Dead Heat

by Peter Cotton

  ‘Nice working with you, gentlemen,’ he said, sad-eyed despite the smile that lifted the edges of his mouth.

  He turned to Coombs and farewelled her with a simple ‘Ma’am.’ His lips barely moved as he said the word. He swung around and headed off down the corridor, and I dropped my eyes to the floor as I dealt with this bewildering decision.

  My first instinct was to blame Coombs, but I checked that impulse, knowing the order to exclude Cherry would’ve come from higher up the food chain. So, what was their objection to a local Aboriginal cop attending the interview of a man from his own community? Maybe they didn’t like Coombs being outnumbered by AFP coppers. Or maybe they thought Cherry’s uniform would send Bynder into his shell. Or maybe Cherry had a negative history with some of the senior people at Creswell and it’d come back to bite him.

  Whatever the reason, the navy was in charge of the case, and they could manage it how they pleased, so I kept my mouth shut. Coombs broke me from my thoughts with a ‘Let’s go’, and Smeaton and I followed her back to reception and outside to her car. I got in the back of the vehicle and Smeaton settled into the front seat beside her.

  Once we’d cleared the car park, I focused on the road ahead and started to think through what we had. That didn’t take long. Essentially, our focus was on three people, all known to each other. One was dead. The other two were missing. Jade Rawlins had gone off on jaunts before, but the timing of this one was too coincidental, given that she’d dropped out of sight within hours of Kylie Stevens’s death. As for John Sheridan, he’d remain a mystery to us until the navy decided otherwise.

  Coombs’s phone beeped with a text, just as mine buzzed with one from Chu. Chu’s message said, ‘Meeting with Commander Ian Peterson, Creswell, 2030 hours. Smeaton re-assigned. To return to Canberra on AFP chopper. Chopper departs Murrays Beach in twenty minutes. Let me know if rendezvous not possible. McHenry to call at 1900 hours. IT still searching for the Stevens and Rawlins phones.’

  Smeaton re-assigned? What a farce! I’d not only been given a shadow who had full authority over me, I’d been stripped of a copper with good local knowledge and contacts, and now I’d been de-partnered without consultation. I leant forward and gave Smeaton the news. The back of his neck reddened as his anger rose. I attempted to calm him. You’ve got to pick your fights, I told him. It was a pain in the arse, I said, and it’d slow things down, but there was no point fighting it. Bloody idiots, was all he said.

  Despite the tension in the vehicle, Coombs stared straight ahead as she drove, her face in neutral, her shoulders loose and seemingly relaxed. I appreciated her apparent detachment. I’d have to become more like her if I were going to stay focused. That meant accepting the hand I’d been dealt and completing the task I’d been given. No point arcing up. If it got to where I couldn’t abide the compromises imposed on me, I could cash in my chips and go home. Until then, I had a homicide to investigate.

  I stared out at the road again and went back to what we’d accumulated: Jade and Kylie had fought. Kylie had left the house at Steeple Bay immediately after the fight. Jade’s mobile had been used to lure Sheridan to Murrays Beach. He’d gone to the beach expecting to meet Jade, but had found Kylie there instead. Kylie had been murdered during, or shortly after, her assignation with Sheridan. Jade had disappeared, as had the navy boy. Had Sheridan and Jade engineered their own disappearances after somehow being involved in Kylie’s death? It was certainly possible, because while the Jade in the photograph didn’t look capable of the cruelty that’d been inflicted on her housemate, I’d learnt long ago that anyone was capable of anything if an extreme situation went bad.

  Coombs slowed as we approached the roadworks. A different young lollipop guy was on duty and he waved us on. We passed through the cutting, crossed the causeway, and were soon driving into the giant car park that serviced Murrays Beach. A helicopter waited at the far end of the blacktop, its crew at the ready beside it. Coombs pulled up twenty metres from the aircraft. She stared straight ahead as Smeaton turned in his seat and shook my hand. He got out of the vehicle without a word to Coombs and I waited till he was halfway to the chopper before I got out and took his place in the front seat. As I watched him walk under the stationary blades of the chopper, I was tempted to follow him. I was working to suppress that impulse when Coombs’s phone beeped with another text. She read it and lowered the phone to her lap.

  ‘We’ve found Kylie Stevens’s phone,’ she said, looking puzzled. ‘About a kilometre from here. Down the bottom of an inaccessible cliff. The weird thing is, the thing’s still intact and pinging.’

  QTV INTERNATIONAL

  WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER, 1.30PM AEST

  The Indonesian Army has told non-protestors to leave the Jayapura occupation site within three hours or we’ll be treated in the same way as the protestors when the troops move in to clear this place. At last count, fifteen Australian non-protestors remained on site, including four doctors, six nurses, and five journalists.

  For the past two days, military vehicles have poured into the streets around the occupation site. Then, about three hours ago, the surrounding streets became eerily quiet. The only sound, now, comes from a large group of protestors who have gathered in the centre of the site to sing the songs that have carried their message to the world.

  According to an East Timorese historian I spoke to last night, some senior members of the Indonesian military are itching to do in Jayapura what their great-grandfathers failed to do in Dili: disable an independence movement with a dramatic show of force.

  An Australian protestor told me earlier today that she hopes the Indonesian military storms the barricades here sooner rather than later. If they’re going to crush us, she said, it’s better they do it now while the world is watching.

  This is Jean Acheson for QTV International in Jayapura.

  3

  ‘It’s just below the ruins of the Cape St George lighthouse,’ said Coombs, slipping the vehicle into drive. ‘We’ve scrambled choppers to retrieve it. They’re due there within the hour.’

  This was very good news, though it raised an obvious question — given that Kylie Stevens’s phone was still intact, how had it ended up at the bottom of an inaccessible cliff? We’d find the answer to that one eventually, no doubt. For now, I was more excited at the prospect of getting my hands on the phone. It might contain evidence vital to the case. At the very least, it could give us a sense of Kylie’s final hours.

  ‘So, we’re going straight there then?’ I asked, my anger over Smeaton’s exclusion from the case fading fast. ‘To the ruins?’

  ‘No. We’re to proceed to Steeple Bay, conduct our interviews, and await further orders.’

  What? We were sticking with the interviews? If McHenry had been running this show, he’d have ordered us straight to the ruins, to oversee the recovery of the phone and take in the lie of the land. But McHenry wasn’t in charge, the navy was. And having waived my chance to pull the pin, I was theirs to deploy as they saw fit. I had to resign myself to that fact, and not let it get to me every time these people did something ill-advised or stupid.

  Coombs turned on to Jervis Bay Road and planted her foot on the accelerator, and I took out my phone and brought up an image of Cape St George Lighthouse. It turned out to be a collapsed tower surrounded by a pile of rubble, about thirty metres from the cliff’s edge. The shell of an old house stood near the ruins. I assumed it’d once been the lighthouse keeper’s residence.

  Next, I brought up an aerial shot taken from well out over the ocean. It showed the water in the foreground, the lighthouse ruins and residence near the edge of the cliff, and a cluster of giant dolomite pillars on the higher ground behind them. Included in this shot was a wide ledge that separated the bottom of the cliffs from the ocean. If that was where Kylie Stevens’s phone had ended up, on that ledge, then how had it got down there? Thrown from the cliff above? That wasn’t poss
ible as it wouldn’t have survived the fall. Had someone brought it in there by boat?

  That question prompted another one: given that the AFP already had a chopper in the vicinity — the one taking Smeaton back to Canberra — why was the navy bringing its own choppers in to retrieve the phone? The answer seemed obvious. They were keen to minimise outside involvement in the investigation. But why? Was it Kylie’s murder or Sheridan and Jade’s disappearance that they wanted to keep under wraps? And if they were so concerned about secrecy, why had they kept me on the case? Maybe I’d get an answer to that when I met this Commander Peterson at Creswell.

  We turned left onto Steeple Bay Road, and the corner of the air base fence came into view from behind a wall of scrub on our right. Three metres high and topped with razor wire, the fence shadowed Jervis Bay Road in one direction and Steeple Bay Road in the other. Large signs had been banged into the ground at regular intervals along both fence lines. All the signs bore the same message: the fence was the perimeter of the Creswell air base, the air base was navy property, and trespassing on navy property was a felony under the National Security Act.

  If the warning signs and the razor wire didn’t do the job, there were small black boxes on top of every second fence post. I assumed these were movement sensors that would alert security if the fence were disturbed in any way.

  Two extra-long, intersecting runways — a north–south and an east–west — filled most of the ground on the other side of the fence. Both runways looked capable of servicing very big aircraft. A little further on, we passed three giant hangars where maintenance crews in various-coloured overalls milled about.

  The main gate was guarded by six sailors in full combat gear. They stood behind a line of extra-fat bollards as they watched us pass. We followed the fence line for a few more kilometres; the east–west corner of the base whizzed by and scrub soon filled both sides of the road again.

  A kilometre beyond the base, we passed a dirt road on our left that wound out towards the cliff, with a signpost for Cape St George Lighthouse and The Steeple. I assumed The Steeple was the name given to the four dolomite pillars I’d just seen pictured on my phone, and which now loomed over the scrub in the near distance. I couldn’t see or hear a chopper in the vicinity, so the effort to retrieve Kylie’s phone hadn’t yet begun.

  The road sloped gently upwards, and at the top of the rise the view opened out onto a light sky and a dark ocean, separated by a line of purple clouds on the horizon.

  Thirty or more houses and as many makeshift structures filled the rocky ground that ran down to a beach and a small bay, where a dozen fishing boats were lined up at an old timber jetty. The houses were mostly timber and tile, and of a similar size and design — the products of a housing commission cookie cutter from decades ago. The few newer places stood out, with their pink-brick facades and their dark roof tiles. There were no fences, and the only bitumen was the road we were on, which ran down to the foot of the jetty.

  Coombs slowed as we approached a group of kids playing cricket on the sloping ground at the side of the road. A group of men outside the Steeple Bay General Store turned stony eyes on us as we passed by. Half-a-dozen women in front of one of the houses broke from their conversation when they saw us coming. One of them said something, and they all cracked up laughing.

  With fifteen minutes to kill before the Bynder interview, we continued down the hill towards the jetty. A line of old fencing had been all but swallowed by the blackberry thickets that filled both sides of the road. At the bottom of the hill, the road tripled in width to become a small car park that filled all the flat space in front of the jetty. The fishermen had long since finished for the day, so the car park was empty. The only sign of life was an elderly black kelpie that lay in the shade of the jetty steps.

  As we rolled towards the jetty, the dog stood up, threw back its head, and let out a throaty howl that trailed off into a whine. It dropped its head and steadied itself for a moment. Then it limped towards us, as we rolled slowly towards it. The animal’s coat was a patchwork of scars — even its hackles had bits missing. But, despite its poor condition, its bold intent was clear. It was going to stop us getting anywhere near the jetty, even if that meant being run over.

  We were about five metres from the dog when Coombs hit the brakes. The dog stopped as well and raised its head and sniffed the air. Coombs cursed under her breath, and, as if in response, the dog snarled to reveal blackened teeth.

  Coombs answered with a growl of her own, but she slotted the vehicle into reverse and hit the accelerator as she swung the steering wheel hard to the right. The vehicle slewed around till we were facing the way we’d come. Coombs slammed it into drive and we powered across the empty car park and back up the hill. The dog’s final howl hit such a triumphant note I couldn’t help but chuckle out loud.

  Ken Bynder sat at a table on his front verandah, in the shade of a tattered canvas awning. He stood and faced us as we climbed the steps to join him. When we shook hands, he made eye contact, but he said his name with a sigh, as though he found the whole introduction thing a bit tedious. He waved at some plastic chairs stacked up against the wall and resumed his seat.

  Bynder remained focused on his cigarettes and lighter as we sat down opposite him. The dark bags under his eyes offset the jowls that hung from his neck. He was a bad colour. Vaguely orange. I guessed his age at anywhere between forty and fifty-five. He lifted his eyes and looked at both of us in turn.

  ‘You know who did it yet?’ he said, his tone as deep as it was challenging.

  ‘No,’ I said, taking a small notebook and a pen from my pocket. ‘We’re following leads, piecing things together — which is why I’m glad we could meet, Mr Bynder. First, though, I know you’re sick, so if you need to stop this interview at any time, just tell me and we’ll resume tomorrow. Though waiting might devalue anything you could give us here and now.’

  ‘Just get on with it,’ said Bynder, pushing his cigarettes and lighter to the centre of the table. ‘Whaddyah wanna know?’

  ‘First up,’ I said, my eyes on my notebook, ‘where were you between five PM last night and five AM this morning?’

  ‘Here at home,’ he said, sliding his chair back away from the table a bit. ‘I was here all night.’

  ‘Did you hear the girls fighting? Jade and Kylie? In Jade’s room?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard it. But I couldn’t tell you what was said. You live in places like this — thin walls, no walls — you learn to give yourself privacy. Usually with music. Yah know what I mean? Pump it up? Well, that’s what Jade did. She turned up the volume. I heard one of them scream “lie” a couple of times. And maybe one of them said “fuck”. But I couldn’t be sure. And that’s it. So not much, really.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ asked Coombs, in a nervy intervention. ‘You didn’t hear a name? Or a place? Even a colour? Whatever you can tell us could be helpful.’

  ‘Like I said, lady, I didn’t hear anything other than the word “lie”, and maybe “fuck”.’

  Despite being so obviously worn out by illness, Bynder exuded confidence in abundance. It was a strange thing to see. Either he had amazing control of his emotions, or they were buried deep, or he had no sense of his situation. I needed to know which.

  ‘How did they get on?’ I asked. ‘The girls?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, nodding to underline his assertion. ‘They worked the same jobs — collecting fees at the park, and on the counter at JB store. They were the same age. Same interests. And they were sisters, of course. Black sisters.’

  ‘Did they fight much, or have arguments like the one last night?’

  ‘No. That was a first, as far as I know. And a bit of a surprise, too.’

  ‘Did they have the same friends? Did they hang out together? Or were they more like housemates?’

  ‘More like housemates. Jade and Daisy are close, like you’d expect with
a mother and daughter. Kylie tended to do her own thing.’

  ‘Do you know anyone who might’ve wanted to harm Kylie?’ I asked. ‘Or can you imagine a circumstance that might’ve ended with her losing her life like this?’

  He reached for his cigarettes and stared at the rotting lungs on the packaging.

  ‘You askin’ me, did she have enemies?’ he said, a sad smile twisting his features. ‘She was twenty-two for Godsakes, and she was a good girl, so it’s hard to see her having the sort of enemy who’d do that to her. Was she in the wrong place at the wrong time? I don’t know. Did she offend someone in some dumb way? I’ve got no idea.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked, deciding to push him a bit, ‘No idea at all?’

  ‘The kid got into trouble, and it did her in. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You brought Kylie into this house,’ said Coombs. ‘How did that happen, and why?’

  ‘She was fightin’ with her mum, so I agreed to her coming down here. To let things cool down between them. And she ended up staying, which was fine with me. I liked having her around. She was a good kid.’

  ‘Kylie drove your car to Murrays Beach last night,’ I said, leaning in towards him. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Anyone who wants to can use my car,’ he said, unfussed by the question. ‘I keep the keys on a hook in the kitchen for that very reason. Though I didn’t know it was her who had it last night.’

  ‘You’re saying Kylie was free to drive your car any time she wanted?’

  ‘And she did. Anyone could, as I said.’

  ‘Including Jade?’

  ‘Yeah. Jade as well. It’s there for the taking, mate. Am I speaking a foreign language or something?’

  ‘Did you see Jade after her argument with Kylie?’

  ‘No, I went to bed after Kylie left, and I figured Jade was in for the night too.’