Under the Cold Bright Lights

by Garry Disher

  Auhl and Claire watched from the doorway. Logan peered under Claire’s bed, Fenwick into the wardrobe. Auhl said: ‘You do know you look ridiculous.’

  ‘Part and parcel, mate.’ Logan was unabashed.

  He re-entered the hallway with Fenwick. Leaned down and reached a hand to Cynthia, who arched her back instantly, all claws and bared teeth. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Claire said, giving both men a winning smile.

  Then out into the garden and the morning dew and shadows. Auhl watched them enter the car shed, return to the yard. ‘See? No car. They’re not here. Mrs Fanning called me yesterday to apologise, but wouldn’t say where she was.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Do you have an arrest warrant for Mrs Fanning?’

  Logan, about to re-enter the house, said, ‘Are you her lawyer now?’

  Auhl didn’t answer that. ‘Claire and I need to get to work.’

  ‘Mate, I need to get to bed, but we don’t always get what we want.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have picked you for a Stones fan.’

  ‘Showing your age, mate,’ Logan said, pushing through to the kitchen again.

  31

  AUHL POKED HIS head into Helen Colfax’s office. ‘Am I still gainfully employed?’

  The boss patted her pockets absently, poked around in her bag, opened and closed her top drawer. She looked at Auhl in defeat. ‘Why wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  She waved him off. ‘Carmen Shirlow’s coming in mid-morning. Until then, go and solve crimes.’

  AT TEN-THIRTY CARMEN Shirlow was shown into one of the victim suites.

  She was late twenties, a gaunt woman with black hair, torn jeans and a flight of tiny blue tattooed birds climbing her neck from within her T-shirt. Chewed nails—everything about her looked chewed. Jittery. Uncomfortable about being in a police station. But her eyes were clear, her teeth healthy. She was careful and precise with her words.

  ‘I found some more photos.’

  Digging around in a grubby daypack, she produced several, including the ones she’d emailed.

  ‘See? It’s him.’ She flashed a look at each of them. ‘You can check my DNA if you like, I don’t mind.’

  ‘We will,’ smiled Helen. ‘Now, you said the other day your brother wasn’t perfect. What did you mean?’

  Carmen wriggled around as if that would help her gild the lily. ‘He wasn’t a junkie. But he did do a bit of dealing.’

  ‘You two were close?’

  ‘Our dad ran off and Mum, well, she didn’t cope all that well, so it was me and Rob looking out for each other.’

  ‘Were you living with him at the time he disappeared?’

  ‘No. I was living with Mum. Someone had to.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Cranbourne.’

  ‘So not all that far from where your brother was living.’

  She looked at them defiantly. ‘Where he was living with Mary, don’t you mean? Elephant in the room?’

  Auhl gave her a small wry smile. ‘Mary Peart.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘A bit. I used to visit.’

  She was still defiant, waiting for them to get to it. Colfax obliged. ‘Is there anything you can tell us about Mary’s murder, or Robert’s involvement in it?’

  The defiance evaporated. ‘Look, I was still in Year 11. I only visited them two or three times.’

  ‘To be clear: they were living together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In an old house on a rural block in Pearcedale?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The theory back then was Robert killed Mary on September the ninth and did a runner, maybe somewhere overseas.’

  Carmen Shirlow shrugged. ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘If as you say the man under the slab is your brother, we need to ascertain if he was murdered by the same person who murdered Mary, and at the same time.’

  Another shrug. ‘Okay, that seems reasonable.’

  Seemed reasonable to Auhl, too. ‘Can you think who might have wanted them both dead?’

  ‘Maybe Mary had an ex-boyfriend? Like I said, I was just a kid, still at home, not part of Rob’s life. He did a bit of dealing and a bit of nicking stuff, so maybe he rubbed someone up the wrong way.’

  ‘Did Mary have an ex-boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Carmen wrapped her thin arms across her chest, clutched her shoulders. ‘Far as I was concerned, Rob would never, ever have hurt Mary. They were mad about each other. I knew something bad had happened to him. I tried telling the police that but no one listened.’

  Claire said, ‘You didn’t, in the corner of your mind, wonder if Robert had maybe shot Mary and gone into hiding?’

  She squirmed. ‘Maybe a tiny bit. I mean, the cops wouldn’t leave me and Mum alone. Where’s Rob? Did you help Rob? Did you deal drugs for him? Go easy on yourself and tell us where Rob is. That kind of thing. So yeah, I had a couple of doubts. Then I’d just think: no, not possible.’

  Helen said, ‘Did you ever see Robert or Mary with other people?’

  ‘At their house? No.’

  ‘Did they ever talk about the other people in their lives?’

  ‘Mary talked about her sister a couple of times. Can’t remember her name…Maybe Rachel? Or Ruth. Anyway they were brought up strict and Mary ran off when she met Rob.’

  ‘And Rob? Did he mention anybody, friends, people he worked with?’

  ‘No. Him and Mary were really happy and he wasn’t doing anything dodgy with her around. All he did was fix up the house in between odd jobs for people.’

  Auhl leaned forward, frowning. ‘The old house in Pearcedale?’

  Carmen gave him a haven’t-you-been-listening look. ‘Yes. It was a bit of a wreck.’

  ‘What kind of doing up?’

  ‘Plastering over holes in the walls, new guttering, replacing floorboards, painting, that kind of thing. He was good with his hands. Do anything. Odd jobs, maintenance, gardening, house-painting, a bit of carpentry.’

  ‘That was his job at the time? Was he employed by a firm, or self-employed?’

  ‘Self-employed.’

  Auhl thought he’d taken that line of questioning as far as it would go. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Mary Peart?’

  ‘Nope. Strict background, worried about her sister.’

  The police reports were also sketchy. Mary Peart’s place and date of birth, the name of the family who’d taken in the sisters when their parents died, a brief employment history. At the time of her death, Mary Peart had been working as a veterinary assistant in Cranbourne.

  ‘What if I’m next?’ Carmen said.

  They all blinked. ‘Next?’ asked Josh.

  ‘Yeah, like, I kind of went underground after it happened. It was too much, you know? Mary. Rob. The police on my back. This guy hassling me. I got scared. Me and Mum cleared out.’

  Auhl said, ‘What guy? Police?’

  ‘Not police. An older guy. Sort of like a businessman but not, you know? Like well dressed and that, but…scary, wore these dark glasses and demanded to know was I part of it? Where was the rest? Questions like that.’

  ‘The rest of what?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Whatever Rob and Mary were up to, I suppose. Drugs. Nothing to do with me and I told him that.’

  ‘Did he actually mention drugs?’

  A shrug. ‘No.’

  ‘Did he give you his name?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And you’re sure he wasn’t police.’

  ‘I just don’t know, all right? I wasn’t part of anything, I was trying to get through Year 11, trying to keep Mum from fucking up her life.’ She shot them a look. ‘She was an alcoholic. Anyway, we cleared out to Queensland. Grandma and Grandpa helped us.’ She paused. ‘They’re all dead now, there’s only me. But no way am I coming back here to live. I feel safe up north.
I can keep my head down.’

  ‘Have there been any recent attempts to contact you? This so-called businessman, for example?’

  ‘No. Anyway, I made it quite clear to him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I didn’t want to take any chances, so we went up to Cairns.’

  ‘Wise move,’ Helen said, reaching out to touch a jittery forearm. ‘Let’s wrap this up, shall we? Josh, could you arrange a hotel for Ms Shirlow? Carmen, we need you to stay in town for a few days, is that all right? The police will pay.’

  ‘A hotel? Cool.’

  AUHL, RETURNING TO the Cold Case office with Claire Pascal, found the man named Logan waiting in the corridor. ‘Things are just getting better and better for you, mate.’

  The tone was cocky but the face oddly sympathetic, and Claire hesitated. ‘Alan?’

  He waved her on. ‘You go, don’t wait for me.’

  She opened the door, glancing back once over her shoulder at the two men, then disappeared inside. Auhl turned to Logan. ‘I thought you were finished for the day.’

  ‘No rest for the wicked,’ Logan said. ‘Your car’s been found.’

  Auhl waited. When Logan didn’t elaborate, he said, ‘My car’s been found, but neither Mrs Fanning nor her daughter was in it, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Correct. They’d have been burnt to a crisp if they had been in it, mind you.’

  Auhl closed and opened his eyes. ‘She torched it?’

  ‘Can we go somewhere more comfortable?’

  Auhl took Logan upstairs to the tearoom along the corridor from the Arson Squad. Sat at the stained Laminex table and pushed out a chair with his foot. ‘Sit.’

  When Logan was sitting, Auhl said flatly, ‘Just get it over with.’

  ‘As you know, we tracked your car north on the Hume, then back to the city several hours later. Anyway, we took a closer look at the freeway camera images. A couple of young guys in the front, no one in the back.’ Logan shook his head commiseratively. ‘Then about an hour ago we found it torched in Footscray.’

  ‘It wasn’t a car you’d bother taking to a chop shop,’ Auhl said, trying for humour to stave off what was still to come.

  Logan acknowledged it with a brief, fatigued grimace. ‘Anyway, we were monitoring Mrs Fanning’s Visa card, and she rented a Hyundai from Budget in Albury–Wodonga. We’re presuming that’s where she left your car, maybe with the keys in the ignition.’

  ‘She kept going?’

  Logan shook his head. ‘The opposite. She drove all the way back here, through the city and down to Geelong.’

  Auhl was hopeful. ‘To her parents’?’

  ‘To her husband’s.’

  ‘Mate, don’t string it out.’

  Logan said, ‘It seems mother and daughter trashed the place. Threw paint over the carpets, left taps running into plugged sinks and the bathtub, smashed windows.’

  Auhl was holding himself tightly.

  Logan took a breath. ‘And that’s all I know so far.’ He gave Auhl a sharp look. ‘You need to tell her to give herself up.’

  Auhl got to his feet and stood, irresolute. A civilian clerk hurried in with an armful of folders, looking for someone. Glanced at the two men oddly but said nothing and went out again. Auhl said, ‘I’m not in contact with her.’

  ‘You need to tell us where she is.’

  Auhl strode away. ‘I’m not in contact with her.’

  CLAIRE PASCAL WAS pretending to read files when he returned. She took one look at him and got to her feet.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Auhl explained. She wrapped him in a brief hug. ‘What a shitty situation.’

  ‘Out of my hands now,’ Auhl said, wondering if that were true.

  He buried himself in work, phone calls, internet searches.

  And eventually learned that the family who’d taken in Mary Peart and her sister was not just any old family.

  32

  ‘MASCOT AND HIS team—bad case of tunnel vision,’ said Auhl.

  Friday morning, and he was in the passenger seat, his lap piled with Google printouts and Rhys Mascot’s files, Helen Colfax behind the wheel, the traffic slow-moving now that they’d left the M1 and were heading along Wellington Road. Destination, the hill town of Emerald.

  ‘Tunnel vision…’ Helen Colfax said encouragingly.

  Auhl lifted a thin file. ‘With Robert Shirlow in the frame, there was barely any follow-up on the sister or the family that took the girls in. Nothing about them being fundamentalist crackpots.’

  When Colfax stopped for a red light, he slid a photo under her nose. ‘Warren Hince, leader of the Assemblies of Jehovah International.’

  Printed from a news website, the photograph showed a portly man in a dark suit, his beaming, well-fed face crowned with a proud mane of swept-back white hair. He was shaking hands with a former Liberal prime minister, also beaming.

  ‘Look who he’s with,’ Colfax said.

  ‘Must have been an election on,’ Auhl said.

  ‘Anything for a vote,’ Colfax agreed. The light changed, she accelerated smoothly away. ‘What else?’

  Auhl continued. The AJI was small, secretive, homophobic, misogynistic and well heeled. First established in Scotland—by Hince—in 1974, offshoots following in Germany, the USA, New Zealand and Australia. ‘Hervey Bay in the mid-nineteen eighties,’ Auhl said, ‘then the Gold Coast, Byron Bay, Darwin, the Adelaide Hills, the Blue Mountains and finally Emerald.’

  Where Hince now lived with his wife and their son. Auhl had checked out the estate on Google Earth: several hectares in size, with a sizeable main residence and several smaller buildings set amid pines and gum trees on a slope leading to a pond fed by a small creek. Other images confirmed Warren Hince’s status: presiding over a baptism in that same pond; stepping out of a black Mercedes; boarding a small plane emblazoned Assemblies.

  ‘Not short of a dollar,’ Auhl said. ‘Donations, plus many of the flock run successful businesses. Hince and his family have built a few small-scale housing developments and shopping centres.’

  He went on. The church had flown under the radar for many years, enjoying its tax-exempt status, before cracks began to appear. Some members left the fold and began to speak out. A few returned, having found the outside world hard and bewildering. Those who did not were excommunicated. The few who agreed to be interviewed told reporters that their ‘sins’ had ranged from buying a computer, or some other trapping of a worldly society, to being ‘immoral’, encouraging their children to get an education, and questioning the elders.

  ‘You could say there was quite a bit to question,’ Auhl said.

  Such as church elders arranging marriages. Urging husbands to beat disobedient wives. Exploiting the authority of their position to sexually abuse the children of parishioners. Their website opposed gay marriage, listed ‘Crimes by Muslims’ and claimed the Black Sunday bushfires were God’s punishment for the country’s lax abortion laws.

  Helen snorted, shook her head.

  ‘Things really came unstuck for Hince when he urged his congregation to donate money to an anti-Islamic political party—which he happened to head,’ Auhl said. ‘Labor politicians finally got off their arses and argued the church was not a charity, and therefore its tax-exempt status should be revoked. Hince denied it, of course, and for a while no one did anything.’

  ‘Friends in high places.’

  ‘Friends like prime ministers,’ Auhl said. ‘And meanwhile there was the child sex abuse Royal Commission. As soon as that started to build up steam, Warren stepped down and handed the reins to his son.’

  ‘Because he was named?’

  ‘Not named but…implicated.’

  They’d reached another red light. This time Auhl handed Helen a Hince family photograph. Warren, his son Adam, his wife Judith. Adam was a tall, stocky, bull-headed young man, not yet portly like his father but heading that way. Soft-looking; not commanding. And he stood glued to his mother’s flank, as
though cringing from his father.

  ‘How old was the son in 2009?’

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  Colfax nodded and Auhl knew what she was thinking: Adam Hince was in the frame. He’d been a young man, not a child, when Mary Peart died.

  ‘And the Royal Commission?’

  ‘Father and son were asked to appear in late 2016,’ Auhl said. ‘They didn’t, in the end. No witnesses, only vague allegations. Adam claimed he knew nothing about the actions of the elders and Warren was excused on the grounds he has dementia.’

  Auhl found another printout, a report from the Herald Sun. ‘Meanwhile the church could be struggling financially. Last year their charity status was revoked, meaning they’ve been hit with hefty tax-concession repayments.’

  ‘That’s the big picture. What about the smaller picture? Would these people murder someone who left the fold?’

  Auhl thought about it. ‘Mary Peart wasn’t the only one who left. And are we asking if they murdered Robert because he lured her away? That seems…extravagant.’

  ‘Carmen Shirlow said an older man hassled her and demanded to know where something was. Are we thinking it was Warren Hince?’

  Auhl nodded. ‘Good question. We need to show her his photograph.’

  THE ROAD WOUND INTO the hills. Helen Colfax said, ‘Dementia. Real or pretence?’

  ‘Apparently real,’ Auhl said, but thought back to a news clip he’d found yesterday, Warren Hince in a wheelchair outside the Royal Commission, his son pushing it. The old man’s face vacant, almost drooling; then a nasty couple of seconds when a reporter shoved a microphone in his face and his expression sharpened to a fleeting, hard malice.

  ‘If the old man’s senile, we may not get much out of anyone,’ Colfax said.

  ‘There’s Mary Peart’s sister.’

  ‘If she’s still there.’

  ‘The wife, the son.’

  ‘Who will be heavily invested in protecting the old patriarch,’ Helen said.

  ‘A patriarch who runs a building firm,’ Auhl said.

  ‘Digging a grave, pouring a slab, patching and painting over bullet holes and bloodstains?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyone with DIY skills can do those sorts of things.’