The others had long left for the Anglers or venues of choice. It was the first of the AFL elimination finals and the entire station house was empty. Even the night shift was nowhere to be seen. Probably holed up at one of the pubs watching the big screen too, thought Clement without any malice. Years past he would have gladly joined them but he was overcome by a kind of stubborn inertia, resisting cleaning his whiteboard of the vestige of the Turner–Crossland case even though he’d accepted, albeit reluctantly, they had the right guy this time. It was still cat-and-mouse with Crossland. So far he had not been officially charged with any murder and was maintaining his innocence. Clement had suggested they try to match Crossland’s DNA with the Karrakatta rape as per Snowy Lane’s original thesis. Reluctantly they agreed but it was no match and apparently the Commissioner ridiculed Clement’s faith in Lane. The fact that he himself had hounded an innocent man to his death didn’t seem to impact him. The press was frustrated. They wanted to release the suspect’s name and had stories lined up ready to go. Once they found out he’d been arrested in the Kimberley, they’d badgered Clement for details. He’d palmed them off to Risely. Snowy Lane had called: somebody had indicated he’d played a key role and the media were hounding him too. Lane of course gave them nothing. He hadn’t given up on Kelly Davies. Good for him. Clement’s hands were tied. He’d wished he could have offered Lane some closure on who he’d chased through the crocodile creek. Two days ago he had finally been able to interview Mongoose Cole in his remand cell. The AFP investigation had climaxed with the arrest of Cole and his Wyndham supplier. The reality had yet to sink in for Cole. He was still acting the big man. Clement had given him every opportunity to admit to Turner’s abduction. He’d said he could put in special requests for privileges for his cooperation. Cole was in denial: he was going to walk. He was almost swaggering.
‘Why would I need to abduct that little dickhead? He was never going to say anything because he had nothing to say.’
Clement thought it was a case of Cole rewriting history. Why else had he been around at Turner’s? He’d fished, suggested there may have been no intent by Cole. They’d taken Turner and left him in the bush as a warning. What had happened was a genuine accident.
‘What part of no don’t you get, bro?’ Cole had answered.
‘Bro’? Even in Broome, crims were thinking of themselves as LA gangstas. What hope was there for any of us?
They’d found no ketamine when they raided Cole’s place but he’d had plenty of chance to get rid of it, and there were a number of his customers who had admitted sourcing it from him in the past. But Cole wouldn’t cop, and Clement couldn’t convince himself to draw a line through the Turner case. Risely was beside himself with pride. They’d had major impact on a Feds drug case but the jewel in the crown had been cracking Autostrada. The AC had called Clement to congratulate him. Nikky Sutton, the Super, had called him too. He knew her quite well from his days at Perth Homicide. He’d deflected her praise, explaining Snowy Lane was the man who made the breakthrough.
‘Snowy Lane of Mr Gruesome fame?’ She was clearly excited. ‘I met him back at the start of Autostrada. He was too clever for them. Apart from George Tacich, they hated him.’
He’d asked if they were close to charging Crossland.
‘Very. He has no alibi for any of the times when the girls went missing. To be honest, they thought they would have cracked him by now.’
Clement had slowly come to accept that if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was a duck. He’d been thorough, no offence to Snowy Lane, but Lane was far from objective on Autostrada. Clement had needed to be convinced that there was no viable alternative suspect. He had personally gone back over the work Shepherd and Earle had done while he’d been in Perth. They had recanvassed all Turner’s earlier break-ins and found no connection with anybody who had been in Perth over the Autostrada period. Earle had even flown to Telfer to interview Henderson, the miner from the Pearl, who’d lived in Perth back in the late ’90s. Earle found nothing suspicious. Clement personally called David Grunder and interviewed him specifically about the Autostrada case. He had an alibi for Caitlin O’Grady. He was in Bali, checked and confirmed.
One constructive thing Clement had done was to call Louise. He had bought a bottle of wine and they had shared takeaway Chinese on the beach under the stars. Then they’d gone to her place and pleasured one another. He had not stayed though. He wasn’t ready for that. Maybe after the wedding. It was set for Grand Final Day. Only Marilyn and Brian – whose interest in sport was Sunday golf and, of course, basketball – could have been so ignorant as to opt for a Grand Final Day wedding. When he’d pointed this out to Marilyn in the only communication they’d had since, she started in on him.
‘It was the only date available by the time we got back to the minister.’
The implication being it was his fault for not urging her sooner to get married. Unfortunately Louise was not here this weekend. She’d flown to Perth to be with her mum. Clement picked up the wiper and cleared the board. Done, whether you like it or not, he told himself. His phone rang. It was Jo di Rivi.
‘Yes, Jo.’
‘The hospital called me. Sidney Turner just passed away.’
People are always telling me how great Kurt Cobain is. I don’t get it myself. Iggy Pop, yes, hell, even Ignatius Jones from Jimmy and the Boys, but they are adamant Kurt was a genius and I’m prepared to concede that if somebody ignites that much passion they probably are, although maybe not in the selection of their women. Imitators of Kurt Cobain however, I’m sorry, I can’t make an argument on their behalf. See, this is another reason why it’s so wrong to get rid of factories because it means people like Max Coldwell, who might have made an excellent fitter and turner, or forklift driver, had nothing to do in his life except practise his guitar and try and write songs like Kurt Cobain and then inflict the result on the handful of us who sat in this Fremantle basement bierkeller place drinking overpriced grog. I think there were seven of us, eight counting Max, who didn’t recognise me back in the shadows. Ingrid Feister was not among the Magnificent Seven. Mercifully, the set came to an end. When Max started packing up, I walked outside and around the back lane where he would load out. It was cool, breezy but not wet, the smell of the port drifting on the wind. A few minutes after I was in position, Max emerged at the back door carrying his guitar and amp. No autograph hunters had delayed him. When he opened his boot I stepped out of the shadows.
‘Hi Max.’
He looked up with that bovine smile. Clearly he didn’t recognise me even out of the shadows.
‘I’m the guy you whacked with a piece of wood.’
He shat himself. He wanted to run but he was still holding his guitar and amp and couldn’t bring himself to drop either.
‘It’s okay, I’m not going to take it out on you.’
He was still wary. I noted this was not Ingrid’s car but an old Hyundai. I held up the boot lid while he slid in the amp and guitar.
‘What do you want?’ he asked not looking at me.
‘I want the truth. I want to know what happened back there at Tenacity Hill and I think deep down you want to tell me.’
‘I told the police,’ he said and made for the driver door. I grabbed his arm. I could have snapped it like a candy cane.
‘No, from what I heard, Ingrid told the police, you were just along for the ride. I’m not the police, Max. I just want the truth, and you owe me that. Different car, I see?’
‘Ingrid and I busted up.’
‘Yep, those rich heiresses do tend to gravitate towards the billions.’
His bottom lip was jutting, trying to be defiant. ‘Let me go, please.’
‘Or what, you’ll scream?’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘I saw the CCTV of Sandfire. I watched it over and over. It told me you were upset. Ingrid too, but you were the one who was really hurting. Because you knew what had happened. Am I right?’
He didn’t dispute it. I was halfway there.
‘And then I remembered something else. When they found you, you had eighty bucks. That was all. Yet Ingrid withdrew six grand before you started. She must have still had five grand left. Why would she take all the money …’
‘I had the car.’
‘Yeah, but she didn’t give you the car, did she? Or you’d be driving it now. I think it went down like this. I think you saw what happened to Kelly Davies and you wanted to tell. Ingrid said you couldn’t. It would kill a huge deal. She probably said her old man would look after you. And then you said “shove your money” or something like that. You actually grew some balls. Because you knew it was wrong, that Kelly’s family deserved better.’
He was near tears. He started talking then.
‘It was all like Ingrid told the police, up until we went to the tents anyway.’
‘Kelly had drugs?’
‘Yeah, a few eccies. I didn’t take one. Ingrid did. Maybe the Chinese guy. We were asleep. We heard a scream, real loud. It woke both of us up, I guess. We were kind of groggy. We lay there then heard a more muffled something, a groan, I don’t know, but it didn’t sound good. We got out and ran to the other tent. It was dark, just moonlight, but he had his hand around her throat and he was shaking her, the way a dog shakes a toy, you know? Ingrid yelled, get away or leave her or something, and he dropped her and she just … dropped, like a rag doll. They were both nude. I think Ingrid tried to revive her but … nothing, and the Chinese dude was just sort of staring and then Duncan came in and checked her and told us she was dead and we all had to shut up and think it through. And I said, we have to get the police or some help, and Ingrid said we can’t help her now, and Duncan said he’d deal with it, we had to forget it ever happened. He told us to go back to our tent. We just sat there. I couldn’t think of anything. We didn’t talk. I smelled something burning. Her clothes I guess, out in the drum. We heard the plane take off. That sort of snapped me to. I told Ingrid we had to report it but she said no, we couldn’t do that, there was too much at stake. Then Duncan flew back and the three of us got on the plane and flew back to Port Hedland. Duncan said we weren’t to tell anybody anything. He dropped us back at the hotel and then he and Shaun drove off.’
Coldwell started sobbing then. He fell into my shoulder and cried like a little boy. I felt sorry for him, but not as sorry as I felt for Kelly Davies and her family. Coldwell got himself under control. He looked up at me. His eyes were red, more tears than dope this time.
‘I want to tell the police,’ he said.