‘What are you looking for?’ asked Rispoli.
‘What do you notice about these?’ she said.
There were a few shrugs, all eyes on the road and the tyre tracks that veered from it.
She put them out of their misery. ‘They don’t swerve off the track violently, do they? Something you would expect if the occupants were being chased. It’s more of a gentle arc. Adding to this is a lack of understeer. The front tyres haven’t washed out and pushed ahead. So the corner was taken slowly. And given the slow speed I think we can rule out a breakage or mechanical fault. This was by decision rather than accident.’
She returned to the tracks nearer to the cliff edge.
‘These are also clean, no sign of tyre spin.’
‘Which means?’ asked Oily.
‘Look at the road. The tracks are indistinct, tyres fighting the whole way, accelerating faster than the grip allows. Then here at the edge the tracks are clearer, no spin, as if the truck stopped and rolled over the edge gently.’
She looked at them. ‘How many people have been walking over the scene?’
‘Me, you, Oily, Barker and Anand,’ said Rispoli. ‘Though Anand was with the witnesses so you can probably count him out.’
‘Do you see these prints?’
Emmaline pointed to what looked like the heel of a boot, then further towards the edge, the toe of another boot print, faint but present.
‘Ours?’ asked Oily.
‘They move right between the tyre tracks, which suggests someone was pushing the ute. They attempted to sweep them away with a branch like raking a bunker after a shot but they weren’t thorough enough. They wanted to get away.’
‘So someone else was here?’ asked Rispoli.
‘Seems that way,’ said Emmaline. ‘Here’s what I think. Whoever did this drove the ute out here with the occupants already dead, or at least unconscious. They got out, placed the victims in the front seat, started the fire and pushed it over the edge. And drove away.’ She paused, then carried on, ‘It was a two-person job. One to drive the ute, one to drive the getaway vehicle.’
‘Professional,’ said Rispoli with a hiss of admiration.
Emmaline nodded. ‘Not the work of amateurs anyway.’
80 Lorcan
Neither Mallon nor his son were keen on future payment plans. Cash for goods only, credit denied. Besides, Lorcan doubted that he had any credit. For ever indebted. He had the brick, tin and beam but had foolishly left the bag of cement partially open and the swirling wind had carried the bulk of it off to distant climes and other houses in need of repair.
Money was the problem. The miners weren’t budging. He had been subtle, then less subtle. Which left only one option. A last resort. He had been scared to do it before but it had been three weeks so maybe Nikos was desperate. There was a chance he could get something for nothing. That would serve Nikos right.
Finding the sole payphone in Hurton, he phoned Phil.
‘I’ll meet you.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow, Durston Park in Wisbech. Bring money.’
‘How much?’
‘Tell him if it’s not enough, I keep it.’
‘Okay.’
‘And just you, Phil. Not him.’
‘Got it.’
Lorcan hung up. His entire body was shaking, the battle-weary army of regret fighting the amped-up army of need. He put his hand on the post box outside of the grocery store to steady himself. A place where post was collected and delivered three times a week. A lonely postal route.
‘Mr Maguire?’
Lorcan didn’t recognize the voice. The armies inside his body called a temporary truce, banding together against a common threat.
The man approached with a smile that was hidden by his beard. At least Lorcan thought it was a smile. It might have been a sneer of hatred. His suit was light grey and probably torturous to wear on a summer day like this. Had Nikos found out where they were and sent someone?
A hand shot out. Lorcan let it hang there.
‘I know your wife,’ said the bearded man. That didn’t help Lorcan’s understanding. Or his nerves. ‘Well, I’ve met her. I hear you have a child.’
Another blast of nerves triggered through his body. Lorcan was caught between fight or flight.
‘How do—?’
‘I’m Greg Williams. I teach at the school.’
The school. Dylan. Naiyana had checked it out. The build-up of blood in his muscles drained suddenly leaving him woozy. And ill.
‘When will one of you be visiting the school? We need time to register Dylan, complete the paperwork, etc. We’re looking forward to having him. He’s lucky. We have two brand new computers this term. Thank goodness for hardship grants!’
Lorcan put his hand up. ‘Wait, has my wife not already been to see it? Last week?’
Greg Williams shook his head. ‘No. She said she’d visit before Christmas but she never did. We were installing the new machines right up to Christmas Eve. They go perfectly with the new mobile.’
‘So the school isn’t run-down?’
Greg looked a little offended at this. ‘It could do with some more work of course, but compared to most buildings…’ he said, glancing around the town for comparison.
Lorcan, however, was lost in his own thoughts. Nee had stated that the school seemed okay, old, dusty and definitely not modern. The opposite to what this guy was saying. Had she seen it from outside? But the new mobile would surely have been obvious. It had been back when she didn’t want to stick around, so was it merely a ruse to persuade him to leave?
Or a ruse to meet up with someone else? Someone from the charity? That MP? BS Foods? He knew all too well that illicit meetings could be arranged. Moving hadn’t improved their personal lives any more than the work-child-work-sleep pattern had in Perth. In fact, it seemed they had even more secrets than before.
81 Lorcan
Lorcan peeked in through the shutters. Naiyana was with Dylan, reading a story to him while relaxing on the plastic sun lounger. He decided not to confront her about the school. Not now. He might need to blow off some steam after his next job. One last attempt to wrangle his fair share of the profits from the neighbours. Targeting Ian this time. Their leader. If that failed then blackmailing Nikos was a runner.
Eventually, the three men came to the surface, joking amongst themselves, their day done.
‘Again?’ sighed Mike, wrapping his used gum in paper and shoving it in his pocket. ‘You got nothing better to do?’
‘It looks like I don’t,’ sniped Lorcan, before focusing on Ian, who was wiping his grimy face with a cloth. ‘Good day?’
‘G’day to you,’ smiled Ian, joking.
Lorcan forced a smile. ‘No, was it a good day down there?’
Ian’s smile dropped to a rueful shake of the head.
‘Nothing?’
‘Very little.’
‘That’s a lie.’
Ian frowned.
Lorcan continued. ‘If it was you wouldn’t be giggling like idiots. And now you’re off to a motel for the evening?’
Ian’s face was emotionless, his sharp eyes dulled, giving nothing away. But in the background Mike couldn’t resist a gloating nod.
‘Whereas we barely have enough to eat.’
‘It was the same for us when you came to town,’ said Stevie. ‘Stuck down there while you swanned around the place like you owned it. Just go back to Perth. There’s nothing for you here.’
It was a brutal and honest summary but also something beseeching in the request. As if a subtle warning. But Lorcan was having none of it.
‘There is something. Down there.’
‘Which we are best placed to extract,’ said Mike. ‘Much as I’m sure you know how to do something else – not house-building obviously – so go do that and leave us alone.’
Lorcan ignored the jibe. He swung towards Ian who retained his passive, calculating expression.
‘You’re o
bviously in charge,’ he said, glancing to see the scowl on Mike’s face. ‘We need help.’
82 Emmaline
It had been a struggle to get both the Forensics and the Recovery teams out here to this remote patch of earth, Rispoli, Anand and Oily guiding them at set points along the route like a crime-scene version of the road train she had seen in Leonora yesterday.
As they shuffled out of the way to a neutral position, Barker discovered a cluster of empty tinnies nestled in a clump of bushes. Recently discarded given the lustre of the metal. Emmaline got him to bag them up and give them to Forensics to check. For all she knew, this was a local drinking spot but it was worth checking out given what was discovered nearby.
* * *
After that Emmaline joined the teams in the gorge and watched on as the wreckage and surrounding area was sampled and swabbed, evidence cut and bagged from the scene, videos and photographs taken from every angle, including from the air, the chopper staying high to avoid unnecessarily raising dust and sand.
Unfortunately, the commotion had attracted more bystanders. The press had latched on, clogging up the roads and their engines with dirt in their desperation to be first on scene. The recovery trucks called to retrieve them had only added to the chaos.
With the exterior evidence logged, the burnt-out roof of the cab was cut open with a pair of lifesavers and the two bodies – no smaller third body was found – photographed in situ before being hoisted clear of the wreckage and the gorge. The early prognosis matched what Emmaline had determined: the bodies had been strapped in the front seat given the lack of movement, remnants of the seat belt seared onto their clothes and skin. But they hadn’t been unconscious.
‘Shot?’
‘Both of them,’ said Rebecca Patel, her face mask pulled down, unsteady on her feet due to the steep embankment.
‘Your initial assumptions?’
Dr Patel didn’t even put up a fight this time. ‘One bullet wound each. JDD was shot in his chest.’
‘JDD?’
‘John Doe, the Driver,’ said Dr Patel before continuing. ‘Given the entry wound it is likely to have caused extensive damage to the heart muscle and lungs at the very minimum.’
‘Self-inflicted?’ asked Oily. His thorough but stupid question was summarily ignored by Dr Patel.
‘JDP – John Doe, the Passenger – has a gunshot wound to the skull. Entry point just above the left eye. It was a catastrophic injury. There’s no exit wound. Death was likely instantaneous.’
‘Both male?’ asked Emmaline.
‘Provisionally it would seem so but I’ll only confirm that once they are on the slab. They have been burnt extensively but the fire wasn’t wholly catastrophic.’
‘So they were killed, then placed in the vehicle. It was then set on fire and pushed over the edge to make it look like a crash.’
‘It’s hard to make it look like a crash when both have potentially fatal bullet wounds,’ noted Dr Patel.
‘Any idea on which one was killed first?’
Dr Patel shook her head. ‘Impossible to determine at present. Securing an ID is our first priority.’
‘Agreed,’ said Emmaline.
Dr Patel returned to the burnt-out ute and Emmaline watched her crew perform a final sweep of the vehicle in situ before the Recovery team took over. The chopper lowered, whipping up dust and sand and the two bodies, bound like mummies, were winched up to the chopper for a speedy return to Leonora. The living wouldn’t be so lucky, having to wade through an assembly of beached vehicles and eager press. But not down here in the gorge. Emmaline stood back as the Recovery team calculated how they were going to remove the vehicle from the scene.
Emmaline was performing calculations of her own. She now had two murder scenes. Within a few kilometres of each other. And no idea which incident had happened first.
Were the miners – if these were indeed the miners – killed by Lorcan Maguire? Who was then murdered by Ian Kinch in revenge. But why would Lorcan Maguire take such a desperate step? Had Mike and Stevie attacked Naiyana and killed her? Is that why they hadn’t found her body yet? Lorcan then had discovered – as noted on the phone message – that his wife was gone and wreaked his savage revenge.
Or what if the order of death was the other way around? Lorcan Maguire had been killed first for some reason. Possibly by Mike and Stevie. Had this in turn led Ian Kinch to kill his fellow miners to wipe out any witnesses? That still left Naiyana and Dylan Maguire unaccounted for.
And what if Ian Kinch was one of these bodies? Killed by Mike or Stevie in an argument over money that spun out of control? If Ian was doing the selling it would have been easy for him to skim some from the sales. And equally possible for Mike and Stevie to siphon gold from the haul. Either of these could have led to a fatal argument.
Or finally, was an outside factor involved in all this? After all, none of them were hardened criminals. Even Ian Kinch couldn’t be classed as a hardened criminal. More a schemer. But schemes can easily turn deadly.
83 Naiyana
Eight years of marriage meant that Naiyana Maguire knew when her husband was up to no good. There was a Machiavellian stench that oozed from his entire being when he had a plan. Especially when he had been on the up. Suggesting that she be the stay-at-home parent as he made more money. In business dealings and bonuses. In buying the massive house. All of which came to an end when INK Tech had let him go and the bank had foreclosed on their home. Somethings were too big to manipulate. Now he was on his knees and scrapping like she had never seen before. The desperation was worrying. What was he capable of?
He had waited until he thought she was asleep before sneaking out of the house. There was only one place he would be going this late.
Ian, Mike and Stevie had shifted to days rather than nights as, according to Mike, it was easier on them and their body clocks. He had stepped into the middle of the road to talk to her as she passed in the ute, his greedy eyes matching his greedy gut. Definitely not her type.
Lorcan had just stepped into the tunnel when she caught up with him.
‘Lorcan.’
‘Shit!’ The torchlight scrambled around the hole as he stumbled down the last few steps. The light turned and shone in her face. ‘What are you doing here, Nee?’
‘What are you doing here?’
His voice turned insistent. ‘If that lot can use the equipment, then so can I. It’s not rocket science.’
At this he turned and started to creep down the tunnel. It was an attempt to lose her but she tiptoed down the steps and caught up with him.
‘Don’t do it, Lorc.’
‘I have to try. It’s better than the alternative.’
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
She wondered what he meant. The stench of sneakiness. Cryptic and mysterious.
‘Do you even know how to work the machines?’ she asked, staying low so as to not crack her skull on the rock or beams overhead.
‘No, but again, it’s hardly rocket science. I just need to do this for a couple of nights. A week at the most. Get us in the black. Then we can move. Somewhere with running water, electricity and an indoor toilet. Get back on the ladder. That’s what you want too. Deep down. I know it.’
There he was again, trying to put words in her mouth. But she wasn’t that person anymore. Still, there she was as ever, blindly following him down a deep, dark tunnel.
After ten minutes they reached the end, the light from the torch focusing on a pair of odd-looking machines, Lorcan yelping in glee as if he had just won the jackpot.
She watched on as he went to work, feeling his way around them as if he was the Fonz, searching for the sweet spot to jolt the machines miraculously into life.
‘Face it, you don’t know what you’re doing,’ she said, feeling the desperate urge to leave but needing the torch.
A flick of a button and the generator burst into life, filling the tunnel with a rumble sh
e could feel in her sternum. Another button and the red barrel machine started to hum, a symphony building. Another minute and the arms of what must have been some sort of grinding machine went to work, adding the final falsetto to the piece, the brutal crunch of rock.
Her pleas to leave now fell on soon-to-be deaf ears. Her head quickly began to pound as she watched her husband check the conveyor belt at the end of the barrel before shovelling more crushed rock into it, the jet of water washing the material, sifting and sorting before being recycled.
He bent down and checked the conveyor belt again, the torchlight reflecting off something. Grabbing it he held it up to the light. It was a chunk of gold, a tiny nugget. The light caught his ear-to-ear grin. She hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time and a part of her didn’t want to ruin his moment but this was crazy and dangerous. Ian, Mike and Stevie would not abide this.
She smelled the smoke first. It was impossible to see in the darkness of the tunnel, Lorcan’s torch focused on the conveyor belt and feeding rock into the crusher. At first she thought that it might have been the stench of pulverized rock but there was a distinctive oily aroma to it. Then in that instant a second source of light appeared in the tunnel, the crusher spouting a burst of flame from underneath.
‘Lorcan!’ she cried but hearing anything in the riotous tunnel was impossible. His focus was on the belt, holding up another nugget, gloating. Then he saw the flames. He stood up, a good six inches taller than her, his face suddenly obscured by smoke.
Cutting the generator, with the flick of a button he moved towards her. And he didn’t stop, pointing behind her urgently. For a moment she had a sinking feeling of childhood dread that a monster lurked behind her. Turning there was nothing but a darkness that was soon dispersed by the torchlight. They fled, the smoke drifting out with them, hoping to not make a wrong turn.
84 Naiyana
They made it out into the fresh air, coughing up the darkness from their lungs. The town was silent. And not just because her ears were ringing.
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