The Princess and the Cop (6 page)
I carried her to deep shade and put her gently on the ground, got against the tree and lifted her over so her head was on my shoulder. She’d not taken her big eyes from my face.
I stroked her head and said, slowly and gently, ‘You’re safe with Bart now, Tessa. I won’t let anything happen to you.’
I was determined about that. I’d become very fond of this girl and I was going to keep her alive, but I knew it would be some time before help arrived. She mustn’t sleep or even close her eyes.
So I talked, shaking her awake when her eyes closed. I asked her questions about Bassenburg du Mont and forced her to answer.
I had many follow-up questions.
Then, trying to join in the spirit of things, she started to question me about my boyhood in the bush.
Patsy Hunter was the girl who’d stayed behind and I got her to keep giving Tess little sips of water.
But I really didn’t know what I was doing despite what I’d said. In all my hours in the bush as a boy and a man, I’d never encountered snake-bite. Close but not the actual thing.
Patsy joined in with the questions but was giving me anxious looks as Tessa’s eyes were closing more and more frequently.
I patted her face, pulled her ears, pulled her hair, to try to keep her on the surface.
Now, my feelings were coming into play. I didn’t want to lose this girl. I’d become very fond of her. I wondered whether I loved her. There was no way that I was going to lose her.
At times her eyes closed and she was in repose, and she looked beautiful. But that couldn’t last and I slapped her face quite firmly at times. Once she snapped awake and said, ‘Ow! Bart. That hurt! I thought you liked me?’
‘I do, Little One. I do.’
I kissed her on the forehead, many times, with Patsy watching curiously. I looked at her and she said, ‘Don’t be embarrassed, Bart. We’ve all watched you two for quite a while now.’
Tess forced her eyes open and said, sleepily, ‘On the lips would be better, Bart,’ and then closed them again. I bent down to kiss her when Patsy cried, ‘Truck, Bart!’ And Jim came hurtling through the scrub in his Land Cruiser.
He gave Tess an injection and then we all lifted her onto the truck on a mattress.
Patsy got up on the back and held her head. Tess opened her eyes, saw me still on the ground as the truck began to move, and called, ‘Please stay with me, Bart?’
I waved and shouted, ‘See you in hospital, Tess. Very soon.’ And she was gone.
****
That night was very solemn and quiet at The Gums cattle station. Jim or Linda kept ringing the Charleville Hospital and got the message that, ‘She’s sleeping quietly.’
An ambulance had met Jim half-way on his journey to Charleville and she’d had another injection, which lifted her past the danger mark.
I rang Don in Brisbane and he contacted the Foreign Affairs Department who, in turn, contacted Tessa’s family in the palace at Bassenburg du Mont. The lines ran hot.
The next morning I told Jim and Linda that I felt my job, for them, and for Tessa, had finished. I’d head off now to the hospital to see her, hang around for a while and then return to Brisbane.
I walked over to the quarters to tell the girls. One by one they came up to me, put their arms around my neck and gave me the mother of all kisses. Jim shook my hand hard and Linda, after a little hesitation, kissed me on the cheek. Jim and I smiled at each other.
They stood in a happy group as I drove out of the station yard and headed for Charleville. I had a light heart. Tessa was recovering and I couldn’t wait to see her, and perhaps, finish that kiss. I knew now that I more than liked her. Love? Perhaps?
I fleetingly thought of glorious Gloria. She had the looks and strong personality but Tessadonna was sweet and had qualities which I’d never found in any other woman. She was exceptional, in my view, but I knew she was a Princess and I was a lowly cop and then, during the drive, I came to that realisation with a thud.
What was I thinking? I’d got used to being with her as an ordinary person but she was a Princess, Bart! Wake up!
And now I was depressed. From exhilaration down to depression.
When I got to the hospital I didn’t know how I was feeling.
Ok, I thought, as I got out of my truck, let’s see how Tess feels about it all?
And then another thud to earth. Her family had arranged for her to be flown to Brisbane to a big hospital there, to prepare her for the flight home. They thought better treatment would be available in Europe.
I chased, but it was a long way and, by the time I got to Brisbane, many, many hours later, she’d gone, in a chartered plane.
I drove home to my scungy little flat and fell into bed, and slept for 10 hours.
9.
When I awoke, the first person I thought of was Tessa, and I knew I’d think of her for the rest of my life. She was like no other woman I’d met. I didn’t hear any news of her and gradually worked my way into the view that I shouldn’t. She’d been the subject of an assignment, which I’d carried out, nearly unsuccessfully.
She would move on with her life in the grand palace that I supposed she lived in, and I’d carry on with my life in Police Headquarters in Brisbane and, regardless of my feelings, I should expect no more.
And my life, believe it or not, was still the Lily Osbourne case. Nobody had done a thing about Lily’s murder since my sudden departure. It was regarded as my case and, on my first day back, Don assigned me to it solo. But with diversions to other cases, as they came up.
He said Henry Chang had been ringing to talk to me so that was my first task---talk to Henry.
Because Henry had been the main suspect and then charged with Lily’s murder, he was naturally reticent to talk to us before. Not that his lawyer let him, anyway.
So I went out to Henry’s parents’ luxury home in a luxury gated community in a high-income part of Brisbane. I’d been given the gate code to allow me free access during my investigations and was interested to note that it hadn’t been changed. Henry was waiting for me.
He made coffee and we sat. His mother and father were out.
Lily Osbourne, Henry’s girlfriend, and the murder victim, had been promiscuous, remember? And when being questioned before, Henry was reluctant to name her other lovers. Henry had been the main one. Now he opened up and named six of Lily’s schoolmates. The girl had been busy alright.
The following day I visited Lily’s school and spoke to the Headmaster, Mr. Ted Carson, to arrange to interview these kids. I gave him the list. Their parents would want to be at the interviews and they could have solicitors although I pointed out that they weren’t suspects, but that I had to talk to them. They’d had sex with Lily.
Strangely, Carson objected strongly. There was no evidence that Lily had had sex with anyone except Henry, he said, and Henry was still his vote for her killer.
Whatever, I insisted that he make the requested arrangements or down to Police Headquarters we would all go, Carson included. We might even sound sirens.
He rang me later to say the parents had all agreed. Solicitors would be present.
I took a detective named Alberto Silva, Bert Silva to all, and we set about the tedious task of interviewing six randy young high school kids, all ready to lie their teeth out. They’d all got together and all swore they’d never even met Lily much less had sex with her.
‘I have a witness who’ll swear that Lily named you to Henry as a lover. She wasn’t shy about it,’ I said. ‘You’re not being charged with anything. We just want to know whether the witness was telling the truth, because we have others in the frame, none of them you guys.’
I wasn’t exactly telling the truth here but I did genuinely have someone else in the frame. These kids weren’t murderers, just apprentice playboys. The parents must have been wondering when the kids found time to do their study. And fitted Lily into their timetables.
And at last we started to get the truth. Yes, they’d banged Lily, and each one told us when and where.
As the last one was leaving he came back into the room.
‘It wasn’t just us kids, you know. You should have a look at some of the adults at the school too.’
He started to leave again but Bert leaped to the door and closed it.
‘Name names,’ he said. ‘You can’t say something like that and walk away. Name names, son. There’s such a thing as obstructing justice and it’s a crime. Name names, son.’
I thought Bert was stretching it a bit there, but the kid caved and gave us four names of staff members. One of them was the Principal, Mr. Carson, he of the jumpy demeanour of a few days ago.
****
I telephoned Mr. Carson and arranged to interview him and the teachers the next day. He was jumpy again and almost refused until I produced the threat of Uniforms and Police cars arriving at his posh school to transport everyone to Headquarters. Then he became very co-operative.
I took these places as I found them, particularly since I’d been around Lily’s gated community, among the wealthy, for some time now. A lot of them were snobby and superior but most were good people. And I’d spent a couple of months with a European princess, who was delightful. Aren’t you, Tessa?
Bert was reared on a cane farm in North Queensland and carried a chip. I knew that and talked long and hard on the way to the school, in order to cool that resentment. I don’t know whether it worked but I tried to do all the talking, taking Bert’s aggression out of play.
With each one, it wasn’t the fact that they’d had sex with the young girl that interested me, but how they’d done it without being spotted, and this led to where they’d done it.
Simple really. Lily had met them at her house, naked and in bed, ready. The girl was a goer alright. I was beginning to take a different view of her. She was your typical nymphomaniac.
But with Mr. Carson she’d gone to his house when his wife was taking night coaching classes.
As far as we could ascertain, with Bert now unable to stay silent, it was sex and sex only—bang and thanks and home. No drugs. The teachers said they all enjoyed it but were nervous because of the eminence of Lily’s father, Sir Robert Osbourne. As far as the boy lovers were concerned, Lily was too bold. The parents could arrive home at any minute, and that was not conducive to a relaxed and loving experience.
Mr. Carson was in a different position. He took his time, certain of his wife’s movements and, anyway, he told us after Bert had stirred him, ‘she wouldn’t have cared. I think she had her own supply outside. Probably some of her students.’
Mrs. Carson had left the family nest after Lily’s killing and was now teaching in the country somewhere.
Why?
‘I think she knew. Schools are just different types of communities. Paula taught at the school too. She’d have picked up on me and Lily. You know, Sergeant, I’ve never been sure that Lily didn’t tell various wives of her adventures with husbands. Everyone regarded Lily as a saint, because she was young and sweet. But she wasn’t, believe me. I’d had pretty violent sex with her. Lily liked it rough at times.’
And that made me think.
I’d drawn my picture of Lily partly from me, viewing the corpse of a lovely young girl, violated and then killed; the wronged one and therefore saintly. Henry had reinforced that view. He, of course, loved Lily and had no doubt that she was a saint. He had to view her like that, in order to forgive her sins.
If all that reasoning were true, Lily might have been killed by a vengeful wife, or even lover. As Bert and I knocked that theory around, my spirits fell. Perhaps Lily had not been raped, if rough sex was her thing? We could have a growing number of suspects, and here we’d been whacking on poor old Henry Chang. If only he’d opened up earlier in the case, he’d have been saved a lot of angst. And his parents.
Bert and I decided to work on the files for a while, refreshing our thoughts. That lasted a couple of days but it wasn’t my way. Files yielded information, sure, but talking to people frequently brought out more.
I detached from Bert and drove out to the gated community and just walked around, pausing and staring at the Chang house, the Osbourne mansion and the Carson house. I was seeking a feel for the whole community. Boys lived here who’d linked up with Lily—it was a Lily-dominated area at one stage, and it still was to a certain extent. Others got on with their lives, but there were many people here who thought of Lily often. I was sure of it.
As I wandered around, further into the estate than I’d got before, I passed a work shed towards the rear of the estate. Inside were three blokes having their lunch. One of them called out and I walked over.
It turned out that they were the estate handymen, working quietly everywhere, repairing things, collecting the garbage and generally keeping the place functioning. How did we miss them when we were investigating before? I’d been engaged in another area, co-ordinating. The detective who should have picked them up was going to have some explaining to do.
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