Ash Island Read online

  Those names again, Jenny thinks, coming back to haunt them.

  She listens to the clink of plates and cutlery as Harry sets the table for their meal. Then he says, ‘Could you hack into the calls record if I gave you a landline phone number?’

  ‘Probably. But surely you can get that from work?’

  ‘This bloke’s made a complaint against me. I’ve been warned off.’

  Jenny feels a flutter of anxiety. ‘A complaint?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Ross and I arrested him after he beat up his wife. It seems he has some bad friends, and I’d like to know who they are.’

  ‘But won’t the other police do that?’

  ‘Maybe. But he seems to have something personal against me, and I just want to cover all the bases.’

  ‘Okay. You don’t think you’re being, well…’

  ‘Paranoid? Yes, probably. Come on, let’s eat this before it gets cold.’

  After a while she says, ‘Have they checked his social media sites?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  He gives her the name, address, phone number. ‘He’s a storeman in one of the mines and is heavily into tattooing, cross-dressing and bashing his wife.’

  ‘Interesting combination. All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

  14

  Later, when Jenny goes to bed, Harry tells her he has to go out for a while. ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘Of course.’ She reaches down to Felecia lying on the floor at her side. ‘But you be careful.’

  ‘Always.’

  He heads to the Mayfield bungalow. It is Friday night, and Harry hopes that McGilvray will be occupied elsewhere. He leaves his car a block away and walks into the quiet backstreet where the house stands shoulder to shoulder with its matching neighbours. There is no one about. Only a few windows showing lights, McGilvray’s in total darkness. Harry steps quickly onto the path running down to the back.

  The glass sliding door has been repaired. Harry takes a small tool from his pocket and works the lock for a moment. The door slides open and he is met with a heavy smell of stale marijuana and old pizza. It’s clear the housekeeping’s taken a slide since McGilvray’s wife moved out. Clothes, pizza boxes and dirty dishes are scattered everywhere.

  Harry begins to go through drawers using a narrow-beam torch. He comes across documents belonging to the wife, including her degree certificate and photographs of her younger self, coy alongside her parents and sister. It is hard to reconcile them with the framed photograph on the wall above. The two McGilvrays in bikini and Speedos, displaying their multicoloured bodies for the camera. She looks unhappy and alarming at the same time, with black and red hair and green eyes.

  In another drawer, filled with men’s socks and underwear, his hand touches something hard buried at the back, and he pulls out a mobile phone. He turns it on and checks its contents. There are no numbers listed under ‘contacts’, and only one, repeated several times, under ‘recent calls’. It’s listed as ‘unknown’. Harry takes a note of the number and replaces the phone.

  There are two wardrobes of women’s clothes and one of men’s, including safety jackets with the large letters NRL on the back and a safety helmet with the same logo. In a desk drawer are letters and forms relating to his employment at the Wattle Gully Mine at Singleton in the Hunter Valley.

  There is a laptop computer on the desk. Harry lifts its lid and hits the return bar and its screen comes to life. He becomes very still, looking at the picture of himself and Jenny. The link is to the New South Wales police site. A report of a function where he received the Commissioner’s Commendation. He is dressed in uniform, wearing his medal, and Jenny is at his side smiling, full of life. It was four years ago, and she could see.

  A woman’s shriek. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

  Harry closes the laptop and switches off his torch. The front door slams and the woman cries, ‘Keep your hands to yourself!’ then shrieks again, this time with laughter.

  Harry gets to his feet and lets himself out through the sliding door and locks it. As he steps off the deck and into the shadows, light floods out onto the boards behind him.

  When he gets home he finds Jenny sitting at the computer in her dressing-gown, the dog at her side.

  ‘His mum,’ she says. ‘He calls her every Sunday on that landline. And there are regular calls to the wife’s parents and sister, their landlord, his work number and a few other everyday numbers—a telco, Domino’s pizzas, Dee-Dee’s tattoo studio, a nail bar. I haven’t found anything incriminating, Harry.’

  ‘Okay.’ He goes to her side and looks at the screen. ‘Thanks. I’ve got another number for you to try, his mobile.’

  She frowns. ‘How did you get hold of that?’

  ‘It was hidden in his sock drawer. Presumably he’s got another one he carries around. And there was a recent call to a blocked number.’ He gives her the number and strokes her hair. ‘Not tonight, though, it’s late.’

  15

  Next day Harry joins the forensic team on Ash Island. It is raining steadily from a heavy grey sky and he is dressed appropriately this time, in waterproofs and gumboots. The new crew from Sydney has brought a cadaver dog as well as various pieces of equipment, and Professor Timson has come out to follow the search. He is like a small boy with a box of new toys as he examines the equipment, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

  ‘Well, that’ll be no bloody use,’ he says, pointing to a heavy ground-penetrating radar unit on a wheeled trolley. The team tries it out on the soft ground and it promptly sinks to its axles. They concede the point, but they also have a lighter hand-held model. They also have a new device with a nozzle that can be pushed into the mud to sniff for the chemicals given off by decomposing flesh. Harry senses a competitive edge to the banter between its operator and the handler of the dog, which has been trained to detect the same gases.

  They crowd together into a tent that has been set up on the site, all dripping and jostling together around a map table.

  ‘This is like camping in the fells,’ Timson says. ‘We need tea and bacon butties.’

  Harry promises to organise it.

  After some discussion they agree on a plan, working outward from the discovery site to east, west and south, leaving the open water of uncertain depth to the north. Harry makes a call to Sammy Lee to bring out food and hot drinks. Sammy says he doesn’t do bacon butties, whatever they might be, and suggests pork spring rolls.

  It is less than an hour before the operator with the sniffer device announces that he has a strong reading, in a boggy area on the edge of the lake barely thirty metres from where Cheung’s body was found. Two scene of crime officers join him and begin probing carefully into the mud. Everyone else waits, motionless, not speaking, watching intently as the rain patters on the leaves and water around them.

  At last one of the probing figures raises her arm. ‘Positive,’ she shouts. ‘We have another body.’ Both the dog handler and his dog look dejected. Timson beams and rubs his hands.

  Timson and the rest of the crime scene team move in cautiously with cordons and equipment, and for a while the others wait by the white tent, watching the camera flashes through the gloom, then the glare of floodlights powered from a generator. Soon the light breeze brings hints of the sickly sweet smell of decomposition.

  Eventually Timson emerges through the scrub, followed by two figures bearing a stretcher. They’re all streaked with dirt, the burden on the stretcher looking like little more than a heap of mud. As Timson makes his way to the white tent Sammy Lee arrives with food. Timson peels off his gloves and pokes suspiciously at the spring rolls. ‘What the bloody hell are these? I said bacon butties.’

  ‘No one had a dictionary,’ Harry says. ‘I think these may be Chinese butties.’

  Timson takes a doubtful bite. ‘Hmm, not bad, not bad at all. Well then, this one is older,’ he says through a mouthful of pork. It takes a moment
to gather that he’s talking about the corpse rather than the food.

  ‘Probably been in the ground a couple of months. Flesh falling off the bone.’ He picks up another spring roll. ‘You’ll be relying on teeth or DNA. My present guess is a one-eighty-centimetre male. Not much more I can tell you at the moment.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh, mate,’ Ross murmurs in Harry’s ear. ‘Fogarty’ll hate you even more now.’

  16

  Kelly Pool fights her way up the motorway from Sydney, buffeted by the spray from heavy B-doubles heading north. She takes the Newcastle exit and follows the sat nav prompts to the Adamstown address she has tracked down for David Suskind. Parking opposite the little house, she stares out through the rain at its blank windows and overgrown garden, wondering if the trail she has been following might be a dead end.

  She flicks open an umbrella and runs across the street. The front gate gives a loud screech of protest, unused to being disturbed, and a curtain flutters in the window of the house next door.

  She rings the bell. There is no reaction and she tries again. Nothing.

  ‘He’s not there, doll,’ a voice says and she turns to see a woman standing on the front step next door, looking up at the sky. ‘Horrible day.’

  ‘Yes, hello. Doesn’t Mr Suskind live here anymore?’

  ‘He’s gone to a home. Poor old man’s gone a bit frail.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Can I give him a message?’

  ‘It was really Karen I was after. I was hoping to catch up with her again and I thought he could tell me where to find her.’

  ‘An old friend, are you?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve lost touch.’

  ‘Isn’t she on Facebook?’

  ‘Not that I can see, no.’

  ‘Well, I know she still visits her pop regularly. Maybe you should ask him.’ She smiles and turns back to her door.

  ‘But where is he?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Bottlebrush Gardens in Shortland. You’ll probably find him sitting outside.’ She peers doubtfully at the rain. ‘He’s still a heavy smoker.’

  Kelly thanks her and returns to her car. She taps in the name to her sat nav and sets off. It’s not far away, and there’s a solitary figure sitting beneath an awning in the forecourt, smoking. Finding a parking space is more difficult.

  She runs over there, umbrella tilted forward against the rain, and sits down on the seat beside the old man. His walker is beside him, a copy of today’s Newcastle Herald in the basket.

  ‘Mr Suskind? Hello, how are you?’

  ‘I’m not too bad, my dear.’ He gives her a look as if he can’t believe his luck. ‘What would a lovely lady like you want with an old wreck like me?’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ she teases him. ‘You’re no old wreck.’

  ‘That’s what I tell them, lovey. I tell them I’m a recycled teenager, but they just laugh.’

  ‘Shame on them. Is it all right here apart from that?’

  They chat for a while until he says, ‘And so, how do you know my name, and I don’t know yours?’

  ‘I used to know Karen, long ago.’

  ‘Ah, at Lambton High?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I thought I recognised you. What was your name again?’

  ‘Laura King.’

  ‘Laura…Laura…yes, I think I remember. That red hair.’

  ‘We moved away, to Queensland, and then I got married and had a family, but I was down this way and I called in at your house in Adamstown and your neighbour told me I could find you here.’

  ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, pet. I’m sure Karen will be pleased.’

  ‘So can you give me her address?’

  ‘Oh no, I can’t do that. In the first place I can’t remember it, and in the second Karen specifically told me not to give it to anyone. She works in a big estate up in the valley, see, and it’s very confidential.’

  ‘Oh dear. But the home here must know, don’t they? I could ask them.’

  ‘No. They have a number for Karen, but only for emergencies. I know, because I tried to get it and they wouldn’t tell me. Her own dad! But I tell you what, she’ll be here any minute. It’s Sunday, isn’t it? She comes in to Newcastle and takes me out to lunch at Hungry Jack’s.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame. I have a meeting with someone and can’t get out of it. In fact,’ she checks her watch, ‘I’m late as it is. Oh dear, I’ll have to rush. Never mind, another time.’

  Kelly jumps to her feet, puts up her umbrella and waves him goodbye. He calls after her, ‘But give me your address, and she can contact you…’ but she hurries on across the road, pretending not to hear.

  On the far side she turns the corner and finds a spot with a view of the home through a thick bush. She stands there beneath her umbrella with her phone to her ear to deter passers-by, feeling slightly foolish. Fifteen minutes later a vehicle turns into the visitors’ parking area in the forecourt and a woman gets out and greets the old man. He rises awkwardly to his feet to embrace her, then begins telling her something, gesturing in Kelly’s direction. The woman turns to look, and Kelly takes a photo of her through the leaves with her phone. She can hardly recognise Donna Fenning now. She has lost a lot of weight, cut her hair shorter and dyed it much darker. But it’s her all right. The same posture, the same way of peering intently as if a little short-sighted. It makes Kelly shiver. She withdraws further behind the foliage.

  Donna—Karen Schaefer—helps her father to the car, folds the walker into the boot and sets off. It’s a white Nissan Patrol four-wheel-drive. Kelly doesn’t catch the number. When it’s gone she goes to her car and drives it around the block a few times until she can get a parking place with a view of the home. Then she waits.

  The Nissan returns after an hour and drops David Suskind off, then swings around and exits in the same direction Kelly’s facing. She moves her car out and follows, keeping well back. They head past the university campus and onto a dual carriageway heading fast out of town. At Hexham Kelly follows the Nissan onto the slip road for the bridge across the Hunter River to the Pacific Highway heading north. She still hasn’t been able to make out the car’s number.

  After twenty minutes Karen Schaefer signals a turn onto the Bucketts Way, heading north through wooded country. It’s a quiet road and Kelly pulls back, worried that Schaefer will notice her. They pass through the small country town of Stroud and she sees the Nissan slow and drive into a filling station. Kelly continues on past for a couple of kilometres until she sees a dirt track branching off ahead. She takes it, bouncing through puddles, then turns around and waits for the Nissan to pass.

  Only it doesn’t. Finally Kelly sets off, back along the way she came, to the filling station. The car isn’t there. She continues into Stroud, checking parked vehicles, without success. She comes to a stop, wondering what’s happened. She never got the car’s number.

  As she sits there her phone rings. It’s her editor, Catherine Meiklejohn, at the Times in Sydney.

  ‘Kelly? They tell me you’re up in Newcastle.’

  ‘That’s right, Catherine.’

  ‘Are you up there for the body in the bog? Have you heard they’ve found another one?’

  ‘Er, no, I hadn’t heard that.’ Kelly has no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘Looks like they’ve got a serial killer up there. They’re holding a press conference in an hour. Can you make it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, sure.’

  ‘It’s on the site, in the bog. Hope you’ve got gumboots, they say it’s pissing down.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Can you give me the details?’

  17

  Kelly turns off the busy highway onto the narrow bridge across to Ash Island and is immediately struck by the atmosphere of the place. Bleak, faintly sinister. The further she goes into the marshlands the more this feeling grows, and when she sees a white truck in her rear-view mirror, trailing her at a
distance, she feels a flutter of panic.

  Then she rounds a copse of desolate trees and sees parked vehicles ahead, a TV camera crew and police tape. She parks and makes her way through the crowd to the barrier. Beyond it she can make out two blue tents among the trees. There’s a larger white tent nearby with uniformed figures going in and out.

  Under a shared umbrella she strikes up a conversation with a young woman, a journalist with the Newcastle Herald, who fills her in on the background and identifies some of the officials.

  ‘That one in the uniform is Detective Chief Inspector Ken Fogarty, who’s heading up Strike Force Ipswich to investigate the deaths. He’ll probably be the one to talk to us. Over there, talking to the men in white overalls, is another detective, Ross Bramley, an old hand. I don’t know the name of the one beside him. He’s new.’

  Kelly knows who he is. She stares through the drizzle, hardly believing she’s looking at Harry Belltree.

  Fogarty moves forward to address them. Yes, a second body has been found, buried in circumstances similar to the first. He says the first body is believed to be that of a Chinese national by the name of Cheung Xiuying; officials of the Chinese embassy have been notified. He refuses to discuss causes of death or possible motives, but confirms that the police are treating the deaths as suspicious. This provokes a laugh from the back of the crowd. He closes by asking for information from the public on any recent movement of vehicles on Ash Island, particularly on the night of November ninth. Photographs of Cheung are distributed and he asks the media to run them, with a request for anyone who saw him and a group of Chinese nationals in central Newcastle, and in particular at Marketown shopping centre on that afternoon, to call Crime Stoppers.

  The briefing ends and the small crowd begins to break up. Last photographs are snapped and a reporter moves to the front with a microphone to speak to the TV camera. Vehicles start making their laborious turns on the narrow track. Beyond the barrier Kelly sees Harry and Ross Bramley plod off through the mud towards the blue tents. She goes back to her car and waits.