by Tim Buckley
We found a café a couple of streets away and whiled away a couple of hours, then decided to get back to the station a bit early. If Carter got into the station and up to his office, it would be easier for him to avoid seeing us. We figured we had a better chance if we caught him on the hop, if we got back early and got him on the way into the building. For all we knew, there might have been a back entrance or he might come up from some underground parking lot, but there had been a steady stream of cops in and out the front door so it had to be worth a try.
We got there just before two and we were trying to look inconspicuous, apparently chatting airily and checking our phones while stealing furtive peeks at the car park. We’d only been there a few minutes when Emily jabbed a finger into my shoulder.
“There,” she whispered urgently, “there he is! He’s coming this way!”
I turned around just as he saw us and before his faux-friendly smile could mask the flash of irritation that passed across his face.
“Mr Wilde, Mrs Wilde,” he said, hand outstretched, “good to see you both. How are you?”
“Good, thanks, Detective,” I said, shaking his hand. “We were just coming to see you, actually.”
“Gosh, not sure I’ve got time right now,” he said, making a show of checking his watch. “I have a…”
“… squad meeting at two thirty,” I interrupted, “yes, we know. That should be fine, we won’t take up much of your time.”
The annoyance dwelled a little longer on his features this time but then he smiled thinly again.
“You know my diary better than I do, Mr Wilde! Come on then, let’s get to my office. But I can only spare ten minutes.”
It took a few of those minutes to get through the front desk formalities of signing the visitors’ book and getting our name-tags and a few more to wait for the lift in uncomfortable silence, but eventually we made it to his office, a glass-walled fiasco of paper and files in the corner of the third floor. All around, uniformed and plain-clothes policemen and women hurried about and barked down phone lines and paid us no heed at all. Carter threw his briefcase on a chair and cleared the mess off two others so that we could sit down.
“So I’m not sure what I can do for you, Mr Wilde,” he said, checking his watch again. “There isn’t much to report, I’m afraid.”
He sifted through a pile of papers on a pedestal beside his desk and took out a lever-arch file which wasn’t, I noticed, stuffed to bursting like all the rest.
He flicked through the pages impatiently then found what he was looking for.
“We checked on that lead in Mitchelstown,” he said, “but that came to nothing, as you know. We talked as well with our colleagues in Brisbane. They had a case with similarities and we thought there might be a link but, again, we drew a blank. Of course, that was before Mrs Wilde gave us the true version of events, so that was a bit of a waste of time.”
He looked at Emily to make sure the point wasn’t lost.
“What about the tyre tracks on the empty plot on our road?” I asked, ignoring the barbed comment.
He leafed again through the file and took out a page. He read it for a moment, then put it back in the file.
“We got in touch with the owner of the plot. They haven’t been up there in months and there haven’t been any contractors working up there. But the tyre tracks, it turns out, are quite an unusual brand. There’s only one supplier in the area and we’re trying to get their sales records but they’re not playing ball. We need a court order but, to be honest, we’re really short-staffed at the moment so we’re still waiting for that to go through the process. As soon as I get it, I’ll let you know.”
“What was the brand of tyres?” I asked.
He took a breath and looked at me.
“Look, Wilde…”
“Mister Wilde.”
Look, Mister Wilde,” he said, through gritted teeth, “it will help nobody if you start to interfere in our investigation. Just leave it to us, OK? We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Leave it to you?!” I had had enough of this pompous arse and his careless incompetence and I lost my temper. “You’re doing nothing! You can’t even remember what’s happened, you have to read it in the bloody file!” I leaned in and pointed my finger at him. “You don’t have the resources, you’re not chasing leads and you don’t care, do you?” I looked around the carnage of his office. “And how do you get anything done in this fucking shambles?!”
I threw my arms wide apart in exasperation and, as I did, I knocked his file and a plastic cup of chewed plastic biros off the desk. He tried to reach over to pick up the file but the pedestal blocked his way.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I raised a hand in apology then bent down to pick up the file and as many of the biros as I could. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
I put the file back on the desk and smoothed out the top page. Outside the office, policemen stopped for a moment and looked in at the commotion, then hurried about their business again. Carter looked at his watch.
“I think this meeting is over, Mr Wilde,” he growled, getting to his feet. “This shambles, as you call it, is where we have to solve crimes. It might not be nice and neat like you see on the TV but we do solve crimes, and we’d probably be a damn sight closer to solving this one if your wife hadn’t wasted our time lying to us for so long.”
He walked us to the elevator and this time there was no offer of a handshake.
“We’ll be in touch,” he muttered, as the lift doors closed.
Emily and I walked in silence back to the car, climbed in and closed the doors.
“What a waste of time,” Emily said, her lip quivering and tears welling up in her eyes. And this time it was no act. “They are not even looking for her, are they?”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but we can.”
“What do you mean?”
“The tyres. I got the name when I knocked the file off his desk. They’re Vredestein tyres and the supplier is in one of the retail parks, not far from here. They’re pretty expensive tyres, as far as I know, not something that would slide under the radar.” I smiled at her and squeezed her hand. “So maybe not a complete waste of time after all, eh!”
Buoyed by a sense of progress that was in stark contrast to the frustrated stagnation that had smothered us up to that point, we decided to go see what we could find out at the tyre supplier right there and then. It was on Kenyon Avenue, not so much a retail park as a suburban street lined with car mechanics, auto dealerships and car accessories shops. It was a Tuesday afternoon and the street was quiet, garish advertising hoardings with half-dressed girls selling car wax and alloy wheels looking lonely and desperate. About halfway down the street was Western Tyres, a low-rise warehouse with a half-inflated Michelin man lolling about in the breeze like a drunk at midnight. There were no customers in the showroom and the salesman jumped to his feet when the bell announced our arrival.
“G’day, folks,” he said, with a broad smile, “how’s it going?”
He was a lean, middle-aged man with grey hair receding from a grey face. He looked like he’d recently lost a lot of weight; loose skin hung round his jowls and his suit hung limply off his frame. As he spoke, he played nervously with his pen and moved constantly from foot to foot.
“Good, thanks, mate,” I said. “I’m looking for a new set of tyres, actually, for a jeep.”
“The one outside?” he asked, looking over my shoulder and into the car park.
“No, not that one, for a Volvo C60. It’s last year’s model. I’ve got Continentals on it, but I was thinking of trying something new. What do you think?”
“Yeah, the Contis are pretty good, maybe don’t wear as well as the Bridgestones or the Pirellis. Have you looked at those?”
“I had Bridgestones on this one,” I said, pointing over my shoulder to the jeep in
the car park. “Didn’t like them though. And a buddy of mine has the Pirellis, on a Merc, reckons he won’t get them again.”
A more confident rep might have relished the chance to get into a debate about the relative merits of tyres and I just hoped he wasn’t going to because I had nothing. Luckily for me, he was sticking to the script.
“Well, the new Michelins are getting some good feedback, pretty decent price too.”
“To be honest, mate, price isn’t really the problem. I’d sooner pay more and get the best, if you know what I mean.” I paused to set up the gambit. “Have you come across the new Vredesteins?” I asked, hoping the high-pitched innocence in my voice wasn’t as obvious to him as it sounded to me.
He visibly perked up at the sniff of an easy sale and turned to take a brochure from a rack behind him.
“If you don’t mind paying top dollar,” he said, handing me the brochure, “you won’t get better than these. We’ve just started importing them and, let me tell you, they’re the dog’s bollocks.” He reddened slightly and glanced over at Emily. “Sorry, missus.”
I took the brochure and looked at it.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I said. “Pretty pricey, though?”
“No arguments there,” he said, “but worth every cent, I’m telling you.”
“Have you sold any round here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, embarrassed to be caught on the hop. “I can have a look on the computer?”
“That’d be good.”
He went over to his desk and tapped on the keyboard until he found what he was looking for.
“Yeah, we have!” he said. “Couple of months ago, actually.”
“I’d love to talk to someone who has them,” I said. “You couldn’t give me the bloke’s name, could you? I could give him a call, maybe…”
He was torn between doing as he was told and the sweet smell of a commission cheque, but he knew the rules and the rules won.
“Aw, I’m sorry, mate,” he said, “I really shouldn’t. We’re not supposed to give out that kind of information, you know?”
“I understand,” I nodded. “Can you at least tell me what they were for? Was it anything like the Volvo?”
He looked at the screen and nodded.
“Yeah, it was actually,” he said, tapping the screen with the tip of his pen. “For a 2014 SsangYong.”
“And he was a local bloke?”
“Yeah, Mandurah.”
I pretended to peruse the brochure again.
“All right, let me think about it,” I said. “Mind if I take this?”
“No, of course not, be my guest.” He handed me a card. “And just give me a call, yeah? Anytime.”
“I will. And thanks for your help, Mike.”
We drove home and, after I’d dropped Emily back at the house, I went back into Clovelly and to the police station. Carter wasn’t going to help me but I thought maybe Willis would, if I caught him in the right mood.
“I need a favour,” I said to him when we were sitting in his office, the door closed.
“Oh yeah,” he said, already suspicious. “And what kind of favour would we be talking about?”
I took a deep breath and told him about Carter and about the row we’d had.
“They’re just not getting anywhere,” I said, eventually. “They might have the best intentions, but they’re maxed out and it’s not top of the list. And they’ve got the hump with Emily for not telling the truth up front, I get that. But this is my daughter, Sergeant, she’s my little girl.”
He nodded slowly.
“What do you need?”
“A jeep. A 2014 SsangYong, probably around Mandurah. I need a name and address.”
The raised eyebrows said it all, this wasn’t an insignificant favour. But Willis came good. He punched the details into his terminal and waited.
“I’m not going to ask why and you won’t tell me,” he said. “There are three in the Mandurah area.”
He scribbled on a pad and tore out the page.
“And this did not come from me,” he said, showing me the page long enough for me to key the names into my phone then scrunching it up and throwing it in the wastepaper basket.
“Thanks, Sergeant,” I said, “I owe you one.”
***
If the day was going well up to that point, the roller coaster was about to plunge into a hurtling descent. I was pulling up to the house when my phone rang.
“I’m looking for Mr Wilde,” said a voice on the other end of the line.
“Speaking.”
“Ah, hello, Mr Wilde. My name is Andrew, I’m calling from Phoenix Insurance. I wanted to talk to you about a claim you registered?”
“Oh right, yes. Is everything in order?”
“Not really, Mr Wilde, no. Our assessors have spoken to the doctors at the hospital where Mr Robins is being treated and it appears that, at the time of the accident, he wasn’t wearing a hard hat.”
My heart sank.
“Your policy stipulates that all workers must wear hard hats at all times on site. If not, then, unfortunately, we can’t pay out on an injury that could have been prevented by wearing one. Do you see my point, Mr Wilde?”
“Erm, yes…” I scrabbled round in my head for an argument, but I didn’t have one.
“The assessor talked to a few of your guys and they said they saw him wearing a helmet. One of them gave him a smashed helmet that he said Mr Robins was wearing at the time but…” He looked for a way to put it kindly, but there wasn’t really one. “Look, the doctors told us that he couldn’t have sustained those injuries wearing a helmet. Your guys would be committing a fraud if they made a sworn statement that they saw him wearing a helmet or that the helmet was smashed in the fall. You might want to… you know, have a word?”
I thought of Stevie lying on the ground, the scaffolding pipes crushing his mangled leg and the yellow hat on the ground a few metres away.
“He was wearing a helmet, I think. They weren’t lying, they would have seen him wearing a helmet. But it came off when he fell. It saw it lying on the ground beside him. Does that count? That at least he was wearing it?”
He sighed.
“I’m afraid not, Mr Wilde. The policy states that the helmet has to be secured.”
He waited for me to respond but I had nothing to say.
“Of course, we’ll pay out on any costs relating to Mr Robins’ leg injuries, but… well, that’s not really the problem, is it? I’m sorry, Mr Wilde, really I am, but there’s a real push to make sure site workers are wearing helmets and, well, there’s just no way around it. I’m sorry.”
So that was that. Stevie was going to be off work for weeks, maybe months, who knew if he’d ever be able to go back to work again. He was going to need all sorts of treatment and God knows what else and all he was going to get was a few bucks for a broken leg. I knew it wasn’t really our fault. I’d heard Nathan badgering the guys to wear their hats, to wear their gloves, to attach the harnesses, he’d say it until he was blue in the face. But complacency and bravado and sheer bloody laziness were a powerful enemy and his shouting fell on deaf ears. I didn’t know if we were liable or even morally responsible but we’d have to do something about it, even if we couldn’t make it good. We’d have to do something.
***
Emily insisted that she was coming with me on the SsangYong search the next morning. We’d had so many false starts and dead ends that we hadn’t dared stop to think about how big a lead this might be. I don’t think, until we got in the jeep to head back to Mandurah, that we’d really appreciated what it meant, or might mean. One of these three jeeps might have been involved in taking Cara. One of them had almost certainly been on our road and nobody ever drove up that road, there was nothing to see up there. If they weren’t involved in taki
ng Cara then what were they doing up there? That question filled the car as we drove up the coast in silence. I tried to stop getting ahead of myself, but my head was running way out in front.
If this had been a television show or a movie, we would have drawn blanks at the first couple of houses and we’d have moved on, dispirited, to the third where, against all the odds, we’d have found what we were looking for. Or the owners would have sold the car or they would have moved to New Zealand and taken the car with them or the car would have been destroyed in a massive accident and we’d have had to wait for the sequel or for the next season. But it wasn’t the movies. The house was on a well-to-do suburban road, tree-lined and quiet, all white picket fences and manicured front lawns. Number 63 was an imposing colonial-style house, white clapboard with louvred windows and a swing hanging from a willow tree in the front garden. It looked more antebellum than Antipodean and it stood slightly apart from its neighbours with a certain haughty gravitas. In the driveway, there were three cars – a convertible BMW, a Mercedes station wagon… and a SsangYong Rexton, 2014.
I drove past the house and pulled in a couple of hundred metres up the street.
“Now what?” Emily said, turning to look at the house through the back window.
“First, we have to check the tyres,” I said. “Then, if this is the one, we ring the doorbell and… I don’t know… see where it takes us?”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
I shrugged.
“You got a better one?”