Scarlet Stiletto - the First Cut

by Lindy Cameron

  The steward handed me a cardboard box: a sandwich still cold from storage, a miniature chocolate bar, which I ate first, and a plastic container of spring water. I dreamt briefly of the day I’d be flying business class. What did I know about the victims? Five people, aged between eighteen and sixty-two, both genders, one Greek-Australian, one Scot settled here for four decades, and three Aussies with genetic histories like a squashed packet of Arnott’s assorted biscuits. No Indigenous Australians. No children—or babies. A variety of jobs. Victims from different States, whose only conjunction under the stars was their apparently unexpected, inexplicable, and terribly painful death.

  The temperature on the tarmac at Alice was beyond my comprehension. The last time I’d been here it was winter, and that was hot enough. I’m small and, I like to think, strong. A decade of lifting weights, long runs, longer uphill hikes in the harsh terrain of the Blue Mountains, nights—and the odd precious morning—of lust; nothing had made me sweat like this. What my mother calls perspiration, if she ever mentions it, spurts from me like water being pumped from the Great Artesian Basin.

  I collected the hire car: four-wheel drive, high clearance, big engine, chips out of the windscreen, a certain gritty reality to it. I felt Ray beside me as I zapped open the doors.

  “Good to see ya,” he said, looking like he meant it. He climbed into the passenger seat, grinning at my raised eyebrows. “Constable dropped me out here. Thought we should have a yarn before you meet Heinrich.”

  Michael Heinrich is now the detective in charge of the investigation. He was brought in from Darwin when it was finally realised that four accidental deaths on or around the same date—the summer solstice—four years running, and all bodies found at the same sacred waterhole, were getting beyond chance. None of the deaths was witnessed. Then, nothing the following year. Now one more, same place, same MO, but out of sync, time wise. This one was in August; in fact, on the date Azaria disappeared. Heinrich’s original report had been tough on the Alice police; but he’d done little better himself, so he had a few chips on his shoulder to fry.

  “So, Heinrich’s theory held no water? Couldn’t you find an Indigenous person angry enough at the invasion of their sacred land to kill?” I asked, as we hit the highway. The traditional owners have maintained for years that the Rock climb should be closed, for spiritual reasons rather than safety. There was plenty of anger out there.

  “Come on, you know as well as I do that the Aborigines have always been too bloody kind to their invaders. And most of ‘em would rather wrestle with Arnie Schwarzenegger than take on the spirits at Uluru. Anyway, nothing holds water around here, mate. Look around. Just rocks, big rocks, small rocks, sand. Red, yellow or bleached; just like the hair on your head, young Annabel.”

  I didn’t mind the remark about my hair. A, because I like it to look seriously bleached and B, because Ray has that old-fashioned courtesy that city men seem to have thrown out with the ability to change a car tyre.

  “Has to be someone who knows the Rock well though, then?” I questioned.

  “Mate, it’s like there’s a big red ‘X marks the spot’ 1000 feet up from Maggie’s Spring. They had to go over in an absolutely exact position. That puts the park rangers in the frame just as much as the locals.”

  “So, let’s hear your theory.”

  “The obvious is that the date’s the significant thing, yeah? The solstice always attracts a few baggie-trousered spiritual types. But, maybe it’s the only time o’year the arsehole gets off work.”

  “Which might give us a hint of what he does for a job. A workplace that closes the week before Christmas ...” I liked the direction Ray was going. A midsummer sacrifice seemed far too simplistic.

  A road train settled itself on my back bumper bar, making the big car suddenly feel fragile. Ray checked the left side-mirror. “Idiot,” he remarked, before returning to his topic. “So, I’ve done a bit of sifting. You know that one consortium owns most of the hotel beds in the Territory? Well, they’re not too willing to give over info, but Marcia works with a girl who’s got a bit of influence. Got hold of a list of guests who’d been here more’n once. Another list of workers who’ve been around for a few years.”

  “Heinrich hadn’t checked this?”

  “Cursory. He’s still convinced it’s someone local.”

  “Is there any way they could’ve been murdered and carried up the Rock?”

  “You’ll see the pathology reports when we get in. We’re not sure with two of ‘em, what bloody killed ‘em. The bodies were so smashed those clever dicks can’t be sure whether the jugular was cut by a blunt knife or a sharp stone on the way down.”

  The road train, four petrol tankers swaying and shimmering in the heat, was clinging to our rear like it might swallow us up any moment. It was beginning to make me queasy. “This the usual way of welcoming visitors round here?” I asked, nodding my head at the rear-view mirror.

  “Nah,” Ray responded slowly, “just curious. Maybe I’ll ring through, check the plates.”

  We were entering Alice now, with the slow sweep of Colorbond-clad suburbs. Not many wooden buildings around here. I let Ray make the call but wondered why he was bothering. He’d left basic copper duties behind twenty years back and there didn’t seem to be any other reason to worry about a bad driver.

  “Hmm,” was all he said when he’d got the reply. Scribbled something in his notebook.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah. You thought I was hard to work with. Well, Heinrich looks like he’s come out of some women’s magazine, but it’s all surface. He’ll hone in on you, for sure, being an attractive young woman. Watch him—and your back!”

  The next two days I spent closeted in the air-conditioned police building. Three of the bodies had been exhumed and re-autopsied when the stab wound on the fourth was noticed. Pics were pretty vile. I was glad I hadn’t sat through the autopsies. Interviews with the poor buggers who’d found the bodies weren’t very revealing. No forensics to speak of, either top or bottom of the Rock. Literally impossible to inspect the sheer 400 metres of the fall.

  On the third morning I searched for a coffee shop. I only drink one cup a day and I like that to be stronger than the French Foreign Legion on full pay. The tourist trade in Alice is huge so there’s a surfeit of cafes. I chose one with haphazard decor and a pile of newspapers. The smell of it proclaimed coffee, which was strong and unburnt. I picked up a Northern Territory News— the national and southern papers arrive on the first plane in at lunchtime—and found myself an outside seat. There’s always a chance of overhearing something useful.

  As I stirred sugar into the coffee a shadow dropped the temperature about ten degrees.

  “Good morning,” Michael Heinrich said, seating himself without asking.

  I paused. I’m not a great morning person and I hadn’t taken to Heinrich. On the other hand my job is get inside the head of a killer and I needed to access all of the evidence, possible leads, the police can supply.

  “Michael. What’re you doing here?” I kept my voice polite.

  “Looking for you.”

  Ray’s right, Heinrich’s a good-looking bastard. Tanned, muscular, his hair cut smart enough to be Lygon Street or Paddington. So, the ‘looking for you’ line is destined to work on most women, and some men.

  “Is there more information I should have before I go down to Uluru?” I was keeping it professional.

  He opened his backpack. He’s plain-clothes, and adopts a sort of up-market park ranger look. “I thought you might appreciate these.”

  I whistled. Photos of the victims, at near as possible to the date of death. And years before. Moments from their lives. Personality shots. I looked at Heinrich, hoping he’d think the narrowing of my eyes was due to the searing heat. Not many police would have realised how useful these photos might be.

  “Thanks. But I thought you were convinced this was a ritual, the targets themselves weren’t important?�
�

  Heinrich went slightly red under the tan. Or did he? Was he just a good actor?

  “Listening to you and Ray yesterday made me rethink that theory,” he said. “The repetitive use of such an extravagant place, the precise siting of the bodies in the waterhole, which is supposed to be like a well of life, and the solstice timing do seem to indicate a need on the killer’s part to have these aspects complete in his own schema. On the other hand, perhaps Ray’s right and it’s all a little too obvious.”

  “So, you did psych at uni?”

  This time the blush seemed real. “Did I sound pompous?”

  “No, it was the word ‘schema’. Jargon for people putting things together in their heads according to their particular experience and set of values. Not conscious, necessarily.”

  “A good way of explaining it. You’re quick with words.”

  Was this a discreet put-down? Michael was proving to be extremely clever. Every comment carried a double edge. And potential danger? Ray had more than implied the guy’s ambitions were causing problems. Nothing proven. Rumours that, on occasion, case notes seemed incomplete, evidence perhaps stayed in his drawer. Like the photos, which I decided to take, putting my worries on hold.

  “I appreciate the info. I’ve got to go now. It’s three hours to the Rock.”

  “Maybe more. Look, Annabel, why don’t you wait until tomorrow? We could go through the photographs together. I can fill you in on some of the more personal background of the victims. And maybe we could have dinner?” He sounded almost nervous.

  My cup clattered as I put it down. “Thanks all the same. I’ll be away a couple of days. Perhaps when I get back.” For some reason I thought it best not to tell him I had a meeting with an Aboriginal elder.

  Uluru, home of the rainbow serpent, scene of battles at the beginning of time, now the most visited rock in the whole bloody world. Half a million people or more a year, each of whom could be the killer, and that’s without the traditional people near the Rock. Then there are the thousands of travellers and tired souls who staff the resorts, and all of the others in the communities and townships stretching way back to Alice, which has the only nearest decent shopping centre, 400 K up the road.

  I was within 50 K by lunchtime, the LandCruiser and I having already developed a close relationship. Although, even with the V8 engine, it’d taken an hour to shake off the road train that’d tailed me out of Alice. Now that I was relaxed, it was hard to keep my eyes on the road. I passed Mt Connor, and the top of the Rock itself reared through the passenger window and then just as dramatically disappeared. Tantalising.

  I decided to go straight onto the viewing place I knew from last time I was in the Territory. Behind me was another LandCruiser, in sight since the turn-off from the Lasseter Highway. Perhaps my speed explained why it hadn’t overtaken me. I put on my left indicator, as if I were going into the resort town of Yulara. The Cruiser slowed. I stepped on the gas, pushing myself past the speed limit with style. Thirty seconds later the Cruiser was back. Shit.

  I pulled into the parking bay as near to the last minute as I could, not indicating. Behind me the brakes squealed, the Cruiser hesitated, drove past. Trouble was, there’s basically only one road out here so it wasn’t going to be hard to find me.

  Putting what could be paranoia aside, I clambered out of the car and set my boots in the sand. There, as if it were proclaiming the centre of the world, was the Rock. Still 15 K away but filling almost the entire landscape: immense, solid, immutable, rising indomitably from the flatness. Childhood memories are stored in wholes: glorious paintings rather than jigsaws with their potential for lost pieces and without the complex networks that Heinrich had referred to as schemas.

  My theory about Uluru is that it’s like the perfect childhood memory. Far, far beyond the ordinary and very, very whole. Words like grand and magical slip away, useless. It doesn’t bring tears to the eyes. Instead breath is drawn in; a deep, primeval echo within the body.

  Back in the car I felt cleansed. Which is pretty wild when you think about the amount of sand and grit I’d just shipped into the Cruiser. I was beginning to understand why you’d think there was a religious significance behind the killings.

  I drove on, paid my park entry fees, forgot the receipt for my tax. Thought about going to the murder site before my meeting, but decided on having my mind uncluttered. I don’t go all misty-eyed about Indigenous culture (or any culture, come to that) like some of my friends do, but I’m very aware that the traditional owners will see the place and the events with a completely different mindset to mine. Heinrich’s schemas again.

  Dorothy had asked to meet in the cultural centre about 2 K from Uluru itself. The centre attempts to be discreet, but it’s a group of big tourist shops and cafes, really. Still, inside it was comparatively cool and the flies were occasional rather than smothering. While I waited—I was early—I did a bit of people-watching. Would our killer sit like this, eyeing off a likely candidate? Did he—the likelihood of it being a woman was slimmer than a Vogue model—did he follow his target, get to know them in a peculiar way beforehand? A guy in the UK did a peeping-tom routine for weeks before the actual deed. Said in his confession that killing was the ultimate intimacy, so it was essential he was close to the victim. Charming.

  Dorothy strolled in just as I was feeling eyes on the back of my neck. Maybe I’d been sitting too long, staring too obviously.

  “Green. Good colour,” she said in greeting, referring to the shirt I’d worn so she could recognise me. “My sister, she green.”

  I offered a cup of tea. Colour needs to be noted for its individual and cultural significance, not just its aesthetic, I thought, as I brought the pot back to our table. Interesting, because one of the commonalities the police had failed to notice was that each of the victims was wearing a shirt or blouse that was either red, or had red on it.

  “Red?” I asked Dorothy.

  She considered me, sucking her tea, nodding.

  “You know talk-cure?” she replied.

  “Psychoanalysis?”

  “Yep. Him that one. Think red, keep saying things. Follow path in head.”

  Shit, I thought, am I just a prejudiced gub or is it indeed weird to have a 70-year-old Anangu woman telling me, a white psychologist, to use the method of word association from Freud’s talking cure?

  The interview continued like this. My questions felt inept but Dorothy treated each one with respect. She had soft eyes and a sharp wit, spent the past thirty years trying to get education for her people, and had a daughter who was a health worker and liked to attend conferences on Indigenous mental health. Some woman, this one.

  At the end of an hour we came back to colour. “Think red,” she advised.

  Outside, red was everywhere. Red was earth, sand, dust, sunset, sunrise, blood. The blood of life, of roo killed and a feast to follow. Red gave succour. Was it death? No, death-blood dried brown. I paced the murder site. Red was the Rock, too, of course. If you wore red you wouldn’t be so easily seen from below. Did this have meaning?

  I hung around while a busload of German tourists, an eco-tour group with a cacophony of accents, and about a dozen walking groups went by, all with sweat hanging from their eyelashes. From here I couldn’t see the road to suss out whether or not the Land Cruiser had reappeared. It was August since the place had last been roped off as a murder scene. Was it about to happen again?

  Toward sunset everyone cleared out, heading for where the whole Rock could be viewed, morphing spectacularly from red to purple to black. I remembered sunset over Uluru as seductive in its beauty, but today I took the opportunity to be alone at the base. I stared up, peered into caves, crannies, dips, scuffed around the edges of paths. The cleanliness was remarkable. One tissue, no other waste. Then a bone. I picked it up, dusted it off, shoved it into the long pocket of my cargo pants. I could just about feel the spirits of the ancestors watching me and could only hope they’d understand what I was doing.
<
br />   The hotel in this manufactured resort town was comfortable. I’d brought my bathers and was pleased to find a pool with a lap lane of sorts. Back and forth, twist, turn, back again. I ignored the soft whistle of the bloke with tattoos when I got out.

  In my room I looked at the bone and thought about red. The red coat of a dingo. Each time there’d been a killing, a single dingo bone was found among the small amount of debris somewhere near the site. Natural enough, perhaps, but dingoes and death at Ayer’s rock have a poignant history. Azaria Chamberlain was the link. Despite the talk at the time we now know her disappearance was not, in any way, sacrificial. Ritual turned out to be a false lead. So, twenty-odd years later we were dealing with a killer who’d made five deaths look like accidents, and then like rituals. Was he trying to prove, in a warped way, that Lindy really did it? Or, had he been there? Was there guilt that he was assuaging? Did he have something to do with Azaria’s death?