The Great Divide

by L. J. M. Owen

  Pulling up to the kerb, he could see signs that O’Brien was at home.

  The kitchen light was on and murmurs from a TV or radio echoed through the house’s thin walls. His first knock went unanswered.

  O’Brien’s car was in the carport at the side of the house. All signs pointed to him being home. Jake knocked again.

  After a third knock Jake decided to try the door handle. It was unlocked.

  He pushed the door halfway open and called, ‘Mr O’Brien?’

  No response.

  Jake wasn’t within his rights to enter the home. He had no warrant or reason to believe O’Brien was in danger in the house. He searched the perimeter, looking in every window and listening for clues as to which room O’Brien was in.

  Finally, through a crack in the curtains in what must have been a bedroom, Jake spied a foot.

  On the floor. Toes pointing downwards.

  He called the station. It switched through to Murphy.

  ‘Listen, mate, I’m at Liam O’Brien’s address. There appears to be someone unconscious on the floor of a back bedroom. The front door is open. I’m going in to have a look.’

  ‘No worries,’ Murphy said. ‘Need me to do anything?’

  ‘I’ll check back in with you as soon as I’ve assessed the situation.’

  Jake entered the house’s narrow corridor, braced himself against the festering smell of rotting garbage and called out again. ‘Mr O’Brien? Liam O’Brien? It’s detective Jake Hunter. I can see someone on the floor. I’m coming in to check on you.’

  Apart from the blah blah blah of a ridiculous breakfast show on the TV in the background, there were no sounds in the house.

  Liam O’Brien was lying face down on the floor of his bedroom. A dark stain near his head spread from a spilt glass of liquor that had presumably been poured from the empty whisky bottle on the bedside table.

  ‘Mr O’Brien?’

  Still nothing. He was out cold. Nothing coffee and a cold dose of reality wouldn’t fix. At least Jake wouldn’t need to start the day by calling for paramedics again. They were starting to tease him.

  ‘Mr O’Brien?’ he tried again.

  Jake noticed a white A4 sheet of paper on the end of the bed, not far from O’Brien’s head. ‘Sorry’ was the first word that caught Jake’s eye. He grabbed the piece of paper.

  May God forgive me …

  Shit! Jake knelt beside O’Brien and shook his shoulder. His flesh was firm and unyielding.

  Jake pressed two fingers into the crook of O’Brien’s neck. Not only was there no pulse, his flesh had the rigid, waxy feel of a body in the latter stages of rigour.

  He sighed heavily and pulled out his phone to call for an ambulance.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dunton, Tasmania

  Thursday, 9.16 a.m.

  ‘I’ll begin the autopsy as soon as his body arrives,’ Meena said to Jake as he explained whose body was on the way to her morgue. ‘What’s the most urgent thing you need to know?’

  ‘He’s left a note claiming responsibility for his sister’s death. I need to know if he was capable of strangling her with his hands …’

  ‘He was the older man visiting Mason Campbell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He probably could have, although it would have been a struggle.’

  ‘Also, could he have carried her body a significant distance across wet and muddy ground to dump her in the vineyard?’

  ‘Although Ava was small, from memory he wasn’t much bigger, was he?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound plausible, but I’ll be able to give you a firmer opinion once I’ve had a chance to look him over.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You really are racking them up, aren’t you?’ Her tone was light.

  Jake smiled into the phone. ‘Changed your mind about me?’

  ‘Oh no, you owe me, mister. I expect the fanciest restau­rant in town.’

  ‘You know that’s probably going to be Chinese at the RSL?’

  ‘Love a good stir-fry.’

  Jake’s grin dropped away as he hung up and re-entered O’Brien’s house. He hadn’t expected to find anyone he was interested in here. He had promised himself he would focus solely on reviewing his life to date and making plans for his future. He certainly didn’t want to become involved with someone to the extent that he needed to choose between staying in Tasmania and moving on with his life.

  What was he thinking? They hadn’t been out once yet. He needed to focus on the matter at hand.

  As the house was now the scene of a suspicious death, and as the former occupant was a suspect in multiple offences against children, Jake believed he had a right to search the premises.

  Snapping on latex gloves, his first move was to open every window in the house. If Ava’s home had been a study in neat and tidy, Liam’s house was the epitome of savage neglect. The air inside was thick with the stench of rotting food and mould. Jake could only imagine how foul it must have been in high summer.

  At the top of Jake’s list of preferred discoveries would be the missing twenty years of Ava’s diaries. If someone had removed them from her home before Jake had a chance to search it, her brother was the most likely candidate.

  His phone rang again. It was the St John of God accountant he’d left messages for. Despite Pete’s news that he couldn’t find any financial connection between the girls’ home and this mob, Jake knew he couldn’t trust the order as far as he could spit. His misgivings must have been apparent.

  ‘Detective Hunter.’ The bean counter sounded defen­sive. ‘The order does not now, nor has it ever, supported a home in Dunton. And …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look. I’m just an auditor sent in to clean up this organisation’s records. I’m not a member. I know what these people did, and it sickens me. Please understand I’m not hiding anything—to the best of my knowledge, this place wasn’t involved in whatever’s gone on down there. Not financially, at least.’

  That checked out.

  So where had the O’Briens’ pecuniary backing come from? Ava O’Brien had no income, her brother had merely scraped by. Yet somehow they paid rent to Mason Campbell for twenty years.

  Or had they? There were no records to support that.

  Even so, they had found the money for food, clothing and essentials for at least fourteen girls over the years.

  Could they have been selling sufficient unwanted Dunton babies each year to cover their costs?

  Kelly’s words, annoying as they were, were true. Jake had no evidence to support the idea, only gossip.

  Time to search O’Brien’s place inch by inch, preferably while holding his breath.

  *

  Over an hour later, after sorting through boxes and makeshift shelving of bizarre religious texts and ancient medical tomes, Jake finally saw the blue spine of a volume similar to Ava’s diaries.

  He shifted the books on top of it to one side, causing a small avalanche of papers. Pulling it from the pile he opened the front cover. It was from one of the missing years.

  Collecting all the diaries that had belonged to Ava—and some journals that appeared to be the corresponding records belonging to O’Brien—Jake headed outside for blessed fresh air.

  His phone rang again as he was opening his car door.

  ‘Meena?’

  ‘The answer is no, there’s no way Liam O’Brien could have carried his sister across a paddock. His spine and knees are so compromised he would have had trouble carrying a cup of tea from the kitchen.’

  More likely to have been a middie of beer across a pub, Jake thought. So if O’Brien couldn’t have dumped Ava in the vineyard … ‘He had to have an accomplice. Or possibly …’

  ‘Or he’s a victim of the same person wh
o killed her,’ Meena said with certainty. ‘He has injuries to his neck similar to Ava’s and again consistent with having been strangled. I can’t get him into an MRI until later today, but you may be looking at another murder.’

  Jake wasn’t entirely surprised. Either O’Brien’s accom­plice had turned on him, or the same person who murdered Ava had now gone after O’Brien and attempted to make it appear that he suicided over guilt from killing his sister. Was it Mason Campbell? Could this be a case of co-conspirators turning on each other?

  Jake could see the possibility of Ava, Liam and Mason all being involved in the abuse of the girls at the home. Ava’s desire to tell someone about Amelia’s back­ground could have prompted O’Brien and Campbell to turn on her.

  Might O’Brien then have struck Campbell over the head in the manor kitchen in an effort to remove him from the equation, and once O’Brien invoked their code word that seemed to require Mason giving Liam money, could Campbell have responded with murder?

  The scenario didn’t quite work. Given O’Brien’s knees, even with Campbell they would’ve found it near impossible to move Ava’s body. And they’d have left two sets of tell-tale footprints in the mud around her body, not one.

  Unless Jake reverted to chasing down the unknown former residents of the home, or possibly a woman who had given birth there, who else was left as a suspect?

  ‘Jake, are you there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, drifted off.’

  ‘The DNA results on Campbell have started to come in. They’re not complete yet, but there’s a definite connection with Max Campbell.’

  Jake’s heart dropped. Had he been duped by Max’s good guy act? ‘Is he the father?’

  ‘His Y chromosome is a match for the child’s … but no, he’s not the father. He’s more closely related than, say, a grandfather or half-brother or uncle, but less related than a father.’

  ‘What could account for that?’

  ‘I think the consanguinity I’m seeing in the child’s DNA comes from the Campbell line. How many close male relatives does Max have?’

  ‘Just one that I know of.’

  Jake heard the sound of Meena opening her mouth to speak, then stopping herself, several times.

  Lilith’s face rose in Jake’s mind … that’s why she looked so familiar. ‘If Max was the baby’s grandfather on his maternal side—meaning he’s Lilith’s father—what would account for the inbreeding you’re seeing in her baby’s DNA?’

  ‘If Mason Campbell is Max’s only male relative that would make him both the baby’s great-grandfather and …’ Meena stopped, sounding too sad to articulate the thought.

  Oh God. Poor Lilith.

  *

  The contents of both Ava and Liam O’Brien’s diaries were stomach-turning, filled with religious references and bizarre justifications for their treatment of the girls in Ava’s care. Jake sat in his car with the engine and heater running as he looked through them. Both also used codes throughout: hints at events incompletely described, initials to represent people. What he could make out, though, again led back to Mason Campbell.

  Jake needed Kelly to listen to him this time.

  As he returned to the station, he ran arguments through his head about what to say to convince Kelly that Mason Campbell was just as involved in the criminal activity at the girls’ home as Ava and Liam O’Brien had been.

  ‘I owe you an apology, Hunter,’ Kelly said, throwing Jake off before he’d even started.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Based on the suicide note, seems you were right about O’Brien.’

  Jake had read the contents to the sergeant over the phone.

  ‘If I’d let you arrest him when he was here we might have him in a cell right now instead of the morgue.’

  ‘Sir, it appears it may not have been a suicide.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘It looks like another homicide, similar to what happened to Ava O’Brien.’

  ‘You mean his fingernails were ripped out? You didn’t mention that over the phone.’

  ‘Not that part. The preliminary examination by the pathologist shows he may have been strangled in a similar manner.’

  ‘How certain is she?’

  ‘She’ll have clearer results later today.’

  Kelly slumped back in his ergonomic chair. ‘We’re back to square one then?’

  ‘Not exactly. I know Mason Campbell was involved somewhere along the line.’

  ‘All right, walk me through it.’

  Jake was pleasantly surprised by the new level of trust Kelly was displaying toward him.

  ‘I found Ava’s missing diaries. Skimming through, it seems she believed the home was set up and paid for by St John of God from the beginning. But O’Brien’s journals show he deceived her about that from the start. It was an arrangement between O’Brien and an “M”. I’m not certain if there was any element of coercion in their relationship, but it seems O’Brien did control his sister to some extent. I don’t think she ever fully understood that O’Brien himself was behind her establishing the home.’

  ‘Are you saying it wasn’t ever an official home?’ Kelly said.

  ‘Correct. And perhaps Ava had started to suspect that recently. I think conflict between the two O’Briens is what set off this whole chain of events, not some argument between Charlotte and Amelia about Max Campbell.’

  ‘So if the home wasn’t funded by the government or the church, how did it stay afloat?’

  ‘It seems their main source of income was selling boys born at the home to adoptive parents. I’m not sure if the money they made from it was sufficient to cover all running costs, but certainly it could have covered the majority of them.’

  ‘So where was the rest coming from?’

  ‘There was another financial backer. Someone referred to only as “M”.’

  ‘You’re thinking that’s Mason Campbell?’

  Jake nodded. ‘O’Brien seems to have kept all the players involved separate from each other, so I don’t think Ava knew Campbell was a financial backer for the home.’

  ‘Campbell’s a kook, but he doesn’t throw money around,’ Kelly said. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Going on what’s in their diaries, Ava and Liam O’Brien both believed it was their duty to curb “Satanic desires” in the girls by removing from them any temptation to enjoy sex. Their warped reasoning—for want of a better term—was that this would protect their eternal souls. They did this with genital mutilation soon after a girl started to menstruate.’

  Which explained why Charlotte hadn’t been attacked by the time the home closed—she hadn’t hit puberty yet.

  ‘The process Ava describes is feeding the girls strawberries laced with a sedative, then leaving the room while her brother mutilated them. She then kept them in a locked room under sedation as they healed.’

  ‘But none of that ties them to Campbell.’

  ‘I’m getting to that. O’Brien’s diaries talk about his belief that powerful men deserved to benefit from his work.’

  ‘You don’t think he meant gardening?’

  ‘I think O’Brien’s beliefs went further than his sister’s. I get the sense he believed the girls in the children’s home were somehow less than human.’

  ‘I see,’ Kelly said.

  ‘And I’m certain that the “M” in his journals is Mason Campbell. From what I can tell he seems to have met Campbell when working as a gardener at the St John of God compound in Castlemaine many years ago. Somehow they agreed on the idea of a girls’ home on Campbell’s property. Campbell seems to have paid for both Liam and Ava O’Brien to move here and set up and then promised O’Brien some getaway cash if he ever needed to skip town as a result of their activities.’

  Kelly shook his head. ‘But why? Why any of it?’

  ‘Once th
e girls had recovered from being mutilated, O’Brien would send Ava out of town on her annual holiday and’—Jake swallowed—‘drug them again to give Campbell access to rape them. I can’t quite figure out if it was O’Brien or Campbell who removed the girls’ fingernails at the time. Ava mentions being shocked by it at first then realising it was another way God could protect the girls from appearing sexually alluring to men.’

  Kelly cleared his throat. ‘Hunter, this is a serious accusation to level against a member of such a prominent local family. How certain are you?’

  ‘One hundred percent.’

  Kelly tapped one finger on the edge of his desk. ‘I didn’t listen to you last time and look how that turned out. Do you have anything concrete?’

  ‘The pathologist has cross-matched a sample from Max Campbell with the umbilical cord of one of the babies born to a girl from the home, the one I interviewed in Melbourne.’

  ‘Sorry, Max Campbell?’

  ‘It’s complicated, but in essence, it seems Max was a close relative of the child twice over.’

  ‘How does that implicate Mason Campbell?’

  ‘The father of the child was a close male relative of Max’s, and Mason is the only candidate I know of. Combine that with the fact that he organised for the home to be set up on his land, paid for it, and lived right next door, and I think we have every reason to arrest Mason Campbell for historic crimes against children.’

  Kelly stared at Jake for an uncomfortably long time.

  ‘Let me make a phone call,’ he said finally, ‘then we’ll bring him in.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dunton, Tasmania

  Thursday, 5 p.m.

  As Jake drove Kelly to the Campbell estate he couldn’t help but worry at his lack of progress determining who had murdered Ava. While it felt good to be finally making an arrest—and he hoped it would lead to a vile abuser living out the rest of his miserable days behind bars—Mason Campbell couldn’t have carried Ava across the vineyard to dump her body any more than her brother could have.

  The way O’Brien had spoken to Campbell in the hospital room suggested they both had reason to be afraid of a third party. But who?