BRUNO AND REYNOLDS ARE in the backyard of the O’Grady house, on a ciggie break by the in-ground pool. They have their notebooks out. Inside, the SIB team are picking over basement debris. Dusting surfaces and cataloguing evidence. An hour ago, they called in extra hands to remove the barrels, loading them on to the back of a truck. No official word yet on what everyone knows: it’s the O’Grady family, dissolved in chemicals. Bruno and Reynolds are more interested in the rest of the basement. The details. The paperwork and records kept down there. There’s a collection. Some of it opens up whole new avenues of enquiry. Some of it makes wild associations clear.
Without a single word between them, the two detectives stub out their smokes and get back to work. In the living room, the furniture has been cleared away and a sheet of clear plastic laid on the carpet. They’re sorting items. Some of it is hard to look at. Violent, perverted pornography from downstairs. Weird stuff, gay and straight. Paedophilic material. Slide carousels, magazines and prints, and rolls of eight-millimetre film. There’s documentation too. Careful, handwritten records. Ledgers. Diaries. Catalogues and parcel packaging. Bruno and Reynolds know the truth now: Phillip O’Grady was a Gold Coast magistrate and a straight-up sex offender. For it’s not just a collection: Phillip O’Grady is in the collection, and it runs deep and dark. He abused his wife and son. He abused other victims. He was a monster.
‘If I knew all this, I would have put him in a bloody barrel too,’ says Reynolds.
Bruno squats down and scans polaroids from a shoebox. ‘Same here.’
The entire day has been like this.
A nightmare.
The sort of police work that haunts you.
An hour later, they’re still in the living room going through it, when one of the scientists comes in with a fresh box. ‘We missed one,’ she says. ‘This was pushed into a cavity behind the desk.’
‘Fuck me,’ says Reynolds. He immediately starts fussing with his cigarettes.
‘What’s in it?’ says Bruno.
The scientist says, ‘More files.’ She waits a beat and adds, ‘But, our sort of stuff.’
‘What?’
‘See for yourself.’
They kneel and the scientist opens the box. The first thing out is a bound pile of court documents bearing the Commonwealth insignia. On the cover of the first file, someone has scrawled the word Torney in blue marker. Reynolds snips open the ribbon and they take a look. It’s a pre-trial dossier of some sort, notes on a serial offender up in Brisbane.
‘I remember this guy,’ says Reynolds. ‘It was a big case. The guy disappeared.’
‘What do you mean?’ says Bruno.
Reynolds glances at the scientist. ‘Dunno what happened. They never got him, though. He slipped away on bail.’
The scientist has her hands back in the box. ‘Some of the stuff at the bottom is … delicate. You two might need to talk to Internal Investigations.’ She fishes out a crime scene photo. ‘This looks like it’s been through our evidence log. See, it’s marked here, and on the back.’
They look. Bruno feels the rush of the floor dropping out beneath them. There will be records of this stuff back at the station—a paper trail—and the thought of this nightmare threading itself through the Queensland Police is too much to handle.
It’s sickening.
And dangerous.
‘We’ll … I guess …’
‘Leave it with us,’ snaps Reynolds, turning away.
The scientist is only too happy to oblige. She knows. She stands up and takes one last look at the box and the monstrous collage of evidence on the floor and her eyes soften. ‘Fuck,’ she says, quietly. ‘You two … ah, good luck.’
The two detectives wait for her to leave.
Reynolds rubs his neck. ‘What do you think?’
Bruno picks up the last box. ‘I think whatever a guy like Phillip hides from himself is the sort of thing that gets your whole family killed. What do you reckon?’
‘Let’s do another hour and call it a day. I need to eat.’
‘I actually need to clock off for a few hours, too,’ says Bruno, thinking of his siblings back at the house. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. One more pass?’
‘Yeah, let’s just take another look at it then take a break.’
One more pass turns into two and three and four until they lose count. Hours disappear as the shadows extend across the O’Grady living room.
The mysterious file box from the bunker begs a lot of new questions.
They find names and dates.
Figures and tallies.
Memos and notes scratched in the margins.
Paperwork with official insignias.
Bank account statements on familiar letterheads.
Addresses and facilities.
‘Holy fucking shit,’ says Reynolds.
There are a hundred suspects now. A hundred people who would want this man dead. And woven through it all are a thousand sinister and soft connections: officials, police officers, lawyers and so on. There’s a system at work. O’Grady was tied into powerful circles. The whole thing screams cover-up.
Bruno and Reynolds try to stay calm. They package up the extra-sensitive parts of the evidence and place it in a cardboard box and put that box in the boot of their car where they can keep an eye on it.
‘Let’s go to mine,’ says Bruno.