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“No,” he replied wearily. “Because I know my request would be denied. As do you,” he added pointedly. “There was no threat to life, nothing to indicate a danger to either myself or Lacey. And we’re both cops. Capable of looking after ourselves.”
Sally-Ann opened her mouth to argue, but Tyrell jumped in to save Nico. They both knew Shadbolt was correct, there was no hard evidence, and they couldn’t afford to waste any precious police resources chasing a ghost. “I’ll make sure we get a car to cruise by your house as often as we can.” He patted Nico on the shoulder. Then he gave his big, trademark smile, white teeth flashing against his brown skin, and Nico was suddenly foolishly grateful to the tall man he called friend. They both knew it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
Right at that moment, Lacey walked through the door, followed by Lawson and Saito. Nico vaguely wondered where Pederson was. Tyrell returned to the back of the room to take his seat. Sally-Ann shot him one more heated glance before she too took her seat near the front.
Nico would have to put last night’s intruder out of his mind. It did no good brooding on the subject, going over and over the scenario in his head; trying to figure out who the culprit might be would drive him crazy. He and Lacey had agreed that she wouldn’t go home alone again in the foreseeable future. And he’d already contacted a local security firm. It was time to have cameras and alarms installed. He wouldn’t rest easy until he knew Lacey was protected. It was going to be expensive to get the state of art equipment he wanted. But with their often opposing rosters, and his sometimes long hours, it was impossible for them always to be home together. It was a fact of life that Lacey would sometimes be home alone, and he needed to deal with that fact in the best way he knew how. He was going to use all the mod cons and money at his disposal to keep her safe. Lacey had jokingly asked why he didn’t trust his guard geese to protect her anymore. His little flock of geese had done a stellar job of driving off her attacker six months ago, but it was time to get real, and get some high-calibre equipment installed.
Nico lifted his head and cleared his mind. Time to get back into the game and back into solving this case. He tapped his notepad on the tabletop until everyone quietened down.
“Thanks for giving up your weekend,” Nico started speaking and the rest of the murmuring died away. Not everyone had come in especially to help solve this case, some, like Lacey, were rostered on today, anyway. But others, like the two detectives and Tyrell had given up their recreation time to get this thing done. “If you’ve all caught up on your case notes, you’ll know we finally identified the second victim late yesterday evening,” Nico continued. A few heads nodded in ascent. “Her name is Sukey Lui, and she was a twenty-one-year-old local woman, living and working in Burnie.” His gaze snagged on Lacey’s for a split second, but he had to drag his eyes away before he drowned in his own recriminations that hovered so close to the surface.
“Earlier this morning I was able to interview Sukey’s parents. Naturally, they were still incredibly shaken. English is also their second language, and communication was difficult at times. But their daughter Jia, Sukey’s older sister was there to help us translate.” He could see Lacey lean forward and focus on him intently out of the corner of his eye; she knew nothing of the detail of his interview this morning, only what he’d told her last night. Her blonde ponytail fell forward over her shoulder and she chewed her bottom lip, something she did when she was deep in thought. And something he also found incredibly sexy. He gritted his teeth and pointed to a picture of Sukey that Sally-Ann had pinned to the whiteboard. “I asked them why they hadn’t reported her missing, and they said they thought she was down in Hobart visiting her boyfriend. They don’t approve of her boyfriend, and she often leaves without telling them that she’s going, sending them a text to let them know where she is after the fact. Dan, the boyfriend, works in an importing business down at the docks, and I get the feeling the Luis don’t like him because he may have dodgy connections. Perhaps even involved in a Chinese triad.” There were a few raised eyebrows at that comment, and he could see the cogs beginning to whir in some heads. Chinese triads were notoriously powerful and thought nothing of meting out violence and death to get their message across. “They received a text from her on Sunday two and a half weeks ago saying exactly that; she was taking the week off work to see Dan. They had no reason to believe otherwise. As Mr. Lui stated, Sukey is a grown woman, and she did whatever she liked.”
Nico stopped to draw breath, and Gorman stuck his hand in the air. Nico nodded in his direction. “Surely two and a half weeks is a long time for someone to visit a boyfriend. Didn’t you say she had a job here? Would they give her that much time off?”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Nico replied with satisfaction. “She worked fora shipbuilding company, building catamarans, as the assistant to the CEO. We contacted him at home this morning, and he confirmed that while he’d given Sukey permission to have a week off, he was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t returned yet. The CEO tried to contact her numerous times last week, but got no answer.”
“And he didn’t think to report it?” Gorman looked incredulous.
“No. This might seem a little strange, but from the people I’ve talked to so far, I’m building a picture of a young woman who liked to get her own way, but was also a little flaky and unreliable. This might not have been the first time she’d been…irresponsible. It seems a little sad, but this may be the reason why the killer got away with their first murder without the body being discovered for so long.”
There were a few frowns from his team, but no one said anything more.
“I also learned another important detail.” Nico paused for effect, waiting till everyone was looking at him with interest. “When I showed them a picture of the little bracelet charm, they revealed that Sukey had one just like it. The sister even went to Sukey’s room to retrieve it, and I can confirm they are the same.” He let his gaze settle on Lacey for one second. This was an important detail. And she was the one who’d found the possible connection between the charm and the sign at the gymnastics club. “They said the charm was issued to all girls who’d trained at the Somerset Gymnastics Club for one particular competition. It turns out Sukey attended that gymnastics club from around the age of ten, right through until she turned seventeen.” There was a collective intake of breath as Nico made this pronouncement, but the best was yet to come. “When I showed her a picture of Zoya Kibel, the mother confirmed the two knew each other, as they were in the same cohort, and were friends in their teens. She and Zoya were in the same team when they were awarded the bracelet charms.” Nico couldn’t help the self-satisfied smile that turned the corners of his mouth up. They finally had it. The link between the two dead girls.
“But we’ve been flashing that girl’s picture on the news. How did they not see it? Especially if it’s one of their daughter’s friends,” Tyrell asked, his tone confused.
“Not sure,” Nico replied. “They don’t watch the news supposedly. They’re not big television watchers full stop, if the sister is to be believed. They like to spend their leisure time in the garden—they have a huge vegetable garden—or watching Chinese movies. If they really had no idea what was going on in their town, it’d certainly explain why they didn’t start to question their own daughter’s whereabouts sooner.”
“Yeah,” Tyrell said sardonically. “Here we are calling for any information on an unidentified body, and they’re spending their time watching Chinese movies and gardening.” He gave a snort of derision.
Nico was surprised himself that no one in the family had caught a whiff of the local double murder. But Nico understood not everyone lived the way Tyrell and even most of the people in this room did. It took all kinds, and it was clear the Lui family liked to live a simple life and remain in touch with their culture and their roots. They probably missed their family and lifestyle back in China. He had no clue as to why they’d moved to Tasmania, but they were clearly loathe to leave their customs and traditions behind. Maybe that was why Sukey had rebelled, wanting to live a more modern lifestyle.
“Anyway, it seems the two girls haven’t seen each other in years. Not since they had some sort of falling out. They both went in different directions afterward, and Sukey at least, gave up gymnastics around the same time as they quarreled.” Nico began to shuffle the papers on the desk in front of him, getting ready to assign various duties, now that he had a plan of attack.
“So, we have two priorities today. The first one is to locate Sukey’s car. She clearly set out to drive to Hobart, but was intercepted on the way. Her phone is missing too, and I’m hoping if we find the car, we’ll find her missing items in the vehicle. Second is to get back to the gymnastics club straight away. The owner never followed through with our request to send us the contact details for all her staff. So, if she won’t play ball, then we’ll take the ball to her. They need to answer a whole lot more questions about these girls and their connection to each other and the club.” Nico could see Lacey nodding emphatically up the back.
“Wait up a sec, Favreau.” Detective Pederson strode into the room. “Sorry I couldn’t make it earlier, but I think you’re all going to want to hear this.” Nico froze and drew in a deep breath, trying not to let his dislike for the other man show on his face. Trying not to let the other man’s arrogance and bullheadedness get in the way of his normally good judgement. The man must be a good detective, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.
So Nico gritted his teeth and said, “Yes?”
“I just got back from talking to Julio down in IT.” Pederson held up something in a plastic evidence bag. “I’ve had him take a look at Zoya’s phone, which was found at her apartment the other day.” One of the reasons it’d taken so long to identify Zoya was because none of her personal belongings had been found on the body. Instead, her handbag, containing her purse and mobile phone was found sitting in her apartment, as if she’d just walked out and left them there. Which was confusing and posed more questions than it answered, but at least they had a few things clear in their minds. It looked like Zoya had been abducted from her apartment, but she hadn’t been murdered there. And perhaps Sukey had been abducted from her car as she was leaving Burnie. Which meant their theory that the killer had drugged and abducted the girls first, then taken them somewhere else to kill them, was likely correct.
“Turns out Julio is a whiz at hunting down recently deleted text messages.” Pederson gave a triumphant little smirk. “And you’ll never guess who she was texting?” The detective paused for dramatic effect.
Nico merely waited for Pederson to reveal his little secret.
“Mrs. Erica Nellenbach, that’s who.” That got everyone’s attention, they all swiveled in their chairs to look at him. “And the texts were quite interesting. Zoya doesn’t state it explicitly, but she was very angry at Erica for something, and she threatened to go to the cops at least twice.” The air in the room went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
“So you think Zoya was blackmailing Erica?” Nico asked.
“There’s a high possibility,” Pederson said with a smug smile.
“Any idea what she was blackmailing her about?” Nico asked. This was an interesting development, and he should be more chivalrous and stop wishing it wasn’t Pederson who’d found it. They were a team, he had to keep reminding himself of that.
“No,” Pederson finally admitted. “And we’re not sure why she deleted the texts either. This all happened around six months ago. But then the texts just stopped.”
“Perhaps Erica paid her off,” Saito said thoughtfully.
