Murder with the Lot

by Sue Williams

  My mind whirled. Why was Ernie’s gun cabinet key lying on the sand at Perry Lake? What was in the gun cabinet? I bet Monaghan didn’t know anything about it. This must be it, the convincing evidence for Dean’s reinstatement. Did I still have the key? I rootled through my handbag.

  In my hand I held the key.

  For your actual everyday criminal, Dean would surely guard the toilet door, listening for incriminating smashing sounds, ready to fly in with his handcuffs. No need for his demented mother though. He was busy on the phone again.

  ‘If I can just explain, Superintendent Bartlett…’ he said, as I closed the toilet door.

  The window was surprisingly easy to open, just a little flick, but not so easy to wriggle through. I pushed and struggled in that window frame, kicking like a kangaroo. Wedged in tight around my middle, my arms outside the window, handbag dangling, my breath was squeezed into tiny gasps.

  A dual-cab ute pulled up on the verge. It had a row of spotlights across the top, Australian flag fluttering above. Vern got out and shut the door.

  I tried reversing back through the toilet window. But the window frame just bit deeper into my stomach. I hung there, holding my breath, as silent as a heart murmur.

  ‘Hah. What you bloody up to?’ Vern let out a hooting laugh.

  ‘Vern,’ I gasped. ‘Look, I’m real sorry about your notebook.’ I had an idea. ‘You couldn’t help me out this window, could you?’ I blinked in his direction, as best I could. It wasn’t a top-notch flirting situation. ‘I should mention though, I think my dress has all ripped away.’ I tried what I hoped sounded like a seductive schoolgirl giggle.

  Vern lunged forward and grabbed me. He yanked so hard on my arm that it felt possible I’d end up a one-armed person myself.

  Finally I fell out onto the ground, slipping out into the world like a new-born calf, my dress reasonably intact.

  Vern looked disappointed.

  ‘Listen,’ I brushed myself down. ‘You’re in terrible danger.’ I gave him a few quick words re the notebook-ripping situation. ‘There’s clearly more to this than Monaghan realises. The murderer will be after you next, he’ll know you notice things.’

  Vern’s face turned grey.

  ‘We need to head to Ernie’s shack. Take a look inside his gun cabinet. There’s likely important evidence in there.’ I held up the key.

  Shaking his head, Vern jumped back in his ute. ‘Nah. I’m not into getting killed. We’re leaving. We’ll head down south and change our names. Start up somewhere new. Hop in. Quick.’ He started the ute and put it in gear with the special lever on his steering wheel.

  I clambered in. ‘But he could murder half of Rusty Bore. You’d feel terrible deserting everyone.’

  Vern gave me a look that suggested he could tolerate the guilt.

  ‘And Brad’s disappeared.’ I rustled up some tears, it wasn’t hard. ‘He’s got a burnt arm.’ My burnt Bradley would represent easy pickings for your single-minded murderer. ‘Please. I’d be terribly grateful.’ I sniffed.

  ‘Grateful.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Well, we can’t stay there long. Anyway, saw Brad driving towards Perry Lake last night.’ He pulled the ute out from the kerb. ‘Out on my hammock I was, taking the air. Watching this couple of flies. The male, he was going for it…’ I interrupted. ‘Why was Brad going to Perry Lake?’

  Vern shrugged. ‘Had a fella with him.’ He kept driving, watching the road.

  ‘What fella? He’s in trouble, I knew it.’ My voice rose.

  Vern glanced at me. ‘Trouble? Nah. Brad’s a sensible young bloke. Bright sort of fella. Held back by his family, poor kid. Birdwatching, be my bet. It’s relaxing for the lad.’

  Brad had said, I’ll show you. That didn’t sound like someone planning to wind down with a spot of bird watching. I picked my nails.

  Locusts mashed against the windscreen, the bonnet and roof. A row of pulped green corpses on the wipers, spotted wings fluttering in the wind.

  ‘Appreciate your help, Vern.’

  ‘Any time.’ A fine-tuning tweak to his groin. ‘Thing is, you can’t go round nicking people’s personal property. There are bloody boundaries.’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’ I paused. ‘What was in that notebook, anyway?’

  ‘Huh. Don’t pretend you didn’t read it.’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t get a chance. I fell asleep, next I knew I was in hospital. Everything got burnt.’ A white lie wouldn’t hurt, would help protect Vern’s dignity.

  He darted me a look. ‘You telling me the truth?’

  ‘Of course.’ I folded my arms. ‘And there was probably something vital in that notebook. You see everything.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Anything stand out? Anything unusual lately?’

  ‘Everything’s unusual, when you observe things closely.’

  ‘You see Donald?’

  ‘Nope. Well, only that time he came poking around your place with the girl in tow, like I said.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There was that Terry Monaghan. He’s been around a bit. You seeing him or something?’

  I flushed. ‘Yeah. No. Not really. Bastard.’

  ‘Why’d you give him that briefcase then?’

  My nail-picking fingers stopped, snap-fossilised. ‘What?’

  ‘Saw him waltzing out of your place with a briefcase.’ He paused significantly. ‘A briefcase he didn’t go in there with.’

  Terry had nicked the briefcase? From under my nose? And Brad’s. Why? For that Monaghan, I’d bet. Aiming to steal the credit from poor Dean. Good thing there was nothing in that case. Served them bloody right.

  We arrived at Ernie’s shack, the cars still parked outside, Mona’s silver Mercedes, Clarence’s black Lexus. And now there was another one at the back, a yellow-green Datsun 180B with a faded Ten things you can do to save the planet sticker on the back window.

  My heart did a little skip. Brad was here! He wasn’t dying on some rain-slicked city street.

  I flung the ute door open and hurtled across the sand to the shack.

  ‘Brad,’ I croaked, opening the front door, peering into the dim. I had a lot of things to say when he appeared, starting with the apologies. ‘Brad?’

  Silence.

  Marching down the murky hallway, crunching over broken plaster, I peered into every room. Still a mess of torn-up clothes and cases in the bedrooms. No sign of Brad. Still a jumble of knocked-over chairs and smashed-up plates in the kitchen. And those bullet holes in the wall hadn’t gone anywhere. ‘Brad?’

  I stepped outside. ‘Bradleeeey.’

  Silence.

  Steeling myself, I looked inside Ernie’s shed. Empty. Nothing in the bath, no suspect mounds under suspect tarps. I rapped on the door of Ernie’s outside loo, opened it. A wooden bracelet, sculpted into waves, lay on the floor. I picked it up and slipped it in my bag.

  Brad’s car was unlocked. I peered inside, keys in the ignition, binoculars on the seat. Closing the door, I saw big scuff marks in the sand beside the car.

  ‘Brad?’

  Just the wind sighing through the pepper trees. On the cracked earth beside the toilet, a wattlebird snapped down on a locust.

  Vern and I marched all through the bush around Ernie’s shack, searching, calling, searching. Nothing. We headed along the track to Perry Lake, crunching over the sand. I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. Miles of pink–white sand, lapping mauve–brown water, scrappy trees. No sign of Brad. The wind was light, the sky a pale friendly blue, not the kind of day you expect to lose your son.

  ‘Now don’t go worrying yourself.’ Vern laid his hand on my arm. ‘He’ll have just nicked out to do a bit of birdwatching and forgot to mention it. You know how engrossed he gets.’

  ‘Without his binoculars?’

  Vern paused. ‘Yeah. Experts like young Brad don’t need binoculars. They know a bird just by the way it hops, flicks its eyelash.’ He was working hard to convince himself.
<
br />   ‘Do birds even have eyelashes?’ I said.

  Vern shrugged.

  I needed Brad here to clarify.

  We headed back to Ernie’s shack. Bradley would be all right, of course he would. I stared up at the sky. My legs started shaking, like they had nothing to do with me.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Vern. ‘You need a little sit down.’

  Back inside the shack, my phone rang.

  ‘Jesus, Mum, I leave you for five bloody minutes and you nick off. Where are you?’ Dean.

  ‘I’m worried about Brad. His car’s here at Ernie’s place but there’s no sign of him. He’s missing. I need you to swing into action. Officially.’

  ‘Do I have to tie you down? Vern’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘Vern’s with me. Good suggestion of yours that we reconcile. We’ve sorted it all out. But we need to find Bradley. He’s in trouble, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, put Vern on. If he’s really there.’

  ‘Of course he’s here. Listen, Dean, you need to hurtle into a missing person’s whatsit. Right away.’

  ‘Mum. Monaghan is on my back. Not to mention Superintendent Bartlett. They’re all on about misuse of police resources. Brad’s just sulking, I tell you. He’ll turn up.’

  ‘You’d rather I call Monaghan, register Brad as missing with him?’

  Dean sighed. ‘All right, if I look for Brad, will you promise to come back? Right away?’

  ‘Of course.’ We’d need to rootle in Ernie’s gun cabinet first, whatever was in there could help locate Brad. No need to mention that.

  ‘You’ll phone me as soon as you find him?’ I said. ‘Call me in half an hour?’

  ‘Mum, missing persons investigations aren’t solved in thirty bloody minutes. It takes time. Bank records, for example…’

  ‘What have bank records got to do with it? You need to get out there and look for Brad. Properly. Helicopters. Tracker dogs. No point wasting time down at the bank.’

  ‘I’m not running around with helicopters, looking into all your stupid fantasies.’

  ‘Brad isn’t a fantasy, he’s family. And Mona wasn’t a fantasy either. She turned out to be dead, didn’t she? Won’t the Homicide taskforce be arriving any minute? They’ll be very concerned about a missing person at a time like this.’

  Silence.

  ‘You get out there and find him.’ My voice was shaking. ‘He’s your little brother, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You come back here right now.’ Dean’s voice was a hiss.

  ‘You listen to me…’ My face was hot.

  Vern grabbed the phone. ‘Dean. Vern.’ He listened for a while.

  I tried to breathe. Would Dean go out and look for Brad at all? Even open his stupid station door?

  ‘Yep, well, I might withdraw the complaint about your mother,’ said Vern. More listening. ‘I could consider phoning Superintendent Bartlett.’ A pause. ‘You’ll direct the taskforce to my shop? Currently the only shop in Rusty Bore. They’ll need a bite to eat.’ Vern glanced at me.

  If I wasn’t so worried, I’d have been gutted about the timing of that taskforce and their hearty bloody appetites.

  ‘We could be a while, your mother and me. Everything’s fine, no need to worry. She’s in good form. Terrific. We’ve got a lot of important retail-efficiency arrangements to go over. Probably be away a night or two. Madison’ll run the shop for me. She can handle a taskforce. You will tell them to go to my place?’

  He handed me the phone. Dean had hung up.

  ‘All fine,’ said Vern.

  ‘I liked the bit about the retail arrangements, Vern. Very creative.’

  He gave me a sideways look. ‘Yep. We’ll talk about those. In good time. Maybe tonight, when you’re more relaxed. You’re a bit too tense at the moment.’ He put his hand on my leg, then inched the hand up my thigh, smiling.

  My stomach moved uneasily. ‘Just remember, I’m deeply vulnerable at the minute. I have a missing son.’ I grabbed his hand and put it firmly on the table.

  I tried Brad’s phone. The call just went to his answerphone again. A tear slipped out.

  ‘There, there.’ Vern patted my arm.

  I watched his hand carefully.

  ‘Normal to be worried. But Dean’ll find him. Now, you’d better tell me exactly what’s been going on.’

  I blew my nose. ‘There’s a whole heap that’s unresolved.’ I ticked the heap off my fingers. ‘Why Clarence came here in the first place. Why Mona was killed. Who ripped out the pages of your notebook.’

  Vern tensed. Oops. I moved on swiftly. ‘Who burned my shop down. How Donald’s bird smuggling fits in. What’s in the gun cabinet.’ I surged out of my chair before Vern had a chance to get started on his notebook. ‘Come on. The gun cabinet. Could even be money in there, Vern.’

  His eyes narrowed, a money type of narrow.

  The gun cabinet was a grey steel affair attached to the wall. I fiddled with the key, trying to open it. Finally, the door creaked open.

  No wads of banknotes, no huge manuscript. No guns either, since Ernie had declared them all years ago under one of those early amnesties.

  I reached into the back of the cabinet. There was a tiny something. I took it out and held it up. A computer memory stick.

  ‘That all?’ Vern bustled in, started rootling through. In case I’d missed something, I suppose. I didn’t like being checked up on like that, but in a way, it was a relief to have someone else to do this with. I’d had enough of being alone, waiting in the dark to be murdered.

  Of course, Vern found nothing. Any person knows how to check a gun cabinet.

  Vern brought in green tea in tiny cups. I took a sip. Bloody disgusting. ‘Very exotic,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, got into green tea in Sarawak,’ said Vern. ‘I needed to get away from the authorities for a while. Terrific swamps in Sarawak. Nothing better than drinking green tea looking out over a decent bloody swamp. Nothing. Mostly buggered now, of course. Palm oil plantations.’ He stared into the distance.

  Maybe Sarawak was where he’d lost the arm. Maybe a motorbike mishap in a swamp. Possibly involving a young Malaysian beauty, a tragic story, that’d be why he never talked about it. Poor old Vern. I took another sip of green tea. If I turned off the normal-tea expectations, it wasn’t too bad.

  I’d never been inside Vern’s house in the daylight. It was a whole lot cleaner than I’d expected, with an array of Chinese cabinets in deep red wood. Flinging one open, he revealed a computer with an enormous screen. Vern probably needed that big screen for the full impact of all his porn. I wondered if Vern knew about Piero’s philandering.

  ‘Vern? You knew Piero pretty well, didn’t you?’

  Vern glanced at me. He switched on the computer and slipped in the memory stick, did some busy clicking.

  ‘He tell you stuff?’ I said.

  ‘What type of stuff?’

  ‘Personal stuff.’ I sipped my tea.

  ‘I’m not one to pry into people’s personal lives, you know that.’

  ‘But you see things. You’re observant.’

  He hunched forward, peering at the computer screen.

  ‘Piero had another woman, Vern.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And a whole other family.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You don’t seem real surprised.’

  ‘Like I said, people aren’t always exactly what they seem.’

  ‘Where is she? This other woman.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go there, Cass Tuplin. There’s no happiness for you down that path. Seriously. I know how this story goes.’

  I moved in my chair. ‘Well, maybe not happiness. But I’ve got a right to know.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you need to.’

  ‘Of course I bloody do. Jesus, Vern. My bastard bloody husband bloody had another woman. And I’ve been mourning the bastard every minute of every day for almost two years. Christ. If my house hadn’t burnt down, I’d slice up his damn photo a
nd fry it.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you all knew. How long?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘And you said nothing?’

  ‘Didn’t want to hurt you, Cass.’

  ‘Well, who the hell am I supposed to be angry with? A dead husband? The whole town? Myself?’

  ‘Reckon you could take your pick. I tend to go for myself, personally.’

  A pause.

  ‘Did something like this happen to you? In those swamps?’

  He shrugged. ‘Had a few things happen. Now, look at this,’ he pointed at the computer screen. ‘There’s an Excel file called Pocket Money. Clarence’s book, you reckon? Strange bloody title. Strange sort of program to write it in as well.’

  I peered at the screen. Lots of columns. Rows of numbers. It looked like something from my BAS return. ‘Some type of accounting record.’

  He leaned closer. ‘Look at those names down the left hand side. Dodgy crowd. Logan Mathieson,’ he stabbed a thick finger at the screen, ‘Shane Yend, Gabbo Ford. All got drug connections, that little lot.’

  ‘Why would this file be locked inside Ernie’s cabinet? And the key left lying on the sand?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe a swaggie had it.’

  ‘A swaggie with a memory stick wrapped in his swag? Which he put for some unknown reason into Ernie’s cabinet? Then dropped the key near Mona’s body?’ I put down my cup. ‘You reckon?’

  Vern turned red.

  ‘More likely Clarence nicked this file from Grantley and locked it in the cabinet.’

  ‘Maybe Grantley’s got some kind of racket,’ said Vern, slowly. ‘But Muddy Soak’s been crime free since…’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ If I heard that one more time.

  ‘It’s an impressive record, Cass. That Sarge Monaghan’s had a few awards.’

  I wasn’t interested in discussing Monaghan’s awards. ‘Reckon we need another visit to Grantley’s place.’

  He nodded; a rare event, someone agreeing with me.

  ‘We’ll take Ernie. He’ll enjoy it.’ Ernie would be essential, I was sure of it. Anyway, no more of the friendless routine. I’d take anyone I could get.

  ‘Plus,’ Vern’s voice was low, ‘Ernie’s not bad behind a gun.’