The Summertime Dead

by Robert Engwerda

  The officer in charge, Wesley Nash, was anxiously waiting for him and hurried him inside.

  ‘Thanks for getting here so quick,’ Nash gushed. ‘With the senior sergeant away I haven’t got much idea about what I should do. We’ve never had a murder here before and …’

  ‘If that’s what it was. Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet sergeant, alright?’

  ‘Sure. Whatever you say, senior.’

  ‘Give me a quick rundown of the facts as you know them, before I go and see him.’

  Nash gave him a brief appraisal of the sequence of events: the telephone call to the station about an incident at the Catholic church, the report of a weapon being used, the finding of a body behind the church, the ambulance arriving, Sergeant Holloway sitting in the gutter nursing a revolver. That was all. The elderly priest was dead. The suspect was taken here to the station.

  ‘You’re a hundred per cent sure about this?’ Cole asked impatiently.

  ‘No question,’ Nash answered.

  ‘And you’ve got him out the back, right?’

  ‘In the cell out the back, yes. Here, I’ll show you.’

  The sergeant led Cole down a dingy passageway, the building from the gold rush period and sorely in need of renovation. Cole smelt the brick dust, noticed the flaking plaster as they made their way to the cell that was claustrophobic in its dimensions and lack of light.

  ‘Is this the only place you could find to keep him?’ he asked Nash.

  ‘Where else could I put him?’

  Even the question had panicked the acting senior sergeant. The day’s events had him way out of his depth.

  ‘You go,’ Cole told him. ‘I want to speak with Sergeant Holloway on my own.’

  Cole took the key from Nash and unlocked the cell where Terry Holloway cut a forlorn figure hunched over on the bunk. Cole plumped down beside him.

  He sat pondering a while before he said, ‘You’re the second big surprise I’ve had this week, Terry,’ he said. ‘First Amy Bridges, and now you.’

  He gazed about the cell, its cream-painted bricks forming an arch above their heads. The narrow slit of light in this dungeon of a cell.

  Holloway cast him a brief sidelong glance.

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you, Lloyd. I did it. I’m guilty,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘But why you did it? It can’t have been a fluke that you came all this way. You must have meant to do it.’

  Holloway shook his head.

  Cole pressed on. ‘Has anyone phoned Audrey yet?’

  ‘Someone tried,’ he said wearily. ‘No one got through.’

  Cole cupped his hands, looked down into them.

  ‘I’ll go and see her then. What do you want me to say to her?’

  Every sentence was a labour for Holloway. He said, ‘I don’t know. You make it up.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Terry. Not for something like this.’

  ‘Then tell her I had to do it. That I’m sorry.’

  ‘Was this what everything was about?’ Cole asked quietly and when Holloway looked anxiously at him, he continued, ‘Why you’ve been so out of sorts? Why you have these blow-ups that no one has a clue about, where they’re coming from?’ Cole looked back at his hands. ‘Why you cracked up that time?’

  He could feel Holloway beginning to rock on the bunk beside him. But Holloway nodded in answer, his head bobbing.

  Cole said, ‘If you could tell me what was behind it, I’ll do what I can to help.’ Holloway sat mute. ‘There’s no going back from this, Terry. You’ve killed a man.’

  ‘I knew there wouldn’t be. I didn’t want there to be. I just wanted it to be finished, all over.’

  ‘Why Euroa though? Why here?’

  Holloway was shaking, his nose dripping.

  ‘He wasn’t here then,’ he said. ‘He was in Mitchell. When I was little.’

  ‘You mean the priest was?’

  Holloway nodded and then Cole understood.

  ‘And he was the priest while you were a kid living there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he assaulted you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And more than once, Terry?’

  Holloway’s head sank as he sobbed. ‘Yes. The bastard,’ he cried.

  ‘Did you ever tell anyone?’

  ‘How could I?’

  They sat there a long time, it seemed to Cole, as Cole found water and some paper towel for him.

  Holloway slowly regained some composure, and turned to him.

  ‘They’ll put me in gaol, won’t they?’

  ‘They will, Terry. But if we can build a case you might get a much shorter sentence. You’ll have to talk to a lawyer, tell him everything you know however hard it is. If there’s anyone who can give corroborating evidence about the priest that’ll add some weight to your case.’

  But even this meagre conversation was exhausting Holloway. His eyelids were heavy, his body sagged on the bunk.

  ‘See if you can get some rest,’ Cole suggested as he rose and went to leave the cell. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  ‘Lloyd?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not sorry I did it. And I’ll never be sorry I did it.’

  For a desolate moment their eyes met.

  ‘No, if it was me, I don’t think I’d be sorry either,’ Cole said.

  Chapter 44

  Cole arrived back at the Mitchell station to find Jack Bunn sitting quietly in the foyer, waiting for him. What now, he thought, until he saw Bunn’s daughter near the notice board with her back to him.

  ‘Let’s find somewhere quiet,’ Cole told them, feeling the weight of everything about to crush him.

  He caught Janice out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘I’ve left a few things on your desk,’ she said. ‘Melbourne are already bombarding you about the other business. I gave the sergeants and Constable Whittaker the word about tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You can go now, Janice, thanks,’ he told her. ‘Jack. Ruby. If you’d like to come this way please,’ he motioned.

  He took them to the interview room, pulling chairs away from the table so it seemed less formal. He fetched a packet of biscuits and glasses of water from the kitchenette.

  The girl was pale, he saw. She’d grown thin. She sat uncomfortably with her arms crossed, but she wasn’t so much surly as sad. But the light hadn’t entirely gone out in her. She didn’t retreat when Cole spoke to her. She could still meet his eyes.

  ‘It was Ruby’s idea we come, but we weren’t sure you’d be here,’ Jack volunteered with a note of reluctance, as if he didn’t want to face it himself. ‘She can’t go on the way it is.’

  ‘Ruby? Are you happy to talk now?’ Cole asked her.

  ‘What?’ she asked plaintively.

  ‘You’ve wanted to come yourself, or your dad’s taken you here – it doesn’t matter which – so we need to talk it out. Work out what we’re going to do. Is that alright with you?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ she answered.

  ‘No one’s going to get hurt by what we say here. I promise you that. But if someone I know was involved in whatever happened to you, I want to make sure they never get another chance to do it to you or anyone else. But first I need to hear your account. What happened and who was responsible. You can take as long as you like. There’s no rush with this.’

  There was a battle raging inside her, he observed. Between fear and wanting to free herself of the ordeal that had consumed her.

  ‘Ruby told me a couple of things at home,’ Jack said. ‘We wouldn’t tell anyone Lloyd, just you. We don’t trust anyone else here. Can it not go any further than just us?’

  �
��That depends on what happened, Jack. If it was something serious and there’s charges and it has to go to court that’s what will happen. There’s no skirting around that, I’m afraid. If someone’s done the wrong thing he has to be held to account. For everyone’s sake, not just Ruby’s. And that’s the point I want to make, Ruby,’ he said, turning to her. ‘It’s for the good of everyone that we do that. And everyone will be behind you because of it. Do you follow what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. So, let’s go back to the start,’ he said. ‘Something terrible obviously happened to you. When was this?’

  She gazed directly at him, answered, ‘The night of Lee’s funeral.’

  ‘And where were you then?’

  She paused, before answering, ‘I was walking to Tracey Piper’s house. I was going to her place to listen to records, and to talk about Lee.’

  ‘What happened then, when you were at Tracey’s?’

  But Ruby shook her head, said, ‘I wasn’t at Tracey’s. I didn’t get there. I was walking along the main street when this car pulled up and …’

  She stalled and her father rubbed her shoulder.

  ‘That’s alright,’ Cole said. ‘There’s no hurry. So a car stopped beside you and someone from the car pulled you into it?’

  She shook her head in the negative again.

  ‘No, he didn’t pull me into it. He called me over. He told me I had to get in, that I couldn’t disobey him. So I did.’

  She was on the brink of tears and Cole shot a glance to her father, whose expression told him to continue.

  ‘And who was this person?’

  Ruby took a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket and blew her nose.

  ‘It was the detective.’

  ‘A detective? You mean one of the detectives from Melbourne who came down for the Max Quade business, or do you mean an officer from the Mitchell station?’

  ‘It was the detective. Mr Fielder.’

  ‘Fielder,’ Cole murmured ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re certain it was him?’

  ‘I’m sure. He came into the milk bar with you that day asking about Lee. Dad saw him, too.’

  ‘It was him alright, Lloyd, plain as day,’ Jack cut in. ‘Don’t you believe it?’

  ‘I just have to be certain about his identity, Jack, that’s all. What Ruby’s saying is very serious and we have to be a hundred per cent sure we’ve got the right man.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got him,’ Jack said shortly.

  ‘After that Ruby, what happened, when you got into Detective Fielder’s car?’

  The question drew tears, Ruby pressing her handkerchief to her face as she tried to answer the question.

  ‘He drove to the Goulburn River. And then …’

  ‘Go on,’ he coaxed softly.

  ‘He drove me there. And he … he raped me. I got bruises.’

  ‘Did anyone else see you get into the detective’s car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay then. What about when you came back to town. Where did he leave you?’

  She looked the verge of being completely overwhelmed.

  ‘I can’t remember, exactly,’ she said, trying to recall. ‘I remember I walked to Tracey’s house, because I didn’t want to go home. Tracey called my dad and told him I was staying overnight.’

  ‘You told Tracey what had happened?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘What about when you got home, then? You said nothing to anyone there?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Only when I was staying at Tracey’s, her mum saw the bruises on my arm, and made me go with her to the doctor the next day.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell the doctor what had happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s fine. We can easily follow up with the doctor. And we’ll need to talk with Tracey, too. And your father told me that your sister may have known something about it, as well?’

  ‘I said something to her. Not much.’

  She wept pitifully then and Cole knew he shouldn’t push any further.

  ‘Thanks, Ruby,’ he said. ‘You’ve done the right thing by telling us. You’ve done a great job coming here. We’ll talk again when you’re ready. I’ll have to get a written statement from you, and then we’ll lay charges against the detective.’ To her father he said, ‘Ruby will need some specialist advice, not what I can give her’ and Bunn nodded that he understood.

  ‘He’ll get me!’ Ruby howled.

  ‘No, he won’t.’ Cole said calmly. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t get within a mile of you. Do you understand that?’

  She settled then, accepted a glass of water from him and drank. There was an eerie silence. It was as if the clock on the wall behind Cole was booming.

  ‘We’ll all fight together on this one, and that’s a promise,’ he presently continued. ‘You won’t be doing it on your own.’

  For minutes no one said anything. There was only the sound of night creaking through the building.

  ‘Ruby, you won’t have to come into the station again,’ he said. ‘Any time we’ll need to speak with you, we’ll do it at home where you feel safe. We’ll make everything as easy for you as we can. Alright?’

  ‘Alright,’ she agreed softly.

  ‘So, do you think you can go ahead with this?’

  The girl set down her glass.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, looking determinedly into Cole’s face, the light stronger in her eyes. ‘Okay, I can. Yeah, let’s get him.’

  When Jack and Ruby left, Cole made some phone calls to Melbourne. The superintendent from Wangaratta had left to take temporary charge at Euroa and it took the Homicide Squad in Melbourne some time to understand Cole’s relationship to the two, separate murders of Amy Bridges and the priest. They would send the lead detective currently in town to Euroa they said, given the gravity of that incident, and because an officer had been involved. They would send someone else to Mitchell to assist with the Amy Bridges case.

  Cole put the phone down and rubbed his eyes, before he remembered Audrey Holloway. He locked the station and drove to the Holloways. It was dark now but there were no lights on inside the house. He knocked on the front door for no answer.

  He walked down the side of the house and into the back yard and at once noticed the aviary door left wide open. Whether it was deliberate or not, most of the caged birds had flown. Two quail picked at the back lawn and he tried to shoo them back into the cage without any luck. When the neighbourhood cats came wandering they’d be finished, he thought. He again attempted to round them up, but it was useless.

  When he tried the back door he was surprised to find it unlocked. He turned on lights and walked tentatively inside. It occurred to him that he had never been in the Holloways’ house, not once.

  ‘Audrey?’

  He knew almost immediately that no one was home. The house was much like any other in the street, in the town, except for something odd he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something desolate. He felt uneasy going into the master bedroom where he found several dresser drawers half-closed, their contents emptied when he tugged them fully open. He went to the wardrobe and found similar signs of a hasty exit.

  She’d gone. Had she known, then, what Terry was going to do? Or had there been a massive blow-up between them that had him storming out of the house, the final straw for him?

  He heard a knock on the front door and went to answer it. An elderly woman.

  ‘Hello, I’m Edith Cochrane. The Holloways’ neighbour. I saw your police car in the street,’ she wheedled. ‘Is something the matter?’

  There was a keening, predatory look in her eye that irritated Cole.

  ‘Have you seen Audrey Holloway about recently, Mrs Cochrane?’

  �
�Well, yes, let me think …’ she began, stringing it out. ‘I did see her. When was it again? This morning? Yes senior sergeant, I saw her just this morning.’

  ‘This morning?’

  ‘Yes, she was walking right here, along the street. And let me tell you, she was downright rude to me too. She nearly ran right by me without so much as a how-do-you-do.’

  ‘Was she off to do the shopping or …?’

  ‘No she was not! Not with a big suitcase like that! She said she was going away on a holiday, she with all her airs and graces. Too big for her boots. That’s what that woman is, when she won’t even take the time of day to speak to an old woman.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘To her sister’s in Melbourne! Off to her sister’s just like that! And I don’t think poor Terry even knows she was going.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she was very rude about him, too. She said she was going away and that she didn’t care what Terry thought about it. Can you imagine that, senior? My Perc would give me a good thrashing if I ever spoke to him like that.’

  ‘Did she say anything else, Mrs Cochrane, anything specific about where she was going?’

  ‘I think she was taking the train. I think she said that. Is she in trouble?’

  ‘No, Audrey’s not in any kind of trouble. I just need to speak with her, that’s all.’

  ‘Then don’t expect Terry to know either, when she’s just run off like that. Brazen!’

  ‘Thanks for your time, Mrs Cochrane. If you do see someone about the house can you let me know, please?’

  ‘I’ll keep a good lookout for you, senior, you can rely on me,’ she said, her nose in the air.

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ he answered.

  He shut the front door behind him and ambled off.

  ‘But won’t Terry be home soon?’ she called after him.

  Cole was already walking away, and didn’t answer.

  So Audrey had gone to Melbourne, he thought, while Terry had gone to kill the priest. He’d have to make inquiries in Melbourne and see if he could find her. It kept on getting worse, just when he was on the brink of taking the biggest gamble of his life.