by T. J. Beach
Her friends waved their hands like cheerleaders. “Yay, Charlton!”
Hollins stood stunned for a moment, then shook his head, chuckling. “Come on you, Addicks.”
Jenny frowned.
“We shout ‘come on you, Addicks’.” Hollins pumped his fist. “Charlton Athletic are The Addicks. It’s their nickname.”
“Like Richmond are the tigers,” Debbie said.
“Come on you, Attics!” The girls pumped their fists.
“Close enough. Hey, Deb, can you get a picture?” He stood behind the new Charlton fans, and Debbie did the honours with her phone.
The girls cartwheeled off to their game while Debbie and Hollins sought out Station Two.
“Sorry about that,” Debbie said. “I wondered why Jennifer wanted her netball shirt.”
“Do they realise they’ve condemned themselves to a lifetime of disappointment? Send me that photo. I’ll email it to Charlton. We might get some gear or something.”
Lachlan jumped up as they arrived. “Hi, Gary,” he said shyly.
Hollins ruffled his cap. “How ya doin’? Are you going to have some fun tonight?”
Lachlan nodded.
His trusting smile made Hollins feel about ten feet tall.
“Everyone here? Dan, your dad didn’t make it tonight?”
A woman as broad and grim-faced as his dad stepped up behind the stout kid.
“Dan’s mum, I presume. Hi, I’m Gary.”
Buoyed more than he could say by the support from Jenny and Lachy, Hollins’ training session left him tired but satisfied. The concentration required to make sure every child stayed safe from flying equipment and got the opportunities and attention they deserved drained him after the day’s trauma, but in a much better way. Even Dan’s mum defrosted enough to give him a nod as she steered her son away.
Lachy helped him stack the cones at the last station. “Thanks, mate,” Hollins said. It only took double the time with a six-year-old’s well-meaning assistance. “Did you enjoy yourself tonight?”
Debbie’s son nodded.
Dave, the organiser, tapped Hollins on the shoulder. “How are you finding it?”
Hollins resisted the urge to say, ‘I get out of my car, and here it is’. “Good, I think. The parents seem happy enough.”
“They’re happy as Larry. I’ve just had Yvette Willette telling me what a fantastic job you’re doing, and Mrs Patil lined me up before the session. You’re a natural.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. It’s my job. Have you thought about doing a little more?”
“Like?” Hollins hoped Dave wouldn’t invite him to join the cricket club. Refusal might offend.
“I run weekend camps for boys two or three times a year. We take them out in the forest, run their legs off, cook over open fires, give them challenges, build their self-confidence. The parents pay the expenses for their own kids, the leaders and a couple of troubled boys that I invite along. It’s a project of mine.”
“It doesn’t sound like me,” Hollins said. Weekends herding over-excited midgets through the woods sounded like a punishment worse than death.
“I beg to differ. I’ve seen you with the boys. I see a lot of myself in you, Gary. You’re one of us.”
“I’m doing this because Debbie asked. Just for Lachlan.”
“Oh, Lachlan. I get it. Well, if you change your mind … I’ll badger you again, I promise.” Dave grinned.
Debbie stepped up beside Hollins. “Hi, Dave.”
“Hi, Debbie, I was just telling Gary about my weekend camps. You should send Lachlan. The boys love it.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
Dave left to do organiser things.
“He runs camps for kids?” Hollins asked.
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it for Lachlan when he’s a bit older. It’s a good thing that Dave does. You should think about helping him.”
“I did. Confidence-building, he said?”
“Lord of the Flies meets cubs from what I hear.”
“Like an outdoor ed camp then?”
“Christ, I hope not!”
Debbie had never divulged the specific acts she witnessed between Stu Reilly and Sally Nuttall at a high school outdoor education camp, but they gave her a hold over the Detective Sergeant that had proved useful more than once.
“I was a cub scout,” Hollins said.
“Yeah? I can just see you in your little cap and wiggle.”
“Waggle. I was a Sixer.”
“What happened to all those leadership skills?”
“Were you a Brownie?”
“Less said about that, the better. Look, thanks again. You’re doing so well.”
“I didn’t see any bullying.”
“Me either. Lachlan had a great time. He’s much better.”
“Problem solved then?”
“No. Lachlan’s been his old self more often, but he’s still playing up about going to school, and he’s come home a couple of times so depressed. You’ll keep on coaching his team?”
“Yes. Where is Lachy? He was right here helping me put the gear away.”
Debbie pointed him out, sitting on his bat with his chin in his palm while Jenny and her friends cavorted around him.
“He looks delighted.” Hollins laughed. “Kids, eh? In five years, he’ll think all his birthdays have come at once if three pretty girls turn cartwheels around him.”
Debbie snorted. “Ten years maybe. Crap, where’s his cap? Lachlan? Where’s your hat?”
Cricket cap.
Cub scout cap.
It tickled at Hollins’ brain.
Something about headgear.
He’d missed something.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HOLLINS HAD A long morning run, a quick breakfast, then drove to the Ridenour Investigations office and parked among the dented vehicles awaiting attention from the panel beater next door.
Debbie turned up a little late, flustered, hurrying to pull up the roll-down security door that shielded the windows outside office hours.
He stood behind her and waited until she had the key in the entry door look. “Morning.”
She jumped a foot in the air. “Bloody hell. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here?”
“I want you to show me something.”
“Gary. I’m a married woman.” She pushed through into the office, threw her bag on her desk and went to her seat. “Make yourself useful. Fill the kettle. Why aren’t you at campaign headquarters?”
Hollins hadn’t thought of going there. With Austin in Victoria and Sophia gone, there didn’t seem any point. “That’s done, isn’t it?”
“If you say so. Glenn Braithwaite stood you down?”
“I haven’t spoken to him since Austin left. Why would I?”
“Professional courtesy. Debrief. Seek feedback on our performance. I’ll give him a ring. Kettle?”
He filled it, plonked it on its base and flicked it on. “Kim’s not in?”
“He went back to his place at Bunker Bay for once. Since you’re available for a new assignment, we have a couple of things—”
“No, thank you. Show me the surveillance tape from campaign headquarters, the one with the vandals.”
Debbie sat up straight and saluted. “Yes, sir. Is this how you ran your cubs six — ruthless authority?”
“Please will you show me the camera tape you gave the police?”
“That’s better. You’re worse than the kids. In fact, I’ve been trying to fathom the strange attraction you have for Lachlan and Jennifer. It’s bad uncle, isn’t it? You’re the anti-parent.”
“Matt likes me.”
“What would he know? He’s a lousy judge of people.”
Hollins let his smirk answer for him.
“Oh, shut up. You know what I meant. Matt has wonderful taste in women.”
“Are you going to show me the tape?”
She rolled her eyes and rummaged in her draw
for the SD card with the raw footage. “What are you looking for?”
“A cap.”
Debbie raised an eyebrow.
“Bozza from the Goon Squad had a blue hat on yesterday.”
Debbie nodded.
“It bugged me all through cricket, every time I saw a hat — Dave’s St Kilda cap, the cricket club hats, Lachlan’s lost kanga cricket cap. Then last night watching baseball on telly, it clicked. Bozza’s lid has a motorcycle embroidered on it and writing around the front edge of the peak.”
Debbie shrugged.
“One of the graffiti artists had a cap on under his hood.”
“Aaah.” She slid the camera card into an adapter and plugged it into her computer.
Hollins got coffee mugs and the tea things.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Debbie pulled the kettle out of his hand and took over.
As Hollins expected.
She had a way with Nescafe instant and tea bags beyond his understanding that produced vastly superior hot drinks — another mother thing, no doubt.
He slipped into her chair while her back was turned, but she was on to him in a flash.
“Out of there.”
With a hot steaming mug in his hands, he stood behind Debbie while she got the pictures on the screen.
“Ah,” she said. “It’s zeroed back to the start.”
“There’s a time code. You can fast forward.” Hollins pointed at the screen.
“I do not need a man to tell me how to operate basic software.” She set the video to its highest speed. Figures scurried in and out of the office doors, bright and clear in daylight, grey in reflected streetlight, static shots of the windows when a dog or a car passed at night and set off the camera for no reason. Back to daylight. “Nearly there.”
“Stop,” Hollins called out at a flash of light hair.
Debbie clicked and looked up expectantly. “I didn’t see any—”
“It’s Sophia.”
Debbie rewound and they watched together as, the morning before the graffiti, Sophia Pendlebury came into shot, tossing back her hair, waving to someone out of the picture with a radiant smile.
A lump formed in Hollins’ throat. “Play it over.”
They watched again. “My God, she was beautiful,” Debbie said.
Hollins nodded.
The office door closed behind her, and the camera timed out.
“Again?” Debbie asked.
“Stop. Who’s that?”
The time code had skipped ahead only a few minutes when the camera next detected movement and turned itself on. The new visitor was male, lean, young, dark-skinned.
“Shit, that’s Keith Tupaea.” Debbie paused the video and swore because the picture blurred.
“Let it run.”
Debbie clicked again without her usual protest at male assumption of superiority.
Keith never looked straight into the camera — why would he? — but they got a half-profile as his head tipped back when he hauled on the door handle. “It’s him,” Debbie said.
Hollins put his mug on the desk and leaned in closer. “He’s wearing the same jacket he had on when I saw him at the pub and that way he throws his shoulder. It’s definitely Keith. She lied to me.”
“Sophia?”
“Yep. She met him. She must have. He went to the office when she was there. Look at the date. This is first thing the morning before the vandalism. She came to my cabin that night.”
“She told you she hadn’t met Keith? That he hadn’t been to the campaign office?”
Hollins straightened, running over the weird confrontation with Sophia Pendlebury draped on his sofa. “I don’t remember exactly. Maybe not explicitly, but she gave the strong impression no one had seen Keith. She lied to me.”
“Damn. Do you think Keith met Austin?”
“No. But he may have.”
“Scumbags. The APP had the flyers. Why the hell didn’t they call me?”
“For all the reasons Sophia gave me to keep it under the carpet for the sake of Austin’s image. Politicians are gobshites. Who’d have thought?”
“I didn’t think Sophia was part of the political thing.”
“We live and learn. It hardly matters now. The important thing is that this is more evidence Keith had a motive. Was this on the tape you sent Stu Reilly?”
“No, just the graffiti artists. I cropped off everything else. Here’s the vandalism. Do you still want to look at it?”
She’d left the tape running, and it had reached the moment when the hoodlums set off the cameras.
“The cap.” Hollins jabbed his finger at the screen.
Shadowy figures dragged painting gear into shot, pointed and talked. The cap flashed into view.
“That’s not Bozza,” Debbie said.
“No. He’s too big. But the cap …”
The hoodie-clad vandals slapped graffiti onto the windows, then stopped, looked at each other and ran. Debbie rewound and played it again. She paused on the best view of the headgear.
“It’s partly blocked by the hood, but I’d swear that’s a motorbike wheel on his cap,” Hollins said.
Debbie squinted. “The second word on the peak could be ‘club’. What has Bozza got on his?”
“I don’t remember.”
“He’s not one of these guys is he?” Debbie indicated the men on the screen.
“No, he’s smaller.”
“Then we’ll ask him.”
“Or you could Google motorcycle clubs in Bell’s Landing.”
Debbie pierced him with a glare.
“Please could you Google—”
“Seeing as you asked so nicely.”
Three came up. They both picked out Geographe MotoX Club at the same time.
“That’s it. The X,” Hollins said. “Go to the … I mean, please would you go the site—”
“And look for photos of their merchandise. I’m not an idiot.”
The website had a link offering headgear in a range of colours, each with a stylised dirt bike embroidered on the front panel and club’s name stamped on the visor.
“Bingo.”
“That’s it,” Debbie confirmed. “The big guy has a connection to the motocross club.”
“Call Stu.”
“He won’t care about the graffiti when he’s got Sophia Pendlebury’s murder to solve.”
“But it’s a clue to who committed the crime, and they’ll want the proof that Keith Tupaea went to the campaign office.”
Debbie glared.
“We’ve got to tell them,” Hollins said. “We can’t withhold evidence.”
“You call Stu. I’ve got work to do if you’re not going to help out Ridenour Investigations.”
“No.”
“I swear you like living in a hut on a caravan park.”
“I do.”
“Loser. Call Detective Sergeant Douchebag.”
Hollins went to the police station to report his discovery in person. The Detective Sergeant was out on enquiries, so Hollins ended up with his doubtful offsider, Detective Constable Hugh Connolly.
“There. See, as he turns across the camera.”
“Maybe we can blow it up,” the policeman said.
Hollins drew his attention to the motocross club merchandise photo on the second screen. “It’s the same, isn’t it?”
“It could be. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I’ll pass it on.”
“And?” Hollins asked.
“We’ll look into it. Can you rewind to the bit where Keith Tupaea enters the office? It’s definitely him, is it?”
“Yes, but—”
“If he was at the campaign office, he definitely had Austin Gould in his sights.”
“So to speak.”
“Yeah.” The detective smiled, realising he’d made a pun. “But you’re telling me that a guy who knew his way around a rifle has a strong motive and contacted the campaign. We’re going to have to bring him in. When we find him. I�
�ll get on to PR in Perth and get them to hurry up a media appeal for Keith to come forward.”
Hollins could see his point, but he still could not accept that Keith Tupaea might be a cold-blooded killer. “Look, I met the guy.”
“For five minutes.”
“Which was long enough.”
The policeman turned away, closed his notebook and slipped it into the pocket of his leather jacket. “Thanks for coming in, Mr Hollins. This is useful evidence, and evidence is what we deal in.”
“You’ll follow up on the vandals? The baseball cap?”
“Sure.” The policeman tossed it over his shoulder as he led Hollins to the exit.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE TELEVISION NETWORKS and newspapers plastered Keith’s photo and description over every bulletin for the next three days. The fact that he remained at large made the Kiwi even bigger news. The vandalism angle didn’t crack a mention, which focused Hollins’ attention on finding the graffiti artist with the cap.
Geographe Bay Motocross Club had a meeting the following Saturday, a perfect opportunity to develop the lead.
Debbie insisted on going with Hollins while Matt minded the kids.
“Lachy and Jenny would have loved this.” Hollins had to shout over the wail of a thousand angry bees as a horde of 50CC two-stroke motorcycles bounded over the first jump at the hands of children in brightly coloured helmets, filling the air with noxious, purple-grey clouds of exhaust fumes and dust.
“Lachlan on a motorcycle?” Debbie asked.
“Jenny—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Matt’s taken them to church today, has he?”
“I don’t want to think what’s happening at home. Matt’s almost as unreliable as you.”
“I’ll call ahead when we leave, so he has time to hide the evidence and set up a meditation circle.”
“I wish.” She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and surveyed the crowd. “I don’t think I have ever seen so many hoons in one place at one time.”
“Don’t be fooled by the leathers.” Hollins pointed out a guy with shoulder-length hair, a Ned Kelly shovel beard and Devil’s Spawn motorcycle club colours. “That one’s just come from taking his granny to knitting class.”