'Did you see the driver of the ute that stopped here last night?'
'No.'
'Could you tell if it was a male or female driving?'
Frawley did a mute headshake.
'Were there passengers?'
'You think that the driver was Margaret's killer?'
It was pointless mincing words. 'Potentially.'
'And I didn't do anything. I let them drive away!' Frawley paled to eggshell and wailed, 'No!'
Sympathy would reduce the woman to a useless puddle. So Georgie pressed on. 'Can you describe the ute? Its make and colour?'
'Not really.'
'Try harder.'
The neighbour screwed her face. 'It might have been a Ford but it could've even been a Chevy or Dodge. Not new but not ancient. I'm hopeless with cars. I think it might've been black…but it was dark, so it could've been deep blue or even red, I suppose. I didn't have my specs on. I'm a little bit night blind.'
Meaning you could have seen a Bigfoot 4x4 Monster Truck and be clueless?
Frawley became too distraught for continued questioning and Georgie couldn't trust herself to speak without grilling. So, they waited in silence.
The first cops on the scene separated Frawley and Georgie. Then, as the area swarmed with uniforms and officious plain-clothed personnel, they were whisked to the nearby police station.
There, Georgie waited and waited. Was interviewed and her every phrase probed, then forced to wait further. Eventually, a two-finger typist who couldn't spell words with more than double syllables prepared her statement. The detective took her through it. She signed and escaped.
Georgie was exhausted. Thanks to fuck all sleep, dealing with Mr Plod and being a witness in a homicide.
Outside the cop shop she considered her battle plan. Her head pounded and her stomach growled. Her car was about a kilometre away, outside what used to be Margaret Pentecoste's home but was currently a crime scene.
It had been a fucking awful day so far.
She hated the country. She wanted to return to the city and immerse herself in normality. But this thing wasn't over. Susan Pentecoste was still missing, out there somewhere, along with her Landcruiser. It wasn't over until the proverbial fat lady sang.
'How's Ms Writer then?'
She cringed at the familiar voice, yet noted the inflection on 'Ms' was less pronounced than before. Reluctantly, she met the stare of the arrogant cop from Daylesford. John Franklin. In jeans and t-shirt but definitely not a figment of her overwrought imagination.
Her fucking awful day grew worse.
'I heard on the grapevine what went down at Margaret Pentecoste's. Your name came up. I thought we should sit down, have a calm chat and exchange info. What do you reckon?'
She couldn't reply, literally too dumbfounded and drained.
He rested his hand on her shoulder blade and propelled her several blocks.
They'd missed the lunch crowd and took an outdoor table. A lone woman sat inside the café amid shopping bags, sucking up a milkshake in a tall silver cup. Franklin ordered, while Georgie contemplated his shift in attitude. Minutes later, fat sausage rolls, yoyo biscuits and steaming coffee arrived.
They didn't speak while they devoured the food. Plates emptied, Georgie fumbled her lighter and Franklin leaned across. He lit her cigarette, then his own. She inhaled the distinctive aroma of his Marlboro and drifted to long summer days at Mentone beach, when her dad was alive. Memories flickered through her mind. Golden Gaytime ice creams, hot golden sand, coconut-fragranced sunscreen. One final dip in the warm salty water amid shrieks of laughter; the panorama tinted by a fiery sunset. Suddenly, Franklin climbed a notch on her approval rating, to hover above 'total arsehole'. A bit of sustenance, smoking her dad's favourite tobacco and an offer to share information only went so far.
He had a lot of redeeming to do.
He shut up and listened to her story - on the whole - which earned him extra points. Every so often he lit a Marlboro or rubbed his hand over his hair. Sporadically, he interrupted with a question. And once, he patted her knee. She didn't know how to take that. Was it a come-on, a put-down or his attempt at kindness? She liked to be in control when it came to men. This one left her alternately stumped and exasperated.
At the end of her narration, Franklin remained silent with a finger hooked under his nose and thumb propping his chin. After some moments, he massaged his temples and said, 'We should talk to Bill Noonan.'
Just yesterday he'd refused to help her contact the former police sergeant.
She replied sarcastically, 'Really? I would never have thought of that.' And he smiled wryly.
Franklin stalked ahead, leading her in the direction of the cop shop. Then he veered towards a white SS Commodore; an older model still in good nick.
As he drove Georgie to collect her car, he said, 'Bill took early retirement three and a bit years ago 'cause Gabby - his wife - gave him an ultimatum. Let it go, retire and have a life, or she was going to have to move on.' He grunted softly. 'It takes a lot for a copper's wife to do that. Either your marriage stuffs up near the beginning or it stays solid. Gabby's one of the best, so if she couldn't hack it after twenty-odd years, that tells you how bad Bill got.'
Georgie suspected he'd just shared on a personal level. She wanted to probe his cop-marriage but instead asked, 'What was Bill obsessed about?'
Franklin parked outside the cordoned-off scene on Ascot Street South. He faced her and answered, 'Vindicating his good mate, Roly. Proving he had nothing to do with the fire or attack on Susan. And finding Roly's killer.'
'Could Schlicht have done it?'
'Yes. Ah, Georgie…'
It was the first occasion he'd used her name in a non-adversarial tone. She kind of liked the way his bass voice played with it.
'At least the Iceman finally copped a stretch in jail -'
'To do with -'
'No, worse luck,' Franklin interrupted with a headshake. 'Unconnected. He went down eighteen months after Roly vanished. He's at the new Castlemaine jail now. When they're coming up for release, they ease them out of the system by sending them close to home. His time's up soon.'
'So he can't be behind Margaret's death? Or Susan's disappearance?'
Franklin snorted. 'Never say never. Anything's possible. He couldn't have physically killed Margaret but that doesn't mean he didn't orchestrate it.'
Georgie realised he hadn't contradicted her assumption that Margaret's murder and Susan's absence were connected. And he'd silently agreed that these events linked to Roly's much earlier apparent murder.
She didn't know whether to crow or shit herself.
Georgie tailed Franklin to Musk Vale, a little place on the Ballan-Daylesford Road. They convoyed up a short gravel driveway to a white weatherboard and red-tin-roofed farmhouse. Various roof pitches were evidence of a series of extensions. Its homeliness appealed to her.
She stepped out of the Spider and scanned the farm. Precise rows of lavender in rich red soil filled a large paddock adjacent to the house block. Further afield, black and white cows munched and viewed the newcomers. On the right, a couple of horses ran, graceful and free-spirited. As she watched them, Georgie breathed the fresh air deeply, letting it relax her. It smelled like more rain on the way.
A woman called, 'Hello!' She approached in blue jeans and a black t-shirt with long-faded logo. She held a white plastic bucket of feed in one hand, flattish cane basket with a layer of eggs in the other. Franklin broke into an affectionate grin as he lifted his hand. She juggled the bucket to wave back, her face splitting into a beam. Georgie's first impression of Gabby Noonan was a good one.
Second impression: brilliant. A generous measure of neat scotch was what Georgie needed. Not to have to ask for it, a bonus.
A freshly scrubbed Bill Noonan joined them shortly. Franklin's ex-boss was stocky with a balding crown. Saddlebags under his eyes and a ploughed field for a forehead were no doubt baggage from his years on the force. Yet, hi
s face crinkled with good humour, accentuated by upward-reaching crow's feet.
Gabby pottered in the kitchen that adjoined the living room. She listened but said little. Bill perched, both hands on his knees as if ready to spring. Franklin sank into the deep couch, one leg crossed over the opposite knee, hands behind his head. Although he'd already heard Georgie's story, he listened attentively but poker-faced.
She again omitted the threatening note and motel disturbance and glossed over her discovery of Margaret Pentecoste's body. Gabby gave her a shrewd smile but Georgie thought she'd pulled off a level of nonchalance with the men. Otherwise, she told it straight, with Franklin adding his ten cent's worth at the end.
Bill leaned back. He rubbed a hand across his chin, its silvery-white growth rasped in synchronisation with his wife's rhythmic chop of vegetables. Georgie applied herself to re-emptying her scotch glass. Mellowed by the whisky, her eyelids drooped.
'Roly was a good man.'
Bill's voice startled Georgie from her trance.
'He was a good chap, with not a bad bone in his body. It devastated Susan to come out of the coma to find him gone. But worse than that, that the court of public opinion held him as prime suspect for the arson and her narrow escape.'
Riveted, Georgie put down her glass despite the tawny mouthful left in the bottom.
'Utter rubbish, of course. Any person who'd ever met Roly could see that. Fair call that us coppers are the worst for assuming anyone's capable of anything' - Franklin nodded and Gabby snickered - 'but that's a hazard of the job. You have to be cynical and you have to trust your gut. Some people are rotten to the core, while others will cross the line occasionally or have the capacity to. Then there's the last, smallest group. The ones who are good right the way through. Roly is one of those - absolutely and unequivocally.'
Georgie noticed Bill's tense switch: past to present. Confused about Roly or in denial?
He tugged the corner of his eye with his right index finger.
'We - the Daylesford team - tried to convince the hierarchy that they'd got the wrong end of the stick and to look at the evidence more carefully. Unquestionably, Susan was meant to die in the fire. It didn't take us long to realise that Roly had probably been knocked off. We expected his body to turn up in due course. But it was bloody impossible to get the Ds to focus the right way.'
'The defectives,' Franklin interjected. He glimpsed Georgie's nose twitch and corrected, 'The detectives wasted too much time and effort suspecting Roly and then' - he finger-snapped - 'their resources dried up.'
'Too bloody right,' Bill agreed, picking up the story. 'So I started doing a lot of unpaid overtime, trying to work it out myself. Eventually, I was asked if I wished to consider a transfer to South Gippsland. A place in the sticks. Perhaps Fish Creek.'
'You've got to be kidding,' Georgie exclaimed.
'You'd better believe it,' Gabby replied and Franklin smiled crookedly.
'Our life's here,' Bill continued. 'Gabby's family is a stone's throw away and our kids have settled between here and Melbourne. I'd worked a few stations but the majority of my time as a copper - the best bits overall - was at Daylesford.'
He puckered his lips. 'And so, I took the hint and quietened down. Didn't give up but tried to be more discreet. Still, Gabby here gave me an ultimatum. And rightly so because in hindsight, I came this close' - he held gnarled thumb and index finger millimetres apart - 'to losing it. I would have done practically anything to solve Roly's case, except have to hit the singles scene in my late fifties.'
A tea towel struck his ear. Bill glanced at his wife who laughed at his weak joke. It broke the tension, before he launched back into the story.
'Susan's been to see me quite often since Roly disappeared. Wanting updates, reassurance that something's happening. Over and over, she's said, "All I want is to bury him. Give him a proper send off." It's enough to break your heart. She became so desperate that she wrote a letter to the paper and later tried to see Schlicht in jail. When he refused to see her, she wrote to him direct. Five letters, I think.'
Gabby's knife clattered. 'William Noonan! You never told me that.'
Georgie pictured the Iceman. She tried to imagine writing to or wanting to visit him in prison. Ugly thought.
'Yeah, well.' Bill shrugged off his wife's comment. 'Anyway, she pleaded with Schlicht to tell her the location of Roly's body. Promised to keep whatever he told her in confidence. She would have kept her word, too. But he never answered her letters.'
Georgie chewed her nail and skimmed from Bill to Franklin. Unreadable faces, except for the cold anger in their eyes.
Bill continued, 'Once, much earlier on, I found a chink in his armour -'
'Hah!' Gabby hacked into a pumpkin.
He lifted his palms to the ceiling. 'I couldn't help it. I got so frustrated that I leaked a little information to the Advocate.' He repeated the thumb and finger gesture. 'Then the media had a field day and so did Schlicht's soly.'
Georgie nodded, recalling Susan's clippings. One reported accusations from Schlicht's pompous solicitor of trial by media. And if she remembered rightly, in the same article the head of Homicide admitted they'd stalled in the Pentecoste case. She watched Bill's face flame. Her stomach knotted in sympathy.
The retired cop said, 'The Iceman de-iced himself enough to say how distressed he and his friends were at this so-called discrimination and the abuse of his privacy. He proclaimed his innocence and that we - the police - wanted to fit him up, no matter what or how.'
'Yeah, right,' Gabby retorted.
Georgie studied the three faces. Relative strangers, from a different world, and her path only crossed theirs through Susan's story. She didn't know them well enough to be sure Bill or Franklin wouldn't fit someone up - especially if that someone was the Iceman and especially to vindicate a mate. She fixed on Gabby's disgusted expression and reckoned she trusted the woman's judgment.
Franklin took up the narration. 'The then police commissioner had a political agenda. All this bad publicity wasn't doing him favours. He did a quickstep to placate the civil libertarians and told us "hands off" Schlicht and his associates. Funnily enough, the commissioner's plan backfired. In his attempts to show off a squeaky clean force, his buddies uncovered a bunch of corrupt big knobs, who fingered a number of others on their way down. End of the day, Schlicht copped minor drug charges as a token conviction -'
'And he's due for release any day,' Bill added, slamming his hand on the chair arm. 'But mark my words, I'll see him go down for what he did to Roly. And I hope Susan is there to see it happen.'
'Right,' his wife interrupted.
Georgie looked at Gabby squarely and made out the faded logo across her chest: Be reasonable - do it my way. She squinted to read the next line of smaller, cracked embossing. For women who take no crap. She clicked with Gabby even more for that t-shirt and wondered where she could buy one.
The woman grinned, as if she'd read Georgie's mind. She said, 'No more talk until we've had dinner. Bill, take these kids for a walk while I finish up.'
Nobody argued. Maybe they'd read her t-shirt too.
Georgie gulped fresh air and half-listened to the men as they strolled around the farm but her mind bulged with information overload.
They knocked back two bottles of red wine with a veritable feast of organic stuff from the Noonans' property. Franklin talked about the daughter he was raising single-handedly. It showed another side to his character and Georgie covertly scrutinised him. His face animated, his laughter deep and natural, he described Kat's scrapes and monumental, often instantaneous, mood swings. She sounded like a normal female at fifteen-going-on-twenty-five: wild hormones, constant testing of the boundaries, mouthy smart aleck one minute, her nice self the next.
Georgie was the first to admit she'd been a bitch at fifteen. She couldn't rewrite history to take it back but tried to be a better daughter to Livia these days.
Franklin glided up a notch on her approval sc
ale. His rating was still tenuous.
They tidied up, then retired to the living room. Georgie broached the question that had been on her lips since they'd arrived at the Noonan farm. 'Do you think Susan's OK, Bill?'
He rubbed his chin. 'It doesn't look good.'
Franklin agreed. Everyone brooded.
Georgie sucked in a breath and took the plunge. She finally fessed up about the note and previous night's disturbance at the Daylesford motel.
'Righto,' Franklin yelled over exclamations from the hosts. 'You're backing off right now. OK?'
He leaned into her personal space. His breath was warm and held tangs of wine, onion and coffee. It disturbed the wisps on her forehead.
His agreeability rating nosedived.
Bill paled to match his thatch of white hair and said, 'I'd have to agree, Georgie. You're dealing with violent scum here and if they're onto you poking around, it -'
'It doesn't bear thinking about,' Gabby finished his sentence.
Georgie was furious and embarrassed.
Breathe. Ten, nine… Counting down to one, she then asked Bill, 'When did you last see Susan?'
Her change of tack flummoxed the men. It was Gabby who replied. 'A couple of weeks ago, wasn't it, darl? She stayed for dinner and then kept you up chatting for half the night. I ended up going to bed.'
'Two weeks ago tomorrow?' Bill hazarded.
His wife agreed. 'I'd say so.'
'She's keen to have another go at seeing Schlicht in jail,' the old cop recalled. 'The anniversary of Roly's disappearance is coming up and it always makes her toey. John here keeps me in the loop on developments but there's been none in ages. Basically, Susan and I rehashed old ground.'
'More than a coincidence, then,' Georgie mused. 'The very next day she goes to Margaret's, stays a few days, then drops off the radar. Meanwhile, Margaret is…'
'Margaret is murdered,' Franklin snarled. 'Get it, kiddo. This is serious shit. You're better off not knowing more. I offered to share info, to see what you had, but that's it.'
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