‘Well, Sir,’ he said to Leslie, ‘finding the car and seeing where it was found has extended our information but not solved the main problems – what happened to Odile Janvier and where is Michel? The only fingerprints in that car matching any database have been Janvier’s, Danno Muphy’s, Bugsy’s and Sam’s. There are others, but you’d expect that if Bugsy and Sam were swanning around in the car for a week before they lent it to Danno. There are also some prints that match the ones in the Earlville house that we think are Odile’s. And, though the forensics have pulled the car apart, there’s nothing at all to give us a lead on where Janvier is.’
Drew went on, ‘I’m inclined to believe Bugsy’s story about finding the car, although Mareeba will check the bush around there to see what Bugsy’s growing. He’s never struck me as a tree-hugger. We’ll also never know how much ketamine was really there. He might not like the stuff himself but I’m sure he has friends who do.
‘So we still have two broad possibilities. Either Michel killed her, possibly using ketamine to get her there and/or kill her, and then dumped the car and took off.
‘Or somebody else, maybe more than one person, kidnapped them both, using ketamine, tied up Odile, killing her directly or indirectly, and did something similar with Michel which we haven’t yet discovered. Like push him into that flooded creek. Let’s have another look at our list of suspects.’
Drew opened his laptop. ‘These are all the men who appeared on videos and in emails,’ he said. ‘All those who seem to have been paying up. We’re working through contacting them all and checking their alibis. With great discretion. It’s going to take days, if not weeks.’
Leslie nodded.
Drew peered at his list. ‘We’ve got two cardiologists. Three GPs. Jim Hewitt and his son. A couple of other businessmen who maybe know Jim. Wilfred Lam – he’s dead; we have to talk to his wife. That’s going to be delicate. There’s an orthopaedic surgeon. A plastic surgeon. A skin doctor, and a few more. Quite a lot have moved away from Cairns. Maybe to get away from the blackmail. If that happened Janvier probably stopped demanding the cash, but of course he would keep the evidence, and those doctors would go on being afraid …
‘We’ve also got Henry Jolley and Arthur Mellish. They were around Cairns the whole time and what they were doing in that time is only partly confirmed by someone else. Mellish says he went up to the Tablelands to check on his property sometime on the Saturday afternoon before Yasi. He can’t remember exactly what time and he says he saw a neighbour. The neighbour’s not completely sure she saw him but says if she did it was about three in the afternoon. To get to that property he had to pass the Davies Creek turn-off. He admits he knows the private road and has been on it at times.’
Drew was on a roll. ‘As for Jolley, he lives on his own. He says he was at home or in his office most of that weekend. He went to see some patients in the hospital both mornings, that’s corroborated. But in the remainder of both days he had plenty of time to commit two murders and try to dispose of the evidence. Probably so did Wilfred Lam. He didn’t work weekends.
‘Especially interesting is where Jolley says he was on the Sunday evening, the 30th. He and the doc he works with, Tim Ingram, were in Jolley’s office going through some files. Jolley’s office is in the outpatient department and on a Sunday night not another soul was there. Just the two of them. For about four hours, he says.’
‘Yes,’ said Leslie. ‘And Ingram didn’t volunteer the information but did tell me that’s what they were doing when I asked him. He did quite openly show me the calendar in his phone. And sounded plausible with the explanation. But we didn’t get Jolley’s statement about where he was until yesterday, whereas I spoke to Ingram on Saturday. They certainly would have had time, if they’d wanted, to get the two stories straight.’
‘Well,’ said Cass, ‘four hours might be long enough to get hold of both Janviers, kill them and dispose of the bodies. Tim Ingram knew exactly where to get into that road. But dragging Odile Janvier in the dark and tying her up wouldn’t have been easy.’
‘If there were two of them,’ said Drew, ‘it wouldn’t have been so hard. And Ingram himself might not have done the killing but might have thought it was OK to help Jolley dispose of the body because he was being blackmailed.’
Troy Barwen, who’d spent much of Monday afternoon googling ketamine use in dental practices, said, ‘Either of them could have got the ketamine. And surgical gloves – they’d both be pretty skilled at managing things like injecting ketamine with their hands in gloves, so there’d be no prints anywhere. The same goes for all the other doctors – and for the dentist. Maybe even especially Lam. As a dentist he’s entitled to use it. And he’s originally from Hong Kong where we know ketamine’s a big party drug.’
‘Lam was certainly terrified of something,’ Cass said slowly. ‘But was it just of being exposed by the videos? Of his wife knowing? Terrified of what it would do to him professionally? That’s a big factor for Jolley and Mellish. Or was Lam terrified because he murdered her? Or rather, organised her murder. I’m sure he didn’t kill her himself, at least not alone. He wasn’t physically capable of dragging Odile Janvier from the road to where she was found, even if she was doped to the gills with ketamine.’
‘Let’s think that through,’ said Drew. ‘Lam decides he wants Odile Janvier dead so he organises one or more hitmen, maybe from overseas. They somehow find out where she lives – she’s made that difficult but not impossible. Perhaps they just watch the unit for long enough to identify Michel then follow him home. They stake out the site at Earlville, then kidnap the two of them, take them up to the mountains full of ketamine, and kill her by some yet-to-be-established method. They do the same with Michel and dump him somewhere else that we haven’t yet found.
‘Problems with this scenario? There was no evidence of any kind of struggle in the house or of any break-in. Apart from the scarves. And I can’t imagine the Janviers ever letting anyone in, not anyone who they were blackmailing, at least. And the person or people would have had to come with quite a lot of stuff – drugs, something to tie them up with and so on.’
‘What about at the unit?’ suggested Troy.
‘No-one ever saw her there,’ Cass pointed out.
‘During the day,’ Troy countered. ‘Maybe she went there at night. To help make the videos. Send the messages. Count the money.’
‘That would be an easier place to catch them,’ Cass agreed. ‘Also, all the suspects know the place. At least, they know the letterbox, even if they didn’t make the connection with the front office, which was presumably why he set it up like that in the first place. Whereas, even if they did find the address of the house, they wouldn’t know anything about who else might live there or the layout and so on. One of the things that’s clear from all the men blackmailed is that none of them knew for sure the identity of their blackmailer, except the Hewitts. They all just knew it was somebody known to Odile Janvier. That’s all. So even if they went down there some time and saw Michel Janvier in the front running a cleaning company, they wouldn’t have known who he was or necessarily make a connection with the letterbox at the back.’
‘And,’ said Drew, ‘if he was in the back and someone he didn’t like turned up, all he had to do was not open the back door but go through into the front office, and slip away. He put a lot of thought into it all.’
‘But, like the house,’ said Leslie, ‘there was no sign of a struggle at the unit. No sign of anything amiss when Barwen went there on Monday. If our supposed murderer went to the unit, you’d expect to see something more than we found there. Michel Janvier was a fit guy. He would have put up a fight.’
‘There’s also one big argument against it being hired killers,’ said Cass, ‘and that’s the scarves. Hiring a killer, I think you’d want them just to do the job. Shoot her and dump the body in a hole in the bush. The same for her husband. You wouldn’t want them to go prancing around the countryside with silk scarves.’
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Troy Barwen looked serious. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Cass is right. Those scarves are sending us a message. I’m just not sure what it is.’
Cass suppressed a snort.
Leslie said evenly: ‘Troy, I think the message is that the killer was directly involved with Odile herself. I think Cass has a point about hired killers. Why would they bother with French scarves?
‘But let’s suppose that Dominic got someone to kill her – let’s move on to that possibility. Dominic presumably knows nothing about his mother’s … other activities, with the scarves or the blackmail. But he’s suffered a lot in the past from being tied up by her. Now he wants her dead. Let’s say because his brother wants to get married, buy a house. Dominic wants to help him and he’s always wanted to get even with his mother. Getting rid of both his parents would mean the boys would inherit the house, which is worth enough for Dominic to help Damian and pay off the killer or killers. Dominic maybe doesn’t feel too badly disposed towards his father so he gets taken somewhere quickly, shot and dumped, whereas Odile gets the slow death tied up in the bush. Tied up with scarves because that’s what Dominic’s ordered, to make the point to his mother that he hates her for what she did to them. The scarves might be a kind of symbol for him too. And Dominic probably has contacts who’d have no trouble getting hold of ketamine.’
Cass nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that sounds possible. But for the sons to benefit financially there have to be bodies found and identified. The parents can’t just disappear. And if it was Dominic or Damian and they were counting on inheriting, the deaths shouldn’t look suspicious, which Odile’s definitely does. But … Odile’s death could have been planned to look like Michel did it, and then Michel killed to look like suicide, except that Michel’s body has disappeared, maybe in Yasi.’
‘The other message that the scarves are sending us,’ Cass added, ‘is that at some stage the killer was at the Earlville house. He, or they, had to get the scarves. If she was grabbed somewhere away from the house she might have been wearing one. But not four.’
Troy’s face brightened. ‘Right!’ he said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Something a woman understands!’
‘One of many things only a woman would understand,’ responded Drew.
‘So, just going back to Arthur Mellish and Henry Jolley,’ Cass said, ignoring this exchange, ‘they both have a good reason to get rid of her but it wouldn’t have been clear to either of them that killing her would stop the blackmail because they both believed someone else was involved.’
‘I do have some reservations about Jolley,’ Leslie said. ‘Not on his own – but with Ingram’s help. Jolley mentioned to me that there’s a new woman in his life. This could be the trigger for him to finally do something about the blackmail, after putting up with it for years. Very likely Ingram is aware of this new development for Jolley; they work together. So Jolley tells Ingram how he’s being blackmailed and Ingram is so outraged he decides to help Henry get rid of her. And Ingram has the idea of using the scarves to make the point to her that she was getting the treatment she’d given Henry.
‘Then,’ he added, ‘did Ingram stage his return to the tree to see if anything was obvious? And to check out the creek because he’d dumped Michel Janvier into it?’
‘Well Sir,’ said Drew, ‘the thing is, that bridge really was broken and his car was in the creek. I saw it with my own eyes. He didn’t stage that. And his wife was with him. And … could they really have killed off Michel as well?’
‘Perhaps. If they had to. But maybe I’m unduly suspicious of him,’ Leslie answered. ‘Then there’s Jim Hewitt. He has men working for him who will stop at very little.’
‘Though they’re bloody incompetent!’ retorted Cass.
‘Agreed,’ Leslie nodded. ‘But there were no files on Hewitt or his son Aidan at Portsmith. Was this because Michel really did destroy the video when Jim’s lawyer asked him to? Or because someone working for Hewitt went to the office at some time when Michel was there, kidnapped him, and took away the compromising videos? Videos which could have been more recent than twelve years ago, or could have involved Jim or other people he knows. Then they could have used Michel to get into the house, where they kidnap Odile as well, take her up into the forest, tie her up and kill her. Then take him somewhere else, kill him and dump the car. Only, again, we haven’t found him yet.’
‘Yes, that’s plausible,’ Cass agreed, ‘because Jim is the only one of the blackmailed suspects who knew who Michel was.’
‘And while it seems believable that he did want to make sure that after twelve years there was nothing left of that early video, it seems a bit excessive to send two guys to break into the place,’ Drew said. ‘OK, let’s think about Michel again.’
A search at Earlville on Monday afternoon had uncovered a box containing two guns, deeply buried under the vegetable patch, as Damian had predicted. In good condition, well-oiled. A Lee Enfield rifle and a Queensland police-issue Glock 22, no doubt bought in a pub somewhere. Not loaded. Officers were still digging up the garden looking for other hiding places.
‘I have to say I’m still not one hundred per cent convinced by Lyndall Symonds’ belief that Michel was incapable of killing his wife,’ Leslie said. ‘So suppose he did tie her up and do the job … Let’s think about that.’
‘Then he stands next to his car by the road smoking cigarettes?’ queried Cass. ‘Why? Does he want to make sure she’s dead?’
‘Maybe they were smoked beforehand,’ said Drew. ‘Maybe he went and staked out the place first. Found the tree within a tree. Maybe even parked in the same place. Stood smoking while he made his plans. Of course, anybody who put her there might have done the same thing.’
‘Would somebody else hang around the place where they’d killed his wife while Michel smoked multiple fags and told them the story of his life?’ Cass asked.
‘A kidnapper might let their victim smoke if they were trying to get information out of him,’ Leslie pointed out. ‘But anyway, putting the cigarettes aside, let’s say that Michel kills her and then drives three kilometres away and parks the car as a decoy. Eventually it’s going to be found, and he must have known that.
‘Then he disappears.
‘One scenario: he walks back to Davies Creek and passes through the picnic ground, which he could do without anyone there really noticing; he’d just have looked like a bushwalker. He makes his way up to the highway. Thumbs a lift from a driver who hasn’t told us about it. And never goes home again. He could have hitched to Kalgoorlie by now. Don’t forget he could have had a lot of cash with him. He’s extorted several hundred thousand at least over the years, even if a lot of it was spent on Madame. Enough to get him to WA, or some other place far away, and set himself up with a new identity.
‘Second scenario: he vanishes into the bush somewhere off the rainforest road, heading possibly across country and further south. Again with the idea of getting away from Cairns.’
‘What about searching the bush even further around where the car was found?’ Drew asked.
‘We already have the men working their way through the rainforest in that area,’ Leslie answered. ‘And they’ve found not one single thing. Extending that search to a region half the size of Tasmania, which is what that state park is, seems to me a fool’s errand. If he did kill her and dump the car, he could have walked clean out of the area and onto the highway in a couple of hours, leaving not a trace behind. We can mount a bigger alert for him across the country, particularly in North Queensland and the Gulf country, since that’s where Damian says he’s spent most of his time. But also right across to Perth and up to Darwin.’
‘Talking of Damian,’ said Cass, ‘I should give him a call. It’ll be all over the evening news that his father’s car’s been found and he should have heard it from us first.’ She left the three men poring over the map.
In five minutes she was back.
‘Kahlpahlim Rock,’ she said. ‘Otherwise known a
s Lamb’s Head. Is that on your map there?’
‘Um, yep,’ said Troy. ‘Right here. Highest point in the Lamb Range, it says.’ He pointed to the red triangle marking the Rock.
‘Damian says Michel took the boys there a couple of times when they were young. He thinks his dad might have been there by himself other times, and that where the car was found must be near the start of the track to the Rock. He thinks there might be two tracks, both going off the road.’
Leslie leant over and studied the map. ‘I’ve been to the Rock once,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful but it’s a helluva walk. Great view from the top.’
‘I’ve been there too,’ said Drew. ‘When I was in high school in Atherton. It’s a tough walk.’
With a finger he traced the trail from the road to the Rock. There were two tracks, as Damian had described. One led off not far from where the Mitsubishi had been found. The second began a bit more than a kilometre further on.
‘There are probably old logging tracks from the other side of the Rock down to Gordonvale, to the main highway going south,’ said Leslie. ‘But it would be an extraordinary way to get away from the scene of the crime, if that’s what he was doing. I think it’s much more likely that he simply walked out past Davies Creek. If he walked anywhere at all.’
Cass looked thoughtful. She’d just been studying the clouds shrouding the mountains outside her window as she talked to Damian Janvier on the phone. Then she said: ‘Maybe I’ll just run an idea past Lyndall Symonds,’ she said.
‘What idea is that?’ Leslie asked.
‘Well, that Michel went to Kahlpahlim Rock,’ she replied.
‘If he went along the Kahlpahlim Rock trail at all it was about four weeks ago now,’ Leslie said briskly. ‘He’s hardly going to still be there. It’s rugged country. Even for experienced bushmen. It’s still an important place for the Tjapukai people. There’s no way we can search right through there.’
Double Madness Page 22
