She slid the shot glass towards Rhiannon.
`Siddown for fuck's sake, Ree. Here.' She handed her a crumpled tissue. `Wipe. Blubbing's bad for business.'
Rhiannon eased her tiny frame up on to the barstool and downed the vodka in one gulp.
`Another one?' Nancy asked. Rhiannon nodded. `Ga-ree!'
Nancy held up two fingers.
`I knew something was gonna happen. I just knew it.'
`Ah, she was a crazy, fucking bitch,' Nancy said. `Been on the game for like, too long, anyway. If someone else hadn't killed her Jordy would've.'
She let forth a high-pitched laugh.
`He couldn't get rid of her! Only kept her on because he like, felt sorry for her. Jee-zuss! She was, like, thirty or something!'
`She was going to quit really soon,' Rhiannon said, sipping the second vodka more slowly. `She was so happy lately, you know?'
`Yeah, so, cry me a river, she's well quit now.' Nancy scooped her breasts up until they threatened to tumble over the lip of her skin-tight lycra top. She flashed a one hundred megawatt smile at two men who had just arrived.
`Did Jordy say what happened?' Rhiannon asked.
`Nah. He's like freaking out the dogs are gonna come and start poking their noses around, you know. If they like, find out where she worked and that.'
`Well, they will, won't they?'
`No way. Her mad fucking old man's been arrested. He thought she was like, a hotel manager at the Hyatt or some crap.' Nancy laced her fingers over fleshy lips in a flurry of long, scarlet talons, and honked with laughter.
`Like, as if!'
CHAPTER FIVE
`Oh shit, yeah, I remember. He was the sort of guy you hoped that, for her sake, she stayed missing.'
PC Metcalf threw back his head and laughed then, realising his gaffe, quickly tried to make up ground.
Archie's impulse to drop in at Prahran CIB had hit the jackpot. The two constables present on January 28, when Kransky filed his Missing Person Report, were on duty.
`Stressed, he was,' Metcalf said. `Very stressed. Bloody hot night wasn't it, Ed?'
PC Ed Conrad, who could have passed as his twin brother, nodded. `Bloody hot.'
`This place was busier than a TAB on Cup Day,' Metcalf continued. `About eleven when he rocked up, wasn't it Ed?'
`Yep.'
`We were both busting for a beer.' Metcalf pointed at himself and Conrad. `We'd had a bloody gutful. Australia Day weekend coming up, give me strength! And this was only Friday night. Darren couldn't type up the paperwork fast enough.'
`You say he seemed stressed?' Archie asked.
`Angry too,' Ed said quietly.
`My word he was angry,' Metcalf concurred. He slapped the counter with the flat of his hand, for emphasis. `Mightily pissed off. Couldn't understand why we didn't just hop in our cars and go looking for the missus right that minute.'
`You made that crack about the full moon, remember?' Ed said, smiling.
Metcalf was momentarily confused. He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head to one side.
`Oh shit, yeah,' he said slowly with fake chagrin, burying his head in his hands. `I remember. You tell `em Ed.'
`Bob here suggested that it might be something to do with the moon,' Ed said, looking at them with a daffy smile. When no response was forthcoming from either Archie or Davey he continued in a less whimsical manner. `He suggested that women did all kinds of strange things at full moon. I mean, we notice it here all the time, don't we?'
He looked at Metcalf who let him dangle.
`A lot more activity on full moons. We make a note of it on the calendar.'
There was a long silence before Archie spoke.
`So, Mr Kransky came to the station on the night of Friday, January 28 at about eleven p.m.' He was making a point of enunciating each word clearly, Davey noted. `He came to register his wife as a missing person and to seek police assistance in locating her?'
`Yes,' the two men said in unison.
`He seemed agitated to begin with, then annoyed at what he perceived to be a lack of interest.' Archie looked pointedly at Constable Metcalf who was waxing paler by the minute.
Davey, who had been taking notes, weighed in. `Did Mr Kransky mention when he had last seen his wife?'
`It's in the report.' Ed became defensive. `Saturday, January 22. When she left for work.'
The ghost of a snigger played about Metcalf's lips and they shot each other a furtive glance.
Archie raised an eyebrow. `Conrad?'
`I mean, you had to feel sorry for the bastard, I suppose,' Ed blustered.
`Who? Kransky?' said Davey. `Why?'
Metcalf took up the story.
`Ed here asks Kransky where his wife works, didn't you Ed?'
Conrad nodded.
`And?' Archie was losing his patience. Davey was waiting for the gasket to blow. These guys were skating on extremely thin ice and the hot weather wasn't helping.
`And Kransky says,' Metcalf took a breath and launched into a very bad impression of a European accent, `"She is menn-ager at Ritz Hotel in Vint-zorr".'
The two men laughed while Archie and Davey stared at them, waiting. When both men had finally regained their composure, Archie spoke. So quietly even Davey was scared.
`Was it your belief that Mr Kransky was unaware of the nature of the business conducted at the Ritz Hotel in Windsor?'
`I'd reckon,' Metcalf said with a snort. `Though it's hard to imagine anyone being that dumb.'
`And did you make it your business to enlighten Mr Kransky as to the nature of the business conducted at the Ritz Hotel?'
`No way,' Conrad said with an emphatic shake of his head. `No point in inflaming a potentially volatile domestic situation.'
`Yeah,' his partner concurred, visibly relieved by Conrad's use of correct terminology.
Archie wasn't buying it.
`Would it be fair to say that you may have, inadvertently perhaps, given Mr Kransky the impression that his notion of his wife's employment was a crock of shit?' Archie asked.
Another silence.
`It's possible,' Conrad said, looking sideways at his partner. Metcalf had obviously decided, wisely, to let his partner do all the talking. `I mean, we did laugh when he said that, didn't we Bob? And he didn't like that. He started banging the desk and yelling, you know, things like "Why you are laughing?" and "Is good job! My wife she is very good vorr-ker!" Anyway, we told him to lower his voice unless he fancied a night in the lock-up.'
`Trying to calm him down, you know?' Metcalf said.
`He was cranky,'Conrad said.
In spite of himself, Metcalf let out a loud guffaw, and slapped his thighs.
`No, mate, Kransky! His name was Kransky, not cranky.'
`He was angry,' Conrad said.
As they walked back to the car, Archie let forth a stream of expletives in which the words `clown', `comedian' and other words beginning with the same letter featured heavily.
`Let's eat,' Davey suggested when the door slammed on his partner's side of the car.
`Fancy