Chapter 14
Very Late at Night Saturday, 19th November, 1988
Harry de Groot
You Burn Me
After I left the Regent Hotel, I drove out to Parramatta and dropped the CCTV film at headquarters. Most of the offices were in darkness and empty of humans, who were mostly home with their families, or sitting on pub stools. As I walked up stairs and along corridors of hard polished floors, smelling of bees wax, my shoes echoed noisily and the air felt cool; few lights were on and the shadows made this familiar place, foreign to me. Then, on the way out, I ran into Brian the communications guy, who had just returned from a bungled job and he stopped a few minutes to chin wag.
‘I couldn’t fit the wire mate and it was bloody obvious. A great waste of time, though Dana Roberts she’s a good sort, alright!’
When he left, I rang The Sarg to find out what Dana was up to. When I heard that she had gone into Ruslen’s place without any backup, I had an idea. It was the small fire at the hotel that made me think of it. So what I did was, get in my car and drive toward the city; then, I stopped at a random phone box and reported that a fire had started in the kitchen of Palais Royale, Ruslen’s mansion, which was currently full of people. If Dana was in trouble, the arrival of the fire brigade should help her get out of there. But obviously, I didn’t want that call being traced back to me, or for Dana to find out.
As I drove through the dark streets toward home I thought about Lee Lin: where did she fit into Ruslen’s scheme? And was she connected in some way to an Asian crime scene? What I did know, was that, the triads were rolling in cash and adept at money laundering through front businesses, so, what we needed were Asian background, undercover police officers, who could infiltrate the triads and break through their strong code of silence. So far, whenever we had tried to target these Asian gangs, they had simply disappeared; sometimes back to the countries of their birth, which would often provide a ‘protecting umbrella’.
So what happened between me and my ex-wife? Well she came inside and apologised to me. She said that she knew that she had problems, and that one of her major problems was depression. She was ready to go to therapy, she said.
‘What…what changed things?’ I croaked.
She shot a very sharp and suspicious look at me, and then, swallowed. ‘John called me and said that I had to get help. He said he…..cared for me, but he couldn’t live with me, unless I ….’
I smiled tiredly and hoped that this latest agreement to get help was true. I had heard all this before and it never lasted. Linda was so vulnerable, and damaged, and her moods were like a rocking boat. Still, I hoped what she said was true. We needed it to be true.
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Sunday 20th November, 1988
Early the next morning the phone rang. It was a call from a Constable Hatsis, from the Australian Federal Police (AFP), regarding the dead man, Keith the tiler, who’s real name was Gary Nobbs. Constable Hatsis informed me that Nobbs’ wife, Sofia Nobbs, nee Mirkin, was the actual boss of what was a large renovating business, and that the AFP had had an ‘audit trail’ trained on that business for some time. The reason being that Sofia Nobbs was a Russian immigrant ,who had entered the United States, in the early 1980s, under immigration policies aimed at Soviet Jews; though evidence pointed to her actually being Russian Orthodox. She then headed for the Brighton Beach area of southern Brooklyn, where she was known to have links with the head of New York City's, Russian Mafia. She, however, hot-footed it out of that country in early 1985, and landed in Australia, after the Don was shot twice in the head outside his Brooklyn apartment. The Feds rightly thought that keeping an eye on this dame, was a good idea.
Within a month of arrival in Australia, Sofia married Nobbs, who was a small time tiler and handyman. She swiftly took over his business, and pretty soon, the couple seemed to be swimming in cash and building a showy, home-palace, on prime real estate.
I rubbed my eyes, this case was like a giant confusing web, but things were at least looking up, as there was some possibility that there might be some documentary evidence linking Ruslen’s business enterprises, with the dead man, amongst this mess. Hallelujah for that! Things had been looking grim on the evidence front.
As I showered, I thought that I would first take a drive past Nobbs’ house at Coogee and take a gander at what sort of joint he had lived in. Then, I would head out to headquarters and watch the CCTV film I’d collected from the hotel, and also see if I could get my hands on the interview with Nobbs’ grieving wife, conducted last night; altogether, I had another fun day in store.
I came to a stop out the front of Nobbs’, faux mansion, which appeared to occupy about 98% of the block of land, looking over rolling waves and golden sands. The house was guarded by two large, cement lions, which sat at the entry to the driveway, leading to the triple garage. As I sat in the Commodore, I remembered how a mate who worked at the tax office, had once said to me that, he’d generally found that stone lions, out the front of houses, had proved to be a useful sign that, the taxation records of the occupants, should be looked into.
I a noticed a pink satin curtain twitch, in the Palladian window frame: I the watcher was also the watched.