The Summertime Dead Read online

  ‘I don’t think he’s got anything against you in particular. It’s just the way he is and we might as well get used to it.’

  Holloway slumped in his chair.

  ‘He’s got all the names he wants in my report.’

  But he set to painstakingly recording the names of every youngster who was even a passing acquaintance of either Furnell, Quade or Faraday, typing one name beneath the other on the page, so they seemed to him like the spilling of the names of the dead on the Great War obelisk in town.

  Chapter 13

  Mid-week, the autopsy and weapon reports went directly to Fielder.

  Max Quade had been shot with a .22 self-loading rifle, possibly a Mossberg. The girl was bludgeoned to death with something heavy, probably a length of wood of some description. There were multiple fractures to her skull. Her collarbone was broken. But she’d also been shot once, something Cole and Holloway had missed when they’d initially examined her.

  After throwing the press a few new scraps of information, Fielder surprised Cole by asking him to sit side by side with him in the interview room where they studied the reports and photographs intently.

  ‘There’s no mistaking he wanted her killed,’ Cole said.

  ‘From what the report says here she was bashed over and over with whatever implement was used. You didn’t find anything Furnell might have used at the scene?’

  ‘No. But here’s his proof about the wood. Look at this photo,’ Cole said, removing the paperclip fastening it to others. ‘One of the times he’s gone to hit her head he’s missed and struck the top of her shoulder, probably explaining the broken collarbone. See?’

  Her shoulders had escaped the worst of the decomposition and it was still possible to see faint bruising, but also abrasive red marks showing the edges of the weapon. They passed the other photographs back and forth. There were views of Max Quade front and back. Close ups of fibres left on his trousers not much higher than his ankles. Similar shots of marks on his shirt cuffs suggested his wrists had been bound too. Another close up of the bullet wound to the head.

  ‘She’s tried to run away from him,’ Fielder said, dropping a photo to the table. ‘He’s tied up Quade, probably shot him before the girl and maybe she’s broken free and he’s chased after her. This bruise might have been the first one he laid on her.’

  ‘She’d been drinking beforehand. Was well under the weather according to her friend Tracey Piper who’d been drinking with her. I’m surprised it took him a hundred yards to catch her.’

  ‘It could’ve been fear taking her along. Or maybe Furnell was enjoying his bit of fun and didn’t want it to end too quickly.’

  ‘It’s a bumpy paddock though. You’d think a drunk girl wouldn’t be able to cover twenty yards before he ran her down.’

  ‘Which adds more credence to the idea he was making a game of it. If he’d set out to kill them from the start he would’ve been sober, and you’d guess he was a young or youngish man. Stronger than her at any rate. Our man.’

  ‘So you think it wasn’t totally spontaneous then? That someone might have been planning to do this? Which makes me think it might not have been Furnell then. If it was him wouldn’t it have been more a crime of passion?’

  ‘She was raped, if you want to call that passion. And Furnell himself says she never let him do anything more than touch her up. Maybe he realised something had been going on between Quade and Faraday for longer than he knew. He starts thinking she’s holding out on him but giving it to Quade. Who knows how long those two had been fooling around behind his back? And the longer Furnell thinks about it, the more it stews in him. Maybe the thing about him working late at the garage was deliberate so as to get him out of the picture of everything leading up to the killings? Make it look as though it had nothing to do with him. Only, he would’ve known where they were likely to go parking.’

  ‘As would every other kid in town. And others besides. What about the time then? How could he have found Max and Rosaleen and got them twenty miles away, killed them at his leisure and then returned to join the hunt for them?’

  ‘That’s the thing, Lloyd. We don’t know exactly when Furnell was seen back in town. Holloway’s report reads like a children’s story. This happened and that happened, all these people running around, but there’s no detail in it. No times saying who was where and when.’

  ‘You couldn’t expect everyone to be looking at their watches when they’re desperately searching for the girl, though. Her family panicked. Furnell was in a state himself. I saw him myself not long after we were called in.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Fielder asked, looking askance at him.

  ‘Maybe two-thirty, three in the morning.’

  ‘You probably saw Furnell a good four or five hours after they were killed then. By that stage it could’ve been the gravity, probably the horror of what he’d done just starting to sink in.’

  Cole took up the photograph showing the spent rifle cartridge.

  ‘So he’s given her a battering, raped her – or the other way around – and then at some point he’s finished her off with the rifle, just to make sure. If we take it they’d been driven along the track, walked into the paddock at gunpoint, Quade tied up and shot, and then Rosaleen ran off, do you think he chased her with wood and rifle, or just the wood and gone back later after fetching the gun to make sure of his job?’

  ‘What difference would it make?’

  ‘If the killer had to go back to get the rifle and then return to her it adds more time to how long he was out there.’

  ‘It’s all about the times. Or not at all about the times. We know the rifle make now. A Mossberg.’

  ‘We need to go back out to the scene. Find that other shell,’ Cole said.

  They again studied the photographs of Rosaleen Faraday, searching for a clue that might suddenly leap out at them.

  ‘It’s hard viewing when you’ve got a daughter not much older than her,’ Cole said.

  ‘Don’t think about the person. Just think about the case,’ Fielder said. ‘We’re like doctors. We won’t get anywhere if we start letting our personal feelings get in the way.’

  ‘True,’ Cole agreed. ‘There’s something else we need to find, too, whatever the killer had used to tie up Max Quade. Faraday’s stockings maybe, if she’d been wearing some?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Are stockings strong enough for that?’

  ‘Wrapped around as many times as possible they are.’

  ‘It’s odd then, that he’s tied Quade up and then untied him after he’s shot him, because we didn’t find the stockings. Why do that?’

  ‘I’d say he’s been at least smart enough to hide part of the evidence. It won’t save him, though.’

  ‘And here’s the other thing I don’t understand,’ Cole went on. ‘The thing that jumps out at me most. This pile of clothing.’ He studied the photo in his hand. ‘It’s like a small cairn. When you’ve brutally murdered two people as he has, why go to the trouble of arranging the clothes so neatly as that?’

  ‘It might have been part of his game. Stretching it out longer. Taking one item of clothing off her at a time and placing it neatly like he has, a macabre striptease. Maybe that was the real thrill of it for him.’

  ‘But then he left the top half of her clothed. Or maybe it was some urge in him that made him leave the clothes like this, even when he must have been frightened of being caught despite whatever excitement he was getting out of it.’

  ‘Or the thrill was it being a long, slow act of revenge. Or the reason he left the top half of her dressed was he started thinking he was running out of time and had to get back to town.’

  ‘If it was Lee Furnell.’

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘And we’re still assuming it’s one man doing this, and not two?’

  Fielde
r took out his pack of cigarettes and drew the ashtray across the table to him. He offered the pack to Cole who declined. Fielder lit up.

  ‘I can’t see it’s two,’ he said, exhaling the smoke as if it was his first cigarette in years. ‘I can’t see two people having exactly the same inclinations or motives to do something like this. But you can make any number of people do any number of things with just one loaded rifle. And now we’ve got to find that rifle.’

  ‘Where do you want to start?’

  ‘Furnell, of course. Let’s go through the Furnell property. Shake them down,’ Fielder said, getting to his feet.

  Detectives Quattrochi and Risdale and two constables were summoned to the room and briefed on what they were to do. Crowbars, hammers and other tools were taken from the police storage shed at the back of the station and thrown into the boot of one of the police cars.

  Cole rode with the three detectives, the constables following in a second car. They pulled up outside the Furnell’s house, adjacent to the garage.

  Ray Furnell was working the petrol bowser and seeing them he hurried over.

  ‘You found something?’ he asked excitedly.

  ‘Not yet,’ Fielder told him. ‘But we’re hoping to. Pull the place apart,’ he ordered the policemen as he drew a Craven A from his pocket.

  ‘Wait on! What’re you doing?’ Furnell demanded as the men removed the tools from the car. ‘Don’t you need a piece of paper or something?’

  ‘There’s no paperwork needed here, pal,’ Fielder told him.

  Cole said, ‘Sorry Ray, but we know the rifle that killed Max and Rosaleen now and here has to be the first place we look.’

  ‘House first. Garage second!’ Fielder called. ‘Anyone who’s working inside get them out here!’

  ‘I don’t even have a bloody rifle,’ Furnell protested. ‘Or maybe …’

  ‘Maybe what?’ Fielder demanded.

  ‘Maybe an old rusted one in the garage. Couldn’t shoot a hole in the side of a barn.’

  ‘We’re not looking for what might’ve shot a hole in a barn, Mr Furnell,’ Fielder said. ‘We’re looking for a .22 Mossberg rifle. Do you own a weapon like that?’

  ‘No fear! Look all you like but don’t make a pigsty of the place!’ he shouted after the constables.

  Ray’s wife Lois was brought from the house. A mechanic in grey overalls emerged blinking from the garage.

  ‘You three need to stay with me while they have a look around the place,’ Cole told them as Fielder left to join the search. ‘Where’s Lee?’ he asked Ray.

  ‘Off somewhere, up the street probably,’ he waved irritably. ‘It’s taking a toll, Lloyd. You don’t know what toll.’

  ‘So you don’t know where he is? Lois?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Make sure he stays in town, Ray,’ Cole told him. ‘If he moves out of here without telling us it’ll make the detectives as suspicious as hell and they’ll charge him with murder as quick as look at him.’

  ‘I can’t watch him every minute of the day. You still think it’s Lee, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think,’ Cole said. ‘But if no rifle’s found here that helps Lee.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone’s going to help Lee now,’ Furnell said as the sound of plywood being torn apart came from the house. ‘I don’t know there’s anyone going to stick up for us.’

  Chapter 14

  The search of Furnell’s house returned nothing, or was inconclusive according to the update Fielder sent his superiors in Melbourne. All it had done was leave the place in one horrible mess that had Ray Furnell hopping mad when he was allowed to return inside.

  ‘I thought you was alright,’ he barked at Cole. ‘But now I see you’re just one of them. Bastards the lot of you.’

  Cole knew there was nothing he could say.

  On the drive back to the station, with Quattrochi and Risdale left behind to check the vacant land behind the garage, Cole said to Fielder, ‘I think your boys went over the top back there.’

  ‘We leave no stone unturned, Lloyd. No plank of wood. No clothing drawer. No tea caddy,’ the detective said. He switched on the car’s radio, his fingers tapping on the wheel to the music. ‘I know you live in the same town as all these people, but you can’t let someone’s feelings get in the way of finding evidence.’

  ‘There was no evidence.’

  ‘They could’ve buried that rifle out the back, or gotten someone else to mind it for them, anything. Don’t worry. If they’re innocent they’ll get over it.’

  You don’t live in a small town, Cole thought, and something like melancholy washed over him, a melancholy that was to do with more than just the murder of two young people.

  When they were back at the station Holloway gave him a searching look and he said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  The early afternoon passed uneventfully, Quattrochi and Risdale taking some of the dead couple’s friends and family through another series of interviews, matching accounts and comparing first, second, and in some cases third interviews praying for discrepancies and changed accounts.

  Fielder left the station early without a word, preoccupied with other matters.

  He drove back to the Casablanca, showered and changed his shirt. He lit a cigarette and glanced at his watch.

  I need to get more of a feel for this town, he thought, as he put on the grey hat that matched his suit, but as he walked away from the motel he whistled happily knowing what was really on his mind.

  He crossed Main Street. He had already been through the staff files at the station and had a fair idea about which men stacked up and which didn’t. He knew who had taken leave for what and what transgressions they had made in the course of their duties. Against all the boggy detail of cases, promotions and rare demotions, more interesting glimpses of personal lives had also been revealed.

  But the most intriguing file for him was Holloway’s. There were several documented instances where he’d lost his temper and beat prisoners and suspects. He’d once jumped into a fight outside the Union Hotel and punched a man unconscious. Who would have thought, he said to himself, meek and mild Holloway? He for one wouldn’t have picked it. There was also a curious reference to him taking three weeks compassionate leave for personal reasons two years ago. What could that have been, he wondered? If it were a physical illness or injury the file would have said so. The entry had been written up by Cole, and he already knew Cole would be discreet when he needed to be, especially about a fellow officer. But if not illness, then what? Something to do with him personally perhaps, or had it been to do with his wife?

  He checked his watch. It had just ticked by three-thirty.

  He knew the address he wanted and with a hot sun beating down on the town he hardly met another soul as he walked, and was grateful he’d decided to wear his hat.

  Audrey. Just the shape of her name rolled around in his head as a pleasant memory. He found her house and rapped on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ he heard her call from inside.

  ‘Gene.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Gene Fielder!’

  She came to the door fiddling an earring in place.

  ‘Terry’s at the station,’ she said, surprised it was actually him, a flush straight to her face. ‘He never comes home before five.’

  Fielder, his hat in his hands, said, ‘I know. I came to say hello.’

  ‘You can’t come here to see me, Mr Fielder. Not just turn up like this,’ she said, scanning the street outside.

  ‘Gene.’

  ‘Mr Fielder, I want you to go. People will see you and …’

  ‘Gene.’

  ‘Gene. I don’t want talk. If Terry knows you’ve been here …’

  ‘Do you want me to stand in the street all day then?’

 
‘Come in then,’ she said, both flustered and irritated at having give in to him. ‘Hurry up.’ She shut the door behind them. ‘Into the lounge room. And you’re only staying five minutes and I don’t even know why you’ve just marched up like this. You’re brazen. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s said that.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t. Sit there. No, not in that chair, that’s Terry’s.’

  ‘And no one’s allowed to sit in Terry’s chair?’ he asked, bemused.

  ‘He’s just particular, that’s all.’ She smoothed her dress over her knees, arched her back as she sat down. ‘Now, what is it you came for?’

  She sat very upright, her fair hair pulled back, watching him. His hands went to fidget for a pack of cigarettes until he remembered he’d left them lying on the bed in the motel.

  ‘Just to say hello. I’m expected to take an interest in the force’s personnel and their families, aren’t I?’

  ‘Then maybe you could start doing that by considering how you treat the officers at the station. And if you’re thinking about Lloyd Cole’s barbecue any idea you might have about that is yours and yours only. I’m married, Gene.’

  ‘And do you like being like that? Unhappily married?’

  ‘You think you know more than you do.’

  ‘And I might know more than you think.’

  ‘Is that why you’re a detective? Because you’re so clever?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, again reaching into a pocket. ‘When I was at school, I wasn’t exactly last in the class.’

  He smiled, but in an almost self-deprecating way, and it occurred to her that there might be more to him beyond the swaggering veneer.

  ‘No. I bet you weren’t,’ she relented. ‘But I should offer you something when it’s hot outside like this. Would you like a drink before you go?’

  ‘A glass of water. Thanks.’

  She returned from the kitchen with it.

  ‘Do you ever get sick of it? This weather?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘The grey and greasy cold of winter I do, but not this, not ever. It makes you feel there’s a reason for everything. The long hours of daylight, the feel of the sun on your skin. I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China.’