The thin column of smoke was about a kilometre to the north. Richie Rich gritted his teeth and flattened the accelerator. A fire in these conditions was always a concern. It didn’t seem to be growing larger so he had to assume that for now it was just a campfire. Tourists were stupid with campfires, Aussies no better than the international people, in fact probably worse because the others tended to read up on what was acceptable practice. Rather than wait for the track, which was nearly two kilometres ahead, and then cut back around, the ranger figured he was better off cutting through the bush direct. The ground here was sparse enough for him to pick his way through with his big four-wheel drive, dodging the odd larger tree. With his windows down he could now smell the smoke quite clearly and soon found himself driving across open ground to its source. Surprisingly it was old Warry who stood there, turning his way. Though this was Warry’s neck of the woods, he invariably cooked early morning and evening so Laidlaw had not even considered him as the fire’s author. The old fellow was gesticulating and running off a stream of words in the old language before Laidlaw had even managed to stop. As Laidlaw decamped from his car, he was able to see that Warry had not been cooking. The fire had been a signal. Warry had been carefully tending it to supply smoke with a minimum of flame. This realisation came as he was deciphering Warry’s turbulent speech, which was a jumble of words, only some of which Laidlaw knew: there was a young fella and he thought he was dead. Warry pointed out the direction, then doused the fire as Laidlaw grabbed a first-aid kit from the car and ran, foremost in his mind the missing couple from Perth. Warry had made his fire where it was safest, for this part of the bush suddenly thickened, with hostile tendrils trying to trip Laidlaw, bully him to a different route. A yell from Warry behind and a hand gesture sent him further to the right, and that’s when he saw the body sprawled in the dirt, the right leg lying at an unnatural angle so he could tell at once it was broken. It was a young Indigenous fellow, not somebody he recognised right off. He was very still and his first thought was that he was dead but, checking his neck, he found the faintest pulse.
I don’t know if I had ever been so excited yet so frustrated. Winding the clock back, I suppose with my first girlfriend, Sharon, when our ardour pushed us down the slippery slope towards the promise of ecstatic sex, only to find the road blocked by common sense … hers, her hand lowering like a boom gate and stopping mine. We had the phone of somebody who likely had been involved in the Autostrada abductions and the known death of Jess Scanlan but we were stymied for now on their identity. Clement had been on to Perth asking for a couple of uniforms to go and interview Chelsea Lipton at the Como address given on her driver’s licence details. The question could be a simple one: your phone has been found, had she given it to anybody? He had yet to hear back. So far he had not notified HQ. I thought his precautions were sensible. Clement didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who big-notes himself. Hey, I’m sure, like me, he wanted to be the one who solved the biggest mystery in WA history but his motivation was genuine. Once the press got hold of this, the killer – if he did not already know we knew – would be alerted and could once again slip through our fingers. The guy had to be smart to have remained so long unknown and I feared the likelihood was he was already far from where he’d lost his ‘trophy’. But the next question rose as inexorably as a pimple after Easter: Was there another more recent trophy to take its place? Had he abducted Ingrid Feister? Maybe stolen her car. Was Ingrid Feister dead?
Whichever way I looked, the odds seemed bad, the omens bleak. He’d been at Port Hedland when she and Coldwell were there. They had left the next morning and not been seen again. More dark speculation sprouted. Could the body in the desert be Lipton? Even if it was, that didn’t mean Ingrid wasn’t also a victim. Something might have kicked the killer off again, another spree the result. I wondered if these ideas had occurred to Clement. Generally he was a beat ahead of me but at the moment he was in his boss’s office on a phone call to Keeble at the Perth autopsy of the desert corpse. I kept my head down in the squad room, flicking through the phone photos that Clement had since transferred to his computer. The sExcitation people were due to play Broome tonight. Thanks to being cracked on the scone, I’d missed the Derby show. I wondered what time they’d get in and where they were staying. Maybe I could front them before then. Clement re-entered the main room.
‘No positive ID on the corpse yet. Chances of DNA are skinny. Rhino confirms Keeble’s likely time of death.’
His phone rang. He answered and spoke in bursts short as Phar Lap’s starting price. I waited rather than piece dots. It didn’t take long.
‘The uniforms I asked to check on Chelsea Lipton. No sign of her but a neighbour says she’s in New Zealand.’ I floated the idea about her being the victim. The way his face clouded I could tell that this time I’d been ahead of him.
‘I hope you’re wrong.’ He announced he was going to try her next of kin and disappeared into his office. I heard the low rumble of his voice and studied a cobweb on a light fitting, trying not to think. He stepped back in on a cordless, speaking aloud for my benefit.
‘You spoke to Chelsea last night and she’s fine.’ He gave me a thumbs up, mouthed “her mother”. That was something. He slid back into his office. I could hear him getting Chelsea’s New Zealand contact numbers. I was left sitting there, redundant. I’d been a cop. Last thing you wanted was some civilian taking up space in your squad room. I eased out to get Clement and me another coffee. My temple had been sore to sleep on but the fog had gone from my brain and my senses were as clear as the Broome air. I could smell desert, ocean and scented flowers right up to the threshold of the café where bacon and coffee took over. Out of nowhere I felt an almost physical pang: the absence of my women, Tash and Grace. I think it was probably in the background the whole time and the instant there was a gap in all the crap surrounding me, it just dove in. I went through the motions of ordering two coffees to take away but all I could think was how I missed them. It was early hours in the morning in Barcelona now. I’d thought of Skyping them last night but I was bushed and I didn’t want to worry Tash about me getting sconed. Grace is a teenager, the world revolves around her – actually it does – hence her mother being in Spain. I’d have to be on life-support before it kicked in that her old man was flesh and blood and might be worth worrying over. She was spoilt, of course she was, she was all we had. Not a brat though, a nice kid, kind to her friends. Sometimes I wondered if she’d had a brother or sister would she be any less self-obsessed but I doubted it. We would have liked at least one other kid but even before Grace, we agreed that if Tash didn’t get pregnant or couldn’t hold a baby to term, we weren’t going to investigate our fertility and travel down the road of IVF. We might have adopted if we were able. As it turned out we were lucky, Tash got pregnant pretty quick, nothing much went wrong. But it was a one-off. For whatever reason she didn’t fall pregnant again. My brain made connections, skipped back to Gerry and Michelle O’Grady. I desperately wanted to give them closure over Caitlin. I realised I was staring at a sExcitation poster for the Cleo tonight. That prompted me to stop indulging myself with personal shit and get to work. The hotel phone number was in the bottom corner. It was near 10.00 as I took my coffees; it would be open. I called. Some guy answered.
‘Hi, this is Mitch from the Post.’ A copy of the local paper was right in front of me so I improvised. ‘Could you tell me when sExcitation get into town and where they’re staying?’ I figured they’d tell a journo, thinking, free publicity. Otherwise I could be any perve. The guy I was speaking to had no idea what time they got into town but they were staying at the Boab Apartments. I thanked him and started back with my coffees.
The squad room was all action. Something had gone down. Clement appeared, moving fast from the direction of the gents.
‘A ranger near King Sound found a young guy matching Sidney Turner’s description close to death in the bush. He’s on his way to Derby Hospital with him. It was quicker to drive.’ He saw the coffee, deduced. ‘Me? Thanks. That’s two I owe you.’ He grabbed one of the cups.
‘Is he conscious?’
‘Not from what we can gather. Shit.’ Something had occurred to him. He was back on his phone. ‘Keeble, me. Need you back here. We found Turner, alive, just … soon as.’ He ended the call, yelled for Mal Gross to get uniforms to secure the area where Turner was found, and turned back to me as he scooped keys. ‘You coming?’
‘I’m going to follow up on the dancers.’ The last thing I wanted right now was more hours on the road and another visit to that hospital.
Clement was moving towards the back door where Graeme Earle waited with it open.
‘Stay in touch,’ called the vanishing Clement.
Car doors slammed and they were out of there. Everybody except the IT guy had vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. He was standing at the kitchenette holding a massive mug.
‘You know where the Boab Apartments are?’ I said.
Workwise the day had been undemanding but he’d been unable to concentrate. He couldn’t stop thinking about the kid. Pure panic, and dumb, the whole thing. The dose was wrong but he’d extrapolated as best he could. He could have waited, tried to get more information, but he was worried somebody might turn up, catch him in the act. The problem was he acted too hastily. What were the chances of the cops even identifying the pendant? Say they had, there were plenty of innocent explanations as to why it might be in his possession. Okay, they’d dig but could they actually prove anything? No, but his life would be wrecked.
He’d shut himself up. It was dark back here. It reminded him of that night … Jessica. Why did she have to struggle? It was her fault really. She’d come to him, hadn’t she? Placed herself in jeopardy. There were plenty of warnings about the girls who had disappeared. She could have stayed away. She should have stayed away. You couldn’t put it all on him. It was fate.
For the umpteenth time he went through the list he’d made before: hypodermic, disposed of in bush, no prints. The hunk of wood tossed in a different location. There were no traffic cameras near the kid’s house, he’d made sure of that. He started to calm. He was safe, he was safe, he was safe.
But still he felt … edgy. Music would help. Music while he worked. Where was his iPod? He checked the desk where he thought he’d left it. No. Then perhaps …
He slid open the drawer but it was not there either. He looked all over. No. No. His sense of unease grew. When was the last time he’d had it? Yesterday? No …
He remembered now. He had it when he was preparing the syringe. He could recall the song he was listening to, Huey Lewis. Surely he hadn’t taken it with him? Or had he? Before the kid, he’d had things to do. He’d been rushed. Fingerprints wouldn’t be a disaster but there’d be other ways to crack an identity, an account number, notes … He had to act quickly, there was no time to dither. Maybe he had taken it with him after all. The car! It had to be in the car. He’d done that before. He dashed outside, fast, obsessed.
But even before he reached the car he slowed, a sense of dread enclosing him like a net. It couldn’t be in the car. He’d washed and vacuumed it thoroughly, every centimetre. Even the undercarriage. He’d replaced the tyres, just in case there might be trace. Fevered, he searched regardless: glove box, under seats, through pockets. His shirt was soaked with sweat. The iPod was not in the car. It was not here. It could have fallen out. It could have fallen out when he got the boy in or out of the car. The kid had been hard to wrangle. It might be out there now, in the bush, a beacon pointing the police towards him.