by Candice Fox
CONKAFFEY SHOCKER: STORIES AND LIVES DUMPS ACCUSATION CONTENT, EX-GIRLFRIEND RETRACTS ACCUSATION
In a move that has bewildered Australians following the Ted Conkaffey case, Sydney woman Melanie Springfield has released a public statement retracting accusations she made in an interview with Channel Three’s current affairs program Stories and Lives against the disgraced former detective. Five million viewers tuned in two nights ago to see new sexual misconduct claims against Conkaffey that were never aired. Springfield plans to give a press conference later today retracting the claims, which she apparently made to Stories and Lives producers in an exclusive interview, that Conkaffey molested her younger sister 15 years ago. Springfield had claimed that the abuse occurred while she dated Conkaffey in high school. Springfield’s sister, Elise, and her parents will be in attendance at the press conference, along with representatives of the New South Wales Police.
Of course, there was no cause for me to go dancing in the street. Whatever Melanie’s reason for accusing me—whether she was mentally ill, wanted the money or notoriety, or simply had always held a grudge against me for ending our brief little teenage romance—the damage was done. If the Australian public thought that the chances of a man being falsely accused of something like child molestation could happen once, they certainly wouldn’t believe it could happen twice. People would think Melanie balked at the prospect of repeating her claims in a courtroom. Or that one of my apparent drug dealing compatriots had paid her off, or threatened her life. But a late retraction was better than no retraction at all. I raised my glass to myself and smiled.
Along with my success at the station, I’d managed not to run into my old squad brothers and get myself whomped again, and I liked to believe something had shifted between Little Frankie and me. She’d seen Sean out and then come back to me on the seventh floor, where I’d been sitting alone trying to think through Elise’s revelations. When Frankie found me I’d just poured myself a cup of that coffee and was staring into it, lost.
“Your lawyer is mad as hell,” she’d said.
“I pay him to be,” I’d said back.
Frankie couldn’t trust me now, not after my arrest for Claire Bingley’s attack. But maybe seeing an accusation against me turn up false had given her hope. As I’d tried to point out to her on the phone in Cairns, she didn’t have to trust me to help me, and by helping me, even when there was a chance I was guilty, she’d always know she’d done everything she could to stay loyal and true to the old Ted she had once known, the one she liked, her teammate, even if he was dead now. Maybe that’s why she put a folder of papers down before me in the interview room and stepped back into the doorway, physically and emotionally distancing herself once again.
“These are copies of the Crime Stoppers calls about Claire Bingley’s abduction,” Frankie said. “When the AMBER Alert went out, the call center started getting flooded with sightings, so the first few pages are just that. But then after she was found, and it was announced she’d been assaulted, people started ringing in with leads about the culprit. Obviously, they sort of fizzled out after we arrested you.”
I’d weighed the papers in my hands, watched her standing there in the doorway.
“Is anyone on the case right now?” I asked. “Is there anyone I can talk to about current leads?”
“The case is in holding,” she said. She couldn’t look at me. I knew why. “In holding” meant the case had been shelved pending new evidence. As far as the brass was concerned, they knew who had raped Claire Bingley. They just couldn’t prosecute him for it.
I’d glanced briefly at the papers in the taxi on the way to the Lord Chesterton, but Elise’s appearance at the station had got my mind so tangled up, I hadn’t had time for much more. The folder was now in my backpack on the floor beside my stool at the bar. The owner of the pub came by after a while and refilled my glass without asking, and I noticed a young man standing in the doorway of the room.
The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. I put the bodily reaction down to nervousness at my speaking commitment, at the strange faces that would soon fill the room, wanting to know every intimate detail of my horrific past year. I smiled at the young man anyway, and he gave a nervous smile back.
“Are you here for the—” I gestured at the empty room behind me “—the thing?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a bit early,” I said.
“So are you.”
I nodded and turned back to my drink, my face burning. At first I’d thought he was a bit young to be off work in the middle of the work day, coming to check out the star of his favorite true-crime sob story, but I guessed podcasts were a young person’s sort of thing. He took a stool at the bar two down from mine and put his arms on the counter. The owner had ducked away again, thinking I’d be the only person in the room for a while and wanting to give me my privacy. The young man was dressed neatly, like he’d just left the office to come down here. Deliberate short stubble and pomade in his hair. The quintessential hipster at work. Neither of us spoke, though I felt him watching me and tried to ignore it. I flicked through stories on my phone about Melanie Springfield, sent a text to Dale Bingley.
How’s the car hunt?
He got back straightaway.
None of the guys on the sex offender list had Falcons. Thinking some of these Falcons might have been sprayed at home or color not updated on rego. Losing faith.
The “losing faith” line made my blood run cold. If there was one thing I needed, it was for Dale to keep his faith that we could find Claire’s attacker. If he decided that her attacker was, in fact, me, there was no telling what he might do to my house. My birds.
Don’t lose faith, I wrote. He is out there. We will find him.
Dale didn’t answer.
Did you see this? I sent him a link to the story about Melanie Springfield’s retraction. If he knew I wasn’t guilty of that, perhaps it would help.
He didn’t answer.
Are you still at my place? I asked.
“I’m Kevin, by the way,” the young man said. He reached across the space between us awkwardly and offered a hand. When I shook it, it was limp. Cold.
“Ted,” I said. “But you knew that.”
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. He was wringing his hands on the bar top, nervous, rubbing his fingers together too hard. “There’s so much I want to ask you. About it all. You know. How you could have … How you could have survived it, I guess.”
“Well…” I stared at the bottles on the shelves behind the bar, found myself lost for words. He’d asked the one thing I really didn’t have an answer for. How I’d survived it. How I kept going on. “I suppose you’ll get your chance…” I gestured toward the room, letting him know I thought I should probably keep question time for the audience when they arrived. He nodded vigorously. I felt bad for shrugging his question off. I was about to offer him something when two huge figures appeared at the edges of my vision and Linda and Sharon pulled out stools on either side of mine, groaning as they heaved their bulky bodies onto the creaking, struggling wood.
“Oh god.” I put my head in my hands.
“Thought you could give us the slip, eh, bro?” Sharon said.
Kevin looked alarmed at the end of the bar.
“How did you know I was down here?” I asked, reaching for my drink.
“Khalid hears everything, eventually.”
“I bet he does.”
“It’s a dangerous thing you’re doing here.” Linda jerked a thumb toward the room. “Any of these creeps could have it in for you.”
“Well, I feel very reassured by your presence,” I said. “Thanks so much for coming. Try not to crush anyone before you know they’re really a threat.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is everything okay here?” a voice asked. Fabiana Grisham was standing in the doorway, looking stunning, as usual. She’d cut her hair into a short, deep red bob, and her gray dress was tight over
her severe, hardened figure. Linda’s and Sharon’s stools creaked as they leaned back to get a proper look at her.
“It’s okay.” I got up and went to her, hugged her, got one of her sharp pecks on my cheek. “They’re associates of mine.”
“Thank you so much for doing this, Ted,” she said. “I know times are tough right now. But, like I said on the phone, this is really critical to maintaining the podcast. You have to appear supportive. People want to know that you know they’re on your side.”
“It’s an odd feeling,” I admitted. “I mean, I don’t know these people. Why are they on my side?”
“Because they want to see justice done,” she said. “Everybody does.”
I wondered what that meant. Was justice to these people simply me having my name cleared? Or would the podcast perhaps be responsible one day for catching Claire’s real attacker? The show was called Innocent Ted. Though I couldn’t bear to listen to it, I wondered if perhaps I should. Fabiana had dug deep, deep into my life and the events surrounding Claire’s ordeal. I was about to sit in a room with a bunch of people who knew things about me that I couldn’t possibly guess.
“Thanks for setting this up,” I told her, despite my reservations.
“Well, we’re almost ready to get rolling.” She patted me on the shoulder. “It’s time for your close-up, Mr. Conkaffey.”
Amanda didn’t need them to tell her what had happened. She knew from the house around her, could see the story in their eyes. She lay on the floor and watched it happening in her mind, almost like a film, the minutes ticking by and the house darkening behind her eyelids.
It had been a loud night. Creatures squawking in the trees, rustling along the creek bed, now and then a curious possum squeezing through the gap in the fence, an old paling rotted and fallen away.
Victoria Songly had been doing what she did every night. The television, the tea, her crossword book for the ad breaks and the old couch, the one by the glass doors, the one Tom had favored before he died that smelled a little like him. Through the doors, across the yard and through the gap in the fence, she could just make out the golden rectangle of the back door of the Barking Frog on the opposite side of the creek. If her eyes had been better she might have seen the light blinking now and then as people moved before it. A chef running here and there.
Victoria fell asleep in the chair as she often did, snoring peacefully as the chef disappeared, and the cars in the lot rolled away, the very last one taking Darren Molk, the postman, off into the night. The last man to see them alive. Andrew Bell had emerged at the back door of the Barking Frog. The red dot of his cigarette wavered as he paced. Pack-up time. The long, boring haul toward the moment they could shut the doors and drive off themselves, he and the glamorous British girl counting up the beer stock at the end of the bar.
2:45 a.m. Had they knocked at the front of the neat little house, or had they simply walked around the back, slid open the glass door, and stood over Victoria Songly as she slept? Amanda knew only that when Jay and Bran arrived there that night, the old woman had not reacted as they’d planned. Instead of quietly answering their questions, she’d fought. Withered fingers grabbing and slapping, thin wailing voice ripping through the air. It was almost certainly Jay who’d hit her. The mean one. He’d watched her stumble out into the yard, still howling, blood running in rivers down her white nightie and spindly legs. He’d finished her off on the lawn with one of the big, square rocks from the fish pond.
Jay had looked up when it was finished and she’d finally fallen silent. Up through the gap in the fence, almost as though he’d sensed himself being watched. He spied the glowing doorway of the pub across the creek. A young man in silhouette, walking forward as though in a dream, his eyes wide in the dark, struggling to process what he had just witnessed through the narrow gap.
Amanda wondered if Jay and Andrew had locked eyes. It had been a bright night. The moon high. She wondered who had run first. Andrew twisting back toward the pub, catching his foot in the damp earth, falling on his hands. Jay sprinting around the side of the house, down the bank, leaping the tiny creek in his panic. Bran shouting for him, horror-struck, standing over the body of Victoria Songly sprawled on the lawn, no idea where his partner had run off to, not until he heard the gunshots. Amanda wondered how the conversation had gone outside the pub after the deed was done, Jay perhaps smoking one of Andrew’s cigarettes, playing it cool while Bran berated him.
How could you do this? How could you do this? This wasn’t the plan. You said no one would get hurt!
Relax. I know what to do. The pub will look like a robbery. Take this. A little bonus for our troubles.
She could see Bran throwing the cash bag up onto the roof of the Barking Frog just to spite his trigger-happy partner. Bran was like that. Spiteful. Wimpy little tantrum-throwing bitch who hurled things when he was mad. Jay hadn’t worried about the tantrum and the perfectly good cash thrown away. They were about to be deep in a whole lot more. And he didn’t need to fight Bran on this. Bran had only agreed to this whole thing because Jay had promised no killing. And now they were three victims deep, too far in to ever hope of turning back.
Oh, Amanda had been dumb. She had stood at the door of this house the very next day and looked at the face of the one named Bran and not known anything was amiss. She’d not looked down at his workman’s boots. She’d gobbled up their pathetic stories about being Victoria’s grandsons. She had seen Victoria Songly sitting in the orange and black recliner just inside the door and not known the woman was dead. Yes, it had only been a slice of her visible from the doorway. An elbow on the armrest, not enough of a view to measure for life, or the absence of it. Victoria had been positioned there deliberately, the tea beside her a real artistic touch. The men had later moved the dead woman, put her by the glass doors so that just her feet could be glimpsed over the fence by any of the curious cops who happened to take a peek. Socked feet and slippers that would hide the lividity in her skin, the swelling, as she decomposed. Amanda should have known something was wrong. Even the thinnest blood didn’t warrant socks and slippers in Cairns.
Keeping her body there in view of the cops had been daring, creative, cunning. She had to give them that. Because dumping her body would have created a liability. A body could be found, particularly with all the land and creek searches being held nearby for the gun. If the old lady appeared to be at home, present and comfortable, then there was no need for questions. All they’d had to do was fend off the cops. Ah, yes, she’d spoken to an officer—they didn’t remember the name. She’d said she didn’t remember anything, hadn’t heard anything. Oh no, no, she couldn’t talk now, she was asleep. She was confused. She was busy. Come back later. Maybe tomorrow. Everything’s fine. There were enough men and women on the investigation to support the bluff. Detectives had been pulled in from as far away as Brisbane. All the two men had to do was stay vague, stay casual, stay happy. Victoria had Alzheimer’s. What good was she to anyone anyway?
Amanda had been so stupid. The vintage car in the driveway—that was another giveaway she’d completely overlooked. Clearly not in use, the car belonged in the garage. The gun, too. Cheap and cheerful, easily obtainable 9mm Browning pistols. As Ted had rightly said, they were not the kind of guns career robbers tended to buy. They were a gun for a single job. A gun that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.
But all was not lost. It brightened Amanda’s spirit to know that these two men were also, apparently, not very clever. Cunning and creative, yes. But while they discussed her possible demise, she had been left in the space before the front door, the living room off to the right of her, the garage and bedrooms to the left. Though her hands were taped, they’d not gagged her. She could, at any minute, start screaming her head off. But she wouldn’t. Not yet. There would likely be no one at the bar across the creek this early to hear her, and her best plan of action now was to earn the men’s trust.
The second thing counting against the men in Amanda’s a
ssessment of their intelligence was the state of the house. They were not renovating, of course, but that story had been a good cover for the noise. She could see through the distant doorway to the garage, where the concrete floor had been ripped to shreds over the days since the murders, the smooth finish now an uneven sprawl of rocks and jagged holes cut by the jackhammer. The men had hedged their bets that what they were looking for may not in fact have been hidden in the concrete floor by knocking holes in all the drywall. Before Amanda in the entrance hall, a series of holes had been smashed through the apricot pink surface, the drywall pulled forward, powdered and papery and hanging, exposing hollow interiors. With still no luck in their search the men had torn up the carpet in one of the bedrooms and flung it onto the floor of the living room, where it now lay in a slashed heap, staples poking out from ragged edges.
Curious, Amanda shimmied along the short hall on her backside, not confident in standing with her arms pinned and her head still ringing from Jay’s punch. She reached the living room and peered in, wrinkling her nose at the smell of decomposition, human waste. Mrs. Songly was still in the chair by the glass doors, most of her hidden from view by the curtain, her limp legs stretched out on the couch’s footrest. The top half of her body had been wrapped clumsily in a white sheet now stained with various bodily fluids. A sad mummy sagging forward slightly, her thin arms in her lap deadly shades of oyster blue and gray. Beyond the view of the glass doors, the men had trashed cupboards and shelves, tossed books and ornaments on the floor. There were glass shards twinkling on the kitchen tiles, the backing of cupboards ripped out and strewn across the counters. A pile of mail had slipped from the countertop and fallen near where she sat.
Amanda shimmied forward again and pinned one of the unopened envelopes with her bare foot, dragged it back with her as she headed toward the front door. It was awkward going, but she positioned the envelope by the front door, turned and flopped onto her side. She rubbed her head and face against the envelope, trying to smear some of the blood from her ear onto the surface. When she had made some suitably dramatic-looking streaks of bright red she got to her knees and sat down again, pushed the bloody envelope under the crack in the front door and onto the step just seconds before the men emerged from their conference in the bedroom.
