19

MCHENRY’S RESPONSE TO my call was as immediate as it was dramatic. Choppers and car sirens homed in on us from every direction as we ran along the fenceline, and by the time we got back to Dunrossil Drive, the whole area was full of cops. They’d blocked off the road with two lines of vehicles and had begun draping the place in long lengths of tape. A couple of choppers buzzed back and forth overhead, adding to the sense of drama. Dog walkers and joggers gawked at the goings-on from behind the newly established cordon.

Jean’s camera crew got there soon after us, and she’d already filed a piece by the time McHenry arrived. Within seconds of pulling up, he was on the radio to a patrol car that had been dispatched to the golf club. Once he’d confirmed that all the stragglers were off the fairways, he called a senior cop over and asked about the status of the nearby lumberyard. The cop said the workers there had knocked off for the day. What about the feeder streets, said McHenry. Yes, said the cop, they’d all been blocked off. And the door-to-door in Denman Street, asked McHenry, pointing to the street that bordered the woods. It was underway, said the cop, and the residents there were being warned to stay indoors until they got the all-clear.

This conversation was interrupted by a beep from McHenry’s two-way. He put the two-way to his ear, listened for a few seconds, then lowered it. Like the thirty-or-so other people standing around him, I held my breath, desperate to hear the news.

‘The chopper’s found it,’ he said, prompting a cheer from everyone there.

He turned to Jean and patted her shoulder.

‘The wreck’s where he told you it would be, so well done,’ he said. ‘And thank you. Now you can go with Detective Glass and observe the recovery.’

He gave a nod, and with a chopper hovering high above us, Jean and I followed Peter Kemp and his Forensics team down a rutted track and into the woods. About fifty metres in, we came to a collapsed section of fence. We stepped over the strands of wire and headed down a disused vehicle track towards the brickworks. Jean and I walked side-by-side in the ruts, with the team in front of us, and a chopper, flying lower now, its spotlight guiding our way.

The berry bushes petered out as we entered another small stand of trees, and then we emerged into a large clearing where bits of buried brick poked out of the hard ground. The chopper moved away, Kemp signalled for Jean and me to halt, and then led his team up through the clearing towards a pile of rusted panels. It was the old car that the European had described.

Kemp positioned himself at one end of the pile of metal, and his people radiated off him in a straight line. Once everyone was in place, they did a circular sweep around the pile, stepping carefully, their eyes to the ground.

‘It’s been well and truly tramped over,’ said Kemp, to no one in particular.

When they got back to where they’d started their sweep, the team sidestepped together, away from the wreck, and circled it again. After they’d been around it five times, Kemp stepped out of the line and put on a pair of heavy gloves. He took out a torch and knelt down next to the hood section of the wreck, and started poking around underneath it.

After another sweep, the officer at the end of the line pulled photographic gear from her backpack and started shooting the wreck. Kemp meanwhile was on his back, edging his body further under the hood. Then he stopped wriggling.

‘Amazing!’ he said, more in relief than triumph. ‘It’s right where he said it would be.’

He worked his way out from underneath the wreck, and when he stood up he was holding an envelope wrapped in plastic. He carefully inserted the envelope into a large evidence bag that he handed to a female officer. She slipped the bag under her armpit and closed down on it tightly before stepping off to the side of the wreck.

Kemp took a brush and a container from his belt and focused his torch on the hood. He dusted it for a few minutes, pausing occasionally to examine his efforts. Finally, he turned to me and shook his head.

‘Nothing here that I can see,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s take her apart now.’

The team began separating the wreck into bits. Three of them were all patience and co-operation as they eased a partly buried mudguard out of the ground. They’d just moved on to a bumper bar when the officer holding the document got a call on her two-way. The whole team eyed her expectantly.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said into the device. ‘Will do, sir.’

She buttoned off, and, without another word, she swung around and walked briskly back towards the road.

‘Where’s she going?’ said Jean, turning to watch her leave. ‘And, more to the point, where’s she taking that envelope?’

‘It’s a crucial find, Jean,’ I said. ‘It’ll have to be thoroughly examined.’

She stared at me, assessing the implications of what I’d said. Then she swung around and quickly headed off after the officer. I followed. Jean wasn’t gaining ground at walking pace, so she started to jog. But the officer had too great a lead on us, and she was jogging now, too. She rounded a corner about twenty metres ahead of us and disappeared.

We were about fifteen metres from the officer when she handed the envelope to McHenry. He immediately gave it to a uniformed guy who ran it up through the road block and passed it in through the front window of a patrol car. The car then sped off. When Jean stumbled up to McHenry a few moments later, their eyes locked, but she seemed to be smiling.

‘You are going to let me see what’s in that envelope, aren’t you?’ she said, catching her breath. ‘Surely you are.’

McHenry looked at me, then his gaze returned to Jean. But he said nothing, which effectively communicated his answer.

‘Ohhhhh, now this really is shaping up as a big mistake,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Just think what you’re doing here. What’s this guy want? This European? Well, in part, it’s personal profile, isn’t it? Publicity. And if I don’t give it to him, he’ll write me off and find someone else to leak to. And none of my colleagues will call you if he leaks something to them. Not if you do this to me. And nor will I if he decides to keep using me. So if you want to catch him …’

‘What you’re saying makes perfect sense, Miss Acheson,’ said McHenry, in a calming tone. ‘But we’ve got no choice. We have to examine what we’ve recovered. Then, hopefully, there’ll be a trial in which it’s used as evidence. And maybe then there’ll be an appeal process. And after that, we’ll return it to its owner, as we’re required to do. I appreciate your priorities, but this is not a simple matter.’

‘But it’s not that complicated, either,’ she said, her eyes drilling McHenry. ‘You’ll give that document the once-over, it’ll sit in an evidence drawer for a few months, then you’ll hand it back to … who? Lansdowne? The government? That way, you’ll save yourself a short-term headache, but you’ll lose your only link to this guy — the European. What could be simpler than that?’

McHenry was saved from further argument by his phone. He took the call, and Jean turned to me and shook her head.

‘It’s okay, Darren,’ she said, seeming to console me. ‘I know you’re bound by what this guy says, but it’s a big mistake — maybe even a tragic one — and I think you know that. And as for you and me? Well, life’s full of possibilities, isn’t it, but timing’s everything, and now’s just not our time, I guess.’

She gave me a weak smile, and turned and walked back to the roadblock where her crew was waiting. She did a brief piece to camera, using a police vehicle as a backdrop, and then walked up Dunrossil Drive alone. She shook her head a couple of times as she went, as though she was trying to free herself of something.

‘Not happy,’ said McHenry, pocketing his phone.

‘And who can blame her?’ I said, feeling like I was about to throw up. ‘She helps us, and then we see to it that she misses out, big time. I know what you’re going to say — we did what was required of us. But how does that help the investigation? Doing the right thing! Because what she said is true, you know. She was our best connection to the killers, and now we’ve lost her.’

McHenry nodded, but I didn’t care if he agreed with me or not. Less than an hour before, Jean and I had been on the verge of something. Now she was walking away, robbed of a huge story, and partly blaming me. But no matter how injured she felt, or how high the stakes were for me personally, there was nothing I could have done differently. The document wasn’t mine to give her.

‘What about surveillance on her now?’ I said, trying to settle my guts. ‘Brady’d have to agree to it, wouldn’t he? I mean, they’ve left two documents for her — both on a route that she walks every other day, so they’re obviously watching her. And there’s a fair chance they’ll contact her again, regardless of what happened here.’

‘Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t,’ said McHenry. ‘But Brady’s still against it. He says it’ll blow up in our faces. So, no.’

I’d normally have responded with fury to such stupidity, but I was totally consumed by a profound sense of loss. And as I watched Jean disappear over the rise on the Cotter Road, I wondered what it would take to set things right between us.