It took Clement a bit over an hour to drive to his flat down at the wharf. On the way he called Mal Gross, told him what had happened and took the details of the Kellys, the couple who’d had their axe stolen. He also fed him the details on the witnesses and asked Gross to check with Victoria if they’d been in any trouble before. Any hope he would enjoy a weekend with Phoebe was fading fast. The case was too ugly and there was no clear suspect yet. As he turned his car towards the wharf, Clement called Shepherd again even though he assumed he would have phoned if there were anything to report. Shepherd told him the croc guys and techs had dragged the bottom of the creek and got nothing but crap. They had assured them there was no croc around. A couple of the guys were suiting up ready to dive. He’d call if there was anything good. He also mentioned that he thought one of the techs fancied him.
‘Briony?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Wild guess.’
‘Did Lisa say something?’
‘Stop thinking with your prick, goodbye.’
A ute was in the space where Clement normally parked alongside the chandler’s four-wheel drive. There were no other vacant spaces so he parked in behind both cars, scrawled a note saying he would be back down in ten but was upstairs if it was urgent. He left the note on the windscreen.
Usually he bounced up the steps two at a time but not today. He showered quickly and checked the scalp laceration in the mirror as best he could. He didn’t think he needed stitches. He grabbed a clean shirt, changed jocks, climbed into his alternate suit, found a tie from the back of his chair and dashed back out to find the ute owner, a tattooed bloke with a thick neck, scowling.
‘Sorry,’ said Clement, though he wasn’t sorry at all. He’d left a note. If the bloke wanted to get out he could have climbed the stairs and asked. For an instant it looked like the bloke might make an issue of it but he held his tongue. At least I must still look like a cop, thought Clement, still pissed off at taking so long to follow up on the Kellys.
It was only a ten-minute drive to their house, an old-style fibro with tin roof surrounded by overgrown straggly garden that could almost be described as bush. Nobody was about, not only here but in the whole street. Clement made his way up the little track between almost dead grass and the more adventurous stretches of bush. He heard a radio on inside the house and knocked on a door that could have done with a lick of paint. The door swung open pretty quickly. Mrs Kelly was in a dress but wore no makeup and her hair was straggly with grey streaks, the real kind, not the whimsy of a hairdresser.
‘Mrs Kelly, I’m Detective Clement. I was at the station the other day. I believe you reported an axe stolen?’
‘Finally.’ Her hands formed a circle then dropped by her side. She called off to her left to somebody out of Clement’s line of sight. ‘The coppers have finally come about the axe.’
Her husband shuffled into view, probably not as tall as her, it was hard to tell because he was bent as if it took an hour or two in the morning before his spine warmed and unwound. He had a large forehead and was bare-chested, wearing short pyjama bottoms and slippers.
‘You find it?’
‘Not yet.’
They edged back allowing him to enter.
‘You run into a door, mate?’ asked Mr Kelly with an impish smile.
Clement didn’t bite. He scanned the small room, neat, modest, and followed the Kellys down a narrow passageway to the kitchen where the radio played. Mrs Kelly made no move to turn it down. The floor was chipped lino and it sloped.
‘Wanna cuppa?’ Mr Kelly offered. Mrs Kelly shot her husband a look that suggested he’d be making it.
‘No thanks. I wonder if you could just take me through again exactly what happened. And show me where the axe was taken from?’
‘Out the back here.’ Kelly played guide. The back door opened onto some sunken paving bordered on all sides by a jungle of a garden. Mrs Kelly took up the tale. She’d heard, or thought she heard something Sunday night along the side of the house. A sound, that was all, like somebody brushing past and the bush slapping the pipe or something. They were in bed, her husband fast asleep, but she’d woken up.
‘He’s too deaf anyway’.
‘I’m not deaf. I heard that.’
She’d sat up and listened but heard nothing more and eventually went back to sleep. She wasn’t sure of the time except that it was after midnight, which meant technically they were talking early Monday morning. It was Wednesday before they realised the axe was missing.
A small woodpile directly in front about five metres from the back door indicated where the axe had been taken from. Clement looked it over carefully trying to keep his distance.
‘Has anybody been up around here since?’
Mrs Kelly shrugged. ‘Not really. But we need the axe for the hot-water heater.’
There were marks in the dirt, no proper images of shoes or anything but Keeble might find something useful. The thief could simply have walked up the side of the house or come through the back way. Clement decided to have a look up there.
He made his way through thick undergrowth expecting to find a back fence but there was none. The boundary to the property behind was marked by a couple of small brick pillars at the extremities, beyond which the jungle-like garden stopped abruptly. The property at the back had stubble for a rear lawn and then a tumbledown fibro cottage facing the opposite direction. He fought his way back and asked the Kellys who lived there.
‘An old lady. She wouldn’t take the axe, she’s not strong enough to swing it,’ said Kelly.
‘It was normal size?’
The Kellys confirmed it was. They couldn’t recall the make or where they’d got it from but decided they’d had it longer than five years and less than ten.
‘Who would know it was here?’
‘Anybody who’s been here,’ offered Mrs Kelly.
‘Don’t have to have been here. You can hear me chopping the wood out front.’
Kelly was right, thought Clement, feeling a step behind. ‘Anybody you think might have taken it?’
Kelly put forward his wife’s cousin as a logical suspect. She thought his cousin much more likely. Clement took down their names just in case. He asked the Kellys to stay away from the back yard for now, explaining he needed to send somebody down to test for things.
‘What about our axe?’ asked Mrs Kelly.
Clement could understand her exasperation, he felt it too. ‘We’ll do our best to locate it, believe me.
Clement made it into the office to find Meg, the civilian secretary, making herself tea. She didn’t notice his battered face. Maybe she didn’t even notice him. There was no sign of any uniforms. He walked straight to Risely’s door and knocked.
‘Yeah,’ came from inside.
Clement turned the knob. Risely, close-cropped hair, still more or less brown, a bull of a man who looked your archetypal tough cop, was sitting back reading reports. So far Clement had found him calm, measured, the kind of bloke who’d long ago learned it was preferable to go around doors than kick them in.
‘Christ, what happened to you?’
Clement told him as succinctly as possible.
‘I’m the last to know, eh?’
‘It was late. I didn’t see much point.’ He explained where he’d just been and the potential lead on the axe.
‘You call Keeble?’
‘Yes, she’s getting somebody onto it. Of course it could be a coincidence.’
‘Tomlinson got wind of Jasper’s Creek and rang me last night. A possible murder is a huge story for him. I told him we weren’t sure what we were dealing with yet. He couldn’t get it in this morning’s edition. I said he could send in a photographer as soon as the area was cleared, and promised him up-to-date reports. Don’t worry, I’ll handle that. So where are we at?’
Clement listed Schaffer’s injuries. He mentioned the likelihood Schaffer had been re-dressed.
‘No sign of a wallet, a rifle or an outboard motor. Confirmation he had an outboard but they haven’t found it in the creek so far and it’s not at his house. I’d like to try and find out where he was from the time he left the Cleopatra Tuesday night till Wednesday night at Jasper’s Creek.’
‘I’ll get onto all roadhouses. He might have got petrol and they have CCTV.’
It was a good idea.
‘You’re thinking robbery?’ asked Risely.
‘Not sure. I don’t get why you shove a clean t-shirt on him and then put him in the creek.’
Risely raised his eyebrows like he couldn’t explain that either. ‘He had dope plants there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A plantation or what?’
‘No. Not a plantation, not that big but more than what he needed for himself. It could be a drug thing.’
‘You need to get stitches?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘You’ve got full resource, whoever you want. You think it’s related? Dope dealer is murdered; you get attacked.’
‘Somebody could have found out Schaffer was dead and gone to get themselves free pot. We can’t assume it was the killer.’
‘Can’t assume it wasn’t.’ Risely pushed back in his chair, considered. ‘Do we need help on this case?’
‘Not yet. Lisa and the Perth techs are processing the site. We might get lucky at the Kelly’s, pick up a print or something.’
Risely’s mobile buzzed. The ID read ‘Tomlinson’.
‘You going to mention this?’ Clement pointed at his wound.
‘Any reason I should?’
Clement shook his head. The last thing he needed was to become part of the story himself.
The phone finally stopped ringing. Risely said, ‘I’ll tell him we’re treating it as a homicide.’ His desk phone rang. It would be Tomlinson. ‘This is your chance, Dan.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know you only came here for personal reasons. I know you’ve probably been bored out of your skull and think the guys here don’t quite cut it but they’re good guys, they just need a leader. This is a great opportunity for all of you. Get on with it.’
Clement closed the door and cast around. The IT guy, Manners, was at his computer. He was an unusual confluence of physical attributes: a solid build with broad shoulders but a weak chin and a mouth that turned down as if he were always on edge with how the world judged him. Clement handed him the phone card.
‘This is from the phone of the Jasper Creek victim. Download everything you can, contacts, text messages, the works. And it’s probably very unlikely, but see if Dieter Schaffer had a Facebook page, Twitter, any of that crap.’
Jo di Rivi and Nat Restoff were just entering via the back door with coffee cups. Once again Clement had to go through the ritual of why he looked the way he did. He deflected more questions and got on with it.
‘I want you to see if anybody is trying to flog an outboard motor for a dinghy, or a rifle, Ruger twenty-two,’ he said. ‘You never know, we might get lucky. Check online, at the wharf, and ring around all the other stations and ask them to keep an ear out. Then I want you up and around McDougall Street. See if anybody saw or heard anything unusual from midnight Sunday to early hours Monday.’ He explained about the Kellys and the missing axe.
They started off, buzzed to be part of a murder inquiry. Clement couldn’t help himself.
‘I guess they put the dog down?’
The last he’d seen of it they were taking the wretch to the pound. Jo di Rivi looked guilty. Clement figured the poor thing had died in transit and they were trying to spare his feelings. Restoff smiled and jerked a thumb at his female colleague. ‘She adopted her.’
‘She was for the needle otherwise,’ di Rivi said defensively.
‘Didn’t she need surgery?’ Clement was still grappling with the idea the dog was alive.
‘Angela, the vet, is a friend. She did it for free. I needed a dog. They’ll keep her at the surgery for a while.’
‘You got a name?’ Same dumb question everybody asks.
‘No. I’m going to wait till I get her home. See what evolves.’
Clement couldn’t think of anything to say so he made do with, ‘Find me the gun.’
He hadn’t quite made it into his office when his phone rang. It was Lisa Keeble. He asked her to wait, entered the office and shut the door. Its starkness condemned him; only Phoebe’s drawings gave it life. They showed the same subject three times over, two stick people of almost equal size holding hands on enormously long arms. Phoebe had designated herself by long hair. He liked to think he was the other figure. They’d been done years ago. He apologised for keeping Lisa waiting. She was unfussed.
‘I’ve got Briony heading over to Macdougall Street to take a look at that scene.’
‘Don’t get too excited. I think our chances of a print anywhere are unlikely.’
‘They climb over a fence?’
‘No fence. But maybe you might find some soil or vegetation samples you can compare with Jasper’s Creek.’
They both knew that would be a long shot. If anything was to come of the scene, it would more likely be from a doorknock.
‘How you doing out there?’
‘I found fingerprints on the drawers and in other places inside the shack. Besides yours, one set, Schaffer’s.’
‘You know that already?’
‘Printed his corpse, dabbed his vehicle yesterday, I recognise them.’
‘DNA?’
‘Found some skin in the shovel handle that could still be viable for DNA. If we’d have got it last night …’
‘I had a slight headache.’
‘If Rhino can pull DNA we eliminate Schaffer’s, see if it’s somebody else’s.’
‘No outboard, no computer?’
‘No.’
And yet there were printouts, so either he had a computer, or a friend who had one, or he used internet cafés.
‘Is there an internet café here?’
‘Yes. At least two I know of, one next to the real estate agent, the other opposite The Dolphin. The Honky Nut.’
Clement now recalled the one next to the estate agent. It was little more than an office with computers. He was aware of the café opposite The Dolphin restaurant but had never been inside. He thanked Lisa, told her she could wind up and get back to the creek when she felt ready. As he ended the call, the image of a computer and printer leapt into his head. He had seen them recently in relation to the case. Where? It took him a moment to locate the objects in the right space, Osterlund’s kitchen. He tried to remember what he’d done with the card Osterlund had handed him and eventually found it in his wallet. He debated whether to call the mobile or the house and settled on the house. The phone rang for some time. He was about to hang up when Osterlund answered in his clipped German style.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Detective Daniel Clement, Mr Osterlund.’
‘You’ve made an arrest?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to ask you something.’
‘How can I help, Detective?’
His head had started throbbing again. ‘Did Dieter Schaffer own a computer?’
‘No idea. Sorry. I never saw him with one.’
‘Did he ever use yours or talk about using one?’
‘Not that I remember. He didn’t seem the computer type. I’m sure I would have recalled if he talked about it.’
Which, Osterlund, being an IT type, had nudged Clement to call him first. He thanked Osterlund and was about to hang up.
‘Do you have any leads you can talk about?’ Osterlund was trying to sound casual.
‘Nothing concrete. Thanks, Mr Osterlund.’
He hadn’t checked Osterlund’s alibi with the neighbours and made a note to do so. He clicked on his computer and stared at Phoebe’s drawing while it loaded, trying to convince himself that this made him a great dad. Once the computer was ready for action he went to his search engine and typed in the address for the OIC website. It conveniently asked which language he wished to use. Clement chose English but may as well have picked Mandarin. OIC offered services for IT solutions, streaming and ‘The Cloud’. It seemed to be involved in advising firms with expensive abstract artworks on the walls of their foyers. At least that was the image Clement conjured. It offered a full range of Net publishing and marketing services too. Like a man who finds himself in the women’s toilet by mistake, Clement exited quickly. Next he did a search for Broome Anglers, found the club phone number, and typed that in to a casebook master sheet while he dialled. Jill answered in her effervescent manner.
‘Anglers, Jill speaking.’
‘Hi Jill, it’s Detective Daniel Clement.’
‘Oh hi, Dan.’
Years of being a confidante to bar flies meant Jill immediately adopted first name familiarity.
‘Jill, do you know if Dieter Schaffer had a computer?’
‘A laptop. Don’t know what make, looked pretty old. He asked me once if he could print off some pages using our printer. I said I was sorry but I couldn’t let him. We’re only a small club.’
She seemed worried Clement would think her a tightwad. Clement thought Schaffer had a cheek asking. ‘When was this?’
‘Few months ago. Said he wanted to print out some soccer stuff. Any idea what happened yet?’
‘Working on it.’
‘Pop in for a drink any time. First one’s on the house.’
He thanked her for the offer. He’d established that Dieter Schaffer had a computer. Whether he had one forty-eight hours ago was a different matter. He could have sold it, it could have stopped working. Clement needed a coffee and he could walk to either of the internet cafés Lisa had mentioned in under ten minutes. He left via the back door.
Getting his legs moving somehow lessened the pain in his head. He tried to run through where he was on things and felt discouraged. He still knew very little about Dieter Schaffer. Perhaps he should have tried to track down the sister first thing? He’d get Earle onto that. Then again, if Dieter had been a cop in Hamburg, the police there might be a good way to locate his origins. So far Clement had no motive or suspect. The one odd thing that he’d turned up was somebody had put a clean t-shirt on the body; why? Surely that indicated a close relationship.
A technique Clement fell into almost naturally on these more elusive cases was to imagine himself conversing with the dead man. It brought the victim home, made him real, made the way he thought of the case more diverse and complete. Clement projected Dieter beside him right now, hunched over a can of beer, smoke from a reefer curling between them. Everybody said you were a loner, so there was some secret life to you, Dieter, wasn’t there? All of us have those dark, trembling secrets too frightened to emerge into the light, so you were hiding something, even if that’s not what got you killed.
Sometimes he almost expected the victim to answer and furnish him with details of the murder. Today was not that day.
Clement decided he’d try the Honky Nut café first. From the little he had learned of Dieter Schaffer it seemed this would be more his style than the antiseptic office tone of the café up the road. The Honky Nut took its name from the large external seeds that adorned gum trees. Hard and heavy as small rocks, they dropped and littered the ground. As kids you could collect them and pelt them at enemies or throw them on an open fire generating surprising heat. Florists sprayed them gold or silver and used them decoratively but there was no gold or silver in the café which was themed by cheap odd lots of furniture, not unlike Schaffer’s own kitchen. A couple of surfer, dope-smoking types sat out front on a narrow wooden veranda sipping milkshakes under vines. Clement stepped into a room that boasted laminex tables and an old sofa up front, and half a dozen work-station cubicles beyond with computers. Two backpacker girls were hunched over one of the computers. Clement guessed they shared the cost. For a while he’d forgotten those days when every cent counted but lately, with the split, they had returned. A large blackboard directly over the counter displayed a menu creatively drawn in coloured chalk. An attractive, dusky young woman with perfect skin and a head full of beautiful dark curls stood relaxed behind the counter reading a magazine. She turned a pleasant smile on him. He felt guilty depriving her of an expected sale, and got the bad news over with, explaining who he was.
‘I’m investigating the death of a man named Dieter Schaffer. I think he may have been a customer.’
The young woman looked puzzled and a little afraid. Clement realised he hadn’t brought the snap of Schaffer and cursed inwardly. Now all he had was a photo of the dead man he’d taken with his phone. He tried to reassure her.
‘Don’t worry, I’m just trying to confirm if he used his computer recently. Do people do that? Bring their laptops in here and connect to the Net.’
‘Yes they do.’ There was a hint of an accent which he couldn’t identify. ‘What was his name again?’
‘Dieter Schaffer.’ It clearly meant nothing to her. ‘He was German.’
At first nothing, and then a light in her eyes. ‘Around sixty? He checks soccer results.’
‘That’s him.’ Small mercy. He wouldn’t have to show her the photo after all.
She was nodding now. ‘He’d go on the Net and print out some pages. He’s dead?’
‘Unfortunately, yes he is. When was the last time he was in?’
‘Last week sometime, I think. He liked his coffee black, strong.’
‘Did you ever see him with anyone? Did he ever meet anybody here?’
‘Not that I remember. He used to come in, have a coffee and use our Net for a while. What happened to him?’
‘We’re trying to establish that. How did he pay you?’
She frowned as she thought. ‘Cash I think. It was never very much.’
‘If you recall anything else at all about him please let me know. Clement.’
He pointed in the direction of the station, thanked her for her time and left.
The sun was heating up. He had planned to buy a coffee from The Dolphin after he left here but now that seemed a betrayal to the Honky Nut. He started back towards the station picking up on what he had been mulling over before. Somebody had rifled through those drawers at Schaffer’s and probably taken the computer. Maybe it was whoever killed Schaffer, either looking to steal or attempting to remove something incriminating. But he could not rule out that it was simply somebody who’d learned Dieter Schaffer was dead. People figured the dead had no need of their possessions, or at least told themselves that to justify their actions. His phone rang. It was Jo di Rivi. She was clearly excited, speaking faster and in a higher pitch than usual.
‘We might have got lucky.’
She quickly ran through the story. As requested, she’d called the other Kimberley stations and mentioned the missing outboard and gun. A young uniform in Derby, Luke Byrd, had got a call from a mate who’d been approached by a young aboriginal man about buying an outboard motor ‘for cheap’. His mate reckoned the young bloke could have been a glue-sniffer. He was driving an old Ford station wagon and there was a girl with him who looked nervous. The whole thing seemed suss so he called Luke. Luke had a fair idea who the young fellow was.
‘I told Byrd to wait until I called you,’ said di Rivi.
Clement was already jogging to the station.
‘On my way.’ He called Graham Earle and Shepherd as he ran and told them to meet him at the Derby police station.
‘Vests, weapons. If you’re there before me, wait.’