THEY GOT THE knife to the lab with the dog.
‘Priority one,’ O’Neil said. ‘Results to me.’
Despite the claims they had made to the boy, O’Neil knew the results wouldn’t be definitive. The best they could hope for was a finding that it was possible the blade had been used to cut the dog and the plastic. That would be good—better than the lab definitively ruling the blade out—but it was circumstantial. It was evidence, they could dress it up and take it to court, but it was defendable.
There was something else the knife would give them. Tom’s prints. They’d printed his father and mother and every other adult at the school, but Tom was a minor.
At his desk in the strike force room, O’Neil could feel it—the prints on the knife would be a match with those on the bench in the Dunlop house.
But there was a problem with that as well. Tom had a built-in defence: he could say he’d left his prints in the house when Spratt had let him in to look for the dog. The prints were evidence—but they were circumstantial too.
‘The fucking dog,’ he said.
Riley, eating a potato scallop at her laptop, raised an eyebrow.
‘What are you looking at?’ he said.
‘Scott Green’s movements on the Wednesday.’
O’Neil nodded, Farquhar’s words in his ears: exposure to violence as a child. Scott Green had a strong alibi, but Riley was right to look at it again. ‘Let’s hear it,’ he said.
On Wednesday, 28 December, Scott Green had been out of the school in the morning and most of the afternoon. His version of events had been verified by CCTV, shop assistants, retail dockets, credit card data, his vehicle registration and phone records. His car had been driven out of the school gates at 9.28 a.m.—exactly seven minutes after Marguerite Dunlop had driven in from her visit to Coles at North Rocks. In Northmead, Green had purchased shelving at Bunnings at 10.22 a.m. and a router at Officeworks at 11.09 a.m. He was eating meatballs in Ikea at Rhodes at 12.37 p.m. He’d driven back into the school at 2.44 p.m.
Sarah and the kids all claimed Scott had been in and around the house for the rest of the afternoon and the evening. He had made a 44-minute call from his mobile to TPG at 6.48 p.m. Satyr analysts had verified the call with the telco.
‘NBN trouble,’ Riley said. ‘Hence the router.’
O’Neil nodded again. ‘Busy day.’ The timing didn’t fit. Everything around Marguerite went dark after she’d driven into the school from Coles. She hadn’t even put the shopping away. She was in trouble as soon as she got home at about 9.25 a.m. Someone was in the house—just as Scott Green was driving out of the gate.
O’Neil’s phone pinged and he read the text. ‘Fucking Christ,’ he said.
‘What?’ Riley said.
O’Neil gave her the gist of it. The Police Commissioner had been hauled into the Premier’s office for a meeting with Hugh Bishop yesterday. The minister had claimed the police treatment of Preston amounted to harassment and he was advising the headmaster to sue for damages. In the meantime, Bishop wanted O’Neil stood down from the investigation.
‘Mother of fuck,’ Riley said. ‘Did the boss agree?’
‘No, he refused. But Bishop’s still circling.’
‘Unbelievable. Arsehole fucking cunt. Who’s telling you this?’
‘Madden—in Orange. He’s plugged in upstairs.’
‘Jesus,’ Riley said. ‘Bishop … It’s got to stop.’
O’Neil did some breathing. Bishop was dangerous, but they had his measure. The politician was stealing focus from the victims. They had a journalist in their pocket, it was time to use him.
Bowman was sterilising the sterile kitchen in the Parramatta unit when his phone rang.
‘Listen,’ O’Neil said. ‘We’ve had some phone taps running. That’s off the record. But there’s a call from Preston that makes for intriguing listening.’
Bowman put down the Spray n’Wipe. ‘Who’d he call?’
‘Rose filled you in on some dealings Preston had with this Hugh Bishop, the federal minister?’
‘Sort of. Bishop called me yesterday.’
‘Yeah, he was busy yesterday,’ O’Neil said. ‘Let me play you our call, and then I need a favour.’
Bowman went for his notebook. There was a hiss on the line and then Bishop’s wide vowels.
‘How are things now?’
‘Not good.’ Preston’s voice was flat.
‘We shouldn’t speak on the phone.’
‘Well, come out. You said you would.’
‘I can’t. I told you, I’m heading north.’
‘Well, if you’re going to run we’ll talk like this.’
‘I’m not running.’
‘If I go down—’
‘Don’t talk like that. Why would you go down?’
‘They’ve been to Orange. They know everything.’
‘What did they say?’
‘The manure linked me to Marguerite. I think they thought I’d done it. They said they knew I liked young girls.’
‘Fucking Zabatino.’
‘He won’t take my calls. They must have got to him.’
‘Well. You just have to ride it out.’
Preston didn’t answer.
‘They’re Homicide, they’re looking for a killer,’ Bishop said. ‘All this shit is nothing to them. It’ll blow over.’
‘Not if the journalist gets onto it.’
‘I spoke to him. I’m trying to pull him off, get him up for a bit of snout in the trough.’
‘You better.’
The audio clicked off and O’Neil’s voice came back. ‘You get it?’
‘Yeah.’ Bowman stared at his notebook. Young girls, Orange, Zabatino. ‘What’s it all mean?’
‘It means Bishop and Preston are on the take with the mafia and Bishop is trying to save himself. He knows we know about Preston and he’s trying to shut us down before he gets dragged into it.’
‘Nothing to do with BMK?’
‘It’s way more ordinary. We looked hard at Preston for Marguerite, we’re pretty certain it’s not him.’
‘What’s the favour?’ Bowman said.
‘I need you to get all this ready,’ O’Neil said, ‘as a story. But don’t publish until you hear from me. I might need you to ring the Premier, put to her what you know about Bishop.’
‘The Premier?’
‘Yeah,’ O’Neil said. ‘I’ve got to go, we’re running something down. Write the bones of it and sit tight. I’ll fill in details later. And tell Alexander to keep an eye on Beat-Up Benny. Bishop might use Diamond to attack me.’
O’Neil hung up and Bowman retied his sarong. ‘What the fuck?’ he said.
In the apartment building hallway, Riley raised a fist to knock on Bowman’s door and decided against it. She rapped on her own instead and Needham opened up, back for another shift. Patel was at the table, working on her laptop.
‘I bought some fruit’—Patel pointed at a bowl—‘so we don’t die of scurvy.’
Riley needed a beer. ‘How’s your head?’ she said.
‘All good.’ Patel touched near her temple.
Riley put her bag on a chair and headed for the kitchen. Someone had stocked the fridge. She broke off two stubbies and went back and took a seat at the table, sliding a bottle to Patel.
‘Let’s hear it,’ Patel said.
Riley glanced past her at Needham reading her phone on the couch. ‘Constable’—Riley tossed her head at the third bedroom—‘give us a minute.’
Needham got up and left. Riley sipped, then started with the dog and went through the day.
Patel made notes and grunts. ‘You really think it’s the boy?’ she said when Riley finished.
Riley frowned and her phone pinged—a text from the techs. They’d got into Tom’s USB and emailed her a link. She pulled out her laptop and clicked through.
Sarah Green had been right—it was more drone footage, shot from the playing fields below the Hay Stand. Riley left it running, got another beer and sat back to watch. The perspective had changed, and it took her a moment to orient herself. She stiffened, her mouth open, the stubby halfway to her lips.
‘Rose?’ Patel said.
Riley blinked. She turned the screen to Patel and pulled out her phone.
O’Neil answered and listened. ‘On my way,’ he said.
‘Bring Farquhar,’ Riley said.
Riley and Patel were still at the table with the laptop when O’Neil arrived with the psychiatrist.
‘He’s got it up pretty high, maybe fifty metres.’ Riley pressed play and fast-forwarded. The drone was past the Hay Stand now and starting to drop and zero in. It lowered to the level of the Dunlop house and moved towards a window on the ground floor. As the camera focused in, they could clearly see a young woman lying on her bed with headphones on.
‘Marguerite,’ O’Neil murmured.
‘Camera sits here for three minutes,’ Riley said. ‘He knows he can hover without her hearing. She gets up and moves around, eventually she leaves the room, headphones still on.’
‘This footage was taken when?’ O’Neil said.
‘Friday, December ninth,’ Riley said. ‘Before Fiji. But school holidays had started.’
‘Do we bring him in?’ Patel said.
‘That’s an offence, right there’—Riley pointed at the screen—‘using a drone like that.’
O’Neil sat forwards. ‘We arrest him for the drone offence, then what?’
‘We wait on forensics on the knife,’ Riley said.
‘It’s all circumstantial, even if it lines up,’ O’Neil said.
‘Right now, he could be busy destroying evidence,’ Riley said. ‘He’s probably figured out we’ve got this footage. If we arrest him for the drone, we at least get him out of the house.’
‘Yeah, but he makes bail.’ O’Neil exhaled. ‘He’s home in no time.’
‘But with this’—Patel nodded at the screen—‘can’t we charge him with Marguerite?’
‘It’s not enough,’ O’Neil said. ‘The strength of good circumstantial evidence is when you piece it together. We need to build it.’
Riley got up and walked to the window. Farquhar had said the boy might have killed the dog for kicks. That could be true, but it wasn’t why he’d killed it.
‘I think he killed the dog for access,’ she said.
Out the window, the river was silver in the dusk. No one spoke. She turned back to the table.
‘It gives him a reason to ask Spratt to open the house,’ she said, ‘so he can check the dog’s not got itself trapped inside. Then, while he’s in there he unlatches the window in the alcove. He goes out and tells Spratt no luck, no Tatters. But he’s got access now, to come and go when he wants.’
O’Neil was nodding. ‘He’s not worried about leaving prints because he hasn’t killed anyone. He’s not planning to kill anyone.’
‘No one is ever meant to know he’s there,’ Patel said. ‘He’s a voyeur, obsessed with Marguerite. He wants to come back and snoop.’
‘Wayne?’ Riley said.
The psychiatrist had a hand in his beard. ‘He’s transgressing, just by being in the house. It fits with the scene—that the killing wasn’t premeditated, that the murderer was surprised and then panicked.’
‘He decides to make it look like Gladesville,’ Riley said. ‘He has to get the plastic from behind the maintenance shed—a round trip of what, at least three kilometres?’
‘He must be on foot, moving through the bush to stay off the road and skirt the cameras,’ O’Neil said.
‘Right,’ Riley said. ‘And Scott Green takes the same route on his Friday morning walk.’
O’Neil’s tongue clicked. ‘They’re working together?’
‘Maybe,’ Riley said. ‘Maybe what Bowman sees on Friday is the father covering his son’s tracks, making sure Tom didn’t leave any evidence.’
‘Does Tom tell his father what has happened and ask for help?’ O’Neil said. ‘Or does Scott find out by chance?’
‘Or is it father and son?’ Riley said. ‘They do it all together?’
Farquhar swayed.
‘Scott’s out of the school on Wednesday,’ O’Neil said.
‘There’s another problem with the timing,’ Patel said. ‘Scott Green was seen by Bowman at the maintenance shed on Friday morning, but Marguerite was dumped Wednesday evening—or certainly by Thursday morning. If they’re covering their tracks, why wait until Friday when we’re crawling all over the place? They had all day Thursday to clean up.’
‘Perhaps,’ O’Neil said. ‘But let’s say Scott, however he learns of the death, only does so after we’re on the scene—that’s why he’s checking things on the Friday.’
‘Yes,’ Farquhar said. ‘And don’t forget Tom is not necessarily in control of the timing of the discovery of the body. As I said, he might have been revisiting the dump site on Thursday evening when Spratt drives past and forces his hand.’
O’Neil’s mobile rang. He listened and stood. ‘Arrest him,’ he said. ‘I’ll charge him. We’ll be there in ten.’
He hung up and went for his jacket. ‘Tom Green just tried to slip out his bedroom window,’ he said. ‘Our guys grabbed him on the lawn.’