by Peter Cotton
‘The chopper’s found it,’ he said, prompting a cheer from everyone there.
He turned to Jean and patted her shoulder.
‘The wreck’s where he told you it would be, so well done,’ he said. ‘And thank you. Now you can go with Detective Glass and observe the recovery.’
He gave a nod, and with a chopper hovering high above us, Jean and I followed Peter Kemp and his Forensics team down a rutted track and into the woods. About fifty metres in, we came to a collapsed section of fence. We stepped over the strands of wire and headed down a disused vehicle track towards the brickworks. Jean and I walked side-by-side in the ruts, with the team in front of us, and a chopper, flying lower now, its spotlight guiding our way.
The berry bushes petered out as we entered another small stand of trees, and then we emerged into a large clearing where bits of buried brick poked out of the hard ground. The chopper moved away, Kemp signalled for Jean and me to halt, and then led his team up through the clearing towards a pile of rusted panels. It was the old car that the European had described.
Kemp positioned himself at one end of the pile of metal, and his people radiated off him in a straight line. Once everyone was in place, they did a circular sweep around the pile, stepping carefully, their eyes to the ground.
‘It’s been well and truly tramped over,’ said Kemp, to no one in particular.
When they got back to where they’d started their sweep, the team sidestepped together, away from the wreck, and circled it again. After they’d been around it five times, Kemp stepped out of the line and put on a pair of heavy gloves. He took out a torch and knelt down next to the hood section of the wreck, and started poking around underneath it.
After another sweep, the officer at the end of the line pulled photographic gear from her backpack and started shooting the wreck. Kemp meanwhile was on his back, edging his body further under the hood. Then he stopped wriggling.
‘Amazing!’ he said, more in relief than triumph. ‘It’s right where he said it would be.’
He worked his way out from underneath the wreck, and when he stood up he was holding an envelope wrapped in plastic. He carefully inserted the envelope into a large evidence bag that he handed to a female officer. She slipped the bag under her armpit and closed down on it tightly before stepping off to the side of the wreck.
Kemp took a brush and a container from his belt and focused his torch on the hood. He dusted it for a few minutes, pausing occasionally to examine his efforts. Finally, he turned to me and shook his head.
‘Nothing here that I can see,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s take her apart now.’
The team began separating the wreck into bits. Three of them were all patience and co-operation as they eased a partly buried mudguard out of the ground. They’d just moved on to a bumper bar when the officer holding the document got a call on her two-way. The whole team eyed her expectantly.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said into the device. ‘Will do, sir.’
She buttoned off, and, without another word, she swung around and walked briskly back towards the road.
‘Where’s she going?’ said Jean, turning to watch her leave. ‘And, more to the point, where’s she taking that envelope?’
‘It’s a crucial find, Jean,’ I said. ‘It’ll have to be thoroughly examined.’
She stared at me, assessing the implications of what I’d said. Then she swung around and quickly headed off after the officer. I followed. Jean wasn’t gaining ground at walking pace, so she started to jog. But the officer had too great a lead on us, and she was jogging now, too. She rounded a corner about twenty metres ahead of us and disappeared.
We were about fifteen metres from the officer when she handed the envelope to McHenry. He immediately gave it to a uniformed guy who ran it up through the road block and passed it in through the front window of a patrol car. The car then sped off. When Jean stumbled up to McHenry a few moments later, their eyes locked, but she seemed to be smiling.
‘You are going to let me see what’s in that envelope, aren’t you?’ she said, catching her breath. ‘Surely you are.’
McHenry looked at me, then his gaze returned to Jean. But he said nothing, which effectively communicated his answer.
‘Ohhhhh, now this really is shaping up as a big mistake,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Just think what you’re doing here. What’s this guy want? This European? Well, in part, it’s personal profile, isn’t it? Publicity. And if I don’t give it to him, he’ll write me off and find someone else to leak to. And none of my colleagues will call you if he leaks something to them. Not if you do this to me. And nor will I if he decides to keep using me. So if you want to catch him …’
‘What you’re saying makes perfect sense, Miss Acheson,’ said McHenry, in a calming tone. ‘But we’ve got no choice. We have to examine what we’ve recovered. Then, hopefully, there’ll be a trial in which it’s used as evidence. And maybe then there’ll be an appeal process. And after that, we’ll return it to its owner, as we’re required to do. I appreciate your priorities, but this is not a simple matter.’
‘But it’s not that complicated, either,’ she said, her eyes drilling McHenry. ‘You’ll give that document the once-over, it’ll sit in an evidence drawer for a few months, then you’ll hand it back to … who? Lansdowne? The government? That way, you’ll save yourself a short-term headache, but you’ll lose your only link to this guy — the European. What could be simpler than that?’
McHenry was saved from further argument by his phone. He took the call, and Jean turned to me and shook her head.
‘It’s okay, Darren,’ she said, seeming to console me. ‘I know you’re bound by what this guy says, but it’s a big mistake — maybe even a tragic one — and I think you know that. And as for you and me? Well, life’s full of possibilities, isn’t it, but timing’s everything, and now’s just not our time, I guess.’
She gave me a weak smile, and turned and walked back to the roadblock where her crew was waiting. She did a brief piece to camera, using a police vehicle as a backdrop, and then walked up Dunrossil Drive alone. She shook her head a couple of times as she went, as though she was trying to free herself of something.
‘Not happy,’ said McHenry, pocketing his phone.
‘And who can blame her?’ I said, feeling like I was about to throw up. ‘She helps us, and then we see to it that she misses out, big time. I know what you’re going to say — we did what was required of us. But how does that help the investigation? Doing the right thing! Because what she said is true, you know. She was our best connection to the killers, and now we’ve lost her.’
McHenry nodded, but I didn’t care if he agreed with me or not. Less than an hour before, Jean and I had been on the verge of something. Now she was walking away, robbed of a huge story, and partly blaming me. But no matter how injured she felt, or how high the stakes were for me personally, there was nothing I could have done differently. The document wasn’t mine to give her.
‘What about surveillance on her now?’ I said, trying to settle my guts. ‘Brady’d have to agree to it, wouldn’t he? I mean, they’ve left two documents for her — both on a route that she walks every other day, so they’re obviously watching her. And there’s a fair chance they’ll contact her again, regardless of what happened here.’
‘Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t,’ said McHenry. ‘But Brady’s still against it. He says it’ll blow up in our faces. So, no.’
I’d normally have responded with fury to such stupidity, but I was totally consumed by a profound sense of loss. And as I watched Jean disappear over the rise on the Cotter Road, I wondered what it would take to set things right between us.
Blood Oath subscription news
Monday 5 August, 4.30pm
A trust betrayed
by Simon Rolfe
The relat
ionship between the police and the news media may seem symbiotic, but don’t be fooled, dear reader.
Each regards the other with a high level of suspicion, and when their interests collide, the cost to any journo who gets in Plod’s way can be high indeed. Just ask Jean Acheson.
Earlier this afternoon, Ms Acheson helped the police locate more documents pertinent to the Wright and Proctor investigations, and what did she get for her trouble? A kick in the guts, and her story went missing.
Who could blame Ms Acheson if she now avoided all contact with the police?
20
AS SOON AS I got back to the station, I dialled Jean’s number. It rang and rang and went to messages, so I hung up. I hit redial, and it rang and rang again, but just as I thought it was going to go to messages again, she answered.
‘Hi, Jean,’ I said, keeping all emotion out of my voice.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, very snaky. ‘And I suppose you’re on your way over here with the documents, are you? And that’s why you called. To see if I’d be around.’
I couldn’t respond to her anger, so I said nothing. After an eternity, she sighed deeply and broke the silence.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just very frustrated at the moment, as you’d understand.’
‘And I wish I could do something about it,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to check that you made it back to your office okay. And I wanted to say that, you know, I thought we had something there, but I can see how it might not suit at the moment.’
‘At the moment?’ She laughed ruefully, and we lapsed into silence again.
‘Look, as for us,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘Well, it’s like I told you. Timing’s everything. We’re both very busy, and even when things quieten down, it could be hard. Being on opposite sides of the fence.’
She had her anger under control, but she sounded resolved, all the same. Here was the brush-off. I’d set it up for her, and she’d done the rest.
‘Okay,’ I said, trying to put some steel in my voice. ‘But when the election’s over, and this case is out of the way, expect a call from me. From the other side of the fence.’
She laughed and said that would be fine, but without enthusiasm. Then she hung up and, immediately, all the hopes I’d had for us, all the daydreams I’d entertained, began whirling around inside my head in a confused mess. Then my guts got involved, and I knew I had to assert control. I told myself that I hadn’t won her heart, so I hadn’t lost it. And I had a job to do and I had to be effective, not distracted. I had to get back on task. But as the afternoon wore on, in everything I did, my thoughts returned to Jean. And it occurred to me that keeping a tail on her had suddenly become much more dangerous. If she caught me at it again, she wouldn’t swallow another half-baked excuse. And she certainly wouldn’t be asking me out for a drink.
Luckily, I owned an old GPS vehicle-tracker that I could monitor her movements with. It was another gift from my American friend James — the one who’d given me the mandolin. His tracker wasn’t as small or as sophisticated as the type we had in the storeroom, but it worked just as well, with one complication: once I’d got the thing attached to Jean’s car, I’d have to call James in Memphis so he could locate the car through his service provider. It was a bit of an imposition, but when he’d given me the device he’d said to call him any time for a reading, day or night. In fact, he’d said he’d be offended if I didn’t try the thing out.
It was almost seven when I walked past Jean’s place. Her lights were out, so I scanned the road and the footpaths, and then plugged my mobile to my ear and walked briskly down into her carpark. Her car wasn’t there, so I decided to give her fifteen minutes. If she hadn’t turned up by then, I’d pick up some dinner and go back to work.
I’d decided on stir-fried noodles, and was about to go and get them when Jean’s black VW swung into Giles Street. The car slowed as it turned into her driveway, the glow from the streetlight catching her face as she flashed past.
When the lights went on in the penthouse, I took my usual evasive trip down to Canberra Avenue, crossed Giles Street, and walked back up to her drive. I checked the street again before descending into her carpark, where I found her car reverse-parked against the back wall in a numbered bay. When I got to the rear of the vehicle, I removed my backpack and took out the tracker, a torch, and a wire brush. I laid them on top of the pack, and then got onto my back and eased myself under the car.
There was a flat metal plate next to the rear bumper bar that looked made for the magnetic base on the tracker. I brushed the dirt from the plate, then took the tracker in both hands and eased it into place. The magnets and the metal met with a clang; when I tested it, the thing felt like it had been glued there. I turned it on. A dull, red light flickered rapidly next to the switch, and then went out. The job done, I eased myself out from underneath the car, put the torch and the brush back in my pack, and returned to my hide via the usual route. I’d only just settled in there when Jean’s lights went out; a few minutes later, her VW emerged from the carpark and headed for Canberra Avenue.
Earlier in the day I’d had an email exchange with James in which I’d spun him a line about my girlfriend’s wanderings. I’d told him I wanted to track her for a few nights. It might be completely innocent — I just needed to know the score. James was sorry to hear about my troubles, and said to call him anytime I needed her co-ordinates.
It was three in the morning, Memphis time, when I dialled his number. James picked up after a couple of rings and said to call him back in a few minutes. When I did, he’d already tracked Jean to Mueller Street in Yarralumla. Rolfe lived in Mueller, so I figured she was visiting him. I thanked James, and as there was no way of telling how long Jean would stay at Rolfe’s, I headed off to a noodle place in Manuka.
Back at work, I spent a couple of hours calling Marie Staples’ old radical mates, but none of them had seen her in years. Then I called James to check on Jean; after only a brief delay, he told me her car was stationary in Giles Street. I thanked him, and, secure in the knowledge that she’d got safely home, I retreated to a camp stretcher in the rec room and went straight to sleep.
In one of my dreams that night, I was creeping along a low white passageway, Glock in hand, on-guard against some unspecified threat. I came to a door that I opened, and there was a huge room with a big hourglass sitting in the middle of it. The top bulb of the hourglass was almost full, and the sand trickling from it formed a pointed pile in the bottom bulb.
I went back into the passageway and came to another door. The room behind it contained a big hourglass, too, but there was much less sand in the top bulb of this one, and it seemed to be emptying out at a faster rate. I rushed from the room and saw a third door. I knew exactly what I’d find behind it, and, sure enough, there was another big hourglass, except the top bulb on this one was almost empty. I watched the last of the sand fall through it, and then I realised I’d been going into the same room all the time, and seeing the same hourglass. It was just that there were three different doors leading to it. That thought made me panic for some reason. Then McHenry was yelling at me to get out of the building. I smelt smoke and could hear fire crackling somewhere, and I was suddenly very hot. McHenry was yelling, ‘Get out! Get out!’
I woke in a sweat in the dark. It was just after four. I could have done with a lot more sleep, but I knew I’d just lie there, so I got up, had a shower, got dressed, and went down to the room. Not much had come in through the night — just a handful of callers to the hotline, mostly insomniacs offering half-baked advice.
At seven, I walked down to Northbourne Avenue for a croissant and a coffee. Just after I got back to the room, McHenry called a team meeting that turned into a talkfest which ate up a big chunk of the morning and got us nowhere. It seemed everything we did and everything that came our way was leading to the same old dead ends and dro
ss. The bosses upstairs would be telling their political masters we were making progress, but the truth was we had two very disciplined predators in circulation, and our hunt for them had all but stalled.
At about one, I got a sandwich from the lunch cart and checked my news sites while I ate it. Rolfe hadn’t updated his blog since the night before, which was unusual. He’d been filing a story or a comment piece every few hours since the election kicked off — in fact, with the race tightening, he’d even been updating his site in the middle of the night. I put his failure to file down to a technical glitch, but, only a few minutes later, McHenry called the room to attention. The grim look on his face gave me an inkling of what he was about to say.
‘I’ve just got off the phone with Simon Rolfe’s people in Sydney,’ he said. ‘They can’t contact Rolfe. Now, they were a bit cagey, but it seems he goes missing sometimes, without notice, and then turns up after a couple of days. So it might be a false alarm, but we’re taking no chances.’
By the time we arrived at Rolfe’s house, Peter Kemp and his team had given the place the once-over, and Kemp was looking very frustrated. It seemed Rolfe was a believer in spray and wipe-type products, and as a result his kitchen benchtops were as clean as a whistle, as was every other surface in the house. Adding to Kemp’s irritation, the place had been vacuumed within the last day or so, the parquetry floor in the hallway had been mopped, and all the beds had clean sheets.
The porch light had been on when Forensics had arrived. According to a neighbour, Rolfe left the light burning whenever he went out at night, but always turned it off when he got home. Well, by the look of things, he hadn’t made it home. What had happened to him? Was he off on a jaunt, or had he been nabbed? And if he had been nabbed, why him?
We spent the next six hours pulling Rolfe’s place apart. When that proved fruitless, people started to head back to City Station, and I told McHenry that I’d see him back there after I’d got hold of some food. But, instead, I drove over to Kingston to check on Jean. She and Rolfe were friends, and according to the GPS under her car, she’d been in his street just hours before he’d gone missing. She might have been seeing someone else on the street, of course; but if she had been visiting Rolfe, that made her one of the last people to lay eyes on him. If my surveillance on her had been above board, I would have brought her in at that stage, but all I could do under the circumstances was to keep shadowing her.
