by Dave Warner
‘Thanks.’
They raised glasses and sipped. Bill said, ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Got a missing couple.’ Clement laid out the bones of the story without mentioning names. ‘If you could ask your mates to keep an eye out?’ Bill’s network of fishermen, boar hunters, camel drivers and long haul truckies, acquired over his lifetime in the Kimberley, was likely to be more effective than any police bulletin.
Bill said he would pass the word around. With his eyes fixed at some point on the far wall he said. ‘You gotta forget Marilyn.’
‘I don’t recall mentioning her.’
‘Didn’t need to. Look, it’s like when you have that most beautiful barra hooked, ready to land. Or landed, and woosh, it gets off the hook, out of the boat, back in the water. It galls you. You keep thinking: what if? And then you start thinking: maybe I can catch it back? That’s pointless. It’s gone and if you set your sights just on it, you’re in for a very frustrated life. But dangle your line, you’ll land another very tasty fish.’
‘Thanks Bill, your poetic language knows no bounds.’
Seratono chuckled. ‘What I’m saying is, the reason you wanted that fish was pride. It was so beautiful and you wanted to show it off to everybody. You wanted having it, to make you feel good. That shouldn’t be why you fish.’
The worst part was, Clement knew they were right. Bill, Graeme Earle, the others who didn’t say anything to his face.
‘Alright. Can we stop with the metaphor?’
They clinked glasses and drank. The beer was cold and he felt good that he could lose himself in this simple pleasure. At the same time it could never be sufficient. He knew too many for whom these kind of spaces became the normal landscape of their lives. Female companionship and sex were not something he was yet prepared to do without. While he had felt no need to get back into a dating world, and certainly no self-consciousness about how he might go with a new woman, he understood that the longer he left it, the harder it would be.
Bill put down his empty glass. ‘Your buy, I believe.’
Clement finished his own beer and headed to the bar with the empties. He put them on the counter, pulled out his phone and located Louise’s number in the contacts list. Should he? Could he?
His phone sprang into life. If it was her calling him, that had to be a sign.
But it wasn’t her name on the display, just a number he didn’t recognise.
‘Dan Clement.’
‘It’s Angus Duncan from Giant. I got a message to call you.’
‘Thanks for getting back to me.’ Automatically Clement moved away from the bar out of earshot. ‘You saw Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell on Thursday the seventeenth. That right?’
Duncan confirmed it was correct. He was showing a Chinese client around when he learned Ingrid and Coldwell were in Hedland having their car repaired. He invited them to dinner at the pub and they accepted.
‘I was a bit surprised actually. They were hippie sorts, you know. I didn’t think they’d be bothered with us but … free feed I guess.’
They had eaten in the dining room but then gone outside to see what the big crowd was cheering on. ‘Tits and arse show. Chicks in skimpy, see-through stuff, miming. My client liked it. Some of the girls invited Ingrid and her boyfriend for a party afterwards, and they invited us.’
The party was actually nothing more than drinks up on the first floor of the hotel where the girls had their rooms. There were a couple of people from the hotel there, the girls’ crew and manager.
‘We stayed for about an hour and then my client said he was tired so I said we were going. Ingrid said she’d come too, and her boyfriend … well, he seemed to do what she wanted. We all walked out pretty much together about one. We saw them to their motel unit and then I drove my client over to his accommodation at Finucane.’
‘Were there problems with anybody?’
‘No. Everybody was fine.’
‘Coldwell and Ingrid? Between them?’
‘He’s a quiet guy. My guess he was a bit stoned, he smelled of weed. She seemed more the party type. But they weren’t arguing or anything. I honestly think they’re probably just zoning out somewhere.’
‘They say where they were going next?’
They had mentioned Broome but only in a vague sense. They were talking about sightseeing and heading to East Kimberley and the gorges.
‘So they could have gone inland?’
‘Yeah. Or they could have changed their minds and split for the coast. It wasn’t like they had a schedule. Well, not that I gathered.’
‘Any chance of talking to your client?’
‘Not here. For one he hardly speaks English but by now he’s back in China.’
Clement thanked him.
‘I’m sure they’re going to be okay. They’re just, you know, Pilates types.’
Ending the call, Clement looked up to see two fresh beers in Bill Seratono’s fist.
‘Man could die of thirst. I told Jill you’d fix her up.’ Bill nodded at the barmaid.
Clement weighed the phone in his palm then slipped it back into his pocket. The easy reassurance of the mining guy should have reduced his anxiety. It didn’t. He had a high-profile missing person in an area the size of Scandinavia. Up here a young woman carrying six thousand dollars was like a beacon attracting all the wrong kinds of animals. He’d better savour this beer while he could.
CHAPTER 13
I hadn’t been to the Pilbara since the mid-’80s. I was doing a bit of hack work for my old boss at Fremantle CIB who had gone out into security and private inquiry. It was a credit company situation. Branko Ludovic had driven out of Leederville in his 1983 Holden Commodore owing two months rent. We weren’t acting for the landlord, who was probably glad to be rid of him, but for the credit company that had loaned him the bucks for the Commodore. Squaring the payments had slipped Branko’s mind. No doubt he thought he was far enough away for any action to be taken but I was at a loose end and happy to dawdle up the coast with a mate who’d played footy with me. A hot tongue of Australian air licked us for a thousand ks of low scrub while we rotated Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart and The Wailers, along with an old tape of local blues band The Elks who I’d seen many times at The Charles Hotel. Those were days when time seemed to plant itself and not blink – no mobile phones, texts, Facebook, wireless internet – just a piece of hot metal on endless road. Branko had found a job at Paraburdoo in the desert and the prospect of heading into the oven did not entice me. Especially as there might be no cops to back us up if Branko and a few mates got stroppy. Fortunately we’d learned he drove into Hedland every other Friday and blew half his week’s wages. We timed our arrival for the Thursday. I don’t remember much about the place except that we had to wait at a crossing for the longest train in the world to roll past. I think it took pretty much the entire side of a cassette, definitely the whole of ‘The Killing of Georgie’ and then some, wagon after wagon after wagon. I guess it was iron ore being sent out to the wharf for loading. I’m not one for detailed economics or infrastructure. What I remember is that infinite train with the sun turning the sea and the air and everything else silver – like a Boney M jumpsuit had been pulled over it. It must have been evening, I’m thinking, because the next day I woke up in our car and the sea was pea green, the sky a brilliant pale blue and the earth orange-red. We spent the day eating seafood and playing pool in an air-conditioned pub. Branko arrived about 8.00. I let him settle in, then fronted him and asked for his keys. He was a big guy, six two maybe, mean, and I could see he might want to go at it. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Branko, you’ve won. You’ve had three free months with the car, you’ve clocked up thousands of extra k, so your resale value is shit. If we tangle about this you’ll wind up on some assault charge. It’s not worth it.’ I saw his big hand flexing around the beer glass on the bar. I could imagine the jagged shards cutting my skin, and my right hand was reaching behind me for the pool cue lying on the felt. Then he relaxed,
reached in his pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them to me.
‘It’s a heap of shit anyway,’ he said and turned back to his beer. I walked out and drove his car back to Perth. My mate drove mine. Branko’s music taste was predictably hard rock, too hard for me, but solitude and repetition can be a powerful combination and by the time I hit Geraldton I’d almost come to enjoy Motörhead.
I hoped for a similar productive result this time in Hedland but was resigned to being disappointed. Knowing I might have to travel off-road, I’d rented a Toyota Landcruiser. It chewed the petrol but I wasn’t paying. After the Feister meeting I’d checked out Ingrid’s flat, found nothing illuminating, then spent the rest of the weekend revising and planning and expecting a call to say Ingrid had turned up. No call came. First day, Monday, I’d spent close to ten hours on the road and stopped the night in Carnarvon at a caravan park. That took me back thirty years. I’d left at 6.00 this morning and spent another nine hours staring at bitumen. Most of the way I thought of Grace and her mother enjoying fine tapas, art and culture in Barcelona. Before I left Perth I emailed, informing them I was heading north on a job and not to worry if I wasn’t in touch for a while. So far I hadn’t bothered to check for a reply. I come from an era where you might not hear word from overseas for a month. In my opinion it helped you think about whatever it was you were meant to be thinking about, and for me right now that was the best way of tracking down Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell. As I crossed the railway tracks, I caught a view of the port. It was vast now, iron lattice, giant wheels, cranes and, where I recalled one or two ships being serviced, today there was a flock of them hovering like sheep at a trough. I wondered how many billions of dollars I was looking at. The irony that most of them had likely been made from the very ore they were shipping wasn’t lost on me. Australia had always been the lucky country: first with wheat and sheep, then with minerals; and that bounty had bred a profligacy. We were like those characters in a P.G. Wodehouse book, burning off the family fortune without ever planning for the day when it ran out, selling parts of the manor when things got tight. Well things were already getting tight. We were exporting five times as much ore to get the same return yet simultaneously closing down any industry that used a hammer, drill, skill – except for construction. And construction was no lifetime industry anymore where a man could sit back with pride and eat with the very utensils he’d made, or dine off the table whose wood had been grown, cut and shaped by his fellow Australians. Construction was a temporary shelter for the unskilled who would blow their hard-earned in Bali or Phuket or on buying stuff on the internet, dollars that would never find their way back.
I passed a truck with Giant Ore stencilled across its flank. That cut the switch on my philosophising. I was here to find Ingrid.
As requested, Dee Verleuwin had booked me into the Kookaburra, the same establishment where Ingrid and her boyfriend had stayed. The Kookaburra incorporated the original large hotel with sprawling veranda, offering a beer garden, a big sports bar and dining area on the ground floor level plus accommodation on its first floor level. At some stage in the ’80s or ’90s, a motel had been added in what had probably been a gravel carpark. It looked like the motel contained around fifteen units. I pulled up near reception. I swear my body creaked when I climbed out. My right hip was aching, so was my calf. Maybe I’d been deluding myself that thirty years hadn’t left their mark.
By the time I let myself into my small room it was nearly 4.00 pm. I had a quick shower and changed into a clean short-sleeved shirt. I swapped my shorts for long pants, though at a shade under thirty degrees Celsius it was well and truly warm enough to stay in shorts. This was probably the best time of the year to be up here. The humidity wasn’t too sapping and the heat was tolerable. Verleuwin had called ahead so the police should be expecting me. I opened my folder and found a direct number for Detective Inspector Peter Richardson. I doubted I or anybody else in my circles would have been afforded such contact. The power of wealth.
‘Richardson.’ He answered like a man whose team had just had a dubious free kick awarded against them. I explained who I was.
‘Where are you?’
‘At the Kookaburra.’
‘I’ll be there in ten, Sportsman’s bar.’
I resisted the urge to put on the air conditioner. My wife and daughter were always on about saving the planet yet I’ve never known anybody to use more unnecessary lighting or air conditioning than they do. It’s nice to arrive in a cool room but I preferred a little martyrdom and self-congratulation.
The bar was open and cool – clinker brick with some hanging pots to soften the wide-screens and tubular aluminium. There were about a dozen drinkers, most of them workmen and women in shorts. This was only a Tuesday, I guessed things pumped on the weekend. True to his word, Richardson arrived in ten minutes. At first I didn’t realise it was him. Much younger than I’d anticipated, maybe just into his forties, he was dressed like me in slacks and short sleeves. Unlike a lot of cops he didn’t have that straight back and broad shoulders, more a distance runner than a weights man, thin and slightly stooped, with thick black hair. I saw him check his phone and then he made a beeline for me, so I guessed the efficient Dee Vee had furnished him with my photo. We shook hands and he joined me in a lemon squash.
‘We don’t have anything further. Broome hasn’t found any trace of them there yet.’ He explained the implications. How they could have gone off-road towards the coast or inland and north as a more direct access to the gorges. ‘So far as we know, they left here in good health with the vehicle in good order and made it as far as Sandfire.’
‘Any chance they may have doubled back?’
He curled his lip. ‘Don’t know why they would do that.’
‘Any problems between the two of them?’
‘Not that we could find. I interviewed the people staying either side of the motel unit. No arguments.’
‘No problems with anybody here?’
‘None we could dig up. They had dinner here with one of the Giant people, Angus Duncan, and a Chinese client. It was a big night. We had a lingerie revue from Perth. Place was packed.’
‘I thought they’d been banned.’
‘Skimpy costumes, they mime the songs, no stripping. Let’s face it, these days the singers are wearing less than strippers anyway. Duncan says he and his guest had a few drinks with Ingrid, Coldwell and the revue people after their show. They all left around one am. He said goodbye to Ingrid and Coldwell at their unit. They were fine, going to leave for Broome the next day.’
‘They said they were going to Broome?”
‘They mentioned it but didn’t indicate if that was their final destination.’
‘What was the name of the revue?’
‘I don’t remember offhand.’
‘You didn’t interview the revue people?’
‘They moved on right away to the next gig. But there was no need. We had a confirmed sighting of Ingrid and the boyfriend leaving the unit the next morning. And since then we know they made Sandfire. Whatever happened, happened after that.’
‘Drugs? You check the unit?’
For the first time he seemed ill-at-ease. ‘We ran a couple of simple checks, bathroom, dressing table. Didn’t find anything except some pot residue.’
That squared with what we’d been told of Coldwell. And I was pretty certain if he was smoking dope, so was his girlfriend. I needed to speak to the maid and already had her name in my file.
‘Am I likely to find the maid who saw them leave?’
‘Not till tomorrow morning. She was a good witness, gave an accurate description. It was them, and the Sandfire video confirms it.’
I thanked him for his time.
‘Hopefully Dan Clement up in Broome will have turned up something by the time you get there. We’ve got our eyes and ears open. If we see or hear anything we’ll let the family know. It’s always a worry when people go missing but from what I hear it’s not out o
f character and there are plenty of places you can disappear for weeks at a time. If they hadn’t had that service I’d be more worried, but I spoke to the mechanic and he says they went over the car very closely. They knew whose daughter it was.’
We shook hands and Richardson took himself off, telling me not to hesitate to call if I found anything or needed help. Everything he’d said made sense but I wasn’t Richardson. I liked to nail down every tiny piece of information. Did they speak to anybody else in the pub, or at this party? Somebody who might have followed them? I approached the barmaid, a slim girl with red hair and fair complexion. She’d need a lot of sunscreen in this climate.
‘Hi, my name is Richard Lane. I’m looking for these guys. Their parents are concerned.’
I showed her a photo of Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell.
‘The police spoke to us about them. Apparently they were here the night we had the strippers, couple of weeks back, but I didn’t see them. Or I don’t remember them. I always work the Sporty.’
‘And where was the show?’
‘In the beer garden. You should speak to Dougal. He hung out with them a bit.’
‘Is he here?’
She checked the clock, pouted as she considered. ‘His shift starts six-thirty.’
The trouble with Hedland is apart from drinking and pool, there’s not a lot to do to kill an hour. It’s marginally more stroll-friendly than Aleppo. You drive everywhere. I remember a story, which may have been apocryphal, about the man who had designed Hedland. He was from the UK or the US, somewhere the sun was much weaker. He’d wanted to create a place with a sense of community and had consequently created many cul-de-sacs and circles so that people would be encouraged to leave cars behind and walk instead. When it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the bonnet of your car, however, nobody is inclined to walk. Supposedly the guy was so horrified with what he’d done that he killed himself. Even if the rest of the story was true I wasn’t putting too much store in the dramatic finale. Ever since C.Y. O’Connor, the great pioneering engineer of Western Australia, had topped himself, we’d shown a penchant for stories that ended in outsiders suiciding because they’d misunderstood the harshness of our climate. This simultaneously made us feel tough and superior. All of which meant I could get in the car and drive aimlessly, sit here and drink, or go back to my unit and catch a few zeds. I settled on the last of these.
