by Peter Cotton
There was a sharp knock at the door, and Dr Rowan walked in, wearing a formless dark suit that she’d dressed up with a single string of pearls. With her was the head of Forensics, Peter Kemp. He wore the same mud-spattered overalls he’d had on at the crime scene. McHenry directed the two of them to the row of chairs beside his desk, and once they were seated, Rowan took a purple folder from her briefcase. She turned to McHenry, who swept a hand in her direction, giving her the go-ahead.
‘Thanks, inspector,’ she said, adjusting her half-moon glasses. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, there’s been a rare outbreak of unanimity back at the lab. Everyone there, including me, thinks Mrs Wright was murdered.’
She paused while the buzz in the room swelled and died.
‘We knew it was carbon monoxide that killed her,’ said Rowan. ‘But an hour before her death, somewhere around midnight last night, Susan Wright consumed a substantial quantity of sloppy pasta mixed with vegetables. There were traces of maize starch, yeast extract, and cheese in the food, so we’re thinking it was tinned soup. And mixed with the soup was a large dose of ketamine, a potent veterinary anesthetic favoured by date-rapists. In other words, Mrs Wright was unconscious when the carbon monoxide got to her, and therefore she had no hand in killing herself.’
Rowan turned to McHenry, and he nodded at her grimly, thus launching a murder investigation without a word. It was what we’d all been expecting, but this confirmation changed the mood in the room in an instant. Like all terrible news, it made the past seem a much simpler place.
‘So, let’s get to what else we know,’ said Rowan. ‘The X-rays were normal, and apart from the ketamine, and the carboxyhemaglobin that killed her, there was nothing notable in her blood. And from what we can tell, she hadn’t eaten for a while before she ate the soup. In other words, whoever killed her starved her to make sure she’d eat whatever she was offered. That’s all from me for now. Peter?’
Kemp thanked her, and, before he spoke, opened his briefcase and took out a plastic evidence bag.
‘We’re still working our way through most of the physical evidence,’ he said. ‘But I thought we should bring this mixture of fibres from the victim’s clothes to your attention straightaway. There seem to be two things in it. The first is some sort of animal fur — maybe from a dog or a cat. The vet’ll have more for us later.
‘The second is a bluey-grey manufactured fibre. We think it’s probably carpet fluff. The thing is, there was almost twice as much of this fluff on the minister’s clothes as there was fur, a fact which gives this mixture a unique signature. In other words, if you find the carpet that this fluff came from, and if that carpet has a healthy amount of animal fur on it, then you’re probably in the place where Susan Wright died.’
Channel Four Live Cam
Wednesday 31 July, 6.00pm
Good evening, Jean Acheson with the Live Cam, repeating for those of you who’ve just joined us that the death of Environment Minister Susan Wright is now the subject of a full-blown murder investigation.
A market summary follows shortly, but first we go to Parliament House, Canberra, where the prayer vigil for Mrs Wright continues. Here’s a bit of what Prime Minister Michael Lansdowne told a packed Great Hall just a few minutes ago:
‘When we get to the bottom of what happened to Susan, we’ll find some measure of peace. Until then, I ask everyone to remain steadfast and courageous in the face of our tragic loss.’
Prime Minister Michael Lansdowne there. Police are yet to say exactly how Mrs Wright died. No doubt they’ll let us know in due course. What I can tell you is that the investigation into her murder will be known as Operation Attunga. The name comes from Point Attunga, a feature on the lake near where Mrs Wright’s body was found. I’m Jean Acheson. Back with more soon.
4
SUSAN WRIGHT HAD last been seen alive on the previous Sunday night after she left a party in her office. The party had been organised to celebrate a World Environment Prize she’d been awarded the week before. McHenry’s team of searchers had assembled six CCTV packages from the party, including vision that tracked the movements of each of the sixty-three guests who’d attended. It meant we knew who’d been where in the office throughout the night, and what they’d done while they’d been there. McHenry’s team had also interviewed all the partygoers in the days following the minister’s disappearance. After reading the transcripts, the one I most wanted to speak to was Alan Proctor, a senior advisor in the prime minister’s office.
According to some witnesses, Proctor had been pissed when he turned up to the party, and, once there, he’d quickly gotten into an argument with Mrs Wright. The two of them had then retreated to the minister’s private office. A short time later, Proctor had stuck his head out the door and had ordered an assistant to go and get him a file from his office downstairs.
CCTV didn’t cover ministers’ private offices, so we had no idea what happened in Wright’s office once the boxy-looking file was delivered. But eighteen minutes after it went in there, Wright had emerged with it wedged up under her arm. The time on the footage was 11.18pm. As well as the file, Wright had a small purse dangling from her shoulder, and a briefcase in her hand. She said quick goodbyes to some of her guests as she headed for the door. Footage from a corridor camera showed her entering a lift. There was a grainy shot of her in the lift, and one of her emerging at the ground floor. The lighting was better where she drove out of the building. In that footage, she was alone in her car and looking relatively relaxed. She gave the security guard a nod as he raised the barrier for her. And then she was gone. Sensing the finality of it, I stared at the screen for a few seconds. Then it went to black.
Wright’s car had been found in Yarralumla mid-morning the next day. There was nothing in it, except for a street directory and some easy-listening CDs. We assumed the killers now had Wright’s purse and briefcase, as well as Proctor’s file. Some who’d seen the file when the assistant walked it through the party were convinced it was from Proctor’s legendary dirt collection; however, Proctor had told McHenry’s search team that it merely contained mundane material from the campaign trail. Regardless of its contents, that file had immediately become an object of interest to our investigation.
Also of interest were seven partygoers we’d dubbed ‘The Early Leavers’. CCTV showed them leaving the party and clearing the Hill by the Melbourne Avenue exit, just before or just after Susan Wright had driven off the same way. The Early Leavers weren’t suspects as such, but, as McHenry put it, they were a good place to start, and he’d assigned me and Smeaton to re-interview them.
The Early Leavers were Proctor; Wright’s senior person, Ron Sorby; her receptionist, Helen Stannage; her environment advisor, Marie Staples; another advisor called James Manton; Proctor’s deputy, Penny Lomax; and the journalist Simon Rolfe. The only Early Leavers not available for immediate interview were Rolfe and Proctor.
Rolfe was travelling in far-west Queensland and wasn’t due back in Canberra until Friday morning. I’d considered flying some people up to talk to him, or even interviewing him myself over the phone, but McHenry had said he’d keep till Friday.
Proctor was out of town, too, on the campaign trail in Perth. McHenry wanted him brought back to Canberra immediately, but he said to hold off on interviewing him until after we’d spoken to all the other Early Leavers, other than Rolfe. That way, he said, we’d have a firm idea of what went on at Wright’s party when we talked to him.
‘Okay, Glass,’ said McHenry, as he walked past my desk carrying a cup of coffee. ‘It’s time to see where we’re at.’
His even tone told me that if Brady had been on to him about my tangle with the PM, I wasn’t in too much trouble — yet. I watched him as he made his way up to the front of the room, his eyes not moving from the cup that he lowered onto his desk. He gazed down at the group that had now swelled to more than forty.
/> ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Attention here, if you will. First up, given that Susan Wright was the environment minister, there’s been a thought circulating that the perpetrators may have been greenies of some sort. Well, ASIO’s assessment is in, and they don’t give much credence to that theory. The fact is, they haven’t got anyone on their books who fits the bill. But Foreign’s looking for any nasties who might’ve left the country in recent days, so you never know your luck.’
McHenry then asked for progress reports. Soon after the body had turned up, he’d dispatched a team of detectives to the Canberra Yacht Club, which was situated on the lake shore about two hundred metres around from the crime scene. The detectives had interviewed the staff and a handful of early-morning yachties, but, according to the team leader, no one at the club had noticed anyone hanging around or anything out of place in the early hours. And none of them had noticed any strange vehicles parked in the area, either.
Another team was re-examining Wright’s mail, but so far they’d found nothing new. Essentially, while a lot of people were very passionate about the environment, no one had made any serious threats against the minister in recent times.
We were also reviewing her phone records, but there were no surprises there yet, either. Nor was there anything helpful in the CCTV footage of roads around the crime scene. Like most security cameras, the ones in question had been set up to monitor buildings, not the roads around them.
‘Anything else before we get back to it?’ said McHenry, his mouth slightly open in anticipation.
I had something to say.
‘Just one thing,’ I said, attracting every eye in the room. ‘And I guess I already know your answer to this, but if Susan Wright was doing a runner with Proctor’s file, shouldn’t we be accessing the rest of his files, if only to get a sense of why she wanted that one? And, of course, her having that file might’ve been what prompted the killers to nab her — which makes Proctor’s files even more relevant to us.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said McHenry, ‘but if we go for those files right now, the government would see it as disruptive to their campaign, so you could expect them to resist. And if we persisted, the barney we’d be buying into would doubtless become a campaign issue. The question is, are those files worth that sort of distraction for us? I think not. So, no, Glass. We won’t be going after Proctor’s files. Not yet, anyway.’
With that, McHenry closed the meeting, and people headed off to the kitchen for the coffee that would keep them going through the night. I got another one myself, then went back to PROMIS and a package of shots from the party. The drink-fuelled figures who’d danced that night away would probably have been much more inhibited had they known that a bunch of cops would later assess their every move and shake.
I was still studying the party vision when my landline rang. It was Colin Stevenson, an old schoolmate who’d worked on the Hill for as long as I’d been a cop. I ran into Stevo every now and then, in a bar or in a supermarket, and we always shared a laugh recalling the years we’d spent as teenagers hanging out together on the south coast.
Stevo was a political advisor to the minister for immigration these days, but his influence extended far beyond that. How far, I wasn’t sure. He said that Susan Wright’s murder had floored everyone up on the Hill, and when he’d seen me on the news, it had prompted him to call. If there was anything he could do, he said, I just had to ask — as long as it was all off the record.
Cops and journos have a similar approach to information. Both use secret sources to get it, but good cops, like good journos, always hesitate when offered the good oil ‘off the record’. No one wants to be the pawn in someone else’s game. So I applied the ‘what’s in it for him’ rule to Stevo’s offer, and conceded that I had no idea of his motivation. And as I had little sense of the people we were about to interview, nor any solid background on any of them, I thanked Stevo, and asked him about Wright’s senior private secretary, Ron Sorby.
‘There’s lots to say about Sorby,’ said Stevo. ‘Just let me grab out some stuff.’
‘You’ve got a file on him?’ I said, almost laughing into the phone.
‘Not really a file,’ said Stevo. ‘More like notes. Look, we should get together sometime. For a drink or something. But you need this now, don’t you? Ahh, here he is. Sorby. Well, the first thing to say about Ron Sorby is, don’t judge him by his looks — the bad hair and the dated get-up. The thing is, he’s got great judgement, and he gets things done. Mostly because he knows everyone up here worth knowing. Susan Wright needed more than good looks and a bit of charisma to get her where she did. She needed someone like Sorby. Funny, then, but the word around the traps was that she was getting rid of him after the election. But I guess you’d say he’s safe for now. So there you go.’
No, Stevo. There you go — pointing the finger at Ron Sorby. I was going to tackle him on it, but then I figured I’d get a better sense of what motivated him if I kept the conversation amicable. So I asked him about the other Early Leavers. He seemed to have ‘notes’ on all of them. Some of it was complimentary, but mostly it was neutral stuff and had more to do with their abilities than their personalities. Except for the prime minister’s man, Alan Proctor. No one seemed to like him very much.
‘Here’s something I’d ask you if I had you in an interview room,’ I said. ‘Do you know anyone up there who seriously had it in for Mrs Wright? Anyone who would’ve done something extreme to get her out of the way?’
‘Not really,’ said Stevo. ‘I mean, a few of her cabinet colleagues will be breathing easier with her gone. You know — one less hurdle between them and the top job. Then again, no matter what happens on Saturday week, they’ll all still have Lansdowne to contend with. He waited a long time for the leadership, and he’s been letting everyone know he plans to hold on to it — win, lose, or draw.
‘But the interesting thing here is, Wright told our people that if the government lost, no matter what the margin, she’d be shifting her support to Malcolm Redding. So everyone’s devastated that she’s dead, but for some it has a very definite silver lining to it.’
Blood Oath subscription news
Wednesday 31 July, 10.00pm
Proctor should tumble if he doesn’t come clean
by Simon Rolfe
First, a declaration: I hate Alan Proctor, and he likes me even less. Gentle readers might remember that it was Proctor who got me sacked as media advisor to transport minister Terry Sarmen some years ago. He said at the time that Sarmen would end up in the shit with me managing his media.
Well, I found my true calling as the scribe who keeps the bastards bull-free. And Terry didn’t last, anyway. Which brings me back to my old mate Alan Proctor, and the fireworks between him and Susan Wright on the night ‘The Popular One’ disappeared.
As regular readers will know, I was at Wright’s party, and having witnessed the said fireworks, it’s clear to me that Alan isn’t telling all he knows.
So let us in on your secrets, Alan. What was it you said to Susan Wright that had her crashing out of her party the night she went missing? What was in the file you showed her? And where’s that file now? And how would you feel if it suddenly popped up somewhere? Like on Blood Oath. And finally Alan, tell me, who’s in the shit now?
5
‘SUSAN WRIGHT LOOKED GOOD,’ said Stevo. ‘She worked hard. And she could’ve easily leapt over the lot of them, and they knew it. She only ever stuffed up once, but that didn’t really hurt her.’
‘What was that about again?’ I said. ‘When she stuffed up?’
‘The Mondrian affair,’ he said. ‘You’d remember it.’
I remembered the affair, but only vaguely. It was early in the government’s first term, so it must have been about fourteen years ago. Susan Wright, as the then minister for housing, had introduced a voucher sche
me to give homeless people a nightly bed in budget accommodation. The move had enjoyed bipartisan support, and it was certainly good policy, given that the turn-away rate for shelters at the time ran at something like 90 per cent. I remembered Wright launching the scheme on TV, in the foyer of a backpacker hostel. She’d been hugging two skinny kids as they held up books of vouchers for the cameras.
I was a bit hazy on what happened next, so Stevo refreshed my memory. He said the publicity for the bed scheme had transformed Wright into an instant media darling, but that didn’t last long. Not after a newspaper revealed that a few months before the scheme was launched, Mondrian Investment Bank had secretly acquired Dolman Holdings, the owner of Australia’s biggest chain of backpacker hostels.
The story highlighted Mondrian’s vocal support for government policy, and its generous contributions to the government’s re-election coffers. And it went on to accuse Susan Wright of ‘borderline’ corruption, given that her bed vouchers would boost Mondrian’s income by tens of millions of dollars a year, thanks to the hostels that the bank had acquired through its Dolman purchase.
Stevo said Mondrian’s share price had soared in the days following the story, prompting the opposition to withdraw its support for the voucher scheme. Then it boycotted all parliamentary debate on the matter.
‘Things went quiet for a while after that,’ he said. ‘Then The Chronicle got hold of some purchase documents which showed that the Dolman deal had been brokered for Mondrian by Mick Stanton. Of course, everyone knew that Stanton was Michael Lansdowne’s nephew, but what The Chronicle told the world was that Stanton had been working in Susan Wright’s office when the voucher scheme was being developed. Well, you can imagine what the rest of the media made of that. Adding to our woes was the fact that Lansdowne was justice minister at the time, so he had responsibility for any probe into the Dolman purchase.’
