by Dave Warner
‘So, what’s going to happen?’
‘Nothing. I’m up to my neck here – a neck I stuck out to have this thing checked.’
My brain was finally warmed up. ‘He might have seen something.’
‘The tape and notes have been passed over to the Sex Crimes unit. They can follow that up but I’m telling you there’s nothing to go on. I’m sorry, Snowy, you did good work but you know what it’s like, ninety-nine percent pans out empty.’
I tried to keep her engaged, to ask if they had acquired the station wagon but she cut me off.
‘I really have to go. It’s all hands on.’
‘Bontillo?’
‘You do the maths.’
I’d sometimes wondered what it must be like for those climbers who are stuck dangling over the crevasse, threatening to bring down the rest of the team till somebody does what has to be done and cuts the rope. When Sutton hung up and disconnected me from Autostrada, I got a fair idea. I sat there, my back to the wall, a swirl of sheets over my body. I felt worthless, guilty. I’d wasted Sutton’s time, given false hope to the O’Gradys, made Tash carry the burden of the house. She didn’t care about that because she wanted to support me, Snowy Lane, the great murder investigator. I’d confused pride with skill, deluded myself into thinking I could find leads others weren’t smart enough to see.
I forced myself out of bed and boiled the kettle. My scrambled ego tried to pull itself back together. There must be some logic that said it could still be Carter. But Sutton was right. All I had was a grainy video that proved nothing. I would have to call the O’Gradys, kill any false hope that I might be onto something.
That’s what I should have done.
Instead, that evening I found myself back at the Swanbourne Hotel having followed Carter and Heaton from the barracks. They were in the games room playing pool with half-a-dozen other patrons, young guys who wouldn’t have known if the Alien rocked up and started chalking a cue.
‘Mathew Carter?’
I tried to use a neutral tone: like I could be a doctor calling out to the waiting room, not quite sure who was going to step forward. He looked me up and down, no more than curious at this stage.
‘My name’s Richard Lane. I’m a private detective.’
‘If I’ve been rooting some married sheila, that’s news to me. I don’t do that.’ He looked with a smile to Heaton who grinned, resting on his pool cue.
‘But single women are fair game?’
‘I’m not gay if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘What about if they don’t give consent?’
The good humour was gone. He narrowed his eyes. ‘What the fuck are you on about?’
‘January before last a young woman was raped at Karrakatta Cemetery. There was a camera, caught this image.’
I showed him a still I’d had done of the video frame and then had blown up. He seemed rocked. I didn’t offer him an out.
‘Care to explain what you were doing there? I mean, that’s you, right?’
Now he was definitely over any courtesy. ‘Fuck off.’ He shoved the photo back at me.
‘Of course. I was just asking.’
Heaton chipped in. ‘You can’t even see the face. Lots of guys have tatts.’
My eyes hadn’t left Carter’s. ‘You gotta admit that looks a lot like you, Mathew.’
‘I guess. I like to walk a lot. That a crime? Anyway, you’re not a cop, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just a private dick-head.’ Carter’s witty repartee set Heaton giggling. This encouraged Carter. ‘So, dickhead, take a walk.’
There was a real coldness in Carter’s eyes. I guess that’s what I wanted to see up close and personal, that look that said he could have done it. Maybe the hairbrush I’d picked up was somebody else’s, left by mistake? Or somebody else had used it? I wondered if Nikky Sutton had considered that, if she might give it one last go and get Carter’s DNA.
‘Thank you for your time, gentlemen.’
I left the bar and made for my car, which I’d parked on the other side of the narrow road beside some pine trees. I’d reached the boot when I heard footsteps. I turned. A fist blurred towards my head. I pulled away instinctively, and even in the dimness of the overhead railway lights saw the surprise in Carter’s eyes as his punch barely grazed me. Heaton stood behind him. I took all of this in in a blink as I retaliated with a left that caught Carter somewhere on the neck. It was a hit but nowhere near good enough to finish him with one punch and that was what I needed. His left caught me in the ribs and as I doubled over, he hit me on the chin with the hard base of his palm, a short, sharp karate blow that snapped me back with a sound like a new deck of cards being broken. Heaton didn’t intervene, he didn’t need to. I was down in broken bitumen, my ear resting on pine needles. Carter seemed a long way up, even as he bent towards me.
‘You harassed me and swung at me. I was defending myself. This man is my witness. You go to the cops, you’ll wind up paying me.’
With that he turned on his heel and strode back to the pub.
Four hours later my ribs were still delicate as a ballerina’s bow but I hadn’t let on to Tash, not even when we made quick love while pasta boiled on the stove and Grace in her cot dreamed of Teletubbies. I’d told Tash about the DNA but that was all the failure I could own up to for now. If she knew of the altercation she’d either want to drive to Carter’s with a baseball bat or oh so gently let me know I wasn’t in the kind of shape I once was, both of which were worth avoiding. So instead I kissed her and folded into her and turned all my disappointment and disintegrating self-belief into a low hum of rising blood pressure and carnal absolution.
Over the next few days I gradually built myself back up. My call to Sutton asking her to reconsider getting Carter’s DNA was not returned, my convictions wavered and I accepted that in all likelihood Carter was just an arsehole in the wrong place at the right time. Whether he might have helped me before, I really doubted, but I was sure he wouldn’t be offering me any help now about what he might have seen. I still believed the nature of Carmel’s rape and the proximity to Bay View Terrace was worth investigating further. I called her mother again and asked if I could call Carmel in the UK. She said she would pass the request on next time they spoke. The next morning when I was up the park pushing Grace in a swing, my mobile rang.
‘This is Adele Younger.’
I pictured the woman in her neat suburban lounge room.
‘I just got off the phone to Carmel. You can call her now, she’ll wait for it.’
I thanked her profusely and memorised the phone number she gave. Then I bundled up Grace and scooted back home, speaking the number over and over again. Once inside my own house I scrawled the number on the back of an envelope, placed Grace in front of a Bananas in Pyjamas video and dialled.
Carmel answered right away. The intercontinental delay was annoying but we blundered our way through the polite stuff. She was in Kent. It was cold but quite sunny. I explained how I had been hired by the O’Grady family to look into Caitlin’s disappearance.
‘It’s possible it’s the same person,’ I said, though I was sure she had been able to join the dots herself, if she hadn’t already done so during conversation with her mother. ‘Could we talk about that night?’
I kept looking over at Grace who still seemed entertained by Rat in a Hat. Carmel did all that could be expected, she went back over the rape, her breath halting in parts. At one point she stopped altogether.
‘I’m sorry to put you through this,’ I said, wishing I had something more adequate to offer.
‘No, it’s okay.’ But I knew it wasn’t. Her voice was teetering more now than when we’d started but she hung in there. There was nothing new in the story from the account I had read in the police report.
‘There was no particular smell; no accent, no tattoo?’
‘All I remember,’ she said, suddenly stronger, ‘is the taste of my tears.’
‘Thank you for your help, Carmel.’
‘Whatever I can do.’
I followed up each and every name she had given me. Like the cops, I focussed on those at the party. There were five guys of interest, one had moved interstate, the other four were scattered over the metro area. I checked them at their work. I followed them and watched them in parks, pubs and clubs. I didn’t see anything that raised suspicions. One of them worked at a garden supply place in East Vic Park. When he went to lunch at a nearby hotel, I followed. It was one of those old places that had been spruced up along the lines of sophisticated bars in faraway places without quite getting it right. It was open, the furniture lighter than the pepper grinder, the grill hood like something off an aircraft carrier. The clientele, mainly young guys in tradies shirts and shorts, enjoyed their burgers and salt and pepper squid with the aid of cold beer while the till rang cheerfully. I was keeping light surveillance, shovelling my counter meal of penne pasta into my gob and sitting directly across from the wall-mounted plasma when a banner scrawled across it: PERSON OF INTEREST IN AUTOSTRADA CASE FOUND DEAD. I paused mid-spoonful, let the gist of the reporter’s spiel lick me: a man known to the deceased Jessica Scanlan and the missing young women Emily Virtue and Caitlin O’Grady had been found dead in his Claremont apartment after a relative went to investigate why he hadn’t been answering his phone. The camera panned to the block of flats in question. It wasn’t Claremont, it was Swanbourne. I knew the building where an Art Deco nude waited quietly on a mantlepiece: Ian Bontillo’s flat.
‘Are you sure it was suicide?’
I trusted George Tacich. We’d both worked with corrupt cops. Tash’s father, Dave Holland, was one of them but I still believed he was essentially a good man who did a very bad thing for what he thought was the right reason.
‘Yes, Snow, I’m sure. He overdosed on sleeping tablets. Tregilgas may not be your cup of coffee but he’s thorough. There’s nothing suspicious.’
The note Bontillo left for his sister had said ‘I’m sorry for all the hurt I have caused’.
I pointed out that was ambiguous, hardly a confession to being a serial killer. Tacich did not disagree. I pressed. ‘Come on, if he was the Autostrada guy and he did this because he felt guilt, why not say where the girls are buried? Why not say he’s sorry to the O’Grady family and so on?’
‘What you’re saying is valid but Tregilgas is confident he got his man.’
‘It might have been “his man” but there’s nothing I’ve seen says Bontillo was a murderer. The worst we have of him is possibly hitting on a pupil. Tregilgas hounded him, got him sacked …’
‘Suspended.’
‘… which was going to lead to a sacking. He took away the guy’s reason to live.’
Tacich let that pass and said calmly, ‘What are you going to do? Tregilgas will close the file with this.’
With no active police support – and, let’s face it, even without Bontillo I was about as welcome at HQ as a white ant at a home inspection – the task of breaking the case was impossible. If I worked hard for six months I might turn up a suspect or two but ultimately I was going to have to hand what I had over to police who had the resources to go deeper. Tregilgas had no intention of going deeper. The case was over.
Later that day I called the O’Gradys and told them there was no point going on. They had reached the same conclusion, I think, and were optimistic that Tregilgas would eventually find the remains of Caitlin, though I knew there was no way they had foregone all hope of her being alive. The Police Commissioner told the people of Western Australia that the task force would continue until all the girls were accounted for. What he didn’t say was that the task force was sure it had its man, and that it was going to require some bolt from the blue, at worst another abduction, before it would focus on anybody other than the dead Bontillo.
Sure it hurt, failure always does, but I didn’t skip a beat going straight back to work for a chain of motels with a pile of suspicious insurance claims from guests who’d slipped in showers or fallen down stairs. Craig Drummond paid me in full and thanked me for my efforts. I told him I wished I’d produced a better result.
Christmas passed: Teletubbie costumes, games to enhance a toddler’s brain, a load of picture books. Eventually summer caught a long wave in. The nights got colder but more beautiful with a sky cleared of bushfire smoke and Tash’s cheek pressed against mine as we dozed on the sofa to the hum of inane television. No more young women disappeared. Autostrada was quietly scaled back with assurances the police would continue to search for Emily and Caitlin. Bay View Terrace was a chronic patient; people still didn’t feel comfortable sitting at its bedside but taxi drivers fared better, custom gradually improving, though women tried to make sure a friend was there to watch them go. Sometimes at night I’d drive there and sit in the car, the window down, the swish of wet tyres an urban lullaby. I would stare through a dappled windscreen and wonder: is he out there? I’d imagine Caitlin walking away from Autostrada towards me, her head filled with nothing more than the relief of getting off her shoes once she got home and what time she would need to walk Soupy in the morning. I’d imagine her looking at me with her young, soft face, the hint of a dimple as she turned just a fraction more my way before continuing. And then I’d check the rear vision mirror and of course there was nothing but a few fat drops of rain on a rear windshield and a fleeing headlight from the black highway beyond.
PART TWO: THE PRESENT
CHAPTER 10
Shepherd’s arms were pumping, his quads stretching out. He was in prime condition, footy finals approaching but, damn, this guy was quick. The hare jinked left down a lane, his figure silhouetted in moon-glow. ‘I can do it, I can get him,’ Shepherd told himself even as his hamstring yelled for him to take it easy. So hard was he breathing, and so loud the slap of his big feet on the pavement, that the sound of footsteps ahead was already gone, burley in an ocean. Shepherd broke right, his big frame on an angle making him skid, leather-soled shoes a handicap, but then he hadn’t exactly expected to find himself involved in a pursuit at 2.00 am on the way back from cards.
He stopped abruptly.
He had powered down the short lane and reached the T-junction onto the road but there was no sign of the arsehole, left or right. He’d vanished. Okay, he was quick but not that quick, surely. Shepherd’s chest burned, he gulped air, bending over, resting his palms on his knees. His brain, never lightning fast, continuing to chug: no vehicle sound so either his quarry was hiding in the lane and he’d run straight past him, or else …
Shepherd swung around and looked up to the roof. Bastard! Just a glimpse heading north but that was him up there. Shepherd charged north down the middle of the deserted street. This wasn’t New York and an endless roof-scape; the prick only had twenty metres and he’d have to drop. Headlights. A car swung into the street heading towards Shepherd, forcing him back towards the footpath, buggering up the angle to maintain a visual.
‘Get off the road, ya dickhead!’ Voices slung at him from the open window of the passing car.
As Shepherd reached the end of the building he angled back out again and, looking up, was frustrated to see his target had doubled back south while he had been momentarily forced inboard. He grunted and started back and saw the figure on the roof suddenly turn to his left. Bastard was going to jump down the other side. Shepherd angled back through the short lane, the pre-season grind standing him in good stead. He was just in time to see a dark shape flutter through the sky and land in the street with the agility of a cat. Shepherd continued his chase, confident he’d get him now, stamina was his strong point. But blow him down if the hare didn’t duck back into the shadows
by the wall, and next thing he was zipping out heading south down Carnarvon Street on a bicycle that he must have had stashed there. Shepherd told himself, ‘I can do this. I can get him.’
Fifty metres on he was forced to acknowledge that was bullshit. He couldn’t do it. No matter how hard he strained, the distance increased until ahead there was only a hint of a bike rider, a dim shape … nothing.
The slippery little bugger had got away with it.
‘I’m telling you I had him, if that car hadn’t come at me.’
As Dan Clement arrived at the office, he saw Josh Shepherd was well into some story. Shepherd’s stories could go on. They usually concluded with Shepherd as a hero or should-have-been hero if only fate hadn’t intervened. This sounded like one of the latter. Graeme Earle and Jo di Rivi were listening with morning starter coffees in their fists. Earle held his usual current bun from the bakery hostage in its white paper bag. Clement wasn’t going to ask Shepherd what he was on about but Shepherd gave him no choice.
‘Our B&E friend. I almost had him.’
Now Clement pulled the strands together. ‘When?’
‘Last night, after poker with the boys.’
Earle’s interest was waning already. Clement saw him ferreting in his paper bag. The late dream that eventually had woken Clement had left him out of sorts, as if he had shoes on the wrong feet.
‘You didn’t see his face?’ Even as he asked it, Clement was aware his question was a conscious effort to bring his body and soul together rather than being organically swept up in Shepherd’s tale.
‘Not his face. But he had to be Indigenous.’
‘Cause he’d broken into the dive shop?’
Clement knew di Rivi was having a dig. Shepherd was prone to snap judgements. But maybe Shepherd’s shrewdness was growing. He didn’t giving her the satisfaction of biting.
‘No, because no white bloke’s that nimble. I wish we had him playing for Townies. We need some outside pace.’
