Perverse Consequences

by Robert Blain

  Schlakier puncher her number into his office phone, expecting it to straight through to voicemail or for the girl to answer again. After two rings, a husky voice answered. Adult and female.

  ‘Maria Lombardo?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’

  ‘Andrew Schlakier. I’m a private investigator working on the defence of your husband.’

  There was a snort at the other end. She was on guard. Instantly suspicious. Schlakier continued quickly, he had to engage her before she had the chance to hang up, he felt.

  ‘Some allegations have been brought against your husband that I believe might be untrue. I would like to find proof of his innocence. Maybe you can help me with that.’

  Schlakier half expected her to hang up. There was silence at the other end. He knew the gambit. It was an old cop trick. Keep silent and let the other person hang themselves with their nervous ramblings. Give ‘em enough rope.

  ‘Well if you did, you’d be the first.’

  ‘I’ve just got a few questions I’d like to ask you.’

  Another long silence, then ‘OK. You called before right?’

  ‘Yes, but your daughter, I think it was, said you were in Europe.’

  ‘That’s correct. I was in Italy, mostly. Staying with my aunt in Olivetti.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s a small town in the north of the country. I only got back yesterday and I’m still jetlagged. So.’

  ‘All right Ms Lombardo, I’ll try to keep this brief. It is Ms Lombardo right, not Ms Hohl?’

  ‘Correct. I kept my own name.’

  ‘Ms Lombardo, do you know the whereabouts of your husband? I tried to phone him several times this week at his residence in Fremantle but there’s been no response.’

  ‘You’ve probably got about as much of an idea where he is as I do.’

  ‘Have you spoke to him since you’ve returned from Europe?’

  ‘Yes, briefly. Yesterday.’

  Schlakier remained silent. He could play the waiting game too.

  ‘He’s still in Western Australia,’ she continued. ‘But he said he’s coming back to Melbourne.’

  ‘Do you know when exactly?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘I had coffee with your husband recently when I was in Fremantle. Are you aware he likes to dress up as a woman?’

  Schlakier heard her laughing quietly. It wasn’t a particularly comforting sound.

  ‘That’s just a disguise he’s adopted,’ she said. ‘He wants to avoid being found by certain people. He’s not doing it for the thrill of it.’

  ‘Who in particular is he trying to avoid?’

  ‘His family for one.’

  ‘I thought it was the other way around. Ms Lombardo, your husband’s brother, Russell, says he fears for his life.’

  Another frosty laugh.

  ‘What a load of nonsense. The Hohl family has been spreading lies about my husband for years. Undermining him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Chris’s brother robbed him of his birthright at the rightful place at the head of the family business, or at least a share in running it. They could have run it together but Russell chose not to. He set out to embarrass and humiliate Chris and he did so.’

  ‘What does your husband say about that?’

  ‘He agrees with me.’

  ‘Ms Lombardo, was it your idea for your husband to change lawyers?’

  ‘You’re damn right. The family lawyer was going to set about proving Chris mentally incompetent if Justina’s missing persons case ever went to trial. The idea was that by proving Chris was not a fit and proper person, they would gain control over his assets, his part of the family estate. He would no longer, we would no longer, have access to his money.’

  ‘But the case never did go to court.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Her body was never found.’

  ‘No.’

  Schlakier was about to mention the murder of Amos Gil in Fremantle but bit his tongue at the last moment. Something told him she possibly didn’t know – and he decided he didn’t want her to find out he’d made the connection.

  ‘Ms Lombardo, if you hear from your husband can you let me know? It’s very important.’

  ‘You’re going to try and help him, right?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Schlakier.

  There was silence for a while on the other end of the phone. Then, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a terrible headache.’

  She hung up without saying goodbye.

  26

  =====

  A MAN AND TWO DOGS

  Schlakier had just killed the motor in his trusty Honda Accord when his mobile rang. Peter Michael’s name popped up.

  ‘I should be getting double time for this,’ said Schlakier. ‘It’s after six.’

  ‘I reckon we’re paying you too much as it is. Anyway, I’m still stuck in this shithole of an office. No one here’s giving me a pat on the back.’

  Schlakier heard Michael take a deep drag of a cigarette.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ said Schlakier.

  ‘I don’t. I didn’t. But the fuck knuckles here are doing my head in. So I’ve started again. I haven’t had a fag for three months until this week.’

  ‘How come your smoking in the office? Isn’t that against strict government policy?’

  ‘There’s no other bastard here except for muggins me. So who’s going to stop me?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘So ease my burden, brother. Tell me you’ve got some good news on the Hohl case.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m about to meet the brother of Justina Doble. It’s the first time anyone from the family has agreed to see me.’

  ‘Do you reckon he’s got anything worthwhile to say?’

  ‘I hope so. Anyway, that’s what I’m about to find out. I just pulled up in front of his house.’

  ‘You better get to it then. Let me know if anything interesting happens.’

  After Michael rang off, Schlakier got out of his car and was greeted with a fine drizzle under a gloomy sky. Somewhere behind the mass of clouds, the sun was starting to go down. It had bucketed down most of the day. One of those slow-moving drenching cloudbursts that drifts down from the north and takes its time moving on. Schlakier avoided puddles as he walked up the driveway.

  Jack Doble lived in a well-to-do part of Williamstown. House prices in the areas had skyrocketed in recent years due to the beachside town’s close proximity to the city centre. The upmarket cafés and restaurants, and trendy craft shops along its main strip had followed.

  Schlakier heard dogs barking over the back fence.

  ‘Anyone home,’ he called.

  ‘Come around the back. The gate’s not locked.’

  Schlakier pushed through a corrugated iron side door and entered. He found Jack Doble in a sunroom at the back of the house, a wide pair of screen doors flung open. He was in the process of trying to put a lead on one of two bloodhounds, which was boisterously trying to leap over him to get to Schlakier. They were massive beasts. Big paws, floppy ears, big tongues lolling. The untethered dog honed in on Schlakier, it’s tail thumping against loudly against the wall.

  ‘Settle Bae Bae,’ Doble said to the dog. Then to Schlakier: ’Don’t worry about him, he’s friendly.’

  Schlakier made to pet the beast as it approached and it licked his hand.

  ‘Find the place all right?’ said Doble, after they’d made their introductions.

  ‘No problem. My iPhone GPS is a wonderful thing.’

  ‘Yeah, when they work. Mine’s on the fritz half the bloody time.’

  From Schlakier’s snap assessment, Jack Doble seemed to bear little resemblance to his sister, although given that he was already a good deal older than Justina was when she disappeared – and ten years had passed since – that was hardly surprising. Lean and tall, he was completely bald, wearing trainers,
blue jeans and a black plastic raincoat over a grey shirt.

  ‘You here on your own?’ said Schlakier.

  ‘Yeah, just me and the mutts. The missus and the kids are having dinner over at her sister’s place.’

  After a brief struggle, Doble managed to get the leads on both dogs.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind if we walk while we talk. If I don’t take them out to expend some of their energy, they’ll end up wrecking the joint. They’re still only pups really.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You need to borrow an umbrella or something?’ said Doble.

  ‘Nah, I’m good. Looks like the rain’s easing up.’

  Schlakier gamely agreed to take the lead of the slightly smaller of the two dogs.

  ‘What’s this one called?’

  ‘Bo Bo.’

  ‘Interesting names your dogs have.’

  ‘It’s what the bloke we bought them off called them. Chinese fella. The names sort of stuck.’

  They made their way along a couple of side streets, over a main road and onto a walking track along the foreshore. The rain had stopped and low sunshine slanted weakly through a crack in the clouds.

  ‘Thanks for taking the time to meet me,’ said Schlakier.

  ‘No worries. Geraldine said you’d call. She thinks maybe you can help us.’

  They had the path to themselves. Apart from the occasional jogger sauntering past.

  ‘Can you?’ said Doble, fixing Schlakier with a sideways glance.

  ‘I’m trying to find the truth,’ said Schlakier, momentarily pulled to the side as his bloodhound spied something interesting in the undergrowth.

  ‘That’s what we’re all hoping for,’ said Doble. ‘We want to know what happened to Justina. We want justice.’

  ‘Must be hard to take,’ said Schlakier. ‘All that time, no answer.’

  ‘His family’s a strange lot.’

  ‘Christopher Hohl’s?’

  ‘Yep. I went to see his father once. After Justina disappeared. I thought he might be able to shed some light on matters. The police weren’t helping and Chris just clammed up. Wouldn’t even talk about Justina. Personally, I wouldn’t trust that guy as far as I could throw him.’

  ‘So what happened – with his father?’

  ‘I went to his house. The place was massive, more of a mansion really. Not that it seemed to make Hohl’s old man happy. Bit of a miserable bastard, really. Anyway, I got nothing from him either. No warmth, no empathy about his missing daughter-in-law. Nothing. I pressed him for what he thought happened to Justina. And then one of Chris’s younger brothers came home.’

  ‘That would be Russell?’

  ‘No another one. Eddie, I think he said his name was. He was very defensive. He said, “This conversation’s over.” Just like that. I was then pretty much shown the door. I felt angry. Stonewalled.’

  ‘And the police. What did they say?’

  ‘Easy Bae Bae,’ said Doble, as one of the bloodhounds made to sniff at a passing jogger. Then to Schlakier, ‘We thought we could trust the police and the procedure. But ultimately it failed. It failed my sister.’

  Doble stared ahead for a while and said nothing. Just the sound of their footfalls. And the padding of the dogs’ feet.

  ‘There might be a way I can help you,’ said Schlakier. ‘Geraldine said she found a list in Christopher Hohl’s handwriting – a list of suspicious-looking items.’

  Doble shot Schlakier a look. ‘Yeah, I know the one,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got a box of Justina’s memorabilia too, mostly letters, documents, a few photos. I think there’s a few of Chris’s letters in their too. You can have the lot. Just bring it back when you’re done.’

  After they finished walking the dogs, Doble made good his promise and handed over the box to Schlakier. It was a cardboard box, secured with a lid and looked to be made from recycled paper. Schlakier resisted the urge to open it until he had farewelled Doble and got back to his car. He placed the box in the passenger seat beside him and removed the lid. And right there on top in a clear Ziploc bag was a piece of paper ripped from a small notepad: the list. Schlakier’s heart jumped as he read the contents:

  The tip

  bridge

  dig

  boat

  other ??

  shovel

  car trunk

  wrench

  27

  =====

  CAIN SLAYS ABEL

  Schlakier drove back to his flat in Hawthorn, opened a nicely chilled can of Victoria Bitter from the fridge and sat down to explore the box of memorabilia. First the list. Impossible to tell if it was Hohl’s handwriting at this stage. The only other sample he had was the cadaver letter and address, which was in capitals. This list was hand-scrawled in lower case. In a court of law, the list on its own was unlikely to be conclusive as it could be argued that it could be interpreted in many ways. Although it was logical to conclude that it was a list of how to dispose of a body.

  The tip? Dump the body there.

  Boat? Dump it at sea.

  Schlakier’s mind flashed back to his visit to Talangi State Forest.

  Car trunk? How to transport the body.

  Wrench? That had Schlakier stumped for now. Perhaps he could run it by some of the boys in forensics at Russell Street Police Station. He still had a few mates there who would do him a favour.

  He unpacked the rest of the box. As Jack Doble had said, it was mostly personal correspondence from and to Justina. Old letters, bills, credit card statements, a few postcards sent to Justina from friends. One from Bali, another from Manali – some far-flung corner of India from what Schlakier could ascertain from the stamp. He found an old Polaroid photo of Justina and Hohl. Incredibly, they were both on horseback. It looked like it was taken somewhere in the mountains. Justina was smiling broadly. Hohl looked uncomfortable, as if he could fall at any moment.

  Schlakier went through the box quickly – he would read through the contents in greater detail in the coming days – until he got to a letter at the very bottom. For the second time that night his heart got a jolt. He took out the envelope and held it up to the light. On it was a handwritten address:

  SARAH CHISHOLM

  15 CAINE STREET

  BRIGHTON

  VICTORIA, 3187

  Schlakier didn’t have access to the image of the address on the cadaver letter, but from what he could recall it looked incredibly similar. Then he took out the single A4 piece of paper in the envelope and unfolded it. It was criss-crossed with horizontal and vertical lines and seemed to be some sort of accounting record. Rows and rows of hand-written descriptions and figures. Schlakier compared it the handwritten scrawl on the list. Jackpot! The similarity was uncanny. There was no doubt in his mind they were written by the same person. Schlakier wasn’t sure if this was enough proof to get a conviction – it would need thorough analysis by a handwriting expert for that – but it was compelling evidence.

  Schlakier looked more closely at the A4 page. It appeared to be some sort of budgeting exercise. With columns on the left like “food”, “electricity” and so on at the top. Toward the bottom of the page, there were more expensive descriptions: “promotion”, “book cover artwork”, “print run”. Schlakier surmised that Hohl had helped Sarah Chisholm balance her budget as well as making an estimate of how much it was going to cost to publish a book – possibly one of the legal thrillers she had spoken of. The figures in the right column totalled in the thousands. Probably Hohl was picking up the tab for it, Schlakier guessed.

  Schlakier went to the fridge, grabbed another can of VB, punched a hole in it, took a sip and returned to his findings. Something about the address puzzled him: 15 Caine Street. On a whim, he brought up Google maps on his laptop and typed in the address. The Brighton address appeared. But it came up as 15 Cain Street. No ‘e’. Schlakier cross-referenced the street name with a number of other Google searches. But only Cain Street came up. There was no Caine Street. In
both the cadaver letter and the letter Hohl address to Sarah Chisholm, Hohl had misspelt the street name in the same way.

  For the first time – with cold, calculated certainty – Schlakier believed that Christopher Hohl had murdered Sarah Chisholm. And probably Justina Doble and Amos Gil as well.

  28

  =====

  AN UNEXPECTED DROP-IN

  ’Where’s my money?’

  Schlakier was outside his office shopfront unlocking the door. Less than five metres away, a thickset man in a hoodie was shouting into the handset in the Telstra phone booth. The Smith Street crazies were starting early this morning.

  ‘Where’s my fucking dole money?’

  Schlakier thought briefly of intervening and telling the man to invest in some politer language in public. But he had the box of memorabilia tucked under his arm and didn’t want to be distracted by a potential dust-up.

  ‘Hello? Hello!? Shit. Bitch hung up.’

  The prospective welfare recipient banged the phone hard against the phone box twice and then stormed off down the street with the offending item dangling off the hook.

  Schlakier gained entry to the relative calm of his office. He got to his desk, fired up his computer, made himself a coffee and set about going through the box of memorabilia in more detail. Birtles was out on assignment, so Schlakier would have the office to himself for the day.

  After a morning’s examination, he had unearthed nothing new or startling. But the evidence he’d found the night before was telling enough.

  Schlakier’s desk phone rang. He picked up an answered but the line immediately went dead. These hang-up calls were annoying but fairly common in this line of work, where clients sometimes called and then got cold feet. Schlakier was about to phone Peter Michael with the bombshell he’d found when there was a trilling at the front door as a potential client – or possibly a hawker – entered. Schlakier went out to greet them.

  ‘Hello Andrew, how are you?’