Feeding the Demons

by Gabrielle Lord

  Two of the casual security operators hired by Charles Perrault stood on duty at the cemetery’s main gates, their brief to keep the press away. The other three, among them the violently disposed Roger Poole, were to stay with the main group, expelling any uninvited or merely curious bystanders. Above her, another kestrel hung in a holding pattern. Her heart was racing with excitement. This was the biggest job of her life. Ahead of her she could see the Perraults, the husband with his arm around his weeping wife, Amy straight and tall beside them. She had insisted on coming to her sister’s funeral, despite her parents’ fears and the fact that the killer might well turn up.

  Gemma hardly recognised Noel in his dark suit standing back a little from the group of mourners, his hands neatly tucked together in front of him. He looked, she thought, like a rather dignified undertaker. And Spinner looked a treat as well in a dark pinstripe, standing up on one of the higher points of the rise in which the Perraults had their plot. The gravedigger had only made a small hole; Bianca’s ashes were joining the bones of her maternal grandparents, both dead in the ’eighties. Angie watched Jason, who gave her the briefest nod in the direction of a moustached man in mirrored sunglasses. In the group of fifty or so people who stood around Angie moved towards Gemma and whispered in her ear, simply looking like one mourner murmuring words of comfort to another. ‘That’s Poole over there. The one with the moustache.’

  Roger Poole looked like an advertisement from Soldier of Fortune. He was kitted out in quasi-police style, complete with police belt with accoutrements dangling from it. Gemma bowed her head and put her own sunglasses on, the better to study him, as if wishing to hide eyes inflamed with grief. Heavy moustache and mirror sunglasses hid most of his face.

  A couple of spits of rain made parts of her field of vision spotty and gulls circled and screamed overhead. Angie returned to stand beside her. ‘I’ve checked with Mr Perrault,’ she said. ‘There’s no one here who isn’t family or friend. Except for the hired hands.’

  ‘But he could still be watching.’ Gemma thought of her automatic zoom binos and how they could see into people’s houses, cars and backyards from a distance. ‘He could be in a parked vehicle up there.’ She indicated the high ground to the south of the cemetery where several cars were parked.

  ‘We’ve checked them all. They’re empty.’

  ‘Could be set up in a building.’

  ‘Maybe he’s here,’ said Angie, indicating the heavy figure in the mirrored sunglasses. Gemma took a few leisurely steps as if to hear the priest’s words better, so that she was standing just behind the sharp little figure of Spinner in the pinstripe suit. ‘We return her to you, heavenly Father,’ the priest was saying. ‘We leave her in your safekeeping until we meet again.’ The sound of Mrs Perrault’s weeping was heartrending and Gemma felt her own eyes fill. This crazy world, she thought. Did you make it like this, God? Are you some sort of idiot? A benevolent six-year-old could have organised things better. Or are we absolutely on our own, and making our own hell as well?

  Soon it was over. Gemma watched while Mr Perrault gave the casual security people their envelopes. Amy stood close beside him. Mr Perrault turned to where Angie was standing and slowly shook his head. Amy hadn’t been able to identify them from their voices.

  Gemma turned to Spinner. ‘I’m going to follow the guy with the mo. Wait here and see if anyone turns up later.’

  ‘I’ll sit up there,’ said Spinner, indicating the road, ‘and watch the grave.’ He turned to leave.

  As the funeral group started moving away, Gemma watched. The man in the mirrored sunglasses and moustache went to the grave as if to pay his respects. She felt Angie bump her in the side.

  ‘Look at that,’ she whispered. ‘Must have read his profile.’ He almost knelt at the grave of the murdered girl, leaned over, and snapped a souvenir rosebud from a wreath.

  Gemma held her breath. Angie was right. This sort of souveniring was straight out of the FBI textbooks. The two women waited, seemingly chatting, until their target walked past them, pocketing the rosebud, then they followed him up the hill towards the main cemetery gate. As the two women approached the entrance, one of the other security officers was still standing there, a sentinel at the grand Victorian wrought-iron gates.

  ‘Sad business, ma’am,’ he said to Angie, wiping a raindrop from his face. ‘I recall your name from the newspaper story.’ Gemma barely glanced at him, worried that she’d lose Roger Poole.

  Angie acknowledged him briefly with a nod and he moved away a little to wait for the main body of mourners to make it up the rise. Gemma looked around for Roger Poole. He was getting into a four-wheel-drive monster, high up off the ground.

  ‘No white Toyota,’ said Gemma.

  ‘He could have sold it. Stay on him,’ Angie said. ‘We want him to take us home with him. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance on this character.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on him, too,’ Gemma volunteered.

  Angie didn’t speak, but her gratitude showed in her smile as she squeezed her friend’s arm.

  •

  Gemma followed Roger Poole to his neat little one-storeyed terrace in Petersham. She parked across the road a good way back on the opposite side. Poole got out and swaggered into his house.

  The late afternoon traffic was quite heavy even on this suburban street. Cautiously, she made her way to the house next door to Poole’s. A young woman with a baby in her arms answered her knock.

  ‘Hi,’ said Gemma, wishing Spinner was doing this. ‘The bloke who lives next door,’ she said in a bright voice. ‘That’s not Roger Poole, is it? I went to school with him!’

  ‘I think that’s his name,’ said the young woman with her lightly accented voice.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ Gemma continued, ‘but I just knocked on his door and he wasn’t in.’

  The young woman frowned. ‘I’m sure I just heard his car pull up. Maybe you should try again.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Gemma said, turning away. ‘I had a big crush on him when we were kids. He was my first boyfriend.’

  They chatted for a while, but Gemma didn’t get much more information except that he had a dog who kept the street awake some nights and that he worked as a security guard. She went back to her car and leaned back in the seat. In her rear vision mirror, she could see two detectives whose faces were vaguely familiar from the Strike Force meetings, sitting in an old Sigma sedan some distance behind her. She realised how tired she was. I think I’ll leave it to the wallopers for a while, she thought, switching the ignition on.

  •

  On the drive home, Gemma felt tired and sad. Missing Steve, missing Taxi, suspecting that Richard Cross was just a handsome distraction. She ran a bath and was just about to get into it when her phone rang. Wrapping the towel around herself, she answered it.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping we can get together again.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said, and the sadness eased a little.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at seven.’

  She realised her heart was beating as she lay back in her bath, soaking. She examined her legs and decided they needed shaving. It felt good to have another date with a desirable man. She went over their conversation and lovemaking of the other night and remembered that she’d done most of the talking. She vowed to be more silent tomorrow. To let him speak of himself so that she could start filling in the picture of this successful, self-made man. A man who doesn’t want to revisit the past like I do. The pressing needs of Angie’s current investigation had taken precedence over her father’s case. Her legs were silky smooth when she lay back again, just floating in the warm water. She recalled that other bath, and the slamming of the bathroom door at the
Tusculum Hotel; the beginning of this whole, dreadful sequence of events that she was now considering. The dead end they’d hit in the investigation. The fear that the killer would attack again wherever and whenever he wanted. And soon. She ran a bit more hot water. Many of her best ideas came up in the bath, she recalled, as she lay back again. She revised the investigation so far. Nothing seemed to lead anywhere. The phone number the ESDA machine had highlighted was the only real lead they’d had and it had fizzled out. But there it was.

  Even though the number had appeared under the letter written by brave Amy Perrault, the Mintners were adamant that no one else knew it. It just didn’t make sense. She felt a surge of energy and decided to drive out and visit the Mintners again. She’d found in her policing days that people sometimes remember details after they’ve been questioned and the subject matter brought to their attention once more. And the Mintners’ phone number was written on a shopping list in a house where Amy Perrault had almost died. They had to be connected somehow.

  Mrs Mintner was tending her roses in the front garden when Gemma arrived and graciously ushered her inside for a cuppa. No, she said, they’d racked their brains since the policewoman’s visit and there was no one who had that number. ‘People sometimes take a number down wrongly, you know,’ said her husband, putting down his tea cup. ‘I’ve done that a couple of times myself.’

  Gemma suddenly had an inspiration. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is who we’re looking for. A man. We don’t know who he is but we know quite a few things about him already.’ The Mintners looked from one to the other. ‘This man is aged between twenty-five and thirty-five,’ said Gemma. ‘He’s a bit of a loner. He’s had quite a few different jobs over the years, but he seems to find it hard to settle to anything. He doesn’t seem to have much luck with women. He’s outwardly shy and polite, and probably overweight or unattractive in some way. Maybe acne scars. He has difficulty with people. He’s withdrawn, he isolates himself. He could well be above average intelligence but you’d never know that because he doesn’t seem to have the necessary skills to get along with other people. He probably has a fascination for weapons, he might even have a gun or knife collection, or both. He moves around a bit. Maybe boards in rooming houses. He does odd jobs. He might have had a job once as a guard or with some form of security work. Just lately, he’ll be very edgy and nervous. Might be drinking heavily. Might be talking about the cases of the two young women, especially about the one called Bianca. Going on about it to anyone who’ll listen.’

  Mr and Mrs Mintner looked at each other, then at Gemma. ‘That’d be Larry,’ said Mrs Mintner.

  ‘Yes, that certainly sounds like Larry,’ her husband agreed.

  ‘Larry?’ said Gemma, sitting straight up as an icy surge of excitement thrilled her. ‘Who’s he? Larry who?’ Her pen was poised over her notepad.

  ‘Oh Larry—’ Mr Mintner looked at his wife for help. ‘This is stupid of me. I just can’t recall his other name. Heavens, we’ve known him a few years now. On and off. He does the odd bit of gardening or gives Eileen a hand sometimes with moving furniture around.’

  ‘But how did you contact him? Did you have a phone number?’

  Mr Mintner shook his head. ‘No. He’d just pop up out of the blue and knock on the door. Eileen would make a date and he’d come back.’ His wife interrupted. ‘Jeremy was in hospital last week and I stayed over with him. Larry did some work out there in the garden. You can see where he’s done quite a good job clearing some of that grevillea. When we got home I made him a cup of tea and he was talking about that poor girl who was killed. Saying he wondered if the police would ever catch the man. He talked a lot about her. Gave me the willies.’ The Mintners looked at each other.

  ‘What else did he say?’ said Gemma.

  ‘He said a man like that must be pretty smart.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he lives?’ asked Gemma, very interested now.

  Mr Mintner looked troubled. ‘I think he’s been staying out at a caravan park along Colo way.’

  ‘Who else has he worked for? Is there anyone who might know how to contact him?’

  The old couple looked at each other. ‘I don’t know, really,’ said Mrs Mintner. ‘I’m sorry we can’t be more helpful. We keep to ourselves and don’t get about all that much these days.’

  Gemma stood up. She wanted to be out of there, to tell Angie. ‘Thank you very much. This has been very helpful. You’ll be hearing from Angie McDonald again.’

  ‘We’ll do anything we can to help,’ said the woman. ‘I just wish I could remember his last name.’ Then the expression on her face changed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, slapping a hand to her mouth.

  ‘What?’ said Gemma, alerted by the change.

  ‘I remember now. I did give him the mobile telephone number. Just in case he wanted to check about anything in the garden. When I was away at the hospital. He wrote it down on a notepad.’

  Snap, thought Gemma. There it is, the connection. Larry Someone was looking very much like a person of interest to the police. She felt elated. She thanked the Mintners and almost ran out of the house.

  •

  On the freeway from Parramatta she rang Angie, who wasn’t at her desk. ‘Just stepped out for a minute,’ said a voice Gemma didn’t know.

  ‘When she steps back in,’ said Gemma, ‘give her this message.’ She passed on the first name the Mintners had given her. ‘Tell her the Mintners at Kellyville—she’ll know what I’m talking about—gave their mobile number to an odd jobs man called Larry.’

  ‘I’ll let her know.’

  By the time she got to the police centre, after battling through peak hour traffic, Angie had also just got in and was reading the message slips on her desk. She looked up as Gemma walked into her office.

  ‘What else?’ Angie’s green eyes were wide. ‘We’ve got a Larry,’ she said, eyes wide with excitement, ‘among the men who contacted Mr Perrault. Bruno said he was clean.’ The two women looked at each other. Then Angie pulled out the folder in which she kept all her details. ‘Here they are. Larry Hagen,’ she said. ‘Let’s have another look at him.’

  She typed his name into her screen while Gemma looked over her friend’s shoulder. ‘Got him. DOB 12.11.63,’ Angie said. ‘He lives in the right area,’ she added, noting his Kingsford address. She scrolled further down. ‘Contact here is his uncle. At Liverpool.’

  ‘There’s the Liverpool connection,’ said Gemma.

  ‘He could have met Adrian Adams at some Botany blood house,’ said Angie. ‘Or they might have done time together.’ She looked at the screen again. ‘Let’s see what he’s done.’ The two women looked in silence at Larry Hagen’s record. Grievous bodily harm, sexual assault. Gaol terms for violent attacks on women. ‘In 1983 he abducted an ex-girlfriend from her flat and assaulted her.’

  Angie looked up from reading. She studied the police photograph on the screen, looking closely. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘he’s the one who spoke to me at the funeral! Said he recognised me from the newspaper.’ She swung around on her chair. ‘That shot was deliberately out of focus. He couldn’t have recognised me from the photo.’ She looked up at Gemma. ‘How the hell did bloody Bruno miss this? Where is the bastard? I’ll kill him for this.’ She noted the address, grabbed her coat and hurried out of the office. Gemma followed. ‘We had him,’ she was saying as she ran to her car in the underground parking area. ‘We could have picked him up at the funeral.’

  In the car, she radioed the two police officers who were sitting off Roger Poole’s place. ‘Meet me at the corner of Victoria and Botany streets, Kingsford,’ she told them. ‘I’ve got a suspect I want to talk to. I may need some extra help. Tell Colin to meet us there.’ She dropped Gemma off beside her car in Riley Street, and Gemma settled down behind her, following.

  Colin and Jason were already parked some distance fro
m the corner and Angie grabbed the street directory and jumped out of her car to talk to them. She was only gone a few minutes.

  ‘They’re going to go round the back. There’s a lane behind Hagen’s place. We don’t want him hopping over the back fence.’

  In another few minutes, Angie pulled up discreetly down the street from 113, a small nineteenth-century worker’s terrace, one of many in the street. The two women walked towards the house.

  Gemma could feel a tightness around her throat and chest. Remember to breathe, Kit used to tell her. She inhaled deeply and let Angie open the iron gate. The narrow front yard had been cemented, and half a cement seahorse stood forlornly with morning glory vines trailing from it.

  Angie knocked. Then knocked again. It was clear there was no one home. No lights, no sounds from inside. No white Toyota parked on the street.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘We leave someone here watching. We put his description out everywhere. We get everyone alerted. I’ll get a warrant for this place. I’ll search it from top to bottom.’

  Gemma stood at the front door, trying to get a feel for the place, for the man who lived there but wasn’t in. But she felt nothing. The blinds were down in the tightly shut windows. There was nothing on the tiny tiled verandah, no pot plant, nothing to reveal anything of the character of the man who lived there. She shivered. This was the one they’d been hunting all this time. We mightn’t’ve known his name, she thought, but we knew more about his character than we wanted to.

  ‘You better go home,’ Angie was saying.

  Gemma didn’t move.

  ‘I promise I’ll let you know the minute anything happens,’ Angie said.

  Gemma drove home. As she turned the corner prior to drawing up beside the kerb she thought she saw Taxi sitting by the top gate, but the surge of relief was quickly followed by disappointment when she realised it was only a large paper bag of rubbish. She felt restless. So near and yet so far, she was thinking. It had to be Larry Hagen. He had the form, the violent background, the criminal know-how. And there was no other explanation for that phone number being on the notepad. She wondered about the shopping list disclosed by the ESTA machine. Tape? Ropes? A knife? Cornflakes? Kit had often reminded her that murderers, even the most violent, did the ordinary things as well. She rang her sister but all she got was the answering machine. She tried sitting down with her calculator and a pen to work out her finances for the next six months, but it was too dispiriting when she looked at the figures and her body was jumping to do something physical. She checked that the kestrel had enough water and thought that he might have eaten a little of the mince she’d put in for him.