Both Carol’s front and back doors were still locked. A worm of concern was eating into him. There was no evidence Carol had been home since his last visit. He had no idea who she rented from so he decided to check the most obvious places a key might have been left — under the mat or in the meter box. Bingo: the front door key was in the box. He opened the door, caught that slightly stale smell of a house closed a short time.
‘Carol?’
He had not expected an answer but called anyway. The lounge room revealed a rumpled sofa, a newspaper carelessly open. He checked it, Friday’s. He retraced his steps to the hall and advanced to the kitchen at the rear of the house: dishes had been washed and left to dry in a rack but it was perfunctory; the Trix not put away under the sink, the cutlery drawer not shut tight. It suggested haste but there was no sign of breakfasting today. Carol’s bedroom was the one at the back adjoining the kitchen, she always liked having that mess of plants and trees outside her window. He clicked on the light. The bed was stripped, the bedclothes on the floor in a heap. The old-fashioned wardrobe was open. The locusts had been through, coat hangers and nothing else. The bathroom was a similar story, a near-empty Pears shampoo in the bin, the cabinet cleaned out. The spare bedroom was, as always, untouched. He felt relief. No bloodied corpse, which, he could admit to himself now, had been his gravest fear. It looked like Carol had got up and left in a hurry. Not so extreme she had left dirty dishes around but she hadn’t tidied the lounge or cleaned the bathroom properly. Carol wasn’t what you’d call houseproud but she was neat and he would have figured considerate enough to leave the house spic and span if she decided to move on. He did a quick search but found nothing at all to suggest a forwarding address. She had never maintained a phone so he couldn’t call the golf club from here to see if somebody there knew anything. He locked the house back up and checked the trash can: old eggshells and vegetables but not paperwork.
‘If you see her, tell her not to bother turning up again because she has no job.’
Blake knew Ray, the golf club bar manager, reasonably well. They weren’t really competitors. Each helped the other out if they were short of stock. Ray was stacking crates out the back of the building. ‘Never turned up Saturday, our busiest day, never called, nothing.’
Blake helped him with a couple of crates, dug for more info.
‘She never showed Saturday?’
‘Nope.’
‘But she was fine Friday?’
‘Good as gold.’ Ray took a break from his labours and studied him. ‘Rooting her were you?’
‘We were acquainted.’
Ray gave a knowing chuckle. ‘You might want to get your dick checked. You weren’t the only one.’
Blake didn’t care, didn’t want to own anybody. He’d liked Carol, he got her, she got him.
Ray embellished. ‘Couple of the members, older blokes.’
It quickly ran through Blake’s head that perhaps there had been a problem in this regard: a wife finds out about her husband in a small place like this …
‘Do you know who she rented off?’
Ray did not.
‘If you really need to find out why she split, try Gloria. She works at Gannons during the day and does the night shift here. She and Carol are thick.’
Gloria was diminutive with a small unremarkable face, a clearing beneath thick, curly brown hair. Blake put her age at late thirties.
‘You’re the Yank she’s always going on about.’
‘I guess so.’
They were at the back of Gannons, which purveyed everything from groceries to fishing gear. Gloria sucked on the very last of her cigarette, dropped it, ground it out, looked back up into Blake’s eyes searching for some indication of deception.
Finally she said, ‘She didn’t tell me anything. She never told you she was heading off?’
Blake told her no, she had not.
‘You didn’t do the dirty on her?’
Blake decided to answer obliquely. ‘Everything was good. We were supposed to be going for a drive Sunday.’
Gloria shrugged. ‘I dunno. I expected her Saturday. When she never showed, I thought she must be sick and too crook to call in. Then I thought we’d hear something yesterday. She’s not the kind of girl puts down roots, know what I mean, but I really thought she’d hang around. For you. She liked you. A lot.’
‘You know who she rented off?’
‘Try Gardiners.’
Gardiners was the bigger of the two real estate agents in Coral Shoals and was only a block from Gannons. He thanked her.
‘You ever get shorthanded at your bar, you know where to find me. And if you hear from her, tell her to drop me a line.’
‘I will.’
‘You heard any more about the woman was killed?’
Blake said he hadn’t. He felt obliged to add, ‘I was worried … about Carol, you know? But all her things were gone. I don’t think anything bad happened.’
Gloria gave a half-grunt. ‘Girls like Carol, something bad always happens.’
George Gardiner wore a crisp white shirt, gold cufflinks and watch, striped tie. He had indeed rented the house on behalf of a client but had no idea the house had been vacated.
‘She’d paid to the end of the month, ten-pound bond. She’ll forfeit that.’
‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’
Gardiner went to a filing cabinet and looked through, pulled out a form, scanned.
‘Post-office box in Toowoomba, Queensland. You want it?’
Blake couldn’t see himself writing to her, he’d never written a letter in his life. He declined Gardiner’s offer and took his leave. That was it, a dead end. For some reason Carol had up and left. Maybe he was the cause, but then why agree to see him Sunday? If one of her family had fallen ill suddenly, wouldn’t she at least leave a message? Gloria was right. A girl like Carol always had some kind of trouble stalking her. He was kind of zoned out standing on the footpath — as they called it here — the air getting steamy again, when a shadow skidded through his vision like a dolphin through a wave and stopped in front of him. It was Nalder in his police van. The passenger window was half-down. He leaned over.
‘Come here.’ Nalder indicated something secretive. For the first time since last night, Blake thought about the bodies up there in the hinterland. They must have been found already. He lowered his head to the window. Nalder darted looks around, making sure he was secure.
‘Vernon and Apollonia just arrested the Beach Bum for the girl’s murder.’
‘You have to admit he is weird.’
Doreen was squeezing oranges for a fresh juice. A Blake she had never had an inkling of had turned up at her place. Not the ice-cool, soft-spoken, logical Blake.
‘They’ve arrested Crane,’ he’d said, then run his mouth nonstop on how dumb and ignorant the police were. Five minutes on he continued to pace around the kitchen, still saying the same words. ‘Crane didn’t kill that girl.’
She thought twice about saying anything but did anyway. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just because he’s a friend …’
‘Forget that. How did he even get there?’
She poured him a glass of juice and handed it to him, tried to be neutral. In honesty she could never say she liked Crane. He was smart, sure, he used words like a rich woman used her purse, as if knowing the contents would never run out. But he was a beach bum for a reason: he didn’t want to fit in with society.
‘What do the police say?’
‘According to Nalder, they say he was with the girl in her car. She gave him a lift to the motel. He killed her and walked back. It’s bullshit. He had scratches because he fell down Cockatoo Ridge. That’s what he told me and I believe him. They say it was her clawing at him.’ He looked at the juice, finally drank some.
‘They have any evidence: fingerprints at the motel, something like that?’
‘Nalder told me on the quiet that Crane’s fingerprints were on the outside of the car. So what? It was parked out the back of the Surf Shack. Some witness says they saw him talking to the dead girl.’
‘What witness?’
‘They wouldn’t reveal that to Nalder. It’s a fit up. They want to clear the case so they go for the easy target, Crane. I spoke to a solicitor in Sydney, David Harvey.’
Alarm bells were ringing for Doreen. The business was doing well but Blake wasn’t shy to spend. Sydney solicitors didn’t come cheap. Blake was already into his story, how he had visited the local solicitor, Collopy, first.
‘The guy flapped about like a wounded seagull, saying the case was way out of his league. “If they’ve taken him to Sydney you need somebody there. At this stage you don’t need to engage a barrister.” At least Collopy explained the difference between the hot-shot who went to court in the wig and the guy who did the legwork. For now we need legwork.’
‘What did Harvey say?’
‘He was honest. He said if the cops had arrested and charged Crane, they wouldn’t be bothering about doing any other investigation, they would try and make everything point at Crane. He told me most Australian juries convict because they believe what the cops tell them. But for now, what he could do was visit Crane and tell him to clam up, say nothing.’
That didn’t sound promising. She said as much.
‘It’s not. Harvey told me Crane’s best chance of getting off is if it’s some psycho who kills again. Great, huh?’
She didn’t look him in the eye, just stirred the juice slow. ‘You can afford Harvey?’
‘Not for more than a couple of weeks. He advised me the most important thing was to get Crane good counsel now, in the early days, stop him from digging himself in a hole. But I have a plan.’
She was worried he was going to go into debt over Crane. ‘You’re not going to get a second mortgage or anything?’
‘Money is not going to save Crane. I’m going to find out who did it.’ It made sense to Blake that if anybody could figure out the killer, it would be him. After all, the one thing he knew a lot about was killing people. He wasn’t proud of this but it was a fact that very few killers had his degree of professionalism: they got sloppy, they made mistakes. For a start, many knew the person they killed. They were married to them or related to them. They left a trail. It was of utmost importance therefore that he knew the identity of the young woman who had been murdered.
‘Valerie Stokes, twenty-four, convicted of prostitution three years ago in Kings Cross.’
Nalder had agreed to meet him at Crane’s beach shack. The cops had been through it, trashed it. All that was left were books, tossed and left in the sand and scrub like scattered bones. The revelation about Valerie Stokes charged Blake.
‘It’s obvious. She met a john at the motel and he killed her.’
‘I don’t disagree but Vernon and Apollonia like the Beach Bum. He’s got no alibi, he was messed up, his fingerprint is on the car.’
‘In it or on it?’
‘I’m not sure. I heard on the outside, but they might have found something on the inside too. Why are you wasting your time with this no-hoper?’
‘I like him. He didn’t kill her. The real killer is wandering around free as a bird.’
‘According to Vernon, Stokes hasn’t been in the game for at least two years. She’s been working in a bar in Brisbane.’
‘Boyfriend, husband?’
‘Sort of boyfriend. He has an ironclad alibi. Says Valerie told him she was visiting a sister down this way. No sign of any relatives north of Sydney. She left Brisbane on the Sunday, the thirteenth. That night she stayed alone at the Heads in a motel. Left early next morning, also alone.’
Monday the fourteenth, there had been sightings at Greycliff and Toorolong. Then on the Thursday her car had been out the back of the Surf Shack.
‘So where has she been in the meantime, Monday night through to Thursday?’
‘So far they haven’t been able to find out. That’s your mate’s best chance. Maybe she was turning tricks at motels.’
‘Or shacked up with whoever killed her.’
Nalder conceded that would explain why the police could find no sign of her.
‘On the coast, she would have been seen but up in that hinterland … farms, shacks, no neighbours for miles …’ Nalder’s gesture intimated she might as well have been on the moon.
‘It’s not likely she just headed south on spec. She knew somebody. Does she actually have a sister?’
‘In Newcastle. That’s where she was from originally. The family haven’t heard from her in years. One day she piked school and never came home. They thought she was dead till a few years ago when a family friend said they’d seen her in Sydney. But she never got back to them. Wild girl, from what they said.’
But if she had been heading back to Newcastle she would have kept driving south, not turned back up north to Brisbane via the Ocean View.
‘How much money did she have on her when she was found?’
‘Congratulations. I missed the part where you joined the police force and made detective.’
‘Somebody has to find the truth.’
‘If I were you I’d be concerning myself with those strongarm pricks that beat up your yardy.’
Blake ignored him, old news. ‘How much money was she carrying?’ ‘Just under thirty-five pounds.’
A lot for a barmaid to have. She had to have been back on the game. Already his brain was working on it: somebody who knew her from before when she was a hooker, who lived within about fifty miles. Maybe they weren’t the killer, maybe she’d left them, was heading back, decided to pick up a little more cash, picked the wrong john. He saw a weakness in the case against Crane.
‘If it was Crane, why do they figure he left so much money? He’s a bum. He’d take every cent he could get his hands on.’
‘They’ll say he’s a bloke who doesn’t care about money. Or he panicked.’
In other words, they would say whatever fitted their theory. He’d wasted enough time.
‘Will you keep me posted?’
Nalder sighed. ‘I feel bad about your yardy but it’s still not my job … but yeah, I’ll let you know what I know.’
Though Blake had never stayed at the Ocean View Motel, he had driven by it a few times. If you were on the inland road that ran from out the back of Cockatoo Ridge, you took the turn-off to Billings on the coast. As he was already on the coast he just followed the road up to Billings and then took Banksia Drive, which ran about halfway up the low cliff that overlooked the small town. Banskia Drive was narrow and winding, with a half-dozen properties perched on the top level of the cliff accessed by driveways. He got caught behind the garbage truck and had to wait while they emptied the trash. It would have been a bitch hauling trash cans all the way down from the houses but the views more than compensated. One white-haired resident was waiting to collect his emptied trash can. It was banged up. He must have thought Blake a sympathetic soul. He started talking to him through his open window.
‘Buggers get a skinful and then overshoot the corner. They mangled my bin.’
Blake wondered if he would ever get old and rich enough that his biggest concern was a dented trash can. He hoped so. A vision of Doreen came to him at her kitchen table, handing him the orange juice. If only it were possible …
The rubbish truck jolted forward, the driver managing to get far enough to the edge of the cliff that Blake could squeeze past. He carried on about three hundred yards to the crest of the road where a tall sign ‘Motel’ ushered in the passing traveller. He turned into the short driveway past an entrance of stone and greenery. Reception was dead ahead but he kept going down the drive. The motel was single level and L-shaped but unlike most motels, which were bare, this one had planter boxes filled with lush plants either side of each room door. These offered screening and privacy from each neighbour. You might see what car turned and parked in front of a unit but you wouldn’t see who got out. There was only one vehicle in front of any of the units, number two. It was hardly surprising, business was unlikely to be thriving given the circumstances. Number ten was the very last one on the short arm of the L, the furthest from reception, closest to the road. Blake made a three-point turn at the end of the strip and headed back to reception, parking in an empty bay beside an older model Holden. When he got out, he could see the ocean through a gap between the reception building and the accommodation area. Obviously the units offered views over the Pacific, as promised. He walked up a short, lopsided path. Birds were trilling, the humidity intensifying. Jasmine or some other sweet scent hung like incense. He entered the deserted reception area and saw, beyond the high desk, a small dining room and bar. He was about to hit the bell when a door at the back of reception opened and a gaunt man, straggly hair, wearing slacks and a sweater stepped through.
‘Hello. Looking for a room?’ The man’s voice was flat and high at the same time. Blake put him in his late thirties.
‘Not exactly.’
The man waited for more.
Blake said, ‘I want to take a look at room ten.’
‘You from a paper?’
‘Yeah. The police finished with it?’
‘As of yesterday. It hasn’t been cleaned yet.’
‘Good.’
‘Ten quid.’
‘Five.’
‘Okay. But no pictures. I got to rent that room sometime, you know what I mean?’
‘Deal.’ Blake pulled out five pounds, asked if he owned the place.
‘My in-laws.’ He had picked up keys and was heading towards the door. Blake followed in behind him.
‘Did you meet the girl?’
‘I checked her in. She gave a false name. A lot of them do.’
They were back outside now, walking diagonally towards the unit.
‘She was alone?’
‘She checked in alone. I never saw the car.’
‘What time?’
‘Ten-thirty or thereabouts.’
Blake said he guessed the police gave him a going over.
‘Oh yeah. I was lucky my wife and mother-in-law were with me.’
‘You never heard anything?’
‘Like screams or something? No.’
They had paused at the door. The motel guy pointed around the step.
‘There was spew all over here. I had to hose it down.’
This was something Blake had not heard before. ‘The cops think it was the killer?’
‘That’s what I heard them say. They were whispering but I’ve got good hearing.’
So whoever did it couldn’t handle his own handiwork. Or maybe there had been more than one person here?
‘Were you busy that night? Many rooms taken?’
‘Four, counting her. We had a travelling salesman and two couples. The police got all their details.’
‘What rooms were they in?’
‘The couples were in one and three, the salesman in six.’
‘Did she ask for the furthest room?’
‘Yes. She said she wanted the far room, that’s number ten.’
‘She make any impression on you?’
‘She seemed … I don’t want to speak ill of the dead … but like, not the kind of girl you want to marry but you’d love to take her to the drives.’ He opened the door, and said he wasn’t coming in. ‘Once was enough. Don’t take anything.’
Blake gave him a scout’s sign. Doreen had taught him that. He stepped inside the room.
With the curtains closed, it was black as the inside of a stove. He clicked on the central light. Like a giant’s ulcer had burst: blood trails, rusted, crusting. It was a good thing the body had been found early. In this humidity the stench would never have cleared. Even with the front window left open, a sickening odour lingered. Immediately to his right was a narrow door smeared with blood, the knob still dusty with print powder. He was guessing bathroom. With a handkerchief, he pushed open the door. Small bathroom as expected: sink, open glass shelves above it, a toilet and a shower stall. Whatever belongings had been left here had presumably been taken by the police. The floor was of small hexagonal tiles, the walls plaster. It was clear of blood, at least anything obvious. Blake pulled the bathroom door to and settled his stomach for the hard part. It was a slaughterhouse. The gold-brown nylon carpet was disfigured by what resembled a large burn mark not three feet from the door: caked blood. Good luck cleaning that off. There was a small writing desk to his left, two cane chairs with curved arms on the left-hand side of the room. The material back and cushions on one were clear but on the other were streaked with dark brown, more blood. The double bed occupied most of the room, its bedhead resting against the right-hand side wall, closest to the road. Directly in front of him, at right angles to the bed, a window looked out over the ocean but there were only glimpses. A lot of vegetation was growing out there. The sheets had been stripped but the bare mattress was splotched dark brown. Streaks of blood were all over the wall to the bed side of the room and there were more patches on the carpet. Blake imagined it going down. The photos showed Stokes naked. If she answers the door like that, she’s expecting someone. But then again it could have happened later. The killer was with her. Perhaps they had sex. She got up to go to the bathroom or grab a drink. Or they argued, she got up angry and the killer nailed her. From the photos he couldn’t say whether she’d been stabbed from in front or behind. And where had the knife come from? Had the killer brought it with him? Was it hers? What Blake did know was that this was done in an angry frenzy. He remembered what it looked like when Tino Sanchez stabbed Charlie Regan at the Miracle Pool Hall. It was a thin blood trail, width of a wasp, that was all, because Tino was a master knifeman and didn’t even get blood on himself. Whoever did this must have been covered in blood.
Blake opened the bathroom door again and checked inside, this time as close as he could around the drain and near the hot and cold faucets. He still couldn’t see any blood but the cops had special instruments that could pick up what you don’t see with the naked eye, microscopes and things like that. So, according to them, Crane either showered, then got back into his old clothes with no blood traces or what, discarded his clothes? How did he get back to his shack? Had anybody found the clothes he’d supposedly got rid of?
Blake had seen all he needed. He had to find where Stokes had been Monday night to Thursday evening. Solve that, there was a good chance he’d be able to find the killer.
There was one more thing he needed to do.
After thanking the motel guy and taking his phone number, Blake climbed back into his car and took the inland route south on Dayman Road. About eight miles before Coral Shoals, the road split. You could take Belvedere, which took you through the hinterland past farms, eventually to the Heights, or you could continue on Dayman. About two miles on from the Belvedere turnoff was the turnoff to Salisbury Road. It ran back down Coral Shoals joining the coast road about a mile south of his house. Crane had mentioned a logging track and Blake thought he knew the one, just a mile or so on from the Dayman turnoff. He found the track leading off into thick bush, parked and climbed out. It was damn hot now and the air smelt of future rain. The track curled along the ridge line in a semicircle. A lot of timber had been stripped from here to build sailing ships, or so he had been told. Many of the tall trees had gone but there was an abundance of ferns and bracken. About twenty minutes into his walk, he found a cabin. He was pretty sure this was the one Crane had talked about. It was made of rough wood, probably seventy or eighty years old but still provided shelter. Compared to Crane’s beach abode, it was a palace. Just like Crane had said, on its south side, the level ground on which the cabin had been built fell sharply away but you couldn’t see the drop unless you pushed aside the topmost ferns of the dense regrowth. When he did this, he could clearly see a drop of around twelve feet to the next plateau preceded by a trail of small broken branches and flattened fronds, just as if somebody had fallen. Of course it could have happened some other time. Crane could have made up this elaborate lie.
Blake did not believe so.
Just because Crane was weird didn’t mean Doreen thought he could be responsible but she didn’t want Blake getting involved. Yes it was selfish but she had found a tiny corner of paradise here, and now everybody wanted to tear it down. Those men who had beaten up Andy, what was going to happen to them? Were they going to come back and beat her up next? Or Blake? She had enjoyed their time this morning, Blake in her kitchen drinking a juice she’d just made. What if it really could be like that between them? He hadn’t gone to anybody else, not that little number from the golf club. Her phone rang. She answered it quickly, expecting Blake with news.
‘Doreen? It’s me, Kitty. Can I see you?’
They met at the Heights tennis club. Kitty had ridden her bicycle and was wearing tennis whites.
‘Mum’s at home and this is good cover,’ she explained as they took a seat on the quiet side of the terrace, the gentle rhythm of an unseen game somehow comforting like an aunt’s lullaby.
‘I just needed to see somebody.’ This was not the bubbly, confident Kitty of a week ago. Doreen tried to angle her body to offer intimacy but was hampered by the furniture. The tables and chairs were of heavy iron frames and legs, the tops and seats made of wood slats painted different prime colours. It made her think of those iron flamingos in her uncle’s garden, of family friends who had returned from the war and spent weekends with bags of concrete, wheelbarrows and welding torches. She would practise her steps and dream of being a ballerina while the men churned cement with thick shovels.
‘It’s horrible what happened but you’re going to be fine.’
‘I feel so stupid.’
Kitty picked at her dress. ‘Even if a boy asked me out … I don’t know …’ she fought tears.
Doreen reached over and took her hand. ‘What I like about you, you’re a really gutsy kid. This is not going to stop you. That creep is not going to fuck up your life. I won’t let him, and neither will you, right?’
The tears squeezed out but there was a smile too. Kitty managed to nod. Doreen found a handkerchief and passed it across. Kitty blew her nose, composed herself.
‘Did anything like that ever happen to you?’
‘Maybe not that bad. But one boy, my brother’s friend, he asked if he could feel my bosoms. This was up in our back shed. I was about thirteen, I really didn’t have any bust anyway so I was almost flattered but it was wrong, so I said no. He grinned and tried again. I grabbed Dad’s hammer off the bench and slammed it down on his other hand.’
Kitty was laughing. ‘He stopped?’
‘He started crying. I felt a bit bad actually. For years he avoided me but we ended up kind of friends. I mean it’s not the same at all …’
‘No, thanks.’
Somewhere glassware rattled, a rally ended. Doreen was filled with a sense of inadequacy: she’d be a terrible mother. She tried, ‘Not all boys are like Todd.’
Kitty deadpanned. ‘Not all boys are like Blake.’
At least Kitty’s humour hadn’t been extinguished.
‘No, they certainly are not.’
Kitty seemed to have climbed out of the depths. ‘You like him, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. But I work for him.’
‘So?’
‘It messes it all up.’
‘Does he like you?’
A question she asked herself regularly.
‘He likes me but I don’t know if it’s romantic.’
Kitty dwelt on that, said, ‘Perhaps you don’t want it all tarnished, like me with Todd.’
Maybe Kitty was more perceptive than Doreen was. There was a part of Blake like the other side of the moon. He wasn’t evasive exactly about his background but Doreen could read people. There were things Blake didn’t reveal, not even to her. Kitty jumped across to another line though.
‘I hear they arrested the Beach Bum for killing that girl.’
‘Apparently. That doesn’t mean he did it.’
‘They must have some evidence though.’
‘Or maybe it’s just because he doesn’t fit.’ Doreen was aware she was turning one-eighty degrees.
Kitty sighed, squinted up at the sun. ‘Well, anyway. I hope it’s him. Otherwise the killer is still out there.’