Clear to the Horizon

by Dave Warner

  Only when I made my own car did I partly relax, keeping an eye out as I recorded the number plates. Then I started up and pulled out, fighting the impulse to toot the horn and shout to the heavens: finally I had something.

  CHAPTER 8

  Luke Whitmore, who it turned out was the guy in the photo with the station wagon and Carter, sipped an orange juice as he stared out towards the ocean, hunching in his fleecy top. It was around 6.30. The sun had dropped faster than Eddie the Eagle and caught me by surprise in my short-sleeved birthday present, a check shirt I didn’t like all that much but wore for Tash’s sake. After putting me in touch with Whitmore, Tom Cornelius had generously offered his deck as a meeting ground and after a quick social brew had discretely withdrawn indoors to leave us to it. Whitmore was about my height, like Carter, sinewy, but with hair that looked like drawn waves on the artwork wall of a kindy class. He seemed naturally quiet, and took time to weigh up his answers. As a favour to Cornelius he had agreed to meet me to talk about his colleague, Carter. I had not revealed why exactly I wanted the information but had sworn I was private, not from any government department.

  ‘Most of the time he’s a great guy. But he can turn quick, and nasty.’

  ‘With women?’

  Whitmore studied me curiously.

  ‘With anybody. Even his friends. That’s why I got out. I’d had enough. Plus I’ve got a girlfriend and … well, to be honest I wasn’t comfortable her staying over there.’

  ‘You think he might try something?’

  ‘Not so much that. But he can be crude, you know? He thinks the world is one big wet canteen.’

  If being boorish was a punishable offence, Australian sports TV would barely have a newscaster left.

  ‘What about in Timor? With the women. You didn’t like how he treated them.’

  Whitmore weighed how much he should say. ‘No, I didn’t. I’m not saying he raped any women, I didn’t witness that, and even if I had I probably wouldn’t tell you. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. But he disturbed you, right?’

  Another long pause, another sip. ‘There was one occasion, this village on the border we thought might be sympathisers with the pro-Indonesian militia. We came on them one day, all the men were out. That was suspicious in itself. Carter took one of the women into the hut he said “for interrogation”. When she came out she was crying. The way she held her clothes … it was suspicious. Other times he was more just … inappropriate.’

  ‘You never reported him.’

  He shook his head. ‘Carter is the kind of guy who saves your arse every second day. I didn’t have anything to go on. You’re sure you’re not government?’

  I gave him my word. I wanted to go back over something he’d said.

  ‘You said you didn’t think he would try anything with your girlfriend. Is that because you’re his friend?’

  Finally a smirk. ‘That wouldn’t stop him. More because he knows I would beat him to a pulp.’

  ‘What about if he came across a girl who didn’t have somebody to protect her?’

  Whitmore’s eyes bore into me for what seemed a very long time. Finally they broke away. ‘If you’re asking me if I think he could pressure or intimidate a woman, I’d say it was possible. I can’t say any more than that but if, for example, some woman has complained about what he might have done to her, well, I wouldn’t dismiss her story.’

  ‘Carter used to drive a Commodore station wagon, right?’

  ‘Yeah. He might still have it.’

  ‘No, he traded in for a sedan. Any problems with it?’

  ‘Usual: leaked a bit of water. Why?’

  In hindsight I shouldn’t have mentioned the wagon. I didn’t want to point Whitmore in the direction I was looking, wanted to obscure my real intentions, act like I might be working for some potential employer Carter might have applied to.

  ‘The sedan is newer. Somebody mentioned he had money troubles.’

  ‘Not that I knew of. Mind you, he would always slug you for a loan, forget to pay it back.’

  I thought I’d extricated myself okay. There was little else I was going to get from Whitmore. By what he had left out, he’d more or less told me that Carter was capable of some form of sexual assault. I thanked him for his time and left him to catch up with Tom Cornelius who had been briefed by me to act dumb on what my real motives might be.

  Queens Gardens, the location of choice for wedding photos in the ’60s and ’70s, was a little haven at the border of the CBD’s eastern flank, right opposite the back of police headquarters. Adjacent to the better-known WACA, it was the place my dad would head into with a Gladstone bag of Swan lager chocolate soldiers and plastic cups when it hit lunchtime in the Sheffield Shield games. I’d sit there and sip my lemonade as he furtively drank from the bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Nowadays, for all but the tests, cricket crowds were thinner than the skin of a doctor’s receptionist. The place, even at lunchtime on a late November afternoon, was deserted except for me and a brace of brave Japanese tourists. Maybe that was because the day was unseasonably cold again and the frigate grey sky gave you the impression of being in a highway underpass, or maybe it was because Perth had moved on from homemade sarnies and a thermos. I glanced around the place and imagined office workers of bygone years with their thin ties, Daily News and packets of B&H passing the lunch hour and squeezing a few extra minutes from their government pay packets. These days they’d be at cafés twirling pesto pasta on a fork and sipping bottled water. I was a man whose generation was fast finding it was more familiar with what used to be than what is.

  After my discovery at the Carter townhouse, my next move had been to check with my RTA contact on Carter’s vehicle ownership history. Sure enough he’d had a Commodore wagon from ’97 till three months ago when he’d traded for a sedan. The suspicious Snowy Lane wondered whether he was obscuring any evidence trail. The circumstantial evidence was growing but it needed cops from here on. Tregilgas didn’t want a bar of me. And I couldn’t very well go and say I’d broken into the guy’s house. But if Carter was our man, every second meant some other young woman was in unnecessary danger. Tash offered to call in with an anonymous tip but you never knew who they’d send to follow it up. George Tacich hadn’t been overly impressed with what he had going for him on the Autostrada Task Force but I called him anyway to see if he could put anything in train.

  ‘I go to them, it’ll be worse than if you do,’ he’d said down the phone. For my own protection and his, I hadn’t told him how I’d found out what I’d learned. He wasn’t stupid though, he would have guessed. ‘Your best chance is Nikky Sutton. She’s smart and I can call her, set something up.’

  And that’s what he’d done and why I was here now checking my watch, waiting for DC Sutton, the scent of flowers whose names I didn’t know telling me I should be thinking about Christmas shopping. She walked through the gate right on time. I moved out of the shadows and waved. She headed my way. She was shorter than I’d remembered but her eyes were sparkling. I went to introduce myself again.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re famous. Or infamous,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘I hope you meeting with me isn’t a career-ending move.’ I was only half joking.

  She waved that away. ‘I can handle myself. Besides, they don’t know. George gave me a brief run-down on your person of interest.’

  I started walking and she settled in beside me. I began with the fact that I had somebody who was worth looking at. As soon as I mentioned the rape of Carmel Younger, her eyes drove into me like needles.

  ‘At Karrakatta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘That’s why George got you onto me. I worked that case, Sex Crimes. That’s what I was doing when I was seconded to the Autostrada TF. We never made an arrest. Go on.’

  I was unsure now, the ground had shifted, she might not like what she was about to hear. I told her anyway.

  ‘There was another camera?’
Her voice was hushed with a chill that conjured images of shocked rabbits emerging from a burrow into bracing winter.

  I explained the situation.

  ‘Oh my God. I missed it.’

  ‘These things happen, somebody thinks somebody told somebody. Miscommunication.’

  ‘But you found it.’

  Not wanting to seem like I thought I was hot shit, I said nothing. I was glad she added, ‘I’m glad you did, for Carmel’s sake.’

  From there I took her through my meeting with Cornelius and my surveillance of suspect Mathew Carter who had a tattoo in the right place and had recently disposed of a station wagon that fitted the description given by Gavan Partigan of a vehicle parked behind Autostrada. I told her Carter had a strongbox in his drawer.

  She looked me straight in the eye. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  ‘I wore latex gloves: didn’t plant anything, didn’t open the box, but I did find these in Carter’s hairbrush.’ I handed over the plastic bag. ‘I believe you can get DNA from these?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She wouldn’t take it yet. ‘You couldn’t use it in court.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that. But if the DNA matches the swab in the Carmel Younger rape kit you can go back in with a warrant based on the other stuff, get an official sample.’

  She thought for a long moment. Her hand snaked out and the bag disappeared into her pocket. I showed her the photos. She told me to keep them myself and asked if I had told the O’Gradys.

  ‘The only people I’ve told anything to are George and my wife. She will speak to nobody.’

  Nikki Sutton sighed. ‘It’s good but there’s one big problem. Tregilgas believes he is closing in.’

  ‘You’ve got a suspect?’

  ‘Yes. Some things have come to light about a previous person of interest.’

  ‘Crossland?’

  ‘Bontillo.’

  She didn’t have to tell me I was not to mention this to a soul. It was in her look, and even if it hadn’t been, it was understood.

  ‘I spoke to him. I got no vibe off him.’

  ‘We followed up all his previous jobs. There was scuttlebutt at a boys school in Melbourne, nothing official. Unofficially there was an allegation that he drove some boys home from soccer training and made one of the boys uncomfortable.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The boy says Bontillo put his hand on his thigh, started talking about the wonderful birds you could see in the bush.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  Even if it were true, it didn’t make him a killer. I said as much.

  ‘That’s not all.’ We’d started walking again. ‘His sister contacted us and admitted the night Caitlin went missing, Bontillo was gone just after midnight. Her husband pressured her to tell the truth.’

  ‘So now Bontillo has no alibi for any of the nights the girls went missing?’

  ‘That’s right. The boss is hot for him: he’s lied to us and he has a history of sexual misconduct with students.’

  ‘Allegations, not proven, and a male at that.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m giving it the way the DI sees it.’

  Which I understood. She told me they were watching him very closely now.

  ‘All of which is going to make it hard to get the boss to look at your theory.’

  ‘Not if the DNA matches.’

  ‘There might be no usable DNA. As it is, it’ll take weeks to get this back from the lab. It’s not like the TV shows.’

  I must have presented as a hot bottle of Coke shaken and ready to explode. She carefully eased the seal.

  ‘We can class him as a suspect in Carmen’s rape. If the video plays out like you say that might give us a warrant, certainly an interview.’

  ‘I’ve done some rudimentary checks: Carter’s squad was in Perth the night each of the girls went missing.’ This was something Cornelius had steered me through. I explained I hadn’t wanted to do any further digging in case it leaked and scared Carter off.

  ‘What about the housemates? Could they be involved?’

  ‘Filbert’s only been here a few months. What I’ve been told of Heaton would suggest not. And neither of them were with him at the time of Carmel Younger.’

  She digested it. ‘Whatever I do, your involvement has to be redacted.’

  She was right, the info needed to be quarantined from the source. I couldn’t care less about bragging rights. Let her present it as her theory.

  ‘Fine with me.’ I handed her the video I’d had copied. My mind was running angles now. ‘What would be the chances of getting a search warrant?’

  ‘Unless this video clearly shows his face –’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘– then not strong. We can interview him though, ask him to show us around, ask for DNA but he’s under no obligation to give it.’

  ‘You do that, he’ll be on his guard. At the very least he’ll have time to dispose of evidence.’

  She could see I was scheming. ‘What’s your plan?’

  ‘If there was a break-in nearby and somebody reported a car that looked a lot like his …’

  She stared at me like I was an extinct form of reptile.

  ‘I just make up a false report?’

  ‘Maybe it won’t be false.’ My turn to shrug. She shook her head but I could tell she was warming to my antediluvian ways. I know that word because Tash uses it to describe me all the time.

  ‘I’d better be getting back. I’ll try and pull a favour on the DNA but don’t expect it any time soon.’

  ‘Let me know if Tregilgas is prepared to investigate. We’ll take it from there.’

  ‘I will, Snowy.’ She allowed herself a smile the way somebody on a diet allows themselves a single jelly bean. ‘George really didn’t do you justice.’ Then she turned on her heel.

  For the next few hours I actually relaxed. Tash had taken Grace into work with her so I slipped by and picked her up. She howled for a good ten minutes when we drove away. Then, as quickly as she’d started, she stopped. I drove to Crawley and let her run around on the foreshore. The wind was up and the river frothed. A lone sailboat battled the elements and I felt a kinship with the invisible helmsman. I’ll be honest, I felt good about myself. Much as I pretended to talk it down with everybody else, I was convinced Carter was the guy. This led me to debate whether I should say anything yet to the O’Gradys. I was walking a fine line, wanting to give them hope, just not false hope. Ultimately I chose to wait until I at least knew Tregilgas had given Sutton the all clear to further investigate. In the meantime, there was Grace.

  If you’ve ever had to change a nappy in the teeth of a Perth wind, you’ll know that the skill required leaves running huskies through the Arctic for dead. Grace was almost beyond nappies now but given it had been a long stint away from base, we’d gone with the precaution. Good thing too.

  I drove back home, fed Grace and myself and started to get anxious that I hadn’t heard anything. For a distraction I began odd jobs I’d been putting off since Vlamingh landed here. Thanks to Grace, my efficiency was impaired but I told myself when I got her down for her nap I’d pick up. That proved optimistic. Put it this way: I was marginally more efficient than Telstra. I still couldn’t concentrate and kept downing tools in case the noise masked the ringing phone. When Sutton finally rang I was on the bathroom floor engaged in home plumbing. She was to the point.

  ‘I’ve got the green light on Carter. I watched the video; I’m still kicking myself. The boss doesn’t think it’s going to amount to anything on our case but he’s not stopping me from looking.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Said I got a tip from an informant that sent me back over my old files, then realised I hadn’t spoken to the principal of the traffic camera business. He thought it was good work. I owe you.’

  ‘How about the DNA?’

  ‘I got that
to an old friend in Sex Crimes, asked them to run it against the Carmel Younger kit. They didn’t ask too many questions.’

  ‘We could just wait,’ I said, though my heart wasn’t in it.

  ‘I’m thinking about every young woman out there in this city. We don’t have time to wait.’

  My kind of girl.

  ‘Okay, sit tight and expect a call.’

  ‘There better not be any blowback, Snowy.’

  ‘There won’t be.’

  Three years earlier Peter Hrovios had been a client. Now he was a friend, playing the odd round of bad golf with me, sharing an occasional lunch. His family-owned clothing factory had been losing five leather jackets a week, regular as clockwork. The manager had tumbled to it about a month before Peter contacted me but after I suggested a full stocktake Peter was able to estimate it might have been going on a year or more. There was no sign of forced entry. Besides Peter, the manager was the only person who had the code to open the office and then the roller door to the factory. Naturally I looked at the manager but he rang no bells. He was an older guy, proud of his work and pissed off somebody was stealing from the place he’d worked nearly thirty years. The first thing I had Peter do was institute a full bag search on all seventeen employees whenever they left the building. Nothing. But the jackets kept disappearing. I’d set up surveillance cameras outside and in. These ran twenty-four seven and I would laboriously go through video tapes, checking to see if anybody was breaking in late at night. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It had to be an inside job but I couldn’t see anything suspicious. I kept checking the video. I was missing something. I started to think the guard had to be in on it even though I’d interviewed him and hadn’t sensed anything off. I studied the tape of the employee security gate and watched the guard searching employees on the way out. He seemed to do a thorough job. I told Peter I wanted to put one of my people in for a couple of days as guard. My guy, a uni student who was smart, sharp-eyed and motivated, stood in for three days. He searched every employee as they left, lunchtime and end of the day. Still nothing but another jacket was stolen. We were stymied and shared a beer in silence at my local pub, which is almost directly under my office.