The Final Cut

by Robert Jeffreys

  ‘You seem friendly with these girls,’ Cardilini said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I live here. I walk past them nearly every day, we say hello. I warned Bridget, many times, but her head would go into a spin if a male showed her any attention. I was happy when she left.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the girl who first told you that Bridget was missing?’ Cardilini asked.

  Nancy sighed. ‘I like her. I don’t want to cause her any trouble.’

  ‘We won’t cause her any trouble,’ Spencer said.

  ‘Cardilini knows her.’ She lifted her chin in his direction. ‘She’s got a good opinion of you, God knows why.’

  Cardilini took the insult in his stride. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Jennifer Clancy, of course.’ She turned to Spencer. ‘She thinks Cardilini saved her life.’ Nancy pointed at the other photographs. ‘You said there were other women?’

  ‘Yes,’ Spencer replied.

  ‘Do you want me to take a look?’

  Spencer placed the photos on the kitchen table. Nancy looked at them and immediately put her hand to her mouth. She pointed to the 1962 photograph. ‘I’ve seen her.’

  ‘When?’ Spencer asked.

  ‘Several years ago. Quiet girl, Italian.’

  ‘She was found in 1962,’ Spencer said.

  ‘That would make sense. In Perth?’

  ‘Close by,’ Cardilini said. ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘She went by the name of Karen, but that wasn’t her real name. Others would know.’

  ‘No one’s come forward,’ Spencer said.

  ‘What about the other one?’ Cardilini asked.

  Nancy looked at the other photograph for some time before shaking her head.

  ‘Thank you, we really appreciate your help,’ Spencer said.

  Nancy stood. ‘Where’s Bridget now?’

  ‘I believe the plot is in Karrakatta,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘I’d like to visit her. Will her family be told?’

  Spencer nodded. ‘I’ll let you know the plot number.’

  Cardilini stood and took his and Spencer’s cups to the sink. Spencer picked up the photographs, and for a moment her eyes met Nancy’s. ‘We will find who was responsible,’ she said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Saturday, 27 November 1965

  12 p.m.

  Detectives Spry and Archer were not happy about being dragged into the office on the weekend and they were adamant Jennifer Clancy should sweat for a while longer. When they got what they wanted out of her then Cardilini and Spencer could have their turn.

  ‘Surely you can see the importance of this, otherwise we wouldn’t have called you in,’ Spencer pleaded. ‘I’m sure Bishop or Robinson would say we can interview her,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we ring them? They want results. That’s why we’re here now.’

  ‘Out of the question, Spencer,’ Spry said.

  ‘It’s their call, they made the arrest,’ Cardilini told her. She rolled her eyes and stomped out of the detectives’ office.

  ‘What’s her problem?’ Spry asked.

  ‘She’s just new. Come on. Me chatting to Jennifer won’t muck it up for you fellas.’

  ‘Okay,’ Spry said. ‘But you can tell her she’s not going anywhere without a confession.’

  ***

  A minute later, Cardilini was back in his own office. ‘Spencer, bring your notebook. We’re going to have a chat with Jennifer.’

  The station’s four holding cells were at the rear of the building. Cardilini had rung ahead and they now waited at the duty officer’s desk, which dominated the small space. The floor was covered in worn brown linoleum, the walls were a muddy brown and large industrial lights the only source of illumination. The officer on duty, Senior Constable Cusack, emerged from the cells.

  ‘Cusack,’ Cardilini greeted him.

  ‘Cardilini, you old bastard.’ He nodded to Spencer, while pulling a bunch of keys from under the duty officer’s desk. Opposite the desk, the corridor ran from the room, dividing the cells – two on either side. The first on the right held Jennifer Clancy. ‘Where do you want her?’ Cusack asked.

  ‘Interview room. We’ll take her there.’

  ‘Cuffed?’

  ‘No. She’s not charged with anything yet.’

  ‘Can’t trust ’em,’ Cusack said and walked ahead to unlock the door. ‘Clancy. Someone wants to see you.’

  A slender brunette of medium height in her thirties, Jennifer Clancy wore a dark-blue floral dress fitted to the waist then flaring full to the mid-calf. Her features were fine with even, pretty brown eyes. ‘Cardilini, this isn’t right.’

  ‘What’s not right?’ Cusack snapped. ‘Possession of a banned substance?’

  ‘I haven’t been charged with that!’

  ‘You could be at any moment so don’t push your luck.’

  ‘This is Detective Spencer,’ Cardilini said. ‘Come on, Jennifer, let’s go for a walk.’

  ***

  As the trio walked to the interview room, Cardilini brought up Bridget Law.

  Jennifer stopped in her tracks. ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘You knew her back in ’63.’

  ‘Where’s Detective Spry?’

  ‘He’s not here. But he knows we’re having a chat.’

  ‘We’re not,’ Jennifer said, turning back towards the cells.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to Bridget?’

  Jennifer stopped again, turned and stared. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You told Nancy O’Neil that she was missing.’

  Jennifer shook her head and looked to Spencer. ‘Are you working with these morons?’

  ‘Afraid so,’ Spencer said.

  ‘They’re more likely to get someone killed than do any good.’

  ‘You know Bridget’s dead?’ Cardilini asked.

  ‘Get me out of here. I can’t stay here.’

  Cardilini nodded and led her to the interview room.

  Once seated, Jennifer looked to the tape recorder. ‘I won’t be talking with that on. What’s Spry told you?’

  ‘That you don’t have an alibi for the night of the fourteenth of November.’

  ‘I was home at 10 p.m. I was relaxing with a friend and after that she was with me all night.’

  ‘You’ll need to tell them where you were before ten, or you won’t be going anywhere.’

  The fine lines around Jennifer’s eyes tightened. ‘I didn’t kill Hardy,’ she said. ‘When he was beating me, you saw, I was terrified. How am I going to kill him?’

  ‘A knife,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘I don’t carry a knife. If I did, I know exactly where it’d end up. In me.’

  ‘It had to be one of you girls. Who else would meet him down by the river?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Your mob were down there all-day Monday, and the talk was that no one saw Hardy at any time during the night. And girls were working the area until after midnight. You know that, Cardilini. And you know I haven’t worked the street for years.’

  ‘No one was working the area,’ Spencer contradicted.

  ‘Huh?’ Jennifer replied. ‘They’re hardly going to put their hand up and say they were there.’

  ‘Give us some names, then,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘Yeah, right. No thanks.’

  ‘You aren’t doing yourself any favours,’ Spencer said.

  ‘I don’t have to do myself favours: I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Nancy O’Neil said she saw you on the street,’ Spencer said.

  ‘I go shopping, I go for lunch. That’s what I was doing when Spry and Archer picked me up. These aren’t my working clothes, you know.’

  ‘Do you know who was in the park that night?’ Spencer asked again.
/>   ‘What will happen to them if I tell you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Cardilini said with a look to Spencer. Spencer frowned.

  ‘She’d book them,’ Jennifer said, nodding at Spencer.

  ‘No, she won’t. Will you, Spencer?’

  ‘No,’ Spencer said, flushing.

  ‘She doesn’t like you, Cardilini. I’d keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Names?’ Spencer asked.

  ‘Names won’t do you much good. Best thing, get down there yourself. Leave him behind, stop acting like a hard nut and they might talk to you.’

  Cardilini asked if Jennifer knew anything about Bridget Law’s death but she shook her head slowly. He insisted she knew something. Jennifer was expressionless when she pleaded with him, ‘Get me out of here. I can’t do this for much longer, you know that.’ Cardilini understood but had no power to help, and told her as much.

  Jennifer put her face in her shaking hands. ‘Oh my God.’ She pulled her hands away and hugged them in her armpits. ‘Then find out who killed Hardy. But hurry up. He wasn’t killed in that park.’

  ‘He was. He bled out within minutes. Right there. You can’t fake that.’

  ‘It wasn’t at the time they said, then.’

  ‘What do you know? What time would it have been?’ Cardilini asked.

  ‘The girls were saying it had to be after midnight; some of them were still working until then.’

  Spencer jumped straight in. ‘Did you see something? Did you see Hardy get killed?’

  ‘For God’s sake, the time they reckon, I was nowhere near. Look, if I have to prove it, I can.’

  Cardilini knew she was most likely referring to a regular client who wouldn’t want to be identified. He asked for any others who might be willing to talk about Bridget’s death but Jennifer wouldn’t budge. When Spencer asked if the person who killed Bridget was still in Perth, she sighed in frustration. Her reaction was the same when Cardilini put it to her that she wasn’t talking because she was afraid of this person.

  Finally, she stood defiantly. ‘Just find who killed Hardy, okay? And get me out of here.’

  ***

  Cardilini and Spencer sat in their office with a fresh pot of tea.

  ‘I don’t believe her,’ Spencer said. ‘I think she knows something.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she get a lawyer?’

  ‘She could, and if she does, Spry will book her for possession.’

  ‘He should book her for possession anyway,’ Spencer said.

  ‘He’s under pressure to solve Hardy’s murder. He’ll keep it as leverage for as long as he can.’

  ‘She saw something or heard something …’

  ‘Maybe she did and she charged home real quick to get an alibi.’

  ‘And if she did stab Hardy? She’d want to get home real quick for the same reason,’ Spencer said.

  ‘Right. So she might have been carrying a knife and killed Hardy, or, she saw whoever did it.’

  ‘Right. But how does that help us with Bridget Law’s murder?’

  ‘It doesn’t, unless Hardy was killed later, as Jennifer suggested, and we can provide enough evidence to make her alibi stand up so Spry and Archer let her go. Okay, get hold of the forensics report. I’ll review their information on Jennifer. Then tonight we’ll take a trip to the park.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Saturday, 27 November 1965

  2 p.m.

  An hour or so later, Spencer returned with the forensic reports for the Hardy murder enquiry. Cardilini took the body forensic report and left her the crime scene forensic report. ‘Let’s go through them and then swap,’ he suggested.

  Thirty minutes later he had a troubling list:

  Hardy’s blood-alcohol reading suggested he was incapable of walking in a straight line, let alone driving a car.

  His stomach contents indicated he’d eaten a Sunday roast at least three hours earlier.

  The clothes he was found in suggested he hadn’t dressed for a trip to town and yet he was always considered a snappy dresser.

  The fatal knife wound confirmed he was standing over his assailant – just as he’d stood over Jennifer Clancy when he beat her up.

  ‘You go first with the crime scene report,’ Cardilini said, a fresh pot of tea on the desk.

  Spencer expelled a breath and arranged her notes. ‘It would seem quite straightforward.

  ‘One: body positioning is in line with Hardy having staggered backwards, collapsing and then dying from blood loss within minutes.

  ‘Two: the blood trail in the park starts where the high-heel shoe imprint was taken, then there are the same shoe imprints up to the bitumen pathway.

  ‘But I have one question.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’re assuming the knife stayed in the assailant’s hand, right?’

  ‘Why are we assuming that?’ Cardilini asked.

  ‘Because there are no shoe prints to the body to retrieve it.’

  Cardilini pulled the file towards him. ‘She took her shoes off, maybe?’

  ‘And risk stepping in Hardy’s blood? No woman would step barefoot in the warm blood of a man she’d just murdered. Well, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Okay.’ Cardilini frowned. ‘What else?’

  ‘The forensics say the knife remained lodged in Hardy’s groin. That’s odd. Knife left in him but nowhere to be found.’

  ‘She came back for it, not in high heels, and avoided the blood?’

  ‘That’d be taking a big risk. And she does all this without being seen and then returns to her flat? All before ten?’

  ‘And no blood was found on the clothes she was wearing that night or any of her other clothes,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘That’s right. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I rang forensics about that, they were quite pointed in stating there wasn’t any blood spatter on the ground where they thought Hardy was stabbed.’

  ‘I can’t believe they didn’t find any,’ Spencer said.

  ‘Maybe they missed it.’

  ‘What else did they miss?’

  Cardilini shrugged. ‘How sound is her alibi after ten?’

  ‘Spry and Archer accepted it. I’d say it’s reasonably sound. What did you get?’

  ‘Hardy’s car being parked a block away; did that trouble you?’

  ‘No. That made sense. If he went to beat this woman he wouldn’t want his car or licence plate to be seen.’

  ‘What about his blood-alcohol reading.’

  ‘Yes. And how did he get to that reading on a Sunday night without being seen at any of the local pubs before 10 p.m. closing?’

  ‘And he had no beer with him,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘A few discarded beer bottles were found in the park fifty yards away. That mightn’t have been him.’

  Cardilini nodded. ‘If it was? He sat drinking, waiting for Jennifer?’

  ‘It would point to that, but there weren’t enough bottles to account for his high blood-alcohol reading.’

  ‘Maybe he drank elsewhere and drove there already drunk.’

  Spencer nodded. ‘A prearranged meeting with Jennifer and she came prepared? But another thing troubles me: she had no signs of having been assaulted. And there’s nothing on Hardy’s clothing to suggest she was performing fellatio. So what was she doing down at that level?’

  ‘And,’ Cardilini was working through the body report, ‘his stomach contents showed he’d eaten a Sunday roast, but Louise said he didn’t come home that evening. So where did he have dinner? Also, he didn’t look like he’d been out; he was a smart dresser, ladies were attracted to him, he was aware of it and dressed accordingly.’

  ‘Okay, obvious scenario: Hardy ate somewhere, maybe at a hotel, drank himself
silly, went to the park to pick up a working girl but came across Jennifer Clancy, who grasped her opportunity for revenge. So, standing in front of him and keeping her arm extended, she brings the knife – which she had concealed – in low, into his groin. Stand up, I’ll show you what I mean.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve got the picture. Shoe size puts Jennifer there, but nothing else.’

  ‘The murder is said to have taken place within a time period she doesn’t have an alibi for.’

  ‘But if Hardy hadn’t beaten her up before, she wouldn’t be a suspect,’ Cardilini said.

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Can you ring around the pubs and restaurants near the park and see if they remember Hardy coming in that night?’

  ‘Okay. But what about this: if he was beating Louise, she, too, could have been on the ground – in a position where she could have stabbed him.’

  Cardilini paused for thought. Then shook his head.

  ‘When we went to the Hardy house,’ Spencer persisted, ‘did you notice Louise was wearing heavy make-up and wouldn’t come anywhere near us?’

  ‘Go on,’ Cardilini said, straightening a file on his desk.

  ‘Perhaps, that night, she went to the park to bring him home?’

  Cardilini looked up. ‘With a knife?’

  ‘The report said a knife large enough to be a carving knife. They argue. He’s drunk, very drunk. He starts hitting her and knocks her down.’

  ‘And she’s brought her carving knife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The children would have to be somewhere. Or has she brought them, too?’

  ‘You don’t think it’s at least worth investigating?’

  ‘Do you want to suggest it to Spry and Archer?’

  Spencer leant back in her chair. ‘It’d be better coming from you.’

  ‘Actually, it wouldn’t. It’d seem like I still had an axe to grind.’

  ‘But do you think it’s even plausible?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

  ‘So, it is plausible.’

  ***

  Spry and Archer were at their desks, still not happy about being in the office on a Saturday.

  ‘Spencer and I want to run something by you,’ Cardilini said, pulling up two chairs. Spry and Archer looked at each other suspiciously. Cardilini told them about Hardy’s blood-alcohol reading, the lack of blood spatter, his stomach contents and his clothing, then paused, waiting for the two detectives to process everything. There being no immediate response, he asked, ‘Don’t you find all of that a bit puzzling?’