TUESDAY WENT BY and then Wednesday, and then the week. Everything had gone quiet, and O’Neil felt the investigation grind down. It was a frustration he knew from experience, and it made him snaky: waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Gladesville to make the next move. Riley was dragging her feet at the Dunlop house and O’Neil was giving her room. She was caught in a loop, ticking boxes, but it was keeping her going.
The press smelt the city’s fear and stirred in tabloid trouble—The Mirror was counting down the next full moon.
Satyr’s main thrust now was the attack on Patel and the note on the headmaster’s door. How had Gladesville got into the school—and how had he got out again? The analysts went to the RTA, the toll road operators, the public wharves, the service stations—and came back with nothing.
By Sunday, O’Neil wanted to rewind a step, back to the Tennyson Point break-in. Police area commands and local stations had been asked to go through their case files and databases over the past three years, combing for anything remotely similar to the fetish burglary. Tran had four detectives making calls, and O’Neil got Patel to help.
He looked at the map on the wall, with Farquhar’s circles in red. He studied the suburbs on the northern bank and reread the briefing notes from the detectives who had canvassed the area. Ryde, Putney, Tennyson Point, Gladesville, Huntleys Cove, Hunters Hill, Woolwich—he was trawling old ground. The focus in the reports was residential, in keeping with the psychiatrist’s theory that they were looking at the killer’s backyard, that he lived in the area. Nothing stuck out. All O’Neil could think to do was widen the search criteria and canvass again.
Bowman called, asking for a quote, asking for anything. O’Neil thought about it but declined. The timing wasn’t right—if he sounded off in the media now, the killer would know they were desperate.
And he was starting to worry about Riley. O’Neil knew that she was still stuck on Marguerite. He’d seen others fold under the weight of their victims. But never Riley. Tom Green was on remand at St Marys, the blood on his shoe had come back as Marguerite’s, his prints had matched, why couldn’t Riley let it rest? O’Neil didn’t ask, because he feared what she might answer.
He tried to get her to take leave, just a day or two to get out of town and think about something else. As if. He’d known when he said it how stupid it sounded. Riley wasn’t even claiming her overtime. The case was all there was, all day and all of her nights. She wasn’t going anywhere. She worked methodically through what they’d done at the school and tied off the loose ends. She drilled down into Craig Spratt’s boat. She hadn’t done it at the time, but she came back to it now. She’d asked the techs to copy the chart plotter and look at where the vessel had been around November first and November thirtieth. She’d gone to Maritime and requested the CCTV footage for the boat ramp at Kissing Point where Spratt claimed to launch.
She chased the outside lab for the incomplete second test on the plastic. Crime Scene had proved the blade used to cut the sheets at Gladesville was different from the one used at the school, but Riley wanted to know what the chemistry showed. Were the chemical markers on the roll at the school a match with the plastic at Gladesville?
O’Neil listened as she harangued the technicians on the phone: had the plastic used at Gladesville come from the roll at the school? Her fixation was disturbing. She was beyond ticking boxes—this was tunnel vision in a wombat hole. She couldn’t let go … she still thought the cases were linked.
Riley hung up and popped a Berocca with Lucozade. It was one step up from a dingo’s breakfast and O’Neil felt queasy watching her. It was Monday morning, nine days after Tom Green’s arrest. O’Neil was ignoring The Mirror and its lunar countdown, but he had learnt some phrases about phases. Now it was waxing gibbous—and he knew what came next. The room was full, the entire strike force deskbound, moribund, peering at screens or working the phones.
O’Neil’s nose twitched, a fizz on the air: Patel was on her feet. O’Neil put his tea down. Patel took a step back and looked towards him and then he was beside her, bent at her laptop.
‘Where?’ he said.
‘That’s what you won’t believe.’ Patel pointed at the screen. ‘Tallwood Drive, North Rocks.’
North Rocks …
‘Right behind the school,’ Patel said. ‘Literally over the fence.’
‘When?’
‘Two and a half years ago,’ Patel said. ‘Six months before Tennyson Point.’
It was the same story as Tennyson Point. Uniforms had responded to a break and enter. No one had been home at the time, and nothing had been taken. A young couple lived in the house with a toddler. The woman’s underwear had been arranged in a pattern on the bedroom floor, the wavy t-shape. There had been trouble with kids in the area throwing bottles at houses and siphoning petrol from cars. The constables had spoken with them and issued a warning. Things had settled down and the break-in had been written off as a nuisance crime, a prank.
Riley and O’Neil and Tran and Patel and Farquhar stood at the back end of the long block. The house had sliding glass doors at the rear, but unlike Tennyson Point there was no river, not even the creek. The yard backed onto bush. Scrub ran hard up to the picket fence. The male owner told them the family left the sliding doors open as they came and went between the yard and the house. And yes, the key to that door had gone missing around the time of the break-in and had never been found.
The detectives and the doctor left the couple at their back gate and walked into the trees. Forty metres down the wooded slope they came to another fence, chain-link, two-metres high. On the other side was the desolate rear of Prince Albert, bushland dropping gradually to the creek.
O’Neil grasped the wire. ‘What in the name of fuck are we doing back here?’ he said. ‘Two and a half years before Gladesville—and he hits here?’
No one spoke. O’Neil looked at Farquhar. ‘Well?’
The psychiatrist frowned at the zig-zag pattern of the boundary fence.
O’Neil shook the mesh and swore. For over two weeks, on doctor’s orders, they had resisted plotting the school into the geographic profile.
Instinct, O’Neil thought. Rose was right.
‘The kid killing Marguerite Dunlop didn’t bring Gladesville into the school,’ he said. ‘Gladesville was already here.’
There was a pulse under Riley’s eye.
‘But who?’ Farquhar said. ‘It can’t be the boy.’
‘Why not?’ Patel said.
‘He was twelve at the time of this.’ Farquhar gestured up the incline. ‘And then at fifteen he graduates to Gladesville?’
‘He couldn’t cover the ground, for a start,’ Tran said. ‘He doesn’t have a licence, or a vehicle. Or a boat.’
‘How many staff at the school again?’ O’Neil said. ‘Two hundred?’
‘Give or take,’ Tran said.
‘And we’ve looked at three of them,’ O’Neil said.
Farquhar’s brow glistened. ‘My thinking was someone living near the scenes at Gladesville, working from an anchor point.’ He looked from O’Neil to Riley. ‘You always thought differently.’
‘A commuter,’ O’Neil said. ‘Someone using the river.’
‘What if he’s not using the river to move per se,’ the doctor said, ‘but rather for recreation, say sailing or fishing. The important thing is he’s familiar with the river and he has a boat.’ ‘Spratt,’ O’Neil said. ‘But we know he didn’t have the boat out at the relevant times. Rose, they analysed the chart plotter?’
She nodded. ‘He’s in the clear on the November dates.’
‘Come on,’ O’Neil said. ‘Let’s look, do any other staff own a boat? Are there sailors? We discard Wayne’s comfort zone,’ O’Neil said. ‘We plug this place into the profile. What have we got?’
‘School, river, boat,’ Riley said.
Riley sat in the passenger seat as Tran drove to Gladesville. O’Neil had taken Patel and Farquhar to the school to ask Spratt about staff and boats.
‘Steve said to discard Wayne’s comfort zone,’ Riley said, ‘but I don’t think that’s right.’
‘Yeah?’ Tran said.
‘Go back to basics,’ Riley said. ‘Opportunity, capability. Remember how with Tom killing the dog, it wasn’t what we first thought?’
Tran nodded. ‘It was about getting future access to the house.’
‘Correct. Now forget Tom. It’s just an example. Think opportunity. It’s about access.’
‘Mm,’ Tran said.
‘School, river, boat.’
‘And?’ Tran said.
‘And Wayne’s comfort zone,’ Riley said. ‘Tennyson Point. Putney.’
Tran slowed.
‘This last week,’ Riley said, ‘I reviewed the Dunlop case. It just occurred to me. The Prince Albert boatshed is at Putney.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Tran said.
‘Yeah. Your boys, they might have looked at it in the Tennyson Point canvass.’
Tran pulled over and took out her laptop. Riley waited while she clicked.
‘Here.’ Tran turned the screen and pointed. ‘They looked at a boatshed at Putney. There was no signage on site, but they cross-checked online. It’s labelled Rowing Shed 1958 on maps.’
Riley peered. It was in the bay past the Tennyson Point scene. ‘What else?’
Tran scrolled down the briefing note. ‘It was locked, apparently deserted. Query operational. They wrote it up as a community rowing club and didn’t connect it to the school.’
‘Their focus was residential,’ Riley said. ‘They were looking at houses.’
Tran closed the laptop. ‘Fuck, Rose,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘You can make it up to me,’ Riley said. ‘Drop me at the Water Police.’
Tran indicated to pull out.
Riley rang the Maritime Command at Balmain. They put her through to the Super.
‘I need to take a look at Putney from the river,’ she said.
‘Thought your specialty was Gladesville,’ the Super said.
‘Tide ran out.’
‘Alright. Now?’
‘Ten minutes.’
She hung up. Tran drove into the tunnel past Strathfield and around the bay at Haberfield, through Rozelle and into Balmain. She pulled up behind the Water Police building, tucked in at the old Jubilee Dock off Johnstons Bay.
Riley undid her seatbelt. ‘Can you get a warrant?’
‘Yeah.’ Tran’s mouth was tight.
Riley met her eye. There was nothing to be gained from pointing the bone at Tran’s team—hindsight was bullshit. ‘We missed it too,’ Riley said. ‘We knew the school had a boatshed, but we didn’t go and look. And we didn’t prioritise it for the canvass.’
Tran nodded.
‘You get the warrant.’ Riley opened her door. ‘I’ll have a look.’
She got out. Bowman’s cottage sat up the hill above her. She shook her head—the way he’d dredged up the Water Police when they’d walked down the lane, the fucker had been lucky she hadn’t shot him in the stomach.
A uniformed constable met her at the front desk. ‘Sarge,’ he said. ‘I’m your ride.’
She followed him onto the pontoon and stepped into a tenmetre Naiad. The twin 250s coughed and grumbled and the constable let go the lines. A double-ended Manly ferry, green and yellow, was out to pasture, tied up at White Bay. The finger wharves of Pyrmont lay to the right, the Anzac Bridge spanned the bay astern, Barangaroo reared up in front, the glass casino pilfering the sky.
‘Putney?’ the constable said.
‘Yeah. You can drop me. Place marked as Rowing Shed, 1958.’ Riley stood in the cockpit, holding onto a rail above her head as the Naiad came onto the plane. They rounded Peacock Point, Goat Island off the starboard bow, the Harbour Bridge in their wake, the wind in her hair. They passed Birchgrove and Greenwich and the brackish invisible line into the river proper. Cockatoo Island went past to port and the Gladesville Bridge was before them.
‘Okay,’ Riley called. ‘Nice and slow.’
They went under the bridge and past Henley and she looked at the Chatfield and Sheridan houses on either side of the headland. Both banks of the river were built out, brown brick, red brick, yellow brick, white brick—each decade of corruption wore its own colour.
The oversight from the canvass was understandable: there was a lot to cover on the river. Riley counted on the helm chart—there were four bays and a dozen rowing clubs just between Putney and Gladesville alone.
They cruised past Cabarita and the Truman Show development at Breakfast Point. On the north bank, the Tennyson Point house overlooked an inlet strung with moored boats.
‘You move around here at dusk, in the dark, no one would see you,’ Riley said.
The constable nodded.
They crossed the submerged cables of the Mortlake punt and edged into the next bay. There was another mooring field with fifty craft, and a drooping haze of sheoaks in a park to the right. At the top of the inlet the properties were set back from the river behind a strip of brown sand. In the middle of it all, a flat, grey shed led to a wide pontoon jutting over the water.
The constable pinched the GPS. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Did you want to jump off?’
Riley nodded. The constable brought the Naiad alongside and she hopped onto the floating platform. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
The constable came into the cockpit and tied off with the engines running.
Riley took her bearings. Hardwood decking led back to the shed. Three large roller doors, all locked down tight. There was no signage. To the east, a thin boardwalk ran along the exterior of the building to shore, with grimy windows battened down at intervals. Halfway along the wall she found one of the timber window frames rotting out and starting to give. She went back to the Naiad.
‘You got a hammer, or a crowbar—something for leverage?’
The constable dug in a locker and came up with a long screwdriver.
Riley felt the weight of the tool. ‘Give me a sec to get it back to you.’
The constable waved at the screwdriver. ‘Got three of those,’ he said and untied the line. ‘You might need it. I’ll see you round.’
Riley watched as he manoeuvred the boat off the dock. They each gave a nod and she turned and walked back down the side of the shed to the window. The wood was damp and soft and came away easily. She stuffed the screwdriver down the side of her belt, pulled open the window and shimmied in. Dropping to the floor, she hoped Tran had the warrant. It was one large open space with rowing boats racked five high in the centre. They were sleek eights and fours, shiny carapaces, alien insects at nest in the gloom. Single sculls hung from the ceiling and oars were bracketed along the western wall.
She held her breath and listened. Five outboards had been hauled up inside the roller doors. Access to boats. She pulled out her phone and called Tran.
‘There’s runabouts here,’ she said. ‘Must be for the coaches. We’ll need a list of all staff associated with rowing or the shed. You got the warrant?’
‘It’s coming,’ Tran said.
‘Meet me here. And tell Steve.’ Riley hung up. There were two doors on the wall towards the shore and she walked over.
The first was locked. The second opened to an internal stairwell leading down, chipped blue paint on the railing as it doubled back, the smell of the river on the ebb tide. Riley took the stairs and descended to a concrete cube with a swing door. She went through it shoulder first and used her foot to let it settle gently back in place.
She was in a short corridor, leading inland and lit by a dim fluorescent tube. Her eyes adjusted and she realised she was in a basement built on the riverbed. There was a door half-open ahead to the right. She pulled her Glock and padded over and with the gun in both hands put her back to the wall and looked in.
It was a storage room, a corner converted to a makeshift office, a trestle table with a lamp, a laptop, a boxy old computer monitor, a chair. There was metal shelving, ropes and fenders, an anchor in the corner, a chest along the wall with its lid up. Mops, hoses, plastic drums for fuel and other fluids. An outboard motor was clamped on a stand, broken oars against a wall.
Riley had flushed to hyperarousal—fight or flight, the hormonal cascade. The bare bulb on the ceiling and the lamp on the desk were both switched on against the dark.
Spratt’s Hilux was not at his fibro and neither was the Subaru. O’Neil knocked and waited. No one. He went back down the path and climbed into the rear of the Prado.
Patel drove through the school with Farquhar beside her. There was a white ute in the drive at the Greens’ house.
‘Let’s have a look,’ O’Neil said.
Patel pulled in and a man came down the front path with a clipboard. O’Neil got out and flashed his badge. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Removalists.’
It was a busy time for removalists at Prince Albert. ‘When are they leaving?’ O’Neil said.
‘Pack it up tomorrow. Gone by Friday.’
The man drove off in the ute and O’Neil crossed the yard and rang the bell. Sarah Green opened the door and stared, blank and unblinking.
‘I’m sorry,’ O’Neil said. ‘I thought you’d moved out?’
She was pale pewter and medicated. ‘We’re in a motel. I had to show the packers.’
Patel and Farquhar were behind him. ‘We just wanted to check in,’ O’Neil said. ‘Make sure you had somewhere to go.’
Sarah Green stood in the doorway.
‘Is Scott here?’ O’Neil said.
She shook her head.
Patel stepped up. ‘Could we come in for a moment?’
Sarah moved aside and they entered. Four doors were open off the front hall. O’Neil looked in the first one. A man’s study. Textbooks waiting to be packed. Science Essentials. He went to the next room. There was a table and chair, a lounge, a TV, a day bed along the wall. It had a pillow on it, a sheet and a blanket. He turned.
‘Scott’s,’ Sarah said. ‘He calls it his den.’
‘He was sleeping in here?’ O’Neil said.
The corners of her mouth tugged down. ‘Nothing new there.’
O’Neil looked back to the room. ‘He always slept here?’
‘Not always. A lot. He gets insomnia, up half the night.’
‘What about you?’ O’Neil said. ‘Sleep alright?’
‘I take a tablet.’
Crime Scene had listed the pills they found in the house when they processed the place after Tom’s arrest. Valium, temazepam, Xanax, fentanyl, Endone. Sarah Green would be lucky to wake up.
Farquhar was in the study, leafing through a textbook. ‘I imagine the teaching facilities here are first rate,’ he said. ‘The science labs.’
Sarah Green considered the psychiatrist. ‘You know how you were asking if Tom wet the bed?’
Farquhar was studying specimen jars on a shelf. ‘Yes.’
‘He doesn’t. But years ago, Scott told me his mother used to beat him for wetting the bed. She was a nun who was raped. She didn’t even know his name.’
Farquhar’s eyes went to O’Neil.
‘I should have told you,’ Sarah said. ‘I wish I’d told you that—and not given you the USB.’
‘What Tom did,’ Farquhar said. ‘You think his father was involved?’
‘Involved?’ She scoffed. ‘Try absent.’
‘But about Tom …’ Farquhar said, ‘Scott knew?’
‘Knew?’ She shrugged. ‘Who knows? He lies all the time. Scott doesn’t care. He came into the motel last night and told me he was going to call Bruce Dunlop to apologise.’
‘Did he call?’ O’Neil said.
‘No. It was just another sick game.’
‘Where’s the motel?’ O’Neil said.
She scoffed again. ‘Ryde.’
O’Neil’s gut clutched.
‘I wanted to be out near Tom,’ she said, ‘but no.’
Ryde. O’Neil looked at Patel. Why Ryde? ‘Is that where he is now?’ he said. ‘At the motel?’
‘Doubtful. It’s near his’—Sarah Green made speech marks with her fingers—‘office.’
O’Neil stared at her.
‘His office?’ Patel said.
‘The boatshed,’ Sarah Green said. ‘He manages it. That’s his extracurricular—instead of coaching sport. He’s got some sort of room downstairs. Now he has to pack it up.’
In the stillness, O’Neil’s phone rang. Annie Tran.