Irish ancestry, no less. Works for a local charity – ‘Homes for Rejected Pets’. How lovely! Two kids, Fran and Marcus. Husband, a spinal surgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital … tempting, very tempting.”
She flicked to the last page. A newspaper article about the murder of Jennifer Granger. Skipped forward. Stopped, read a name at the top of a double-page profile. Let her eyes drift down to the material she had collected on this woman.
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