‘Is Jared back yet?’
Clement’s bark was like a handful of chips thrown to a bunch of seagulls, not meant for any one in particular, but everybody automatically looked to Mal Gross, the only person who had any idea of rosters, car pool, the comings and goings of personnel.
‘I can check.’ Something in the sergeant’s manner transmitted to Clement he needed to dial back the aggro.
‘Wasn’t he due back today?’ Clement made a concerted effort to rein in his irritability. He should never have indulged in that last bottle of red with Risely.
Gross said, ‘Due back in town but he’s not rostered on till tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Can you check anyway?’ Clement wanted to get Jared Taylor started on the Feister disappearance as soon as possible. He beat a retreat to his office, safer there. It wasn’t their fault his ex-wife had placed him in this situation. He’d answered honestly, albeit spitefully, that she shouldn’t marry Brian. His encounter with her had tainted everything. He would surely have called Louise by now except for Marilyn ambushing him like that. It had thrown him completely. The obvious conclusion was she was having second thoughts, realised she would never have with Brian what they’d had together. Yet the reality was she had divorced him and then reiterated they had no future. So now he was what – some best-friend sounding board? He checked the time: 11.45. He’d wait half an hour then call Louise as promised. He rang Bill Seratono to soak up a few minutes.
‘Any luck on that car and couple?’
‘Nothing yet. I got the word out. I’ll let you know if anything comes back. You want to meet up tonight after work?’
‘I’m in the middle of stuff. I’ll buzz you if I’m free.’
‘What about the girl? How’s that going?’
‘Slowly. Call me if you hear anything.’
He hung up. There was a knock on his already open door. He expected Mal Gross but it was Meg the civilian receptionist.
‘There’s a Richard Lane says he needs to see you urgently.’
He must have turned something up on Ingrid Feister, thought Clement, and told Meg to bring him through. He was not really hungover, not with a headache anyway, but too much wine and not enough water made him feel like there was a smudge across his medulla. Risely had been good company, his wife Chantelle pleasant. They had talked little or no work apart from some old-case glory days but the bottom line was he had overindulged.
Meg pointed Snowy Lane into the office and withdrew. Clement had caught sight of some TAB tickets in her handbag on more than one occasion, so he suspected a closet gambler but Meg did not mingle with the rest of them.
‘That bluebird pendant … you still have it?’
The words punched out of Lane like desperate men bursting from their prison transport. Clement was completely lost. Lane gave him no chance to seek clarification.
‘It was on the long table yesterday, part of the bust you did.’
Clement might have been oriented towards the finish line but the blindfold was still firmly in place.
‘The evidence bags you mean? I don’t remember any bluebird.’
‘It doesn’t look like a bluebird. Have you got the evidence bags? I’ll explain.’
Clement reluctantly got up and poked his head out. Josh Shepherd was on a computer on the far side of the room.
‘Josh, where did you put the evidence from the Turner case?’
‘Current Court Cases.’
Clement moved to the rear of the building, leaving carpet for concrete. He felt Lane at his shoulder. A narrow corridor led to a locked evidence room protected by a key-code pad.
‘You need to wait here.’ Clement punched in the code.
Lane said, ‘It’s a sleek piece of silver, looks almost like a plane, sapphire for the eye.’
Clement switched on the light in the hangar-like room of steel shelves. At the back of the room was a larger area for bulky pieces of evidence. There were three small safes and a firearms cabinet. The drugs would have been tagged and locked in one of the safes but he surmised Shepherd would have left the other pieces together in a simple box. He located it correctly marked, and sorted through the plastic bags till he found the pendant. Only now did he notice the chain seemed to be broken. He signed the book, recording the time. Lane was waiting for him on the threshold, in hyper-drive, his eyes wide and alive, his body craning in though his feet remained where they should.
Clement held the plastic bag up to Lane who studied it a long moment then almost whispered, ‘That’s it.’
‘That’s what?’
‘That’s the pendant Jessica Scanlan was wearing when she disappeared in Claremont, August, two thousand. It was not found on her body.’
Lane did not need to explain who Jessica Scanlan was. Every cop in WA had the names of the three girls who had disappeared near Autostrada nightclub burned into his or her brain. But now Clement was angry he’d indulged Lane. The guy had been tangentially involved in the investigation and had clearly become obsessed, probably trying to find a way to skate back under the limelight. Well, Clement wasn’t going to be used for Lane’s agenda.
‘You don’t remember this, but I shared a lift with you back when George Tacich was running the case. You came in with some big theories and wasted the task force’s time. George Tacich got rolled. Ian Bontillo did it.’
Lane absorbed the hit without flinching. ‘The case is still officially open.’
Clement knew that was a sop to public sentiment. Tregilgas who had replaced Tacich had won his way to commissioner on the back of that case; it was never going to be overturned.
‘Bontillo killed himself. There’ve been no repeats.’
‘That you know of.’
Clement sidestepped the barb, swapped insult for logic. ‘There could be a hundred of these.’ He shook the evidence bag a little for emphasis.
‘There’s only one.’
Lane pulled out a sheet of A4 on which was printed an old press report with a photo blown up, showing the pendant. The piece was identical.
‘One?’ Clement had no recollection of that detail.
‘One-off designer piece sold by Emerson’s of Piccadilly to Jessica’s dad. Listen, even if it was Bontillo, you don’t know if he had an accomplice. We trace this, we can tie the case up officially. We might even be able to find those girls’ bodies. You imagine what it’s like for their parents?’
Clement could. Phoebe was his life. He had no time to feel embarrassed that he’d slighted Lane, his cop’s brain was busy running the implications.
‘Sidney Turner’s too young to have been involved in any way. But he is a thief.’
Snowy Lane was already there, waiting with the next question. ‘So who did he steal it from?’
The old Broome Regional Prison was supposed to be closed down, but reality had set in and it was now used for remand for prisoners pending court cases. As prisons went, it didn’t look the worst from the outside: single level, well-tended garden, open design. Clement drove to the prison faster than he should have. Lane had infected him with the same fever: putting a full stop to the Autostrada case was the Holy Grail of criminal investigation in this state. More importantly it would give the parents closure. Unless somebody had copied the design of the pendant for some unfathomable reason, this was a huge breakthrough. At the gate, Clement explained who he was and was told to drive to reception. He threw a look at Lane whose eyes were far away. The drive was short. He parked and they climbed out of the car. Somewhere a bird warbled. It had the stillness and quiet of a hospital. Clement addressed another intercom that was on a short pole in front of a porch area. A female voice told them to advance to the door where they would be met. A female prison officer, with a pleasant face and curly blonde hair, was waiting on the other side of the glass door. Clement had met her before but for the life of him could not remember her name: Barbara? The door slid back and they stepped into a cool area that offered a water fountain and a coffee table with some very old magazines, in front of a well-used but still firm sofa.
‘Afternoon, Inspector.’ The woman prison employee turned her smile from Clement to Snowy Lane to show he was included. A male officer remained behind a desk. Clement thought he had the look of a man who led a greyhound to its starting box: smoker, drinker, slightly undernourished because he gambled money that should have gone to food.
‘How can we help, Inspector?’ asked the woman. Clement was becoming more convinced her name was Barbara.
‘A remand prisoner we brought in yesterday, Sidney Turner. I’d like to see him.’
The woman looked unsure and glanced across to the male officer for support.
‘He’s gone,’ said the male officer. ‘He got bail.’
It had been like having a dog barking outside your door for fifteen years. Now, finally, a chance for peace. And these bozos cock it up. I got the gist as we hurtled out of there towards Turner’s house. Clement called his constable and had him phone the prosecutor, a cop. The prosecutor said the aunt had hired a defence lawyer who had asked for bail. The prosecutor had said the boy was a flight risk, the aunt had said via her lawyer that she believed he would not flee and was prepared to bet her house on it. The magistrate was a member of the boy’s former hockey club and remembered him as a good young man. He also noted the boy had been injured by a DUI driver the day before and thought prison might not be the best place for him. He set bail at a hundred grand. The aunt stumped it up. The prosecutor hadn’t had time to communicate this to Clement and his team because he was overloaded and onto the next case. A perfect storm. I wasn’t panicking yet. Maybe the boy wouldn’t run anyway, maybe the aunt was right. It was less than two hours ago, so chances were he wouldn’t get far. I had no doubt this kid had stolen the pendant. All we needed off him was to find out where. The sense I’d had while in the ocean of Craig Drummond’s presence hit me afresh. I’m not sure if I fit the mould of a spiritual guy; I go to church Christmas, and the crowds seem pretty strong. I’d rather believe in God than not, but the older I got the more certain I was that there was something bigger than me, bigger than what you could see or hold in your hand, something formless and inexplicable that connected all of us from the caveman down, something that every now and again we could detect, as if a beam set off something deep in our DNA. And that’s what I felt now, like I had some part to play still, like I’d been given a second chance. I dare not waste it.