‘Mmm … but the idea did occur straight away to Damian that it was a place he might go.’
‘Look,’ said Leslie, indicating the map. ‘He could also have walked down Bridle Creek Road past Copperlode Dam and down into Cairns. Which is what Doctor Tim and his wife were going to do by car. Much easier. He could have walked up to the highway and gone in any one of three directions. Damian himself told us he’s had nothing to do with his father for years, the only knowledge he has of him is from years ago. We have to direct this search logically and with the best use of my resources. Which are finite.’
Cass nodded. All that was true. But she was captivated by the idea of the giant Rock, brooding high in the range, hidden in mist. She was determined to go there.
Kahlpahlim Rock, 12 March 2011
Cass and Lyndall set out early on Saturday morning. It had taken all of Cass’s powers of persuasion to get Drew’s approval for the expedition, which, he’d emphasised, she was undertaking in her own time and on her own responsibility.
The week had been devoted to the tedious business of interviewing reluctant suspects who’d had to be cornered between their operating lists and their consulting sessions, some of them in places far from Cairns. Almost all had unshakeable alibis for the critical period.
The two cardiologists had been at a conference in the States. One general practitioner had been on a walking tour in New Zealand, and another one in England. The dermatologist had been at his Gold Coast practice for two weeks including the crucial days. The gastroenterologist had undergone prostate surgery in Brisbane. The orthopaedic surgeon had been to a meeting in Florence and then on holiday in Italy … The list of exotic alibis went on.
Jim Hewitt had spent the relevant time at his house in Port Douglas, where he had friends staying. He appeared to be covered, as did Wilfred Lam, whose wife, visibly distressed, swore he was at home with his family the whole weekend before Yasi, and whose receptionist Leanne produced the appointment book to confirm he had been fully occupied with the incisors and molars of his clients during the working week.
That left just Henry Jolley, Tim Ingram and Arthur Mellish with holes in their alibis. Jolley and Ingram said they’d spent the Sunday night together, which no-one else could confirm, and Mellish’s neighbour remembered seeing him at the Tablelands house not far from Davies Creek, but couldn’t say when, not even which day. Troy had been given the task of pursuing these gaps.
The only positive piece of news had come from Leah Rookwood, who phoned Cass to say that yes, ketamine in significant amounts had been detected in tissue samples taken from Odile Janvier’s body.
‘Leah must have special influence in Brisbane,’ Drew said when he’d heard this. ‘Normally it takes six weeks minimum for tox results.’
‘I know,’ said Cass. ‘She leant on them heavily because there was no obvious cause of death at autopsy and it looked like murder. So they’ve confirmed ketamine. But no alcohol, cocaine, cannabis, other prescription drugs.’
In between these banal but necessary detective pursuits, Cass had enjoyed the respite of several long conversations with Lyndall, whom she was liking more and more. After checking with Drew, she’d told Lyndall about the ketamine, about where the car had been found, and then what Damian had said about Kahlpahlim Rock.
‘I want to go to the Rock,’ Cass said. ‘I’d just like to go and see it. I’m not expecting to find Michel Janvier.’
‘Can I come with you?’ Lyndall had asked immediately. ‘I’d seriously doubt too that Michel would be there, despite what Damian says. I’ve been there once. The track’s tough going for a couple of hours, but it’s worth it at the top. You’re fitter than me, not to mention younger. But I’ve been walking a lot in France.’
‘Saturday?’ Cass said.
Lyndall laughed. ‘Yes, OK. Saturday. My jetlag’s well and truly gone now. I can do it.’
Told of this plan, Drew was not impressed and did his best to dissuade her. ‘Yes, you’re due time off,’ he said. ‘You all are. But that should mean a day of relaxing at home, not a mad scramble up a difficult bush track. I can’t spare anyone to go with you so you’ll be there entirely as a civilian. And I can’t believe you’re going to find anything at all.’
‘Well,’ said Cass, ‘at least we’ll know.’
‘Take plenty of water,’ said Drew. Aha, thought Cass, so I can go.
‘And make sure your mobiles are fully charged,’ he said. ‘Remember there’s a helipad at the top, to service the mobile phone tower there, so there’s mobile cover. But I can tell you, if I have to send a chopper to rescue you two I won’t be amused.’
He gazed out the window in the direction of the range. Then he added: ‘Diamond, I know you’re a registered gun owner. You’ve got a weapon in your house?’
‘A Glock. Same as service issue.’
‘I think it’d be a good idea to take it with you.’
Dawn was breaking through the canopy as Lyndall drove along the road beyond the Davies Creek picnic grounds. This track now resembled the holding pen of a cattle market, so many vehicles had passed along it. As Lyndall splashed her Subaru Tribeca through a deep mud pool, the wheels spun then gripped again as she changed to a lower gear and the car inched forward.
‘About eight k’s down this road is the start of the ridge trail,’ Cass said, peering at the guidebook in the half-light. Then she lifted her eyes to a break in the trees where a sunbeam lit up a flowering tree orchid. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘it’s just beautiful here!’
Lyndall smiled and nodded, gripping the wheel as she steered the car across another muddy morass.
Five kilometres from the highway they came to police tape marking off the area where Odile Janvier had been found. The forest was very still, with only the occasional song from a bird waking high in the canopy.
The ridge trail’s first section had once been an old logging track. Their plan was to climb up along this first trail and come back down the second track, then walk back along the road to Lyndall’s car. The first trail was steeper, but it was also shorter. This would be the most demanding part of the walk and they planned to do it in the hours before the sun, and the temperature, rose too high.
Both women wore jeans and T-shirts and boots. Lyndall couldn’t help noticing the bulge beneath Cass’s T-shirt, even though the detective was off duty. But she said nothing. They each had a backpack with a water bottle, and Lyndall had brought sandwiches and a flask of coffee. All going well, they would make it to the top of the Rock by late morning and be back down at the road by mid-afternoon.
For a while the track followed a creek with sandy shores and stumpy palms. Then it crossed an old wooden bridge. Cass stepped gingerly onto this, remembering the sight of Tim and Chris’s car in the creek on the day the corpse had been found. It held firm. The track widened out into the road loggers had made a hundred years earlier. Paperbark trees grew on both sides, much of their flaky bark peeled off by Yasi and lying in long sheets on the ground. Then the path began the steep climb to the top of the range. Parts of the route were defined by rough timber steps but it was still a demanding climb and they barely spoke for thirty minutes as they clambered upwards, grabbing at branches to steady themselves and sometimes crawling on hands and knees. Then the path levelled out onto a plateau.
‘Wow,’ groaned Cass. ‘I need a break! Is it too early for coffee?’ Sweat was running down her face and breasts and soaking into her T-shirt, and the knees of her jeans were thick with mud.
Lyndall laughed. ‘Just have some water!’ she said, unscrewing a bottle.
They sat on a group of small boulders as rays of sun broke through cloud above them, and looked upwards to where the track began to climb again and the eucalypts were replaced by purple-barked kauri pines. These huge trees were what the loggers had come to take.
They started up again. Coming to the start of the pines, Cass suddenly stopped and grabbed Lyndall’s arm, pointing ahead. Lyndall peered at the path and saw what she thoug
ht was a dark purple kauri branch. Then the branch began to move and she saw that it was actually a large python, glistening purple in the sunlight.
‘An amethystine python!’ she said as they watched the snake slither away into the undergrowth. Fully stretched it measured at least four metres.
‘They don’t like humans,’ she told Cass. ‘They’ll never attack if you just leave them alone. You can see how they get the name.’
Cass paid closer attention to where she put her feet after that; she had no intention of putting Lyndall’s claim to the test.
They climbed through rainforest where ferns and palms jostled for space under the kauris and reached a junction marked by orange tape. Now the trail took a turn to the right and they began their approach to the Rock itself. Soon they could see a huge boulder that the guidebook identified as the first lookout along the ridge to the Rock. They staggered across and found footholds that took them to the top of the boulder. Cass looked around and took a deep breath. Even if they went no further, the climb had been worth it.
‘It’s fabulous!’ she exclaimed and Lyndall nodded, panting from the exertion of the last few minutes. They flopped down on the warm surface of the boulder and looked around. Below them stretched the forest: grey-green and silver where the eucalypts grew further down the mountain, darker green with the glowing purple trunks of the kauris higher up. To the west they could see the broad plateau that was the Atherton Tableland, and in the distance the town of Mareeba starting to wake up to the day. A tiny bus was making its way down the distant highway, and a microscopic horse ambled across a field. Several hot air balloons were floating in the sky, orbs of gold caught by the morning sun. Near the Rock, a small cloud hung motionless above the dome like the froth on a glass of bitter.
‘I’m beginning to feel less negative about Michel Janvier,’ Cass said, unscrewing the thermos and pouring coffee into mugs, ‘if he liked this place and brought his kids here.’
‘Yep,’ agreed Lyndall. ‘I didn’t meet him until years after he would have come here with the boys. It’s good to think that he appreciated the bush and shared that with Damian at least. And he was apparently quite happy when he was out west. Before he met Odile. Although he was always inclined to fraud, to taking the easy option. That was in his personality long before he met her.’
‘She does seem to have been a right bitch,’ Cass said, watching a small grey bird with a lemon chest hop from branch to branch.
‘The pale-yellow robin,’ Lyndall identified, before saying of Odile: ‘Yeah, she screwed up her husband, and her sons when they were kids, and it seems a lot of other people. She mightn’t have been so destructive if she’d stayed in France with perhaps more help with the kids from Michel’s family. They might have restrained her. That’s not an excuse, just a comment.’
‘Can I ask you,’ Cass began, ‘what Michel’s attitude to you was, personally? As a man talking to a good-looking younger woman, about intimate sexual matters? How difficult is that, for a woman psychiatrist?’
‘Well, thanks for the compliment,’ Lyndall laughed. ‘Actually he was difficult. Certainly male patients do hit on me, from time to time. But female patients do the same to male psychiatrists, I’m told. And gay patients, where a therapist is gay. I always felt wary about Michel. Not that he would make an advance, which I’m perfectly capable of handling. Rather that he would become emotionally dependent on me, or his idea of who I was, and seek masochistic gratification by being rejected by me. I always tried to keep a physical barrier, usually the desk, between us, to emphasise that there was always going to be an emotional distance between us. The relationship was always going to be a doctor–patient one, controlled by me, and I had to make that clearer to him than I need to do with most of my patients. Actually talking about sex, which is a regular part of my work, I don’t find all that difficult with patients. About myself, though, with men, yes, it’s difficult!’
Cass roared with laughter at this. ‘Men!’ she said. ‘Talking to them about anything personal is hopeless. But I’ve given up on men anyway.’
Lyndall looked quite shocked. ‘Surely not! At your age? What about the father of your son? He’s not still in your lives?’
Cass gazed out towards Mareeba. ‘Richie?’ she said. ‘No. He died when Jordon was not quite three. He hardly remembers his dad at all.’
‘I’m sorry. You must have been very young when that happened.’
‘Eighteen. Yes, it was terrible. Such a waste. I got pregnant when I was fifteen. Richie was seventeen. He didn’t run away from it, though. He was very supportive. But we both dropped out of school and left home and travelled together. Right around New South Wales and southern Queensland. That was in 1993. We had a lot of relatives to put us up but we also worked. Picking fruit and things like that. And I admit, did some drugs, but not much. Jordon was born in Sydney.
‘Then in 1995 my mother got sick. She’d just had my youngest sister, who’s almost three years younger than Jordon. We were in Inverell. I took a train back to Newcastle with Jordon. Richie was coming with the van – we had this old, beat-up van. But he never made it. He was found unconscious in a back street in Taree and the van was missing. It was eventually found burnt out. No-one was ever charged for any of it. Richie spent six days in John Hunter Hospital but never regained consciousness.
‘He was … funny, clever, he could have done so much. But the story of his death, it’s totally an Aboriginal story. A young male Aboriginal story. The kind of story I don’t want for my son. But the kind of story I wrote for my thesis.’
‘Your thesis? In criminology?’
‘Yeah. I did honours. I had ideas about being an academic. Successful Indigenous woman activist in criminal justice reform.’
‘So is joining the Police a kind of positive action in that direction?’
‘Funnily enough, it might be, although I never consciously thought that. My reasons for joining the force were much more personal. I was the classic case of the student who falls for her professor. In my case much older than me. And as it turned out I was not the only one, only, it took me a long while to realise. And it also had quite a bad effect on my son, for a while. Luckily my family helped a lot.’
After a moment Cass added: ‘The prof, his name is Rufus Forbes, you may have heard of him.’
‘Lord, of course I have. He’s always on the radio, talking about social justice and Indigenous issues. He has quite a reputation.’
‘Yep, he does. And what he has to say along those lines is mostly spot-on. He loves it. White fella left-wing hero, fighter for Indigenous rights. But in relation to women he’s medieval. He wanted me because I’m Aboriginal. A trophy to display.’
‘How long were you with him?’
‘Two years. But not exclusively. I kind of knew that. But you know and you don’t know.’
Lyndall nodded. Hadn’t she herself used those exact same words?
‘One day I came back early from fieldwork and found him in my bed with my flatmate. They were supposed to be babysitting Jordon, who was watching TV. He was ten.
‘That’s when I gave up writing the book of the thesis and the whole academic thing and decided to become a copper. Because I knew how pissed off he’d be. A lot of his public image is about exposing the police. And sure, a lot of it is justified. He’s done some good things. But I joined the New South Wales force basically to spite him! It was only later that I discovered I’d made the perfect choice for me. I love what I do and yes, I do think it’s possible to be a good cop and make a difference to some people. Though I wouldn’t say that out loud in the station.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Lyndall said. ‘I’ve done a lot of work in the courts, particularly with teenagers. There are good cops and bad cops, and the good ones can really make a difference; I’ve seen that happen, many times, where a cop decides not to press a charge and directs a kid into some program to help them. It’s a pity that didn’t happen to Dominic Janvier.’
Lyn
dall was silent for a moment, and then said: ‘I understand about the whole infidelity thing. In a town as small as this, everyone knows. But no-one tells you. I spent days and nights wondering where Trevor was, agonising over it, when I was younger. Instead of just getting up and leaving, because that’s hard to do with kids, but harder when I wanted to stay here, my work’s here, my friends are here. It was only when the kids had finished school that I was able to leave.
‘The kids know a lot. Give good advice. When I left Trevor, Nicola told me she wished I’d done it much earlier. Not for her sake; because I would have been happier, she said. And she was right.
‘But, Cass, don’t give up entirely on men. I’ve found a nice one in France. Although,’ she added reflectively, ‘I have no idea what he does when I’m not there. But I feel old enough to just live in the moment. And the moments have been good. I’m going back there at Easter.’
‘I haven’t come across anyone I fancy yet in Cairns,’ Cass laughed.
‘What about your colleague, Barwen? He seems to have taken a shine to you.’
‘Troy. Yep. That’s the case. I had to have some words with him. He’s like a giant cocker spaniel, isn’t he?’ She rolled, spaniel-like, around on the rock, her tongue hanging out. ‘I think I’m more of a whippet woman.’ They both burst into laughter then gathered up their backpacks ready for the next stage of the climb.
Reading from the guidebook, Cass found the bower of a golden bowerbird beside the trail. The tower, two metres high, was woven from sticks around two saplings and decorated with forest flowers that the male bird had plucked. The bird himself, brilliant in his yellow plumage, hovered about protectively.
They climbed on through thick bush. The air was still very humid but at this height the temperature had dropped. They emerged onto bare rock, partly covered by cloud, then plunged again into a thick tangle of ferns and moss. Following the guidebook, they found a crevice between two boulders, slid down, climbed over a small tree, then up a steep path. Besides the ferns and mosses there were hundreds of orchids, white and pink and yellow, emerging from cracks in the rocks and feasting on tree trunks. Finally, they came to the saddle between the two highest points of the ridge, just as the hovering cloud moved away from the Rock.
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