Drainland (Tunnel Island Book 1) Page 6

  11

  Friday, September 3, 2004

  Chandler came straight from the boat, no uniform. He took one look at the bodies and started drawing short little breaths. “What the hell, Romano?”

  “They were over there.” Romano pointed to the bed. She knelt down by the male victim. “Then the ambos dragged them over here and—”

  “I can see that. She OD’d. He shot himself. Case closed. You know, people OD and shoot themselves over here all the time. It’s a fucking island pastime. Just let hotel security clean it up.”

  Romano carefully levered the male’s head up with a pen. “Do they actually train you to be a policeman up here, or do they just give you guys a uniform and a slap on the ass?”

  “Have a nice day playing detective. I have better things to do.” He started off.

  “I need you to talk to security and get whatever footage they have on hand. They won’t talk to me. And I need someone checking plates going in and out of the car park.”

  “Oh, no problem,” he said.

  “Chandler?”

  He laughed. “Go fuck yourself.”

  The door slammed.

  Romano turned her flashlight on the body. The man’s head didn’t look right at the back. It was crumpled almost. She poked around with her pen and found blood. It wasn’t an exit wound—the angles were wrong—but it could be spatter. His left hand was swollen as well. That would have been his shooting hand.

  The girl had nothing interesting about her. No bruises. No blood. Her clothes were loosened, but that could have been from a failed resuscitation.

  Romano got to work breaking the scene down. She noted and photographed. She swept and documented for the incoming detectives. She placed Post-it notes by anything that looked interesting. The room was full of them, but it didn’t add up to much.

  There was no gun.

  It was not uncommon for the weapon to get moved. Security, the medics, the cleaners. People see a gun and they put it out of harm’s way, but it should have been here.

  There was no ID. No wallet or purse. No passports.

  Very few personal effects.

  Something was missing.

  The place was empty.

  Denny radioed in: “I’m done here. It’s just Rosie now. She wants to go home.”

  Romano checked her watch. Four-forty.

  “I’m still next door. I haven’t heard back from Brisbane yet. Give me a minute.”

  Romano tried State Crime again. The desk punched her through to Homicide, where a woman answered with a quick “Yep.”

  “This is Constable Laura Romano, calling from Point Hallahan Police. I’m just following up a call I logged this morning, ’round seven AM. I’m standing here in a crime scene and I’m, what, ten hours in and I’ve got no one. No forensics, none of your lot, nothing. What’s the hold-up here?”

  “We generally don’t service—”

  “Sorry, who am I on with?”

  “Detective Sergeant Smith.”

  “Is this your direct line?” Romano checked the number and jotted it down.

  “No, this is not my direct line. You called the switch. What can I do for you, Constable?”

  “What do you think? I need you to send some people over. This is above my pay grade at the moment.”

  “Hold on.” Smith put down the phone with a loud thump.

  Romano stepped out onto the balcony. The tiles were still slick with rain but the dusk weather was clearing. She tapped a cigarette out of her pack and lit it.

  “You there?” said the Sergeant.

  “I’m here.”

  “We can’t help you today. Everyone’s booked.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll just tell these two dead people to come back to life until next week, then. Put your fucking Senior Sergeant on.”

  He must have been right there because the changeover was instantaneous.

  “Constable Romano, this is Himes, you know who I am?”

  “Hopefully someone who can do his job properly,” she said, regretting it immediately. This was the hangover talking.

  “Well, I know who you bloody are,” he said. “You’re some trumped-up bitch from Melbourne, over there for a time out. So here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to take care of this yourself. Apparently you used to be a detective, so I suggest having a crack at that, but honestly, I don’t give a shit. We don’t go to your part of the world. We don’t send our people over there. Don’t have the budget or the time or the fucking inclination. You’re a regional outpost as far as I’m concerned, and trust me, that feeling goes all the way up the chain. All the way. From what I hear—”

  “What do you—”

  He took it up a notch. “From what I hear, you’re got yourself an open-and-shut OD and suicide. Don’t make work for me and my people. Do your fucking job, if you remember how. Now, is there anything else?”

  “Thanks for your cooperation,” she said.

  They rang off.

  Romano flicked her lit cigarette over the balcony into the greenery below.

  The radio crackled. Denny. “You there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Send Rosie home. Tell her not to leave the island. I’ll swing by her place tomorrow.” Romano walked as she spoke. She went back to the bed and looked at the carnage. “Denny, do we have an evidence kit back at the station?”

  He replied much as she expected.

  He said he didn’t know.

  A man from Arthurton came at dusk and took the bodies. He was a big guy with thick unkempt hair and a beard. He handed over his card and assured her that they’d be on the mainland by tomorrow afternoon. “The lab reports probably won’t be more than a fortnight or so. It’s been quiet lately,” he said. He stood over the bodies and added, “They’re young aren’t they?”

  Romano spent the rest of her time in the suite swabbing, printing, and writing. She bagged what looked like soil and sand around the bed, found hair and fragments of adhesive tape in the carpet, blood every which way. The couple had a giant oversized suitcase in the bedroom. Romano dragged it out, gently packed their belongings, checking each garment.

  That was how the car keys turned up.

  The car was down in the hotel’s spiralling basement. A black Jaguar sedan. Romano noted the plates and popped the hood, taking the VIN off the engine. A search of the inside of the car revealed a street directory and rubbish. The windows had a film of dust on them. It had been parked for a couple of weeks, at least. To finish, she popped the trunk: empty. Out of instinct, or dumb tired luck, she padded around in the trunk’s lining and found a bump. Under the carpet lay something wrapped in a tea towel. She took it out into the light and opened it.

  A handgun.

  “You almost done for the day?”

  The voice rang out in the concrete. Romano scanned around.

  Down further, Barry Nash stood by a dark green Range Rover. He had a suitcase in his hand. When she didn’t answer, he started towards her. Romano covered the gun over and placed it on the hood of the car.

  “You almost done?” he repeated.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  He nodded to himself. “I see you found his ride. We can tow that for you tomorrow, if you like.”

  “As far as I can see, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, irrelevant of what I want.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “I don’t know if I will, Barry.”

  “Everybody does, Constable. Everybody does,” he said. He waited a beat, then kept moving. When he was further down in the car park, he called back to her, his voice trailing off with a booming echo. “We all live on the same island, you know.”

  That was enough for Romano. She called a cab. Denny was long gone. Back in her house, she poured herself a drink, lit herself a smoke, and fell asleep at the kitchen table.

  12

  Saturday, September 4 to Sunday, September 5, 2004

  Romano ran the licence plates of the car in the Gold Point
basement. The system came back with a name: Ron Bachelard. She found the rest online. Senator Ron Bachelard, member for the National Party of Australia, born in Brisbane in ’31, a fossil, the father. Ron was married to Donna Bachelard. Ron and Donna had two sons: Brian and Thomas. She searched for photographs. Brian was the oldest. He worked for the State Government and had his father’s disagreeable nose and mouth. The other one, Thomas, was younger and good-looking. He was her guy. He was victim number one.

  Romano found a number for the Bachelards and called. She reached some sort of assistant.

  “I need to speak to the senator or”—Romano checked her notes—“Donna Bachelard about a police matter. It’s personal. It concerns their son Thomas.”

  The assistant wouldn’t budge. “You need to be more specific.”

  Romano tossed it up and decided the protocol was already fucked. “I suspect Thomas has passed. I need someone from the family to identify the body. It’s en route to Brisbane.”

  The women didn’t even flinch. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Point Hallahan Police, over on Turnell Island. I’m the Officer overseeing the investigation.”

  “And your name again, please?”

  The assistant promised a call back.

  Romano looked up the Brisbane exchange, and tried the extension for fingerprinting. After being passed around, she reached a soft-spoken man who agreed to keep an eye out for the work.

  “And it’s a double homicide?” he said.

  “OD and suicide, maybe a homicide. I’m just confirming the victims. I’m on Turnell.”

  “Tunnel? Right. Okay, then.”

  “You know anyone I can talk to in ballistics?”

  He had a name for her. Romano called and made arrangements. They had a backlog but they sounded on the level. They didn’t care where the gun was from.

  Romano wrapped the work up and took it out to reception. Denny and Chandler were hard at it. Chandler gazed into the television, an infomercial. Denny had his head stuck in a copy of People. Romano dropped her parcel in the outgoing mail. She nodded at Chandler. “How was the day off?”

  “Fuck off,” he said.

  “Uh huh. You want to come for a ride, Denny?”

  He winced. “I’m pretty busy.”

  “I can see that.”

  Chandler said, “What are you up to?”

  “I know who the guy is, but I don’t know who the girl is. I’m going to start there. We also don’t have the gun yet. I found a piece, similar calibre, in the victim’s car. But I don’t think he shot himself, then stashed the gun there.”

  “Pathology will sort the girl out. And that gun is long gone. You should forget it.”

  “Brisbane could be a fortnight, they reckon. Last time I checked, we still tried to find out who killed people relatively quickly.”

  “It could be fucking anyone over here,” said Denny.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means your vic, your perp, could be anyone. If that dead bloke is from the mainland, you’re better off letting Brisbane handle it. The bodies went over, right?”

  “Yeah. And the girl, if she’s a local?”

  The two constables looked at each other.

  “What?” said Romano.

  “Then it’s absolutely their business,” said Chandler. “Brisbane will notify the family over here. If they have any questions—which they fucking won’t—they’ll come over and ask them.”

  Denny went back to his magazine. “He’s right,” he said. “You don’t want to get yourself mixed up with the locals.”

  The road to Arthurton hugged the edge of a small costal range. Romano moved the police cruiser out of low gear and took in the township as it appeared through the windscreen. It wasn’t much. A dozen residential blocks pushed into a bulb of land jutting out from the island. The tunnel from the mainland lay on the edge of the bulb like a giant black eel in the water. A tall set of gates—a checkpoint—sat across its mouth.

  Romano drove into town. There was a commercial strip on the outskirts: the drinks card office, the Arthurton pub, a service station, a bakery, a newsagent doubling as a bait shop. She passed through the suburban streets to a school on the far side before doubling back. That was Arthurton, start to finish.

  The idea was to try the local currency exchange, then the checkpoint gates. She bought a top-up for her own drinks card in the exchange, before lobbing a few softball questions at the clerk. He stammered through his answers. Overhearing the conversation, a manager stepped out of a carpeted partition.

  “New girl, over here,” he said.

  Romano went to a side door leading back behind the tellers. It hung open. Security obviously wasn’t a big concern.

  “What is this? Bush Week? We don’t talk to the police,” said the manager. “What are you doing?”

  Romano took a photo of Bachelard’s drink cards out of her folder. “So you can’t tell me who these belong to then?”

  “I wouldn’t even if I could,” said the manager. “What do you think these things are? You buy one of these, you spend your money how you like over here. That’s the whole bloody thing, isn’t it?”

  Romano took another photo from the folder, a picture of the dead woman, framed from the shoulders up. “Do you recognise her then?”

  “Lots of girls come through here. Now piss off, you’re making the customers nervous.”

  Romano checked the line. A sole customer stood waiting. She was about eighty years old and Romano doubted the woman could even see.

  “Am I making her nervous?” Romano said.

  The man gave a high-pitched whistle and said, “Hey, Margie, what do you think of cops?”

  The old woman squinted at them, then leaned over and spat on the carpet.

  “The only good pig is a dead one,” she said.

  The checkpoint guards weren’t much better. Their approach to security looked laissez-faire at best. Like at the exchange, Romano only got a couple of questions in before a watch manager stepped in. She came out of a demountable office off to the side and made her way across the busy tollway with a stout, matronly waddle.

  “I’m new on the island,” said Romano. “Got a case up the other end involving a dead couple. I figured I’d come down and see what’s what.”

  “Well, there you go,” said the manager.

  “No records, no CCTV footage, licence plates logs? I’ve got plates I can give you. I just need dates, maybe a run-down of who came and went the night of the murder, I’ve got that in—”

  “Nope. None of that. Heaven forbid.”

  “So all this is just about the toll then?”

  “Uh-huh. That and contraband.”

  “Come on,” said Romano.

  “If you can bring it with you, why buy it over here?” the woman asked.

  “You know, you’re probably supposed to lie to me about stuff like that.”

  “It is what it is,” said the manager. “Now I’m going to have to ask you to shuffle on out of here. I don’t want our tourists coming up through the gate and the first thing they see is someone dressed up like police.”

  “You know, I could—”

  “You have yourself a super day, Officer.” She smiled again and took herself back to the little office.

  Romano held up her middle finger.

  She had an appointment with the cleaner—Rosemary Doyle—at eleven-thirty. The Gold Point had given Rosie the day off, and she now sat on the steps of her fibro cottage, up on Point Hallahan. She sipped tea.

  “I don’t know them,” she said. “I know they were messy, that’s it. We can’t talk about the guests.”

  “How messy were they?”

  “Food things, drug things, one of them vomited all over the bed a few weeks back. The man, he always stank like a night out.”

  “How long had they been booked in there?”

  Rosie shook her head no.

  “A few weeks, then,” said Romano, jotting it down. “Talk m
e through finding them, if you’re up to it.”

  Rosie wiped her eyes with her fingers and let out a long, slow sigh. They were in the bed, she said. The woman was on her stomach, her head on the pillow, like she was asleep. In shock, Rosie actually tried to wake her. The man had fallen down between the bed and the wall, trailing a splotch of blood and gore along with him. The room smelled like fireworks, but there was no gun. Romano figured it would have been down on the floor with the body. She couldn’t see Rosie pocketing it. She wrote GUN/SECURITY in her notepad and circled it.

  “Did you call the ambulance?”

  “I screamed,” Rosie said. “And then I ran out to the hallway. The other girls called Carl. I think he called the ambulance.”

  “Is there anything else you remember?”

  Rosie shook her head.

  “Some of their personal effects are missing,” said Romano. “Their things. His wallet, her purse, her handbag, if she had one. You didn’t see any of that lying around?”

  A phone chimed inside the house.

  “I didn’t see anything like that,” Rosie said.

  She went inside and closed the door.

  Romano heard the deadlock snap across.

  She went back to the Gold Point and canvased the staff. No one said a word. She went back to the crime scene and the whole room was wiped clean, as if it never happened. They even took the car.

  By any measure, the case was already fucked. Romano took a drag on her cigarette and held the photo of the bodies up.

  No IDs.

  No weapon.

  Every type of scene tampering.

  The scene looked like an OD and suicide, but just enough of it was left unconfirmed to make things difficult.

  She exhaled and watched the smoke join the cloud under the pub’s ceiling.

  “Another?” said the barman. It was the same cocky guy as before. She was back in the Point Hallahan Public Bar like the first night. He seemed to remember her. Romano could feel herself swaying a little on the bar stool.

  “Hold up,” she said. She took a photo of the dead woman’s face from the file and held it up. “You know this girl?”