Before It Breaks Read online

  Not a kick, flat battery his diagnosis. The glove box was open and disturbed. In the crack where the hinges sat was a live cartridge, twenty-two by the looks. There was another on the floor where it might have spilled. No weapon though.

  It was looking more and more like a crime-scene. No blood in the car. No obvious sign of more than one person, no women’s clothing, anything like that. Clement slowly circumnavigated the vehicle. A bumper sticker extolled the virtues of Broome Anglers.

  Clement used his phone to take photos of the scene and record the car’s number plate and odometer setting. A phone burst into life somewhere close by. Generic ringtone. Clement tracked the sound to the dirt a few metres from the edge of the creek. Using his shirt over his fingers, Clement carefully picked up an older model smart phone. Number Withheld flashed on the screen. Clement answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  No answer but somebody was on the other end.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Daniel Clement …’

  The line went dead. Clement stared at the phone. His police car was equipped with a computer that would enable him to trace the Pajero plates but to get back to it through the bush was going to take another twenty minutes slog. He scrolled through the phone’s last calls. The most recent out was identified as ‘Rudi’.

  He dialled, using his own phone.

  Voicemail. A man, foreign accent, something European. “I’m not available. Leave a message.’

  Clement left a brief message asking Rudi to call him. He scrolled to the next entry which was labelled ‘AngClub’. Clement had never been inside the Anglers Club but he’d passed it often enough, a small modern brick building at the industrial end of town, so indistinguishable it could as easily have been a public dunny or scout headquarters. Broome was a small town and he doubted there would be more than fifty members of the Anglers. He gave it a try. The phone rang for some time. He was about to give up when a woman answered.

  ‘Anglers.’

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Daniel Clement.’ He ran through his spiel. He was at an abandoned vehicle he thought might belong to one of the members. After eliciting the woman’s name was Jill he described the car.

  ‘Just a sec,’ Jill said. He heard her calling to somebody in the background. She came back on. ‘Sounds like Dieter’s.’

  ‘Dieter who?’

  A further bout of offline consultation was followed by ‘Schaffer. Don’t ask me how you spell it. Is everything okay?’

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  Apparently Dieter Schaffer was about sixty-five, retired and unmarried. He generally fished alone. The only number they had for him was the mobile. He lived way out on Cape Leveque Road somewhere. Jill didn’t know who Rudi was. Clement got off the phone and considered his options. His gut said it was a probable crime scene but there could be many explanations for what he’d found. Schaffer could have accidentally shot or cut himself, then called Rudi or some other mate to come get him. Clement rang Derby Hospital, and got Karen who had made it abundantly clear to him several times that there was always a bed ready for him there, with her in it. Karen was late forties and it showed in her face but she had the taut body of a woman half her age.

  ‘You finally asking me out?’

  Clement sidestepped.

  ‘You have a Dieter Schaffer there? Sixty-five, German accent, emergency admittance most likely?’

  ‘We got a twenty-something idiot who blew himself up with his barbecue gas-bottle.’

  ‘Anybody admitted with any sort of gunshot or other wound, the last twenty hours?’

  ‘No. And you still haven’t answered my first question.’

  ‘I’m not dating.’

  ‘I’m not asking for a date.’

  He had to extricate. ‘I’ll buy you a beer at The Banksia.’

  ‘She’s not coming back to you, Dan. Sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be.’

  ‘Thank you, Karen.’

  ‘My pleasure. I’ll call you if Mr Schaffer turns up here.’

  He’d never slept around on Marilyn. Once or twice he’d kissed women, a greeting or farewell, felt that jolt, knew that if he wanted it anything was on the table but he always pulled back, no matter how bad it was with Marilyn at the time. He was never sure if this was any testament to his morality, he liked to think so, but maybe he just wanted the high ground. It was eighteen months since they’d split. It took him eight months before he slept with another woman and it was strange, not unpleasant, not earth shattering, but like wearing new shoes. He slept with two other women in quick succession and knew he shouldn’t compare them to Marilyn but couldn’t help it. He resented this weakness in himself. She’s not coming back; even if she did, it would be a mistake so you’re more the fool for protracting the inevitable. Karen is right, he thought, but she’s wrong too. Marilyn and he were a conundrum, a circular square, yet he was still unable to move on with his life. As a boy he’d been fascinated by the story of Scott of the Antarctic who must have known he was pushing on to his doom. Clement had not meant it to act as a template for his behaviour but sometimes he felt it did.

  The buzz of the flies drummed in his ears, the bored or weak ones who couldn’t get to the blood were attracted to his sweat.

  Clement made his way back to his vehicle through the same unwelcoming bush and the same over-friendly flies. They crawled up your nose and were in the back of your throat before you could blow them back out. En route he tried Graeme Earle. As expected the call went dead. Earle was the kind of bloke who loved this life, fishing, drinking, blue skies, wide open space and malevolent heat. You could never reach him on a rostered day off. Clement didn’t rate him highly as a detective but to be fair it wasn’t like he was basing this on a great sample. They’d worked assaults, rapes and one tribal spat that turned into attempted murder. Earle’s work was solid, he wasn’t incompetent. It was more that while this might be a massive region of thousands of ks, the crime garden was very small and there was nowhere to hone real detective skills so they stayed unborn or undeveloped. Earle had lived here fifteen years and in him Clement saw the traits more of a small-town sheriff than a detective. He dialled Shepherd next. The detective constable answered his phone promptly.

  ‘Guilty. Course the beak’s given him a slap on the wrist. Three months.’

  Shepherd couldn’t finish a speech without some complaint. On this occasion Clement sympathised. They’d gone after an inveterate wife-beater. Those cases were hard to get to court and when they got a sentence lighter than a cicada shell you felt you were in the wrong job on the wrong side of the planet. The women looked at you like you were the one who had given them the black eye or split lip.

  Clement explained where he was and what he’d found, or rather hadn’t. He told Shepherd they’d be setting up a crime scene.

  ‘Bring Jared. And those guys who trapped the Callum Creek crocs. See if they’re available.’

  He opened his car and risked his bum on the scorching seat. He tapped the Pajero’s plates into his computer. Bingo. Dieter Schaffer. DOB 14.04.48. As Jill had warned, the address was a lot number on Cape Leveque Road, a strip of bitumen that ran a hundred k north-south in a wilderness of mainly low scrub. The only phone number was the mobile he had. He did all this while Shepherd whinged about how hard it was going to be to do each of the tasks set. He ignored him. ‘See you soon, Shep.’

  Clement called the station and asked Mal Gross if he knew a Dieter Schaffer. Of course he did. Gross knew most everybody in the Kimberley.

  ‘Dieter. They call him “Schultz”. Used to be a cop in Germany.’

  So far as Gross was aware Schaffer lived alone in what was little more than a bush shack. Gross said he would get a car out there to look over the house but it was a good hundred k so Clement should not expect anything for a while.

  Typical.

  Clement fought his way back to the locus of his investigation. The missing outboard worried him but he began constructing plaus
ible alternatives to murder-robbery. Dieter could have taken it with him in a mate’s car. In fact he could have injured himself on it if the boat capsized. Against that, things about the scene jarred. You could lose your phone in the accident but would you leave keys in the ignition? No, surely even if the battery had already run flat, you’d take the keys. Clement wondered if he should drive out and around to the yet-to-be-pegged crime scene but he was worried about driving over evidence so he was forced to yet again retrace his steps to the other side of the creek. Before leaving he took a swig of water, you could dehydrate fast out here. On the way the flies harassed him again. They bit him this time. He flicked them off as best he could.

  Using the tent as the centre of the target, Clement began searching out in bands of about five metres thick. After around thirty minutes he found an area of flattened bush as if a vehicle had recently been there. He estimated it was about sixty metres northwest of the tent and would not have been visible from it. There was a bush track leading out from there, clearly used by vehicles for access. He’d always approached the creek from the eastern side, as the tourists had, but clearly some regular traffic came this way too. He followed the path for another hundred metres calling out Schaffer’s name over the incessant insect buzz but received no reply and doubled back.

  Gradually he worked his way anti-clockwise around the entire creek. There was the usual kind of litter, chocolate and chip wrappers, plastic bottles, beer cartons. He took photos of everything he encountered. The only piece of recent technology he gave credit to was a phone with a camera in it. So much easier than logging everything with a biro that wouldn’t write on a cheap pad. Karen’s comment needled him. It wasn’t like he was trying to get back with Marilyn. Was he just terrified of another relationship, the unknown?

  The dissolution of their relationship had caught him by surprise even though he supposed it had all the classic pointers. They’d both let it go too far. It was like a DVD on your shelf you look over at every day still in its case, telling yourself tonight was the night you’d watch it. But you never got around to it. There was always something more at hand, more demanding of your time. Until she announced she was leaving, and of course he said that’s ridiculous. That’s how it starts, he thought, the end. Every grievance is dredged out. Pride flares. He offers to move out, the martyr. And before you know it, what is just bravado, a sympathy play, turns into the real thing and when you drag your sorry arse back and apologise, it’s too late, she’s ‘discovered’ herself and how much you’ve ‘inhibited’ her.

  Back to where he started in more ways than one. His phone rang. Mal Gross. One of his mates had family near Dieter’s shack. They’d driven over and taken a gander. Nobody was there. He had di Rivi and Restoff heading there too but he thought the sooner Clement knew, the better. Clement thanked him and looked up to see a swirl of dust announce Shepherd’s arrival. Jared Taylor, the aboriginal police aide, was with him towing the trailer on which was mounted an inflatable boat. A tinny was lashed to the roof as back up. Shepherd stepped out wearing the plastic white-framed sunnies Shane Warne had made famous in the late nineties. They looked ridiculous then and worse now. Shepherd was around one eighty-eight centimetres and fit, the build of a centre-half-back, de rigueur tattoos just poking out from under short sleeves. Jared Taylor was shorter with a gut and, at forty, around twelve years older than Shepherd. Unlike Shepherd, he had a sunny disposition. They’d sparred in the ring once as part of Shepherd’s training for the annual Kimberley v Gascoyne police comp. Naturally Shepherd fancied himself. Taylor’s punches had nearly sent poor Shepherd through the ropes.

  ‘What’s the plan, Skip?’

  Shepherd’s vocabulary reduced everything to a footy match.

  ‘I guess we need to poke around for a body.’

  Both of them looked at him, hoping he was joking. They didn’t need to mention the croc. If it had overturned one tinny, why not another?

  ‘Let’s get to it.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Yeah, Shep. Come on.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for the croc blokes?’

  ‘No time for that.’

  They lifted the tinny off the roof of the vehicle and walked it to the water’s edge, keeping a wary eye. The creek was only shoulder-deep but too muddy to see into. Taylor had thought ahead and brought a couple of thin plastic rigid electrician’s tubes, perfect as probes. He stayed on the bank, rifle ready, just in case. The little motor shattered the default static of bush noise. Clement guided the tinny to the far bank near Dieter’s upturned tinny, cut the motor and they began probing the waters close to the shore. Gradually they worked their way out.

  ‘Fucking flies,’ grumbled Shepherd for the fiftieth time.

  About twenty minutes in, Clement’s pole struck something just below the surface firmer than mud but too soft to be a rock or tree.

  ‘Pass me the gaff.’

  While he held the position, Shepherd passed over one of two gaff hooks. Clement sank it down, let it find purchase and pulled hard. The unmistakable shape of a body broke the surface.

  4

  It took them a good half-hour to manoeuvre the body across the creek to the eastern side where they’d left their cars. During the time they remained vigilant. If there were a croc lurking it might not like this potential food source being dragged away. Eventually they got close enough to shore for Taylor to get the winch hook to them. Like many police vehicles the van had a winch mounted on the front. Nothing up here was simple. Had the body been under longer, winching it in wouldn’t have been an option, it might have pulled the body apart and they’d have had to wait for some kind of nets. But the body was not so long in the water. Even so, trying to get the winch hook on the body while bending over from the boat, was tedious. Finally Clement managed it. Taylor set the winch motor going and in a macabre visual the body surfed up to the bank which was too high at this point, a drop rather than a slope, so Taylor had to cut the motor or the body would have ploughed into it. It needed lifting. Clement had had enough by then. Stuff the croc. He jumped from the tinny into the thigh-deep dark water and helped Taylor drag the body up over roots to scrub beyond the bank. After protesting loudly at the stink and danger, Shepherd finally abandoned the boat in shallow water and pulled the tinny up with alacrity while Taylor kept his rifle ready just in case.

  Dieter Schaffer, or at least the body they presumed to be him, lay facedown. Forensically Clement’s method may not have been ideal but this wasn’t the city and the longer the body stayed in the water the worse it would be for the techs. The body was of a man who looked early sixties, large build but not tall, wearing shorts, boots a t-shirt and dungaree style pants. Except for where the centre of his head had been cleaved like a mandarin with a couple of pieces missing, he boasted a good shock of grey hair. He wore a Citizen watch on his left wrist. Inconveniently, unlike in the movies, it hadn’t stopped or been shattered at time of death and was still ticking. After putting on plastic gloves and shoe covers and instructing the guys to do the same, Clement bent and examined the body as best he could.

  ‘Bullet holes?’ asked Shepherd keeping his distance.

  ‘Doesn’t appear to be.’

  Clement was open to suggestions but couldn’t resist looking for the kind of smaller holes a twenty-two might make. Taylor stated the obvious.

  ‘Someone caved his head in.’

  ‘Could have been an accident, couldn’t it?’ As usual Shepherd was trying to sound like he had some idea of what he was talking about.

  Taylor shook his head. ‘Man, I seen plenty of these. I reckon it’s an axe done that.’

  Clement had to agree with his aide. Back in the days before gas and electric heaters, every house had a woodheap and the axe had been a common murder weapon but these days in the city it was rare. Up here, an axe was a cheap available weapon sometimes used when there was clan strife. The wound may have been caused by a heavy machete but that was, to use a grisly pun, splitting hairs. Unless it
had been inflicted post-mortem, Clement was sure this was the cause of death. The blow had been severe, the skull shattered. Studying the victim’s face in profile, Clement mentally matched it to the driver’s licence photo on his police computer. Not the ideal conditions for a comparison but good enough to declare this was Schaffer. He took photos while the guys shooed flies.

  ‘Let’s turn him.’

  They rolled the body onto its back and Clement almost recoiled. Nasty. The right cheekbone and jaw had been smashed in. The t-shirt was caked in mud now but appeared to be one of those souvenir types of a sport team. There was a photo of the team, a trophy, the words HSV 1978–79 and some other words in, he presumed, German. It looked surprisingly new compared to the dungarees, probably a reprint. It only just made it over Schaffer’s belly. Taylor had called an ambulance right after they’d found the body. Once it arrived they’d load the body and it would be taken to the morgue at Derby Hospital then flown to Perth for the coroner to do the official autopsy. Western Australia was a huge state, the logistics immense. It was like the police in London flying a body to Moscow for the once-over.

  For now there wasn’t much to do but cover the body as best they could and tape off the whole area. The death would have to be treated as homicide. Lisa Keeble was the senior crime-scene tech who worked the region. Of all Clement’s colleagues up here, she was the only one he thought could have held her own with any of the Perth crew. Smart, pretty and efficient, she preferred to live here than the city, quite likely because she had a boyfriend here. The boyfriend acted as no impediment to Shepherd. He invariably embarrassed all of them with his attempts to crack onto her. Despite her competence Clement suspected HQ might send in reinforcements for any homicide that was not a simple domestic. Whether they would also send detectives was another matter. He was pretty sure his boss, Scott Risely, would ask for his opinion and hold the fort if he wanted. Just into his sixties, Risely, Area Commander for the whole Kimberley, had a knack of serving his political masters without alienating the local community. Up here that was a tricky business. Risely wouldn’t want to palm this off to southerners at the get-go, thought Clement as he swung back to the boys.