Chapter Eighteen #3
Whether Palmer found out because he’d followed his wife, or because Declan Harrison was a stupid prick, what happened next was not in dispute.
That evening at nine p.m. Anita had tried to phone her parents in France.
Her mother answered the call but it was immediately cut off.
The following day, Anita’s battered, broken body was found on the beach.
Her two girls, one aged twelve, the other eight, were sitting in the sand beside her, holding hands.
Charlie Palmer’s body was found lying on the kitchen floor with a shotgun blast to the side of the head.
He’d tried and failed to kill himself. He’d survived and healed well enough to go to trial, to be convicted of Anita’s murder and sent to prison, but he’d died a year later from complications from his injury.
In the aftermath of Anita’s death, there’d been an investigation into her allegations about the disappearances of Susie Deacon and Bianca Rossi, but a search of Palmer’s house revealed nothing untoward.
A prolonged police investigation identified three other young women who had, at one time, taken Palmer’s surf course, and had later gone missing, but no trace of the women was ever found, and no evidence was uncovered to prove that Palmer had had anything to do with their probable deaths.
He had, predictably enough, denied everything.
Still, it was widely suspected that Charlie Palmer had killed five young women and disposed of their bodies, probably at sea.
And when Anita had reported him to the police, he’d killed her too.
Judith went down a rabbit hole. She read every article she could find—and there were many—describing the events of the eighth of June, 2007, and their aftermath.
She searched for references to the daughters Anita had left behind, and found only the same rehashed information.
The girls had gone to the local primary school.
They’d been well-liked. The older girl had been a great surfer.
She’d won an under-fourteens competition in 2005, and placed second in 2006.
Charlie Palmer’s mother was dead, and his father was a hard-drinking labourer who worked in north Queensland.
Anita’s parents lived in Lille, in France.
Anita also had an older brother, Bernard, and a sister, Francine, but it seemed that none of them had wanted Anita’s daughters, because reporting made it clear that the girls had disappeared into the foster system.
Two girls. Of course they would have been renamed, and certainly their files would have been locked down.
Surely this wasn’t a coincidence. The Palmer girls must have entered the foster system and become Miriam and Ruth Hall.
Or maybe she was just tired. Maybe she’d been drawn in by the tragedy of the story, and was giving too much weight to what was, after all, only a theory.
Judith closed the laptop. She closed her eyes.
It was late. Too late. She should have been asleep an hour ago.
Tiredness pulled at her, dragging her down.
She should go to bed, but she didn’t want to bring all of the horror into her bedroom.
She put her empty beer bottle on the coffee table and lay down, adjusting the blanket so that it covered more of her body.
The heating was off, and the temperature was dropping.
Judith stared up at the ceiling. She couldn’t stop thinking about the lost years.
Anita had been married to Palmer for over twelve years.
He’d hit her, certainly, had killed her in the end, and very probably murdered five other women.
What had it been like to live with him for all of that time?
How much had Anita known? What had her daughters seen?
Five women had disappeared, and no one had ever linked them, let alone suspected Palmer, until Anita had come forward.
Why? He must have been helped by the fact that the women were travelling alone in a foreign country, that there was confusion about when and where they’d each disappeared.
People had had mobile phones in 2007—they were nearly ubiquitous even then—but they hadn’t had anything like the features they did today, that made tracking so much easier.
That was no excuse. Palmer should have been arrested years before Anita went to the police.
Surely the disappearance of five women over eight years should have prompted the creation of a task force.
Connections between them should have been found, including the fact that all five had stayed in the same hostel, that all five had learned to surf with Palmer.
It was maddening that instead nothing at all had been done, and that, even when Anita came forward, no one had seen the obvious danger she was in. No one had taken steps to protect her.
It took Judith a long time to fall asleep.
She thought about Anita and her daughters and Palmer’s horrendous crimes, but her last thoughts were of the lost women, still lost, their bodies never found.
Palmer had access to a boat. He’d likely taken them far out to sea and sunk their bodies deep into the dark ocean.
The fact that he’d taken his own life, and left no answers behind for the families of those he’d killed, seemed to her like a final, painful injury.