by Gary Gregor
“N-n-no,” Schmidt said hurriedly.
“Then, just for the moment, we will call you a witness. You are a witness and, as such, we need to get a statement from you.”
“Of course. I understand,” Schmidt said.
“There is a son, no?” Meier asked.
“Pardon?”
“A son. The Jaegers have a son, do they not?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, they have a son. His name is Adalhard.” Suddenly Hermann Schmidt stopped walking. “Oh … oh. Adalhard,” he said apprehensively. “He will not know about his parents. You must find him and tell him!”
“Find him? He is away?”
“Yes, he is in Australia.”
“Austria?” Meier said more to himself than to Schmidt.
“No, not Austria. Australia.”
“Ah … Australia. That is a long way from here.”
Schmidt nodded. “Yes, it is a long way.”
“Does Adalhard live here at the estate?”
“When he is at home, yes,” Schmidt answered.
“How long has he been in Australia?”
Schmidt remained silent.
“How long?” Meier asked again.
“I’m thinking,” the gardener answered with a furrowed brow. “One week, maybe longer … ten days … a fortnight perhaps.”
“Do you know where exactly in Australia the son is?”
“I do not know,” Schmidt said. “He said he planned to see as much of the country as he could. He left soon after he left the army.”
“He was in the military?”
“Yes, a commando I think.”
“Are you friends with Adalhard?” Meier asked.
“No, not friends,” Schmidt answered. “Friendly. We speak occasionally.”
“When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“Oh, I don’t recall exactly. Not long before he left for Australia. It was down at the lake. I was mowing and stopped to chat for a while.”
“Does he go to the lake often?”
“Rarely, I think. That is why I stopped to chat. I don’t think I have ever seen him at the lake before. It was unusual to see him there. However, I only work here three days a week and maybe he goes there more often than I know.”
“What was he doing when you saw him there?”
“Nothing,” Schmidt said with a shrug. “He was sitting on the bench, looking at the lake. It is a very pretty lake, no?”
“Yes, very pretty,” Meier mumbled. “Come, let us continue there.”
As they walked, Claus Meier was thinking about how long the Jaegers had been in the lake. Could their son, Adalhard, have killed his parents, weighted their bodies and thrown them into the lake and then fled across the world to Australia? If so, why?
As they passed the main house, Meier paused and watched as a plainclothes detective stood at the front door. Inside, there would be more detectives, searching the house for anything that might be considered evidence.
“What are they doing in the house?” Hermann Schmidt asked, curious.
“It’s standard procedure,” Meier said. “They will be looking for evidence. Did Adalhard get along with his parents?”
“I do not know that,” Schmidt responded. “I am just the gardener. I do not know such things.”
“Did Adalhard ever talk about his parents?”
“No, never.”
“What did you talk about when you saw him at the lake?”
“Mostly about the gardens,” Schmidt answered with a shrug. “He told me they looked nice.”
Back at the lake, Hermann Schmidt climbed back into his buggy and continued to watch the proceedings taking place at the edge of the lake. Meier ordered the uniformed officer carrying the roll of twine to hand it to the detectives to add to their collection of evidence, and then he re-joined his two colleagues.
“Where did you go?” one of them asked.
“There is a shed. Beyond the house. A large greenhouse also. The gardener showed me a roll of thin rope, the same type as the rope used to bind the feet of the victims.” He indicated the two bodies now covered in a large white sheet. “If it is the same, it will be evidence that the rope came from the large roll kept in the shed.”
“Who would know about the rope?” the second senior officer asked.
Meier shrugged. “The gardener, of course. Maybe the wife.” He nodded towards the sheet-covered victims. “I understand she sometimes used the rope when tending her private garden at the house. Maybe the husband, but he doesn’t sound like the type to while away his leisure hours, pottering in the garden.”
“What about the gardener?” the second officer inquired.
“We will run a background check on him, naturally,” Meier replied. “But I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened here. He appeared genuinely distressed.” He paused. “There is a son. The gardener told me he is traveling in Australia. He will have to be contacted and informed about the death of his parents.”
The first senior officer glanced at the covered bodies. “Perhaps he already knows they are dead.”
27
The Major Crime incident room, now temporarily established in the General Duties muster room, was crowded. Cameron Yap Yap Barker had called every officer involved in the investigation back to the station for a hasty meeting. The officers present, a combination of General Duties uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives, talked quietly amongst themselves, waiting for the meeting to begin.
Cameron Barker sat on the edge of a desk at the front of the room and looked at the mass of police officers before him. The sound of perhaps forty or fifty voices all talking at once filled the room. Barker stood, moved a few paces to his right, and called for quiet. “Okay, okay! I need your attention. A few minutes quiet, please!”
He waited as the sound of multiple voices decreased rapidly and finally ceased. “Thank you. Thank you all for coming and I apologise for interrupting your investigations. I am afraid I have bad news for you, and I would prefer you all heard it from me rather than from the media.” He looked at a small piece of notepaper he held in his hand. “It is with great sadness that I inform you all that at approximately 0700 hours this morning, Lara McKenzie, the wife of Mathew McKenzie, passed away in Royal Darwin Hospital.”
No one spoke. No one moved. With upwards of fifty people crammed into the incident room, it was eerie that the silence was so profound. Barker looked up from his notepaper at the room full of silent cops. Every eye in the room was focused on him. It was like he’d said something important, something they all needed to hear, but no one actually heard what it was … like they’d misheard his words and were all waiting for him to repeat them, so they had a grasp.
“Lara never regained consciousness,” Barker continued grimly. “She was placed on life support when she arrived at Darwin Hospital and, in the early hours of this morning, the decision was made to switch off life support. She was pronounced dead at 0700 hours. I am advised that Moose and their two children were by her side when she passed.”
Cameron Barker swallowed hard. He had been faced with some difficult tasks over the course of his career as police officer but breaking the news of Lara McKenzie’s passing was way up there with the hardest things he had ever done in his twenty-five years of service. As he regarded the faces in the room, he saw a sea of numb, shocked, and sad faces staring back. He saw more than one member wipe his or her eyes as tears threatened to flow. He wished he could take it all back. Wished he had never had to say it. Wished it was all a terrible mistake and Lara McKenzie was not dead at all. But it was no mistake. There was no taking it back.
“Someone say something,” Barker said finally, breaking the silence.
“How is Moose?” someone asked.
“I spoke to Moose for a few minutes earlier this morning. He and the two children are taking it hard. They were a close family. I have authorised compassionate leave for him so he can be with his kids. The leave is open-ended and he wil
l return to work when he feels he is ready.”
Barker addressed the whole room. “Remember. We are a family. The partners and children of police officers are as much a part of our family as the officer himself or herself. Today, we lost one of our own. This so-called ‘Demon of the Desert’ is still out there somewhere. We need to find him, and we need to find him fast.”
“We know it’s early,” someone else in the gathering said. “But have we any news on a funeral for Lara?”
“You’re right. It is too early. As soon as I know something, I will pass it on. Now, before you go back out there and find this arsehole, are there any more questions?”
No one spoke.
“Okay, get back out there. Turn over every bloody rock. Stop every four-by-four vehicle you come across. I know there are hundreds of them, and some will have been stopped and checked more than once. Check them again. We need to find the man responsible for these shootings before he strikes again, and, make no mistake, strike again he will if we don’t stop him.”
Barker reached into his pocket and pulled out another piece of paper. “Before you all go, we have a BOLO from Interpol, acting on behalf of the German police in Hamburg. I do not know what relationship it has to the case we are all working on, if indeed there is any relationship at all. Apparently, there is a German tourist in Australia somewhere and he may be a suspect in a double-homicide in Hamburg. Both his parents were found floating in a lake on their property. Both were killed with a single gunshot to the head.”
“That will do it,” someone said.
“Yes, it will, and it did,” Barker affirmed.
“Sounds familiar,” someone else suggested.
“A little familiar, yes,” Barker said. “But remember, wherever the dude is, he may not even know that his parents are dead. He may be a suspect in their killing, or he may be an innocent tourist traveling around our country. We don’t even know where in Australia he is, but the police in Hamburg would like us to be on the lookout for this bloke and, if we come across him, we are to break the news about his parents.”
“Like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” someone snorted.
“There are some similarities with our suspect.” Barker held up the paper in his hand. “He is traveling alone and we believe he is driving a four-wheel-drive he purchased in Sydney on his arrival in Australia. His name is Adalhard Jaeger.”
“Shit!” Sam Rose exclaimed from the back.
“What?” Barker asked.
“Wait one second, boss.” Sam raised his hand and fumbled in his shirt pocket for his notebook, opened it, and read in silence. Finally, he looked up. “I spoke to a bloke at Curtain Springs. He was having breakfast in the roadhouse. He was German and he was driving a four-wheel-drive.”
“Did you get a name?”
Sam glanced at his notebook. “Jaeger. A. Jaeger.”
“And you let him walk?” someone demanded sharply.
“He was camped in the caravan park,” Sam said, ignoring the question. “Both Russell and I watched him for a while after he left the roadhouse and returned to his vehicle. There was a canopy on the back of his four-by-four, and it was packed with what appeared to be camping equipment.”
“Did you get a vehicle rego number,” Barker asked.
“Yes, I checked with reception and got his details from the check-in register.” He referred to his notebook again and read aloud the vehicle registration number. “I suggest everyone write it down.” He repeated the registration number. “It is a Toyota Landcruiser, old model.”
“Okay,” Cameron Barker said with a nod. “Keep your eyes peeled for that particular vehicle. As I said, we don’t know what, if anything, he has to do with the spate of murders we are working on, but we are looking for a man on his own, driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle. So, given what Sam has provided, he fits the profile … along with a couple of thousand others.”
Russel Foley raised a hand.
“Yes, Russell? Something you want to add?”
“Yes, boss.” He cast his eyes around the room. “This Jaeger character was at Curtain Springs the day before Lara McKenzie was shot. That puts him in the general area. It doesn’t make him our perp, I admit, but as the boss said, he fits the profile of the dude we are all looking for.”
“If he is our perp,” Sam threw in, his expression grim. “I let him go and now Lara McKenzie is dead. If you happen to come across him, don’t make the same mistake.”
“Also,” Foley added, “he is armed, so you should approach with caution.”
“Okay,” Barker said loudly. “Let’s get back out there and keep looking. Don’t forget: one of our own is dead, along with six others that we know of. Remember also: forget all the Desert Demon shit the media would have us believe. The dude we want is an evil bastard, but he is not a ghost or a demon; he is human. He walks and talks just like you and me. There is probably nothing spectacular about him regarding his appearance. He will be capable of blending into a crowd without raising any suspicion. Your job is to find him, and fast.”
“We are starting to piss off a lot of innocent motorists,” someone in the crowd announced.
“Yeah, I know,” Barker said with a sigh. “And we are going to piss off a lot more. Your job has not changed. Stop every four-wheel-drive vehicle driven by one man. Ask all the right questions. Confirm driver ID with a driver’s license. Our perp could be anywhere. So far, he has been operating in areas south of Alice Springs. It is possible, if he thinks we are getting too close, he will head across the border into South Australia and from there he can head to New South Wales or Victoria. We will lose him. I do not want that to happen. I think he is, for the time being anyway, still here in the Territory, so let’s give it everything you’ve got and find the arsehole.”
“You’re quiet,” Foley said to Sam. “Something bothering you?”
“I let the bastard go,” Sam said unhappily. “I had him in the palm of my hand. I stood there and watched him shovelling scrambled eggs down his throat like he hadn’t eaten in a week, and I let him go.”
“We let him go, Sam,” Foley stated. “You picked him as a possible suspect, told me about him, and then we both watched him as he sat on the tailgate of his vehicle. Neither of us took it any further. Don’t beat yourself up over this. I am as much to blame as you are. And remember, we only heard about his parents this morning at the meeting. We didn’t know the German police were looking for him.”
“Thanks, mate, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“We were tired, Sam,” Foley explained. “We had been driving all over the place for days. The old Ghan highway where the Watson family was killed, then out to Chambers Pillar, out to King’s Canyon, Curtin Springs, Yulara, and then back to Kulgera. Chasing fuckin’ shadows. And besides, it’s still possible that the dude at Curtain Springs, what’s his name …?”
“Jaeger.”
“It’s still possible that this Jaeger character is what he said he was: a tourist.”
“Yeah,” Sam said glumly. “A tourist who shot and killed his parents, and then decided to hide out here in the Territory and kill a few of our people.”
“We don’t know he killed his parents, Sam. Maybe he is driving around, enjoying our great tourist attractions, and doesn’t even know someone killed his parents back in Germany.”
“My money is on him as both the killer of his parents and all the victims here.”
“We don’t know a time of death regarding his parents, Sam,” Foley pointed out. “You heard what Yap Yap said when he spoke to us both after the meeting. He is going to follow up with the right people and see what else he can find out about this character. We can get a date he left Germany from the airlines, and a time of death from the authorities in Germany. If the parents were killed before he left for Australia, he may well be our man, as well as the number one suspect in the killing of his parents. If they were killed after he left Germany, then it suggests he is nothing more than an innocent tour
ist here in Australia.”
Foley’s phone, sitting on the dashboard of the vehicle, rang shrilly.
“You wanna get that?” Foley asked Sam.
Sam picked up the phone and answered. “Sam Rose speaking,” he said.
“Cameron Barker here, Sam. Is this Russell’s phone?”
“Yeah, boss. He’s driving at the moment.”
“Where are you?”
“About sixty k’s down the track,” Sam answered. “Almost at Stuarts Well. We are planning on stopping there for a coffee. Can I help you?”
“I just got a call from the manager at Stuarts Well Roadhouse,” Barker replied. “Seems one of their staff members was heading out on a station bore run when he came across a body about five klicks from the roadhouse. A young female, apparently. Can you check it out?”
“You have a contact, boss?”
“Speak to the manager, Judy Brown; she has the details.”
“Roger that, boss. Do you think this is our man again?”
“I don’t know, Sam. Apparently, the stockman came across the body on the side of a rarely used dirt track behind the roadhouse. It’s not pretty. Seems the dingoes might have had a feed during the night.”
“Charming,” Sam said flatly. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. We’ll call you from the roadhouse when we know more.” He hung up the phone and tossed it on the dash.
“What was that all about?” Foley asked.
“Stockman from Stuarts Well stumbled across the body of a woman about five k’s from the roadhouse.”
“The Demon again?”
“Dunno,” Sam answered. “Bloody dingoes have been feasting on it overnight, apparently. And don’t let the boss hear you call him the Demon.”
“When we finally find this Demon dude, don’t stand between me and him.”
“You can’t shoot him, Russ, you know that,” Sam pointed out. “Besides, it’s my turn to shoot the bad guy.”
28
Samantha Love’s body was fully clothed and laying half on the dirt verge at the side of the bush track and half on the track itself. Determining an age, even a good estimate, was difficult due to the damage to the face caused by carnivorous dingoes. A small travel bag lay upside down four metres from the body.
