Without a Doubt

by Fleur McDonald

  Dave clicked in his seatbelt and took a little while to answer. ‘Not so much,’ he said. ‘Couple of the blokes I worked with when I was out of the academy were older, so they’ve retired. Haven’t even heard where they are. Probably Margaret River or Denmark. Somewhere peaceful where cops go to retire!’

  Spencer nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about where I’m going to retire. Got to have a plan. I reckon Margs would be a good place.’

  ‘Margaret River …’ Dave grinned. ‘The amount of coppers I know have moved there, you wouldn’t think there’d be anything illegal happening, would you?’

  ‘Oh, there’s probably enough hippies for the drug trade to be viable.’

  They both laughed.

  Dave was silent and then he said, ‘I keep in contact with Shannon. Remember her from that last big case we worked? She was the pathologist who flew in from Perth.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, real pretty one.’

  ‘I dunno about that, but we talk on the phone a bit. It’s nice to talk to a woman who understands the job.’

  Spencer looked sideways at him but stayed silent.

  ‘What are we going to talk to Jeff about today?’ Dave asked, changing the subject, wishing he hadn’t said anything. ‘I know you want to check on his wellbeing.’

  ‘That’s what’s most important,’ Spencer said. ‘I’ve got the paperwork for him to sign, to say we’re confiscating his gun.’ He pointed over his shoulder to the back seat.

  ‘Righto. Doctors, counselling?’

  ‘Yeah, all of that. Let’s see if we can get him back on an even keel.’

  Strictly Agricultural had a few clients waiting at the merchandise counter when the two men walked in.

  Jeff saw them and nodded his acknowledgement, signalling with a spread palm at them before continuing to serve the client he was with.

  Five-minute wait.

  ‘Hi, Dave.’ Eliza appeared from an inner office. ‘We’re glad he’s back! I didn’t think we’d see you again.’

  ‘Eliza, this is my partner, Spencer. We’re tidying up the last loose ends. Looks busy this morning.’

  ‘It’s been crazy today. The races are on this weekend, so all the station owners have come in to town to do shopping, pick up their supplies, then have a weekend out on the town. The day before the races is always manic.’

  Jeff finished serving and walked towards them.

  ‘Do you want to borrow my office?’ Eliza asked. ‘I’ll cover Jeff on the desk until you’ve finished.’

  ‘Where’s Alan today?’

  ‘Out the back unloading the freight truck. That’s my office there.’ She pointed to the door she’d come out of. It had a mirrored window, so she could see who was coming and going and who needed serving, but could continue to work in peace if she wasn’t needed.

  Good idea, Dave thought.

  ‘Thanks, Eliza. Shall we?’ Dave held out his hand and ushered Jeff inside, with Spencer following.

  ‘How are you feeling today, mate?’ Spencer asked when they had all sat down.

  ‘Pretty dusty.’

  ‘Done over or hungover?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Done over. I didn’t have a drink last night. Don’t think that shit helps me.’

  Spencer nodded. ‘No answers at the bottom of a bottle.’ He leaned forward and pushed the envelope across the desk. ‘Now, Jeff, we’re going to have to confiscate the gun. I’ve run the serial number and it’s not registered and there’s no history of where it’s come from. At the end of the day, you don’t have a licence for it, so we’re going to have to take it.’

  Jeff nodded. ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘Can you tell us where you got it from?’ Dave asked.

  ‘I asked a bloke, who said he knew a bloke, who knew someone else. When it came time to deliver, I left money in the mailbox out the front of the house and the gun was put there. This was in Perth before we moved here.’

  ‘Right. Do you have a name?’

  ‘I didn’t know the guy. Met him in the pub one day and got talking.’

  ‘Right.’ Dave would’ve liked much more information than that, but he’d just seen Spencer give a slight shake of his head. It mattered, but not right now.

  ‘Can you sign to say you understand what we’ve just told you?’

  Jeff scanned the contents of the letter. Grabbing a pen from Eliza’s desk, he quickly scribbled his signature and held it out to Spencer. ‘That all?’ He jiggled his leg up and down and Dave could feel his need to escape.

  ‘Couple more things,’ Dave answered, feeling in his pocket. He drew out a card. ‘This is the contact details of a counselling service here in Barrabine. An excellent counsellor named Dan Granger works there. Part of the conditions of you going home is that you attend some sessions with him. Along with visiting your GP.’

  ‘Dan’s expecting your call,’ Spencer took over. ‘I spoke to him last night, so he understands what happened and a little of the situation. He mentioned he could offer sessions for couples if you’d like.’

  Jeff swallowed and curled his hands into fists. ‘I wish I didn’t feel like this,’ he muttered.

  ‘Hopefully Dan’ll be able to help you with that,’ Spencer said. ‘And, like Dave said, a trip to the GP to have a yarn won’t hurt either.’ He paused then bent down to look Jeff in the eye. ‘Mate, you gotta understand, there’s nothing wrong with the way you’re feeling. Those feelings are real and true because you,’ Spencer pointed as Jeff’s chest, ‘you’re feeling them. You just gotta work through them and there is no shame in any of that. Us coppers, we get counselling all the time. Plenty of blokes do. There’s nothing, nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about, you understand me?’ He continued, not letting Jeff answer. ‘Let me tell you a story.

  ‘When I was a young bloke and first moved out here to Barrabine, I found it real hard. I’d grown up in the city and had a bit of that “city smell” about me. All the other coppers here were country born and bred. They understood the way the town worked, the language—there’s a whole different language between the city and country—how the networks and what I call “spider webs” fit together. You know, who’s related to who and all those other connections.

  ‘Anyway, this one prick, Kinger was his last name, enjoyed pulling the piss out of me every single bloody day. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, and there wasn’t anyone to show me the ropes. I made a couple of fairly big stuff-ups and Kinger freaking crucified me for them. I was ready to chuck it all in.

  ‘Then a bloke called Justin turned up and he and I got tight. He helped me through, but not before I saw a counsellor to talk about what was happening and how the demands of the job were affecting me at home. Kathy, my wife, told me a few times I was being an arse, but I didn’t think I was.’ He sighed and rubbed his face. ‘Coming from a bloke who knows, there’s no embarrassment in having a yarn to someone. Okay?’

  Jeff had tears welling in the corner of his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he whispered.

  Spencer clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good lad.’ He looked across at Dave. ‘We better get out of here, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Dave answered. ‘How were Mary and the kids when you got home, Jeff?’

  Jeff gave a watery smile. ‘They were all real pleased to see me.’ A shaky breath and he continued. ‘I was pleased to see them too. She wanted to talk but I said it would have to wait.’

  ‘I reckon that’s half the battle. Onwards and upwards, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The men shook hands. ‘Make sure you ring us anytime you need,’ Spencer told him and, with goodbyes all round, they left the building.

  ‘Good outcome,’ Dave said.

  ‘Helping people,’ Spencer said. ‘That’s why I became a copper.’ He gave a satisfied smile and pulled out onto the road.

  Chapter 14

  After visiting the lonely site of the accident, the Major Crash Unit had compiled the brief on John Doe’s hit-and-run. When it had been sen
t to the coroner, Justin had received a copy too, since it had happened on his patch. The coroner had added his report and now it was all lying on the Senior Sergeant’s desk.

  Justin was re-reading it, because the autopsy report didn’t contain what he’d expected.

  ‘No visible signs of braking,’ he read out loud to himself. Putting the paper down, he picked up the next report. ‘I have concerns his hands had been tied together, behind his back, with cable ties. The lineal cuts on his wrist are consistent with this. I believe this is a murder.’

  Justin frowned. ‘Surely not out here,’ he murmured to himself. ‘He could’ve just walked out in front of a car.’

  Yeah, but the car didn’t stop, was his next thought. And why would he do that with his hands tied? Then the small thing which had been annoying him at the scene came to him. There wasn’t a hat. No self-respecting hitchhiker would be out there without a hat.

  ‘He wasn’t supposed to be there,’ he muttered to himself as he grabbed the scene photos and looked back through them. ‘The backpack was to put us off.’

  The coroner had identified Justin’s John Doe as William Clarke. Justin didn’t know the name, but it appeared Bill, as he preferred to be called, had been put up in front of the courts a few years before for a drink-driving incident—he’d lost his licence for eighteen months. Also his rap sheet of small misdemeanours had meant the police had taken photos of identifying features.

  Thank goodness because his body had been too badly decomposed to get fingerprints, but he had a tattoo of an eagle on his chest. The pathologist had been able to use that and dental records to make an ID.

  He picked up the phone and rang the pathologist who had performed the autopsy. Once he’d identified himself and the reason for the call, he asked, ‘These cable ties. How can you be sure that’s what happened to his wrists? Could he have been doing something while he was alive that accounted for the marks?’

  ‘I’m one hundred percent sure those linear cuts are caused by cable ties. I’ll tell you why. A couple of years ago I did an autopsy on a bikie member who’d been tortured. I think the rival gang was looking for information on some drug deals. The murder made the news, so you can research it later if you want. Here’s the thing. I saw the exact same cuts in that murder.’

  ‘Do you think we’re dealing with a bikie gang?’ Justin’s heart kicked up a notch at the thought of his sleepy town in the middle of Queensland being infiltrated by bikies.

  ‘Not necessarily. I guess there could be a link, but you and your detectives will have to be the ones who find that association. What I am saying is that the marks on William Clarke’s wrist are identical to the ones I found on this other body. I pulled the file to make sure. It took me ages to work out what had made them, so I remember it quite clearly.

  ‘Ropes will always leave some fibres you can trace back to the type of rope, as do most other things used to tie hands—ribbon, curtain cord—you know what I’m saying? Cable ties leave nothing because they’re plastic.’

  ‘How did you work it out?’

  ‘Deduction and a bit of luck. The detective working the case came in to watch the autopsy and, at the end of it, we were talking about other things as we usually do. He was telling me about the renos he’d been doing on his place and he was wanting to put up some shade cloth where the wind whipped through his verandah. He couldn’t work out how to secure it properly. My morgue supervisor suggested cable ties—they tie up really tight.

  ‘Didn’t think about it much until later. I’d been pondering over what could’ve caused the marks and I realised they were about the same width as the cable ties I had in my back shed. I went and got them out and used my wife as a guinea pig.’

  ‘Jeez, what’d she think about that?’

  ‘It was all in the name of science! When I cut them off her, I measured the red marks they left on her skin, and they were the exact same measurements as William’s.’

  ‘Woah.’ Justin really couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Do you want me to send you the photos of the wrist marks from the bikie’s file? It’s been to court so I can release the evidence. Nothing confidential about it now.’

  ‘No, mate, all good. Just doing my due diligence.’

  ‘Anytime. Happy to help.’

  Justin hung up the phone and rubbed his face. ‘William Clarke,’ he muttered to himself again. He grabbed a local phone book and looked up the name, but there was nothing listed for Nundrew.

  Andy passed his doorway and Justin looked up.

  ‘Hey, Andy,’ he called out. ‘Come in here for a moment?’ Andy stuck his head around the door. ‘What’s up?’ ‘You know the name William Clarke?’

  ‘William Clarke, William Clarke,’ he repeated the name as he tried to place it.

  ‘Yeah, went by Bill.’

  ‘Bill Clarke. Nah, can’t say I do. Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s our John Doe.’

  ‘Good to get an ID. Family?’

  ‘Looking into all of that now, but here’s the thing—the pathologist doesn’t think he’s a victim of a hit-and-run.’

  ‘Really?’ Andy said. ‘What does he think it is then? Murder?’ His tone was cynical.

  Justin gave him a tight-lipped nod.

  ‘What?’ Andy was incredulous. ‘What gave him that idea?’

  ‘All the injuries are consistent with being hit by a car. The grazing, the bruising. He’s got massive bruising to his chest and right shoulder where he took the impact. His body popped like all hit-and-runs do.

  ‘But it’s his hands, or rather wrists that are the problem. Come and have a look.’

  Justin spread the photos from the autopsy report out on his desk and picked up the four that were of the wrists, then took a pen to point out the marks.

  ‘See here?’ He traced the deep red lines that were about four millimetres wide and ran in an irregular pattern around the wrist. At the edge of them, in a couple of spots, there were long thin cuts where the ties had rubbed through the skin.

  ‘I’ve never seen injuries from cable ties before,’ Andy admitted, ‘so I’m not one hundred percent sure what I’m looking at, but I can see the resemblance.’

  ‘I’m glad you haven’t seen marks like this before. Someone would have to be depraved to use them.’

  ‘You’ve been in this country town too long,’ Andy chuckled as he picked up some of the other photos and looked through them. ‘I did four years in Brisbane. Jeez, the things you’d see there. I had a mate who worked the Tracey Wiggerton case—you know, the woman who thought she was a vampire and killed Edward Baldock to drink his blood? She almost severed his head she stabbed him that many times. People do crazy and horrible things to each other.’

  They looked at the photos in front of them and were silent.

  ‘Well,’ Justin said eventually, ‘this isn’t finding out who William Clarke is. I’m going to do a run around of the pubs and ask if anyone recognises his name. What do you want to do first on this?’

  ‘Is there a missing person’s report?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Righto, I’ll do the normal driver’s licence search and start a file. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘I’ve got a drawing of the tatt he had on his chest. Do you want to take a photocopy of it and I’ll take a copy with me?’

  ‘Sure thing. I’ll hand them out around the station and, depending on how you go, we can call the media in if we need to. Get it on the news.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Justin collected all the pieces of the report and put it back into the folder and stood up. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Even though Justin was familiar with all the pubs in Nundrew, he hadn’t been inside every one of them. The West End was one he hadn’t frequented.

  When he walked through the door, he immediately saw it was like every pub he’d ever been into and it was here that Justin finally had some luck.

  ‘Dunno about the tatt,
but I know the name,’ the bartender said as he looked down at the photo Justin had put on the bar. ‘People called him Bill, not William.’

  Justin nodded. ‘What did you say your name was again?’

  ‘Mackenzie. My mother named me against me father’s wishes. Everyone calls me Mac.’

  ‘And how do you know Bill?’

  ‘He was a drunken waster. In here all the time, picking fights and causing grief. I had no time for him. I’d get annoyed when he showed up through my door.’

  ‘Do you know if he has any family in Nundrew?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you that, but I’d reckon with the amount of time he spent in my bar, he didn’t have a missus.’

  ‘Maybe he just didn’t like her.’

  ‘I guess there’s that.’ Mac used the bar mat to wipe the bar, then replaced it with a fresh one.

  ‘What about work? Do you know what he did or who he worked for?’

  Mac paused and gave the bar an extra hard rub. ‘I reckon he used to knock about with the Highwaymen Mustering crew. Sometimes when he came in here, it was obvious he’d been out in the bush for a while ’cause he was filthy and stank. It was bad for business. But I don’t think he’s been doing that for a bit.’

  ‘Why’d you say that?’

  ‘Well, for one, he wasn’t dirty and rank when he came in and, two, I haven’t seen him around here for a while.’

  ‘How long’s a while?’

  ‘I ain’t a diary. How the hell am I supposed to know? It didn’t even occur to me he hadn’t been in until you came asking about him.’

  ‘When was the last time you think you saw him?’ Justin pressed.

  Mac sighed, picking up a clean tea towel and starting to polish the glasses. ‘I couldn’t tell you a date, but maybe two, three weeks ago. Might be a bit more. Reckon he was sitting down the end of the bar drinking whiskey. That’s what he liked to drink. Straight whiskey. Sometimes with a bit of dry. Depending on how quickly he wanted to get smashed.’