by Gary Gregor
“The people responsible for the roads are sitting on their fat arses behind desks somewhere in Darwin, picking up equally as fat pay cheques. Most of them wouldn’t even know there was a road here.”
“Be that as it may, Sam, the road’s been here for a long time. If it hasn’t been sealed by now, I seriously doubt it will ever be sealed and you complaining to me about it isn’t going to change that.”
Sam looked across at Foley. “Perhaps I’ll just sit here and shut up, shall I?”
“That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said since we left Alice Springs,” Foley said. “Are you cranky because I took you away from Sarah?”
“Of course, I’m cranky!” Sam growled. “Sarah’s on her way back to Yulara. I don’t know when I will see her again.”
“I’m sure you made the best of the time you had together.” Foley said.
“Yeah, several times,” Sam said, smiling.
“Oh shit!” Foley cried. “There’s a mind picture that’s gonna give me nightmares!”
Russell Foley and Sam Rose had been partners in the job for a long time. They went through the Police Training Centre together when they were both young, free-spirited, ambitious police recruits and later partnered together, on-and-off, for several years when attached to the General Duties section in Darwin.
When not referred to by their colleagues as Starsky and Hutch, they were the Abbott and Costello of the job—named after the famous Hollywood comedic duo of the early 1950s, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Foley and Rose found their niche together very early in their careers and it wasn’t long before Russell Foley earned the reputation of being the straight man, Bud Abbott to Sam’s bumbling, irreverent, Lou Costello. However, despite their somewhat cavalier, light-hearted approach to the job, an unsurpassed crime-clearance rate quickly elevated Foley and Rose to a point where they became the envy of fellow officers and superiors alike.
Unlike Sam, Russell Foley had been married, but like so many marriages where one of the husband/wife team was a cop, the relationship soon soured and faded until it teetered on the edge of failure and eventually collapsed completely. The fact that Foley’s wife, Jennifer, embarked on the alarming journey of screwing every male she managed to get her hands on, and had a particular penchant for police officers, male or female, certainly didn’t help the stormy relationship. Her promiscuity was designed, in her mind at least, to hurt her husband for his refusal to quit the police force and take her and their two children back to their home state of Queensland.
Not only did Jennifer fail in her foolhardy attempts to scare Russell into quitting, she eventually developed a bizarre liking for her debauched, licentious behaviour and, together with an unhealthy appetite for strong booze while indulging in such sexually indiscriminate acts, Russell was left with no alternative but to walk away from the car wreck that was his marriage.
If looks and physical stature were considered the measure of a man, Russell Foley would probably be best described as an above average Aussie male. At around 180 cm tall, he was by no means an imposing figure, but he exercised regularly, drank alcohol only moderately, and maintained a daily ritual of never drinking coffee before 10:00 am. He dated occasionally, choosing to ignore Sam Rose’s constant needling about his perceived, prolonged abstinence from the pleasures of the opposite sex. He remembered Sam once told him that if he continued to lead a life of celibacy, his dick would fall off. “Use it or lose it!” Sam had taunted him.
Since his marriage disintegrated, Foley’s current girlfriend, Jessica Braithwaite, was the only women he had dated that he thought might change his somewhat biased thinking about a long-term commitment to another woman. He was certain he would never marry again and often it was that dogged determination to lead a single-man lifestyle that turned away a potential life-partner looking for just such a commitment. Perhaps Jessica Braithwaite would be the one to change his mindset. In the several months they had been dating, she had never given him any indication that she would like to marry at some point and, so far, that suited Russell fine. However, occasionally thoughts of a future with Jessica would pop unheralded into his head and he would find himself actually considering it.
Moose McKenzie and his partner, Colin Palmer, saw the dust of an approaching vehicle long before they saw the vehicle itself. They climbed out of their station vehicle and waited.
“You think this is them?” Palmer asked.
“Has to be,” Moose answered. “Look how slow it’s going. Gotta be Russell Foley driving. He drives like my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather still alive?” Palmer asked, surprised.
“No. Been dead for years. But when he was alive, that’s how he drove. Had to take a cut-lunch just to go to the fuckin’ corner store.”
Russell Foley braked, slowed, and stopped a few metres behind the Kulgera vehicle. For a few moments, he and Sam sat looking across at the Watsons’ Landcruiser, sitting at an odd angle astride a large clump of spinifex grass.
“Lousy parking,” Sam joked. He opened his door and climbed out of the vehicle, stretched, and flexed his shoulders in an attempt to ease the aching in his back, caused by several hours riding over the rough road. He stepped around to the driver’s side of the vehicle and waited as Russell Foley climbed out.
“Hey, look!” Moose McKenzie called loudly. “It’s Starsky and Hutch!”
Foley and Sam looked at Moose as the big cop and his 2IC approached.
“G’day, Moose,” Sam greeted them with a wide smile. “It’s been a long time. I thought they would have put you out to pasture by now.”
Moose offered his hand to first Sam and then Foley. “Nah, they won’t pension me off,” he said. “They know a good old street cop when they see one. Not enough of us old-timers left. Bloody job’s full of sissy, university-educated computer nerds who think they can passively talk an obnoxious, violent drunk into the back of a paddy wagon with some sort of new-age psychological gobble-de-gook.”
“Good to see you, Moose,” Foley said. “Glad to see you haven’t lost the ‘in-your-face’ approach to policing.”
“Much easier and faster to grab the arseholes by the scruff of the neck and the seat of their pants and spear them headfirst into the cage.” Moose said. He ushered Palmer forward. “This is Colin Palmer, my right-hand man. Colin, these are the two dudes I was telling you about, Russell Foley and Sam Rose.
Foley and Rose shook hands with Palmer and Sam.
“I don’t suppose there was anything complimentary in what he was telling you about us?”
“He said you were kind, considerate of little old ladies, and Russell reminded him of his much-loved grandfather,” Palmer joked.
Sam laughed and scoffed, “What a fuckin’ crock!” He looked at Moose. “You haven’t changed a bit, Moose.”
Moose shrugged. “Why fuck with perfection, mate?”
“What have we got, Moose?” Foley asked, looking back at the Landcruiser.
“The Watson family,” Moose answered solemnly. “Husband, wife, and young daughter. They have the Mount Dare Hotel, just across the border in South Australia.”
“Shot?” Foley asked.
“Yeah, one shot each to the head.”
“Robbery?” Sam asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Moose answered. “Colin and I checked. Both the husband and wife were carrying cash. Not a lot, just traveling money. Husband had a tad over two hundred dollars and the wife had three-fifty.”
“Why is it that the wives always carry the most money?” Sam asked jokingly.
“I’ve been married for thirty years, Sam,” Moose said. “As far as marriage is concerned, the wife is the CEO, the Treasurer, the Secretary, and the Chief Delegation Officer—”
“Any witnesses?” Foley interjected.
“No eyewitnesses,” Moose replied. “Laurie Anderson, a diesel mechanic on a routine run servicing generators at bush pubs and roadhouses found the family and called it in. While we were waiting for you and Sam, I h
ad Alice Springs run a check on the bloke. He’s a clean-skin. Colin has all his contact details.”
“Any idea which way the killer was heading?”
“Had to be north,” Moose suggested. “Apparently, the roads south of Mount Dare are closed due to heavy rain across the western edge of the Simpson Desert.”
“So, it’s our problem now?”
“I’m afraid so, Russ. A little further down the track and it would be South Australia’s problem.”
“What do we know about the family in the Landcruiser?” Sam asked.
“I contacted the OIC of Marla Police Station on the Stuart Highway, a couple of hundred k’s south of Kulgera. He knows the Watson family pretty well. They have been running the Mount Dare pub for about three years and he knows them to be a friendly, popular family. They run a good pub and the licensee, Gordon Watson, had to pass a full police clearance check before he was issued with a license.”
“Starting to look like a random, motiveless, drive-by shooting,” Sam commented. He studied the road in the vicinity of the two police vehicles. “Doesn’t look like we will get anything from tyre tracks.”
Moose motioned a point on the road where the Landcruiser veered off the verge. “The vehicle veered off the road just over there. You can see the wheel tracks where it ran up over the verge. Colin and I found a set of footprints in the soft ground around the stalled vehicle. Has to be where the killer walked across to check his handiwork. The dead family never got out of their vehicle. They were all still buckled into their seatbelts.”
Russell Foley turned to Colin Palmer. “Any ideas, Colin?” he asked the young officer.
“Moose and I were talking about it before you arrived,” Palmer answered. “I think the killer was stopped, probably just south of where the Landcruiser veered off the road. The Watsons came along and stopped, thinking the killer was having car trouble. He shot the wife and the husband through the open passenger-side window.”
“What about the daughter?”
“We think that explains the footprints around the car. The prints are only on the passenger side of the Cruiser; Moose and I were careful not to disturb them. Both rear windows were wound up, but the rear door was open. I think he walked over there to check they were dead and noticed the girl in the back seat. He opened the door and shot her. We haven’t touched the door in case he left fingerprints.”
Sam looked at Moose McKenzie. “This lad’s gonna make a good detective one day.”
“Don’t say that, Sam,” Moose said wryly. “He’s been with me twelve months now and I’ve almost got him convinced that there really is no job in the cops worth having other than General Duties.”
Sam turned back to Palmer. “Get away from this man, Colin. As fast as you can. He will destroy all your hopes and ambitions and leave you a lost and broken man plodding aimlessly through your career in that highly uncomfortable and unfashionable uniform.”
Palmer laughed. “Thanks, I’ll take your advice under consideration.”
“Any spent cartridges?” Foley asked.
“No,” Moose answered. “The shooter either picked them up or he used a revolver.”
“Okay,” Foley said with a sigh. “Let’s go over there and have a closer look at what we’re faced with. Stay away from the footprints on the passenger side of the vehicle. Moose, we have John Singh and one of his fellow Forensics members on the way down here, as well as a wagon to take the bodies back to the Alice for autopsy. When we have had a closer look at the scene over there, Sam and I will head up to Finke and have a nose around before heading back to Alice Springs. What, if anything, is happening in regards to next-of-kin notifications?”
“The Marla police are taking care of that on our behalf,” Moose advised. “Any other family members are in South Australia.”
“Okay, good. Have you got gloves, Sam?”
Sam patted his trouser pocket. “Yeah, right here in my pocket, next to my condoms.”
4
Susan Chambers stood on the public viewing platform and stared mesmerised at the huge geographical feature in front of her. Chambers Pillar, formed by sandstone sediments laid down some three-hundred-and-fifty-million years ago, towered 50 metres above the surrounding hot, dry, desert plains. This magnificent, imposing land feature, almost dead centre in the middle of the Australian continent was, Susan believed, a direct link to her family’s ancestry. She found it hard to believe that she was really here. But for the viewing platform, she was so close she could almost reach out and touch it. She craned her neck and slowly ran her eyes up the massive side of the pillar to the very top. It was like a great, natural monument connecting the earth on which it stood to the heavens above. Although having stood many millions of years before humans walked the earth, Susan couldn’t help but feel the connection to the glorious column. It was like nature’s specific tribute to the Chambers family.
Susan was a history buff. Her interest in the subject encompassed world history but her enthusiasm for the subject focused more so on Australian history and the early Australian pioneers responsible for building the foundations of exploration in what was then a newly discovered country on the other side of the world, far from their homeland in England.
In particular, Susan was interested, obsessively so some might say, in the history of explorer Colin McDouall Stuart, who led the first successful expedition to cross the Australian continent from south to north and return, and never lose a member of his team of intrepid adventurers while doing so. In the mid-nineteenth century, with only camels and horses for transport, Stuarts’s feat had to be worthy of the admiration of all the early settlers struggling to build a new life in their adopted country. Many decades later, Stuart’s dramatic journey certainly earned the admiration of Susan Chambers.
Susan’s fascination with McDouall Stuart and his accomplishments had its beginnings when, as a teenager, she developed a curiosity in her own personal heritage. As she delved deeper and deeper into the history of her family name, she discovered that she was, in fact, a direct descendent of James Chambers, an early immigrant from England who attained great wealth as a horse dealer and pastoralist in the new settlement of Adelaide in South Australia.
James Chambers arrived in South Australia in 1837, having sailed aboard the Coromandel from England in 1836. Along with his brothers, Colin and Benjamin, and his sister Pricilla, he settled in the new colony, Adelaide, which would later become the capital city of South Australia.
Chambers and McDouall Stuart became good friends and when Stuart announced plans to explore the new continent from south to north through the centre, his friend James Chambers readily offered to become a major sponsor of the intrepid venture.
In honor of James Chamber’s generous sponsorship, when McDouall Stuart happened across the great sandstone monolith whilst on his journey across the country, he named it after his friend, James Chambers.
To anyone else, Chambers Pillar was no more than a fascinating, natural, sandstone monolith that had existed for many millions of years. It was far more than that to Susan Chambers. Susan was in awe of the pillar and what it represented to her and her family. She had walked around the base of the pillar—twice—and had taken a zillion photographs of it. She had viewed it at sunset and, now, as the first fingers of a new day’s light peeked over the distant eastern horizon, she would view it at dawn.
She came early, when it was still very dark, and very cold. She wanted to see the pillar before anyone else arrived from the camping grounds a couple of kilometres away. This natural monument was a tribute to her four-times-great-grandfather, and that was special. She wiped an errant tear from her eye.
Unfortunately, due to its geographical location, Chambers Pillar was not one of the Northern Territory’s most visited attractions. The tourists who did dare to venture way out here to the middle of nowhere either drove sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicles or came on an organised Outback day-tour with one of the many tourist companies operating out of Alice Springs. Sus
an drove herself here in her second-hand compact Volkswagen camper van which, while she was away from her home in Adelaide, was her accommodation as well as her transport.
She wanted to do this trip alone. She wanted to soak up the history and the sense of achievement by Colin McDouall Stuart and his team of intrepid explorers along with the ancestral ambience of the family connection to this place, without the distractions of a traveling companion. Thanks to McDouall Stuart, Chambers Pillar would forever be that connection—maybe it would stand for another three-hundred-and-fifty-million years.
Susan did not hear the footsteps approaching from behind as she stood gazing at the pillar and the amazing way the hues in the sandstone changed as the dawn light creeped across the desert landscape. Only when one of the palings in the viewing deck creaked softly from somewhere behind her did she realise she was no longer alone.
She turned, and immediately froze. Her heart skipped and then began to beat so fast she could feel it pounding against the wall of her chest. The stranger was so close she could see his breath clouding as he exhaled, and his warm breath met the freezing desert air. He was holding a gun. It was pointed at her face. And he was smiling.
Her immediate instinct was to run but her feet would not move. She wanted to speak but her lips seemed to be frozen in an unattractive gape. Her eyes would not blink; they just stared, wide and fear-filled at the business end of the gun in the stranger’s hand.
Then, he pulled the trigger.
Susan did not hear the gunshot. She did not see a muzzle flash. The bullet tore into Susan’s throat at around fifteen-hundred feet per second. It hit just below her chin, separating the C1 Atlas and C2 Atlas joints in her cervical spine as it soared onwards and exited at the back of her neck. In less than a millisecond, every nerve housed in the cervical spine was shattered in a haze of blood and gore. She felt no pain. The impact slammed her body backwards against the chest-high railing running the length of the viewing platform. Her legs folded involuntarily at the knees and her body collapsed ungainly to the floor of the deck, her eyes wide and staring, seeing nothing. If Susan Chambers wasn’t dead before she hit the viewing platform deck, she would have bled out in less than a minute from the massive wound at her throat.