On the same day a little way across the city, Federal Policeman Ben Preston was also reading the newspaper article.
He remembered the outback murders. Not only because they had been the news items of the day for a day, but also because of the small tid bits of information that had reached his desk, before the actual event took place.
Little pieces.
The first piece was in the form of a facsimile. It had been intercepted between Africa and Australia, and logged as the scam letter it appeared to be.
It wasn’t hard to pick up on.
After all, in this day and internet age the lowly facsimile stuck out like a sore toe. Transmissions between the two continents were that small in number that their computer didn’t even have to pick at random. It grabbed them all. Much easier now compared to the old days of five years ago, when facsimile transmissions ran at a peak hour traffic rate into Australia 24 hours a day.
The second piece was a Customs and Federal Police central computers cross reference. The computers picked up on the outback town of Bourke twice in a little over a week.
One occasioned a supposed scam facsimile to an unknown person in that outback town, and it was followed by a seemingly sudden and short trip to Liechtenstein by that same person. Liechtenstein was a major financial centre in Europe, it, and a person from Bourke were like chalk and cheese.
The action exposed the possibility of yet another scam, and the suggestion that this man Simon West had taken the bait.
But now, with the benefit of hindsight Ben knew that if the affair had been recognized for what it was in the beginning. It would have only taken twenty minutes to find the owner of the facsimile machine that West used in Bourke. Then probably another ten minutes to inform Customs that West was to be detained for questioning the moment he stepped back into Australia.
End of story.
The third piece of information that the outback murders had blatantly demonstrated, was that the whole affair had been worth closer scrutiny, but by then it was too late.
Ben had read the State Police murder investigation report. At the time there had been no actual Federal Police file on West, so any investigation was left in the hands of the State Police.
So, due to the lack of communication, the State Police had no knowledge of the two pieces of information and had only investigated the murder, not the motive behind the murder. It seemed to Ben now, that this man Simon West had just kept his mouth shut, and the ‘outback murders’ had in effect remained inconclusive.
Ben had also read the Federal Police memo that had accompanied the State Police file. It stated that Senior Federal management had deemed the case not important enough to warrant manpower expenditure. Although West had known the reason behind the murders, he’d obviously not committed the murders. So his part in the investigation had come down to answering State Police routine questions, relating to the murder only.
Then there was Sudovich, whose death occurred during that same period.
It hadn’t come as any surprise to those in law enforcement; in fact, Ben could almost hear the champagne corks popping when it had become known that Sudovich had failed to make par.
Sudovich had been a pain in the arse. His name had always seemed to crop up at the oddest times in seemingly unconnected State Police investigations.
No hard evidence on him, just his name here and there, as if he’d had many small fingers in many small pies. Sudovich’s name rarely came up in Ben’s Federal investigations though, other than when State Police matters reached his desk.
Ben remembered that the intercepted Sierra Leone facsimile had been addressed to a Garry. He remembered also that he’d briefly considered the possibility of it being Garry Sudovich. It would have been the only time that anyone had ever referred to Sudovich as ‘Dear’ of course, unless they were making reference to the cost of knowing him. If Sudovich had been ‘Dear Garry’, then that in itself could be considered as a fourth piece of information. A small piece of seemingly unimportant information which appeared to have little value until he’d read of Simon West’s boat explosion.
Suddenly, with West’s demise, the case had new momentum and Ben felt the urge of the curious.
He glanced at the wall calendar, and after taking in its ocean view picture, he recalculated what he already knew.
Then considered the resulting fact, he was three months away from retirement and after that there would be no more investigations.
Three months.
His imagination put a bobbing boat beneath his feet now, as his nostrils sought the smell of salty air and his hands the tug of tasty fish in touch with the end of his fishing rod.
He knew that he would miss this work though.
Over the years he’d delighted in the in-depth search for answers, before understanding the motives behind criminal actions, and then finally the wholesome feeling of finished business. With that thought in mind he looked back at the newspaper. Wondering if there had been any new information on the Sudovich death, although he’d already decided it suspicious enough to be called murder.
The autopsy report had stated the golf ball had struck much too hard to be the impact of a normal ball near or at the end of its flight.
Ben turned to his computer keyboard and typed in Sudovich’s name, then waited while the screen delivered to him an in-depth State Police file.
He opened it and read.
Sudovich’s file went back nearly twenty years, and it appeared that with experience over those years he had learned to cover his tracks. His early years were filled with theft, possession of stolen property, possession of small amounts of prohibited drugs and assault. The assault charge was one where he had paid someone else to do the dirty work, and apparently it had been withdrawn by an intimidated victim. No charges against him at all in the last seven years, although it appeared there were many suspicions.
Ben keyed through the file until he finally come to the murder investigation. A possible suspect had booked into a motel near by the golf course under the name of Eduard Scott.
Ben browsed through a number of files. All of them based on the surname of Scott, and eventually peered into his computer screen at the face of one whose name was Edward Scott. Who was a known associate of Sudovich’s, and one who was the subject of an ongoing police investigation into paedophilia.
It seemed he had dropped out of sight, as there was no credit card or passport use since his stay at the motel. Ben wondered if the man who had stayed at the motel had signed himself in as Edward or as Eduard.
There was a photograph lifted from the motel security camera film within the Sudovich hardcopy file. Ben looked back into the computer file on Scott to see straight away that the two faces were different. He wondered if maybe this man’s photograph might not be on State Police files, and clicked in a search of the Federal/Customs files instead.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Since the Bali bombings, there had been extensive updates to the Federal computer systems. There had also been an inclusion of information on people who had been of no consequence prior Bali.
Ben looked at the photo of the man. His reason for being on Federal files was because he was a known mercenary and hired gun. He decided there was no doubt about it, and opened the corresponding file.
There was little information.
His name was Peter Quinn who had served in Vietnam, one tour. After that he’d worked as a mercenary up until the mid 1980’s, then as a personal security adviser in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at various stages during the 1990’s.
Ben felt that the man may have given the game away by now, as he would probably be feeling his age.
Quinn had no Federal Police criminal record at all, but Ben noted that he’d entered Australia three days before Sudovich’s death and left the country the day of Sudovich’s death.
Prime suspect Ben thought, before he made a mental note that hell would probably freeze over before he could prove it. He had no motive, no weapon and
no idea of what weapon might have been used. No fingerprints, no nothing, except for a low grade photograph of a man who used a fictitious name to book into a motel.
There were some things that he did have though, and those were questions. Why the two murders in the outback? Why Sudovich’s murder? Why the explosion on West’s boat? Why a five-week interval between Sudovich’s murder and Simon West’s boat explosion? Was the Sierra Leone scam not a scam after all? Why would West go to Liechtenstein unless he was certain of something?
The one thing he knew for sure was that Liechtenstein was a tax haven. It had an international banking system much like that of the Swiss, and where there were banks there was money.
If there was money, then where is it now? The boat explosion might suggest that people were still showing an interest in finding it and that the trail was still fresh. Ben wondered about the bigger picture and decided it deserved a closer look.
It was intriguing after all.
There was also the possibility a large amount of money was somewhere waiting to be collected.
Ben had a weekend ahead of him and if necessary he could take Monday off, as he had time owed him. He thought for a moment and then called out to his secretary.
“Laura, would you book me a flight to the Cook Islands please? I need to get to an island named Rarotonga.”
Laura didn’t leave her desk. She’d been working for Ben for nearly twenty years now, and they were comfortable enough together to drop the formalities. When he called, she called back; after all he was less than five metres away.
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon if possible, please.”
He looked again at the file on his computer screen and wrote down Quinn’s last known address.
CHAPTER 3