Wordlessly, he handed it over to Spencer.
Back at the station, Dave worked overtime to get a warrant to pull Tim’s financial records. He didn’t really have enough to go on—only one statement with one withdrawal, but they’d matched it back to a deposit in Glen’s bank account. A good lawyer would argue that until the bank could confirm who had made the deposit, it was only circumstantial evidence. Dave didn’t agree. He was convinced that for some reason Tim was putting money into Glen Bartlett’s bank account. Spencer helped him embellish a little and within twenty-four hours they had the paperwork needed.
Together they walked to the bank and asked to see the manager.
‘Can we have the last six months of statements for Timothy Tucker,’ Spencer asked, putting the warrant on his desk.
Immediately the bank manager straightened. ‘What are you wanting with Tim?’ he asked. ‘He’s my best client.’
‘I’m sure he is, but we still need access to his accounts please.’ He held out the paper and the manager flicked through it before throwing it heavily on the table. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ll be able to tell you in time, but not now. If we could get the information stated on the warrant, please.’
It didn’t take long before they had everything they needed.
Spencer was the colour of chalk as they drove to Tim’s place.
Again the humpy was empty, but this time Chief was roaming around outside and let out a ferocious round of barking.
‘Better stay in the car,’ Spencer said. ‘I’d say if Chief is here by himself, then Tim’s at the pub.’
Tim and China were sitting next to each other at the bar of the Oakamanda Pub and Dee was behind the counter talking to them.
Glancing up, she smiled and motioned Dave and Spencer inside.
‘Come in, come in. Look, I’ve got it almost like new again,’ she said with a throaty laugh.
‘Looks great, Dee,’ Dave agreed. ‘G’day, fellas,’ he said, pulling up a stool on one side of Tim and China, while Spencer sat on the other side. ‘How’s tricks?’
Both men answered ‘Good’ and they all shook hands.
‘Everything seems to have gone very quiet,’ Dee said with a relieved look on her face. ‘No nightly visitors. It’s great.’
‘The trespassers seem to have dropped off too,’ China said.
‘Great news. Hopefully I won’t get any reports of anyone putting a gun in anyone’s face,’ Spencer said. ‘I get a bit edgy when things like that happen.’
China turned to him. ‘Has that happened recently?’
‘Hmm, I had a report from a bloke who’s been trying to buy up land around here for a mining company. Said there was some old codger who pulled a pistol on him. Neither of you know anything about that, do you?’
Dave held his surprise in check—he didn’t know anything about this report.
‘Not me,’ said China. ‘But he’s been to my joint. I just told him to fuck off. Said if he came back I’d push him into a mine shaft.’
Dave gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t be saying stuff like that, China. You’ll get yourself into trouble. We’re looking for a murderer, you know.’
‘Well, I ain’t the bloke you’re looking for. Just thought it might frighten him off.’
‘It should’ve,’ Spencer agreed. ‘After all, it’s not long happened to someone.’
Tim took a pull on his beer. ‘It was me who pulled the gun,’ he said.
Spencer shifted his attention to him. ‘That right, old mate? Now what did you go doing that for? I’ve told you, ring me and I’ll come out.’
‘He’d been around three or four times and wouldn’t leave. I just encouraged him a little.’
‘Mate, you’re lucky he didn’t want to press charges. He would’ve had every right to.’
‘But he didn’t.’
Dave leaned back and looked at Spencer. They’d agreed on the way out here that Dave would take the lead—he wasn’t local and could ask questions he wouldn’t know the answer to.
‘Ever married, China?’ Dave asked.
‘What? Me? Nope. What woman’d have me? Or rather, who’d want to come and live out here?’
‘Don’t get lonely?’
‘Like me own company. Women just nag, don’t they?’
‘Oi!’ Dee flicked the tea towel, which as ever was in handy reach on her shoulder, in his direction.
‘Go on then, I’ll have another one if you insist, Dee,’ China said cheekily.
‘What about you, Tim? Anyone ever caught your heart?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Tim answered. ‘My girl was the best. Beautiful and hot-headed. She was part Italian, you know.’
‘Fiery then?’
‘I used to call it passionate,’ he said with a faraway smile.
‘Did you have any kids?’
‘We did, but they died. They’re buried out on my plot. I go and talk to them occasionally, but it’s years and years ago. You get used to living without them, and living with the pain instead.’
There was a pause and Dave wasn’t sure how to frame his next question. As it turned out, he didn’t have to.
‘Gee, in all my time here I never knew that. What happened to your wife?’ Dee asked, leaning on the bench with a sympathetic look.
‘Don’t like to talk about it, so I don’t usually. She died.’ Tim put his beer down and looked at her.
‘Ah, shit, Tim, I had no idea. I’m really sorry.’ Dee looked horrified at her own question. ‘I’d never even thought about you having a woman—you, China and Killjoy have just always been here by yourselves. Assumed it had always been that way.’
‘Not for me,’ Tim said quietly.
Dave knew it was time to throw his hat in the ring.
‘Do either of you know a bloke called Glen Bartlett?’
China was shaking his head before he’d finished saying the name. ‘Don’t know anyone called Glen, do you, Tim? What’s he do?’
‘He’s the body down the mine,’ Spencer said and held Tim’s gaze.
Tim looked down at the table and pressed his lips together. ‘I know him.’
The silence stretched out and Spencer dropped his head. ‘You silly old bugger,’ he muttered to himself.
Dave wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or Tim.
‘How do you know him, Tim?’ Dave asked.
Dee and China were looking from one person to the other, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
‘I answered his ad.’
‘What ad?’
‘I saw an ad saying he was looking for the family of a woman who’d gone missing in 1945 from the Barrabine area. I’ve been trying to find Marianne since the day she walked out of our camp and never came back. I saw his ad and answered it, hoping he’d have the answers I’ve been needing for fifty-two years.’ He looked down at the bar.
‘Trying to find…I thought you said she died?’ Dee said.
Silence again.
‘Want to tell me about it?’ Spencer asked
‘Not really, but I guess I don’t have a choice. I figure you know everything already.’
Spencer paused before answering. Finally, as if it hurt him, he said: ‘We know enough, Tim, but you can fill in the gaps for us.’
Dee leaned forward to say something but Dave shook his head.
‘Marianne didn’t die,’ Tim said eventually. ‘I’ve always told everyone she did because I didn’t want to think she could just walk away. But she did. One morning she was at camp, smiling and cooking breakfast. Although her smile was never the same after the children died. Kenneth, Pammy and Kelly—they were her world. More than me, but I could live with that because I knew she loved me too, just not as much.
‘I’d wanted a good breakfast because I had a big day underground. Mari cooked me bacon, eggs and beans with damper. I told her I didn’t know when I’d be home, but it would be after dark. She kissed me goodbye and when I came home she was nowhere to be found.
’
Dave stole a look at Dee, whose mouth was beginning to tremble.
‘How did the children die, Tim?’ Dave asked.
A look of pain crossed his features. ‘Kenneth and Pammy fell down a mine shaft. One I hadn’t covered. They weren’t supposed to stray far from camp and they didn’t usually. I don’t know what happened that day, why they went outside their boundaries and why Mari didn’t realise. She always kept such an eagle eye on the kids. You have to out here. So many things can kill them. Her screams were enough to bring me home. I found them about half an hour later. They must’ve died on impact.’ He blinked.
‘Kelly, that was another matter. I still to this day don’t know how a brown snake got into her cot. By the time we found her, she was cold.’ He looked up and stared at Spencer. ‘She had three puncture wounds to her body.’
Tears were streaming down Dee’s face and Dave decided he’d better put the closed sign up on the door. He didn’t want anyone coming in and interrupting.
‘Six weeks after we buried Kelly, Mari went missing.’ His voice became loud. ‘I couldn’t believe she’d walk out on me. I was grieving too—I wanted us to do it together, but she turned away from me every time I went to comfort her. It was like she blamed me for their deaths.’ His fists clenched in and out, then he let out a deep breath and seemed to shrink into himself.
‘I supposed in a way I was to blame. I wanted to be out here. Wanted to find gold. I didn’t have the fever as bad as some, but I had it. I’ll admit it. It was my fault.’
‘Tim, I need to ask,’ Dave said, ‘you answered an ad in the paper because you thought she walked away from you?’ ‘I think the pain she had to bear was amplified every day she woke up and looked at the country, our mines, their graves! I never believed she killed herself but I did think she moved away because she couldn’t be here.’ He sat ramrod straight and shook his head. Then his voice dropped. ‘And because she couldn’t look at me anymore. Marianne didn’t want to be around me because she blamed me for the children’s deaths and the torment she was enduring.’
There was a pain-filled silence, broken only by the fridge’s motor kicking in and out.
‘So how did you meet Glen?’ Dave asked, his voice sounding loud.
‘I saw his ad, so I wrote to him, telling him all about the circumstances in which Marianne disappeared. He answered, via the pub here, and said he had information on Marianne. I think his exact words were: ‘I have information on the woman you are wanting to know about. If you send me three hundred dollars I’ll give you the information.’
Dave couldn’t help it, he groaned out loud. ‘You gave him all the information he needed to extort money from you, Tim!’
Tim continued to talk as if he hadn’t heard. ‘And three hundred dollars turned into three hundred every fortnight. You’ve got to understand I needed to know…I had to know what happened to her. He would send back photos of a woman who looked like Mari—the first photo, I couldn’t hold it I was shaking so much. I have it at the hut. She was in a garden, cutting back some rose bushes. It wasn’t a very clear photo, but it was enough for me to believe—hope—it was her. She was old and her hair was tied up in a bun, just like she used to do after she had the kids.’ He gave a mirthless harrumph. ‘Looking back now, I was stupid. The woman looked nothing like my Mari would’ve at seventy-eight. I saw what I wanted to see. A black and white photo taken from a distance. He could have put a blonde woman in the picture and I probably would’ve believe it was my wife.’ He pounded his fist lightly on the bar.
‘When the request came for another three hundred, I paid it without thinking.’
‘How long did this go on for?’ Spencer asked.
‘Five months.’
‘And then he turned up here?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened then?’
‘He came out and saw me, introduced himself. He was such a nice bloke. Friendly, interested in me. Asked me loads of questions. I felt comfortable with him. And Chief liked him. That was the big thing for me. After we’d spent a bit of time talking, he told me he was here to show me where Marianne was. For another ten thousand dollars.
‘Money doesn’t matter to me,’ Tim explained. ‘I’ve got more than I need and no one to leave it to. I wrote him a cheque on the spot, thinking he must have brought her over with him and she was waiting in Barrabine. I told him if he took me to her now, I’d give him the three small nuggets I’d found earlier that day. I had them in my pocket. I would have given him my fortune if I’d thought I was going to see her again.’ Tim shook his head. ‘When you want something so badly, you’ll do anything for it. Anything.
‘But when I followed him in my ute, he took me to a clearing and pointed to an old grave. Of course, I knew it was there—I know this country like the back of my hand and I’d heard the story of the nameless woman who’d been buried here.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe I was naive, but I never once entertained the idea of her being my Mari. Like I said, she needed to get away from me, not life. I thought he was joking.’ He looked down at the bar mat and started to rub it between his fingers. ‘He wasn’t.’
China was staring incredulously at his friend and Dee just looked sad.
‘He told me how his father had buried a woman with long black hair. He told me about an ivory and gold locket around her neck. His father hadn’t seen it at first because her neck was…swollen.’ Tim bit out the word. ‘Apparently it caught his eye as he was burying her. It had to be her. No one else would have had a necklace like that.’ His voice trailed off. ‘She’d been here all the time.’ Pause. ‘Close to me.’ Pause. ‘Within reach.’ His head snapped up. ‘I couldn’t believe how angry I was. I’d never felt anything like it in all my life. I suddenly knew I wanted to kill him.’ He shrugged. ‘I told him there was something I wanted him to have and got him to jump in my ute. I drove him back to the mine shaft. I think he thought I was going to give him more gold nuggets to thank him. I led him over to the shaft, my shovel in my hand. When he was nearly there, I hit him hard and he fell. And that was it.’
The silence was only broken by Dee, crying again. China looked ill.
‘Where’s the cheque you wrote him, Tim?’ Spencer asked quietly.
‘He’d put it in the glove box of his car and I took it out.’
‘Your fingerprints aren’t in there.’
‘Gloves.’
‘So you went back out there?’
‘Yes. I cleaned it of anything that would lead to me. There wasn’t much, just the cheque.’
‘And a newspaper with the ad in it,’ Dave said softly.
Tim looked up at him in surprise, then he shrugged with a half-smile. ‘Well then,’ he said, resigned.
Spencer looked sad as he stood up. ‘I wish you’d talked to me, old friend,’ he said. ‘Tim Tucker, I’m arresting you for the murder of Glen Bartlett.’
‘No!’ Dee cried out.
‘Mate.’ China looked stricken.
‘I did it,’ Tim said quietly. ‘You gotta let me go.’
Chapter 32
‘I’ve finally got the bastard!’ Spencer let out a whoop.
Dave looked up, surprised. ‘What are you working on?’ he asked. ‘I thought everything was wrapped up.’
‘Come with me,’ was all Spencer said.
They pulled up in front of Jaffa’s and walked into the hotel reception. ‘I need to see Ross Pollard, please.’
‘I’ll ring through to his room.’
Dave took Spencer aside. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Just watch.’
Ross came through the door, a large smile on his face. ‘Detectives! Great to see you again. To what do I owe the pleasure?’
Spencer reached out and yanked his hands behind his back.
‘Ross Pollard, I’m arresting you for harassing lease owners, damage to the Oakamanda Pub and for causing fear with intent.’
The girl behind reception screamed and stumbled back into the office, shutting t
he door quickly.
Dave only just had time to react to the charge when Ross twisted away and broke into a run.
‘Fucker,’ yelled Spencer.
Dave took off on foot and chased him down the street. People scattered every which way until finally Ross started to slow and Dave, whose pace hadn’t changed, grabbed his arm and shoved him against the wall.
Out of nowhere Ernie appeared and helped hold him still while Dave got out his cuffs.
‘Bad move, dickhead,’ he puffed and slapped the cuffs on his wrist. ‘Cheers, Ernie. You make a great neighbour and helper. Glad I got to know you.’
‘And it turns out,’ Spencer yelled delightedly from across the bar, ‘Ross Pollard was paid on commission from HMA Mining. No sales, no money. I looked into his bank records and found that he’s in a bucketload of debt. Gambling, prostitutes. Turns out he was the one Narla spoke to us about the night we got called to the brothel; the one who was getting a bit rough with the girls. He would go in with a bundle of money and offer them extra to do perverted things.’
‘What the hell?’ Dave said.
‘Long and the short of it, he needed money. So he tried to scare people into selling.’ Spencer raised his beer. ‘He won’t be doing that again in a hurry!’
‘Here’s to Spencer,’ Dave raised his beer, and a cheer went around the room.
Everyone broke off into smaller groups and started talking loudly.
Dave went to Melinda and put his arm around her. ‘Who would’ve thought the case was going to end with a chase through the streets of Barrabine, hey? Just like the movies,’ he grinned. ‘Have you heard any more on Janelle?’ ‘She moved into her unit today. I went and saw her before I came here, but she’s doing so much better. Maddie, oh my God, she’s a pudgy, healthy little thing who just loves to laugh. She’s gorgeous.’
‘Good news all round,’ Dave said. Then he noticed she didn’t have a drink. ‘Do you want a drink?’
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