The Bluffs : A Novel (2020)

by Perry, Kyle

  ‘All of the family, come to support them, I imagine,’ said Agatha.

  He parked the BMW and they walked to the front entrance, Agatha bringing both Con’s laptop and a black leather folio. Barking sounded from up ahead and two shaggy border collies appeared, their tails wagging.

  Con grinned, and crouched.

  The mansion’s door swung open. ‘Millie, Max! No!’ shouted a thin, athletic-looking woman – Bree’s mother, Isabel Wilkins. ‘Oh, it’s you lot, is it?’

  ‘It’s alright, ma’am.’ Con pushed the dogs away from his face as they started licking his mouth.

  ‘Well? Why are you here?’ said Isabel. ‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it? Bree is dead.’

  ‘The forensics report has come in overnight,’ said Agatha. ‘I’d like to discuss it with you and your husband.’

  ‘Will it bring her back?’ snapped Isabel, as she tossed her hair back and walked inside.

  Con and the commander followed.

  ‘I’m guessing she doesn’t like police?’ said Con.

  ‘My guess is she’s angry and isn’t sure who to blame. In her defence, it’s remarkable that Bree managed to evade police and all the search efforts, to the point where she could hang herself on that tree. She has good reason to assume we weren’t doing our jobs properly.’

  Isabel waited for them at the end of the timber-lined corridor, in the massive dining room, where no fewer than thirteen people were eating a breakfast of bacon and eggs. She squeezed the shoulders of a burly dark-haired man sitting at the table, dressed in a dirty hi-vis farming shirt and ragged jeans. Con recognised him as Marcus Wilkins – he had seen him up at the car park on the day the girls went missing. His eyes were ringed by shadows and he wiped his sleeve across a chin dark with stubble before making to stand.

  ‘No, please stay seated, Mr Wilkins. Could we have the room, please?’ said Agatha to everyone else, midway through their breakfast.

  ‘I’ll not have you ordering my family about,’ said Isabel shrilly.

  Marcus waved his hand. ‘It’s alright, guys. It’ll be about Bree.’ His voice broke on her name.

  The other people in the room left, muttering among themselves, until only Isabel and Marcus remained.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ said Marcus. He extended a callused hand to Con. ‘Marcus Wilkins. I haven’t met you yet, but I understand you’ve been leading the investigation.’

  ‘You’ve volunteered for the SES search, Mr Wilkins?’

  ‘For all the good it did,’ he muttered.

  Isabel rubbed his shoulders. ‘He doesn’t stop. As soon as he finishes work, he heads out there onto the mountains. He’s back long after dark, and then up before the sun to see to the cattle.’ She pierced Con with her gaze. ‘You can’t expect him to keep going up there. Our daughter is dead!’

  Marcus reached up to pat Isabel’s hand absently. ‘Forgive Isabel. She knows you aren’t truly to blame.’

  Isabel sniffed.

  ‘What brings you here?’ said Marcus.

  ‘We have early forensics,’ said Agatha. ‘Bree passed away three days ago, the cause of death a broken neck from hanging. It would’ve been quick and painless.’

  Isabel sat down. ‘Days ago?’

  ‘How could she have been there that long?’ said Marcus.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Agatha. ‘What we do know is that the same rope that killed her is the one she was hanging from. How everyone missed her hanging there for days . . .’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Marcus. ‘I know people were there. I walked that path myself – I walked the entire trail from the school to the Trapper’s Hut. I even saw people at the Hanging Tree, bringing flowers. Bree was not there three days ago.’

  ‘So someone killed her?’ said Isabel, hands to her mouth.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Agatha. ‘Her stomach was full of fruit, chocolate, potato chips, dried meats. Nothing like what was found in Georgia’s stomach, nor did they eat it during the camp, as far as we know. If Bree did kill herself, she found somewhere to stay between disappearing from the path and the moment she died . . . and that’s why we wanted to speak to you. Do you know anywhere Bree might have gone that has horse chestnut trees?’

  ‘What are those?’ said Isabel, turning to her husband.

  ‘I didn’t think they were edible,’ said Marcus.

  ‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘We found traces of them on her shoes.’ She pulled a photo out of her folio and laid it flat. It showed a horse chestnut. Con knew he’d seen some, and recently, but where?

  ‘We called them conkers when we were boys,’ said Marcus, picking up the page. ‘You play a game where you knock each other’s until they break, but we always just pegged them at each other across the footy ground.’ He looked up, right as Con remembered.

  ‘At the school,’ said Con.

  Marcus nodded. ‘There’s a big row of them, right along the main driveway.’

  ‘Are they building anywhere at the school?’ said Con, remembering the concrete dust in Bree’s clothes.

  ‘Yes . . . half of the Home Economics block is being renovated,’ said Marcus. ‘Bree loved Home Ec.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wilkins,’ said Agatha.

  ‘No one will be there today,’ said Isabel, ‘the students are staying home. Most of them would’ve been there . . . last night . . .’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Did Madison really plan all of this?’ she finished in a whisper. ‘Bree hated Madison.’

  ‘I think it might be best to show you some footage we’ve recently recovered,’ said Agatha. ‘It’s confronting, I’ll warn you, but it may shed some light on your daughter’s headspace.’

  ‘Just ask, why don’t you?’ said Isabel.

  ‘Ask what, Mrs Wilkins?’ said the commander.

  ‘Why she killed herself. Why we didn’t get her more help. Ask us why she didn’t think she could come to us, but instead chose to —’

  ‘We believe there may be more to it, Mrs Wilkins,’ interrupted Con. ‘If you could just watch this video . . .’

  Agatha set the laptop down and played the video that featured all five of the girls.

  Isabel and Marcus leaned in, Marcus even touching the screen when Bree appeared, as they watched the four girls explaining their reasons.

  The door swung open. ‘Oh,’ said a new woman, clearly a relative of Isabel’s by the look of her. ‘You’ve already seen it?’ She pointed at the screen.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Agatha.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said the woman in a haughty tone. ‘The new video Madison Mason just uploaded.’

  ‘It’s on her YouTube?’ Isabel stood up. ‘I’m going to kill that little bitch.’

  ‘Con,’ said the commander, as Marcus rose to hold Isabel back. ‘I’ll deal with this. Call Detective Tran and get her to meet you at the school together with the forensics team. When you’re done, come back to the station. It’s time we brought Madison in for questioning again.’

  Con parked near the school office. Melinda Tran was already there, but the forensics team were still running some final tests on the evidence from the Hanging Tree.

  ‘What’s our approach?’ said Tran. ‘No one’s even here.’

  ‘The office staff are. They’re expecting us,’ said Con. ‘We have a lot of CCTV footage to look through.’

  Together, they walked into the school lobby. The woman behind the desk smiled sadly at them. ‘Hello, detectives,’ she said, her nose blocked, eyes red from crying. ‘I’m Lois. Come through.’ She opened a door into the office. ‘You can set up here. I’ve already fired up the system for you on both computers.’

  With both Con and Melinda trawling through the footage of the external cameras, it wasn’t long until they found Bree, in a dark hoodie, leaving through one of the doors of the Home Ec building.

  ‘Lois?’ called Con, his voice rising.

  She came over and leaned down to check the monitor. She gasped. ‘That’s her.’
r />   ‘Where is this? What’s she been doing?’ he said.

  ‘It used to be the laundry,’ Lois said. ‘But it’s closed off for renovations at the moment. There’s no power in there or anything.’

  ‘Tran, look: she’s carrying rope,’ said Con. ‘And the time stamp: 3 am, three days ago.’

  Tran gave a sad sigh. ‘Lois, can you take us down there?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she replied.

  She set off at a brisk pace and the detectives followed, but unless there was clear urgency, they would have to wait for the forensics team before they could enter a possible crime scene. Tran called them, informing them of the development, and they promised to come directly to the scene.

  Con, Melinda, and Lois stood waiting outside the laundry door. It had begun to drizzle. The footage of Bree sneaking out with a coil of rope over her shoulder played over and over in Con’s mind. It would be someone else’s job, now, to look through the footage and find the moment she arrived at the school, but he imagined it would be the same night the girls went missing.

  A clever place to hide, he thought. With all the rain that night, it would’ve been easy to slip in here unnoticed, and she would have known the school would be closed after their disappearance.

  Finally Forensics arrived and Lois unlocked the door. With rubber gloves, serious voices, cameras flashing and recording, they walked inside.

  Immediately they found the space where Bree had been staying. It was a small tiled room just off the laundry, Lois explaining that the freezers for the cooking classes had been kept here before the renovations began. There was a doorway into a small toilet, which was still connected to the plumbing, and the floor was covered in a blankets, pillows and junk food wrappers. The full Deltora Quest series lined one of the walls, and paints and markers lay in a neat pile in the corner.

  But what drew everyone’s eyes was what was written on the walls. On one wall:

  The Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real the Hungry Man is real

  On the second wall:

  I’m sorry Hungry Man I’ll never tell anyone what I saw please don’t take me please don’t take me please don’t take me please don’t take me

  On the third wall:

  Hang a girl on a tree to die, and the Hungry Man will pass you by.

  I’m sorry Denni. We should have believed you.

  On the fourth wall:

  She was right.

  He took them into the caves.

  And their bones will feed him.

  Two hours later, Con walked into the interview room at the station. Madison was alone, having refused a lawyer and even the support of her mother, who was instead waiting in the room next door.

  Agatha wasn’t there, either: she was giving a press conference. Con was supposed to wait for her to finish before he spoke to Madison. This was a formal interview of a minor, he needed to wait for a second police officer, at the very least. Preferably a social worker would be there too, as she’d refused her parent’s presence, but Madison said she wouldn’t speak a word to anyone but Agatha and Con. It definitely would not go well for him if he began this interview by himself.

  Con took a seat. Madison watched him, hands folded on the table. On the back of her arms he spotted scars from self-harm, pale lines. He’d never noticed them before. Her eyes burned like a zealot, a smirk tugging at her red lips. ‘What’s on your mind, detective?’

  Anger rushed through him. ‘How did you know Bree was hanging there?’ he said.

  ‘Whatever do you mean, detective?’ said Madison.

  ‘You arranged for hundreds of people to see her. Just like you did with Denni. Why?’ said Con.

  ‘Well, I’m not admitting to anything at all, but theoretically, if you killed yourself, wouldn’t you want hundreds of people to see you? To finally feel for you?’ she said. ‘Footage of Bree is all over the internet now. No one will ever forget.’

  ‘How did you know she was there?’

  ‘Don’t you understand, detective? My subscriber count is now eighteen million,’ she said.

  ‘And the other girls? Cierra and Jasmine? Georgia?’

  She watched him. No response: just a tiny lick of her lips.

  ‘You need to tell me the truth,’ he said.

  ‘I am telling the truth,’ Madison said.

  ‘How did you know that Bree was there?’ said Con again. ‘She died three days ago.’

  A flicker of doubt on Madison’s face. ‘What are you talking about? She died moments before we got there. Her blood was still warm.’

  ‘I can show you the reports. How did you know she was there? Did you tell her to do it, like you told Denni?’

  ‘You’re lying. It wasn’t three days since she’d died.’

  ‘Did you tell her that it was the only way to stop the Hungry Man?’

  ‘Badenhorst!’ snapped the commander. He hadn’t even heard the door open. ‘Outside. Now!’

  He stepped into the hallway with her, shaking.

  ‘Go back to the Inn, Cornelius,’ she said, her voice so icy it could have frosted the window.

  ‘Two girls are still out there!’

  ‘Stop, Cornelius,’ she hissed. ‘If you leave your hotel – and believe me, I will know – I’ll take you off the case.’

  Their exchange had drawn a crowd in the corridor, including Doble.

  Con turned to walk away, but Agatha said, ‘Wait. Give me your phone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your phone, Badenhorst, or I am taking you off the case. I’ll not have you contacting Gabriella or Murphy or whoever else you’ll manipulate into doing your investigating for you.’

  He threw his phone at her feet, then pushed through the crowd and ducked into a bathroom.

  Standing in front of the mirror, he willed himself to calm down. He hadn’t been so angry in a long time.

  ‘Hello, detective,’ said Sergeant Doble, walking in behind him. He was in uniform, and his basset-hound face was alive with malice.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Heard you were investigating me,’ he said.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Con.

  ‘You don’t look too good, mate. I’ve heard post-traumatic stress can be a real bitch. I bet even those medications aren’t enough. I mean, you’ve got a real cocktail going there.’

  Con’s hands clamped over the edges of the sink. ‘You were in my room.’

  ‘I wasn’t in your room,’ said Doble. ‘But one of the cleaners is a client of mine, if you know what I mean. I had him have a look, once you started investigating my little enterprise, just to get a little insurance. Nice job with the curtains: does it help with the nightmares?’

  Con turned on him, his hands balled into fists.

  ‘The funny thing is, PTS isn’t listed in your personnel file. I wonder what the commissioner would say about the lead detective on the most important kidnapping cases of the decade being mentally unstable. I mean, it wouldn’t just be bad for you, but also your commanding officer.’

  Con stepped forward. Doble didn’t sense the danger.

  ‘Here’s what you’re gonna do, Badenhorst. You’re gonna tell whoever you need to that I am clean, or I’ll tell the media and you and Normandy will never work in law enforcement again.’

  ‘The first thing I’m going to do is find the missing girls,’ said Con. ‘Then, after that, I’m going to bring you down. And, if you’re lucky, I won’t let Murphy have a piece of you.’

  Doble swung his fist at Con’s face, but Con was ready, dropping Doble to the ground with an Aikido throw. Doble landed on his back, groaning.

  He staggered to his feet, cheeks red. ‘You just assaulted me, detective,’ he growled.

  ‘You’re the reason people hate cops,’ he said. ‘You’re worse than a grub.’ He walked out of the room.

  He didn’t n
eed the commander. He had at least three allies to help him get to the bottom of this: Gabriella, Eliza and Murphy.

  CHAPTER 42

  MURPHY

  This time, Murphy knew what the dream was trying to tell him. Sara stood below, looking up at him. Her ginger hair caught the wind, her lavender dress billowing.

  We’re going to find you, Jasmine. I know it.

  Sara smiled as he crashed down on top of her.

  Murphy jerked awake. He was fully clothed, tangled in the blankets on the floor of Con’s hotel room. Someone was pounding on the door. The clock read 9.04 am and the detective was nowhere to be seen.

  Before he stood up, he checked the Glock was still in his belt.

  He opened the door, and Gabriella walked in. ‘Where’s Con?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Murphy.

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I only just woke up. Where’s Eliza?’

  ‘I called a taxi to take her home. She needs time to grieve – she cried nearly all night, though she tried to hide it.’ She peered into his face. ‘How are you feeling, after Jasmine’s videos?’

  ‘Like I still want to kill Butch.’

  She nodded. ‘You want help finding him?’

  He looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I have a feeling Con will contact you before he contacts me, and I need to talk to him.’ She walked out of the room, calling over her shoulder, ‘Besides, who else is going to help you? Of course, if you actually try and kill Butch, fair warning, I’ll have to intervene. Remember how that worked out for you last time?’

  CHAPTER 43

  ELIZA

  The taxi pulled up at the bottom of her drive and Eliza climbed out. Once the taxi pulled away, she put her arms around herself and walked up the drive towards her little crooked cottage.

  The front door slammed open and Butch appeared in her doorway, wearing only a singlet and shorts. He had a bottle of her wine in his hand and was swaying slightly. ‘Eliza,’ he called, voice slurred.

  She saw now his black Toyota Hilux parked behind an apple tree.