by Gary Gregor
“Anyone done time?”
“Again, there’s a few. Mostly for non-payment of fines etcetera. None who you would consider to be anything more than low level offenders.”
Russell Foley tucked his phone into his pocket, stepped closer to the desk and glanced down at the map. “Max, Spog, you two know everyone here, and I expect most of those living in Papunya. Do the rounds of both places. Find out if there is anyone who has left town recently and has not yet returned. Find out where they went and, if possible, if they can be contacted.”
“You think we are looking for locals?” Sparrow asked.
“I don’t know,” Foley shrugged. “I doubt it. This is a sophisticated job. It would not have been a ‘spur of the moment’ thing. It would have taken considerable planning and preparation. I accept that such planning and preparation would probably rule out local involvement but let’s eliminate that element first.”
“Okay,” Sparrow nodded. “We’ll get on it.”
“What do you want me to do?” Sam asked.
“Come with me,” Foley said
“Where are we going?”
“Back out to the scene,” Foley answered.
A few metres from where Foley and Rose stood back-to-back, both staring long and hard at the vast country around them, a patch of discolored ground, once dark red but now a dirty, dark brown color, was still evident in the dry dust at the side of the road. Although slowly fading, unsheltered from the relentless, burning sun, the residue from Walter Tjapanangka’s fatal wound still attracted a swarm of flies, albeit in lesser numbers than when the blood was fresh and far more inviting.
Foley turned and looked at the flies harassing the dark stain on the ground. “You ever wonder where they come from?” he muttered.
“Where who comes from?” Sam asked absently.
“The flies,” Foley said.
“The flies?”
“Yeah, where do they come from? Look around, there’s nothing out here. No trees. No water. No houses. Nothing. Where do the fuckers come from?”
Sam focused on the swarm swooping down to, and out from, the dry blood patch. “Does it matter where they come from?” he asked Foley.
Foley shrugged. “No, not really. I just find it interesting. If there was nothing here to attract them, where would they be? Where do they sleep?”
“Are you serious?” Sam asked incredulously. He swatted furiously at a small break-away swarm that had obviously suddenly discovered their presence.
“No,” Foley answered. “In the whole scheme of things, it doesn’t matter where they come from. I just find it curious, that’s all.”
“I suppose it is another example of the great mysteries of life,” Sam suggested.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Foley agreed.
“What are we looking for,” Sam asked. “Besides the place of residence of the flies,” he added sarcastically.
“The direction of travel,” Foley answered. He moved out into the centre of the road and looked to the north.
“We know they headed along Gary Junction Road,” Sam said. “Then they turned north and drove up to the Tanami Road. That’s where they torched the bus.”
“So, they had to off-load the teacher and the kids somewhere between here and there, right?” Foley posed.
“I’m thinking they off-loaded them up at the Tanami Road,” Sam said. “Maybe onto another bus… or a large van of some sort… like a furniture removal van.”
“I thought we talked about that,” Foley said. “As I recall, you were of the opinion that they stashed the hostages somewhere out there in the desert and drove the empty bus up to the Tanami Road.”
Sam shrugged. “It was just a thought,” he said.
“The more I think about it, the more I think you could be right,” Foley said. “With all the road-blocks we have in place, I’m sure we would have found them by now if they were trying to transport them beyond Alice Springs. There’s only one logical way to go when they reached the Tanami. The bus was found a few k’s to the right of the intersection, back towards Alice Springs. Had they turned left they would have eventually reached the Tilmouth Roadhouse, risking discovery, and then there’s nothing until the Western Australia border. I can’t see any reason why they would head that way. The area is far more desolate than it is here.”
“With twelve hostages to hide, maybe desolate is what they want,” Sam suggested.
“The Tanami Road intersects with the Stuart Highway twenty klicks north of Alice Springs,” Foley continued. “Our road-block would have been in place long before they reached it, even if they were in another vehicle and went that way. And, regardless of which way they went, it would be too easy to spot them from the air. One road. A rough, isolated, cattle road all the way to the Western Australian border. Like you, I’m beginning to think the hostages were not on the bus when it reached the Tanami Road.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “If I’m right, where did they off-load them?”
Foley turned in a slow circle. Tiny puffs of powder-like dust, stirred by his feet, settled in a thin film on his usually highly polished shoes. When he had completed one full rotation, he stopped and focused again on the parched, tree-less country to the north. “I don’t know,” he muttered softly.”
“Do you have a theory?” Sam asked.
“More like a hypothesis,” Foley answered.
“Hypothesis?”
“Yeah, a supposition.”
“I know what a hypothesis is, Russ. It’s just that it’s one of those… you know… studious, highfalutin words. Like it belongs in a university lecture room, not out here in the Never Never.”
“What would you prefer I say?”
“I like ‘theory’,” Sam smiled.
“That’s because you are an un-educated idiot, Sam.”
Sam adopted a boxing pose. “You wanna fight?”
“No,” Foley said. “I don’t want to fight. I want to find the teacher and her class.”
Sam relaxed. “Okay,” he said. “You are the second smartest cop I know, let’s hear your hypothesis thing.”
“I think they all left here in the bus… the teacher and the kids… and at least one of the perps. They drove to another location, a location we are yet to determine, and off-loaded their hostages. Then, one of the perps drove the empty bus to the Tanami Road, followed by a co-offender in the ‘break down’ vehicle. They torched the bus and drove away.”
“Why the Tanami Road?” Sam asked.
“To throw us off,” Foley answered. “They wouldn’t torch the bus close to where they off-loaded the hostages, that would take us straight to them.”
“That’s why you are the second smartest cop I know,” Sam said.
“Who’s the smartest?”
Sam did not respond. He just smiled widely at his friend.
16
Asked to wait by the duty officer posted at the front counter reception area of Alice Springs Police Headquarters, Peter Cornwell paced impatiently back and forth across the entrance foyer. He cast an occasional, squinted glare accompanied by an exaggerated and unattractive scowl in the direction of the young Constable behind the counter.
He glanced often at his watch. This action, also exaggerated, was designed to convey his agitation and obvious annoyance to the officer who, he had no doubt, would immediately drop everything and attend to his requirements.
Cornwell was not used to waiting for anything or anyone. He was a politician and, like the vast majority of politicians the world over, he held the belief that his time was far more important than that of his lowly constituents and being asked to wait before he could speak to one of them was a foreign and unacceptable concept for him.
Cornwell was the Minister for Education in the incumbent Northern Territory Labor Government. Realistically, he had to know his position on the front bench of the government was tenuous at best, and his Party was destined for an electoral wipe-out in the upcoming Territory election. However, despite what he mig
ht believe of himself, Cornwell, was not a realist. Arriving at the knowledge that his time as a cabinet minister was limited was a prospect difficult for him to grasp. He was a conceited, arrogant, demanding personality who lived in complete denial that he was immensely unpopular with the electorate and indeed with many of his political colleagues as well as the staff in his electoral office who he drove to the point of exhaustion with his insistent and unrealistic work expectations.
For the various media outlets in the Territory, Peter Cornwell was a gift from the media gods. They loved him. Not because he was a lovable character, far from it. The media loved him because his conceited, brash, obnoxious manner provided great press. Any hint of scandal or impropriety involving Cornwell, regardless of how trivial or even whether such hint had any basis in fact, sold newspapers and lifted radio and television ratings. It was reported often and widely in the media that he was an odds-on bet to lose his electoral seat at the next Territory election; if his colleagues didn’t boot him out before then. It seemed the only person who would not accept that supposition was Cornwell himself. Losing his seat, and by extension his job, was simply not an option for him.
He glanced again at his watch, stopped pacing, and stepped across to the counter. “Did you tell Superintendent Barker that I was here?” he asked with a scowl that would peel paint from the wall.
“Yes, I did, sir,” Constable Lachlan Jefferies answered, forcing a smile that he hoped conveyed politeness as opposed to the desire to jump the counter and smack the smug bastard in the ear.
“Then, why am I not in there?”
“The Superintendent is busy, sir,” Jefferies responded. “I’m sure he will be with you shortly.”
“Busy? Busy?” Cornwell spluttered. “I’m not sure the Superintendent understands what ‘busy’ is! I’m busy! I don’t have the time to stand around here all day waiting to speak to him! Call him again, and remind him I am still here!”
“He knows you are here, sir,” Jefferies said.
“Remind him again!” Cornwell insisted.
Constable Jefferies glanced at a large wall clock hanging on the back wall of the foyer. “It’s only been a few minutes, sir,” he said.
Cornwell leaned across the counter and glared at the young Constable. “Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” Jefferies answered. “I know who you are, but me knowing who you are is not going to get you in to see Superintendent Barker any sooner. He will call for you as soon as he is free.”
“I’ve been waiting here to see your superior for twenty minutes,” Cornwell complained.
Jefferies glanced again at the clock on the wall. “Actually, it’s only been twelve minutes, sir.” He smiled politely at Cornwell and this time gave even more serious consideration to the merits of jumping the counter and hanging one on the Senator’s bulbous, blue-veined nose.
At that moment, Superintendent Cameron ‘Yap Yap’ Barker entered the reception area from a door leading to the inner sanctum of the headquarters building. He stepped across to the counter, reached across and offered his hand to Peter Cornwell. “Minister Cornwell. Good morning. I’m Cameron Barker. I apologise for keeping you waiting but, as you can imagine, this is a particularly busy time for us.”
Cornwell hesitated and threw a look of disdain at the outstretched hand before finally accepting it with a limp, dead-fish grip. He shook Barker’s hand once before releasing it and surreptitiously wiping his own on his trousers. “My time is valuable, Superintendent. I cannot afford to waste it standing around here waiting for you to find the time to speak with me.”
“Well, I’m here now,” Barker responded. He indicated a half-door at the far end of the counter. “Please come through. We’ll talk in my office.”
Barker crossed to the end of the counter where a half-door, locked from the inside, separated the public reception area from the business side of the counter. He unlocked the door, stepped aside, and beckoned Cornwell through. “My office is just down the hall,” he said, offering Cornwell a conciliatory smile, hoping it masked his distaste for the man but not really caring whether it did or not.
Cornwell entered and paused while Barker re-locked the door. He offered Constable Jefferies one of his best supercilious scowls and then followed Barker through into the heart of the headquarters building.
Followed closely by Cornwell, Barker entered his small office, adjacent the Major Crime squad room, and immediately seated himself behind his desk. “Please, have a seat,” he invited the Minister.
Cornwell could see only one chair; occupied by Barker. Confused he looked quickly around the tiny space and noticed a second chair, a standard, government issue, steel-legged chair against the wall and partially hidden behind the open door.
“Please,” Barker said. “Bring the chair closer. I’m afraid my rank doesn’t warrant a full office suite, as you can see”
As well as being unfamiliar with having to wait for what he considered an inordinate amount of time for an appointment, Cornwell was also not used to fetching his own chair. He looked back at the chair with undisguised disdain and paused, considering the merits of holding his ground and waiting until Barker rose from his seat and got the chair for him. Deciding that was probably not going to happen, he pushed the door partially closed, lifted the chair and positioned it in front of Barker’s desk with somewhat more gusto than was necessary.
When he sat, the chair squeaked in protest; Cornwell was not one who might be described as willowy in stature. The permanent flush in his cheeks, the fatty, hound-dog jowls, and the large, blue-veined nose, were an obvious indication that he spent way more time in the Parliament Dining Room consuming copious quantities of tax-payer-funded wine and cholesterol-laden food than he did working-out in the Parliament House gym or attending to matters related to his portfolio.
“Bring me up to date,” Cornwell said.
“Pardon?” Barker responded.
“The teacher and the students,” Cornwell said. “Bring me up to date.”
Before the minister’s arrival at the station, Cameron Barker had never met Peter Cornwell. But, based mostly on media reports and hotel-bar gossip, he had decided long ago, along with many others, that he did not like the man.
Barker was not one to judge the character of a person based only on bar-room gossip and suspect media reports but the past few minutes in the company of the arrogant, pompous prick, served only to exacerbate those feelings of distaste. The contemptuous smug, egotistical attitude seemed to ooze from Cornwell’s pores like perspiration on a humid day.
As Barker watched Cornwell squirm and wriggle his over-sized posterior onto the chair, he found himself hoping the chair would surrender under the weight and collapse beneath the Education Minister, sending him ungainly to the floor.
“What exactly would you like to know?” Barker asked.
“Everything,” Cornwell answered. “It’s been twenty-four hours since the bus was first reported missing. I want to know where you are with the investigation. I understand the first forty-eight hours are supposed to be the most important.”
Barker shrugged. “Every hour is important, Minister,” he said. “We have been in constant contact with the Chief Minister from the moment we learnt the bus and everyone on board was missing, updating him with our progress. I assume, in your capacity as Minister for Education, he would have passed on that information to you.”
“Of course he has,” Cornwell said. “In fact, he asked me to fly down here from Darwin to get a first-hand account.”
“Probably only too happy to see the back of you for a few days,” Barker wanted to say. “When did you get here?” he asked instead.
“Eight o’clock last night,” Cornwell answered.
“I was here until after eleven,” Barker said. “If you had phoned, I would have had someone pick you up from the airport.”
Cornwell waved his hand dismissively. “The casino sent a car,” he explained.
“You’re sta
ying at the casino?”
“Yes,” Cornwell confirmed with a lift of his brow that suggested his choice of accommodation was appropriate for one of his status.
Why not, you’re on the tax-payers’ dollar, Barker said to himself. Might just as well stay at the best place in town! “How long will you be here?” he asked.
“I’m booked on a flight to Fiji this afternoon,” Cornwell said.
“Fiji?”
“Yes, I was supposed to leave yesterday but this business put a stop to that. There is a three-day conference for relevant ministers on remote education in the South Pacific region,” Cornwell explained.
The silent cynic in Barker surfaced again. Three days of stuffing your fat face with free booze and food, he thought. “You might want to cancel that trip,” he said.
“What?” Cornwell sat a little more upright in his chair. “Why?”
Barker looked down at a file on his desk, opened it and took out a sheet of paper. “This arrived this morning,” he said, handing the page across the desk.
Cornwell grabbed at the paper. “What is it?”
“A ransom demand,” Barker said. “It’s a copy, of course. The original is being examined by our Forensic people. It was sent via text message to your departmental secretary in the Darwin office.”
Cornwell quickly read the note. “Two million dollars!” he exclaimed. His permanently flushed cheeks reddened deeper. “Two million dollars! Why wasn’t I told about this?”
Barker shrugged. “It seems no one could get hold of you. So, I’m telling you now.” Who are these people?” Cornwell asked.
“If we knew that, they would be locked up in the cells out back,” Barker said.
“Exactly where do they think that sort of money is going to come from?”
“I don’t suppose the perpetrators care where it comes from,” Barker answered. “But my guess would be, if a ransom was to be paid, it would come from General Revenue.”
