Charlotte Pass

by Lee Christine

  ‘Well, hi there, everyone,’ he said, waving to the crowd before turning to look back down the slope that stretched all the way to the bridge over Spencers Creek. ‘What a beautiful day we have to christen this fabulous new ride. I know it’s going to be so much fun for you parents—I mean children.’

  Everyone laughed, and Vanessa grinned at Libby. ‘He really is a showman, isn’t he?’

  Libby nodded. ‘It’s like Santa’s arrived. I love his blingy gold suit.’

  ‘Me too. You can pick him out from anywhere on the mountain, which is the idea, isn’t it? He is the guest of honour.’

  ‘Yes, it’s like the Queen always dressing in brightly coloured suits and hats—no one in the crowd can miss her.’

  Before Vanessa could reply, she noticed Aidan Smythe trying to catch her eye as he walked over to join them. ‘Well, hello again. I was wondering if either of you ladies had—’

  Vanessa pulled scissors from her pocket like a magician. As she held them up he laughed, showing a perfect set of orthodontically straightened teeth. He leaned in towards Libby and said conspiratorially, ‘Just as well someone’s organised.’

  Vanessa laid the scissors in his hand. Earlier, she’d strung a blood-red ribbon across the top of the slope ready for him to do the honours. ‘This is my friend, Libby. Libby, our Winterfest guest of honour, Aidan Smythe.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He said graciously and then shifted his attention back to Vanessa. ‘And you are? I remember us speaking at the top of the chairlift, but I don’t believe I know your name.’

  ‘Vanessa Bell.’

  ‘Well, Vanessa Bell, let’s not keep this crowd waiting any longer.’

  Aidan kept his speech short and friendly, expressing gratitude for his good health that had enabled him to return to Charlotte Pass and take part in the celebrations held in his honour. He thanked the Winterfest organising committee for their sustained work, and finally the crowd who had come along today—most of whom he noted were too young to know who he was.

  Laughter rippled through the crowd and then, without further ado, Aidan cut the ribbon and declared the tube run open.

  Vanessa gathered up the pieces then waved to Sam, who was waiting for her signal at the bottom of the slope. He switched on the engine and the rope tow started with a jerk. Libby and the kids lined up, inflatable tubes clutched to their sides.

  Vanessa held a tube steady for a boy who looked about eight. ‘You’re first down the hill. In you go, mate.’

  He settled himself inside, grinning at his friends over his shoulder.

  ‘All set?’

  When he gave her the thumbs up, Vanessa put her hands on the tyre and pushed. ‘Bombs away!’ she shouted as a cheer went up from the crowd.

  The next half-hour was spent loading and unloading kids into tubes and sending them on their way downhill. Smaller children were accompanied by their parents, but when a parent wasn’t available, it was up to Vanessa and Libby to take the littlest ones down.

  Aidan mingled with the crowd, chatting to the parents and every now and then coming over to give Vanessa and Libby a hand.

  ‘Do you have children?’ Vanessa asked, catching her breath. For once, all the riders, including Libby, seemed to be at the bottom of the hill.

  ‘A boy and a girl. They’re grown up now, both married.’

  ‘Do they live in Canada as well?’

  ‘Yes. They live quite close to us.’

  ‘I guess Canada’s more home to you now than here?’

  He grimaced. ‘In some respects. I don’t think you ever lose that Aussieness, for want of a better word. Here feels like home, too. Maybe because some of the old crowd are still around, which is incredible.’

  ‘People like the Gordons?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve had the lease on this place forever.’

  Many thought they should have gone long ago, but Vanessa wasn’t about to say that.

  ‘The band, too,’ Aidan exclaimed. ‘I knew all those guys back in the day. I told them they’d improved since the last time I’d heard them.’

  Vanessa laughed. ‘There are a few other lifers.’ She brought to mind the list of names she’d given to Detective Flowers. ‘Burt Crofts, our lift mechanic, is one. I think he’s on leave at the moment, so fingers crossed we don’t have any major problems. And then there’s our groomer, Bruno, he’s been here forever as well.’

  Aidan frowned and shook his head. ‘Those names don’t ring a bell.’ He turned to look at the line of trees that shielded the gravesite from view. ‘I do remember that poor girl, though, the one whose body they found recently. I met her a number of times with Nigel, her husband.’

  ‘Yes, it’s very sad.’ Vanessa moved closer to the rope tow, ready to help the child who had almost reached the top. She grabbed hold of the tyre and pulled it clear of the unloading area. The last thing they needed was a pile-up. ‘I hope it hasn’t put a dampener on your visit.’

  ‘Well, the Gordons are a bit on edge, having detectives on the premises. But the police seem to be keeping a low profile, which is good. And the place is booked out. I doubt they’ll lose guests because of a few policemen lurking around.’

  Vanessa couldn’t imagine Detective Ryder ‘lurking’ anywhere. Whether he was sporting a business suit or mountain gear, the man had presence. And he was one hundred percent focused on his job. ‘It’s important they find out what happened to her, for her family’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course it is. Don’t get me wrong. I hope they do.’

  ‘Hey, Vee! Can you help us out?’

  Vanessa swung around. Libby’s tyre was approaching the unloading area. She was hanging onto the rope tow handle, and had a little boy sitting in her lap.

  ‘I’ll let you get on with it, Vanessa.’ Aidan gave her a friendly salute. ‘Thanks for being so organised.’

  ‘Just doing my job. See you out on the slopes.’

  She leaned over, hands resting on her knees, watching as Libby came closer. When she let go of the handle, Vanessa pulled the tube clear of the unloading area. ‘G’day. Was that fun?’

  ‘It’s was heaps fun,’ said the little boy in a bright blue puffer jacket.

  ‘Do you want another go?’ Libby asked.

  The little boy shook his head. ‘Mum and Dad are over there.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Libby said, struggling to her feet. ‘Off you go then.’

  They watched until the child had met up with his parents, then Libby gave a groan and stretched out her back. ‘Thank God. I don’t think my spine could take another jolting ride down that mountain.’

  ‘You were ages. What were you doing?’

  ‘That kid needed to go to the toilet. Do you know how long it takes getting all the layers undone? Then you have to sit them on the toilet, and they take forever. Half the time they don’t go. Then you do all the layers up again and make sure they’ve washed their hands. Finally, you end up half-carrying them to the bottom of the rope tow because their little legs are just about to give out. It’s bloody exhausting.’

  ‘That’s why I’m a patroller and not an instructor.’

  ‘Smart arse. I wish I could ski like you. Hey, I saw your crush waiting for the oversnow transport. He said to tell you he’s off to Sydney.’

  Disappointment settled like a stone in the pit of Vanessa’s stomach. ‘Did he say when he’d be back?’

  ‘Probably in the morning. He’d arranged for Detective Flowers to give you a message, but then he ran into me.’

  ‘Oh, that was thoughtful of him.’

  ‘I thought so, too. And me, being equally thoughtful, went and told Detective Flowers that I had run into Detective Ryder, and I’d be happy to deliver the message to you.’

  Vanessa’s mouth fell open. ‘Libby. You just wanted to see Flowers.’

  ‘Yep.’ Libby laughed, her eyes sparkling with humour. ‘Hey, you can’t talk. You’re the one who asked out his boss. I just delivered a message.’

  Seventeen

/>   At 11 am, Ryder stood on the edge of Sydney Harbour, his umbrella doing little to protect him from the lashing rain. Commuter ferries moved like ghost ships on the water, their lights a dull glow through the thick fog. High above him, a train rumbled across the Harbour Bridge.

  Ryder headed towards the enormous laughing clown face that marked the entrance to Luna Park. A woman in a raincoat was outside a popular eatery, fiddling with a plastic blind that was flapping in the wind. Further on, a lone swimmer crawled through the water, doing laps in North Sydney Olympic Pool.

  At eight this morning, the same chopper pilot had set him down in Queanbeyan, where Ryder had picked up an unmarked car. Three hours later he was walking through the clown’s grinning mouth and casting his eyes around the deserted park. On his left was the function centre, on his right the Big Top concert venue. Coney Island, towards the rear of the property, looked much the same as it had during the few times Ryder had visited as a child.

  ‘Where are you, Crofts?’ he murmured, lifting his umbrella so he could get a better view. The Hair Raiser ride loomed in front of him, as tall as a mobile-phone tower. According to the park’s supervisor, the lift mechanic had been working on the ride during an enforced shutdown.

  ‘Burt Crofts is one of the best lift mechanics in the country,’ the man had said. ‘All the engineers want him to do their work.’

  ‘Send the Sydney boys around,’ Flowers had suggested early that morning as he’d watched Ryder getting ready to leave. ‘Save yourself the time and travel.’

  But Ryder wanted to talk to Crofts alone.

  He walked towards the Hair Raiser, his trouser bottoms growing wet around his ankles. Clown faces were a recurring theme. The eyes in the smiling caricatures painted above the ticket office followed his every move, as did the horses on the silent carousel. But the gruesome sideshow clowns were the worst. With their elongated bald heads and high pencilled eyebrows, they were the stuff of children’s nightmares. They stared at him, some through monocles, their blood-red mouths gaping.

  Moving through the crowd-control rails, Ryder listened for the sounds of work being done, but only the occasional blast of a foghorn on the harbour cut through the torrent of relentless rain.

  Leaving the Hair Raiser behind him, he headed towards Coney Island, dodging puddles as he searched for any sign of life.

  ‘Come on, Crofts. Where the hell are you?’ he muttered as he stopped to look at a list of safety instructions for a nearby ride.

  ‘Ya right there, mate?’

  Ryder swung around at the friendly voice. A bear of a man around Lewicki’s age stood there. Bald, and naked to the waist, the man wore budgie smugglers and a pair of blue thongs. A sodden beach towel hung from his neck, partly obscuring curly grey chest hair. The man was the lone swimmer from next door.

  ‘I’m looking for Burt Crofts,’ said Ryder, closing the umbrella.

  ‘Looks like you’ve found him,’ the man said with a smile, stepping towards Ryder ready to shake his hand.

  Ryder opened his suit coat and flashed his ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder, Sydney Homicide Squad.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Crofts retracted his hand, then cocked his head in the direction of the ticket office. ‘You’d better come this way, seeing as you’re the law.’

  At the ticket office, Crofts opened the door. ‘We don’t lock it through the day; nothing worth taking.’

  Ryder looked around the space. There was a kitchenette at the rear of the room, a door with a plastic sign on it saying ‘Toilet’, and a round, wooden table with four matching chairs.

  ‘Bit cold for a swim,’ said Ryder, shrugging out of his suit coat and draping it over the back of a chair.

  ‘I figure I may as well—couldn’t get any wetter.’ Crofts dropped the sodden towel into a corner and, without bothering to dry himself off, pulled a faded Bathurst 1000 T-shirt over his head. ‘This is balmy compared to where I come from.’

  ‘Let’s talk about that,’ said Ryder.

  ‘I have a feeling I know where this is going.’

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Celia Delaney in 1964.’

  Crofts expression remained the same as though he’d anticipated what was coming. ‘I knew Celia.’

  ‘How well?’

  ‘Pretty well, back in the day. They were regulars, her and Nige.’

  ‘Have you seen the news?’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad you found her body. I thought she was a real nice girl.’

  It was an interesting change. Most of the others hadn’t had a good word to say about her. ‘You’re aware we are now conducting a murder investigation?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Have you spoken to anyone from Charlotte Pass since you left?’

  Crofts gave a definite shake of his head. ‘No, no need to, it’s all in the paper.’ Crofts shook open a newspaper that was lying on the table, licked his thumb and turned over the pages. He pointed to a headline and read, ‘Police re-open missing person case at Charlotte Pass.’

  Ryder pulled the paper towards him and skimmed through the article. It recounted the facts from the original case and the Coroner’s findings. The only new information was what Flowers had released to the press.

  Ryder closed the paper and stilled. There on the front page was the facial sketch of Gavin Hutton that Inspector Gray had told him about. He quickly folded the paper and pushed it aside. He had to let Hutton go for now.

  Pulling out the portable recording device, he gave Crofts a similar spiel as he’d given the others. ‘All right, I’d like to go back to that weekend. Someone wanted Celia Delaney dead. You were there then. What do you remember about those few days?’

  Crofts settled himself in the chair opposite Ryder. ‘It was a long time ago, but I remember it. You don’t forget the tragedies, right?’

  The man locked eyes with Ryder, and Ryder’s stomach clenched. It was the way Crofts said it—‘You don’t forget the tragedies’—that made him wonder if he knew about Scarlett’s death. People in Newcastle remembered but, since moving to Sydney, Ryder had kept to himself. Only Lewicki had managed to break through the veneer. Still, it was all there in the old news reports if someone decided to look. They wouldn’t find anything about him on social media, that’s for sure.

  ‘Did Celia Delaney have any enemies?’

  ‘Not that I knew of.’

  ‘Describe that weekend to me.’

  Croft leaned his lumberjack-sized forearms on the table. ‘It was like going fifteen rounds with mother nature. We’d land a punch, she’d give us an uppercut. Time and again we picked ourselves up off the canvas but, in the end, she delivered a knockout blow.’

  ‘What were you doing the morning after the storm?’

  Crofts’ story was familiar. He’d helped carve out steps so people could enter and exit the buildings. Then he’d started digging out the buried snowploughs. ‘More and more people came to help, so I left to try to find the buried electricity cable.’

  ‘When did you hear that Celia wasn’t among the head count?’

  ‘Sometime during the day. Word was she’d had a blue with her husband and had walked into Perisher. As soon as we got the ploughs going, we cleared the road and sent out a search party.’

  Frustration boiled up inside Ryder. He was hearing the same story over and over. ‘See, that’s what I’m having trouble understanding. Everyone assumed she’d headed for Perisher. Why was that, when other skiers had taken the chairlift out to Thredbo?’

  Crofts rubbed a massive hand across the lower half of his face. He was silent for a while, as though thinking back.

  ‘Where was Nigel?’ Ryder prompted, deciding to come at it from another angle.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘Mr Crofts, you and Bruno Lombardi have worked together for a long time. How close are you?’

  ‘Not that close. We work well together. He’s a private bloke.’

  ‘Has he always been like that?’ Crofts was less cagey t
han the others they’d interviewed, friendlier, his memory sharper.

  ‘Actually, he was pretty funny when he was young. He changed after that weekend.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He got really quiet. His dad had died a few years before, and he was the only breadwinner. We were all single, but he had his mum and sister to provide for.’

  ‘I’d imagine it’d take more than a storm to change your personality to that extent, though.’

  Crofts held his gaze, then eventually shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you what I saw.’

  ‘Di Gordon had reason to dislike Celia. How do you find the Gordons?’

  Crofts rolled his eyes. ‘This won’t get back to them, will it? They’ve employed me for a long time and I’m on the verge of retirement.’

  ‘It won’t get back to them.’

  Crofts hesitated for a few seconds. ‘How can I say this? While I don’t think the Gordons would physically harm anyone, I don’t like them. They’re mean, jealous people.’

  It hardly surprised Ryder.

  ‘It’s the way they operate. I feel bad saying it, him being a war veteran and all, but they make their money off people who’ve got money, but they still resent them, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve met all types.’

  ‘She’s a bully—likes to be queen bee—and she’s terrified of getting old. If anyone outshines her, they’re gone. Some of the young girls who work down here in the uni holidays, they’re highly educated, sensible kids. I’ve seen how she treats them. And then, on the other hand, if someone’s in trouble, she’s the first one there, supporting them so they feel like they owe her something. She surrounds herself with people she can get something out of.’

  ‘Sounds like you have her all worked out.’ Ryder doubted Crofts was among Di’s former lovers.

  ‘In another life I almost finished a psychology degree, but I could make more money as a mechanic.’ He stood up and went to fill the kettle with water. ‘I do my job and stay out of Di Gordon’s way.’

  Ryder thought about the people in the photograph Flowers had shown him. ‘Where was Aidan Smythe at this time?’