“Saunders has got to Davis somehow. I don’t know, promised him something, or threatened him. But Davis is saying I was alone in the Cadogan house for long enough to have taken the money. It’s a straight up lie.”
“Surely they can’t prove anything, though. There is no money, so it’s not like they’re going to find you with it. It’s still your word against that of a guy who killed his wife. Even if Davis says you had the opportunity, that doesn’t prove anything. They can’t prove anything ’cause there’s nothing to prove.”
Stocky shook his head, put down the half-eaten burger. “Doesn’t matter. It’s my reputation, Coop. It’s enough to be accused, but then if your fellow officer doesn’t back you up… shit. They might as well throw me in jail right now.”
Cooper had to admit, it was pretty bad. If he thought he disliked Ray Davis before, he absolutely hated him now. Saunders must have something on him, it’s the only explanation. In a him-or-me situation, Davis was the guy who would always save his own arse. Cooper didn’t know what to say, how to make it better. He was so angry with Davis, with Saunders, with the whole fucking system. He was so angry he hadn’t noticed his phone was ringing.
“You going to get that?” Stocky asked, going back to his burger. How could the man eat right now?
Cooper answered the phone. It was Anita.
“Seems Vanessa Bridges was in a bit of trouble when she left Perth,” said the analyst. “The local cops were after her for credit card fraud. I’ve got the fraud squad looking into it now, see if they can trace her. But I have a feeling they’re not going to.” There was more than a hint of a smile in her voice, and Cooper knew she’d found something.
“What have you got?”
“I did a couple of searches, looking for unsolved cases around the time the women supposedly travelled across the country. I concentrated on the route they would have taken, and I got a hit. The body of an unidentified female was found in a shallow grave near the Fraser Range rest area, which is on the edge of the Dundas Nature Reserve.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s still in Western Australia. The body was found a couple of months after Vanessa and Carmel were supposed to have left Perth, and the report says it was badly decomposed. The timing matches.”
Cooper relayed the information to Stocky, who polished off the rest of his burger and fries as he listened.
“Okay, thanks, Anita. Anything else?”
“Yeah, one more thing. I’ve been monitoring Carmel Payne’s Facebook account. She just shut it down. Did you spook her?”
“Shit. Okay, got it, thanks.” Cooper hung up and stood, not interested in lunch anymore. “Carmel just shut down her Facebook page,” he said to Stocky. “She might be about to run.”
* * *
Back at the real estate office, Cooper noticed straight away there was a car missing from the staff parking spots. Shit. They went inside and found Jack on his own in his office. He was paler than he’d been this morning, and Cooper could tell the man knew something was very wrong.
“Where’s Carmel, Jack?” asked Stocky, as Jack came out into the main office area.
“She’s out to lunch with a friend. She left just after you did.”
“What friend?”
“A woman, I don’t know her name. Haven’t you asked enough questions for one day?”
Stocky took a step closer. “Nope. We’ve barely begun.”
The bell over the front door sounded, and Cooper looked around to find a man entering the office. He went over and intercepted him. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to come back another time.” He guided the confused man back out the door, then turned the ‘closed’ sign over.
“Let’s sit down,” suggested Stocky, and they all took seats at the round table in the kitchenette. There were no offers of coffee this time. “Jack, we know Carmel isn’t who she says she is. The question is, do you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re taking the word of two former friends on the other side of the country who you haven’t even spoken to in person. You don’t know what lies they might be telling, or why.”
“We don’t think they’re lying, Jack.” Stocky stared at him, and Jack looked nervous. Was he involved in all of this? They strongly suspected that Carmel had killed another woman, either by accident or purposefully, and stolen her identity to relocate to the other side of the country. The question was: was she hiding it from her new husband? Or did she tell him everything? Cooper suspected a woman like Carmel, or Vanessa, or whoever she was, would keep that kind of information to herself. No knowing how a husband or future husband would react to that kind of news. But Jack was sweating. He knew something. Time to lay it all on the line.
“Jack,” Cooper began in his most authoritative voice, “we found evidence that leads me to believe that Carmel killed her friend on the way over from Perth and assumed her identity once she got here. She’s been lying to you this whole time. She’s not Carmel Simpkins, never was. She’s not even Vanessa Bridges, although she pretended to be for two years. Before that, well, we don’t know yet, but we’ll find out. The point is, she’s not who she says she is. Her whole life is a lie. Your marriage is a lie.” Cooper leaned forward. “I don’t believe you had any knowledge of this, Jack. I think she played you, like she’s trying to play us now. But I think you know something. Do you know something, Jack? Something about Rebecca Gilmore? Something you want to tell us?”
Cooper watched as Jack’s last line of defence dissolved. He knew he’d got through, was about to get a break in the case. But he wasn’t expecting what Jack said next.
“I killed Rebecca.”
16
“You what?” Stocky asked.
“I said, I killed Rebecca.” Jack Payne sat very still in his chair, and Cooper noticed that he was no longer sweating. He was telling the truth.
“Okay,” said Stocky gently. “Talk us through it.”
He nodded, a quiet calm settling over him. “I was never seeing her. The affair, between me and Rebecca? It never happened. That was Carmel’s idea. She told me if Rebecca was having an affair, you might blame her murder on that Adultery Killer. But that wasn’t going to work, because he sends photos to the husband, doesn’t he? We couldn’t do that.” He paused, but neither Cooper nor Stocky said a word.
“Anyway, she thought the affair story might point you towards Royce, Rebecca’s husband. Carmel never liked him.”
Cooper had to ask. “You mean… she’d planned to murder Rebecca?”
Jack shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. She stopped calling Rebecca on her own phone a while ago, started using mine, so there’d be a record of calls between me and Rebecca. When she first started doing it I asked why, she said it was an insurance policy. I didn’t really understand, but then I never understood half of what Carmel was thinking. She was always two steps ahead of me, and I trusted her.” He looked around the office. “This business was about to go under before I married Carmel. She turned things around so quickly, I don’t know how but she did it. ‘Look after the customers and I’ll look after the business side of things’, she told me. So I did, and we’ve never been in a better position.”
Cooper was amazed at how matter-of-fact Jack was. A woman was killed — her murder planned, no less — and he’s talking about it as if it was part of a business dealing. “So you let her take over the running of your business without asking what she was doing?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. She got the results, and I was happy not to have to worry about it anymore. I deal with people, I sell houses. I don’t do paperwork. Carmel found the customers, both buyers and sellers. She got people coming through the door, and I did the rest. We’re a great team. Were a great team.”
“Let’s go back to this ‘insurance policy’,” said Stocky. “You didn’t question what she meant by that? You didn’t find it odd she’d use your phone instead of hers to call Rebecca?”
“Yeah, I guess I did. But she told me not to worry about it; it w
as all part of a plan. Just a backup plan, she said. In case things go wrong.”
“In case things go wrong with what?”
Jack sighed, clasping and unclasping his hands together on the table. “Look, I’m not stupid. I knew whatever Carmel was doing to get people through the door might not have been entirely legal, and I knew it somehow involved Rebecca Gilmore. But my business went from almost dead to the best it’s ever been in six months. She turned things around, and I chose not to ask questions. The phone calls to Rebecca were another thing she said she was taking care of, and I let it go.”
Cooper was getting increasingly worried that Carmel was at that very minute packing up her things and getting the hell out of town. But they needed to get some more answers from Jack before they could move on her.
“Let’s go back to the part where you said you killed Rebecca,” said Stocky. “Tell us what happened.”
“Carmel told me Rebecca had to go. I don’t know why, but I can guess it had something to do with her work. I overheard a few of their conversations, and I got the impression Rebecca was getting into trouble at work for doing whatever it was Carmel had her doing. Carmel can be very persuasive, you know. She’s used to people doing what she wants. I learned pretty quick after we got married how to keep her happy. You don’t want to make her unhappy.” Jack glanced down at his lap and paused.
“Do you think Rebecca made her unhappy?” Cooper asked.
Jack nodded. “Why else would she make me kill her?”
It was all Cooper could do to keep his expression neutral. They had to keep Jack talking, and the best way to do that was to stay unaffected by what he said and just listen, prompting where necessary, as if he were telling a normal anecdote. But what Jack Payne relayed to them was anything but normal.
As Jack spoke, Cooper’s impression of Carmel Payne, or whoever she was, grew more and more disturbing. He was confident she’d targeted Jack from the outset, picking him out as a vulnerable single man with a failing business — someone she’d be able to easily manipulate however she pleased. They’d married less than six months after meeting, and by then she’d already taken over most of the day-to-day running of the real estate agency.
She’d been friends with Rebecca Gilmore before she’d met Jack, and from what Jack said Cooper suspected she’d been getting Rebecca to steal identity information from her work at the tax office. With names, addresses, dates of birth and tax file numbers, Carmel could find out a lot about a person. Couple it with information gleaned from social media sites, where people tend to share far too many personal details, and Carmel Payne would have had a wealth of information to work with.
It wouldn’t have been too hard to use the personal information she held to find people who were interested in buying or selling property. With good marketing skills, which Cooper was sure would be part of Carmel’s repertoire, he could see how she was able to get people through the door of Jack’s business. But how did she get him to commit murder?
“Carmel called Rebecca using my phone on that Friday night. I think I told you I’d spoken to her, but… that was a lie. It was Carmel. She suggested to Rebecca they have a girls’ night out, and because Carmel had been rather cold with Rebecca for a couple of weeks beforehand, Rebecca jumped at the chance. Rebecca would have done anything for Carmel, so I guess she was probably upset that Carmel had been giving her the cold shoulder.”
“Why had Carmel been giving Rebecca the cold shoulder?” asked Cooper.
“I’m not sure, really. Carmel’s like that. Hot and cold, you know. When she’s hot on you, she can make you feel like you’re the king of the world, you know what I mean? Then when she’s cold, all you want is to be hot again. You’ll do anything.”
Cooper nodded. He’d met a few people like that over the years, but fortunately he was able to read them pretty quickly and stay away. But people like Jack and Rebecca were the clueless targets those sociopaths hunted.
“So you think Rebecca was in Carmel’s ‘cold’ zone, and was trying to get hot again? So she agreed to go out with her Friday night?”
“That’s right,” Jack said with a short, sharp nod. “Only Carmel had no intentions of going to any club or restaurant.”
“Tell us what happened,” Stocky said softly.
Jack turned his attention to Cooper’s partner, and sat back in his chair. “She told me what she planned to do. She’d pick Rebecca up, and drive to the national park. Once she found somewhere isolated enough, she’d pretend there was something wrong with the car and pull over. Which is exactly what she did.”
“With you in the car as well?”
“I was in the boot. When she pulled over, she told Rebecca she had a toolkit in the boot of the car. Rebecca was asking questions, why were they out here in the bush when they were supposed to be going for a night out, and all that. Carmel said she’d wanted to talk about their business first, and wanted to do it somewhere quiet. She faked the car trouble and went to the boot, that’s when she let me out. I had a knife we’d brought from home.”
“What happened when Rebecca saw you?” asked Stocky.
“She was getting out of the passenger seat when I came around from the back of the car. I had the knife behind my back, so she didn’t see that at first. She was confused, started to ask what I was doing there. I don’t think she realised at first I’d come out of the boot, I think she thought I’d come to help with the car or something. But it soon dawned on her that couldn’t be possible. Carmel hadn’t called me, and I’d got there way too quick.
“I saw it on her face when I brought out the knife. Fear, panic.” He cast his eyes down, started fidgeting with his trouser leg. It was almost a minute before he looked up and continued. “Carmel grabbed her arm to stop her from running, and then put her hand across her mouth to stop her from screaming. ‘We just want to talk to you’, Carmel said to her, but we all knew that wasn’t true. It was dark, only the headlights of the car let us see each other. Rebecca’s eyes were so wide, she was looking around, trying to figure out what to do. Carmel told me to get the torch from the glovebox and turn the car lights off, so I did. Then we walked into the bush.”
“You did everything Carmel told you to do?” Cooper asked.
“I told you, you don’t make Carmel unhappy. Little things are bad enough, but when you stuff up on the big things… you don’t want to stuff up on the big things.” Jack’s hand came up and stroked the right side of his jaw, just underneath his chin, and for the first time Cooper noticed a scar. “Yes, I did what she said. I led the way down a track and into the bush with the torch, and Carmel brought Rebecca behind me. We put some tape over her mouth so she couldn’t scream.”
“Then what happened?”
“Once we’d walked for a few minutes, Carmel said stop so we stopped. She took the knife off me and started waving it in Rebecca’s face, told her she was going to die and the police were going to blame her husband. Carmel said a few derogatory things about Royce, and Rebecca started to cry. I felt sorry for her, then.”
Cooper was picturing the scene in his head. He could see Rebecca frightened and desperate, knowing she was about to die, perhaps wondering what she did to deserve her fate. Rueing the day she met Carmel Payne and fell under her spell.
“Did Carmel stab Rebecca?” asked Stocky.
Jack shook his head. “No. She threatened her for a while, then handed the knife to me. ‘You do it’, she said. Then I was scared. That wasn’t the plan, and I told her so. She got angry. ‘How am I supposed to trust you?’ she said. ‘How do I know you love me if you won’t do what I ask?’ I told her I loved her, but she said it wasn’t enough. She said I had to show her. So… so I did it.”
“You stabbed Rebecca?”
“Yes. I took the knife and I stabbed Rebecca while my wife held her down. It was hard at first, but Carmel kept yelling at me to do it again, do it again, do it again. So I did, and it got easier. I shouldn’t say that.” His eyes fell to his lap. “It wasn’t eas
y, of course. But it did get easier each time. The knife went in easier.”
Cooper wondered what it must be like to be completely under the spell of another person, so caught up in their bullshit that you would kill for them. Actually take another person’s life, because they asked you to. Human behaviour astounded him every day.
Stocky had obviously heard enough. He stood, and pulled Jack up as well. He got out his handcuffs and formally placed Jack under arrest for the murder of Rebecca Gilmore.
“Call for a uniform team to take him in,” Stocky said to Cooper, before turning back to Jack. “What can you tell us about this person Carmel was meeting with now? Is there even a person? Or has she already run?”
“No, there’s definitely a person. Her first name is Kim, I don’t know her surname.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Just that they’ve been meeting quite a lot lately.”
“Do you know where she works?” Cooper asked. Maybe Carmel was grooming her to replace Rebecca as a source of identity information.
“I don’t think she works. Carmel said something about feeling sorry for the woman because she was on a disability pension, or something like that. She has no-one in her life, that’s why Carmel’s been taking her out to lunch a lot, I guess.”
The look on Stocky’s face told Cooper he and his partner had reached the same conclusion almost instantly. Carmel wasn’t grooming this woman to feed her information, she was planning on taking over her identity. They needed to find Kim fast, before they had another body on their hands.
17
Once Jack was taken into custody Cooper and Stocky turned the office upside down, looking for anything that might help them identify Kim. They found nothing. Carmel had been too careful.
“We’re looking in the wrong place,” said Stocky.
“Should we go search the house?”
“No, we need to be smarter than that. Even if we find out who this Kim woman is, Jack said they go out for lunch. That could be anywhere.”
The Dark Series Page 10