Читать книгу The Family Murders - Greg McInerny - Страница 3

‘The one that got away’

The weekend had arrived and 15 year old Bradley waited patiently perched upon the fence outside his sister’s block of flats in Childers Street, North Adelaide.

It was nearing the Christmas season in late 1971 and Adelaide was already beginning to swelter as the temperature rose. The evenings offered a beautiful tepid breeze though and Bradley didn’t mind waiting outside for his sister to return. He was living with his sister and her husband in their modest flat in the leafy historical area that shrouded the perimeter of Adelaide’s central business district.

There was nothing that stood out about Bradley; he looked like any other teenager. He was roughly 5’ 10” with sandy blonde hair and had yet to sprout enough facial hair to begin the daily ritual of shaving.

Only 400 metres from O’Connell Street, the main road that connected the city to North Adelaide, Bradley could hear the traffic meandering through. It was late at night but a gentle glow of light still filtered through from the busy street. Bradley continued to wait, his sister wouldn’t be too long and there was little more he could do but to sit and think, and like most 15 year old boys he was probably thinking about girls!

Suddenly as if to interrupt his train of thought, a car approached making the most awful racket! It wasn’t going very fast and was heading in the direction of O’Connell Street. Something was obviously wrong with it. He couldn’t help but watch as the ‘sickly’ Ford Falcon edged closer. Bradley soon caught the attention of the driver who seemed to stare back at him with equal curiosity.

As if defeated, the driver pulled up and parked the vehicle about 40 metres up the road and got out of his car. Bradley watched on with curiosity and welcomed distraction as the driver went to the rear of his ailing Ford and bent down to inspect the problem.

“Arrgh” yelled the driver, as if he had perhaps burnt his hand from the hot exhaust.

Young Bradley jumped down from his position on the fence and immediately approached the distressed man to offer assistance.

“Do you want a hand?” offered Bradley.

“That would be great” said the driver.

Bradley helped to push the exhaust back together again from the tail pipe end. As he did this, he thought it was funny that such an obviously new exhaust would fall off! He also noticed that the driver seemed to know what he was doing and placed the exhaust back into position easily. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time the exhaust had come apart!

Bradley looked the man up and down; he was at least 6ft tall, clean shaven, thick dark hair which was wavy at the front. He was neatly dressed in business pants, the sleeves of this white shirt rolled up on the arms. The man was softly spoken and had what Bradley would later describe as a ‘German’ appearance about him.

The exhaust now fixed, the driver asked the teenager what he was doing sitting on the fence late at night. Bradley explained that he was waiting for his sister to come home as he didn’t have a key.

The driver then got into the front passenger seat of his car, leant over and opened the driver’s door and said ‘hop in’. Perhaps the man was kindly offering the teenager somewhere more comfortable to sit whilst he waited. Bradley did as instructed and jumped in behind the steering wheel. As he did, he noticed that the man had a beer in his hand.

“Take a drink” said the man, which came across more as an instruction than a polite offering.

“No thanks” replied the teenager.

With a flick of his head, the driver then said “take it for a spin”. Perhaps again the slightly odd but personable man was trying to reward the young lad for rendering assistance.

“I’ve got no licence” said the teenager.

“Doesn’t matter” said the driver.

Again Bradley declined the offer with a simple “no thanks”.

After a short moment of awkward silence the driver seemed to settle back as if to concede defeat and started to swing the conversation towards general chit chat. Bradley hadn’t really felt uncomfortable or under any threat, he was sitting in the driver’s seat after all and still only metres from his sister’s flat.

His sensible head had taken over and allowed him to refuse the offers of alcohol and driving without a licence.

“Do you like football?” asked the driver. Bradley declared that he wasn’t at all interested in football. With this the driver proceeded to tell Bradley that he was with a ‘footy’ team from NSW but at this point already knew that his cover story would not at all excite the teenage boy. Once again the driver had struck out in finding any common ground or common interest that he could use to seduce the fresh faced lad.

The driver’s patience withered and the mood took a sudden change.

“How about we go somewhere, hop in the back and suck each other off?” suggested the driver.

Bradley’s heart began to pound as his brain attempted to analyse what the seemingly innocuous man had just blurted out. He knew in that moment that he had to get out of the car and he would have to do so quickly. Bradley discreetly placed his hand on the door handle as the man continued to swig his beer and made further suggestions of sexual deviancy.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never done that sort of thing” Bradley uttered to his potential abductor as he opened the door and got out of the car.

“Fuck it” said the man as he too jumped out of the car, realising that the teenager was now out of his reach.

Glaring at his catch from across the roof of the car, the man waited for the young lad to make his move. Like a game of cat and mouse, would he go left or go right? The driver was ready. In a split second, the boy bolted to the back of the car as did the assailant. So determined not to lose his catch the predator lunged across the boot of the car in an attempt to grab at the boy’s clothing but missed.

The terrified teenager bolted west along Childers Street towards Jeffcott Terrace. He didn’t have to look back to know that the monster was not far behind him.

“Get back here you little shit, I’m gonna fucking kill you”

Bradley jumped up onto the footpath still running as fast as he could. He knew he had to get off the road and hide in someone’s yard; he just needed to know if the man was still chasing him.

Still running he looked back over his shoulder and saw that the monster had stopped.

“I’m gonna tear you apart you little bastard” bellowed the predator, no longer able to keep up with the teenage boy.

Still yelling obscenities, the driver ran back to his car. Bradley kept running for another 100 or so metres until he realized he was in the clear. He crossed the road and jumped over the fence into someone’s front yard to catch his breath.

The nightmare wasn’t over though, as he ran off again he noticed the car moving slowly down the street with the headlights off.

The man was hunting him. He had to get to the main street, O’Connell Street. Exhausted and terrified he summonsed the strength to keep moving. He ran along Jeffcott Street, onto Gover Street, down Mansfield Street and Tynte Street, finally reaching O’Connell Street.

Once again he saw the predator driving along looking for him, this time with his lights on. Too late, the mouse had escaped.

Bradley went straight to the police station on O’Connell Street and told them of his ordeal. He was far too humiliated to tell them about what the man had said to him about “sucking each other off” but this omission did little to deter the police from looking for the potential abductor.

They promptly drove around the area with Bradley in search of the car and its driver but by this stage he was nowhere to be found.

15 years later Bradley would see the predator again as his face appeared in the newspaper. He had been arrested for the abduction, rape and murder of young Richard Kelvin. He looked older, his hair was white grey, but there was no mistaking that it was the same vulgar man that had attempted to abduct him. Bradley immediately contacted Detective Trevor Kipling who was in charge of the case and gave a full statement of the events of that fateful evening in 1971. This time he didn’t leave anything out. According to Bradley it was the same monster, and now the monster had a name – Bevan Spencer von Einem.