CHAPTER 13

What now? If Nash had experienced some kind of psychotic episode and killed his neighbour, there wasn’t much I could do except offer him support.

But if he was being set up, two possible explanations arose.

One – he was the fall guy and the intended victim was Raph Cambric. Or two: Nash himself was the target. But did that make sense? Why would you go to all the trouble of murdering one man just to frame another? That led to a third possibility: somebody was trying to get rid of the pair of them.

If Nash had been set up, was the incident connected to his former profession? How had he put it? As a cop, you pick up a few ticks and leeches along the way.

Or did it spring from childhood? He’d described it as something he’d had to fight his way out of, fraught with holy rollers and junkies. Wallace had also made mention of the ‘kooky church’.

Whatever the truth, I needed help. And there was only one place I could think of to get it. I was a newcomer down here, but I had made a few friends on previous visits. I drove towards Windmark, hoping that news of the latest instalment of my self-immolating career hadn’t come through yet.

I put the foot down.

‘God no,’ Vince Tehlich groaned when I came in the front door of the Windmark Police Station. The senior sergeant dropped his head into his hands. ‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ he pleaded.

I hadn’t put the foot down far enough.

I don’t know why I bothered. Gossip flies through the police force faster than a sunray through space.

There were a couple of constables in the room. ‘Hey, Jesse,’ said the first, Jace Gradey, whom I knew and liked. ‘Katie Page,’ said the second, who apparently knew me, if only by reputation. A probationary, she was young, blonde and staring at me with what might almost have been awe, which was a worry.

Vince certainly wasn’t staring at me in awe. He raised his head and twisted his face into something resembling a wet rag.

‘You’ve only been here five minutes . . .’

I stepped closer to him.

‘You going to let me give my side?’

‘I just spoke to Nev Wallace. You’ve been caught shagging a wanted man, then chauffeuring him round the countryside. There couldn’t be a your side.’

I did my best to explain. I told him how I’d bumped into Nash out on Ryan’s Road and struck up a friendship. If Vince’s eyes rolled back any further they’d be looking at the bottom of his brain. When I told him I’d gone up to the Wiregrass to persuade Nash to turn himself in, he frowned.

‘And you didn’t think to run this by your colleagues?’

‘It was my day off. I just went up there to have a look around.’

He still didn’t appear convinced.

‘Come on, Vince,’ I said. ‘You know me better than that. I’ve got my faults, but bullshitting isn’t one of them.’

He sighed, swallowed, looked around the room. Pale blue walls, wanted posters and windows heavy with wintery sky looked back at him. The wind outside was picking up. A woman on the footpath was fighting a losing battle with an umbrella. The child at her side was fighting a losing battle with his temper.

‘My office,’ he said. ‘Katie, Jace,’ he said to the constables, who were pretending to work while keeping an ear on proceedings. ‘Make yourselves scarce.’

They did so, grabbing their jackets and heading for the door.

‘Area familiarisation?’ asked Katie.

‘Bakery,’ replied Jace.

‘And word of this doesn’t get out of the building,’ Vince called after them.

Jace gave a mock salute and left.

‘Getting cheeky, the boy,’ I said.

‘About time,’ Vince muttered as we entered his office. He took a chair and asked what I was after.

‘I’m looking for information on Nash Rankin.’

‘Why are you asking me? From what I’ve heard, you already know more about him than I ever will.’

‘I got the official version from Neville Wallace, but it just doesn’t feel right,’ I said. ‘You know how I tackle a problem like this.’

‘How’s that?’

‘By instinct.’

He leaned back in his chair and turned his eyes to the ceiling.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he admitted. ‘You’re like Doc Watson flatpicking a lead break.’ An appreciation of country was one of the few things Vince and I had in common, though we were on opposite sides of the Venn diagram. He was traditional, I was alt. I liked Sierra Ferrell, he wanted some of whatever she was smoking. We overlapped somewhere out where Johnny Cash ran into Slim Dusty.

During the complicated silence that followed I licked my lips. He noticed.

‘You had breakfast?’

I shook my head.

‘Come and I’ll introduce you to our latest recruit.’

I followed him out to the kitchen, where he showed me a deadly little DeLonghi coffee machine.

‘Wow – where’d you score this?’ I asked.

‘Lost and found,’ he replied. ‘Somebody lost it, we found it.’

‘Somebody?’

‘Nobody we need worry about. And Katie made some ace cookies.’

He gave me one from the jar: it was fat, rich, full of oats and nuts and dark, drizzled chocolate. I took an extra one. ‘For the road,’ I explained.

In a few minutes Vince and I were sitting on the back verandah talking about the Wycliff incident and watching a flock of lorikeets squabble over god knows what in the overhanging she-oaks. One of the cheeky buggers was eyeing off my cookie. I told it where to go.

‘So you really think there’s a possibility that Nash was framed?’ Vince asked. ‘Not just once, but twice? I know we get a lot of lightning up here in the hills, but in all my years here I’ve never seen it strike twice in the same place.’

‘It’s just an idea, but I can’t abandon it until I know it’s wrong.’

I took a sip. The coffee was good. Smooth and powerful, a heavy-hitter.

‘So,’ I continued. ‘Shoot.’

And shoot he did. He said he’d known Nash Rankin, though not well, before his downfall. He’d had a reputation as a good copper. Maybe too good – too intense, too eager to get results, unwilling to compromise or bargain. He’d started out in uniform at the Greendale Police Station, transferred to the Criminal Investigation Unit when his appetite for arrests became obvious. He was never one of the good old boys, down boozing in the bar or sneaking freebies at the brothel. And he wasn’t a thug, or on the take, or meth. Nor was he your community cop, out talking to schools and service clubs, coaching the local footy team. He was a loner. Intense, moody, guarded. But he made arrests – lots of them. And they led to convictions. His main weapons were persistence, intelligence and a relentless hunger for justice. He played a role – albeit a minor one – in several major investigations. His star was on the rise. The bosses liked him.

It was a year or two into his promotion to the CIU that things started to come unstuck. His personality changed, cracks appeared, went seismic. He began getting agitated by small things, worried that individuals unknown and unseen were out to get him. He blacked out once in the station, assaulted a colleague, went over the top bringing in a couple of crooks.

‘Who was the colleague he assaulted?’ I asked.

‘His partner – and immediate superior, Dan Starcevic. Starcy. The senior sergeant in Greendale. He didn’t want to press charges, insisted that it had been a misunderstanding. They’d been close, and he knew Nash was unwell.’

‘Is this Starcy still around?’

‘He’s retired now. Spends most of his time in a shack out bush. And before you say it, no, he doesn’t need any grief from the likes of you.’

Dan Starcevic. I made a mental note to track him down. Even if he’d left the force, he could be a useful source of information. He was the first person I’d heard described as being ‘close’ to Nash.

‘What about these crooks Nash assaulted?’

‘I was busy running my own show, but memory tells me one was a drunk phys. ed. teacher arrested for grooming and abusing young girls. Nash said the guy swung a punch and he was defending himself. But a complaint was made, went on his record.’

My first reaction was to think, well done, Nash, but I put that aside.

‘Then there was the domestic up in Hawksborough. Feller bashed his wife, fractured her skull. Nash roughed him up bringing him in, the guy tried to get him charged.’

So far, I thought, Nash was travelling well.

‘He was already under investigation for those incidents, then he went and killed this bloke up in Horse Thief Creek.’

He gave me the story, much of which I’d already gleaned from Wallace. Apparently, Nash found evidence that his old friend Leon Glazier was involved in a child pornography circle, went up there to confront him. There was an altercation and the guy ended up with a bullet in the head.

‘What are the chances Nash was set up?’

‘Slim to non-existent. There was a witness.’

‘Nev mentioned that. Who was it?’

‘Old bloke next door. Saw Nash rock up to Glazier’s place and bang on the door. He heard a yell, then a scuffle and a shot. When everything went quiet, the neighbour went over and looked in the window. Found Nash semi-conscious on the floor, Glazier dead – by Nash’s gun.’

‘So this neighbour didn’t see the actual shooting?’

‘Heard it, and he had no reason to lie. He was just a harmless old codger. Hommies aren’t stupid, Jess. I’d leave it be if I were you. Gonna give yourself a world of hurt.’

I finished my coffee and stood up. ‘How’s Karly going?’ I asked.

‘Doing well,’ he said. ‘Loving the work.’ His daughter, Karly Tehlich, was in her second year of a building apprenticeship with Sam Kelly, Possum’s father. The question had an ulterior motive and both of us knew it; I was reminding Vince of his debts. A couple of years earlier I’d saved Karly’s life.

Whatever its ethics, the question did the trick.

Vince told me he’d look through Nash’s case records, have a word with a few old friends in low places, see what he could dig up. That was as good as I could have expected. Vince had worked in the area for twenty years, knew where the metaphorical bodies were buried, had buried a few of them himself. He’d have a multitude of contacts, snitches, debts to collect, favours owed.

I lingered for a last hint of the coffee’s rich black aroma, stole another cookie for the road – it was a very long road, I explained to Vince – and drove down to the Windmark Hospital.