Cole found Robyn Kinross a learned and enthusiastic family historian, and he was invited into the house, a stone building unusual in these parts and built just after the turn of the century. Inside were many common living rooms, each with high, patterned ceilings and broad, silled windows. A wide, bull-nosed veranda shielded all sides of the house from burning summer sun, and rainfall when it came.
It was darkish inside on this gloomy day, but thickly carpeted floors and fires burning in the lounge and kitchen created an impression of warmth. On the walls were colour-tinted photographs of ancestors and oil paintings of rural scenes, of Scotland and possibly of the Kinross property itself. A family coat of arms and tartan hung in the room where visitors would be entertained, if they ever were. For Cole had a sense that time had ground to a stop in these rooms. There were no tea cups waiting to be cleared, dust settled on chair armrests, and the drapes were three-quarters drawn in what could have been a permanent protest against the light.
‘These photographs. Are they all family?’ Cole asked of military-uniformed men hung in what once might have been termed a reading room.
‘All of them,’ she said proudly. ‘Eleven members of our family have seen active service in the Great War and World War Two.’
‘Did they all get home?’
She paused before one photograph. ‘This one, Frederick Kinross, died in France in 1916. Beside him here, his younger brother Andrew, perished one week before the war ended. Tragedy upon tragedy. In the second war we lost another two,’ she said solemnly, moving a few steps along. ‘This is Neil Kinross. He died in North Africa. My mother’s brother died, too.’
‘Very sad,’ Cole said, scanning the faces on the wall. ‘The first war especially, my family copped it too, everyone was affected weren’t they?’
‘Terrible,’ she agreed, and Cole saw sorrow in her eyes, and that family was important to her.
‘You said something about the Colstons the other day. That there was something about them going way back, to the war. Which war did you mean?’
‘Harry’s family?’ Her eyes were still fixed on her family’s dead. ‘World War Two. John Colston was somehow involved in my uncle’s death, or that was the idea I got.’
‘Harry never said anything?’
‘He did about that. He heard it was an accident, too. But we never really talked about it. We were both very young when it happened.’
‘Do you think that had anything to do with you two breaking up?’
‘No. It was to do with something else.’
‘But you don’t know what?’
‘No, and he wouldn’t tell me. Sometimes he looked at me in this peculiar way. I should have seen the writing on the wall then. Anyone who keeps secrets from the person they’re supposed to love …’
Her voice trailed off and she drew herself away from the photographs.
‘Did Harry love you then?’
‘Oh yes, he did. That made his family casting me off even harder.’
‘This is none of my business, and forgive me for saying it,’ Cole said. ‘But you and Harry seem an odd couple. You’re smart, you don’t suffer fools, and you’re a modern woman who prefers fast cars to horses. I can’t see any of Harry in that.’
She chuckled softly. ‘I thought that myself sometimes. But who knows what attracts one person to another? Perhaps it’s true that opposites do attract, although we did have things in common, too, despite what you might think. Our history on the land, for example. But I’m over all that now. The Colstons are the past.’
‘And no boyfriend now?’
‘No,’ she said, without any trace of regret or melancholy. ‘I have male friends I can call on for company if I feel like it, mostly in Melbourne when I go there. If there were any men in town here whose interests went beyond football and cricket I might be interested, but you try and find me one.’
‘I’ll put my thinking cap on,’ Cole answered light-heartedly.
‘Come on,’ she said, taking his arm momentarily. ‘There’s something else I want to show you. If we’re quick.’
She led him to the rear of the house and through the back door, either side of which were square, brick buildings the size of a small bedroom. She used a large key to unlock the structure on their left and anticipated Cole’s question by saying, ‘We aren’t completely sure, but we think this was where the family originally churned its own butter, and kept milk and cream cool.’
The building being windowless, it took Cole a minute to adjust to the light, before she found the light switch.
‘Being a policeman, I thought you might be interested,’ she said with an expectant look.
‘Very impressive!’ he couldn’t help but exclaim.
What he saw wasn’t a churnery but an armoury, with an array of rifles and pistols of all description hanging from the four walls, from heavy weapons that appeared Boer War and Great War to modern shotguns and rifles. In the middle of the room, on the concrete floor, was a small cannon. A tall and expansive cabinet against the far wall housed a small library of books on military history. There were even medieval-looking weapons: lances, a pike, longbow and arrows, a mace and heavy throwing hammer. Beneath a bench were ammunition boxes and when he nudged one with a foot it didn’t budge at all. A clutch of African spears bristled in a corner.
‘It’s my father’s passion. But if we see him before you leave don’t say I took you here. He doesn’t like anyone knowing about it.’
A few minutes later she locked the room and they strolled around the veranda, whereupon Cole heard Bill Kinross’s raised voice castigating his sons. Robyn held Cole back out of sight as the tirade continued. It sounded to Cole as though the sons hadn’t oiled tools in the machinery shed to their old man’s liking, had left one God-awful mess there, and were now being paid out for it. One of the sons was returning fire, and for a minute Cole feared he was going to have to intervene.
Robyn tugged his sleeve. ‘Don’t worry, they’re always like that. But I think the coast’s clear, now,’ she grinned as the row subsided. ‘What do you think of our place?’
‘It’s one of the better properties I’ve seen. I can see why you’re so proud of it,’ he answered, but he was uneasy about the men’s arguing. There was venom in those raised voices.
‘And thanks for coming out,’ she said, as if the men’s quarrelling had never occurred. ‘It’s been wonderful seeing you and I’ll pop in and say hello sometime. But if you don’t mind, I’ll let you see yourself off.’
And with that, she leant forward and kissed him quickly before he knew what was happening. He watched her disappear back inside the house.
Taken aback, Cole paused to look at where she’d gone, but the door had shut behind her, and he returned to his car seeing the downcast sons, both in their late twenties he gauged, trudging away into a paddock with shovels over their shoulders.
If it wasn’t odd, it was unusual, he thought. This family’s behaviour. The way she’d kissed him like that. The armoury that could fight a small war. The heated argument between father and sons. Heaven help any thief caught in the act by Kinross or his sons, he thought.
There was another noticeable thing too, though, something remarkable for its absence. In all his wandering through the house he hadn’t seen a single photograph of Mrs Kinross, or any sign that she’d lived in the house. Nor had her daughter mentioned her at any time. What he hadn’t seen, then, was as powerful to him as anything he had witnessed on his visit to the property. It was as if the mother had been expunged from the family record. Was it out of embarrassment, the shame of her institutionalisation, or was there some other reason for it?
He understood the Kinross’s stubborn refusal to engage with the town, their desire to do things in their own way and in their own time. It was that which might have offended the sensibilities of those in Mitchell who ticked them off as stuck-up, mad i
solates. But there was also a glimmer of truth in that perception.
And there was also something else he understood, that it was Robyn Kinross who would have been the bulwark against the turbulent undercurrents in that family, that it would be she staving off the worst inclinations of the father and his sons.
Chapter 19
Cole strolled down to the State Bank and asked the manager, Geoffrey Rowlands, to show him Harry Colston’s banking records. Rowlands’ face was a blank slate, which didn’t worry Cole. He knew inscrutability was an asset for a bank manager and that banking was a business that kept its distance from emotions. It was numbers, not words, that interested Rowlands.
Cole sat patiently in his office while he fished out the records.
When he delivered them, Cole told him, ‘Stay here a minute, will you? I might want to ask some questions.’
Rowlands said nothing but sat and obeyed without any tangible change of expression as Cole flicked through the statements. Alongside them were Harry Colston’s betting records and Cole wasn’t surprised to notice that during periods of intense betting Colston was also withdrawing large sums of money from the bank.
Cole asked, ‘Did he ever overdraw his account?’
‘Often,’ the manager replied evenly. ‘At first it concerned me, but money always reappeared in the account in the end.’
‘What did you put that down to?’
‘I couldn’t accurately say, and I wouldn’t like to guess.’
‘Try then. Where do you think the money came from?’
Rowlands gazed absently at the paperwork on his desk.
‘He was a farmer. He had both dairy and beef cattle. There was some dairy income, however that income was partly offset by the sharefarmer Mr Colston employed to do his milking. Farmers have been known to sell the animals they breed. Mr Colston also sold one part of his property to a neighbour.’
‘I knew about that,’ Cole said. ‘But the sharefarmer is news to me. Do you know who the sharefarmer was?’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Mr Colston was also in trouble with the tax department, too. Were you aware of that?’
‘Yes, only too aware. As you’d expect, I had inquiries from the taxation department myself. I was obliged to hand over copies of all Mr Colston’s records. At some point he was fined for not paying back tax.’
‘But you kept his account going here?’
‘I saw no reason not to,’ Rowlands answered a trifle defensively.
‘I saw Mr Colston’s accountant, Laurie Heywood, recently. He mentioned that Mr Colston had been regularly paying money into two bank accounts, in transactions that seemed a bit odd to him. These two here, I’m guessing,’ Cole said as his eyes ran down the page in his hands. ‘Do you know who these belong to?’
Rowlands bent forward, looked at the account numbers but said, ‘No.’
‘But you could find out?’
‘I should think so.’
‘Then I’d appreciate you looking into them and telling me who owns those numbers. Over the phone is fine. And this one other payment, too. This one here,’ he said, showing the last page of Colston’s records to the bank manager. ‘This large payment made not long before Mr Colston died. I’d like to know who it went to.’
Cole thanked him and left the bank. It was a two minute walk from there to the Albion Hotel where he found Wayne Jennings propped up at the bar. In summer the hotel swarmed with fruit pickers and other itinerants drowning themselves in beer. In winter it was the last refuge of alcoholics and those who couldn’t bear the company of their families. Jennings looked completely at home where he was.
Cole sat on a stool beside Jennings and ordered a Coke from the barman. Even in winter Jennings wore loose, checked shorts and blue singlet, with old sandshoes on his feet. He looked askance at Cole before trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Cole played along, chatting to the barman and sipping his drink.
Jennings appeared to be staring at himself in the bar mirror behind the counter, at the same time fingering a small pile of notes and coins beside his beer glass.
Without turning to look at him, Cole asked, ‘Any luck with the gee-gees lately, Wayne?’
‘Tryin’ to give it up,’ Jennings answered laconically.
‘Bob gives you a cut on all the errands you run, doesn’t he? Is that how it works?’
‘Bob? I dunno who you mean.’
‘Bob Fry. He told me you do odd jobs for him.’
‘Ah, that.’ He began to smirk, missing a couple of bottom teeth, Cole saw. ‘Yeah, Bob gives me work sometimes.’
‘Is that your main form of employment, Wayne?’
Jennings knocked down his beer and ordered another. He said, ‘Mate, do I look like someone who likes hard work? I don’t do nothin’ else, just help Bob.’
‘Good old Bob.’ Cole took a long draught from his glass. ‘I think it only fair to warn you though, Wayne. I know, as well as a whole lot of other people do, that you and a couple of other blokes – Boland and Van der Sloot, for instance – run bets for Bob Fry, which is illegal as you’d know. With all the bets you put down over the course of the week, it won’t be hard finding at least a couple of people happy to testify that you’re part of an illegal betting setup. The fine will be pretty heavy, unless of course, it’s Bob who’s going to pay up for you. I suppose he would?’
‘Nah mate, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I don’t take money from no one. Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘I think you do, Wayne. I think you know what a SP bookmaker is, and how he collects and pays out on his bets. Did you ever take bets from Harry Colston, go out to his place to collect or pay out on bets?’
‘I knew Harry. Never went out there though.’
‘Was he in some strife with Bob?’
‘Dunno. Ask Bob.’
‘I already have. Now I’m asking you.’
Jennings became absorbed in his glass, sniffing and studying it from all angles in an unwitting parody of a wine buff.
Cole said, ‘If you don’t want to answer fine, but I’ll have to take you back to the station and ask you a whole lot more questions there if you don’t. And who knows how long that’ll take. It’s up to you.’
The prospect of being torn away from his beer wasn’t one that appealed to Jennings, so he answered, ‘You always get a bit of this and that. Harry liked a punt, nothin’ wrong with that, but he wasn’t much good at it. He had a farm so we all reckoned he was worth a quid. Sometimes he couldn’t pay up but he always got it in the end. Bob’d know, though. He’d was the one with his finger on the button. Sometimes he cut someone off who was gettin’ too much in the red.’
‘Did you ever see Colston and Bob arguing, anything like that?’
‘Nah. Bob’s not the arguin’ type. Like I said, if it gets too bad Bob just cuts them off, bans them.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Colston? Anyone who might’ve had a grudge against him?’
‘Nah. He was friendly enough to me.’
‘Alright. What can you tell me about Jan van der Sloot? He does the same work for Bob as you, I’m told. By Bob himself.’
‘Him? Nothin’. I don’t even know the bloke.’
‘Where does he live, Wayne?’
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘But have a look around the caravan park. Do that. Lots of people I got no idea about live there.’
Cole stared at him in a way that Jennings understood – that he was being put on notice.
‘I’ll have a wander around to the caravan park,’ Cole told him. ‘I expect to find Van der Sloot there.’
On his way out of the hotel Cole walked through the Ladies’ Lounge to show his face. He’d forgotten that the hotel’s sporting memorabilia had been moved from the public bar to the ladies’ lounge in the interest of its own safety and he
paused to look at the photographs on the wall. In one he found himself and his Fire Brigade cricket team members on the last occasion they were premiers. Some photos went even further back, to the time of his father and he peered at the fading print, his father looking back at him through the years as if they were complete strangers, which they more or less had been. When his eyes moved on he saw the 1961 Mitchell cricket team, the same photo he’d seen at the Colston house, only this one had the players’ names listed at the bottom. Harry Colston was there, along with one of the Bigelow boys. He almost laughed to see a teenage Ben Whittaker with the same unmistakable grin. Two of the young fellows killed in that shocking accident at Harper’s Corner. Some of the players had since moved on from Mitchell, but the Jennings brothers, Wayne and Barry, sat squatly at bottom front, wicked grins on their faces.
Back at the station, Cole stared again at the cork board in his office and pondered the Colstons’ fate. If the answer was going to come to him, it wouldn’t come easily. Perhaps he should have insisted on autopsies for the dead pair, but that wasn’t a thing done lightly, and when his evidence was slight to say the least, there was even less reason for it. Still.
He wondered, too, if Kinross the doting father, or the Kinross sons, had played a hand in Harry Colston’s death as retribution for his shabby treatment of Robyn, however long after the event. He couldn’t believe that Robyn herself would have played any part in it. He believed what she’d said about putting the Colstons behind her. She was a free, vivacious, happy-go-lucky woman. Or seemed to be.
As it drew nearer to five o’clock Janice began packing up for the day. He realised he’d barely spoken with Chris Sheridan the last few days, such was his focus on the Colstons, and now Robyn Kinross, but he was relieved that Ben Whittaker had taken her under his wing, or was it she who had taken him under her wing? Either way, Cole was happy, if not a little surprised at how quickly she was becoming a part of the furniture. Sergeant Forrest made his departure for the day, and before Whittaker did Cole told him he’d seen his picture on the wall at the Albion. Maybe Whittaker should play for the Fire Brigade team this coming summer, Cole quietly teased him?
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