by Phyllis King
‘One of them was your Mr Wiggs,’ he said, ‘and the other was a guy by the name of Magnus Burns. Both have form.’
Having watched more cops shows than most people had hot dinners, I knew that ‘having form’ meant that the men had police records. Goodness me, in my day, ‘having form’ meant wearing a Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Bra.
I rang Sergeant Eke the next day, again at Giselle’s insistence. She certainly was proving to be a sticky-beak, that girl. ‘Any news?’ I asked him. ‘We’re all dying to know what you’ve found out.’
‘We?’ he asked.
‘Well, me and Giselle from the chemist.’
‘I really can’t share information from an investigation.’ His voice was polite but stern.
‘Oh dear me,’ I said, flustered. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought since I fished Bill out of the fish pond...’ I heard Sergeant Eke sigh on the other end of the line.
‘What did you want to know?’ he asked, cautiously.
‘Giselle wants to know if the same gun was used to kill those two men as the one that killed Bill. And I want to know if you’ve got any suspects!’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, wearily, ‘and that’s all I’m giving you.’
It was so exciting to be in-the-know. I passed on Sergeant Eke’s rather cryptic message to Giselle and we figured that he meant that yes, the same gun had been used in both killings and no, they had no suspects.
From then on, I rang Sergeant Eke often -I kept remembering things that I thought he might find useful. I also told him my Mafia theory. I think my persistence wore him down and little by little, he told me things. He said that nothing could be ruled out at this stage. He also told me that the bullets were from a 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol, but they didn’t match any police had on record.
In another of our conversations, Sergeant Eke told me that the police had investigated Wiggs and Burns and apparently they were into blackmail. Under the guise of installing cable TV in people’s homes, they would plant hidden cameras which were connected to a bank of computers at their house. If the films showed anything interesting, they would blackmail people.
Sergeant Eke asked me if I’d seen anything untoward at Bill and Rita’s over the years... perhaps women coming and going while Rita was at work. I told him most certainly not.
Eke said that when the police searched Wiggs and Burns’ house after they were killed, it looked like someone had cleared their computers - though not in the usual way. Someone had filled up the bathtub and dropped the computers in there. Any information they might have contained was lost.
A couple of days later, Sergeant Eke sat at my kitchen table - he’d come to speak to Rita, and I’d invited him in when he finished.
‘You look tired, young man,’ I scolded while I filled his tea cup and added a dash of milk.
‘You know, Kath,’ he said in a weary voice, ‘when a homicide happens, we hardly sleep at all; maybe a few hours here and there, but if the trail goes cold, we miss our chance.’
‘Do you think you’ve missed your chance with this one?’ I asked. It had been over a week since I’d lugged Bill out of the fish pond.
‘No, not at all!’ said Sergeant Eke with a confidence that I didn’t think he felt.
‘But what have you got?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t found the murder weapon. The bullets are from a gun that’s not in your database.’
I didn’t want to be a negative Nelly, but someone had to be honest with the young man.
‘I know. But while we might not be able to find the gun, we can look at people connected to Bill who have owned a registered 9mm Smith and Wesson. We are also looking at people who knew Bill who might have wanted him dead.’ His shoulders were slumped.
‘There, there,’ I said soothingly and patted him on the back as I left the table to get him a Tim Tarn.
‘But you know, hard evidence isn’t everything,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I got the packet of Tim Tams and put a small handful on a plate.
‘Well, there’s also a line of investigation that deals with criminal behaviour.’
‘Really?’ I said, intrigued.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘We look at how people behave after a crime - it’s called post-offence behaviour. Everyone will behave and react differently to Bill’s death, but only the killer has to do certain things to avoid detection. The killer had to kill Wiggs and Burns who possibly had some dirt on Bill, and then the killer has to hide the gun, appear innocent, and perhaps do other things to avoid detection.’
I smiled sympathetically at Sergeant Eke; he certainly had his work cut out for him.
‘And there’s another phenomena in investigations that we watch out for.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked. I was certainly learning a lot about detective work.
‘Sometimes the killer tries to inject himself into the investigation.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Sometimes when we do a crime scene, we’ll review photographs later, and the killer might be somewhere in the crowd of onlookers. It makes sense when you think about it - he goes to all that trouble, and he wants to be around for the excitement afterwards.’
‘Goodness gracious me,’ I cried. ‘What will they think of next?’
‘It’s true,’ he said.
‘Well, did you take photos of the crowd outside Bill and Rita’s on the night of the murder? Although, if you ask me, I can hardly believe one of our neighbours could have done something like this. And I certainly have never seen any Mafioso wandering around our streets.’ I laughed at the very thought.
‘Fountain Gate is hardly a seething hotbed of Mafia activity’ he conceded.
‘So you’re looking for a man who had hung around the investigation?’ I mulled this over.
‘...or a woman.’ He looked up.
‘A woman?’ I laughed. ‘How many women do you know who go around shooting people? Although ever since that Lara Croft film, a lot of girls rushed off to join rifle ranges. My Skye-Rose dabbled for a while; joined a pistol club. Luckily, that phase lasted about as long as her tie-dying and a bit longer than her macramé.’
Sergeant Eke flipped open his notebook. ‘And according to our records, Skye-Rose purchased a 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol in 2001, right after the first Tomb Raider, if my memory serves me correctly’ Sergeant Eke certainly knew his Lara Croft.
‘Well,’ I sniffed, ‘it was only a fad. I think for a while there, she thought she was Lara Croft. Once, she asked if we could install stretchy ropes from the cathedral ceiling in the family room.’ I paused and considered him for a moment.
‘You’d like her, my Skye-Rose,’ I said. ‘She’s single...’ I felt my cheeks blush just a little and I hoped Sergeant Eke didn’t notice.
‘I think you’re missing my point,’ said Sergeant Eke gently, ignoring my overtures. ‘We’ve checked everyone connected with Bill, and your Skye-Rose is the only one of them who owns a 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol just like the one we’re looking for.’
‘So...’ the idea suddenly dawned on me, ‘...are you saying that my Skye-Rose killed Bill?’
I wondered if Sergeant Eke would still want to date her if he thought she was a murderer. And then I suddenly had a horrible feeling that Sergeant Eke would put Skye-Rose in jail for a crime she didn’t commit, just like on The Fugitive. Except Skye-Rose had both her arms. Or was that the real killer who was missing an arm?
‘No, I’m not saying that,’ said Sergeant Eke gently, patting my hand. ‘Fortunately, Skye-Rose was in Byron Bay at the time Bill was shot and has her whole commune as an alibi.’
I let out a sigh of relief.
‘Skye-Rose’s 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol is registered as being kept at this address. I would like to have a look at it.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘She keeps it in the garage in my late husband’s safe.’
‘Can I see it?’ he asked in a quiet voice.
I gasped. ‘Do you think that someone
used it to shoot Bill?’
Sergeant Eke shrugged and I got my set of keys and he followed me into the garage. I opened the old safe and it smelt musty as the iron door swung open. The gun lay in its usual place on the top shelf. Sergeant Eke flipped a clean hanky out of his pocket and went to pick it up.
‘It’s got no finger prints on it,’ I told him, ‘so you don’t have to bother about using your hanky.’
He pulled his hand back and raised an eyebrow in my direction.
‘I Mr Sheen it,’ I explained, smiling at the shining gun. ‘In the 35 years I’ve been a housewife, no one has ever been able to fault my aptitude for cleaning.’
‘Tests can match the bullets to the gun. Even Mr Sheen can’t disguise that,’ he paused and let the meaning of his words sink in.
‘How long have you known?’ I asked.
‘Pretty much since you killed Wiggs and Burns and tried to make it look like a Mafia hit.’
‘Bugger!’ I said. ‘So that didn’t fool you?’
‘Not when the bullet wounds were covered in doilies.’
‘The Mafia don’t do that?’
‘No, and another give-away was when we tracked down Skye-Rose in Byron Bay and told her that Bill had been shot; she broke down and told us that Bill had promised to leave Rita and marry her. Now because Bill had cable TV and a connection with Wiggs and Burns, we thought the two of them might have been filmed in a compromising situation and that suggested a motive...’ He left the sentence hanging.
‘Bill was a no-good layabout dirty old man. Skye-Rose can’t help it if she falls for the underdog. I thought her last boyfriend was bad enough with his pierced nipples and low-hanging jeans that exposed his underpants. Imagine my horror when I spotted her kissing Bill at the front door after a visit. He deserved everything he got.’
‘Are you making a confession?’ said Sergeant Eke, in the gentle voice of a sounding board.
‘I have the right to remain silent,’ I said, and then pursed my lips shut and went back inside to get a warm cardigan to wear to the police station.
<
Bucket Time
Kerry James
‘Dementia, cancer and chlamydia are the scourges of the present age, and on the increase.’ I read from the newspaper to the two people assembled in front of me.
‘Assembled’ maybe wasn’t the right word. They both looked more like heaps of parts in need of a mechanic who had actually seen old people and not just read about them.
‘We know about the first two,’ snorted Iris. ‘What’s chlamydia?’
‘It’s real pretty little stuff. There’s some growin’ down the side of the RSL,’ said Gordon.
‘Gawd, give it up, Gordie!’ Iris sent me a look that spelled: ‘He has to go.’
Gordon was missing more than a few beats these days, having lost most of his marbles, also a leg from diabetes, a few teeth, and parts of his hands and face from skin cancers. But Iris just meant Gordie had to go.
‘The men’s room. Quick!’ he rasped.
‘It’s up the back where it’s always been! You grew up in this house, Gordon. The dunny hasn’t walked away!’
Iris wasn’t usually that sharp with Gordie; but she was at the end of her tether what with looking after him and her older sister, who was in much the same way, and it being not too long since she had seen her poor demented mother into her grave.
‘He don’t wanta stay, Beryl; that’s the real bugger of it. Day after day, night after night, he whinges and moans about how crook he is, nothing left for him, how he don’t wanta go on. You can’t take him anywhere near the shearing sheds where he used to be a gun shearer or the oval where he played championship footie. Remembering what he was like reduces him to tears. Cries like a bloody baby, and gets himself all upset.’
‘Hard on you, Iris.’
‘Say that again; but he really doesn’t want to stay, Beryl. When you’ve lived with someone for over 60 years, you know. Mum was the same. Said the doctors had too many ways to keep old people alive when she was tired and had had enough. But they kept on with drips and that. In the end, they was force-feeding her. It was cruel.
‘I asked them to cut it out and they looked at me as if I was a mongrel. I didn’t dare mention this Youth-in-Asia malarkey, even though we are meant to be all multicultural. Haw! But doctors are the ones using up good resources on people that don’t want them. We ought to do something about it.’ She fixed me with a pair of flinty blue eyes I’d known since way before kindergarten.
‘We’d have our job cut out. The whole of Creswick is God’s waiting room, except for them newcomers.’
‘Lifestyle changers. Artists mostly. They keep to themselves. Got nothing against them. It’s our mob I’m worried about, Bez. Lotta unhappy sick people wanting a peaceful way out. But will anyone help them? Gordie’s past his use by date and wants to go. Chlamydia, my sweet fanny! Down by the RSL! In La-La Land, more like!’
She laughed mirthlessly again, and lit another of her medically-forbidden cigarettes. ‘I gotta put up with his mad thinkin’ night and day, 24/7. It’s degradin’, and it’s hurting my health.’ She took a drag and squinted out through the back door.
‘Where’s the old bugger got to? He’s been rabittin’ on about that mine shaft up the hill behind the old dunny; goin on and on like a broken record about the happy times you had when you wuz kids and you used to go blackberryin’ and play up around there. You have got it covered over, haven’t you, Beryl?’
I stared back at her. Gordie was my brother, the last of a long line of country boys used to taking things into their own hands.
‘He wouldn’t do anythin’ stupid, would he?’
Iris had just mashed her cigarette out in her saucer when we heard scraping sounds and thuds and the clatter of timbers echoing down the hill. We got up there as fast as we could, considering my arthritis and Iris’s emphysema. The wooden cover of the mine shaft had a wide gap in it, and Gordie’s felt hat and his boots were lying on the edge.
‘Gawd, Gordie! He’s gorn!’ Iris clapped her hand over her enlarged heart.
I hugged her and she hugged me, joined in sorrow as we were over Gordie.
‘He done that deliberately. That’s the way he wanted to go,’ she sobbed.
‘Aw, you don’t know that.’
‘Don’t I? He’s been talkin’ about it. Why do you think he come here today? How long is it since Gordie dragged his wreck of a body up here to see you and the old place? Besides, look.’
She kicked at a bottle and white tablets come out of it into the grass. I hadn’t seen it because I was peering down the mine shaft. Hundreds of feet deep our father had told us it was, and it might have been bottomless for all the hope we had of seeing Gordie. He was gone, any way you looked at it.
We stoked the stove with wood, and brewed up another cuppa.
‘We’ll say it was an accident, Beryl. I won’t have the taint of suicide hangin’ over the family. If the doctors had done their job, he wouldn’t of had to do this. It was bucket time for Gordie, only he didn’t have no bucket.’
Her blue eyes bored into mine just like they used to do when we was kids and she would get me to do all sorts, sliding down the mullock heaps on old sacks and runnin’ up and down the mine workings, until we fell and scraped our knees and elbows, tore our clothes, and got a hiding from our parents. Later, she egged me on to get Gordie to notice her and then to marry her, which of course he did, once she got pregnant.
Iris has always had a strong will; but even that will couldn’t have propelled Gordon up the hill and into the mine shaft. I had to accept he’d done that, taken some of his pills to calm his mind, smashed the cover, and put himself down. I would like to think he’d dropped back into the magical world of our childhood before old age, pain, and illness had overtaken him.
Just like him not to go with his boots on, too. He’d told me they’d see him out, and they had: the big metal eyes around the bits of twine he used to lace them up
with staring down the shaft from its edge with their tongues hanging out. That was his last message, to let us know - and so someone else could have his boots, I reckon.
‘They could get me busted for the cover on the mine shaft.’
‘Not your fault. The hills are alive with them mine shafts. Death traps they are; their fences rotting and covers all falling to pieces. How was you to know he was going to do that?’
True; the Creswick hills hardly ring with the sound of music, although sometimes the wind blowing down the shafts makes a real eerie kind of caterwauling. It’s always been a tough hard place from its mining beginning, and the grittiness has stayed with its people.
