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I climbed the stairs to my hotel room, made myself a coffee, and drank it out of an old mug that said ‘Brisvegas Queensland,’ with a dice and palm trees on it. I sliced some of the brie I’d bought, and ate it with a banana.
The conversation with the doctor had unsettled me. The revelation that my cousins had subjected a young man with Down Syndrome with rape, causing that poor man to later attempt suicide was extremely hard to stomach. I needed to find George, and hoped to God he was alive.
I booted up the laptop and made some notes of Dr. Ashbury’s phone call, then got my phone out and opened up a map of the surrounds. A small grid of suburban houses dotted the area and ran along the inlet—manmade waterways separated the other suburbs. I geared myself up for some old-fashioned gumshoe business, otherwise known in the trade as door knocking. I decided to start with the line of rural houses opposite the development site I’d noticed on my trip with Constable Hunter the morning they found George’s car.
I locked up, went downstairs, said a quick g’day and cheerio to Noelene in the reception area, and wound my way outside of town to walk the kilometer and a half. During the walk, I entertained the notion of extending an olive branch in Constable Hunter’s direction, despite her cold demeanour, then just as quickly decided against it.
The properties were one-hectare lots with the houses set far back from the road. I entered the first property, a two-storey palace freshly rendered with sprawling lawns, and peered through the front window. I couldn’t discern any signs of life, most likely making it a holiday house for a well-to-do Sydney family. I approached the next property, a single-storey, seventies fibro affair. I heard screeching and looked up—a flurry of rainbow lorikeets fought a couple of red wattlebirds for the precious nectar of a she-oak tree. The fight was over quickly, with the lorikeets coming out on top.—beautiful things, but certainly could be vicious.
The front area was untended and slightly overgrown, with piles of rubble, stones, rocks, and house detritus scattered in dirty mounds across the land. The stench was atrocious. Pink roses and weeds grew in two gardens, alongside knocked over flamingo statues and puddles of dirty, mosquito-infested water. I knocked on the timber doorframe so as not to rattle the security screen door. Crimsafe doors had dark screening so you heard rather than saw the person behind them. I could smell casserole and cigarettes wafting through the mesh.
‘Yeah, what is it?’ said a man’s voice from the darkness.
I stated my business and held up my phone wallet, already opened and displaying my licence.
Keys jangled, a lock snapped, the door opened, and a man leaned out gingerly. He was short, balding, and in his seventies. He gripped the edge of the door with a gnarled arthritic hand and inspected my credentials closely, then looked at me apprehensively, and stared at the dressing over my nose. ‘You’re not with the coppers, are you?’
‘No, sir, I’m an independent investigator.’
‘Jesus Christ! Get the other guy as good as he got you?’
‘Not this time.’
‘I had my nose busted like that once. Billy Atchison. We were playing darts in them days, a round robin between country and city. Tensions were through the roof. I got into a barney with Billy and—pop—bastard got me a good one, right in the cavity here.’
He indicated a spot near the bridge of his liver spotted nose. ‘But believe you me, I got him twice as hard. He wasn’t game enough for more. So, you one of them blokes who snoop into other people’s dirty laundry, eh?’
To keep the peace, I smiled. ‘You may be aware that Mr. Demich’s murder occurred near here, sir. Right across the road, in fact.’
‘Yeah, I read the papers. Did you know those mongrel developers are dredging the waterfront? God knows what that’s going to do to the basin with all that silt and grit smoking up the water. Bloody no good, clueless government officials sitting behind their desks approving multimillion dollar projects, and I can bet you not one of those bastards ever set foot on that soil. Not one. Oh, they do their survey reports and get their experts to run risk assessments, but I can guarantee you, if you put a map under their noses, not one of them could point to Sussex Inlet. Bloody clueless, the lot of them.’
I made a face as close to what I thought passed as compliance, but there wasn’t much more I could say to that. The matters of surveyors weren’t mine to comment on, and I wasn’t willing to argue semantics.
I said, ‘I was wondering if I could talk to you about Monday night? Maybe you saw or heard something?’
He deliberated for a moment, then pulled his head back inside. The piston hissed and the door slammed shut behind him.
I heard feet shuffling across thick carpet, and he grunted with each step. After some minutes, I heard more shuffling and grunting.
The door opened, and he emerged with two light beers, one of which he passed to me.
I took it and twisted the top off.
He wore a singlet, and brown trousers, and his legs appeared bowed at the knees. He indicated a table and chairs on the porch.
I took a seat facing the sun, and he slowly lowered himself into the padded bench seat opposite me.
He reached a hand over and said, ‘Mike, was it?’
‘Matt.’
‘Ray.’
We shook hands.
He twisted the cap off his beer with great difficulty, and offered a small salute.
I did the same.
He took a long pull, exhaled in a tired fashion, and looked at me squarely. ‘You Polish?’
‘Australian.’
‘I mean your background. Your ancestry. Kowalski’s Polish, isn’t it? Where are your parents from?’
‘My father’s Polish and my mother’s Italian. I’m first generation Australian.’
‘I knew it. I’m fifth generation Aussie. Rob Demich was Croatian, wasn’t he?’
‘He was born here. His father’s Croatian.’
‘Went to a school with a Croat. Tall skinny bastard, Lubce, I think his name was. I don’t think that bloke took a shower a day in his life. Gypsies, or something or other....’
I got the inference, and took a pull on the beer to help put my prejudice in check.
‘We’ve gone too far, I think,’ he said. ‘I’m only saying this because I can tell you’re not the sensitive type. I’m not talking about you. I’m sure you’re a hard-working bloke who pays his taxes and contributes to society, but I think we’ve gone too far bloody far. You can’t sing Waltzing Matilda these days without someone getting upset.’
He took another pull on his beer and gestured at nothing in particular. ‘I tell people time and time again, those people do not assimilate. They come here and form their little ghettos, put up signs in their language no one understands, and they don’t learn the language. And now you’ve got bloody terrorists in Sydney, we’ve got Man Monis putting up his ISIS flag and killing people, and it’s all because we’re letting them in. And the police knew about him! They had Monis on watch, did you know? He slipped through their fingers. Now you tell me, do you think that’s right?’
‘The man had a criminal history, I agree. I think there should have been more checks in place. However, hindsight’s twenty-twenty.’
He dismissed me with a stern look and a guttural groan. ‘Those people want to build another mosque in Nowra. Why do they need another bloody mosque down here? There are already two mosques in the far south coast region as it is. Now look, I don’t mean you. Europeans have acclimated to our way of life. I’m talking about the ones who don’t. I’m talking about the ones who come here with their Sharia laws, and don’t care for our way of life. They don’t respect our laws. You might think I’m a stupid old man who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’ll tell you this: my son, Nigel, he’s married to a nice Maltese girl. Nerida. They have two kids, Byron and Angelica. They live up in Cairns now, and they come down to see me every Christmas for three days. Gorgeous, lovely lady, Nerida is. I don’t meddle in their affairs, and they don’t meddle in mine. Nerida, now she’s an exception to the rule.’
Again, I arranged my face into what I imagined passed as polite compliance, as it became more difficult to let things slide.
‘And don’t bother complaining to the mayor, that Hugh O’Loughlin,’ he continued. ‘He’s too puritanical to be wrapped up in this sordid business. I didn’t vote for him. He’s got his hand in a lot of pockets. And don’t get me started on the police. That Sergeant Green came here, door knocking with his little offsider, some sheila who hasn’t shown her face around here. And the only reason Green made sergeant was political. The minister needed to promote officers across the Shoalhaven to spin good PR, and there were only two officers up for promotion, Paul Green being one of them. So, they promoted him to Sergeant because the Minister forced them to. That man has the morals of a cut snake.’
He pulled out a bag of tobacco and some papers, then pinched out some tobacco, spread it out on a paper, licked it and sealed it. He placed it behind his ear. ‘I make a point to raise my personal concerns with the good sergeant about issues in the community, which he needs to be aware of. Somalis coming in and walking the streets all hours of the night, getting up to God knows what. But our good sergeant is as baffled as Adam on Mother’s Day. You tell me, do you think it’s okay that we let them so they can sponge-live off the taxpayer?’
I raised my eyebrows and took a pull on the beer. ‘It’s complicated.’
He smiled and held my gaze. ‘It’s not that bloody complicated.’
He took a sip and, when he spoke, it was in a different tone. ‘I respect your opinion because that’s the kind of person I am, but these people don’t care about your opinion. All they care about is sitting around on their arses collecting the dole. It’s you lefty bleeding hearts who’ll cry the loudest when you find your car up on bricks and your house ransacked.’
He shook his head, twisted his face in disgust, and tapped a stained finger on the table for emphasis. ‘We don’t need those types here. I don’t take my grandchildren anywhere. You don’t know who’s going to mow them down or blow them up. And Demich... that degenerate always had the cops coming ‘round his place. I can’t tell you how many times that little arsehole destroyed property or stole money to get his next hit, always disrespectful, yelling and carrying on like a bloody yahoo. The words that came out of his mouth would make Gordon Ramsay blush. The man was a menace to our community. I didn’t wish him dead, but there’s an old saying: If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.’
With those words, Ray had lost any chance of earning points from me. As he took a pull on his beer, I said, ‘I’m Rob’s cousin.’
He stopped drinking and lowered his beer. He opened and closed his mouth but no sound came out. The air had changed between us, in my favour—exactly how I wanted it.
I said, ‘And despite what you may think or believe, a man is dead. His brother is missing and presumed dead. Now I need to find the person who did it, and I think you might know something, or we wouldn’t be talking. I take it by the condition of your front lawn that you’re not a neighbourly type, nor someone who respects the law. I’m guessing you hate authority, Ray, and you hate the police, which is why you never told them anything. Now, I need you to think very long and very hard, and consider giving me the information I came here for.’
He quickly licked his lips and took another hasty pull on his beer. ‘I don’t appreciate the tone you’re using.’
‘I don’t like using it. Tell me what you saw on Monday night.’
His hand trembled as he considered his options, and his watery, red-rimmed eyes didn’t leave mine. ‘Well, not much traffic passes this way Monday evenings. It was late when I heard something roaring down this road like the bejesus. Like a scalded cat, it was. Engine had a high-pitched roar to it, and it came through here like a shot, heading out of town. I’d been sitting in there watching the telly.’
‘What time?’
‘Well, that would have been after the late news, so about half ten? I heard it coming back about half an hour later, roaring like the bejesus again. I got up and looked out the front to see if I knew who it might be. I saw it come out of the Homestead site about five minutes later. It roared off again straight back into town.’
I tried to make sense of that. Why would the killer leave the scene, only to return to it half an hour later? Did they have an afterthought? Did they have to clean something up? Did they leave something there and go back for it? Or did they go back and leave something there on purpose—like a mobile phone?
‘Did you get the rego?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get the chance to get my glasses from the side table.’
‘What about the car? Did you get the make and model?’
‘I can’t see as well as I used to, but I think it could’ve been one of them Subarus. It might have been a black one or a very dark colour.’
‘How many people in the car, Ray?’
‘It was dark. I couldn’t see—’
‘Have you seen the car before?’
‘No.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
He hesitated. ‘No.’
I finished the beer, which had turned sour, in one long pull and put the bottle on the table. ‘Thanks for the beer.’
As I stepped off the porch, I didn’t feel very good about myself or what I’d done. I had several decades over Ray, and as far as I could tell, he lived alone, but by the time I’d walked down the driveway and out through the front gate, the bad feeling had already ebbed away.
