Chapter 47
RUSSELL
I had Bridie drop me off at the back of the pub, marched in and tossed Rob Winter’s car keys at the first constable I encountered.
Told him to go get the vehicle and bring it back.
I could see the burning curiosity in his eyes.
Probably half the town knew by now that a couple of hours earlier I’d carjacked Winter and driven off in a mad hurry.
But he didn’t ask. I found Fry hanging around by the operational marquee, overseeing a guy on a laptop, probably as determined as I was to still linger in the case even though he’d been officially stood down.
I kept well back so he didn’t smell wallaroo on me and held out the camera I’d taken from the back of the drug house.
‘You’re the tech genius,’ I said. ‘Can you get any footage from that?’
‘Probably not,’ he said, before he’d even taken the device from my hand.
I heard years of disappointment in his tone, the tendency for tech never to be as useful to an investigation as fiction would have you believe.
He took it finally, turned it in his hands.
‘I’m not familiar with this brand or model, but most of the time, something like this only works if it’s connected to wi-fi and sending its data to a computer. Do you have the computer?’
‘No.’
‘It might have its own drive.’ He started picking at a compartment into the back of the device. ‘But I doubt it. I’ll give it a crack anyway.’
‘Thanks.’
The constable at the laptop swivelled sharply in his chair at the sound of my thanks, surprised and confused, like I’d just farted aloud. My reputation continued. I started marching away again and stopped when I realised Fry had followed.
‘Something you needed?’ I asked, still keeping out of wallaroo stink range.
‘Ah, listen,’ Fry was still picking at the door to the camera. ‘Last night. In the bush. The panic attack. I don’t usually, uh …’
‘I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Constable Fry,’ I said. ‘I killed a man last night. My recollection of the events beforehand is hazy at best.’
‘Well, I’ll remind you then,’ Fry lifted his gaze to mine, determined. ‘I had a panic attack, and you got me through it, and I’m telling you right now that I don’t usually have those.’
‘At what point did I ask you for an exhaustive breakdown of your medical and psychological history?’
‘None,’ Fry gave an exhausted exhalation at me, at all the rigid dickheads like me he’d obviously encountered before.
‘Just as I thought,’ I nodded. ‘If you’re done, I’ll be off.’
‘You’re going to accept my thanks, Detective.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’
I shook my head, thought about Bridie and my promise, felt vicious words rush up my throat and meet my lips and dissolve before they were spoken. ‘Good,’ I finally blurted. ‘Great. Thanks accepted, Fry. Thanks accepted. You happy now?’
Fry smirked and walked away.
Dodge picked me up at the roadside, and we drove to the Special house. The cockatoos in the gumtrees around the property started screaming their heads off as soon as I stepped out of the car.
Dodge hobbled up the verandah steps, and I waited for him at the door.
He had just learnt from me that there was no physical evidence to speak of in Linda Special’s and Marian Richley’s cases, which, as my brother had pointed out, wasn’t an unusual occurrence for such old cases.
Retired coppers taking home case materials or files as a hobby or a souvenir had been standard practice for many years, as well as boxes being lost to floods or fires, or pilfered from evidence holding by corrupt officers on the request of scumbags.
That was the reason for the tight security at the forensics holding facility today.
Cameras, supervised access to the boxes, sign-ins.
John Special let us in, and I stood there dejectedly in his inner doorway being hysterically shouted at by his daughter’s dog while I tried to get a grip on what to do next.
I noted that what I was experiencing wasn’t just disappointment, but an off-balance feeling I recognised as being tied to this place.
It had started the first time we’d come here.
When the cockatoos started screaming at me.
At me? Yes, I realised: that’s how it felt. But that didn’t make any sense. Why did I think that?
‘You two look like someone’s stolen your last zac,’ John commented, nudging the dog out of the way with a slippered foot. ‘More coffee, I suppose?’
‘That’d be nice,’ Dodge said. To me he murmured, ‘What if we could give them something new?’
I almost laughed. A sad, angry laugh welled up in my throat, at the idea that someone could tamper with or accidentally lose evidence in murders as vicious and callous as this.
At the idea that there was still a chance the killer had left his mark here, on the house, half a century later.
I shook my head again, deliberately tried to knock that purely insane thought out of my skull.
It made no sense. ‘What the hell could we possibly give them, fifty years later?’
‘We could do an exhumation.’ Dodge shrugged. ‘See what’s under her fingernails.’
‘That’ll take a year to get approved, and she’d have been scrubbed clean for redressing and burial.’
‘Uh, Mr Special?’
‘Don’t tell him.’ I grabbed Dodge’s forearm.
‘I’m just thinking’—Dodge nodded, following the old man into the kitchen—‘Do you remember what police took at the time of your wife’s murder? The original investigating officers?’
‘They took a bunch of stuff.’ John shook his head. ‘A doorknob. The broken glass. Bits of the shower drain. Her clothes. Some floorboards.’
‘They lifted up the floor?’ I asked.
‘Yup. Took three sections from the hall there.’ He pointed.
The little dog followed his owner’s finger, sniffed the floor and looked suspiciously at me.
‘Linda was lying right there when she was found. Bled right through the floor. They didn’t exactly know why they were taking the floor, the original guys.
They just felt like it made sense. I think maybe they knew something like DNA was coming, in the future.
They were right. They tested the boards in the mid-eighties. Didn’t get anything, though.’
‘Would they have been looking for his blood?’ Dodge wondered aloud. ‘Did they think he’d probably cut himself while he stabbed her?’
‘More likely sweat,’ I said. ‘Sweaty business, killing someone, in my experience.’ I felt both men staring at me. Scratched my brow to hide my eyes. ‘I don’t mean in my experience of doing it, I mean of working murders.’
‘Although, last ni—’ Dodge started.
‘Shut up, Dodge,’ I finished for him.
I looked at the spot on the floor between me, in the front entryway, and the men in the kitchen. I went there. The dog moved aside for me. Dodge stayed in the kitchen, talking to John. ‘So they replaced those three floorboards, obviously.’
‘Yup.’
I bounced on the floorboards in the hall.
Heard them creak. Had a flash of being under the floor at Stephen Branch’s house, the dirt at my back, pressing upwards with the sole of my boot and hearing those boards groan.
I remembered the boards pulling against their nails.
Dry, steel nails embedded deep in the joists and reluctant to shift.
‘John?’ I called.
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you have a saw?’