Her car had no radio and instead she listened absently to the rhythmic thumping of her windscreen wipers against the weather. When she turned into the main road to Mitchell she could barely see the bitumen in front of her. She switched on her headlights. It would be just her luck, she thought, to be out on watch on a miserable day like this. Her only consolation was that she’d be able to stay nice and dry in her car, if not as warm as she’d like. She’d brought a book with her, The Valley of the Dolls, and a blanket to keep cosy in case there was no action at the caravan park, which she doubted there would be.
She’d telephoned Linda yesterday, and although there was no news she could offer her on Dianne Colston’s liaisons, she felt she had at least smoothed the waters with her. When Linda had come to see her after the scuffle with Ken Bramley it was like beginning all over again. But she had to be careful not to take another misstep. And as she thought about that, she wondered why it was so important to her that Linda should like her. Was she that lonely, did she crave friendship so much, or was it something else she barely dared admit to herself? And then she thought, was she really that stupid, or that naïve? But did it matter, anyway, when the object of her affections was married and now besotted by the tiny child she had inherited? Their friendship could only go so far. But for the moment that didn’t matter. She would see her again soon enough, and the joy and pleasure of her company would blot out the enormous void she sometimes felt.
And Mitchell loomed like a foggy ghost town as she ploughed toward it, waves of water fanned out by her wheels. Through the misty windscreen every aspect of Main Street grew a wintry mantle. Grey rivulets ran down shopfront windows. Doors were battened shut. Pennants and advertising hoardings flapped and shook. From unseen quarters came a perplexing chugging, first here, and then there, as if some machinery was being coaxed to life to help the town get moving again.
She knew the location of the caravan park and that her car wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention given its age and lack of attention; it was an old bomb amidst a junkyard of rusting vans and vehicles. She had read in the Advertiser that there was a move to close the park down and she could see why. She drove along a narrow asphalt strip, a path really, before pulling off it and parking her car on a vacant site as if she owned it.
The place was dead still and the rain perfect cover, allowing her to prop thirty yards from this Van der Sloot’s van without anyone setting eyes on her. She could barely see out of her car windows now, though, and wound them down a fraction. She wondered what this character had done. She’d heard something about SP bookmakers at the station and guessed it might have had to do with that, or if not it was probably to do with theft of tools and light machinery which seemed to be an almost daily occurrence in Mitchell. Still, whatever the reason, this beat doing paperwork in the office, cold as it was. She wrapped the blanket around herself, settling herself low on the bench seat, and wondered what her parents would be doing now, how she should go and visit them once she’d settled in a little more. She wondered what Cole was up to, as well. What he was thinking by his questioning of Linda. He’d been spending a lot of time out of the station, even the others were saying it, and Ben Whittaker said that the boss would have a card up his sleeve, don’t you worry about that. Ben was a good fellow, kind, thoughtful and happy to serve. She thought he wouldn’t last more than ten minutes in some of the Melbourne police stations she’d worked in.
Ten o’clock came and went and then eleven. She picked up her book and began reading, raising her head regularly to peer toward the caravan. The van’s door and window curtains were shut, something she had also noticed on others as she’d driven in. No one wanting anyone to see what they were up to, or what they had in their vans. She couldn’t imagine there’d be much worth stealing in any of them, but a person living here was probably only a step away from sleeping on someone’s floor, or being homeless, and perhaps that was why they so protectively guarded what little they had. The Permanents, as the park’s ongoing residents were called, when everything about them seemed quite the opposite.
She thought of Harry and Dianne Colston, who she never knew, but did. All the talk about them, Cole’s convictions about their deaths, the fine home and a property with a name, Hilltop. It sounded luxurious and perhaps Linda would live there one day, with or without the man who was her husband. She visualised the car wreck, the impossibility of anyone surviving such a collision with a train. The blood spattered insides of the mangled car. The unidentifiable globs of oozing matter on the seat and the messy smears on the inside roof of the car. Who had killed them, then? If Cole did know, the cards Ben had talked about were closer to his chest than up his sleeve.
As she waited, gusts of wind buffeted the caravan park as fierce rain drove nails into the tin can that was her car. A dazzling shaft of lightning lit the sky, a explosion of thunder following terrifyingly close behind. She tried to recall the equation for working out how close lightning was, and whether she should be worried. Torrential rain pummelled down and she almost missed seeing the slight figure in a black raincoat dash up the path not ten yards from her car.
Sheridan pulled herself higher and quickly wound her window down as the figure with its back to her – she quickly decided it was a girl – ran to Van der Sloot’s caravan and banged on the door. The door opened only briefly but the man she saw fleetingly matched the description Cole had given her.
She waited five minutes to see if the rendezvous was going to be a short one, but when it wasn’t she turned the car’s engine on and drove away in first gear until she was beyond the park, pushing as hard as the weather allowed before she reached the police station.
The minute she was inside the building she drew amused grins from everyone, realising that in between leaving her car and entering the station she’d managed to get herself thoroughly soaked.
Cole came out. ‘Yes?’
‘Someone’s gone into the van, boss. It looked like a girl.’
‘Okay. I’ll need you to come back with me. Ben!’ he called. ‘I need you, too.’
Forrest glanced up from his desk, relieved he hadn’t been singled out in this rain. The other two officers were talking football by the window.
Cole, Sheridan and Whittaker slipped on raincoats and ran to one of the police cars, Whittaker taking the wheel. As they battled their way to the caravan park, Cole explained what he wanted them to do.
They left the car by the caretaker’s hut and walked through the rain to Van der Sloot’s caravan, Cole thumping on its door until he heard a muffled ‘Who is it?’
‘Police, Mr Van der Sloot. I’d like you to step out of the van please. Right now.’
When there was no answer, Cole repeated his demand.
‘I cannot come out,’ Van der Sloot called then. ‘Please come back another time.’
Cole grimaced at his colleagues, and thumped the door again. ‘Open up now Jan or we put a sledgehammer through your door.’
They heard more scurrying about inside. The door opened a few inches and in the Dutchman trying to slip himself outside and shut the door behind him Cole pulled him away and onto the ground with Van der Sloot resisting and swinging punches. Cole landed one on him before Whittaker helped pin him to the ground.
‘Put the cuffs on him,’ Cole ordered and Whittaker snapped the manacles around Van der Sloot’s wrists before they hauled him back to his feet.
‘You cannot hold me like this. I have a Dutch passport,’ the man protested.
‘Good for you then, Jan. Tell me though. How did you get all those bruises on your hands and face? Been in a fight, have you?’
‘You are fighting with me now. That is how I get those bruises.’
‘I doubt they’d come up that quickly,’ Cole laughed.
‘You do not have the power to do this!’
The rain was still tumbling down and Cole felt it trickling down his neck, annoying him all
the more.
‘Take him to the car and hold him there, Ben. Radio in to the station and ask someone else to come out here. Get Forrest,’ Cole said. ‘Chris, you go inside the van and tell me if it’s decent in there. Just be careful.’
‘Right, boss,’ Sheridan answered and stepped up into the van.
Cole heard her voice, and a younger female one before he was told it was alright.
‘Be there in a minute,’ Cole answered and he walked back to the car, telling Whittaker he could take Van der Sloot back to the station and keep him there.
When Cole stepped into the caravan he saw a girl who looked well shy of sixteen sitting on the end of a makeshift bed sobbing, Sheridan with an arm around her.
Cole squatted, keeping a distance between himself and the girl.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Marnie,’ she said timidly. ‘Marnie Fowler.’
‘Well, Marnie, you’re okay now. Miss Sheridan here is going to look after you for a bit. You’ll be safe with her.’
‘You won’t tell my parents will you?’ the girl cried.
‘Look, I don’t know how old you are, Marnie, but I’d guess fourteen or fifteen?’ The girl nodded. ‘You shouldn’t have been here with that fellow, which is his fault and not yours by the way. But because of your age we’ll have to talk to your parents. There’s no way around that. Just be honest with them, that’s all you can be.’
The girl dissolved into tears and Sheridan held her tightly as her and Cole’s eyes met, both feeling for the kid.
‘Let’s get her out of here, Chris,’ Cole said quietly. ‘When Forrest gets here get him to take you both back to the station. Make sure Marnie’s nowhere near Van der Sloot. Give me an hour here to go through this van and then have someone pick me up. Get the parents in, too. Okay?’
‘Of course, boss,’ Sheridan said.
When they heard Forrest’s car arrive, Cole said, ‘Alright Marnie. Let’s see if you and Miss Sheridan here can jump into that car without getting too wet. I’ll see you both at the station.’
He remembered the Fowlers now, the family firmly entrenched as part of the local poor. They lived in the same street as Barry Jennings, at the furthest end of it. Frank Fowler had been brought to the station once or twice over minor infractions of the law. The local schools complained that his children missed more days than they attended.
Cole spent the next hour pulling the caravan’s bed apart, upending the drawers cabinet, and peering and poking into every nook and poky cranny. If the outside of the van had appeared dilapidated, inside was worse, a stink coming from dirty bedding and a pile of old clothes stuffed under the small Laminex table at one end of the van. Baked-on grease had turned the two gas cooker rings black. Mould bloomed everywhere wood veneer was separating itself from the more solid parts of the van, and there was water damage to the ceiling, wet to his touch. Days-old cooked food festered in an Esky with two inches of water in the bottom. Half a loaf of white bread and a bottle of tomato sauce, a jar of pickles without a lid, empty beer bottles, cigarette packets and a full ashtray littered the table top.
Seeing all this, smelling it, he wondered what had made a young kid want to be with a reprobate like Van der Sloot. Did being with someone older make her feel older, too? Or was it that even among all this chaos and filth, any kind of attention went a long way for someone who had never known much of it?
But from bad things good things sometimes grow, he thought. He now had enough of a stick to make life difficult for Van der Sloot, and in turn for those higher up the food chain from him.
Chapter 37
Cole telephoned Geoffrey Rowlands at the State Bank and had his young teller come in and sit out of the way in the station’s reception area. Carolyn Bingham nursed a magazine in her lap as Barry Jennings was brought into the station, Sergeant Forrest holding Jennings there long enough for the teller to identify him. As Jennings was then taken through to the interview room, Bingham told Cole, ‘I’m pretty certain that’s him, the one who opened the account as Douglas Balfour.’
‘Would you be prepared to write and sign a statement testifying to that?’ Cole asked.
‘I would,’ she answered, and Cole thanked her and let her go, asking her to return after she’d finished work so she could formalise her evidence.
In the interview room Jennings looked like a man who wasn’t sure whether he should clam up or return fire.
Cole said, ‘How are the bruises coming along, Barry?’
Jennings shrugged, ‘Alright.’
‘You know what? It’s a funny thing. Not so long ago now I saw someone else with bruises on his face and hands, too. Jan van der Sloot. Do you know anything about him?’
‘Nah, nothin’. Why would I?’
‘I just thought you might. He’s pretty good mates with your brother, and you’re pretty good mates with your brother. In a town like this, the odds would be fairly reasonable, wouldn’t they?’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ he said.
‘You didn’t happen to get into a barney with Van der Sloot, did you?’
‘Nah, like I said, it was a punch-up down the pub. End of story.’
‘Okay, I suppose it’s just a coincidence that both you and poor old Jan look like you’ve been in a fight.’
‘That’s right, it’s a fuckun coincidence, mate.’
‘As a matter of fact, Jan’s with us in the building right now. Just down the passageway. Another coincidence, hey?’
‘Must be.’
But Cole noticed that, ever so slightly, the wind was being taken out of Jennings’ sails.
‘It’s my opinion that Mr Van der Sloot there has been up to no good. Do you know what I’m saying?’
‘Nah, I don’t.’
‘Well, let me put it to you this way, Barry. I think you and Jan might have been up to mischief together, or even involved in something much worse. A whole lot worse.’
‘Yeah, right. I don’t even know the bloke.’
‘Let’s go back a few steps then. You were a witness to Harry Colston’s will.’
‘Was I?’
‘You know you were. We’ve been through this, remember? Harry thought he could trust you. That’s why he put you on in the dairy. You and Harry and your brother had known each other from way back. Harry probably mentioned that he wanted someone to take over the milking from him. He probably told Wayne when he was picking up or dropping off a bet. Probably your brother recommended you and Harry thought that was a great idea. But it was also a terrible mistake on his part, wasn’t it, not that anyone could have blamed Harry for it. He wouldn’t have known, at least not at the start, that you and Dianne Bramley went back a long way, too, and most likely were still friends, if I can use that word, right up until the time she died.’
‘I dunno about that.’
‘I think you do. But Harry made his mistake worse when he got you to be a witness to his will didn’t he? And he couldn’t have known you were likely to tell Dianne you’d been a witness to the will, and tell her that except for Harry’s brothers and sister no one else was ever going to inherit any part of Hilltop. Am I right?’
‘You’re wrong.’
Cole laughed. ‘Come on, Barry. You told Dianne about the will, and then she thought she’d better do something off her own bat. She knew she couldn’t risk talking to Harry about it, because he might then alert his solicitor or someone else about the chance of some shenanigans going on, so she stayed quiet with him and then either with her father, or by herself, she set about making a will of her own. By the way, did you know about that, that she forged a new will that was supposed to be Harry’s?’
‘Didn’t know nothin’ about it.’
‘Had she promised to give you some of what she got out of it?’
‘That’s a joke.’
‘Well, Dianne had copies
of Harry’s signature she could trace, and she would have known Albert Grimes was likely to cut corners, so that was a risk she was prepared to take. Why would Grimes have suspected her, anyway, when she just called the office to say the will was being updated and would they mind if Harry just posted it in? Of course Grimes didn’t mind. As long as he was paid to do it, why would he?’
‘So what’s it to do with me? Even if I told her about the will, it’s not a crime.’
‘That part of it’s not, I’ll agree with you there. Do you have any idea why Harry wouldn’t have included his wife in his will? Or his son for that matter, too?’
‘Search me.’
‘Might he have thought someone was moving against him?’
‘Search me.’
‘Your wife’s name, Barry. What is it?’
‘Andrea.’
‘Nice name. What’s her surname though, before you were married I mean?’
Jennings sneered, ‘Why don’t you find out?’
‘I’m going to do that, and it’ll be easy, but you could probably save me the trouble. Was her maiden name Balfour by any chance?’
‘I’ve had a gutsful of this,’ Jennings complained. ‘I came here, did the right thing, now I’m gettin’ all these bloody questions. What’s it about?’
‘You’ll see.’ Cole picked up the phone and dialled Whittaker, asking him to come to the room.
‘Are you gonna let me go now?’ Jennings asked.
‘Not yet. Ah, Ben,’ he said as the door opened. ‘Would you mind escorting our good friend here down to the vacant cell, please?’
‘Be buggered I am!’ Jennings cried, but the two policeman took an arm each and led him away, by the other cell where Van der Sloot looked up with alarm as Jennings was hauled past him.
Once Jennings was secured, Cole unlocked Van der Sloot’s cell and brought him to the interview room. Whittaker kept watch at the door.
Whistle Down The Wire Page 24