'Yeah, righto, Price, there's nothing to see here. Just use the other ring will you,' Jill's sparring partner responded.
'She's the one with nothing to see. What a friggin' waste of time.' Jill heard the man moving closer to the ring. 'Use the force, kid,' he called derisively.
Jill didn't respond; she continued to try to make contact with her blows, trying to anticipate where Kaylene would move next.
'Give us a go, Kaylene. I'll partner her for a while.'
'Just forget it, Price,' Kaylene began.
Jill stopped. 'Yeah, all right,' she said, removed her blindfold, and faced the man outside the ring. 'Thanks, Kaylene. I want to get some practice with different people.'
'This is not a good idea,' responded the trainer. 'Jill, it's dangerous trying to fight like this.' In a quieter voice, just to Jill, she said, 'Not this guy. You're not training with him.'
Jill reached a hand down to the man standing by the ring. 'I'm Jillian. Two-minute rounds okay with you?'
Kaylene shrugged in disgust and got out of the ring. The man took her place. He was about 170 centimetres tall – a little taller than Jill – with thinning brown hair and a slight beer gut.
'Ron Price,' he ignored her hand. 'So what's with the blindfold? Kinky?' he asked.
'So are you okay with two-minute rounds?' Jill repeated.
'Yeah, whatever. This should be fun.'
He threw his towel over the ropes in his corner and Jill went to her own, her heart pounding. Although she'd wanted a serious opponent, she knew she wasn't ready for this. She took a deep breath and pulled her blindfold down, put her mouthguard back in. I'll never be ready unless I find someone to fight me, she thought.
Over the next two minutes, Jill hit the ground five times. When she sat back in her corner, her head was ringing and each breath felt like a stab wound to her ribs. She could hear Price sniggering in his corner. Five more rounds, she thought, this is gonna kill me. The blindfold felt suddenly stifling and she raised her hand to rip it off, a wave of fear and disorientation rising up to swamp her. She swallowed, pushed the fear back down and felt the numbness kick in. She heard Price breathing in his corner, eager to go again.
About fucking time, she told herself. I'm finally gonna learn something.
Over the next eight months, Jill sparred regularly with Ron Price, and soon found there were others happy to partner her in the ring. She learned to tune out the background noise of the gym and to concentrate solely upon the sounds of her foe – their footsteps, subtle movements, even their breathing, taught her where they were and the moves they would make next. These sounds began to replace the need to see, painting for Jill a mental image of her opponent's position, and she began striking accurately, pre-empting their next blow. She learned to use their punches and kicks to set up her own, increasingly accurate with her judgment of the time it would take for their balance to be regained, and striking before they could reposition.
She practised daily, at the gym at six when it opened, and fitting in two hours after school every day. However, when the number of people watching outside her ring increased, and their taunts became cheers, she left the gym and took to training at home. Jill walked into her home gym and filled a cup from the water dispenser near the door. She glanced at the clock. 4.20 a.m. The alarm would've gone off in forty minutes anyway. She started her routine again, her headache forgotten as she punished her body for the weakness of the day before.
6
Late the next morning, at her desk in the squad room, Jill tried to apply herself to paperwork on the Carter case. She and Scotty had decided to split some of their work to try to progress things faster. Neither of them wanted this to go on any longer than it had to.
Scotty was out interviewing the father of an eleven-year-old girl who'd been molested by David Carter five years previously. The case had only gone to court last year, and Carter had been found not guilty because of insufficient evidence. Although two children had testified that Carter had sexually abused them, his highly paid barrister had torn their evidence to shreds, arguing that if they had been mistaken about exact dates and times, they could have been mistaken about being abused at all. It was an outcome the police and DPP saw all the time, with crushed victims and devastated families walking away from the process feeling that the justice system was a sick joke. Little Madison Lee's father had been particularly vocal in his threats to castrate Carter. Scotty would be sympathetic interviewing him.
Jill stretched and took another sip of her Pepsi Max. She couldn't settle into this case. With her feet up on her desk, she ignored the muscle pain from her workout that morning and tapped into the COPS database, searching for updates on the murders of Dennis Rocla and George Manzi, also known as George Marks.
Within moments, she found what she was looking for.
'I knew it,' she breathed, sitting up straight in her chair, bringing her face close to the computer screen. She looked up from the database and punched in Scotty's mobile number.
'The dead guys in Woolloomooloo and Lane Cove' – Jill was speaking before Scotty had even said hello – 'Manzi and Rocla. I told you they were squirrels. They've both got sex offender sheets. This is the same killer. The same person killed them and Carter. I know it. Someone is getting payback.'
Scotty sighed. Then there was silence for a few beats. 'Shit. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? But if you're right, Jill, we're talking about a mass murderer now, not a simple bashing at the beach. This is gonna be big. Bigger than us.' He sounded tired. 'Who's working the Rocky and Manzi cases? I guess we'd better go talk to them.'
'It'sRocla, Dennis Rocla, not Rocky,' said Jill. 'And Harris and Jardine are working both cases over at Central.' She tried to keep the last part casual.
'Aw, fuck! Why'd it have to be them?'
'Yeah, anyway. How's Madison's dad?' Best to change the subject. Scotty had a history with Harris and Jardine. Elvis's cronies.
'Let's just say he's not in mourning for Carter,' he answered. 'You wouldn't believe it, J. He shook my hand when I told him Carter was dead. He actually offered me champagne – at ten in the morning.' Scotty laughed. 'He's still pretty cut up about what happened, but the whole family's in the clear. They arrived back from a trip to China yesterday arvo. Couple of bags were still in the hall.'
'So when are you coming back?' asked Jill. Alibi or no, she and Scotty had thought it unlikely Jiang Lee would have carried through his threats to kill Carter. An accountant from Strathfield in Sydney's Inner West, Lee was a Buddhist with two young kids and a wife. He might have wanted Carter dead, but he just wasn't the type to kill him.
'I'm coming in now. You want to go for a swim and get some KFC?'
Jill smiled. 'Yeah, whatever. See you when you get here.'
Within thirty seconds of re-scanning the database, she'd dropped the smile. Manzi and Rocla had both been investigated for separate alleged sex offences dating back at least ten years. The three victims had not come forward until they were young adults. She noted the COPS event numbers that linked the complaints to the men, and typed one of the numbers into the computer. The database accessed a 2001 complaint by a then 18-year-old man who'd claimed that eight years earlier Manzi had raped him in a caravan. She copied down the complainant's name and address – a home in Castle Hill. She copied the contact number into her notebook and picked up the phone. Travis O'Hare.
Ten minutes later, Jill's blue eyes were wide. O'Hare no longer lived at the Castle Hill address, but she'd managed to speak to his older brother. He didn't have a lot of time for Travis, but his diatribe against him had thrown up an interesting detail. A coincidence? Maybe. Jill accessed the database again and located contacts for Rocla's two victims.
'Scotty, where are you now?' She had the phone tucked under her ear, leaving her hands free to shove her notes into her briefcase. 'We're driving out to Richmond this afternoon to interview the shrink. You're not gonna believe this.'
