by Dave Warner
‘I feel for the parents. I didn’t know them. But, anything I can do.’ There was a pause, he wriggled ever so slightly. ‘Obviously I’m somebody the police are going to look at.’
I was relieved he’d got straight down to it. ‘You taught all three girls?’
‘I didn’t abduct them. I’m gay by the way.’
I raised an eyebrow, as if that might have escaped my attention. ‘Please, don’t take this personally,’ I said, ‘but it would be great if I could ask you some questions. I’m sure the police have done this but Caitlin’s parents feel they are in the dark.’
‘I barely remember Caitlin. I did not abduct her.’
I nodded solicitously but went on my way regardless. ‘I’ve spoken to Beth Springer, asked if it was alright to interview staff. She said it was fine if they were willing.’
Beth Springer was headmistress of St Therese’s and what I was saying was the truth. I did not want Ian Bontillo thinking he was a prime suspect, and I’d already had a chat with an English teacher, Jenny Clohessy, the only other teacher as it turned out who had taught all three girls, though several other staff had held tenure across the girls’ student years. They could wait.
‘So, is it okay to proceed?’
He opened his palms as if to say ‘sure’. I produced a mini tape-recorder.
‘Do you mind if I record us? I never keep up if I’m writing.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Please don’t think I’m targeting you in any way other than to establish facts. The questions I ask you will be the same as I asked Jenny Clohessy.’
‘You’ve spoken to Jenny?’
‘Yes. Do you remember the girls well?’
He was relaxing slightly now, edging back more comfortably into his seat. ‘The only one I remember very well is Jessica. She was one of the leads in Guys and Dolls that I did as the school play. She was a natural. Emily I don’t recall very well. I think she did drama only for a couple of years and she wasn’t in the passionate core group of kids you tend to find. Caitlin … I said I hardly remembered her, that’s not accurate, I meant, when it first happened I couldn’t place her. But then I saw her photo and of course I remembered her. She was one of those kids who … drama wasn’t her thing especially but she’d put up her hand to be a spear holder.’
‘Do you recall any time or instance the three girls might have been together?’
He was shaking his head. ‘I’ve thought about that. Jessica was finishing when Emily was starting. I can’t think of anything.’
We talked about the girls for a good half-hour, their personalities, friends.
‘Did you ever see any of the girls outside school?’
‘Jessica, who I had most to do with. I saw her up the shops a couple of times. Once when she was at uni, then a few months ago we chatted briefly. She was in the city, law … no stockbroking.’
‘What about other staff at school. Academic or cleaners, anyone you thought …?’ I left it to him to fill in the gap.
‘No. I can’t believe it of anybody. Look, whoever did this, I don’t think they give off the vibe, they must fit in.’
‘I know the police would have asked you this but I have no access to their material …’ okay that was a lie, ‘… could you tell me where you were when each of the girls went missing? You know I need to ask this.’
‘Emily went missing in October. I was at the school preparing for the school play, which we always do in November. I worked there with one of the music teachers who was MD and one of my set designers, our tech teacher, till about eleven. They left. I stayed for a while, maybe forty minutes, then came back here to bed. That Saturday after Australia Day when Caitlin disappeared, I was at my sister’s for a party. Everybody except her and me flaked about midnight. I stayed and helped her clean up till around two. The night Jessica disappeared, that was a Friday. I was worn out. I came back here, cooked myself a meal, surfed the net, watched TV. My team St Kilda was playing Collingwood. We lost.’
‘St Kilda,’ I said with sympathy.
‘Born in nineteen sixty-six.’ Chagrin is the word I think that describes how he said it. The Saints had won one premiership in their history, and that by the lowest possible margin, one point, back in ’66. Maybe it was a calculated tactic on his part to win me over. If so, it worked pretty well. One minute I’m stalking him like he’s a duplicitous monster, next it’s like he’s a dolphin I’m trying to protect from ritual slaughter. I delved into his background. He’d wanted to be an actor but realised early on he wouldn’t be elite enough to crack the big companies so he pursued teaching. He’d come to Perth in ’91, having landed the job at St Therese’s.
By the time I’d left I was no wiser on what had happened to Caitlin. Did I think it was Bontillo? I never rule anything out, but no. Quite apart from the St Kilda thing and the gay thing, and the fact he was alibied, I just didn’t get a sense that this guy was anything more than a coincidence. Frankly, Jenny Clohessy was scarier. If she’d have been teaching me English I would have read Jane Austen cover to cover. She was alibied, so was her husband and her seventeen-year-old son; hey, I’m thorough if nothing else.
…
While checking up on the designated persons of interest was a main focus, it wasn’t my only line of investigation. I was especially interested in prior criminal or deviant behaviour: rape, sexual assault of course, but even snowdropping and flashing. Too often people dismiss some teenage kid stealing his neighbour’s panties off the line as nothing more than a quirk. To me it was a big warning arrow – cliff edge approaching – and over that edge lay violent behaviour spurred on by long-held sexual fantasies. Flashing, even more so. Some creep hangs out in the sandhills and bares his wares at a passer-by, one day he’s going to go further. The task force was onto it too. There were twenty plus convictions related to these more minor crimes, going back three years. Thing was, there’d be double that number unreported, and as many unsolved. Also with this kind of behaviour you might have to go back ten years. The serious sexual assaults and rapes were well documented. Thankfully, over the last three years there’d only been one serial rapist and he’d been caught and was behind bars. The task force had done a good job of listing all those convicted of serious sex crimes, and anything related to deprivation of liberty, going back thirty years, not just in WA but nationally. They had clearly spent a lot of hours sifting through each and every entry but none of those previously convicted had stood up as a strong suspect. I ran through the list of names and their crimes, wishing I could transport them to an island and nuke it. This was not going to be a line of inquiry I could fruitfully pursue, too much ground to cover, too many resources needed and much better left to the task force.
But it was while trawling through unsolved rape cases that I finally felt a jolt.
Back in January ’98, Carmel Younger, a twenty-two-year-old sales assistant, was walking past Karrakatta Cemetery around 2.00 in the morning when she was grabbed from behind, dragged into a dark part of the cemetery and raped. Younger had been drinking from late afternoon at the Cottesloe Hotel until about 11.00 pm. She had then cadged a lift to Shenton Park with some of her fellow drinkers where an impromptu party had ensued. About 1.40 in the morning, alcohol affected, she had decided to walk the five kilometres to her home in Nedlands. The people who had given her a lift to the party were too drunk to drive and she had thought she’d probably hail a taxi if she saw one but she wasn’t especially concerned. She didn’t own a car herself and often walked to the beach and back. After crossing Aberdare Road, the city side of the cemetery, she walked down the hill past the cemetery and had traversed about a quarter of the block to the next cross-street, Loch Street, when she suddenly felt herself lifted up in the air and carried away from the road into the cemetery itself. A hand clamped her mouth, an arm pinned her right arm. It was too dark to see her attacker’s features but she saw the knife he brandished under her eye before turning her over, pulling down her pants and taking her from beh
ind. Too terrified to scream, she had half expected her throat to be cut. Even after her attacker had satisfied himself she expected the blade and remained kneeling, sobbing to herself. She felt him move back but that was all. After what might have been a minute or two she gathered the courage to turn around but there was nobody in sight.
He had vanished. She did not recall hearing any vehicle but by then she was likely too distraught anyway. She did not possess a mobile phone at that time and had done her best to battle her way back to the road where she had stumbled on in a daze in the direction of her home, too terrified to flag down the few passing cars. She had eventually made it home and woken her housemate. The housemate had called the police. The subsequent police investigation had focussed first on those at the Shenton Park party. It was sound enough strategy: that the rapist was one of the guests who had seen Younger getting progressively drunk and had followed her, waiting until the cover of the cemetery. They had two potential suspects but both cleared on DNA and it was back to square one with time having elapsed. The next stage had been looking for witnesses who might have been driving by. They checked the speed camera inevitably set up at the cemetery, followed up on a couple of infringements roughly around the time of the rape but got nothing. One motorist remembered seeing a young woman, most likely Younger, walking unsteadily south near Aberdare Road. It was a dead end. Nobody was ever charged. I left the file open on my desk. I wasn’t finished with it. Maybe it wasn’t somebody known to Emily, Caitlin and Jessica who had abducted them. On the other hand, maybe it was.
‘It’s not fun having the cops accuse you of being a serial killer.’ Party Pig Partigan slid the speaker box off his broad shoulders and placed it down at the back of the truck.
I offered a correction. ‘We don’t know the girls are dead.’
He pursed his lips. Partigan was only around five-eight but built like a bull. ‘That’s how they acted. That Sergeant Collins, he was … he was fucking heavy.’
I could imagine. Partigan had been on a north-west tour with a band for the last week and a half and this had been my first chance to get to him. It was already November, Grace was officially a year older and my investigations had stalled. Soon as he was back from tour, I called Partigan at work and he’d agreed to talk while he loaded up for a gig that night.
‘I mean, look at me,’ he was sweating through his singlet, hair sprouted from his shoulders. ‘You think those girls are going to jump in the truck with me?’
I didn’t want to rub him up the wrong way but I felt obliged to point out the cops may have thought he just grabbed them.
‘Right out the front of The Sheaf? With people coming and going all the time? Besides, like I told Collins, “Where do you think I put them?” ’ He gestured through the open back door of the truck. It was jammed tight with sound gear. The only space left was for this last speaker box.
‘Did you know the girls?’
‘Not personally, no.’
‘Did you recognise them though?’
‘Not really. They were a type, you know? Those rich chicks. I mean, there’s a few girls always would dance down the front of the stage trying to catch the band’s eye. You get to know them after a while. The others just give you a hard time when you politely ask them to take their drinks off the mixing desk.’
Partigan sounded like he might have a chip on his shoulder. That could be the sort of guy who would abduct these girls. I baited.
‘Like you’re the one in the wrong?’
‘Exactly. I’m just doing my job.’
He heaved the box into the truck. It fitted snugly.
‘You saw Emily leave Autostrada.’
‘Yes, I did.’ He slammed the doors shut and bolted them.
‘How did you know it was her?’
‘I recognised her when they put her photo on the news.’
Earlier he’d indicated these girls were a ‘type’.
‘This was a week or so later?’
‘Yeah. I remembered. I was out there loading the truck. People were coming and going and then it was one of those lulls. There’s nobody there and I saw her walk out of Autostrada and turn towards Stirling Highway.’
‘You know why you remember her?’
‘Just did.’
He was fiddling with his keys, giving me a signal he wanted to get going. I refrained from asking about Caitlin or Jessica at this point.
‘Did you notice anybody lurking about? Any vehicles?’
‘Just the station wagon.’
My ears pricked up. I’d been over and over the reports. There’d been no mention of a station wagon.
‘What wagon was this?’
Partigan explained that for a gig at The Sheaf he would pull up in the loading zone out front and drop all the gear in. He would then move off and park the truck in one of the carparks for the duration of the gig to clear the loading zone for other deliveries.
‘After the gig, I’d go get the truck. When I went to get the truck that night it was pretty deserted. Few pedestrians heading to Autostrada. Where I parked the truck there was a station wagon, engine running, but no headlights. It was a bit odd. I forgot about it at first but when I was trying to remember stuff, it came back to me.’
‘You didn’t see who was in it?’
‘No. It was parked next to my truck on the left facing the wall so I couldn’t see in the window. And when I was in the cab, I was too high. When I reversed, I was too busy making sure I didn’t run into anybody.’
‘Where exactly did you park that night?’
‘There’s a little carpark behind the post office, just four or five spaces. You back out onto Railway Parade or whatever it’s called.’
He meant Gugeri Street on the railway end of Bayview Terrace. I remembered the small carpark, hidden away.
‘What time was this?’
‘About twenty minutes, half an hour, before I saw Emily. I’d packed all the gear up ready just inside the front door of The Sheaf, so I just had to load it in the truck when I parked back there. I reckon I was halfway through when I saw her leave. So, yeah, twenty minutes, I reckon.’
‘Anything else you remember about the car? Make, model, colour?’
‘I think it might have been a Holden. It was dark; dark red I think. There was no light, so I’m not sure.’
He didn’t recall stickers, an aerial or obvious dent. He checked his watch. ‘Man, I want to help, but I gotta go.’
‘You told the police all this?’
‘Yeah.’
He climbed into the truck and drove out of the warehouse. I supposed the detail of the car was contained in his interview and therefore not available to me on the police record. The police report summarising what Partigan had claimed to have seen was quite long and detailed as it was and maybe whoever was doing it figured this wasn’t critical to go in. Or it could simply have been some lazy police work. Then again, maybe I was the sloppy one; there was a file marked VEHICLES containing close to two hundred vehicles the police wanted to track in relation to the case. I’d only skimmed through this. Maybe I would find it in there?
I did not find any mention of Partigan’s account but I did find a report of a dark-coloured station wagon in reference to the disappearance of Jessica Scanlan. According to that, the day Jessica’s disappearance was made public there was an anonymous call to police of such a car being seen at the highway end of Bay View Terrace at 1.05 Saturday morning. Somebody had noted in the margin this was forty-five minutes after Jessica had left The Sheaf and was therefore ‘unlikely’. But the caller could have got the time wrong. Okay, two sightings in the vicinity of the disappearances around the time wasn’t remarkable but it was more than interesting. There was also a sighting of a silver Camry for the time and nights Jessica and Caitlin disappeared and for this vehicle the timing was more exact with the last known time they had been seen. Trouble was, silver Camrys were a dime a dozen. There were also multiple sightings of a light-coloured Ford Falcon in the area on the night o
f all three disappearances but again there were thousands of these cars. I was working off my home computer. The hard copy I’d printed was at the office. With Grace on the scene I found I was splitting myself more frequently between the two locations and even though it was a five-minute drive to the office, it was a pain in the arse to be shuffling around.
I’d come straight back from the PA factory to the house to relieve Sue, who had been holding the fort. I was still dwelling on Partigan and barely took in what my mother-in-law was explaining about Grace’s eating and pooing. In terms of assessing his credentials as a killer, my interview with the roadie had been no more illuminating than that with Bontillo. It was like trying to sightsee the Colosseum at night with a single match.
I heard the key in the lock and unmistakable footsteps up the hall. I turned to Grace who was on the floor on a rug fiddling with building blocks.
‘Mummy’s home.’
Tash entered in her work clothes and her eyes went straight to her daughter. Grace gurgled, delighted, and her arms reached out. Tash scooped her up.
‘I never get that reaction.’ It was true. I might as well have been a guy measuring curtains as far as my daughter was concerned.
‘When she’s older, you’ll be the favourite.’ Tash gave me a consolation kiss.
I guess we’d have to wait a while to see if that was true.
Before dinner, Tash and I popped Grace in her stroller and walked to Hyde Park. It felt good having Tash on my arm, her body pressed into me. Simple things in life, eh. It was one of those cool, breezy November evenings that pop their heads up for a little guerrilla rear-guard action after spring had lulled you with warm, peppery-scented days suggesting the battle was over and summer was about to roll in, the conqueror, a column of scorchers in tow.
‘You think it’s possible they could still be alive?’ Tash shuddered as she spoke. I wasn’t sure if it was the night air or the idea.
‘I didn’t at first but the longer no bodies turn up, you have to think it’s possible.’
