Crucifixion Creek

by Barry Maitland

‘Sounds as if you’re having a better day today, Nicole. I’m glad.’

  ‘Oh, Harry, I am feeling better. For the first time I feel as if there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Of course nothing will ever be right again with Greg gone, but I’ve been so worried about the money, and giving the girls a good life. I know how hard you’ve worked to sort things out for us, but now I am feeling optimistic, for the first time in ages.’

  ‘That’s good. Has something happened?’

  ‘Oh…nothing specific, you know.’ She is suddenly cautious, sober. ‘I just feel things will be okay.’

  ‘Good. I think you’re right.’

  ‘And Harry, do talk to Jenny about lunch. We’d love to see you, if you feel up to it.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  He stops at a supermarket on the way home to pick up the groceries on Jenny’s list. Shoppers with glazed, hungover expressions push trolleys through bland music, and Harry has a sudden urge to shout at them. Wake up! Don’t you realise how vulnerable you are, how little there is between you and chaos?

  He wheels his trolley out into the car park. The grey sky is clearing, a wintry sunlight glimmering through. He notices a pristine new Mercedes opposite him in the car park, and as he opens the boot a man gets out and comes towards him. He is wearing the sort of casual clothes you might expect in an expensive country club, out of place among the T-shirts and track pants in this suburb, but it is a moment before Harry recognises him in this unlikely context.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Belltree.’ The man transfers his shopping bag to his left hand as if he might offer his right.

  Harry continues to load his boot. ‘Mr Horn.’

  ‘A strange place for us to meet,’ the lawyer says with a thin smile.

  ‘We all have to eat.’

  ‘True. Actually, I’m glad I’ve seen you. There’s something that I’ve been wanting to tell you, if I may.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Horn comes closer and lowers his voice. ‘In confidence? It concerns three of my clients, but since they’re dead now I feel at liberty to share this with you.

  ‘As a member of the legal profession I was of course very much aware of your father’s remarkable achievements, in fact we sparred several times, when he was at the bar and on the bench. I admired his passion and integrity.’

  As you might admire an exotic plant, Harry thinks, but says nothing.

  ‘The last time we met was outside the courtroom, in his chambers. Not long before he died.’

  He has Harry’s full attention now. ‘Really?’

  ‘It was on a matter that hadn’t been publicly announced but was known to a small circle of people within the profession, myself included. The state government at the time was considering introducing a bill to impose severe—I might even say draconian—restrictions on the rights of members of outlaw motorcycle clubs to assemble and wear identifying clothing. The attorney-general had decided to seek the advice of the profession on the legality of this legislation, and was considering establishing an advisory tribunal chaired by your father.

  ‘My clients, represented by one of the three recently deceased—you may guess the gentleman I mean—were extremely concerned about the proposed new law, and asked me to try to find out where Justice Belltree stood on the matter. Well, I made an appointment to see him, ostensibly on another issue, and went to his chambers. He was very friendly, very open, and our conversation ranged over a number of topics, including the one my clients were concerned with, and it became very clear to me that he was firmly of the view that the proposed legislation was in the public interest. He also believed it could be reconciled with constitutional principles, and in fact he seemed very eager to get the tribunal going—prod the government into action.

  ‘I reported this to my clients, and heard no more on the matter. Two months later your father was dead, and soon afterwards the tribunal and the legislation were quietly abandoned.

  ‘Of course, there may be no connection between these events, but I felt uneasy. To be frank, my client was a violent man with an extensive police record, and it would not have surprised me if he had used lethal force to further the interests of his associates and himself.’

  Horn falls silent. Stands there in his cashmere sweater and Rockports, waiting for Harry’s response. Harry says, ‘Are you planning to make a statement to the police?’

  Horn shakes his head. ‘Not a word. It would be professional suicide. But I wanted you to know. You may say that I am merely trying to ease my conscience, and you could be right. But I think you have a right to know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Horn does his tight-lipped smile again. ‘I’ll get on with my shopping then. Have a nice day, sergeant.’

  Harry watches him walk away, then slams the boot and stands for a moment, thinking. He walks over to the shelter of a stunted gum and phones home, using the rogue mobile. He asks Jenny to find out where Nathaniel Horn lives. It doesn’t take her long.

  ‘The North Shore,’ she says, and gives him the address. It is at least twenty kilometres away. Then he tells her he’s spoken to Nicole, and suggests that they take up her invitation to lunch. Jenny says she’ll ring her.

  As he gets back into the car he’s thinking that it is impossible that Horn met him by accident. But if not, then how did he know where to find him? Are they tracking his car, his phone? The story Horn told is very tempting, but also very convenient. He has no doubt that Bebchuk and his mates killed his father and mother. The problem is why? For whom? Now Horn has provided an answer. They did it for themselves. Case closed.

  When he gets home he sits Jenny down next to the CD player and puts on some music to cover their voices and murmurs his conversation with Horn; also his meetings with Peck and Rizzo. ‘I think Peter is up to something,’ he says. ‘It may just be that he’s setting himself up in Greg’s business and feels awkward about it, but he’s acting shifty. I think it would be good if we could find out more about him.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’

  Once she would have winced, catching herself using the word see. Now it doesn’t seem to bother her.

  ‘Why did you change your mind about going to Nicole’s?’ she asks. He tells her about her sister’s change in mood.

  ‘I don’t think it was the champagne. I think she was celebrating, and I’d like you to find out what’s happened.’

  ‘Harry, you see problems everywhere, even when people are happy.’

  It is the first barbecue at Nicole’s since the day before Greg died, and although Nicole seems oblivious, Harry finds it uncomfortably poignant—the same tortuous route down to the deck, the same brand of beer in his hand, the same smell of burning meat. He calls the girls over so Jenny and Nicole can talk, and they ask him about the bikie killings, about which they seem to have a morbid fascination. ‘Did they really just shoot each other down in the car park? It’s like a western! Anyone could have been killed!’

  It’s late in the afternoon when Harry and Jenny leave. In the car he turns the radio on and asks her what she’s found out.

  ‘It took a lot of probing, but eventually she came out with it. She’s
had a visit from a lawyer representing the estate of Alexander Kristich, who told her that it had never been Kristich’s intention to evict them from the family home. He assured her that that would not happen. She’s over the moon about it.’

  ‘A lawyer?’

  ‘Yes. She showed me his card. Nathaniel Horn. He made her promise to tell no one about his visit. Said it might prejudice the arrangements he was making for her.’

  That’s it then, Harry thinks. Horn is cleaning up the mess. So they are tracking him, whoever they are.

  He uses his unmarked phone to try Kelly’s numbers again. No answer.

  There is a text message on his phone from headquarters. He is instructed to attend a health and safety workshop first thing tomorrow, no ifs, no buts.

  36

  Kelly blinks awake, feeling cold, thinking there’s a frog in her throat. She tries to cough it up and chokes. She is lying on her front on something…a mattress. It stinks, she is suddenly aware, of urine. She tries to roll over but her arms are pinned down. And her legs too. She is spreadeagled on the mattress. The frog croaks and she hears a shuffle behind her.

  ‘Ah, Kelly, you are awake at last.’

  She blinks up but can’t see him, though she knows the voice, that South African accent. Potgeiter.

  ‘Water?’

  He grips a handful of her hair and pulls her head roughly back, holding a cup of water to her mouth. She gulps, chokes. Much of it spills, running cold over her skin.

  ‘It’s so nice to meet you again, Kelly,’ he purrs, his mouth close to her ear. ‘The last time you and your sweet little friend had the advantage of me. You had fun with me, didn’t you?’ His grip tightens on her hair and she cries out with pain. ‘And now I have the advantage of you, and I will have much more fun with you.’

  ‘Please…’ She barely manages to croak out the word.

  ‘Oh, you will please me, Kelly. Without a doubt.’

  ‘Why?’ she gasps.

  ‘Why? Well, my friends are very keen to learn where you got those photographs of Jakarta and Vanuatu, and who gave you all those interesting titbits of information, and what else you know. Would you like to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  He laughs. ‘I thought not. I told them, “This will take time.” They are impatient, but I have plenty of time. I’m only sorry that your sweet little friend isn’t here too.’

  He releases her hair and her head flops back down onto the mattress. She feels his hot hand on her shoulder, then sliding down the skin of her back, and she realises that she has no clothes on. She winces as his hand reaches her buttocks, and she cries out, ‘Don’t touch me you disgusting little toad.’

  He removes his hand, saying nothing, and she feels a moment of hope. Then she hears a thump, and another—two boots hitting the floor—and the snuffling sound of fabric dropping on the floorboards and she thinks NO. There is a sharp crack and a searing pain rips the flesh across her back. It takes her breath away. She sucks air into her lungs in panic and there is another crack, another shocking flash of pain, and she begins to scream.

  He tires after perhaps an hour, and tells her that he is taking a break for lunch. She lies trembling on the mattress, covered in blood and semen, the stink of it foul with the urine. Alternately sweating and shaking with cold and pain and shock, she gradually subsides into a catatonic stupor. From time to time she is aware of background sounds—a telephone ringing, the pop of a champagne cork, the rattle of cutlery.

  In the afternoon he comes for her again, brutalising her in long waves of pain interspersed by sudden shocks of agony.

  He leaves her when darkness comes. She hears a shower running, the sound of his voice singing off-key. When he returns she smells aftershave. He tells her that he has an appointment and is going to put her away for the night. He releases her hands and feet and trusses her limp body into—what?—a straitjacket, it seems. Muttering to her words she barely understands. ‘…Safe…sink hole…deep, deep…mustn’t struggle or cry or you will fall…never found…tomorrow more, much more…’

  As he heaves her over his shoulder she sobs helplessly. He lugs her out of the building into the dark. She smells fresh air, tinged with smoke. The night sky overhead is bright with stars. He drops her, her bruised flesh striking the hard ground, and she sees the outline of a gantry against the sky. There is the roar of a motor kicked into life and he fits a harness around her and she is hauled upright and swung beneath the gantry, swaying, turning.

  Then she is dropping slowly into a dark tube. Sounds become muffled, the darkness is absolute. Her descent abruptly stops and she hears a clang from far above which echoes all around her, then fades into total silence. She spins slowly in the chill black, and a dreadful smell rises from the void beneath her feet.

  37

  There are four of them sitting in a circle around the psychologist, Harry and three highway patrol officers, ‘cockroaches’ as the others call them, because they come out at night. They look much as Harry feels. Long-suffering, wishing they were somewhere else.

  The psychologist explains that the subject of the workshop is RESILIENCE—she writes it in large letters on the whiteboard. She gets them to discuss the things that can affect their resilience—appropriate training, health and fitness, nutrition and exercise, feelings of job satisfaction, stress management strategies (other than alcohol).

  Harry hardly hears her. He is preoccupied with the progress of the homicide investigations that are swirling around him without his involvement or knowledge. And Kelly Pool—what the hell has happened to her? Last night he phoned the Times and spoke to Catherine Meiklejohn again, and she still had no idea where Kelly was. She sounded worried. ‘It’s just possible that she’s gone to Indonesia without telling us,’ she said. ‘Apparently she discussed it with her colleague.’

  ‘Are you with us, Harry?’ the psychologist says.

  ‘Sorry, yes, of course.’

  ‘Now here’s the thing,’ she goes on, holding up a blank sheet of A4. ‘In an ideal situation, this is our police officer coming to work, starting a new shift fully rested and resilient. But this is not an ideal situation. He has been unable to sleep properly for the past month after attending a particularly nasty crime scene involving the death of a child.’

  She has their attention, and they watch as she tears a strip off the side of the paper.

  ‘So his resilience is reduced. Also, his relationship with his wife is not good at the moment. It’s been going steadily downhill for a while, she’s angry because his work schedule prevented them going to an important family event, and he’s worried that this may be the last straw. So he feels he has no emotional support at home.’ She tears another strip.

  ‘Because of these concerns he has been drinking more than usual lately, and he is suffering now from a pretty bad hangover.’ Off comes another strip.

  ‘And on top of all this, he has fallen out with two of his workmates, who are giving him a hard time.’

  She tears off another strip and holds up what remains. ‘So this is our officer, at the start of another day in the firing line.’

  They all stare in silence at the diminished piece of paper.

  �
�Jesus,’ says one of the cockroaches. ‘He’s white as a sheet.’

  The psychologist looks at him, her mouth quivering, then she starts to giggle. Now they all crack up, roaring with laughter, and the cockroach takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his eyes.

  As soon as he can get away, Harry gets a vehicle from the car pool and drives out to the Creek. He parks in Mortimer Street and goes over to the spot where he last saw Kelly, in front of the cactus garden, staring up at the bedroom windows. What made her come here? What did she see? Like her, he notices the same blinds, all closed, in all of the upper windows of the houses on this side of the street, running down to the Crows’ compound at the end.

  He goes up to the front door and rings the bell. There is no reply. The whole street seems unnaturally silent. After a minute he makes his way down the narrow covered passage between the house and its neighbour and comes into a rear yard, bare of plants except for a neglected lawn. He knocks on the back door, then breaks the pane of one of its small windows and reaches inside to release the lock. He goes inside, calling out, ‘Hello? Police. Anyone home?’ Silence.

  Two cups and saucers stand on the draining board, quite dry. He searches the downstairs rooms and continues upstairs, where he checks the main bedroom—feminine bits and pieces—then the small bedrooms at the front, dimly lit through the closed venetians. He is on the point of turning back when something about the blinds catches his eye—there are no cords to raise or open the blades. He takes a closer look. The bottom strips are screwed to the windowsills.

  On the landing he notices something else not quite right. There’s a door in the party wall between this house and the next. There is a key in the lock, and he turns it and steps through. This house seems identical to the last, except that there is no comfortably furnished bedroom—all the upper rooms are filled with steel-framed single beds, like dormitories. Beyond them there is another door in the next party wall, locked this time from the other side.