The Summertime Dead

by Robert Engwerda

  ‘I wonder where he got that information from,’ Holloway remarked acidly.

  ‘Yes, I wonder. He’s doing everything he can to load more pressure on the kid.’

  ‘The great messiah from Melbourne hasn’t been able to prove anything yet. We learnt more about the crime in the first day or two than he has in all the time since. He’s all huff and puff.’

  ‘I know you don’t like him, Terry, and I won’t be asking him to be a pen pal once he’s back in Melbourne either, but we still need to help with this case as much as we can. He keeps on saying it’s Furnell, but I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. And if we don’t make more sense of it, who will?’

  ‘Furnell isn’t helping himself either, I’ve got to say, with the mouth he’s got on him. Neither will getting into fights.’

  ‘That would’ve been Conor Quade’s fault. He’s angry. His whole family is and you can understand that. But wanting someone to blame for it doesn’t mean you pluck out the first person you see.’

  ‘Even if he’s the most obvious candidate?’

  ‘Fielder’s trying to crack him and his family. He thinks that’s the way he’ll get a conviction. But I doubt he’ll get anywhere doing that.’

  ‘But who else have we got?’

  Cole scratched the back of his head.

  ‘That’s just it. That’s our problem. We don’t have anyone, not anyone obvious at least. No one saw Quade and Faraday at the lake. No one saw them taken at gunpoint. No one saw them where they ended up. We can’t trace the rifle. We don’t know what Faraday was bashed with.’ He rose wearily from his chair. ‘When all is said and done, we haven’t got much to go on when we need to find something soon. And for some reason I’ve got Amy Bridges nagging at me, if only because we don’t know where she went, or what happened to her.’

  ‘The case was closed. She ran off with her boyfriend, didn’t she?’

  Cole wondered. He said, ‘I don’t think we know what she did.’

  They were interrupted by Fielder emerging from his office.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said brightly, grinning at Holloway before adding, ‘Lloyd, I’d like you to give me a hand down the street. What did you make of that fight at the milk bar on Friday?’

  Cole shrugged. ‘I don’t think there was much in it. Young Quade picked a fight with Furnell. You can see why he might have, he’s a bit of a hot-head.’

  ‘You don’t think Furnell was behind it? Trying to rub Quade’s face in it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he’d be that stupid.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Fielder said. ‘Come with me. We need to talk to the milk bar people.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, someone here has already interviewed them?’

  Cole felt himself beginning to bristle. ‘No, I haven’t. I listened to what Ray Furnell had to say. It was a scrap, that was all.’

  ‘Ray Furnell, hey? Well, let’s just make sure that was all it was then. This way.’

  Fielder headed for the door, Cole obliged to follow him when he knew it was a waste of his time and Fielder’s.

  When they got in the police car Fielder said, ‘The natives in Melbourne are getting restless. Unless I run this one to ground soon they’re going to make Marco and John head home again and leave me to work with everyone here. No offence to this station, but I can’t see it happening without the experts on the case.’

  ‘No offence taken,’ Cole replied, deadpan. ‘You need your experts.’

  ‘I’m getting the other two boys out on the beat here, see if they can pin down any information on Furnell. People know but aren’t saying.’

  Or they weren’t saying because they didn’t know, Cole thought.

  Fielder parked the car down the end of Main Street and pushed open the door into the London Milk Bar. There were four boys seated at one table, the jukebox on and, to Fielder, some irritating teenage squawking issuing from it. He and Cole went to the counter where Ruby Bunn was serving.

  ‘Hello, Mr Cole,’ Ruby said brightly.

  Cole answered in kind.

  ‘Detective Gene Fielder of the Melbourne Homicide Squad here,’ the detective pushed in, taking the girl aback.

  She could only nod her head in response to Fielder’s introduction.

  ‘I heard there was trouble here a few days ago,’ he said.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Yes, trouble. T.R.O.U.B.L.E. Lee Furnell picking fights.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Ruby answered nervously. ‘There was a bit, but it got sorted out.’

  ‘Who was involved?’

  ‘Lee Furnell … Conor Quade,’ she answered hesitantly, as if she couldn’t trust her answers.

  ‘Who started it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Conor I guess. I was just cleaning up and …’

  ‘Lee Furnell didn’t start it?’

  ‘Not really. He was …’

  ‘He was fighting with the other boy wasn’t he? Assaulting him?’

  ‘They were fighting each other. Fighting like boys fight.’

  ‘And you saw Furnell punch Quade?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two or three times? Maybe two.’

  ‘What did they say when they were fighting?’

  She fished about, trying to remember. ‘It was probably about Conor’s brother.’

  ‘Max Quade, right?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And Conor was accusing Furnell of killing his brother?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘No buts, sister. What do you know about it?’

  ‘The fight?’

  ‘No, what Furnell had to do with the murders of Quade and Faraday. What can you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said, stepping back. ‘How would I know? I just work in the shop.’

  ‘There’s no need to get smart with me. What’s your name?’

  She told him.

  ‘What’s your age?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Our house is behind the shop here. With my dad and my sister.’

  ‘I’ll want to speak with you again, Ruby,’ he said. ‘Come on, Cole. Let’s get out of here. Silence is golden around this dump, hey?’

  The two men departed, Cole turning an apologetic look back at the girl.

  Ruby’s father, Jack, came out from the storeroom behind the cafe.

  ‘What’d he want?’

  ‘Just asking about the fight,’ she answered, but wondering what had just happened, feeling as though she’d done something wrong.

  Her father went to the window and cast a long, searching look outside.

  ‘If that clown walks in here again come and get me,’ he said.

  Chapter 21

  It was late-morning with the sun already oppressive overhead when the detectives and police began their check of cars and drivers. Cole and Holloway were stationed at one end of Main Street, while Fielder, Risdale and Quattrochi remained at the other.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get ourselves a break,’ Fielder told Quattrochi and Risdale. ‘We’ll walk along the street, find any car that looks like it belongs to someone young who might know something and start asking questions. If they know Furnell push hard. You two take that side of the road further down. I’ll take this side.’

  They stripped off their jackets and began moving along the street.

  Fielder waved down his first car and asked to see the driver’s licence. A twenty-something year old with his girlfriend, holding hands across the seat. A farmer’s son, who said he knew of Furnell, but hadn’t gone to school here, had gone away to boarding school instead. Fielder sent him on his way.

  He also drew blanks with the next cars he pulled over, and noti
ced the other two detectives had already advanced further along the street, setting themselves up in front of the Albion Hotel where there was more activity. As if to purposely oblige Quattrochi and Risdale, a Ford carrying three young men pulled up directly in front of the junior detectives.

  ‘You three dickheads get out of the car and stand where I can see you,’ Quattrochi ordered.

  Two of them looked very similar, had to be brothers, he thought. The other one in the dirty flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows had to be a fruit picker with his ripped shorts and bare feet.

  ‘Who owns the car?’ he demanded.

  ‘Me,’ the driver said.

  ‘Show me your licence then, quick smart.’

  The driver handed his over.

  ‘Phillip Jarvis,’ he read. ‘You know anything about Lee Furnell?’

  ‘Only that he was Rosy Faraday’s boyfriend, works at the garage. So what?’

  Quattrochi stared at him.

  ‘Don’t give me a so what, shithead. Not unless you want your head punched in some place no one can see us. Start talking about Furnell. Now.’

  Phillip Jarvis added to what he’d said, but it wasn’t much.

  ‘What about you? You this goose’s brother? Show me your licence.’

  ‘He doesn’t have one. Can’t drive a car,’ Phillip said.

  ‘How about we let Mr Doodledick here speak for himself, hey?’

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ Gifford Jarvis answered. ‘Like Phil says. And I didn’t know Lee much. He got killed didn’t he?’

  ‘No, you dumb prick, he didn’t. That was someone else.’

  Jarvis bowed his head, as Quattrochi put his hand out to Jarvis’s other passenger, the fruit picker, who fished about in his back pocket before drawing a slip of paper out of his wallet.

  Quattrochi grinned, ‘Well, then. Take a look-see at this one, Detective Risdale. Looks like we got a genuine catch here.’

  Risdale scrutinised the name on the bit of paper. Thomas Tomasulo. The two detectives grinned at each other.

  ‘The boss is going to be happy about this,’ Risdale said.

  ‘You’re coming with us,’ Quattrochi told Tomasulo. ‘You other two, piss off.’

  They marched Tomasulo off as he protested his innocence over whatever it was he was supposed to have done. When they reached Gene Fielder he laughed, ‘Well done boys!’ and told them to hold Tomasulo at the station until he got back.

  There was progress, even if it was probably only to do with their snowdropper, Fielder told himself. If they drew a big blank in the street they’d start moving through the hotels and orchardists’ fruit picker huts, seeking what they could find on Furnell before the itinerants left town taking with them what they had seen or heard.

  Summer nights, he thought, as he wandered back to his car. Heat. Stifling heat. People out and about trying to get away from it. Someone had to have seen something at that dance or after it.

  He kicked over the engine again and steered his car along the street. The smallest mistake, an obvious sign in plain sight previously overlooked, a little nudge here or there, and the case might suddenly break wide open.

  He needed a stroke of luck, and some thinking time. He caught up with Cole and Holloway, told Cole the news of Tomasulo.

  ‘You two stay here a couple more hours,’ he ordered them. ‘See what you can pick up.’

  ‘Do you want me to question Tomasulo when I get back?’ Cole asked.

  ‘Why not? He’s small fry, so you may as well.’

  Cole said nothing in reply, and listened as Fielder smoked and postulated about Mitchell’s lack of cooperation in his investigation. When he had said his piece the detective walked back to his car and drove off.

  *

  ‘What a graveyard,’ Fielder muttered to himself as he spun the wheel away from Main Street and wound his window down.

  There had to be a crack. Someone had to break soon, he thought. He, Furness, had to.

  He took Churchill Street and almost immediately saw her strolling along the footpath. He pulled over.

  ‘Jump in, Audrey!’ he called through the open window.

  But Audrey Holloway stood fixed to the footpath, nervously looking up and down the street, watching for a car approaching and passing until she decided it was safe and hurried into the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘Gene,’ she said, flustered at his appearing out of nowhere like this. ‘I wasn’t expecting you here.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s called the element of surprise.’

  ‘Then it worked – you surprised me,’ she said delightedly. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out looking for murderers.’

  ‘Should I be with you then?’

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t care,’ he said.

  ‘Then I don’t care either,’ she laughed, feeling the sudden thrill of him again as she sat close to him.

  She tugged her yellow sunhat off and kept her head low as Fielder took the car through and away from the town. She reached out and touched his arm as he drove. Soon they were running alongside the embankment of an irrigation channel and out toward the orchards.

  ‘You can get up now. The coast is clear,’ he said.

  She sat up higher in the seat, exhaled loudly. ‘Thank goodness. You know what people are like in a small town.’

  ‘I don’t, but even if I did I couldn’t care less. What have you been up to? I thought you might have come and seen me.’

  ‘I thought the same about you,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Maybe I was thinking that perhaps it was just a one-off to you, one of those one-night stands. I hardly know you, I didn’t know what you might be thinking about me, if I even mattered.’

  ‘Did you want it to be a one-night stand?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t,’ she said ardently. ‘I just can’t stop thinking about you.’

  He looked across, one hand on the steering wheel, the other taking hers.

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you, either,’ he said.

  She leant across and kissed him as he drove, a soft lingering kiss on his cheek as warm wind coursed through the car blowing her hair about. She felt her heart racing. This thing – it was mad, stupid, ridiculous, but it was also wild and exhilarating. She could have flown alongside the car as it sped on.

  ‘Careful, Audrey,’ he laughed. ‘You don’t want me putting the car into a ditch.’

  She leant in even closer to him, took a hand and gripped it tightly.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘Speaking of which, I have to say, this is the one place the country is pretty lovely.’ He gestured with his driving hand to the blocks of pear trees they passed. ‘All that fruit. The shade underneath the branches on a sunny day. It’s the closest thing to a Garden of Eden you’ll ever find out here. Probably the only thing.’

  ‘Are we Adam and Eve then?’

  ‘We can be whatever we want,’ he answered, grinning. ‘Friends, lovers …’

  ‘And?’

  He laughed again. ‘That’s enough for the moment.’

  She let go his hand and drank in the country around them. It was beautiful, she thought, more beautiful than she’d ever realised. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll find any of your murderers out here, though,’ she sighed. ‘Is this just a drive, or are we going somewhere?’

  ‘I know a place,’ he said. ‘I drove by it the other day with Marco. Not far from here.’

  When she looked at him again she saw his hands gripping the steering wheel, his white shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow revealing the downy hair on his arms. His eyes w
ere fixed ahead, almost squinting through the windscreen’s glare and she just wanted to take hold of him again and throw her arms around him.

  The orchards gave way to a long stretch of tomato farm, row after row after row of plants reaching through the dusty earth. She could smell the dust.

  The car pushed on.

  His place was beyond the orchards and tomato farms, a road that turned into a track as it crossed a rickety wooden bridge and into a scrubby rise of wattles and eucalypts murdered by the heat. They rode a levee and then a dip before the ground was broken by a succession of dry creeks and billabongs. She spied a glimpse of the Goulburn River snaking through trees in the distance.

  ‘It turns out Marco is a fisherman. He dragged us along with him the other day with our one fishing rod and needless to say we didn’t catch a thing.’ Fielder laughed. ‘But I was thinking of you the whole time we were out here. Let’s get out and take a look.’

  They eased themselves from the car and he took her hand, walking her in the direction of the water.

  For some reason, she thought of Terry’s cricket whites lying in a bedroom drawer, how he had played cricket when they first met and how he stopped playing – or this was how it seemed to her now – the minute she expressed an interest in going to watch him play.

  The drooping eucalypts above them offered thin shade and the ground beneath them crackled with the tread of their shoes over twigs and desiccated leaves.

  He pulled her toward him, slung his arm around her as if she was drunk and needed propping up.

  ‘Let’s hold up here for a minute,’ he said and turned her to him, kissing her again as he had at the motel.

  She drew herself away, smiling self-consciously. ‘I must be stupid mustn’t I? Thinking something is ever going to come of this?’

  ‘Carpe diem. Seize the day,’ he said.

  ‘You are,’ she said.

  ‘I fully intend to,’ he said. ‘Just up here.’

  ‘Is this what happens every place you go to? You find someone and turn their life upside-down?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’

  ‘Really? Is that true?’

  ‘Scout’s honour,’ he said.