A young uniform cop laden with files kept trying to not stare at me as we rode in the lift to the Homicide Division at Police HQ. By now, I had pretty much mapped out all the areas of Caitlin’s life I would have to investigate. Some things I’d followed up with the O’Gradys but whatever I might try and do, I knew it was fairly hopeless without deeper knowledge on the other missing young women. So far I’d not checked out Autostrada or The Sheaf firsthand, reasoning it would be better to wait until after this meeting. For instance I was sure George Tacich would have run the microscope over all the staff and I didn’t want to blunder in on some train of inquiry that might be in progress. The door opened and the uniform waited for me to exit first. A mainly open-plan space with various individual offices at the far wall, the room didn’t look that different to how it had twenty years earlier, except for the computers. There was one on almost every desk. At first glance I counted three young women and six or seven men but I couldn’t say who was a cop and who was civilian. I caught sight of George in an alcove, figured it was the kitchenette and started towards him. He was in the company of an older man in a suit. The uniform who had gone on ahead of me handed him the files he’d been carrying. He must have mentioned me, for I saw George look up quickly in my direction. But before I could offer a friendly wave, I had jammed in front of me the face of a guy bitter with what life hadn’t handed him.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Richard Lane …’
‘I know who you are.’
He flexed on his toes ever so slightly. Had to be a cop. I guessed he was a shade older than me. He struck me as the kind of guy whose weekend highlight would be washing and polishing his car. I could hear him on the sidelines at soccer criticising his kid’s teammates.
‘I’m here to see the Inspector.’ I indicated George, who was starting over. My guy wasn’t aware and was not shifting his ground. A short blonde with a sizeable backside moved in to support him. She looked like she’d offer some mean wing defence Saturdays at Matthews Netball Centre. George’s voice climbed over their shoulders.
‘It’s alright, Collins. This man is a legend: Snowy Lane.’
Collins didn’t tell his boss he knew who I was. By now they were all watching me. I could almost hear the laughter in their heads. Legend? This guy?
One of the policewomen, fine features, dark hair, lighted on my name and whispered to the guy beside her. Put it this way, it wasn’t exactly a cheer squad but after Collins, it felt like one.
‘G’day Snow.’
George put out his hand and I shook it. The older man he’d been talking with had followed him and was at his shoulder. For the benefit of the others, George added, ‘This man is one of the best detectives I ever worked with. He’s been engaged in a private capacity by the O’Grady family on Caitlin’s disappearance. Snowy, this is Michael Unwin, he’s our media officer on the Autostrada Task Force.’
The task force had been named after Caitlin’s disappearance but before Jessica’s. I shook his hand. We both eyed each other carefully but without judgement.
George said, ‘DS Garry Collins.’
Collins didn’t offer his hand and I didn’t offer mine. Somewhere a phone rang. One of the crew went to it.
‘I won’t introduce the others because you won’t remember the names anyway. You want a tea or coffee?’
‘I’m fine.’
George addressed the wing defence. ‘Jill, you hold the fort.’ He turned to the uniform who had ridden up with me. ‘Daniel, thank Roy and ask if he could go back as far as ninety-six. Snowy, come through.’ George indicated a door on the other side of the room. I trailed in his wake. He gestured the others follow. This surprised me. I’d assumed that some of them at least would be assigned to other homicides or major crimes. George opened the door marked with a sign AUTOSTRADA TF and ushered us into a large windowless space that was clearly the engine room of the investigation. At its centre was a long trestle table – on closer inspection two trestle tables, joined, with what must have been twenty chairs. I could see only two desktop computers, one at each end of the room at separate workstations but laptops littered the table like napkins after bridal cake. There were two large whiteboards, one to my left at the short end of the rectangular room, the other behind me as I walked in. They’d been flipped so any writing was hidden but the maps of Bay View Terrace, photos of the missing women and various printed time lines and facts on the three women were displayed on the wall ahead of me. I noted red string had been used to cross-correlate items underneath each of the women’s photos. At a guess there were nine or ten strands. A large empty space on one wall marked with blu-tack suggested some display recently removed. My guess: photos of persons of interest taken down prior to my arrival.
‘Please, Snowy, sit.’
I picked out a chair and the others settled in around me. George read my thoughts.
‘There are more than twenty of us all up. Five work the night shift.’
‘Other cases?’
‘We manage okay most of the time. If something major comes up we have to hive off some of these guys.’
Unwin spoke for the first time. ‘Naturally we don’t want any specifics of manpower being made public.’
What Unwin and his bosses actually didn’t want was some opposition politician claiming the task force was under-resourced.
George addressed the room. ‘You guys don’t know Snowy. I do. He will not leak anything or compromise our investigation in any way. Right?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. Collins was picking his nails.
George carried on. ‘We want to help the O’Gradys, all our victims’ families but we can’t have the investigation compromised. These young women may still be alive. If we mess up, we could cause their deaths.’
I said I understood. Already I’d picked up on the formality in George’s manner.
‘We can’t give you access to any of our investigation on any persons of interest. For your own sake, it’s probably better you sift through the facts anyway, a virgin. That way, you never know, you may find something we missed.’
Unwin interjected. ‘Of course that’s unlikely but if you did, you would bring that information to us before making it public.’
Time I put him in his place. ‘I will simply pass it on to my clients. You need to ask them for their cooperation but I have explained to them my absolute confidence in Inspector Tacich and his team.’ George, I reckoned, suffered this guy the way a bus-driver suffers piles.
‘Good.’ George pointed at the wall where the girls’ eight-by-ten photos had been placed. ‘This is what we can give you. Precise time lines of each of the girls on the day of their disappearance, also any common areas in their lives we have been able to establish.’
‘How about access to your tips?’
George looked to Unwin first before stonewalling me.
‘I’m sorry, that is confidential. As are interviews we may have done. We can only give you the raw data, mate, otherwise you are on your own.’
It was skinnier than a greyhound on Pritikin. It would save me a couple of weeks, sure, but it left a monster slab to chip away at.
‘What about criminal records of abductions and sex crimes going back say three years, solved and unsolved?’
Unwin threw to George who ignored him. ‘We can do that. What else?’
‘You interviewed a lot of taxi drivers, other people in the area at the time …’
‘Sorry, Snow, we’d like to help but it’s a legal minefield. You will have access to any witness statements concerning the time of disappearance: what they saw, didn’t see, so forth. That’s not bad. Anything else?’
‘If I want to look into anybody, can you help on any criminal record?’
Unwin seized the cudgel. ‘Absolutely not. You’ll have to pursue other avenues.’
‘You can hand us the information, we’ll take it from there,’ said George, softening the blow.
I felt all eyes on me, sensed their resentment. I was yesterday’s man and I had no right to sneak in and plunder their hard work looking for some flaw that would trip them up.
I wasn’t done yet though. ‘The O’Gradys feel like there has been no progress. Can you tell me if there are any strong leads you are following?’
Again Unwin and George exchanged glances.
George said, ‘Snowy, you know what it’s like. Sometimes eliminating a lead can be progress, it might not look like it from outside but we can concentrate our focus.’
‘So, no, you don’t have any real leads.’
Collins looked like he wanted to strap me into one of those carnival whirly rides, put the speed up full and then just walk away leaving me screaming. Unwin spoke.
‘Inspector Tacich has been most gracious to you, Mr Lane. The O’Gradys should know everything possible is being done. We have the largest investigative team ever assembled in the state working on this around the clock.’
I told him I appreciated that but on behalf of my clients I was obliged to try and get as clear a picture as possible.
‘What about staff at The Sheaf and Autostrada? You must have investigated them thoroughly?’
George said, ‘We’ve checked and rechecked. All staff who were working on the nights in question, all staff who weren’t on duty those nights and every former staff member we could find going back two years. We didn’t find anything to give us grounds to suspect any of them. Now, I’m sorry, Snowy, but we have to keep moving. If you come up with anything, rest assured we’ll treat it very seriously.’
The kiss-off. ‘Right. Thank you.’ I stood.
Unwin said, ‘We would appreciate you explaining to the O’Gradys how we have given as much assistance as we possibly can.’
I looked him in the eye. ‘I’ll give them an accurate report, Michael.’
‘I’ll see Snowy out.’
George opened the door for me. I followed him back through the main room to the lifts. As we reached the elevator he whispered, ‘The zoo, quarter to five.’
I shook his hand. ‘I’m partial to the polar bears.’
He nodded that he understood and walked back to his team. I felt their eyes on my back all the way until the steel door of the lift closed them off.
It had been many years since I’d wandered around the zoo and I’d forgotten how calming it could be. This time of day it was near deserted. A few mothers pushed toddlers around, one or two Asian tourists took snaps of peacocks strutting by but, all in all, you’d find more action at a wharf on Labour Day. I was already looking forward to another year from now when it would be opportune to bring Grace through. That led me to thinking about Caitlin O’Grady. No doubt her parents would have held her little hand and walked her past the exotic lions and tigers, the penguins, the hyena compound. I felt angry about what had happened. And impotent. George Tacich and his task force had got nowhere; who did I think I was to do any better? I’d arrived early but try as I might I couldn’t find the polar bears. As a kid I’d always been fascinated looking down the concrete walls into the green water pool on those hot January days where the big white bears would swim backwards before lumbering out into their dark concrete cave. Ten minutes walking, I was back where I’d started. The Freo Doctor was blowing strong now, leaves were rustling. George would be here soon. I spied a keeper exiting the crocodile compound and asked her where I might find the polar bears.
‘Try the Arctic Circle. The last bear we had died around twenty years ago.’
I couldn’t believe it. I suppose in these days of enlightenment it was felt that it was too cruel to keep polar bears in this climate. Or maybe there just weren’t enough of them. Sure there were big cats on offer here but nothing beats a bear. I checked my watch: right on 4.45. Hopefully George was running late. I sprinted back to the entrance, my quads protesting. Apart from my lazy swims, the last exercise they’d tasted had been indoor cricket going back three or four months. After the polar bears I was rapidly losing confidence in whether I still had any viable place on the planet. George’s arrival ripped me out of my funk.
‘No polar bears,’ I explained.
‘No polar bears?’ He was as surprised as me.
‘Not for twenty years.’
I remembered that in the early ’70s a young man who was either on drugs or having some psychotic episode had jumped into the pit and been torn to shreds by the two bears. I supposed my disappointment might not be universal. George and I started walking away from the entrance. The zoo closed at 5.00 pm and what few people were still there were coming in the opposite direction.
‘They’ll give us about fifteen minutes before they shoo us out,’ he said.
If he wanted to be away from prying eyes it would be hard to think of a better place.
‘Sorry about earlier. I didn’t know how else to play it,’ he said. The smell of guinea pigs overpowered frangipani as we turned up one of the avenues.
‘I was hoping that was it.’
‘My guess is I haven’t got much longer on the task force. We’ve turned up nothing concrete. There’s a new commissioner, Cosgrove, Pom, and he’s going to want a head. That will be mine.’
George was a good solid cop but I didn’t dispute his reading of the tea-leaves.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I’ll be okay. They’re talking a superintendent job for me. Might be Kalgoorlie but it’ll work out. Don’t expect any help once I’m out. Unwin’s there to save the Minister’s arse but you probably guessed that.’
I told him I had.
‘DS Collins didn’t go me much.’
‘Thick as. Workhorse, no analysis. Most of the others are in the same category. Well, not thick like Collins, just inclined to stay in the box instead of looking outside. Sutton, the pretty brunette, she’s good, especially from the girls’ angle. Piper’s a young bloke we picked up from Fraud who has smarts. Truth is, Snow, I haven’t managed to get us closer, so it’s probably for the best. But I hate it. I want this bastard.’ He stopped, looked around. Nobody else was in sight. ‘You got a computer?’
‘Yeah. When it freezes, I turn it off and back on. If that doesn’t work I’m fucked till Natasha can help.’
‘The advantage of younger staff.’ He reached under his jacket, pulled out a manila envelope and pressed it on me. ‘Floppy disks. They’ve got all the relevant stuff: all the persons of interest, criminal records, basically everything that’s not complete chaff.’
‘They could sack you. Take your pension.’
‘You’re not gonna tell them. Just be careful. I want to help those families but you can’t let them know about this.’
I promised complete discretion. A call came over the PA saying the zoo was closing in five minutes and would anybody still in the grounds make their way to the exit.
‘What do you think, George, in your gut?’
He sighed, pushed out his bottom lip. ‘I believe we’re up against somebody very efficient. I think they’re dead. All of them. I hope I’m wrong.’
‘Somebody they know?’
‘I think so. You know the area?’
‘Checked it daytime.’
‘Very open except for those laneways, a lot of pedestrian traffic, vehicles cruising slow looking for parks. I mean, Emily Virtue, okay, nobody knows there’s an abductor out there, so maybe she could be snatched. But after that, people are aware. After Caitlin everybody was looking at everybody. Jessica was on high alert.’
‘Alcohol might dull their danger detection.’
‘True. But none of them had been drinking heavily. And from the week after Caitlin, I had undercover people, male and female, inside the venues and out. They didn’t see anybody who rang bells. We didn’t get reports from other girls saying somebody followed them. I had people in those carparks night after night taking number plates. Nothing stacked up.’
I heard what he was saying. If these were simple crimes of opportunity the perpetrator was going at a one hundred percent success rate.
‘So, more likely somebody they know or trust.’ I was drawing the inference he’d thrown out.
He shrugged, turned, heading back to the exit. ‘What you don’t know is what you don’t know. We found some cross-correlations, school, tennis club, friends. We also looked at all those shops nearby. Who lives there, who cleans, who has keys.’ He tapped the bag. ‘It’s in there. Hope you find something I missed.’
We both stopped instinctively a good hundred metres from the exit.
‘Good luck, Snow. I mean it.’ He slapped me on the back and headed out. I waited a moment, the weight of evidence in my hand.
Only time would tell if it was gold or sand. I took a last look at the zoo and thought about Caitlin once again. She’d been in a zoo of a different kind. Strutting peacocks, chirping birds, and somewhere in the shadows a predator who could sniff her out. I vaguely recalled a high tower here at the zoo where kids would queue to ride elephants. Or was it giraffes? No, surely had to be an elephant. Gone like the polar bear pit, a different time. We were more humane now. We cared for and protected animals so much better. It was our fellow humans who suffered our thirst for cruel entertainment.