I was up early. I did a brutal taekwondo workout, fortifying myself for what I knew would be a heavy-duty day. I made a coffee and sat looking over a map of Melbourne, wondering where to begin.
Start at the bottom, I decided – the pervert priest – and work your way up. At least he worked in a nice, clean office. I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty. I wasn’t so sure about my soul.
I buried the files back in the bottom drawer and whistled up the dog. He sprung up from the hearth, tail wagging. The house didn’t have a yard and I couldn’t leave him on a chain all day so he’d have to come with me. Besides, he was growing on me. And he seemed to have a better situational awareness than I did.
We set out for Box Hill – and Ronald Laws.
An hour later we pulled up in front of a streamlined, triplestorey office building of tinted glass, granite columns and luminescent steel cladding. The company was called Hawley and Sons.
I told the dog to stay put and made my way towards a rock-jawed security man who took himself way too seriously. He scrutinised my ID to within an inch of its life and directed me into a vast foyer. It had crimson carpets, sofas designed to discourage malingering and a receptionist of similar purpose: she had eyes like a basilisk. When I asked for Ronald Laws, she put a call through to some back office. A full five minutes crawled by before a side door opened and a man stepped into the foyer.
He seemed disconcerted by my presence, adjusting his tie and tugging at his collar. I wasn’t sure what an accounts payable clerk did, but it clearly didn’t involve many visitors.
‘Ronald Laws,’ he said, not offering to shake my hand. I wasn’t complaining; I didn’t want to shake his. His eyes were a mess of tics and flickers, his lips as tightly pursed as a cat’s backside. From the colour of his fingertips, he wasn’t a smoker, but he looked like one would do him the world of good; he was staring at me like a myxoed rabbit.
I almost eliminated him from my list at first glance. He was deflated, balding, hunched forward, maybe in his late sixties. He’d selected his wardrobe from the bargain rack at a back street op shop: a sloping-shoulder suit and a worn shirt with winged collars and a sauce-splattered tie. I was taken aback. This was the dreaded abuser of Weymouth Ladies? He had as much personality as a deflated sex doll. I could barely imagine him making his own lunch, much less carrying out a crime like the one at Wycliff Rise. Stomping about the bush dropping trees on people, manhandling chainsaws and winches? Framing Nash? Hardly. If this guy wanted to frame somebody, he’d be doing it with accounting software packages or poisoned pen letters.
Anyway, no point leaving without giving him a once-over. He could have hired a hit man.
When I showed the ID, Laws gave a sideways glance at the security man, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He suggested we move to a meeting chamber further back in the building. He escorted me down a corridor and into the room – leaving, I couldn’t help but notice, the door partially open. Being on the sex-offenders’ registry must have taught him a thing or two. He motioned me to a chair on the far side of a broad oak table and took a seat himself.
The interview began smoothly enough. I asked him how long he’d worked at Hawley’s, how he was adapting to life on the outside. His answers were monosyllabic, wary, his gaze flitting about the room like a honey-drunk butterfly. I asked him about the business and his role in it. He said the company managed every aspect of the modern medical practice – billing, budgets, payroll, recruitment. They had offices in Sydney and Brisbane, over five hundred clients, even owned a couple of private hospitals and carried out important research. He was a member of the team responsible for processing invoices and reconciling the ledgers here in the Box Hill office.
The conversation went as well as could be expected – until I asked him about his movements on the previous Tuesday. He clicked his tongue, shook his head and went still. A red flush crept into his temples.
‘Can’t help yourself, can you?’ he snapped.
I raised a brow.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’ve paid for my crimes – so called – ten times over. But people like you – zealots – you’ll never let it rest. You keep turning up, going over old ground, twisting the truth to fit your own ends.’
He caught my eye, and, just for a moment, I got a glimpse of the subterranean anger that must have underlaid his appalling crimes. Maybe I shouldn’t discount him as quickly as I’d been inclined to. There was a bit of bite left in the old dog yet.
‘Sounds like what you said in court about Nash Rankin,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘The officer from Greendale who first investigated you.’
‘Well, he’s had his comeuppance,’ he shot back. ‘He was of a similar bent, always putting his own disgusting tint on things, on the blessings of human interaction. You’re all cut from the same cloth.’
He paused, breathed deeply. His fingernails drummed on the table.
The action must have given him the space he needed to collect himself. He sat up straight, ran a distrait hand through his comb-over and requested I repeat the question. He gave clipped, precise answers to each of my questions then waited for the next one, clearly willing the interview to be over.
I asked him again about Nash, but he said he hadn’t given the man a moment’s thought in years. He’d never heard of Raph Cambric, had a vague recollection of the name Wycliff Rise but had never been there.
I pushed a little harder about his movements on the day of the storm. He said he’d worked in the office during the daylight hours, then gone home to his apartment. He’d dined on a take-away chicken and a glass of wine, watched television. He swore he’d been nowhere near the Windmarks for years, was endeavouring to get what was left of his life back on track. He was grateful to Hawley and Sons for giving him another chance. Almost against my better judgement, I found myself believing him. When I asked if anybody could confirm his alibi, he suggested his employer, at least for the office hours. He gave me the name and number of the relevant HR person.
Eventually Laws said he had work to do, suggested I find my own way out, muttered a farewell that felt more like a good riddance and disappeared through a door at the back of the room.
As I approached the foyer, another man appeared from an adjoining office and asked if I had a moment.
‘Ms Redpath? Kane Lochran. Corporate Governance.’
He was a smooth, buff fellow with a bespoke blue suit and a direct, almost flirtatious smile that wasn’t reflected in his eyes. I was surprised to notice that he was wearing Nike trainers. He followed my look. ‘Just up from the gym,’ he explained. ‘I’m wondering if you have a moment? Our managing director would appreciate a word.’
He said it in a manner that didn’t invite dissent. I was starting to worry that news of this visit might find its way to my bosses, but I could hardly say no. Lochran had a military brusqueness about him. He escorted me down a corridor to a lift that whisked us up to the third floor and into a plush executive office occupied by a plush executive.
‘George Hawley,’ he said, rising from the desk and ushering me into a chair opposite his own. He looked to be in his sixties, thin-lipped, craggy-faced, with a confident grip and a suit that would have cost a month of my wages. On the wall behind him were photos of men in white coats with other men who looked like politicians or captains of industry – some of them were even recognisable. Lochran hovered in the background.
‘Father or son?’ I enquired with a smile, nodding at the nameplate on Hawley’s desk. It was gold-embossed, custom-made and had his name prominently displayed under the company’s logo – a blue crown with triple spikes and the words ‘Hawley and Sons’ woven into it.
‘Neither, I’m afraid. Hawley and Sons was founded by my uncle, Jonathon. Now, alas, no longer with us. But the business remains in the family, something we’re proud of. That and the fact that we’ve been delivering quality healthcare to the people of this nation for over forty years.’
He leaned across the table and extended a hand. ‘Could I have a look at your ID, please?’
I handed it over. Hawley had a pleasant enough demeanour, but I sensed there was a shark circling below the surface. Hardly surprising. You’d need a lethal streak to rise to the top of a business like this. He studied the card for a moment, jotted a note on a pad then cut to the chase.
‘I couldn’t help but hear you came for a chat with Ronald Laws. Could you tell me what it was about?’
I started to tell him it was a private matter, but he cut me off.
‘We’re fully aware of Ronald’s past, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s the reason he’s working here.’
He explained that the firm had, for many years, been an active participant in Jump Start, a corporate philanthropy program designed to give newly released white-collar criminals a chance to get their lives back on track.
‘Ronald’s background is about as white-collar as they come,’ he said. ‘But we’re more than happy with the way he’s performed his duties. He had a background in bookkeeping before he joined the clergy, and he did further studies in IT and medical management while he was inside. For a man of his age and history, that’s quite remarkable.’
I assured him I was pleased to hear it and that I wasn’t here to give anybody grief.
‘There’s no suggestion of a relapse, is there?’ he asked with an air of concern. ‘We regard Ronald as one of our success stories and I’d hate to see that change. He’s not the most . . . dynamic individual on staff, but when he’s doing his work he’s diligent and reliable.’
‘There’s no problem,’ I said. ‘I was just looking for some background information on an issue connected to his previous life.’
His brow moved downwards.
‘You can’t tell me any more?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s a police matter.’
He leaned back in his chair and studied me for a moment. ‘Okay then, we’ll leave it there. But Ronald’s health – both physical and mental – is delicate. I’d hate to see you stirring up his demons.’
I told him not to worry, that I could see no reason why I’d need to be bothering him again. I said it with a slight sense of unease. Hawley’s main motivation was clearly the wellbeing of his employee. They were committed to this Jump Start program. Fair enough; it sounded like a worthy venture. But if my bosses got word of my visit today, I’d be deeper in the shit than I already was. If the photos on the wall were anything to go by, Hawley was the kind of character who’d have a range of heavy hitters in the medical, legal, even political circles on speed dial.
I left soon afterwards, then sat in the car going over what I’d just experienced. The visit hadn’t gone as smoothly as I’d hoped, especially its finale.
I was still trying to make up my mind about Ronald Laws. He was a weird cat: evasive, bristling, flickering with buried emotions. Hawley and Sons deserved a medal for taking him on.
As I pulled away from the car park, I remembered a slight anomaly in the conversation with Laws. He’d said he hadn’t given Nash a moment’s thought since the trial. But before that he’d commented that Nash had ‘had his comeuppance now’. What was he referring to? If he knew about Nash’s history and incarceration, maybe even his recent arrest, he’d clearly given the matter more than a moment’s thought.
There wasn’t much I could do now except add it to the image of the case I was building in my head.
I’ve heard people compare the solving of a crime to the completion of a jigsaw puzzle, but, to me, it isn’t so much a jigsaw as a portrait. Maybe my understanding was shaped by growing up with the kind of art my father painted. He created intricate landscapes that were subtle, elusive, glancing – and based on solid science. Every mineral depicted, every lithic fragment, every fossilised mollusc had a reason for being there. That seemed to be the perfect metaphor for the kind of investigation I was engaged in now. I couldn’t relax until it achieved the sense of balance and completeness those paintings gave me.
I pushed on to my next port of call.