The gate into the back yard was closed so Bob, the old dog Dave and Kim had inherited from an elderly farmer, couldn’t get out.
She opened the latch and froze as the hinges let out a loud screech.
Standing still for a moment, she waited, listening. Nothing but silence and the occasional drop of rain.
She left the gate ajar, knowing Bob would be inside the warmth, and went in, debating whether to knock on the back door. No, he’d told her not to contact him. Somehow, Zara had to get him outside of his own accord. He wouldn’t want Kim knowing anything about this.
Looking around, she saw the path that led out to the veggie patch … made of little white pebbles. Picking up a couple, she tossed them towards the roof. A loud bang echoed through the empty night.
Nothing.
Zara tried again.
Nothing.
Third time lucky? She tossed the pebbles onto the roof.
This time the door swung open and Dave stood there, silhouetted in the frame.
‘Who’s there?’ he called out.
‘Dave?’ Zara whispered in the loudest low voice she could manage.
Dave took a step down from the door and walked out into the darkness. ‘I’m the police,’ he called.
‘It’s me! Zara.’
Silence. ‘Zara?’ This time Dave’s voice was low too. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I think someone is watching Essie.’
Walking to the side of the house where no light reached, he motioned for Zara to follow him.
‘What’s going on?’
Summarising exactly what had happened that afternoon, she finished with: ‘I’ve got the numberplate. Can you do anything with it?’
‘Give it to me. I’ll try, but I don’t know—if it comes back to the people who are sending the drugs to her place and Simms knows who they are, there’ll be a flag on the plate.’
Zara held out the piece of paper, and Dave reached out to take it. ‘Have you kept a record of the plate?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got a photo of the car too.’
Dave paused. ‘Kim said something similar happened when she was with Essie yesterday.’
Listening as he described the phone call and subsequent fear from Essie, Zara nodded. ‘It’s the people with the drugs for sure,’ she said.
‘Like I tell Jack—never assume anything, but I’d say you’re right. You’re going to have to be careful. Especially if they’re taking photos of your house. They’re probably trying to work out who you are. Won’t take much, your name’s all over the web.’
Zara nodded.
‘I’ll keep an eye out too. Let you know if I see anything suspicious. If this gets too hot, you’ll need to pull out and I’ll go back to the AC and talk to him, tell him what we know.’
‘It’ll be fine. Hopefully, it won’t take me long to get the info I need and we can make sure Essie is okay.’
Dave nodded, then paused. ‘Why’d you chuck rocks on my roof?’
Zara laughed a little. ‘I didn’t know how to get your attention. You said not to contact you. I felt like a teenager rocking someone’s roof!’
Dave gave a laugh. ‘That’s exactly what Kim said.’
The rain got a little heavier and Zara looked up at the sky, feeling the cold drops on her face. ‘That’s a welcome relief.’
‘Isn’t it just. Been a while between fronts.’
‘Well, I’ll get back to it. Do a bit of googling. Start pounding the pavement in the morning. See what else I can find.’
Dave turned to go back inside. ‘You’d better make this the code if you need me. Chuck rocks on my roof.’ He gave her funny smile. ‘You’re good at hurling rocks, from what I can see.’
Laughing quietly, Zara moved towards the gate. ‘Have you seen Jack?’
‘He’s fine, Zara. Did you think about that counselling service?’
She nodded, then realised he wouldn’t be able to see her as she’d moved too far away. ‘Yeah. I know you’re right. I’ll do something about it once I’ve finished with this story.’
‘Don’t leave it too long.’
Chapter 24
Back in the house, Zara re-checked all the locks and then opened her laptop.
Googling Melissa Carter didn’t get her any further than her search of birth announcements—there were a few Facebook pages, five Twitter accounts and nine people with the same name on Instagram. None seemed to be the Melissa Carter she was looking for. She knew there were other private accounts she couldn’t see, but all the public social media websites were a dead end.
What she did find was a newspaper story in the Port Augusta Transcontinental under the Police Reports. Dated 25 July 2012. Eight years ago. Well and truly before Paris was born.
Local woman Melissa Carter will appear in the Port Augusta court today charged with the supply of illicit drugs in the town.
Port Augusta police say that they received a tip-off from a member of the public and, on further investigation, search warrants were issued for a house on Chapman Street.
Police say Ms Carter, aged 32, was not in possession of the drugs at the time of arrest.
Zara read on through the links that Google had thrown up, but there didn’t appear to be any other information—nothing about whether Melissa Carter had been convicted or acquitted.
She tried different wording—Local woman overdoses in Barker—and found something:
Fatal drug overdoses are on the rise in rural areas, and Barker is no exception. Last night, a woman was found in her car and only through the quick thinking of the local policeman was her life saved.
There was a photo of the car, an ambulance, and Dave and the body of a woman being stretchered away.
Nothing useful.
Flicking back to the Google search results, she clicked on another link. This time it was about a man in Port Pirie who had overdosed.
He had died. As had the woman in the next article—she was from Port Pirie too, but according to police reports their deaths were unrelated.
Three deaths in a 300-kilometre radius. Zara checked the dates of the newspaper reports. They were all within two days of each other.
Frowning, she clicked back and went to a different newspaper report, titled ‘Bad batch’:
Police in Port Augusta and Port Pirie have today confirmed the spate of drug-related deaths were caused by a contaminated batch of drugs. Although police are still awaiting toxicology tests on two of the victims, three others have been confirmed to be intravenous drug users who injected heroin.
A 23-year-old man in Port Augusta was found unconscious in Jewel Nightclub toilets, while a 35-year-old woman was found dead in her home by relatives.
Zara rubbed her tired eyes and considered the connection. Victims of contaminated drugs. Someone had to have supplied these people. Would the same person have supplied Melissa? The stretch wasn’t that big considering the towns were close together. Was this the person now stalking Essie? And now possibly Zara too?
Looking at her watch, she decided it wasn’t too late to call Lachie. He picked up on the first ring.
‘How goes?’ he asked. Zara could hear the noise of the newsroom in the background.
‘You still at work?’
‘Sure am. It’s deadline day, or had you forgotten?’
‘Of course it is! Sorry, you’ll be flat strap.’
‘How’s that story on the pollies coming along?’
‘I’ll have it to you next week.’
‘Don’t forget. I know it’s only a filler, but I want it.’
‘You’ll get your story, Lachie.’
She paused as Lachie yelled to someone, ‘It’s in your inbox! … Sorry,’ he continued.
‘I’m wondering if you’ve got any contacts who’d have a line into the heroin trade?’
‘What the hell for?’
She knew she had Lachie’s attention now. She imagined him sitting straight up at his desk, his eyes wide, patting his tie down as he spoke.
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‘If you do, I need to see if we can get a lead on a woman called Melissa Carter.’
‘And who’s she when she’s at home?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking you for help. But she’s Essie Carter’s daughter. I think there’s a link between her and why Essie is, or was, receiving drugs through the post.’
‘Zara, Zara, Zara, I told you—this is a granny story. Why are you still looking into it?’
‘It’s more than a public-interest story. You’ve got a sixty-plus-year-old woman importing heroin into Barker four hours north of Adelaide in the Flinders Ranges where there isn’t a population large enough to warrant what she was caught with. She’s looking after the six-year-old granddaughter, who her daughter abandoned after she nearly OD’d in the back streets. Doesn’t that raise a few flags with you?’
‘What does your pet policeman have to say about this?’
Zara heard him take the phone away from his ear and yell again. ‘Send it through and I’ll mock it up.’ Smiling, she imagined him waving his hand towards whomever he was talking to, commanding them to send through their story right now.
She waited until she knew she had his attention before speaking again. ‘Nothing. Jack and Dave have been warned off any further investigations. Officially.’
Silence. Then, ‘Why?’ The word was drawn out slowly.
‘Dave’s wife posted bail for Essie Carter. He took some flak for it.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘No, there’s a story there in itself.’
‘Make sure you get that one too,’ he said, giving Zara the green light to go ahead with the piece. ‘I’ll put in some calls to a few blokes I knew back when I worked the night shift at The Advertiser and see what I can find out.’
‘Thanks, Lachie.’
‘Great piece on the shearer, by the way.’
‘I was going to talk to you about that. Why the hell did you use that photo? Jack went off his tree.’
Lachie laughed. ‘Surely not? That was a great pic.’ He paused. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
Not wanting to answer, Zara stayed silent. The rising anger in her chest had come from nowhere. Suddenly all she wanted to do was yell at Lachie. She’d never felt like doing that in her life.
‘I just don’t know why you used that photo. I didn’t send it in to be used.’
‘That photo was the best one we had. The others you took were okay, but that one told a story.’
‘Well, it caused me trouble. Check with me next time.’
‘Okay, well, moving on … Let me make some calls. I’ll see what I can find out.’
‘Thanks, Lachie.’ The anger subsided and she hung up the phone feeling exhausted. Craving uninterrupted sleep, she stretched out on the couch, her computer propped up on her knees as she wrote a few notes:
WHAT I KNOW
Package arrived in mail—Essie collected.
Essie charged with receiving narcotics—taken by AFP to Adelaide.
Kim bailed Essie.
Essie frightened by a phone call.
Strange car at oval where Essie was taking Paris to netball.
I spoke with Essie at netball.
Same car drives past my house—numberplate YNE-807.
Essie Carter: Long-time resident of Barker. Looking after granddaughter. Receiving illicit drugs. Daughter drug addict.
Melissa Carter: Born and schooled in Barker. Drug addict. Left daughter behind.
Paris Carter: Born in Port Augusta. Lives and schooled in Barker.
She tapped her keyboard, thinking. What was the best way to track down Melissa? Maybe through Paris.
Perhaps the girl’s father knew where Melissa was.
She logged into Trove and put in Paris’s name and the town name.
Scrolling through the hits, she saw a headline: ‘The Five Faces of the Heroin Epidemic’, dated the same time as Melissa Carter’s first overdose. Look at these faces and remember them, the opinion article started.
Because if you don’t, these faces will be forgotten in time, and they should never be.
Last week, South Australia had its worst recorded spate of overdoses from contaminated drugs being sold across the state. The destruction caused by the batch of heroin has reached outside of Adelaide, all the way north to Port Augusta and south to Mount Gambier. Scores of people have been found unconscious, keeping the ambulance service and hospitals busy. Thankfully there have been only five deaths, but that is still five too many.
These are senseless deaths, unnecessary deaths.
Jeremy Gunner, 18, Head Prefect at Mount Gambier High School, was found dead last week in his car. His school principal spoke publicly of his achievements and the many things he could have accomplished throughout his life. His family declined to speak to the media.
Holly McKay, 25, went out with her friends to a nightclub on Hindley Street. Her body was discovered by a street cleaner the following morning. Holly had, three weeks previously, been promoted to associate with her legal firm. She leaves behind a husband, Frank. ‘I wasn’t aware that Holly was taking drugs. My heart is broken. I want to track down the bastards who sold the shit to her.’
Grant Beacon’s body was found in the parklands across from his home in Bentley. The 28-year-old was a known drug user, as was his partner, Kelly-Ann Hare, but he had been attending a rehab clinic in an attempt to break the habit.
Ryan Kipling, 32, had become a new father only six months before his body was found in his bed by his partner, Melissa Carter. His daughter, Paris, will now never know her father and his partner will never grow old alongside the man she told me was ‘the only reason life was worth living’.
Finally, 22-year-old Carrie Plain had her life cut short by heroin. Her family told me she was ‘the one most likely to go places’ in her class at high school. She’d finished at the top of her class and was studying medicine.
These five faces should never be forgotten. These people are dead because someone brought drugs into their lives. Someone brought drugs into our state and our cities.
These five faces represent families who now have to bear the trauma of pain.
I’m sure some of you will write into the paper and tell me I’m wrong. That these five, plus all the others who have taken these drugs, chose to take heroin—and, yes, you would be right. They had their own free will, but if the drugs weren’t here in the first place, no one would have the choice to take them.
It’s the drug producers and dealers who are a blight on our society. They have knowingly declared war on our community, on our young people, and for this they should be given a life sentence. As the families of these five people have been given.
Zara blinked, then checked the dates, noting that Melissa had come back to Barker to get off the gear eight months after Ryan’s death. Why hadn’t the Department for Child Protection taken Paris away from her before, if she was using with a baby in the house?
She added Ryan Kipling to her notes, but there were still only a few links she could make with the information she had. Everything came back to two simple facts: Essie Carter had a drug-addicted daughter, and Essie Carter was being mailed drugs. They had to be connected.
The question was whether Essie was receiving them and passing them on to Melissa, or was it something else?
Frustrated, Zara got up and paced the floor. None of this was helping her get any closer to finding Melissa, and Zara was now certain that to find the answers, that was what she needed to do.
Chapter 25
1981
Ian sat at the bar and rocked the pusher with his foot.
There was nothing to this parenting thing, he decided as he sipped his beer. Rosie must have been exaggerating when she said it was hard and the twins wouldn’t travel well. Alroy hadn’t cried once in the four hours he’d been at the pub. In fact, he’d slept for most of it. Even the barman, whom Ian had taken to calling Pop because he kept offering unsolicited advice, had commented how good he was.
Soon afterwards, a couple of cute girls had come up and cooed over Alroy and spent ten or fifteen minutes talking with him. Ian had played up to them, being the doting dad while the barman frowned at him from behind the bar.
Alroy had let out a couple of squawks and cries when one of the girls had picked him up, but quickly nestled into her chest and fallen back to sleep.
‘See, he knows a good spot when he sees it,’ Ian said with a grin, nodding towards the girls’ breasts. ‘Buy you a drink?’
‘Thanks, but no. We’re on our way out the door,’ the girl had said as she gently laid Alroy back in the pram.
Now, the barman put down the glass he was polishing and took a step towards Ian. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to go home?’ he asked. ‘It’s nearly ten o’clock. I’m sure your wife will be wondering where you are. Where the baby is.’
‘Nah,’ Ian took a sip of his beer. ‘I’ll have another one, mate.’ He waggled the empty glass. ‘She’s off doing something at the hospital.’
‘Maybe you should be with her?’
The man still hadn’t drawn his beer.
‘I think she’ll be managing just fine, thanks Pop. Rosie has done this all by herself for the past twelve months.’ He looked down at the sleeping child. ‘Tells me it’s a hard job. It doesn’t seem to be.’
Ian noticed the barman shake his head as he lifted a clean glass and held it to the beer tap.
‘What’s your name, mate?’ Ian asked. ‘Don’t suppose I should call you Pop all the time. Sounds like you are, though. Giving all this advice about being a parent when I haven’t asked for it. You did that last time I came in too.’
‘Bruce.’
‘Well, Bruce, I tell you, I’ve been here all of a day and I’ve hardly seen the wife. All caught up with these ones. No time for me. Don’t think she was even that pleased to see me.’ He raised his glass to Bruce. ‘Cheers. Don’t reckon she’s going to come away with me either.’ Sighing, he looked down into his beer. ‘Never really thought life would pan out this way. Thought we’d get our little family on the road together and set off to the next shed.’
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