‘While we smack the shit out of them.’
‘Only when it’s necessary,’ Fielder corrected him, cigarette pointed. ‘We never yet once laid a finger on someone who didn’t deserve it.’
‘And that kid deserved it,’ Quattrochi said.
‘He got what was coming, of that there is no question, my friends. He wouldn’t have popped himself off if he hadn’t been guilty as sin.’
‘He left a pretty clean trail though, you got to admit,’ Risdale said.
‘Here’s a lesson for you, Johnny. We might not have found the gun – yet. We might not have found the piece of wood he bashed the girl with – yet, or the clothes he was wearing when he did it – yet. But what we did find was him and in the end that’s all that matters. Sometimes you’ve got to jump from A to Z without bothering about all the letters in between.’
‘He never owned up to it though.’
‘Except that he did. That stiff they buried is the proof of him owning up. Pure and simple. The people in this dump will be able to get on with their business now because of our work and we can take pride in that.’
‘I’m not going to be sorry when we hightail it out of here,’ Risdale said.
‘So say all of us,’ Fielder agreed.
‘How much longer do we have to hang around for, boss?’ Quattrochi asked.
‘Just to tidy up the paperwork. I’ll brief Cole about carrying on looking for the murder weapons just to neaten things up and then we’re done.’
‘Halle-bloody-lujah.’
‘Not that he’s got any idea and I doubt he’ll find anything,’ Fielder answered. ‘Look at those yokels at the station and see yourself in ten years time if you don’t stay nimble on your feet. Move to the country and die.’
‘He put on a pretty good party for us though.’
‘He’s friendly enough, I’ll grant him that,’ Fielder said, but he was thinking of Audrey Holloway. ‘But the rest of them …’
‘Not worth two fucking bob,’ Quattrochi finished the sentence for him.
‘Not worth a cracker,’ Risdale agreed and they all laughed.
‘How about that Holloway, though?’ Fielder grinned. ‘Have you ever seen as big a sad sack in uniform as him before?’
‘I’ve seen plenty, both in and out of uniform,’ Risdale said.
‘But Holloway…’ Fielder began cackling with laughter.
‘What?’
‘No, I’m not going to say it,’ Fielder said. ‘The poor jerk wouldn’t know which way his toes were pointing. Makes you wonder how he ever got a hold of the woman he did.’
‘She looked alright to me. I admit I had a good old gander at Cole’s,’ Quattrochi grinned.
‘You and everyone else. Girls must be hard up for husbands in the country,’ Risdale supposed.
‘She’s a bright girl though, a good sort. And lively,’ Fielder said off-handedly and winked.
‘And you’d know, would you?’ Quattrochi snorted through his flattened nose. ‘Done a bit of private investigating, have we?’
‘I might have,’ Fielder said and got up to open another bottle of beer, pouring drinks all round before lighting another cigarette.
‘Well?’
Fielder leant back in his chair, hooked his ankle up across his other knee. ‘Well what?’
‘Holloway’s missus. What about her?’
Fielder blew out smoke. ‘Her name’s Audrey, and I have it on good authority that she’s pretty handy in the sack, that good authority being me.’
‘Bullshit!’ Quattrochi roared.
‘There’s no bullshit there, gentlemen. As sure as I sit here now, I can tell you it’s no lie. Audrey Holloway is a fine-looking woman who is not averse to a stray poke or two.’
‘And who told you that, Holloway?’ Quattrochi asked, still laughing.
‘As a matter of fact, no.’
And he grinned so broadly at them Quattrochi jibed, ‘You’re taking the piss out of us there, boss. When would you have been able to do it?’
Fielder puffed away. ‘What do you think I do when I go out every day? Pick daisies?’
‘Jiminy Crickets,’ Risdale slapped his forehead. ‘Does Holloway know?’
‘If he does, he hasn’t told me yet. But with him it might be hard to tell if he knows or not.’
‘Until the day he lines you up with one right between the eyes,’ Risdale said. ‘Those moody ones who say nothing, they’re the ones you want to watch.’
‘I can handle Holloway.’
‘You may as well, the way you’ve already been handling his missus,’ Risdale continued. ‘How long have you being doing that, anyway?’
‘Pretty much every day since Cole’s party. But I never let it get in the way of nailing that Furnell kid.’
‘Jesus,’ Quattrochi laughed.
They diligently worked their way through the beer and before long empty bottles and cigarette butts littered the floor of Risdale’s room. Risdale pushed up the window to let out some smoke. They tackled the toasted sandwiches while polishing off the wine and talked on into the night.
When Quattrochi had enough he marched off to bed, banging his knee on the doorframe on the way out, and Fielder followed him soon after taking his whisky bottle back to his room.
When he went to the fridge he discovered he was out of ice and he was drunk, but not that drunk, that he didn’t know it was too late to disturb Tilly Beecroft.
But he wasn’t ready for bed yet either. He poured a neat whisky and stared absently through the window, tapping a cigarette out of its packet as he thought of Audrey Holloway and how he’d like to take her again like he had that last time. Show her who was the boss, not returning his calls and then fobbing him off.
He turned on the television set but could only find one channel playing an old English film – lots of men in flannel suits with insipid-looking women swatting tennis racquets. Thank Christ he wasn’t born there, he thought, as he flicked the set off.
And this damned room was driving him mad. It was like being cooped up in a cardboard box. Better do something instead, he decided. Get some air and see what he could see.
Before he knew it he was slinging himself into his car and feeling the cooler air outside. He sat a minute with the door open before he flicked his cigarette butt onto the gravel and drove off slowly. He might be woozy, it came to him, but he wasn’t that woozy that he didn’t know how to drive a car.
He took the Holden right into Main Street and then hooked left off it, crossing through the yellow light of the Churchill Street intersection, slowing the car to a crawl.
‘Let’s see if she might be out and about,’ he murmured to the night.
He cruised unhurriedly past the house, but the curtains were drawn and there was no sign of any lights on. At the end of the street he turned the car and idled back along it, cutting the engine as he neared the Holloway’s house.
He already knew it wouldn’t be Holloway doing anything inside with her. That first or second time he was with her, hadn’t she said something about sleeping in separate beds? But it still smarted that they’d be in there together. A cosy little husband and wife arrangement that was nothing more than a sham.
Fielder lit a cigarette and waited, and then he got out of the car and strolled up to the house, eyeing its galvanised iron roof, seeing its windows mysteriously dark. He noted the carefully mown front lawn with its trimmed edges, the rose bushes along the side fence with not a weed in sight. Tidiness. Order. Tidiness and order masking the pathetic masquerade inside.
He had half a mind to bang on the front door and drag her out of there, but instead he flicked the remains of his cigarette over the fence and onto the lawn before getting back behind the steering wheel.
Maybe he’d crossed the line with her, he thought through the alcohol washing around inside hi
m, but that was days ago and she’d be over it by now. He’d call her tomorrow and kick-start the old motor again. Yes sir, that’s what he’d do.
He remembered how she went walking at night and decided to negotiate a few more streets on the off chance of catching her before he headed back to the motel. But as he drove on she was nowhere to be seen, and he knew she’d be asleep like all good girls were, neatly tucked up in bed and safe and sound in a house where nothing ever happened.
‘What a lousy joint,’, he scoffed aloud. ‘What a hole of a place passing itself off as a town fit for human habitation.’
It was when he was back onto Main Street, not far from the Casablanca, that he spotted her.
He pulled up right beside where she was walking, leant across and wound down the passenger window.
‘Come here a minute,’ he demanded.
The girl from the milk bar stopped and looked uncertainly at him.
‘Detective Fielder from the Homicide Squad,’ he called and she tiptoed over.
She leant over and peered cautiously through the window, remembered who he was, the detective who had called in about Lee Furnell.
‘Yes?’
‘I need to ask you a few things. Get in.’
‘Now? I’m going to meet my friend Tracey.’
‘You can meet your friend Tracey any old time. You can’t disobey an order from a senior detective any time. Now get in.’
He pushed the door open and she got in reluctantly.
‘What’s your name again?’ he asked.
‘Ruby. Ruby Bunn.’
‘Well Ruby, there’s a few things I hope you can help me with.’
‘About what?’
‘About what young people get up to in this town when they’re drunk and bored.’
He put his foot down on the accelerator and the car skidded down Main Street, once rocking up against a kerb so she clung onto the door handle in fright.
She’d always felt safe walking through the town’s streets at night, light from the shops and street lamps and people’s homes making her feel there was always someone close. And she had no trouble fending off any boof who wanted to make a pass at her, but as they hit the edge of town with the bitumen slapping under the car’s wheels she began to take fright.
He hadn’t said anything since she’d gotten into the car. She hunched her shoulders as she watched the car’s headlights bore a pathway through the night.
She asked, ‘What am I going to help you with? Yeah, I know I can do some stuff, but with the murders and all that I can’t.’
He glanced coldly across at her.
‘You can start by lighting me a smoke,’ he said, tossing a packet of Craven A’s and box of matches at her. ‘Have one yourself if you want. Might calm you down.’
The cigarettes had fallen to the floor between her feet, but she found them and lit two thinking she had something more than smart aleck talk to be worried about this time.
She said, ‘Yeah, my friend Tracey Piper is waiting for me, so I better get back soon or else she might wonder where I am and call my Dad.’
She risked a glance across, but he was staring out through the windshield trying to make out the road in the dark, or that was how it looked.
A minute later he hiccupped, ‘You’ll get … home when I’m good and ready.’
‘Yeah, it’s good we went out for a ride and that, but I need to go back now.’
She drew nervously on her cigarette, but he didn’t answer. He only kept puffing casually on his own smoke as if he was thinking about something much further afield.
She bit her lip, looked out her window and then back at him as she tried to guess how fast the car might be travelling, if she might be able to jump out if they slowed down enough.
She tried again, ‘Detective, I’ve got to go home. I want to go home.’
Then he turned his eyes on her again, something cruel in them.
‘What’re you worried about? I bet you’ve been out this way lots of times before. Boyfriends at the swimming hole, right? A regular spot for a bit of this and that, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve never been there before.’
He laughed sourly.
‘Well there’s a first time for everything, sweetheart, and you don’t need to worry cause I’m not going to tell anyone, not a soul in the whole wide world. Just like you won’t. Your wonderful reputation is safe with me. We all know what this fucking town is like. Stupid, simpering coppers and women who think they can turn the tap off whenever they feel like it. Well, it’s not like that where I come from, and when you’re with me I call the shots, you hear me? You understand that?’
‘Please, let me go home.’
He pulled the car off the main road and onto a narrow bitumen strip running behind orchards, the night blacker than ever where she saw a farmhouse with its lights pale in the distance. The car kept pushing on and the lights disappeared as they clunked over an old wooden bridge and she knew he had taken her to the river and that there was no one who could help her now.
Chapter 36
The rain that had lingered was gone and the midday sun hung drowsily over the cemetery when George Makepeace began his work. As the town’s gravedigger he preferred being up and about early before the public left flowers and tears at the resting places of loved ones. So far as his occupation went, he liked the solitariness of it, the idea that his work would be done by the time the funeral crowd came to stare deep into the grave he’d excavated.
But there had been a mix up and the grave should have been dug earlier to give the hole time to settle, and to give him a chance to smooth out any movement of earth before the funeral itself. The undertaker wasn’t up to the mark, he thought disdainfully, only giving him notice of this grave at the last minute. He shook his head again at how some people came to occupy the positions they did.
It was the Ranson plot he had to dig today and he remembered when Mrs Ranson was first interred because as a young man he’d mowed her lawns. Her passing was a good seven or eight years ago according to her headstone. Yes, he remembered her and how she sometimes had him in for cake and tea, or brought him out an iced drink outside if the day was a scorcher. And now Horrie was coming to join her in their little underground family and she’d be happy about that, he chuckled. It was a long time to be scratching around in a coffin, waiting like that.
He got his shovels, pick and mattock out of the tray of his utility and carried out the small wooden ladder he used as a grave was dug deeper. He glanced up at a sky that wasn’t going to interrupt his labours.
He pulled off his jumper, spat into his hands and set himself to the task, selecting his favourite shovel. Even a grave first dug ten years ago was generally easier than one dug fresh, but as he stabbed his shovel into the earth and leant his boot into it the ground gave way easier than he might have expected.
In a grave like this, where husband and wife would eventually be reunited, the first one in was generally buried a bit deeper than the standard six feet. He’d dig down until he found the coffin, or what was left of it, and then leave a few inches of dirt on top of it for the new one to rest on. So he might have six or seven feet to dig to get down to Mrs Ranson’s remains. But as he got going the shovel, and then the pick, cut nicely into the earth and the first foot of dirt came away easy as pie.
He measured his breaks as he always did when digging a hole. A foot a time with a smoko in between was how he liked to pace himself. But the first foot came so easily he waited until he had dug a touch over two feet before laying down his shovel and rolling himself a smoke.
And my, this was a good one to dig, he cackled, and thank goodness for that when time wasn’t on his side. He’d barely raise a sweat the way he was going. He was near three feet and sometimes you got a good one like this. Sometimes you got one that made up for another where the ground was like flint.
It was the law of nature: the hard and the easy, the good with the bad.
He hadn’t gone much further, however, when his shovel struck something it couldn’t force its way through. He tried again and again, becoming increasingly frustrated by the impediment.
It was too good to be true, he sighed. It had been going too easy. But unusual when it was only fill that had been put back into the grave to cover Mrs Ranson originally.
He moved his shovel a little further north and found the same thing. A little probing here and there only added to the puzzle.
Something was there, but he didn’t know what.
He used the shovel to only scrape now and not dig, lightly pushing earth away from the centre of the grave to its edges.
‘Mangy old carpet!’ he cried when he saw what had held him up.
What bozo had done that? He clearly remembered filling this grave and knew he would never have thrown rubbish into it. From time to time he certainly put a length of carpet or heavy sack down beside a grave occasionally to stop dirt from falling back in, but he was sure he hadn’t done it here, and if he had he wouldn’t have let it fall in and be covered over. He would have noticed, wouldn’t he?
Anyway George, get it bloody out, he ordered himself, as he put the shovel down and found an edge of carpet, tugging hard at it until he felt it start to give. Then a harder yank and it began coming clear of earth before – what was it, the bottom of a shoe? – revealed itself.
He had a peculiar feeling then. He had a feeling that went right down into his bowels. A feeling that told him something definitely wasn’t right.
He walked away not turning his back on the grave until he was at the car, and then he jumped into it and couldn’t turn the key quickly enough, bouncing over the speed limit all the way back into town.
*
At the police station, Cole was deep in thought. If Tomasulo had been one of the men responsible for threatening the woman with a knife, it would be easy to cast a line from him all the way through the previous clothesline thefts and back to the Faraday’s stolen underwear episode. And to who knows what else in-between. He’d asked Terry to find out what he could about Tomasulo, but with the drama of the funeral he didn’t know if Terry had been able to look into it yet. And Terry hadn’t come into work today.
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