Mandy finds Morris Montifore upstairs in the same Chinese restaurant, the one on Sussex Street he brought her to after her release from Zelda Forshaw’s captivity. He’s seated in the same corner, apparently eating the same food, this time with Ivan Lucic at his side. Martin has told her Montifore has a wife and children, and it’s true the man wears a wedding band, but that’s the only evidence. He seems married to his job, living it twenty-four seven, surgically attached to his suit, addicted to MSG and catching killers. She approaches the table. Montifore at least has the good grace to study only her face; Lucic gives her the once-over.
‘Please, take a seat,’ says Montifore. His words are shaped by formality, but tinged with sympathy. Yet nothing feels comfortable or relaxed as she joins them. ‘Have you eaten?’ asks the policeman, gesturing at the dishes on the table.
‘No thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll eat with Martin later.’
‘Understood,’ says Montifore. ‘So what is it that you have for me? You mentioned a video.’
‘Yes.’ She opens her phone, pulling up the video, making it full screen. ‘Here,’ she says, handing it over, believing it to be self-explanatory. She watches Montifore’s eyes as he views it, bracing herself for the stream of questions she knows must be coming.
Montifore watches only long enough to get the gist of it before handing the phone to Lucic. ‘The date stamp,’ says Montifore to her, ‘you believe it’s accurate?’
‘Yes. It’s Tarquin Molloy on the last day he was seen alive,’ she says. ‘On the trading floor, inside Mollisons.’
‘Yeah, we’ve already got it,’ says Lucic matter-of-factly.
‘What? How?’ asks Mandy, addressing Lucic, aware that Montifore’s eyes are on her, studying her reaction.
Lucic shrugs, speaking to his superior more than to her. ‘The original investigation into Molloy’s alleged theft had it. It shows him walking to Mandalay’s desk on the trading floor, inserting a flash drive into a port that was meant to have been disabled, feeding in the software enabling him to transfer several millions of dollars. And leaving.’
Mandy can’t believe it. ‘So you knew about him, all the way back then? Henry Livingstone?’
Montifore looks at Lucic, then back to her. ‘What?’ His voice is muffled, his mouth full of noodles, but his frown is communicating his displeasure. Lucic looks blank.
Mandy fills the space. ‘Right at the end, when Tarquin gets into the lift. Just before the video cuts out, a man joins him. It’s Henry Livingstone.’
Montifore looks back to Lucic, who is watching the video again. ‘Shit. She’s right, boss,’ the younger man states, handing the phone back to Montifore.
There’s a moment of silence as the senior detective reviews the clip before delivering his verdict. ‘The dickheads. They missed it.’
‘I guess they weren’t looking for it,’ says Lucic. ‘Their eyes were on Molloy, their thoughts full of stolen money. Livingstone was just a man in a suit in an office full of suits. If they weren’t looking, they weren’t seeing.’
Montifore addresses his subordinate. ‘Okay. Can we get the techs to look at it, to see if they can enhance the vision? It’s been five years—the technology must be better now. And get in touch with Mollisons, see if they still have any other video footage from that day. I’m guessing they handed over everything with Molloy in it, but maybe there’s other footage with Livingstone. I want to know who he met, who he talked to—and how he managed to get into a secure area of a bank in the first place.’
‘I’ll do it in person. Ring tonight, go in first thing,’ replies Lucic.
Montifore nods, turning his attention back to Mandy. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘An old workmate from my time at Mollisons.’
‘Not from a police source?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t know any police.’
She’s expecting him to demand she identify her source, but the inspector’s thoughts have moved on. ‘Is Martin investigating this? Another of his true crime potboilers?’
‘I think he’s more interested in the murders of Max Fuller and Elizabeth Torbett,’ she deflects. ‘Max was like a father to him. He feels a debt.’
Montifore looks at her for a moment, unseeing, before resting his head in his hands, chopsticks abandoned and food forgotten. He remains like that for long seconds before addressing her. ‘Listen, Mandalay. Mandy. You’ve done us a favour here, a big favour. We were unaware Livingstone was in the video. But listen, I’m serious: this is dangerous. Livingstone and Spitt are psychopaths. They’ve killed before. Brutally. Martin would never forgive himself if anything happened to you.’
‘Is that a threat?’
Montifore laughs, a real laugh, a belly laugh. Lucic is shaking his head in disbelief. ‘No,’ says the senior man. ‘No. I’m not threatening you. Just the opposite. I’m trying to save your life.’
chapter twenty-eight
The cab drops Martin outside a largish terrace in Paddington, down by Trumper Park: a modern house, doing enough to sympathise with the suburb’s nineteenth-century row housing to win council approval and not much more. The street is tree-lined and quiet against the background hum of New South Head Road up on the ridge above the park. Bats move soundlessly across the luminous greyness of the night sky. He opens the gate, climbs up a couple of stairs to a narrow concrete verandah and the front door, inaccessible behind a locked security screen. A floodlight trips on; a camera peers down at him. There’s an intercom with its own lens; Martin rings the bell, identifies himself. A maid unlocks the door, then the security grille, and ushers him in. No, not a maid. The uniform is different, the watch attached above her breast the giveaway: a nurse. As well as the uniform, she’s wearing a bored look, as if answering the door is beneath her.
‘He’s in here. In the lounge.’ She indicates the way but doesn’t enter herself, retreating deeper into the house.
Justice Clarence O’Toole of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court is slumped in an armchair,
