The Twisted Knot (8 page)

24

Although Woodford had a little land, it wasn't far out of town. Up a dusty gravel driveway to an unkempt high-set Queenslander. A flight of rickety steps led to the front door and Sammi could see dark bulky shapes under the house.

In a scorched patch of dried grass in the middle of the front yard stood a crudely constructed scarecrow. The body was a sack full of hay, which had been covered in a fluoro yellow work shirt and most of which had fallen onto the ground. This had been mounted onto a long wooden stake that stood taller than Sammi. The remains of a pair of dark workman's pants lay on the ground, but it looked like they hadn't been stuffed with anything and hadn't burnt as well as the hay-filled sack. The scarecrow's face had been made from some sort of thick plastic, possibly cut out of the bottom of a washing basket. Although it had started to melt a little from the heat generated by the burning hay, the features were still discernible. It had crudely drawn eyes, which had been painted red. The mouth had been drawn as a wide smile, but then some of the teeth had been blacked out. A message had been scratched into the plastic, across the forehead of the face. ‘DIE PEDOFILE'.

Bob was standing next to her, looking too. Sammi walked around to the back of the scarecrow. ‘Whoever did it has done a half-arsed sort of a job,' she observed.

‘It's a warning, not a work of art,' Bob replied. He was already on his way up the front stairs. He banged on the front door. It was shut, but when he turned the handle, it swung open. Bob thumped on it again nevertheless.

‘Peter? Are you there?' he called loudly. There was no response. The place had an eerie deserted feel to it. Bob leant in the door. Suddenly he jumped back, nearly overbalancing on the top stair. Sammi sprung back too, her hand unconsciously going straight to her right hip, to rest on the handle of her Glock.

‘Shit. Scared the bejeezus out of me.'

Sammi spotted a brown kelpie standing inside the doorway, wagging its tail uncertainly.

Bob bent down, reaching forward with a closed fist for the dog to sniff.

‘Where's Pete?' he asked it. It retreated back inside.

Bob gestured for Sammi to come up. ‘We'll have a quick look through, hey?'

Sammi's nostrils, already suffering from the acrid smell of burnt fabric and plastic, were now under fresh assault as she and Bob entered the house. A cross between wet dog and stale body-odour was the best way she could describe it. Cockroaches scuttled away as she and Bob moved into the lounge room. There was a pile of old stick magazines next to a coffee table, the colour of which could hardly be seen under dirty mugs, rags and what appeared to be some engine parts. A bachelor pad was a kind way to describe it. It was nothing new to Sammi. Houses like this were quite common amongst police clientele. Some people lived like pigs.

Bob continued to call out Peter's name. They moved from the front to the back. Like most Queenslanders, the house had a hallway down the middle, with the rooms running off either side. There was no sign of life, other than the brown dog trailing along behind them.

The kitchen showed the only sign of a disturbance. The pantry was open and there was food packaging, ripped and empty, strewn on the floor. The dog was in the doorway behind them, tail tucked in between its legs. Bob and Sammi exchanged glances.

‘No one's here. The dog's feeding itself,' Sammi said.

There was a back door out of the kitchen.

‘Let's have a look around the back,' Bob said.

The dog stayed at the top of the small landing as they went down the stairs into the backyard. They headed for a large shed, with an old ute parked at the side. It was Colorbond with a large double roller door at the front. As they got closer, Sammi caught the first whiff of an overpowering stench. It hung in the still air, suffocating like a heavy blanket pulled over your head. The smell of rotting flesh. Both Sammi and Bob had smelt it before and once you were acquainted with it, it was hard to mistake it for anything else. They exchanged glances.

‘Pete the Ped might have taken matters into his own hands?' Sammi speculated.

‘Would certainly solve some problems,' Bob replied. ‘But it might be a dead animal or something else.'

Sammi looked at him with a half-smile. ‘You don't believe that.'

‘It is a farm. There will be animals. Some of them will surely die. Circle of life and all that,' Bob countered.

‘We should be so lucky.'

They did a full lap of the shed. There was a small access door at the side. It was also locked. There were a couple of little windows, but they were covered with old towels doubling as curtains.

‘What do you reckon? Should we kick the door in?' Sammi queried.

‘No,' Bob answered slowly. ‘We need to get a detective down here.'

‘The Ds? Already? Shouldn't we confirm we've got a body first?'

‘Not this time. We want to tread very, very carefully on this one, Sammi. This whole case is a hornet's nest. If he's dead in there, it's going to have repercussions throughout the community. You know yourself there's some angry people around town. Yes, it's likely that this ped has killed himself in there, but it might not be a suicide. We'll be thorough, cover ourselves.'

Sammi mulled it over. Bob was right. She was glad she was with him, that he had the experience to not make an over enthusiastic error.

‘I saw Terry up in CIB this morning. I'll get hold of him,' she said.

‘There's no hurry.' Bob was looking around. ‘Who knows how long he's been in there? Long enough for the dog to get hungry. Definitely since yesterday if there was no sign of him when that scarecrow was lit up. Another hour's not going to make any difference.'

‘So, there's a ped in the shed and he's dead,' Sammi said wryly.

‘And it fills me with dread,' Bob quipped back.

‘I bet Dr Seuss never wrote that story,' Sammi muttered. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and headed back towards the car away from the smell.

It took her two calls to get hold of Terry but he wasn't too far away and agreed to come out immediately. She noticed Bob had re-entered the house. He emerged and held up something small and grey in his gloved hand.

‘Clicker for the remote control shed door,' he said with a smile. ‘At least that's what I hope it is. I found it in the kitchen.'

‘Good one. Terry should be here in about ten, so we might as well wait,' Sammi answered.

‘Why don't you try to get onto the senior and let him know the situation,' Bob said. ‘Keep him up to date. He'll appreciate that.'

Sammi nodded and dialled the station.

*

They met Terry as he parked next to their vehicle on the front lawn. Sammi liked Terry Cousens. He was friendly and easygoing. He was also the least experienced of the CIB staff. He had only recently moved to the Crossing and was still a plain clothes constable, working towards the right to call himself a detective.

‘So, tell me why I'm at a possible suicide where you haven't even confirmed there's a body?' he asked.

‘The bloke who lives here's called Peter Woodford. He got off a pedophile charge several years ago. There's rampant rumours around the town that he's abusing another girl. But we haven't been able to identify another complainant and no one's coming forward with any info. And . . .' Sammi gestured to the scarecrow, ‘. . . the townsfolk are getting restless.'

Terry turned to examine the burnt scarecrow. ‘Ah, this is going to turn bad, isn't it?'

Bob held up the remote control. ‘Action's in the shed.' He offered it to Terry but the younger man held up his hands, refusing to touch it.

‘Nah, mate. This isn't a CIB job until it's suspicious.'

Bob snorted. ‘Just a matter of time.' He led the way around to the shed.

The three of them stood expectantly in front of the door while Bob pressed the remote button. With a click, the motor slid into gear and the door started its slow climb upwards, like a macabre curtain-raising.

And so it was that the feet came into view first, suspended about a half-metre off the ground, a dark puddle below them. The rising door revealed a bloated body, clothes stained shades of brown with bodily fluid. Then the face, black and puffy, eyes swollen shut as if the man had been bashed before death, the black slug of a tongue forcing its way past the peeling lips. Sammi knew it was all normal discolouration and bloating for decomposing flesh. Only the forensic pathologist would be able to tell if there was bruising, and even then, it wouldn't be certain with this amount of decomposition.

The body was hanging from the rafters of the shed. It was clear to Sammi that it had been there for some time, though the heat generated in the closed-up shed would have quickened the decomposition. Maggots crawled around the man's mouth and eyes, giving an illusion of movement. A chair lay on its side behind him. He was wearing the uniform of farmers around the state – a dark blue singlet and stubbies. The shorts were stained dark with fluid and, inevitably, his uncontrolled bodily functions.

The three of them stood and looked for a moment. They had all seen decaying bodies before, but it was still unpleasant and no one was in a hurry to enter.

Terry was the first to speak. ‘Fuck. Why couldn't he have waited till winter? He's fucken cooked in this weather. I'll be smelling him in my clothes for the rest of the shift.'

It was a bit of bluster, stalling.

‘Go on then, plain clothes constable,' Bob said. ‘This is what you get the big bucks for.'

Terry pulled on some latex gloves. It was his job to establish whether there were any suspicious circumstances. If there were, it would be a CIB matter. If it was a straight-out suicide, he could hand it back to Bob and Sammi and escape to the cool sweet-smelling cab of his car.

Terry entered the shed and looked up at the body at close range, pinching his nose with his fingers and holding his hand over his mouth.

He came back out to where Sammi and Bob were standing.

‘I think he's dead,' he announced with a half-grin.

‘Don't you need to check for a pulse?' Bob asked.

‘Trust me, I'm a copper,' Terry replied. ‘Now what made you think this suicide might be a CIB job?'

Sammi counted the reasons off on her fingers.

‘Firstly, the noose with his name on it left at the station's front door. Secondly, the lynch mob at the front counter demanding his arrest. Thirdly, the irrepressible rumour that he's abusing another child. Then there's a couple of other little clues,' Sammi said, waving her hand in the direction of the scarecrow.

‘Are you going to give me a list of possible suspects too?' Terry asked.

‘Wouldn't be hard,' Sammi said, holding up her thumb as if she was going to start counting them off.

‘All right,' Terry said. ‘You've convinced me to investigate.' He covered his nose again and walked back into the shed. This time, Sammi followed him.

Terry looked at a piece of paper on a work desk near the corpse. It was next to an empty bottle of Bundy rum, the obligatory ‘Square Bear' bottle found in liquor cabinets across the outback.

‘There's the suicide note,' he said. He leant closer to make out the single word on the A4 sheet.

‘It says “Sorry”. Nothing else,' he announced. ‘There you go.' He turned to Sammi. ‘That's as good as a confession.' She could see his smile widen from behind his hand. She rolled her eyes at him.

‘Okay, can you please get Forensics out?' he said. They would take photos of the body in situ. Also, swabs and fingerprints if there was any chance that there was another person involved in the death. As much as Terry was hoping this would be a suicide, clearly he wasn't prepared to rule out other possibilities.

Sammi went away from the shed to make the call. Comms confirmed that Forensics had to come out from Gympie, about an hour's drive. She also got them to put Peter's address through the system to check no one else was listed as living there. She remembered Kayleen saying something about his mother. Someone would have to do the death knock – letting the family members know their son or brother was dead.

Terry and Bob had left the shed and she joined them at the front of the Queenslander.

Sammi looked over the scarecrow again. It was rough, but its creator would have made some effort to build it and get it out here.

‘I'll put money on it that it's not linked,' Bob said. ‘No one would risk drawing attention to themselves like this if they were actually going to kill him. This was meant to threaten him, scare him. Whoever did this wouldn't have known that their wish had been granted. That he was already dead in the shed.'

Sammi nodded.

‘The night crew said there was a neighbour who came over to put the fire out. Might have a chat with him, see if he noticed anything,' Bob said.

Sammi
did
a
360
degree
turn,
but
couldn't
see
any
other
houses.

‘Neighbour's probably too far away to have seen anything useful,' Sammi said.

‘Yeah. Forensics won't be able to do anything with it either. Other than a couple of happy snaps. It's too burnt to find any DNA. It'll stay unsolved unless someone starts skiting about it in town,' Bob said.

Sammi looked at the charred body. ‘What's that?' she said, nudging a piece of burnt material with the toe of her boot. She squatted in the dirt and flattened the piece of shirt out. Part of a faded emblem was visible.

‘Something and D Scaffol . . . it would have to be scaffolding, wouldn't it? And then “kay”.' She made a note in her notebook.