Before It Breaks (26 page)

‘We got a call from a truck driver heading to Derby last Wednesday. Says he saw Dieter Schaffer's vehicle around two thirty p.m. heading towards Derby, one person in the cabin as far as he could tell or remember. The car overtook him and he thought it was dangerous, so he filed it away.'

‘If he's right then it wasn't somebody along with Dieter who did him in.'

‘If he's right.' Risely emphasised the conditional ‘if'. ‘He wasn't certain. Of course Schaffer could have arranged to meet somebody there.'

‘True but then there was no need to park so far away. What about Perth with the CCTV footage, did they spy the biker anywhere?'

‘No. They're looking again just in case. They did pick up Schaffer's Pajero once, Sunday before he was murdered, just driving down the main street but there was no sign of the bike.'

Running through what he'd learned from Rhino, Clement saw Risely become gloomier by the second. The window to apprehend the criminal was shrinking fast.

Clement tried to sound more hopeful than he felt. ‘Maybe the DNA from the shovel will turn up somebody.'

Clement drove straight to the station, fielding a call from Shepherd who had just interviewed the neighbours of the Osterlunds. They had confirmed their story about the dinner party.

At the back of the station he found Lisa Keeble and her team still working on Karskine's car. She anticipated his questions.

‘The car wasn't cleaned, so either he's innocent, or cocky or stupid. No blood on his seat or around the pedals, wheel or window buttons which is where you might expect transfer. I did get up under the mudguards and scraped out the soil, twigs and stuff. There's a few interesting anomalies at Jasper's Creek so there might be a chance for a match.'

Inside the station he found Graeme Earle feasting on a tomato sandwich.

‘No cheese, Barb's put me on a diet. How was it?'

Clement never got a chance to answer because Mal Gross swept in waving a piece of paper.

‘I had triple 0 on the phone. They've got a report of a body near the old servo at Blue Haze. The caller is a Mr Orese. He's been told to wait there. Paramedics are on their way.'

Clement's assumption was the body would turn out to be a derelict, natural causes, but he couldn't rule out a hit and run. The uniforms wouldn't be any quicker getting there than them. He looked at Earle.

‘Let's go.'

Gross walked with them. ‘I had an idea about finding that bikie. He could be from an interstate gang, Darwin or Adelaide most likely. I've spoken to the biker squads and they are having a look for me.'

Clement managed a wry grin. ‘Not bad for an old bloke.'

Gross said, ‘You're doing alright too.'

Clement remembered the servo from its halcyon days of the late 70s when he'd ride his bike hour after hour across Broome, looking for something, anything to break the monotony. Sometimes Bill Seratono would ride with him, he remembered that now. Bill was always one to adorn his bike with a flashy chain or streamer. Hot sun baking low, thin scrub hour after hour, the asphalt shimmering; they would tour all over the place. The servo had been Valhalla to the young Clement. It had air-conditioning and sold soft-drink, chocolates, and ice-creams; his personal favourites the weirdly named Golden Gaytime or Paddle Pop. In those days it had been the only building around for several ks but more recently cheap housing had been built close by. As if tuned into his head, the radio played ELO, ‘Telephone Line', one of the definitive songs of his youth.
I'm living in twilight,
the lyric went. Back then he'd thought it was true but he saw it was even more apt now.

‘I spoke to Trent Jaffner,' said Earle, the gleaming road stretching ahead. ‘He gave the same story about Schaffer as all the others. The man virtually gave away his pot. If it was up to this lot he'd be canonised.'

It took them a little over ten minutes to reach the place which sat just off the highway behind a wide gravel space so flat it could have been a military parade ground. From the highway Clement couldn't see anything except the boarded up old servo and its adjoining garage. Only when he turned off onto the gravel did he see what had been hidden from the road by a grove of trees and scrub: a white delivery van parked on the southern flank, about fifty metres to the right of the garage. An ambulance was beside it. Two male paramedics were attending, one on his phone. A short, dark curly haired man in a tight polo shirt and shorts was sitting on a flat rock near the delivery van. Clement pulled up behind the other vehicles. They got out and approached the paramedics. He hadn't been back here long enough to know people from the other services by name. The one who was not on the phone, a chunky, prematurely balding fellow, came towards him.

‘He's dead. We didn't move the body. I don't think you're looking at natural causes.'

Now Clement saw the crumpled figure lying on the edge of where the gravel met bush. Flies had already zeroed in. He glanced over at the man sitting on the rock.

The paramedic said, ‘He's the one who called it in.'

Clement and Earle retrieved plastic gloves and shoe covers from the car and each slipped one set on, cramming more into their pockets. A man's body, bent awkwardly, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, was lying in the dirt on its left side. Blood had pooled around his staved-in head like a halo then flowed down around his torso but his Maori features were visible and he was wearing thick boots.

Earle spoke for both of them. ‘Looks like we found our biker.'

A hunting knife was close to the body but had escaped the river of gore. Its blade seemed clean.

Earle clocked him. ‘His?'

Clement shrugged, checked the body now, stiff.

‘A good few hours.' He felt in the pockets of jackets and jeans, found a wallet with a hundred and forty dollars but no ID. There was no phone but there were two keys, one household style, the other shiny silver with black plastic tabs, probably for a cycle. Up close the wound looked like Schaffer's, the skull had been sliced, tissue exposed.

‘Get some photos.'

As Earle moved around the body clicking his phone-camera, Clement peeled his gloves and shoe covers and headed to the man sitting on the rock.

‘Mr Orese?'

Close up, Clement saw he was green around the gills. He introduced himself then started in.

‘When did you find the body?'

‘Just before I called triple 0. I do the pies, for Wilson's.'

Wilson's was the local bakery. It had been around since Clement was a boy.

‘I pulled over here for a cup of tea. I keep a thermos. As I pull in, I seen this shape on the ground and first I think it's a roo or something then I see it's a person and I think it's some drunk and I'm going to leave him be but he didn't move at all so I got out to see.'

He offered a stricken face at what that had been like. Just telling the story had him sweating up again.

‘Okay, thanks, look we'll need to keep everything in place until our techs can get here and check it out.'

‘What about the pies in the van?'

‘I'm sorry. You can't move anything just yet. Did you touch the body?'

‘No way, it was gross.'

‘Did you see anybody around? Pass any vehicles?'

‘Didn't see anybody, guess I passed cars but you know …'

The chance of the killer still being around when Orese was doing his pie run was remote. Clement thanked him but cautioned he would have to stay till the techs checked him and his vehicle. A patrol car pulled in and di Rivi and Restoff climbed out. Clement told them to establish a crime scene and returned to Earle who looked up from his phone-camera.

‘Looks like the same guy killed Schaffer did him.'

Clement was cautious. ‘Maybe. We'll need the techs.'

Earle nodded towards Orese. ‘He useful?'

‘Doubt it.'

‘What was he doing out here you reckon?'

Earle meant the dead biker. It was a good question. There was no sign of a bike or any other vehicle. He may have been dumped there. The gravel was not conducive to tracks and Orese's van would have wiped them anyway. Clement's eyes swung across to the boarded-up servo shop and garage. Whatever door there once may have been on the shop was invisible behind nailed board but the adjoining old brick workshop offered a rusted metal roll-a-door. He walked towards it, shoes crunching over the gravel. He remembered what Lisa Keeble had said in the briefing about gravel being found at the back of Schaffer's house and wondered if it had come from here. The afternoon sun was ripening, setting off images in his head of defrosting pies and flies. From around ten metres he could see the roll-a-door was secured by padlock, a new padlock at that. He bent down and tried the key he had taken from the biker's pocket. The lock sprang. He unhooked it and lifted up the metal door which moved far too easily for something supposedly abandoned for years.

The space inside was the original garage, a rectangle of brick walls and concrete slab floor. A mechanic's pit was dead centre but the hoist and everything else had long gone except for a Kawasaki Z750, black and gleaming chrome, just inside the door. It bore no licence plate. Dan put on a new set of plastic gloves and felt it. Cold. He pulled the door back down but did not bother to secure it with the lock.

He started west towards what had been the servo shop. How grand it had seemed to him as a ten year old. Now it was revealed
as a shell, wood frames and glass windows stuck on a low brick base, although the glass had long been replaced by sheets of ply which were covered in graffiti of not the slightest artistic merit. As Clement reached the end of the structure and began to walk down the western flank of the building which was licked by low bush and scrub he realised the shop area of the servo was a façade built onto modest fibro living quarters. He reached the back of the building and what in his youth had been called a sleep-out, an enclosed veranda. He noted its glass louvre windows, a few still intact. Three old, rough wooden steps gave onto a back door of warped wood, the sort you locked with a long key with three teeth at the end, like in a cartoon. The small brass knob was loose as they always were. It spun when he tried it but finally caught and opened. The key was in the lock on the reverse side, exactly the sort he had imagined, long, rusty, God knew how old. With the bike in the garage it seemed probable this was where the biker had been staying. They'd have to do a property search, find out who owned the place. On the top step he called out.

‘Hello?'

Nobody answered. He stepped into the room which sloped towards him so walking up the warped floorboards was almost a climb. An old pool table dominated the space. Empty beer cans with cigarette butts stabbed into them decorated the room. The smell lingered, recent occupation. He stepped through the doorway into a narrow hall. On his right, what had once been an old bathroom. Only the toilet remained. It was ancient and filthy. He pushed down a wonky button and was surprised it flushed. On the left of the hall was what had been a bedroom, now barren, a hole smashed in the outer fibro wall so that it was exposed to the elements. At this point the floor levelled again. He continued up the hallway into the lounge room, the front room that sat immediately behind the old shop. Somebody had recently been living here. A grubby mattress lay on the floor, a sleeping bag thrown on top. Two old armchairs comprised the furniture. More empty beer cans and cigarette stubs. No phone, fixed or otherwise, that he could see. It beggared belief the biker had been here without one. He turned on his heel quickly, went back outside and phoned Risely.

‘Christ,' said Risely after Clement's precis. There was a pause — Clement imagined a moment of bitter reflection—then, ‘Perth is going to want in. The media is going to be all over this. Fucking serial killer shit.'

‘We can't be sure it's the same killer. Could be somebody trying to make it look like it is, or just coincidence.'