2 p.m.
‘Time of death for both victims: sometime between midnight and four a.m.,’ says Stones, reading to Walker from the preliminary forensic report.
Stones had arrived back on another helicopter. Walker had been sitting with Blair and Grace at the roadhouse eating a steak and mushroom pie and drinking an iced coffee. The pie was excellent, flaky pastry and plenty of good-quality meat in the filling. ‘We buy them from the bakery at Quilpie,’ Paul’s wife, Nat, had told him, and Walker has added the bakery to his list of places to pit-stop for good food.
He’d been keeping an eye on the crowd in the roadhouse too. The place had had a strange energy to it. Cars coming in and out, blokes sitting with Paul at a table at the back in quiet yet intense conversation. A moody undercurrent he couldn’t quite pin down. Everyone anxious about the murders, he’d figured. It was understandable. Grace had asked after Vero. He’d told her she was back with Susie, that she was doing OK, then changed the subject. They’d talked about Boston and he and Blair had shared more stories of Caloodie, trying to distract her, lift her mood, not entirely sure they’d managed it.
When he’d seen the helicopter arrive, Stones ducking his head, the blades whipping above him, carrying what looked like an overnight bag, White waiting in the cruiser, he’d dropped Grace back at the cabin before heading to the station. She’d wanted to access the Wi-Fi, wanted to watch something on her phone, switch off. He’d got it but wished he could give her a better option, that this holiday was going more to plan, that they weren’t stuck here, dealing with a double murder.
‘Cause of death for the female victim: haemorrhage and blood loss,’ says Stones, still reading. ‘She had eight deep cut wounds to the face, chest and neck, her ribs were broken and the lung and heart took damage, the pleural cavity was breached, she had a pneumothorax – that’s a collapsed lung to you and me – caused by a penetrating chest injury, but it was blood loss from the severed carotid artery that was the cause of death. Jesus …’ Stones exhales. ‘They reckon less than two minutes before she died, given the extent to which it was severed. Just gotta hope she was unconscious.’
Walker feels the horrible violence of the murders wash through him again. He’s seen some terrible things in his time but this is a really nasty case.
Stones flicks a page over. ‘Mark Bailey likely died instantly from his head injuries. Extensive brain contusion following fragmentation of the neurocranium, as the result of an assault on the head with a sharp-edged tool. A total of three slash and cut wounds as well as contused lacerations were identified on the scalp, the face and the neck.’ Stones skims on. ‘Like we thought, Bailey also had defensive wounds.’ He reads: ‘Both ulna and radius in the forearm are broken, precise causation cannot be explained, though likely within the dynamic processes involved between victim, assailant and the offending weapon. Christ, this lot never use one word when a hundred will do.’
‘Do they reckon she was killed first, and he woke up?’ says Walker. ‘You’d think you’d do it the other way round, kill the bigger target first, then the softer hit. And she was further away from the door too, on the far side of the bed. Could she have been the target?’
‘All conjecture at this stage,’ says Stones, ‘but if you’re right, that puts the husband straight in the frame.’ He goes up to the board and puts a question mark beside Karen Mullins’s name. ‘We need to do a bit of digging into her life,’ he says. ‘I’ve already asked for financial and insurance checks on both victims. We’ll find out how much Todd Mullins benefits from her death.’
‘What about their phones? Be worth checking out if there’s any calls or messages on them that might give us a clue …’
‘Good point,’ says Stones. He goes through the paperwork, pulls out a page. ‘That’s odd. There’s no phone on the evidence list. Neither Mark’s nor Karen Mullins’s. Maybe the killer took them. I’ll get someone to request call records and have White do another search of the house. I asked him to check Mark’s car yesterday – I’ll get him to look through that again, too.’
‘Was there anything interesting on Mullins’s phone?’ asks Walker.
‘At first glance there wasn’t anything obvious. He didn’t have a passcode to lock it and I couldn’t see any calls or messages around the time of death. It needs more analysis – I’m waiting for the report.’
The whiteboard now has a series of pictures of the victims and scene pinned up alongside the names of the possible suspects: Mullins, Stewie Charles, and Blair’s name, incongruously, still up there too.
‘Any indication on what the weapon was?’ asks Walker.
‘They’re only saying a sharp-edged tool at this stage,’ says Stones, ‘but I spoke to the pathologist and she says probably a hatchet of some type. White and I searched the house, the garden, the shed, the empty block next door for the weapon, but couldn’t find it. We’d be home and dry if we had it but he could have chucked it in any of the empty lots out here, or he held on to it and then dumped it in the water … It could be anywhere. We’ll need a hell of a big team for a proper search – that won’t happen till the water goes down.’
‘There’s a couple of other things I’ve been following up,’ says Walker. He fills Stones in on the trashed workshop and his conversation with Wilson. ‘I reckon we should add his name to the suspect list. He could be responsible for the break-in at the workshop.’
Stones writes Dean Wilson up there. ‘Is the workshop secure?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, Blair locked it up.’
‘Right, I’ll get a team to go over it.’
‘I spoke to Vero Bailey, Mark’s wife, too, and she says he was anxious in the days before he died. He’d started locking his doors, after the rumour came out that he found that million-dollar opal. I’ve been thinking that it might be he was killed for the stone. Maybe the affair was just a way to cover tracks, to set Todd Mullins up for it? Bailey’s mining camp was trashed last week and he told his wife he suspected it was the Charles brothers.’
‘Interesting,’ says Stones. ‘I looked Stewie Charles up on the system. He knifed a bloke down in New South Wales, in a pub fight. The bloke died, bled out while they waited for an ambulance. That’s what got him the ten years. He’s in the frame for this too.’ Stones pauses, thinks a moment. ‘Let’s start by talking with Mullins again,’ he says. ‘He’s still the most obvious suspect. We can put some pressure on him, see where that gets us. You want to come with for the interview? Be good to have another pair of eyes and ears on him …’
They take the police cruiser, leaving the ute parked outside the station, and Walker directs Stones to Blair’s place. It’s Blair who answers the door when Stones bangs on it. He nods at Walker, standing a few metres away in the yard, and Walker can see he doesn’t think much of Stones. Blair keeps his face closed and guarded whenever he looks at him.
‘Looking for Todd Mullins,’ says Stones.
‘Yeah, nah, he’s not here.’
‘Where’d he go?’
‘Dunno. He was gone when I got back.’
‘How long you been back?’
‘About half an hour,’ says Blair. He’d come straight back here when they’d all left the roadhouse, thinks Walker.
‘Any idea where he might be?’
Blair shakes his head. ‘Pub maybe?’
‘Mind if I come in and have a look round?’ says Stones. It’s not really a request. Blair looks across at Walker, who gives him a slight nod. No harm in it, he’s thinking.
‘Alright,’ says Blair, standing aside. Stones pushes past, unnecessarily bullish, playing the hard cop.
Blair waits by the door, wanting nothing to do with it. Walker, who knows him as well as he knows anyone, can sense Blair’s dislike of the Queensland copper radiating out from him.
‘He’s only doing his job,’ he says. Blair raises his eyebrows as if questioning his read of the situation, and Walker is surprised. Visceral distrust is written all over Blair’s face and body. Thinking on it, Walker realises it’s the first time he’s seen Blair in contact with the law.
Stones comes back out, and Blair’s face switches back to neutral.
‘You been drinking?’ asks Stones, showing Blair an empty bottle of Bundaberg Rum.
Blair shakes his head. ‘Nah. Don’t know where that’s from …’
‘Reckon Mullins is sleeping it off somewhere, then. There’s an empty two-litre bottle of Coke in there too,’ says Stones, dropping the bottle on the floor by the door. ‘You were partners with Mark Bailey, that right?’
‘Nah, not really,’ says Blair. ‘I did a bit of work for him.’
‘Same difference,’ says Stones, and Blair shrugs.
‘How’d you blokes get along?’
‘He was alright,’ says Blair. ‘We got on fine.’
‘Where were you the night he was killed?’
‘Here, asleep.’
‘Anyone confirm that?’
‘Nah,’ says Blair. ‘The blokes who live here are stuck the other side of the water.’
‘You knew he was having an affair with Karen Mullins?’
‘Well, she came to the workshop a lot. I knew they were friendly …’
‘Anyone you know who might have had a beef with Bailey?’
‘Nah, but I’ve only been here a couple of months, so I wouldn’t really know.’
‘Vero said there was some trouble at the camp?’ says Walker. ‘Someone turned it over?’
‘Yeah. Last week. Mark didn’t know who it was.’
‘But he had a theory …’ Walker is pushing.
‘He thought it might be the Charles brothers,’ says Blair. ‘But he didn’t know for sure and it might have been a possum or a rat or something, knocking shit off the counters, looking for food. Nothing was missing, it was just a mess.’
‘There was bad blood between Bailey and Stewie Charles?’ says Stones.
‘I wouldn’t really know. We worked long hours and I didn’t get out much. I was busy doing my job, I wasn’t listening to gossip.’
‘You don’t know much, do ya,’ says Stones, looking hard at Blair. ‘What do you know about this big opal he found?’
There’s a second’s pause. A tiny hesitation. Walker notices it, for sure Stones does too. ‘There’s no stone. That’s just a story,’ says Blair.
‘Bailey didn’t find a big opal? Nothing that might have inspired someone to look for it, maybe kill him for it?’ Walker notes a shift in tone. Stones has marked something about Blair he doesn’t trust.
Blair looks down at the veranda. ‘We haven’t been finding anything this season, that’s why I’m leaving. I reckon this stone is nothing but a rumour.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Stones sounds interested.
‘Yeah, I was supposed to be going home yesterday morning.’
‘So you’d have been gone if it wasn’t for the flood …’
Walker steps forward. ‘That’s right. That’s why I’m here. I was picking him up.’
Stones turns, his eyes raking over Walker, not relishing the interruption. Walker doesn’t care – he knows this is a waste of time. Whoever did this, it wasn’t Blair. He’d stake his life and the lives of all those he loves and cares about on that.