by Peter Corris
‘What about Polkinghorn?’
‘All our suspicions were confirmed. The dishonourable Tim Polkinghorn’s career is severely compromised, shall we say. And our clients may well adopt a different stance towards him and others. All in all, a very satisfactory result.’
‘So glad. You said Bright gave you trouble.’
‘With his martial arts talents, yes. He did a certain amount of damage to one of our people but he was restrained.’
‘Is he hurt?’
‘Oh, no.’
I patted my jacket pocket for reassurance.
‘You’re armed, I see. You were scanned as you came in.’
‘Right. So now we call the police.’
He shook his head.
‘No, I guess not,’ I said. ‘You don’t want cops poking around here. Okay, hand him over to me.’
‘I’m afraid not. He was of no further use to us and no threat.’
‘What’re you saying?’
‘We let him go.’
‘For Christ’s sake, why?’
‘He may be useful in the future.’
part three
25
I threatened Jones with a charge of enforced restraint and he replied by saying he was sure he could persuade Glassop to level a similar charge against me. Stalemate there. All Jones would say was that Bright had left by taxi.
‘How much money did he have?’
‘No idea.’
‘I can’t help wondering whether you employed him in the first place and he went rogue.’
‘Wonder away.’
‘That’s a lot of dirt you’ve got now.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find a use for it.’
‘I won’t wish you luck.’
‘Luck, Mr Hardy, is for those without brains.’
‘How’s Kyle?’
‘He’ll mend, but you’ve made an enemy there.’
‘He can stand in line.’
‘I have to say Bright made several threats as well.’
‘He wouldn’t know where Penelope is, would he?’
Jones shrugged. ‘Who can say? There’s been a lot of coming and going. He may have overheard something.’
‘If she’s come to any harm I’ll be back.’
‘Come back by all means, but I doubt you’ll find a Mr Jones here.’
I went out. My breath plumed in the freezing air. I drove to the motel and asked at reception for Ms Marinos’s room. The receptionist was not the one I’d dealt with before.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the woman said. ‘Ms Marinos has checked out.’
‘When?’
‘I can’t tell you that. It’s—’
I showed her my PIA licence and put on my most serious manner. She tapped computer keys.
‘At five-thirty-five.’
‘Was she alone?’
I must have sounded threatening because she merely nodded.
‘You called her a taxi, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was she going?’
‘To the airport. Is . . . is something wrong?’
I didn’t answer. I left and sat in the car feeling a wave of disappointment and apprehension rushing towards me. Bright and Pen both gone and I had no idea where. Great work, Hardy, I thought. Neville Kim’ll be thrilled to hear all about it.
I had dinner where Glassop and I had eaten lunch simply because I couldn’t be bothered looking for anything else. The food—swordfish, salad and chips—was surprisingly good and that, with a glass of wine, made me feel more cheerful. I told myself again that finding people was my go and I was convinced of it after the second glass.
I had coffee and, rugged up with a scarf and gloves, I walked around for a while until I was sure I was safe to drive. I’d had enough of Canberra and the ACT. I drove to Queanbeyan over the border into New South Wales and checked into a motel. I drank the rest of the bottle of wine, watched television and went to bed. I’d only slept with Pen for a couple of nights, but it was enough to make me miss her.
I ate breakfast in the motel dining room, stoked up on black coffee and felt alert as I took the road to Gundaroo. I was pretty sure Bright wouldn’t be there, but my idea was to look over his cottage to see if he’d left any clue as to where he might have gone.
Nothing much was stirring in the frosty morning in Gundaroo. I drove out to Bright’s place where again there was no sign of a car. This time I pushed open the rickety gate and drove right up to the house. There was no traffic on the road and the nearest house was a good distance away. I thought I’d be undisturbed for long enough.
The cottage was in poor repair with a sagging bullnose veranda, at least one window boarded up, and rusty guttering. Two decayed car bodies stood in long grass beside the place; the wooden porch slumped where its brick underpinnings had given way. The flyscreen was a tattered ruin. The front door opened creakingly on protesting hinges.
I walked through quickly to get the layout—central passage, two bedrooms, kitchen-cum-living room with a big fireplace. The back door opened on a fenced yard. A fibro and corrugated iron lean-to held a washhouse with a copper and a sink. There was a vegetable patch and a chook pen in the yard, now both overgrown. Some heavy plastic sheeting had been tacked up to provide a covered sitting area where there was a cane chair, a milk crate full of empty beer stubbies and a plastic garden pot where a plant of some kind was trying to draw nourishment from hundreds of cigarette butts.
One bedroom was full of junked furniture; the other held a double bed covered with a stained blanket. No sheets, no pillow. I’d seen dossing places like this before—typically, the occupant used a sleeping bag and rolled up clothes for a pillow. A length of electrical cable ran from a nail in the doorjamb to the shaft of a floor lamp that lacked a bulb and shade. A couple of empty wire coat hangers dangled from the cable.
The barman had told me Bright drove a Jeep, a not inexpensive car. Why would he live in a place like this and over time as the barman had said, even intermittently? The question stayed with me as I searched the kitchen-cum-living room where he’d obviously spent most of his time. There were ashes in the fireplace and the remnants of a stack of chopped wood. There was an old refrigerator, a combustion stove and some shelves still holding tins of soup and cans of tuna and sardines.
All the signs were of a hasty departure—milk and cheese and bowls of leftover food in the fridge, cutlery and plates in the sink and a half-full stubby of VB on the table. A moth-eaten armchair was drawn up near the combustion stove and, wedged down between the cushions, I found a crumpled magazine. Love in Chains was a BDSM publication with a snuff element incorporated. The stories and photographs involved young women variously restrained and penetrated by leather-clad, masked men—personally, or using implements. A number of the photo sequences, presumably faked, ended with the females dead and the men masturbating over their inert bodies.
I went out into the yard for some fresh air and became aware of a smell. I walked towards the chook pen at the end of the yard and disturbed a dog that had been scratching in the dirt inside the derelict structure. It came towards me growling and baring its teeth. I picked up a heavy stick and swiped at it intending to just miss. But it jumped forward and I hit it hard on the nose. It yelped and ran away, scrambling under the fence where it seemed to have recently dug a hole.
Still holding the stick, I crouched to duck under a remaining roof strut to investigate where the dog had been scratching. It had dug deep under layers of chook shit and soil and cleared a sizeable area, exposing two human skulls and several bones. One of the skulls still had flesh adhering to it—the source of the smell. I turned away and forced myself not to vomit. The skulls weren’t man-sized or child-sized. They were the remains of women.
26
The police found the skeletons of five young women buried in the yard of the Gundaroo house. Under the floorboards they found clothes, shoes and accessories. The remains showed signs of torture and dismemberment. Charred human bones were foun
d in the combustion stove, and a fatty residue in a copper in the washhouse was evidence of human flesh having been boiled.
I told the police who I was working for and how I’d traced Bright or Ball to Gundaroo. I didn’t say anything about Pen or Jones or Glassop. They asked why, since I’d got the information from the barman the day before, I’d let so much time elapse before searching the house. I said that the house appeared empty the first time I’d looked at it and I waited a day to confirm this—true as far as it went.
They were unhappy with me carrying out an investigation without informing them of my presence and for not notifying them of a wanted criminal in the area—and for being an armed trespasser—but as I’d turned up evidence of a major crime they weren’t in a position to protest. I was held in uncomfortable rooms, interrogated in a hostile manner and had my car and my belongings searched. But when Neville Kim confirmed my story in every detail they had no course but to release me, although I was obliged to stay in Queanbeyan for several days while they checked everything.
‘So you have no idea where this bastard’s gone?’ one of the detectives asked in the last interview.
‘That’s right.’
‘You wouldn’t be holding out like you did before, hoping to get the glory for yourself?’
‘Glory’s not an asset in my business.’
In fact, the story made headlines in the eastern states and ran for longer than usual as the women were identified. Two were Canberra prostitutes in the low-income bracket; one was a British backpacker and the other two were from the tribe of itinerant workers that travel the country districts—fruit-pickers, vineyard and market-garden casuals—who easily slip through the cracks. I dropped out of the story early, but still got more exposure, not all of it complimentary, than I wanted. I shifted motels twice to avoid reporters. It didn’t work.
Early on, Neville Kim rang to thank me.
‘What for?’ I said. ‘I came close but he got away.’
‘The police are redoubling their efforts or, I should say, are now making an effort. The photograph of the man is much clearer now that some technology has been applied to it, and it’s being widely circulated. I am optimistic but I want you to continue.’
‘Mr Kim, it’s already cost you a lot of money and I don’t have any leads. I—’ ‘As I say, you have achieved something. The discovery of the bodies of those unfortunate women must have been a shock. When you’ve recovered from that you may think of something.’
‘You’re paying me to think?’
‘I do it all the time. Draw on the funds I’ve provided. God bless you.’
So he was one of the Christian Koreans. Perhaps he was praying as well as paying for me. Before leaving Queanbeyan I rang Glassop’s mobile and the number Jones had given me. No answer in both cases. I was packed and ready to go when the phone in the motel room rang. I answered; the caller was a woman with an English accent.
‘Mr Hardy, I’m the mother of Gloria Drake, one of the murdered girls.’
‘Mrs Drake, I’m sorry.’
‘Yes, but I wanted to thank you. We’ve been driven almost insane by not knowing what happened to Gloria. My husband and I travelled from England and we’ve been here for two years making inquiries. Now we know. It’s terrible but it’s better in a way.’
‘I understand.’
‘I wish we had come to you in the first place. Thank you again.’
I put the phone down although I felt like throwing it through the window. I realised that I’d hardly given any thought to the murdered girls and their families. I’d been too busy being economical with the truth to the police and fending off reporters. And me with a daughter of my own. I was feeling their pain now and an urgent need to see Megan and Ben. And something else—I wanted to get Sean Bright more than I’d wanted anything for a long time.
I stopped in Newtown but Megan wasn’t at home. I could have phoned or texted but I wanted to see and touch both her and Ben—an unusually needy feeling for me. I drove to Glebe in this mood and my pulse went up a few notches when I saw Pen’s car parked in the street.
She greeted me with a hug that bent my ribs. I returned it and clung to her speechlessly.
‘I’m sorry I was such a shit in Canberra,’ she said when we finally broke apart. ‘I felt abandoned and I was scared.’
‘It was bad,’ I said. ‘All bad, but they didn’t hurt you, did they?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but I felt like a pawn in a game that just you and they were playing and . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ I said.
She pointed to a pile of newspapers on the coffee table. ‘I got here feeling buggered and angry and thought I’d just sleep one night and take off. I got the horrors when the news broke and I bloody nearly collapsed. I was under that man’s control for days.’
‘I thought about that, too.’
‘Then I started to think what you’d gone through and I felt rotten. So I stayed.’
We went upstairs to bed and remained there for the rest of the day.
In the evening, I told Pen about Glassop and my dealings with Jones at Fyshwick—all the stuff that wasn’t in the newspapers. She listened and nodded in the appropriate places but she seemed distracted.
‘Are you okay, Pen?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me.’
We were in the kitchen eating a cheese omelette, one of my few culinary achievements, and drinking red wine. She had her appetite back and was going easy on the wine. She took a swig and put her glass down.
‘I’m fine, sort of,’ she said. ‘I’m over the rape and all the rest of it.’
‘What, then?’
‘It’s you. I’m not asking you to tell me how you feel about me. I know men hate that kind of question. It’s how I feel about you and it’s not good. I feel as if I might fall apart again without you, and I hate that feeling. It makes me want to . . .’ ‘Do what?’
‘Go . . .’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t know if I could. That’s the bugger of it. I can’t just . . . I have to do something. I feel as if I’ve left all sorts of things hanging in mid-air, and I don’t even know what they are.’
You haven’t got over anything, I thought, but I didn’t say it and I didn’t know how to help her.
She scraped the scraps on her plate into the bin and rinsed the plate. ‘When my swimming career went bung I saw a psychologist. She was helpful. If she’s still around I think I’ll see her again.’
‘Sounds like a good idea.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ she mocked. ‘Oh, shit, Cliff, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .’
‘It’s all right.’
‘No, it’s not all right. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to find Bright.’
She refilled her glass and toasted me. ‘A man with a purpose.’
27
The next day Pen located her psychologist and went off to see her in Bondi Junction. After a quick visit to Megan and Ben, I went to my office and dealt with routine things. My media exposure hadn’t led to a flood of clients. Megan said that Ben had seen me on television when a crew caught up with me in Queanbeyan.
‘What’s Cliff doing?’ Ben had asked.
‘Hiding,’ Megan said.
‘Why?’
Ben was at that stage when kids ask why exhaustively, whatever the answer they receive, and after three more whys Megan had persuaded him to stop and play with his toys.
I sat at my desk with a notebook in which I’d jotted down various things during the course of the investigation, plus the printouts Pen had prepared, and made more notes of things half-remembered that Jack Buchanan, Rory O’Hara, Kelly, Pen, Glassop and Jones had said. I pored over the material, hoping to see something that would point me in the direction of Bright. Some unanswered or unasked question. The only thing I came up with was the matter of who had hired Bright in the first place, or had he been freel
ance from the start?
Not helpful. I stared at the wall, so frustrated and preoccupied that I barely heard my mobile ring. It was in the pocket of my jacket, which I’d hung on the back of the door. I swore and heaved myself up, prepared to be unpleasant.
‘Hardy.’
‘This is Jones. I think we should meet.’
‘Why?’
‘I imagine you want to find Bright.’
‘I do.’
‘I may be able to help you.’
‘Why would you?’
‘I’ll explain. I’m at the Novotel in Darling Harbour. Shall we say in the coffee shop in an hour?’
It wasn’t far, the day was mild, so I walked. The Novotel is no uglier than other buildings of its kind, and it offered all the homogenised comforts international travellers demand. The coffee shop was on the mezzanine floor and I found Jones sitting at a table reading a newspaper. The man who’d introduced himself as Mr A was sitting with him and alerted him to my arrival. Jones nodded and put the paper down.
‘Barney,’ Jones said, ‘why don’t you go and see the sights for a while?’
‘Barney who?’ I said.
‘Just Barney.’
I sat down. ‘Like you’re just Jones.’
‘Yes.’
Barney gave me an unfriendly look and moved off. Jones reached into his jacket pocket and brought out my voice recorder. He slid it across the table.
‘Very helpful, thank you, but I don’t suggest you record this conversation. Coffee?’
‘Flat white,’ I said. ‘Very hot.’
‘I agree.’ Jones signalled for a waiter and ordered the coffee.
‘You made a splash in the media,’ Jones said.
‘It couldn’t be helped.’
‘I was grateful that you didn’t refer to our . . . business.’
‘Don’t be grateful. I was protecting myself from a charge of withholding information about a wanted man. It could’ve meant my licence. As I told you, I have enemies.’