by Garry Disher
‘Give her the benefit of the doubt first,’ Auhl said. He lowered his window. Late afternoon air flowed through the car, faintly scented by petrol and exhaust fumes.
There was an explosive backfire, smoke wreathing the little Subaru. The street racers backed away from the car, waving at the fumes, casting embarrassed looks at Auhl and Pascal in the Cold Case car.
‘Get a job,’ Claire muttered.
14
EVENING NOW. AUHL at the kitchen table with his laptop, the house mostly silent around him.
He’d keyed in ‘parental alienation syndrome’, curious that Neve’s lawyer, in a rare flash of animation that morning, had thought Kelso was drawing on the theory, and curious to know why it had been discredited.
PAS, he read, was the brainchild of an American child psychiatrist named Richard Gardner in the 1980s. The theory grew quickly in favour and influence, spreading from the US to the UK, Canada and Australia, and held that children affected by the syndrome had been brainwashed by one parent to denigrate, or allege abuse against, the other. Typically, such children used foul language against the accused or rejected parent, insisted their allegations were not coaxed, and were protective and supportive of the non-accused parent.
Auhl sat back. He hadn’t seen, or heard, anything like that from Pia. She didn’t talk about her father.
Or not to me, he thought.
He read on. According to Gardner, PAS was found mostly in custody cases where child sexual abuse was alleged. The solution: the child should be removed from the alienating parent—usually the mother—and placed with the alleged abuser—usually the father. Gardner went on to suggest that mother–child contact should cease for long periods and mothers who persisted in their abuse allegations should be jailed.
Not only that, he believed that most sexual abuse allegations were false. In a book published in 1992 he argued that hysteria attended such allegations in the context of an overly moralistic and primitive understanding of paedophilia. The tendency of a father to seek gratification from a child could be reduced, he argued, if therapists treating child sex abuse victims helped the mother become more sexually responsive.
Auhl was stunned. He poured a scotch and read on. Eventually Gardner was discredited. He’d never treated children and was accused of demonising women. Finally the Family Court in Australia disavowed PAS.
But were all judges and ‘single experts’ up to speed? Were some ignoring the shift? Dressing PAS up in softer language?
Neve hadn’t alleged sexual abuse, though. So Justice Messer was justified in slapping down Fleet when he tried to suggest Kelso was arguing Parental Alienation Syndrome. But did Kelso believe PAS applied in all instances of abuse—including the plain old violent kind?
Auhl googled Messer. A Melbourne Grammar boy, educated at the University of Melbourne and later Columbia in the US. Resided in Brighton. Divorced, no children. Belonged to a couple of predominantly male business and social organisations and was a stern fixture in Anglican church circles.
Then Auhl dug more deeply into Kelso, finding a couple of less formal sites. Apparently the psychiatrist had no particular training in recognising or treating sexual abuse in children. Hadn’t been obliged to reach a level of expertise before becoming a ‘single expert’. Yet he’d been called on to evaluate several hundred families, and was regularly used in cases featuring highly contentious allegations of physical and sexual abuse. He’d been reported as saying that ninety per cent of the child sexual abuse allegations he’d assessed were false. Which didn’t square, Auhl read, with the view of many of his peers that ninety per cent of such allegations in fact had substance.
A two-year-old newspaper piece quoted Kelso saying there’d been some differences of opinion about the efficacy of PAS but clinically it was a useful concept in some circumstances.
‘Useful in all your circumstances,’ Auhl muttered.
AS THE EVENING DEEPENED, Auhl brooded. Men like Kelso, Fanning—Alec Neill. Their assumptions, cronyism, power, sense of entitlement. Pre-emptive strike kinds of men: they seized the advantage while the rest of the world was thinking things through. Like Neill with his accusations against his wife, thought Auhl. And as soon as we move against him he’ll surround himself with lawyers and colleagues.
Auhl couldn’t deny it, Neill obsessed him. Three deaths. The first wife might have died naturally, but he doubted it. Her queasiness, gradually getting worse over several days? It indicated some kind of poison. Not the same kind that killed Siobhan and Christine. But then, although arrogant, Neill wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t use the same drug three times in a row.
Quite suddenly, a deeper unease settled in Auhl. Saturday morning. Janine Neill, pale, dizzy, uncoordinated. She had speculated blithely that Neill might shoot her or push her off a rock, but what if he’d poisoned her? Surely he couldn’t be that arrogant? But he’d succeeded three times before. Maybe he thought he was untouchable.
Auhl phoned Janine, mobile and landline. No answer.
He sat and thought very carefully, then dug around in an old sleeping bag for one of the protective clothing packs he’d scrounged over the years, working crime scenes. He dressed in dark clothing, backed his elderly Saab out of the garage and headed across to East Melbourne, heart jumpy and mouth dry.
Parking against a dark, leafy kerb a few blocks from the Neill house, he checked for surveillance. Was unsurprised to see none—the department hadn’t the resources for around-the-clock watches on the Neills—but he entered the property via the laneway at the rear anyway. He tested the back door and found it unlocked, as if Janine were at home and not yet in bed.
Except there were no lights on.
At that moment, however, Auhl had no need of lights. He was familiar with the odours of sickness and death. And whatever slimy stuff he was treading in, he was thankful he had forensic overshoes on his feet.
15
ALAN AUHL DIDN’T GO home. Didn’t call anyone. Midnight, a brilliant moon. He drove Janine Neill’s Jetta north-east out of the city, taking minor streets and roads as much as possible. He couldn’t avoid all of the CCTV cameras but it wasn’t his car, and he had the sun visors down, a cap over his brow. Even so, he made a wide loop, through Eltham and Yarra Glen and the farmland around Kinglake, north of St Andrews, before turning south. A play of tricky light and shade across the roads, the moon striking through the trees. A distant red flicker that proved to be a dying bonfire in the middle of a harrowed paddock. Further heaped pine trees and branch litter awaiting the match.
Finally the maps app on Janine Neill’s phone took him to a driveway on a region of wooded hills and dirt roads. He drove past for a kilometre. Parked behind an abandoned fruit and vegetable stall. Deleted maps from the phone.
He’d ditched his first forensic suit in a builder’s skip. He pulled on another, all but the gloves and overshoes, pocketed a small torch, and walked back to the Neill driveway. The hour of the fox, he thought. He still didn’t know what he was doing. Knew enough for self-preservation, however: thinking of the driveway, of powdery dirt holding shoe impressions, he parted fence wires and slipped onto the property that way, crossing a lightly wooded slope to the house. Good: the garage door was up. Fitting the overshoes to his feet, the gloves to his hands, he entered.
He felt around under the workbench. No metal box. The rifle was not where Janine Neill had said it would be.
And then Alec Neill said, ‘This is harassment.’
His voice was a squeak. He was as scared as Auhl—but he was armed and Auhl wasn’t.
‘I saw you. Got up for a glass of water and there you were, glowing like a light bulb in that white suit.’
Auhl said nothing. Kept his hands where Neill could see them.
‘Any reason you’re dressed like that? You look like you’ve got something…messy in mind.’
Neill was in the shadows beside his car, a black Porsche Cayenne. Auhl darted a glance out at the moon-soaked slope of land leading down to the road. He
could run. He could get shot in the back if he ran. Or he’d make it out safely and Neill would call the local cops. Or Debenham, Colfax. Either way, Auhl was finished.
His mouth was dry. ‘What did you use on Janine? Same poison you used on your first wife?’
Neill stepped into a patch of brighter light. He wore pyjamas, paint-spattered blue Crocs on his feet. His hair was askew from his pillow and the rifle shook minutely in his hands. He held it as if he didn’t know what it was—but you don’t need to be an expert to shoot an old .22, thought Auhl.
‘Where are the others?’ Neill said, the rifle absently turning away from Auhl as he risked a quick look out at the empty night.
Before Auhl could act, man and rifle swung back. In that short time, Neill had gathered himself. His voice was steady, laced with undisguised, sardonic amusement as he said, ‘It’s just you, right?’
‘Just me.’
Neill grinned. ‘This is going to be good,’ and his eyes were aglow. Auhl saw the madness there at last.
‘What is?’
In reply, Neill motioned with the rifle, a busy, get-a-move-on, up-and-down jerk of the barrel. ‘Inside.’
Inside, where he’d call the police. Shoot Auhl, the intruder. Auhl didn’t move.
‘In, I said.’
More gesturing. Impatience when Auhl didn’t move. But Auhl was watching the rifle, timing his move. He’d need two seconds and suspected he had only one. The barrel tip is trained on his chest, then it’s bisecting his face, it reaches the ceiling, and now it’s tracing a downward arc. The action repeated again and again, expressing contempt and pure arrogance.
‘I’m not fucking around, Sergeant. Move.’
Another gesture and Auhl charged, covering half the distance before the rifle barrel was fully up, slamming into Neill as it came down. The men grappled, the rifle trapped between them, Neill trying to push him away with it. Neill was strong, wiry. Auhl, despite his morning walks, was the older man. Then Neill slipped on an oil patch and Auhl followed him down, tangled and desperate as their sweaty hands fought for control of the little rifle and then it was at an awkward angle and then it went off.
AUHL SPRAWLED PANTING on the floor, waiting for his senses to return. Neill had toppled onto his side, the rifle tangled under him, his cheek on the cement, revealing his jaw, the entry wound. No exit wound, not with a little .22; and not much blood yet. But it was leaking down inside the collar of the man’s pyjama top; it would stain the cement soon. Auhl moved at last, badly panicked. He ran to the bench, ran once around the interior of the garage, trying to think.
A painters drop cloth, still in its cellophane wrapper. He tore it open, spread it on the cement floor, rolled Neill onto it. Wrapped him in it, finally, and carted him outside onto the lawn.
He listened. He hadn’t seen other houses nearby, and the barrel had been pressed under Neill’s jaw, muffling the shot. What next? His actions seemed inevitable: like everything he’d done this evening, aimed at concealment. The hour of the fox, he thought. The hour when a hobby farmer might take his .22 rifle to henhouse marauders. Or shoot himself because his wife was leaving him. Or because he was a killer and couldn’t stand the guilt a moment longer.
Auhl was improvising here.
He went with the fox.
Auhl, the old Homicide cop… It was instructive, carting Neill’s body by the light of the moon. To understand at last the weight of the human body, its lumpen intractability in death.
He skirted a broad, neatly plotted area of rosebushes at the rear of the house and crossed a patch of grass to a barbed wire fence separating the Neill property from empty paddocks and distant trees. He choreographed the death of a man who had gone after a fox in the night-time and overbalanced while climbing a fence. A man with his right foot tangled between the first and second wires and his torso on the other side, his shoulders on the ground and his face staring blankly at the sky. Barbed wire tears on his calf, arms and torso. A rifle near his outstretched right hand. The wound under his jaw.
Then Auhl stood back. He’d constructed a narrative: what narrative would investigators construct? Auhl didn’t admire his work but eyed it critically. He asked himself the questions a man like Debenham would ask. The length of Neill’s arms, the length of the rifle. Was he right- or left-handed? Whose gun?
Satisfied, he crossed back to the house, entering via a connecting door in the garage. A faint odour of curry and human habitation. Working as rapidly as he could and using thirty years of police experience, he searched every room. Behind the bathtub skirting, behind power points, under the toilet lids, inside shampoo bottles and lumpy packs of frozen peas, the floor space under bottom drawers…
He found two ampoules of succinylcholine inside a laser printer. One labelled Cabrini, the other Peninsula Private.
Pocketed one, left the other where it would be found in about two minutes.
AUHL STOPPED AT THE unknown neighbour’s bonfire on his return trip. Burned the forensic clothing and the drop sheet and cellophane and walked gingerly back to the car with his shoes in his hands, trouser legs rolled, socks in his pockets. A clever forensic technician might trace the soil on his feet to this paddock, but Auhl hoped to have showered multiple times before that happened.
A fast run back to the city, his nerves jangling, waiting for something to happen. An abrupt swamping of guilt. Sirens. The alarm going off, time to wake up.
He tried to search his feelings. Remorse? Shame, glee, fear, chest-thumping sense of righteousness? None of the above. But the jumpy nerves meant something. That he’d killed a man? More than that: he didn’t want to get caught. He’d covered his tracks. He was careful, oblique, a shadow slipping in and away again.
Bundle of nerves, though.
Thirty minutes later, he was swapping cars and heading for Carlton, thinking inexplicably of Liz. He hadn’t expected the break, but he hadn’t been surprised by it either. And he hadn’t argued. There was no fighting or bitterness, just acceptance tinged with regret.
He wondered what Liz would think if she ever learned about the night he’d just had. She’d always thought him slightly inert: under-motivated, content with his own company, absorbed in his own thoughts. Would this change her opinion?
Couldn’t tell her about it, of course. Couldn’t tell a soul.
16
TUESDAY.
Auhl did not vary his routine. He walked; he took the tram to work and made calls and checked records. A picture of diligence. But as the morning progressed, he found himself controlling external indicators of stress: shoulder tension, jaw clenching, his right leg jiggling. Every time footsteps passed the Cold Case main door, or anyone entered the office to check a matter with Bugg, Pascal, Colfax, he believed the sword of judgment was about to fall.
Hadn’t the bodies been found yet?
He’d already checked his private and work emails. Clumsily worded offers of anal sex with beautiful Russian women; unmissable deals from online store sites he’d never visited. Nothing from Tasmania. No recent suspicious deaths in East Melbourne or St Andrews.
Half an hour later he checked again, and some of the anxiety lifted. A new message: Launceston police had visited the address listed on Roger Vance’s LandCruiser registration papers. According to neighbours—who continued to stay in touch, forwarding the occasional letter—Vance had moved out four or five years earlier. Lived in Victoria now, an address in Moe.
Not so far from the late John Elphick’s farm.
A familiar and welcome sensation replaced the anxiety: the hunt. Auhl thought about Vance, forming a mental picture. A man who hadn’t bothered to take out Victorian registration on the LandCruiser because it was an effort, an irritation. A man who didn’t look far ahead. Wouldn’t factor in the risk of attracting police or bureaucratic attention. Vance was the kind of killer who’d drive around with broken tail-lights and a body wrapped in a blanket.
Auhl made a series of phone calls. Roger Vance still lived in Moe. He was deeply i
n debt; on a community service order for drug possession; finding occasional work as a farrier, in horse country where farriers were thick on the ground.
Knocking on the boss’s door, poking his head in, Auhl said, ‘I’ve found the guy who might have killed Elphick.’
Colfax, about to make a phone call, replaced the handset. ‘Where?’
‘He lives in Moe now. Moved there a few years ago. I’d like to question him.’
‘Moe? Christ, that’s halfway across the state,’ she exaggerated.
‘Until we have a face for Slab Man, we’re at a standstill,’ Auhl said. With a sudden dryness in his mouth he added, ‘And the Neill business has nothing to do with us until Homicide finish with it. So I’d like to move on Vance before his old Tasmanian neighbours tell him we’ve been sniffing around.’
Helen waved a hand at Auhl, wincing as if the action hurt her head. ‘Okay, okay, made your point.’ She patted her pockets absently for cigarettes. ‘Not entirely at a standstill. You still need to find Donna Crowther.’
Auhl said nothing, let her stew on his request.
Finally, looking at her watch, she said, ‘I don’t want you going down there by yourself. Take Claire or Josh with you, and contact the local station and see if they’ll provide a couple of uniforms.’ ‘A wise boss is a revered boss.’
Helen was still looking for her non-existent smokes. ‘Question him at the local station in the first instance.’
‘Deeply revered.’
She sighed. ‘Alan, just piss off, all right?’
AUHL CALLED MOE POLICE, arranged backup, signed out a car and by late morning he and Pascal were heading east. They rode in silence, Auhl driving, the motion of the car and the growl of the tyres encouraging reflection. No spring light today, only a dank and sunless sky.
Claire looked over. ‘Is anything wrong?’
Auhl realised he had the steering wheel in a death grip. He breathed in and out and let some of the tension drain away. The bodies would have been found by now; forces must be moving against him. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m fine.’
