Clear to the Horizon

by Dave Warner

  ‘We choppered in a little grader.’ Duncan made it sound like a mum dropping a school book off to a kid at lunchtime but Clement could imagine the cost involved. He watched Lane poke around the tents. Duncan had already said there was a three-man geology team off beyond Tenacity Hill.

  ‘What’s it like here at night?’ asked Clement.

  ‘Pleasant.’

  Clement guessed Duncan knew they hadn’t flown here for a chat but all Clement had said so far was they wanted to ask a few questions. Out the corner of his eye Clement caught Snowy Lane showing a great deal of interest in a cut-down forty-four gallon drum which served as a makeshift incinerator.

  ‘What was it like the night of August seventeenth, or early hours of August eighteenth?’

  Duncan made a helpless gesture.

  ‘I don’t remember what day that was.’

  ‘The night you flew out here after the sExcitation show. You, Ingrid Feister, Max Coldwell, Kelly Davies and your client, Mr Li. Shaun. We’ve got video footage.’

  Duncan looked away to nowhere. His neck was red even though he wore his work shirt collar raised.

  ‘Alright. We came here to have a bit of a party. The pub was closing, Ingrid suggested it. She said she wanted to see her family’s business. There’s always lots of grog here.’

  Clement jerked his chin at the strip. ‘Bit dangerous, though, night-time landing here. Not to mention illegal.’

  ‘I could do it with my eyes shut and one hand tied behind my back.’

  Clement could picture it all now. The excitement of the night, the still beauty.

  ‘So. You got here and what happened?’

  Duncan took his time, weighing how much to say. ‘It was a beautiful night and Shaun wanted a private dance and was prepared to pay.’

  ‘We understand he talked about it with the girl before?’

  ‘I wasn’t privy to that. Ingrid wanted to come out here. She’s the daughter of my boss. My client wanted to bring a girl. End of story.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t, was it?’ Snowy Lane had sauntered over. ‘Something happened, something bad.’

  Clement noted Duncan showed the first sign of stress. He put two hands to his face and brushed his hair back.

  ‘Yeah. The dancer, she’d scored some drugs back at the pub. Ecstasy, I guess. We hung here for a little while. I broke out some grog. Coldwell was already stoned. He and Ingrid went off to that tent; the dancer, Kelly, and Li that one. We were all going to sleep the night here and I would fly them around next morning then drop them back in Hedland. I was in the mess tent on an air mattress.’

  According to Duncan, about two hours later Li came running into his tent and woke him up, babbling in Chinese. He knew something was wrong.

  ‘I got to the tent and she was stone cold with some sick around her face.’ He threw his hands up. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  Yes, you did, thought Clement. You knew exactly what to do for your employer.

  ‘You could have called us.’

  ‘You have any idea how much this deal is worth to this country? We’re talking billions. If Shaun got involved in that, the whole thing could be shut down.’

  Nothing shocked Clement any more. His dismal assessment of humanity was simply reinforced.

  Lane said, ‘Shaun was involved.’

  Duncan blustered. ‘She OD’d on her own drugs.’

  Lane said evenly, ‘Was she wearing clothes?’

  ‘She was naked. What arrangement Li and she came to was none of my business.’

  Clement had figured out the next bit, albeit with Lane’s assistance. ‘So rather than call us, you took off with the body and dumped it out of the plane where you thought it would never be found. Dumped the girl like a piece of meat.’

  ‘It was too dangerous to land. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘Straight enough to burn her clothes and her bag first.’ Lane jerked his head towards the makeshift incinerator. ‘There’re buckles in there, and I’ll bet techs can match them to her bag.’

  Duncan stared straight at Clement. ‘You put yourselves in my shoes.’

  Clement was thinking the steps through. The body and evidence had been disposed of. ‘When did Li fly back to China?’

  Duncan shuffled. ‘He flew to Singapore that day.’

  ‘What about Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell?’

  ‘They slept through it.’

  ‘A plane taking off and landing?’

  ‘They were out to it, completely.’

  Lane said, ‘They didn’t find it surprising Kelly Davies wasn’t there the next morning?’

  ‘I told them I’d dropped her back in Hedland, then come back for them.’

  Clement was thinking of the vision of Feister and Coldwell at Sandfire. He recognised that body language now: they’d been part of something traumatic. He didn’t buy Duncan’s story.

  ‘And you flew Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell and Li back to Port Hedland.’

  Now Coldwell and Feister running off into the outback made a lot more sense.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be trying to protect your employer’s daughter?’

  ‘No, I would not. They didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘And then you lied to me when I asked where Ingrid was,’ said Lane.

  Duncan protested. ‘I tried to convince you there was nothing to worry about. That she was fine.’

  Clement drew an arc in the sand with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘You’re facing a heap of charges including illegal disposal of a body, hindering police investigations, withholding evidence.’

  ‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ was all Duncan offered in his defence.

  ‘Alright, you’ll fly back with us to Hedland and be charged.’

  ‘What about my plane?’

  Clement said, ‘It contains potential evidence. Our techs will check it over.’

  They were back in Lane’s room after returning to Port Hedland where Duncan had been charged with the offences threatened. Lane had made them an instant coffee with the powdered milk supplied. Up until now they had curtailed any discussion of the case in front of Duncan or other police.

  Clement sipped. As a rule he didn’t mind instant but this brew was pretty awful.

  ‘You saw that CCTV footage at Sandfire,’ Snowy said.

  ‘Yeah. Coldwell and Feister knew what had happened. They were traumatised.’

  ‘The question is, was that all he lied about?’

  Clement spelled it out as much for his own sake. ‘The client gets rough. She resists …’

  ‘You’ll have to interview Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell. They might give you the real story.’

  Or they might not. At the very least they’d concealed evidence. Clement wondered if, now that the background was known, the pathologist would be able to tell anything about how Kelly Davies died.

  Lane said, ‘Will you take it on or leave it to Perth?’

  ‘No, my case, my burden.’ He couldn’t drink any more of the coffee. ‘But we can rule out Crossland.’

  ‘Ironically, if he supplied the drugs and Duncan isn’t lying about how she died, Crossland could be up for that, some manslaughter charge.’

  Once again Lane was ahead of him.

  ‘You should sign up again. We need some good detectives.’

  Lane seemed amused. He was obviously still pondering the facts. ‘If Crossland didn’t abduct Turner, we’re talking another coincidence.’

  ‘Crossland probably never knew who took the pendant. How would Crossland know Turner had been arrested for the break-ins unless he was hanging around the court? I’m thinking it was Mongoose Cole abducted him. Maybe he didn’t do it himself. He’s got plenty who would. But we’ll probably never know. Turner is as good as brain dead.’

  Clement stood. ‘I have to be getting back. I’ll be flying to Perth no doubt.’

  Lane got up too. ‘You might make it before me. I’ll take my time down t
he coast. Please let me know about Kelly Davies. I’d like to inform Alex Mendleson and the girls.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘We did good, Inspector.’

  Clement’s shake was not convincing and Lane read it.

  ‘You’re still not sold on Crossland for Autostrada?’

  ‘I suppose it has to be.’ Lane knew Clement was skirting the question. ‘But?’

  ‘When he saw the pendant I might as well have been waving a biro.’

  ‘He’s had years to practise.’

  Clement supposed so. Lane suggested they catch up in Perth if Clement ever had the time.

  Clement told him he’d look forward to it … if he ever had time. Right now he had to fly back out to Tenacity Hill.

  There were four techs going through the tents and the incinerator drum. Lisa and Mason had Duncan’s plane to themselves. The geology party had returned and been told they would have to stay with their vehicle until the company could fly them out; apparently a plane was standing by but with three planes already on the makeshift strip there was no room. Clement finished off his bottle of water and walked over to Duncan’s plane. Lisa Keeble saw him and climbed down. Things hadn’t stopped for her and her team.

  ‘There’s no sign of any blood, I can say that much.’

  ‘Any way to tell if Duncan’s lying about the overdose?’

  ‘I don’t reckon you’ll get anything like a tox screen from the body.’

  ‘Strangulation?’

  ‘So many bones were broken it might be difficult. And there’s no way to tell really if they happened post-mortem. Grabbing, dumping a body …’

  He understood the difficulties. It would be up to Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell to paint a true picture of what happened.

  ‘Did you see the reports on Sidney Turner? I put them on your desk.’

  Clement explained he’d had no time.

  ‘Turner had a large volume of horse tranquilliser in his system. I also retrieved a partial tyre tread from behind the creek on the second visit. There was nothing of significance from our first examination and nothing else of interest in location two near the creek except for one thing.’

  She was reeling him in.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘A very small trace of wattle, which might not be unusual except there was none in the immediate area and it was an exact match of the wattle from the tree on the corner of Olive Pickering’s street.’

  Clement made the jump immediately.

  ‘So, the person near croc creek the second time could have been the same one with Turner the first time?’

  ‘Or at least have been around his street at some time recently. There was hardly any sample at all. My guess is it might have come from the first visit, probably off the sole of a shoe and onto the mangrove root where I found it. There was probably more originally. We would have missed it if someone hadn’t gone back.’

  Clement was thinking it through. ‘Ketamine in his system. Plenty of users go for that, right?’

  ‘Not in these quantities. There was a needle mark but Turner is not an intravenous user. I’d say he was dosed into a stupor.’

  ‘Mongoose Cole would likely have access to a large quantity of ketamine. Did you find the wattle in his car?’

  ‘No.’

  Which didn’t mean he couldn’t have cleaned his car or had somebody else snatch Turner. Why had they gone back? Lost something? Taken somebody else out there? Shit. They’d have to search the creek and that meant trapping the croc.

  She had lost none of that haughty beauty that was her trademark. Even from where he sat in the Mimosa garden bar looking into the sun, he recognised her from the way she carried herself. She saw him and walked over. The frock was white, naturally elegant. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, the kind you might see at the races but without the fruit. She could get away with that and she was very sun conscious which was why he had chosen a table in the shade. He had already ordered her a chardonnay. When he’d called her upon his arrival back in Broome, he’d said he could come over to the house right away but she had said Brian was home today and she didn’t want him present.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me. You must have been flat out.’

  She seated herself, smoothing her dress beneath her bottom, and raised her glass in a ‘cheers’. He was on soft drink. After this he had to fly to Perth to confront Ingrid Feister and he wanted all his wits about him.

  ‘Yes, it’s been unbelievably busy. I’m sorry about last time we sat down,’ he said, not truly meaning it.

  ‘I doubt that, but it’s okay. I probably wasn’t being fair.’

  They talked about Phoebe, easy stuff to settle them both. She was doing well at school but could do better. She was becoming too interested in social media but then she was hardly alone in that regard. They both monitored her and there was no area of conflict here. Small talk had spent itself quickly. The breeze lifted slightly. Marilyn pulled his eyes to hers.

  ‘You think the wedding is a mistake because you’re a romantic at heart. You also think no man can know me like you, which is probably true and why I asked for your advice, but that doesn’t mean you’re better or more desirable, necessarily. It does mean you are special.’

  Clement tempered his response. ‘That’s a relief.’

  She let it slide by. ‘Brian asked me to marry him over a year ago. I said no. Don’t ask me to tell you why, I probably couldn’t tell you, except that it hurt when we broke up. It really hurt that we failed … I failed.’

  ‘I can take my share of the responsibility.’

  There was a far-off look in her eyes and she was staring down at her glass as if trying to remember, for all time, the exact shade of yellow of the wine.

  ‘Brian has cancer. I feel I owe it to him.’

  Clement was rocked. It was the last thing he’d expected. ‘What sort of …’

  ‘Prostate.’

  Prostate, that was barely a cancer most of the time, more an inconvenience. He did not want to appear dismissive though, even if part of him was.

  ‘There could be a lot worse. They get it early?’

  ‘We think so. It appears to be contained.’

  ‘And you want to know if I think it’s a good enough reason to marry somebody you don’t love?’

  ‘I do love Brian. I can’t tell any more if I wanted to marry or not but I think it’s the right thing. Just, before you say anything, put yourself in his shoes.’

  Clement did not want to put himself in anybody else’s shoes, Brian’s especially.

  ‘You should do what makes you feel good,’ he said. ‘If that’s marrying Brian, for whatever reason, marry him. If marrying Brian is going to make you miserable, then don’t. You’re right, romance isn’t a valid reason for marriage. If it was, we’d still be together.’

  And that’s how you give up, he thought. With the breeze wafting in slowly, opposite a beautiful woman in a white dress, you renounce ownership of what might be and settle for what is. He wanted to feel sorry for Brian but he couldn’t. Cancer or not, Brian had Marilyn. He’d won.

  CHAPTER 34

  Squally rain lashed the window of Clement’s hotel. Winter’s last gasp, he thought, as he gazed out on the Swan River. A couple of sails were visible through the grey. The water was flecked with whitecaps. It had been a little while since he’d been back to Perth in the cooler seasons and he felt disoriented, as if it were a different country. The sensation rekindled thoughts of when he’d first come here from Broome as a teenager. How strange everything was, how rushed. Prostate cancer. What could you say without seeming inhuman? He didn’t want Brian to have cancer. He didn’t want him to have a cold. He didn’t want him to have Marilyn, that’s who he didn’t want him to have but it was moot, even cancer had conspired against him. He checked himself in the mirror. His shirt was brand new, his suit drycleaned. In his days down here on Homicide, he’d found that you got better results if you dressed like them. Budget res
trictions had meant he’d not been able to bring Graeme Earle but he chuckled now as he thought of what Earle might have looked like, probably wearing his shorts. Risely had been very cautious about the whole idea. His boss really would have preferred Perth detectives to do the interview. Nobody wanted Nelson Feister as an enemy because that meant the Minister and Commissioner would be your enemies too. In the end, the boss had supported him, agreed it was their case and only appropriate he do the interview, but Risley’s concern bubbled close beneath his skin. It was Clement’s job to try and get Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell to admit they knew what exactly had happened to Kelly Davies. That might incriminate them and the client, Li. Of course Clement would offer them a deal for their cooperation. Otherwise he’d get nothing. Risely had got a call suggesting a meeting at 9.00 am sharp at Feister’s lawyer’s office on the Terrace. That meant heavy monitoring and little chance to appeal to the better nature of the two hippies.

  Clement strode to the elevator and mingled with the businessmen and women out to joust for the day in the corporate tournament. He wondered if he could ever have made a go at that life. At school he’d done well at math and there was an attraction in the impersonality of numbers. They couldn’t hurt you like people. The elevator travelled smoothly. Its surfaces were clean and shiny and brought to Clement’s mind the pristine water in the Kimberley gorges. Leaving the hotel he joined the foot traffic and passed a parking inspector booking a courier van in a no-standing zone. I don’t miss that, he thought. Nor the rain which, though weak as the shower in a cheap motel, was surprisingly cold and dreary. A few pedestrians chanced their luck with umbrellas far too flimsy for the wind. Most preferred to jostle each other for the lee of the buildings and Clement quickly got into the swing. He had the size to take the best line and, apart from the top of his right shoulder, remained dry.