Crucifixion Creek (28 page)

‘No.'

He laughs. ‘I thought not. I told them, “This will take time.” They are impatient,
but I have plenty of time. I'm only sorry that your sweet little friend isn't here
too.'

He releases her hair and her head flops back down onto the mattress. She feels his
hot hand on her shoulder, then sliding down the skin of her back, and she realises
that she has no clothes on. She winces as his hand reaches her buttocks, and she
cries out, ‘Don't touch me you disgusting little toad.'

He removes his hand, saying nothing, and she feels a moment of hope. Then she hears
a thump, and another—two boots hitting the floor—and the snuffling sound of fabric
dropping on the floorboards and she thinks
NO
. There is a sharp crack and a searing
pain rips the flesh across her back. It takes her breath away. She sucks air into
her lungs in panic and there is another crack, another shocking flash of pain, and
she begins to scream.

He tires after perhaps an hour, and tells her that he is taking a break for lunch.
She lies trembling on the mattress, covered in blood and semen, the stink of it foul
with the urine. Alternately sweating and shaking with cold and pain and shock, she
gradually subsides into a catatonic stupor. From time to time she is aware of background
sounds—a telephone ringing, the pop of a champagne cork, the rattle of cutlery.

In the afternoon he comes for her again, brutalising her in long waves of pain interspersed
by sudden shocks of agony.

He leaves her when darkness comes. She hears a shower running, the sound of his voice
singing off-key. When he returns she smells aftershave. He tells her that he has
an appointment and is going to put her away for the night. He releases her hands
and feet and trusses her limp body into—what?—a straitjacket, it seems. Muttering
to her words she barely understands. ‘…Safe…sink hole…deep, deep…mustn't struggle
or cry or you will fall…never found…tomorrow more, much more…'

As he heaves her over his shoulder she sobs helplessly. He lugs her out of the building
into the dark. She smells fresh air, tinged with smoke. The night sky overhead is
bright with stars. He drops her, her bruised flesh striking the hard ground, and
she sees the outline of a gantry against the sky. There is the roar of a motor kicked
into life and he fits a harness around her and she is hauled upright and swung beneath
the gantry, swaying, turning.

Then she is dropping slowly into a dark tube. Sounds become muffled, the darkness
is absolute. Her descent abruptly stops and she hears a clang from far above which
echoes all around her, then fades into total silence. She spins slowly in the chill
black, and a dreadful smell rises from the void beneath her feet.

37

There are four of them sitting in a circle around the psychologist, Harry and three
highway patrol officers, ‘cockroaches' as the others call them, because they come
out at night. They look much as Harry feels. Long-suffering, wishing they were somewhere
else.

The psychologist explains that the subject of the workshop is RESILIENCE—she writes
it in large letters on the whiteboard. She gets them to discuss the things that can
affect their resilience—appropriate training, health and fitness, nutrition and exercise,
feelings of job satisfaction, stress management strategies (other than alcohol).

Harry hardly hears her. He is preoccupied with the progress of the homicide investigations
that are swirling around him without his involvement or knowledge. And Kelly Pool—what
the hell has happened to her? Last night he phoned the
Times
and spoke to Catherine
Meiklejohn again, and she still had no idea where Kelly was. She sounded worried.
‘It's just possible that she's gone to Indonesia without telling us,' she said.
‘Apparently she discussed it with her colleague.'

‘Are you with us, Harry?' the psychologist says.

‘Sorry, yes, of course.'

‘Now here's the thing,' she goes on, holding up a blank sheet of A4. ‘In an ideal
situation, this is our police officer coming to work, starting a new shift fully
rested and resilient. But this is not an ideal situation. He has been unable to sleep
properly for the past month after attending a particularly nasty crime scene involving
the death of a child.'

She has their attention, and they watch as she tears a strip off the side of the
paper.

‘So his resilience is reduced. Also, his relationship with his wife is not good at
the moment. It's been going steadily downhill for a while, she's angry because his
work schedule prevented them going to an important family event, and he's worried
that this may be the last straw. So he feels he has no emotional support at home.'
She tears another strip.

‘Because of these concerns he has been drinking more than usual lately, and he is
suffering now from a pretty bad hangover.' Off comes another strip.

‘And on top of all this, he has fallen out with two of his workmates, who are giving
him a hard time.'

She tears off another strip and holds up what remains. ‘So this is our officer, at
the start of another day in the firing line.'

They all stare in silence at the diminished piece of paper.

‘Jesus,' says one of the cockroaches. ‘He's white as a sheet.'

The psychologist looks at him, her mouth quivering, then she starts to giggle. Now
they all crack up, roaring with laughter, and the cockroach takes a handkerchief
from his pocket and wipes his eyes.

As soon as he can get away, Harry gets a vehicle from the car pool and drives out
to the Creek. He parks in Mortimer Street and goes over to the spot where he last
saw Kelly, in front of the cactus garden, staring up at the bedroom windows. What
made her come
here? What did she see? Like her, he notices the same blinds, all closed,
in all of the upper windows of the houses on this side of the street, running down
to the Crows' compound at the end.

He goes up to the front door and rings the bell. There is no reply. The whole street
seems unnaturally silent. After a minute he makes his way down the narrow covered
passage between the house and its neighbour and comes into a rear yard, bare of plants
except for a neglected lawn. He knocks on the back door, then breaks the pane of
one of its small windows and reaches inside to release the lock. He goes inside,
calling out, ‘Hello? Police. Anyone home?' Silence.

Two cups and saucers stand on the draining board, quite dry. He searches the downstairs
rooms and continues upstairs, where he checks the main bedroom—feminine bits and
pieces—then the small bedrooms at the front, dimly lit through the closed venetians.
He is on the point of turning back when something about the blinds catches his eye—there
are no cords to raise or open the blades. He takes a closer look. The bottom strips
are screwed to the windowsills.

On the landing he notices something else not quite right. There's a door in the party
wall between this house and the next. There is a key in the lock, and he turns it
and steps through. This house seems identical to the last, except that there is no
comfortably furnished bedroom—all the upper rooms are filled with steel-framed single
beds, like dormitories. Beyond them there is another door in the next party wall,
locked this time from the other side.

Harry calls Jenny and asks her if she can find out who owns these properties. It
doesn't take her long to ring back.

‘A company called Pretoria Holdings. Sole owner Joost Potgeiter.'

Harry remembers
Kelly's text message.
Potgeiter is the key
. ‘What do we know about Potgeiter? Where
does he live?'

‘I have an address…two actually. He has an apartment in Parramatta, and a property
out near Orchard Hills. And I have several phone numbers.'

Harry notes the addresses and rings the numbers in turn. The landline to the Orchard
Hills property is answered by a man who sounds as if he's been woken from a deep
sleep. ‘Hello? Hello? Who is this?' Harry recognises the vowels and hangs up.

As soon as she gets off the phone Jenny remembers the other thing she had to tell
Harry. Working through another Kristich file that she has managed to open, she has
found more references to payments to ‘Curly', for larger sums this time, tens of
thousands of dollars. She decides to ask the computer for its suggestions, and it
comes up with a list of synonyms and associations. Among them are translations of
the word into other languages. In Italian, the word for curly is
rizzo
. She rings
Harry again but it goes to voicemail, and she leaves him a message.

It's a thirty-five-minute drive. Beyond Orchard Hills the GPS takes him off the bitumen
and onto a dirt road that runs between empty brown paddocks. He reaches the number
painted on a post and turns into a long drive leading to a single-storey house with
verandas and a tin roof. When he stops no dogs bark. A white Holden Caprice is parked
at the front door.

Harry walks around the house, looking through windows. Through one he sees Potgeiter
preparing something in the kitchen, through another an unmade bed, and through a
third a bare mattress on a bed frame with what appear to be straps attached to its
four corners. He peers in more intently, shading his eyes, and sees other things
scattered on the floor. Some clothes, a cane, a thick whip. Harry puts on gloves
and tries the window, which proves to be unlatched. He climbs in. He smells bacon
frying and hears the sound of a radio from the kitchen as he steps among the things
on the floor. The clothes are a woman's. There is dried blood on the braided leather
lash of the whip, and in patches on the mattress, which stinks of body fluids.

‘And who the fuck are you?' The same words that Kristich used when he caught Harry
in his office, spoken now with a broad South African accent. Harry turns to see Potgeiter
standing in the doorway with a shotgun in his hand. He looks tousled, wearing the
T-shirt and boxers he probably slept in. His face clears in recognition, and he
cries out in mock affability, ‘Why, Detective Belltree! How kind of you to call!'

‘I don't think we've met,' Harry says.

‘No, but I know all about you. And about your illustrious black father, of course.'

‘Why? What was he to you?'

‘A bloody nuisance. What are you doing here?'

‘I'm looking for the reporter, Kelly Pool. Do you know where she is?'

‘Aha.' Potgeiter gives a knowing smile and his eyes stray to the bed. ‘Indeed I do,
and I have some further business to conduct with her which you are holding up. So
let's take a little walk. Come along.' He waves the barrel of the gun, and Harry
steps slowly forward.

‘That's the way, nice and easy.' Potgeiter steps back from the door to keep him covered,
but as he reaches it Harry puts out a hand and slams it closed, then drops as the
shotgun booms and shredded plywood sprays across the room. He springs up, runs to
the window and dives through. Races to the front door, reaching it just ahead of
Potgeiter, who bursts out, gun first. Harry grabs the barrel and rams the butt into
his stomach. In a moment he has the gasping man back inside, handcuffed on a wooden
chair. Eyes watering, Potgeiter sucks in air and stares up at Harry.

‘Do you have a warrant, detective? You don't, do you? You are a trespasser, breaking
the law. I had every right to shoot at you.'

‘There are a number of things I want you to tell me,' Harry says. ‘Let's begin with
Kelly Pool. Where is she? What have you done to her?'

‘Go fuck yourself. Oh!' He sees the look on Harry's face, and
gives a crow of satisfaction.
‘Are you going to hit me? Well, go ahead! As much as you like. And when you're finished,
and I've told you nothing, I shall destroy you. How proud your father would have
been of you, threatening a defenceless prisoner.'

Harry draws up a chair facing him. He feels weary. Thinks of the psychologist's piece
of torn paper. ‘What do you know about my father's death?'

‘Does it bother you still, sergeant? Didn't Marco Ganis tell you what you wanted
to know when you broke into his tow-truck yard? You threatened him too, but of course
you didn't really hurt him. I'm not so easily frightened. He told Bebchuk about your
visit, and Bebchuk wasn't best pleased. He was a brute, that Bebchuk.' Potgeiter
chuckles, indulgent. ‘Didn't Ganis' story satisfy you? Bebchuk ran your father's
car off the road.'

‘I want to know who Bebchuk did it for.'

‘Oh, those bikies. They did it for themselves. Your father upset them.'

‘No, I don't believe that.'

‘Really? Then you'd better be very, very careful, Detective Belltree. And you can
start by getting off my property.'

Harry shrugs and gets to his feet. He goes through to the kitchen and starts going
through the drawers. From one he takes a pair of large poultry shears, and from another
a steel mallet with a serrated face for tenderising meat. He returns and sits down
again in front of Potgeiter, who eyes the tools with a sparkle in his eye.

‘Ooh, mister detective, please don't hurt me,' he whimpers, mocking. Then he snarls,
‘You want to do to me what Bebchuk did to your old army mate? I was there, you know.
I watched it all. Are you no better than Bebchuk? I can hear your father and mother
spinning in their graves. No, you won't do it. You won't break my fingers and toes.'

‘I don't think they're the bits you value most,' Harry says, and reaches across to
pull Potgeiter's shorts down to his ankles. He picks
up the shears and rests them
on Potgeiter's thigh. The man flinches, his face grows a little paler, and when he
speaks his confidence is less convincing.