Before It Breaks (36 page)

‘Do you want me to put anything out about these vehicles?' Verschuer's exaggerated red lips were oddly distracting.

‘Not yet, just a general appeal for information on people out walking or driving at the time and what vehicles they saw on the road. Okay, people, let's get to it.'

Chelsea Verschuer approached him. ‘The networks are screaming for a briefing.'

It was the last thing Clement wanted. ‘It's a critical time in this investigation.' He tried to sound apologetic though he wasn't in the least.

‘Stan Le Testa and Sharon Nistrom say they've liaised with you before.'

They were Perth television journalists, crime reporters. Neither had taken the trouble to send him so much as a farewell text when he'd left town. Obviously they believed they'd not be needing him in the future. Thank God he'd changed his mobile number when he'd left, they would have bombarded him.

Chelsea pulled her most appealing face. ‘It wouldn't be more than ten minutes.'

‘Not right now, Chelsea. Got a murderer to track down.'

The day of the wasp, as he catalogued it, played on a YouTube loop in his memory. It was a Sunday and for once the skies over Manchester were bright blue with a few wisps of white cloud immobile, as if they had been stuck on. He was to be found as always on such a day in the back garden, his personal zoo, big enough to smother him in its wonders, even at the ripe old age of nine. The scent of flowers wrapped around him like a flag in a light wind. The roses were particularly pungent but they weren't alone. Pansies in bright contrasting colours matched the butterflies that seemed to crouch and quiver on their leaves. He always thought they looked scared as if waiting for some horrible force to come bursting in, shouting at them.

He knew how that felt.

His favourite were the spiders. Lying on his tummy as close as he could get to them he would watch them spin their webs, or climb over to the tiny flying bugs trapped within. Spiders were clever, he decided, perfect hunters. They would stake out the territory of high insect traffic and then find two branches or posts to hold their web. Only rarely were they foolish enough to waste energy on a web that would be torn apart by humans, setting them up above head height. The trick he saw was in their preparation, for once the web was set the spider could essentially sit back and relax. It seemed the spiders were in no hurry to eat their victims and he wondered if the spiders actually enjoyed watching the plight of those trapped and struggling beetles and gnats.

This day, however, was different. He was lying on the lawn drowsy, smelling his skin as the sun warmed it when something dropped right close to his arm. It was a fat black spider, inert. As he propped himself up a wasp landed beside it and wasted no time latching on to it. The hunter had been felled, presumably stung by the wasp, which even now was dragging the spider's large carcass
along the trimmed edge of lawn. He watched fascinated as the wasp reached the base of the small garden shed and began to hoist itself up carrying the spider. What incredible strength and resolve it displayed. At one point it hit some impediment which on close inspection turned out to be a spider web. In trying to shake itself free the wasp fell all the way back to the ground with its booty. It instantly resumed its climb with the stunned spider towards its own nest under the eaves of the shed. It was around this point that he became aware of an unusual sound hovering beneath the twittering of the birds, a kind of hum. His first thought was it might be the lawnmower but he almost immediately dismissed that for it was too even, not cackling and popping. He edged towards the house and the sound got stronger. Now he identified it as a motor, more muffled though than he would have expected. A narrow concrete path led up the side of the house, a sizeable two-storey. He had expected to see a car idling out front in the quiet street but there was no car. His mind grappled with the quandary: no car, yet the sound was still near.

He swung and found himself facing the garage door.

The day of the wasp dashed. Once more he was in the present, the cement sky pressing down upon him. The sand was still warm on his back. He sensed something, a warning in the air. Was it just a human's in-built radar alert to an approaching cyclone, a sophisticated development of the ‘flight' instinct? Did we react to air pressure in the way we might if some giant animal with sharp teeth ran towards us? Or was this just for him, the Power who had guided and protected his every move whispering to him that it was time to go?

There.

He sensed its breath. He had stayed too long already. All things must come to an end. It had been a long, long journey but from the first moment he had held the letter in his hands he knew his life was forever changed. The hand that had penned the words had been unsteady, untidy, making it difficult to read but no less potent.

… I knew your father, he was my friend, the best friend I ever had but it did not begin like that really. We were different, from opposite walks of life. I was the worst kind of man, hardly a man at all, perhaps more like an animal. I would
like to think I changed, and if it is true that I have, then all credit goes to your father. I feel I owe it to you to tell you all I know. Back then I was a pitiful excuse for a human being, a junkie who sold…

He saw Wallen's face before him now.

‘I could not have done it without you, old friend,' he said, then looked back across to the pit and felt a swelling sense of pride. Almost done.

The news crews had arrived and set up around the station. Inside the station the mood was one of frustration. It was more than five hours since the computer had been found and the investigation had not advanced a metre. Every available police officer was searching vacant buildings. One promising lead—a Dingos member owned a blue van—died in its crib. An independent witness said the van had not moved all morning. The jogging couple had been located and cleared. They had never really got close to the area of the abduction, staying further to the south. Their vehicle, however, a new Mazda, was one of the ones reported as being in the area so at least something could be eliminated but it was more than compensated for by the number of vehicle reports coming in. Osterlund was not on the radar of the Australian Federal Police or any agencies with whom they liaised. Graeme Earle was busily constructing his list of Germans who might be resident or visiting the area and Whiteman had been delegated to help him. The Hamburg Police had sent the complete files on Kurt Donen, Dieter Schaffer and Pieter Gruen, and Clement was alone in his office using the computer translator on them. Born in Essen in 1947, Donen's criminal career was first recorded when, as a sixteen year old, he bashed a pimp in Essen. The police report indicated Donen's motive was financial: he was running his own string of girls and wanted to discourage competition.

There were references to Donen's progress in brothel ownership and later pornography publishing. Donen was prime suspect in at least six suspected homicides. Two were drug rivals, two his own distributors, a prostitute who was a casual informer, and Gruen. Reportedly a chainsaw was Donen's weapon of choice. Until Gruen, the police had found it impossible to penetrate his operation and very little was known of Donen other than what came as hearsay from lower-level drug mules.

Copies of his fingerprints and photo were included. It was
the same photo as in the article Schaffer downloaded but clearer. Donen was wearing an overcoat and sitting on a railing perusing a German newspaper. Somebody had printed the date on the file so it could be read more easily. Checking across at Gruen's file, Clement saw the date was nine days before Gruen had gone missing. The name of the drug dealer who had presented himself to the police and claimed to be part of the organisation had been noted, Michael Wallen. After some unconfirmed reports in 1981 that Donen could be in Amsterdam, there was nothing on him. He had vanished. Clement had just started on the file of Pieter Gruen when his door opened.

‘Dan?'

He looked up. A fatigued Risely entered, closed the door and said with gravitas, ‘The AC is talking task force.'

Clement knew that was inevitable but even so a sour feeling in his mouth welled. ‘I won't be running it, I presume?'

‘Probably not, they need to make it look like they're doing something.'

‘How long?'

‘Twenty-four hours max. They're panicking there'll be another death or abduction. Frankly, so am I.'

‘We've got some promising stuff.'

‘We've also got an abducted person and we're hitting twelve hours in, not to mention a week since Schaffer was murdered. This is a tourist town. Murder and a cyclone is a big sign saying stay away. Our Minister has been copping it from the Treasurer. Nothing to do with the fact he's Minister for Tourism as well! Look, it's not personal. It's all about bad press and votes.' Riseley fixed him with his gaze. ‘You've done a good job, Clem. Nobody thinks otherwise.'

Somebody did.

When Risely had gone, he sat there soaking up the disappointment for a long moment, wondering if he should tell the others. In the end he decided it might look like self-pity. He'd find a good time and inform Earle and it would seep out from there. He went back to the files; he scanned but felt he wasn't taking in anything. Dumped, that's how he felt. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back and let random questions fizz past. How did the abductor pull this off? What was the significance of Schaffer's life as a police officer? Was he bent? Why the biker? No answers.

His phone rang. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see it was Marilyn.

The stretch of road was empty and dark. In this part of the world, man still only had a toehold on nature. He was fairly sure Marilyn had had an affair; or if not an affair, at least sex with another man in those months before they split. Perhaps nowadays he wasn't so sharp but back then he was at the height of his game. He never accused her, not once, in truth he didn't wish to know the answer. Probably her lover was on that museum committee, an intellectual who frequented foreign films and enjoyed cos lettuce. Nobody would ever know her as he did though. He knew every pore of her body that in some way he failed to satisfy, every lost aspiration that was slapped down by the moisturiser ritual prior to bed, every doubt that landed like a butterfly about her brow as she sipped her Darjeeling and studied him over the rim on her favourite cup, the one with the tiniest chip on the opposite side to the handle. If you want to know somebody, really know them, he thought, you must first disappoint them, and he had disappointed Marilyn in spades. And despite that, tonight she had called him and mentioned that Phoebe was scared about what was happening and wondering if he could reassure their daughter.

As Clement swung up the long driveway, lightning shimmered over the ocean. The radio was suggesting a potential category four cyclone: that would be a monster if it hit but they generally talked up the size and began reducing as countdown approached. Clement would gladly take a small cyclone to rid the heavens of the humidity.

His arrival was greeted with the faint grumble of thunder. Marilyn met him at the door. She looked good. Too good. A slim patterned frock clung to her body, a bead of sweat on her neck. ‘She's just finishing off her bath.'

It was a strange sensation entering a house that had been so familiar and welcoming but where he was now considered an alien. He followed Marilyn's slim ankles along polished wood into the parlour, a formal room old Nick never enjoyed. It was all Geraldine's taste, the kind of style private schoolgirls of the 1950s aspired to, rosewood sideboards polished to high gloss, a chintz lounge suite, a slim-legged table with a large vase of fresh flowers, the colours complementing each other and the room. Nick used to prefer an old wicker chair on the back lawn. Sometimes Clement thought this was the essence of Marilyn, she was forever torn between the personalities of her parents, and instead of finding
a happy medium she was either wholly one or the other. Tonight the easygoing nature of her father seemed to have the upper hand, much to Clement's relief. She slipped off her sandals and sat on the sofa, curling her bare legs and feet under her bottom. He sat at the other end of the sofa. His eyes travelled over the oils of old luggers and early Broome. Some of these paintings were near a hundred years old. They were the only thing in the room he responded too.