Private Sydney (Private 12)

It didn’t take long for him to fill me in about the twins’ house and Alexandrus Wallace. It was the breakthrough I was hoping for. I searched online. Alexandrus went by ‘Alex’ now. His company, trading as Al Wallace, restored fine antiques. A further search on antique fairs and I hit paydirt. It was a group shot but, second from the left, Gus Finch’s bland face stared back at me. A few shots later, Jennifer’s visage appeared.

And we had them.

I rang the business number. A recorded female voice said the office was closed for family reasons and would reopen on the second of next month. The business was located in Dural, forty minutes north of the CBD. A street search quickly showed it was a house on an acreage.

I couldn’t make any of this right, but finding the baby was the best start.

Mary was working on Moss’s background when I interrupted to tell her about the address for the man posing as Finch. I could use her help if things went sour. She didn’t hesitate and suggested we could take her Jeep. I stopped to let Collette know where we’d be in case anything went wrong and we didn’t check in within the hour. We’d call the police on the way to Dural. Collette crossed her fingers and wished us luck.

We headed north on the M2 and encountered surprisingly little traffic until Pennant Hills Road. I decided to wait until we could confirm Wallace was home before letting Brett Thorogood know. We couldn’t afford any mistakes. If the Wallaces had already gone, Mark Talbot could accuse me of withholding information long enough for them to escape. The not-so-friendly Area Command could twist it any way he saw fit.

Mary was quiet, concentrating on the road. At a set of lights on Old Northern Road, she spoke.

‘Lots of acreages, new and old money out here.’

It was a part of Sydney I hadn’t spent much time in. I knew it attracted some high-profile people who shunned publicity and attention on their private lives.

‘This whole area used to be orchards.’ Mary glanced sideways and cleared her throat. ‘I was way out of line yesterday with what I said. About Cal.’

I looked out at striking views of the Blue Mountains in the distance. ‘If anyone had the right, it was you. We’ve known each other long enough to be honest –’

‘It wasn’t true,’ she said.

I disagreed. ‘I let my guard down and got suckered.’

‘It isn’t you I was angry with.’ She accelerated around a cement truck in an overtaking lane. ‘Surrogates in India are known to have borne kids to members of paedophile rings. Kids are bred for abuse and passed around the rings.’

I knew Mary had survived a rough childhood and that thankfully things had changed once she was fostered by a loving family. She rarely spoke about it.

Opposite a school, cows grazed. Further along, mangoes were being sold from the back of a truck. This area had rural advantages with city benefits. I let her speak in her own time.

‘I was angry at a system that gives abusers rights just because they’re biologically related,’ she finally said. ‘After everything they did to us, the courts gave our biological parents legal access. One weekend we were supposed to go for an unsupervised stay. Joanie refused and took off.’

Her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter.

I hadn’t known the full extent of the problems in her childhood, but I was aware that her younger sister had died at fourteen.

‘The police found her in a neighbour’s shed that night. She hanged herself.’ Her eyes were locked on the road. ‘We’d have been better off if we were dogs. No one would have tolerated that amount of cruelty to an animal.’

Chapter 46

WE DROVE THE rest of the way in silence. There was nothing I could say to defuse her anger.

Mary pulled up about a hundred metres from the address, in the shade of a tree and out of range of the camera positioned on the electric gate.

The home was a single-level colonial style at the end of a gravel drive with pines planted on either side. Lawns looked recently mowed and the garden carefully manicured. To the side and behind the house sat a six-car shed. A stripped wooden chair had been left in the sun.

My pulse accelerated. The sliding access door was open. We had to play this right to get the baby out alive. I called Brett Thorogood using Mary’s phone. Mine had zero reception.

I told him Johnny had managed to get a lead on an address in Dural. Our intel said the suspects may be inside. He warned me not to go near the house or approach Wallace. He’d take care of things from here. I wasn’t in any mood to argue. It was the safest way of getting Zoe if she was, in fact, inside.

All we could do was watch the house and wait for the posse. But I couldn’t sit still. The more information the police had when they arrived, the better.

I stepped out of the vehicle to look for other ways in or out of the property. Fences on either side and at the rear were visible from our position. I clicked photos on my phone.

The sound of a helicopter in the distance made me stop. It was headed our way.

It would alert the Wallaces. Who the hell would compromise the scene with a helicopter? I dialled Brett Thorogood and told him to get rid of the chopper.