‘When are you coming home?’ her father asked.
‘I’m not sure yet, Dad. I’ll let you know soon.’
The line was quiet for a while.
‘Dad, have you heard anything more about that rumour of a deal? Because I haven’t heard anything.’
‘The word is still strong that the Crown is at the negotiating table with him,’ her father said.
Mak’s stomach churned. That couldn’t be right.
‘But what does he have to negotiate with? He’s already confessed to murder. He’s been convicted.’
‘But he hasn’t been sentenced yet. He’s going to show them the bodies, Mak. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone but I just don’t want you reading about it in the news. He’s supposed to be showing them where he buried his other victims. I’m surprised your friend Andy hasn’t told you already.’
Here we go again
, Jimmy thought.
On Saturday morning they escorted Ed Brown into the back seat of an unmarked car for the second time, ready to embark on another excursion to recover remains. It seemed possible that Ed had been straight with them about the petrol station the day before. It had been confirmed that it really had been an empty, overgrown lot only two years earlier, so they’d wasted no time in setting up this second expedition. A different location, a different girl. It was improbable that they would be unlucky a second time—or so Jimmy hoped.
‘Can we get you anything? Are you thirsty?’
‘Ah, no thank you.’
Now that the prisoner had a history of cooperation, neither Lewis nor Jimmy intervened when Hoosier offered him beer, chips, whatever crap most men wanted. It still ate at Jimmy’s guts, but he ignored it. Strangely, though, Ed declined everything on offer. He was an odd pup. Jimmy couldn’t remember the last con to turn down free booze—or the last mate of his, for that matter.
Perhaps having to stay cuffed soured the offer for Ed? Tough luck.
‘So you used to spend some time out this way? I spent so many summers down here just soaking up the sun with my brothers…’
It looked like Hoosier was going to chat to Ed while he drove, as if it would make some difference to the amount of information Ed would give in return. Ed didn’t have a lot to say so far. He sat still in the back seat, unassuming, placid. He was so quiet that Jimmy could barely even hear him breathe.
‘Keep going this way, Ed? Along this road?’ Hoosier asked.
‘Ahh, yeah. Yeah, uh huh,’ came the prisoner’s reply.
That frickin’ voice creeps me out.
‘Oh look, a Nando’s. Would you like some chicken, Ed?’
Holy Mother of God!
Ed shook his head politely.
Jesus Christ, Hoosier was a fucking knob. Playing pals was a good strategy with some cons, and they tended to get a little pampered on excursions like these no matter who they were—paedophiles, axe murderers, rapists. It was not the kind of thing the victims’ families needed to know about, but hey, if it got the job done quicker, and more effectively, then chatting and beer was the ticket. But Ed frickin’ Brown? Jimmy wouldn’t hear of letting him out of his cuffs, as Hoosier had suggested, thinking it might loosen his tongue, and thankfully, neither would
Lewis. He didn’t care that Ed was outnumbered by more than half-a-dozen armed and trained officers. You had to draw the line in this case. You just had to. And despite Ed’s placid demeanour, Jimmy couldn’t relax. He could feel Ed’s presence behind him like a loaded gun aimed at his back. He kept waiting to hear the barrel click over. He was an Ivan Milat. A Ted Bundy. A fucking psycho. As far as Jimmy was concerned, he wanted to get this adventure with Ed over as quickly and painlessly as possible, preferably without repeating the previous day’s disappointment. And then Ed could rot.
On the prisoner’s instruction, Hoosier drove towards Botany Bay National Park, in the opposite direction to the petrol station of the previous day. The forensic van, audiovisual van and unmarked car followed close behind them. With all that manpower on tap for a second consecutive day, the pressure was on Lewis to bag the goods and bring something home.
‘Which way now?’ Hoosier asked.
‘Yeah, ah, into the park. Thank you. Uh huh.’
This malaka sounds like a frickin’ Bee Gee with a speech impediment. A homicidal Bee Gee. Now there’s a thought.
As they passed the sign at the entry to the national park, Jimmy tried to recall what he knew about the area. He wanted to do his best to anticipate their every turn ahead of Ed’s instructions. The bushland? The adjacent New South Wales Golf Club? Thankfully, Ed had not pointed them in the direction of the airport, or
Port Botany with its hundreds and thousands of freight containers, both in the vicinity. That would have been a logistical nightmare. But if Ed got them to dig in an isolated spot within the national park they wouldn’t need to kick up much of a commotion. It wouldn’t be the first time they had come across criminal evidence in the area. The park was just out of the way enough to appeal to those with dubious intentions. Just so long as Ed didn’t point them to a spot in the middle of one of the busy golf greens, they would be fine. If Ed did something like that, Jimmy would make sure they pulled the plug on this charade without a moment’s hesitation. He wouldn’t let any one of them waste one more second of their time on Ed Brown.
Or at least that’s what he told himself.
In reality, Jimmy didn’t have the authority to pull the plug on anything, and he knew it. They would all have to humour this creep for as long as Lewis and Detective Inspector Kelley ordered them to. And Hoosier could offer him all the Nando’s in the world. They had strict orders to be polite and helpful—and to bring back the dead without attracting the tiniest bit of attention. That meant no smacking Ed Brown in the mouth. Admittedly, that would have been Andy’s job.
‘Thatta way, ah…yeah, there please,’ Ed stuttered, pointing them along the road past the turn-off to the golf clubhouse.
He ain’t asking us to dig up the clubhouse. Praise the Lord.
Their four-car procession moved slowly along
the winding road through the park, flanked by thick coastal scrub on either side. They passed some old military residences that looked to still be inhabited, and they kept going. They came up over a rise, and slowed. The end of the road was in sight.
DANGER
PISTOL RANGE
KEEP OUT
Oh, here we go. A frickin’ pistol range?
A small parking lot sat to the right of the road and a pistol club complete with an operating pistol range on the left. The parking lot was nearly full. Jimmy could hear the crack of light gunfire. He wondered if this would constitute a security concern, a convicted serial killer near a bunch of live weapons? It couldn’t be good. Perhaps he was going to tell them that he buried someone in the middle of the pistol range. Convenient.
But Ed didn’t motion towards the pistol range at all. With his chin, he gestured towards the disused remnants of Banks Battery, a cluster of dilapidated concrete structures covered in graffiti which stood near the edge of jagged cliffs, the blue ocean raging below. No people, no boats, no cars. That was looking better.
‘Ah, in there,’ came the voice from the back seat.
‘
In
there?’ Senior Sergeant Lewis did a double take.
‘Yeah…ahh…I put her in there. Yeah,’ was Ed’s response.
Ed pointed to one of the old underground structures, built in World War I. The entrance burrowed into a grassy hill several metres from the parking lot.
‘Okay, let’s take a look,’ Lewis said.
Thankfully there were no bystanders. Inspector Kelley would be happy about that. The golf course was just beyond view on the other side of the hill, and there didn’t appear to be anyone in the pistol range clubhouse. There was no need to camouflage Ed’s cuffs, and Jimmy was happy to watch Senior Sergeant Lewis order Ed out of the car exactly like the prisoner he was. Ed blinked in the sunlight and looked around, slack-jawed, like someone who was recalling the fragrance and feeling of the long-denied fresh air.
Let’s hope we don’t see a news helicopter whip around the shoreline right about now…
Walking slowly in his restraints and monitored carefully by half-a-dozen armed officers, Ed led the way to the bunker, followed closely by the audiovisual crew who recorded his every move and instruction. Forensics walked behind. The closer they got to the entrance, the more Jimmy disliked the look of it. There were two concrete walls spaced about a metre apart leading to the mouth of the underground structure, probably to protect it from seeping sand. Despite this, all manner of rubbish had accumulated in the space. A rusted scrap of unidentifiable machinery lay on the path before them, along with some cracked chunks of concrete, and a small drift of dirt and sand. The
entrance was low, less than five feet high, Jimmy figured, and was blocked with a heavy iron gate.
‘
Fila mou to kolo
,’ Jimmy mumbled to himself.
Kiss my Greek arse.
‘What was that?’ Hoosier asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘So tell us about it, Ed,’ Lewis began. ‘What are we looking for here?’
‘Uh, yeah. I’ll show you. She’s inside…wrapped in black plastic bags. I uh…will show you.’
Jimmy frowned. The heavy gate was obviously an attempt by the Parks and Wildlife Service to block access to the inside, but they had not quite succeeded. One small section of iron had been forced open with something very strong. Jimmy wasn’t sure any full-grown adult could fit through the hole that had been made. And even if they could, it sure didn’t look very inviting once they got inside. They would need torches. Lots of them.
‘When were you here last?’ Lewis asked.
‘When I ah…put her in there…I ahhh, I think two or three years ago? Yeah. Three years?’
‘And how did you get in?’
‘Through that there ah…hole. It was like this, yeah.’
‘And you put a body in there?’
‘Yeah, she’s in there. She ah…didn’t weigh much. Pretty young one.’
Jimmy’s stomach churned.
He twisted himself into that little fucking hole?
Jimmy thought.
Great. Am I the only one who likes doughnuts here?
‘Okay, Hoosier, you give it a go,’ Lewis ordered.
Happy to have his number overlooked as the guinea pig, Jimmy passed Hoosier the small torch off his belt. He turned to one of the officers on the forensic team, a skinny and sunburned young man.
What is his name?
‘How many torches have we got, Simmons?’ he asked.
‘It’s Symond,’ he corrected. ‘We have half-a-dozen good torches. No worries.’ He started back towards the van. ‘We’ve got some bolt-cutters too. I’ll see if we can do something about that gate,’ he called out.
‘Let’s not upset Parks and Wildlife,’ Lewis said. ‘Let’s see if we can do this without touching anything.’
Bolt-cutters wouldn’t do a damn thing for a gate like that anyway
, Jimmy thought. Not unless they had a few spare hours and a circus strong man to help it along. Jimmy sized up the hole and looked the team over, one by one. Skinny Symond would find it a cinch to squeeze in there, no doubt. He was built like a praying mantis. Constable Hoosier was a fairly big man, though, pretty much on par with Senior Sergeant Lewis, who was clearly a fan of pumping iron. Hoosier didn’t have Jimmy’s well-earned gut, but he was taller than both himself and Ed. If someone like Hoosier could get through that damn hole then the rest of the team would probably be fine, he figured. All except himself, of course. He had doubts about his ability to perform that magic trick. He was too old for contortion—and several meals too doughy for such a squeeze.
‘Okay, here goes…’
Jimmy watched with interest as Hoosier attempted the hole. On his first go he hoisted himself up, slid his body in headfirst all the way to his waist, and then tried to pull his lower half through. He wasn’t flexible enough and found himself embarrassingly stuck. It was rather gratifying to see him pretzelling against the low ceiling of the concrete hole. On his second attempt, Hoosier tried a different angle and fitted through, but caught his shoe on the bent piece of the gate, falling on his arse in the deep sand that covered the floor.
Bravo.
Jimmy wished badly that Andy could see it.
Symond arrived with the torches and bolt-cutter just in time to see Hoosier brushing the sand off his pants.
‘Dead easy. You give it a try,’ Hoosier mocked through the bars. He couldn’t stand fully upright inside the structure, and he stooped like the Neanderthal that he was. The ceiling was low and the sand had probably built up to a depth of a foot or two as well, making the bunker even more cramped.
Jimmy’s stomach churned at the thought of what he was about to do. And beyond the tricky entrance, no one on the team had clear knowledge of what was inside. How deep did it go? Was there anything dangerous to beware of?
‘What’s in there, Ed?’ Lewis asked plainly.
‘A girl. Yeah.’
‘Can you tell us about the structure itself?’
‘Ahh, yeah. A couple of old tunnels. Yeah, and some rooms. Not too big. No one goes in there now, no. Except kids maybe. Yeah. It’s mostly sealed up. It’s not far to her.’
‘Why don’t we get him to direct a team of guys, and they can go in,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘We’ll stay on the surface with him.’
‘No.’ Ed’s response was fast and eager. ‘No, no, ahhh, that’s not the deal. I get to go in. I get to see her, too. That’s the deal. I was promised.’
Jimmy’s skin crawled.
Fucking psychos.
He could never get used to them. Ed wanted to see his handiwork, that’s why he was there. His type always liked the show and tell. Ed had done the same thing back when he was a member of the free world. He was working at the morgue, in a jurisdiction where he knew that most of his victims would pass his way.
Fucking degenerate psycho freak.
But Ed was right about the deal. He was permitted to show them his victims in person, and there was not a thing Jimmy Cassimatis or any of the rest of them could do about it. He took some small solace in the fact that Ed’s thrills would be short-lived, but his sentence would not.