Tropic of Death

by Robert Sims

  Robert Sims grew up in Melbourne, going straight from high school to journalism and working in an array of newspaper and radio jobs. He took a career break from journalism to complete a degree in politics and philosophy, then spent more than twenty years in London working for Independent Radio News, ITN and the BBC. Robert and his wife and young sons now live in Melbourne. Tropic of Death is Robert’s second novel; his first, The Shadow Maker, was published in 2007.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2009

  Copyright (c) Robert Sims 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Arena Books, an imprint of

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

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  ISBN 978 1 74175 671 5

  Set in 12/15 pt Adobe Garamond Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  16/2/09 10:02:52 AM

  ‘And this also … has been one of the dark places of the earth.’

  Joseph Conrad

  1

  The little girl stood back and admired her sandcastle. It sat there, a shapeless blob, on the wide wet flank of the estuary. Seagulls were wheeling and cawing overhead. A breeze ruffled the waves in the distance. The sludge from drains traced the rim of a sandbank a few yards away from her. Over on the far shore, the concrete bulk of grain silos loomed against the sky and dirty-looking smoke drifted from factory chimneys. The day had an unsettled mood, something shrill in the air and, among the parrots fighting over fast-food scraps, a hint of tainted innocence. But the child didn’t sense it, not even in the distant boom of artillery rumbling over the mudflats from the testing range beyond. She’d made her mark and her soul was content. She bent down and topped her castle with a flag made from a piece of tissue. It fluttered in defiance of the tide that would sweep her small work of art into oblivion.

  Her mother sat on a promenade seat. She smoked and stared with empty eyes into the middle distance where a tourist launch headed out towards the Great Barrier Reef. Its wake rippled among the mangrove thickets of a nearby inlet. The girl waved but the mother didn’t notice, so she drifted off to look for shells. She passed a bait digger who stooped beside his pail, slopping mud with his spade. He watched her darkly. She said hello, but he just nodded in response. She wandered over to a clump of seaweed and squatted and tugged at a slimy strand. It dislodged something strange in the mud. She gazed in fascination. Then she went back to the bait digger. He paused and looked at her with irritation, and she smiled at him.

  ‘There’s a man in the mud,’ she said.

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at her through cold eyes.

  ‘There is,’ she insisted. ‘A man in the mud. Come and see.’

  He leant on his spade and watched her plod back to the seaweed and point at something.

  ‘Come and see.’

  He sighed and jabbed in his spade so it stood upright, and then he squelched across to her. She was pointing triumphantly.

  ‘See! I told you!’

  At first he just saw a muddy lump and a crab scuttling away.

  Then he saw the shape of the severed head. The skin was death-white. Parts of the face had been eaten away. The little girl was still pointing excitedly as the bait digger began to vomit. She looked at him with disappointment.

  2

  ‘Still with us, Van Hassel?’ The greeting, from DSS Wayne Strickland, was meant to be ironic. It drew an indulgent smile from Detective Sergeant Marita Van Hassel as she brushed past him into the squad room.

  ‘Till I get my ticket of leave,’ she replied.

  ‘Ticket to ride is more like it,’ said Strickland. ‘And an easy ride at that.’

  ‘Does that mean you want to keep me in the squad?’

  ‘Huh.’ Strickland smoothed back his thinning hair. ‘Do I look like I’m in your fan club?’

  The banter contained the usual mock hostility but Rita knew it reflected something deeper. It wasn’t so much dislike as a clash of styles. While Strickland was her immediate boss, he was also her opposite in a number of ways. Like many of her male colleagues he was old school - uncompromising, pragmatic and committed to traditional methods of policing. An astute detective, he was also hard-faced and middle-aged, a man suspicious of innovations such as behavioural analysis and psychological profiles. Rita specialised in these areas after doing the necessary fieldwork and academic study. In Strickland’s eyes that made her an intellectual, as well as a perfect example of the feminising trend within the Victoria Police. When she’d been selected to become a profiler he’d called her overindulged and over-promoted - a fair-haired favourite of reformers who were bent on re-marketing the force.

  The barb had been prompted by her photo in Police Life magazine. Rita liked the shot. It captured something of how she saw herself - a woman with an independent mind, a trim figure and the ability to succeed. There she stood between the pillars of Melbourne’s police headquarters, arms folded, head turned sideways to the camera, staring directly into the lens. The pose, in a white linen blazer and trousers, was almost symbolic. With her gaze of concentration and short blonde hair blown back, it showed off her best features - the blue of her eyes, the curve of her cheekbones, the serious expression of her mouth. Her friends told her it was the portrait of an alpha female, but Strickland dismissed it as image manipulation. He said it made her look like a warrior in a pantsuit - part detective, part Visigothic princess.

  The comment had made her laugh. There was an element of truth in it, not least because of her northern European ancestry.

  That had been the low point in their working relationship.

  Since then he’d mellowed. He also conceded she got results.

  That’s because she was diligent and assertive, much like Strickland himself. But unlike him, her ambitions were far from realised. At thirty years old, she was convinced her finest achievements lay ahead of her.

  ‘One thing I’ll admit,’ said Strickland. ‘Things won’t be the same without you.’ He laid on a gritty smile. ‘I’ve actually got used to you being a pain in the arse.’

  Despite her breezy manner, Rita was losing patience with the delay over her future role. In the past month she’d officially completed her profiling course, processed a backlog of case files and generally cleared the decks ahead of her next appointment. But the senior commanders at police headquarters were yet to decide where to assign her. They were having trouble finding an appropriate slot for a fully qualified criminal profiler, something of a rare and exotic breed among rank and file officers. Until they made up their minds she remained in limbo, a
semi-detached member of the Sexual Crimes Squad, feeling professionally unsatisfied and at a loose end.

  With a sigh of frustration she sat down at her desk, dumped her bag next to the keyboard and logged on. The inbox had collected a dozen new emails, mostly routine messages and junk mail, but one item stood out. Titled Man in the Mud, it had two attachments.

  Rita clicked on the email and read the covering note: Please look at the attachments then phone me.

  It had been sent by an officer she didn’t know, a DS Steve Jarrett based at Whitley police station in Queensland. Already intrigued, Rita opened the first attachment. It contained a copy of a clipping from the local newspaper, the Whitley Times: who is the murdered ‘man in the mud’?

  By Nikki Dwyer

  A week after the discovery of a severed head on the northern end of Whitley Beach, police admit they are no nearer to identifying the victim.

  A DNA check and searches of dental records have failed to produce any results.

  Officers have also been circulating a computerised image, reconstructing the decomposed face, but so far no one has come forward to put a name to it. The victim is described as a male Caucasian in his 20s or 30s, with shoulder-length black hair.

  The investigation was launched after the gruesome find by four-year-old Jennifer Griffiths, who dislodged the head while playing on the mudflats of the estuary. She impressed local police and journalists with her composure, describing the grisly object as simply ‘the man in the mud’.

  A post-mortem examination showed the unknown homicide victim had been shot through the top of the skull.

  Since the initial discovery, more pieces of the dismembered body have floated ashore. Last Friday a handless forearm washed up south of the town and two days ago another macabre find was made by a man walking his pet labrador near the dunes.

  To the owner’s horror, the dog retrieved a boot containing a foot.

  The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Steve Jarrett, said yesterday it seemed obvious that the body was dumped at sea by someone who failed to take account of local currents.

  ‘It’s a case of waiting to see what else the tide brings in,’

  he said.

  When she’d finished reading the article Rita opened the second attachment, a computer-generated image of the victim. The face meant nothing to her. While the crime presented an interesting challenge, she couldn’t see what it had to do with her. Nevertheless, she phoned the number provided and asked for DS Jarrett.

  ‘Is that Van Hassel?’ drawled a male voice.

  ‘It is,’ she answered. ‘Are you Jarrett?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘G’day.’

  ‘G’day to you too, Jarrett. You get this morning’s prize for the most ghoulish email. Any more body parts float your way?’

  ‘No more human joints of meat,’ he said. ‘Though I did get a false alarm about a torso under the pier. It turned out to be a side of pork wearing a Kakadu T-shirt.’

  Rita laughed. ‘Sounds like the deep north has its own brand of humour. Okay, so I’ve caught up with the local news about your corpseless head, but what’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was wondering what connections you have up here.’

  ‘Around Whitley?’ asked Rita, puzzled. ‘None that I know of.

  What makes you think I have?’

  ‘A boot containing your name and a size-eight foot lopped off at the ankle.’

  ‘I hope this isn’t a piss-take.’

  ‘I know it sounds weird,’ admitted Jarrett with a dry chuckle,

  ‘but I’m just trying to make sense of it. That’s why I sent the newspaper article with the background before I spoke to you.’

  ‘If you’re talking about the boot in the report, how could my name possibly be inside it?’

  ‘When the crime lab boys in Brisbane extracted the foot they found a soggy beer coaster with four words written on it: Van Hassel Sex Crimes.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ said Rita. ‘It’s not some sort of mix-up?’

  ‘I’ve got the lab’s digital photos on the screen in front of me,’

  answered Jarrett. ‘I’ve done a database check - I even Googled the words - and you’re the only one it can refer to.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘Though I’m less than thrilled that my name was under a severed foot.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all a bit gross. Welcome to my horror show.’

  ‘Describe the beer coaster to me,’ she said.

  ‘A square cardboard mat with the Four X label on it. Could’ve come from any of the dozens of bars we’ve got around here. This is backpacker central. The words were written on the back with a ballpoint pen, so they survived a soaking.’

  ‘And what about the foot?’

  ‘Chopped off post-mortem with something like a heavy meat cleaver, and still wearing a white Nike sock. The DNA matches the other body parts, so it’s the same victim.’

  ‘Well, no pun intended, but I’m stumped,’ she told him. ‘Got any theories?’

  ‘I toyed with the idea that a psycho might’ve deliberately planted evidence but I’ve ruled that out. The body parts weren’t meant to be found. Whoever dumped them miscalculated, and the tide did the rest. So that leaves me with one working theory, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I think our victim might have heard, or overheard, something about you while he was in a bar up here. So as not to forget, he picked up the nearest thing to hand - a beer coaster - wrote down your name and squad, and concealed the information in his boot because he was worried it might be discovered on him.

  Before he could contact you, he was murdered, dismembered and dumped at sea. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Of course, that leaves me with the burning question: what’s your connection up here?’

  ‘I can’t think of any,’ she sighed. ‘But I’ll check back through the files.’

  ‘Thanks. At the moment this case is going nowhere. The man in the mud is starting to haunt me.’

  ‘Anything else I can do?’

  ‘Just one thing. You can say hello to a colleague of yours, Detective Sergeant Erin Webster.’

  ‘You know Erin?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s uh …’ He paused. ‘She’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Mine too.’ His hesitation made Rita curious. ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘We worked a case together a few years back when I was still stationed in Sydney. A Victorian rapist was on the loose. Erin was sent up as liaison.’

  ‘I see.’ Rita thought she caught a hint of irony, but she just said, ‘I’ll pass on your greetings.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  As she hung up Rita was intrigued, not so much by the decapitated head but by Jarrett’s association with Erin. This was her closest friend inside the force, someone to confide in, a woman to share secrets with. But there’d never been any mention of Jarrett.

  Why? She got up and crossed the squad room to where Erin was working at her desk.

  As Rita approached she observed her friend more closely than usual. She was poring over a document, highlighter in hand, a frown of concentration on her freckled face. Typically, there was a restless energy about her as she shifted in her chair; the sign of someone who’d rather be out in the field than pushing paperwork.

  It was in her background. With her soft hazel eyes, shapely figure and copper-coloured hair pulled back loosely, she had the looks of a country girl from the Wimmera. That was her appeal, along with her provocative smile and a crude sense of humour that had men chasing her even though she was married with a three-year-old son.

  But while the marriage was rocky, the only suggestions of infidelity surrounded the husband, a uniformed inspector who insisted on remaining one of the boys. Erin’s days of playing around
were supposed to have ended with her wedding vows, or so she’d said, but Rita had her doubts. There was a perennial friskiness about her friend that needed to be satisfied. The more Rita thought about it, the more convinced she was that Erin was not only capable of jumping into bed outside a marital relationship that was part workplace, part battlefield, she was also slick enough to conceal it from her husband, her colleagues and her friends.

  Rita stopped in front of her desk, hands on hips. ‘So what have you been getting up to?’

  Erin looked up. ‘Well, right now I’m going through the transcript of a public masturbator’s trial from 1978. The old scuzzbag’s reoffended.’ She threw down the highlighter. ‘What about you? Got the nod yet?’

  ‘No.’ Rita pulled up a chair and sat. ‘Any day now, or so I’m told. But they’d better pull their fingers out or I might choose another career.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been offered the chance to do a PhD. The workload’s horrendous but it’s tempting. I’m doing little more than twiddling my thumbs at the moment.’

  ‘You wouldn’t chuck in your career here?’

  ‘Maybe. An academic post’s an option.’

  ‘But you’d be wasted among a bunch of eggheads.’

  ‘They might appreciate me more.’

  ‘Well I appreciate you. And I need you here.’ Erin sighed.

  ‘You’re the only one I can really talk to.’

  ‘Well, while we’re on the subject of talking,’ said Rita, ‘what’s this about a liaison with Steve Jarrett?’

  ‘Shit.’ Erin glanced around nervously. ‘What’ve you heard?’

  ‘So it’s true, you tart. And you’ve never breathed a word of it.

  Is it still going on?’

  ‘Not here!’ insisted Erin in a harsh whisper.

  She got up and led Rita to the tiled interior of the women’s toilets, checking the cubicles to make sure they were alone before turning abruptly.

  ‘What’s been said?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing I know of,’ Rita answered. ‘It’s just informed guesswork on my part.’

  ‘Based on what?’

  ‘Your track record, for a start. Your prenuptial conquests.’ Rita was still amused. ‘Plus, I’ve just got off the phone with Jarrett.