Deb turns to the pathologist’s report on the first murders, and when she’s read it and reviewed the images she calls the morgue at Glebe and asks for Dr Rebecca Jardine. The pathologist comes on the line, a familiar Canadian voice.
‘Hi Deb,’ she says, ‘I’m ready for you now.’
When Deb gets there she’s taken through to the forensic pathology suite and into Rebecca’s office, where the pathologist waves her to a seat in front of the big TV screen and taps the keyboard of her computer to bring up the first of the CT scans. An external image first in vivid colour, of a human leg, then the skin melts away revealing flesh and muscle, which in turn dissolves into bones.
‘This is interesting,’ Rebecca says. ‘Quite different from the first victims.’
‘How?’
‘They were butchered on site, crudely, with something like an axe or machete. Look.’
Rebecca brings up images from the first murders, splintered and cracked bones, then returns to the new scans. ‘Not this time. See the clean slice through the bone?’
She rotates the image on the screen, showing what she means, then zooms in to see the marks in close-up. ‘She’s been sectioned with a machine saw, like they have in abattoirs.’
‘What about a hand-held chainsaw, or a circular saw?’
‘No. Too regular. I reckon she was cut up off-site and brought in in pieces.’
Deb tries to picture it, some maniac in a shed, just a few hours ago, doing his horrific business.
15
At her desk the next morning, Kelly stares at the photocopied report in front of her and wonders if it isn’t time to drop this whole Harry Belltree business and move on to something new. All it’s brought her is pain and misery. Well, it’s brought her here, to a well-paid job on her own crime desk in the best newspaper in the city, but apart from that…
She tells herself to grow up, picks up her phone and punches in the Vanuatu code and the number for Brad’s Hamburger Bar in Port Vila harbour.
‘Morning, Brad.’
‘Kelly sweetheart! I was just thinking of you last night. When are you going to finally make up your mind to come over here and live a life of tropical languor as my squeeze?’
Kelly laughs. ‘Languor, eh? By day two you’d have me in the back kitchen scrubbing dishes.’
‘You should think about it. So how can I help you, love?’
‘Maturiki Island again. The Nordlund family went up there for a holiday early September. Amber Nordlund was with them, but sometime around the middle of September she had an accident of some kind—they say she nearly drowned—and returned to Sydney on the fourteenth with her nurse, Karen Schaefer. At Sydney Airport Amber ran off while Schaefer was at the baggage carousel, and hasn’t been seen since. I’m interested in finding out what happened and any background, like who else was on Maturiki.’
She gives Brad the flight details listed in the investigators’ report and he promises to get on to it straight away. He seems to know everyone in Port Vila—reporters, police, government officials, market traders, travel agents—who all drop in to his bar.
Kelly hangs up and sits there, tapping her pen, itching with frustration.
16
Out of the window, across the street, early shoppers are trudging into the Trái Cây Ngon Ho’n Minimarket. Mr Công Thành is rattling up the shutter on his money transfer office. And the lights are going on in the Viê.n Tram My internet café.
The woman waits and watches. Most of the faces are familiar to her now.
At seven-thirty she gets to her feet and goes down the narrow stairs to the ground floor and makes her way through the fruit and vegetable shop. Mrs Ngô is serving a customer and gives a toothy smile and a cheerful ‘Xin chào, Scarlett!’ and carries on with her work.
Scarlett crosses the street and opens the door of the internet café. She says chào to young Carly Viện, who has been trying to put curls in her straight black hair. Curly Carly. She orders a coffee and a tomato and cheese roll for breakfast and goes to her usual computer at the back of the store. She taps away, and the message Welcome to Facebook comes up. She logs in and checks her messages. As usual, Clare and Helen have sent a report of their doings. Today the picture takes her breath away. At first she doesn’t recognise the bearded man holding Abigail. Then she does. The girls have sent a message: Harry has come back to help you, Jenny. Please please get in touch!!! XXX
Scarlett closes the page and wipes the tears from her eyes as Carly comes over with her coffee and roll.
17
Harry is eating toast in his kitchen when the unfamiliar tone of the Blackphone sounds. He takes it outside into the little courtyard.
‘Hi, Bob.’
‘Morning. Your two questions. One, nothing special about the broken window—no bloodstains, DNA or prints. Two, Palfreyman’s autopsy found no defensive wounds, only the single stab wound that killed him. How are you going?’
Harry hesitates, then decides to tell him about his visit to Horn.
Bob growls his disapproval. ‘What’s the old fox up to?’
‘I think they’re just desperate to get hold of Amber.’
‘Maybe so, but why involve you? They could be trying to set you up for something, Harry.’
It’s possible. He’s been set up before. ‘Like somebody’s done to Jenny?’
Bob gives a neutral grunt. ‘On the subject of Jenny, her card’s been used again.’
‘Really? Where this time?’
‘Still Darwin. It was used to book a ticket on a Greyhound bus south to Adelaide. By the time they found out, the bus was long gone and already passed through Alice Springs. They’ve alerted the South Australian police, who’ll be waiting in Adelaide, but she could get off along the way, at Coober Pedy or Port Augusta. Or maybe she got off before Alice, at Katherine, and went west to Broome, or at Tennant Creek and headed east to Queensland and the Pacific Coast. Lot of alternatives to check, and four different state forces to liaise with. Could keep them busy for a while.’
‘Right.’ Harry picks up the doubt in Bob’s voice. ‘You don’t buy it?’
‘You know Jenny better than anyone, Harry. She’s a bright girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘On the run, trying to hide. Would she be stupid enough to use her own credit card?’
‘No.’
‘You’d already worked that out?’
‘I had my doubts. Unless she was very short of cash.’
‘Quite, and that is a possibility. They’ve accessed her bank account and she did withdraw cash the morning after the murder, from a bank in Sydney, but there wasn’t a huge balance, just $800. That won’t get her very far. Still, Deb knows Jenny too, and she must be asking herself the same questions. Deb’s sharp, Harry. She’ll be thinking of all the possibilities. If somebody else is laying a false trail all over the bloody country, where the hell is Jenny?’
‘I have no idea, Bob. I really don’t know.’
‘Well, we’d better work it out before homicide do. Listen, we should meet up and talk this through. How about a drink tonight?’
‘Sure.’
‘Have you been back to Crucifixion Creek lately? It’s been completely flattened. They’re building a new development there, Phoenix Square. First stage has just opened, and they say it’s worth a look.’
Harry doesn’t welcome the idea of returning to that place. What does Bob want to do, chew over old times, old cases? But he agrees to meet him there that evening.
18
Harry walks briskly towards the city centre, and along the way buys a copy of the Times and makes a call on a public pay phone. When he reaches the twin spires of St Mary’s Cathedral he turns down into the parkland of the Domain and along the tree-lined avenue towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where people are sitting on the front steps waiting for it to open. He buys a coffee at the Pavilion kiosk and sits, reading the paper. The front page is dominated by the discovery of a new murder victim in Slater Park. Anothe
r young woman. The Times reporter Brendon Pyle reveals that she has a police record for soliciting and drug possession. He speculates that she may have been picked up at one of her usual haunts in Kings Cross and taken to Slater Park by the murderer. The park is now deserted, he reports, the art school closed down, the dog-walkers and picnickers gone. Panic is spreading through the surrounding suburbs. Shops and cafés are experiencing a forty per cent drop in trade.
The people on the steps are getting to their feet, passing beneath the banners hanging over the portico, and Harry finishes his coffee and makes his way across to join them. Inside he switches his old mobile off and puts it into the backpack, which he hands in at the cloakroom counter, keeping the Blackphone in his pocket. Then he turns and leaves, walking across the Domain and into the CBD. At a branch of his bank he checks the balance of an old joint savings account that he and Jenny opened when they married. He hasn’t used it in years. He gets a copy of recent transactions. There’s only one within the past five years, a cash withdrawal of $8130, leaving just $100 in the account. The timing is interesting: two months ago, soon after the Ash Island inquest finished. Jenny must have been making plans.
Harry catches a bus out to Glebe and walks along Glebe Point Road until he finds the address he’s looking for, an office above a Tibetan restaurant. From the street he can see the posters in the office windows above: Sustain Our Earth, Sustain Our Environment. He climbs a steep flight of stairs to a small office lined with filing cabinets and more posters. A young woman is fiddling with a photocopier. She straightens up. ‘Hi. Bloody machines. Can I help you?’
Harry says that he’s interested in Sustain. She explains that they are an environmental activist group, currently mounting campaigns in the coalfields of New South Wales and Queensland and in the old-growth forests of Tasmania. She offers him a sheaf of pamphlets.
‘I met a couple of people who told me about you,’ Harry says. ‘Amber Nordlund and her partner, Luke Santini. Do you know them?’
‘Umm…I know the names.’ She goes to a computer and types. ‘Oh, yes, I remember—they joined up last year, came to a couple of meetings. Only…doesn’t look as if they renewed their subscriptions this year. She was nice. I think he was a bit…’
‘Prickly?’
‘Yes!’ She laughs. ‘But she was okay.’
‘Yes. It was her really that I wanted to get in touch with again.’
‘Ah, I see. Well, we have an address here, Kramfors Homestead near Gloucester, north of Newcastle.’
‘Yes, but I believe she’s not there anymore.’
‘Really? Well, I’m afraid I can’t help. That’s all we have.’
‘How about other friends of theirs? Anyone I might try?’
‘Hang on.’
The girl consults the list of contacts on her phone, then calls a number. Harry listens to her half of the conversation, obviously leading nowhere. Eventually she rings off and gives him an apologetic shrug.
Harry says, ‘How about a list of your members? I could try contacting them.’
‘What?’ The girl’s manner abruptly changes. ‘I couldn’t possibly give you that. It’s confidential.’
‘But surely…’
‘You’re not from the police, are you? My God, you are, aren’t you?’
‘No, no. I just want to contact Amber.’
‘I think you’d better go.’
‘Couldn’t I give you a hand with the photocopier?’
‘Just get out!’
Harry raises his hands and leaves. When he gets outside he makes a call on the Blackphone, then makes his way back along Glebe Point Road towards the campus of Sydney University.
It’s nine months since he came here with Amber, and he follows the same route, across the quadrangle and into a maze of corridors and stairs to the door marked with the name of her uncle, the other Nordlund brother, Professor Bernard Nordlund, who opens the door as soon as he knocks.
‘Mr Belltree, come in, come in. Can I offer you a coffee?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
They sit, facing each other across a table piled with papers in the small book-lined room, and Bernard regards Harry with a vague, quizzical smile. ‘How interesting to hear from you again. How can I help you?’
‘I’m trying to get in touch with Amber, Professor Nordlund.’
‘Bernard, please. Ah, yes, we’re very concerned about Amber. No one’s heard from her for several weeks now. Why are you after her?’
‘My wife, Jenny, was in touch with her on social media until early September. Now she too is missing.’
‘But that’s terrible. Are the police aware of this? Could they be together?’
‘It’s possible. I’m anxious to find both of them and help them if I can. Has Nathaniel Horn spoken to you about this?’
‘Horn? The lawyer? No. He represents my brother Konrad’s side of the family, not mine. You’ve probably gathered from Amber that we’ve been a rather dysfunctional family since our parents died. For a time our older brother Martin—Amber’s father—held things together, ran the Nordlund companies in a fair and proper manner. But then he died tragically, twelve years ago. You may have heard about it.’
‘Flight VH-MDX,’ Harry says. ‘That Martin was piloting when it crashed in the forests around Cackleberry Mountain. Yes, I spoke to the local police sergeant who told me search parties still go out looking for it.’
‘I rather wish they wouldn’t. After all this time the remains of the plane and its two occupants will be completely swallowed up by vines and undergrowth, and it’s probably best they should be left in peace. But anyway, as I was saying, things fell apart after Martin died. I was never cut out to be a businessman, and Konrad quickly got his hands on all the family companies, and hasn’t looked back. As an economic historian I can only look on in wonder. He probably has much in common with that character up there…’ He points to a small portrait on the wall of a stern-looking moustached Victorian. ‘Sir Henry Pottinger, who negotiated the Treaty of Nanking and became the first governor of Hong Kong. The Chinese gentleman facing him in that other portrait tried to stand up to him. Lin Zexu, a favourite character of mine. A very able and intelligent man who stood against the tide of history, and was swept away, as I would be if I tried to stand up to Konrad.’
Harry says, ‘After we saw you last, Amber told me that Konrad raped her not long after her father died, and that her son Dylan is the result.’
Bernard sighs. ‘Ah, she told you about that, did she? Yes, she told me also, and I tried to persuade her to go with me to the police, but she refused. So no, Mr Horn works for Konrad, not me, and I’m not sure how I can help you. I haven’t heard from Amber for some months. You know she’s had great difficulties recovering from her injuries?’
‘Yes. I remember how much faith she put in you, Bernard, and I wondered if she might have spoken to you about friends and contacts she had.’
‘Oh…’ he strokes his rosy cheek, pondering, ‘no, no, I don’t think she did. Latterly we spoke more about family matters, her dispute with Konrad about the future of the Cackleberry Estate, that sort of thing.’
‘Yes. She was very passionate about environmental issues, wasn’t she? The impact of the coal industry? Did you meet her partner, Luke Santini?’
‘Yes, we had lunch together one day. I got the impression she was very taken with him, but I think she could see that I wasn’t much impressed. A bit flaky, I thought, that phoney American accent, and rather full of himself.’
‘Yes, you’ve got it.’
‘But of course he was killed at the time Amber was so badly hurt, wasn’t he? I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. All very tragic.’
‘He was involved in environmental protest groups—something in Australia called Sustain, and an American outfit called Burning Rage. Did she talk about that? I’d like to speak to the people she knew there.’
‘I see, yes. But I don’t think we discussed anything of that kind. Amber regarded me, qu
ite rightly, as irrevocably stuck in the past. I really know nothing at all about Burning Rage and so on.’ He frowns for a moment in thought. ‘But I might know someone who does. A young university colleague. His name is…what was it?’ He stares up at the ceiling, waiting for inspiration. ‘Ramsey, that’s it. Ramsey Awad, in the Department of Environmental something or other. He’s made a study of environmental protest movements. Got a large government grant recently. I was jealous. Shall I try him?’ He reaches for the phone on his desk, thumbs through a directory, finds a number and dials. There is a slightly awkward exchange as Bernard has to remind Awad who he is and where they met, then he explains what he wants, listens, nods his head and rings off.
‘A stroke of luck. Ramsey can see you now, Harry. I’ll show you the way.’
He gets to his feet and opens the office door, gives directions to Fisher Library. ‘Now, Harry, please let’s keep in touch. Let me know if you hear anything about Amber, will you?’
Harry finds Awad waiting for him in the library lobby. The young man leads him to a seat, checks his watch and says, ‘I’ve got a lecture in twenty minutes, but I’ll try to help.’ He has a soft American accent—Californian, Harry guesses. ‘I do know something of Burning Rage—I worked on them as a case study when I was at Caltech. So what’s your interest?’
‘I’m trying to trace someone who’s missing, name of Amber Nordlund. She was the girlfriend of a man called Luke Santini, who I believe had some connection with them.’
Slaughter Park Page 6
