Slaughter Park

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Nordlund,’ Harry says.

  ‘Yes, Nordlund. I’m not sure if Strike Force Redgum has realised the significance of that yet.’

  ‘But…that’s crazy, Bob. The whole point of Jenny insisting I stay away from her was because she was terrified I would endanger her and her family again by getting mixed up with people like the Nordlunds. She would never have walked into a situation like that.’

  ‘And yet it seems that’s exactly what she did do, Harry.’

  He’s enjoying this, much more fun than talking to schoolkids about the five rules of road safety. But it’s bruising Harry, who feels he’s become mentally unfit for it, having tried to avoid hard thinking for so long.

  ‘Why?’

  Bob shrugs. ‘I have no idea.’

  Harry shakes his head, struggling with confusion, while Bob just sits there, munching, watching him.

  ‘Apart from the credit card, have they found any other trace of Jenny after the murder?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. They don’t seem to have found any CCTV sightings so far.’

  ‘What can I do, Bob?’

  Bob shrugs. ‘Not a thing. Wait and see.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, thanks, thanks for filling me in.’

  ‘I’ve told you nothing, Harry, nothing about Jenny, because I know nothing. All right? We’ve just had a chat about old times and a sandwich and you asked me about what’s happened and I wasn’t able to tell you anything more than I read in the papers. Got it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘They’re tapping your phone and tracking your movements for sure, and now they’ll probably tap my phone too, if they’re not already doing it. So it’d be best if you didn’t come back here again.’

  ‘Right.’

  As they get to their feet Bob reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out something wrapped in a plastic bag and hands it to Harry. ‘You can call me on the programmed number, son. They won’t trace it.’

  Bob escorts him down to the lobby, they shake hands and Bob says loudly, ‘Sorry I couldn’t help, Harry. Just be patient. All the best.’

  10

  Harry stands outside the road safety division offices feeling humiliated and helpless. And angry with himself. What bloody use is he? No car, no gun, no computer, and a phone that’s bugged. He switches the phone back on to call for a cab and it immediately begins to ring. Kelly Pool.

  ‘Harry! I’ve been trying to call you. I—’

  ‘Kelly,’ he says sharply. ‘I told you I’ve got nothing to say to you. I know no more than you do.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Look, I can give you five minutes, that’s all.’

  ‘O-kay.’

  He hears the hesitation in her voice, wondering what’s going on. ‘In an hour. Meet me at Di Bella on Holt Street in Surry Hills. Five minutes, that’s all.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Harry.’

  He rings off and calls the taxi. Once inside he opens Bob’s package. It’s an encrypted Blackphone, supposedly immune to police tracking.

  He arrives ten minutes late and sees her sitting inside with a cup of coffee in front of her. He takes a seat at her table with his back to the window, leans forward and says softly, ‘Sorry about that. Don’t look, but they’re sitting in that blue Falcon across the street, with a camera and a long-range mic.’

  ‘What?’ She has to lean close to hear what he’s saying over the loud music. ‘Who are?’

  ‘Homicide cops. They’re hoping I’ll give them a lead to Jenny. My phone’s bugged, that’s why I had to speak to you like that.’

  ‘Jesus, Harry. What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to have an argument, then I’m going to get up and storm out of here and go back to my place around the corner, and you’ll head back to your office. Sometime later I’ll leave my phone at home and come and meet you wherever you like. Have you been up to Blackheath?’

  ‘Not yet. I was going to suggest we did that.’

  ‘Good. I haven’t got wheels.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up below Central station, four-thirty?’

  ‘Great.’

  There’s a lull in the music and he jumps to his feet. ‘No, Kelly, no way! Just leave me alone for fuck’s sake!’

  People turn to stare as he jerks his chair away and marches out, scowling.

  11

  Harry hangs back in a corner, watching the crowds pouring into the station, looking for any sign of plain-clothes police. Kelly’s late, and when her car appears he jumps in beside her and they speed away. Traffic is heavy along Parramatta Road and they make slow progress, Kelly glancing frequently at the rear-view mirror.

  ‘You’ve had a rough day then,’ she says.

  ‘Kind of. Look, Kelly, I appreciate you doing this, but you’re a newspaper reporter and you have your job to do, and maybe this isn’t a good idea.’

  ‘Yes, I do have my job, Harry, and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability, and this is going to be a big story. But I owe you a great deal—my life, in fact—and I’m not going to do anything that embarrasses you or endangers Jenny. I think it’s in both our interests to work on it together.’

  He looks over at her, the energy, the determination, the mess of red hair, and he feels better. ‘I hope you’re right. What have you got?’

  ‘There’s a Nordlund connection. The murder victim claimed he was screwed by Konrad Nordlund over a business deal a few years back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know? That Jenny went along to the Nordlund AGM early this month?’

  Harry remembers the receipt for a single share in NRL. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  So, as they crawl out onto the Great Western Highway through western Sydney, they tell each other what they’ve discovered.

  It’s after seven by the time they climb up into the Blue Mountains and pass through Katoomba. The highway swings north by the national park. Far out to the west the sun is setting over the Megalong Valley. They reach Medlow Bath and finally Blackheath. Kelly has the address of the crime scene and they turn off the main road at the edge of the town and follow a heavily tree-lined lane. The houses become less frequent and then disappear. She turns onto an unsealed track and comes to a stop. Up ahead two small cottages hide in the gloaming beneath dark trees.

  Kelly says, ‘As I understand it, the house at the end of the road is the one that Palfreyman was living in. It’s a weekender owned by a former friend who’s planning to have it refurbished. The one next to it is also a weekender, owned by a Sydney family and rented by Jenny two weeks ago, on the sixth of October, for seven days starting on the ninth. Palfreyman’s body was discovered on Tuesday last, the fourteenth, by the local butcher, who was owed money by Palfreyman and stopped by and found the front door open. The last sighting of either of them in the town was five pm on Monday the thirteenth, at the bottle shop where they bought wine and vodka.’

  ‘Where did you learn all this?’

  ‘One of our reporters has a cousin on the force in Katoomba. She was sent here door-knocking on the Tuesday.’ She lets off the handbrake and drives to the end of the track, turns the car around and they get out. Both of the end cottages have police tape and warning notices on them. Kelly gets a flashlight from the glove box and they go over to Palfreyman’s place, walking around the outside, peering in through the windows. At the front door Harry uses his bump keys to open the lock. They duck under the tape, closing the door behind them. It takes a moment to adjust to the deep gloom inside. They smell chemicals. To one side of the small hallway an open door leads into the living room and they go in, then pause. Chaos, cushions thrown off chairs, a bookcase tipped over and paperbacks scattered across the floor. They move forward into the room, checking the numbered plastic markers left behind by the crime scene team, and Harry indicates an armchair. He takes the torch from Kelly and shows her the dark stain of blood on the floor in front of the chair.

  ‘I’m guessing he was sitting or standing here when he was stabb
ed. He fell forward and lay here and bled…you see the way the blood is smeared? I would guess that the killer stood here, on this side, struck with their right hand, and would have been sprayed with blood. A deliberate and determined attack.’ He shakes his head. ‘Jenny didn’t do this.’

  From this position the markers make a pattern spreading out across the room, back to the hall door. Harry examines each one, pointing out bloodstains and a footprint. They follow them across to a bedroom, which has also been turned over. Everywhere they look the surfaces are smeared with powders, white powder on dark surfaces and black on light.

  Kelly says, ‘The way everything’s been thrown around—did they have a fight?’

  ‘No, it’s too systematic. And at least some of it was done after the murder—see how those books are lying on top of the bloodstains?’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘Searching for something? Or maybe to make it look like a violent home invasion.’

  ‘Maybe it was a violent home invasion.’

  ‘Maybe, but why did Jenny disappear?’ He looks through the window at the dense scrub, imagines her body lying out there in the dark. ‘Did your contact mention whether they searched the surrounding bushland?’

  ‘Yeah, they had several teams searching the bush and police rescue checking the trails along the escarpment.’

  Harry nods. ‘Let’s take a look at her place then.’

  They leave, locking the front door behind them. At the back of Jenny’s cottage they find a new plywood panel screwed into place over a window opening. Beside the front door is a burglar alarm box with a warning sticker. Harry ignores it and opens the front door. No alarm sounds, and they move inside. It looks as if all traces of Jenny have been removed—no clothes in the bedroom, no toiletries in the bathroom, no foodstuffs in the kitchen. In the small bedroom at the rear, Harry crouches beneath the plywood panel and finds fragments of broken glass in the pile of the carpet. In the kitchen, hallway and bedroom there are more plastic markers next to what looks like the faint traces of bloody footprints.

  When they get back to Kelly’s car Harry suggests they go into town. On the way he phones Bob Marshall on the Blackphone.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Bob, I’m at Blackheath. Two things. What do the crime scene reports say about a broken window in the bedroom of the house where Jenny was staying? And were there any other wounds on Palfreyman’s body, any defensive wounds?’

  ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They reach the main street and Kelly says, ‘Where to?’

  Harry nods at a hotel standing on the most prominent corner. ‘The pub.’

  At the bar they order drinks and chat to the barman. Harry shows his old police ID.

  ‘You lot were here Tuesday.’

  ‘Sure, just a follow-up.’

  ‘Not arrested anybody?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Found the lady?’

  Harry shakes his head.

  ‘She seemed all right. But I suppose you can never tell.’

  ‘How did they seem when they were in here?’

  ‘Well, he was happy as a pig in mud. She was paying, see? Terry was always short of cash.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘That’s what we wondered.’

  ‘So he was all over her?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘And how did she seem?’

  ‘She looked happy enough.’

  He turns away to serve another customer and Kelly puts her hand on Harry’s arm. ‘She had some reason, Harry. He was no George Clooney.’

  12

  Kelly drives them back to Sydney, to Harry’s house, and asks if she can come in to use the bathroom. ‘That beer at the pub,’ she laughs.

  They go inside and Harry checks his phone. There’s a text message from Nicole to call her, which he does.

  ‘Harry, I’ve found something you might be interested in. When Jenny was—’

  He cuts her off. ‘I’ll come over, Nicole. Half an hour.’ He hangs up.

  When Kelly returns he tells her about the call. ‘I’ll get a cab,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll take you. I want to know what she’s found.’

  When they get to Nicole’s house she scolds Harry for his lousy telephone manner, and is shocked when he tells her that their phones are probably bugged.

  ‘I’ll make some arrangements so we can keep in touch,’ he says, ‘but in the meantime we’ll just have to be careful what we say. So what have you got?’

  Nicole has remembered that when Jenny and the baby stayed overnight with her one weekend, Jenny had forgotten to bring her own laptop and had spent some time using Nicole’s computer. She has checked back through its history of web searches and found the record of Jenny’s use that day. She shows them. ‘I just thought it was weird.’

  Harry scrolls through a long list. Every item concerns Amber Nordlund—news items, business directories, genealogy, social media references.

  Harry checks the date: Sunday morning, September the twenty-first.

  ‘Looks a bit obsessive,’ Kelly says.

  ‘Yes.’ Harry is trying to think of a reason for this. Jenny hardly knew Amber, only met her once, at the big homestead, Kramfors, she had inherited after her father died in a plane crash when she was fifteen. She had seemed an angry, damaged soul, an environmental activist alienated from her family and especially her uncle Konrad. Why should Jenny be interested in her now?

  ‘Two days later she bought a single share in Nordlund Resources,’ Harry says, ‘as a result of which she was able to attend their shareholders’ meeting a week later. Was Amber there?’

  ‘Yes!’ Kelly cries. ‘I mean no, but she was meant to be. She’s on the board, and at the start of the meeting the chairman apologised for her absence on health grounds. I’ll show you.’

  She logs on to the NRL website and calls up the video of their AGM, Warren Dalkeith’s introduction and apologies, Amber’s empty seat, then fast-forwarding to question time and Terry Palfreyman. ‘That’s Jenny, isn’t it, just along there.’

  Harry and Nicole stare at the image. She says, ‘Yes, I think it is.’

  Then Harry says, ‘If Jenny went there looking for Amber, then… why? And did she find her? Or was she trying to get Palfreyman to help her?’

  They’re silent for a moment, thinking, and then Nicole says, ‘I wonder if they were friends on Facebook.’

  Harry says, ‘Jenny wasn’t on Facebook, was she?’

  ‘Not when she was blind—she didn’t think there was much point because she couldn’t see the images. But when she got out of hospital, being able to see again…one day she saw me watching a video clip that someone had sent me on Facebook, and she asked me how it worked, and I showed her. We set up an account for her. I don’t know how much she used it—she did send pictures of Abigail and Felecia to the girls from time to time. They’ve been trying to contact her since she disappeared, but there’s been nothing.’

  ‘It would be good if we could get into her account,’ Harry says. ‘The police will have tried.’

  Nicole says, ‘Actually…I think I kept a record of her password when we set it up. But where did I put it?’

  She searches a drawer, checks her phone and computer and eventually finds the scribbled note in a box of paperclips, rubber bands and pencils. They watch as she logs on to Facebook as Jenny, and scrolls through her messages.

  ‘So the first is on the third of August, that’s just after the Ash Island inquest ended, and it’s to Amber Nordlund.’

  Just wanted to say a big thank you for your support at the inquest. I thought I was doing all right until I had to go through that. And Kylie’s threats. It really shook me up.

  They all leaned in to read Amber’s immediate reply: We supported each other, the walking wounded. You’ve got to put all that shit out of your head. Focus on the good things. Amazingly we survived, and you got your sight back and a wonderful
baby. Have they got you on medication? I don’t know how I would have survived without the pills.

  Jenny: No pills, I’m breastfeeding. But you’re right. We’ve got to focus on the positives. What are your plans?

  Amber: The doctors have to give me the final okay on the skin grafts, then who knows. Konrad is planning a family trip to Vanuatu next month. I don’t want to go with them but I may have no choice. I’m pretty helpless. I’m really sorry about you and Harry. I thought he was a good bloke and I think you’re very brave to leave him and bring the baby up on your own. I hate to think I was responsible for what happened to you both, getting you involved.

  There’s a break for five days, then Amber again: You okay? Been thinking about you. The doc’s cleared me, so that’s something. How you going?

  Jenny: Not good. I can’t stop thinking about Kylie screaming at me, ‘I’m gunna have your baby killed, see how you feel.’ Frankly I’m terrified. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. I don’t know what to do. The police can’t suggest anything more than getting an AVO against her, but that won’t stop her. She has friends, horrible friends. I saw them waiting outside the courtroom. Can you suggest anything?

  Amber: There’s only one person I know could scare her off. His name’s Nathaniel Horn.

  Jenny: The lawyer?

  Amber: That’s him. Our family lawyer. He has bigger and badder and more powerful friends than anyone else. Want me to ask him?

  Jenny: I’d need a long spoon.

  Amber: What?

  Jenny: To sup with the devil.

  Amber: Know what you mean. He’d take that as a compliment. Well?