‘About?’
‘Which side are you on?’
‘To do with what?’
A titter rippled through the gathering. They were apparently following this exchange with interest. Murphy was suddenly avidly interested in his phone.
‘Are our glorious mountains—’ high-vis man raised a wavering arm ‘part of the Great Dividing Range?’
‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘Think about it now.’
Jake couldn’t see the harm in appeasing him. He brought up a topographical map of the region on his phone and scrutinised it for a few moments while the pub held its collective breath.
‘They seem to be,’ he answered.
Cries and boos echoed across the room.
‘Bloody mainlanders, trying to claim what’s ours,’ his interrogator accused.
‘Aren’t you asking if the mountains here are a continuation of the mountains in Victoria?’ Jake said.
‘Yeah,’ the pub chorused.
Jake held up his phone. ‘Looking at this, they are.’
‘Nah mate, there’s a whole ocean between them.’
‘But water over the top doesn’t make any difference. It’s still a continuous mountain chain.’
The tone of good-natured ribbing that had filled the pub moments ago evaporated.
‘Ring-in bastard,’ one barfly muttered. ‘Shouldn’t’ve been him who got the job. Shoulda been that other Murphy kid.’
Jake was at a loss. ‘Surely they are what they are. Nothing we say about them will change that.’
‘Went to university to learn to talk like that, didja?’ A woman who looked as though she should have a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth sneered at him.
‘Heh heh. Bet you don’t talk fancy to the missus like that,’ a desiccated old man mocked Jake, a touch behind everyone else.
‘Nah, he’s single,’ Murphy sniggered. ‘Had his heart broken recently.’ He chuckled suggestively at the woman tending bar. ‘Bet you could fix him up, eh Jenny?’
‘Give it a rest, will ya?’ she admonished the gathering. ‘If you don’t keep it down, I’ll be forced to call the police.’
Raucous laughter filled the bar.
‘Nah, he’s a goer, this one, I’m tellin’ ya,’ Murphy chortled. ‘Bet you he got kicked outta his last place for being a ginger though.’
Another round of drunken laughter.
‘Like that Prince Harry,’ the not-smoking woman shrieked.
‘Hur,’ random drunk number four slurred. ‘You want a black piece of arse like him too?’
Murphy snorted. ‘Like that stuck-up bitch at the hospital. You’d be in there, I reckon.’
Jake forced a smile and sipped at his beer until he could excuse himself. Inside, he was seething. Despite his lack of professionalism and abysmal report-writing skills, Jake had hoped to make friends with the young constable. Now, he wasn’t sure how he could share an office with the little turd.
Employing an old device he’d used to escape the parties of his youth, Jake asked the leather-skinned woman for a smoke and a lighter and headed for the door.
Nothing was visible beyond the street lights, just swirling vapour. Jake lit the cigarette in case Murphy was watching, then sucked and blew at the acrid poison. His head spun; it had been a while.
The door opened. Murphy came through holding out his phone. ‘It’s for you,’ he slurred.
Jake took it from him with a harsh glare; Murphy stumbled back inside, oblivious to it.
‘Jake?’
He stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Nic? Why are you calling me on Murphy’s phone?’
He didn’t bother to ask how she’d tracked down Murphy’s number. That was one of her specialities.
‘Because you never answer yours. Jake,’ she said. ‘It’s been two weeks since you left. Talk to me.’
‘Nic, I …’
‘And tell the truth. I know when you’re lying.’
That was precisely the problem.
‘I’ve been tearing my hair out,’ she said, ‘wondering what I missed. Work’s no fun without you. And you’ve never gone this long without spending time with Pete in your life. He’s really missing you, I can tell.’
‘Nic.’
‘And then I find out you came back to Melbourne this week and didn’t even let me know?’
‘He told you?’
‘Of course Pete told me. He’s my husband.’
And an idiot who slept with another woman. In Jake’s bed, no less. Jake had screamed at Pete for putting him in a position where he either had to stay silent—which meant reducing his contact with Nic significantly—or saying something that triggered the breakdown of Nic and Pete’s marriage.
‘Why the hell would you do this?’ he’d yelled.
‘You don’t need women like I do,’ Pete had screamed back, scrambling to pull his clothes on. ‘You never have.’
‘You have the best woman on the planet already, you greedy dickhead!’
‘Jake?’
The sound of Nic’s voice pulled him back to the present; he gritted his teeth. ‘Look, Nic, I’ve been working around the clock on this bloody awful murder, and I just need some space …’
‘Bull. Shit. Even if that’s it, it doesn’t explain why you’ve just cut us out of your life. What are you hiding?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you sick? Do you have cancer, or something? Whatever it is, you know I’ll be there for you. Just let me in!’
Nic’s compassion almost broke his resolve. ‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Are you in trouble? Did you uncover something at work that puts you in danger?’
‘No.’
A pack of drunk tradies burst through the pub door, spilling noisily into the street. Jake turned his back on them and covered one ear, wandering a few paces into the wafts of mist rolling up the street.
‘Then what is it?’ Nic was saying. ‘If you don’t want to tell me what’s happened, I can live with that. But why don’t we at least catch up. Fly back one weekend and we’ll hang out?’
‘I’m sorry Nic, I can’t.’
‘You’ll have to come back to civilisation at some point.’
Jake drew a ragged breath. ‘I made this move to find some time for myself, and to change things. I need a fresh start.’
‘And how’s that working out for you?’ Nic always became narky when thwarted.
‘So far, not so good,’ he attempted to lighten the mood. ‘Some missing kids, murders, rapes, pretty horrendous shit all round.’
‘Keeping busy then.’
‘Always. But when it’s done with I’ll still need space.’
She became serious again. ‘Is the answer you’re looking for really in the middle of nowhere?’
For the first time since he moved to Tasmania, Jake chuckled. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for the country life. I belong in a city. But …’
‘But?’
‘But for now it’s not Melbourne.’
‘Oh.’
‘At least, not for a while. I’ll see out my time here, then transfer somewhere else.’
‘But your flat, your things?’
‘I’ll figure something out. Nic …’
No response.
‘Nic?’
‘Don’t say it.’ Her voice was sad.
‘I’ll see you again, I promise, but it will be a while.’
‘Jake, why won’t you tell me what’s happened? How can you walk away from me and your brother like this?’
Unable to muster a convincing lie, Jake hung up on what felt like the last call he would ever share with his sister-in-law and lifelong best friend.
*
Guilt over his cowardice toward Nic clung to Jake like
a shroud all night. He sat at his desk, his words to her this evening and scenes from the Campbell’s kitchen today playing over and over in his mind, becoming entangled.
Both situations were off.
Jake knew why his conversation with Nic felt insincere—his own refusal to be honest about his reasons for leaving.
Why did the arrest of the Campbells feel disingenuous?
Kelly had already left the station by the time Jake returned from the pub. He still needed to explain the DNA evidence to him, although at this point Jake wasn’t certain it would make any difference. Kelly was certain he had the perpetrators—DNA evidence or no. Jake, on the other hand, needed to work his way through the case against the Campbells again to sort through his doubts.
Mason Campbell was definitely guilty of rape and murder. He deserved to rot in gaol for the rest of his miserable life. But was he guilty of the murders of Ava and Liam O’Brien? That part didn’t ring true to Jake. Why?
All right, from the top … could Ava have driven to the manor on Thursday night to confront Mason and Liam over what they had done to the girls in her home, as Kelly suggested?
Yes, that was possible.
Might she have been surprised to find Liam wasn’t there?
Perhaps. But she did know that Max was visiting since Charlotte had told her the night before.
So the first question Jake had to answer was: how likely was it that Ava O’Brien had jumped in her car in the middle of the night to go and confront her brother and Mason Campbell, knowing Max Campbell was in the house as well? And why now and not at any other time in the past decade?
It didn’t seem overly likely, especially given that Ava seemed to have been under her brother’s thumb most of her life.
Even if Jake assumed that Ava had gone to the manor of her own volition, the second question was how likely was it that Mason murdered her? He was clearly mentally capable of it, but physically?
If he had strangled her, would he have been able to remove her fingernails, and then been able to convince his son to dump her body in the vineyard and move her car back to her house? Surely even someone as out of touch with reality as Mason Campbell wouldn’t be so foolish as to dump the body of a woman he had just murdered in his own front yard?
Max Campbell was certainly no fool. Kelly’s hypothesis that Max was so desperate to return to the mainland that he’d help his father cover up a murder was barely plausible. That Max would then risk a long prison sentence to cover up his father’s abhorrent crimes was highly doubtful.
Would it hold up in court? Jake couldn’t see how.
The whole scenario was too thin. It felt like a case no overworked prosecutor would touch without more evidence to connect the dots.
Why had Kelly pushed to wrap it up prematurely? Was he under pressure from Hobart that Jake didn’t know about? Did he need to make an arrest or risk being sidelined? Jake had seen that happen to more than one regional station commander after multiple homicides had occurred in their precinct.
Whatever Kelly’s reasoning, at the deepest level, Jake didn’t believe the investigation was over. Even if he had to do it on his own—and even if it meant going against his superior’s explicit instructions—he would keep pushing until he uncovered the truth.
So, where to start? There had to be something Jake had overlooked. Another party, or set of factors, or event, that he had failed to track down.
In the silence of the office, the heavy tick of the station’s clock beat against Jake's thoughts.
He understood how the girls came to be in the children’s home. He was confident he’d pieced together what had happened to Amelia and Lilith. He knew who had mutilated them and who had raped them. Unfortunately, he also knew where Lilith’s son had gone. It was a long shot, but when the FSST team finally arrived tomorrow and began searching the vineyard, they might find a trace of him.
He wished he could question how an entire town had failed to see that something very wrong was happening at the children’s home. But it seemed the populace had collectively written the girls off and turned a blind eye to anything that might happen to them. That was horrendous but sadly not unusual—ignorance is bliss, as they say.
Jake opened the investigation file on his desk and began walking through the questions raised in each of his interviews. He had no doubt that Ava, Liam and Mason were all responsible for what had happened to the girls and their babies, though he kept coming back to the idea that there was another person involved … who?
Pulling out his phone to review the conversation between Liam and Mason in the hospital, Jake found what was niggling at him. The fingernails. After Liam saw Ava’s hand he’d almost collapsed. Seeing that had somehow changed his understanding of what had happened to her, and it was clear from the conversation that he didn’t think Mason Campbell was responsible … which confirmed that there must be a fourth party involved in the current events, and most likely what happened to the girls historically.
If someone had entered the chain of abuse the girls were subjected only to rip out their fingernails, how would they get access? It had to be through O’Brien. But why?
Power. It always came down to power. Was it someone who helped O’Brien smuggle children out of the state? An intermediary who took payments from them?
Looking through notes from his interview with Lilith, a quote jumped off the page at him.
… and a man with a gun brought her back to the house.
Lilith had remembered, as a young child, one of the older girls escaping the home and making it all the way into Dunton. She was returned to Ava O’Brien by her brother, Liam, and another man with a gun. Whoever that was, the woman who had turned the runaway in had first called the police. Which meant there had to be a record of her passing through the station. Jake had never thought to search for it.
He made himself a ridiculously strong coffee and began scrolling through computer records and picking through filing cabinets. He stepped outside regularly to inhale lungfuls of icy air to stay awake.
It took until five a. m. to find the answer. Or rather, not to find it.
There was no report in the past twenty-five years of a young girl being found living in a car park in Dunton, or indeed anywhere in the town. There were a staggeringly large number of complaints and allegations against two or three families—mostly branches of the Murphys—who were generally let off with a warning. But there was absolutely no trace of a lost girl returned to Liam O’Brien or the girls’ home.
Somehow, this was the clue Jake had been searching for. As an afterthought he spent an hour trawling old web pages and listings, looking for the counsellors who had previously established businesses in Dunton and the surrounds. He found three. Evelyn had been truthful—none had remained for longer than a few months.
He looked up their personal and business names in the station’s records. It appeared they had all left town for similar reasons. This only served to reinforce his suspicions.
Ferocious warning barks from neighbourhood dogs cut through Jake’s concentration. He raised his head and squinted, dazzled by the headlight beams reflected into the front room of the station. Murphy’s vehicle rolled into the driveway. He looked somewhat the worse for wear.
‘You’re in early?’
‘Up all night. Can’t risk getting any kip now—I’ll sleep through my shift.’ Murphy’s voice was thick with smoke and dehydration. ‘Why’re you up?’
‘Just running a few things down.’
Murphy pulled a face. ‘I don’t understand you. Why aren’t you happy? This will look great on our records.’
Jake narrowed his eyes and brought Murphy into sharp focus. ‘What did your mate at the pub last night mean?’
‘What?’
‘I shouldn’t have got this job. That it should be the “other Murphy kid”?’
Murphy collapsed into a
chair, one hand over his eyes, yawning. ‘My brother, Stu, is in the academy now.’
‘So why wasn’t it him?’
‘It was going to be, but he’s not ready to graduate yet. Headquarters said if Kelly didn’t take someone now he’d lose the position and we’d go back to just being a two-man station for good. They bumped up the pay scale so he could take you, but it’ll drop back after you leave.’
With an almost audible snap, something clicked in Jake’s mind. ‘Will Stu be ready then?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘He’s been in a bit of trouble. That’s why his graduation was delayed.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Nothing serious.’ Murphy winked. ‘Slept with a superior officer’s wife.’
Murphy’s repeated suggestion that he’d slept with Nic made Jake furious. ‘For the last time …’
‘Okay, okay, you didn’t sleep with her.’
‘And you’re okay with your brother’s behaviour?’
‘For fuck’s sake, don’t get all sanctimonious,’ Murphy said. ‘If she wanted it, who was he to say no?’
Jake had never been able to piece together the constable’s motivation for joining the force. He was even more at sea now. ‘Murphy, why did you and your brother decide to apply to the academy?’
‘We-ell, I was a bit of a rat bag when I was younger. So was Stu. Kelly said Dad should sign us up, that it’d straighten us out.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘Nothing serious, just teenage stuff.’
Jake waited.
‘I mean, it was just bit of fun.’
Jake continued to stare at Murphy, unmoving. The constable looked away.
‘Kelly never went hard on us. Said it was all just a misunderstanding. He understood we were good kids at heart.’
‘What. Did. You. Do?’ Implacable worked on suspects, perhaps it would work on this idiot.
‘We were young, just fooling around.’ He laughed. ‘Got our hands on some liquid E, invited girls over, had a few parties with mates …’
Jake’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Are you kidding?’
The Great Divide Page 20