Ash Island Read online

  ‘Oh?’ Gibb looks blank, and Fogarty murmurs in his ear. ‘Oh yes. Yes, of course. She must be very shaken, Belltree. How is she?’

  ‘Shaken, yes.’

  Fogarty says, ‘Belltree’s name and the cause of the explosion are bound to come out. I suggest it will make their lives and ours simpler if they were to leave town before then.’

  ‘Leave Newcastle?’ Gibb thinks about it. ‘Back to Sydney? Deb?’

  ‘Yes, I think that would probably be a good idea, at least until we have some answers.’

  ‘Good. Let’s agree on that, then.’

  Harry holds his tongue.

  ‘Suspects?’

  Fogarty looks dyspeptic. ‘We have the peculiar case of Mr Logan McGilvray, arrested by Belltree and Bramley last week and on record as making threats against Harry two days ago. However, he’s currently being held at Cessnock Correctional Centre on drugs and assault charges.’

  ‘So he had friends?’

  ‘We don’t know who, yet. McGilvray is only one possible line of inquiry. It might have been a case of mistaken identity. Or perhaps Belltree upset some people in Sydney before joining us.’ He raises an accusing eyebrow at Harry.

  ‘Ah…’ Gibb looks thoughtful. ‘But there’s no connection with the murders on Ash Island, I take it?’

  ‘Oh no. I think we can safely rule that out.’

  As they are leaving, Deb says quietly to Harry, ‘Fogarty doesn’t like you?’

  He shrugs. ‘I won’t be able to help you with your drugs problem now.’

  ‘Not to worry.’

  ‘Who do I report to in Parramatta?’

  ‘Bob Marshall’s still the boss. I’ll let him know what’s happened. But take some time off, Harry. Concentrate on getting yourself and Jenny settled again.’

  When he leaves, Harry gets a cab to Carrington and picks up his car, which, despite the ruined paintwork, still functions. When he gets back to the hotel there is a parcel of clothes for Jenny waiting for him at reception. She wakes when he gets to their room and he makes her a cup of tea and tells her what he’s been doing. She reaches out for his hand and says, ‘Let’s just go home, Harry.’

  26

  Catherine Meiklejohn has recalled Kelly to Sydney to cover the new ICAC hearings. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is always worth attending, and these particular hearings, concerning the granting of liquor and gaming licences to organised crime figures, were inspired by one of Kelly’s predecessors on the Times crime desk. But Kelly finds it hard to concentrate on the complicated trail of dealings that the lawyers are attempting to untangle. Her mind keeps returning to Donna Fenning. Harry hasn’t got back to her. Her own attempts to find a record of a Karen Schaefer in the country north of Newcastle have produced nothing, and it’s preying on her mind.

  When she was maybe eight or nine, playing hide-and-seek with three younger cousins, she climbed into an old disused chest freezer in the garage. For twenty minutes she congratulated herself on her clever hiding place; then she started to get stiff and uncomfortable, the air hot and stale. She pushed at the lid and found she couldn’t open it from the inside. It occurred to her just how far out of earshot the garage was from where her parents were pottering in the house. In the muffled dark her breathing became short and panicky. By the time one of the cousins heard her frantic banging on the inside of the freezer she was convinced she was going to die.

  Since then, she’s had a problem with confined spaces. It’s been reinforced by various incidents, including the time she allowed her lover, a married man, to lock her in the boot of his car while he dropped off his wife and kids before going back to her place. It seemed a hysterically funny idea to a young, slightly pissed Kelly. Until the steel lid slammed shut.

  So when Joost Potgeiter lowered her down into that dark sink hole after he’d grown tired of using her, her terror had deep roots. It was as if he had seen into her soul. Read her most paralysing fears.

  And now the thought of Potgeiter’s accomplice, reborn as Karen Schaefer, living untroubled by her past crimes makes Kelly feel physically ill. The only slender thread that connects Karen to that past is Kelly herself. She dwells upon it constantly. Come Sunday she will drive back up to Newcastle to wait once again outside Bottlebrush Gardens nursing home, armed this time with one of the Times’ telephoto cameras and a furious determination to nail the bitch.

  27

  And it is good to be home. On their way back through the city they stopped at a maternity shop and bought new clothes for Jenny—light, cool things for a summer pregnancy. They rekindled in her a sense of hope for the future, and also a frisson of fear for what so nearly happened. Unpacking them now in the familiar surroundings of the little house in Surry Hills, she absorbs its smells and sounds. The gentle stirring of a branch of the big plane tree against the metal roof, the echo as traffic passes the end of their lane, the creak of the sash windows, the rattle of a shutter in the wind.

  She knows they are probably no safer here than they were in Newcastle, but it doesn’t feel like that. This house—Harry’s parents’ house before the crash—has been here for a hundred and twenty years, and it seems inconceivable that it won’t be here always.

  The front doorbell rings, her sister Nicole come to take her out for a late lunch, then a visit to her doctor for her monthly checkup. Harry won’t be coming; he has things to do. Jenny has been wondering what to tell her family. Not a bomb, but a fire? But that would lead to more questions. They would assume it was her fault. In the end she has decided to say only that Harry’s boss has recalled him to Sydney.

  Over lunch Nicole is full of advice about maternity wear, then asks Jenny vaguely about their life in Newcastle. She went there once, Nicole says, on their way up to the north coast. It seemed strange, she says, ‘So…’ she searches for the word, ‘…so white.’

  When Jenny returns home Harry is setting up her new computer. He has taken it to her usual guy, who has installed the various special programs that she needs, and when Harry has it running she sits down and plays with it for a while. Familiarising herself with its new features, downloading files from a backup hard drive she left here in the Surry Hills house. When she’s finally satisfied, she moves to the kitchen and gets on with the evening meal, loving the familiar cupboards, the old crockery, the larder smells. As each hour passes, what happened last night—only last night?—has become more and more improbable. Increasingly it’s as if Newcastle never happened.

  But when they go to bed she can’t sleep. Her body, lying rigid between the sheets, seems to have its own grip on reality, regardless of what her mind pretends. Beside her Harry is silent, but his breathing doesn’t sound like sleep.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What time is it?”

  It’s 2:00. Exactly twenty-four hours since the bomb.

  ‘We should talk,’ she whispers.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll make tea, shall I?’

  When he returns they sit side by side for a while, thinking.

  ‘Do you know who did it, Harry?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think it has to do with things that happened here in Sydney before we left.’

  ‘So we’re no safer here than in Newcastle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will the police stop them?’

  There’s silence for a moment, then, ‘Yes, I’m sure they will. Given time.’

  ‘But you know things they don’t know?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So we can either try to hide somewhere, or you can go and put a stop to it.’

  ‘My first priority is to protect you and the baby, Jenny. There’s no question about that.’

  ‘But what’s the best way to do that? You want to go after them, don’t you, Harry? It’s what you do best.’

  ‘I can’t leave you, Jenny, and the more I make myself a nuisance, the more danger you’re in.’ He sounds helpless, indecisive. Unlike himself.

  ‘And I’m so conspicuous, a
ren’t I?’ She sips her tea. ‘Remember my Aunt Meredith—Meri? She came to our wedding.’

  ‘Vaguely. Bit eccentric?’

  ‘Distinctive, good fun. We always got on well. She lives inland on the Central Coast—the Yarramalong Valley. A little place where she keeps alpacas and ducks and chooks. She came to see me when you were in hospital. She asked me to go and stay with her whenever I want.’

  ‘Yes, but not if it’s going to put her in harm’s way.’

  ‘I’d have to tell her, of course, what’s involved. She may not agree. In a way I hope she doesn’t. The thing is, I could live there without anyone knowing.’

  They talk it over, the risks, the consequences. Finally Harry puts the light out again and they try to sleep.

  ‘I could take on a false identity,’ Jenny mumbles. ‘Scarlett… When I was a girl I wanted to be called Scarlett. Can’t remember why. Gone with the Wind, I suppose…’

  28

  The following morning Harry reports at police headquarters in Parramatta. He tries to make an appointment with his boss, Detective Superintendent Bob Marshall, whose secretary tells him that Bob is out of the office this morning. He has a very busy diary for the next few days before he flies off to a conference in Perth. She promises to try to squeeze Harry in.

  He logs on to [email protected] and checks the latest information from Strike Force Ipswich. They have an identification for the third corpse now, a sixty-five-year-old male, charges for assault and affray from the 1970s and ’80s. Harry stares at the name.

  ‘Tony Gemmell,’ he whispers. ‘Bloody hell.’ He remembers the last time he saw Tony, standing by his side in the car park of the Swagman Hotel facing a crowd of bikies.

  And as he remembers Tony, and thinks of him buried in the mud of Ash Island, he hears the voice of Kelly Pool in his head. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you on Ash Island, Harry…It’s kind of spooky, don’t you think?

  The phone rings, Marshall’s secretary. He can see Harry at one the next day. Lunch at Argosy on Circular Quay. Does he know it? He says he’ll find it.

  He phones Ross Bramley in Newcastle, who tells him Fogarty has decided to have McGilvray released on police bail. They’ll track him and hope he leads them to his co-conspirators. Harry thinks that’s unlikely. McGilvray isn’t stupid.

  He feels like a lost ghost now in the Parramatta headquarters, avoiding old colleagues and the questions they would ask. It’s a relief to leave and head back home. When he gets there Jenny tells him that she has spoken to her Aunt Meri.

  ‘She didn’t hesitate, Harry. She told me to get over there right away. I made it as clear to her as I could about the risks, but she was adamant. She told us to come this afternoon.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Harry says, disturbed by her enthusiasm. ‘We need to go through this carefully.’ They discuss the implications, the precautions, the alternatives. He insists they don’t decide until he’s seen Bob Marshall tomorrow, but agrees that they’ll head down to Yarramalong together after that, to take a look.

  In the afternoon he drives over to Ricsi’s innocuous shoe repair shop in Petersham for some precautionary supplies. He carries a pair of old shoes in a bag, and Ricsi gives him a ticket, then takes him into the back room, where Harry buys several throw-away mobile phones and an unused Chinese copycat Taurus sub-compact pistol, with ammunition. Ever since he was in a position to arrest Ricsi when he first arrived in Sydney some years ago, Harry has been an occasional customer, for both shoe repairs and other goods. Careful and not too ambitious, Ricsi has so far managed to avoid any further interaction with the police, and Harry knows he’ll be as discreet as he is about all his customers.

  29

  Harry is surprised, very surprised, when he arrives at Argosy—the crisp linen, the cutting-edge decor, the expensive murmur of the maitre d’, the huge glazed view of Circular Quay and the Opera House. Bob Marshall has never shouted him more than a sandwich at a team briefing. Now this.

  He is led to a table in a prime spot by the window, where Marshall is looking as if he too has been out shopping for a new suit—somewhere more pricey than Harry.

  ‘Harry.’ He rises and extends a hand. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘Some pub, boss.’

  ‘You haven’t been here before? Not my usual watering hole, but I thought you deserved something special after what you’ve been through. How’s Jenny doing? No physical injuries, I hear?’

  ‘She’s coping pretty well, considering.’

  ‘Yes. Steel backbone, that girl.’

  A waiter appears at his shoulder with leather-bound volumes. They consider them in silence.

  ‘Glass of wine, Harry? You’re on leave, right?’ He orders a couple of glasses of wine and fish for himself.

  Harry asks for a steak. He unfolds his napkin and says, ‘I’d prefer to get back to work.’

  ‘And run the bastards to ground, of course you would. But it’s not on, Harry, it’s not on. I blame myself for sending you up there to Newcastle. Remember my advice? Go to Tasmania or anywhere else far away and start a new life. I should have insisted. Now we have no choice. We’ll put you both on witness protection, Harry. New identities, a new life.’

  Harry is silent, then says, ‘Why did you suggest Newcastle, boss?’

  ‘Bob, Harry. We’re off duty, two blokes having lunch together and an off-the-record chat…I take it you’ve gathered that Newcastle wasn’t a random choice. Did you see they’ve identified the third victim on Ash Island?’

  ‘Tony Gemmell.’ He is aware of Marshall studying him. ‘One-time president of the Crows.’

  ‘Exactly. You knew him?’

  ‘I came across him.’

  ‘We think he was one of the two assailants at the Swagman Hotel killing. He was a close friend of Rowdy O’Brian before O’Brian was murdered by Gemmell’s successors in the Crows.’

  ‘Makes sense. Hang on, you said the Swagman Hotel killing, singular. There were two.’

  ‘You didn’t know? Hakim Haddad is dead right enough.’

  This is no surprise to Harry; he shot the Crows’ sergeant-at-arms himself. ‘What about their vice-president, Frank Capp?’

  ‘Yes, Capp actually survived the attack with the baseball bat. He came out of hospital around the same time you did. Now in maximum security at Long Bay. He looks a mess, but his brain seems to be functioning okay. It’s a fair bet he recognised his assailants, too, though he’s not telling us.’

  Marshall lets this sink in, still giving Harry that uncomfortable stare.

  A waiter approaches and sets down plates in front of them. ‘Complimentary amuse-bouches, messieurs.’

  Marshall stares at it. ‘What’s that in English?’

  ‘Stuffed marrowbone, sir.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  The waiter retreats. Harry says, ‘So two of the three Ash Island victims were connected with the Crows.’

  ‘Maybe all three. At first the drug squad thought Marco Ganis might be running drugs up the coast; then they thought it could be the other way round—that he was collecting drugs smuggled into Newcastle and taking them down to Sydney for the Crows.’

  ‘Surely the Crows have broken up?’

  ‘That’s what we assumed, but it’s possible that Capp’s been organising a resurrection, starting by settling a few old scores.’

  ‘And you think the bombing of our house was part of that?’

  ‘The thought crossed my mind, Harry. But only you know if it makes sense.’

  He knows it very well, but doesn’t reply, picking up his fork.

  ‘Actually this tastes quite good.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘You didn’t think about telling me some of this when you sent me up to Newcastle?’

  Marshall sighs. ‘It was all hypothesis and conjecture, Harry. You seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the Crows…’ a raised eyebrow at this, ‘and we thought you might recognise a face or a name that would help us join the dots. But we had no idea ab
out Ash Island. It was pure chance that chopper pilot led us to it.’

  ‘A Crows’ burial ground?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘So there are probably other bodies out there, past enemies.’

  ‘Very likely.’

  Their main course arrives.

  ‘Anything else bothering you, Harry?’

  ‘Yes. Newcastle’s also close to where my parents died. I wondered if that had something to do with my being sent there.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Marshall looks uneasy for a moment. ‘It was another element, yes. A more personal one. You kept scratching away at that old sore. I hoped it might give you a chance to get some closure.’

  Marshall is concentrating on his fish, and Harry thinks there is something evasive in this reply. The word closure doesn’t sound right coming from him.

  ‘You know Ross Bramley, of course,’ Harry says.

  ‘Yes, yes. How is old Ross?’

  ‘Pretty good. Jenny met him and recognised his voice, and he told her he’d met her before, with my folks, just before they died.’

  ‘Ah yes. And Jenny recognised Ross from his voice, did she? That’s good. Is her memory coming back, then?’

  ‘Fragments. The thing is, Ross told us they left Newcastle the day before the crash, so they must have stayed in the Gloucester area that night. I don’t remember that coming out at the inquest.’

  ‘It was certainly known. Maybe it didn’t seem important. Was it?’

  ‘Ross said it was never established where they stayed that night, so Jenny and I drove up to Gloucester to see if we could jog her memory.’

  Marshall looks at him intently. ‘And did you?’

  ‘Maybe. We drove past a place called Cackleberry Valley and she remembered the name. She described the shape of Cackleberry Mountain, and it looks just like she said. She’d been there before. Nothing on that road except a homestead called Kramfors, and we got out there and spoke to a woman. Jenny immediately recognised her voice, we asked her if she remembered meeting Jenny, she said no. She was lying.’