Ruby’s dad frowned. Ruby could see his brain ticking over as if he’d just been handed an interesting case. From behind the screens of the next-door bed she heard a noise like a bicycle pump, the trickle of water again and the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum.
At last her dad clicked his fingers. ‘You did work experience with the local vet.’
The doctor jumped in before Ruby had the chance to reply. ‘How long ago was that?’
Ruby gazed at the ceiling for a moment. ‘I finished just over two weeks ago, after working with him for a week.’
‘That just about covers the incubation time. This has to be more than a coincidence. The vet will have to be notified and the infected animals traced,’ the doctor said. ‘As you may know, Sergeant Fraser, Q fever is a notifiable disease. There’s even been talk that it could be used as a weapon of biological terrorism. While not as lethal as anthrax, it’s just as infectious.’
‘What’s the name of the vet, Ruby?’ her dad asked. ‘I’d better go visit him.’
‘Julian High-Koenig, “HK” for short.’
The lines on his forehead deepened. He reached into his pocket for his notebook and flicked back a few pages. Rubbing his chin, he didn’t write anything down, just stared at the notebook, oblivious, it seemed, to the terrible smell creeping about the room.
‘Umm, Dad . . .’ Ruby had pulled the sheet up over her nose and mouth.
He looked up. ‘Mmm?’ Looked down at his notebook again.
‘He’s kinda weird.’
‘Who is?’
‘The vet.’
‘But he’s a very good vet,’ Jo hastily added.
Cam gave Jo a strange look before turning back to Ruby. ‘So what’s that got to do with the price of eggs? You think I haven’t seen weird?’
Ruby said, ‘I just don’t want you to be against him before you even know him, I mean, you can be such a dag. And don’t be mean to him either, he’s a very nice, caring man and brilliant with animals.’
‘I needed to see him about the murder case, anyway. This’ll kill two birds with one stone. I’ll wear my kid gloves, I promise.’
Jo met Ruby’s eye and winked. Ruby refused to acknowledge the attempted make-up and gave her a blank stare back.
But when an aerosol spray sounded from next door, filling the air with an overbearing pine scent, she pressed the sheet to her face, unable to hold back her giggle.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Later that afternoon Cam called in at the station before heading off to interview the vet. Pushing his way through the heavy front door, he was surprised at how quiet the station was. With two murder investigations running, the place should have been a hotbed of activity.
Leanne was sitting on the edge of a desk at the far end of the front office, unaware, it seemed, of his entrance. She was nibbling at her thumbnail and talking in an agitated manner to Pete as he flicked through the pages of a magazine. ‘Why didn’t you put a tail on it?’ he asked with a smirk. A joke? Cam wondered.
Leanne looked as if she was about to thump him, but sprang up from the desk when she saw Cam, her raised fist dropping to her side.
‘Where is everyone?’ Cam asked.
‘Derek’s on traffic, the seconded guys are at a team meeting in Toorrup. Apparently we’re too unimportant to be invited.’ Pete shrugged. ‘Besides, Pauline Copley will be here soon to look over Ivanovich’s stuff.’
Cam turned to Leanne. ‘You got the dog?’
‘How’s Ruby, Sarge?’ Pete cut in before she could reply.
‘She’s going to be okay. She’s been discharged from hospital and gone home with Jo.’
The constables smiled back, sharing his relief.
The station door swung open to admit Pauline Copley. She wore tight jeans and a red top. The baby in her arms twisted one of the top’s straps in his pudgy fingers, exposing the edge of her black nursing bra. Cam showed her through to the incident room, relieved to see that one of the constables, probably Leanne, had had the foresight to remove the more grisly pictures from the walls. But he saw Pauline glance at Ivanovich’s mug shot and shiver.
Leanne and Pete followed them through.
‘All your boarders fed and watered?’ Cam asked as he closed the door behind them. ‘Hope no one threw any plates today.’
‘Funny, they’ve all been as good as gold since Jack left.’ Pauline flicked her hand at the table. ‘This his stuff, yeah?’
‘Yes, we want you to have a look at it, compare it with what you packed up the other day, see if anything’s missing.’
The baby wriggled on his mother’s hip then lunged at a set of keys on the table, contorting his face when she wouldn’t let him have them. Leanne took him from his mother’s arms and gave him her own set of keys to play with, leaving Pauline free to scan the table’s contents.
The room was silent except for the jangling of keys and the occasional burble from the baby. Cam had only scanned Pete’s inventory and it was interesting now to see the catalogued objects before him. His eyes roamed over neat piles of clean underwear and work clothes, boots, trainers, toiletries, and a pair of reading glasses.
Pauline echoed his own suspicions. ‘You’d think he’d have taken some of this stuff with him, wouldn’t you? There was fifty dollars too, but I put it in the safe for the landlord.’
Pete laughed. ‘You should’ve been a cop.’
‘So what’s it all mean, then? He left in a hurry or what?’ Pauline asked.
‘That’s a possibility,’ Cam said. He pointed out the two Ventolin inhalers to Pauline. ‘Did you know he was asthmatic?’
‘I didn’t know for sure, but he was always wheezing and carrying on.’
Her eyes continued to roam the table. After about a minute she said, ‘His branding iron, it’s gone.’
The officers in the room looked at one another. ‘You mean a paint branding iron?’ Cam asked.
Pauline nodded.
‘What’s that?’
Pete wasn’t originally from the country; it was no fault of his that he didn’t know.
‘A paint branding iron is a long metal stick with a flattened branding mark at the end of it,’ Cam told him. ‘The end is dipped in paint and stamped on the backs of the animals before they’re sent to the saleyard. All stock owners have to register their own brand with the Department of Agriculture so all the brands are on record. It’s one of several marks used to identify stock and hopefully prevent theft.’
Leanne said, ‘I can’t see why Ivanovich would have one, he wasn’t a land or a stock owner. And even if he did have one, he wouldn’t keep it with his personal possessions, it would be in a shed or a truck.’
‘But he didn’t have a vehicle, remember?’ Pete pointed out.
‘Well, the branding iron was there when I packed his boxes. I thought it was odd myself,’ Pauline said, her tone even and conversational, Cam was pleased to note. Pauline was proving herself to be an ideal witness: keen to help, but not over-keen. Over-eager witnesses were often less help than reluctant ones. They tended to jump to conclusions in their enthusiasm, or exaggerate their involvement because of a need to impress, sending the police in all sorts of wrong directions.
‘Did you notice the brand?’ Cam asked.
‘Nah, sorry.’
Cam looked at Pete and shrugged. ‘There’s one more thing, Pauline,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’
Followed by Pete and Leanne, he led Pauline through the front office and into the back room where they kept the firearms safe. He held out the bagged knife they’d found in the dam.
‘Do you recognise this?’ he asked.
Pauline bit her bottom lip, nodded and stretched her arms out for her child. When Leanne handed him over, she clutched him to her chest. ‘It’s Jack’s knife,’ she said. ‘The one he threatened Robbie with.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
During Cam’s absence on Wednesday, Rod had been running the murder investigation from Toorrup. He’d run a background check on
the body in the pit, discovering that Shane Block had spent several years in jail for assault causing bodily harm. He’d also notified Shane Block’s next of kin about his death and organised the collection of Rita Pilkington’s dog by Leanne. The whereabouts of Jack Ivanovich were still unknown and the manhunt for the suspected murderer had been expanded to a nationwide search.
What else had been going on Cam wasn’t sure; Rod had been trying not to bother him with too many phone calls, leaving him to temporarily brush aside the murders and focus on the more personal urgency of his daughter’s health. But as had happened in the past, it seemed to Cam that his personal life was again intersecting with his professional life. As well as being one of the last people to see Pizzle alive, the vet might unwittingly have exposed Ruby to Q fever.
A teasing afternoon shower had left the ground steaming and the air filled with spiralling cones of flying ants. Cam drove down the vet’s bitumen driveway and through a sheep-nibbled paddock, passing a large shed and some well-maintained animal yards. A horse with a bandaged leg nickered as he climbed from the ute and dogs barked from a concreted yard under the shade of a spreading bottlebrush.
He’d been told the transportable house ahead doubled as the vet’s home and surgery. Cam mounted the wooden steps leading to the screened front porch cum waiting room.
Cam had had to deal with all types in his long and varied career, and never had any problems slipping off preconceived opinions and personal prejudices when interviewing a witness. But as the door opened, he knew he would need a metaphorical crow bar to prise away his assumptions about what a country vet should be and approach this man with an open mind. He’d expected tweed jackets, overalls and wellies, a few eccentricities perhaps — but not this.
He glimpsed a water balloon of a stomach hanging above an orange lap-lap and a bearded face upon which stood a frozen expression of horror. The half-naked man quickly turned back into the house, leaving a vapour trail of incense and the echoing flap of bare feet on linoleum.
Cam remained on the doorstep, his mouth hanging open.
Julian High-Koenig reappeared a few minutes later, doing up the press studs on a blue boiler suit. Despite this more conventional veterinary attire, his long black curls and beard gave Cam the impression that he might have been more at home bathing in the Ganges than standing in the doorway of a rural veterinary surgery. His high cheekbones stood out like ripe apricots, his dark eyes like bright currants, but there was no evidence now of the warm joviality such features could be expected to convey.
‘What do you want? I’ve already told the police all I know about Darren Pilkington.’ Suspicion sharpened the edge of the deep, cultivated voice.
The tone of voice surprised Cam. Pete Dowel had interviewed the vet not long after the discovery of the body in the wool bale. Apparently High-Koenig had backed up what Rita had said about seeing Darren on the evening of his disappearance, adding that at one stage he’d sat upon an upturned bucket, which explained the presence of his fingerprints on it.
Pete had said nothing about the vet’s being hostile to his questions, and HK had been eliminated from their enquiries, so why the hostility now, Cam wondered? Was it because he thought he’d got away with it before and a second visit from the police meant things were no longer going his way? But why would the vet want to kill Darren Pilkington, or anyone else for that matter? Cam attempted to wipe his earlier absurd notion about the crazed animal liberationists from his mind.
He introduced himself and explained to the vet that although he still had some questions to ask about the Pilkington case, the main reason for his visit was a semi-personal one. When he asked if he could come in, the vet gave a reluctant shrug and walked him through the waiting room, with its tapeworm history charts, shelves of flea-control products and obligatory corkboard of children’s animal art.
Leaving behind the harsh smells of antiseptic and flea powder, Cam found himself in a comfortable private sitting room, breathing in the soothing scents of sandalwood and candle wax.
A soft modular couch curved around two sides of a Persian carpet, and pictures of India adorned the walls along with a portrait of a bearded guru, a larger version of the small picture HK wore on a short chain at his throat. He pointed Cam to one end of the long couch and settled himself as far away as he could at the other, next to a tightly curled Siamese cat.
HK reached for the cat and stroked its head. Its tractor-like purrs filled the silence between the two men as they took a moment to size each other up. Finally HK said, ‘If you’re here on a personal matter, I can only guess that it’s about Jo. As I told your constable, after I went to see Darren, I saw Jo, albeit briefly.’
Cam thought he detected the spark of a challenge in the man’s dark eye. ‘What’s Jo got to do with all this?’ he snapped. The fact that Jo had still not told him outright about the seriousness of her prior relationship with the vet had niggled for a while, but he thought he had finally managed to bury it at the back of his mind. Now, with the unpleasant thought exhumed, Cam found himself responding to the vet’s challenge in kind.
‘Because it might have complicated things,’ the vet said with equal hostility.
‘And why should that be?’
‘Because she’s now seeing you.’
Cam saw a look of loathing at the bottom of the deep brown eyes. He returned the stare without emotion.
A fly started up an irritating buzz. The cat opened its eyes and followed the insect’s movement around the room, the tip of its tail twitching. The fly settled on Cam’s knee. HK flinched at the sound of Cam’s sharp slap, and again when he flicked the tiny corpse to the carpet. The vet moved his chubby fingers to the picture at his throat.
‘I’m not here to accuse you of murder, or even ask why you saw Jo that night,’ Cam said, ashamed of his fleeting feeling of satisfaction at the vet’s discomfort. This interview seemed to be turning into a seesaw of one-upmanship and sexual rivalry, sullying the reason for his visit.
‘I’m here on behalf of my daughter, Ruby. She’s come down with a bout of Q fever. The doctor thinks she might have picked it up when she was working with you.’
HK’s eyes fell to Cam’s name badge. The tip of his small pink tongue as it touched his lips was a startling contrast to the bushy black beard. ‘I didn’t realise Ruby’s father was a policeman. She never said.’
‘And would it have made a difference if she had?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course not.’ HK took a moment to stare back at Cam, then blew out a breath and spread his hands in what appeared to be a sign of truce. He said, ‘She’s a lovely girl — bright, intelligent, would make a very good vet. Is she all right now?’
The cat uncurled itself and yawned, stretching its legs and fanning its toes. Cam managed to excavate a brief smile. ‘Yes, thank you. She’s well on the way to recovery. But now we have to trace the source of the disease and prevent further outbreaks.’
‘I suppose it’s only logical that she picked it up when she was with me. I’ve had the vaccination, of course, but I never thought to enquire whether she had.’ His remorse at least sounded genuine.
‘It’s something that obviously has not been considered in the past, though I think you’ll find that the school will insist upon it for future work-experience students.’
‘Yes, and so will I.’
After a moment’s silence, Cam said, ‘I’d like you to put a list together of the names and addresses of every client you had contact with over the duration of Ruby’s work experience. You can fax or email the information to me at the station.’ Cam pulled his business card from his pocket and handed it to HK.
The vet took it, nodding towards a desk in the corner of the room that looked like a recycling depot, piled with an untidy mountain of books and papers. ‘It shouldn’t take long, most of the details are recorded in my diary.’ Surely he was being optimistic.
Then he cleared his throat. ‘And just for the record, I was meditating when you called.
I hope you appreciate that I would never have dressed like that in front of Ruby.’
Cam couldn’t resist feigning a look of puzzlement. ‘The thought hadn’t occurred to me.’
HK twisted on the couch.
Cam reached into his top pocket for the tooth, deciding to approach the next issue while he still had the upper hand. Leaning across the vast space between them, he held out the jar for the vet to see.
‘Back to the Pilkington case. This was found in one of the victim’s wounds. We think it belongs to the Pilkingtons’ dog; one of her canines is missing. Please have a look at it.’
HK took the jar, turning it in his blunt fingers and looking at it closely.
‘To me it’s an obvious match, but I’ll need your verification for legal reasons,’ Cam added.
HK handed the jar back, sighed, closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the couch. ‘Yes, I’m sure it is, but I’ll check nevertheless. What a terrible shame.’
‘And then once all the paperwork is complete, legal matters sorted, I’m afraid you’ll probably have to destroy the dog.’
The man slumped further into the couch, unmoving, his black eyes open again and fixed on Cam. Finally he shook his shaggy head, making the ringlets jiggle like black lamb’s tails. ‘No, I’m afraid I won’t.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s an unpleasant business for all concerned, but . . .’
‘No “but”s, Sergeant, I won’t do it. You’ll have to take your little court order somewhere else, I’m afraid.’
‘May I ask why, sir? Is it because you don’t believe the dog capable of a savage attack?’
‘All dogs are capable when pushed.’ He stared at Cam, put two fingers to his chin and began to tap thoughtfully. ‘But of course, you’re new to the district, aren’t you?’
‘No, not exactly, but I’ve been away a long time.’
‘Then you aren’t to know. I don’t perform euthanasia of any kind on anything; it’s against my religious beliefs. But I can give you the names of other vets who do.’
Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Page 13