The Devil's Garden (30 page)

Lee talks the talk of a media-savvy officer: about internal mechanisms within the police service; checks and balances; hoops they need to jump through in deciding how to spend money; the actions they are taking. Then he moves to cover the topic so hotly debated in Western Australia: the external assessments. 'The second thing in relation to this investigation is that we invited numerous' – he stretches the word –'
numerous
people in to look at the process that we have.' One of those forensic reviews – still ongoing – was started by Senior-Sergeant Sanderson, now attached to the Special Crime Squad. The officer driving the car. 'We don't believe we suffer from short-sightedness, that the reviews are too close. We still have people saying to us, "What you have done is right, justified and at times, best practice."' There it is again.
Best practice.

'Who said that, particularly?'

'The Schramm review.'

Paul Schramm has a reputation as a highly regarded officer who deftly plays the media. We are only an hour into our meeting and I wonder should I comment. 'With all respect,' I venture, 'as good a police officer as Paul Schramm is by reputation . . .' I don't get to finish the sentence.

'He wasn't the only person involved in the investigation,' Lee interrupts. 'Dave Barclay from the UK was also on that team.'

'Was his response positive?'

'Yes.'

'Everyone was 100 per cent positive about the way the police have run this investigation?'

He nods emphatically. 'Yes. There was certainly no major criticism amongst those people in terms of how the operation was conducted.'

'Has there been a time when overseas experts, not including anyone from the Australian police service, have looked at the entire case?'

'That happened in the Schramm review.'

'But wasn't part of the criticism, that Paul Schramm headed it up? That he would hardly criticise his colleagues in another state? That it should have been completely independent?' Lee's cool demeanour is changing, his voice harder-edged and louder.

'This is the media's problem. For them the interesting story has stopped and they need to find new angles . . .'

I can see where this is heading. 'But the media represent the community, and the community is unnerved.'

'I do concede that individuals in the community might feel that the police are somehow incompetent, incapable,' he says. 'I can see that there is concern we haven't looked broadly enough, that we've made mistakes.' I nod and Lee starts to generalise about history showing that around the world there have been horrendous errors made in investigations. He moves to bring the interview back onto sure ground. 'You accept that?'

'Yes.'

'Well I don't think this is one of the horrendous errors. If I did, I would certainly be making some noise about it.'

I want to talk about police culture. 'It's known that professionally, officers become very close. So given that, is there room for criticism within your ranks? Is there room for someone like you to say to officers who have previously worked on the case, look, you've really mucked it? How much clout do you really have?'

Lee's sunglasses are again obscuring his eyes. 'How much clout do I have? As much as I dare to take on.' I think about that answer for a moment. Given the hierarchical chain of command in the police service, and the incredible secrecy surrounding Macro's work, it seems a hollow response.

We go through what police have released. Property out-standing. Photographs taken. Lee wishes, he says, that he could publicly release what they have done, their operational techniques. It is, he assures me, outstanding, innovative work. World's best practice. He will talk to Dave Caporn, see what he can organise.

Lee admits that police could have looked in the wrong place for the Claremont killer. He spins the negative into a positive. 'As an investigator, wouldn't it be great if we had looked in the wrong spot; not because of poor police work, but merely because of circumstances? And suddenly, we look in the right place and find all the things we've missed?' He continues. 'What's the best friend of the investigator?
Evidence.
So if we've looked in the wrong spot and then we look in the right place and find the evidence, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?'

I agree. 'So why, for example,' I ask, 'would you stay on overt surveillance of Lance Williams for years and years, the community knows you're looking at him, he knows you're looking at him . . .'

'Yep.'

'He's never charged . . .'

'Yep.'

'Bucketloads of money have gone into it...'

'Yep. Relatively large amounts of money . . .'

'Which the taxpayer is funding . . .'

'Yep. Fair enough.'

'So the community has a right, doesn't it, to demand to know why you did that. Where their money has gone? To ask what has it achieved?'

'Yep.'

'So what has it achieved? Anything?'

'I don't know,' he smiles. 'There hasn't been a murder since then.' Now I am finally getting wha he is saying without him articulating it.

'Right. So there apparently hasn't been a murder for ten years. If you take that by extension then it could be Lance Williams, but you just don't have enough to charge him with?' Now I'm laughing. 'It does sound a little like, "We let John Button go, but we still know we had the right bloke."'

'How do you know we don't with Claremont?' he asks, before turning back to look out the front window.

We move to another topic. 'Why won't the police release modus operandi?'

This time, Lee's answer is swift. The nature of police work demands confidentiality. Persons of interest – that ubiquitous police term – should not be targeted by the media and held up to ridicule or criticism by the public. Trial by media is unfair. His voice rises. 'And who says that members of the community need to know how Ciara Glennon was found, and all the nice sordid details that make for an interesting read? A large percentage flick to the next page and Ciara Glennon will mean nothing to them other than a story to debate in the office. They don't know her, they don't care about her. All they care about is themselves, that they have had an interesting read and they hope it doesn't happen to them or their kids. All the public need to know is, are the police doing their job?'

The modus operandi, he says, needs to be kept secret so that in the event of someone coming forward and making admissions about a murder, police can verify and validate that admission. 'And as for suspects: a number of people in Perth, by virtue of their odd behaviour, have been extensively investigated, in effect creating a database of information about their activities.'

I ask if they have investigated a particular individual, whom I name. 'No comment,' he says. 'You'll have to talk to Dave Caporn about that.' Caporn. I am starting to feel as if I am shadow boxing with a silent partner, a phantom. He concedes the individual I have named is known as a character in Perth, that he is a possibility. But he wants to return to discussing miscarriage of justice cases in Western Australia; he can't understand their relevance to the Claremont story. I can't understand why he needs to even query
why
.

'Because,' I remind him, 'people are scared. If police can get it wrong in other cases – and there is no doubt they have – what does that say about how they have handled Claremont?'

We discuss Bradley James Murdoch, now serving time for Peter Falconio's murder and the abduction and assault of Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees. 'He's someone we are now looking at, trying to work out where he was at particular times.'

'He was in jail for one of them, wasn't he?' There is a long pause. 'It was a question,' I prompt. Another long pause.

'Yes, records show that he was. But we need to check that that was the case.'

'Do you mean he could have had early release?'

'We want to prove there was no discrepancy in the recording process.'

Murdoch had spent time in Claremont as a child. When he was nine years old, his brother died of a brain tumour. He became a Gypsy Joker bikie member but was in prison between November 1995 and February 1997. Unless the prison records are wrong, that makes it impossible for Murdoch to have abducted Sarah Spiers in January 1996 and impossible to have taken Jane Rimmer in June the same year. He is a possibility only, perhaps, for Ciara Glennon in 1997.

'Is it likely,' I ask, 'that these girls would have willingly got in with Murdoch? His car was spotless, but he's hardly the classiest man around. Sure he knew Claremont, but what are the chances, really? Can people really change their pattern?'

'It's highly unlikely, I'd say. But you sound more sure of things than we are.' He has adopted a mocking tone, the one police often use to put a curious journalist back in her place. His sunglasses now rest on his forehead and his eyes have a flinty expression. He looks hard at me. 'I'm not sure of any-thing,' he says. 'But I do know this. The public is lucky that the final siren hasn't been blown on this case years ago. And I know this, too: that anything is possible. Given the right set of circumstances, anyone will do anything. Anything at all.'

We come upon it, suddenly, a white cross on the verge of this overgrown rural track. No lilies now in the scorching heat of this summer day, but trees that grow wild, their branches entangled as if united in prayer. A freight railway line is close, rusted iron sheeting abandoned on nearby slips and horses graze in paddocks high with brambles. Woolcoot Road at Wellard is still and quiet, even in the prime of the day. Still and quiet, even as the softest breeze whispers that we should step carefully, here in front of the cross that marks Jane Rimmer's disposal site.

I close my eyes and try to imagine what had happened ten years earlier. A car creeping along this track under cover of darkness and crawling to a halt, just here. The driver checking there are no signs of headlights from an approaching vehicle, no one watching his furtive movements as he drags Jane's lifeless body out of the vehicle and down into this lonely verge. He would be hurried, perhaps now slightly panicked, as he covers her with light foliage. Bidding farewell to his quarry – what would he say? – before he scrambles back into his car and drives away, his dreadful night's work done. It is obscene to imagine that the Rimmers' beloved daughter and adored sister was picked up and tossed away like human trash, used as a macabre toy for her killer. This awful place doesn't fit the smiling young woman whose photos adorn laminate surfaces in her family home, whose spirit lingers over all her parents' conversations.

A decade on, there is still little here but brambles, a dirt road and the overwhelming sense that here was visited an obscenity. The police car turns slowly at the end of the road, returning to drive once more past her site. I look back through the rear window and imagine that the trees, swaying in the slight breeze, seem to be waving me goodbye. And the haunting words of Mary Frye's bereavement poem suddenly come to me:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

The highway leading to Eglinton is ringed with houses now, but it wasn't always so. In 1997, when Ciara Glennon was in the vehicle in which she travelled to this place, it was a long, lonely stretch of emptiness. To travel through the city traffic from Claremont, stop at red lights, cruise through the suburbs and head out to the bush, would then have been a one-hour drive. A high-risk drive, with a young woman in the car who was either scared for her life, or already dead. One mistake and a police car could have pulled the driver over. Just one error of judgement, the smallest slip. Or was her killer so confident, so psychopathic, that nothing bothered him?

The police car turns off Pipidinny Road and turns left into a rough dirt track before it comes to a stop. From this vantage point, the killer could have seen headlights approaching; fisher-men or sporting enthusiasts on their way to the sea. It is an uncomfortably hot day and Lee advises I take care as I follow him and Ken Sanderson through the scrub to Ciara's disposal site. The area, he warns, is teeming with ticks that latch on like leeches and which can cause a nasty infection if not carefully dislodged. I gingerly pick up my feet as I follow Lee off the track and into deeper scrub. Stupidly, I had not anticipated a walk and am ill-prepared in sandals and loose pants. Then, suddenly, there it is.

A white cross, placed by the police as a sign of respect and as a marker for future officers who need to find the site. A terrible reminder of a life cut short. I stare down at the cross and feel a roiling somersault in my gut. Ciara Glennon – brilliant, young, vibrant – dumped out here like human refuse where she would lie for 19 days before she was discovered in this godforsaken, remote place. God only knows what was done to her before her killer wrenched the claddagh brooch from her as a trophy, a memento.

Crows wheel overhead, their harsh caw piercing the still air and the cloudless sky offers no protection from a fierce sun. It feels like we are in Hades. Anthony Lee, privy to the terrible facts of Ciara's murder, has set his jaw hard, and grimaces. Sanderson shakes his head, staring down at the cross.

I realise I am crying, turn from this desolate place before they notice and stumble back to the car. There is a bleak silence before any of us speak again, nothing to say of any consequence: nothing, except to speak of the futility of it all; the terrible, tragic futility. How
dare
this killer selfishly take the lives of these beautiful young women, ending their youthful dreams with senseless, sudden violence, condemning their shattered families to an endless grief from which they will never recover?

Ken pulls the police car off the track, gripping the steering wheel hard as he drives. When he speaks, his voice is barely audible. 'It could have been anyone's daughter,' he says. 'Anyone's daughter.'

It has been a long, sultry and emotional day. My understanding is that the next morning Lee will facilitate interviews with other officers who had worked on Macro and furnish material to me that I had requested. It isn't to be. Instead, I am afforded only a telephone call. 'You're not going to like this, Debi,' Lee begins with a hint of genuine apology. 'No police officers are allowed to speak to you.'

I am stunned. 'Why not?'

'Sorry, I can't tell you that. I am not at liberty to discuss it with you any further.'

'Why wasn't I told this before I came to Perth?'

'Sorry.' I sense that he is. Younger, less entrenched in the patronising attitude often afforded the media by older officers, Lee can see the benefits of a healthy relationship with the press. But his hands – despite the clout to which he earlier boasted – are tied. 'I can only advise you to put your grievance in writing to the commissioner, Karl O'Callaghan.'

Bewildered, I take his advice.