by Dave Warner
By 11.30 that night I was back in my unit at the Mimosa. It was a perfect night, with a cool breeze blowing from the ocean but not strong enough to clear the scent of the surrounding gardens. I ran through Facebook and located the page for sExcitation. According to their schedule, they were in Tom Price tonight and, as the poster had suggested, Derby Saturday, then Broome the following Monday. I didn’t expect to get anything from them but, having come this far, I was going to tie up every possible lead. After messaging sExcitation, pretending I was interested in hiring them, I sat back with time on my hands. For once my timing meshed with Barcelona. It would be late afternoon. I pushed my IT skills to the limit, logged on to the Mimosa internet and checked Skype. It said Tash was online so I gave it a go. I sat listening to my modem or whatever it was calling across vast oceans and was given to thinking that each ring was a modern day pebble thrown against Juliet’s window. I was old enough to remember television before satellite, cricket on a radio wave, the FA Cup, something for the morning paper’s late news on a back page in pink ink; and while I’d been mightily impressed when it became reality that we could sit in our lounge chairs and watch live the first ball of a Lord’s Test as it hit the infamous ridge, or a Gunner netting at Wembley, nothing was quite so impressive as this: staring into the eyes of the object of my affection who was on the other side of the world. That the mundanity of our conversation – the reference to weather, the furnishings of the rooms we found ourselves in, the checklist of tourist highlights – fell so far short of the beauty of the technology and the perseverance of the human spirit that had allowed it was a shame but not a disaster. After all, people had wandered past Van Gogh’s paintings without blinking and no doubt propped themselves against David for a quick slash after too much vino and some ducal hijinks. Most of us are unable to elevate ourselves to the plane on which reside the greatest achievements of our peers. That’s what makes us human. But all of us yobbos, no matter how emotionally inarticulate, are grateful for anything that helps us see, hear, draw closer to, our distant loved ones.
Unfortunately Grace was off having coffee with a friend. Nothing Tash or I said to one another impacted any aspect of the world in the slightest, and yet the simple joy of talking to her coursed through me. One day maybe we’ll be able to skype the dead and I’m sure we’ll have the same inane conversations. I doubt we’ll be sitting around waiting for wisdom on how to make the world a better place, how to save the planet from greed or plague. I reckon we’ll just gaze into the eyes of our departed loved ones and chat about the weather and ask if plants are blooming and what we’ve been eating.
After fifteen minutes, we’d said all we could. Tash kissed the screen and I was a young man again.
I pottered for another twenty minutes writing up a report and emailing it to Dee Vee. Just after midnight I switched off the computer and the lights and went to bed where I tossed and turned for another fifteen minutes. Then I got up and peed because that’s what men do post fifty-five. I slipped outside for a minute and gazed up at a million timeless stars that looked like they’d been hurled from a bucket and stuck. With the smell of fresh salt air in my nostrils I slipped back under the sheets and gave myself to sleep.
I ate breakfast like a Viking. Well, there was space in there. I’d fasted since yesterday’s lunch but there’s something about eating under a clear blue sky off a big white plate, with cutlery heavy enough to anchor a tinny in a cyclone, that increases appetite. The bacon and perfectly cooked eggs lasted less time than an Italian parliament. I never swim straight off after eating; however, the breakfast hadn’t even registered in my stomach and with unusual foresight I’d packed my bathers, though to be honest I assumed I’d be swimming in chlorine. But here I felt an irresistible pull.
I’ll just go for a look, I told myself.
Within a few minutes I was on Cable Beach standing on a cape of white sand that stretched endlessly to my left and right. Ahead was a sheet of Indian Ocean, flat as a spirit level. The waves were too polite to lap, they softly hushed. A couple of people in the water about two hundred metres north were having a dip, otherwise it was deserted. If I hadn’t checked and rechecked it was safe from box jellyfish this time of the year, I would have thought that was the cause. Reason told me there’d be no great whites up here, didn’t mean there weren’t other sharks, crocs even. If I was ever to swim in the ocean again though, this had to be it. I had my budgies on under my shorts. I dropped them and my cotton shirt, a birthday present from the girls, and walked towards sea. I was not scared, on the contrary, as I eased myself into the water I felt an amazing privilege, and a sense of awe. Maybe this was how monarchs feel when they are anointed. This was my cathedral and I was the chosen one, inducted into a line of the specially blessed in a place that suggested a Power infinitely greater than me. I crouched down so the chill water reached over my shoulders to my chin. I could hear the frenzied shouts from the day Craig Drummond had perished, as clear in my head as if a soundtrack was playing. I had no vision of Craig like you might see in a movie, no flashback but – and I know this sounds like a cliché – I sensed him with me. I began to swim and any fear or residual tension left me. My body was out of practice, the muscles not too bad but my breathing slightly shallow. For maybe twenty minutes I swam parallel to the shore, and with each stroke I became more comfortable. I floated a few minutes on my bed and thanked Craig, and then I swam back to the shore and walked back along wet sand to where my shirt declared itself on an otherwise snow-white backdrop. I’d not brought a towel but by the time I walked back to the car I’d pretty well dried. I put on my shirt and brushed the sand from my feet, whole again.
After I’d showered, I redressed and began hunting through the town, again proffering the photos of Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell. After ninety minutes I had nothing to show. Maybe it was the earlier reminiscence of Craig Drummond that did the trick, I don’t know, but as I passed by the little watchmaker jeweller on the way to the chemist, something slapped my consciousness. I stood staring through the window at the rings, necklaces and watches, and I knew what it was that I’d seen without seeing at the police station last night. In one of the evidence bags on the long table had been a bluebird pendant. I should have recognised it straight away. I’d stared at that damn thing day after day, night after night, for months. It didn’t look like a bluebird really, more like a flying swallow, and that was why I knew it was the one-off piece designed and sold by a small London jeweller in 1989 to a visiting Australian businessman looking for a gift to his daughter. That daughter was Jessica Scanlan and she had been wearing it nearly twenty years ago when she’d gone missing.
CHAPTER 16
‘Is Jared back yet?’
Clement’s bark was like a handful of chips thrown to a bunch of seagulls, not meant for any one in particular, but everybody automatically looked to Mal Gross, the only person who had any idea of rosters, car pool, the comings and goings of personnel.
‘I can check.’ Something in the sergeant’s manner transmitted to Clement he needed to dial back the aggro.
‘Wasn’t he due back today?’ Clement made a concerted effort to rein in his irritability. He should never have indulged in that last bottle of red with Risely.
Gross said, ‘Due back in town but he’s not rostered on till tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Can you check anyway?’ Clement wanted to get Jared Taylor started on the Feister disappearance as soon as possible. He beat a retreat to his office, safer there. It wasn’t their fault his ex-wife had placed him in this situation. He’d answered honestly, albeit spitefully, that she shouldn’t marry Brian. His encounter with her had tainted everything. He would surely have called Louise by now except for Marilyn ambushing him like that. It had thrown him completely. The obvious conclusion was she was having second thoughts, realised she would never have with Brian what they’d had together. Yet the reality was she had divorced him and then reiterated they had no future. So now he was what – some best-friend sounding board? H
e checked the time: 11.45. He’d wait half an hour then call Louise as promised. He rang Bill Seratono to soak up a few minutes.
‘Any luck on that car and couple?’
‘Nothing yet. I got the word out. I’ll let you know if anything comes back. You want to meet up tonight after work?’
‘I’m in the middle of stuff. I’ll buzz you if I’m free.’
‘What about the girl? How’s that going?’
‘Slowly. Call me if you hear anything.’
He hung up. There was a knock on his already open door. He expected Mal Gross but it was Meg the civilian receptionist.
‘There’s a Richard Lane says he needs to see you urgently.’
He must have turned something up on Ingrid Feister, thought Clement, and told Meg to bring him through. He was not really hungover, not with a headache anyway, but too much wine and not enough water made him feel like there was a smudge across his medulla. Risely had been good company, his wife Chantelle pleasant. They had talked little or no work apart from some old-case glory days but the bottom line was he had overindulged.
Meg pointed Snowy Lane into the office and withdrew. Clement had caught sight of some TAB tickets in her handbag on more than one occasion, so he suspected a closet gambler but Meg did not mingle with the rest of them.
‘That bluebird pendant … you still have it?’
The words punched out of Lane like desperate men bursting from their prison transport. Clement was completely lost. Lane gave him no chance to seek clarification.
‘It was on the long table yesterday, part of the bust you did.’
Clement might have been oriented towards the finish line but the blindfold was still firmly in place.
‘The evidence bags you mean? I don’t remember any bluebird.’
‘It doesn’t look like a bluebird. Have you got the evidence bags? I’ll explain.’
Clement reluctantly got up and poked his head out. Josh Shepherd was on a computer on the far side of the room.
‘Josh, where did you put the evidence from the Turner case?’
‘Current Court Cases.’
Clement moved to the rear of the building, leaving carpet for concrete. He felt Lane at his shoulder. A narrow corridor led to a locked evidence room protected by a key-code pad.
‘You need to wait here.’ Clement punched in the code.
Lane said, ‘It’s a sleek piece of silver, looks almost like a plane, sapphire for the eye.’
Clement switched on the light in the hangar-like room of steel shelves. At the back of the room was a larger area for bulky pieces of evidence. There were three small safes and a firearms cabinet. The drugs would have been tagged and locked in one of the safes but he surmised Shepherd would have left the other pieces together in a simple box. He located it correctly marked, and sorted through the plastic bags till he found the pendant. Only now did he notice the chain seemed to be broken. He signed the book, recording the time. Lane was waiting for him on the threshold, in hyper-drive, his eyes wide and alive, his body craning in though his feet remained where they should.
Clement held the plastic bag up to Lane who studied it a long moment then almost whispered, ‘That’s it.’
‘That’s what?’
‘That’s the pendant Jessica Scanlan was wearing when she disappeared in Claremont, August, two thousand. It was not found on her body.’
Lane did not need to explain who Jessica Scanlan was. Every cop in WA had the names of the three girls who had disappeared near Autostrada nightclub burned into his or her brain. But now Clement was angry he’d indulged Lane. The guy had been tangentially involved in the investigation and had clearly become obsessed, probably trying to find a way to skate back under the limelight. Well, Clement wasn’t going to be used for Lane’s agenda.
‘You don’t remember this, but I shared a lift with you back when George Tacich was running the case. You came in with some big theories and wasted the task force’s time. George Tacich got rolled. Ian Bontillo did it.’
Lane absorbed the hit without flinching. ‘The case is still officially open.’
Clement knew that was a sop to public sentiment. Tregilgas who had replaced Tacich had won his way to commissioner on the back of that case; it was never going to be overturned.
‘Bontillo killed himself. There’ve been no repeats.’
‘That you know of.’
Clement sidestepped the barb, swapped insult for logic. ‘There could be a hundred of these.’ He shook the evidence bag a little for emphasis.
‘There’s only one.’
Lane pulled out a sheet of A4 on which was printed an old press report with a photo blown up, showing the pendant. The piece was identical.
‘One?’ Clement had no recollection of that detail.
‘One-off designer piece sold by Emerson’s of Piccadilly to Jessica’s dad. Listen, even if it was Bontillo, you don’t know if he had an accomplice. We trace this, we can tie the case up officially. We might even be able to find those girls’ bodies. You imagine what it’s like for their parents?’
Clement could. Phoebe was his life. He had no time to feel embarrassed that he’d slighted Lane, his cop’s brain was busy running the implications.
‘Sidney Turner’s too young to have been involved in any way. But he is a thief.’
Snowy Lane was already there, waiting with the next question. ‘So who did he steal it from?’
The old Broome Regional Prison was supposed to be closed down, but reality had set in and it was now used for remand for prisoners pending court cases. As prisons went, it didn’t look the worst from the outside: single level, well-tended garden, open design. Clement drove to the prison faster than he should have. Lane had infected him with the same fever: putting a full stop to the Autostrada case was the Holy Grail of criminal investigation in this state. More importantly it would give the parents closure. Unless somebody had copied the design of the pendant for some unfathomable reason, this was a huge breakthrough. At the gate, Clement explained who he was and was told to drive to reception. He threw a look at Lane whose eyes were far away. The drive was short. He parked and they climbed out of the car. Somewhere a bird warbled. It had the stillness and quiet of a hospital. Clement addressed another intercom that was on a short pole in front of a porch area. A female voice told them to advance to the door where they would be met. A female prison officer, with a pleasant face and curly blonde hair, was waiting on the other side of the glass door. Clement had met her before but for the life of him could not remember her name: Barbara? The door slid back and they stepped into a cool area that offered a water fountain and a coffee table with some very old magazines, in front of a well-used but still firm sofa.
‘Afternoon, Inspector.’ The woman prison employee turned her smile from Clement to Snowy Lane to show he was included. A male officer remained behind a desk. Clement thought he had the look of a man who led a greyhound to its starting box: smoker, drinker, slightly undernourished because he gambled money that should have gone to food.
‘How can we help, Inspector?’ asked the woman. Clement was becoming more convinced her name was Barbara.
‘A remand prisoner we brought in yesterday, Sidney Turner. I’d like to see him.’
The woman looked unsure and glanced across to the male officer for support.
‘He’s gone,’ said the male officer. ‘He got bail.’
It had been like having a dog barking outside your door for fifteen years. Now, finally, a chance for peace. And these bozos cock it up. I got the gist as we hurtled out of there towards Turner’s house. Clement called his constable and had him phone the prosecutor, a cop. The prosecutor said the aunt had hired a defence lawyer who had asked for bail. The prosecutor had said the boy was a flight risk, the aunt had said via her lawyer that she believed he would not flee and was prepared to bet her house on it. The magistrate was a member of the boy’s former hockey club and remembered him as a good young man. He also noted the boy had been injured by a DUI driv
er the day before and thought prison might not be the best place for him. He set bail at a hundred grand. The aunt stumped it up. The prosecutor hadn’t had time to communicate this to Clement and his team because he was overloaded and onto the next case. A perfect storm. I wasn’t panicking yet. Maybe the boy wouldn’t run anyway, maybe the aunt was right. It was less than two hours ago, so chances were he wouldn’t get far. I had no doubt this kid had stolen the pendant. All we needed off him was to find out where. The sense I’d had while in the ocean of Craig Drummond’s presence hit me afresh. I’m not sure if I fit the mould of a spiritual guy; I go to church Christmas, and the crowds seem pretty strong. I’d rather believe in God than not, but the older I got the more certain I was that there was something bigger than me, bigger than what you could see or hold in your hand, something formless and inexplicable that connected all of us from the caveman down, something that every now and again we could detect, as if a beam set off something deep in our DNA. And that’s what I felt now, like I had some part to play still, like I’d been given a second chance. I dare not waste it.
CHAPTER 17
He couldn’t believe he was back at Aunty’s house. He thought that was it, he was going inside, and it scared him bad. He had been stupid to think being fast was enough. Sooner or later they were going to get you. He was so lucky to have Aunty. It was only bail though. He’d have to go court and they’d find him guilty and he would go to prison. That wasn’t so bad was it? They’d get him off the crystal. He could come back here, live with Aunty, play hockey again. They had been the happiest times of his life. To know you’re good at something, that was cool. His mates, they all played footy. Not that he was bad at footy but he was light and he couldn’t kick so well when he was at full speed, but then he found hockey, that was his game. The coaches said he could play state.
