The Silent Inheritance (16 page)

There was more. They’d spoken to the farmer and his wife. They’d printed a description of the tattooed Islander and his big knife, had suggested that the carjacking may not have been a random attack. They’d rehashed Freddy’s recent loss of the Swan case, had mentioned Swan’s known addiction to ice – which could also have repercussions. Freddy was currently appealing Swan’s conviction.

Wanted to hide from Monday morning. His burying of that girl’s body haunted him, as did the knowledge that bodies were usually found – most of them were – sooner or later.

He knew the burnt-out shell of Cheryl’s Commodore would be found. He was an arsonist now as well as a murderer. He’d set fire to the forest out behind Heathcote. It hadn’t burnt much, may not have burnt enough – the front seats had been soaked – and whether it had or not, the engine block wouldn’t have burnt, and each one was numbered. Given time, that Commodore would be traced to Cheryl Anne Adam-Jones. However, given the minimum of luck, that car wouldn’t be connected to the body of the girl.

Had to keep going, keep doing what he had to do. He had to keep playing the injured party. His appearance helped, his limp, swollen face, his aching muscles and protesting sinews.

*

He’d caught a taxi to the office. Smyth paid the fare then gave him a handful of notes from petty cash. Freddy’s refusal to discuss the trauma of his weekend earned him a smidgen of respect from the newshounds and maybe the judge, who asked him twice if he wished to continue, and Freddy nodded, aware he was getting the jury’s sympathy vote. Then the judge went and dismissed them early.

Rolland had been in touch. He preferred the less personal text to voicemail, and neither text expressed remorse or concern for his father’s health. Rolland’s concern was for the health of his malfunctioning bank card.

On his sixteenth birthday, Freddy had given him access to the family everyday account – limited access. He’d been allowed to withdraw up to four hundred dollars per month, Freddy’s means of teaching that boy the art of money management. Apparently, he’d used his allowance to set himself up in the marijuana business.

Freddy replied to him via text.

Will be home by five. Will speak then.

Lack of funds or the need to charge his mobile drove Rolland home at seven thirty. No greeting, a grunted reply to Freddy, but he plugged his mobile into the charger, opened the freezer, ripped his way into a packet of frozen meat pies and placed two, unwrapped, into the microwave before setting it humming. A search of the refrigerator revealed no can of Coke, nor would it until his mother returned.

‘Where have you been?’

‘What’s it to you?’

Not a lot, Freddy thought, then shuddered and thought of the parents of that girl who hadn’t come home on Friday night.

‘Where have you been sleeping?’

‘As if you care.’

He hadn’t slept at home. Rolland left behind mute evidence of his every passing.

Children are born into love, Freddy thought, but as with a fine pair of shoes, love pinches, then wears out. Freddy’s pinching shoes were in the green bin. He was barefoot tonight. Born with faulty feet, or feet made faulty by hand-me-down shoes, for the greater part of his adult life he’d suffered the agony of ingrown toenails. Since his walk through the bush, both big toes were preparing to explode. He needed an appointment with his podiatrist and Cheryl wasn’t at home to make it.

The microwave beeped – too soon to have heated those pies through. Freddy considered advising that boy, but a poorly heated meat pie wouldn’t be the worst he’d put into his gut.

He had the sort of looks that might take him a long way, and was already three inches taller than his father. He might have had a brain had he sat still long enough to find it.

Watched him search the pantry for the tomato sauce dispenser. Watched him find it, squeeze, and when nothing came out, pitch it towards the garbage bag in the corner, then return to the pantry for a two-litre bottle of sauce. Plenty in it. It came out fast to drown his pies. He picked up the plate, relieved it of one pie, bit, spilling pie and sauce as he left the kitchen.

Like blood on the floor.

And the phone rang. It jarred Freddy’s mind back to the moment. He was reaching for it when Rolland materialised behind him and snatched it.

‘A customer?’ Freddy asked.

Not a customer. The snarling youth’s demeanour altered as he began his mother manipulation. Freddy had witnessed it before.

‘Mine isn’t either,’ Rolland, his son, said. ‘He won’t tell me.’ He listened a moment, then slid the phone along the granite bench. Freddy caught it before it fell overboard.

‘What’s happening with our cards, Freddy?’ Cheryl asked. Banks, known thieves, were apparently efficient thieves. The repercussions of the cancelled cards had reached Bali – or Thailand.

‘I had to cancel the lot,’ Freddy said.

‘Why would you do a thing like that with me stuck over here?’

He had to lie to her. It didn’t come as easily as it had to the police and farmers. ‘I was carjacked,’ he said. ‘They took everything.’

‘I told you when you bought that car that flaunting your money around was asking for trouble,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I was in your Commodore,’ he said. ‘Five wouldn’t have fit into the Ferrari.’

‘Five?’

‘Islanders.’

‘Where were you going on a Saturday night?’

‘I was looking for your son,’ he said.

‘Were you harmed?’

‘I was in the boot for hours, trying to kick my way out. My feet need an appointment with the podiatrist.’

‘I wrote his number down on that pad I left beside the phone,’ she said, then got down to business. ‘I’ve got around twenty Australian dollars on me, Freddy.’

‘I thought your tour was all inclusive?’

‘All inclusive doesn’t cover everything. Did you give them our PIN?’

‘I told them my wife knew it, but was currently in Thailand.’

‘Bali,’ she said. ‘I left you a copy of my itinerary beside the phone.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘We fly out late on Thursday night – and I can’t manage for a day on twenty dollars.’

‘The locals manage on less,’ he said.

‘I’m not a local. I’ll have to borrow from one of the girls, I suppose. What’s the matter with Rolly? He sounded upset when he answered the phone.’

‘He missed school today,’ Freddy said, and offered the phone to her Rolly, who had his hands full, helping himself to ice-cream from the container. ‘Your mother wants to know why you missed school, Rolland.’

O
n Tuesday, in their own individual styles, two of Melbourne’s newspapers featured an identical school photograph of Lisa Simms, missing from her home since Friday night. Their headlines were similar.

The second headline made no mention of her age.

Her colouring was similar to that of Monica Rowan, who too had left her friend’s house on a Friday evening. There were similarities enough for many readers to relate Lisa’s disappearance to the abduction of Monica. To those who looked deeper, there were none.

Lisa Simms wasn’t fifteen. She was seventeen, and her employer’s description didn’t match the schoolgirl image in the papers. He described Lisa as a well-developed, independent sort of girl. The killer took immature girls.

It was Lisa’s employer who’d raised the alarm when his previously reliable employee, after failing to arrive for her Saturday shift, left him in the lurch again on Monday. He’d called her mobile half a dozen times before her boyfriend picked it up and told him that he didn’t give a fuck where Lisa was, that she’d pissed off with someone called Liam on Friday night and forgotten to take her phone.

Her parents had been located, one in Frankston, one in Canberra. Neither had been in contact with Lisa in weeks. Her housemates hadn’t seen her since she’d left for work on Friday morning.

Seventeen-year-old girls may take off with a new love, but they don’t forget to take their mobiles. Seventeen-year-old girls can’t live an hour without their mobiles. Ross smelled foul play, though not the child killer. He was waiting now for the boyfriend to be brought in. To date he’d been uncooperative. Running the gauntlet of a bunch of newspaper and television reporters could loosen the tongues of the innocent.

Danni Lane’s disappearance had been given no space in either newspaper. Casualties of matrimonial warfare didn’t sell papers. Until Captain William Daws, ex-army, Danni’s grandfather, contacted Inspector Johnson on Monday afternoon, Danni had been considered such a casualty.

‘Take no notice of my daughter’s nonsense about a previous kidnap attempt. She used the uncle’s boating mishap as a weapon in a prolonged and acrimonious custody dispute,’ he’d said.

He’d told Johnson that Martin Lane was on a boat due to dock at Townsville sometime on Tuesday afternoon. He said he’d been in touch with the agent who handled the Lane brothers’ fishing tour bookings. Ross had contacted them since, and according to the agent’s records, the Lane brothers had sailed on Friday afternoon with half a dozen American tourists on board, three of whom had planes to catch at six thirty this evening.

William Daws was en route from Sydney, estimated time of arrival thirteen hundred hours – one o’clock.

Too much, and nothing happening right now. Ross was waiting to talk to Lisa’s boyfriend, waiting for Captain William Daws to arrive, and filling time spinning through security videos, sifting that ocean of mud for a grain of gold, his eyes and mind disconnected.

Or maybe not. A neuron sparked on something. The tape had moved on before he got his sight and brain connected. He spun it back, seeking the place where that neuron had sparked. He was playing it forward on slow speed when he caught the edge of a schoolgirl who could have been Danni, in a car park, carrying a shopping bag.

He stilled the shot, demanding it say more than it did. He moved it forward, and he lost her, moved it back and she disappeared, but not before he glimpsed the swish of that overly long white-blonde ponytail.

He was about to call someone over to verify what he was seeing when a kid constable with a baby face and an unpronounceable name approached.

‘The boyfriend’s here, sir, with his parents and a lawyer.’

‘Take a squiz at the girl,’ Ross said. ‘Danni?’

‘Could be. Got any more of her?’

‘That’s it,’ Ross said.

It wasn’t much, an edge of uniform, a bunch of hair, slim neck, slim leg and an environmentally friendly shopping bag. That bag wasn’t right. Danni had been carrying a schoolbag in the upstairs shots.

‘Meeting her father down there maybe?’ the kid said.

It was possible. The brother could have sailed alone with his tourists. Martin Lane could have flown down and flown her back before her mother reported her missing. Captain William Daws could have been wrong, but, according to Johnson, he wouldn’t like being told so.

They spun the video forward and back, looking for Martin Lane but seeing little more than an elderly couple walking hand in hand towards the entrance and an elderly female toddling away from the entrance, not far behind the schoolgirl.

‘Has Martin Lane got a mother?’ the kid asked.

‘Dead,’ Ross said. ‘That woman’s carrying a similar shopping bag.’

‘They’re two a penny, sir. Mum’s got dozens of them – forgets to take them with her and buys another one.’

The security camera had picked up a good shot of the elderly woman and her walking stick; she wasn’t dressed for Friday’s weather, was wearing a pleated plaid skirt and a long dark cardigan.

‘Friday was as hot as hell,’ Ross said.

‘That storm was forecast. If she’d taken her cardi off she’d have had to carry it, sir, and she looks as if she’s having trouble enough carrying herself,’ the kid said, then stared at Ross who’d grabbed a bunch of tissues to sneeze into. He followed it with two more explosions before blowing the irritation from his sinuses and looking back to the screen, where that girl was beginning to look more like Danni.

If it was her, she’d got that bag from someone. They had a clear shot of her at the supermarket checkout loading items into her schoolbag. In the upstairs shot, she had that bag over her shoulder. Could have been carrying it over the shoulder that was out of frame. The time on the tape told them that shot was taken nine minutes after the upstairs shot, and in the western underground car park, which was at the opposite end of that centre. A man could walk a long way in nine minutes. A kid in a hurry would do it faster.

‘Her mother will know if it’s her or not. Get her in here,’ Ross said.

‘She doesn’t like our decor, sir.’

Ross didn’t like Barbara Lane’s decor. It had got up his sinuses, or her air freshener had – or she had. She’d told him he stank of cigarettes, that she was allergic to the smell of stale nicotine and would prefer to speak to a non-smoking officer.

Ross’s youngest sister didn’t like his smell.

‘Johnson’s waiting, sir – and the boyfriend,’ the kid reminded.

Ross killed the video and got to his feet, staring for a moment at the controlled chaos of desks, computers, whiteboard, filing cabinets and bodies, sitting, leaning, walking, talking. A dog’s breakfast, his sister would have named it. She kept a tidy, sweet-scented house. He had dinner there once a month – usually – was supposed to have eaten there last Sunday – hadn’t.