Violent Exposure (34 page)

‘I don’t know that name.’

Dennis took out his mobile and dialled.

‘You can’t use that in here,’ Locke said.

‘It’s just for a second,’ Ella said.

Dennis
listened, said, ‘Here he is,’ and handed the phone to Locke.

Locke put it to his ear without a word. Ella couldn’t hear Ryan Dawson’s voice but knew he was offering a mixed deal: keep your job, keep your place in the PI training course – conveniently run by another ex-cop and friend of Dawson’s – help the detectives. All or none.

Locke looked at the floor. ‘Yes,’ he said into the phone. ‘I understand.’

He handed the phone back to Dennis, who said ‘Thanks’ into it then hung up.

‘So,’ Ella said.

‘Yes, I met her. Yes, I was helping her.’

‘What did she want to know?’

‘In a nutshell, who her husband really was. But I had nothing to do with what he did. If I told her something and she said it to him and it made him go crazy, that’s on him, not me.’

‘How did she find you?’

‘How is that relevant?’

Ella started to steam. ‘This is a murder investigation. Everything is relevant if we say it is.’ She was agonisingly aware of the time. The doctor could turn up at any second and boot them out. ‘How did she find you?’

‘A friend recommended me.’

‘Your friend’s name?’

‘Look,’ Locke said. ‘He’s actually the one who’s paying my fee, so technically he’s my client, and I’m honour-bound to keep his
name confidential.’

‘Paying,’ Ella said. ‘Not paid.’

‘That’s right.’

She smiled. ‘You think you’re going to get any more money out of him now?’

‘We drew up a contract.’

She looked at Dennis. ‘They drew up a contract.’

‘It’s all legal,’ Locke said. ‘If he doesn’t pay, I can take him to court. If I divulge information, he can take me.’

Ella said, ‘If he’s involved in a homicide we’ll be the
ones taking him to court, and the way you’re behaving there’s a good chance you’ll be coming too.’

Dennis loomed over him. ‘What is his name?’

Locke went silent.

‘I’m sick of this,’ Ella said to Dennis. ‘Let’s just arrest him for obstruction. It won’t be hard to get it to stick, and then he’ll have a record and will never get work in security or investigations again.’

Dennis’s mobile rang.
He answered, listened, said ‘Thanks’, and then hung up. ‘Who rang your house five days ago at three in the afternoon?’

‘How should I know?’

‘You talked for five minutes.’

‘Telemarketer.’

‘On a stolen mobile that once belonged to a Streetlights boy?’

Locke didn’t ask what Streetlights was. He plucked at the edge of the blanket. Ella clenched her fists and threw a glance at the door. The doctor
must’ve got tied up. She hoped he stayed that way for just a little longer. ‘Who was it?’ Dennis said. ‘You are in potentially serious trouble here.’

Locke sagged down in the bed. ‘His name’s John Oberon.’

Ella’s back prickled.

‘What did he say?’ Dennis asked.

‘I have to go back a while first,’ Locke said. ‘I know John from the gym. He knew I was training to be a PI and about a month ago he
asked me to do a job for him. He said it was a bit different: he had this friend who needed help but she was proud and so I couldn’t say he’d sent me. He told me about her nursery, so I went there and started chatting and just had to work into the conversation that I was a PI.’

‘In training,’ Ella cut in.

He shrugged. ‘She didn’t ask. She just latched on, said maybe I could help her.’

He paused
for a sip of water. Ella wanted to smack the cup out of his hand. ‘Then what?’

‘I was supposed to tell her I’d find some stuff out, then come back and feed her little bits of information that John gave me. But she wanted to come along. Said he was her husband, she was entitled to know as soon as I did. I tried to tell her my sources of information were confidential but somehow she kind of blustered
me and I ended up saying okay.’ He looked embarrassed.

What a gutless wonder. No wonder he couldn’t get into the job.

Locke said, ‘John wasn’t happy but told me whatever I did I couldn’t mention his name.’

‘You didn’t think that was strange?’ Dennis said.

‘He was paying my bill, so I did what I was told,’ Locke said. ‘I stalled as long as I could, a week or so, trying to work out how to do
it, then I took her to this internet cafe in the city. She asked didn’t I have an office and I had to say it was being refitted and my broadband cable had been damaged during the work. In the cafe I told her to sit at a different terminal and look busy; I said it was necessary, in case somebody saw us together there, but really I couldn’t have her look over my shoulder. We haven’t done the computer
bit of the course yet so I was just typing random stuff.’

‘She swallowed all those lies?’ Dennis asked.

‘She seemed desperate,’ Locke said. ‘She seemed like she’d do and believe anything if I would just give her some information.’

‘Right,’ Ella said.

He glared at her. ‘I’m not proud of this, you know. I thought it would help me with my career. First job under my belt and all that. I thought
it would help her too, because John said he knew facts, so I figured she’d get them in the end.’

‘So kind of you,’ Ella said. ‘What facts?’

‘Hey, I paid for it,’ Locke said. ‘I felt so bad and nervous that she would come over and see what I was doing that I got chest pain. I shut down the browser and told her I had to go to hospital. She insisted on coming with me, asking all the way in the
taxi about what I’d found. I said I’d only found out one thing before the pain came on, but she didn’t seem to believe me, she kept at me and at me, even in the hospital itself, told them she was my cousin so she could stay with me.’

He seemed almost shocked at her lying. Ella had to bite her tongue in an effort not to shout at him.

‘She kept ringing me up after that, wanting more information,’
Locke said. ‘I left a heap of messages for John, saying what should I do? He finally got back to me five days ago and said not to speak to her for a while, not to answer her calls if she rang. I didn’t think that was right, but he said he’d still pay me.’

‘That made it all better, huh?’ Dennis said.

‘As I said before, he was my client, not her.’

Ella had so much to say, and at such volume,
but she made a big effort and kept her voice restrained. ‘What did you pretend to have found on the internet?’

‘Her husband’s first name,’ Locke said. ‘John told me to tell her his real name was Robert.’

E
lla put Detective Peter Hepburn on loudspeaker as they drove. He read out Oberon’s address and phone number in Unwins Bridge Road, Sydenham. ‘He drives a maroon Ford Falcon, plate UEG 714. The car matches the description of one seen near Emil’s body-dump site.’

Ella scribbled down the details.

‘What else do we know?’ Dennis asked.

‘No criminal record,’ Hepburn said. Ella could hear
his fingers on the keyboard. ‘No traffic fines.’ Hepburn typed some more then said, ‘That’s it. We’ll dig deeper and get started on the warrant too.’

Ella said, ‘Is there anything on the name Robert Oberon?’

More typing. ‘Nothing.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Can you search those fire records for that surname?’

‘It’ll take a little while,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you back.’ There was a murmur in
the background. ‘Daniel says to tell you that last text from Emil was to Aaron Maguire’s stolen phone.’

‘Somehow I’m not surprised,’ Ella said. ‘Thanks.’ She ended the call and looked at Dennis. They were meeting other detectives near Oberon’s address. Once they saw his house, they would decide on their plan.

‘Call his phone,’ Dennis said now.

She dialled Oberon’s number, ready to fake a wrong-number
call if he answered. But the phone rang out.

‘Have you got Maguire’s number there?’

She called Hepburn back and scribbled it down, then rang it. ‘It’s turned off and the voicemail’s full.’

‘So Oberon sent Locke to tell Suzanne that Connor’s first name is Robert,’ Dennis said. ‘Why?’

‘Go back a step,’ Ella said. ‘Is it his real name or not? If it’s not, how could Oberon know that Suzanne was
trying to find out Connor’s real identity?’

‘Maybe they got talking at Streetlights.’

‘Seems extreme that he might make something up and send someone to tell her.’

‘Only as extreme as the notion that Oberon knows who Connor really is and sent someone to tell her the truth,’ Dennis said. ‘Either way we come back to why.’

Ella frowned out the window. The spring sunshine was bright.

Dennis said,
‘Are you thinking he’s involved in the murders?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘If he knows who Connor really is, he could have any sort of motive.’

‘Why kill Suzanne, then? And how did Emil get involved?’

Dennis tapped his fingers on the wheel. ‘Maybe it’s not as logical as we’re expecting it to be.’

‘Random killings?’

‘Not random, but not sensible either.’

‘We’ve met him,’ Ella said.
‘He didn’t seem crazy then.’

‘“Seem” being the key word there.’

He drove a little faster and grinned across at her, and she felt the nervous thrill of anticipation charge up her spine.

*

Oberon’s house was on a corner with a laneway at the back. The detectives drove past at intervals then parked well down the sunlit street to confer.

‘We’ll take the front,’ Ella said. ‘Daniel and Laurel,
you stay on the side fence. Steve, Bianca, David and Michael, you lot are on the back.’

‘Watch for him legging it via the neighbours’,’ Dennis added. ‘Anyone see his car parked along the street?’

They’d all looked, but it wasn’t there. Michael had peeked over the back fence from the laneway too, but the carport was empty.

Ella called Oberon’s home number again but it still rang out. She put
the phone away. ‘Okay. Let’s find this guy.’

The front of the house was shielded from the street by shrubby trees. The house was old, and white paint peeled from the verandah posts and doorframe. The windows were closed and barred. Ella stepped onto the cracked tiles of the verandah floor, flexed her fingers for a moment, then knocked on the locked steel grille door.

No answer.

Dennis glanced
down the side of the house to the other detectives and shook his head.

Ella clenched her fist and pounded on the grille.

Still nothing. Dennis shook his head again.

‘How long till we get that warrant?’ Ella said.

‘Probably at least a couple of hours.’

She nodded towards the back of the house. ‘Don’t suppose they can hear anyone calling for help?’

Dennis smiled at her. ‘We’re going to have
to wait.’

They were putting detectives in place to watch the house when Hepburn rang.

‘First up,’ he said, ‘I called Streetlights and got a mobile number for Oberon.’ He recited the number and Ella jotted it down. ‘I’ve tried it but it’s turned off. Second thing is that we found the fire.’

‘Hang on.’ She put the phone on loudspeaker so the others could hear.

‘It happened in 1984 near a tiny
town called Narrepin in south-western WA,’ Hepburn said. ‘A house and shed burned to the ground one night. It didn’t come up in our searches because we were looking for dead parents and a surviving son. Here, a woman and her seven-year-old twin girls and fourteen-year-old son were believed to have been killed. Fire investigations being what they were at that time and in that area, plus the added
complication of some sort of bulk farm chemical being involved too and resulting in a hotter than usual fire, meant that they weren’t ever completely sure, though. That’s what the husband, father of the twins and stepfather of the boy insisted anyway.’ The phone crackled. ‘He’d been away on business and came home to find everything destroyed. He was a suspect for a while. He had work-related money
problems in his building and renovation business, and investigators thought it might have been an insurance job gone wrong because the wife and kids were meant to be away on holidays but had come home early without telling him. He was interviewed repeatedly but never charged, and always claimed the boy had done it and cleared off but there was never any trace found of him. Secondary issue was that
they were in severe drought so there was no way to see tracks if he had run away. Stepdad’s name was John Oberon,’ he finished. ‘Boy’s was Robert Mailer.’

‘The age is right,’ Ella said. ‘Connor said he was born in 1970.’

‘So,’ Dennis said slowly, ‘Oberon’s tracked him down after all these years and is getting his revenge?’

‘That birthmark sounded pretty distinctive,’ Bianca said. ‘Maybe Oberon
saw it by chance. They might’ve encountered each other through Streetlights.’

‘But wouldn’t Connor have recognised Oberon too?’ Steve said. ‘Either his face or his name?’

‘There was a photo in the newspaper archive,’ Hepburn said. ‘Oberon was one fat bastard back then.’

‘He’s certainly not now,’ Ella said, thinking of Oberon’s lankiness when they’d spoken to him at the church hall. ‘And it
was mostly Suzanne who was involved with the group. Angie and even the kids mostly said they’d met Connor once and that was about it. There’s a chance that Connor was just removed enough that he didn’t hear Oberon’s name and maybe never even really met him.’

‘So what happened that night?’ Hepburn said. ‘How did Emil come to be there?’

Ella said, ‘Emil told Gus Bielecki he was going to see the
girl or woman that he liked to try to talk to her. Might Gus have let that slip to Oberon? And Oberon made use of it?’

‘If Oberon has Aaron Maguire’s phone he could’ve called Emil on it that afternoon,’ Bianca said. ‘Offering some grownup advice perhaps?’

‘Or moral support, or a lift?’

‘But afterwards he took the Crawfords’ car. So did he drive his there or not?’

‘I’ll get onto the taxis,’
Hepburn said on the phone.

‘What family does he have?’ Ella asked.

‘Nothing showing here,’ Hepburn said.