‘I have to get out of here, Nick,’ he whispered, even though Mitch was tucked away in the office and Yohan and Suze were wrapped up in their own tasks. ‘I’m going to try the Hill. They both mentioned the same shack, so it must exist.’
‘Yeah, but they both claimed not to know where it was,’ Nick reminded him.
‘It must be somewhere near Turtle’s. Where Heath was caught trying to steal the car.’
‘I might be new around here and all, Sarge, but that’s a lot of ground.’
‘I know but maybe I can track it down. At least I can give it a shot.’
‘And what do I tell him?’ asked Nick, arching his neck towards Mitch.
‘That I’m following up a lead.’
‘Okay . . .’ said Nick, sounding less than sure.
Chandler retrieved his keys and jacket and was within arm’s reach of the station door when Mitch floated out of his office.
‘Where are you off to, Sergeant?’
For an instant Chandler thought about making up some excuse.
‘I’m going to check out the woods behind where Heath was picked up.’
Mitch’s face turned to stone again, his eyes darting side to side, determining whether there might be traction in this idea, a bandwagon that he might want to jump on.
‘I’m coming with you.’
Chandler formed a backup plan. ‘Do you remember Turtle, Mi—, Inspector?’ he asked.
‘Turtle Siefert? Yes I do, Sergeant.’
‘Good. But Turtle won’t remember you. His memory’s gone. He shot the last guy who tried to tell him John Howard wasn’t prime minister. And that guy was his own brother!’
Chandler stopped short of mentioning that he’d only managed to wing his brother in the arm and no charges had been pressed.
‘I’m coming with you, Sergeant,’ said Mitch.
And that was that. Chandler had a partner once again.
The car ride was silent; a silence that Chandler dared not break in case he said something ill-judged in a confined space that neither could escape.
Thankfully it was a short silence. Twenty minutes later he pulled the car into Turtle’s front yard. The first welcome sight was the banged-up Chevy tied to the concrete post like a horse in lieu of a working handbrake. Second was that Turtle himself wasn’t in the yard, brandishing his shotgun at them. It was where his nickname had originated: always on the defensive, a shell on his back and another in his shotgun.
‘Remember, he’s not the biggest fan of the police,’ said Chandler as they got out of the car.
‘I know,’ said Mitch, batting the concern away as he scanned the front yard.
‘So let me do the talking.’
Mitch didn’t reply as they cautiously weaved their way between the dilapidated barns and machinery, the subsided porch sloping away from the wooden building as if trying to flee. It was a farm in need of repair. A farm with plenty of places to hide.
They made it halfway to the farmhouse when they were greeted by a gnarled old man, who stepped out the screen door. His shotgun rested low, but high enough to make a point.
‘What’re you doin’ here?’ asked Turtle, in typical drawn-out fashion, his jaw grinding like one of the threshing drums in the harvesters now rotting in the yard.
Before Chandler had a chance to answer, Mitch spoke up.
‘We’re the police, Mr Siefert.’
‘I ask’d what you’re doin’ here,’ said Turtle, not advancing from his porch.
‘Mind if we come closer rather than having to shout?’
‘You mind tellin’ me your name, boy?’
‘Turtle,’ said Chandler, interrupting. ‘It’s me, Chandler. Sergeant Jenkins.’
Turtle tilted his head, his good eye scanning the horizon, the other set straight but as blind as a bat’s. Now within thirty feet of him, Chandler could also see that his eyebrows appeared to have been drawn on in thick black marker, halfway up his forehead in a look of permanent surprise. He’d done it again, lit the gas cooker on full, shooting a cloud of flame towards his already charred face.
‘And what do you want, Chan’ler?’
Mitch inched closer. ‘We want you to keep calm.’
‘I was calm, boy. I ammm calm. What do you want?’
Chandler spoke up. ‘We need to have a look around, Turtle.’
Turtle’s head swung around so that his good eye faced Chandler. The unfortunate by-product of this was that the shotgun now pointed straight at them.
‘I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. You can’t prove I was poaching those fish.’
‘We—’ started Chandler. He flicked a glance at Mitch whose hand had curled around the butt of his gun, wary of the shotgun and the increasingly perturbed old man. ‘We’re not here for that. We just need a look ’round.’
Mitch grunted at Chandler, his voice forced low. ‘What are the chances he knows something about this?’
‘Slim to none,’ replied Chandler, equally forced, eyes trained on Turtle who kept the gun trained on them. ‘He’s not one for partners. Poaching’s the most serious thing he’s into.’
‘I still want to search it,’ said Mitch, his eyes on Turtle.
‘The place we’re looking for is further in.’
‘I want to rule this place out.’
‘I’m telling you—’
‘You said yourself that his memory’s gone. Our suspect could be here now, or maybe he had been here, pretending to be his son, the one who was fencing cars down in Sydney last I remember.’
Turtle might be losing his memory but there was nothing wrong with Mitch’s. The youngest Siefert boy was still in prison outside of Sydney for running a chop shop out of an abandoned warehouse.
Chandler swung back towards Turtle. ‘We’ll be quick, Turtle. We aren’t looking for anything you’ve done. We think someone might have been trespassing on your land.’
‘Who?’ asked Turtle, his face curling into a frown but his eyebrows remaining static.
‘A guy from out of town.’
Turtle swung around as if the Devil would appear on command. With his failing brain and eyesight, it was a worrying possibility. ‘Is he still on my land?’
‘No,’ assured Chandler. The last thing he wanted was Turtle storming off and getting in their way. ‘We want to see if we can find any clue about where he went after he was here.’
The old man fell silent, considering the request.
‘We won’t touch anything we don’t need to,’ said Chandler, closing in on victory.
‘Don’t break any of my tractors,’ warned Turtle.
Not a problem, thought Chandler. Most were already broken, relics of a farming past, back when the Sieferts had worked the land instead of chopping cars, poaching fish and threatening cops.
Mitch carefully backed off towards the car as Chandler made sure that Turtle was fully on-board with what was going to happen.
‘You’ll destroy my bloody farm.’
‘If anyone damages anything, you can make a claim for it.’
‘Really?’
Chandler pointed to Mitch. ‘Direct them to Inspector Andrews. He’s the man in charge, now.’
‘That stick of koala dung dressed like a starched penguin?’
‘He was born and bred here in Wilbrook. You can trust him.’
‘Didn’t sound like he was from here.’
Chandler nodded in response before rejoining Mitch by the car. He was studying a map of the surrounding area on a tablet.
‘We’ll check the outhouses first,’ said Chandler, ‘then the main house. I can go—’
‘You won’t be required, Sergeant.’
Chandler paused, struggling to process this new information. ‘Why won’t I be needed? You can’t search this place on your own.’
‘I know. I’ve called my team out.’
‘But I know the area, I can—’
‘We have this covered, Sergeant. My team will be here soon. They know how I work. I need you to explai
n to the old man—’
‘You forget that I know how you work too.’
‘How I used to work.’
‘What exactly is your problem with having me around, Mitch?’
Mitch rested the tablet on the hood of the car and looked at Chandler. ‘I need people I can trust.’
‘And what have I done to lose your trust?’
‘Nothing, Sergeant Jenkins. You never had it in the first place. You’ll just have to accept that I give the orders and I choose my team.’
‘You’re letting the shit that went on between us in the past get in the way of this investigation.’
Mitch slowly shook his head. ‘We have no past, as far as I am concerned, Sergeant. This is a decision based purely on what I think should be done. You know these hicks, that’s true, but you’re also a little too close to them and when you’re this close it’s easy to miss something. Or look the other way.’
‘So you’re accusing me of what? Unprofessionalism? Bias? Corruption?’
‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Sergeant. This is what an inspector . . .’ he paused on the word, ‘has to do. Make unpopular decisions.’
‘And if I decide to stay?’
Mitch picked up the tablet again. ‘I’d have no choice but to take you off the case and suspend you.’
Chandler didn’t doubt the seriousness of this threat.
‘Anyway, why are you complaining?’ continued Mitch.
‘While I lead the taskforce up here, you’re in charge of base operations. With Suze and Yohan. In case any new leads emerge.’
Chandler understood that Mitch was fobbing him off but given the commotion with Turtle if Gabriel had been here he would have had ample chance to clear out. Plus, Turtle’s farm wasn’t where the kidnaps and killings had taken place. The crazy old man might have been blind but his ears were fine. Any cry for help within a few kilometres of his place and Turtle would have heard it. And been nosy enough to check it out.
18
2002
‘Watch your step, Mitch!’
Chandler shouted even though there was zero chance that his colleague had heard him over the whine of the helicopter engine overhead. He retreated a safe distance from the murderous blades that whipped up a vicious whirlwind of dust that almost obscured the aircraft from view.
Five days into the search for Martin and still they continued to forge deeper into the outback, so much so that they now had to be airlifted in and out with enough supplies to survive for a few days in the dense woods and scrubland. Out here, the terrain was pretty in a feral way, wild and untouched, alluring and unknown, appealing to the adventurous side of Chandler’s character, the teenage side, the lost side. He and Mitch had camped in the wild when they were younger but never this far in. It would have taken a full day and two tanks of fuel to get this far on scramblers, the terrain rough and undiscovered, lacking natural trails, which meant little speed and real danger.
As Mitch charged across the rutted ground, clear of the blades, the chopper began its slow ascent, whipping up dust in a wider and wider arc, causing the already disembarked Chandler to shield his face. Only as the helicopter cleared the top of the trees did the whirlwind die down, the craft angling forward and speeding back towards town.
They were amongst the second load ferried in today, bringing the group’s number to fifteen, a figure that was shrinking by the day and in Chandler’s opinion, a feeble effort given the area they needed to cover. Donning his backpack he set off to rendezvous with the others.
As their hearing recovered from the squeal of the engines, talk swung towards Bill’s morning briefing. The area to search over the next three days had been marked out with a warning for them to find a clear spot by the end of the third so that the helicopters could extricate them. After that the rest of the meeting spiralled into attempts to rouse motivation but Chandler sensed that even Bill was frustrated at the air search having proved fruitless.
There was another reason for his frustration, too. Some bright spark in management had taken to inviting Martin’s family to these briefings, amongst them Sylvia, the mother of the missing boy. Even in the airconditioned room, her soft face glowed red in the heat. It lent the impression that she was on the verge of collapse, much as she had done on the second day of the search when they had to radio in the helicopter to transport her to hospital. After that, Arthur had barred her from going out again.
What the presence of the family had done was turn the briefings into formal affairs, everyone wary of what they said and how they said it in case it was deemed too negative. Words were adjusted to offer hope rather than state reality, each fruitless day in the wilderness sold as more area covered. The emotional attachment that they had brought had initially succeeded in driving the volunteers forward but now it was becoming a burden. Chandler was feeling more counsellor than policeman, concerned with the family’s welfare as much as overseeing the search’s progress.
Today, if anything, was worse. As if dealing with the tortured emotions of the parents wasn’t hard enough, Arthur had dragged his remaining son along. Twelve years old and dropped into an alien landscape to battle with the rest of the group, his eyes were glassy and as wide as saucers, but Chandler could see that he was determined to make a difference, a stubbornness he no doubt inherited from his father – and brother.
As the group prepared to set off Arthur offered his morning prayer, red rings still evident around his eyes from the tearful interview on television last night that Chandler had watched after tucking an exhausted Teri into bed. The passion and hurt Arthur had displayed had turned the localized search for his eldest son into a national news story, resulting in Chandler being hounded by reporters at the station and the base camp this morning. They had been warned by HQ to stay silent about progress and to let those at the top act as the mouthpieces but Chandler didn’t need to be told; he distrusted vultures who fed on human misery so he passed through the forest of cameras and microphones silently. If it hadn’t been for the national attention and crippling fear of missing out on a scoop, none of them would have cared about the family’s distress. And when the bones had been picked clean and they caught the whiff of blood on the wind, they would fly away again, hunting for their next victim.
Despite the inauspicious start, midday brought a clue, right before the two-hour break to wait out the hottest part of the day. One of the volunteers, a teenager all the way up from the Murray River area south of Perth, found a scrap of clothing caught on a briar, waving like a flag in the gentle breeze.
Chandler was soon on the scene, a crowd surrounding the strip of red almost afraid to approach in case it vanished in front of their eyes. First observations were that it had been torn from the original garment rather than cut, the edges frayed, fibres waving a thousand tiny fingers at him.
‘What is it?’ said Mitch, having caught up with them.
‘A piece of clothing, possibly. Torn,’ said Chandler, eyes fixed on it. The fact that it danced so easily in the wind told him it was a lightweight material. ‘Pass me a bag.’
Mitch rummaged through his backpack for an evidence bag. Teasing the material delicately from the barb, Chandler placed it into to the bag and zipped it up.
He held it up for a closer look. All eyes followed it, almost reverent of the find. Part of a logo was imprinted on to the material. An ‘N’ and what looked to be most of an ‘O’ in white capital letters.
‘What do you think?’ asked Chandler.
‘No Fear . . . North Face . . . Mizu—no. ?’ offered Mitch.
‘If it was torn off he must have been travelling quickly.’
‘So where’s the rest?’
‘Let me see,’ said Arthur who stumbled into the fray, his belly leading the way, his youngest son locked to his side.
Chandler passed the bag to the old man whose hand was swollen with the heat.
‘North Face,’ said Arthur. ‘Martin bought a lot of that stuff. He has clothes in that colour too but Sy
lvia would be able to tell you better.’
‘It’s a popular brand,’ said Mitch, gently.
‘It’s something,’ said the old man, brusquely. ‘Tells us that he made it this far.’
‘Unless it blew—’
Chandler’s raised eyebrow was enough. Mitch shut his mouth. Truth was that the discovery of the clothing generated as many questions as it answered. Had Martin made it here or had he not? Was it blown on the wind or ripped straight off? Was it even from Martin’s clothing? The fact that it had been ripped could also mean that he had been attacked by something. Martin’s disappearance remained as mysterious as the region they continued to scour. The best they could do now was search for further pieces of clothing.
Mitch was also concerned – but for different reasons.
‘We’re getting closer and closer to hell out here.’
‘Where do you want to be, Mitch?’
‘By the beach. Taking a morning dip before a shift. Maybe let the riptide sweep me silently away like Harold Holt. Like Martin.’
Chandler looked angrily at his partner. ‘Don’t let anyone catch you saying shit like that.’
Mitch glanced around. ‘They can’t hear me. And let’s face it, there’s no one else for miles. And that includes Martin.’
It was blunt but probably true.
Mitch wasn’t finished. ‘You think he did this on purpose?’
‘What?’
‘Disappear.’
‘Like some form of elaborate suicide?’ asked Chandler, humouring Mitch’s wild theory.
‘Faking it is my guess. Running away and becoming someone else. Mark my words, he’ll turn up in twenty years, his fingerprints on some murder weapon. I mean, what reason is there to fake your death and assume another identity unless you have done or plan to do something illegal?’
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