AT THE SCHOOL gate, Riley wound down the window to talk with the uniforms on duty. The only civilian traffic through had been a couple in a Mercedes at 8.20 a.m., here for a scheduled meeting with Preston.
She thanked them and drove on, glancing at the dash: 9.05. Preston’s Range Rover wasn’t in the driveway when she pulled up. O’Neil got out and rang the doorbell.
He came back. ‘Not here. Let’s go for a stroll.’
Riley and Patel followed him across the lawn to the rose garden, five raised stone beds forty metres from the house. The bushes were staked, some in tight bud, some with drooping flowers. The beds were hard with a tatty cover of dry straw.
‘Anyone got green fingers?’ O’Neil said.
‘Doesn’t smell like shit,’ Riley said.
‘Sheep shit doesn’t smell,’ Patel said.
They looked at her.
‘I read the internet,’ Patel said, squatting to poke the mulch. ‘Nothing’s been put on here for a while.’
They walked down the side of the garage. Hot-water systems and air-conditioning units were mounted on the wall, a low hedge of rosemary ran parallel.
‘There.’ Patel pointed. A compost bin sat under trees past the edge of the back lawn.
‘Hiding in plain sight,’ Riley said.
‘He’d have had no reason to hide it,’ O’Neil said. ‘Until the night before yesterday.’
A red wheelbarrow was propped against a tree and there were thick-tread tyre tracks around the bin. Riley bent closer. ‘Not a car,’ she said.
Patel pulled a glove from her pocket and lifted a corner of the lid. The tub was full of dark pellets breaking down into something fibrous.
‘Careful with your feet,’ Riley said.
They heard a vehicle and turned to see Farquhar’s black Volvo coming up the drive.
O’Neil called Crime Scene as they walked back to the Calais. Farquhar greeted them and followed as Riley drove to the administration block. There were two vehicles in the carpark—Preston’s Range Rover and a Mercedes sedan. Farquhar pulled up beside Riley. They waited until the front door of the building opened and a man and a woman emerged, trailed by Philip Preston.
‘This should be fun.’ O’Neil got out.
Riley and Patel came up as he intercepted Preston and the couple on the asphalt.
‘Mister Preston,’ O’Neil said. ‘Good morning.’
‘Detective.’ Preston gestured. ‘Some prospective parents, just flown in from Singapore.’
O’Neil put his hands on his hips.
‘They only have this morning,’ the headmaster said. ‘I need to show them the facilities, I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
‘We haven’t got half an hour.’
Farquhar came over from the Volvo and smiled at the couple. The woman was bottle-blonde North Shore blueblood, pearls and diamonds.
Preston put a hand on her lower back. ‘As I was saying, the police are still onsite. You might need to excuse me.’
O’Neil looked at the admin block. ‘Somewhere we can talk in there?’
Preston took a moment to shunt the expat parents towards the classrooms for a little self-guided tour. Once they were out of earshot, he rounded and got up close in Patel’s face. ‘Still working with the newspaper?’
Patel stood her ground.
‘She’s multi-talented,’ O’Neil said. ‘Does a bit of police media.’
‘Talking of media,’ Riley said. ‘That NeedFeed article was interesting.’
Preston stepped back.
‘You don’t know anything about that, do you, Doctor Phil?’ Riley said.
His eyes went around the four of them.
‘Can we call you that?’ Patel said. ‘Or do we need a glass of red first?’
‘Or a Scotch,’ Riley said. ‘Hear you’ve got plenty of Scotch.’
‘This is beginning to resemble harassment,’ Preston said. ‘If it continues, I’ll have to call the lawyers.’
‘Lawyering up.’ O’Neil grimaced.
‘In our experience,’ Riley said, ‘only the guilty call their lawyers.’
‘What is it you think I’m guilty of? Murdering three girls?’
‘Let’s start with one,’ O’Neil said. ‘Let’s start with Marguerite Dunlop.’
The headmaster tried for a smile. ‘You’re being ridiculous. I’ve never so much as touched Marguerite Dunlop.’
‘Yeah?’ O’Neil said. ‘I hear you like touching girls.’
Fear flashed with loathing. ‘I can sue you for that.’
‘Off you go then,’ O’Neil said. ‘Call the lawyers. But make sure they know the facts. Make sure they know you like paying for girls.’
Preston’s head went back. ‘I have never paid any girls for anything.’
O’Neil looked at Riley.
‘There it is,’ she said. ‘Plausible deniability.’
Preston flinched, chickens coming home to roost on his face.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ O’Neil said. ‘Out of the sun?’
The headmaster led them across the carpark to the admin building. The wandering parents could be seen in the quadrangle in the distance.
‘How are enrolments?’ Riley said. ‘Don’t they read the news in Singapore?’
Preston ignored her and took them up a staircase and along a carpeted hall to a spacious office. There were chairs in front of a sleek desk and a clutch of sofas around a low table. Blown up on the wall was a photo of Preston standing between the Prime Minister and Hugh Bishop.
The desk was polished white stone with a large Mac to one side and nothing else. Preston sat behind it. The detectives fanned out and stood. Farquhar took a seat.
‘You might have noticed in the press,’ O’Neil said, ‘that for reasons pertinent to our investigation, we are interested in sheep manure that has been brought into the school. Do you know anything about sheep manure being brought onto the grounds?’
‘My colleague’s daughter has been murdered,’ Preston said, ‘and of all things, you’re interested in sheep manure?’
‘That’s called not answering the question.’ O’Neil nodded at the photo. ‘Those politicians teach you that?’
‘We’ve seen your compost bin,’ Patel said.
‘We’ve been to Orange,’ Riley said.
Preston looked as if he’d trodden in something. ‘What has Marguerite Dunlop’s death got to do with Orange and compost?’
‘Just tell me what you know about sheep manure,’ O’Neil said.
Preston’s brow glistened. ‘A parent brings it in for me. From his farm in, yes, Orange. I compost it and put it on my roses. End of story.’
Riley had her notebook out. ‘How do you move it around—to the compost bin and to the roses?’
‘I borrow a buggy from the grounds staff. I have a wheelbarrow.’
‘This buggy,’ O’Neil said. ‘What does it look like?’
‘Like a golf cart. They’re green and yellow.’
‘Do you drive the buggy, or do the grounds people?’ O’Neil said.
‘The staff don’t work on my roses.’
‘You said they,’ O’Neil said. ‘How many are there?’
‘I don’t know. Two or three.’
‘Where are the buggies kept?’ Riley said.
‘All over.’ Preston shrugged. ‘At the front oval, at The Flats. There are sheds. You’d have to ask Craig Spratt.’
‘When was the last delivery of manure?’ Riley said.
Preston looked at the wall. ‘Around the first week of December. Speech Day. The seventh.’
‘When did you move it to the compost bin?’ Riley said.
‘About a week later, when the holidays had started.’
‘And you used a buggy?’ Riley said.
‘It was eight bags. I drove to The Flats and took a buggy. When I had finished, I drove the buggy back and got my car.’
‘Well?’ O’Neil said from the rear of the Calais. ‘Wayne?’
In the passenger seat, Farquhar gazed through the windscreen. ‘He was … plausible.’
They were in the admin carpark still, aircon running. ‘You think he’s telling the truth?’ O’Neil said.
‘I think he’s a good liar,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘He’s not what he presents as, the upstanding headmaster of a school. We know he’s a predator, at the very least sleeping with young prostitutes.’
‘All this payola,’ O’Neil said. ‘Zabatino seems to be paying over the odds to fix a problem with his kid.’
‘There’ll be more to it,’ Riley said. ‘The politician will be in on it. Zabatino’s in Orange, Bishop’s a stone’s throw away in Blayney. Preston makes the introduction. Zabatino’s buying favours. He needs to keep Preston sweet.’
‘So it’s graft?’ O’Neil said. ‘It carries a lot of risk.’
‘Preston might like risk,’ Farquhar said. ‘Zabatino indicated Preston might be rough with the girls. We should check with them about how bad it got. I’d like to ask Preston’s wife about their sex life. Is Preston difficult to satisfy? What is he aroused by? Do they even have sex?’
‘The wife’s still in Adelaide,’ O’Neil said. ‘Annie’s spoken with her. You could fly down.’
‘That’s odd as well,’ Farquhar said. ‘The fact she hasn’t returned to support her husband.’
‘He says he told her to stay away.’ Riley sniffed. ‘Reckons she’s not comfortable in the empty school—even before this.’
‘That’s convenient,’ Farquhar said. ‘Maybe the marriage is too.’
‘What else?’ O’Neil said.
‘He’s entitled,’ Farquhar said. ‘He’s in the pocket of the mafia, he’s corrupt. He’s not ethical, he’s expedient. He lies, he manipulates, he sponges off others. It’s not a pretty list.’
‘Where’s it pointing?’
‘Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic features,’ Farquhar said. ‘That’s not uncommon. It’s a long way from psychopath.’
‘But could he kill?’ Patel said.
‘Anyone can kill,’ Farquhar said. ‘In a panic or a rage or a corner. The difference is that Preston’s type wouldn’t fess up and take his due.’
‘What’s his motive?’ Riley said.
‘Again, as with Lynch, I can only assume a scenario. Say Preston put the hard word on Marguerite, or perhaps it had gone beyond that and there had been something physical. The girl didn’t like it and threatened to blow the whistle. In a corner, his reputation at stake, Preston lashes out.’
‘He kills her and then he rides it out?’ Riley said.
‘Yes,’ Farquhar said. ‘In his mind, he’s more important than the victim, he has more to offer the world. He’d convince himself he’s honoured Marguerite, bestowed some special privilege on her with his interest in her. His psychology would allow him to kill her and then live with himself. Nietzsche sums it up: it is easier to cope with a bad conscience than a bad reputation.’
‘You said he was plausible about the cart,’ Patel said. ‘Let’s say he’s telling the truth. He used the John Deere to move his manure and put the cart back at the playing fields. If that’s the case, why didn’t he just admit to the manure delivery when he saw us asking in the media?’
‘It goes back to risk,’ Farquhar said. ‘He rationalised that only he and Zabatino knew. And maybe Bishop. So Preston wants to ride it out. He thinks if he comes clean about the manure it’ll lead us to Zabatino and graft and prostitutes.’
‘He knows we’ll dig into it and that Bowman won’t be far behind,’ O’Neil said. ‘It’d finish him at this place—it might even send him to jail.’
Riley half turned. After they had confronted Preston with Orange and the manure, she had expected O’Neil to go harder, to hit the headmaster with the discrepancy between the CCTV and his statement. ‘You didn’t want to give him both barrels, Steve?’
O’Neil’s tongue clicked on the roof of his mouth. ‘I wanted him broken before we used the CCTV,’ he said. ‘The way it played, he managed to stay standing.’
‘Yes, but he’s starting to unravel,’ Farquhar said. ‘Rhythmic ambiguity.’
‘What?’ O’Neil said.
‘The voice,’ Farquhar said. ‘He’s all over the place.’
‘Back in Ottawa,’ Riley said. She’d heard it too.
‘The accent, the pretence,’ Farquhar said. ‘It’s unravelling under pressure. We should keep it up.’
‘Alright,’ O’Neil stretched his neck. ‘Let’s bring him in and lay it all on him.’
‘Now?’ Riley said.
‘Tomorrow,’ O’Neil said. ‘Let’s stir him up more first.’
‘We could tell him we’ve got a search warrant for his house,’ Riley said. ‘The court will grant it if we say manure from his garden turned up on the plastic that wrapped the body.’
‘Nice,’ O’Neil said. ‘What else?’
Patel cleared her throat. ‘We could play dirty.’
‘Mm?’ O’Neil said.
‘There’s a book I’m reading,’ Patel said. ‘Case studies about the early days of behavioural science at the FBI.’
A corner of O’Neil’s mouth curled up. ‘Right.’
‘At two in the morning I ring Preston on a burner,’ Patel said.
‘And say what?’
‘And say I’m Marguerite Dunlop.’
O’Neil’s eyes closed. ‘Let’s pretend you didn’t say that.’
‘Sir,’ Patel said.
‘It’s hillbilly shit. The court would eat us alive.’
‘It’s got one thing going for it,’ Riley said. ‘It’s not concrete thinking.’
‘What are we hoping to achieve?’ Farquhar said. ‘To spook him?’
‘It’s more pressure, it adds to his stress,’ Patel said. ‘The night timing is important. He’s home alone, in a big house. Things are ominous at the witching hour. We’d need to have eyes on the place when we call, see if he runs. If we do it right, keep it simple, it would be unsettling, throw him off balance.’
‘We’d steal some sleep off him at least,’ Riley said. ‘Bring him in tired in the morning.’
‘Tell me,’ O’Neil said, ‘when the feds ran this manoeuvre, did it work?’
‘The case was a few years old and going nowhere with the local cops,’ Patel said. ‘The FBI came in and cracked it open.’
‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ O’Neil said.
Farquhar opened his door.
‘So, let’s agree,’ O’Neil said, ‘that we never had this conversation.’
Patel nodded and got out with the psychiatrist.
‘You know what that’s called?’ O’Neil said.
Patel looked back in at him. ‘Plausible deniability?’
‘You learn fast, kiddo.’
Riley watched Farquhar and Patel walk to the doctor’s Volvo. O’Neil climbed from the back of the Calais and came around to the front passenger seat. She left the car in park.
‘Got the briefing note on the carts,’ he said, bald head bent over his phone.
She waited while he read. Preston’s admissions had not changed the fact that the John Deere from the shed behind the Dunlop house remained their best lead. Two of Tran’s boys had been digging into the carts since Monday, and O’Neil had ordered them to keep clear of Spratt. Riley agreed—Spratt was a person of interest and they relied on him too much.
To circumvent the property manager, the Satyr detectives had tracked down the head of the grounds staff to Bermagui, where he’d been since before Christmas, a watertight alibi. The officers had travelled south to question him in person about the carts, and then spoken to the bursar, Murray, to confirm details. O’Neil finished reading their findings and looked out the windscreen.
‘What?’ Riley said.
O’Neil summarised. Prince Albert owned three John Deere Gator utility vehicles. They ran on twenty-five-horsepower diesel engines and could carry two people in their cabs, and loads of up to six hundred and fifty kilograms in their trays. They had been bought as a job lot three years ago and were serviced annually. One of them had recently had its tyres replaced.
‘Where are they kept?’ Riley said.
‘That’s the problem,’ O’Neil said. ‘It doesn’t matter who you ask, the answer to that question is always the same.’
Spratt. She put the car in gear.
‘He probably knows we’ve been looking,’ O’Neil said.
Riley nodded: news travelled. She drove through the school. Lynch, the bursar, the head of the grounds staff and now Preston had all been questioned about the John Deeres. Spratt had an ear to the ground.
There was an old Subaru, but no Hilux, outside the Spratt house. They knocked and Jenny Spratt opened the door. Tanned, thin, late forties, faded short shorts and a singlet, no bra.
‘Mrs Spratt, I’m sorry to bother you again,’ Riley said. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector O’Neil.’
‘Jenny,’ she said to O’Neil. ‘Craig’s out. You want to come in?’
They followed her to the kitchen.
‘Do you know where Craig is?’ O’Neil said.
‘Nope, but he won’t be far. Cuppa?’
‘Sounds good,’ O’Neil said.
She flicked the kettle on and faced them across the bench. Dirty blonde hair with the roots showing, lines around the mouth. Party girl. Booze, drugs, sun, smokes—it was written on her face.
‘Mind if I use the bathroom?’ Riley said. ‘Been drinking tea all morning.’
Jenny Spratt nodded towards the hall. ‘First on the right.’
In the mirrored cabinet over the sink Riley saw Berocca, face cream, eye drops, Panadol, tramadol, deodorant, Dettol, Voltaren, talc, nail polish remover. Stilnox … She picked up the bottle, pushed the lid down and turned. Maybe twenty tablets. She opened the drawers in the vanity. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, makeup, a hairdryer. A bunch of chemist scripts: steroid creams, asthma sprays, the pill.
Listening, Riley slipped down the hall, passed the Spratts’ bedroom, then a spare room, then a small office with a desk and a bank of four monitors. She went in and brought the screens to life with a click on the keyboard. CCTV footage of the school. There was no movement on the screens and Riley guessed it was live. She walked to the back door. It was unlocked, three steps down to the yard, brown grass and packed earth. A long hose hung coiled on the side fence. It was done right, no kinks. Not everyone could coil a long hose right. She looked at the boat on its trailer over the fence. If you ran a boat you learnt to coil a hose.
She heard a car pull up at the front. She went back to the bathroom, flushed the cistern, and returned to the kitchen as Craig Spratt walked in.
‘Mr Spratt,’ O’Neil said, picking up his mug.
Spratt nodded at him and then Riley. ‘Can I have a cuppa?’ he said to his wife.
O’Neil started straight in. ‘The three John Deere carts,’ he said to Spratt. ‘Can you tell us who uses them?’
Spratt scratched the back of his neck. ‘Groundsmen, mainly.’
‘What about the headmaster?’ O’Neil said. ‘He use them?’
There was a change on the air. Jenny Spratt turned to the sink.
‘Preston?’ Spratt said. ‘Yeah, when he’s feeding his roses.’
‘Does he sign the cart out or something?’ Riley said.
Spratt looked confused. ‘Nah. Keys are left in the ignition. Lots of teachers use ’em.’
‘Do you use them?’ Riley said.
‘Me?’ Spratt squinted at her like she might have a roo loose. He took the mug from his wife. ‘Not unless I have to. Got me Hilux.’
‘Do you know where all three carts are now?’ O’Neil said.
‘In the work huts.’ Spratt gave an over-yonder look. ‘At the back of The Flats.’
O’Neil’s phone buzzed and he excused himself, stooping through the screen door to take the call outside.
‘At The Flats,’ Riley said. ‘You know that for certain?’
‘Yeah, we put ’em away for the break.’ Spratt blew on his tea. ‘Why?’
O’Neil came in, nodding at Jenny Spratt as he put his mug on the bench. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘We need to keep moving.’
Riley followed him to the Calais and started the engine. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Shoe and Tyre came back on the vehicle tracks at Preston’s compost bin. A match with the John Deere in the shed.’
Analysts had also checked the CCTV footage from earlier in the month and confirmed that Preston had picked up a John Deere from behind The Flats and then returned it. ‘That was on December thirteenth,’ O’Neil said. ‘The John Deere is at The Flats, nearly two kilometres from where we find it in the shed on January first.’
Riley drove at a crawl. ‘On Wednesday, December twenty-eighth, or the next morning, the killer moves Marguerite’s body from her bedroom to the shed,’ she said. ‘He’s either moved the John Deere to the shed sometime after December thirteenth or he now needs to go and get it. He washes, wraps and dumps the body and then takes the John Deere back to the shed behind the house and leaves it.’
‘That’s what I still don’t get,’ O’Neil said. ‘Why does he return to the shed? He’d be better off leaving the cart back at The Flats, or at least somewhere neutral. Why return it to the scene?’
‘Because he’s obsessive,’ Riley said. ‘He knows there’s a hose and privacy. He wants to wash the cart again.’
‘And then what? He plans to come back and move it later?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It’s the same with the creek. Farquhar thinks he wanted to put the body in the creek.’
‘He runs out of time.’
She saw Spratt’s coiled hose. Preston’s garage: Priya had said there was privacy to wrap and load. Riley’s phone pinged and she read the text. ‘Bowman’s prints have come back clean.’
They were now near the Hay Stand, the police tape still streaming. Riley pulled up and put her window down and O’Neil did the same. The prints on the bench at the Dunlop house weren’t Bowman’s. They sat in the warm cross-breeze.
‘Bowman’s obsessive,’ Riley said. ‘He’s a bench wiper.’
‘Jesus, Rose.’
‘I know. But there’s …’ Something? Or just coincidence piling up.
‘What about Preston?’
‘You really want to get Priya to call him tonight?’
‘There’s a phone tap running, we’d have to be careful.’
They talked it through as Riley drove back to the station. In the strike force room, they briefed Patel. She would be taken to the school by patrol car at one a.m., she would make the call, watch the house in case Preston ran, and be brought back in the same car. Riley handed her a clean, pre-paid mobile. If there was anything urgent, Patel was to call O’Neil on her own phone, otherwise she could brief him by email on the ride home. Riley and O’Neil would go to Preston’s house at six a.m. and ask him to accompany them to Parramatta to answer some questions.
At 8.30 p.m., they disbanded. They needed to sleep.
O’Neil was woken in his mezzanine by a call at 4.10 a.m.
‘What?’ he sat up, fully alert, and listened. ‘Don’t approach the house,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way. Call me if it changes.’
He threw on clothes and nearly tripped down the stairs to the kitchen. He called Patel’s mobile. Voicemail. He went down in the lift, drumming at the hand rail, and ran to the Prado. He called Patel’s number again as he waited for the garage door. No answer. He was doing one-thirty through the empty streets of Camperdown when his phone rang again. It was the officer who had woken him, the general duties constable who had driven Patel to Prince Albert.
‘Sir, we got her. We heard her phone ringing. She’s okay.’
O’Neil braked. ‘Put her on.’
‘Steve,’ Patel said. ‘We need Crime Scene.’
‘What happened?’
‘Gladesville. He knocked me out, tied me up, said some things.’
‘Jesus fuck.’
‘Yeah, it’s good. Flushed from his burrow.’
‘Fucking Christ. Where?’
‘In the trees outside Preston’s.’
‘Make a voice memo—what he said, everything you can remember. I’ll be there in ten. Put the constable back on.’
‘Sir?’ the constable said.
‘Secure the scene and the school. No one steps on a blade of grass. Don’t touch Patel. Call an ambulance. Was she gagged?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘With tape?’
‘We cut it, but it’s still on her face. She won’t let us touch it.’
‘Good,’ O’Neil said.
‘Sir,’ the constable said. ‘She wants to talk to you again.’
Patel’s voice came back on the Bluetooth. ‘He said he left a present on Preston’s door.’
O’Neil went into the tunnel at Haberfield. ‘What else did he say?’
‘Tell Riley we’ll play.’