Everything about these graves spoke of neglect and disinterest. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. He chose to remember his children in his heart rather than sit and stare forlornly at their graves.
He wanted to remember Kenneth’s wicked giggle and the way he’d followed Tim around, wanting to be just like his dad. His favourite saying had been: ‘Dad, don’t walk so fast, I can’t keep up with you.’ Tim had always slowed down and taken his hand. Walked him back to his mother or to somewhere safe.
Pammy had idolised her twin brother—he was five minutes older and she followed him everywhere. Which was why when Kenneth had toddled out into the bush at age four she’d followed. It was also why, when Kenneth had peered over the edge of a mine shaft, she had too, and it was why they’d in fallen together.
Born together and died together. The family of five had suddenly been reduced to three.
Marianne’s ready smile had been replaced by deep lines and grief etched across her lovely face. Tim had worked harder to forget the pain. Kelly had tried so hard to bring her parents back, to get their attention.
Tim ran his hands over his head as he squatted in front of the graves.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘God, I’m so sorry.’
How it had come to be that not eight months later a king brown had been found curled up in Kelly’s makeshift cot, the child dead inside, no one would ever know. But Kelly hadn’t been the first child to die from a snakebite and she wouldn’t be the last—the houses weren’t snake proof by any stretch of the imagination. The shack they’d lived in then hadn’t even had doors on it.
Three to two.
Two empty shells.
Marianne had wept and stormed, furious with Tim for bringing them out here, into the heat and flies, in the search for gold. Was gold more precious than his family? she’d screamed at him.
Tim hadn’t known how to answer. He’d always thought not, but hadn’t his actions proved it was?
Had he ever thought the precious mineral could cost him his family? Never. Not once. And it hadn’t been just his children. It had ended up being his wife too, but not in a way he had ever dreamed possible.
Chapter 13
Dave straightened his tie as he walked into the station on Monday morning. It was a little cooler than usual and he thought, since he was hoping for details on the body today, he should dress as he would’ve every day in Perth. Professionally. It reminded him he was a detective and had an important job to do. If he was going to be out interviewing people then he had to look the part. Shorts and an open-neck shirt would have been frowned on in Perth, but he’d fallen into the casualness of the country since he’d arrived and it was what Spencer wore day in and day out.
The casualness appealed to him much more.
As usual the station was humming with busyness. Uniforms were dragging in a drunk and disorderly, who seemed to be putting up a fight, and there was a woman in one of the interview rooms as he walked by. The low drone of people working and computers humming filled the air.
‘Morning.’ He nodded at Tez and Claire who were poring over a witness statement.
‘Dave, how goes? Good weekend?’ Claire asked around the pen in her mouth.
‘Great. Yours?’ He switched on his computer and put his coffee cup down on his desk.
‘Fine,’ she answered before Tez said, ‘Hey, you don’t have a lead on your stiff down the mine, do you?’
‘Nah, not yet. Hoping to have all the info this morning. Shannon would have done the PM on Saturday at the earliest, and she mightn’t even get to it until this morning. She did say that John Doe would have the priority.’
‘It’s all round town.’
‘Course it is.’ Dave sat down. ‘Wouldn’t expect any less. What’s the deal here?’ He nodded towards the woman in the interview room.
‘Looking at a fraud,’ Tez said.
‘Fraud?’ Dave turned around and looked at the well-dressed woman who was sitting with a straight back, her hands linked together in front of her on the table.
‘Yeah.’ Claire grinned and rubbed her hands together. ‘But it sounds worse than it is! Between you and I, I’d say she was being entrepreneurial, but I’m pretty sure the people who have made the complaints about her wouldn’t see it my way.’
‘Sounds interesting. What’ve you got?’
‘She runs prospecting tours. The complaints against her are they never find gold.’
‘Them and the rest of the world, I would have thought!’
‘Turns out one of the tourists she took out saw her hide a piece of gold in the ground. What she does is charges to take them out into the field and lets them loose with detectors. Part of the deal is the first nugget they find is hers. From then on in, they keep the rest. They only ever find slivers of gold—not worth ten bucks—but because they find something big the first time, they recommend the tour to others.’
It took Dave a moment to work it through. Then it dawned on him and he grinned. ‘She’s planting the gold and pocketing the money and they never find anything worth much?’
‘Spot on. Clever, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That’s gold!’ he said in a tone which was half laughing and half amazement. Then he realised what he’d said and groaned. ‘Sorry, pardon the pun!’
Claire cracked up laughing. ‘I hope your jokes are better than that!’
Dave held his hands up in surrender. ‘Melinda would say they’re not, but I don’t think they’re that bad. Here, let me tell you this one: what do you call a man who lies under leaves?’
Everyone in the room looked at him blankly. Then Claire dropped her head into her hands and said, ‘I think my ears are going to hurt.’
‘Drum roll…’
‘The suspense is killing me.’ Tez’s sarcasm was like water off a duck’s back.
‘Russell.’ Dave held out his hands, waiting for applause.
Tez looked at him deadpan, while Claire peered at him from between her fingers. Neither of them had a smile on their face. They hadn’t even groaned.
‘Yeah, that’s not good,’ said Tez, turning away.
‘I’m not giving you the job of organising the entertainment for the Christmas party,’ said Claire. ‘You might hire yourself and we’ll all be crying into our beer within the first five minutes.’
Laughing, Dave said, ‘Okay, okay, I admit it. Telling jokes is not my forte. My brother told me that years ago.’
‘You surprise me,’ Tez answered in the same deadpan tone.
‘Okay, so back to Barrabine’s newest hotshot entrepreneur. Got any ideas on how you’re going to prove it?’
‘Thought she could sweat it for a bit. We’ll go and have a chat in a couple of hours, probably caution her. Maybe put out a warning to the tourist bureau so it shuts her little business down. Don’t think we need to charge her with anything.’
‘Never ceases to amaze me how crims evolve,’ said Dave. ‘They just keep coming up with new ways of ripping people off.’
The phone rang and Claire picked up it, while Dave grabbed his empty paper coffee cup and threw it across the room and into the bin.
‘Better basketballer than you are comedian,’ Tez quipped.
Dave harrumphed good-naturedly and turned to the computer and put in his password. He could hear Claire on the call.
‘Uh-huh.’ Pause. ‘Right, and when was it supposed to be returned?’ Pause. ‘And your name?’ Pause. ‘Right, right. Can you give me the details: who hired it, plate number, et cetera?’
Dave could hear Claire’s pen scratching across the page as he scrolled through his emails, hoping to see something from Shannon. Nothing with her name on it. Damn. He really wanted to get going on this. Maybe he should check the fax. Emails were so new, Shannon might have sent it by fax instead.
‘Look, I think we’ll send a detective out to see you. Might match up with an investigation we’ve got going on already.’ Pause. ‘Detectives Burrows and Brown.’
Dave loo
ked up at the sound of his name.
‘Yes, sir, they’ll be out there shortly. Thanks for calling.’
Claire put the phone down and looked at Dave. ‘Just got a report from the Avis mob at the airport saying there has been a rental car not returned.’ Excitement lit her face. ‘Maybe that’s your John Doe. Said you’d go out and see him.’
A familiar thrill of discovery flowed through Dave. ‘A hire car not returned? Sounds good.’ He stopped. ‘Unless we’ve got a body in a motel room somewhere.’
Claire shook her head. ‘If there was, it probably would have been found by now. This car should have been returned four days ago. White Toyota four-wheel drive.’ She reeled off the numberplate and the vehicle identification number. ‘Most of the hotels here service the rooms daily. I reckon we’d have heard about it if there was another body somewhere. Anyway, I think one’s enough, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘More than,’ Tez said, looking up from the book he was writing in.
‘Did you get a name of the person who had hired it or a DL or DOB?’
‘A Mr Glen Bartlett. Thought you’d get those other details when you went out.’
Dave frowned and swung his chair around and with two-finger typing entered the name into the Missing Persons Register but didn’t get a hit. From there he did a search to check whether the man had a record or anything that might give him some information as to whether he could be his John Doe, but without a date of birth or driver’s licence number, he couldn’t be sure which of the five Glen Bartletts who appeared on his screen would have had reason to be in Barrabine and not return a hire car. None of them had theft on their record. Driving under the influence for two, and drunk and disorderly for the other three.
‘Okay, I’ll head out there and talk to the manager,’ he said, then remembered the autopsy report. He checked his pigeonhole in case someone had picked the report up off the fax machine, but it was empty. Over at the fax he leafed through the pages on the tray. Nothing for him or Spencer.
Instead there was the regular police newsletter, which no one read, and an enquiry from the Karratha Police Station addressed to Tez.
‘For you,’ he said, putting it down on his colleague’s desk.
‘Cheers.’ Claire put her hand out for it. ‘That’ll be the details on that stolen truck they’re looking for. Need to let patrols know.’
There wasn’t any answer from Tez, who was reading something intently. Dave grinned as Claire picked up a piece of paper and scrunched it into a small ball before throwing it at her partner. ‘Oi!’
‘What?’ Tez looked up at her with a wounded look on his face.
‘You’re not listening.’
‘Shit, for a moment I thought you were my wife. That’s why I didn’t take any notice.’
‘You dickhead,’ Claire answered good-naturedly. ‘Here.’ She pushed the fax towards him. He flashed her a cheeky grin and took the pages. They had a great partnership.
‘Morning, morning,’ called Spencer in his loud voice as he pushed the door open and came into the detectives’ office. ‘How’s everyone this morning?’
‘Fine, boss.’
‘Good, and you?’
‘No worries.’
They all spoke at once. Spencer sighed, threw himself in the chair and looked over at Dave.
‘What’s going on? You look excited. Got the PM results?’
‘Not yet, but there was a phone call reporting a hire car that hasn’t been returned. Been missing for four days. Out at the airport.’
Spencer pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Interesting.’ He seemed to think for a moment then asked, ‘What did you do for the weekend?’
Dave blinked at the change of subject.
‘Ah, took Melinda to Oakamanda for one of Dee’s Contiki tours.’
‘And you survived? You’d better buy yourself a lottery ticket. Did you see the couch on the back?’
Dave grinned. ‘Oh yeah, and all the beer cans! She’d go for a row if we wanted her to.’
‘Got to pick your battles, mate.’
Dave nodded. ‘We right to head out to the airport?’
Spencer adjusted the waistline of his shorts. ‘I’ve got something to do here. You head out and do the interview.’
The phone on Dave’s desk started to ring and he snatched it up.
‘Burrows.’
‘It’s Shannon.’
‘Morning. What’ve you got?’
She paused and he heard her intake of breath. ‘You’ve got yourself a murder.’
Dave glanced up at Spencer and nodded, before grabbing his pen and paper. ‘Hit me with it.’
‘I’ll send everything through by email.’
‘Great, but give me the basics now. I’ll read your report when it comes in.’
‘Okay, your John Doe has had a blunt force to the head, which cracked his skull. My measurements and research make me believe it was a flat-mouthed shovel. The type you can buy from any hardware store.’
‘And the type which would be a dime a dozen in a mining town.’
Shannon gave a small laugh. ‘Yeah, I don’t suppose I’ve given you an unusual murder weapon.’ She paused and Dave could hear the rustle of paperwork. ‘The decomposition hid the damage to the side of his head, which was why I couldn’t determine whether it was murder or not.’
‘It’s no problem. Some clever pathologist told me you had to wait for the science anyway.’
‘Very clever pathologist that one,’ she quipped. ‘So, the blow was on the left-hand side. It measures one hundred and fifty-two millimetres across on a downward angle, so I’m wondering if the vic was starting to bend or bending down as he was hit.’
Dave exhaled loudly.
‘I’ve managed to pull some partial prints, but again the decomposition has hurt. I’ve run what I’ve got through the database and not got any hits. We ran him through the X-ray machine and he had a broken leg when he was young. Maybe twelve or fourteen.’
‘Other than a run in with a shovel, he’d still be alive, yeah?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Any scars or tatts?’
‘Nope, he’s a cleanskin.’
‘Right, I’ll wait for the rest of your report then. Thanks for the heads-up. It’s good to know what we’re dealing with.’
‘I’ll email it through to you now.’
‘No worries.’ Dave paused and turned his back on Spencer. ‘And, Shannon, it was good to see you last week.’
The line hissed quietly and Dave felt her embarrassment all over again. ‘Yeah, you too,’ she said finally. ‘Sorry…’
‘Nothing to be sorry about. Nothing wrong with two work colleagues going out for a drink. I’ll give you a ring when I get back to Perth next. See if we can round up some of the old crew and have a catch-up.’
‘Sounds good. Talk to you then.’
Dave hung up the phone and relayed the information to Spencer. ‘Need to ID him,’ he finished with.
‘So she didn’t come up with that barcode I was hoping for?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Shit,’ Spencer complained, then seemed to gather himself. ‘Better get out to the airport and see if you can get a match that way.’
Chapter 14
Melinda smiled broadly and held out her hand to her new boss, Patricia Adams.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much. When would you like me to start?’
Patricia smiled. ‘Right now. I’ll get the forms you need to fill out and hopefully we can have you on the floor in a couple of hours.’ She stopped and smiled. ‘I’ve got to tell you, Mel, you’re a godsend. I didn’t think I was going to fill the position. Community nurses are hard to find out here.’
Melinda ignored the shortening of her name and touched Patricia’s arm instead. ‘You might be my godsend,’ she said truthfully.
‘Call me Patti,’ Patricia said and indicated she follow her down the hall. ‘Patricia sounds so formal, and you’ve probably worked out
by now that no one in Barrabine is formal. We’ll shorten or lengthen any name. Anything to make a nickname!’
‘I’ve noticed everyone’s pretty laid-back. My husband used to wear a tie to work; everyone did in Perth. It was expected. Today’s the first time he’s worn one since his first day and I’ll bet he’s the only one in the office wearing a tie.’
Patti gave a bark of laughter. ‘Yep, you’d be right there. I know Spencer and I don’t remember him ever wearing a tie. In fact, I bet he doesn’t even own one.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Melinda agreed, looking around and taking in her new workplace. The walls were lined with posters imploring mums and dads not to smoke or drink. The heavy black writing shouted about passive smoking in cars and showed photos of babies and young children stuck inside with the windows up and smoke filling the vehicles. Others encouraged healthy eating and exercise or stressed the importance of immunisation.
‘I’m sure you understand I’ll have to put you on a three-month trial,’ Patti said, breaking into Melinda’s thoughts.
‘Um…’ She didn’t get to ask why because Patti continued talking.
‘Yeah, the government has just brought it in: mandatory three-month trial. I’m sure you won’t need it, though. It’s not a hard job. I guess you’d say it’s more of an early childhood nurse rather than a community nurse. You’ll need to weigh the babies and track their growth. Talk to the mums and make sure they’re managing okay. Not suffering depression or baby blues.
‘You’ll be able to make referrals to other professionals if you think there’s something developmentally wrong with the baby.’ Patti walked fast and Melinda almost had to jog to keep up with her. ‘Just last week I recommended a two-year-old see a speech pathologist. The child wasn’t showing any signs of forming words, but I knew she could understand what I was saying to her. I’m more than aware children develop at different stages, but by eighteen months they should have a couple of words.
‘The grandmother had come in with the mother and said she felt there was something not quite right with the toddler. Of course that upset the mother, and within moments the whole appointment had deteriorated into a sobbing mum, screaming child and a grandmother trying to talk over the top of it all.’ She shook her head. ‘God, it was awful.’ She stopped at the entrance to a small office and indicated Melinda should go in.
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