Chapter 48
Forty-eight hours later
Detective Yolanda Markos took a long, slow, deep breath.
On the other side of the door was an epic throng of press, bloodthirsty for the facts and baying for her statement.
Usually she liked to take a backseat, to leave this to the official spokesperson and keep her identity on the down-low.
It didn’t do for a woman who was taking on the underworld to be too public.
But today’s statement was different and it required the personal approach.
She pushed open the door and strode out with as much confidence as she could muster onto the front steps of the police station where a podium had been set up, with high tech audio so that those at the back could hear her over the shouts for comments, and soundbites could be played on all the news stations.
She wasn’t wholly surprised to find as she opened her mouth to speak that her hands were shaking.
“Good afternoon everyone,” she said, keeping her voice clipped and formal.
“I’m here to deliver a formal statement on behalf of Taskforce Lombardo, the unit assembled to investigate organised crime in Melbourne city.
As you are all aware, there have been escalating tensions between two of our largest crime syndicates over the last year and a half, resulting in several violent deaths and countless affected bystanders.
In the early hours of this morning Victoria Police have made major in-roads in the dismantling of organised crime in our state, with twenty-nine arrests made of members and associates of the Grant and Florelli families. ”
She paused to let the murmurs and exclamations ring out and found she couldn’t quite feel the full weight of this moment.
She’d fought for her entire professional life for the chance to one day get to make such a statement.
For decades it was simply an arrest here, an arrest there, a game of pointless and repetitive whack-a-mole, never once getting to cut the head off the snake. Until now.
For a few seconds she lost her way, the crowd of reporters fading into white noise.
She’d never, no matter how long she lived, forget the moment that Estella Grant had shown her that it wasn’t about cutting off the head at all.
It was about ripping the guts out, and this one woman had achieved what an entire taskforce had not been able to do, destroying the Florelli gang once and for all.
It had, perhaps, been the shock of the moment that had informed Yolanda’s next movements.
Letting Estella go on the shaky assertion that she would take down her own syndicate on the way out had been a highly dangerous and ethically indefensible decision.
Even standing there on the podium, Yolanda knew that it wasn’t impossible she was about to face her own investigation into her conduct, though she could only hope that the outcome — the Melbourne gang wars obliterated — would be enough to prevent deeper scrutiny.
More lives than her own depended on that hope.
All things considered, she still wasn’t sure if it had been the best or worst decision of her life.
“The taskforce acted in the wake of a significant tip-off, and a rapid escalation in activity on behalf of the criminal enterprises involved. In addition to the explosion in Maribyrnong on Wednesday night, two suspected shooting deaths and an as yet unsolved abduction, we are this afternoon able to confirm that the body discovered at the O’Hara Hotel in Clayton on Friday morning belonged to James Jenkins, aged 49, of South Yarra.
Mr. Jenkins was, as many of you know, the head of Fallen Productions, the television studio currently producing a series about Melbourne’s gangland wars, and his death is believed to be connected. ”
Yolanda took a long breath to try to settle herself as the assembled crowd of reporters exploded in a volley of questions.
She thought of the scene in the hotel room and the brutal death that had occurred there and wondered what Jenkins himself would make of this crowd, a man who had so thoroughly profited off other people’s trauma.
She waited for the yelling to stop and then continued.
It took her a solid moment, despite her carefully assembled statement, to find her footing now.
“Our investigation at the hotel has concluded that the leader of the Grant syndicate, Estella Grant, entered the hotel immediately after Mr. Jenkins and, along with one of her associates, entered the room just prior to the time of the murder. We are seeking no other suspects.”
The explosion this time was epic. Seasoned crime reporters and newbies alike were wetting themselves at the announcement of Estella Grant’s involvement.
Yolanda tried to keep calm, knowing that the press conference was being live streamed right now in studios across the country, that her face and her voice would be replayed over and over again in the coming weeks and years, as true crime documentaries and podcasts delved into this story until the end of time.
She hoped that if anyone saw the quiver of her jaw right now, they wouldn’t read into it.
She hoped that no one would see the emotion threatening to overcome her, a seasoned detective, right there on their screens.
She counted to ten, and then twenty, slowing her breathing, trying to stay calm, before she said her next words.
“There were reports of a prolonged altercation in the hotel room and the CCTV surveillance footage at the site uncovered that a second death occurred on Thursday night.”
The crowd leaned forward, rabid for details, but Yolanda found herself stuck, just for a moment, as she reran the footage in her mind.
The hulking figure of legendary Grant enforcer Kenneth Brozovi?, hauling down the corridor the bloodied lifeless body of a woman Yolanda knew well.
A woman she’d chased after and sparred with, followed and surveilled, whose life’s work had, in the end been the same as Yolanda’s.
A woman whose frantic phone call she’d taken right before the end.
“I can confirm that a known associate of the Grant family has turned himself into police and confessed to the murder of Estella Grant.”
When the press conference was finally over, Yolanda locked herself in her office and wept.