by Dave Warner
‘What’s going on?’
Marilyn was walking towards him. In the glow of the car’s interior lamp she seemed fragile now, and very scared.
‘Is this the watch?’
She looked at him, asking silently what it was doing in an evidence bag. While she put it under the light and examined it closely, Clement told her where it had been found, then prompted again, ‘You think that’s it?’
‘It looks just like it. I’m not sure about the band.’ Her mind was working fast over the same ground his had covered. ‘If it is, how did it wind up there?’
The awful possibility dawned. Her voice was a whisper. ‘Has he been here?’
Clement deflected. ‘Have you checked the car for her watch?’
‘Yes. But quickly.’
He followed her across to her car and they both searched thoroughly. There was no sign of a watch.
‘Do you have any photos of her wearing it?’ he asked.
Marilyn thought she might have some on her phone. They went back inside. Marilyn found her phone and began scrolling through photos. Snap after snap of Marilyn and Brian, or Brian and Phoebe, at dinner, on the beach, with horses. Every photo delivered its own vicious little sting. None of the photos showed Phoebe with the watch. Marilyn was starting to lose it now.
‘He could have been in her bedroom. He might want to hurt you.’
And his family to get at him; there it was, the inevitable accusation. Clement did not defend himself. After all he’d surmised as much. Instead he remained the policeman.
‘I don’t suppose there is any chance you or Phoebe were out near Blue Haze around that time?’
‘No. I don’t know if I’ve ever been there.’
Clement saw Geraldine drift past, copping a look. She would have wanted him out by now. ‘And you don’t remember being near a biker?’
Marilyn snorted.
Clement said, ‘Take me through the trip to town to get the bathers. Where did you park?’
Marilyn recounted their movements as best she remembered. They’d parked on Carnarvon Street close to the shop in Jimmy Chi Lane. They’d bought the bathers.
‘Did she try them on?’
‘No. I know her size. We just bought off the rack. Phoebe was pestering me for a milkshake so we strolled down to the Honky Nut.’
She saw Clement’s reaction. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘One of the victims used that café.’
Marilyn’s hand flew to her face. Clement pushed. ‘What then? Where did you sit? Who served you?’
They’d sat outside. Marilyn couldn’t recall who’d served them.
‘After the milkshake, did you go anywhere?’
‘We went back to the car. There’s an exhibition of photographs at the Boab Gallery I wanted to see. We parked out front, did a quick look. I stopped at the fruit shop bought some fruit and veggies and we came back here.’
They hadn’t gone out again. The next morning they’d got up at six and Marilyn had driven to the private jetty Ashleigh’s parents used. Clement was thinking there were not that many places the watch could have gone missing. And one of them was the Honky Nut.
Geraldine had begun pointedly lingering.
Clement said, ‘Could you ask the Porters if they happened to find it? Is Brian here tonight?’
‘He’s in Queensland for a couple of days.’
The silence swung between them.
‘I could come back, stay the night.’
Her glare hit him between the eyes. ‘And if he’s after you?’
Clement hadn’t told her about how he’d been hit over the head. He would not reveal that now, petrol on flame.
‘I can get a uniform,’ he said.
Marilyn thought about the offer. ‘I don’t want to scare Phoebe more.’
‘Better she’s scared than harmed. You too. I’ll organise it.’
‘I’ll have to tell Mum.’
There was that. Unfortunately it was inevitable. Clement dialled the station. Mal Gross was still on. He told Mal what he wanted. Mal knew better than to ask why.
‘I’ll send Parker.’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
He turned back to her. She looked vulnerable but determined. He said, ‘Keep your doors locked, don’t go wandering outside.’
He hung there waiting for the touch of her hand on his arm, a sign that said ‘we’re still intimate even if we don’t have sex’. It never came.
As he left the porch he watched her silhouette in the doorway behind a screen door. Then the main door closed. He was barely back in the car when lightning split the sky, much closer now. Tonight there had been so much of the old chemistry between them he could almost think it could work again. He killed the idea. No, tonight was just like that last flash of lightning, a moment of brilliance before everything returns to black.
By the time he made it back the TV crews had settled in for the night. A camera even filmed him entering the carpark, part of some stock footage he guessed. The whole way he’d been thinking about the potential danger his job brought Phoebe and Marilyn. You were dealing with desperate demented people, people who would hurt you given half a chance. It had been wrong for him to come up here, selfish. Marilyn hadn’t quite accused him of that, hadn’t said that their lives would be simpler and better if he’d just quit, stayed with Skype, but both knew it was true.
The incident room was wilting. Earle’s progress on compiling his list of Germans was glacial. The others were each methodically following their instructions. Almost every case Clement could remember went in rushes and lulls. Now, after a brief spurt they had been becalmed. Clement knew this was typical but that was cold comfort. A man’s life was at stake and it was sickening to think he was at the mercy of anything other than his own wits. Mal Gross intercepted him.
‘Parker called, he’s at the house now.’
Gross did not ask why the request had been made. Clement felt obliged to offer something.
‘The watch we found at Lee’s murder … my daughter had one just like that, went missing on the weekend.’
Gross got it. ‘You can rely on Parker but I can send another?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’ve arranged for the last few Dingos to be interviewed starting at eight tomorrow morning.’
Gross moved off. Clement’s brain felt clouded, his head was still sore, somewhere dimly his tooth ached, Marilyn’s presence still lingered. Clement girded himself. He had to put any question of Phoebe’s safety on hold, tell himself she would be fine.
He had to locate Osterlund.
37
A steel arrowhead poked out the front of his knee, its shaft extending behind. The pain had been excruciating at first, then ebbed, and was now pounding again. He guessed some ligament had been severed. His throat clawed at him like a wild cat. He’d had not a drop of water since morning. For the thousandth time he cursed himself for venturing onto the beach. Once he’d been brought to ground he’d been helpless. He’d waved the knife around but there was an arrow aimed at his throat, so he surrendered, was bound with plastic strips, first his legs, then his arms behind his back. His assailant had said nothing. He was dragged across the sand and bundled in a vehicle under a tarp. It seemed they drove for half an hour at least before he was again dragged out under dark grey sky, the bush somewhere, gagged, rolled down into an earthen pit.
He tried to talk, to plead but his words died in the gag. Why was this happening? Was it money?
His captor squatted on the edge of the pit and spoke for the first time, clearly and calm.
‘I know you hope the police are going to find you in time. They’re not. They’re busy looking for a connection between you and bikies and Herr Schaffer. You know what it’s like to grow up without a father?’
Osterlund tried to speak, to ask him what he wanted but what wasn’t muffled was obliterated as thunder rumbled, very powerful, closer than before.
‘God is angry tonight. And why wouldn’t he be? One
of his children held down, sliced apart with a chainsaw, butchered. A man’s heart, his lips, his eyes, wrapped tight in glossy pussy and large tits.’
So that was it. Hamburg. He should have listened to Schaffer, when was it, over a year ago, that Klaus had been killed? For six months or so he’d been on alert but he had become complacent. Klaus had numerous enemies. A thin smile seemed to play on his captor’s lips.
‘You understand, I see. Your money can’t save you.’
The man turned away, extended his arms to the sky and howled. Literally, howled like a wild dog. To fight the pain in his knee Osterlund bit into his gag, but he could not take his eyes from his captor who had begun to perform some grotesque dance, throwing handfuls of sand in the air. He stomped, he laughed and exhorted into the thunder, mumbling words, most unintelligible down in the pit but one Osterlund caught clearly: ‘Wallen.’
And then it was over. His captor stood panting looking down on him.
‘You know the expression, to be shat on from a great height? That’s what God does to us humans. And tonight, I am your god.’
Osterlund tensed for a bullet, or another arrow. His tormentor loosed his belt, dropped his shorts and squatted over the pit. A huge clap of thunder sounded overhead simultaneous to a white sword of lighting, slicing, bleaching the night.
‘Eat shit and die!’ the man screamed down at him.
Osterlund edged as far to the other side of the pit as he could. Then the man had disappeared from view. Something was being dragged over his head blotting out what little light there was, centimetre by centimetre.
38
He was sitting in what was normally his mother’s position, beside his father in one of the fold-out chairs, staring out at the camp ground. They were drinking beer from small glasses, the kind that were thin and broke easily. His father’s glass had a jagged wedge out of it and he was cut and bleeding into his beer but didn’t seem to notice. Clement said nothing. He felt it would be foolish to express concern when his father had none. There was a weird duality about Clement. He seemed to be about the age he was now and simultaneously around fourteen. They’d been playing tennis, he saw now. He was dressed in tennis whites and there was a racquet on the concrete stoop.
‘One day you’ll find someone,’ his father said.
‘But I have, I’m married to Marilyn.’
His father looked him deep in the eyes and shook his head. Clement was gripped with the same panic as that first time in the swimming pool but before he could ask for an explanation his father was gone and Bill Seratono was there. Bill was dressed as if for some caving expedition with ropes and a little helmet with a headlamp and possessed of the same duality as Clement where he was both young and old at the same time.
‘We’re ready,’ he said.
Clement stood. ‘How deep do we have to go?’
‘Until it stops.’
They lowered themselves down some hole. It became very dark. Clement felt terrified yet bold at the same time.
‘This is how he feels,’ he said and knew he was talking of Osterlund’s abductor.
Water trickled down the cave walls, glistening.
Seratono’s headlamp clicked on right into his eyes. The light dazzled him. Clement felt the sensation of something swinging at his head …
Clement snapped awake at dawn, cramped from being wedged in the car, the dream still so fresh he looked for streaking rain on his windscreen to match the rivulets of the cave. Surprisingly there were only a few drops. Last night, after everybody else had gone except the uniforms on night shift, Clement had returned to his office and tried to get his brain into gear to find something he’d overlooked while trying not to worry about Phoebe and Marilyn. He was successful at neither. He scanned the list of resort staff but nothing leapt out. Like Earle had said, they were all too young to have been around in 1979. It was hopeless. His brain was jelly. Gross had left Parker’s number for him. He called and was reassured all was quiet out there. It had been too late to ring his mum so he decided to go home and catch a few zeds. He needed milk and bread but like everything else he’d left it too late. He’d started home through dark streets, his only companion the voice of a radio weatherman warning of the impending cyclone expected to cross the coast about a hundred and fifty kilometres to the north, sometime tomorrow, now today. That’s how I spend my life, he thought, hunkered down for some impending catastrophe. And then he’d spun the wheel and started back in the other direction. He had to be at Marilyn’s, close to them. Sure Parker was there as protection but the killer had proven resourceful. Clement had parked down the end of Geraldine’s long driveway and kept a vigil on the house until around four when he must have dozed off. Despite the physical discomfort he felt quite good. His head had cleared even though the dream still hovered like steam on hot tar.
Nothing in it surprised him. The worries about his father, his relationships and the case were all obvious. Even his wanting to be married still was kind of natural. The exception was that moment where, descending into the deep black hole, he sensed his emotion mirrored the killer’s. The killer was scared yet felt invincible, as if he knew he was in a dream. But he was real, he needed to eat, crap, sleep. Where had he spent the night? In a soft bed beside a loving woman, in a cramped vehicle like this, in a tent beneath the stars?
He climbed outside the car now and stretched. The air’s wet breath swamped him. It was too early to drive up to the house and what was the point?
Clement called Parker.
‘Sir,’ Parker sounded tired but alert enough. Clement felt instant relief.
‘Everything good?’
‘Yes, sir, they are all still asleep.’
‘Well done. I’ll get the Sarge to organise a replacement for you.’
‘He already called, sir. I’m to stay here till ten, then Constable Latich will take over.’
Clement thanked him again. He pictured Phoebe sleeping and was gripped by the terrible knowledge that this part of his dream was all real. In the house he knew so well, he’d felt alien; might he come to experience that same sensation with his daughter? This frightened him. His marriage, his previous life, had been expunged and like some time traveller who changes one thing in the past, it was as if everything in the present never existed.
Before falling asleep, hunched in the car, his reflection visible every now and again when the horizon lit up with nature’s lightshow, Clement had been asking himself who might want to avenge Pieter Gruen. He picked up on the thread now.
First and foremost, family. Gruen had a brother and sister. The Hamburg police had been notified and may well have found them by now. Ex-colleagues couldn’t be ruled out, not even Mathias Klendtwort and Heinrich Schmidt. Klendtwort hadn’t called him back with anything that placed Osterlund in that world. Clement felt bent as a coathanger. He’d sent the others home for a few hours’ sleep a little after two. He’d briefed them on the possibilities of the watch. Earle was spent. He’d logged thirty-three Germans or Austrians in the region and narrowed to four those who could be worth a visit. But only one was in Broome. The others were in Derby, Newman and Onslow. Whiteman had checked the Mimosa. It had two current German families as guests, the Panasch family, mum, dad a couple of kids; and the Erdmans, a middle-aged couple who had flown in from Alice Springs four days ago. The Panasch family had only been there two days, which ruled them out. Whiteman had asked the manager at the Mimosa if any Germans had stayed with them in the last month. They had promised to get back to him on that. As for the Mimosa staff, there were a number of internationals, six Brits, two Irish, two Brazilians, two Kiwis, a South African, an Italian, plus Marie Kasprov and Rose Figueroa, the maids Clement had interviewed. No Germans. It had been the same story with the Emerald Bungalows and Apartments. Not all of them knew the nationalities of their casuals but there were no known Germans and none over fifty, which was the most likely age bracket of the killer. Hospitality it seemed was a young persons’ game.
The team were al
l out on their feet. Clement was acutely aware that Osterlund was out there somewhere, possibly being tortured, but there came a point where it was counterproductive to keep the team working so that’s when he’d called it a night.
He drove back to Broome listening to a weather update. The cyclone had been downgraded to a two but that was still a big storm, wind gusts expected from one hundred and ten to one thirty k where it was due to cross a hundred k to the north. Even so, no one was relaxing. The traffic was thin all the way to the station. News crews were unravelling themselves with tired eyes and coffee after too many drinks at the Roebuck. And what, he wondered, of Osterlund? Was he still alive, gasping the same heavy-lidded air as the rest of us?
The offices had the smell of constant occupation even though only Mal Gross was there bustling around printing up reports.
‘If only crims took a rest while we were working the big cases.’
‘Busy night?’
‘Break-in at the pharmacy, two brawls.’
Gross’s night counterpart might have had to deal with the arrests but there was always paperwork.
‘The guys have been checking properties every chance they get.’ Gross didn’t have to add they’d found nothing.
In his office, the first thing Clement did was to call di Rivi. The policewoman sounded brighter than Gross. Mrs Osterlund had been up until around two a.m. retired to her bedroom and then been up again around five. She was still resisting medication.
‘How have the media been?’
