Читать книгу Priors - Stuart Jackson E. - Страница 6

She decided that she’d call herself Kathy. Kathy Turner. Harmless enough. But she needed something she could respond to effortlessly, that would run off her tongue without thinking.

The phone answered on the third ring.

“Federal Police.”

“Is Inspector Barron there, please?” she asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. Can someone else help you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was it in connection with? There may be someone who can ...”

“I’m trying to locate James Christie.”

“James Christie?”

“Yes.” She’d sensed the hesitation in the voice of the person on the other end of the phone.

“There may be someone who can help you. What’s your name, please?”

“Turner. Mrs Kathy Turner. I’m calling from Curtis and Wright, the solicitors.”

“Just a moment, Mrs Turner.”

“Who will I be speaking to?” she asked.

“I’ll try to switch you through to Sergeant Green. I’m just not sure if he’s in the office at the just now. I’ll only be a moment.”

The phone went dead and was replaced by recorded music. She looked around her. If they delayed for too long, she’d hang up and try again later. A tram clattered past and she pressed the phone tighter to her ear.

“Mrs Turner?”

“Yes. Yes?”

“I found Sergeant Green. I’ll put you through.”

Another delay and then a man’s voice.

“Mrs Turner?”

“Yes.”

“How can I help you?”

Would they be tracing the call or not?

“I’m trying to locate James Christie. Can you help me?”

“You’re with Curtis and Wright, aren’t you?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh, I thought ...”

“I told your receptionist that I was with Curtis and Wright, because I didn’t want to spend a lot of time explaining things to her.”

“I see. What sort of things?”

“Do you know James Christie?”

“I do. What has this got to do with him?”

“He’s contacted me a few times. About an investigation that’s he’s connected with.”

“Which one?”

Christ? she thought. Bloody policemen, they’re all alike.

“There was a man killed in Tasmania.”

“Barry Doyle.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s him. You knew him?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, Mr Christie found out that I knew Barry and spoke to me on two separate occasions. He asked a few questions that I wasn’t able to help him with, but the other day I was speaking to someone else and I uncovered a few other things.”

“What?”

“Well ... well I need to talk with Mr Christie. I wasn’t able to get him at his normal number, and this was another number that he gave me. I didn’t realise it...”

“That’s okay. He’s not available. He’s ... he’s caught up with a case in court at the moment. In Sydney. I can help you. Maybe, you’d like to tell me what ...”

“You?”

“I’ll make sure ...”

“I don’t know.”

“It’ll be quite all right. I’ll make sure that ...”

“Not on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I was dealing with Mr Christie. Face to face. I knew who he was. If I have to talk to someone else, then it has to be face to face.”

“Would you like to come in and ...”

“No. No. I thought we could meet somewhere.”

“Where?”

“In the city.” She paused. “On the corner of Burke and Russell Streets, there’s a bookshop. There’s a shoe shop, a sweet shop, a fast food place and on the fourth corner, the bookshop.”

“I know it.”

“Be there tomorrow. At one o’clock.”

“We don’t usually ...”

“If you’re not there, I can wait until Mr Christie comes back.”

“How will I know you?” he asked.

“I’ll be wearing a red skirt and a black handbag with a large “W” on it.”

“Okay.”

“And you?”

“Me?”

“What will you be wearing?”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then, “Grey trousers and a blue blazer.”

“You could be anyone of a hundred.”

He half-laughed and started to say, “Disguises aren’t our stock ...”

“I need something more distinctive. Carry a bag. A shopping bag. From Collins the booksellers. Goodbye, Sergeant Green.”

She hung up. Her heart was pounding.

Time to think, she thought.

*******

Drummoyne House had been named after Alfred George Drummoyne. He’d been a very successful pastoralist in northern Victoria, but he’d had a stroke and the doctors had told him to take it easy. He’d left the farm in the care of his three sons and, with his wife, moved to Melbourne. Then he’d discovered the untouched beauty of the Mornington Peninsula to the south of the city and he’d bought fifty acres and built Drummoyne House. During the Depression, Drummoyne had died and his wife had lived in it for another ten years before she too passed away. The children never looked after the house and much of the original property was sub-divided when the popularity of the Peninsula grew. Drummoyne house now stood on only five acres of the original fifty, but the area was heavily wooded and conveniently buffered from surrounding properties. And a high security fence had been erected to provide even more privacy. From the roadway, and the houses that surrounded it, the house could not be seen.

The sign alongside the gate at the start of the driveway merely said :

DRUMMOYNE HOUSE

Private Property

Barron slid the electronic key into the slot and waited while the gates swung open, driving through and watching, in his rear view mirror, until they had closed behind him. The driveway was compacted gravel and it crunched beneath the tyres of his car as he drove through the tunnel of trees, curving slightly to the west and then coming upon the large parking area that lay in front of the house itself.

Barry Malone was standing at the top of the short flight of steps that gave access to the broad veranda that completely circled the house. The windows on the second storey showed no signs of life.

Huge trees grew all around the house and, in places, their branches rested on the tin roof. A cool breeze murmured among the branches and leaves.

“Any news?” Barron asked.

“Nothing. The MO’s been with him most of the morning, but he’s getting absolutely nothing out of him. Just sits there. Says nothing. MO says there’s nothing physically wrong with him.”

“He’s probably realised that it’s in his best interests to say nothing. After all, what can you say when you’re caught with the body and the murder weapon.”

“But why? What’s the motive?”

“I may have something on that. Come on.”

They both walked into the house and up the stairs to the room that housed Christie. The MO stood up and crossed to them as they came into the room.

“Nothing, I’m afraid.”

Nothing.

“And still no idea about when or if he’s going to recover?” Barron asked. He glanced quickly at Christie who was lying still in the bed.

“No. If this has been caused by a traumatic incident of some kind, it may take something of a similar impact to reverse the condition.”

“You mean if he kills someone else?” Malone asked, and smiled.

The doctor treated the question seriously and said, “I don’t know if that caused the problem. Sometimes these things are caused by a bad knock. He has a very bad bruise across the right side of his face. Cheekbone round towards the ear. Black eye. And there’s a contusion at the back of his head. Right side too.”

“Any idea how he might have got the injuries?”

“No. It’s the sort of thing you might get if you were hit across the back of the neck with something, as you were turning, maybe, and you catch a blow from the same instrument across the side of the face.”

“Could a shotgun do that?”

“Yes. Or an instrument like that. If I’m right it would have been wielded horizontally,” and he lifted his hands up in front of him, the fists clenched as if he was holding a pole between them. “Hit like this, as Christie turns, catching the side of his face as the assailant continues with the swing and getting the rest of the instrument on the side of the face.”

“A strong person?”

“Not necessarily.”

“A woman could do it?” Barron asked.

Malone looked at him.

“Who else could it have been?” And Malone nodded.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “Yes, it could have been a woman. It’s also possible that the injuries were obtained in two different incidents.”

“You said ...”

“I said he might have got the injuries. Might. I wasn’t there. Were you there?” he asked Barron.

“No. But we were on the scene very quickly. There was nothing else there that could have been used as a weapon.”

“A fall? Could a fall have caused the injury?”

“Maybe.” The doctor looked at Barron. “But the strike by an instrument - like the shotgun - is more likely.”

Shotgun.

“So let’s hit him with the shotgun again,” Malone said, and smiled at Barron.

“Shut up, Barry.” Barron turned to the doctor and asked, “And what about prompting with something from the past?”

“It’s worked in some cases. I’m no expert on this. It’s not a common occurrence. Anything’s worth a try.”

“Let’s try. Barry, grab that chair and bring it over to the table near the window.”

Barron sat at the table and pulled a small collection of papers from his briefcase. He sorted them quickly and waited until Malone was seated across the table from him.

“What’s this?” Malone asked.

“I’ve just finished talking with Gloria Doyle.”

Doyle.

Barron lifted his voice so that it would carry to Christie on the bed. Malone nodded as he realised what Barron was doing.

“How is she?”

“She’s coping. She’s a solid woman, she’ll get over it.”

“So what did you talk about?”

“I ... I was trying ... trying to see what relationship there was - if any - with Barry’s .... with Barry’s death. After all, Christie was involved.” Barron paused, allowing himself a sideways glance at the motionless figure on the bed.

Barry’s death.

Christie lay there, motionless, his arms lying straight down the side of his body, the hands open. His eyes stared at the white wall on the opposite side of room, blank, unseeing.

“And?”

“Gloria said that Barry and Christie used to meet quite a lot prior to Barry’s death. She’d been worried about Barry for quite some time. He seemed to be worried about something and she couldn’t get him to tell her what it was. They’d had some troubles with money and she thought it might have been that, but he reckoned it wasn’t.”

“But that wasn’t true. The investigation uncovered quite a lot of gambling debts.”

“She didn’t know that at the time. She also thought there might have been another woman. This only became an issue because Barry had made friends with Dennis Hunt.”

“Hunt?”

Hunt.

“The truck driver. The one who was killed in a crash.”

“Oh, yeah. And that was where Christie came in.”

Barron nodded. “Hunt was quite the ladies’ man and Gloria was sure that when they were both out together, that Hunt was providing the women.”

“That doesn’t sound like Barry,” Malone offered.

“Who knows, mate? Who knows? Look, who would have thought that he was a gambler and that he up to his neck in debt. I knew him fairly well - we’d worked together for years. He never gave me any indication. We’ve all got our skeletons in the wardrobe. If he was the gambler that we didn’t know, he could just have easily been cheating on Gloria. This Hunt was a nasty piece of work by all accounts and maybe Barry was easily swayed.”

“Where did Hunt get his money from?”

“Not clear.”

“You said he was truck driver. Doing what?”

“Some ... some contract work on the .... on the farming side of things, I think.”

“A gambler too, then?”

“Yeah.”

Gambler. And a ladies’ man. Not right. He drifted back to sleep.

Malone looked to one side and saw that Christie’s eyes had closed. He nodded to Barron and cast his eyes to the bed. Barron looked at the man in the bed and sighed.

“Uphill battle,” he said resignedly.

“I don’t think so, Dave,” Malone said. “We’ve got the evidence. Christie was caught at the scene.”

“And motive?”

“We might never know. A domestic. Maybe she was playing around.”

“We need that background to make it sound right.”

“And if Christie never gets his memory back? What then? There’s no way we can get that background. The priors get to be a little thin, but that’s no reason for us to say it can’t be done.”

“You’re right,” Barron admitted. “We will have to make a case. If Christie can’t contribute - because of this amnesia business - then we have to go with what we’ve got. No matter how thin the priors are.”

“It doesn’t really matter if we don’t discover the motive. Whatever the reason, he killed her. And how bloody long do we wait to see if his memory returns? We could keep saying, wait a week, wait a week. It might happen next week. It also might never happen.” Malone paused and looked over at Christie, sleeping in the bed. “Let’s wrap this up and get on with some more serious stuff.”

Barron was studying his colleague with interest. He finally, said, “Okay, wrap it up. Go on the basis of us getting nothing out of Christie. I’ll talk with the boss.”

“Done. Hey, look who’s here. How they hanging, Greenie?”

Sergeant Green stood at the doorway and beckoned both men out of the room.

“What is it?” Malone asked.

He walked away from the doorway, saying nothing, drawing them further from the room. He stopped and turned to face them, leaning back against the balustrade. Behind the stairs descended to the ground floor.

“I had a call earlier today.”

“Heavy breather, Greenie?”

Green expressed his annoyance at Malone’s flippancy by sighing and raising his eyebrows and turning his attention to Barron, in the hope that he would get a more reasoned response.

“Who from?” Barron asked.

“A woman calling herself Turner. Kathy Turner.”

“Who’s she? Should I know her?”

“Wanted to talk to Christie.”

“Why? Did she say?”

“Yeah. Said that Christie had been speaking to her a couple of times in the past. Something to do with Barry Doyle.”

“Barry?” Barron asked. “Did she say his name?”

“No, I did, but she was quite specific. No mistake about it.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Told her Christie wasn’t available. Was in Sydney and was likely to be there for quite a while. I asked her if I could help her.”

“And?”

“And she was a bit cagey to start with. Implied that she trusted Christie and didn’t know if it would be right to talk with someone else.”

“And you lost her?” Malone butted in.

“No,” Green said, not taking his attention away from Barron. “I arranged to meet her. She said she would only talk to someone other than Christie if she could see them face to face.”

“Where?”

“In the city.” Green explained the location that she had specified and the ways they were going to identify each other. “What do you want me to do?” he asked Barron.

“Good work. Leave it with me. I want you to help Barry here get all the paperwork on Christie finished.”

“You’re going with it now?”

“Yes. We can’t afford to hang around just waiting for Christie to regain his memory. We might be waiting forever. We’ll go with a case based on what we’ve got now. You’ll need to do a bit of poking around. Get some neighbours who’ve seen Christie and the woman around. See if they provide any insights. You know the stuff. When you’ve got it together we’ll do a run-through. If it’s okay, we’ll run it past the boss.”

“And if Christie comes good?”

“We’ll bring in whatever we can. “

“And you’ll meet this woman?”

“Yes. I’m sure it won’t amount to much, but if I go you’ll be able to concentrate on the case. I’ll let you know what happens.”

“Fine.”

“When?”

Green told him.

“Come on, we’ll let the doc know what’s going on. We got full cover for Christie?”

“Yes. Twenty-four hour watch. Armed.”

“Good. Let’s go.”