Clear to the Horizon

by Dave Warner

Under ten minutes they were assembled just up the road, di Rivi behind the wheel, the three men at the side of Clement’s car.

  Clement gave the run-down. ‘Graeme and I will go to the front door. Shep, I want you around the back.’ He looked at di Rivi. ‘When we’re about to go in I’ll radio to start …’

  He never got any further. A cyclist swung by them, a slim fellow. He took one look at them and his eyes bugged.

  ‘Turner!’ yelled Shepherd after him.

  The cyclist drove his feet into the pedals but in that lag before the wheels spun faster, Shepherd made quick ground. He lunged for the bike, which accelerated just as he was about to lay a hand on Sidney Turner’s leg. Shepherd got the slimmest tag on Turner’s ankle then cursed as he fell onto the road. Without waiting to be told, di Rivi gunned the car along the inside of the cyclist who looked panicked, stranded in the middle of the road. He might have been okay except for the small sedan that chose that moment to reverse from its driveway into his path. He tried to brake and swing right but he was travelling too fast and slid into the side of the car at a fair clip. He seemed to bounce and roll but miraculously sprang up. Josh Shepherd was on all fours making grunting sounds. Earle was a statue, more used to catching his prey with a fishing line. Clement charged. Sidney Turner ran towards Clement and went to dummy by him but this time Clement did not commit too soon. He kept his feet ready for the change of direction and when Sidney broke to his right, Clement dived to his left and wrapped his big arms around Turner’s slim waist, pulling them both to the road.

  ‘Calm down, Sidney. You’re going nowhere.’

  The boy, for that’s what he seemed like to Clement, appeared to comprehend it was done. He stopped wriggling. Graeme Earle arrived and cuffed him. Di Rivi cruised back. Shepherd had regained his feet but was gingerly rolling his shoulder.

  ‘Better not have done a bloody ACL,’ he muttered.

  Clement’s phone rang. Louise. He ignored it and told himself he would call back later.

  The woman who had been driving the car involved in the collision was still in her seat behind the wheel. ‘I checked. He came out of nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘I know. We’re your witnesses,’ said Clement. ‘But you’ll still need to blow into the whistle.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked worried. Di Rivi was heading over with a fresh kit. Again Clement was impressed by her foresight.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ he asked as he pulled away the buckled bicycle that was pressing against the driver side of the Hyundai. Underneath it was a satchel. He carefully picked it out.

  ‘One glass. I was just going to get some milk.’

  Clement felt sorry for her. The car had sustained damage. ‘You insured?’

  ‘Third party only,’ she said.

  Di Rivi asked her to blow into the whistle. A few people had begun to emerge from houses like rock crabs at low tide. Josh Shepherd had headed off to get his car. Graeme Earle remained with Turner and patted him down.

  ‘Inspector,’ he called over.

  Clement looked up to see a fat roll of cash in Earle’s hand. Then he opened the satchel: phones, cameras, some jewellery. Di Rivi sidled over to him and discretely showed him the reading from the woman driver. It was a tad over the limit. He felt like his shoulders were being weighed down a brick at a time. Normally he could turn a blind eye, advise her to park her car and go walk for her milk.

  ‘You’ll have to book her,’ he whispered to di Rivi. ‘Take my car.’

  Shepherd arrived back with his vehicle. Clement had one ear on di Rivi as he called out to the cuffed suspect.

  ‘We’re taking you back to the station, Sidney. First though, hospital, have you checked out.’

  ‘I’m fine. I don’t need hospital. You got the wrong guy. She’s the one you oughta arrest.’

  ‘Well, we’ll discuss that later.’ With a jerk of the head he indicated Shepherd should take him away.

  ‘I’m the one needs to get checked out,’ mumbled Shepherd to Graeme Earle as he placed Turner in the car.

  ‘Sidney is a good boy. That bag probably isn’t even his.’

  He guessed Olive Pickering was in her late sixties. She stood with her arms folded in front of a rich, dark-wood dresser topped with a cluster of photos. Several showed her with a beaming young Sidney in his school uniform. The pride burst from her as much as from him. Another black and white photo from around the late ’60s or early ’70s showed two young Indigenous women in check blouses smiling shyly at the camera. Clement thought one looked like a much slimmer Olive and guessed the other might be Sidney’s grandmother, her sister. There was not a single photo that showed any man who may have been a husband. The house reminded Clement of that of his widowed aunt Patricia. Her husband had died when Clement was so young he could not even remember meeting him. Unlike Aunty Patricia, who unfathomably did not keep a pet despite what must have been a lonely existence, Olive clearly had some four-legged company. A pet bowl sat on the floor. Beside it, stacked high, were seven or eight large bags of unopened pet biscuits. Along a wall was a small sewing table on which resided an old Singer machine. A pattern had been left open and a little purple thread flecked its base as if there hadn’t yet been time to sweep it away.

  ‘Would you mind if Detective Earle checked over Sidney’s bedroom?’

  ‘I don’t mind. You won’t find anything.’

  She indicated a room towards the back of the small house. Earle put on gloves and aimed for it. Clement came as far as the threshold and looked in. Sidney Turner’s bedroom was surprisingly neat. Well, perhaps not that surprising when you considered the rest of the house. The single bed was made perfectly. It smelled fresh too.

  ‘You sew?’ he offered, by way of making conversation. Olive Pickering stayed at his shoulder where she could make sure Earle wasn’t planting anything.

  ‘Worked for nearly thirty years for Mr Jeffrey.’

  The tailor. Clement saw him now, as he had when he was ten or eleven, outside looking in through a plate glass window – stooped over his counter, lean, balding, impeccably dressed even in this climate.

  ‘Always wore a bow tie.’ He was remembering aloud as he pictured him.

  Olive looked at him curiously. ‘You from around here? I don’t remember you.’

  ‘My family had the caravan park.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said and nodded sagely as if she had already made some unspoken judgement on him. Her eye flicked back to check on Earle.

  ‘What became of him?’ Clement wasn’t just making conversation now. He was curious. The man had been background to his everyday life as a kid for three or four years but then one day he was gone. He hadn’t spared him a thought for a generation.

  ‘He retired, died.’

  Clement was appalled by the impermanence of life, not so much life itself – with the job he worked, that was a given – but our place in other people’s perceptions of it. The hunched elderly gentleman in the bow tie, a man of a different era, odd, comical to the young Clement listening to Prince on a Sony Walkman, had yet still been part of the fabric of his life. The tailor probably had a wife, children, dreams, secrets, but now perhaps only Olive Pickering was there to vouch that he was no figment of a schoolboy’s imagination.

  ‘I was fifteen when I started sewing for him,’ she said. ‘The nuns taught me.’

  She offered no more insight into whether he had been fair, tyrannical, finicky – though one almost naturally assumed a tailor would be. Clement tried to picture the location of the old shop.

  ‘What’s there now?’ he asked.

  ‘Hairdresser,’ Olive Pickering said.

  Clement thought there was some insight into modern humanity in that: men no longer cared about their appearance but women still took trouble with their hair.

  Olive Pickering proved to be right about finding nothing in the bedroom. Clement guessed that whatever way Sidney was ingesting ice, he was doing it off premises. Earle was as careful as he could be in returning the ro
om to its previous state but Olive still made a show of neatening it all up. They found nothing in the lounge room. Clement did not wish to insult Mrs Pickering by asking to check her bedroom.

  As it was, there was plenty of evidence against Sidney in the satchel. Clement stared at it now on the long desk in the squad room, spread out in plastic evidence bags: seven phones minus sim cards, four cameras, a watch, several pieces of jewellery, fifty-six ecstasy tablets, a big pouch of pot. Turner had been carrying five hundred and sixty dollars in cash. Given he’d had no job since returning to Broome, it was a fair guess that this money had come from wallets which had then been tossed away. The woman driver had been charged and di Rivi had driven her home. Turner had been interviewed but was now claiming he’d found the bag. His attempted escape, he claimed, was just a reaction to being freaked out by the big guy – Josh Shepherd – yelling at him. Clement had tried to get Turner to implicate Mongoose but Turner was sticking to his guns.

  ‘Nearly five dozen eccies. We can charge you with dealing. Are you working for Mongoose? He gives you crystal in return?’

  ‘I told you, I found the bag. I don’t do drugs.’ His body language said otherwise. Lack of the drug was already starting to bite.

  ‘This might be the best thing for you, Sidney, a chance to get off it.’

  The boy looked at him, guilty, knowing it. ‘I found the bag. I’m not saying any more.’

  They’d locked him up. There would be a bail hearing in the morning. Clement had determined Shepherd should handle it all himself, give him some responsibility. He’d sent him off to brief the police prosecutor.

  ‘He’s a flight risk so we have to oppose bail but there’s no indication he’s violent. Make sure he’s checked regularly through the night.’

  It was now close to 5.00 pm. Earle was busy writing up the report on the arrest when Scott Risely walked through the door with an older man who seemed familiar.

  ‘Good stuff on getting the B&E guy. This is Richard Lane. He’s working privately for the Feisters. I assured him he would have full cooperation. I’ll leave you guys to chat, bring each other up to date. And see you tonight.’

  Clement extended his hand to Snowy Lane, that’s the name he remembered him by now. No wonder he seemed familiar. Snowy Lane had cracked the Mr Gruesome case. The guy’s handshake was like Iron Man’s.

  ‘Afternoon, Inspector.’

  Lane obviously didn’t recognise him. Clement considered mentioning an earlier crossing of paths but quickly expunged that thought. It would probably be embarrassing to bring it up. Snowy Lane had been a legend at one time long ago and he didn’t want to highlight a failure.

  ‘You like a tea or coffee?’

  Lane waved that off. ‘I’ll have a beer when I get back to the hotel.’

  Clement pulled up one of the plastic chairs for him and they sat facing one another with the long squad table on one side. Clement cleared a space among the exhibits for Lane to place the folder he was carrying.

  ‘We had a successful afternoon,’ he explained.

  Lane studied the haul but didn’t say anything. Clement felt obliged to make some light conversation before business.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Mimosa.’

  Of course that’s where he’d be staying if Feister was footing the bill.

  ‘When did you get in?’

  ‘Couple of hours ago. Drove up from Hedland.’

  That did for niceties.

  ‘I’m sure the Super filled you in: we’ve put the word around to all our people and Fisheries, Parks et cetera. We’ve had two flights a day checking a radius from Sandfire, which we’ve gradually expanded, and I’ve sent a memo to all the mining companies who fly over the area to be vigilant.’

  Lane nodded with each of these steps as if offering approval. Clement didn’t care if he approved or not. He felt no ill will towards the man who had helped solve one of the biggest cases in Perth criminal history. In fact he respected him. However, that was many moons past. Good luck to Lane for landing Feister as a client but he didn’t need the guy reviewing him. Lane seemed to study the tabletop again, then shook that off and turned back to him.

  ‘You were the one who collected the Sandfire footage?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve seen it?’

  Lane had. ‘The family are concerned about the boyfriend. I don’t know about you but I didn’t see anything that suggested there was any problem between them.’

  ‘Same.’

  Lane sighed, scratched his eyebrow. ‘It may be nothing. The girl has done this before but …’

  Clement completed the thought: ‘… she was carrying a large sum of money and it’s odd we haven’t found any sign of her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They sat in silence for a few seconds. Lane broke it. ‘I’ve been told there’s been no recent abductions, murders, carjackings up this way.’

  ‘It’s not North Queensland.’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard you had a few bodies here a year or so ago.’ He winked.

  Clement didn’t want to like the fellow, he just wanted a neutral professional relationship, but there was some force of life about him that was oddly compelling. Still, he resisted the overture for camaraderie.

  ‘We’ve got an Aboriginal aid, Jared Taylor, works with us. He knows every crevice, every creek and probably the nickname of every bloody goanna from here to Kununurra. I’ve been waiting to send him up the Gibb River Road but he’s had a family death up Beagle Bay. He’s due back tomorrow.’

  Graeme Earle sidled up with his jacket slung over his shoulder. ‘Finished. See you tomorrow.’

  Earle acknowledged Snowy Lane and took his leave. Mal Gross had already handed over to the evening shift and left.

  Clement said, ‘You got any thoughts on how you might proceed?’

  ‘I’m going to ask in shops, show the photos …’

  ‘There was no sign of the car on any CCTV.’

  ‘The car might have carked it. They cadge a lift …’ Not for the first time Lane left his thought dangling for Clement to nibble on. Clement had to concede the possibility and was annoyed he had not seen it himself.

  Lane was continuing. ‘It’s not much to go on but they had mentioned heading to Broome. Now, whether they just meant the general direction or the town, who knows? Perhaps they had a specific reason to travel here, meet somebody, say. I’d like to rule that out. Besides, I might meet somebody else fresh into town who just had a barbie with them at Fitzroy Crossing or wherever. I’ll do the pubs tonight. Coffee shops, supermarket, chemist tomorrow. Doubt I’ll need to check real-estate agents or hairdressers.’

  Lane’s thoroughness told Clement he’d not been taking the whole thing seriously enough. The thief, the wedding, Louise, had all been blurring focus.

  ‘I’ve got dinner with the boss tonight, otherwise I’d be glad to come with you.’

  Lane waved the offer away. ‘Appreciated, but sometimes it’s better not to be a cop or even around one.’

  Lane stood to leave. Clement reminded him he was welcome to call him if anything turned up and handed him a card.

  By the time Snowy Lane walked out the building it was close to 6.00. There was still time for a quick call to Louise. But that’s what it would be, quick and cursory. Clement needed to get home and shower. And he couldn’t get Marilyn out of his mind; like a shape that had appeared on the perimeter while he’d drawn sentry duty, he wanted to get closer, get a better look. Was she waiting for him to challenge her assertion they didn’t have a future together?

  He found himself in the car heading away from the station without remembering the steps in between. Idly he studied faces as he cruised by, Snowy Lane’s hypothesis playing in the background. Could Feister and Coldwell have driven to meet somebody specific and then met foul play? If that were the case, the best chance would lie in finding that vehicle. He drove to the wharf and parked in front of the chandler. Would a text be enough? Show he hadn’t completely forg
otten Louise? Or was that the coward’s way out? He sat in the hot car and hit the phone keys. Sorry missed you. Flat out. Dinner with boss. Call tomorrow. He stopped. A whole new problem had loomed out of the ocean Moby Dick–like. You can’t put ‘love’, he told himself, but you put nothing and it seems curt doesn’t it? He found a solution by scrubbing out Call tomorrow and replacing it with Looking forward to catching up tomorrow.

  He got out of the car feeling sticky and climbed the stairs.

  Sometimes when you spend several hours on a boat you get off and the earth feels like it is swaying. That’s how I felt after I left the police station. Not literally. I mean I hadn’t been on a boat for a start but things didn’t seem quite as they should. The reason was mental not physical. One of the worst things you find as you get older is that, whereas a few years earlier you would have an answer at your fingertips with the merest hint of a question, now you knew you knew the answer but couldn’t find it. It was shoved down the back of your memory, crumpled and hidden. There was something I’d heard or seen when Clement had been talking to me that should have grabbed me like a high-kick long-legged chorus line but it might as well have been the featureless Great Northern Highway I’d stared at for the last day or so. Was it something about the Feister girl? Not exactly. Something else. It was pointless to waste time on it, it would bob up eventually. Meantime I had questions to ask. The burger I’d eaten at the roadhouse was still sitting heavy in my gut so while I should have been dying for some fine food, I wasn’t. The cops had already done the rounds at the Mimosa Resort and other pubs, asking if they had seen Ingrid or the boyfriend, but I figured there was no harm trying again. Like I’d told Clement, sometimes people won’t talk to a cop, especially if they’ve been with those you were asking about, smoking weed, or shooting up or whatever. Starting at the Mimosa, fuelled by a welcome mid-strength beer, I worked my way around Broome showing pictures of Ingrid, Coldwell and their car without uncovering any definite leads. A couple from Queensland thought the car looked familiar from two days earlier on the Gibb River Road. A pretty girl from France believed Ingrid might have been at the airport. I made notes. At the Cleopatra Tavern, I got the same negative response but on the flipside there was a poster advertising sExcitation for the following Monday. I’d meant to try and track them down but had put that on hold after I couldn’t locate any website of that name. The poster indicated a Facebook page. Despite Tash’s continuous urging, I wasn’t on Facebook myself – hey, I’d stubbornly resisted flares too when they were the rage and believe me there was no regret – but it was proving to be a useful investigative tool.