‘They were all home when we turned up.’
‘We’, Sutton explained, was her and Detective Roylan. Detective Constable Sutton sat in a chair in my office sipping a glass of red I’d poured. I was pacing, occasionally glancing out my window at the bored hoons of North Perth squealing rubber. It was close to 10.00 pm. This was the first chance she’d had to communicate with me. Earlier we’d agreed my office was the best place to meet. She’d told Tregilgas there had been a break-in near Carter’s place and wanted to use it as a pretext. As long as he didn’t know how she knew about this break-in, he gave her the green light to investigate. He still didn’t buy Carter as a suspect for Autostrada but was happy to nail a rapist as a by-product. Sutton continued now.
‘I told Carter and his pals there had been a burglary and we had been given a partial number plate consistent with Carter’s.’
This is what we’d worked out: a good reason for the police to visit but not so much as to put Carter on his guard.
‘How’d Carter and his mates react?’
‘No problem. Carter said he owned the car but hadn’t been out for a few hours. He explained he was in the SAS, as were his housemates. I empathised, said I understood but we still had to follow up. Then I asked if we could take a look around as there had been some things stolen and it would help us greatly if we could clear them of any suspicion then and there.’
Time for me to pour myself a drink.
‘That set off any alarms?’
‘Carter was sanguine enough.’ You had to admire a cop with that kind of vocab. ‘Filbert wasn’t rapt. He thought it was going a bit far. I said fine: why don’t you just let us take a quick look over your dressing tables or drawers? They agreed.’
‘And?’
‘The metal box was there as you’d suggested. We got Carter to open it. It contained a pistol and a small amount of bullets. Turns out he belongs to a gun club. He has a licence, all in order.’ My disappointment at there being no serial killer “trophies” was counterbalanced. He could have used the gun in the abductions. I mentioned that.
‘Same thing crossed my mind.’
‘Nothing else?’ I hoped maybe she was holding out on the good stuff for dramatic effect.
‘Nothing. No knife, no jewellery. I glanced through the photos. They were standing there watching.’
My deflation must have been obvious.
‘Hey, we still have the DNA. I’m also waiting for the army to get back to me with movements of his squadron on the nights in question.’
‘What can I tell the O’Gradys?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
Which of course I knew but the sadist in me needed it confirmed. I really wanted to give them some sense that we were progressing.
‘Can you get eyes on Carter?’
‘The boss won’t go for that. But I’ve circulated his photo and description to all our task force and the patrolling uniforms in Claremont. Also his car and rego. Of course, if somebody else wanted to put eyes on him …’
Sutton stood, found my pathetic basin and rinsed her wineglass.
‘Thanks for the vino. I’m thinking overall it’s positive, the gun especially. I’m running down the station wagon, will let you know when I’ve tracked where it is now.’
Once people have imparted what they need to, my office rarely tempts them to stay. She was already at the door by the time I spoke.
‘What did you think of Carter?’
‘Arrogant, smug. I don’t know about Claremont, but I think you’re right about Carmel Younger. If the DNA agrees, party-time.’
After Sutton left, I sat and moped. Halfway through another slug of red I told myself not to be despondent, my expectations had been too high. Soon the police could point to Carter as the man who assaulted Carmel Younger. Then they’d be able to bring real pressure to bear. In the meantime, starting tomorrow, I’d be devoting more of my attention to Mr Carter. If he was the Autostrada guy I’d need to check him in the dark hours. Eventually I settled on this routine: surveillance 5.00 pm to 3.00 am, home for a sleep till 8.00 am, time with Grace and Tash before she left for work, after which I’d do all the domestic stuff I had to do and any more research into the case I could before grabbing another hour of sleep between 3.00 and 4.00 pm, which was when Sue would come over to hold the fort with Grace until her daughter returned. Carter was at the barracks till 5.00 pm, so I’d try and pick him back up as he left. If he was keeping the girls or their bodies somewhere, maybe he’d go straight there before heading back home?
Three days into my surveillance of Mathew Carter I had nothing to show but bad eating and sleeping habits, and developing piles. I wished I had the power of the police department at my disposal and could check on whether Carter had ever been involved in any training or bivouacs in Jarrahdale where Jessica Scanlan’s body had been dumped. I wished I could trace the station wagon myself and run forensics on it. As it was, my resources were a surveillance van fitted out like a plumber’s, my old Magna, a Sony Walkman and a bunch of old cassettes. Sure everybody else now had portable CD players but I came from a tradition where furniture was varnished, verandas oiled and tyres retreaded. The old man had drummed into me that you looked after and maintained, wringing every last drop of service before discarding or contemplating replacement. I’d only bought a CD player four years ago, a decade after almost everybody else, still had my vinyl and still played it. Unlike my record collection – which consisted of some albums I’d saved for as a teen, others I’d bought through the ’70s and ’80s but each carefully chosen – my cassette library was physical evidence of the haphazard, the unplanned, the whim. Prince rubbed shoulders with a Reader’s Digest Bill Haley & His Comets I’d bought at a garage sale, Linda Ronstadt found herself in a Dugites cover, Loaded Dice was sandwiched between Honky Château and Born Sandy Devotional.
The plumber’s van I had parked in advance on the street opposite Carter’s. My routine was to tail Carter from the barracks in my car. If he did drive off somewhere, the car was far less conspicuous than the van. So far that hadn’t happened, he’d driven straight home. I would then park the car in a nearby street and walk back to the van. The van’s only bonus was neighbours couldn’t see you camped in the front seat like they could with a sedan. In a place like Perth with its low-traffic streets, you’d arouse immediate suspicion. The first night, Carter emerged with the other guys around seven. I tailed them in the van to the Swanbourne Hotel where they had a counter meal before returning home. I parked the van on the other side of the street. Lights were all out by midnight. I spent the night with my cassettes, beginning to hate every last one. At 3.00 am I called it quits, locked up the van and walked back to my car.
Day two was a carbon copy of day one except this time they drove to the Captain Stirling Hotel on Stirling Highway, under ten minutes by car from Autostrada. Once again, however, they all returned.
The morning of day three, Nikky Sutton rang to tell me the latest.
‘The army got back to me. Carter’s squadron was free and in Perth on the dates Carmen Younger was raped, and Emily Virtue and Caitlin O’Grady disappeared.’ I restrained my excitement, I felt a ‘however’ coming on. ‘However …’ – there it was – ‘… the night Jessica Scanlan disappeared the squadron was in Northam on a training exercise.’
It was a blow but not fatal.
‘Maybe he was able to get back? Northam’s what, an hour or so away. It would be the perfect alibi.’
She had considered the same thing. ‘I haven’t been able to speak to anybody in person yet, this just came through as a fax.’ She would keep trying, she assured me, as she would for the station wagon. It had been located but from now on it was a logistics matter as the wagon was in Esperance, hundreds of ks away, and a tech had to be peeled off to examine it thoroughly. I told her about my surveillance and she was grateful. We agreed to talk if either of us had any news.
The rest of the day panned out pretty much like its predecessors. It was 9.00 pm, and I was in the back of the van listening to Johnny Warman’s only hit so far as I was aware, ‘Screaming Jets’, when my phone rang.
It was Gerry O’Grady. He sounded agitated but I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or anxiety.
‘We just had a call from Tregilgas. Did you know about this suspect?’
I was about to say ‘I’m watching his house as we speak’ but Gerry ran on. ‘Ian Bontillo.’
My heart sank. I was surprised Tregilgas would have mentioned Bontillo.
‘I interviewed Bontillo. He was cooperative. He didn’t ring any bells.’
Gerry was keen to get it all out. ‘The police took him in for questioning. Apparently a reporter got wind of it so they wanted to call us to warn us. They told us he had lied about his alibi. They said a history of sexual misconduct with students had come to light.’
‘That’s gilding the lily.’ I set him straight on what I knew. But for the first time in months they had some hope.
‘Snowy, he lied. He has no alibi for any of the nights the girls went missing and he taught them all.’
It was a strong point of course, and I wasn’t sure I ought to dissuade him just because I had my own hobbyhorse.
‘I’m following up on something else. It’s promising. I think I should keep going but it’s up to you if you want me to stop.’ I knew when I said that I was putting myself between a boulder and a canyon wall.
‘What is it? You’ve got a lead?’ You could taste the eagerness in his voice.
I told them I’d come right over.
‘So, this Mathew Carter could be involved in the other rape?’
Michelle O’Grady spoke for both of them. We were sitting in the lounge room that now felt almost as familiar to me as my own. Nellie was in her room doing homework. In deep slumber, Soupy lay side-on, his flank rising and falling. I’d laid out everything with the care of a mother packing for junior’s first school camp.
‘Yes. That will give the police a much stronger reason to check everything about him.’
Michelle bit her lip. Gerry leaned forward. ‘Is there any evidence he might have known the girls? Other than playing pool at the OBH?’
‘No, but I don’t think that’s critical. We’re talking SAS here.’
I could sense his reservations.
‘Look, I’m not saying it’s not Bontillo, only that I didn’t get that vibe. But maybe that’s why he has gone undetected. I honestly don’t know. But I don’t think there’s anything to lose following Carter.’
They looked at one another, then turned to me.
‘You better get back.’ It was Gerry who spoke. I reminded them that it would be better for everybody if they didn’t mention all this to Tregilgas.
‘He’s not obstructing the line of inquiry,’ I hastened to point out. ‘But he might if he knew I was involved.’
We agreed to communicate the next day. I stepped back out and, even in the dark, felt the hot breath of summer on my neck. Bill Hayley and I drove back to Carter’s house and I resumed my vigil. The car was still in the driveway. I watched until around 2.00 am before calling it a night.
Tash was fast asleep when I got home. I made myself a toasted sandwich, showered and climbed into bed beside her. Lately I’d spent no time with her and I missed her company. For a long time I couldn’t sleep. My brain kept picking back through images of Caitlin, the dark station wagon, a figure approaching out of the dark. It stuck Bontillo’s head on the shoulders of the figure, then Carter’s. Finally I fell asleep.
When the phone woke me there was no sign of Tash next to me. The clock radio showed 9.07. The house was too quiet for Grace to be around. Tash had gone to work and taken Grace with her to drop at her mum’s; that’s what my brain was somehow churning through as I fumbled for the phone.
‘It’s me.’
‘Snowy? It’s Nicole Sutton.’
I sat up. ‘Any news?’
‘Yes, not good, I’m afraid. The DNA isn’t a match.’
My brain wouldn’t register what my ears were being told. ‘What? Sorry, say that again?’
‘Carter’s not your guy. He didn’t rape Carmel Younger.’ The words were like knuckles, driving my hope down. My innards were crushed.
‘You’re sure?’
Of all the lame lines to come out with – but I couldn’t help myself. I’d been so wedded to the idea that I had cracked not just Carmel Younger’s case but the whole Autostrada thing.
‘Yes, I’m sure. I double-checked with the lab. If that is Carter on the tape he’s probably going to say he was simply out walking.’
‘So, what’s going to happen?’
‘Nothing. I’m up to my neck here – a neck I stuck out to have this thing checked.’
My brain was finally warmed up. ‘He might have seen something.’
‘The tape and notes have been passed over to the Sex Crimes unit. They can follow that up but I’m telling you there’s nothing to go on. I’m sorry, Snowy, you did good work but you know what it’s like, ninety-nine percent pans out empty.’
I tried to keep her engaged, to ask if they had acquired the station wagon but she cut me off.
‘I really have to go. It’s all hands on.’
‘Bontillo?’
‘You do the maths.’
I’d sometimes wondered what it must be like for those climbers who are stuck dangling over the crevasse, threatening to bring down the rest of the team till somebody does what has to be done and cuts the rope. When Sutton hung up and disconnected me from Autostrada, I got a fair idea. I sat there, my back to the wall, a swirl of sheets over my body. I felt worthless, guilty. I’d wasted Sutton’s time, given false hope to the O’Gradys, made Tash carry the burden of the house. She didn’t care about that because she wanted to support me, Snowy Lane, the great murder investigator. I’d confused pride with skill, deluded myself into thinking I could find leads others weren’t smart enough to see.
I forced myself out of bed and boiled the kettle. My scrambled ego tried to pull itself back together. There must be some logic that said it could still be Carter. But Sutton was right. All I had was a grainy video that proved nothing. I would have to call the O’Gradys, kill any false hope that I might be onto something.
That’s what I should have done.
Instead, that evening I found myself back at the Swanbourne Hotel having followed Carter and Heaton from the barracks. They were in the games room playing pool with half-a-dozen other patrons, young guys who wouldn’t have known if the Alien rocked up and started chalking a cue.
‘Mathew Carter?’
I tried to use a neutral tone: like I could be a doctor calling out to the waiting room, not quite sure who was going to step forward. He looked me up and down, no more than curious at this stage.
‘My name’s Richard Lane. I’m a private detective.’
‘If I’ve been rooting some married sheila, that’s news to me. I don’t do that.’ He looked with a smile to Heaton who grinned, resting on his pool cue.
‘But single women are fair game?’
‘I’m not gay if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘What about if they don’t give consent?’
The good humour was gone. He narrowed his eyes. ‘What the fuck are you on about?’
‘January before last a young woman was raped at Karrakatta Cemetery. There was a camera, caught this image.’
I showed him a still I’d had done of the video frame and then had blown up. He seemed rocked. I didn’t offer him an out.
‘Care to explain what you were doing there? I mean, that’s you, right?’
Now he was definitely over any courtesy. ‘Fuck off.’ He shoved the photo back at me.
‘Of course. I was just asking.’
Heaton chipped in. ‘You can’t even see the face. Lots of guys have tatts.’
My eyes hadn’t left Carter’s. ‘You gotta admit that looks a lot like you, Mathew.’
‘I guess. I like to walk a lot. That a crime? Anyway, you’re not a cop, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just a private dick-head.’ Carter’s witty repartee set Heaton giggling. This encouraged Carter. ‘So, dickhead, take a walk.’
There was a real coldness in Carter’s eyes. I guess that’s what I wanted to see up close and personal, that look that said he could have done it. Maybe the hairbrush I’d picked up was somebody else’s, left by mistake? Or somebody else had used it? I wondered if Nikky Sutton had considered that, if she might give it one last go and get Carter’s DNA.
‘Thank you for your time, gentlemen.’
I left the bar and made for my car, which I’d parked on the other side of the narrow road beside some pine trees. I’d reached the boot when I heard footsteps. I turned. A fist blurred towards my head. I pulled away instinctively, and even in the dimness of the overhead railway lights saw the surprise in Carter’s eyes as his punch barely grazed me. Heaton stood behind him. I took all of this in in a blink as I retaliated with a left that caught Carter somewhere on the neck. It was a hit but nowhere near good enough to finish him with one punch and that was what I needed. His left caught me in the ribs and as I doubled over, he hit me on the chin with the hard base of his palm, a short, sharp karate blow that snapped me back with a sound like a new deck of cards being broken. Heaton didn’t intervene, he didn’t need to. I was down in broken bitumen, my ear resting on pine needles. Carter seemed a long way up, even as he bent towards me.
‘You harassed me and swung at me. I was defending myself. This man is my witness. You go to the cops, you’ll wind up paying me.’
With that he turned on his heel and strode back to the pub.
Four hours later my ribs were still delicate as a ballerina’s bow but I hadn’t let on to Tash, not even when we made quick love while pasta boiled on the stove and Grace in her cot dreamed of Teletubbies. I’d told Tash about the DNA but that was all the failure I could own up to for now. If she knew of the altercation she’d either want to drive to Carter’s with a baseball bat or oh so gently let me know I wasn’t in the kind of shape I once was, both of which were worth avoiding. So instead I kissed her and folded into her and turned all my disappointment and disintegrating self-belief into a low hum of rising blood pressure and carnal absolution.
Over the next few days I gradually built myself back up. My call to Sutton asking her to reconsider getting Carter’s DNA was not returned, my convictions wavered and I accepted that in all likelihood Carter was just an arsehole in the wrong place at the right time. Whether he might have helped me before, I really doubted, but I was sure he wouldn’t be offering me any help now about what he might have seen. I still believed the nature of Carmel’s rape and the proximity to Bay View Terrace was worth investigating further. I called her mother again and asked if I could call Carmel in the UK. She said she would pass the request on next time they spoke. The next morning when I was up the park pushing Grace in a swing, my mobile rang.
‘This is Adele Younger.’
I pictured the woman in her neat suburban lounge room.
‘I just got off the phone to Carmel. You can call her now, she’ll wait for it.’
I thanked her profusely and memorised the phone number she gave. Then I bundled up Grace and scooted back home, speaking the number over and over again. Once inside my own house I scrawled the number on the back of an envelope, placed Grace in front of a Bananas in Pyjamas video and dialled.
Carmel answered right away. The intercontinental delay was annoying but we blundered our way through the polite stuff. She was in Kent. It was cold but quite sunny. I explained how I had been hired by the O’Grady family to look into Caitlin’s disappearance.
‘It’s possible it’s the same person,’ I said, though I was sure she had been able to join the dots herself, if she hadn’t already done so during conversation with her mother. ‘Could we talk about that night?’
I kept looking over at Grace who still seemed entertained by Rat in a Hat. Carmel did all that could be expected, she went back over the rape, her breath halting in parts. At one point she stopped altogether.
‘I’m sorry to put you through this,’ I said, wishing I had something more adequate to offer.
‘No, it’s okay.’ But I knew it wasn’t. Her voice was teetering more now than when we’d started but she hung in there. There was nothing new in the story from the account I had read in the police report.
‘There was no particular smell; no accent, no tattoo?’
‘All I remember,’ she said, suddenly stronger, ‘is the taste of my tears.’
When I was convinced there was nothing more to be gained I took her back through the earlier part of the evening. I asked who she recalled from the pub, then from the party. She gave me a list of names, people who were there, two girlfriends who might be useful. We’d run through more than twenty minutes.
‘Thank you for your help, Carmel.’
‘Whatever I can do.’
I followed up each and every name she had given me. Like the cops, I focussed on those at the party. There were five guys of interest, one had moved interstate, the other four were scattered over the metro area. I checked them at their work. I followed them and watched them in parks, pubs and clubs. I didn’t see anything that raised suspicions. One of them worked at a garden supply place in East Vic Park. When he went to lunch at a nearby hotel, I followed. It was one of those old places that had been spruced up along the lines of sophisticated bars in faraway places without quite getting it right. It was open, the furniture lighter than the pepper grinder, the grill hood like something off an aircraft carrier. The clientele, mainly young guys in tradies shirts and shorts, enjoyed their burgers and salt and pepper squid with the aid of cold beer while the till rang cheerfully. I was keeping light surveillance, shovelling my counter meal of penne pasta into my gob and sitting directly across from the wall-mounted plasma when a banner scrawled across it: PERSON OF INTEREST IN AUTOSTRADA CASE FOUND DEAD. I paused mid-spoonful, let the gist of the reporter’s spiel lick me: a man known to the deceased Jessica Scanlan and the missing young women Emily Virtue and Caitlin O’Grady had been found dead in his Claremont apartment after a relative went to investigate why he hadn’t been answering his phone. The camera panned to the block of flats in question. It wasn’t Claremont, it was Swanbourne. I knew the building where an Art Deco nude waited quietly on a mantlepiece: Ian Bontillo’s flat.
‘Are you sure it was suicide?’
I trusted George Tacich. We’d both worked with corrupt cops. Tash’s father, Dave Holland, was one of them but I still believed he was essentially a good man who did a very bad thing for what he thought was the right reason.
‘Yes, Snow, I’m sure. He overdosed on sleeping tablets. Tregilgas may not be your cup of coffee but he’s thorough. There’s nothing suspicious.’
The note Bontillo left for his sister had said ‘I’m sorry for all the hurt I have caused’.
I pointed out that was ambiguous, hardly a confession to being a serial killer. Tacich did not disagree. I pressed. ‘Come on, if he was the Autostrada guy and he did this because he felt guilt, why not say where the girls are buried? Why not say he’s sorry to the O’Grady family and so on?’
‘What you’re saying is valid but Tregilgas is confident he got his man.’
‘It might have been “his man” but there’s nothing I’ve seen says Bontillo was a murderer. The worst we have of him is possibly hitting on a pupil. Tregilgas hounded him, got him sacked …’
‘Suspended.’
‘… which was going to lead to a sacking. He took away the guy’s reason to live.’
Tacich let that pass and said calmly, ‘What are you going to do? Tregilgas will close the file with this.’
With no active police support – and, let’s face it, even without Bontillo I was about as welcome at HQ as a white ant at a home inspection – the task of breaking the case was impossible. If I worked hard for six months I might turn up a suspect or two but ultimately I was going to have to hand what I had over to police who had the resources to go deeper. Tregilgas had no intention of going deeper. The case was over.
Later that day I called the O’Gradys and told them there was no point going on. They had reached the same conclusion, I think, and were optimistic that Tregilgas would eventually find the remains of Caitlin, though I knew there was no way they had foregone all hope of her being alive. The Police Commissioner told the people of Western Australia that the task force would continue until all the girls were accounted for. What he didn’t say was that the task force was sure it had its man, and that it was going to require some bolt from the blue, at worst another abduction, before it would focus on anybody other than the dead Bontillo.
Sure it hurt, failure always does, but I didn’t skip a beat going straight back to work for a chain of motels with a pile of suspicious insurance claims from guests who’d slipped in showers or fallen down stairs. Craig Drummond paid me in full and thanked me for my efforts. I told him I wished I’d produced a better result.
Christmas passed: Teletubbie costumes, games to enhance a toddler’s brain, a load of picture books. Eventually summer caught a long wave in. The nights got colder but more beautiful with a sky cleared of bushfire smoke and Tash’s cheek pressed against mine as we dozed on the sofa to the hum of inane television. No more young women disappeared. Autostrada was quietly scaled back with assurances the police would continue to search for Emily and Caitlin. Bay View Terrace was a chronic patient; people still didn’t feel comfortable sitting at its bedside but taxi drivers fared better, custom gradually improving, though women tried to make sure a friend was there to watch them go. Sometimes at night I’d drive there and sit in the car, the window down, the swish of wet tyres an urban lullaby. I would stare through a dappled windscreen and wonder: is he out there? I’d imagine Caitlin walking away from Autostrada towards me, her head filled with nothing more than the relief of getting off her shoes once she got home and what time she would need to walk Soupy in the morning. I’d imagine her looking at me with her young, soft face, the hint of a dimple as she turned just a fraction more my way before continuing. And then I’d check the rear vision mirror and of course there was nothing but a few fat drops of rain on a rear windshield and a fleeing headlight from the black highway beyond.