After the Flood, page 7
Clement was sure that was added directly as a comment to Clement himself.
‘I’m happy when I’m with Phoebe.’
Seratono drained his beer and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do for January.’
Jill bustled over with Clement’s phone.
‘I’ve tried my mates at all the pubs. He doesn’t ring a bell with any of them. They’re not saying they never served him but they don’t remember if they did. He’s not a regular.’
Shit. Life just got harder, thought Clement. Twenty-four hours earlier he’d been bored, praying for a big case. He should have learned his lesson: be careful what you wish for.
7 SATURDAY
‘The spikes are, surprise surprise, manufactured in China. Very commonly used in mining,’ di Rivi was sitting with her iPad on her lap and a cup of coffee at the ready. It pleased Clement to see how relaxed she was now with him and Earle and Mal Gross. For the first month or so as a detective she had always set herself up at the outside of the circle like she would be trespassing to join.
It was just after 8.30 a.m. Clement and Earle had turned up nothing on their previous evening pub crawl, leaving Clement going to bed still annoyed at Marilyn and frustrated he’d got nowhere yet on the case. The case he’d wished for. To his great surprise he had slept like a teenager and needed his alarm to hammer him awake. Earle, Mal Gross and di Rivi had joined him for the morning debrief. Brett Manners, the IT guy, was at home on standby. Keeble had arrived but was in the kitchen. He’d not drafted Josh Shepherd to the case but was wondering now if he should have already done so. Shepherd was officially still on the clinic break-in.
Di Rivi said, ‘Mal’s liaising with Perth about the spikes.’
Mal Gross spoke. ‘Most of these supplies will be sold by a national distributor. Perth didn’t have that information yet but they had a list of possibles so I’m getting requests out this morning to those. Hopefully I’ll get all the relevant information from China but my mate in Perth warned it can be two steps forward and one back.’
‘I thought it might be quickest to get on the phone and chase up every local mining or railway company I could find listed for the Kimberley,’ said di Rivi.
‘Good idea,’ said Clement and swivelled to see Keeble with some kind of yoghurt and fruit bowl. ‘Still nothing on the prints?’ he called. First thing he’d checked when he had arrived was whether there’d been a match yet on the victim’s prints.
‘Nope. But just in – the autopsy confirms he was crushed to death. Traces of potato chips, bread and cheese in the stomach.’
That was not going to help much.
‘However …’
They all hung on her next words. Clement knew Keeble enjoyed toying with them.
‘… bingo on the benzodiazepine.’
Earle spoke for them all. ‘It was planned. The Sun King was drugged, driven out to Meda, nailed down with his own spikes and driven over by a …’
He threw to Keeble.
‘Don’t have the likely vehicle yet,’ she said.
Clement’s phone vibrated. The name on the display was that of the chief crime reporter for the West Australian newspaper. The story was already beyond local then, but Clement would have to pick up to find out how much they knew. Clement ignored it. The paper would call Scott Risely next and he would deal with it.
‘Still sounds like bikies,’ said Mal Gross.
‘Except there’s been no hit on the fingerprints,’ countered Clement. He didn’t need to elaborate that were Sun King a bikie, he would likely have some criminal history.
‘Maybe he wasn’t a bikie himself. Maybe Sun King was clean till he got involved with the wrong crowd?’ said Earle.
Emma Parentich, a new constable who was training under Gross, poked her head around the corner.
‘There is a woman on the phone, says her boyfriend never came home last night.’
Clement’s first thought was that Emma would learn to screen better. Even in a small town like Broome, there must have been thirty men who hadn’t made it home. Mal Gross had already dealt with two such calls before joining the meeting and had swiftly established the men’s whereabouts. One had been picked up drunk and passed out and was safely in the holding cells, the other was still playing cards at a mate’s house.
‘Did they give a name?’ asked Gross, debating whether he should break to take the call.
Constable Parentich said, ‘Her name is Lauren. The boyfriend is Jean-Claude Seydoux.’
Earle locked eyes with Clement who threw to Keeble. She flipped out her spoon as if taking a bow.
‘French,’ she said, and scooped her yoghurt.
The flat photo sat in a small plastic frame on top of a small, flat loudspeaker that in turn squatted on one end of a low, rectangular, black entertainment unit, a flat-screen TV in the middle. The photographic image of the late Jean-Claude was the apex of a pyramid, and it occurred macabrely to Clement that the last time he’d seen Jean-Claude, he too had been flat. There was no doubting the man in the photo was him.
The policeman made this assessment from the vantage of a rectangular black sofa of indeterminate fabric. He and Graeme Earle were on the first floor of Unit 8 in a rectangular block in Bilingurr, a northern suburb. Through the lounge room’s glass sliding doors, across the narrow balcony, Clement had a view of the surrounding brown countryside. It was just as flat as the floor, the table, the speaker and the photo.
Lauren Bagot was still dabbing tears that had started nine minutes previous. Clement felt very sorry for her, although he forced himself to remain neutral as to her potential involvement. There was a Ford ute sitting out the front that could have been the instrument that turned Jean-Claude into a human wafer. Forensics had suggested a four-wheel drive or small truck, so it was in the market. Keeble was already on her way here to test it.
‘Meda?’ Lauren Bagot said, red eyes puffed.
‘You know where it is?’
‘Yeah.’
When they had arrived, they had told her that a body, possibly that of Jean-Claude, had been found. When she had confirmed the tattoo marking, they had shown her a photo of his face only. Her lip had trembled and she’d had to sit while she absorbed the horror. Since then, Clement had been releasing information in dribs and drabs in the lulls between her sobs. When she had asked how he had died, Clement had told her that it appeared he had been crushed by some vehicle but there were no witnesses and the death was suspicious. He had not mentioned the crucifixion. As she fetched his passport, Clement had added more detail.
‘Jean-Claude’s body was actually on a gravel service road of the cattle station,’ he had explained. Lauren Bagot had not been able to offer any explanation of what her boyfriend might have been doing there. As far as she knew, he had no friends out there or association with the station.
‘Sometimes he would head off for the day,’ she had offered weakly as she passed over the passport to Earle. Bagot was wearing shorts and an aqua-coloured blouse, sandals on her feet, bright pink nail polish.
‘Did he have a car?’ asked Graeme Earle.
‘A motorcycle.’ The reply was muffled by a fistful of damp tissues squeezed tight against her face.
At motorcycle, Earle and Clement swapped a knowing look.
‘It wasn’t there?’ she asked looking up. Her eyes were now a shade darker than her nails.
‘No,’ said Clement. He wanted to take his time on this, first get to know Lauren Bagot before he got into the technical details of vehicles and bank accounts.
‘Can you tell us a little about yourselves? Have you been together long?’ asked Clement.
‘Just over a year.’ Bagot sniffed. ‘We met in Port Hedland.’
She had an accent, English, north maybe but Clement didn’t consider himself an expert. She was small and had a toned body that suggested a regular workout routine.
‘How did you meet?’ Clement continued to take it slow. Experience had taught him that way you caught bigger fish.
‘The gym. He was hitching his way around Australia.’
Clement gave himself a tick on the workout observation. Earle passed over the passport. Clement studied it. Jean-Claude Seydoux was a French citizen born 1989.
‘And what were you doing at the time?’ he asked.
‘Back then I was working for Rio.’
‘And now?’
‘Hardcastle Minerals. Mining site out at Fitzroy Crossing. I’m the cook. I work Monday to Friday.’
‘And come back here for the weekend?’ Clement surmised.
She bit her lip and nodded. Clement understood how she would know Meda. She would pass the turn-off on the way to Fitzroy Crossing, which was about a four-hour drive from here.
‘I take it that’s your ute out front?’ asked Graeme Earle.
‘Yes. Well, company car.’
‘We’ll have to examine it,’ said Clement. ‘You won’t be able to drive it for now. We’ll likely tow it to our garage. As soon as it’s clear we’ll let you know.’
She barely reacted.
‘You’re English?’ said Earle, saving Clement the trouble.
‘Lancastrian. Grew up in Leyland, the town where they made the buses. I came out here when I was nineteen. I’m a citizen now. I never wanted to go back. Can’t stand the cold. You don’t have any idea what happened?’
‘Not at this time,’ said Clement hating the stock answer but there was nothing else he could offer.
She just sat there slumped like a rock with waves breaking over it.
‘Did Jean-Claude have a job?’ Clement cast about for a clue as to what it might be.
‘A couple, but not full-time. He works for a diving outfit sometimes when they need somebody. And he is a personal trainer.’
The world constantly disappointed Clement. Not even Broome was safe from personal trainers. Clement got the name of the diving business and a contact.
‘Did he have regular clients in his training group?’ asked Earle.
‘Some of them. He usually had a class of about five or six down at Cable Beach most days. He’d put fliers up at the holiday lodges, so a few regulars but casuals too.’
‘Would you have a list of his clients?’ All potential suspects, Clement was thinking.
‘It’ll be on his phone.’
‘Unfortunately we didn’t find a phone,’ said Clement. ‘A computer?’
‘No. He did everything on his phone.’
Clement got Jean-Claude’s phone number off her. She wasn’t sure who his provider was.
‘I think Vodafone. A lot of time he wouldn’t have coverage and they are probably the weakest up here.’
Clement remembered from when he’d let Phoebe have a mobile phone. He was pleased to have one with poor coverage. Not that he needed to worry. She was responsible. Graeme Earle got Bagot’s own phone details from her. If she realised that they’d be checking her records, she was able to cover skilfully. It seemed she was still drifting through fog.
‘By the way, do you use a logbook with the company car?’
‘No.’
Pity. If she was involved, that might have told them if she had diverted on her run home.
‘What about social media?’ asked Earle. ‘Did Jean-Claude engage in that?’
‘He didn’t do Twitter or Snapchat or Facebook, but Instagram, yes. He’d put up photos of his class.’
‘What was his handle?’ asked Clement.
‘Sunsetsunking.’ She spelled it out for them.
‘What about you?’ asked Clement.
‘Facebook but just with a few old school and work friends.’
‘Under your name?’
‘Yes.’
Something for Manners to check. Clement had already texted him on the way over and told him he would be needed at the station.
‘When was the last time you saw Jean-Claude?’
Clement had held off on that big question. He wanted to build some rapport first, not frighten the young woman into thinking she was prime suspect, though of course for now she was their only ‘person of interest’.
‘Last Monday morning. I leave about three and drive straight to work to get the breakfasts going. He was asleep.’
‘And the last time you spoke to him?’
She sighed, trembling still, cast her mind back. ‘That would have been Thursday night. Well, evening.’
‘What time exactly?’ asked Earle.
‘Just after his class. So, a bit after six. Normally he would text me again and then call me Friday before his morning class, and then he’d be here when I got home.’
She ebbed away. Clement sensed her thinking that by then he would have already been dead. Clement heard vehicles arriving outside. That was likely Keeble.
‘So, you waited for him?’
‘For a little while. I thought he had gone for a Friday catch up. Then I texted him and when he didn’t reply I rang but only got his voicemail. I thought probably he’d taken his bike for a long run and was out of range. He does that sometimes. You said his bike wasn’t there?’
Clement could see she was starting to work the logic, maybe discarding her first assumption that it had been a hit-and-run. Or she could be playing them. But if she was, she was damn good.
‘Somebody took his bike and his phone. Was that why he was killed? It wasn’t an accident?’
Clement felt she was asking the question more of herself than them.
‘It definitely wasn’t an accident. We hope we can find out what happened as soon as possible. Would you know the registration number of his bike? Have a photo of it?’
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were faraway. Graeme Earle was poised with a notebook.
‘What sort of bike?’ he asked gently.
‘It was a Honda tourer.’ She came back to reality and began searching her phone. ‘I don’t know much about bikes. I think the licence is here.’
Lauren Bagot got up and rummaged through a kitchen drawer still checking her phone with one hand. ‘This is a photo of the old one.’
‘Old one? Asked Clement as she handed across the phone. He passed the phone onto Earle.
‘He bought a new one about three weeks ago.’ She stood peering at two printed documents, making a judgement.
‘This one is the new one,’ she said, handing them the licence.
‘If that’s the old licence, may we have that too?’ Clement pointed at the other piece of paper. She handed them both across. She was still searching her phone, wiping tears.
‘He took heaps of photos of the new bike on his phone. He probably sent me one. I’ll check my texts.’
Clement studied the date of the licence transfer. Just over two weeks. Clement passed the licences to Earle who had a much better grasp of cars and cycles than he ever would.
‘Any receipts?’ asked Clement.
‘Don’t think there are any receipts. The guy wanted cash.’
She had a cursory look in the drawer. ‘Not in here.’ She was exasperated, still trying to find a photo of the new bike on her phone. ‘Sorry. I’m sure he sent me a photo of him and the new bike.’
Studying the licences, Earle said, ‘The new bike is a two thousand and nine model, a tourer. Cost him what, ten grand?’
‘He got it for just under nine. Said it was a great deal.’
‘So, he sold his old one?’ asked Clement.
‘Yes. The dealer near the airport.’
Clement knew the one she meant. There were only four in town. He would be able to chase that down.
‘Here, this is the only photo I can find.’
Clement and Earle took a look. Jean-Claude was sitting proudly astride the motorcycle. It was very similar to the previous one but newer.
‘What did he get for the old one?’ Earle buying back into the conversation.
‘I think about six thousand.’
‘And the balance?’ Earle again. ‘Did he have that much saved?’
‘His parents sent him the money.’ A whole new swirl of ideas seemed to suffocate Bagot. She spoke in a kind of trance. ‘Who is going to tell them? I don’t even know their phone numbers. He had all that on his phone.’
Clement said, ‘Perth will notify the consulate and they will let them know. Have you ever met his family or spoken to them over the phone?’
She grabbed for another tissue. ‘Well, I’ve sort of said hello when Jean-Claude held the phone out to me a couple of times but that’s it.’
‘He didn’t have any relatives in Australia?’
‘I don’t think so. He never mentioned any. A brother and sister in France.’
‘Had he ever been married?’
‘No.’
She looked anxious. Clement took her answer to mean that Seydoux had never mentioned having been married. But he could have been. He helped her out of the mire.
‘His family will likely want to speak to us, and I presume you. When we get it, we can forward their number if you like?’
She nodded but she only had one foot in reality.
‘Was he in regular contact with any of his family?’
‘I don’t think so. He phoned his mum for her birthday back in August. I think he texted his brother a bit but not very much. They weren’t close.’
They would have to check up on all this. Clement allowed himself a moment to think about the motorcycle purchase. These days dealing in cash from people you met online could get you targeted by some very bad individuals. It wouldn’t be out of the question that some arsehole could sell his bike for the cash then kill Jean-Claude and take back his bike. But the manner of the death was so savage … Clement couldn’t help feeling it was more personal.
‘The guy he bought the bike from, that wasn’t the dealer?’ Clement doubted a dealer would insist on cash.
‘No, a private sale. He went to Port Hedland for it.’
Port Hedland was six hundred k south, give or take. If he’d already sold his bike …
‘How did he get there? Did you drive him?’
‘No. I was working. He said one of his clients, Rex, was heading there and would give him a lift.’
‘Do you know Rex’s second name?’
‘No. I’ve met him once or twice.’
She described a man about thirty, tall and slim with prematurely thinning hair.
