by Dave Warner
CHAPTER 30
What had depressed Clement about having to call Perth in on the pendant case was not sharing any subsequent glory but that he had not already brought the case to heel. Police, he thought, were no different to any other profession – they liked to call their own tune. And he’d had that privilege but squandered it, right from when he’d chosen to keep Shepherd in the dark about the pendant and thereby missed getting earlier to Chelsea Lipton’s phone. From this point on he would be an appendage acting on whatever Perth determined. However, Snowy Lane’s revelation had re-energised him. The body in the desert was still his case and he could pursue that as he thought fit. That it may be related to Crossland was a bonus. They were back in his lounge room now. Lane had called the mobile of the dance troupe proprietor, Alex Mendleson, but received no answer. While Lane tried the Boab, Clement searched his desktop for the sExcitation Facebook page. It wasn’t that easy to find. His search engine query threw up ten pages of suggestions. It occurred to him the world seemed to be able to wean itself off cigarettes and oil but sex was a different matter. He assumed it must still be lucrative.
Lane ended his call. ‘The girl at the Boab says they left about an hour ago. She wasn’t sure where they might be headed.’
‘I can’t find it here yet,’ Clement was forced to admit.
Snowy Lane referred to the card. They switched to Facebook direct and typed in the address. As if by magic the girls appeared on screen. Upcoming Dates was easy to find.
‘Dampier, tomorrow night.’ Lane tapped the screen. Clement had seen it already. Dampier was on the coast south-west of Port Hedland.
‘They’ll be hours yet.’ Maybe if he got lucky, he’d get a call through to Alex Mendleson near Port Hedland. His eyes flicked over the five young women on the screen.
‘Which one is she?’
‘I think she’s already been removed. That’s the new girl.’ Lane pointed at a slim redhead in a bunch of posed shots. There were some historic photos in the gallery but the girls were distant in them, their features indistinct. Fortunately Clement had brought his laptop computer with him from work and it contained the downloaded photos from Chelsea Lipton’s phone, photos they assumed Crossland had taken. He refilled tea while the laptop loaded. He wondered if Louise would be in court at this very second and chastised himself for letting things drift. He found the file with the Port Hedland photos and opened it.
‘That’s gotta be Kelly,’ said Lane as they scrolled through them. ‘I recognise all the others.’
There were at least two good shots that showed Kelly on stage, full length.
A pretty girl, thought Clement, more striking than the others, higher cheekbones.
‘What’s that?’ He had spied a mark on her lower leg. He zoomed in. ‘Tattoo? Birthmark?’
‘Tattoo for sure,’ said Lane, peering in real close.
‘Can you make it out?’
Lane shook his head. ‘Too blurry, but it’s a tatt.’
Clement was certain there had been no mention of a tattoo on the corpse from the desert, otherwise it would have cleared Ingrid Feister as the victim as she had no known tattoo. He dialled Lisa Keeble. She was in her lab sifting through stuff they’d found at the Turner location. She’d sent her team back to look for anything from this morning’s activity.
‘Don’t get your hopes up on this lot. We were there till at least one this morning. I’m running prints on what we have. You might get more from today. Sounds like you disturbed him.’
‘We did that alright.’ He asked if she recalled there being any tattoos on the desert corpse.
‘No, no marks, but the body was not intact. There was damage to the lower legs.’
That was right, animals or insects had got to work.
‘But there was some flesh, right, mummified?’
‘Yes, quite a bit.’
Clement asked her to call the coroner asap and get him to check. He thanked her for her efforts. It can’t have been fun labouring through things: negative, negative, negative.
‘Maybe it was wishful thinking about it being Kelly,’ said Lane who had picked up a lot of what had gone down.
Most cases, you found yourself a balloon, you inflated, you deflated, over and over.
‘It’s a good thought. Let’s see what happens. You know what it’s like. They miss things sometimes.’ Clement couldn’t indulge himself any longer. He had to get back to the station. He asked Lane his plans.
‘He might still be up here. I want to see it through. I’ll keep my room at the Mimosa. For now I’m going to head back there and sleep.’
The man was prepared to risk being taken by a crocodile, Clement couldn’t deny him that.
‘I’ll let you know what I can but it might get tougher with Perth involved.’
‘It will get tougher,’ said Lane. ‘But I still want to be around.’
‘They’re excited.’ Risely was in his office, pacing as if he too had the fever. It always seemed so uncluttered in here to Clement.
‘I’ll bet they are. Have they said who will be running the case?’
‘I get the impression the Commissioner himself.’
Risely didn’t have to editorialise, they both got it. The cold-case detectives would find themselves out in the cold so to speak. The Commissioner had his reputation at stake, he’d want to protect his legacy, or at least create a new one if the old one wilted under new evidence. So long as he didn’t bury it.
‘How did Perth go with Crossland’s parents?’ Clement asked.
‘They last saw him a little over three weeks ago. His mother was ill after an operation and he came to see her. He told his brother he was living on the Gold Coast and working in construction. He said he was flying back there. His phone has been inactive for eighteen hours. The last calls he made were to old pals back in Perth. They claim he was just saying hi after catching up with them three weeks ago. He told them he was ‘up north’ but was not specific. The full list of calls is on your desk. They want us to follow up any Kimberley numbers. By the way, Feister called the Commissioner to thank him for our help.’
‘Did he offer to pay for our planes and personnel?’
‘Now, now, Inspector, somebody might think you resent us being an organ that helps the people.’
‘Which people is the question. We seem to be pretty selective.’
‘Don’t get too cynical, Dan. We’ve expended a fair bit on the Turner boy too.’
Which reminded him, he needed to check in on him.
He took his leave and returned to the squad room. Graeme Earle looked up from his desk.
‘Still no answer.’ Among other things, like double and triple checking missing persons to see if anybody fitted the desert corpse profile, he’d been tasked with calling Alex Mendleson every ten minutes. ‘I had a thought.’
‘Fire away.’ Clement liked it when Earle had thoughts. Usually that element was on standby because of fish or beer.
‘We could see if there are any road patrols on the highway. Get them to pull over the bus.’
‘Go for it. And contact Sandfire, tell them to keep an eye out and get Alex Mendleson to call me.’
‘Done. I’ve put a list of all known Turner burglaries on your desk. Josh did a good job.’
Meaning, give him a pat on the back. It was something Clement often forgot. Mind you, where Shepherd was concerned, there were scant opportunities to praise his work.
‘Where is he now?’
‘In with Manners looking for CCTV of Crossland’s vehicle on major roads.’
Clement made a mental note to check with the Sandfire Roadhouse for any footage of him. Something about Sandfire and the Feister case echoed but he couldn’t haul it in. Too much on his plate right now. He shut himself in his office and imagined dissecting the space staring back at him. First he sliced it in two. One side was Shane Crossland, the other the desert victim. Step one: track Kelly the dancer and any other missing persons. That was in hand. Next: press relea
se circulated nationwide. Then he switched to the other side of the dissected void: Sidney Turner can link Crossland to the pendant.
Clement transferred that thought into black marker pen reality on his whiteboard and wrote CALL DI RIVI. He did and found her at Olive Pickering’s.
‘I drove her back this morning. She needed a break.’
There was no change in Turner’s condition. The doctors were pessimistic he was ever coming back to consciousness. He hung up and thought again about the pooch. The dog was dying and didn’t know it. How much of our lives are dying every second without us realising? Not just our cells, but our love, our hopes, ambition. We’re perpetually shrouded in ignorance. Maybe that was a good thing?
He fought it off, went back to the whiteboard. Was it Crossland at the creek this morning? He wrote KEEBLE, ANALYSIS. He wasn’t hopeful of getting much from the tech but whoever was there this morning panicked; they might have left something. From his desk he picked up the list of calls assumed to have been made by Crossland on Chelsea Lipton’s phone. It was not a long list, maybe a dozen to fifteen numbers. The people who owned the phones had been listed. At a glance Clement could see the early landline numbers were in Perth. The mobile numbers he couldn’t tell but someone – he was pretty sure it was Mal Gross – had circled a mobile number belonging to a Dwayne Laughlin and written DOPE-HEAD. The same was noted against Jeff Hunter. So presumably they were local. The other account, Crossland’s personal phone, showed no numbers of any individual who had been identified as a Broome resident but there was a number for the tour people who organised camel rides on the beach, and one for a diving tour company. On the face of it, typical things a tourist would do. They were for a week ago, Tuesday morning. That night the Pearl Motel was burgled by Turner. There were also two numbers for individuals in Pilbara towns, both women. As Risely had said, most were identified as Perth numbers. There was also Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sydney represented. But curiously neither Dwayne Laughlin or Jeff Hunter’s numbers reappeared on the personal phone. He called in Mal Gross.
‘Did you make these annotations?’
‘Yep. Both big pot-heads. Laughlin’s probably into eccies, speed as well.’
‘So they live here?’
‘Yep. Small-time, users, deal a bit.’
Snowy Lane had said Crossland was a dope-head. That made sense. But what was interesting was that when in Hedland he had called them on the phone he stole but not from his own phone since he got here. That reeked of him being cautious.
‘Let’s go speak to them,’ he said to Gross. His phone rang. He recognised the number. ‘Hi Marilyn.’
‘Is now a bad time?’
Out the corner of his eye he noted Mal Gross peeling off to grab the car key. Mal always liked to drive.
‘I wish I could say it wasn’t. I’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘There’s a lot … I’ll call you later. Or you call me.’
And just like that she was gone again.
Hunter had a job packing meat at the abattoir on the town outskirts. Clement remembered a visit to an abattoir in his school days. A few of his classmates wound up working there. Those were the days when you could leave school at fifteen and make your way in the world for better or worse. Now everybody had to be ‘educated’ and then unemployed because there were no industries any more, well, apart from tourism. He was certain that these days a school visit here would not be encouraged. The principal would be put in stocks for traumatising his charges. Grief counsellors would be employed. Today kids were taken to the theatre and encouraged to take up a profession that would lead to them waiting tables. He wondered how long this place would be allowed to operate. Surely it was only a matter of time before eating meat was banned. Clement actually wasn’t a big meat eater and he had nothing against vegetarians but certain attitudes increasingly annoyed him. The kind of attitudes Marilyn’s friends had. They’d definitely be against abattoir visits. They’d all gone to university and they all felt the same way about everything, just like their lecturers. Slaughtermen would be equated with paedophiles. If he said – and this is what he would like to say – the visit is what you make of it, it’s good for kids to understand the reality of death, blood and slaughter; life isn’t all about tannin in wine and sundried tomatoes … well, you can imagine the response.
He caught himself then: he was pissed off and annoyed, not because of the nation’s inexorable drift to becoming one big café for former humanities students, but because he yearned to speak to Marilyn, to share with her, like in the old days, his excitement and fear of failure, and she had picked almost the worst possible time to call. He was even more annoyed he hadn’t said bugger it, and kept talking anyway. Mal Gross was a vault. But he hadn’t been courageous enough to follow his desire, had he? He didn’t want his vulnerabilities on display for a colleague to witness.
As soon as they’d got out the car, flies had swarmed. It didn’t matter how clean you were, flies loved slaughter. Mal Gross had gone to fetch Hunter. Clement studied ubiquitous hygiene signs while he waited not far from the building entrance on a concrete apron under the high tin roof. Men’s and women’s voices rose and bounced. The constant sound of a high-pressure hose being turned on and off gave time its borders, bone saws on high rev its stitching, and though the smell of blood enveloped him it was perfume compared to the smell of human death. There must have been fifteen to twenty people working the floor, the saws in the far distance; closer, at benches, men and women in health scrubs chopping and cutting meat. He felt a vibration in his pocket, pulled out his phone, the noise too high for its ring. Lisa Keeble’s name was on display.
‘Yes, Lisa.’
‘The Coroner’s Office just called, mucho apologetic. There was definitely ink on the body’s left ankle.’
He felt his heart kick. ‘Thanks, Lisa.’
Kelly the dancer was looking so much more likely now. And that meant Crossland was right in the crosshairs.
Mal Gross returned, accompanied by a young man, Hunter presumably. He was small, wiry and wore a blood-smeared apron and a hairnet. When he got close Clement noted his interesting face, Japanese somewhere back in the past he was sure. A lot of Japanese divers had come to Broome working pearl boats way back when and had settled. Ironically the Japanese had also bombed Broome during the Second World War.
‘Jeff Hunter, Detective Inspector Clement.’ Gross made the introductions and stood at ease.
Hunter looked cautious. Clement got to the point.
‘You have been in contact with a person of interest in a major homicide case.’ He saw Hunter blink: that was news. ‘Shane Crossland, aka Shane Shields. Do you know where he is? I advise you most strongly to tell the truth or face a charge of impeding an investigation.’
Hunter moved his jaw but no words came out. He took another breath.
‘I hardly know the guy. We worked on a building site once.’
Clement had no patience, not today. ‘You can save us a lot of time and yourself a lot of grief if you tell me the truth. I know he called you three weeks ago from Port Hedland.’ Hunter was about to go for some glib response. He could see it in his eyes. ‘Think very carefully. This is not an ordinary investigation.’ He watched Hunter swallow like he understood the gravity involved. Good.
‘I really don’t know where he is.’
A couple of workers walked by trying not to look but the way they stopped talking as they passed gave them away.
‘I am not a drug cop on this case, I’m a homicide investigator. I’m not going to trick you but you must tell the truth. Did you see him in Broome?’
Hunter’s eyes darted. Clement could feel him weighing which way to play it.
‘Yes. But only for like ten minutes.’
‘When was this?’
Hunter was jumpy. ‘I don’t know, a week ago.’
‘Did he say where he was staying?’
‘Some motel. The Pearl maybe?’
An encouraging start. ‘Was he
buying drugs off you?’
‘No! I don’t do that shit.’
The first denial rang true, the second clanked.
‘Last chance. Don’t lie to us. You won’t be charged on any drug business.’
‘He rang me from Hedland. Said he was coming to Broome for a holiday and he had some gear for me at a good price. But he never delivered. He turned up here after my shift, said he got robbed. All his weed and eccies. You can’t bust me, right? I never bought anything.’
‘I told you, we’re not going to bust you. Tell me everything.’
‘He asked me for some drugs. I had a little bit of weed. I gave it to him. By the time he saw me he’d already scored some eccies. I don’t know who gave him those but he said they were top quality, better than what he’d been carrying. He was going to try and score some wholesale. I told him there were some heavy dudes had the territory here. He said he was going to the source. That’s the truth. I never saw him after.’
Clement established it was a Wednesday this took place. Six days ago. That was the night after the Pearl robbery. Crossland was supposed to deliver drugs but never did. It was falling into place now: Mal Gross said the tablets found on Turner were not Mongoose Cole’s. The reason was they were Crossland’s, stolen at the Pearl along with Lipton’s stolen phone. Crossland had, to use a pun, not let the grass grow under his feet. He’d immediately tried to source more supply.
‘So Crossland is a dealer.’
‘Not like, big-time or anything. He just buys up some gear and travels around the country selling it.’
‘Working holiday.’
Hunter allowed himself a grin. ‘I guess.’
‘He say where he scored the eccies from?’
Hunter licked his lips, anxious. ‘No.’
‘Your guess would be?’
‘My guess would be he went to the nearest pub, asked around.’
‘Thank you, Jeff. You’ve been most helpful. If he gets in touch, or you hear where he might be, give Sergeant Gross a call.’
Mal Gross handed him a card.
‘That it?’ said Gross as they strode away.
