The Cooktown Grave

by Carney Vaughan

  Number one’s courage returned when he saw two and three had the upper hand. Bent on vengeance, number one struggled to his feet.

  They went to work with their boots, number one hacking at the head. “Cunt!” he spat, as he delivered each kick, while the others worked on the body now curled into a foetal ball. One of them searched the drunk’s pockets.

  “Ten bucks! Ten fuckin’ lousy bucks. Where’s the rest?” “Dunno! C’mon, quick let’s piss off.”

  Number one, still on his vengeful high, emptied the contents of a nearby garbage can over the body and threw the empty can at its head. They left the loading dock by the door through which they had entered.

  The barmaid, who had refused the drunk, watched him go through the doorway followed too closely by the three goons. She knew the delivery bay was deserted and the gates were locked, she decided something was wrong. She finished pulling her set of beers and giving change. She ducked under the bar flap. Avoiding ‘goosing’ fingers, she went out through the door as the goons returned, one held a rag to his face. Some bastard had kicked over a garbage can, she picked up the lid and then saw him.

  “Jesus Christ!” she shouted above the noise in the bar. “Call an ambulance!”

  CHAPTER

  3

  The ambulance, with Mac on board, pulled to a stop in the emergency bay at the Cairns Base Hospital. White clad figures began their intrusive search for his body’s vital signs.

  At the same time, some two thousand miles to the south, seventeen-year-old Shelly Overton was having an unsuccessful night. Driving rain, beating down at an acute angle, and a swirling gusty wind precluded any chance she might have had of finding reasonable shelter. Not that she’d needed any yet. There weren’t many customers on the street this night and those who were about were catered for by girls in the dry, warm comfort of their cosy rooms.

  Shelly was a street kid; or she used to be. Though only seventeen, and still on the street, it was a long time since she’d been a kid, not since the rush from that first needle. Since then she’d been cuffed about the ears by life; by cops, pushers, yobbos, and anyone else who wanted some sport. As her demon took charge it forced her to sell her body to feed it. If left unfed it became a rampaging monster which drove her to do terrible things. It was only in the high afterglow of that calming jab that Shelly became human again. It was then, as she began to descend, she would think of home, and her mum, and her own comfortable bedroom with the wallpaper with little bears and tiny pink roses on it. And the tears would flow. As she got lower, she would think of him and the shock of his assault.

  Shelly had returned home from school to find him there, drunk. Now, an aeon later and after countless penises of odd shapes and sizes she couldn’t remember the searing pain. But subliminal bouts of shame recurred at odd times. On that day by some convoluted argument the rapist had become the victim. She was blamed for ‘flaunting herself in her short school tunic’. When she was discharged from the hospital and discovered her mum hadn’t thrown him out, she fled.

  Too profuse to be overcome by the storm Shelly, in her sad reverie, tasted the saltiness of tears. A likely customer drew near, head bent against the stinging rain. She shivered; it wasn’t the cold, it was the iciness in his opaque stare as he leaned forward to whisper.

  “No way!” her tone was firm, “I don’t do that.” “Five hundred,” he offered.

  “No!”

  He dangled a small plastic bag containing a generous amount of white powder before her.

  With that much skag she could calm, almost tame, the beast within. “I…I don’t…know,” she stammered.

  “Five hundred and…” he repeated still brandishing the bag. From her halting answer he knew the outcome.

  “I…Uh…Well…”

  He turned her away from him; she didn’t resist but braced herself with outstretched arms against the panelling of the shop door. He raised her short skirt. As he entered, she thought of her mum and the wallpaper on her bedroom wall.

  The rain pelted down. Russ Byers could see the blue light on the squad car at the end of the deserted street. Each time it flashed, its reflection in the wet surface reached out to him with unerring aim. He parked his vehicle and turned off his own flashing light, the reflected glare and the expectation of what was to come was beginning to make his head throb. The area was bordered with blue and white chequered ‘Crime Scene Do Not Enter’ tape. Some uniforms were rigging banks of halogen lights. Byers didn’t need the lights to know that there would be a young female body with an obscene, bloody grin where once there was a smooth ivory throat. It was the work of his damned Night Monster, again.

  “Who found her?” he asked the senior constable.

  “The shop owner, Sarge. He came home with his missus, from the movies. He’s inside, trying to calm her down.”

  “Any ID?”

  “Yeah, she’s Michelle Overton, she’s seventeen, eighteen at the most.

  She’s been hangin’ around King’s Cross for years.”

  “Jesus!” Byers shook his head. “No witnesses, I suppose?” he didn’t wait for an answer, “I want a filter placed in the gutter before the drain. Do it now, don’t waste time. And I want the gutter roped off, we might be lucky. Although I suppose anything useful would be washed out to sea by now. Get the cover off that drain, too, and get someone down there to search.” He felt sick. “Tell the bloke who found her to stay with his wife, tell him to come up to Darlinghurst tomorrow, to see me,” he handed the constable his card, “give him this.”

  Detective sergeant Byers leaned back in his uncomfortable, squeaky chair and rubbed his eyes. He was no nearer to solving this case than he had been when he’d landed it twelve months earlier. The bastard was still killing women, like some bloody slaughterman at an abattoir, and all too frequently. He selected his victims from a renewable source, the streetwalkers, those unorganised ladies of the night who took their chances in the dim-lit alleys and side streets of the Cross. Sadly, they defied the standover men whose job it was to frighten them into the relative safety of the brothels. Byers, at one time or another, had all of the known muscle, and any newcomers to the area, in for questioning for no result.

  “Here’s your morning tea, Russ.” A donut freed itself from its greaseproof prison as it bounced and rolled its way across his desk.

  “Young monkey,” he thought. He watched the probationer’s back diminish as he dispensed cakes and buns among the desks like some Pan scattering petals in a meadow. Russell Byers’ eyes misted and filled with tears as they usually did lately when his mind was distracted from its immediate concern.

  He had buried old Bill Bishop only a month ago and his sense of loss was greater than when his mother had died. Back then he was at war with the whole world and, although he grieved, the death of his mother was just another one that he owed them. He came into contact with old Bill at a time when life demanded he should become an adult and Bill gave him breathing space, a chance to view things without having to worry about the helter-skelter of survival. He had loved the old man with such a passion that in the end when the pain from Bill’s cancer became too much to bear for both of them, he administered a fatal dose of morphine. The last expression on the old man’s face was the smile which matched the gratitude in his eyes.

  He stared at the file on his desk, he had written Night Monster across the front, and he wondered why an arsehole like this prevailed and Bill had to die. He remembered John Murray from the police boy’s club recounting the South African version of Jimmy Carruthers title fight. Carruthers threw a hundred-and-seventy-three punches to Vic Toweel’s none, or none that he landed with, and the fight ended early in the second round. The South Africans maintained Carruthers caught Toweel whilst he was still blessing himself with the sign of the cross. Byers always wondered why God let his man down. God would have to give him a bloody strong sign before he became relevant in Russ’s
picture of the world.

  A shadow darkened his daydream, a card landed on the desk pad before him, he looked up, Sykes was there, “How yer goin’, Sherlock?” Byers ignored the sarcasm; the Night Monster had been Sykes case a year ago.

  At that time the city had been shocked from its complacency when the morning papers reported another murder in what seemed to be a series. Until then the victims had been street prostitutes. Scant sympathy was generated for them around the breakfast tables among Sydney’s self-centred inhabitants. They had problems of their own. They had to battle the morning traffic to work. They had to get the children to school on time. They had tennis courts to mark with chalk, swimming pools to clean. They had no time to mourn the passing, however violent, of women who had only themselves to blame. They had more important things on their minds.

  This time, however, the populace in this case-hardened city learned over morning coffee that one of theirs had been slaughtered. They read the headline with shock. The savagery of the attack on such an upright citizen caused any who heard the slightest noise, during ensuing nights, to check locks on windows and doors.

  SERIAL KILLER???

  DETECTIVE’S WIFE SLAIN!

  Muriel Sykes, wife of Darlinghurst police officer DS Michael Sykes, was murdered last night. Mrs Sykes was the daughter, and only child, of the late industrial tycoon Milton J. Emerson. Her murder brings to seven the number of women killed in the same manner. Can the Commissioner continue to deny that this city has a serial killer, a madman, on the loose? The sad irony of this latest murder is that the victim is the wife of the officer investigating the previous crimes. Is it a warning? Did DS Sykes get too close or was it committed by this ghoul in some perverted sense of fun?

  The story continued. It dredged up the sordid details of the previous killings.

  The file on those earlier murders had landed with a thump on Russ Byers’ desk. Byers was senior to the rest of the squad and he had no kin who could be jeopardized by his involvement. D. S. Michael Sykes was given compassionate leave and the department publicly acknowledged the reign of a serial killer. Now, twelve months later, Byers’ Night Monster was no nearer capture.

  On this morning, after the Overton girl’s death, Mick Sykes was filled with a smug good humour because Russ had got no closer to resolving the case than he had. “There’s a punter at the front desk, wants to see yer. He had yer card, ‘s about last night’s stiff crow, I think.”

  The shopkeeper, Byers guessed. His chair creaked with relief as he stood. As he made his way to the front desk he wondered about Sykes. Byers had never liked him much, he was a rough, crude bastard but he didn’t deserve to have his wife stalked and killed. He had lost her to the madman he had been hunting. Since then, the way Sykes had coped, well, Byers had to concede he had some admiration for the man.

  Federation type brick homes, with their close-clipped lawns, carpeted the middle-class suburb of Haberfield. The homes differed only in their construction by several various designs of facade. Owners exercised their individuality with their choice of colour of woodwork, rain gutters and paving. Combined with the above breaks in uniformity a heavy sprinkling of these homes in mirror image of their next-door-neighbour added a welcome relief to the suburban monotony.

  Russ Byers parked outside number fifty, he walked up a green path and tweaked a bell in the centre of a red front door. This was the part of police investigation which he hated. The heavy door creaked open, “Missus Overton? I rang yesterday, I’m Detective Byers. May I come in?” He flashed a laminated ID. She nodded and slid a security chain from its channel. He followed her down a long hallway to a depressing lounge room. A once-pretty woman her features were puffy, coarse, ugly in grief. There was an extra puffiness around one eye.

  On the way back to Darlinghurst Byers reflected on what Shelly Overton’s mum didn’t tell him. Why her daughter, at seventeen, wasn’t still occupying the spare room with its little-girl furniture and its pretty wallpaper; from where she got the fresh bruise near her eye; why her daughter hadn’t kept in touch? And why Shelly was selling herself in the lanes of King’s Cross? There was a man somewhere in the background. There always was.

  Russ was tough enough and he had seen enough in his career to know the answers to most of those questions – answers which weren’t immediately forthcoming he gave a priority to find out. But he wasn’t tough enough to escape the sadness and the frustration he always felt whenever a violent death, and the manner in which it occurred, was his to investigate. When he parked the car behind the station he sat for a while in thought. Nothing could hurt Shelly Overton now, she was out of it, but her mum would carry this misery to her grave. The anger of frustration was once more welling in his breast.

  CHAPTER

  4

  With scalpel and scissors she was removing the newest patient’s clothes. “Has he been mugged? It looks a bit like it.”

  “Nah, Sister. He’s one of the bums from the Barbary Coast. He’s just got pissed and fell over.”

  “That’s a bit crude Harry, and rather uncharitable. Where’s the Barbary Coast?”

  “It’s down on the waterfront, or it used to be, the area got class when the tourists found us. There used to be three or four pubs near the wharves where seamen from the merchant ships, and sailors from the patrol boats, would get pissed and brawl.”

  She gave her aide a glance; it brought an apology. “Inebriated, sorry,” then he added, “Anyway, win lose or draw, they’d all stagger around to the Bunda Street brothel and buy their ten minutes of bliss.”

  “Sounds like happy daze, Harry. How come you know all this? And why don’t I?”

  “My old man gets pis…drunk sometimes and he rambles on about the old days. Mind you, he works his…er…bum off through the week and he only drinks on Saturdays, he reckons that’s his day. Hear him tell it, there were some pretty tough blokes and tough times back then. And tall tales.” he added.

  “Help me get him out of his clothes.”

  “I’m off to my coffee break Sister, I got caught last night, I’ll send Miller in.”

  Harry Bernard headed for the cafeteria. Although he called Helen Bell by her first name when they were alone or away from the hospital, he always acknowledged her title whenever any staff or patients were within earshot. It was a practice appreciated by Helen who, in Harry’s opinion was a good scout – and a good sort.

  Harry had worked as an aide at the hospital for almost three years and had decided this was where he wanted to be. He was still young enough to make a career for himself here. To start with, next year he’d enrol as a mature age student at Cook University and chase a degree in nursing. He would never become a doctor, he knew that, but he liked being around people who needed help and he liked helping them. He liked being around Helen Bell, too.

  Harry had finished secondary school in year ten and had then bummed around the Cairns’ suburbs and country regions. He’d worked as a ringer on outback cattle stations. He’d spent time as a boner at the local abattoir. And when the slaughtering and butchering was done there was always work on the wharves getting the cold stores ready to export the frozen beef. The old-timers that he’d shared cribs with backed up his dad’s tales, but with one difference. While Sal told his stories about other people, they reckoned it was old Sal’s own experiences. After that, Harry had viewed the sinewy old bloke in a different light. He became a proud and protective son.

  He scanned the cafeteria. No Miller. “Seen Miller?” he asked Warren Smith, another aide.

  “In the laundry, I’m going there after my break.” “Tell him he’s wanted up in casualty.”

  He drew a cup of coffee from the urn and sat down with the evening paper. The words blurred as his thoughts drifted back to his old dad. He would blame the tears on the hot coffee.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Salvatore Bernardini was a Sicilian. He arrived in New Sou
th Wales in the early fifties, lured there by the Australian government with promise of a golden future in a land of opportunity. His life as a child on the family farm in Messina was like any number of Australian kids’ lives; at least those kids who grew up in the outback. It was full of innocent past-times and things to do. But, at sixteen, Sal’s innocence and his dreams for the future were violently wrenched from him when he was conscripted into Mussolini’s army. It was the twelfth of May 1943.

  The Allies had overcome German resistance in North Africa and until then the only hostile action Salvatore had seen took place high in the clear sky over the Bernardini farm. So remote did it all seem, as he lay in the grass watching smoke trails from wounded metal birds creating patterns on a blue screen, he could have been viewing movies.

  Sal’s childhood was rudely transformed into adulthood without the buffer of adolescence when, two months later, the British and American forces crossed the Mediterranean and attacked his homeland – the ball at the toe of the Italian boot.

  The Allied ‘Operation Husky’ saw the British Eighth Army land at Cape Passero. General George S. Paton, ‘old blood n’ guts’ with his pearl handled six shooters, and his American Seventh Army, gained a foothold and won an area for themselves on a beach at Gela. Meanwhile General Lucian Truscott’s task force and General Omar Bradley’s Second Corps pushed their way across the island and up the west coast. The British took Catania on the fifth of August and just five weeks after the first assault, Sicily was in Allied hands.