He asked the beat police what they thought. One of them said, “Well at first nothing, I thought, Just a car of someone who has gone on holidays overseas, and parked close by before getting on a plane. But then I thought, If a bushie is going to leave his car here for a month or two while away, why would he clean it so well first? It is like it has been detailed, before it was left.
Then I looked underneath and, while the top is almost spotless, the underneath has not been cleaned at all. If you were having it professionally cleaned and detailed, why not do the under-body as well with a high pressure hose? Instead the under-body still has all the dags and lumps of mud that come from months of driving in the bush. Five minutes with a high pressure hose would shift most. However the tyres look like someone has washed them a bit.
And it looks like someone has smeared a mud on the number plates to make them real hard to read. I needed a couple goes, cross checking between the front and back, before I was sure I had the rego right. It is definitely odd that only the topside has been cleaned so well.
I can’t say I am surprised that you find this a bit interesting for your crocodile case. You haven’t said it yet, but you have a nose on you for these things like a foxhound on the trail of his fox. I am guessing now that you’ll be wanting our vehicle recovery crew to take it to the police workshop. That way we can take it apart systematically, before anything else is disturbed.
Alan nodded. “You got it. While I would love to pop a door and have a proper look inside, I think this is one for the pros to do, we run the risk of stuffing up any evidence which remains. I don’t suppose you have seen any keys.” The patrol men both shook their heads.
Alan asked his constable to stay with the vehicle and make sure no one disturbed it until the vehicle recovery team came along. Then he was to accompany it to the workshop and advise them on what was required. He wanted it totally pulled apart to look for any evidence of previous users, and a careful check of anywhere where there may be DNA to see if it matched to the “Crocodile Man”, victim. They also needed to see if the tyre tread matched the cast in his office.
He left the vehicle and asked the patrol car to drop him back to the station. He could see a lot of work flowing out of this and wondered if he should book a flight to Alice Springs to try and get some information on this man, Mark Bennet.
Once back at the office he quickly rang Sandy to give her an update, then it was off to talk to his boss about the “where to from here”. They agreed they would hold off on any media about the vehicle for a day or two and, in the meantime, Alan would get to Alice and see if they could either locate Mark Bennet or get any information from people who knew him. If he hurried he could just make the mid-afternoon Qantas flight there today.
Chapter 10 – Who and Where is Mark Bennet
Mark touched down in Alice Springs in the late afternoon, just as the heat was going out of the day. He caught a taxi to the Alice Springs Police HQ where he talked to the officer who had called to the address earlier in the day. This man, Richard, told him it was an unremarkable third floor flat with a locked garage to the side. There was no sign of anyone living there, or of recent use, and there was no mail other than a small amount of junk mail in the letter box, suggesting this was emptied by someone from time to time. He had knocked on the doors of the immediate neighbours but no one was home. So he had left it at that, knowing that someone was coming from Darwin for a more detailed investigation.
Richard had also called to the motor registration authority and obtained a photo from a license issued in this name. While not detailed it was an image of a man who looked to be in his mid thirties, and at least from the photo he had no distinctive features, mid brown hair and a pleasant if not highly handsome face, not a man who would obviously stand out in a crowd. Alan slipped a copy of the photo in his wallet.
As it was now late afternoon and people would be coming home Mark asked Richard if her would be able to accompany him to pay a repeat visit, as now it was more likely that neighbours would be around. Richard seemed keen to help, even though Mark could only tell him a limited amount about their investigation, as of now. Richard had heard of the Crocodile Man and Mark indicated that it may be linked to this investigation.
So they called around. It was a nondescript, relatively new but dingy building on the east side of the town, which Richard said housed twelve 2 bedroom flats. He said that the flat listed as Mark Bennet’s address shared a common entrance which went up 2 flights of stairs. His was on the top level with three other flats opening off at the top of the stairs. To the side of the building was a car park area with a row of garages with numbers which matched the flat numbers. Mark’s was Number Eleven and, sure enough, the garage door was locked. They walked around the back. There was a tiny window, up high, which let in a small amount of light, but when Alan climbed up to look inside it was too dark to make anything out. So they climbed the stairs to the front door. They knocked loudly for a minute with no answer.
The front door of the flat was a heavy security door and there were no internally facing windows, to look in. They went back downstairs and outside to see if anything was evident from street level. They could see a small verandah, with an iron railing which seemed to correspond to the flat, but it was bare except for two old looking metal chairs. They could not get any view of the inside but there was no sign of life.
So they went back to the neighbours doors at the same level. Only one was home. When Alan showed him the license photo he said he was not sure but he thought it could be the man. He said he rented this flat for about a year now. In this time he had rarely seen his neighbour from Number 11. This person was not often around and kept mostly to himself. He had never seen him in the company of anyone else.
They spent another hour working their way around the rest of the building with similarly little result. Only two other building residents had ever sighted the resident of this flat. They also said they were not really sure if he was the person on the driver’s license, “he looked similar”, was all any of them would say. No one knew if he was the owner or just a renter, but the longest term person had been here since the flats were built five years ago and he said this person had used the flat for at least three years. He also said that, while this man was not rude, he showed no inclination to socialise and was rarely there.
Nobody could recall having seen him in the last two or three months but they said that this was not unusual, he only seemed to be at home for a few days at a time, perhaps two or three time a year.
There was a view that he probably worked out bush, as he had a white Toyota four wheel drive with what looked like tools on the back. No-one remembered a built in cooler box.
The one useful piece of information was that another person had been observed collecting his mail and throwing away the junk mail every week or two. He seemed to have a mailbox key and was a man who looked to be in his fifties and who walked with a limp. He mostly came on a Thursday or Friday, in the late afternoon. As it was now Wednesday it seemed there was a good chance that he would come tomorrow or the next day.
This seemed like the best lead to date. So Alan decided he would come back here and wait near the mail box area, for the next day or two, in the late afternoon. Tomorrow he would see if he could find out anything else useful about a Mark Bennet from around the town.
As he had worked in the Alice on several previous occasions and had many friends and work colleagues he knew well, he had made an impromptu arrangement to meet a few for a drink at Bojangles Restaurant and Nightclub, a long time haunt. He asked Richard if he wanted to come along but Richard said he had family commitments with two small children and would have to take a raincheck.
Alan was up early the next day and returned to the Police Headquarters. He had been assigned an office and a vehicle for his use while in town. Richard, his colleague from last night, was working day shift for the next two days and was available to assist him.
As soon he had settled at his desk and
given a phone update to Darwin, he decided it was time to give Richard a proper briefing on the case, as he had now committed to spend the next two days here trying to get leads and wanted Richard’s help. His experience had taught him that investigations work much better if everyone is fully briefed.
So he found a small conference room and asked Richard to come in. Once he had an undertaking of confidentiality he walked Richard through everything he had found out to date. Then he asked Richard what ideas he had, as someone who lived in this town, about how to try and track this man down. His trust was well rewarded, within five minutes they had a list of more tasks than they could do in the next couple days and had divided the work.
Richard would focus on the flat and its ownership, he would find out from the land titles office who was its owner and, if Mark was a renter, get details from the real estate agent, any rental agreement, references and so on. Richard would also prepare a warrant to obtain entry to the flat tomorrow if their mail contact did not get them access.
Alan would focus on the vehicle, get details of its age, original purchaser, any previous locations, records of fines, breaches or insurance claims, any information coming back from Darwin about accessories and fittings, garages where it had been serviced and look for anything else which would pin it down its usage and perhaps give a clue to where Mark went when out of town.
He would also try and obtain information on any people with the name of Mark Bennet from different record sources, such as the Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages, listed bank accounts and so on. The trouble was that Mark Bennet was a common name and there may be more than one person by that name in a town like Alice. Still Alice was still a small town from a business sense. That meant less places to check.
They would reconvene for lunch and together ring the vehicle investigation team in Darwin to see if they had anything definite from their end. Then they would plan their afternoon’s activities, including surveillance of the post box for any sign of a mail collector. They had decided they needed to cover this for the full afternoon, in the event the person came early.
They reconvened at lunch time over a steak sandwich at a local café. Alan bought both meals on his expense account. They both agreed it had been a frustrating morning, and were amazed at the level of invisibility that surrounded this person, Mark Bennet.
The flat was owned by a corporation which had a Sydney post box address. It had not yet proved possible to trace the owner or owners behind this corporation as it appeared to have a complex structure of ownership behind it.
There was nothing useful coming from the vehicle to date. The purchaser was Mark Bennet, and he had purchased it new three years ago from the Toyota agent in Alice Springs. He had given, as his address, the flat they had already visited, but no other contact details. He had paid cash for it with a bank cheque, drawn to Westpac, Alice Springs. They may be able to trace this through to bank accounts or other identity information in due course. The vehicle had returned for its first two warranty services, and the owner had paid cash for the costs incurred, but after that the vehicle had vanished from their system. He had also traced the supplier of the bull bar and winch fitted to the vehicle, just after purchase in Alice Springs, but in both cases Mark had provided no information except the same residential address. They had shown these vehicle suppliers Mark’s photo and, while all thought it could be him, none was sure; it was three years after all, as one said.
Together they rang the vehicle yard in Darwin, using Alan’s mobile, sitting in the police car, after lunch. They talked to the constable who had spent the morning alongside the workshop crew as they started to take the vehicle apart.
All agreed that the vehicle was far too clean; the cabin had been stripped of all its regular contents and then cleaned, using both detergents and solvents, to get it to an extraordinary level of cleanness. They was little to indicate they would find any DNA of other useful evidence about former occupants, but they were yet to pull out all the seats and other fittings which may yet reveal something. The back tray and the cooler box had a similar level of cleanliness though there was some hope of a few fibres or other minor residue in its corners.
However, there was one really significant piece of news and it was a jackpot. The back passenger tyre matched the cast from the track near the billabong, down to the piece of missing rubber from the inside of the tread.
At this time the head of the workshop’s voice came over the top. “Well Alan, if we get nothing else I think this will nail it. It is as good as says that this vehicle was the one that made that track just next to the Mary River billabong where you found your Crocodile Man. So, if I was a betting man, I would say it is odds on that a Mr Mark Bennet is your Crocodile Man or, if not, he was at least there with him. All we need now is some of his DNA from the car, or better still from his flat, for it to be an absolute dead certainty.
So now they now had an excellent basis for a search warrant of the flat. Richard said he would organise this if Alan wanted to go and start surveillance at the letter box.
As it was turning into a stinking hot afternoon, with some thundery cloud rising over the West McDonnell Ranges, Alan suspected this was as much about a desire for some air conditioned comfort. But it suited him too; he liked the idea of parking himself in an obscure corner of flats where he could see what transpired. Sometimes he got ideas for other inquiries through surveillance of this type and he did not really mind the heat, though he preferred more typical Alice Springs days when the air was dry than today with humidity added in.
So he said, “Can you try and organise the entry for about ten am tomorrow when most people have gone to work. I would rather keep this low key for now, though I am sure it will be in Saturday’s newspapers. One way or another we will have to do a news conference before the end of tomorrow, or we will be accused of a cover up.
Richard nodded, so Alan asked him to drop him to the flats before he went back into town to get the search warrant and the entry team organised.
It was just before 2 pm when Richard let him off and drove away. He had bought a bottle of water and a newspaper to help pass away the long afternoon. There was a little courtyard, with two seats and a table under a shady tree just inside the entrance from the street to the flats. It gave a good view across to the post boxes, so Alan settled himself down on a chair with his paper opened. An hour passed. The only sound was the hum of air conditioners and the buzz of an occasional fly willing to brave the heat. Alan could feel his shirt sticking to his back. It was bloody hot and more than a bit humid, not the best day for this. But it meant that he had no company and this suited him.
About three thirty he heard the noise of a car motor coming along the street towards him. It was a beat up old Ford Falcon, the sort loved across aboriginal communities. A weather beaten man, perhaps in his fifties, got out and walked purposefully to the mail boxes, key in hand. Sure enough, he went to Mailbox Number 11, Marks flat. He opened it and proceeded to sort through what was there. It looked like there were a dozen items of junk mail and three letters. He tossed the junk mail into a bin and started to walk back to his car with the three letters.
It was time for Alan to act. He got up and walked across to where the man’s car was parked, reaching it just a second before the man did. He put his body between the man and the car door. Thus far the man seemed completely unaware of Alan, but suddenly he realised his path was blocked and looked up. “Excuse me,” he said in a surprisingly polite manner, “I need to get into my car.”
Alan, flipped open his police identification, nodded and replied. “Sure, but I need to ask you a few questions before you do. The man looked perplexed then, it was like he realised the situation.
He said, “You think I am nicking his mail, don’t you. Well you are wrong. See, I have got the key,” he said, waving it in Alan’s face, his hostility rising.
Alan held up a hand to calm him. He could see this guy was a heavy drinker and prone to a bit of temper. He said, �
�Calm down old fella, no one is accusing you of anything.” We are just trying to track down the man who owns those letters. We figured you may be able to help us. More better if you come and sit with me, under that shady tree, and tell me how you know Mark Bennett and why you collect his mail. When we have that story straight you will be free to go, though we might need to check letters for any addresses. Later we may need you to come to the police station to make a statement, but that is it.
In five minutes Alan had the story straight. The man normally came around 5 pm on a Thursday, but had come early today because he was meeting some friends later to have a drink, and he needed his money. He was on a disability pension since he had hurt his back a bit over three years ago. He said he had only met Mark the once, when he and Mark had got chatting over a drink in a bar just after he got out of hospital. That was three years ago, just after his accident happened.
Mark had told him he worked out of town a lot and needed someone to check his mail each week, throw the junk mail away and put the real stuff into an envelope and send it on to a post box address in Katherine. In return Mark would pay him sixty dollars a month, which would come to him in this mailbox, along with his other letters.
He had now been doing this for three years and, each month without fail, the letter with his money had come, for the first year with sixty dollars a month, the next year seventy and now eighty dollars a month. There had also been the odd bit extra like a Christmas bonus.
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 34