LITMIR.BIZ

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she's a neighbour.'

      'Bring her in,' Bruin nodded. 'She might be able to shed some light on what's happened.'

      The constable's attempt to escort the woman was thwarted by her scooting under his arm and marching up to Bruin. 'I'm Janey Dearmoth. I live in the front unit. Is Liam all right? Good Lord!' Her hand flew to her chest as she noticed Rogan. 'I should have recognised the vehicle. Liam isn't …'

      'He's missing, Janey.' Rogan said. He had a great deal of respect for the sparrow-like woman who had taken a motherly interest in Liam when he'd moved into the unit several years ago. A retired schoolteacher, she was an enthusiastic volunteer for several charities, but it was her sense of humour that had endeared her to Liam and Rogan. She'd once told them 'I might be a miss, but I haven't missed much', and the twinkle in her eyes confirmed it.

      'When did you last see him?' Rogan asked.

      Janey thought a moment. 'Early last Wednesday morning. Six days ago. He was driving out when I was working in the garden and he stopped to mention that he'd be away, and it could be more than a week before he came back. That's why I was worried when I saw the police car just now. I thought he may have had an accident.'

      'So you didn't know he'd returned?' Bruin asserted his role and scribbled in his notebook.

      'No.' She looked at Rogan. 'I'm sorry.'

      Bruin looked up as the forensic officer approached. 'Bloodstain tell you anything?' he asked.

      'It looks reasonably fresh to me, maybe a day or so.'

      A day or so. Rogan cursed himself for deciding to drive down. He could have saved almost a day if he'd come by plane. But his need to protect his parents from something he wasn't exactly sure about himself had overridden his normal reaction to feelings he received from Liam. Guilt ate heavily into his chest.

      'We might need to talk to you further, Ms Dearmoth,' Bruin said, 'so could I please have your contact details?'

      'It's Miss Dearmoth,' Janey corrected him, and gave her phone number.

      Bruin turned to Rogan. 'Here's my card. Let me know where you'll be staying in case I need to get in touch.'

      'He'll be staying with me.' Janey's tone brooked no argument, and Rogan smiled. She would have been a tartar in the classroom, but no kid would have felt unprotected while she was around.

      Several hours later Ed Bruin flung his coat onto the rack behind his desk and picked up his coffee mug. His progress to the lunch room was stopped by another officer telling him he was wanted in the Inspector's office. With an exasperated curse fuelled by his need for caffeine, Bruin soon presented himself in front of the Inspector's desk.

      Short grey hair and thin grey eyebrows added to the pallor of the senior officer's face. But it was the expression there that worried Bruin. The man was obviously pissed off about something. Coffee looked like it could be a long time coming.

      'What have you found out in the McKay case?' the Inspector asked.

      'Very little. None of the neighbours saw or heard anything, except a resident's dog barked about two or three o'clock in the morning two nights ago. The forensic report should tell us if that's close to the time McKay was injured. That's if it is his blood on the carpet. And as soon as I've checked through the contacts supplied by McKay's former employers, I'll interview his friends.'

      'Forget about that. And when you get the forensic results I want you to put them with your notes and give the file to me.'

      'Sir?'

      'You heard me. The order's come through from the Local Area Commander. We're to stop investigating the case and hand in all documentation.'

      Bruin's puzzlement must have shown on his face because the Inspector spread a dismissive hand on the desk, then relented. 'Apparently it has something to do with national security. We have to keep our noses out of it and let the Feds investigate. And that's not to be divulged to the relatives. Your official line is that we're working on it. The apartment is to be left taped off as a crime scene as well.'

      The expletives that sprang to Bruin's mind remained unspoken. He'd only moved up into homicide recently, and this was the first case he'd been allowed to handle on his own. Now it looked even more interesting, and he was being told to forget about it.

      He nodded reluctantly, and left the room.

      As he paced the small office that was their Melbourne base, Vaughn Waring cursed the vagaries of fate. Placing a surveillance camera in McKay's apartment had seemed a shrewd measure after the private investigator had disappeared last week. That was the second time he had given them the slip, but a check of his vehicle registration had supplied all his details. Unfortunately, the inconsistent comings and goings of the elderly woman who occupied the front unit had made it difficult to access McKay's apartment until the day after they'd lost track of him. But using the camera to alert them to any movement in the apartment had freed him and Mark Talbert from physical surveillance and allowed them to concentrate on their own search for the Montgomery woman.

      What Vaughn hadn't counted on was the pair of armed men who'd followed McKay into his apartment when he'd returned. The camera had picked up part of their search, but the hidden microphone had captured McKay's brutal interrogation. Then the camera had shown the pair carrying out McKay's body, bleeding from a wound to the head. The intruders had also taken away a case of CDs, as well as the computer tower.

      The rage that had filled Vaughn while he'd watched the tape had been tempered by perverse satisfaction as he imagined their faces on discovering the hard drive was missing from the tower. Apart from his ability at deactivating security systems, Mark Talbert had excellent computer skills, and a knack for hiding surveillance cameras so they were almost impossible to detect.

      The presence of the intruders was something Vaughn hadn't expected, and he berated himself for thinking that he and Talbert were the only ones following the progress of McKay's search for Breeanna Montgomery. But he had assumed that the woman's attacker was a drug addict desperate for a quick dollar, and not someone who'd got wind of what Vaughn was sure she possessed.

      And now McKay's damned twin brother had turned up! Not that he appeared to know anything. But his visit was bloody inopportune. Or was it? Perhaps he had access to leads that Vaughn knew nothing about. Switching surveillance to him might prove more effective than what they were doing now.

      Mark looked up from his computer as Vaughn walked over to him.

      'Any luck?' Vaughn asked.

      'No.' Mark shook his head. 'I can't crack the password, and the email program and protocol has a PGP encryption scheme. We need a super computer to break the code but usually only the military and intelligence services have these.' He shot Vaughn a sideways look. 'You're cleared with both. Why don't you use them?'

      'Not yet. We don't know there's anything on this that's of any use to us. I'd prefer not to have too many people aware of this at the moment.'

      Vaughn had already stepped outside the parameters of his authority several times in order to get the information he'd needed. But he didn't want to risk drawing too much attention to this operation. Not just because they were his orders, but it would make it easier for him to slip through his employer's net once he had procured the professor's records.

      Waiting was something that Rogan didn't do well. Unlike his twin, his patience was definitely in short supply and he knew it. The discipline he'd worked under in the Navy had tempered his zeal into a force that usually allowed him to attain the goals he focused on, and having to wait for the police to investigate Liam's disappearance was irritating him badly.

      After pacing Janey's unit all morning, he had taken her advice to get his hair cut and visited a local barber. As his sun-streaked locks fell to the floor and Liam's face looked back at him from the mirror, he couldn't stop the anxiety that grabbed him.

      A phone call to Sergeant Bruin proved useless, and after lunch Rogan gave in to his body's need for sleep. His years of shipboard living had trained him to sleep deeply for

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