Disappear (34 page)

Roger swallowed hard. He glared at his father, fists clenched. Then, with his finger pointing and stabbing at the air, said, ‘You were always the big shot, always the superstar. Never me. I was never good enough. I never did it right, did I? Well, it’s all gone now and as usual you’re blaming me.’ He charged toward the door.

‘I’m not finished with you, Roger,’ his father warned.

‘I’m finished with you,’ Roger retorted, slamming the door behind him.

From its exterior it appeared to be an ordinary leather briefcase, and neither the case nor the man carrying it attracted so much as a second glance. The jogger was conservatively dressed, dark business suit, striped tie.

The plan for collecting the briefcase had been child-like in its simplicity. He had delivered a cheque for twenty thousand dollars, made out to one of the many business names used by Fred Hargreaves. That cheque was handed over to the front desk clerk in a back street Kings Cross hotel. The clerk had been instructed to hand the briefcase over to the bearer of that cheque.

Back in his car the jogger inspected the contents of the briefcase. Several packets of blasting explosive were wired to the detonator mechanism, which consisted of an alarm clock, a battery, a light bulb and a head-screw. A simple but effective form of bomb making, Hargreaves had assured him on the phone, modelled on the compact, home made bombs used by terrorist groups all over the world. This particular version detonated only when it received a signal triggered by the plunger. The plunger was no larger than a cell phone and shaped to look like one from a distance. It featured a lever, which needed to be pressed down firmly to set the electronic impulse in motion.

He imagined the moment in which he stood with the plunger in his grasp, his target within sight.

The jogger drove to the large, sprawling estate. The house, nestled in an area largely shielded by hedges and overhanging trees, had beautiful, landscaped grounds. Everything was quiet. The jogger scouted the area, making doubly sure. Neither the cleaner nor the gardener was due today…and the house was empty.

The jogger went to the rumpus room on the west wing of the second floor, an airy room filled with natural light. The double glass doors opened onto a balcony that overlooked the front garden. Light filtered through the canopy of trees in a patchwork pattern. The jogger placed the briefcase on the table, standing it against the left wall.

Now that he was in the house with the explosive in place he felt a growing sense of confidence. This would work. Curiously the idea had only come to him that morning, as he’d watched the news broadcasts. It seemed a logical progression to what had gone before.

He felt a familiar tingle in the hairs on the back of his neck, and then the swell began to surge through him. The sickly sweet sensation of the dark power. He had no qualms about destroying this house. It represented everything he hated. Money and property and bravado and bluster. This house, with its plush pile carpets throughout, the polished mahogany furniture, the painting and antiques and the great, vast emptiness of it all. Like the soul of the man who owned it.

The jogger took the coil of wire from his coat pocket and held it tightly. He hadn’t expected to feel the thrill, but it was there, coursing through him, even though this was not one of his random thrill killings.

He’d eliminated the chance of the watchers coming back. Hadn’t he? Soon he’d be free of those who were closest to discovering his secret. Perhaps that was why the excitement surged within him.

He thought of Jennifer Parkes. Perhaps her death, at his hands, had been destined. After all, she was one of
them
. She’d built a company, played at the business of being in control.

He snapped the wire taught in his hands.

The deputy commissioner’s visit to the special unit room was a hurried one. He told Lachlan about the anonymous call suggesting Rory McConnell was behind the Southern Star bombing. He wondered if it could be mere coincidence that McConnell was once a suspect in a murder case, and that he was close to the Parkes family.

Razell knew Harold Masterton was still the only link Lachlan had in the Winterstone investigation. ‘Could there be an unknown connection between McConnell and Masterton?’ he’d asked.

Lachlan asked Bryant to run a check on that. He then brought Razell up to date on their suspicion that there’d been a strange surveillance on the garrotte killer. And that possibly Henry Kaplan or Hans Falkstog were involved in some way.

These thoughts circled in Lachlan’s mind. He advised Bryant to call him as new developments arose, then left with Ron Aroney for the drive to Dural. First, he needed to see the hidden basement at the warehouse. He’d arranged for the police rescue’s demolition men to meet them there.

And then he wanted to meet with Hans Falkstog.

The rescue team used sledgehammers and blowtorches to knock down the brick wall that hid the basement in the Winterstone warehouse.

The two men had a knockabout, larrikin air to them, despite the gravity of the work they were normally called for. ‘There you go, mate,’ one called to Lachlan. ‘Gateway to Hell. All yours.’ He grinned, gave the thumbs up sign, then they took off for their next assignment.

‘Doesn’t know how right he could be,’ Lachlan commented to Aroney.

‘Is there anything those rescue blokes can’t do?’ Aroney wondered as he inched forward into the darkness of the basement.

‘They can’t bring back the dead,’ said Lachlan.

Aroney explored the wall with his fingers, found the switch and the room beyond was bathed in a pallid glow. Neither man was prepared for the sight that next greeted their eyes.

Jennifer tried to ignore the presence of the constable in the front room - his was the latest in a series of shifts watching over the house. She sat in the kitchen and listened to the radio news reports about the Southern Star bombing.

Carly appeared in the doorway, a welcome diversion to the battery of bad news. ‘You look as if you could use something to occupy the mind and I’ve got just the thing.’

She led her mother through to the study and she booted up Jennifer’s PC.

‘One of the girls I know from modelling – Marcie – showed me this very cool website. She knows the guys who are putting it together. It’s called ‘Fever For Fashion’ and it’s a comprehensive collection of images, year by year, from the 1900’s through to today, showing the fashions from one era to the next.’

‘Okay, sounds like fun.’

‘That’s not the half of it. It’s interactive, so you can actually play around with the images, taking elements from one picture in one era, and mixing and matching them with items from another era. And it does it all by company, so there’s an image stream of fashions through the ages from Givenchy, and another stream for Ralph Lauren, and it’s all kinds of clothing brands, and accessories, and cosmetics. Runs the full gamut.’

Jennifer looked over Carly’s shoulder as her daughter accessed the site and entered keywords, bringing up a gallery of images. ‘You’re right, it’s cool. Very cool.’

‘And it has a complete history of each of the companies and their products,’ said Carly. ‘I have to admit, I love this site, even if I am done with the whole modelling charade. Take a look at this, for instance, did you know the L’Oreal company in the U.S. was originally called Corsair, and that they changed the name of the holding company because its L’Oreal brand was the name with which the world identified?’

‘Yes. Back in 2000. Seems so long ago now.’

‘I never knew that. Imagine, back when you started your company, Mum, if someone else had owned the Wishing Pool Fashions name. You would have had to call the business something else. Anyway, time to play. Pick a brand.’

Silence.

Carly turned around to face Jennifer. ‘Come on, Mum, pull up a seat, pick out a brand name. Any-’ She stopped mid-sentence, noting that her mother was standing very still, her eyes on the screen but her mind a million miles away.

‘Mum….?’

‘Corsair changed its company name to L’Oreal,’ Jennifer repeated.

‘Yeah…?’

‘Not at all unusual for companies to change their name.’

‘So? Mum, let’s play-’

‘The police haven’t been able to find out anything, as yet, about the Lifelines company that supplied goods to Winterstone. Nothing on the internet. What if that company’s name was changed?’

‘Okay. Good point, I guess.’

‘Probably nothing in it, but worth investigating.’

‘I suppose, but how would you do that?’

‘There’s a thousand and one databases out there with all sorts of information, particularly when it comes to the corporate world. Let’s try a search for business name change information. Google it.’

Carly typed in ‘lists of company name changes.’

The Search Results screen listed several websites.

The ‘famous-business-namechange’ website had a wealth of information and lists. Jennifer and Carly trawled through it.

‘They’ve got to be kidding,’ Carly said with a giggle, scanning the site, ‘Google was called BackRub when it launched in 1996, and changed its name to Google two years later, just as it was taking off and revolutionising the whole search engine industry.’

‘This is interesting,’ Jennifer said, reacting to items she was seeing on the site. ‘The iconic tobacco firm Phillip Morris Inc., a household name in the latter half of the twentieth century, changed the name of its parent company to Altria in 2001, and some believe it was to disassociate itself from the growing negative image of cigarettes.’

‘Crazy,’ said Carly.

Jennifer pointed out another item. ‘1996. A U.S. airline company, ValuJet, was grounded after one of its planes crashed in the Everglades. Massive bad publicity. It merged with a smaller airline, Airtran, and adopted that as its new name to distance itself from the tarnished Valujet brand.’

‘Nothing here on Lifelines.’

‘Go back to the Search Results.’

Carly backspaced.

There were a number of commercial sites, and a national archives web page, that listed company name changes for the stock exchanges and the wider marketplace.

‘Try this,’ Jennifer said. ‘Back to Google. Type in “Lifelines, Burbank, California, company name change,” let’s see what comes up.’

Seconds later the search results showed “Lifelines name change, legal challenge,” and the link led to a cached article on the United States National Archive website.

In the mid 90’s a wealthy family had taken out a legal injunction against Lifelines Inc. The case had gone to court where it was subsequently dismissed by the presiding judge, but not before a wave of bad publicity and media coverage had engulfed the firm.

Later, the company moved its operations to New York and changed its name to Longer Life.

Jennifer pulled a chair up and searched for that company name.

A link to the company appeared at the head of the page and Jennifer clicked on.

‘What do you think Longer Life is, anyway?’ Carly asked. ‘One of those youth preserving alternate health mobs?’

‘No idea. But hopefully we’re about to find out.’

The basement room was long and wide, ample floor space, low ceilings, stark bare walls - the light provided by low-hanging fluorescent tubes somehow didn’t disperse the shadows still hovering on the ceiling and in the corners.

The gazes of both men were drawn to a row of long, metallic cylindrical caskets standing along the far end of the eastern wall. Lachlan subconsciously found himself counting. Eleven.

‘Jeez - us.’ He heard Aroney breathe, an unlikely tremor colouring the word, which produced a responding tingle at the base of Lachlan’s spine.

Both drew closer to observe the wires and tubes, which connected each casket to individual controls built into the wall.

The room was deathly silent, but Lachlan imagined the steady mechanical hum which would have emanated from these unearthly appliances had the power still been feeding to them. Raising his eyes, he saw also that at the top of each cylinder was a large metal lid. Six were open. The other five were closed … and - six missing bodies had turned up recently. Okay, Lachlan mentally steadied himself. Just what in hell were they going to find in this Godforsaken place?

‘You ever seen anything like this?’ Lachlan said. He needed to break the silence closing in on him like something tangible. ‘… Ron..?’

Aroney jerked his eyes from the canisters back to Lachlan. ‘Uh, yeah. Yeah, I have.’ His head nodded jerkily, looking from Lachlan to the canisters and back again, as though gripped by a sudden surge of hyperactivity. ‘Just can’t remember if it was one o’ them sci-fi TV shows with freakin’ aliens snoozin’ away in them, or the last remake of Frankenstein. This supposed to be some sort of laboratory?’

Aroney’s comment voiced both their thoughts.

‘Maybe.’ Lachlan felt a shiver bite at the nape of his neck as he climbed up to peer down into the first cylinder.

It was empty.

Aroney watched silently as Lachlan checked each of the remaining five open cylinders - all empty, as he’d expected.

A sense of foreboding came over the two detectives as they now contemplated the closed cylinders. ‘You going to open ‘em?’ Aroney muttered.

‘Unless you want the privilege.’

A gust of wind found its way through the smashed brickwork where they’d entered, dislodging something at the opposite side of the room, which fluttered as it hit the floor. Both men started, instinctively drawing their guns and swivelling in that direction. A moment later, each flushed with embarrassment as they realised the absurdity of their actions. No one living could have remained in that sealed-up basement … and guns would be of little use against ghosts.

Aroney laughed shakily. ‘And we’re supposed to be a couple of hard-assed coppers. Let’s get on with it. I say we take half each.’

‘Done,’ Lachlan agreed, thinking: how do you halve an uneven number? Why an odd number such as eleven? The question niggled at him.

Aroney opened the first of the remaining five - empty.

By unspoken agreement Lachlan took the next - also empty. Their apprehension began to abate a little as the third also revealed vacant space.