Deadman’s Track

by Sarah Barrie

  ‘Extra precaution. Sounds like a plan.’

  She wrapped the prusik knot around the rope, hooked it onto another clip on his harness and checked it all over. ‘Okay. You’re ready. Now you just need to—’ She swallowed. Nerves bouncing, she tried to focus while he took a good look at where he had to go.

  ‘It’s not too far down if I stuff this up. Right?’ he asked.

  He really was unsure of himself. It helped her mind switch back into instructor mode. ‘You’re not going to stuff this up. I’m not going to let you. Watch.’ She edged closer and looked everywhere but down. ‘The belay uses the friction of the rope against itself to control your speed as you let it out, but if you do happen to slip, or let go, the prusik will tighten around the rope and stop you from falling.’ She heard the reassurance in her voice, knew the truth of it, and felt even more stupid for not getting down that small drop herself. ‘You need to hold the ropes like so … great. Now just take some weight on the rope and lean out to about a forty-five-degree angle.’

  He leant out. And just seeing him heading over that drop, no matter how small, put Tess back on Fedder and filled her mind with Charlie. She dropped to her knees, stunned at the inability to breathe against the sudden tight knot in her chest.

  ‘Why forty-five?’ he asked, still poised as though he couldn’t see her fighting not to pass out.

  ‘What? Jared, I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’

  ‘You’re not. I am. Why forty-five?’

  ‘Um …’ She made herself look at him, refocus. Slow her breathing. ‘Not enough lean, you’ll face plant the rock; too much, you’ll end up upside down. How you are right now, that’s good.’

  ‘So what next?’

  ‘Now you …’ She cleared her throat, tried again. Another deep breath. ‘You slide the prusik down the rope as you let it out. Good. Make sure your feet are spread wide enough to keep you stable. You don’t want to tip to either side. That’s it. Then you just …’

  ‘Start walking?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Got it.’

  He took a few steps, until she could just see his face over the rock. What if he falls? ‘Jared—’

  ‘Hey, once you’re over the edge, it’s great!’

  ‘Just go slow and steady. Please.’ She got her legs under her and hurried down the slope at the side of the drop to watch his descent from below, but he had the hang of it and beat her to the base.

  ‘Too easy,’ he said with a grin. ‘Can we do the big one next?’

  She pressed a hand to her head where it hurt from tension. ‘Ah … I suppose so. But not today. Indy will need you back, right? We should get you out of the harness.’

  ‘You did it. You wanted to pass out, but you got me down. You’re not a coward, Tess Atherton. Forget about Aaron. He’s just bitter.’

  ‘And good at scoring points.’ Another deep breath had her feeling almost back to normal. ‘I don’t know why I assumed he’d just let go without a fight. I’m sorry you got dragged into it. Stupid thing is there isn’t even anything for him to be jealous about.’

  ‘Would you like there to be?’ he asked. ‘The offer still stands.’

  Would she? She couldn’t believe she was even considering it. She liked Jared, and she certainly felt better when she was around him. But …

  ‘I know your head’s full of your break-up with Aaron,’ he said as though reading her thoughts. ‘But if you feel like going out and just forgetting about it for a while, let me know. No pressure, okay?’

  Perhaps it was what she needed. Maybe it would take some of the focus off Aaron. Make it all seem less important. But she needed some clarification. ‘If what you’re suggesting is some sort of sympathy date, forget it.’

  ‘Sympathy would have nothing to do with it.’ The words and their warm delivery did anything but loosen the knots in her stomach.

  ‘Well, in that case … You’re not clingy, are you?’

  Jared’s smile became a laugh. ‘You can find out Saturday night.’

  CHAPTER

  20

  ‘Abseiling?’ Indy asked in disbelief as they drove back to the station. ‘You hate heights!’

  ‘I’m not sure Tess wants it broadcast to her entire family, but she’s having a bit of a hard time with them herself.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘I thought it might help if she instructed me on it. Got back into the swing of things.’

  ‘Does she not expect it to take time?’

  ‘Aaron is the one who has her stressing over it.’

  ‘Aaron? He just won’t go away! What did he do this time?’

  ‘He asked her to go to Canada. I’m sure she’ll tell you about it. But when she said no, he made some stupid parting shot about her being useless because she had a moment over the height at the last rescue she did.’

  ‘The one where he nearly knocked her off the cliff, you mean?’

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘Accidentally. Apparently.’ Indy sighed heavily. ‘I’m just glad she called it off so I don’t have to pretend to like him anymore.’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘I know, I know. Everyone likes Aaron. How could I not like him?’

  ‘Everyone likes that guy? Really? I must be missing something.’

  ‘He’s a bit of a hero in Search and Rescue circles. He’s done some great things since he arrived a few years back. If you believe his stories, he was just as successful doing a similar job over in the UK.’

  ‘I see. Tess obviously liked him enough to start seeing him in the first place.’

  ‘He can be thoroughly charming. And he’s easy on the eyes. Brave, dedicated and shares a similar lifestyle. And he absolutely adores her.’

  ‘I sense a really big but coming.’

  ‘I don’t like him. Tess is a capable, independent person. She was willing to compromise on a lot of things to give the relationship a chance and he just kept reeling her in tighter and tighter. He had her questioning everything she did. Anyway, he’s gone.’

  ‘Or soon will be. What was that phone call about as we were leaving?’

  ‘Wilde’s pushing for answers—his lawyer was giving me a rocket up the backside. I’m copping pressure from all corners.’

  ‘Don’t let it get to you.’

  ‘I won’t. Oh, I meant to say, the phone you were called on during your drive home last night was a prepaid job. We haven’t been able to trace it.’

  ‘I didn’t expect our POI to make it too easy.’

  ‘And he left no fingerprints or other evidence after the rock-throwing incident. You don’t seem to be taking the threat very seriously. He could have killed you.’

  ‘He wants me to back off. I’m not backing off.’

  Emily was waiting for them when they entered the station. ‘I think I’ve found something.’ She took them back to her desk and gestured for them to look at her monitor. ‘Does that look like Fitzgerald to you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s him.’

  ‘Good, because I’ve spent most of the morning chasing him on every available camera. In your notes from your interview with Stiles, he said Fitzgerald had visited a pub with a direction and coordinates in its name. I figured it had to be Tavern 42 Degrees South. He’s leaving the pub here, safe and sound, next picked up on CCTV crossing Macquarie Street and again south on Liverpool Street. I’m guessing he was most likely heading towards Flamingos because I think, though I can only see the back of him, this is him entering the club. The footage is quite a distance away.’

  ‘Clothing looks right. That’s a different location to our POI’s usual haunts.’

  ‘It’s a gay and alternative bar.’ Emily flicked to another screen. ‘I think this could be Fitzgerald leaving at around midnight. There was a big crowd that poured out at once and the camera angle’s not great.’

  ‘Hold up. Go back to the first lot of footage and let it run.’ He scanned the screen, spotted it. ‘There!’ He pointed to another figure in
the background, heading in Fitzgerald’s direction. ‘Is that the same guy who was behind him when he left Flamingos?’

  Emily opened another screen. They all looked closer.

  ‘Could be …’ Indy said. ‘Go back to the Macquarie Street footage. Keep it going after Fitzgerald has moved on.’

  A few seconds ticked by. The other figure came on screen, following Fitzgerald from a distance.

  ‘It’s the same guy,’ Indy said. ‘He’s stalking him. How clear can we make that face?’

  ‘Better, but probably not great. It’s only a partial and shadowed.’

  ‘Pass it over to tech, see what they can do.’

  ‘Why is he just wandering around after him?’ Emily asked.

  ‘The later it gets, the more bars he goes to, the drunker the victim,’ Jared said. ‘And the less likely he is to fail.’

  ‘This is different from the others. Our POI would pick up women, learn how to get in to their houses, wait a few days at least, then break in.’

  Indy nodded. ‘He might not have been able to get near Wilde. Besides, he only needed to pick up the paper to have known she was worth the hit. But he needed to get in. So I’m guessing he watched the boat, the routine, worked out the security was linked to their phones. Then he followed Fitzgerald around until he was as drunk as he was going to get and jumped him for the phone. Take another look at them both leaving the club. They’re practically side by side but there’s no interaction. Fitzgerald wasn’t involved in this and he never made it back to that boat.’

  ‘Em, can we get an analysis not only of the guy’s face, but his approximate size?’ Jared asked. ‘We know Fitzgerald was five-eleven, so this guy’s huge.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll find out.’

  ‘Thanks. Because I can’t see a guy like that fitting into a size nine shoe.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Indy said and cursed under her breath. ‘There’s two of them.’

  Jared picked up his jacket and car keys.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going out there. I’ll try Flamingos and the yacht club again, then head out on foot between the two if nothing new surfaces.’

  He drove to the nightclub first. The streets were packed with shops and businesses and he knew it was well lit at night. He checked every nook and cranny he could find, before deciding the relatively quiet streets surrounding the yacht club contained many more likely sites for Fitzgerald to have been attacked. They’d searched the immediate area. He’d have to extend it, look again.

  The yacht club sprawled out along the roadside. He walked slowly around the clubhouse, checked out boats and cars and bins. At the furthest end of one carpark, a shipping container caught his eye. He wrestled with the handles and opened it. Nothing. Damn, where was Fitzgerald? In the water? Had they missed him?

  Jared walked along the waterfront to the park, up and down the rock wall and stopped at some boat sheds, trying to figure it out. His foot kicked a bottle lid. He watched it roll away and hit the wall. Something had leaked out from under one of the roller doors next to where the lid came to a stop. He walked over and bent down to take a closer look. Noticed the smell. He tried the door. It was unlocked or broken, because it rolled straight up. He took several steps backwards.

  Fitzgerald’s body had been carelessly dumped in the corner. He was wearing the clothes he’d left the club in, crusted in blood that had run from a wound to the back of his head. But from the way his bloodshot eyes seemed to be popping from their sockets together with the angry wound on his neck, Jared was going with strangulation as cause of death. A few feet away a leather wallet sat open, but there was no sign of a phone. He pulled his own phone from his pocket as he turned away to drag in a couple of deep breaths of fresh air, and call it in.

  Because Indy had taken the first two autopsies, Jared put his hand up the following day for Fitzgerald’s. He didn’t enjoy them the way a few cops he’d worked with did, but he could understand and appreciate their fascination for the process, the giant jigsaw puzzle of evidence that constituted a homicide victim’s body. He still walked out feeling sick to his stomach.

  ‘How’d you go?’ Indy asked as he arrived back at the station.

  ‘Fitzgerald was struck over the head before being strangled with a copper wire. Traces were found embedded in his skin.’

  ‘The initial blow knocked him out?’

  ‘There’s no evidence of a struggle or defensive wounds so it doesn’t look like he ever knew what hit him. The heels of his shoes were worn in a manner that suggests he was dragged some distance over a gravelled surface.’

  ‘That was risky,’ Indy said. ‘If he caught a cab back to the yacht club, that’s what? Couple of hundred metres to the dumping point?’

  ‘At least. He could have just dragged him to a car.’

  ‘Most likely. Knocked him out, dragged him into his car, drove him round, strangled him in situ. Roberts reported earlier that they’d found what they believe to be the remains of Fitzgerald’s phone washed up under the jetty. It was completely destroyed, which is why we couldn’t get any kind of a signal off it to track it down. I wonder if the copper wire was found at the scene.’

  ‘Not that I know of. I didn’t notice it, either.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Indy chewed on her pen, stared into space.

  ‘Something else is bothering you,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Does this really seem like an amateur burglar turned killer to you?’

  He sighed. ‘I have some issues with it.’

  ‘Our second POI could account for this massive jump in behaviour, but it still reads to me like Sash was murdered just to get him out of the way, and Wilde was the main target. I’ve been looking into her ex.’

  ‘Bryce Cochrane, the full of remorse, money-laundering druggie. And?’

  ‘He’s been in prison almost a decade, due for a parole hearing. That money laundering Mr Wilde mentioned was a business agreement Cochrane had with a local motorcycle club. He was running their drug profits through the casino for them, handing it back over in chips they would then cash in as clean money.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was quite profitable—to the tune of several million. The money was never recovered, apparently all blown on Cochrane’s extravagant gambling habits and failed business ventures.’

  ‘Hence the divorce.’

  ‘No, that came about after Madison found social media pics of him having a little too much fun one night in a brothel he had a stake in. She had him followed by a private investigator and when evidence of criminal behaviour came to light, got the police involved, which brought the rest of it out in the open. Bryce initially swore she set him up, that Madison was angry enough to want him to pay for cheating on her, that she swiped money from the business herself and bounced it through his accounts, before making it vanish.’

  ‘And yet Mr Wilde suggested Cochrane was apologetic.’

  ‘In the last couple of years he sent them both written apologies, blaming his behaviour on a drug habit, debt and simply getting in over his head.’

  ‘A big turnaround. You think it was to look good to the parole board?’

  ‘Maybe. Timing’s about right.’

  ‘What makes you think he had anything to do with her murder?’

  ‘There were some threats early on. They were pretty vicious. Jared, what if we’ve been looking at this the wrong way around? Instead of thinking of our POIs as local thieves who have graduated to rape and murder, what if the hit on Wilde and Sash and the five mill in diamonds was the goal all along, orchestrated by Cochrane? The other minor break-ins could have been designed to throw us off track, give our POIs an idea of police presence, response times, some easy cash while waiting for the main target to arrive?’

  ‘I’d say that pointed to a well-planned, well-executed crime by someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘I’ve organised for Mr Wilde to come back in this afternoon. I want to ask him a few more questions about
his former son-in-law.’

  ‘You think Cochrane’s somehow set this up from prison?’

  ‘Correct. Feel like a trip to Melbourne first thing Monday?’

  ‘To interview Cochrane? I’ll book the flights now.’

  ‘Great. But don’t be late. You and Tess are still doing something tonight, right?’

  He laughed out a sigh, almost told her in the nicest possible way to mind her own business. ‘Yeah. Why?’

  ‘Just playing the nosy sister-in-law. Have fun.’

  CHAPTER

  21

  He got away from work almost on time, only to find a missed call from Tess on his phone and a message. Hi Jared, sorry, I need to rain-check. We’ve got a horse down with colic and Logan’s at a comp. I’m going to need to stay put.

  He was disappointed, but weighed appearing clingy against putting in some effort, then called back. ‘Hey, just got your message.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry again. I can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘That’s okay. Favourite takeaway?’

  There was a pause, then, ‘I could really go a cheeseburger and a seriously big vanilla shake.’

  Though he cringed at her choice, he yielded. ‘Macca’s it is.’

  Forty-five minutes later he drove through Calico Lodge’s impressive main gates and down the long, winding drive past the guesthouse to find Tess standing in a floodlit round yard outside the stable block, patting a small black and white patched pony. He parked nearby then, gathering the takeaway, kicked the door closed with his foot and made his way across the grass.

  ‘Hey,’ he called.

  ‘Hi!’ Tess said, stroking the pony’s face. It was hot and bothered, its ears were pinned back and it was stomping, kicking at its stomach.

  ‘He looks pretty upset at the world.’

  She unclipped the lead and walked across to the gate. ‘He’s impacted, in pain. I’ve stomach tubed him and given him some painkillers. Hopefully they’ll help with that. I’ve just got to keep him moving, or at least on his feet. I don’t want him rolling around.’