White Throat Read online

  ‘Um, no actually. I just thought you must’ve been a bit more relaxed, with the boat being in the marina,’ said Longshanks.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. If this is what I think it is…’ Clem could hear him walking around the saloon. ‘Let’s have a look at the CCTV.’

  Oh shit. She felt a string stretching tight across the back of her neck. She hadn’t looked for cameras on board. So stupid! And she’d had her torch on. Thank God for the Vegemite. But how had Fullerton found the bug? It must have fallen off the light fitting onto the table.

  The recording continued. She could only hear three voices, the mayor, Stanton-Green and Longshanks. The women must have left.

  ‘How many cameras you got?’ asked Stanton-Green.

  ‘Just the one. Here. It takes in the back deck and the saloon so I can see anyone coming aboard or inside the saloon.’

  There was a pause, then, ‘Here we go.’ Another long silence, a minute ticking by.

  ‘Can you fast forward until we see some movement?’ said the Hyphen.

  ‘Yeah. Hang on.’ They were watching, waiting for her figure to appear in the sliding door. A brief silence as Fullerton fast forwarded. Then a click.

  ‘There!’ said the mayor.

  No sound. Then Stanton-Green’s gruff, hard-edged voice: ‘Well, fuck me sideways.’

  There was a thunderous crack of static and the sound went dead.

  Ohno. Ohno. Clem had her head in her hands, her mind rushing over the possibilities. Assume the worst. What’s the worst? Think, Jones. The camera had captured her entering and fixing the device in the saloon and probably the one on the rear deck. Fullerton had destroyed that device now, as soon as he’d seen the CCTV confirming the break-in. They would try to locate the others and destroy them too. Could they identify her? Her burglary outfit—hoodie, Vegemite—was basic but there was only one camera on the saloon deck. They would see her disappear below decks and come up a long time later when Longshanks was asleep, but she’d hidden the devices well downstairs and they were so tiny. They would search, but even if they found them, she should still have the entire recording up to the moment they were discovered.

  She switched the app over to the second device, which she’d located on the rear deck. Lots of party talk including a steady stream of vulgar jokes from Stanton-Green, the chatter and laughing going on and on. They must have spent most of the day out there, apart from a long gap just after they finished lunch. Then just the Hyphen and Blair the Mayor, congratulating themselves, bawdy comments, before the women re-joined. They left around three. The men must have gone inside because the recording jumped forward to the three of them, searching.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Longshanks. A repeat of the first time: a scratching noise as Longshanks peeled the device from the surface and a crash of static, then nothing.

  The third device, from the drinks cabinet at the bottom of the stairs, had recorded the girls speaking in hushed tones about ‘the old gits’ and culminating in a giggling pact to ‘bloody well enjoy what they could get’ anyway even if it did involve having to ‘take turns in the bedroom’. The men had located this device and destroyed it in the same way.

  Listening to the fourth device in the master cabin it seems ‘taking turns’ had not been necessary as the ‘old gits’ had enjoyed a raucous foursome, punctuated with panting, slapping and exhortations to ‘go deeper baby’. Useful. The men knew it too. They spent a long time looking for this device, swearing heatedly, before they found it.

  The fifth device was from the downstairs dining table, the one she had rushed to stick on when she heard Longshanks entering. It sounded like it had fallen off into the carpet—inaudible at times, muffled as if something was covering it—maybe a cushion over the top or an item of clothing? And then she struck gold. With the time stamp at three-twenty, two voices came through loud and clear: the Hyphen and Blair the Mayor. Longshanks must be upstairs cleaning up or left for the day.

  They were talking about the women in fairly disgusting terms; then they got bored with that and there was a silence, the top of a beer bottle hissing open, a slurp and a change in subject that had her ears burning.

  ‘So what’ve you done about Williams?’ said the Hyphen.

  Williams? She racked her brain, trying to place the name.

  ‘I met with him last week. Independents in the senate are making noises and the department’s being bloody painful, picking over everything. But Brian reckons he can swing it,’ said Fullerton.

  Brian Williams, Federal Minister for the Environment and, very handily, a relative of Fullerton’s. His brother-in-law.

  ‘He bloody better swing it. The amount of dough I’ve forked out.’

  To Williams? To the mayor?

  ‘Speaking of dough…’ said Fullerton. Clem could hardly breathe.

  ‘Fuck! You’re like a pup on the teet! Hang on.’

  She heard footsteps, the creak of the stairs, a pause. She could hear her own heartbeat. Then the footsteps again coming back down the stairs.

  ‘This has to be the last one.’ The Hyphen was approaching the table from the stairs, his voice getting louder. ‘The syndicate’s running out of patience.’

  ‘As always, Scott, I’ll do what I can,’ said the mayor. ‘I can’t promise more than that.’

  Stanton-Green grunted. ‘Make it happen.’

  Then there was a rustling. Clem could hardly believe it. Was Blair Fullerton sitting on his boat counting a wad of cash from a brown paper bag?

  The sound stopped. ‘Good-oh,’ said Fullerton.

  The Hyphen belched and she heard the sound of leather hissing as he sat down. ‘What about the new turtle woman? Think she’s a problem?’ he said.

  ‘No. On the contrary I’m quite encouraged. I managed to get her to start considering a deal’—the bastard, it had been her idea—‘and she seemed open to the concept. Thinks she might be able to swing it with the ferals if Marakai throws in support for a conservation program.’

  ‘Shiiiit,’ said the Hyphen, sounding hopeful. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. So did you talk dollars?’ A donation from Marakai was probably a lot more palatable than sacrificing hard-earned Meat the Magic winnings.

  ‘Not at this stage. I need you to come back to me with an idea. Ballpark will do. I’d like to be prepared for next time I meet with her. I think with the costs of litigation, I might just be able to bring her round to some sort of compromise.’

  Oh please, somebody hand me a bucket.

  They sat there and finished a beer and went back up the companionway stairs. This must have been the point at which Fullerton made the first discovery, the device in the saloon. She heard the search party come back down the stairs, then nothing. The search was over and they had not found this one—perhaps when it dropped off the underside of the table it landed somewhere obscure. The sound was faint, distant. From the corridor? The devices had a range of ten metres. The men were discussing the intruder.

  ‘Whoever it was looked short and black,’ said the mayor.

  ‘Definitely female. The bitch had tits.’ The Hyphen’s voice was slightly clearer, closer to the device.

  ‘How could you tell with that bloody great hoodie? Could’ve been a male. Maybe a kid. Teenager?’

  A grunt, then: ‘Got tits on the brain.’

  ‘Oh good Lord, don’t remind me.’

  ‘Everything, mate. All of it’s fucking on there.’ The Hyphen punctuated this with a loud belch as if trying to expel the thought.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ groaned Fullerton. ‘You think we should call the cops?’ He sounded close to frantic. It gladdened Clem’s heart.

  ‘Nuh. If they find the bastard and the recordings, we’re done.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. The cops wouldn’t release anything, would they?’

  The Hyphen grunted. ‘Not officially. But it’d leak for sure—there’d be one or two who’d make sure it leaked. Fuck! Whoever has a copy’ll be blackmailing us anyway if there’s any he
at from the cops.’

  There was a pause. She could almost hear the cogs turning as she stared at the audio graph on the app: the broad bars of their voices becoming a thin line as the men paused, silently modulating her fate.

  ‘Yeah. You’re right—too risky,’ said the mayor.

  Clem let the relief wash over her, dropped her head to her chest.

  ‘It’s a fucking nightmare.’ It was the first time she’d heard Fullerton swear. ‘Not a word, not a single syllable to anyone about this,’ he hissed.

  ‘Ha! Think I’ve got a death wish or something? I’ve got a career too, ya donkey.’

  CHAPTER 13

  The gate was locked, so Clem left the car on the road out the front and climbed over. It was Saturday night, three days after the auction. The For Sale sign still stood out front. Didn’t they normally whack an Under Contract sticker on after an auction? Probably too remote out here to bother.

  The two acres of land at Turtle Shores were studded with paperbarks and gums, palms and messy scrub, long grass in big tufts lining the dirt path up to the house. At that time of night the likelihood of a snake was low, but it didn’t stop Clem stomping loudly as she made her way up the long driveway, swinging her torch back and forth ahead of her.

  The recording had given her more than leverage. It had confirmed to her that corruption was lurking around the port development. And if powerful men were willing to engage in bribery, was it such a big step to have an obstacle like Helen removed?

  She had no evidence of that, though. Two men neck-deep in corruption and she had enough to put them in jail. But she hadn’t caught them admitting to conspiracy to murder. And the results of the soil test on Ralph’s car had come in the mail late on Friday: no match with the quarry. She’d decided to switch her focus from the suspects to Helen herself, and the circumstances of her death. Maybe she could find something at the house to link these crooks to Helen herself.

  She walked up the steps to the verandah where the living room looked out over the river, put the surgical gloves on and gently removed the flyscreen. Helen hadn’t bothered with locks on the old sash windows. Clem placed her hands in the centre of the glass and pushed up, it didn’t budge. She applied more pressure, thrusting upward with a grunt. Bingo.

  She shone her torch inside and climbed through, then switched the light on. The house was so isolated, she had no concerns there, and the power was still on, probably for the open homes. They’d sold it furnished but all the nick-nacks and decorative pieces had gone. She stood in the doorway, looking across at the heavy wooden dining table where they’d sat so many times. She recalled the conversations, turned them over, trying to see a sign that she might have missed. The one that kept cropping up was Helen telling her about how she and Jim had both desperately wanted kids, the whole IVF thing.

  ‘It was a form of torture,’ Helen had said with downcast eyes. ‘With every failure there was grief and I went into a wretched spiral. James couldn’t help me. I couldn’t help me. It was like I was getting sucked into this emptiness.’

  Then she came to the point of the story, or so Clem thought at the time. Helen’s way of delivering a lesson, passing something on to Clem. ‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘You have to live the life you’re given. Play the hand you’re dealt. And, Clem, even if the cards are shit, at least you’re still in the game.’ She’d fixed her hazel eyes on Clem. ‘So anyway, I only came out of that spiral when I gave it a label: Plan A.’ Then she gave her the same look Clem remembered from when her father had dropped her at the door, a little girl lost and scared. ‘Because you know, Clem, if there’s a Plan A, there’s always going to be a Plan B.’

  Helen’s Plan B had been her career. She’d returned to university at thirty and given it everything she had.

  Was the Melbourne job Plan B for Clem—out of Sydney, starting again—or was it a return to Plan A? Same gig, different city. How could she know? She wanted to talk to Helen about it. The fact that she couldn’t…She felt like crying.

  She ran her hands along the bench where Helen had kept her coffee machine and the row of cookbooks. Helen was everywhere in this place, but nowhere.

  She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, then stood tall and shook her shoulders out. She’d come for a reason. She’d come to immerse herself in Helen’s last moments, find something, anything that might inch her closer to the truth. The police had been so quick to arrive at suicide, it was unlikely they’d done a thorough search of the house. If Helen had been forcibly taken maybe there would be signs of a struggle, however minimal. Something the cleaners wouldn’t notice. Or maybe—the thing that Clem had been clinging to all afternoon—maybe Helen had left her some sort of message. Something that would speak to the people who loved her.

  And she did cry then, standing there in Helen’s home. Silent tears.

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, started looking around, checking drawers and cupboards first. All of them were empty. The bathrooms were sparkling, the curtains and blinds all hanging straight, not a single one torn or pulled. But of course, the executor would have had any damage repaired for the open homes.

  In the bedrooms she got down on her hands and knees and searched under the beds. Nothing but shiny timber floors.

  She walked back to the kitchen, stood in the centre. They’d left the fridge, a big stainless-steel thing, wedged open and switched off. Next to it the back door opened out onto the verandah. Half a dozen steps down to the driveway, which curled around the western side of the house and ended near the steps. Helen loved cooking, always had her music up loud, never locked her doors. She wouldn’t have heard a car. They could have just strolled up and wandered in, taken her by surprise while she was in the middle of baking her brownies, her back to the door. She would have fought, with her skinny arms, she would have scratched and clawed and screamed. Clem gulped, caught her breath as she imagined Helen’s terror. Then there was a shiver along the back of her neck and the hairs on her arms stood up. Standing in the kitchen she could feel something…something to do with this room. Was it just Helen’s lingering presence, or something more?

  She checked the cupboards again, the oven. Nothing. If Helen had been attacked she might have fallen to the floor. Clem dropped to her hands and knees, trying to put herself in Helen’s shoes. What could she grab at if they were dragging her out? She looked around. There was nothing but the cupboard handles. She checked them all again. Nothing. She wheeled around, still on her hands and knees, until she was facing the fridge. She hadn’t looked under it.

  She pulled out her torch, lay down on her stomach, shone the beam underneath. The light hit something—something small, hardly visible but casting a tiny shadow. Cockroach? No, that would have run from the light. She tried her hand underneath but the gap was small and the gashes on her palms were still sore. She slid around on a different angle to get a better look but it was still just an unidentifiable shape.

  She stood up. The fridge was huge: double-doored and heavy. She gave it a shove. On wheels—Oh thank you, sweet Jesus!—and gently eased it away from the wall, not wanting to disturb whatever it was underneath. Edging it out and away to the right, the thing became visible. A necklace, one of Helen’s beaded things. She crouched down to take a closer look. Not just any necklace, it was her favourite, the one Jim had given her before he’d died, the one she was wearing in the funeral photograph. It was broken, the beads scattered around it. Clem’s heart was beating hard. She took out her phone, took a series of photographs from different angles and up close. The cord was torn in the middle, nowhere near the clasp, just a random spot, the edges frayed.

  Helen’s favourite necklace had snapped in two and she hadn’t bothered to retrieve it and get it fixed. It had to be because someone tore it off her neck.

  Clem left Turtle Shores, striding up the path, almost running, not caring about snakes or spiders or the dark or any damn thing. She was right—Helen had been taken, forcibly—and now she could prove it to Sergeant Wiseman
.

  The next day was Sunday. She rang the station to make sure Wiseman was in but Constable Griffin answered. Clem told him she’d be in to see them with the photos of the necklace.

  ‘You still on about that suicide?’

  ‘Yes I’m still on about it. I’ve got evidence proving Helen was abducted from her home.’

  ‘Case is closed, I’m afraid,’ he said officiously. ‘She was single anyway.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Half of all female murders are at the hands of a partner or an ex. Domestics.’

  ‘How about the other half, then?’ Clem scoffed.

  He started rabbiting on about murder statistics, like he’d been swatting up on the topic for an exam recently…that morning even.

  ‘So when’s the sergeant in?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Not till the afternoon shift.’

  Clem threw a load of washing on and took the dogs out, heading for the quarry. Plenty of time to check out the actual place of death. In fact she was angry with herself that she hadn’t done it previously. She’d been relying on the police, believing they would have been thorough. She should go up there, try to work out how someone could have got Helen to the top without leaving a second set of tracks. She stepped along gingerly, trying not to allow the hot sand to spill over the top of her thongs. Sarge kept to the shady bits beside the path while Pocket skipped around, wherever the scents drew him, his paws hardly touching the ground.

  Her phone rang, a number she didn’t recognise. It was Selma Bennett. She wanted to know if Clem was up for another fishing trip. Ralph wouldn’t call himself, she said. ‘Silly old duffer didn’t want to admit he enjoyed your company. But he gets lonely going out on his own. I thought if I tell him you asked me, he’d jump at the chance.’

  It was remarkable—Ralph such a brute and Selma still loving him.

  And the moment the thought entered her head, Griffin’s statistics twigged: the birthday card she’d seen on the sideboard at Turtle Shores the last time she was there. Roses on the cover, all my love…What if it was from a lover? And the entire row of kisses. Who puts so many kisses on a birthday card? But Clem had been working closely with Helen for weeks and she’d never mentioned anything about a man.