At five o’clock Clement’s team, including Lisa Keeble, was assembled in the main area of the Major Crime unit. Risely slipped out of his office and propped himself against the wall. Clement had wheeled in a whiteboard and written up the most important points. Manners poked his head in to inform Clement he was printing off the contact list from the phone. Clement studied the group which sat facing him over chairs and desks. It was now around thirty hours since he’d found the body and though he felt time slipping by, he refused to let that hurry him.
‘Okay, anything new, before we begin?’
Lisa Keeble stuck a finger in the air and spoke at the same time.
‘Perth Coroner has checked the body over and confirmed death was caused by blood loss and the blow to the head. The other trauma was inflicted while the victim was still alive, definitely some after the head trauma but we can’t be certain there wasn’t also a beating beforehand. Also spoke to Rhino who checked fingerprints from the drawers. Two sets: yours and Schaffer’s.’
She made nothing of having already identified Schaffer’s prints herself. Clement supplied the conclusion.
‘So either Schaffer removed the computer himself or somebody was careful and probably wore gloves.’
‘Rhino also believes the murder weapon is an axe not a machete.’
Clement wrote AXE on the board, alongside time of death which he had written as BETWEEN 9 PM WEDNESDAY AND 1AM THURSDAY.
‘How about the Kelly yard, anything?’
‘Briony has processed it but we have no analysis yet as to whether any trace matches the Jasper Creek crime scene; ditto where you were attacked. But I did find a few traces of gravel near where you were hit and also where I think the bike was parked, that didn’t seem to be anywhere else on Schaffer’s property.’
‘You think the attacker may have transferred it?’ Clement said.
‘It’s possible. I didn’t find it on your shoes for example and it would make sense that if it came from boots it might be where the bike was parked.’
‘But none in the house?’
‘No.’
Nat Restoff looked around to his colleagues. ‘You being attacked has to be related, doesn’t it?’
Clement could have given him a lecture on jumping to conclusions but he restrained himself.
‘We need to let the facts tell us what is and isn’t related.’ He looked over at Shepherd to prompt his report.
‘I’ve done all around McDougall. Nobody saw anything or heard anything unusual except Mrs Kelly. At the creek there’s no sign of the weapon, in the creek or the bush.’
‘So our murderer may have taken it with him. Mal? Any gambling history with Schaffer?’
Gross shook his head. ‘None of the bookies I know had dealings with him. But these days there’s so much online gambling…’
He threw his hands up to emphasise the vastness of possibility.
‘We need that computer.’
Clement wrote COMPUTER on the board and underscored it.
It was Graeme Earle’s turn. He had checked with Schaffer’s neighbours. They were a kilometre away from him on either side so they rarely had much to do with Schaffer except to borrow or return a tool, or pass each other on the highway. No alarm bells rang for him when interviewing them. Neither of the neighbours recalled seeing regular visitors to Dieter Schaffer’s. They described him as a bit of a hermit. None of them saw motorcycles around. None of them rode motorcycles.
‘Schaffer owned his place outright, two hectares, paid cash three years ago. Three years ago he opened his savings account with a transfer of around twelve thousand dollars from a German bank and for the last year his balance has remained steady around eight thousand. He pulls a few hundred out now and again and deposits a few hundred, always cash. I’ve gone through all the documents we found and sorted them into receipts and so forth. There is only one letter, in German. I’ve got a friend who is German, Ellie. She is translating it as we speak.’
‘You can use the computer to translate.’ Having scattered this wisdom, Shepherd sat back, superior.
‘Really?’ Mal Gross was as surprised as Earle.
Gross was working his way through it. ‘But you’d have to scan it or type it first.’
‘Anyway …’ Clement urged the story on.
Earle continued. The letter writer was a ‘Mathias’, no surname, dated three months ago. The other stuff was various computer printouts from Google pages, a lot of them to do with Hamburg, especially the football club.
‘Maybe he was homesick?’ offered Gross.
‘There were these from German newspaper websites.’ Earle held up the pages Clement had spied among the football stuff. ‘Ellie’s having a go at them for me too.’
‘Looks like a crime scene.’ Lisa Keeble was craning forward to check out the page Clement had noted.
‘He was an ex-cop,’ offered Gross. He didn’t extrapolate but they got the point, Schaffer’s interest might be natural.
Earle held up the old newspaper clipping showing a young Dieter Schaffer in uniform.
‘Back in seventy-three he got a citation for bravery. Knife-wielding loony was holding a mother and kid hostage, Schaffer got called in off the street, and tackled the guy unarmed, alone.’
And now on the other side of the world he gets an axe buried in his head, thought Clement.
‘Anything on the sister?’
‘I’ve asked Immigration to get back to us with next of kin address but haven’t had a chance to follow it up.’
Manners pushed into the room and, over the heads of those seated, handed a printout to Clement. ‘Three of them have records, two for possession of cannabis, one for assault.’
Clement addressed his team as he digested this and scanned the page.
‘Phone contacts off Schaffer’s mobile. Gerd Osterlund, a businessman, I’ve interviewed him. A Mitchell Karskine. Looks like he had some form years ago, petty stuff, pissing in public, and an assault that had him placed on a good behaviour bond.’
Clement suspected this would be the Mitch he’d met at The Anglers. The assault meant he had to be considered somebody of interest.
‘Jenny Messiano, Rory Clipsall, possession of cannabis. Then Trent Jaffner, Sally Nightcliff and Romano Grigio.’
The uniforms were smirking from local knowledge.
‘Potheads,’ explained Jo di Rivi.
Clement turned and wrote MOTIVE on the board and, under that, POT. ‘So the people in his contacts are most likely his clients. We can’t rule out that one of them was into him and wouldn’t or couldn’t pay, so took him out; or was just greedy for that matter. How big was his crop?’
‘About as big as a one-man operation would allow,’ said Graham Earle.
‘We have to ask what Nat mentioned before: is the break-in at Schaffer’s house related to his killing or not? Was the assault on me related? If related, is this about the pot or the missing computer or both? Was the same person responsible or different people? We need to look for facts, people, that will tell us what the right direction is.’
Shepherd stuck a hand up.
‘Yes, Shep.’
‘It could have been a crime of opportunity at the creek. But then the kids show up and the killer has to take off before he can take anything. But he knows where Schaffer lives so he goes back to score what he can there.’
The kids hadn’t mentioned hearing anything but, in their state, who knew?
‘True.’ It was a sound point.
Shepherd sat back, chuffed.
‘Are we sure it’s not the kids?’ Angus Parker was a large constable, early thirties, used to being on the front line. Clement glanced at Risely, whose look suggested he was asking the same question.
‘It’s not them kids.’ Jared Taylor twisted around in his chair to address Parker. ‘They’re not going to go out in the middle of a creek when they think there’s a croc around. They’d just leave him. Maybe drag him to the edge.’
Clement spoke in support. ‘I’m confident they’re telling the truth. There was an area about fifty metres back where a vehicle had recently been parked. That could have been the killer.’
‘Any decent forensic evidence from there?’ Risely asked from the back.
Keeble explained she had paid particular attention to the area but there was no litter, no blood. ‘There was part impression of a boot in the sand. I made a cast.’
Shepherd tried his hand again. ‘So it could have been anybody parked there, not necessarily anything to do with this case.’
‘It could have,’ said Lisa, ‘but virtually every car that parks in the bush here leaves some kind of litter. Beer cans, cigarette stubs, chip packets, tissues. They’re all slobs. This one left nothing, like somebody was being careful.’
Clement had been thinking about Schaffer’s drug operation.
‘The way Schaffer lived was extremely frugal. Even with only a dozen regular clients he would have made surplus cash which he probably wouldn’t put in a bank. People involved in drugs sniff that kind of thing out.’
‘So maybe somebody figured he had a stash and killed him for it?’ Lisa Keeble was following the reasoning.
Earle had a habit of chewing his pen. He pulled one from his mouth to point out that the shack had been thoroughly searched and nothing had turned up.
‘Two hectares, that’s a lot of land to dig a hole,’ said Mal Gross.
Clement cautioned he was just floating theories but laid out some scenarios. ‘The reason the killer didn’t take the wallet might have been he didn’t need it. He could have stolen Schaffer’s stash then killed him; or beaten him, found where he’d hidden it, killed him, then stolen the cash.’
Risely eased himself off the wall, liking this train of thought. ‘Schaffer could even have carried it on him, or in his car. I’ve seen it before.’
Everybody was nodding like this could make sense. The change of shirt still nagged at Clement but he wrote STASH? on the board anyway.
‘Has anybody had any bright ideas on why the killer would change Schaffer’s shirt?’
Shepherd had a stab. ‘DNA? Trying to degrade it.’
Keeble couldn’t see it. ‘Why leave the bloodied original shirt?’
Clement sensed they were running out of steam. ‘Okay, there are promising lines of enquiry here. Also we can’t ignore the fact Schaffer was a policeman. However unlikely, we need to consider some criminal may have caught up with him. I’ll ring Hamburg and see if they can tell me anything of interest. In the meantime, Graeme, you and I will go through his phone list and interview each of the people on it. Shep, you, Angus and Jared search every inch of that property for a stash. The rest of you, I want you looking for the computer and any whisper Dieter Schaffer had a stash. Even if he didn’t, somebody may have thought he did.’
He warned them all they would be working through the weekend but there was no need to start a search of the property until light tomorrow.
‘And the car, can we make sure there’s no stash hidden anywhere in it?’
Keeble announced it was in the compound out the back of the station and she would get onto it right away.
Risely stayed behind after the rest had shuffled out. ‘There could be something in this business of a stash. The killer could have gone back to take the plants too but you got in the way. I’ll tell the media we are pursuing several lines of enquiry. Perth is all over it now so it’s going to get hectic.’
‘Well, let them get their pictures at the creek and we’ll follow the leads up.’
Risely disappeared into his office. Clement looked up the time in Hamburg on his computer and saw it was morning, a suitable time to call. It was only as he checked for a telephone number it occurred to him he might need to speak German. It wasn’t like he hadn’t pursued overseas lines of inquiry before, but it had been a while, and he’d gotten rusty. Things that had been second nature were leaving him. His work was the one compartment of his life he had been able to take as a given—if that went, what was he? Could he really afford to stay so far away from the action in this backwater? And what was the point? Either there was no work or a case presented that drew him away from the only reason he was there in the first place. Clement tried the number indicated. He wasn’t even sure he had the country code correct and was half-surprised that he’d got it right. He was answered in German and did his best to communicate his needs. Eventually he was passed onto some English-speaking young woman and tried again. The young woman explained she understood he was a ‘police’ in Australia but he should put his request in writing.
Of course this was what he should have done in the first place. In Perth he would have had translators or other support staff to get this in train.
He hung up having achieved nothing except an email address. He wrote a short letter requesting to speak to any current or former police about Dieter Schaffer, and asking if somebody from Hamburg police might visit ‘Mathias’ and get him to contact him direct. He ran it through the translator and sent it off.
Earle was checking his computer screen and looked up as Clement emerged.
‘Why don’t you go home and have dinner?’ said Clement. ‘I’ll pick you up at nine and we’ll pay a few visits.’
‘I can work through.’
‘No need. Get a break, get fresh, we’ve got a bit to knock over.’
By now it was a little after six. A thought occurred. Clement rang Marilyn’s house and his stomach tightened at the thought of her mother answering. He was in luck though. It was Phoebe. He apologised right off.
‘I’m really sorry about the weekend.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘You’re going away on your friend’s boat.’
‘Mmm. It should be fun.’
‘Have you had dinner?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’
The slightest hesitation. ‘Okay.’
He was not going to offer her the chance to reconsider. ‘I’m on my way. Tell Mum I’ll have you back by eight.’
He hung up and grabbed his keys before Marilyn could intervene. On the way out he passed Mal Gross hunched over his desk demolishing a hamburger. Gross waved as Clement took the back door through to the yard where Keeble was getting started on the car with Jared Taylor and a mechanic. He felt guilty he was deserting them but did not consider hanging around.
‘I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.’ He threw the comment like a chip to a seagull and hurried to his car.
The drive to Marilyn’s house took around thirty minutes, a lot less than it legally should have. He turned up the familiar driveway that snaked over a magnificent bluff. The sun was red pink in its last throes of the day, the ocean a mirror. Old Nick had been at the game a long time. In the glory days of Broome, before the cultured pearl farm operations, the oysters of the region had yielded many pearls and Nick had claimed his share. During the 80s the Japanese had moved in, paying full-tote odds for existing businesses and generous incentives to keep the former proprietors involved. That was one reason the driveway was smoother than any you’d likely find in town. The residence came into view. Clement could query how Geraldine raised her daughter but not her garden. It was lush and bright with pinks and violets. This time of night it glowed. Tall palms gave it majesty. At least one gardener was employed full time but it looked like he had headed home, for the only cars visible in the carport near the house were those of Geraldine and Marilyn. Brian lived in Perth and used Marilyn’s car when here so this didn’t mean he wasn’t in situ. The driveway culminated in a loop where you could park within easy walking distance of a typical big homestead-style house circa 1920 that would not have been out of place on a horse-breeding property. Crimson bougainvilleas and frangipanis followed the line of the veranda. Vines offering small pink and yellow flowers twirled around the poles which, like the rest of the house, were white and seemingly always freshly painted. Nick had done extensions back in the 80s but retained the single level. People who made their living from the sea didn’t need a bedroom view of the ocean. Nick figured he could smell and hear it from his porch. If he wanted the view he could walk five hundred metres and enjoy a beer looking out over the ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. Paths led to a small gazebo and old stables dating from the 30s. Clement remembered kissing Marilyn in that gazebo, reaching up under her skirt. He tossed the memory. It wasn’t helpful. He climbed the steps and was about to rattle the oval-shaped flywire door when it sprang open on Phoebe, with a smile bright as the kind of globes that burned in ceilings before environmental prefects hushed them.
‘I’m ready.’
Clement tried to see any of himself in her but as usual failed. Mind you there wasn’t much of Marilyn either except the shape of her eyes. Unfortunately that characteristic was shared by Geraldine, who loomed out of the grey interior. She was a traditionalist so he guessed the glass in her hand contained gin and soda.
‘Eight at the latest.’
‘Marilyn and Brian here?’
‘Brian’s overseas on business. Marilyn is having a bath.’
Dismissing him as a maid might.
‘Thanks, Geraldine. I’ll see you later.’
He enjoyed opening the door for Phoebe and watching her wriggle into the passenger seat, a big girl now, the baby seat probably expunged from her memory. As a special treat, he told her, he was taking her to the Mimosa.
‘I love the Mimosa. The lasagne is so yum. We go there every Tuesday.’
Not so special then, he guessed, but it didn’t matter. This was enough, having her beside him, her pretty shoes not quite touching the floor.
‘So tell me about the boat.’
Phoebe couldn’t tell him much at all. Only that it was big with sails but an engine too in case there was a problem: Mummy had checked. Of course she had, Marilyn missed her vocation by fifty years, she should have been of those wartime code-breakers; nothing would have escaped her. He tried to elicit something about Phoebe’s friend Ashleigh.
‘She has problems with her teeth.’
That was about all he learned by the time they reached the resort. A feature of resorts here was the outdoor dining setting, Tahitian lamps, cobbled walkways, tables that sat square on the ground. The dining area was a quarter full. They had beaten the rush but only just.
‘You want a Coke?’
‘Mango and orange please.’
Everything made him aware of the growing distance between them, despite his efforts. The same Irishman took their orders. Clement followed his daughter’s lead and asked for two juices. He ordered the lasagne for her and a chicken salad for himself.
‘Not the barista tonight?’
From the waiter’s face, Clement realised he hadn’t been recognised. The waiter did a good job of covering.
‘Oh no, only till five.’
Clement and Phoebe sat in silence waiting for their drinks. It reminded Clement of so many evenings like this with her mother. Phoebe stared out into the growing gloom. That look like she was off thinking her own undisturbed thoughts, maybe that was how he’d seemed to Marilyn, impenetrable. Much as he was curious about Brian and Marilyn, he avoided that subject.
‘And are you going diving?’
‘I don’t know. I think Ashleigh has a wetsuit.’
He had taught Phoebe to swim and an image hit him: water wings inflated with his breath encircling her tiny arms, goggles making her face laugh-out-loud cute.
‘Ashleigh’s dad fishes but I don’t want to kill any fish.’
He lit upon an attractive young woman just arriving with a similarly good-looking young man. It was only when her eyes widened too in recognition that he clicked it was the young woman from the Honky Nut, dressed up for the night. She said something to her partner and started towards him. Twenty-four hours earlier Marilyn had advanced on him almost in this exact spot. Hoping for a better reception he rose from his chair.
‘It’s incredible,’ she said with a kind of wonder in her voice that he associated with yoga and activities alien to him. ‘I was only just thinking I have to contact you.’
She smiled at Phoebe. ‘Hi, I’m Selina.’
He hadn’t even taken her name before, more proof he was on the way out.
‘My daughter,’ Clement threw a hand out in her direction. ‘Phoebe.’
‘Nice to meet you, Phoebe. What are you having?’
‘Lasagne.’
Selina made her finger into a gun. ‘Good choice.’ She turned to Clement. ‘I remembered something … about that man.’