BOWMAN WAS IN his bathroom drinking beer. It was four p.m. and he’d filed the Lynch story. He’d read in a magazine years ago that drinking in the shower was a sure sign of alcoholism. He didn’t drink in the shower anymore. He put his stubby down to hop back under the shower to wash off his shaving cream. Drinking between showers was a bit slippery, he knew.
After towelling dry, he applied moisturiser to his face—a dermatology student he’d flatted with in Glebe had instilled in him this one good habit—and rolled on deodorant. A Somac for reflux, washed down with beer. Novasone to stubborn eczema in his elbow crooks. An eye drop in each eye. He blamed the state of his eyes on alcohol—cataracts at forty, a detached retina. He blamed the state of himself on alcohol. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t burn herb—no drugs—he didn’t eat shit. But he drank. Sitting at home alone in his clapboard, Bowman could drink a bottle of wine while wondering what to drink that night. Ten, twelve, fifteen drinks a day, every day, that was his habit. He had to be disciplined—any more, and he’d risk a headache. Like the night before last, when New Year’s Eve had got away from him.
His phone rang in the bedroom and he hobbled through in his towel. Riley.
‘I’m looking at your Lynch story,’ she said.
‘The boss is happy. Tell O’Neil thanks.’
‘I will. I’m with him now … We wanted to set up a couple of things for tomorrow. You can write that piece on the drone footage.’
Bowman placed his beer on the bedside table. ‘Nice.’
‘We need a bit of control on the timing. Think you could put it online at midday?’
‘Why’s that?’
‘We want to be looking at a couple of people when they read it.’
‘Who?’
He felt her hesitate.
‘They’re nothing,’ she said. ‘They’re like Lynch. We have to eliminate them.’
‘Come on. Who?’
She briefed him on the plan for the morning. ‘Don’t read anything into it,’ she said. ‘Names come up, we cross them off.’
‘But Spratt and Preston?’ he said. ‘Haven’t they got alibis?’
‘Yeah.’
Liar. He was getting to know her tones. ‘Spratt said he saw Preston on Wednesday. I quoted him in the paper. He saw Preston in his car, they had a chat.’
There was silence down the line, deep and still. ‘Got to go,’ she said and hung up.
Bowman stood in his towel and looked at his phone.
At her desk, Riley sat frozen.
‘What?’ O’Neil said.
She put her phone down and opened files on her laptop. ‘We might have something.’ She scrolled. ‘Here. This is Spratt from his statement: Jenny worked on the Monday for the Sydney to Hobart. I saw Lynch, told him his jobs for the week. On Tuesday I saw Graham Murray over at admin. Jenny was at work in the day and home for the evening. On Wednesday Jen was off. I had a doctor’s appointment. I saw Philip Preston, the headmaster. I was driving. Him too. In his car over here toward our place, near the tennis courts. I was running late but we had a quick word. Round two p.m.’
‘The statements don’t match?’ O’Neil said.
‘The CCTV clocks Spratt in four spots on that drive at two p.m.,’ Riley said. ‘That matches up with his statement.’
‘Spratt says he sees Preston driving,’ O’Neil said. ‘We see Spratt on the CCTV …’
‘But?’ Riley said.
‘But we never see Preston.’ O’Neil bent to her screen. ‘Preston never mentions seeing Spratt?’
Riley pulled up the headmaster’s statement. ‘Wednesday, remember—he says he’s at home, working. No mention of a drive, no mention of a chat with Spratt. If he drove to where Spratt says he saw him then we’d see it on the CCTV.’
‘Unless he skirted the cameras,’ O’Neil said. ‘Either way, someone’s telling porkies.’
‘Shall we pay a visit?’
‘Let’s wait. See how they react to the drone footage. If either of them is looking sick, we can hit them with this as well.’
She sat back as he straightened, looking at his phone. She waited while he read. He clicked his tongue.
‘What?’ she said.
‘The briefing note from Crime Scene just lobbed,’ he said. ‘The house, the shed, the plastic, the John Deere.’
‘And?’ she said.
‘I thought I’d seen it all, but Jesus’—he shook his head—‘there’s some weird shit coming back from the lab.’
Riley sat with Patel and Farquhar at a rectangular conference table in the middle of the Gladesville room. Across from them sat Annie Tran and her top five officers, all detective constables, all male, all Homicide. There were three analysts as well. In all, it was about half the strike force.
‘First,’ O’Neil said. ‘They’ve confirmed the blood on the bedroom carpet is Marguerite’s and that the killer tried to clean it up.’
‘With what?’ Tran said.
‘Bleach and detergent,’ O’Neil said. ‘No wet wipes and no ammonia.’
‘Still,’ Riley said, ‘he’s cleaning.’
‘Agreed,’ O’Neil said. ‘But there’s no getting around it—it lacks sophistication. If this is our boy, it’s another change in his MO.’
His eyes went around the table. ‘Now, the plastic,’ he said. ‘Listen carefully and don’t be afraid to ask questions.’
Crime Scene had got a fracture fit match of the plastic from the body with the roll at the maintenance block. It was forensic evidence that would stand up in court: the work under the microscope proved that the plastic wrapped around Marguerite’s body had been cut from the roll Bowman had found.
‘Cut with what?’ Tran said.
‘A sharp blade—not serrated and not scissors,’ O’Neil said.
‘So again, different to Gladesville,’ Tran said.
‘Correct,’ O’Neil said.
‘Chemical analysis?’ Tran said.
O’Neil put a finger up and looked at Patel. ‘There’s another test we’re waiting on, from an outside lab. The chemical markers on the plastic from the two Gladesville scenes are identical—they both came from the same roll. We’ve sent the plastic used to wrap Marguerite out for the same analysis, but the results are days away. Okay?’
‘Sir,’ Patel said.
‘Good.’ He cricked his neck. ‘So, we’re looking at a different blade to Gladesville, and very possibly a different roll. Got it?’
Nods all around.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now. Let’s look at how we think she was moved.’
The Crime Scene briefing said the killer had likely carried the body from the bedroom and out of the house, then used the orange wheelbarrow to get her to the shed where the John Deere had been found, a distance of several hundred metres. Assuming the murder wasn’t premeditated, the killer then needed to get the plastic, a three-kilometre round trip to the maintenance block that didn’t show up on the CCTV. In the shed, the killer had washed the plastic and the body, minus the hair, and washed the whole package again after wrapping her.
Riley fiddled with her pen. There’d been a lot of washing. She made a note: John Deere. The questions from Sunday had not been answered. Did he have it waiting in the shed, or did he have to go and get it? And why not leave it somewhere neutral—why return it to the shed? She looked up. ‘Just on the washing,’ she said. ‘He’s DNA aware, showing some knowledge of forensic investigation. Do we think Spratt’s smart enough?’
O’Neil’s bald head caught the light. ‘I think Spratt’s capable. He’s rough, but he’s neat and organised.’
‘I agree,’ Farquhar said. ‘Spratt’s competent, cunning even. He’s more equipped for this than Preston, I would think.’
She looked back at her pad. Competent, cunning, capable. And lots of keys. But the key to the John Deere was in the ignition. And the shed doors were closed, not locked.
‘Now,’ O’Neil said, ‘the victim’s blood. There were sixty mils, dried, in her hair. If he’d washed it, there’d have been blood running on surfaces and we’d have picked it up under the lights. But he doesn’t make that mistake. He doesn’t try to wash it out, he doesn’t even touch it. He washes everything, but not the hair and not the wound.’
‘They think he’s at ease?’ Tran said.
‘They think he was composed, that he gloved up and probably put on booties too—although maybe just plastic shopping bags around his shoes.’
There were unknown fingerprints throughout the house, presumably from friends and guests, and, of course, the prints and DNA of the Dunlop family. The only other match they had was Craig Spratt, probably from the work he’d done on the locks. There was no trace of Jenny Spratt, Preston, the Greens, Lynch or Graham Murray.
‘But there is evidence of wiping,’ O’Neil said, ‘which is interesting. It’s likely the killer is retracing his steps to mop up what he’d touched. Priya, it goes to what you said.’
‘He doesn’t have gloves on when he enters,’ Patel said. ‘He’s there to snoop. Things get out of hand. That’s when he gloves up.’
‘Alright,’ O’Neil said. ‘This is where it gets a bit strange. The brown substance found on the plastic around Marguerite and in the tray of the John Deere has been identified as sheep manure.’
‘Fertiliser?’ Riley said.
‘Maybe,’ O’Neil said.
‘You said it got strange?’ Farquhar said.
‘The sheep manure is laced with anthrax.’
Everything went still and Riley’s stomach rolled. An Arab with a beard. She studied the table top and tried to think back. She’d said it, not him. He hadn’t led her up to it.
‘Rose?’ O’Neil said.
She looked up and around the silent table. ‘Sorry, it’s crazy,’ she said. ‘Last night, I was talking to Bowman … about profiling—in the age of terror.’
O’Neil was nodding. ‘That was my reaction too, that this was some chemical weapons trace. Turns out it’s more ordinary than that.’
‘Ordinary?’ Farquhar said.
‘Crime Scene called in Primary Industries. There’s an anthrax belt running down the middle of the state—for some reason it thrives in this narrow corridor.’ He read from his laptop. ‘It lives in the soil and forms a spore, grazing stock eat it. The first outbreak in New South Wales was in 1847, then it spread along cattle routes. The department says it killed one hundred and twenty sheep last year.’
‘How’d it wind up in North Parramatta?’ Tran said.
‘Let’s find out,’ O’Neil said.
‘We could start with Lynch and Spratt,’ Patel said. ‘If it is fertiliser, they’d be the ones using it.’
‘We could put it out through the media again,’ Tran said. ‘Ask whether anyone has brought sheep manure into the school.’
‘We’ll leave the anthrax out of it,’ O’Neil said. ‘Don’t want to scare the horses.’