He was sitting in what was normally his mother’s position, beside his father in one of the fold-out chairs, staring out at the camp ground. They were drinking beer from small glasses, the kind that were thin and broke easily. His father’s glass had a jagged wedge out of it and he was cut and bleeding into his beer but didn’t seem to notice. Clement said nothing. He felt it would be foolish to express concern when his father had none. There was a weird duality about Clement. He seemed to be about the age he was now and simultaneously around fourteen. They’d been playing tennis, he saw now. He was dressed in tennis whites and there was a racquet on the concrete stoop.
‘One day you’ll find someone,’ his father said.
‘But I have, I’m married to Marilyn.’
His father looked him deep in the eyes and shook his head. Clement was gripped with the same panic as that first time in the swimming pool but before he could ask for an explanation his father was gone and Bill Seratono was there. Bill was dressed as if for some caving expedition with ropes and a little helmet with a headlamp and possessed of the same duality as Clement where he was both young and old at the same time.
‘We’re ready,’ he said.
Clement stood. ‘How deep do we have to go?’
‘Until it stops.’
They lowered themselves down some hole. It became very dark. Clement felt terrified yet bold at the same time.
‘This is how he feels,’ he said and knew he was talking of Osterlund’s abductor.
Water trickled down the cave walls, glistening.
Seratono’s headlamp clicked on right into his eyes. The light dazzled him. Clement felt the sensation of something swinging at his head …
Clement snapped awake at dawn, cramped from being wedged in the car, the dream still so fresh he looked for streaking rain on his windscreen to match the rivulets of the cave. Surprisingly there were only a few drops. Last night, after everybody else had gone except the uniforms on night shift, Clement had returned to his office and tried to get his brain into gear to find something he’d overlooked while trying not to worry about Phoebe and Marilyn. He was successful at neither. He scanned the list of resort staff but nothing leapt out. Like Earle had said, they were all too young to have been around in 1979. It was hopeless. His brain was jelly. Gross had left Parker’s number for him. He called and was reassured all was quiet out there. It had been too late to ring his mum so he decided to go home and catch a few zeds. He needed milk and bread but like everything else he’d left it too late. He’d started home through dark streets, his only companion the voice of a radio weatherman warning of the impending cyclone expected to cross the coast about a hundred and fifty kilometres to the north, sometime tomorrow, now today. That’s how I spend my life, he thought, hunkered down for some impending catastrophe. And then he’d spun the wheel and started back in the other direction. He had to be at Marilyn’s, close to them. Sure Parker was there as protection but the killer had proven resourceful. Clement had parked down the end of Geraldine’s long driveway and kept a vigil on the house until around four when he must have dozed off. Despite the physical discomfort he felt quite good. His head had cleared even though the dream still hovered like steam on hot tar.
Nothing in it surprised him. The worries about his father, his relationships and the case were all obvious. Even his wanting to be married still was kind of natural. The exception was that moment where, descending into the deep black hole, he sensed his emotion mirrored the killer’s. The killer was scared yet felt invincible, as if he knew he was in a dream. But he was real, he needed to eat, crap, sleep. Where had he spent the night? In a soft bed beside a loving woman, in a cramped vehicle like this, in a tent beneath the stars?
He climbed outside the car now and stretched. The air’s wet breath swamped him. It was too early to drive up to the house and what was the point?
Clement called Parker.
‘Sir,’ Parker sounded tired but alert enough. Clement felt instant relief.
‘Everything good?’
‘Yes, sir, they are all still asleep.’
‘Well done. I’ll get the Sarge to organise a replacement for you.’
‘He already called, sir. I’m to stay here till ten, then Constable Latich will take over.’
Clement thanked him again. He pictured Phoebe sleeping and was gripped by the terrible knowledge that this part of his dream was all real. In the house he knew so well, he’d felt alien; might he come to experience that same sensation with his daughter? This frightened him. His marriage, his previous life, had been expunged and like some time traveller who changes one thing in the past, it was as if everything in the present never existed.
Before falling asleep, hunched in the car, his reflection visible every now and again when the horizon lit up with nature’s lightshow, Clement had been asking himself who might want to avenge Pieter Gruen. He picked up on the thread now.
First and foremost, family. Gruen had a brother and sister. The Hamburg police had been notified and may well have found them by now. Ex-colleagues couldn’t be ruled out, not even Mathias Klendtwort and Heinrich Schmidt. Klendtwort hadn’t called him back with anything that placed Osterlund in that world. Clement felt bent as a coathanger. He’d sent the others home for a few hours’ sleep a little after two. He’d briefed them on the possibilities of the watch. Earle was spent. He’d logged thirty-three Germans or Austrians in the region and narrowed to four those who could be worth a visit. But only one was in Broome. The others were in Derby, Newman and Onslow. Whiteman had checked the Mimosa. It had two current German families as guests, the Panasch family, mum, dad a couple of kids; and the Erdmans, a middle-aged couple who had flown in from Alice Springs four days ago. The Panasch family had only been there two days, which ruled them out. Whiteman had asked the manager at the Mimosa if any Germans had stayed with them in the last month. They had promised to get back to him on that. As for the Mimosa staff, there were a number of internationals, six Brits, two Irish, two Brazilians, two Kiwis, a South African, an Italian, plus Marie Kasprov and Rose Figueroa, the maids Clement had interviewed. No Germans. It had been the same story with the Emerald Bungalows and Apartments. Not all of them knew the nationalities of their casuals but there were no known Germans and none over fifty, which was the most likely age bracket of the killer. Hospitality it seemed was a young persons’ game.
The team were all out on their feet. Clement was acutely aware that Osterlund was out there somewhere, possibly being tortured, but there came a point where it was counterproductive to keep the team working so that’s when he’d called it a night.
He drove back to Broome listening to a weather update. The cyclone had been downgraded to a two but that was still a big storm, wind gusts expected from one hundred and ten to one thirty k where it was due to cross a hundred k to the north. Even so, no one was relaxing. The traffic was thin all the way to the station. News crews were unravelling themselves with tired eyes and coffee after too many drinks at the Roebuck. And what, he wondered, of Osterlund? Was he still alive, gasping the same heavy-lidded air as the rest of us?
The offices had the smell of constant occupation even though only Mal Gross was there bustling around printing up reports.
‘If only crims took a rest while we were working the big cases.’
‘Busy night?’
‘Break-in at the pharmacy, two brawls.’
Gross’s night counterpart might have had to deal with the arrests but there was always paperwork.
‘The guys have been checking properties every chance they get.’ Gross didn’t have to add they’d found nothing.
In his office, the first thing Clement did was to call di Rivi. The policewoman sounded brighter than Gross. Mrs Osterlund had been up until around two a.m. retired to her bedroom and then been up again around five. She was still resisting medication.
‘How have the media been?’
‘Not too bad. A few have called here. I’ve passed it onto Chelsea and she’s asked them to back off.’
‘I’ll be over shortly.’
He stopped to fix himself a tea when Graeme Earle entered. He’d been about to head off for the first of the four Germans he had identified as worth a look but thought he’d check first all was well at Marilyn’s. Clement appreciated the gesture.
‘It’s all good there.’
‘Did those names of Germans in the region trigger anything?’ he asked of Clement.
‘To be honest, I only scanned. I’ll need to look at them again when I’m compos. Who is this guy you’re going to see?’
Lured by Clement’s tea, Earle made himself one.
‘Name is Liedel, fifty-seven so he’s around the right age, worked as a chef in Perth, then in catering on the mining camps but he did time for an assault.’
It didn’t sound an overly promising lead.
‘They’re talking Taskforce. Somebody else will head it.’
Earle was suitably indignant. ‘That’s fucked. Nobody would have done any better than what we have.’
‘Possibly, but that’s the way of the world.’
In a small way Clement felt ashamed that he’d had the same prejudice at the start of the case. ‘Take care out there,’ he said. ‘Our man is a killer.’
Earle paused at the door, a mug of tea in his fist. ‘I think you’ve done an effin’ good job.’
The flyscreen had barely banged shut when Clement’s phone rang.
‘Yes Jared.’
‘Might have something, boss. Potential witness to a vehicle at the Blue Haze garage.’
The news crews videoed Clement again on the way out. A female reporter in a suit, one he recognised but whose name he could not recall, shot a question that was ripped away in the gathering wind, her hair already a mess. He had nothing against the media guys. Death was their living, and his too.
It was a plain brick bungalow, one of a number in a small state housing village about a kilometre from the garage where Lee had been squatting. The wind was increasing. Smoke from a large bonfire out the back of one of the other houses pressed on Clement’s lungs as he strode up the gravel front behind Taylor who had been waiting in his car on the corner. Music from the yard of the bonfire was loud here and must have been ear-splitting at the source. Clement only listened to music post-1987 by accident and didn’t recognise the artist. A squeal of laughter and shouting from the bonfire yard actually managed to cut through the music, a party which he guessed had been going all night. A small patch of struggling lawn announced the front door, standard mesh security grill. The windows were sliding with aluminium frames. They stopped at the grill, the door behind was open and a light was on somewhere further back in the house.
An aboriginal woman appeared. She had a thin, lined face. Clement put her age at forty but she could have been ten years shy of that. Taylor had explained her name was Bronny Jackson, a single mother with three kids. She opened the security grill for them.
‘This is Detective Inspector Clement.’
‘Hello Mrs Jackson.’
She pointed a bony finger back to the gloom. ‘Tyson’s back there.’
Jared had told him that Tyson was the youngest of the three. The father had shot through a couple of years ago. Tyson had been caught wagging school this morning and in the following interrogation by his mother had spilled on more truancy and what he’d seen one day last week. She knew of Jared through his cousin and called him. Jared had not attempted to interview the boy himself but had called Clement. He now led the way down the narrow hallway past a couple of closed bedroom doors to a small living room. It was stifling. The sliding door that gave onto the back was closed. Clement presumed that was to keep out the noise but even so the boom of the bass rumbled in here. The furniture was well worn, a sofa and an armchair that didn’t match. A small flat-screen TV, the newest thing in the house, sat on an old pine sideboard. A piece of copper art, a galleon of some kind, was the wall’s only adornment. It couldn’t have been a bigger contrast to Osterlund’s house overlooking the ocean. The boy, Tyson, was small and skinny with black curly hair. His eyes avoided them and he sat hunched like he was expecting to be chastised or beaten. He wore a t-shirt and shorts. Taylor took the lead.
‘Tyson, your mum tells us you saw something down at the garage there. You need to tell Detective Clement what you saw.’
Tyson remained mute. Clement sat down on the lino in front of Tyson. His mum hovered in the background.
‘You barrack for the Eagles or Dockers, Tyson? Or both?’
‘Eagles.’
‘Well, I like the Dockers but don’t hold that against me. Tell us what you saw, Tyson. It could be important to us.’
Unsure, Tyson looked to his mother.
‘Tell the man about the car.’
Tyson told his story in a small, halting voice. Last Monday, Tyson, instead of being at school, was playing in the bush down by the garage. He heard the sound of a powerful motorcycle approaching and watched it swing into the area in front of the garage and stop. He saw the rider lift up the roller door and put the bike in. While he was doing that a car had appeared on the road slowing, almost stopped. From Tyson’s position closer to the road but hidden in the bush he could see the car, but the rider, from his position near the garage, would not have been able to. The rider disappeared around the side of the old building. The car drove up towards the village. Then a few minutes later it turned back around and cruised slowly past again.
‘What time was this Tyson?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Had you been there long? Was it morning?’
He thought. ‘Probably about lunchtime.’
‘Did you see the driver, Tyson?’
‘No.’ A small voice.
‘Can you describe the car, Tyson? Have you seen the car before?’
Tyson was nervous. He shook his head.
‘What colour was it? Do you remember?’
He nodded. ‘White.’
‘And what sort of car, do you know? Have you seen any like it?’
‘It was high.’
‘A truck?’
‘No.’
‘A four-wheel drive?’
His mum helped. ‘Like Uncle Nicky’s?’
‘Kind of. Not so big.’
Jared ascertained that Uncle Nicky had a Pajero. Eventually they narrowed the field of cars to some sort of sports utility. The boy was unable to help with numberplate, stickers, roof-racks. They went back over it a few times.
‘Have you seen the car around here before?’
Tyson shook his head.
‘Okay thanks, Tyson. You’ve helped us a lot. Make sure you go to school though, right? See you in an Eagles guernsey.’
Bronny opened the door for them. Jared jerked his thumb towards the party which had quietened a little but was still going strong.
‘When did they start?’
‘’Bout eleven last night.’
‘You want us to have a word?’
‘Better not. They’ll get tired soon enough.’