Dusty cradled her cup of tea in both hands and inclined her head slightly toward a table off to the right. “They’re having a long holiday. They were here the first day we came. Remember?”
I glanced over at the table she indicated and saw the elderly English couple. ‘Ducks’ had his head down, working his way through a large plate of bacon, eggs and sausages. His wife’s eyes met mine. She flashed me a smile, apparently remembering our brief exchange on the beach the other morning.
“There’s someone else hiding in the grass.” Dusty had returned to our conversation. I gave her an enquiring look.
“Louisa Penrose. Where does she fit into all this?”
“You think she might be involved in the murder in some way?”
“There’s something odd about the woman.” She paused to sip her tea. “What if she’s also one of Paul Walker’s victims? As Abbie said, there must have been other girls he abused, girls who didn’t come forward. What if Louisa Penrose is one of them?”
“Why follow you? If she killed Walker, isn’t she putting herself at risk of being found out?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer has tried to get close to an investigation or even to be part of it. And what about her initials? Is it just coincidence they are the same as Lena Patterson’s initials? I think I’d like another chat with that so-called journalist. Let’s shake her up and see what rattles.”
After breakfast we drove to the motel where Louisa Penrose was staying.
“Keep an eye in the rear vision mirror for a silver Toyota,” said Dusty.
If Louisa was following us, she was doing a better job of remaining out of sight than previously. In fact, since the day Dusty had confronted her, we hadn’t seen Louisa or her car. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised therefore, when we arrived at the motel, to discover Louisa Penrose had checked out.
“Nincompoop!” Dusty slapped the side of her head with the heel of her hand as we walked back to the car after speaking with the motel receptionist. “I can’t help thinking that woman has a strong connection to this case and I’ve just let her slip through my fingers.”
Dusty called Louisa’s number several times and left messages but did not get any response.
“Why not ask Jake to track her down?” I suggested.
“I’ll do that if necessary but…”
I took the hint. “I’ll do some more digging and see what I can find out.”
The frustration of letting a possible suspect get away was eased somewhat when Dusty had a piece of luck with her advertisement asking anyone knowing Paul Walker to get in touch. In fact, she received several calls. Most of them were nuisance calls or people who knew a different Paul Walker. This particular response came by way of a surprise visitor.
Chapter 37
The visitor arrived two days later just as Dusty and I were heading to the Marina to catch a catamaran out to the Great Barrier Reef.
By now we’d been in Port Douglas for almost a month. If I didn’t know better I’d suspect Dusty of deliberately drawing the case out in order to keep spending time with Jake. Although he’d gone back to Cairns, he travelled up to Port whenever he could and, when not together, they communicated regularly. I’d never seen Dusty so light hearted. To her credit, she didn’t allow her emotions to interfere with her work ethic or dilute her strong focus on the case.
On this particular day, I had spent a long night checking airline flights to see if Kimberley had flown to Port Douglas. With various airlines flying the route several times a day, it was a tedious exercise. To make matters worse, after doing all that work, I discovered it is possible, although illegal, to travel on a domestic flight under a false name.
“Serious?” said Dusty when I told her. “I never knew that. So we still have no idea whether Kimberley flew to Port Douglas or not.”
“Right. I could have saved myself a lot of work if I’d checked about travelling under a false name first.”
“Not really, Mr Maze Master. I would still have asked you to check in the hope she’d booked a flight in her real name which would have given us absolute proof. Anyway, I think I’d better fly down to Sydney to interview Kimberley Grey.”
Then she took pity on me and suggested a day out on the ocean would ‘recharge our batteries’.
We had bounced down the stairs, both of us feeling a sense of freedom at the thought of being out on the water for the rest of the day with laptops and mobile phones locked away in the safe. Dusty was wearing a turquoise sarong over her bikini, hair piled up on her head and, as the tour included snorkelling, she was devoid of jewellery.
Hearing Dusty’s name mentioned as we passed the front desk, we paused. The charming receptionist was explaining to an elderly lady that she was unable to give out guest details. She offered to pass a message on to Ms Kent. Dusty interrupted them to address the visitor.
“Are you looking for me? I’m Dusty Kent.”
The woman who turned toward us was in her late seventies with short grey hair neatly styled. Kindness etched her lined face but sadness clouded her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said in a soft voice. “I should have called you first.”
Dusty put her head to one side, offering the woman a tentative smile. “Do I know you?”
“No, but…” She glanced toward the receptionist who was now absorbed in something on her computer screen, politely affecting disinterest in our conversation. “My name’s Joyce Walker. I’m Paul Walker’s mother.”
Dusty took her arm and steered her gently away from the desk area.
“I know I should have called first, dear.” Dusty waved her apology aside. “It’s just that I’ve waited so long. As soon as I read your piece in the paper I booked a flight.”
Dusty was immediately solicitous. She harboured tender feelings for elderly women, no doubt because of her close relationship with the grandmother who took over her mother’s role. “You’ve come straight here from Cairns Airport? You must be ready for a nice cup of tea.”
The coach trip from Cairns added an extra hour or more to travel time.
“Oh, they looked after us well on the plane, dear. Don’t worry about me.”
Dusty shepherded Mrs Walker up to her apartment. Upstairs, I made an excuse to go to my own apartment after a look from Dusty that was both an apology for the aborted catamaran trip and a request to cancel our booking. When I returned, both women were seated at the table on the balcony, each with a steaming cup of tea.
“You’ve got a lovely accent,” said Joyce Walker, when Dusty introduced me.
“He’s from the Emerald Isle, Mrs Walker. I’m doing my best to Aussify him.”
“Oooh, don’t you go doing that. He’s just fine as he is.” I took a liking to Walker’s mother and sat down next to her. “Please call me Joyce.”
“Okay, Joyce it is then. So you’re Paul Walker’s mother?”
I expected Joyce’s face to darken with the burden of being the parent of a paedophile when she heard her son’s name. I saw only sadness.
“Yes, dear, I am. I cannot tell you how it made me feel when I read your advertisement. I’ve waited so long for news of Paul. Then to find out that…to find out what happened to him. It was a dreadful shock. At first I didn’t believe it. But the details you included in your advertisement about his art, his date of birth, and how long he’d been living here, that sort of thing… To think he’d been living here all those years and I didn’t know.”
“The police can do a DNA test to be absolutely certain.” Dusty reached out and touched Joyce’s hand in sympathy. “I’ll put you in touch with the Queensland police later. They can give you more details.” Dusty explained how she came to be investigating the murder, choosing her words carefully when she came to the part about Paul Walker’s past.
“At the moment I’m investigating people, well, women actually…I mean…”
“It’s all right, dear. I know what you mean.” Joyce’s eyes moistened. She rummaged i
n her handbag and drew out a letter. “I wanted to…” She stared down at the letter before continuing. “My son wrote this. It’s an awful letter but… He wrote it years ago. I’ve waited so long. Now it’s too late.” Her hand tightened around the letter, crumpling the paper. “It’s his confession, you see. He gives details about that night at the school camp. Not graphic details, you understand, but enough to make it absolutely clear what he did to those three girls and where the blame lies.”
“It’s not too late, Joyce. It can still be helpful to the girls: Abbie, Kimberley and Lena. To know he confessed will mean a lot to them.”
“Yes, it might help the girls a little. I’m grateful for that. I’m just so sorry for Paul. It’s too late for him.”
She held the letter up as though it represented her son, her hand shaking slightly. “He never wanted to be the way he was, you know.” Her eyes met Dusty’s. “It was his uncle. I blame myself. You see, his uncle had train sets. Puff, that’s what we called him when he was a little boy, loved trains so we let him stay with his uncle a lot. We never knew. My husband and I never knew what was going on. I know not all children who are abused become abusers themselves but for some it is a trigger. That’s what happened to my son. Before that, he was a lovely boy.”
Dusty and I exchanged glances. If either of us had been clinging to any last hope Ram had not been a paedophile, it had now been completely extinguished. Dusty waited patiently for Joyce to continue, understanding how difficult it must be for a mother to admit such an awful truth about her own flesh and blood.
“He wrote this letter as a sort of reparation.” The look on Dusty’s face revealed her unwillingness to accept that. Seeing this, Joyce shook her head.
“I don’t mean he was trying to make amends to the girls. Despite his despicable inclinations he at least knew he could never undo the damage he’d done to those innocent girls or make up for it in any way.”
Dusty arched her eyebrows. What did she mean by reparation then? Joyce continued.
“I mean reparation to his brother.” I recalled from my research Paul Walker had one sibling: an older brother called Colin. “He was always jealous of his brother. There was only a year between them, you see. At first, it was just normal sibling rivalry. Later, we found out his uncle had done his best to inflame that jealousy.”
Dusty frowned and considered this for a moment. “You mean the uncle was afraid he’d confide in his brother and so did what he could to drive a wedge between the boys?”
Joyce Walker sighed and nodded. “Children are so vulnerable, aren’t they? Especially vulnerable to manipulation by adults.” She started to unfold the letter. “I’ve hung on to this letter all these years. I knew it would mean so much to Paul. If only he could have read it.”
Joyce had apparently mixed up the names of her sons. My mother used to do that sometimes with my sisters. Dusty’s face was a cloud of confusion. “Paul? Didn’t Paul write the letter?”
The rustling of paper ceased. Joyce jerked her head up and stared at Dusty.
“Paul? Oh no, dear. Not Paul. Colin wrote this letter; his brother.” She passed it across the table to Dusty. “I hoped Paul could use it in some way to clear his name. I know he was acquitted but most people still believed he was guilty. He lost his job, his reputation and it all happened not long after his wife died while he was still grieving. It was so unfair; utterly cruel.”
Dusty laid the letter flat on the table and positioned it so that I could also see it.
“Colin was a teacher too, you know.” Joyce’s eyes were fixed on her tea cup. She shook her head slightly, perhaps to express regret for the circumstances that formed the character of her eldest son.
The letter was a confession written by Colin Walker, evidenced by his address at the top and his signature at the bottom which had been witnessed by a third party. He confessed to the sexual abuse of Kimberley Grey, Abbie Kowalski and Lena Patterson.
Paul’s brother detailed how he sneaked into the school camp that evening. He stated that he’d deliberately impersonated his brother. He was angry at Paul for not being able to see what the uncle was doing to him when they were kids just as he was angry at his parents for not protecting him. As an adult, he realised his enmity was irrational. Sadly, by then, hatred had already infected him. He confessed to being pleased his brother had been accused and disgraced. Later he regretted it but didn’t have the courage to come forward.
“He wrote it not long before he died.” Joyce spoke softly. “He’d been arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a minor but took his own life before he could stand trial. He even had the letter witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, to make sure it was taken seriously. Of course, the witness had no idea he planned to commit suicide.”
Dusty and I were both too emotional to speak. Joyce on the other hand needed to talk.
“Paul was never like that; like his brother – could never be. He was a sweet boy. Luckily his uncle never touched him. If he had, I think Paul would have reacted very differently to Colin. I think he would have retreated, shut himself away from everyone.”
“Just like he did when his brother betrayed him?” Dusty refilled Joyce’s cup from the pot on the table.
Joyce nodded. “He just disappeared. Broke off all ties, even with us. It hurt his father and me deeply, even though we knew he would have done that for our sake more than his own. He knew being the parents of a son who was thought to be a paedophile would make us targets of people’s hatred. He wanted to spare us that as much as possible by disappearing. That’s the way Paul was.” She lowered her eyelids. “We would rather have had him in our lives. Besides, we never for a moment believed any of the accusations against Paul.” Joyce smiled through her tears, dabbing her eyes dry with a tissue. “If the girls had been able to see his face that night, they might have realised it wasn’t Paul.”
“So the brothers didn’t look alike?”
“You could pick a family resemblance but their features were not identical. The main difference was their eyes. Paul had a condition called heterochromia which means his eyes were not the same colour. He had one blue eye and one brown eye. Colin’s eyes were both blue.” Joyce sighed.
It hadn’t been clear from the photo I’d found of Paul Walker that he had different coloured eyes.
“Did Paul know his brother had set him up?”
“Not at first, but he worked it out. He didn’t tell us but he did write to Colin, asking him to come forward. We found the letter among Colin’s things. In the letter he said he knew it was Colin when he heard the girls in court saying they recognised his voice. Colin and Paul sounded identical when they spoke, and when they laughed. The girls didn’t know Colin. They probably didn’t even know their teacher had a brother so naturally they believed it was Paul’s voice.” Joyce stared at the steam swirling from the hot tea in her cup. “In one way, I’m surprised Colin kept Paul’s letter. In another way, I think he knew deep down that one day he would come forward and clear his brother’s name. Maybe he even hoped someone would find the letter and thus force him to confess.”
Joyce sank back into her chair. She looked like she’d completed an emotional marathon.
“Joyce. May I take a copy of this letter? I’d like to include it, parts of it, in the book I’m writing about my investigation into your son’s death.”
“Oh yes, dear. I’d like that. I want people to know the truth about Paul. He was an artist, you know. An accomplished artist. He would have been happy spending his life painting but it takes a long time for an artist to get established. In the meantime there’s no money coming in. So he became a teacher. He liked the idea of having regular holidays when he could devote himself to painting.”
“Sean and I saw some of Paul’s paintings at Sunyarta Sanctuary where he’d been living. I have pictures of them on my phone but I think it would be much nicer for you to view them for the first time in real life. We’ll take you there after lunch.”
A short time later, af
ter establishing that Joyce had plenty of time before her flight back to Melbourne which wasn’t until the evening, Dusty insisted on taking her to lunch at Rocky’s Cafe.
Chapter 38
When we arrived, Rocky was sitting out the front of the cafe strumming his guitar. Dusty seemed absorbed in the melody he was playing. Finishing the tune with a final accented note. Rocky smiled at us, his guitar still resting against his chest, fingers dangling over the strings.
“Does this mean business is quiet?” said Dusty.
“It’s the calm before the storm. Another ten or fifteen minutes and the place’ll be jumping.”
“This is Joyce.” Dusty gestured to Ram’s mother but didn’t elaborate on the introduction. “She’s just here for the day. I couldn’t let her leave Port Douglas without experiencing the one and only Rocky’s cafe.”
Rocky beamed proudly.
“This cafe has the most interesting wallpaper I’ve seen,” I said.
Her curiosity piqued, Joyce wandered into the cafe.
“How’s your investigation going?” Rocky rested his guitar in an upright position on the ground next to his chair.
“Very well indeed.” Dusty beamed. “I think I’m on the edge of a breakthrough.”
“Good.” Rocky nodded approvingly. “I heard the monk who was murdered was a pedo.”
I looked around quickly, relieved to see Joyce was now down at the other end of the cafe well out of earshot and absorbed in the messages on the wall.
Dusty was cautious in her response. “He had been charged with sexual offences but he was acquitted.”
I knew Dusty was exercising considerable self control to refrain from defending Ram. Although she might have been disappointed the bush telegraph had inevitably spread this news, she would not attempt to correct the misinformation just yet. It could give her an advantage and might be a useful surprise to spring on a suspect.
“It’s a shame.” Rocky glanced up in the direction of Sunyarta. “People will think the other monks are the same and turn against them. That’s not fair; they’re good people. They’ve done so much for Port. The hill for a start; no trees up there at all until they started the monastery. It was just a barren bump on the horizon. Look at it now; it’s so green.”
Disguising Demons Page 17