by PD Martin
The incline gets steeper, and as we get closer to the small farmhouse we instinctively slow down and crouch a little lower, melding our bodies into the shadows of the trees. Thankfully we’re all wearing dark clothes, with aqua blue being the lightest colour in the mix. With just over one hundred metres to go, the tree line stops short, providing a perimeter around the house. Lots of country homesteads followed this format, planting pines or other similar border-type trees up the driveway but stopping well short of the actual house, which was built in the middle of cleared land.
I take a deep breath, focusing on the two front windows of the house. Light streams from them to the surrounding dirt, and Wake’s Pajero is in muted light at the top of the driveway.
Shaw, leaning on a tree for cover, turns around and gives us a nod. He holds up five fingers, indicating we had five minutes before they’ll approach the house from the front.
Darren and I set off to the left, keeping to the line of trees rather than going diagonally across to the side of the house. We stagger our dashes from tree-to-tree, keeping low and taking it one metre, one tree, at a time. The others keep their eyes on the house, and when I glance back at them occasionally they give me the “all clear” nod. So far, so good.
We overshoot the side of the house, and once we’re about twenty metres past the mark, we crouch together behind a tree.
‘Ready?’ Darren asks.
I nod, but my breathing is hard and fast—not from exertion, but from pure adrenaline. Is this where John was held?
‘I’ll go first.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I make the dash through the open space. There’s nowhere to hide, no cover, but I still think we’ve been discreet enough that Wake is confident he’s hidden. As far as he’s concerned, by now we’d only be wondering why he didn’t turn up for the hypnosis session. There’s no way he’d think we’re out in front of his hideaway.
I make it to the corner of the house without incident and a few minutes later Darren’s by my side. We move together down the side of the house, heading for the back. At the first window I risk a look inside. With the internal lights on, it would be very hard for Wake to see us, unless his face was pressed against the window. Otherwise, all he’d see is his own reflection. Still, I keep the look to a peek, ducking my head up for only a couple of seconds.
‘Well?’ Darren whispers into my ear.
I shake my head. All I could see was a bedroom, and beyond the bedroom door a hallway. It looks like the house is in the classic design of a long hall with rooms rolling off from either side, and the kitchen and bathroom are probably at the back of the house.
We keep moving along the side of the house until we get to the next window. However, at this window, the lack of light makes me cautious. Without a light on in the room, if Wake happened to be looking outside just as I popped my head up, he’d see me. I play it safe, sinking underneath the window and pausing, listening. After a minute of silence I keep us moving toward the next window, which I’m assuming must be the bathroom or kitchen. But as we move closer to the back of the house, another building suddenly becomes visible. It’s large, almost as big as the house. And while it’s only made of steel and resembles a huge shed, it’s also a totally enclosed structure. A faint light emanates from inside.
A rush of nausea hits me and an onslaught of images comes thick and fast.
Faces of boys…screaming…boys gasping for their last breaths…screaming…
I come to with Darren shaking me. I’m on the ground, leaning against the side of the house. How long have I been here?
‘You okay?’ Darren’s brow is wrinkled and he looks extremely worried.
I manage a nod, followed swiftly by a cold shiver despite the fact I’m drenched in sweat.
‘This is it.’ I look over at the renovated shed, then avert my eyes. ‘That’s where he takes them.’ I can barely get the screams out of my head and I keep on seeing their faces in taunting flashes. It’s not the worse visual I’ve encountered, not the most graphic, but the boys’ fear…I dig my nails into the palm of my hand, concentrating on not throwing up.
Then it hits me…Curtis Baker. Stay on track.
I edge my way up the side of the weatherboard wall until I’m standing and make for the large shed.
Darren grabs my wrist lightly. ‘What are you doing?’ His voice is barely audible.
‘We have to go in. Curtis Baker.’ I match his decibel reading.
‘We’ll get the others first. They don’t know about the shed.’
‘What if he’s in there right now…doing God knows what to that boy…or killing him?’ My voice rises ever so slightly.
Darren’s brow furrows and then gives me a nod before making the dash across the open yard to the shed’s entrance. He stands, his back against the shed, and after a few seconds waves me over. Darren was looking at the back windows of the house, so obviously Wake isn’t standing in the kitchen with a direct visual of the shed. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s not somewhere in the house rather than inside the shed.
My legs are wobbly, but they do take me across the dry earth to Darren’s side. I hold my gun close to my chest, ready.
He looks at me and we both give each other a little nod. Holding Darren’s gaze I mouth, ‘I’ll go first.’
His brow furrows again for a few seconds before he realises it’s our only option. We can’t discount Wake having a firearm and I’m the one holding a gun.
I manoeuvre myself past Darren, still keeping tight with the building. Hand extended, I test the handle of the metal door. It gives, and I push it down very slowly until the lock releases. My options are to go in slow, hoping he’s not looking at the door, or go in fast, gun leading. I decide on the first option, and gently nudge the door open with my left hand and slight body weight, while using my right hand to hold my gun up at chest height. I also listen intently, ready for any sound that may warn me Wake’s coming our way.
The door’s only open about twenty centimetres, not enough for me to see inside, when I hear a boy’s muffled cry. I turn back to Darren and he gives me a nod, indicating he heard it too. I quickly switch to option number two, swinging the door open with my gun trained roughly at what I’d estimate to be Wake’s chest level, and I step in.
A little boy is sprawled on a torn leather sofa, watching a dilapidated TV.
The inside of the shed comprises of a large living space at the front, while down the back are three rooms with three closed doors. The little boy looks up at me and I put my forefinger in front of my lips. He freezes, glancing back at the middle door.
I move over to him, keeping my gun on the doors, and crouch down next to him. ‘You’re safe now,’ I whisper.
The boy’s sandy blonde hair is matted together, and his face is streaked with dirt—as is the rest of his body. He wears nothing but a pair of shorts. The boy’s not Curtis Baker. I don’t even recognise him from the missing persons reports we ploughed through at Lily’s house. A victim who somehow disappeared under the radar?
I stand up and move slowly toward the back rooms with Darren close behind.
Another little whimper startles me, and I can tell it’s coming from behind one of the doors, but it’s hard to say which one. I take a quick glance back at the boy, who’s now watching us rather than the TV. I’m sure he looked at the middle door when I first arrived, but confirmation of that would be handy. However his face is blank.
Moving forward, I signal to Darren that I’m going to try the middle first. He nods, but I’m still at least ten metres away when the little boy on the couch yells.
‘Anthony, police!’
Anger flickers through me, but is quickly gone and I make a run for the back wall, heading for the left side. I remind myself it’s not the boy’s fault. He’s obviously been with Wake for a long time and has been groomed, just like we assume Wake was by his “predecessor”. A derivation of the classic Stockholm Syndrome, where a hostage bonds with their captor.
My plan is
to get my back up against that wall and then wait for Wake to come hurtling out of one of the rooms. But we don’t make it before the centre door flings open. Tears are streaming down Wake’s face, and he’s unarmed. Or appears to be.
‘Stop right there! Hands up in the air where I can see them.’
He complies with my request, tears still falling.
‘What have you done, Wake?’ I rush past him and push him over to Darren, double checking there’s not a gun or anything else in the small of his back.
The room is just like the one from my vision…a bed, two buckets, nothing else. And lying on the bed is the lifeless form of Curtis Baker.
‘No!’ I rush to the bed and drop to my knees, checking for a pulse. Baker’s neck is red, and I can still see the imprint of Wake’s fingers around it. Death by strangulation usually occurs when the pressure around the neck blocks the blood flow to the brain, by compressing the carotid artery. It’s compromising the blood to the brain rather than cutting off the airway that’s deadly. First the victim will become unconscious and then, if the pressure is still applied, death will quickly follow. But I’m hoping we interrupted Wake in time—before death and hopefully before irreparable brain damage. We were fast…he didn’t have much time with Curtis. But just as I’m cursing myself for not getting here a minute sooner, I feel the faint pop of a pulse. Quiet, slow, but it’s there. Barely able to contain my excitement, I check to see if he’s breathing.
With the pressure around his neck no longer present, he should regain consciousness quite quickly; but I still need to confirm he’s breathing. Placing my hand close to his mouth, I feel a faint heat against it and the breath is confirmed by a gentle rise and fall in his chest. It’s a little slow and uneven, but it’s something. Rescue breathing, rather than full CPR, may help to even it out and will ensure as much oxygen as possible is getting into his lungs. Gently tilting his head back, I block his nose with my thumb and forefinger and give him small breaths.
‘Baker’s back here,’ Darren says. Obviously Shaw, Danahay and Lily have finished their sweep of the house and found their way to the back shed.
I’m not surprised to see only Shaw and Danahay come through the door—Lily would have stayed with the boy on the couch.
‘Shit!’ Shaw crosses to the bed.
I look up. ‘He’s alive, just unconscious. But I don’t know how long he’s been out for.’
Shaw kneels down on the other side of the bed. ‘Strangled… even if he wakes up, he could have brain damage.’
I bite my lip. ‘I know.’ I continue with mouth-to-mouth, even though I don’t know if it will help or not.
‘I’ll get on the SAT phone. We need paramedics A-S-A-P.’
‘Uh huh.’ I sit back on my haunches and watch Curtis’s breaths. ‘I think his rhythm and force are getting better.’
While Shaw calls the emergency operator, Curtis inhales several more times and lets out a sharp cough before his eyes flutter open. I lean into him, making sure he sees my face, a female face, immediately.
‘You’re safe now.’ Compared to the other boy I said this to, it seems to have a much stronger effect on Baker.
‘Police?’ Curtis’s voice is husky and he’s still coughing, but the clarity of his question shows me he’s with it. To double check, I ask him his name, age, where he lives, and he’s able to answer all the questions easily and coherently.
I look up to Shaw, who’s listening intently. ‘Can you ring the Baker family?’
Shaw gives Curtis Baker a wide smile. ‘Sure.’
It’s the sort of phone call we all long for, but often don’t get to make: a successful resolution to a case and a victim found alive, not dead.
He punches the number into the SAT phone off by heart. ‘Mr Baker, it’s Detective Brad Shaw from Victoria Police… It’s good news, Mr Baker. I’m with your son now and he’s okay.’
Okay is an overstatement, but he is alive.
Epilogue
Two days later
I snake my way through the well-kept grass, navigating on gut feel and long-ago memories. The sun’s shining, beating down with a heat that seems way hotter than the forecasted twenty-eight—but that’s the Aussie sun. As the warmth radiates into every limb, I’m reminded of my childhood in country Victoria.
I take a left, skim-reading the tombstones as I go. It always saddens me to see the indicators of shorter life spans. Death is never easy, never okay, but there’s something so wrong, so tragic about dying young.
I start looking for John’s grave, feeling that we’re close. I vaguely remember it being near the top left corner of the cemetery. In the distance I recognise a stone marker. Surrounded by marble, it looks modest and somehow comforting—cosier. The stone marker suits John better than marble.
I stop at his grave and take a deep breath before sinking to my haunches. ‘I did it, John. I finally did it.’
I feel the floods of wetness on my cheeks before I even realise I’m crying. Heavy sobs drag my lungs down, as I struggle for breaths. Darren’s hanging back, a good ten metres behind me, and I’m glad he doesn’t come closer. This is my time with John.
Eventually the raw emotion passes and I sit down cross-legged at the foot of John’s grave. I know Mum talks to John, but I’ve never really done that, except for maybe a few times when I was looking over his case file and I’d let something slip like “Who did this to you?” Aside from that, I’ve never felt comfortable talking to him.
But today…today is the time to tell him everything. It took a few hours of questioning Wake to put it all together, but Shaw and Lily Murphy did a great job. During questioning, Wake even confessed that he was planning to kill Curtis, the other boy, and then himself. Lucky for us he didn’t realise we were so close behind.
I take a deep breath. ‘We found the place, John. The place where he took you.’ Another deep breath. ‘Your abductor’s name was Harold Banks. He was a journalist for The Bendigo Advertiser and covered a lot of territory in Shepp, too, including writing articles for the sports and community pages.’
According to Wake, local sporting events for kids were Banks’s hunting ground. And Wake copied this behaviour many years later. Elements of our profile fit both men, but we always knew we could have been dealing with two offenders.
‘Harold Banks’s wife left him and took their son and younger daughter when he was thirty-nine. The son was ten at the time and the wife suspected Banks was sexually abusing him. But rather than going to the police, or even talking to her son about it, she just up and left. I guess that was easier for her—to say that the marriage wasn’t working, rather than admitting her fears to herself and others.’
Her decision was also probably influenced by the era. Back in the seventies, paedophilia was much less common—or maybe just reported less.
‘Banks’s wife told Shaw that she’d never revealed her fears to anyone—until Shaw started asking the hard questions yesterday. She’d walked in on her husband and son, both in only their underwear. It was the final straw, something that confirmed her suspicions. She gathered the two kids up there and then and walked, sending her sister back later for their things. Banks’s last image of his son was his wife dragging him away in only his underwear.’
Lily and I both believe this is the significance of finding the victims in their underwear. Every victim was a substitute son for Banks, and he left them in the last image he had of his son. Rather than representing remorse or restoring the children’s innocence in some way, the underwear was part of Banks’s signature.
Banks’s family also represents his most common victim type—a boy with a younger sister. He didn’t find the boys through the sisters, but most of his victims did have younger sisters—and now we know why.
‘Banks’s first victim was Anthony Wake, whose real name is Jarod Small. Small’s parents were killed in a car accident and Banks turned up at the police station in response to a call for relatives. I guess the welfare system wasn’t what it is today,
because they believed him—believed he was the boy’s only living relative. Jarod Small, known to us as Anthony Wake, became the son Banks had lost, and I guess Banks filled a gap for Wake too...until the sexual abuse started.’ I stare at John’s tombstone.
‘Wake didn’t even know it was wrong at first. But after a few years his “father’s” interest began to wane...Wake was reaching puberty. I don’t know how it happened the first time, how Wake felt when he realised Banks had brought another little boy home. Maybe he was relieved that Banks was no longer paying him any sexual attention...maybe he was jealous. Either way, Wake says he tried to protect the boys as much as he could, but in the end he couldn’t fight a grown man.’
I twist the ring on my little finger. ‘And I guess he loved Banks.’ That especially makes me pause.
‘In 1980 Banks hoped a fresh start in New Zealand would tame his demons, so he sold his property and took Wake/Small with him. But it didn’t help. He didn’t stop. Death was the only thing that could stop Banks from abducting young boys and then killing them. From what Wake said, Banks had a heart attack. His death was recorded as natural causes, but no one even knew he had a “son”. As far as his New Zealand workmates and neighbours knew, Banks was a bachelor. And when he keeled over, Wake ran. As for the claims of amnesia, Wake says he experienced a complete memory loss for many years. Part of him knew how wrong his “father’s” actions were, so he shut them all out. It wasn’t until Wake hit his late thirties that he started to remember. Flashes of memory when he looked in the mirror. He said eventually it got so bad that he couldn’t see his own reflection—only that of his abuser. He remembered the house near Shepparton, found it and bought it, using a company name.’
Hence why it didn’t come up in the initial Victoria Police search.
‘And so he started where Banks left off…recruiting a son-like figure and killing the other boys he abducted once he was done with them.’