The Devil's Garden (2 page)

• About the Author
  
• By the Same Author
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Epigraph
  
• Preface
  
• Part One The Devil's Garden
  
  • Chapter 1
    
  • Chapter 2
    
  • Chapter 3
    
  • Chapter 4
    
  • Chapter 5
    
  • Chapter 6
    
  • Chapter 7
    
  • Chapter 8
    
  • Chapter 9
    
  • Chapter 10
    
  • Chapter 11
    
  • Chapter 12
    
  • Chapter 13
    
  • Chapter 14
    
  • Chapter 15
    
  • Chapter 16
    
  • Chapter 17
    
  • Chapter 18
    
  • Chapter 19
    
  • Chapter 20
    
  • Chapter 21
    
  • Chapter 22
    
  • Chapter 23
    
  • Chapter 24
    
  • Chapter 25
    
  • Chapter 26
    
  • Chapter 27
    
  • Chapter 28
    
  • Chapter 29
    
  • Chapter 30
    
  • Chapter 31
    
  • Chapter 32
    
  • Chapter 33
    
• Part Two: The Dark Harvest
  
  • Chapter 34
    
  • Chapter 35
    
  • Chapter 36
    
  • Chapter 37
    
  • Chapter 38
    
  • Chapter 39
    
  • Chapter 40
    
  • Chapter 41
    
  • Chapter 42
    
  • Chapter 43
    
  • Chapter 44
    
  • Chapter 45
    
  • Chapter 46
    
  • Chapter 47
    
  • Chapter 48
    
  • Chapter 49
    
  • Chapter 50
    
• Part Three The Lonely Lilies
  
  • Chapter 51
    
  • Chapter 52
    
  • Chapter 53
    
  • Chapter 54
    
  • Chapter 55
    
  • Chapter 56
    
  • Chapter 57
    
  • Chapter 58
    
  • Chapter 59
    
  • Chapter 60
    
  • Chapter 61
    
  • Chapter 62
    
  • Chapter 63
    
  • Chapter 64
    
  • Chapter 65
    
  • Chapter 66
    
  • Chapter 67
    
  • Chapter 68
    
  • Chapter 69
    
  • Chapter 70
    
  • Chapter 71
    
  • Chapter 72
    
  • Chapter 73
    
  • Chapter 74
    
  • Chapter 75
    
  • Chapter 76
    
  • Chapter 77
    
  • Chapter 78
    
  • Chapter 79
    
  • Chapter 80
    
  • Chapter 81
    
  • Chapter 82
    
  • Chapter 83
    
  • Chapter 84
    
• Epilogue
  
• UNSOLVED, MISSING OR MURDERED
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Bibliography
  

'God has come into our garden and picked the most
beautiful rose.'
Denis Glennon, in his eulogy to his daughter, Ciara

The taxi driver circles the phone box from where Sarah Spiers had called requesting a cab. That's odd. There is no one here. He checks his watch. 2.06 am. The radioed request had only come in six minutes ago and he had driven straight to the pick-up site at Claremont. It is dark; virtually no street lights illuminate the phone box on the corner of Stirling Highway and Stirling Road. He circles again. There is definitely no one here. It's bloody odd. And bloody annoying. The girl must have changed her mind and got a lift with someone else. He curses to himself: now he will have to take his chances with a random fare from one of the young partygoers leaving the nightclub up the road.

They spill out from Club Bayview into the balmy January night. Girls in short dresses and perilously high heels, flushed from dancing, too much alcohol or party drugs, giggle as they drape themselves around their friends and walk unsteadily up the street. Many are continuing the party from yesterday – Australia Day, 1996 – in the languid first month of the New Year. Claremont, the well-heeled heart of this gentle city where a violet sky winks to ruby sunsets that wash over the Swan River, is home to the ritzy clique; the big end of town where upmarket boutiques with upmarket prices nestle alongside trendy cafés. Perth's wealthy citizens – playboys in sporty BMWs and young women boasting platinum credit cards and solarium tans – shop here during the day and cruise, carefree at night.

Shaped by its status as the most isolated city in the world, Perth is more than remote. Sequestered from Australia's eastern states by time and distance – its closest city, Adelaide, is a three-hour flight – it is bordered by the vast Nullarbor Plain, Simpson Desert and the Indian Ocean. Up north, the Pilbara – a place of blistering heat and ochre rock – churns out vast wealth for mining companies, and the Kimberley, famous for its port town, Broome, and its pearling industry, attracts tourists to its beautiful, rugged coastline.

They party on Bayview Terrace while the rest of Claremont, with old houses built on old money, sleeps. The nearby Stirling Highway is virtually deserted, the odd car heading east toward Perth, ten kilometres away. Perth's aquatic play-ground, the Swan River is inky black in these pre-dawn hours, lapping gently on the shoreline.

Don Spiers started with nothing, leaving school at 14 and working relentlessly to ensure his family never wanted for anything. His daughters, Amanda and Sarah, were educated at a private school, Iona Presbyterian, and stayed close, sharing a flat after they left home. The family lives in an apartment in salubrious South Perth and Don runs a highly successful shearing company in Darkan. It's a tight ship: blokes who apply for a job at his outfit know better than to mess with him. No grog. No drugs. No brawls. Many a time he has stood toe to toe with tough shearers half his age who haven't abided by his rules. 'Get this through your head,' he warns them, 'or you'll come off second best. Either shape up or ship out.' He works the men hard but expects no more from them than what he delivers himself, shearing up to 200 sheep a day. An old man who had lived in Darkan all his 80-odd years paid Don a compliment just before he died. 'I've lived in this district all me life,' he said, 'and I've never seen a man work as hard for his family as you do.' Life in the Spiers household is simple, and happy.

The road is glistening with summer rain. Don stares out the window, struck by a bleak thought. This weather can only hinder any search for his daughter Sarah, who has now been missing for more than 12 hours. The windscreen wipers move rhythmically like a metronome as he flattens the accelerator, barrelling along the country roads on the three-hour drive home to Perth from his shearing contracting business in the rural town of Darkan. His wife, Carol, had left an urgent message with an employee that morning for Don to return her call, immediately. There was panic in her voice. 'Sarah is still not home. You had better come back.'

Don nervously drums his calloused shearer's fingers on the steering wheel. Sarah, their ebullient, affectionate daughter, would never go anywhere without notifying them. Her flatmate and sister, Amanda, two years older than Sarah, is distraught. Sarah hasn't contacted her since she went out to Claremont with friends on Saturday night. It is completely out of character: extremely close, the sisters have not had one fight in their life. Sarah was in fabulous spirits, excitedly planning Amanda's forthcoming twenty-first birthday party before she went out. Amanda had dropped Sarah at a Cottesloe hotel before she took her to Club Bayview around 12.15 am. The area was teeming with young people, celebrating the Australia Day long weekend.

Amanda peeked into Sarah's room on Sunday morning and noticed her bed had not been slept in. 'Sarah hasn't come home,' she tells her mother. 'She doesn't love me!' It is said tongue-in-cheek. Sarah adores her, she knows.

Her bed remains empty on Sunday night. Don churns through the possibilities of where she might be as the car swallows up the kilometres on his way home. Did she impulsively decide to go for a trip to the country? She hasn't got a mobile phone; has she lost her purse and can't call home? Has she been assaulted and is too ashamed to show her face? She has no boyfriend; has she met a bloke and is simply preoccupied?

Sarah. A Hebrew name meaning 'princess', Sarah is responsible and loving, virtually running the household, doting on her family, cooking meals for them even after she had moved out. She was, Don recalls, a giver not a taker. On weekends, she would snuggle up with him and watch the footy, cheering on their team. It bonded them closely but now raw fear binds the family in a vice. Where the hell is she?

The police arrive, cognisant of the family's grief but wary, too. All too frequently, the perpetrator of a crime is a person close to the family, or a family member. Don is quizzed closely but ruled out. He was nowhere near Perth the night his daughter went missing. They run through the normal questions. Could she have run away with a boyfriend? Was she suicidal? Did she have enemies? Any problems at home or work? They draw blanks at every turn.

The investigation falls under the command of the Major Crime Squad. Sergeant Mal Shervill is the case officer. By Sunday, police have all the relevant details. Name. Age. Last seen by friends leaving Club Bayview. Last call made from a phone box near the corner of Stirling Highway and Stirling Road to a taxi company. Sarah Spiers is now, officially, a missing person. The family mounts a 24-hour vigil, monitoring the phone at all times, snatching to answer it as soon as it rings. An army of volunteers distributes her photograph on 35,000 posters around the city. 'Have you seen this girl? She is 18 years old. A secretary for an engineering consultancy. She disappeared from a roadside telephone box in Claremont. Have you seen her?' Up to 35 people a night, roaming the streets of Perth, endlessly asking questions.

Post
newspaper proprietor and journalist Bret Christian recalls that time. 'What is often forgotten is that Sarah Spiers was treated as simply a missing person for two weeks. Her friends, family and journalists worked bloody hard to prove that she hadn't just simply taken off somewhere. It's a major problem in investigations; until police realised she wasn't going to turn up, it wasn't prioritised.'

The Spiers family is appointed a liaison officer with whom they can direct concerns or information and who helps bear the burden of their grief. The responsibility falls to OLC of Major Crime Paul Coombes, who walks the tightrope between the family and the media, 'When a body is located, we immediately contact the family,'. 'But sometimes the reporters get to them first.' One journalist rings Don Spiers informing him that a female body has been found in the bush. Not knowing if it is Sarah or not, he is devastated until he speaks to Coombes. 'Police had already briefed the media off-the-record that they knew it wasn't Sarah,' he says. 'That irresponsible search for the big headline didn't help anyone in those early days.'

The phone jangles in the darkness. Don Spiers, instantly awake, snatches it from its cradle, magnetised by the voice on the other end. That voice: smooth, precise, confident. He quickly hauls himself up on the pillow.

'Is that Mr Spiers?'

'Yes.'

'Mr Don Spiers?'

'Yes.'

'You are Sarah's father?'

'Yes.'

'Sarah's dead, and her body is at Gnangara Pine Plantation.'

The caller hangs up.

Don replaces the phone on the hook, lying in the darkness trembling and distressed. He glances at the clock. Just after 2 am. He has not recognised the male caller's voice, but he would know it again, instantly. Educated. Modulated. So confident. He has slept only fitfully for weeks, from that terrible moment when he was told Sarah went missing. He knew then, with a father's instinct, that something was horribly wrong.

Gnangara Pine Plantation: more than five-and-a-half thousand hectares of inhospitable, desolate scrub. A grave-yard for stolen cars, wrecked and dumped. A place of stunning fauna and birds, and of ticks and snakes and spiders. A place of winds and shadows and impenetrable parts. Don wills the male caller to ring again. To clarify information. To tell him all he knows. To be specific about her whereabouts.
Ring back. Ring back. Please, ring back
.

Sarah's disappearance tips the family's axis. But they can't know, in those early days, just how bad it will get.

The police will theorise that Sarah was abducted within two minutes of making the phone call for a taxi – the amount of time it takes for a cab to travel from nearby Eric Street, Cottes-loe, where the taxi logged the job-call. But when the scene is checked in a re-enactment scenario at the same time of night as the phone call was made, the police discover that the caller could barely be seen from the roadway, if at all. This raises a disquieting, though distinct possibility: that Sarah could have been in the vicinity of the phone box for a lot longer than just two minutes, and that her presence was simply missed by the taxi driver. The taxi drives away; someone else pulls up.

But who? Some taxi drivers come forward with leads on people they have had in their cab. One is Steven Ross. An unsophisticated, slovenly man whose vehicles are notoriously untidy, in 1996 Ross volunteered to police that he had picked up Sarah Spiers in his taxi the night before she disappeared. In the taxi was another woman, who was dropped off in the next suburb and a man – apparently unknown to Sarah – who had indicated he wanted to go to the city. Sarah got out of the cab, Ross said, at the hip Windsor Hotel in South Perth, close to where she lived. The man, having changed his mind about going to the city, paid the fare, unceremoniously pushed her out of the taxi and followed her. Ross forwarded his theory to police that the following night, the man had returned to Claremont, found Sarah Spiers and murdered her.

Ross was not unknown to police. In the early 90s his partner, a former Austrian beauty queen, housebound after being severely injured in an accident, died. Ross inherited her property and during the police investigation into her death was extensively questioned until it was proven she died of natural causes.