Slaughter Park

by Barry Maitland

  ‘I believe it’s possible that Martin Nordlund, the pilot of the plane, was at the same meeting.’

  ‘Really? So what were you after?’

  ‘I was hoping to speak to someone who was there.’

  ‘Oh…Twelve years…My father might have been involved, but he died last year. Senior clerks?’ He ponders, shakes his head. ‘No. The other partner at the time was Hugh McKensey. He might remember something, I suppose. But he’s retired now.’

  ‘Would there be a record of the meeting?’

  ‘Did it concern ongoing litigation?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ve been computerised and recomputerised since then, so…’ He shrugs. ‘We do maintain an archive of paper records, but space is limited and we cull ruthlessly. I think Hugh might be your best bet. I’ll give you his number.’

  Harry rings it and McKensey agrees to see him. He is currently working on a project, he explains, in the State Library just a couple of blocks away, and they arrange to meet in the café. Harry spots him at a table with a cup of coffee and a small pile of history books.

  ‘Danny’s boy, eh?’ McKensey scrutinises him with a smile. ‘How interesting. Take a seat. Let me get you a coffee.’

  Harry thanks him and explains that he has been going through his father’s papers and came across a reference to a meeting with Norman Comfrey on the day he died in the plane crash.

  ‘Aha, thinking of a biography of Danny, eh? Excellent idea. Tricky, though. Wouldn’t write it yourself, would you? Bit of a challenge to write objectively about your old man, eh? I see George W. Bush has had a go. Wonder what that’ll be like.’

  ‘I’m not sure what to do, but I’ve been going through his stuff, trying to decide what to keep, and I was intrigued by that reference.’

  ‘Yes, a tragic day. I remember it quite well, of course, the last time we saw poor Norman. Devastated us all, his family, the firm.’

  ‘Were you at the meeting?’

  ‘No, that was just Norman, the judge and Martin Nordlund, who piloted the plane.’

  ‘Norman was Martin’s solicitor?’

  ‘Yes, the Nordlund family solicitor. I understand Nathaniel Horn has taken over that role since.’ McKensey barely hides his grimace.

  ‘Do you know what the meeting was about?’

  ‘No idea. Some Nordlund family matter, I suppose.’

  ‘Why would my father be involved?’

  ‘Norman knew him quite well. I assume he was seeking his advice on some legal question. I remember seeing your father that afternoon when he arrived for the meeting. We had a bit of a chat. Norman and Martin were delayed, you see, over lunch, and I had to hold the fort. Let me see, what else can I remember…?’ He ponders for a moment. ‘I think we just talked about personal matters—yes, both our wives were having back problems or something like that. When Norman and Martin finally arrived I had the impression that the wine had been flowing at lunch. Oh…’ He stops with a frown. ‘I’m sure not enough to affect Martin’s capacity to fly that plane. I didn’t mention it at the inquest, and neither did Bernard.’

  ‘Bernard Nordlund?’

  ‘Yes, he’d been at the lunch. I remember one of them mentioned it when they arrived. Then I had to go off to an appointment of my own, and I never saw poor Norman again. I think about it quite often, his remains still lying somewhere out there in the bush.’ He sighs.

  ‘The next day, when we heard, your father called me. He was very distressed, of course. He came into the office to commiserate, and we met up several times in the following weeks, at the memorial service and elsewhere.’

  ‘And he didn’t say what they had discussed?’

  ‘No, though I remember he did ask if Norman had left any record of the meeting, any notes to be typed up. We searched, but there was nothing.’

  Later, with Jenny, Harry says, ‘We keep meeting a blank wall. And yet Terry Palfreyman claimed to have discovered something incriminating. What did he call it? A dossier. How had he got hold of that?’

  ‘I know, I keep wondering that. Did he really have something to show me, or was it all talk?’

  ‘Well, Fogarty and Grimshaw must have believed he did.’

  ‘Yes, and presumably they didn’t find it after I disturbed them. So they’ve probably been back again to have a further look, wouldn’t you think, after the police finished?’

  ‘You’d think so, but it would be risky for them. They wouldn’t know whether you’d got word to the cops.’

  ‘Maybe we should go back and take a look.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry says, ‘that’s what I’m thinking.’

  70

  The message comes in as Deb is sitting with Superintendent Blake in his office, working out how best to handle this. He lifts up the phone, listens, then turns, eyes wide, to stare at Deb, and even before he murmurs, ‘How?’ she knows what’s coming.

  He says, ‘Thank you,’ rings off and says to her, ‘Fogarty, found in his cell. Ripped up his T-shirt to make a noose. The bugger’s dead.’

  A long silence.

  Deb says, ‘Who’s going to tell the women, Brenda and Michelle?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  71

  Kelly takes a seat in the press gallery in the chamber of the lower house. Below her the members’ benches are packed. A government minister is reading from a document in a monotonous drone, but no one is listening. Heads are down, whispering, nodding, waiting.

  Her eyes roam over the half-empty visitors’ galleries and come to a stop at the figure of a man in a grey suit, sitting motionless, eyes fixed on the scene below, his hair and complexion pale, almost anaemic. Konrad Nordlund. Kelly takes a picture.

  The droning voice comes to an end and the whispering stops abruptly as the familiar figures of the premier and deputy premier stride into the chamber. The premier pauses to say something to the speaker, then takes his place on the government front bench. The speaker announces that the premier will make a statement. He rises to his feet and speaks in a firm, steady voice. After intensive and thorough negotiations, he says, the government has reached an agreement with a major development consortium to put an end to the scandalous and tragic neglect of a major public asset. Subject to strict planning guidelines, which will ensure that the public interest is safeguarded, Slater Park will be transformed from its present pitiful state into a vibrant new community. It will be designed and constructed to the highest standards, following international best practice.

  As he pauses to let this sink in, applause breaks out from the government benches. He raises his hand and continues. At the end of business today the consortium will present its proposal, prepared by prestigious international architects, at a briefing for all members of the house, to be followed by a press conference. He is also pleased to advise the house that the Nordlund family, who have suffered directly as a result of the recent tragic events at Slater Park, will be represented in the development consortium. He informs the house that Mr Konrad Nordlund is present in the visitors’ gallery.

  Heads turn towards the gallery and clapping breaks out again, this time on both sides of chamber, rising to a crescendo, with cries of ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Hear, hear’, members getting to their feet. Konrad Nordlund also stands and bows his head in acknowledgment of the acclaim.

  Kelly takes more pictures with the zoom lens she picked up at the Times. Should the headline be Extraordinary Scenes in State Parliament? Or maybe something less boring: The Slaughter of Slater Park? On the strength of Kelly’s scoop—the photo of the development model—Catherine Meiklejohn has given her the lead story, which will go online as soon as she’s written it. Brendon Pyle will also have a piece on the bloody history of the park, while the property and environment desks will assess the proposals.

  Kelly hurries out of Parliament House and finds a seat at a café nearby where she rapidly composes her piece and sends it through to the office with a note to her editor. C
atherine responds quickly, approving the article and asking her to cover the premier’s press conference. A call comes in from Husam Roshed, asking if she wants to meet beforehand, somewhere they won’t be seen together. He suggests the Art Gallery of New South Wales, across the park, the nineteenth-century Australian room. She walks over there and takes a seat facing Streeton’s Fire’s On, the heroic scene of blasting a tunnel for the railway to the Blue Mountains in the blazing summer heat.

  ‘That’s the real Australia, isn’t it?’ a voice says behind her. ‘Anglo pioneers grappling with nature, before they let us wogs come in and spoil it all.’

  Kelly turns as Roshed sits down beside her. ‘Are you going to spoil it all, Husam?’

  ‘Given half a chance. You heard of the Haddad boys?’

  Kelly thinks. Haddad, the name’s familiar. ‘Hakim Haddad was one of the Crows, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Their sergeant-at-arms, shot dead in the car park of the Swagman Hotel last year. His sister had two boys, Amal and Khalil, idolised their uncle.’

  ‘Okay. So?’

  ‘You asked me about Kylie McVea, sister of Frank Capp, vice-president of the Crows. Well, according to a well-placed source, namely my mum, Amal and Khalil Haddad now work for Kylie, somewhere out west, on a property or something.’

  ‘Doggylands Dog Breeders, Boarding Kennels, yes, I’ve been there.’

  ‘Really? Dog breeders? I’d have thought those boys would have been more at home pushing dope in a Kings Cross nightclub.’

  ‘Right. Well, thanks for the tip.’ She’s not sure what she can do with it. Then she remembers the flash drive in her pocket and a thought strikes her. ‘Do you know any tech whizz-kids who could open a pin-protected flash drive?’ She takes it out and shows him.

  He turns it over in his hand, examining it. ‘I might. What’s the deal?’

  ‘I’m not sure of the provenance, but it may contain something—emails, photos, I don’t know—relating to the Nordlunds. Thing is, not knowing what’s on it, I don’t want to give it to anyone who’s going to blab or make copies, see?’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Absolute discretion. I think I can do that. Leave it with me.’

  72

  The train leaves the plains of western Sydney and climbs up into the Blue Mountains. A perfect spring day, blue-domed, sparkling. At each of the small towns—Wentworth Falls, Leura, Katoomba, Medlow Bath—the passengers on the platforms are cheerful, untroubled, and Jenny begins to relax. But when they get off at Blackheath and make their way through the familiar streets the sense of dread returns. What if they’re there, waiting?

  They walk quickly through to the western area of the town and follow the road into the bush, a few houses visible to left and right. Wary now, they come to the turning onto the dirt road, and Jenny stops, gasps. Ahead there is nothing but trees, the two cottages gone.

  ‘What happened?’

  Harry is pacing on ahead and she hurries to catch up. As they get closer to the site she begins to make out the blackened, burnt-out ruins.

  ‘Someone’s torched them both.’ Harry walks over towards the fallen metal roof sheets, the charred stumps, peering into the remains. There is a strong, acrid smell of burning hanging in the still air, no sound of birdsong.

  Jenny circles around her cottage, making out the remains of the mattress on which she slept, the kitchen sink, then moves to Harry standing beside the ruins of Terry Palfreyman’s place.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘they did a pretty good job. If there ever was a document hidden here it’s gone now.’

  Near the place where the back door would have been, Jenny recognises a pile of cracked and blackened wine bottles, the cardboard box in which they were stacked now disintegrated around them. ‘In vino veritas,’ she says quietly. Harry goes carefully into the ruin, his feet crackling on shattered glass, dust and fumes rising around him. ‘Hopeless,’ he calls back over his shoulder. ‘It must have been quite a blaze.’

  Jenny is still staring at the bottles, recollecting Terry’s voice, his impish tone of conspiracy. The image of him kneeling on the floor begging for mercy. Her heart is pumping and she lifts her head, staring up into the cobalt blue sky, trying to breathe.

  Harry is by her side. ‘You all right?’ he asks. ‘We shouldn’t have come.’ He takes hold of her and begins to turn her away.

  She says, ‘The bottles, Harry. Check the bottles.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please.’

  She watches him kick at the pile of blackened bottles, some shattered, then pick his way through to the more intact ones below. He straightens, holding one up to the light. Through the mottled green glass she can make out something inside. He tells her to turn away, and she hears the sharp crack as he hits it against a brick. She turns back and sees him picking among the pieces of glass.

  ‘A message in a bottle,’ Harry says, carefully drawing out a blackened roll of paper. As he lifts it up it disintegrates into charred flakes, crumbling between his fingers. ‘Damn,’ he murmurs, ‘the whole thing’s burnt through.’ He’s left with just one barely legible brown fragment, a piece of what seems to be the cover page, which had been coiled tight in the centre of the roll. He reads: Record of interview with Joseph Doyle, signed and witnessed by Terry Palfreyman, 10 September 2014.

  ‘Terry’s dossier,’ he says. ‘It did exist. But not anymore.’

  Jenny stares at it for a moment, then says, ‘Let’s get out of here, Harry.’ She hears the shake in her voice. This place is too silent, too sinister.

  He takes hold of her arm again and together they walk quickly back towards town.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks. ‘Do you want to stop and have a drink?’

  She shakes her head. ‘People will recognise me here. Let’s just get on the train.’

  The station is deserted. They wait far down the platform and when their train arrives find a quiet corner of the carriage. As it continues on its journey, winding through native bush and small townships, Jenny says, ‘In vino veritas—Terry was telling the truth after all. He did that interview while Amber was at Maturiki, and he never had the chance to tell her.’

  ‘And Joseph Doyle is the key,’ Harry says. ‘But we have no idea where to find him. I wish we could have seen his letter to my father that Amber discovered. There might have been something in it to tell us more.’

  ‘It could be at Kramfors, don’t you think? Amber probably hid it there, somewhere private, personal to her, where other people wouldn’t come across it.’ Jenny pictures the family homestead in Cackleberry Valley. ‘It’s a big place. It’d be hard to find anything hidden there, even if we could get in. I’d like to see it again, the valley and Cackleberry Mountain. When we were there last year I had to imagine it all, hearing and smelling it, but unable to see.’

  73

  Something Brenda Fogarty says sticks in Deb’s mind. She goes to see her accompanied by a mature woman constable who looks as if she’s done this sort of thing many times. After the shock, the confusion, the disbelief, Brenda, choking through the tears, frames the question. Why? Why did he do it?

  ‘We’re not entirely sure at the moment,’ Deb says. ‘We believe he’d got himself mixed up in something that he shouldn’t, something he was ashamed of.’

  ‘Eden Grimshaw,’ Brenda says bitterly. ‘I always knew he was trouble. I warned Ken often enough.’

  They wait until her sister arrives to be with her. As the two officers are leaving, Brenda says, ‘Eden made a remark last time we saw him, something about his evil little mate, and I could see it made Ken unhappy. I said to Eden, maybe you should watch yourself, and he said, don’t worry, I have insurance tucked away, nice and safe. I don’t know what he meant by that.’

  Neither does Deb, but when she gets back to the station she contacts the leader of the crime scene team and asks for an update. A thorough search of Eden’s flat has yielded nothing beyond some doubtful pills and a bit more cash, both at the lab for tests. Deb asks him to go back ther
e with her for one final search.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ he asks when they enter the flat.

  ‘I don’t know. Grimshaw said he had insurance tucked away somewhere safe. It sounded like something physical. A photograph? A letter? A memory stick? I really don’t know.’

  They work their way through the small flat checking everything that might have been missed, anywhere a cop might hide something small. They unscrew the light switches and power sockets, tap the skirtings, strip the backs off the TV, refrigerator and microwave, dismantle light fittings, and find nothing.

  ‘What about his car?’ Deb says.

  ‘It was downstairs in the parking bay in the basement car park. Been taken to the workshops for examination. I’ll make sure they do a good job.’

  ‘Let’s go down and have a look.’

  They take the lift to the basement and he shows her the empty parking bay. Bare concrete floor, wall, column and ceiling. Sprinkler pipes and heads running under the ceiling, a bulkhead light and conduit on the wall. Deb goes over to the light, pokes the back of it with her screwdriver and snags a bit of plastic. She teases it out, a small plastic packet. Inside is a folded envelope, and inside that a fifty-dollar note. They stare at it, then the man says, ‘What’s that smudge?’ He takes out a magnifier and peers closely. ‘Looks like a blood smear, with a fingerprint in it.’

  Deb wonders how that would work. And then it comes to her—victim’s blood, killer’s print. That would do the trick. That would be insurance. ‘This is priority,’ she says. ‘For God’s sake don’t lose it.’

  74

  It takes a while to track down Bernard Nordlund. The faculty office thought he might be away at a conference, but eventually it transpires that he’s working at home. They give Harry a phone number, and when he rings, Bernard invites him to come round. Harry remembers Amber describing her uncle’s home as an art deco flat in a block in Potts Point, but the description seems too modest for what he finds there. Spacious, immaculate and filled with furniture, artworks and fabrics of the 1930s, it looks as fresh as it must have done when first bought by Bernard’s grandfather Axel. He welcomes Harry and takes him through to the lounge room with its view over Sydney Harbour, only partially spoiled by more recent developments, and offers him a cocktail from a shaker that once belonged to F. Scott Fitzgerald.