‘You’re right, Ben. I shouldn’t take it personally. And it’s fair enough that I should have been able to track down those wheels.’
‘Did you look at the tip?’
‘No. Should I have?’
‘If people don’t want to keep anything, they either throw it out at the tip or dump it beside the road. Do you think the Colstons were really killed, not by the train?’
‘It’s possible, but I’m not as certain about it as the boss is. You don’t just kill two people like that, do you?’
‘People have been killed here before. But usually it’s a fight that goes too far or someone has a shotty and the trigger gets pulled before they know what they’re doing. It’s different if you kill someone and then make it look like they’ve been hit by a train.’
‘Very different. Have there been murders here before, other than the ones last year?’
‘For sure. There were a couple during the war, they say. If you count the whole district there might be another half a dozen since then. Going further back, they say there were some shockers, like when they were building the Waranga Basin they had all these blow-ins from Melbourne doing the labour, and there are supposed to be bodies buried in the dam wall there.’
‘Charming. There’d be no hope of anyone ever finding them there. But Ben, would you mind showing me where the tip is later? I need to find those tyres.’
‘I’d be very happy to,’ the constable grinned.
But as Sheridan sat down at her desk she thought what a whirlwind the last days had been. Her instant, strong liking of the senior sergeant had been tempered somewhat by his almost abrupt questioning, although she knew and understood that he was first and foremost her boss and had his job to do. The others at the station were friendly and were doing their best to help her fit in. Janice was a real card. But the strongest impression on her so far, and in spite of what Cole had said and suggested, had been made by Linda Fantasio. The way Linda welcomed her so warmly, the way she laughed along with her, the way she wasn’t immediately wary or distant to her as so many were because of her job. She felt taken in, wanted, and she breathed out so loudly thinking of it that Janice turned around to look at her.
‘Welcome to Mitchell, hey?’ Janice said.
Chapter 12
It didn’t take Cole long to learn SP’s identity. Nor to discover that his initial suspicions were right, that SP was indeed shorthand for the local starting price bookmaker. When he rang the number and no one answered, he told the silence, ‘This is Lloyd Cole here, Bob. I’ll be over at your house in ten minutes.’
After a pause, there was a begrudging, ‘Alright, see you then’, before the phone was put down.
Bob Fry lived in the street parallel to his own so it was a short drive from the station to his house.
A rather dishevelled Fry answered the door. Though it was mid-afternoon, he was still in his pyjamas.
‘Got you out of bed, did I?’ Cole asked.
‘Senior Sergeant Cole, welcome to my humble abode. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit and fine company?’ he inquired effusively, as if the phone call of just a few minutes ago had never taken place.
‘Harry Colston brings me here. Let’s go inside and talk,’ Cole said.
‘Seeing you asked so nicely, be my guest,’ Fry said. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’
Fry was diminutive but plump, an appearance exaggerated by arms that seemed too short for him. With slightly bulbous eyes and thinning grey hair pasted over the shiny crown of his head, he could have been off-putting, but with his large hands, which he was fond of waving about, and with his perpetually wide grin, he always looked like someone’s favourite uncle. This perception as well as two facts about him were known to every adult in Mitchell: that he was a bookmaker who would bet on two flies crawling up a wall, and that he was also involved with every charitable endeavour going. Some said that the second provided insurance against the first, and that in the manner of his dubious trade he weighed the odds of every action he took, always looking for an eventual profit, and always with a smile on his face.
In his lounge room, Fry said, ‘I’d offer you a slice of something, Lloyd, but it’s last year’s Christmas pudd, and I couldn’t vouch for its flavour.’
‘Or on whether I’d survive eating it. I’ll pass on that one then and get to the point,’ Cole said. ‘I need you to tell me everything you know about Harry’s gambling. How often he bet, what amounts and when.’
‘Harry gambled?’ Fry asked incredulously.
‘Knock it off, Bob. If you muck me around I’ll start wasting your time too. I need to know what Harry was up to before he died. You’ll have kept a record of his dealings somewhere, I take it?’
‘Yeah, and I take it you’ll take me to court if I give you that kind of evidence on a plate. I’ll be out of business for good.’
‘Bob, I don’t care about your business, and I know you’re active in the community, so you help me and you’ll help yourself at the same time.’
Cole saw the calculations taking place in the bookmaker’s eyes.
‘Fair enough, Lloyd. I trust you,’ he said. ‘But this can’t go any further than you or me, is that a deal, Scout’s honour?’
‘That’s a deal. I promise not to besmirch your fine reputation,’ Cole answered.
‘We’ve all got to make a living,’ Fry said jovially. ‘And who am I to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do? I’m just a poor old digger who served his country in its hour of need, who made the sacrifices, but other than that I’m no one.’
‘Except the bloke who takes people’s hard-earned, the man hiding behind the telephone.’
‘It’s up to everyone as to what they do or don’t want to do. Free will, they call it. I hear you didn’t do so well yourself a week or two ago, Lloyd. And who forced you to put those wagers on?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘At the Shepparton trots. I hear you turned over quite a few quid, or so a little birdie told me.’ All the time Fry spoke, the pleasant expression never left his face. ‘That money went to a bookmaker I’ll bet. You wouldn’t go on course and bother with the tote, not unless they were offering a better price than the man on the bag, which would be rare.’
‘They’re legal bookmakers, Bob, not SP bookies.’
‘SP’s being men who offer better odds than any government stool pigeon. The SP looks after the ordinary bloke, he likes to give everyone a fair go. The government, on the other hand, wants to kill everything that’s Australian and squeeze the last few pennies out of every business they can. Tax us all into extinction. The few of us resisting it are the last men standing, Lloyd, the upholders of true Australian values.’
He said it with half a smirk, as if he wasn’t certain himself if he was joking or not.
Cole said, ‘I know, Bob. As you take them to the cleaners.’
‘My point being that you, like lots of other people in Mitchell, don’t mind a punt, and you can give a slice of it to a government who never does anything for you, or you can divide it more equally between yourself and the bagman. Which way do you reckon most people would go, if it was a fair choice I mean? I don’t always win myself, you know.’
‘No, but you win more than you lose.’
‘Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s the other. Sometimes it’s somewhere in between. I make an agreement with someone, they know they can take me at my word. I’m a man of numbers, Lloyd, it’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. So why deprive me of my one talent, the talent that lets me earn a living?’
Cole said irritably, ‘Save the soapbox stuff for someone else, Bob. Harry Colston’s betting records. Where are they?’
‘Look at this place,’ Fry waved his short arms expansively. ‘Do I look like a man who’s making a killing? I’m a two-bob each way man, that’s what I am.’
&nbs
p; ‘Harry Colston, Bob.’
‘Alright, alright. I don’t keep any records on the premises, for obvious reasons. I’ll have to get them and meet you somewhere quiet. No offence, Lloyd, but the minute anyone sees me with you I might as well drink a cup of hemlock.’
‘And we wouldn’t want that, would we?’ Cole said. ‘But you’ll know off the top of your head what sort of amounts Harry was gambling, so tell me what amounts he was churning through.’
‘Fair enough,’ Fry said again, as if he were priming himself for a great revelation. ‘Harry came in fits and starts. I might not hear from him for a month and then he’d be all over me like a rash. He’d be phoning me day and night, small to medium amounts. Starting at five dollars going up at any number to a hundred. I know what you’re going to ask. He could be wagering up to five or six hundred a day.’
‘And how much of that would be on losing bets would you say?’
‘It’d depend. He could have a good day and end up a hundred and fifty per cent ahead. More if he was really lucky. But there are always more horses in a race than a punter is covering, so you know what that means.’
‘So how much all up might he have lost in a typical week?’
‘When he was going? Maybe one or two thousand.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘You’d know.’
Cole let it pass, asking, ‘Do you know where his money came from?’
‘Search me. I never ask anyone that and it’s not my business. But I just took it that it was income from the farm. You know he sold off a paddock last year?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘One of the farm’s better ones, I’m told. To Marty Bigelow. Old John would’ve had a fit if he was around. But then if old John was around it probably never would have happened in the first place. But it’s not my job to be nursemaid to everyone in town. I help where I can, as you know, Lloyd, but I can only do so much.’
‘I’m surprised the shire hasn’t honoured you for it, Bob. All these great deeds with never a thought for yourself.’
‘Now now, Lloyd. There’s no need for sarcasm. You’re looking at me through a very narrow prism when you should be taking in the bigger picture.’
‘I’m seeing more than enough the way it is, Bob. The money all these blokes wager – who actually collects it and pays out? You wouldn’t be doing it all yourself.’
‘No, I wouldn’t. But me talking about what I do is one thing, giving you the names of my trusted associates, that’s another.’
‘I thought so,’ Cole said. ‘Just one more question and I’ll let you get back to bed. Did Harry owe you money at the time of his death?’
Fry scratched his head.
‘He could have. I wouldn’t know. I’ll have to look it up,’ he said.
Cole regarded him sceptically. He said, ‘You’d better dig up that information for me, Bob. I’ll be seeing you around. Soon.’
‘You’ll get it,’ Fry assured him. ‘It’s probably with my war service stuff somewhere.’
Cole again let the dig at him pass. Since 1945 many in Mitchell who had seen active service looked down their noses at those who hadn’t, asserting an unspoken moral and manly superiority over them. Even though Cole had attempted to enlist, the government’s manpower department had decided that he should serve his country through his employment in the police force. Through no fault of his own, then, he was never going to pass as being as good a man as the returned soldiers around him.
He regarded Fry’s slobby pyjamas, the inane grin and his conniving nature. This then was the man whose like was celebrated every Anzac Day.
‘Soon, Bob,’ he repeated.
But in spite of Fry’s jibes he’d achieved what he set out to do by visiting him. Harry Colston was throwing his money around like there was no tomorrow and literally selling off the farm. If he owed Bob Fry money there was little doubt he would have been in debt to others, too.
Now he’d be interested in seeing what Harry Colston’s will had to say about Hilltop in the event of his death.
Chapter 13
‘This is the glamorous part of the job out here, is it? Wading through rubbish?’ Sheridan asked Whittaker as they got out of the car.
‘I’d still rather be here than being a pen-pusher at my desk,’ the constable replied, his eyes raking the vista before him. ‘This place is interesting. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve found here.’
The Mitchell rubbish tip was a parcel of unwanted land two miles south of town, convenient enough for the shire’s rubbish collectors but still far enough distant that its smell couldn’t reach town. The pair left their police car near the main gate and wandered over to where a grader had dug a long trench that was now near half-full. The tip attendant was nowhere to be seen.
The two police stood with hands on hips surveying the long mound of rubbish and seeing, too, all the paper and cardboard that had been blown out of it, screeds of paper clinging to the wire perimeter fence as if desperate to escape.
Whittaker explained, ‘They dig a long pit and when it’s full they cover it over and dig another one beside it.’
‘And what happens when there are no more plots to dig up?’
‘I dunno.’ The constable puzzled, ‘Maybe they start all over again. Or go somewhere else?’
They walked toward the pit’s edge.
‘Where should we start?’ Sheridan asked.
‘Did you bring the photo?’
‘Here,’ she said, taking it out. ‘I’m hoping the tyres will still be attached to the wheels. That’d make it a whole lot easier than just trying to match treads. And thanks for helping me out with this one, Ben. You’re a saint. ’
‘No worries. Maybe we should start where those piles of tyres are,’ he said, pointing.
Sheridan shook her head with something approaching disgust as they began hauling tyres out from among a small mountain of discarded rubber. Before long their hands were caked with mud and unidentifiable filth. Even in winter the place reeked, the mingled smell of wet rubber making it worse for her.
To take her mind off the task, she asked, ‘You seem pretty familiar with this place. How do you know so much about it?’
‘I come here a fair bit,’ he remarked casually. ‘Sometimes on a Saturday when I’m off I like to see what I can find.’
‘To the tip? Don’t you mind the smell? It must be something else in summer.’
‘It is. But you’d be surprised at what people chuck out. As a kid I got my first bike from the tip near where we lived. It was too big for me, at the start. My dad always went as well, and maybe I learnt it off him. He said when he was a kid they had nothing, so even a throwaway was better than that.’
‘And no one at the station minds that you come here?’
‘I don’t come here in my uniform, senior constable.’
‘I guessed that. But it’s not like people wouldn’t know who you are.’ She looked at him then, and realised what she was implying, and that she was making him uncomfortable. She hurried on, joking, ‘On our wages, we need every bit of help we can get, though, don’t we? And you know what they say – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’
‘I heard someone say that,’ he said.
They dragged out, examined and rolled away tyre after tyre until the constable said, ‘I think if they were here they would’ve been near the top and we would’ve found them by now. Maybe if we walk along the pit, if they’ve been thrown in there, we might see them.’
They walked either side of the trench, picking and prodding with wooden stakes they’d found at anything vaguely resembling a wheel. There was a rusted door panel here, a bumper bar there, but no wheels.
‘No good,’ Whittaker said. ‘But lets take a look at the pits closer to the gate. See the rubbish around those pits? That’s people too lazy to drive down t
o the one they should be dumping in. They just throw their muck any old where.’
They made their way back to the gate, casting glances over the filled-in trenches, protruding pieces of timber and metal poking out of them.
It wasn’t long before something caught Whittaker’s eye.
‘Here!’
In an indentation in a trench, where the fill had caved in, there were four wheels with their tyres, a car door wrenched off its hinges and other scraps of metal clearly from a vehicle.
‘Ben, you’re a genius!’
The constable looked away bashfully. ‘Anyone could see it.’
They dragged the wheels, too beaten and buckled to attract a scavenger’s eye, out into the clear where Sheridan compared the tread from one tyre to her photograph.
‘It looks like a match, but we’ll let the boss confirm it. Let’s get these into the car and get out of here,’ Sheridan said.
*
Across the other side of town, Lloyd Cole drove in the direction of Hilltop, passing its locked gates before travelling another two hundred yards and turning off the road and over a cattle grate into a gravel driveway.
Martin Bigelow was Hilltop’s immediate neighbour, sharing the longest boundary with the Colston property. He was also the fairly recent beneficiary of Harry Colston’s largesse in selling-off one of his better pieces of land at a discount price.
Bigelow was a big loaf of a man, neither friendly or unfriendly, a straight-shooter who never saw any reason to lie or unnecessarily praise those around him. Cole found him tidying a stack of fruit boxes by the back of his house, his wife hanging out washing as Cole pulled in.
As Cole got out of his car he felt the Bigelows’ gaze turn and narrow on him. A police visit to a property usually meant trouble of some colour and their faces reflected that.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Cole reassured them. ‘I just wanted to ask a few questions about the Colstons.’
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