An Isolated Incident (8 page)

AustraliaToday.com

A haunted place

May Norman

8 April 2015

Five minutes out of Strathdee, heading south on the Hume Highway, a series of unnatural colour bursts draw the motorist's eye past the line of eucalypts to the ordinarily drab green and brown grass strip beyond. Pulling onto the asphalt verge it becomes immediately clear that the garish pinks and yellows spotted from the road belong to a makeshift memorial shrine surrounding a lean ghost gum. Twenty or so steps to the left of the tree is the patch of dirt where the naked, violated body of popular, 25-year-old aged-care worker Bella Michaels was found on Monday morning, partially wrapped in a blue tarpaulin.

The area was immediately sealed off by local police, then in came the detectives, the crime scene investigators and then the battalions of police, including trainees from the police academy at Goulburn, enlisted to search the surrounding area centimetre by centimetre. By 10 pm Tuesday the vans and floodlights and army of searchers were gone. All that remained of them was a series of indentations and skid marks in the asphalt and mud dividing the grass from the road.

Strathdee, population 3000, situated 450 kilometres south-west of Sydney and almost the same distance north-east of Melbourne, used to be the number-one stopping place for travellers on the road between the two cities. But thanks to the highway bypass completed five years ago, the thousands of cars, trucks and coaches that would once have stopped here for a stretch, bite to eat or overnight break now pass right on by. Several hotels and restaurants as well as a major service station complex have closed and a few hundred locals have moved, many of them to the comparatively thriving rural hub of Wagga Wagga, 50 kilometres west.

Still, Strathdee is no ghost town. Its retailers and small businesses serve the surrounding cattle and sheep farmers and on any given night its four pubs, two hotels and large, sprawling caravan park are kept busy by a mixture of locals, long-distance truck drivers on their compulsory driving break and tourists taking it slow, stopping off to enjoy the quintessential Aussie country towns that lie between Australia's biggest cities.

On Wednesday, one such traveller, Glenys Morton of Cairns, was horrified to hear of the recent murder. ‘It's such a lovely, calm little town,' said Mrs Morton who, with her husband, is spending six months caravanning down the east coast of Australia. ‘It's the last place you'd expect to hear about that kind of violence.'

Arthur Tomesberry of the Strathdee Historical Society, however, has a different view. ‘The town has been safe as houses long as I've know it, and that's coming up on seventy years, but the history of this area is a dark one. I've always felt, whenever I head out into the bush around here, that it's somewhat haunted.'

The ‘dark' history Mr Tomesberry is referring to includes an alleged massacre of the Indigenous inhabitants in the early 1800s. ‘Bunch of newly arrived Scotsmen came through looking to set up farms. They cleared the locals off the land like they were vermin. There's no documentation on it, but the stories have been passed down orally and every old family in the area knows something of what went on.' Mr Tomesberry also points to the ‘reign of terror' conducted by the bushranger known as Mad Dog Morgan in the 1860s as a contributor to the ‘eeriness' of the area surrounding the quiet, tidy town.

For the first-time visitor it's impossible to say whether the stretch of sparse, bristly grass by the highway five minutes from town has always felt as desolate and crushing as it does today or if the atmosphere of despair set in the moment Bella Michaels drew her last, no doubt terrified, breath.

Thursday, 9 April

May woke to her phone ringing, saw it was her brother Max and hit ignore. She made some coffee, slapped on some mascara and lippie, dressed in tight tan pants and a fitted, brown-and-white-checked shirt. Packing in Sydney she'd thought this outfit looked appropriately country, but now she was in the actual country she saw that it looked like a city stripper's idea of a jillaroo. As if she didn't already stand out here in the whitest bloody town in Australia. She swapped the tan pants for jeans. Now she looked like she was going to round up some senior citizens for a barn dance. Fuck. Tan pants, black t-shirt, black blazer. Not at all country but also not looking like she was trying to be. Okay.

Her phone rang again as she was leaving the hotel. She leant against the car but it was already too hot for comfort. In April, for God's sake. She unlocked the door and slid into the stifling interior before answering.

‘Hey, Max, I'm on my way to an interview so I don't have long. What's up?'

‘Why does your by-line suggest that you wrote your last two articles from a place called Strathdee?'

‘Huh, weird. I'll have to talk to the sub desk about that.'

‘Yeah, well, thanks for letting your family know.'

May picked up the map from the dashboard and fanned her face. ‘I'm just covering a story. I haven't moved here.'

‘Still could've let us know. It's school holidays. I would've loved a road trip.'

‘Max, you would hate it here so much. It's, like, ten degrees hotter than anywhere else on earth. No breeze at all. Plus, no banh mi, no craft beer, no skinny jeans.'

‘Sounds like Blacktown.'

‘Please, Blacktown had banh mi twenty years before your gold-hipster-plated hood did.' May had never hated the suburb they grew up in the way Max did. But, then, she hadn't been a smaller-than-average, fine-boned boy with soft curls and a tendency to forget himself in public and sing out loud. Not that she wasn't bullied, but her tormentors were only at school whereas Max copped it everywhere outside their home. God, imagine how he'd fare here, where even preschoolers looked like Clint Eastwood.

‘Whatever. When are you coming home?'

‘Don't know.'

‘Ugh. I'm bored.'

‘You sound twelve.'

‘I might as well be. Nothing to do all day, no money, no car, no sex.'

‘I can't help you with any of that. And I really have to go.'

‘Selfish bitch.'

‘Yeah, love you, too.'

At the police station she had a chat with the sweet young guy on the front desk who, it turned out, was not only one of the first response officers when the body was called in but also knew Bella personally. May asked if she could buy him lunch and he blushed and told her he could meet her at Frederica's – ‘it's in the mall, but really nice, not in the food court or anything' – at twelve, and then she hotfooted it out of there before someone with guile or experience came along to ruin things.

She drove over to the nursing home, but turned around when she saw the Channel 7 van out front. Next was the sister's house, where the door was answered by a bearded giant who told her that Chris wasn't doing interviews. When May persisted, asking him if he might like to say a few words about the deceased, he told her that she should be ashamed of herself for harassing the grieving.

May almost told him that harassing the grieving was the least of what she was ashamed of, but her remaining morsel of dignity asserted itself in time. She thanked him and, after he closed the door in her face, slid her card underneath it. She dragged her shameful self up and down the street, knocking on doors, collecting a handful of tidbits that would do if they had to, then headed to the mall to meet the young cop.

She still had fifteen minutes before he was due, so she spent the time talking to smokers leaning against the grey, rippled concrete walls, grabbing a few more quotes, each a variation on the same theme.
It could've been me. Could've been my daughter. Could've happened to any of us.

Constable Matt Drey was five minutes early, grinning from oversized ear to ear. He took her elbow as they entered Frederica's and pulled out her chair to seat her.

‘What's good here?'

His grin, impossibly, got bigger. ‘Oh, everything. I'm a bit biased, but. It's me aunty's place.'

‘Your aunty is Frederica?'

‘Nah, nah. Her name's Jo, but you can't call a restaurant that, can you?'

No, May thought, but then this isn't really a restaurant, is it?
She asked him to order for them both, which seemed to be the best thing that had happened to him for a long while. The waitress was a girl he obviously knew well, though not, from what May could tell, a relative or girlfriend. May was a bit concerned the girl didn't take in anything Matt said, so busy was she looking at May from under her heavily augmented eyelashes. If Matt noticed, it only added to his air of extreme contentment. May wondered if she should ask him if their engagement would be official once they'd finished the meal.

‘So, um, I hope you don't mind, but I looked you up. Like, on the internet not on the database or anything. Ha ha ha ha.'

‘Hey, nothing to hide here.'

‘Nah, I never thought that. It's just the name of the newspaper on your card, I hadn't heard of it, so I thought I should check it out and that.' He knocked back half a glass of water in one go, then added reassuringly, ‘It looks like a really good publication. You should talk to Mr Chin at the newsagency about stocking it here.'

‘Oh, no, it's digital only.'

‘Like, just a website?'

‘We call it a newspaper because that's the format, but it's not printed on actual paper, no. Our subscribers get a full edition sent to their iPads or whatever each morning and the website updates all day and night.'

‘And you make money from that?'

‘Well, I get paid a salary. The owners will make money at some point, I guess, but it's a new venture. Only been operating a couple of months, so, ah, not exactly a cash cow at this point.'

‘Huh.' He sat back, nodded. ‘And, um, your profile thingy on the site said you grew up in Sydney but, like, hope you don't mind me saying but you don't look like you – I mean, like, are your parents from . . .'

May kept her pleasant, neutral reporter face in place. Let the silence hang.

He swallowed nothing. ‘. . . from overseas somewhere?'

‘Nope, both born and raised in the western suburbs of Sydney.'

‘Yeah? Huh. Alright! Here comes the pumpkin soup. Aunty Jo makes it herself and never skimps on the cream. So what's it like being a crime reporter up in Sydney? Bet you've seen some exciting stuff.'

‘Oh, please, you're a cop. You wouldn't bat an eyelid at anything I've seen.'

‘I dunno. Sydney's a whole different kettle of fish, I'd reckon. Round here, don't see much worse than pub brawls and domestics. Up till now, anyhow.' He scooped a dripping spoon of soup into his gob, swallowed. ‘Yeah, I'd be pretty happy to go the rest of my life without seeing anything like that again.'

May itched for her notebook. ‘Pretty bad, huh?'

‘You ever seen anything like that?'

‘Like . . .?'

He glanced towards the counter then leant forward. ‘A murder. Body all messed up.'

‘Not like that, no.' May hoped her tone suggested the viewing of countless other kinds of bodies messed up in different but no less traumatising ways rather than the embarrassing truth, which was that she'd never even been to the scene of a murder before this morning, let alone caught a look at a body. Six weeks ago she was still the senior reporter at the tiny community paper she'd been hired at as a cadet. The
AustraliaToday
job wasn't any better paid, but it was an opportunity to do the kind of work she'd wanted to since uni. It had taken her so long to get to it partly because journalism jobs were few and getting fewer all the time, and crime reporter positions in particular were held by old-timers who gave the impression they wouldn't hesitate to use some of the underworld tactics they'd learnt on the job if some upstart tried to push in on their beat.

But even so, she probably could've done more to advance her career. Some time in her mid-twenties she'd stopped nagging her editor to let her write longer-form pieces, stopped subscribing to any industry e-news because it made her feel bad to see people she'd been at uni with getting city and national jobs or being nominated for Walkleys. She stopped boring her friends with rants about advocacy journalism and how when she finally had a high-profile position she was going to . . . What was it she'd been going to do? End sexism, racism, homophobia and poverty? Bring about world peace? She couldn't remember exactly. What she did remember was drinking cask wine on the floor of her share-flat and realising mid-rant that her friends were swapping cringes and side-eying the fuck out of her. She'd gone to the bathroom and in the mirror she saw a puffy, transparent, needy loser. Pathetic to reflect on it, but she'd felt that way ever since. Until Craig . . . No, fuck him. Focus.

‘Seeing her in particular – someone you knew – it must have been really distressing.'

‘I'll tell you something, Miss Norman –'

‘May.'

‘I'll tell you, May, there are some things a person is better off not ever knowing and what a body left wrapped in a tarp in the rain for two days smells like is one of them.'

‘So when you got there she was . . .'

‘C'mon now, let's leave all that. Eat your soup before it gets cold or Aunty Jo'll be wild.'

After soup and garlic toast and chicken schnitzel with pasta salad, accompanied by questions about where she lived in the city, whether she'd ever been robbed, what kind of security she had on her place and what car she drove, May managed to slide in another question about Bella Michaels. The food must've sharpened him up though, because he said he couldn't really tell her anything and definitely nothing on the record. She suspected he actually didn't know much about the investigation anyway, but that was okay. The stuff he shared when she encouraged him to talk more about the town was detailed enough that she at least had a good idea now of who she needed to hunt down.

He wouldn't let her pay for the enormous meal, asked her if they could do it again sometime. ‘That'd be lovely,' she said. ‘But I don't know how long I'll be in town. It all depends on –'

‘Us doing our jobs and getting you more stuff to report.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Speaking of, I better get back to the station.' He lurched forward as if for a kiss. May caught his arm and slid her hand down to force an awkward shake. ‘Ah, righto. Um, see ya.'

He ambled off towards the street. May found the public toilets and did her best to get rid of the lunch, though it had taken so long to eat that half of it was too far gone to get back now.

Walking to her car, she switched her phone off silent and saw she had a message. She dialled in, stopped short in the middle of the car park at the sound of his voice.

‘May, it's me.'

Fuck. A car beeped politely, she waved and continued walking, the phone pressed hard to her ear.

‘Listen, I'm sorry about that message. I had to, but . . . I need to see you. I know I said . . . Jesus, I miss you. I can't get away for long, but maybe, I don't know, we'll figure something out. Um, don't call me back, because – well, you know. I'll, ah, try again when I can.'

May made it to her car and collapsed into the seat. Her finger hovered over his name. But he said don't. If she did and his wife was there it would get him into trouble and then he'd be mad at her and then . . . Fuck. She put the phone in her pocket. He'd call back. He would.

May spent the afternoon with a man who'd lived next to Bella Michaels' mother until her death. He had some good colour for her, but it was so embedded in endless, interconnected stories about each and every person who'd ever lived in the street and their relatives and their jobs and what they'd done in the bloody war (which one, May had no idea and could not risk asking), that two minutes' worth of information took almost three hours to extract. May touched the phone in her pocket so often that if the man hadn't been almost blind he might've thought she spent the whole time masturbating.

At four o'clock she dropped the car back to the hotel then walked across the road to the pub where the fragile, tracksuit-wearing sister worked. The deep red carpet was streaked with sunlight from the glass panels set high on the front wall. There were four small clusters of drinkers spaced through the room and three loners sagging over the bar. A big-screen TV silently broadcast a game show. She bought a beer from an old man with a silver tooth then took a table near the back wall.

To her left and slightly in front were four men in high-vis shirts and King Gees. Two of them were younger than her – a pinch-faced redhead and a far too good-looking sandy-haired surfer type. The third man was in his late thirties and unusually tall; his shirt, pants and face lacked the grey dust speckled over the others. The fourth man had his back to her, but judging from his slumped posture and white hair, he was older than all of them.

‘Yeah, you gotta do it. Least if you want them to do it back to ya,' the young redhead said.

‘That's the thing, hey,' his sandy-haired mate agreed. ‘If it's just a one-nighter then fuck it, but if it's your girl, like long term, and you ever wanna get your knob polished, then you've gotta get down there now and then.'

‘Fucking faggots,' the oldest one said.

‘Faggots don't eat pussy, you moron.'

‘I dunno what to call youse. I just know you won't ever find me eating something that can get up and walk away.'

‘So dead chicks and cripples only, eh. Knew it, you sick bastard.'