Thicker Than Water. Lindy Cameron

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ you don't mind, I'll wait for the expert's opinion."

      "He bled to death," Ruth repeated straight-faced. "I'd say the vic was tied face-down-"

      "Face down?"

      "Yes. It wouldn't work otherwise, Senior Sergeant."

      "What wouldn't work?" Parker asked.

      Ruth smiled as she accepted the coffee that Angie offered. "Ordinarily," she said, "even with the major arteries severed, as they were in this case, a person would die before complete exsanguination. So, in order to deplete the body of most of its circulation volume before death occurred and stopped the heart pumping, a body - just like this one was - would have to be unconscious or restrained face down when his jugular and both femoral arteries were cut. The tray caught the flow but moments before death he was rolled onto his back."

      "How do you figure that?" Parker asked.

      "There is a degree of lividity, but not much, in the gluteus max and in the heels which are hanging lower than the rest of the body," Ruth explained. "That tells me the heart was still beating, but not for long, when he was posed like ET phoning home."

      "That's not ET, it's Disco Man," Marek offered.

      "God, here we go again," Angie moaned.

      Parker looked from Ruth to Marek and then puzzled. "It's a signature," he said.

      "Of what?" Ruth asked.

      "Hel-lo!" Parker crowed. "Am I the only one on-line here?"

      "More than likely," Kit muttered.

      Parker waved towards The Red. "This is obviously a secret ritual-killing of some poor bastard by a bunch of raving bloody lezzos," he pronounced, giving Kit a cursory sneer before looking pointedly at his number one suspect - the rather surprised Angie Nichols.

      Kit prepared a clench-fisted launch from her bar stool, until she realised that Marek's hold on her was only half-hearted. She settled down before he decided to let her go through with it.

      "That's a moderately idiotic assumption," Ruth commented.

      "You reckon?" Parker said.

      "Oh Chuck, you ignorant little hetero," Kit sighed, in a tone so calm it was scary.

      Marek released her completely and shoved his hands in his pockets; while Angie's low-voiced "Katy" was a definite warning - but for whom?

      Kit smiled... like a Taipan. "I'm only going to explain this to you once, Senior Sergeant," she said. "By their very nature lesbian rituals don't actually involve men in any way, shape or form; nor in any condition - dressed, undressed, dead or alive. That's the best thing about them, our rituals I mean, they are exclusive to and for women. They are the ultimate women's business - but there's nothing secret about that."

      "Well, I'd like to point out," Angie smiled, "that it's also not much of a secret if one of the alleged raving lezzos calls the cops."

      "On top of which," Marek said, "apart from being quite prematurely dead, Disco Man is not some 'poor bastard'. That there is Gerry Anders, head thug of the Riley clan and youngest nephew of Queen Marj herself. And he may be late but I doubt he'll be much lamented."

      "No way!" Parker exclaimed, scurrying back to take a decent look at his homicide victim.

      "You knew who he was?" Kit said. "Why did you ask us...? Oh, okay; dumb question."

      "Would someone explain why this pronouncement has got the little man's jocks all twisted," Angie requested. "What's the Rilycan?"

      "The Riley clan," Kit enunciated. "You know, Angie: one of Melbourne's biggest, wealthiest, meanest, most notorious, um, dangerous-"

      Marek held up both hands, "...bad, bad, very bad-"

      "...families," Kit continued. "It's headed by the sixty-something matriarch Marjorie Riley - aka Queen Marj or Queenie."

      "Nah-uh, Queenie's in her seventies now, Kit," Marek corrected.

      "Oh, I suppose she would be by now," Kit said thoughtfully.

      "The Riley family business goes way back, to Melbourne's boom years in the 1920s," Marek explained to Angie.

      Unnecessarily, Kit thought, because her friend looked shocked rather than uninformed.

      "But it was in the Depression and the war years that they really made it big. They grew rich on misery, or rather on helping folks escape the misery with gambling, opium dens, brothels, smuggling."

      "Opium dens?" Angie exclaimed.

      "Yeah. These days it's brothels, coke and protection rackets. They've always maintained a host of legitimate businesses so they can insist, regularly, that having underworld connections does not make them criminals. But the Rileys are the Melbourne underworld; every serious bad guy in town is connected through them. Their decades-long adversarial relationship with us has almost become a game with it's own rules of engagement and-"

      "Stop!" Angie's voice was verging on the hysterical. "Are you saying I have a dead gangster in my bar?"

      "Kind of," Kit acknowledged.

      "Bloody hell!" was Parker's reaction from the dance room.

      "That's a fucking understatement!" Angie declared. "Please, someone - anyone - tell me what a dead gangster is doing in my bar."

      "I think that would be my question," Parker said, returning to the fray.

      "Well don't look at me, Sunshine," Angie snarled at him. "You are the homicide detective; go detect something." She turned back to Marek and Kit. "Do you think you could get him out of here now, or soon?"

      "Who? Chucky?" Kit smiled.

      Parker's objection was overtaken by Angie's. "No goddamnit, the dead dude. Get him out before, before... I don't know, before the other gangsters find out he's here. Dead and here."

      "How about it, Ruth?" Marek asked.

      "Who's in charge here?" Parker demanded. "Ah," he said a bare second later, when it obviously occurred to him that it probably wasn't him - outranked as he was by Jon Marek, acting Head of the Homicide Squad; and by Dr Ruth Hudson FP, whose judgement alone could decide when the body was removed.

      "Ruth?" Marek repeated.

      She shrugged. "I'm finished; the autopsy is scheduled; the video and photos, as far as I know, have all been done; my team are finishing up; and I think Cathy is waiting for you."

      "Or me," Parker said softly.

      "Why don't you go find out then," Marek prompted. He waited until Parker was out of earshot before smacking himself on the wrist. "I wish I could control myself."

      "Why?" Kit asked. "He doesn't."

      "True." Marek turned to Angie. "Dr Hudson will arrange for the guvvy undertakers to remove the body asap. I'm afraid you will have to remain closed until Parker's crew is satisfied that the scene is secure. I'll get СКАЧАТЬ