by Dave Warner
‘They make TV shows about that stuff. Some psycho with girls chained in a cellar. You don’t think it could happen here.’
I didn’t contradict her but after Gruesome nothing surprised me. The universe had shrunk, evil was but a mouse click away and little ol’ Perth could be every bit as malevolent as LA or Adelaide. Even though Grace was too young to understand, I had an aversion talking about the case anywhere near her, like it could contaminate our family too.
‘I don’t really feel like talking about this right now,’ I said.
‘Sorry, I just … it’s so unreal.’
‘It’s not your fault, it’s me, I’m …’
How do you express how every minute on the case choked the life out of me?
‘It’s like smog that I’m surrounded by all day and I just need a little fresh air.’ I wanted to assure her my lack of communication was temporary so added, ‘When we get back.’
‘Smog?’ she raised her eyebrows, chipping me, but I knew she got it. She always got it.
As it turned out we never got around to further discussion. Tash went to put Grace down and I warmed the stove with Van Morrison as background. Back in the early ’70s, I used to go and see a band called Roadband. They were the ones who turned me onto Van the Man. He made cooking easier too. My culinary capability had all the range of my cheap mobile in a concrete tunnel, but what I did, I did really well … fifty percent of the time. I opened the fridge, saw eggs and decided I’d fix us an omelette. As I cracked an egg, my mobile phone rang. Only clients rang it. I answered, reaching for a knife to slice cheese.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Craig Drummond.’
In my game you read the tone in a voice quicker than the short acceptance speech you pray they’ll give and never do. You can pick anger, fear, envy, and so on in a breath. In Drummond’s voice I heard anxiety.
‘Do you know anything?’
Yep, there it was, high anxiety.
‘About what?’
‘You haven’t seen the news?’
I turned down the stove, picked up the remote and sent the magic beam to the new flat screen I’d bought specially for the Olympics but barely watched. The screen ignited on bushland, police in forensic gear. Even without the big type that scrawled over the screen – REMAINS OF YOUNG WOMAN FOUND – I would have guessed what was going on. Drummond was back in my ear.
‘Do you know if it’s Caitlin? Have you heard anything? Gerry rang me. They’re beside themselves.’
‘I haven’t heard anything. Tregilgas will call the family. I’m persona non grata, he’s made that clear.’ I wanted to concentrate on the news item. ‘Listen, I better watch this, I’ll call you if I hear anything.’
He thanked me and rang off. I sat on our cheap sofa and leaned closer to the screen. I recognised the netballer cop and Collins in the background. The body had been found in a shallow grave in bush near Jarrahdale, an hour south-east of Fremantle. They switched back to their reporter on the scene, a young woman pretty enough to be in an ice-cream ad. Her long brown hair was flailing in the wind as she pitched a stream of excited words into her microphone. Apparently the remains had been found early that morning and police had been on the scene all day processing it. It was too early to say if it was one of the missing young women but police had said the state of the remains suggested the time frame was consistent. Tash entered the room and sat silently beside me. At some point she rested her hand in mine. I suppose there were people all over the city doing the same thing, all imagining what it was like to be the parents. A lot of times we fervently hope for something in life but this time I prayed for something to not happen: I did not want to find myself in the situation of those parents, ever.
I knew the police would be looking for something distinctive to identify the body. In Caitlin’s case the thin watch and gold necklace. Jessica Scanlan had been wearing a gold bluebird necklet when she disappeared, Emily had three gold bangles. An Australia-wide search had failed to turn up these items in pawn shops or anywhere else for that matter, leaving the possibility they were still with the girls or their abductor. Neither Tash nor I had much appetite after that. I think we had some toast, it was a blur.
CHAPTER 6
That night I couldn’t sleep. Eventually I got up, turned on the computer and started looking again at the reported rape of Carmel Younger. In the whole pile of facts and conjecture it was the one thing that had given me that slight tingle: maybe. The assault had taken place one suburb north of Autostrada. Five minutes by car. Younger was of a similar type to the other girls but had been dressed more casually, which made sense as she’d basically gone out for the afternoon and partied on till the early hours of the next morning. I thought of Partigan’s story of the station wagon with the engine running and looked to see if there was any mention of such a vehicle in the rape investigation.
Nothing close. The police had identified a white van that had been parked on the side of the road about a hundred metres south of the assault area but inquiries revealed it was owned by the operator of the speed camera and had been unattended. I made a note of the operator’s name. Maybe they still had negatives or whatever and I could get a look at the photos of the cars that had been speeding. The task force had not bothered to include any of that on the disks. Apparently it took up a lot of disk space or something, so the only photos in the floppy disks were of the missing girls and Bay View Terrace and its carparks. I checked the address of Carmel Younger against the phone book but couldn’t find her name. I wondered if she was still around. I had a contact at the RTA who could help. I went back through the other crimes that might have been a precursor: trouble was, snowdropping, for example, usually went unreported, and I figured anyway I’d have to go back to maybe 1980 because often it’s some bent teenager taking the first steps to a major crime they’ll commit a decade later. There was nothing around Dalkeith, Claremont, Swanbourne, Cottesloe that really clicked, apart from a pervert in Cottesloe who had been peering in bedroom windows. The cops had got him but they had checked on him for the Autostrada abductions and he was confirmed to have been in Sydney at the time of the disappearances.
By 4.00, I was tired enough to go to bed. Grace was sleeping through now till around 5.00; great timing on my part.
It wasn’t until midafternoon the following day that I got the call from Gerry O’Grady. I’d been less focussed than the photos in a retirement home newsletter but had managed to get a call through to my RTA pal. As of yet I hadn’t heard back with an address for Carmel Younger.
‘Yes, Gerry.’
My voice tightened. If I was assessing myself, I’d register as high on dread.
‘Tregilgas just called. It’s Jessica Scanlan.’
I can’t describe my emotional condition. It wasn’t any sort of relief. Perhaps if it had been none of the girls I might have been able to think they were all still alive somewhere.
‘Did they say how they identified her?’ Really I was just looking for words to keep the world around me real.
‘No they didn’t. He warned us they are conducting a search over the entire area.’
The area was massive, nearly all thick bush. They could be weeks, months combing it.
‘How are you guys doing?’ It was a dumb question but to not ask it would be even more insensitive.
He took a deep breath, his voice quavered a fraction. ‘Not so bad. We need resolution.’
‘I understand. I’ll keep going.’
‘Have you found anything at all?’ There was a grain of hope in his voice. That made me especially careful.
‘There’s a couple of things I’m looking at. They might be a dead end but then again they might not. If you like I could brief you on what I’ve done so far but I think it might be better if we wait a while, see what might eventuate.’
‘Okay.’
I asked him to hang in there and then we ended the call. The only positive to come out of the finding of Jessica’s remains was that it opened up some m
ore space to investigate. They might well be able to tell how she died, how long her body had been there, how she had been transported. A time frame would allow them to look for witnesses who may have seen something in the area. And they might get DNA from the killer off it. I didn’t think there was any point me heading out there, I’d just be making a nuisance of myself. Coldly I analysed what I’d avoided with Gerry O’Grady on the other end of the line: the chances of Caitlin being still alive. They were very, very poor. In some ways if it had been Emily’s body there in the bush it would have been better news. That sounds terrible but dealing with murder is. You had to figure that if the first girl abducted was the first to turn up dead, there might still be time. But Jessica was the most recent. On the other hand maybe the scientists could get more information from her remains because she was the last abducted. I was swirling in black. My phone rang.
‘It’s Nipper.’ My contact at the RTA.
‘Yes, Nipper.’
‘I have an address and phone number.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ I copied it down, hung up and debated whether to ring or call around. I rang. The prefix told me Melville.
‘Younger residence.’ A woman’s voice.
‘My name is Richard Lane. I’m wondering if I might speak with Carmel Younger.’
‘She’s not here.’ Curt, not rude though. ‘I’m her mother. May I ask what it’s in relation to?’
‘I’m a private detective employed by the family of the missing girl, Caitlin O’Grady. My investigation turned up the assault on your daughter. No suspect was ever arrested. I thought Carmel might be prepared to talk with me.’
‘She’s overseas.’
‘Oh. For how long?’
‘At least another six months. I’m happy to talk with you though, if I can help.’
‘That would be much appreciated, Mrs Younger.’
She asked when I would like to drop by. I told her as soon as possible, I already had her address.
‘I’ll see you in an hour,’ she said, and gave me directions.
An hour later I was parked outside of a Californian bungalow–style home in a street running parallel to Canning Highway but about a kilometre south. There was a newish Mazda in the driveway, the garden was well kept. Could equally be the home of a welder or an accountant. The coolness of the previous day had been replaced by humidity and droplets from a neighbour’s sprinkler scented the air with that distinctive Perth smell of bore water and latent heat. As I drew closer on the neat path, the door opened. With the light in my eyes and shadow from the alcove I couldn’t see Mrs Younger clearly behind the flyscreen but her shape was detectable.
‘Richard Lane,’ I called out as I took the first of three steps to a low porch.
A well-groomed woman, mid-fifties in a casual floral dress, stepped out and ushered me in.
The entranceway was carpet not board. She showed me to a lounge room on the right. It was clean and fresh, some flowers in a vase on a highly polished dining room table that looked rarely used. There were photos of the family on display. I made out a brother, sister, two parents combo. It might have been the O’Grady’s place except smaller and with slightly older taste. A family portrait photo I dated as being about six years ago showed a smiling round-faced man with not much hair. I guessed Mr Younger, more tradie than accountant, but I still couldn’t be sure. Carmel would have been around eighteen. She had slightly dull eyes but then so did the brother, the family portrait not exactly a highpoint in a teenager’s busy schedule.
‘Please.’ Mrs Younger indicated a low white sofa. She sat at the other end and asked if I’d like a tea or coffee. I told her I was fine. Her manner on the phone had not been one of a woman who beats around the bush. I dived right in.
‘I appreciate you seeing me. I’ve been looking at anything I can, anything the police might have missed, to help identify the person who abducted these young women.’
‘They said on the news it was looking like it was one of them they found.’
‘It’s likely.’
‘As soon as it happened, the first girl, Emily? I said to my husband this could be the same man as attacked Carmel.’
‘How is Carmel?’
‘Slowly getting better. She was a fun-loving girl. She’s lost that. She’s travelling around England with a girlfriend.’
‘When did she go?’
‘August.’
‘Did the police interview her again?’
‘Yes. A policewoman came and asked if there was anything else she could remember about her attack. She couldn’t. We all wish she could do something to identify the bastard.’
‘How about at the time of the attack? Did you feel they were thorough in their investigation?’
She pulled a face. ‘They were thorough with everybody who was at the party she’d been at. They obviously thought it was somebody from there but they didn’t find anything.’
‘What does Carmel think?’
‘She doesn’t think it was anybody from there. She thinks she was just the wrong person at the wrong time.’
I told her that I had access to a summarised report of the crime and asked if she would mind if I read it out. ‘If there’s anything missing, it will help me to know.’
‘Go ahead.’
I read through the summary verbatim.
‘No, that sounds right.’
‘The attacker had no particular odour, like cigarette smoke …’
She was shaking her head.
‘Carmel had no idea anybody was about. One moment she was walking then she was just yanked off her feet. He didn’t speak the whole time, just showed the knife.’
I got her to describe the knife. It was what was commonly called a hunting knife.
‘It took her a long time to be able to talk to me about it. She couldn’t even face her father. He wasn’t blaming her, you understand, his heart was breaking. She just couldn’t do it.’
I didn’t think I was going to get any more from Mrs Younger about the attack. I doubted I’d get anything new from Carmel from the sounds of it.
‘Did Carmel have any problems with any male friends before this: ex-boyfriends, would-be boyfriends, strangers?’
‘No. She’d had three steady boyfriends, didn’t have any real breakup problems. It’s not like she walked that route every night. It was just shocking bad luck.’
I thanked her for her time. She showed me out. The breeze had woken up, carrying a faint sound of highway traffic that had previously been inaudible.
‘I pray you find him. I think there’s every chance it’s the same man.’
I didn’t quite know how to end this interview. ‘It must be very difficult.’ It was stock but from the heart.
‘I feel for those other parents. We still have Carmel.’
Back at the office, the full weight of my failure bore down. The discovery of Jessica’s body was a game changer. Sure, I could plough on with my investigation but some of the things I’d be chasing might be redundant. Without knowing if the remains gave any new clues, I was firing blind. So did I wait, try Tregilgas again, hope he’d share? Or did I look for some angle that wouldn’t be affected by what they might find now with the remains?
I lifted the phone and tried the guy with the traffic camera.
‘Vince Santich.’ Reasonably thick accent suggesting peppers and cold cuts.
‘Mr Santich, this is Richard Lane. I called and left a message.’
‘Sorry, you were on my list to call back.’
I explained I was a private detective and interested in the case where a young woman was raped in the cemetery.
‘I remember. Awful thing.’
It sounded like he was eating something. For the first time in hours I felt a pang of hunger myself.
‘I don’t suppose you would have a copy of the shots the camera took that evening.’
‘Police property. I pass all that along.’
As I expected. I would have to go back to the task force and see if I
could access the stills somehow.
‘Your van was parked nearby all night, is that right? Did you visit it at all?’
‘Not until the next day to collect the speed camera and check the video.’
I nearly fell out of my chair.
‘We were having lots of problems with the cameras: outright vandalism, to some smart-arse taping something over the lens. One of the other operators, his camera, they wiped human poo over it.’
Vince Santich was close to fifty, with cropped hair, mainly brown. He wasn’t as tall as me and didn’t have to stoop quite so low to get under the roller door of his factory unit somewhere out the back of Dianella, where the sand was fine and the grey of school shorts, and blackboys still grew. It was not yet 8.30 am. When he’d called the day before it had been too late in the day for him to see me but he’d be happy to see me first thing in the morning, he said. I gave the ocean a miss, swam a few laps at Beatty Park and headed on out with a kiss from Natasha, who had managed to negotiate a late start to work. Grace seemed to wave goodbye with an egg-smeared hand but maybe it was wishful thinking.
Santich wore a dark blue body-shirt stretched over his chest, and dress-shorts with a belt, tennis socks and sneakers. The floor of the steel and brick unit was concrete. I relayed back to him what he’d told me over the phone, making sure I had it right.
‘So you had people wrecking your speed camera, or blocking it, and you set up another camera to catch them.’
‘That’s right, a video camera running the whole time. We put it in a van see?’
‘But the police never checked it.’
‘Never.’
‘Did they know about it?’
‘I thought so but …’ He was leading me through shelving towards a back area. ‘What must have happened was … it was January, from memory. I always go on holidays just before Australia Day for three weeks. The cops didn’t contact us right away. I mean they would have had the camera film anyway. But I get a call from my assistant, Don, not the sharpest tool in the shed.’ We had swung into what was a kind of office area with a desk, filing cabinets and a small sink. ‘Don emails me and says the cops contacted us about our van. Could I give them a call. I was in fucking Thailand. I had to work out international dialling and all that shit. Anyway I call, get this policewoman and I tell her, yes that’s our van, what’s it about? She says they are looking into an incident and asks when I was at the van. I tell her I parked it there about 7.30 pm and set up the camera and went straight to my niece’s twenty-first and I give her a number where they can confirm that. I didn’t even think about the surveillance video. I was on holiday. I mean, the traffic camera wasn’t damaged so I’m not thinking about it. If I did think about it I probably thought Don would have mentioned it.’
