The woman from Immigration got back in touch to say there was no record of a Manfred Gruen entering the country in the last five months. They were still in the process of compiling a list of people named ‘Manfred’ who had entered Australia in that time. Clement had thought the chance of Manfred having his father’s surname was fifty-fifty so he wasn’t too discouraged.
‘You can reduce it by eliminating those under thirty-five and over forty-five. Also please check for a Manfred Bourke.’ He could have adopted his stepfather’s name.
‘I’ll email you a list as soon as we have it, shouldn’t be long.’
Michael Wallen had been in contact with Manfred when he was a boy. Perhaps they had stayed in touch? Once you accepted that Wallen was not lying and the photo shown of Donen was fake it was a short step to put Dieter Schaffer in the frame. He was the only one who could have substituted the photo. If Clement could see that, Manfred Gruen may have also.
‘Look for anybody with first name Manfred up here, caravan parks, vehicle hires.’
He stood in the centre of the room firing off orders. Mal Gross emerged from the AV area and Clement stabbed the question.
‘How’s Manners going?’
Gross shook his head. Ryan Gartrell slammed down the phone and called out from his desk.
‘It’s not Manfred Gruen, boss.’
What did he mean? It had to be Gruen, everything fitted.
Gartrell continued. ‘The Hamburg Police have records of sympathy cards they sent to Hilda Gruen. Manfred Gruen suicided twelve years ago.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘They’re definite.’
The room shrank.
‘The cards were sent to an address near Manchester in England. They still haven’t found her current address.’
‘Wallen might have told somebody else.’ It was Whiteman.
‘Probably, but his son was only aware of that one parcel going off to Manfred.’ Clement sucked it up. ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. Let’s find the owner of that white SUV. I’m going out to clear my head.’
Clement fought the temptation to head up to AV and hang over Manners’ shoulder again. The guy was under enough pressure already. He climbed into his car and drove back out where the media crews had been assembled a little earlier. None were left. The streets of town were eerily quiet, the footpaths spare of café furniture that could become lethal weapons in a cyclone. A shop-owner was drilling and fixing ply boards over his windows. Clement passed only two cars heading into town as he cruised out, his mind a jumble between the case and the humiliation of being shifted from leading it. On autopilot he turned along the coast road. Sand was whipping across from the beach.
When he saw the entrance to the more northerly track he turned down towards the beach, just as the abductor must have done. Halfway down, crime scene tape, straining and rattling in the increasing wind, blocked his path. There were no vehicles in sight.
He switched off the engine and sat, the increasingly awesome wind emphasising his insignificance and by extension that of any one human being. Yet he was not totally despondent. Hopefully if Manners couldn’t crack that plate, Perth would. They were prepared too, roadblocks up, police and emergency vehicles on the alert for white SUVs.
He had been so confident about Manfred Gruen.
He climbed out into the gale, ducked under the chequered tape and walked towards the beach. As if hurled by an angry fist, sand stung his cheeks. He was forced to squint to keep it out of his eyes. Hunching his body he tried to scan the miles of white sand with not a soul on it. The ocean was foaming, angry but not yet psychotic, the sky a grey purple. How had the abductor got close enough to subdue Osterlund? Was he working with an accomplice?
No, Clement felt a single intelligence here. It would be perhaps another trick, more sleight of hand as he had used with the biker. Who are you? You have a beginning like everyone, like me. You were born somewhere, you had aspirations, maybe of being a famous soccer player, maybe that was the thing with the t-shirt, but somewhere along the way they disappeared, didn’t they? The only thing that became important was punishing these men for the wrong they did to Gruen, you, or both. That is what sustains you, emboldens you. Nothing can happen to you because you are righting a wrong. That’s what you believe isn’t it?
His phone rang. He felt it more than heard it in the wind. Automatically he began to retreat to the shelter of the car, the wind blowing him along so his legs had to move to catch up. He pulled the phone from his pocket expecting Manners but it was not a station number. ‘Mathias? Hold on.’
He had to yell above the wind. It was a battle to pull the door open. He flopped into his seat feeling more secure out of the gusts. The usual impish tone had drained from the German.
‘Hello Daniel. Sorry I missed your calls. We got your message, Heinrich and I. We couldn’t believe it. But it had to be Dieter, right? The fingerprints he couldn’t get rid of because they came direct to Heinrich but the photo, they just film some schmuck in Belgrade or Prague with a newspaper and they know poor Pieter will never have a chance to contradict them. I can’t believe none of us saw through it. I guess we didn’t want to.’
Another spray of sand hurled itself at the windscreen.
Clement said. ‘I’m sorry, mate.’
‘You know why Dieter did it?’
‘Just a guess. He got in over his head gambling, it was his way out. I need to speak to Hilda, if you have her number.’
There was a deep, regretful sigh. ‘There’s something Heinrich and I have been debating. I won’t bullshit you, man, this has been very hard for us. Kurt Donen murdered our friend and ruined the lives of Pieter and his boy. He gassed himself, the boy, Manfred, you know that?’
‘Yes, I thought … I thought he might be the one.’
Clement oughtn’t feel guilty but he did.
‘Tragedy,’ was all the German offered before another substantial pause. Clement fought impatience and waited. ‘Heinrich remembered something. You asked me about this Klaus Edershen.’
Clement was suddenly thrown back to the clipping of the crime scene in some German park. ‘That’s right.’
‘I looked up the article. It said the victim was a soldier. And I’m thinking, why did Dieter have the article? There was a rumour passed onto us from Gruen via Dieter, maybe before he went bad, that one of Donen’s bodyguards was an ex-mercenary.’
Clement’s gaze had automatically turned back to the beach. He was still listening but thinking too about that article. An arrow could have stopped Osterlund, no noise, no shell casings.
‘So Heinrich and me work it out, maybe this Klaus Edershen was Donen’s bodyguard. Maybe that was why he was killed. The bodyguard, then the informer; somebody is taking them out, right?’
Still Clement did not interrupt. He sensed something was coming.
‘Over the years Heinrich was writing to Hilda on and off. In one letter she told him the boy was a junior champion, archery.’
‘Manfred was a top archer?’ Clement was trying to calculate ages.
‘Not Manfred, Manfred’s son Peter, named after his grandad. That’s why this is so hard. We think you’re looking for Pieter’s grandson. To be honest we never even thought about him. Last time we saw his father, Manfred, he was just a little kid himself, you forget. Manfred had the boy when he was only nineteen or something—junkie mother shot through. Hilda raised him. This is going to break her heart.’
The woman had lost her husband, son and now maybe her grandson. Clement hated this part of it but could not deny the euphoria building in his veins.
‘Peter Gruen or Bourke?’
‘Bourke. As a junior he represented his country in archery.’
‘England?’
‘No, after Manfred died they moved. To Ireland.’