Slaughter Park

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Early days.’

  ‘No, I mean literally, they haven’t got a clue—no forensics.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘No fingerprints, no footprints, no DNA, no traces at all. Even the dogs couldn’t sense him. I tell you, there’s another ghost, a real scary one too.’ Bob sits back with a smug smile. ‘Bloody frustrating for my successor, Dick Blake. He’s a tech man, our Dick. Digital Dick. Three women dead and his flashy gear can’t tell him a damn thing. He’s put Deb in charge of Strike Force Spider now. I wish her luck.’

  The bottle arrives and Bob pours. ‘So, are we going after Zuckermann?’

  Harry thinks. ‘If he turns out to be Sol Fleischer you’ll have no choice but to arrest him, and then he may clam up. Let me take a look around first.’

  ‘It’s your game, Harry.’

  22

  It’s almost ten when Harry reaches Nicole’s house. She greets him with a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘The girls are asleep. Wasn’t sure if you were eating with us. Made enough for you. I can warm it up.’ She sounds mellow, her words slightly slurred.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I should have made that clear. I just want a bed, to keep an eye on Abigail.’

  ‘Okay. Drink?’

  They sit in the lounge room overlooking the valley, and Harry realises that he’s in Greg’s favourite armchair. He doesn’t tell Nicole that he’s been to Crucifixion Creek in case it brings back bad memories of how her husband died.

  ‘God, these murders, Harry, aren’t they shocking? I actually went to the Slater Park Art School for two years until I decided to change to graphic design. I loved it there. I can’t bear to think of those girls, those students, what he did to them. Have you heard anything—about Jenny, I mean?’

  ‘Nothing new. Tell me, did she ask you for money before she went away?’

  ‘Yes, she said she was short of cash, and I gave her a thousand dollars.’

  ‘Ah. I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She stares out into the darkness, sighs. ‘Those poor girls…’ Then, dropping her voice, ‘Do you think Jenny’s dead, Harry? Tell me truthfully.’

  ‘No,’ he lies. ‘The police are confident she’s alive.’

  She seems inclined to keep drinking, but Harry says he’s tired and she rouses herself to take him to the room where Abigail is asleep.

  ‘I keep the night-light on,’ she whispers. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

  He looks down at the strange little sleeping face. ‘Yes. Yes, she is.’

  ‘That bed is pretty small for you. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to sleep in one of the other rooms? There is a baby monitor.’

  ‘No, this is fine. If you could just tell me what I need to know.’

  ‘Well, she’s still in nappies, and has a bit of nappy rash, but I try to avoid changing her at night because it interrupts her sleep, unless she gets really uncomfortable.’ She takes him through the baby gear, the change table and mat, the nappy wipes, the spare teats of the right size, the toy Abigail likes. ‘I’m getting her off a bottle at night now, and she’s pretty good, but if you need to give her a little feed the bottles are in the fridge next door, and this is the thermostatic bottle warmer. You know how to test the milk temperature? No?’ She laughs. ‘This is all alien territory to you, isn’t it, Harry? You look like you’re training on some new weapons course. You’ll soon get the hang.’

  ‘Yeah. So if she cries I warm up a bottle and stick it in her mouth.’

  ‘No, you pick her up and cradle her in your left arm and put the bottle to her mouth tilting it up so the teat is full and she doesn’t just suck air. When she’s had enough you burp her.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  The lesson comes to an end and Nicole leaves him to take a shower and go to bed, but only after he’s gone around the house checking doors and windows. When he lies down he feels tired and worn, acutely conscious of the fragile little thing lying in the cot next to him.

  The fragile little thing wakes him an hour later, with an alarming grunting sound that quickly develops into a whimper. Harry leaps out of the narrow bed and picks her up, holding her awkwardly to his chest and rocking her. But this seems to make things worse and soon Abigail’s whimper has turned into a howl. Nicole hurries in and takes the baby, who gradually calms down. ‘Colic probably,’ Nicole says, ‘and an unfamiliar person. Poor thing has had to get used to so many changes.’

  She hands the baby back to Harry. ‘Just relax. She’s not a hand grenade. Let her feel you’re confident. Let her get to know you.’

  By dawn Harry and his daughter have come to know each other quite well. Neither have had much sleep. Nicole comes into the nursery with a mug of tea.

  ‘I heard some of it,’ she says, ‘but thought I’d leave you to it. Immersion training. You look buggered.’

  ‘Yeah, she won on points.’

  She takes Abigail from him and immediately the baby falls into a deep sleep.

  ‘She just needs to get used to you, Harry.’

  The rest of the household comes awake—Helen, Nicole’s younger daughter, excited because today is her tenth birthday. The breakfast table is piled with cards and presents. Harry, half-asleep, is mortified because he’s forgotten; Jenny always took care of that.

  They sit around the table, the girls shrieking over the surprise presents, the wonderful cards. Then Helen says, ‘Who’s Scarlett?’ She shows the card to her mother, who shakes her head. ‘Súng Vàng? No idea.’

  Harry says, ‘Can I have a look?’

  It’s a standard commercial birthday card with an image of balloons and candles. Inside, in careful, childlike printing, the message reads: Many happy returns, Helen! With heaps of love from your friends Scarlett and Súng Vàng, XXX

  Harry is suddenly very awake. Scarlett…it was the name that Jenny had wished for herself as a girl. At the time of Ash Island, when she needed to hide, she suggested that name as an alias. Gone with the Wind.

  Nicole notices Harry’s expression and says to Helen, ‘Weren’t they your friends at primary? Anyway, what did Gran send you?’

  While Helen unwraps the largest parcel, Harry slips away to the computer in the little office space Nicole uses on the floor above. Although the words Súng Vàng sound Vietnamese, they don’t appear to be people’s names. They translate as Golden Gun. He runs them through Google and finds an entry in a business directory for a restaurant called Súng Vàng in the inner west suburb of Marrickville.

  23

  Something’s going on over there, on the far side of the office floor. Brendon Pyle’s desk—there’s a cluster of people around it, cries of ‘Oh my God!’, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

  Kelly gets to her feet and joins a stream of others heading for the sensation, whatever it is. The news works its way through the crowd. The Slaughter Park killer has sent a message to Brendon. A confession.

  They part for Brendon, who emerges holding a sheet of paper and an envelope by the tips of his fingers and makes his way to the nearest photocopy machine. ‘Kelly!’ He’s energised, eyes bright, ten years younger. ‘Come and look at this!’

  The others return to their workstations, chattering among themselves, while Kelly goes to his side, watches him copying the two things, front and back, several copies, together with a coil of blonde hair which he tips out of the envelope.

  ‘Have you been following the reaction after the third killing?’ he gloats. ‘It’s been on CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC. And they’re all calling it Slaughter Park! Now with this…’ He hands her a copy of the letter. ‘I tell you, this is going to be Jack the Ripper on steroids.’

  The letter was left overnight outside the front door of the Times offices, marked For the personal attention of Brendon Pyle. It has been typed on what appears to be an old typewriter, with some letters barely visible.

  My dear Sir,

  You have been so good as to write about my experiments so long delayed. Much time has passed but I am now ret
urned to complete the scientific marvel I so long anticipated. Miss Florian was so good as to assist me in my latest attempt but alas without success. Many more trials will be necessary but I shall prevail.

  Your humble servant,

  Cador Penberthy

  ‘Wow,’ Kelly says, but she’s thinking, this is crap.

  Catherine Meiklejohn is hurrying towards them. ‘Brendon? Is this true?’

  ‘Absolutely, Catherine.’

  ‘You’ve called the police?’

  ‘Sure. Dicky Blake, head of homicide, on his personal mobile. He’s on his way.’

  Brendon, Kelly thinks, calm down.

  ‘Aren’t you…’ the senior editor is looking at the jumble of documents and hair on the photocopier, ‘…contaminating the evidence?’

  ‘No, no. I’m being careful, Catherine. I know what I’m doing. But we need a record, right? For tomorrow’s front page.’

  He begins to gather everything together as someone shouts, ‘The police have arrived downstairs. They’re coming up.’

  Meiklejohn tells him to take his trophies to a meeting room and she goes to meet the officers. Kelly watches them arrive, a tall man and a woman she recognises from Crucifixion Creek—Deb Velasco, looking tired and a lot less confident than last year.

  Kelly sits at her desk and types in Cador Penberthy. It doesn’t take long to find him: a Cornish tin miner who emigrated to Australia in 1886. In 1892 he was charged with the murder of a woman whom he had decapitated. Police found him watching the body because, he explained, he wanted to see if she would be able to find her head again. To help her, he had tied a pink ribbon to her hair and laid it out within reach of her outstretched hand. Instead of hanging, Penberthy was committed to the recently opened Slater Park Hospital for the Insane, now the Slater Park Art School. He died in the influenza epidemic of 1919.

  24

  This length of Illawarra Road is filled with Vietnamese businesses—hair salons, butchers, pharmacies. They all have bright, colourful signs and shopfronts, all except the Súng Vàng Restaurant, which sits, darkened and unwelcoming, beneath the offices of Huynh, Trinh and McPherson, Solicitors. Harry can see two figures inside sitting at a table. He goes in.

  They scowl at him suspiciously, two Vietnamese tough guys—black leather jackets, jeans, scars. ‘We’re closed.’

  ‘Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping to find Scarlett here.’

  ‘You a cop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You look like a cop.’

  ‘No, I’m her friend. She sent me a message.’

  One of the men gets to his feet and walks to the front door and locks it. The other waves Harry to the back counter where there’s light from the kitchen. He pats Harry down, examines the name on his drivers licence, takes out a phone and photographs his face.

  The man says something in Vietnamese to the other, disappears into the kitchen. They wait, Harry and the man at the front door, standing there silently for ten minutes. Then the other man reappears, waves to Harry. ‘Come.’

  They go through the kitchen to the back door. A laneway leads along the rear of the shops, and they weave around bins, a builders’ skip, a delivery van, then turn down a gap between shops to emerge onto the main street. They cross, and the guide leads Harry into a fruit and vegetable store where a small elderly Vietnamese woman in an apron scrutinises him carefully.

  ‘You Harry?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Harry.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nods to the guide, who turns and leaves. ‘Follow me.’

  She pushes through the plastic strips in the doorway at the back and leads Harry into a dark lobby from which a stair rises to the next floor. As he makes for it, the woman growls after him, ‘You better look after her damn good, mister.’

  Another woman is waiting in a doorway on the dark landing at the top of the stairs—young, possibly Eurasian, straight black hair in a fringe, narrow glasses. She steps back into the room to let him in and closes the door behind him. There is no one else there and he turns as she removes the glasses and he recognises her. It is Jenny.

  25

  It’s so strange to see him. For three and a half years—forty-two long months—she had been blind. Then for a few brief turbulent days she had been able to see his face again, and then he was gone. Her eyes explore his features, retrieving him, and then he’s coming to her, calling her name, wrapping his arms around her, and for the first time in an age she lets go, gives a great sigh, and presses herself against him.

  They cling to each other for a long while. He whispers, ‘Jenny, Jenny, I thought I’d lost you.’

  She finds she can’t speak. They separate and she takes his hand and leads him to the small threadbare couch where they sit close together. Finally he says, ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘I figured, if I was going to stay in Sydney it was either this or the burka.’

  ‘You’ve planned it for a while, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, from the time of the inquest. When I heard Frank Capp’s sister threatening me and Abigail I realised how wrong I’d been to think that by banishing you I could keep her safe. Now look at me. I can’t protect her—just to be near her puts her life in danger. I’m petrified that they’ll go to Nicole’s house and take her.’

  Harry says, ‘I’m sleeping there nights, next to the cot, to be on the safe side.’

  ‘You’re staying with Nicole?’

  She feels a mixture of relief and alarm, remembering how Nicole had a habit of stealing her boyfriends when they were young. Harry nods, understanding what’s going through her head. ‘Don’t worry.’

  She manages a little smile. ‘Anyway, I decided to make a plan, just in case. I put some cash aside, found this room to let, and worked out how I could straighten and dye my hair and look Asian. I approached Mrs Ngô and told her that I had a violent husband. I had left him and fallen in love with another man called Harry, and together we’d had a child. Now my husband wanted to kill me. He was a policeman, a bad man with contacts and influence, and I was terrified. Mrs Ngô took pity on me. I paid her to hold the room for me until I was ready to come with my child. In the event, though, things happened so fast I couldn’t get Abigail, and then I decided she’d be safer without me, at least until things quietened down. You see, Harry, I really am in trouble, not just from Kylie McVea. The police think I murdered someone. They’re hunting for me.’

  ‘I know. They came to see Nicole and your mother the day after Palfreyman was killed.’

  ‘So you know about him?’

  ‘I know what the police are saying. Do you have a friend in Darwin?’

  ‘Yes, her name’s Nora. We were at university together. She married an engineer, went up to the Northern Territory. We kept in touch. She agreed to help me.’

  ‘They’re trying to track her. They’ve got pictures of her at the ATM and the bus station. She should get rid of the sunglasses and cap, the T-shirt.’

  ‘I’ll get a message to her.’

  ‘I’ll do it, if you give me her phone number. She’s got your credit card?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’ll have to destroy that as well. So, tell me about Terry Palfreyman.’

  ‘Oh, he just barged into my life. I was looking for Amber—Amber Nordlund.’ Jenny stares at the old dead fireplace in the wall in front of the couch, thinking how crazily, how impossibly, one thing has led to another.

  26

  Amber and I spent quite a lot of time together at the time of the inquest. We just seemed to hit it off. So much shared recent history—there was you, Harry, and both of us damaged by Ash Island. And we felt protective towards each other, me with the baby and Amber with that creepy Karen Schaefer, her nurse or chaperone or jailer, whatever she was, hovering in the background. There was a kind of helplessness about Amber, as if she couldn’t resist any longer what was happening to her, the doctors, the skin graft operations, the drugs, and the Nordlund family machine. So we became co-conspirators, texting, meet
ing secretly. At some stage she suggested that their family lawyer, Nathaniel Horn, might be able to help me with Kylie McVea. Horn had been Frank Capp’s lawyer, but the Nordlunds were his bread and butter and jam, she said, and she thought she could persuade him to warn Kylie off. Of course I was grateful. Right then, after Kylie’s vicious threats, I was more than grateful. Then Amber told me that the Nordlunds were taking her to this Pacific island they owned, to recuperate, and she’d see me again in Sydney in September. We made a date but when it came round and she never showed up I was worried. I did some work on the web and found she was on the board of Nordlund Resources, and they were having their annual shareholders’ meeting on the first of October, so I bought a share and went along. But she wasn’t there. Medical reasons, they said. Nathaniel Horn was at the meeting; he recognised me and came to speak to me and I mentioned Amber’s proposal about his help. He told me to come and see him. As I was leaving the meeting another shareholder who had spoken there caught up with me outside. He said he’d heard Horn refer to me as Mrs Belltree and said he had important information for me. My immediate impression of Terry Palfreyman was that he was mad and I should run a mile. I was right, of course, but then he said, ‘You know this is all about what happened to Judge Belltree on the twenty-sixth of June 2010, don’t you?’ and so I had to find out what he knew.

  He wooed me, Harry. I knew he was doing it, and I went along with it because I was convinced he knew something really big. He said he had evidence, documents, and I had to find out. And when I heard his life story I felt sorry for him. He’d worked with the Nordlunds, and when Konrad took over he treated Terry terribly—I was able to check some of it online, and by talking to lawyers I knew in litigation and tort, who’d heard of the case. Konrad Nordlund destroyed Terry, his marriage, his company, his resources. He left him a pauper, and when I checked and found this was true I felt a kind of admiration for poor old Terry, who was still somehow on his feet, punching, maybe only at shadows. And he said he had a dossier, the truth about the Nordlunds, and why your father had to die. How could I resist that?