Another breakfast call from Brad.
‘What have you got?’ Kelly reaches for her pad.
‘Had a bit of luck with the National Provident Fund. Anyone who employs Vanuatu citizens has to contribute to the fund for their retirement benefits. I know someone who works there and I got hold of the names of a couple of Pandanus Trust employees with Port Vila addresses. Managed to track one of them down and we had a few beers together yesterday. He was catching a boat back to work on the island the Trust owns, up north near Pentecost, place I’d never heard of called Maturiki Island. He said there’s a big villa up there and staff houses.’
‘That’s interesting. Did he say anything about the people who own it?’
‘He was vague about that, just said the bosses are Aussies and Chinese. They come and go. Pay’s good, often not much to do, other times people arrive and they’re busy. Sounds a bit like a resort—foreigners come, they eat and drink and talk, sunbathe on the beach, go out to the reef snorkelling.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘You should see the boat he left on to go to work—a hundred-and-twenty-foot super yacht. Million bucks for sure.’
‘Called Rashida?’
‘Nah, name of Princess Estelle, out of Sydney.’
After she rings off, Kelly does a search for Maturiki Island. The satellite image shows a small, densely wooded island about twenty kilometres away from the much larger Pentecost Island. There is a white crescent beach on one side facing across a lagoon to an arc of surf marking the reef. It’s just possible to make out some rectangular shapes beneath the canopy of trees—pandanus trees, presumably.
Kelly thinks about it. Why would a charitable trust own an island? Or a luxury yacht for that matter?
Before she leaves for court she phones Matthew at the Times office and asks him to find out what he can about the Princess Estelle.
When she reaches the seventh floor of the Supreme Court building on Queens Square she finds the trial in a state of suspension, the press, jury and officials waiting for the judge and counsel to emerge from discussion. It’s over an hour before they appear and the judge informs them, to Kelly’s great relief, that the fiasco is at an end, the accused having finally accepted reality and changed their plea to guilty.
Kelly returns to ground level and steps out onto Phillip Street, looking for a cab. As her eye scans the street she sees a woman on the corner of King Street staring at her. For a moment Kelly is paralysed. She recognises the posture, the face. The woman turns and vanishes into the crowd. Kelly runs across the street, dodging between cars, and stands on the corner where Karen Schaefer stood. There is no sign of her now.
She lets her heart slow down, then catches a cab back to the Times. Everyone is busy, preoccupied, oblivious. She finally pulls herself together and checks through the latest updates. There is a report of arrests in Newcastle and a search for a fourth body on Ash Island. She goes to see Catherine Meiklejohn, explains that she’s now free and asks to go back up there. Catherine agrees.
When she gets back to her desk she finds a note from Matthew. The Princess Estelle was built in Italy three years ago for its present owner, Konrad Nordlund. So here is another connection, Mansur—Ozdevco—Pandanus Trust—Nordlund. First there was Karen Schaefer, now this. There’s something here, but what exactly? She goes to see Matthew and tells him to keep it to himself.
He says, ‘Of course. We don’t investigate Konrad Nordlund, do we?’ He’s becoming cynical. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he goes on, ‘and changing the subject completely, I chanced upon this odd little item, deep in our archives.’
Chanced upon? Kelly smiles at him. ‘What is it?’ She runs her eye over it quickly, then stops and reads it again, an article dated 20 December 2002, from what was then called the Social Editor’s desk. ‘This didn’t actually run, did it?’
He shakes his head. ‘It was spiked. Who wants to read about that sort of thing at Christmas?’