Dead Heat

by Peter Cotton

  He looked at me, raising his eyebrows, and read on.

  ‘Calder is a single man,’ he said, scanning the lines of type with the aid of his index finger. ‘He’s close to his extended family and his few friends. He’s Aboriginal. His family is originally from the central desert somewhere. He gives generously to the needy in his community, though Vaughan says it’s a means to an end — that he’s bolstering his brand, and that he was even considering throwing money into a new political party.’

  ‘Calder’s a heavy hitter then.’

  ‘Yes and no. He’s rich, so he can influence certain events in particular ways. But from the bit of digging I’ve been able to do, he has detractors on both sides of the aisle. No one I spoke to had any particular gripes. They just didn’t seem to like the man. Oh, and he’s not well. One of Vaughan’s photographers caught him coming out of a chemo clinic a few months ago. The story hit his share price for six. Cancer’ll do that, I’m told.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. So, what about Phil Manassa?’

  ‘A senior in the Calder organisation, and a good friend of the man himself,’ said Rolfe, turning the sheet of paper over and back again. ‘And that’s all Vaughan had on him.’

  ‘And Ken Bynder?’

  ‘He didn’t have much on him, either, except that he worked for years as an electrician, mostly around Jervis Bay. He had a big contract on the airport road. Then he got cancer too and had to give it up. He’s retired now, I suppose. One final thing: Vaughan came up with some interesting connections between the three of them — Bynder, Manassa, and Calder. They were all apprentices at the Redfern railway workshops, all of them have family in the central desert, and Calder and Bynder are both sick, as I said.’

  ‘Seems every other person in this case is sick in some way or other. Makes you think, doesn’t it, Rolfey? About doctor’s advice? Anyway … this friend of yours, Vaughan. He’s good.’

  ‘He knows things worth knowing. Which prompts the question: if you’re asking about a prominent Aboriginal man in the bay area, and you’re investigating the death of a young Aboriginal woman in the same part of the world, do the two connect?’

  ‘There’s no connection. I’m just filling in details, so I’ll recognise a clue when I see it.’

  ‘Mmmm. Sounds like a quote from Crime Detection for Dumb Bums. A great book, I’m told. I wonder what they’d advise if another agency stole your investigation, then insisted on keeping you on the case, but treated you like a mushroom? Would it give any pointers do you think?’

  ‘Your imagination’s in overdrive, Rolfey,’ I said. ‘Or you’ve been talking to the wrong people.’

  ‘Point of interest,’ said Rolfe, undeterred, ‘you’ve visited all three Australian mainland territories in the three days you’ve been working this case. Must be some sort of record. And another interesting morsel: your guy, Harris, and the lovely Defence Minister had a major barney a couple of days ago. Jurisdictional issues I’m told. Foreign sided with Defence, so Harris lost, of course. Senior ministers sticking together, you might say — but it went beyond that. Defence and Foreign know something they’re not telling. Whatever it is, I have it on good authority that somehow it relates to the Stevens case.’

  ‘Defence is doing exactly as you’d expect,’ I said. ‘One of theirs is dead, they don’t know who did it or why, so they’ve circled the wagons till they find out. As for the AFP, a young woman has died, and her family and the community expect us to find out what happened to her, regardless of the sensitivities of the other parties involved.’

  ‘You call them sensitivities,’ said Rolfe. ‘What I detect is something closer to the jitters. Yes, defence is radically self-protective, but the resources it’s throwing at this thing? And the secrecy surrounding it? It has some very senior people talking. And, as a friend who values you deeply, I advise you to tread warily. The rumblings at the highest quarters indicate that your investigation goes to matters well beyond a couple of murders on the south coast, so the attendant dangers for anyone as intimately involved as you could be immense.’

  I woke at dawn with Rolfe’s warning echoing in my head, showered, had breakfast, and headed in to City Station. The only person in the equipment room directed me to a Seven-Fifty Nighthawk parked in a corner of the garage. A big canvas bag rested on the seat. In it was a full set of leathers and an integrated helmet with a phone and a police radio. The bike’s pannier bags held a range of stuff, including a first-aid kit and a set of emergency rations.

  I donned the leathers and pulled on the boots, tested the phone and radio, and checked the fuel and oil. Then I started the bike and rolled it out of the yard. I quickly cleared the empty city and made good time on the open road between Canberra and Queanbeyan. I barely saw another vehicle on the road to Bungendore, nor on the way to Braidwood. I cleared the Clyde Mountain, and was zig-zagging through the switchbacks on the other side when I got a call through the helmet. It was Cherry. He cut straight to the chase.

  ‘You better get here as quick as you can, sir,’ he said, sounding a bit breathless. ‘The lighthouse. Looks like they might’ve found something.’

  BLOOD OATH NEWS BLOG

  SATURDAY 3 DECEMBER, 7.00AM

  A government news outlet in Jakarta has confirmed that an unspecified number of Australians died forty-eight hours ago when Indonesian troops stormed the Jayapura occupation site. Tempo Media has also confirmed that ‘some’ Australians were seriously injured in what it called ‘the clearing operation’.

  According to Tempo, the injured Australians are being treated at ‘a number of Jayapura hospitals’, while ‘able-bodied’ Australians from the occupation site are being detained at the city police station. The report did not address the fate of any of the Papuan protestors, though, as QTV’s Jean Acheson reported, a sizeable number of them were killed when the Indonesians first fired on the site.

  Australian Prime Minister Lou Feeney will convene an emergency meeting of Federal Cabinet later this morning to consider high-level trade and diplomatic sanctions against Indonesia. This comes after Australian officials were again denied access to the Australians in Jayapura.

  About four hundred members of the ‘Friends of Jayapura’ last night attended a silent, candle-lit vigil outside the Indonesian embassy in Canberra. More people are expected to attend the vigil today, and I’ll be among them. Like the other one hundred and twenty-two Australians who were at the Jayapura occupation site when it was stormed, my friend and colleague Jean Acheson remains officially unaccounted for.

  10

  A couple of drones hovered high above a smallish crowd gathered in the morning sun at the turn-off to the Cape St George lighthouse. The hundred or so people, most of them in some sort of hat, included journos and camera crews, daytrippers from a tourist coach, and about thirty Steeple Bay locals, including a good number of kids. About twenty cops in full riot gear stood behind a mobile barrier blocking access to the lighthouse road. A dozen troop buses, three police transports, and various other vehicles, including the tourist coach, packed the verge on either side of the turn-off.

  The media people had taken up positions against the police barrier. Everyone else stood on Steeple Bay Road, where they chatted or just milled about. Crowds could always surprise you, but none of the people in this one looked threatening in any way, so I was curious as to why it’d attracted such stringent control measures. I also wondered how and where the navy had deployed all the sailors it’d evidently bussed into the location.

  Cherry had told the cop in charge that I was coming, and she was waiting for me when I pulled up. She checked my ID, then called four of her people over. They parted the crowd and moved a section of the barrier aside, and I eased my bike through the gap. I thanked the cop, and before heading off, my eyes roamed over the crowd and I spotted Father Radcliffe standing with some people from Steeple Bay.

  Despite what promised to be ano
ther scorcher, the priest was still in his cassock with the giant rosary beads and the trick crucifix. He recognised me, despite my helmet and sunglasses, and gave me a nod, and then held my gaze — locked onto me, really. And in that moment he projected such deep empathy, I instantly began to tremble, and my eyes misted up. Everyone knew about Jean’s situation, and most people were appropriately sympathetic, but implicit in the priest’s gaze was the promise that he’d follow through — with a shoulder, or an ear, or whatever I needed. I hadn’t been to mass in years, but had the circumstances been different, I’d have gone back through the barrier and had a chat with Radcliffe. As it was, I returned his nod, put the bike into gear, and headed off.

  The winding road narrowed and was soon hemmed in by dense scrub. I kept my speed down and worked to suppress the emotions that the contact with the priest had provoked. Then, out of nowhere, a series of disturbing images popped into my head. All of them depicted the worst sort of human cruelty, and all featured Jean in some terrible way. I tried to erase them, but each time I made one disappear, a new one took its place.

  With my heart racing, breathing rapidly, I eased down on the footbrake, moved to the side of the road, and slowed to a stop. I put both feet on the ground, steadied myself, and breathed slowly and deeply for a while. These attacks seemed to be getting more physical, and I feared they could soon become debilitating. I’d tried a number of techniques for dealing with them, including one that involved ‘changing the subject’. That’s what I opted to do now.

  I concentrated on the edge of the blacktop where it merged with the fine grey sand at the side of the road. I studied the scrub around me — thicker, but more stunted than it’d been back at the roadblock. I took in my first unimpeded view of The Steeple, the cluster of four dolomite pillars towering over the space directly in front of me.

  The middle pillar was about seventy metres high and seemed to hold the cluster together. The pillars on either side of it — each about sixty metres — gave the formation its steeple-like appearance. The fourth pillar rose about thirty-five metres. It emerged from the same rock as the others, but was a few degrees off perpendicular and looked delicate and somewhat unstable. The security fence that enclosed a wide area around the formation reinforced that suspicion.

  Having mostly restored my equilibrium, I wondered at the origin of this particular panic attack. The contact with Radcliffe? Probably, but maybe it was a build-up of lots of things, which had broken through all at once. I’d never know, so I shook my head, put the bike into gear, and moved off again.

  The road circled The Steeple, and the view below opened out onto a jagged line of cliffs and headlands, a wide strip of ocean beyond, and a massive blue sky arching over everything. Two sets of ruins were perched on a headland about a kilometre away. Even at a distance, I recognised the ruins of the Cape St George lighthouse from the images I’d seen on my phone. The other ruins consisted of a roofless shell of a house and a couple of derelict outbuildings — what was left of the old lighthouse keeper’s residence.

  A hundred metres down the snaking road in front of me, two sailors in camouflage gear stood behind a stationary truck. The back half of the truck was occupied by a big machine, which had the sailors’ full attention. As I rolled past, the closest sailor, a red-headed woman, turned and gave me such a fleeting glance that she’d refocused on the machine before I could raise my hand to give her a wave.

  As I rode on, my question about the deployment of the sailors who’d been bussed in was answered — small groups of them patrolled the distant scrub on either side of the road. On closer inspection, it seemed they’d formed two loose cordons to enclose a wide swathe of land that extended from the edge of the cliffs, went up either side of the lighthouse ruins and The Steeple, and probably stretched all the way back to Steeple Bay Road itself.

  Half-a-dozen drones buzzed through the scrub inside the cordon, presumably looking for anyone who might have penetrated the protected area. It was the military’s take on a physical lockdown, and they’d thrown the kitchen sink at it.

  At the bottom of the hill, the road flattened out and swung round in a wide arc to follow the line of the cliffs. As I neared the ruins, Cherry got out of one of the SUVs parked in front of the old residence and gestured for me to park behind him. I did, got off the bike, and removed my helmet and jacket.

  ‘They’ve got problems,’ he said, nodding at the truck with the machine on its back, inching down the hill towards us. ‘Extraneous vibrations was all they’d say. Let’s sit in the cool, and I’ll give you the drum.’

  Cherry got in behind the wheel of his idling SUV, and I slipped in beside him. He turned up the aircon, and while he flipped through his notebook, I studied the facade of the old residence. It was full of cracks, and most of its stone scrollwork lay in piles on the ground. But, despite its decrepitude, the structure retained a certain dignity, thanks to its broad frontage, its wide doorway, and the large rectangular holes that had once housed windows.

  As I studied the doorway, the long corridor that ran off it was suddenly lit up by a flickering glow. It quickly merged back into shadow, and I locked onto the spot where the glow had been, hoping for a repeat. Then Cherry interrupted.

  ‘I should’ve, ahh, said this already,’ he said, fumbling for words, ‘… but all the best with that Jayapura business, eh? I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said, in a gruff tone aimed at killing the subject.

  Cherry returned to his notebook, and we shared an awkward silence for a few seconds.

  ‘I talked to some of the brothers,’ he said, his eyes flicking at me and back to his notebook, ‘out on the road. They say there isn’t a tunnel or anything like it around here. I took them at their word. But then I thought, if they were telling the truth, why are so many of them still hanging around out there? Doesn’t make sense.

  ‘So, I called an old mate at the ANU. An earth scientist. He said he’d be surprised if there weren’t voids in these rocks. You might know this, but voids form when soft material is washed away from inside rock formations. My mate reckons the core sampling for this place shows plenty of soft seams right underneath us.’

  ‘I could’ve done with a science teacher like you at school,’ I said, grinning.

  ‘It’s why I became a cop,’ said Cherry, nodding as he looked up. ‘To be a forensic scientist. I didn’t end up doing it, obviously. Too many body parts, for me. But I still love the stuff. Science, that is. What I was going to say, though, was that if I’ve been able to establish the geologic nature of this place, then the military people out there would’ve done it as well.’

  ‘So, if we were betting people,’ I said, gesturing at the truck, now a hundred metres away, ‘we’d wager that that machine there will find a cave or a tunnel, right underneath us. So, how does it do it?’

  ‘Seismic detection,’ said Cherry, as if the answer were obvious. ‘It’s sonar basically. They put listening probes into the ground and explode little charges that send soundwaves out everywhere. The waves bounce when they hit solid rock and they show the voids as well. The techs got excited about an hour ago — that’s when I called you — but they’ve been quiet since then. And they don’t like talking. They’ve made that clear.’

  ‘Let’s see if they’ll talk to me,’ I said.

  I got out of the vehicle and walked along the cliff road and up the hill towards the slow-moving truck. As I closed in on it, I stepped to the side of the road. The driver flicked me a hostile look, then returned his gaze to a group of sailors arresting someone near the edge of the cliff. I pulled my eyes away from the arrest and waited for the truck to pass. Then I stepped back onto the road and followed it. The redhead walking behind the truck glanced at me and quickly turned back to her machine.

  ‘You can’t stay there,’ she said, without looking at me again.

  I didn’t respond, and the silence got t
o her pretty quickly. She tapped the side of the truck, and the vehicle stopped. She turned, and our eyes met.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Darren Glass from the Australian Federal Police,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know what progress you’ve made here.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from you, sir,’ said the tech, displaying her indignation. ‘I report to Lieutenant Commander Trainor. You can put your questions to her. Now, if you don’t mind.’

  She returned to her keyboard and dials, and I stepped away. Lieutenant Commander Trainor? Could she be the new Coombs? I skirted the truck and called McHenry’s office as I quickstepped down the hill. McHenry’s PA confirmed that Lieutenant Commander Zoey Trainor was indeed the Coombs replacement. She was surprised I knew the name, given that the notification had only just come through from the navy. I asked her to send me Trainor’s contact details and hung up. I was almost back with Cherry when my phone pinged with Trainor’s number. I called her immediately, and she picked up after a couple of rings.

  ‘Zoey Trainor,’ she said, giving her surname an upward inflection.

  ‘Lieutenant Commander Trainor,’ I said, ‘Darren Glass here. I was wondering when we might meet?’

  ‘I’m looking at you right now, Detective,’ she said, a smile in her voice. ‘Forty-five degrees to your left.’

  I turned, and there she was. Standing in the doorway of the old lighthouse keeper’s residence, a phone to her ear, checking me out through binoculars. I rang off and eyed Cherry, silently demanding an explanation.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said, mightily embarrassed. ‘She was here when I arrived about an hour ago. A senior officer of some sort. Name’s Trainor. She’s set herself up in the ruins. Sorry about that, boss.’

  I froze Cherry with a stare. He’d let me stumble into a surprise, which had advantaged the ‘other side’. I turned and walked towards Trainor. She was attractive, in her mid-thirties, with short dark hair, parted in the middle. She wore dark-blue trousers and a dark-blue sweater over a white blouse. None of her clothing displayed any military insignia.