Headland, page 14
‘Are you okay?’ she murmured.
‘Yeah, good,’ he said. There was a soft sliver of light creeping into the room through a gap in the curtains. He glanced into the large dresser mirror sitting against the wall at the end of the bed and he could just make out Larissa lying there staring at his back. It was hard to tell in the half-light, but she looked like she was smiling.
They had breakfast back in Larissa and Ellie’s kitchen. Larissa cooked up the sausages she had left out the night before and some eggs. He toasted some bread over a hotplate, holding the slices with a pair of tongs, and then boiled water in a saucepan for coffee.
Watson needed to get back to the barracks for a change of clothes and a shave, but they checked out the back door before they left. It had been expertly jemmied; Watson had to look closely to see where a thin sheet of steel—like a spatula—had been jammed into the locking mechanism.
‘Well, I’m pretty sure they didn’t get in while we were asleep yesterday afternoon,’ he said.
‘How can you tell?’
‘This way of opening the door, with a steel jemmy, it’s loud. You have to jam it in hard and then shove the door to make a gap. It’s not easy and it’s noisy.’
When they arrived back at the barracks the first thing they did was check the back door there. Same deal.
‘It must be the same person. These boot prints look identical.’
‘God, this place gives me the fucking creeps,’ Larissa said. ‘I hated it here. Was anything taken?’
‘Not that I could tell,’ he said. ‘Things had been tossed around, like at your place. It was like they were looking for something.’
‘Like a search?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, just like a search. Except there’s nothing here to find.’
He grabbed a pair of jeans and an old flannelette shirt, the last pieces of dry clothing he had available. Most of his clothes were either still wet or at the laundromat. Larissa stood in the bedroom doorway smiling at him while he shed his dirty damp clothes and re-dressed in a goosebump-covered frenzy.
He was considering skipping the shave but his whiskers had just reached the awkward length where they were itching and sticking into his neck.
She followed him into the bathroom, where he ran some icy water into the sink, his breath frosting against the mirror.
‘I see you’ve been dealing with the rats,’ she said, leaning up against the doorway, her arms folded.
‘What do you mean?’ he said, daintily splashing his face with the frigid water using only his fingertips.
‘The manhole,’ she said, glancing up.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said, and followed her gaze in the mirror. The manhole was half open. He felt a jolt and stopped. He turned. Looked. There were muddy tracks on the side of the bath. There was something just on the edge of his consciousness. He looked up again at the half-open manhole cover.
‘What?’ Larissa asked, sounding concerned.
‘That,’ he said, looking up and pointing. ‘I closed it.’
He stepped over closer to the bathtub, reached down and picked up a scrap of grass from a faint muddy print on the edge of the tub.
Fuck.
‘What?’ she said again.
‘Out the back,’ he said, charging past Larissa towards the back door. He flung the door open and rushed out into the soaking wet knee-high grass and weeds. It was raining steadily onto his dry clothes.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I tossed an old sack out here. The rats had eaten it.’ He paced furiously up and down in the long grass searching.
‘Is that it?’ Larissa asked, pointing into the weeds further down the yard.
He quickly walked over. It was hardly recognisable, a pile of lighter brown scraps down in the mud.
‘Yep, that’s it,’ he said, and he bent down and scooped the soggy mess into his hands.
He carried the rotten heap back into the kitchen. It was mostly paper scraps, rat shit and chewed pieces of sack, but there was a clump of paper still stuck together, probably by a combination of damp and rat piss.
‘Oh my God.’ Larissa heaved and held her hand over her mouth. ‘That is so fucking rank.’
Watson pulled at the wad of papers with the very tips of his fingers and separated it from the rest of the disgusting mess, his face a tight grimace of revulsion.
‘Go and get my shaving kit from the bathroom, will you?’ he said, trying not to breathe.
When she returned, he took a pair of tweezers from his toiletries bag and attempted to gently prise off the top piece of the chunk of twenty or so layers of paper. It continually ripped and came off in little pieces as he grabbed at it.
‘Shit, this isn’t going to work,’ he said. ‘It’s too soggy.’
‘Try to grab a few pieces at once,’ Larissa said, holding her nose. ‘It might be drier towards the middle.’
He did as Larissa suggested and carefully dug the bottom prong of the tweezers between bits of paper in the middle of the stack.
‘Yep, that’s it,’ he said as he began to prise the stack apart. The edges of the paper revealed nothing, but as he peeled more away, he could see colour.
‘What are they?’ Larissa asked.
‘They’re photos,’ he said as he peeled the stack completely in half. It was only a portion of a colour photograph and it was badly bleached by time and decay, but what you could see was not good.
‘That’s someone’s leg,’ Larissa said.
Watson knew he had seen something very similar to that leg not too long ago. He carefully peeled the photo off the pile, exposing the next one.
‘Oh, hello,’ Larissa said.
It was obviously the same scene, the same person, but this section of photograph showed the upper legs and naked, shaved vagina of what appeared to be a teenage girl. Watson looked up at Larissa; her eyes were wide with revulsion. He shook his head and peeled off the next photograph. It was a headshot, from the neck up, a different girl, and her hands were tied to bedposts behind her head.
Larissa let out an involuntary groan and held both hands over her eyes.
‘Hey.’ He stood up, putting his arms around her.
She uncovered her eyes, left her hands resting on her cheeks, and took a deep breath.
‘That’s Laura Sweeney,’ she said, breathing out. ‘And, oh fuck.’ She leant in closer. ‘Oh no.’ She turned and walked out of the kitchen, motioning for Watson to follow.
She led him down the hall to the second bedroom. ‘Here,’ she said. She threw open the door and pointed a shaking finger at the narrow single bed and the pieces of coloured cloth holding the ratty, thin curtains open.
23
Watson walked back into the kitchen, ran some water into a glass, drank half, and then popped an Oxy. Larissa stood behind him, seemingly in a trance. He picked up the bunch of photographs and walked back into the bedroom. There was no doubt it was the same place.
‘I bought those curtain ties,’ Larissa said. ‘I left them here when I moved out.’
He turned to face her. ‘How long ago did you move out?’
‘A year—just over a year ago.’
‘And who has been in here since?’
‘No one. Just you.’
‘Philby. He has the keys to this place and I saw something like this on his computer the night you saw me coming out of his office.’
‘Oh God. Really?’
‘Well, who else could it be?’
‘God no, he’s … old.’
‘What about the other bloke—Bishop? You and Ellie said they were close.’
‘He was a sleazy arsehole, but this?’ She indicated the room, the pictures.
‘Fuck knows,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through the rest of these and see what we can find.’
Most of the photos they could salvage were body shots of Laura Sweeney on her own. Except one.
In one photo there were two sets of legs intertwined, both obviously female. It was taken on a different day, at a different time, judging by the light. One pair of legs belonged to Laura, but the other woman was clearly a lot older, her legs more toned, fit-looking.
‘Anything?’ he asked, staring hard at Larissa.
Larissa shook her head. Her eyes were terrified.
‘Do you know where Philby lives?’
‘Yeah, we had to drop him off a few times after he passed out at the pub.’
‘What about this Bishop character?’
‘I know he lives up on the headland road. I’m not sure where exactly, but it’s a nice house going by the way he kept banging on about it.’
‘And those kids—I remember Tayla’s mother, or maybe it was her brother, saying something about a place up there on the headland where kids go to hang out. Maybe that’s where they were headed when we saw them yesterday, on the beach?’
‘Yeah,’ she said quickly. ‘So where do you want to go first?’
‘Philby. He had access to the house. He left us here. He had these photos on his computer. He’s involved.’
Larissa looked like she was going to be sick. She shook her head. Walking over to the sink she ran a glass of water and had a sip, staring out the window into the grey and the rain and the soggy unkempt grass.
He felt for the Xanax in his pocket, thought about offering her one, to numb the pain. He left them there.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked instead.
She turned and nodded, smiling weakly.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, and he felt the floor move under him, just slightly. He held out an arm and she walked into him and they wrapped their arms around each other. Clinging on for dear life.
It was miserable, low clouds dripping, drizzling and freezing cold when they made their way out to the car. Larissa tried the police two-way radio: nothing. The walkie-talkie: static. She checked her mobile.
‘Fucking hell!’ she yelled jamming the useless phone back into her pocket. He had already checked his. Same result.
‘Which way?’ he asked.
She sniffed. Gathered herself.
‘Just go straight,’ she said. ‘It’s not far.’
Philby’s home, it turned out, wasn’t far from Nefarian’s; only a two-minute drive. Again, they needed to jump a back fence to gain access as the road at the front of the property was underwater.
‘Jesus, they don’t mind locking up around here, do they?’ Watson observed, surveying the security grilles covering the doors and windows at the back of the smallish single-storey weatherboard.
‘It’s okay,’ Larissa told him. ‘Like I said, we’ve had to drop him home heaps of times. He’s usually passed out.’ She led him around a side passage, slightly overgrown, and reached up on top of an external hot-water tank. When she pulled her hand back she jangled a small set of keys.
When Larissa inserted the key into the rear security door it was immediately apparent that it was already unlocked.
‘Hello,’ she said pulling the grille open and trying the doorhandle. She looked back at Watson with raised eyebrows as it slid open as well.
‘Just be careful,’ he said as he followed her into the house.
It was a small kitchen, with old-fashioned appliances and well-worn cabinetry. The sink was stacked with empty beer bottles, a dozen or more.
Larissa gagged, holding her hand up to her mouth. There was a thick, sickly aroma. They had both smelt it before.
Watson took the lead, walking out of the kitchen and down a short hallway to a bedroom at the front of the house. The smell was eye-wateringly powerful as he pushed open the bedroom door.
It was as he’d expected. Philby was there. Hanging by his belt from the clothes rack in his wardrobe.
‘You should probably just take half,’ Watson cautioned as Larissa popped the Xanax tablet into her mouth.
Ignoring him, she swallowed the whole thing with a mouthful of water.
‘They’re pretty strong,’ he said resignedly, and then swallowed one himself.
‘I don’t care,’ she said, slumping down at the kitchen table.
Larissa had walked out of the house immediately after they’d discovered Philby in the bedroom. Watson stood at the back door and watched as she walked two or three laps of the well-tended back lawn, alternately mumbling to herself and clutching her chest, trying not to throw up.
After swallowing the pill, he went around the house opening all of the doors and windows.
‘I’ll do a quick search,’ he said. ‘Do you want to wait in the car?’
‘No, I’ll help,’ she said. ‘Just not that room.’
Like a lot of divorced blokes, Philby didn’t have a lot. The bedroom gave up a dog-eared collection of old porno magazines—Hustler, Penthouse and the like—but nothing that got them any closer to Ellie or Tayla.
There was no suicide note. No signs of a struggle. He was dressed in his full uniform, less his jumper and rain jacket, which they found lying on the bathroom floor. Watson reached out gingerly and felt the bottoms of Philby’s trousers; they were still slightly damp.
His face was horribly swollen and had taken on a dark bruised purple colouring. His eyes had almost detached themselves from their sockets; most of the intraocular veins had burst, giving them a demonic red glaze. Blood had seeped out of his eye sockets and his nose and had run dark red tear tracks down to the collar of his light blue police shirt. His tongue had swollen to twice its normal size and it was poking pornographically out through his blood-coated lips.
Watson stood back, rubbing his eyes, trying to take only shallow breaths. Clearly Philby had cleared his bowels into his pants sometime during the horrifically painful few minutes it would have taken for him to literally choke himself to death.
He had hanged himself from less than head height, simply fastening the belt around his neck, attaching it to the clothes rail, and then basically sitting down as far as he could, using his own body weight to tighten the belt around his throat. His backside was suspended thirty centimetres off the floor, his legs protruded stiffly out of the wardrobe, his feet resting on their heels on the carpet.
Watson took a step forward and placed his boot up against one of Philby’s. There was not a lot of difference; not nearly enough for Philby’s boots to have made the tracks in the barracks and Ellie and Larissa’s place.
Larissa was standing at the door watching him silently. He looked up at her, moved his foot back and shook his head.
‘Check the light switches,’ he said.
She immediately looked at the switch just inside the doorway she was standing in.
‘It’s on,’ she said, then went to investigate the rest of the house.
Most of the other lights were switched off, except for the kitchen.
‘The heater,’ she called from the lounge room. ‘It’s still in the on position.’
He came to stand with her next to Philby’s little bar heater and surveyed the room. There was a TV, an old record player, some scattered newspapers and an empty beer bottle and glass on a small side table next to a tattered recliner lounge. There was a small puddle of water, most likely condensation that had run off the empty bottle.
‘What time did the power go off the other night, do you remember?’
‘Um, it was on when we got up and went to the bridge—I remember turning the light on to go to the toilet before we left,’ Larissa said.
‘And it was off by the time we got back. What would that have been about five thirty?’
‘That’s right.’ She nodded. ‘I wanted to cook everything out of the fridge for breakfast because the power was out.’
‘Shit,’ Watson said, rubbing at his face again. ‘So, he’s packed up everything at the bridge, probably told the other crew that he was coming over to get us.’ He looked down at the beer bottle and the glass. ‘He’s come straight back here, had a beer in front of his little heater and then decided to go and top himself.’
‘He was probably already dead when we were standing at the bridge wondering where everyone had gone,’ she said softly.
‘Yeah, maybe we should have checked here earlier,’ he said.
There was no response from Larissa.
He turned. She was standing in the middle of the lounge room, contemplating the carpet. The Xanax had kicked in.
24
He graduated in the bottom third of his class. A major disappointment. Mueller had recommended he see the police headshrinker, guaranteed it would not go on his personnel file, nor would it effect promotion or postings in the future. Bullshit. He didn’t go. His mother had a six-month supply of Valium left over from a bitter break-up with a boyfriend a couple of years back. He went through the lot in six weeks.
He was posted to the City Central Command and worked out of Central Station in the middle of the CBD. It suited him just fine; it was the biggest and busiest station in the state and he could get lost in the crowd. He had found a regular source of Valium, Oxy and Xanax among the deadbeats and low-lifes he dealt with on a daily basis as an inner-city cop. And of course, there was Jeremy Landers for coke. He was barely able to function most days: his memory was shot, he was anxious and depressed.
Andrea, meanwhile, had made the leap from local council to state politics and been swiftly bumped up the pecking order. She was being touted as the next big thing, and her party was backing her to run for a blue ribbon seat in the upcoming elections. To his relief, Craig hadn’t seen or heard from her since he left the academy.
He had his first holiday three months after starting in the city. He doubted his colleagues would miss him; his first probationary performance report had rated him as barely adequate. He took Alison to Fiji. It was a special deal at the travel agency near the station; there was no way he could have organised it himself. The first couple of days were a nightmare. Coming down off his regular opioid cocktail, he didn’t sleep, but by day three and then four and for the rest of the fortnight it was the best time of his life.
