55

by James Delargy

  Immediately the cuffed hands ripped from his grasp. Heath turned to him, eyes ablaze. As he took a step away from Chandler, Tanya and Luka closed in.

  ‘That’s what I want to tell you about,’ said Heath.

  ‘You want to confess?’ asked Chandler, fighting a curious mix of anticlimax and excitement. But if a confession meant he didn’t have to bring in Mitch then—

  ‘What do you mean, do I want to confess? I’m the one who was attacked,’ said Heath, flicking his head as if signalling the direction. ‘Up there. In the woods.’

  Tanya and Luka corralled the suspect into a seat. Chandler stood in front of him wondering what Heath was trying to achieve. Misdirection? Lying to save himself? A game?

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, playing along.

  ‘I mean,’ started Heath, sounding affronted, ‘someone kidnapped and tried to kill me. I managed to make it out of there until I ran into the bastard with the mullet and the shotgun.’

  ‘Who attacked you?’ asked Chandler.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one in the woods.’

  ‘Called himself Gabriel,’ said Heath, licking his cracked lips to wet them.

  The name sent a million thoughts crashing through Chandler’s brain but it was Tanya who spoke up, still coiled and ready to pounce. ‘What did he look like, this Gabriel?’

  ‘Tall . . . taller than me. Maybe your height,’ he nodded at Chandler, ‘but slimmer. Talked . . . I dunno . . . like he was from around here.’

  No, he didn’t, thought Chandler. Gabriel was definitely from Perth, though he supposed that for someone from out East all Westies did all sound the same. He warned himself not to fall into the same trap. Casual stereotyping equalled lazy police work.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Chandler. The description wasn’t much to go on. Nothing to say for sure that it was Gabriel Johnson.

  ‘What d’you want to know?’ asked Heath. ‘He was your height, tanned with stubble, but his face was kinda, I dunno, too young. As if they didn’t match, like the beard was stuck on. He was softly spoken. Like silk.’

  That nailed it. Heath had described Gabriel, almost exactly. In fact the recollection might have been a little too good, more of a prolonged study of the subject than a fleeting glance in panic. Especially for a supposedly startled brain.

  Chandler looked to his fellow officers. Tanya seemed as stunned as he was. Luka stared at him, looking for direction as to what to do next. The final member, Nick, remained stuck behind the front desk, his eyes wide, enjoying the show.

  Heath filled the silence.

  ‘So that’s why I tried to take the car. I was running for my life. You have to believe me.’

  The plea was aimed at Chandler. Chandler didn’t respond, his brain swimming in treacle.

  ‘Sarge?’ said Luka, pushing for an answer. The kid always liked it when someone was under pressure, even more so when it was his boss.

  ‘Stick him in a cell,’ answered Chandler. It was nothing more than a stalling tactic but it was the best he could come up with until his thoughts settled down.

  As Luka nodded, Heath exploded, trying in vain to free himself from the two officers dragging him to his feet.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ he screamed as he was led off towards the cells. ‘I’ve got my rights. You can’t lock me up.’

  ‘I can if you’re under custody,’ replied Chandler to his protests.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Stealing a car to start with.’

  ‘He was trying to murder me!’

  ‘You’ll be safe in the cells then,’ said Chandler, listening to the ongoing protest fade into the distance.

  8

  Chandler sat at Tanya’s desk and tried to clear his head. He had two people, each claiming to have been attacked by the other. One he had locked up, and one he had let go. Who was telling the truth? Who did he think was telling the truth? The one who had entered voluntarily or the one presented at the business end of a shotgun? He would start by questioning the one he had.

  ‘Will I call HQ?’ Nick’s enthusiastic voice interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘Let me think.’

  ‘We might have a serial killer, Sarge.’ Nick’s voice was riddled with excitement.

  Luka stepped into the main office from the cells in back.

  ‘He all locked up?’ asked Chandler.

  ‘He is,’ replied Luka, grabbing a tin of Coke from the fridge. Chandler felt like the temperature in the station had cranked up a notch, impossible as it seemed in this scorching heat. ‘You might want to stop young Nick’s imagination getting carried away, though.’

  Chandler agreed. It was his job to keep a lid on the emotions, even if he was struggling to deal with his own. ‘We don’t know what we’re dealing with. It might just be a dispute between friends that’s got out of hand. We’ll get some facts before we call HQ. We all need to stay calm.’

  It was a mantra Chandler repeated to himself as he stood outside the interview room trying to calm his nerves. Inside was a man who had murdered fifty-four people. Or a kid who’d had an argument with a friend and posed no more of a threat than the flies buzzing around the ceiling light. Heath had been left to stew for twenty minutes before he had been transferred from the cell to the arena.

  In the twenty-minute gap Chandler had checked in with Jim who informed him that there was nothing to report on Gabriel, their witness and victim, now implicated as a possible suspect. He’d ordered Jim to continue his watch and call if anything changed. After the interview he’d bring Gabriel back in.

  Chandler entered the interview room. Heath was sitting at the table, bound in handcuffs, Tanya standing guard at the back of the room. Heath’s eyes were firmly closed as Chandler sat down. He let him meditate for a moment, studying the man, both uneasy and excited over what he was about to uncover.

  ‘Mr Barwell, are you with us?’

  The eyes opened and focused on Chandler. Where he had been expecting cold and calculating there was only weariness and a look that suggested he had been awake for an extended period of time – or that his brain was struggling to contain a terrible secret.

  ‘’Course I’m with you,’ spat Heath, raising the handcuffs. He might have been weary but he retained enough wit to bite back.

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ said Chandler.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve told you who held me captive and who tried to kill me. I’ve even given you a description – yet I’m the one locked up.’

  ‘You stole a car, Mr Barwell.’

  ‘And I explained why. I was fleeing from a murderer. That overrides any attempt to steal a car, surely?’ There was a pause, before Heath backtracked, realizing that he’d just confessed to a crime. ‘You can’t use that, you haven’t started the interview, or read me my rights.’ Sweat dripped from the tangled brown hair, sweat that was quickly swallowed up by a beard, which seemed to have grown a shade darker in the last half hour.

  ‘I already know about the car,’ said Chandler. ‘I want to know the rest. I want you to tell me your story. How you got here.’

  There was a long pause as if Heath were deciding if Chandler could be trusted. It didn’t matter; in his present situation he had no choice. Leaning back, Heath grabbed his hair, twisting it even more out of shape before dragging his hands down over a face that was as tanned and weather-beaten as Gabriel’s. It was where their physical similarities ended.

  Their stories, however, were almost a perfect match. Like Gabriel, Heath was out of work, broke and travelling inland to secure some farm work.

  ‘Did you have a name? A location? A phone number?’

  ‘What, ring ahead and book?’ said Heath with a snarl.

  ‘You must have had some lead to come all the way out here.’

  Heath sighed in frustration. ‘I was doing what I normally do – winging it. Some picker down the coast tipped me that way inland was the best place to go, that most stick to the coast to
move around easily but there’s too much competition.’ Heath looked at him. ‘But winging it’s not a crime. Is it?’

  It wasn’t but it also made him less credible. Chandler needed more. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well I was thumbing a lift out of Port Hedland when Gabriel pulled up.’

  ‘What car was he driving?’

  ‘I dunno. A piece of shit car. The colour of shit too.’

  ‘Make?’

  Heath shrugged his shoulders. ‘It stopped. That’s all I cared about. Battered piece of shit or not, it was better than slogging all day under the fucking sun.’

  ‘Licence number?’

  Heath sighed and closed his eyes. ‘If I can’t remember the make, what makes you think I’ll remember that?’

  Chandler didn’t answer. Both Gabriel and Heath’s descriptions of the car matched, both were equally vague.

  ‘And you always hitch?’ asked Chandler.

  ‘Only if I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘You didn’t get any bad vibes about him?’

  ‘He was tall and skinny. Nothing I couldn’t handle if he tried anything. Introduced himself as Gabriel, travelling back from town with supplies.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Heath’s eyes wandered to the back wall. ‘Only that he lived around here, on his own. Seemed true. I mean, he didn’t say much and when he did it was so soft I could hardly hear it. Made me think he was possibly, you know, gay.’ His focus returned to Chandler. ‘Not that I’ve anything against them . . . What people get up to s’their business. I mean, I don’t hate ’em or anything,’ said Heath, clearly struggling to express himself.

  Chandler let him continue digging, hoping that he’d reveal something.

  ‘What I’m saying is that I wasn’t scared. I had it under control.’ Heath closed his eyes in a moment of reflection. ‘I thought I had it under control. I asked him what he did, being friendly and that, but there was nothing I wanted more than to sleep for a few hours. Because he was a stranger I didn’t.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing really. I told him I was from Adelaide and that the place up here seemed as barren as the haul from Coober Pedy to Alice Springs, but that it’s where the money is. We headed out of town aiming inland. Passed a couple of turnoffs—’

  ‘Did you get the impression that something was off about him?’ interrupted Chandler.

  ‘No, just that he was passing places that I might get work. He explained that everyone dives into them. He had a phrase . . .’ said Heath, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, ‘like stopping off at the first watering hole you see.’ Heath looked at him. ‘You know it?’

  Chandler shook his head, wanting Heath to continue.

  ‘Something like you get there but all the animals have trampled the soil and made the water too dirty to drink. He said that the ones further along were better so on we kept going. It was nice to be moving, rather than cooking by the roadside. He told me there was water in the back if I wanted it.’ Heath winced. ‘I didn’t see why not. I was thirsty.’

  Chandler could see where this story was headed. Poisoned water. Like Gabriel had also described.

  ‘It took a couple of minutes before I began to fade. Like I was shutting down. At first I thought it was just my body relaxing, the anxiety of being in a stranger’s car passing and the hot air blasting in the window making me drowsy, but it gradually got worse and worse until I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. Then I must have passed out. I guess the water had been spiked.’

  Chandler let him continue, scribbling notes.

  ‘I woke up in a tool shed.’ Heath sniffed the air. ‘It smelled like sweet sap, from the chopped wood in the corner. I was trapped in some old-style handcuff thing that hurt my wrists.’ He showed Chandler the raw skin that branded his thick wrists, the skin rubbed off. ‘Feet too. Chains like you see in old movies about Ned Kelly and the like. Thick iron attached by a chain to the wall. He didn’t want me going anywhere.’

  ‘Can you describe them exactly?’

  Heath shook his head. ‘Like D-shapes . . . loops linked by a chain. On my legs, too. My wrists were attached to the wall. My legs weren’t but the chains were too heavy to move, like they’d been set in a concrete block. I yelled for help but there was nothing from outside but squawks and chirps . . . and someone moving next door. That’s when I guessed I was chained up in a shed next to a cabin. That got me worried about what all the tools were for.’ He stared at Chandler. ‘Everything looks sinister when you’re a prisoner. I kept calling out until my throat burned but Gabriel didn’t care. He knew there was no one around to help. After a while he appeared at the door, not angry, not happy . . . just there. I pleaded with him to let me go and he told me to calm down, in that weird soft voice of his. I was afraid that he was going to do something there and then but he just mentioned something about fifty-five. I asked him what the hell he meant but he said he had work to do and left. I told him he didn’t have to kill me. Then he said something that still creeps me out. “No need to worry about it,” he said. “No need to worry at all. Of course you’ll be killed.” ’

  Heath stared at Chandler, as if the seriousness of the threat had to be reinforced.

  Chandler played it straight. ‘If Gabriel was that intent on killing you, how did you get away?’

  His suspect put his handcuffed wrists on the table, the skin torn, blackened around the edges, dust ground into the wound.

  ‘Luck. I kept pulling at the cuffs, hoping that they were so old they might break. They did. One of the locking mechanisms fell out. For a few seconds I froze, looking at it on the ground, not believing it had actually happened. Leaning over I grabbed a hatchet from the bench and swung for the other cuff, trying not to chop through my wrist. I kept hammering at it, listening for him coming back from next door.’

  ‘And he didn’t?’

  Heath smiled, noticeable pride in it. ‘I started shouting again, covering the noise of the chops, shouting louder the harder I hit. Managed to bend the metal enough to get my hand out.’ Heath stared at the swollen palm of his hand. ‘I was going to do the same to the leg irons but found the key hanging on a nail. I wanted to use the hatchet to bust through the shed doors but it was blunt so I went to the connecting door and peeked inside.’

  Heath closed his eyes, recalling the scene. ‘He was in there, facing away from me, papers and maps all around like he was planning something. Probably where to bury me.’

  ‘So his back was turned to you?’ asked Chandler.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you had the hatchet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why didn’t you attack him?’

  Heath paused, as if only now asking himself the same question. ‘I just wanted to get out of there, Sergeant. Anyway, he turned and stared at me. Looked as startled as I did. I bolted for the door, got outside and started running. I fuckin’ hate the outdoors.’

  ‘But you work outdoors,’ Chandler reminded him.

  ‘Only for the money. Give me brick, tarmac and air con any day but I haven’t got the brains or qualifications to scratch my arse behind a desk.’

  Chandler corralled him back to his story. ‘So you ran but didn’t lose him?’

  ‘No. He’s built like one of those middle-distance runners for fuck’s sake. I managed to hold him off until I came to the graves.’

  ‘Graves?’ asked Chandler, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Yeah – graves. Or at least I think they were graves.’

  The instantaneous backtrack made Chandler suspicious – as if his suspect were pretending not to know too much.

  ‘How many graves?’

  ‘Six I think. It was like I’d stumbled into hell given the heat.’ Heath flashed a weak smile, but it was quickly dropped when Chandler didn’t return it. ‘I aimed for the top of a hill thinking I’d find a way out but there was nothing but a ten-foot drop. Then he caught me and shoved me to the ground.’ Heath cleared his throat. ‘I don’t remember
much about the fight other than neither of us laid a decent hand on each other, rolling over and over to try and get an advantage before we must have gone over the edge. When we landed, I remember thinking that I was dead, no air in my lungs, unable to move my arms or legs. Then I guess I passed out and woke up sometime later staring up at the ridge. I had no idea where I was.’

  ‘How long were you out?’

  ‘I dunno. The sun was still rising so I guess a couple of hours.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Chandler. ‘And where was Gabriel?’

  ‘Beside me. Covered in cuts and bruises. Alive . . . dead, I didn’t care. I left him there.’

  So neither suspect had tried to finish off the other. Chandler supposed that if either had truly been a serial killer they would have seized the opportunity. One thing was for sure – one of them wasn’t telling the truth.

  Heath continued his story. ‘I stumbled along for a few hours before I came across a dirt road. Followed it and it came to a farm. Didn’t look to be anybody in so I thought I’d try and borrow the car. That’s when the gun-totin’ arsehole found me. And here we are. Sitting here talking while that psycho is out there.’

  Chandler decided to level with Heath to gauge his reaction. ‘That psycho is telling exactly the same story about you – that you kidnapped and tried to kill him.’

  Heath’s face dropped, turning pale as his eyes blinked rapidly. ‘You caught him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chandler.

  Heath paused. ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Okay. Why?’ asked Chandler.

  ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘Why would Gabriel lie?’

  Heath shuffled to the edge of the seat, the legs of the chair scraping on the floor. ‘I told you. Because he’s a psycho.’

  ‘I mean, a specific reason? Is there anyone that would want to kidnap and kill you? Would hate you enough to set this up? Any enemies? Debts? Anything?’

  ‘I don’t have shit to owe shit,’ spat Heath.

  Maybe the first true thing you’ve said, thought Chandler. There was an intensity about Heath’s posture that gave Chandler the impression that on the inside he was permanently on edge, as nervous as a startled cat, claws buried within the soft padding of his clothes.