Blood Junction Read online

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Am I under some sort of unofficial house arrest?”

  “You’ve somewhere else to stay?”

  India got up and poured some more coffee and stood opposite the Mexican red-knee’s tank, sipping slowly. She had a problem with kindness, she knew, and she tried to work out why she felt so suspicious. Was it because he was a cop, like her father? Or something more simple: could she trust him? She hadn’t trusted anyone since she was a kid, so there seemed no point in changing her spots just because someone was being nice.

  “I’ll find a place,” she said. He opened his mouth to protest and she added, “Any luck with finding Frank Goodman?”

  Whitelaw ducked his head. “The only report we’ve had was from a ranger who thought he might have seen Frank’s party at the Yourambulla Caves. They’ve moved on. Could be anywhere.”

  India rolled her eyes. “Jesus. Give the police an award for efficiency.”

  “The Flinders Ranges aren’t Centennial Park,” he snapped. “They run north from the top of Gulf Saint Vincent for eight hundred Ks, It’s wild, rugged country, and we’ve about the same chance of finding a needle in there as Frank and his buddies.”

  India cursed several times, lit another cigarette.

  “He’s bound to turn up at a sanctuary or park site shortly,” Whitelaw reassured her. “We’ve sent posters to the national parks office, and they’ve assured us he won’t miss them.”

  “Great,” said India. “And what happens if he falls down a gorge and breaks his neck? I guess I’ll have to find my own defense then, huh?”

  Whitelaw cleared his throat, which she took for assent.

  “Anyway. As I was saying,” he said. “I want you to stay away from town, and well away from the Royal Hotel, and Ken and the rest of the mob.”

  “I can’t stay away from town,” she said reasonably. “I’ve got to ask questions, find out what’s going on. You of all people should know the procedure: one, establish movements of victim until their death; two, pin down the last positive sighting of the victim; three”—she smiled bitterly at this—“look for someone who knew the victim.”

  He took a breath and let it out. “Done a lot of police work before?”

  “I’ve snooped a fair bit. Us journos get to know how things work. I’d like to know why Tiger and Lauren were at Nindathana.”

  Whitelaw reached out to the windowsill, neatened the row of cookery books with a finger. “You’re going to write about it, aren’t you?”

  She looked away. She wanted the story, that was true. But it was much more than a story; it was about her and her past. Her and Lauren.

  “I’m not sure if I want myself in the papers,” he said.

  “You won’t be,” she assured him.

  “Like hell I won’t. When a reporter’s got a story, everyone gets hauled into the light: cops, witnesses, children. Don’t tell me you can keep me out of it.”

  There were some postcards leaning against the cookery books. The top one had a row of naked women lying on their fronts on the sand. “Bottoms up,” it read.

  “Writing about it will help me,” she said, “help me understand. What happened, why it happened.”

  He looked into space, and smiled. “I’ll copy some relevant stuff for you, but on one condition.”

  India frowned, knowing from his smile she wouldn’t like what was coming next.

  “That you base yourself here.”

  Her lips formed a protest but his palm was raised, like a traffic cop’s. “We’ve already established the only place you’re welcome is at Polly’s. All that bunch of yobbos have to do is drive out there and pick you up. The Abos over there don’t have guns—or a lot of guts,” he added quietly.

  She felt his eyes study her face.

  “Look,” he said, “I managed to get a message to Lauren’s husband late last night. He’s back in Sydney.” Whitelaw inclined his head towards the phone on the wall, and took his coffee outside. “Why don’t you call him? He might help you come to a decision.”

  TEN

  SCOTTO, HOW ARE YOU BEARING UP?”

  “India?”

  “Yes.”

  Just hearing his voice filled her mind with him. Scott Lewis Kennedy, tall and lean and narrow-waisted, his curly brown hair bleached by years of sailing. Blue eyes, kind eyes.

  “I can’t go to work.” He sounded as if he might start to cry. “I think I might break into pieces if I do.”

  “Then you’re doing the right thing,” she assured him. “Stay at home and take it easy for a while. Don’t be hard on yourself.”

  The Sydney Morning Herald would be able to cover for him, she thought. Loads of editors there to shoulder the extra workload for a while.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “No.”

  “We were going to move. We’d found a house in Balgowlah, overlooking the harbor …” She could hear him rummaging around, presumably for tissues, and she wondered why she wasn’t crying too. Perhaps Lauren was right, perhaps her heart was rusted shut.

  Scotto blew his nose. “Are you okay?” His voice was muffled.

  “Much better now that I’m out of jail. And, Scotto, thanks for stumping up my bail. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can, I promise.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My bail.”

  “I never paid any bail.”

  “You must have.”

  “Your solicitor told me it had already been paid,” he said. “I didn’t get back into town ’til late yesterday. I assumed you’d sorted it.”

  “Do you know anyone called Arthur Knight?”

  “No, sorry.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t suppose it could have been Lauren’s mum?”

  There was a small pause. “I’m sorry, Indi.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sylvia’s in shock …” He trailed off.

  India felt her stomach lurch. “She thinks I killed Lauren?”

  “Give her some time. She’ll come around soon.”

  “Shall I ring her? Explain the situation?”

  “I wouldn’t, no.”

  She tried to swallow the ball of tears rising in her throat. Don’t lose it, she told herself. Hold yourself tight like you used to and don’t let it get to you.

  “Indi? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Honestly. Look, could you do me a favor, when you feel up to it?”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Could you find out what exactly Lauren was working on? It sounded like it was something pretty heavy. Maybe she got too close, and someone …” she hesitated “… wanted her out of the way.”

  A long silence, during which she hoped Scotto wasn’t sitting there stricken but was thinking about her question.

  “Scotto?”

  “She went up there to talk to a man called Mullett. Bertie Mullett.”

  “What about, do you know?”

  “It’s to do with someone called Geraldine Child. Hang on a sec.” She heard the phone clunking down, some classical music in the background, then he came back and relayed a Sydney phone number. “Geraldine’s a doctor. Retired, I think.”

  “A GP, or another sort of doctor?”

  “No idea.”

  “What was the theme of Lauren’s story, can you remember?”

  Scotto remained silent.

  India took a sudden wild guess. Could the name Mullett be Aboriginal? “Was it to do with the stolen generation?”

  “Yeah, that could have been it.” He suddenly sounded very tired. “You ought to meet Geraldine too, I guess. Talk to her one to one.

  India rubbed her forehead with her hand. “I can’t leave town. Not while I’m on the wanted list.”

  “Yeah. The detective mentioned that. Shall I come to Cooinda? Can I help?”

  “No, you stay there.” She found herself staring at the receiver on the wall, at the telephone number there. She thought briefly, then gave it to Scotto.


  “When you feel up to it, maybe you can call in at Lauren’s office? No pressure. Just have a look, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll do it tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, but I will, she’d want me to.” His voice cracked. “I’ve gotta go, Indi. Take care.

  He hung up. India gazed out into the bright sunlight with a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness over Sylvia, and relief that Scotto accepted her simply as she was: innocent. And without a single question. She had a friend. Thank God. She closed her eyes and sent him a blessing, a mental kiss on the cheek, then walked back to the breakfast bar. Whitelaw came and joined her. “You okay to take the sofa tonight? My friend will probably want his bed back.”

  “The sofa’s fine.”

  He picked up his car keys. “I’m going to work now. I’d like you to leave with me and come back at six o’clock, which is when I get home. I don’t usually lock up, but you’ll find a key in the gutter above the back door.”

  A question stood in her eyes at the mixed message: I don’t trust you alone in the house but you know where the key is.

  But Whitelaw didn’t seem to realize what he’d said. “You don’t get many people who want to rob a policeman’s house out here,” was all he added.

  It was already hot outside, the sky blue, the yard a dusty green. A couple of cars rumbled past—Cooinda’s rush hour—but otherwise all was quiet and still. Whitelaw’s was the second to last house on the Biloella road northeast of Cooinda and peaceful, aside from the view next door. India could see bed springs, a butane stove, two prams, a sink and a stack of engine parts including a twisted exhaust pipe.

  “Can I get a cab back from town?” she asked. To her astonishment, he gave her a set of keys to a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle parked at the side of the house.

  “I’d rather you use it than have to deliver your body to the morgue,” he said perfunctorily. “This way it saves me some trouble.”

  She said thank you faintly, and watched him climb into his Land Cruiser.

  “See you at six,” he said, and with a spurt of gravel, drove off.

  The Beetle looked as if it had been used for log-chopping practice. The body was dented in a dozen places and both bumpers hung precariously. Even the license plates were battered, as if someone had put them on the ground and repeatedly stamped on them.

  The seats were split with the stuffing poking out and the steering wheel was cracked, but the engine started first time with a burbling roar. “You little beauty,” she said out loud, and glanced at the space where the rear-vision mirror should have been. Shrugging, she reversed into the road and headed for town, to top up the fuel tank—which read zero—and pick up the road to Benbullen and the Goodmans’ house.

  It was half-past eleven when Mikey saw a dark green Bentley pull up at the gatehouse of the Karamyde Cosmetics Research Institute. The binoculars he’d brought were powerful and he could see the number plate clearly but not the driver; the windows were tinted.

  Mikey brushed a fly from his face and studied the Institute again. It was a big semicircular building, dense and ugly, built of concrete and painted pink, which made it look like a cooked crab. It had two floors with close ranks of windows set deeply in the concrete. A high wire-meshed fence topped with razor wire circled the complex, and the only entrance appeared to be the electronic iron gates. They swung shut behind the Bentley and Mikey tracked the vehicle until it was lost from view behind the semicircular curve of the building.

  He scanned the area around the Institute. Although the complex was quite large, it was still only a dot on the broad expanse of bush surrounding it. It sat at the end of a three-kilometer private gravel road, which was immaculately maintained all the year round. Well tucked away, Mikey thought, but not too far for the commuters of Cooinda at just twenty minutes door to door. As usual, he had parked along the Jangala road, outside the kangaroo sanctuary where his car wouldn’t be conspicuous. He’d then walked two kilometers or so across the bush to the low ridge of hills overlooking the Institute.

  He swung his binoculars to the sandy airstrip, empty of any aircraft, then to the loading bay. Two men were rolling a large white tub into the back of an unmarked white transit van. The tub was marked: CAUTION—TOXIC WASTE. He hadn’t discovered where they dumped the stuff. They flew it out by plane, and since he couldn’t fly …

  He scrutinized the van and noticed it had a crumpled fender on the driver’s side. They’d probably hit some wildlife, a kangaroo or perhaps a wombat.

  Mikey switched his focus to study the gate. There were two security guards smoking in the gatehouse. He watched them for a while, and eventually shifted to check the road. All was quiet aside from the tapping calls of birds and the odd rustle of a lizard in dead leaves. The Institute appeared totally innocent.

  He threw his binoculars on top of his pack. He didn’t care how long it took, he was going to sit and watch the bastards until they made a mistake. Flipping open the front of his pack, he withdrew a battered photograph. Carefully, he smoothed it between his fingers. Four policemen in uniform stood in the sun, grinning at the camera. Whitelaw was on the right, Mikey the left. Between them were Tiger and Sergeant Brian Patterson, both now dead.

  Everything stemmed from Alex Threads murder six months ago. Thread was from the Australian Medical Association, and had been asking questions about the Karamyde Cosmetic Research Institute when he was shot.

  Sergeant Patterson, six foot three of balding bean-pole from Wollongong, had been investigating the murder of Alex Thread, when he was found drowned in the public swimming pool.

  Mikey took up Patterson’s investigation and the day after he’d met the Institutes owner, Roland Knox, a five-year-old girl went missing after school.

  Mikey had pulled out all the stops to find her, and fast. He’d quickly ascertained she wasn’t staying with friends, that there hadn’t been a mix-up within the family about collecting her from school, then he put every cop available on the street to continue the search.

  Come midnight they had nothing, but Mikey wouldn’t stop searching.

  He’d been in his patrol car, scouring the streets in the faint hope of spotting the little girl, when he received an anonymous call on his mobile. It had been six A.M. He’d spun the car around and raced to the local rubbish dump, another squad car close behind. He leaped out of the car to see a bloke bent over a cut-off piece of sewage pipe in the center of the dump. Saw the bloke trying to force something into the pipe …

  When Mikey had pulled the little girl free from the pipe he thought she was still alive. Her body was soft and pliant in his arms. He heard a groaning sound and realized it was himself. She’d still been warm.

  Mikey hadn’t hidden his feelings for the suspect, Norman Harris. He had told everyone he’d be glad to see him dead. Harris violently protested his innocence, saying someone had called him about where the find the little girl, but he couldn’t give a name and nobody listened. He was the child’s uncle and they were all sure he’d been abusing the little girl and then killed her for any number of reasons.

  The morning after the arrest Norman Harris was found strangled in his cell.

  Even now, Mikey found it hard to swallow the fact that his own team had believed he’d popped the perp. Christ, he may have said he wanted to, but actually killing him …

  Mikey was suspended that same day, but not before he found out that Harris was an ex-employee of Karamyde Cosmetics and was in the process of suing Karamyde for wrongful dismissal. Harris, Mikey belatedly realized, hadn’t been trying to hide the child, he’d been trying to pull her body free.

  Karamyde Cosmetics had murdered a five-year-old girl in order to kill two birds with one stone—Mikey and Harris—but nobody had believed either of them, or wanted to believe them.

  So Mikey went to Tiger, his friend. And two weeks after Tiger had reopened the investigation, he’d been killed. In the cold light of day Mike
y knew now that India Kane hadn’t killed Tiger out of jealousy. She, and her dead friend Lauren, were something to do with Karamyde Cosmetics, he was sure of it.

  His vision blurred as he stared at the photograph.

  A little girl, an innocent man, and two good friends had died because of Karamyde Cosmetics.

  He would nail the bastards if it was the last thing he did.

  It took India forty-five minutes to get to Benbullen from the BP garage. A shiny bay horse with two white socks stood hitched to the front verandah. It swung its head around sharply as she approached, and reared a little, jerking against its head collar.

  A wiry man in jeans and checked shirt came out.

  “Nice horse,” she said.

  “You want the missus, she’s over there.”

  “Over there” was the stables, where Mrs. Goodman was in a loose box, grooming a large dusty brown horse. Like her husband, she was thin and well muscled, and although her face was worn and deeply creased from the merciless Australian sun, her eyes were bright.

  “Don’t mind if I carry on,” she said, brushing the curry comb in quick, circular movements behind the animal’s left ear. Dust and horse hair floated in a shaft of sunlight. “Got Freddo coming around with the thought of buying this feller. If he’s valeted properly Freddo might go an extra couple of hundred.”

  India gave a nod and watched the woman work her way briskly down the horse’s neck.

  “I wanted to ask about your son, Frank,” said India. “And my friend Lauren Kennedy.”

  “Yes. I recognize your face from the papers.” She flicked a hank of mane aside, looked at India. “Your friend talked about you. Can’t say as I know what happened, I’m no judge, but I believe she’d want me to talk to you. She was here almost a week.”

  India wasn’t sure what to say next, she was flooded with so much relief at the woman’s kindness. “Thank you,” she managed.

  Mrs. Goodman was nodding as she spoke. “Jeremy says your alibi hangs on our Frank,” she said. “All the stops are out trying to track him down.” She looked proud.