Chapter 40
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR NIGEL Spader was the God of Gotham. It was one of his only hobbies, constructing his dark city, a place where good and evil clashed violently over hand-painted sidewalks and green flocked grass. The sprawling table in the centre of the concrete garage barely contained the complex miniature model city. Artistically warped and leaning buildings crowded over a long, narrow headland jutting into a model harbour filled with black waves. The miniature city had everything. Uptown, the narrow streets held neat brownstone townhouses and apartment buildings lined with tiny fire-escapes. Downtown, he had constructed the imposing city hall with hundreds of steps, homeless people glued in and around its buttressed sides with their trolleys of garbage. Men in suits with long black coats froze mid-stride on the sidewalk, briefcases swinging, passing the tiny models of prostitutes on the corners.
Nigel sat on a leather stool by the sprawling Wayne Manor, gluing the side of the ancient building to the front with the careful strokes of a nail polish brush. The battery-operated subway train emerged from the tunnel at the side of the harbour and wound around the corner by his elbow, then over an ornate gothic bridge that had taken Nigel four weeks to create. He felt happy. The world beyond the reach of his garage light, the wet Sydney streets, was nothing. He was the lord of this place, and at this moment, in his universe, everything was well.
The sensation did not last long. Nigel jolted as the garage door slid up just enough to allow Tox Barnes to emerge into the light. The man walked into the garage like he owned it. Nigel found his mouth was hanging open.
‘Evening, Detective.’
Nigel felt a splinter of pain in his brain. He knew Tox Barnes. Everybody did. The man was rumoured to have murdered a mother and young son when he was a child himself, an eruption of violence from a group of boys who must have been frenzied with rage. Nigel didn’t know how much truth there was behind the rumour. All he knew was that Tox Barnes was poison, and that anyone who worked with the man was stained.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Oh, you know, I was in the neighbourhood. I’m working on the Samuel Blue case. Understand you were head of the task force.’ Tox’s eyes wandered over the enormous model city. He bent and looked through the windows of an office building, noting the tiny people at the desks on the fourth floor. ‘Jesus Christ, this is some set-up you’ve got here. You’ve spent a lot of time on this. I thought you were married? You should marry someone.’
‘I’m not going to discuss a single aspect of the GRK case with you.’ Nigel looked at his hands. He was holding the glued pieces of Wayne Manor together. He could not put them down now, before the glue set, or it would be hours sanding the lumpy glue back off again. ‘Get out of my garage.’
‘Look, I’m really only interested in Sam Blue’s confession,’ Tox said. ‘I know you’ve muscled suspects into confessions before. Did you lean on Blue?’
‘I’m not …’ Nigel was almost blind with rage. ‘Get … out … of my …’
‘Huh! Look at this!’ Tox said. He reached into the city, somewhere around Third Avenue, and plucked up a prostitute. Nigel heard the snap sound of the glue securing the model woman’s feet to the sidewalk. ‘You’ve got tiny little prozzies!’
‘Stop! Don’t touch that!’
‘Oh shit,’ Tox examined the figurine’s stiletto heels. ‘Was that attached? Sorry.’
Nigel put down Wayne Manor, wincing as the still-wet sides became unwed and flopped apart. He shoved Tox in the chest and rescued the miniature prostitute, looking at the space where she’d been ripped from the model.
‘Did you lean on Sam Blue, Nigel?’ Tox asked.
‘We lean on everyone, arsehole,’ Nigel snapped. ‘This is a fucking serial killer case.’
‘Well, there’s leaning and then there’s leaning. Did you guide him into the confession? Did you drop hints about what happened to the missing girls so his story would line up?’
‘We did nothing unprofessional.’
‘Come on.’
Nigel gave an exasperated growl. ‘I wasn’t there for the entire interrogation, OK? We took shifts. It’s possible someone else dropped hints.’
Tox put a finger on the train tracks. The train stopped at his finger, the tiny wheels grinding in their slots.
‘Stop! You’re going to break it. This is not a toy, you fuck! This is very expensive shit!’
‘Did you reveal anything …’ Tox said slowly, ‘that would have led Sam …’
‘I left the autopsy photos with him, OK?’ Nigel breathed. ‘He’d have known the girls suffered certain injuries from the pictures.’
‘So you forced the confession?’
‘We encouraged it. There’s nothing wrong with that. We provided him with materials to help him along. That’s all.’
‘Did you starve him?’
‘No.’
‘Did you beat him?’
‘No!’
‘Did you leave him in the custody of people who did do those things?’
‘Get out!’ Nigel grabbed a cricket bat from beside the garage door. ‘Get out of my garage!’
Tox took the train from the tracks, detaching the battery-pack carriage, making the internal lights flicker and die. He threw the train over his shoulder so that it crashed onto the cluttered table against the wall.
‘I wasn’t there for the whole Blue confession, alright?’ Nigel begged. ‘No one was. We didn’t keep a log. It was twenty-two hours. People came and went. The tape wasn’t always on. It’s possible Blue was leaned on too hard.’
‘It’s possible?’
‘It’s possible, yes.’
Tox nodded, wandered around to the harbour, making sure he was always on the opposite side of the table to Nigel. He spied the miniature model of the Joker standing on steps of the town hall, a Tommy gun in his hands. Tox snapped the Joker from his place on the model landscape, smiled at the tiny purple-jacketed figure in his fingers.
‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘My favourite.’
Tox threw the Joker up and caught him in his palm, put the little man in the pocket of his leather jacket. He winked at Nigel as he ducked back under the garage door and out into the night.