It was almost four by the time I pulled up outside Mallee Environmental and started to get that feeling at the back of my neck again, the kind that makes you think you’re being watched. I swung around.
No one there. Just a red ute parked behind a motorbike and a young guy locking up his pushbike to a light pole. Get a grip, Cass.
I walked briskly along the concrete path to their front door, peered in through the glass. Cardboard boxes stacked up in the foyer. A blonde woman was packing things into another box on the reception desk. I tried pulling the door open. Locked.
I knocked on the glass but Bron didn’t look up at me.
‘Hello?’ I called out.
No response.
I shouted through the glass. ‘Bron, I need to talk to you.’
She looked over; shook her head. ‘We’re closed.’
‘Please? I’m really worried about Joanne.’
She walked over and unlocked the door.
‘Two minutes,’ she said. ‘I’m about to go.’ She shot a nervous look through the door, then locked it behind me.
‘Just a couple of quick questions.’
‘I’ve kind of had it with people’s questions. The police, that private detective, Andy Devlin. None of it’s going to bring Viv back.’ Her eyes looked red and tired.
‘Devlin’s been in again?’
She nodded. ‘Apart from him, this was a good place to work. I have no idea what I’m going to do now.’ She looked around the foyer, at the piles of cardboard boxes, the blank walls. Framed photos and certificates stacked against the desk.
‘I know I shouldn’t worry about my job, not when Viv’s…’ A catch in her voice. ‘God, it’s all so awful.’ She sounded like she was talking to herself.
‘Sorry, Bron.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Look, it’s about that argument between Vivian and Joanne. Can you… tell me more about it?’
A pause. ‘I honestly don’t know the details.’
I got the feeling she honestly did know the details. I tried another tack. ‘What’s Devlin’s problem? Why’d he want to see Vivian when I was here the other day?’
‘I probably shouldn’t talk about it.’ She folded her arms.
‘I’m not going to go around telling people what you’ve said. My objective is to find Joanne. Before…anything happens to her.’
She gave me an anxious look. ‘You think she’s in danger?’
‘I don’t know. But someone left a heap of dead rats on her front step. And she was getting nuisance phone calls, last I heard. They don’t seem like good signs.’
Bron considered that a moment. ‘Well, I don’t see how it’s related, but Andy wanted Viv to reinstate his old role.’ She snorted. ‘Unbelievable, after what he did.’
‘Didn’t he resign?’
‘He did, kind of, but…You really don’t know?’
I shook my head.
‘You must be the only person who doesn’t.’ She looked around the foyer. ‘So, I guess it won’t matter if I tell you… it was over that disaster of an environmental assessment at the old Caltex. The one at Gol Gol. You didn’t hear about it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the owner had been wanting to sell for a while. And he finally had an offer, but not as a service station—it was from a property developer, a couple of guys from Adelaide. They were looking to get it rezoned into a residential development. Although, really, it was going to take years—redeveloping a petrol station isn’t a fast business. They must have figured it was worth the wait, though—anything with a view of the river’s worth a bomb. And Viv reckoned they had their eye on the adjacent plots as well.’
‘Right.’
‘We got the contract for the due diligence. It was Andy’s doing—he’d only been here a few weeks, but he’s got lots of contacts—his father knows one of the developers…’
I nodded.
‘So Viv put Andy on the contract. He didn’t have much experience, but given we got the work through him, she could hardly…Yeah, Andy’s whole problem is that he knows everything, at least according to Andy.’
‘I see.’
‘Viv made it more than clear—and I was there when she told him—that he wasn’t to do anything at the site without Joanne’s OK. For God’s sake, anyone else would have accepted that. Anyone normal.’
Bron gathered up some papers from the desk, a somewhat listless movement; put them in a box.
‘Not Andy. No, he decides to rock up to the Caltex without telling Joanne—without telling any of us—and start on some soil sampling—as in drilling into the soil for samples. Jesus, the fuel tanks hadn’t even been pumped out yet.’
‘Ah.’ I shifted my feet.
‘Next thing, Andy-I-know-it-all has managed to puncture an underground pipe. Diesel leaked out and contaminated the soil big-time.’
Ernie and his drongo. Flaming precious soil all mucked up. Good work Ernie. A bit of a shame he couldn’t have explained it a little more clearly, though.
‘What was worse, the leak didn’t show up straight away. Jo discovered it a week later when she was doing some preliminary tests. By then, the diesel had leached into the surrounding land as well.’
Diesel. Why did that ring a bell?
Bron grabbed another wodge of papers and shoved them in a box. ‘Total fiasco. The Caltex owner went nuts. Everyone went nuts. The site—plus most of the plots along the whole damn road—are now on the EPA’s register of contaminated sites. And will be for years probably—it’ll be a big expensive remediation. We’ve got insurance, but…’ Bron looked over towards the door.
‘But what?’
‘Well, it’s not a great look for us, is it? There’s three environmental consultancies in Mildura and you can probably guess which one of those hasn’t been getting any work lately.’
‘Right. So, what about Devlin? Did Vivian sack him after that?’
Bron shook her head. ‘He’s too well connected. But she’d originally told him she intended promoting him to her 2IC and after Gol Gol she scaled that back, obviously. Assigned him to low-risk admin work, the stuff most of the consultants hate doing. The kind of work they usually flick off to me.’ A crooked smile.
‘So he still works here?’
‘Not exactly. After Vivian told him his “responsibilities were being reassigned”, Andy just stopped coming into work.’ Bron took out a hanky and blew her nose. ‘I really hope he gets that job. Then maybe he’ll leave me alone.’
‘What job?’
‘He applied for a job at Lower Murray Water. The arrogance…and you know what Jo did?’ A note of incredulity in her voice.
I shook my head. Whatever Joanne had done had got up Bron’s nose, clearly.
‘Jo actually put in a good word for him. She used to work with Bill Hutchins—he’s at Lower Murray now. She just told me she figured Andy deserved another chance.’ Bron shook her head.
‘So why did he come in the other day demanding to see Vivian?’
She shrugged. ‘He had the Lower Murray interview just over a week ago—he’s still waiting to hear if he got it. Andy and his bloody theatrics.’ She sighed. ‘Thank God he’s going overseas tonight. I hope he never comes back.’
Devlin was heading overseas? Did Dean know about this?
‘Where’s he going?’
‘To Fiji.’ She looked at her watch. ‘His flight leaves in a couple of hours.’
Dean wasn’t answering his phone. I sent him a text. No response. I spent a couple of moments tensed up against my bonnet while I considered my next action. Our only suspect—apart from eighty-year-old Dan who, never mind his walking frame, didn’t have any obvious connection to Vivian Bentley—was about to leave the country.
I chewed my lip.
Devlin would probably be leaving for the airport shortly, if he hadn’t already gone. Well, I wasn’t letting him nick off anywhere, not before Dean had a word. There’s probably an extradition treaty with Fiji, but still. Devlin could change his name, his hair, get his gender realigned.
I considered phoning Stephens…
Yeah, nah.
Paula? But she was miles away, and busy on the Ice Team.
Homicide? That would hardly help with the not-treading-on-Dean’s-toes approach.
I got into my car.