Before It Breaks (20 page)

‘Then you should have kept lying. You know if they find out…' He shook his head again, stressed.

‘Listen, that's why I'm telling you. You have to get out. Everyone is going down. In my reports I gave you an alias. Nobody knows about you, you can go but it's going to happen soon, any day, and whoever gets caught in the sweep is going to jail for a long time.'

‘I can't go. Go where?' The veins were bulging from his neck.

‘This time next week the Emperor and his operation will be finished. Sell the shit, take your family and leave.'

Wallen looked trapped. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘This is my fucking living.'

‘We both know that can't last. You'll never make thirty, you keep this up.'

Wallen stabbed his finger like a cobra. ‘What's to stop me from going to them now, hey?'

‘Nothing, except I don't think that's who you are.'

‘Those things you told me, about your family? About your boy. Were they lies?'

‘No. That's why I am telling you this. That's real.'

A battle seemed to be raging inside Wallen. ‘I walk out of here, you going to follow me?'

‘No. Wallen, one day, years from now, maybe I'll be somewhere with my boy. Manfred might be sixteen, say. Maybe we're in Luxor, looking at the pyramids and I look across and I see you and your kids, laughing. You're showing them all the stuff about people who lived and died thousands of years before us and I know that whatever shitty things I had to do in my life, I did one good thing. You love your kids, I know you do. This is your chance to really show it. Do it, man, change your fucking life.'

Gruen still wasn't sure why he was acting like this, talking like this, breaking all his training, only that he should.

Wallen stood up. He seemed about to say something but just shook his head and turned to leave.

‘Goodbye Wallen.'

Wallen offered the hint of a smile. ‘Pyramids are in Giza.'

And then he walked up the stairs.

For some reason there was no hammer today but Clement still woke at six a.m. Since childhood he had been possessed of the ability to bid himself wake at the appointed time, no alarm clock needed. He showered, the water tap-dancing on his skin as consciousness warmed. Before shaving he forced himself to truly regard his image in the mirror. For a very long time, maybe twenty years, it was as if he had been looking at the same face every day. Nothing changed. Then just before he left Perth, one day, there it was, a different face, older, void of any belief the next day might be better than the last. Like a lump that appears overnight on your body which you hope will work itself out, he morbidly studied that face hoping for a reversion. Most days he glossed over it. Today he felt obliged to take his medicine, to acknowledge the apex of his life had been reached and he was plunging in a billycart down the other side. How long before a different face looks back at me? he wondered. Another twenty years or is it a law of diminishing returns, and maybe it's only ten years next time? He was ruminating on this as he searched the rack for a clean shirt, found one, and dressed. Finally the anonymous worker began clanking. It made Clement feel less of an island and he smiled, wondering why the man had begun late. Slept in? Car didn't start? Gave the girlfriend one? Late start Saturday? Clement had no such luxury.

Graeme Earle was at his desk by the time Clement reached the office. He had spoken to Bill Seratono who confirmed he had called Karskine around ten on Wednesday. They had chatted for about ten minutes.

‘You think he'd lie to us?'

‘I hadn't seen him for years but I doubt it. The phone records will tell us.'

Earle waved printed documents.

‘Ellie finished translating the letter from “Mathias”. ‘It's not very long. Sounds like an old work colleague. The Reeperbahn is the redlight district apparently. She also translated the news printouts and newspaper article.'

Clement entered his office to find that Lisa Keeble with trademark efficiency had left a report on Clement's desk stating they had been over Schaffer's car and found no cash anywhere. It was signed with the time of two forty-five a.m. He did not expect she'd be in before ten. He turned his attention to the letter.

My old pal,

How are you travelling out there in the land of crocodiles? It's a while since I wrote, I know but Greta is being married to a Swiss fellow and it has been chaos. Can you believe it? I can't. It seems like yesterday we were all together. Only the other night I was thinking of that time we had young Pieber nab the transvestite. I'll never forget his face. Heinrich has had some health scares with his heart but I think it's alright now, after a minor operation. And he was always the healthy one. But enough of that. Any young women taking your fancy there? Although I suppose young now is under fifty. I am still working two days a week, not that I really need the money but it keeps me occupied and I like being around my worker pals. Stacking supermarket shelves is a long way from the Reeperbahn. Anyway, please write to me, I enjoyed your last letter and was envious of your description of the hot nights there. It's cold as hell here as usual. My blood and bones are getting thinner.

Mathias.

Not a lot to go on in that. He turned to the first news item which was from the online
Rheinische Post.
The date was September 2012. Ellie had scrawled translations on the headlines and then a summary.

MAN KILLED BY ARROW. It is believed Klaus Edershen, sixty-five, a local of Dortmund, was walking his dog in Westfalen Park, Dortmund when he was shot through the neck and killed by an arrow fired by a person or persons unknown. The body was found by a father walking with his children in the popular park but there were no witnesses to the event. The police were unable to speculate on whether it was murder or a terrible accident but asked anybody with information to come forward. Herr Edershen, a retired soldier, lived alone. His neighbours described him as a quiet man who kept to himself. It was believed Edershen had spent some time in Asia in the nineteen eighties working as a security adviser for European firms.

Ellie had also placed a yellow post-it on the bottom,
crime unsolved as of November 2013.
The first thing that occurred to Clement was Edershen may have been some former colleague of Schaffer's. Perhaps after Schaffer had left the police they both worked security somewhere. All the same, he would see if the German police could give him any information. A bow and arrow and an axe were primitive weapons but tying them on that basis might be, well, a long bow. The second printout came from some sort of True Crime retrospective. This was number eight and titled
THE DRUG CZAR WHO GOT AWAY
. The gist of the story was that in the nineteen seventies the man pictured, Kurt Donen, ‘the Emperor', ran Hamburg's biggest drug syndicate. This was the only photo ever taken of the shadowy Donen who was responsible for numerous deaths including that of an undercover police officer. Donen had escaped a police dragnet and never been captured.

Schaffer was working the drug squad then and Clement supposed he may have been on the case. Was it possible Schaffer had come across him here in Broome? He looked at the photo again. The man looked forty-five then which would make him around eighty now but it might just have been he was balding with a low forehead, he could have been thirty. Even so, if Schaffer recognised him surely he would tell somebody. He took the printout and found Mal Gross.

‘Add thirty-five years. This guy look familiar?'

Clement couldn't believe there would be anybody in the region with whom Gross hadn't had a beer or barbecue. Gross studied it hard, shook his head.

‘Speaking of newspapers. The latest
Post.'
He slapped it into Clement's hand. Front page showed a photo of Jasper's Creek with crime tape and an insert, a grainy blown-up photo of Dieter from goodness knew where. The headline read
POLICE ZERO IN ON KILLER.

‘Not,' was Clement's immediate reaction.

Gross made himself an instant coffee. ‘If it's okay with you I'm going to pay the Dingos a visit. Put it right on the line they had better cooperate if they know this Maori-looking bloke.'

Clement thought it a good idea.

The phone rang, Shepherd. He had again checked Schaffer's house for any possible stash, everywhere, including the roof but had come up empty-handed and was preparing to start on the property. Clement brought him up to speed on what he had learned from the clients: Schaffer seemed small-time, never flashed much money. Shepherd's immediate reaction was predictable.

‘Is it worth it then? It's a lot of manpower.'

‘Manpower,' Shep talking like a commander now. Clement had a good mind to order him to start digging, even though he had the same misgivings.

‘Come back to the station, let the other guys check the property. I have some vehicle owners for you to chase up.'

He left the list Manners had prepared on Shepherd's desk.

Out the corner of his eye he caught Mal Gross heading for the back door.

‘Hold up, I'll come with you.'

Earle was finishing up on the phone. Clement waited to hear what he had to say.

‘Spoke to the abattoir and they confirm Nightingale and the boyfriend were working there Wednesday night.'

Clement grunted and followed Gross through to the carpark. Mal Gross was the kind of man who kept his government vehicle in immaculate condition. Clement eased himself into a spotless passenger seat. Gross talked as he drove.

‘Dean Marchant is the President of the Dingos. We may as well go straight to the top. There's only about twenty of them anyway.'

Clement had heard they were the only outfit in this part of the Kimberley.

‘There's no other small gangs?'

‘Not here. Hedland there's a couple. The Dingos keep their heads down. They push speed around the place, eccies, a bit of weed but there's usually no trouble.'

Clement was surprised when Gross pulled the car up suddenly on the outskirts of town. There was nothing here. Gross pointed to a manhole on the side of the street surrounded by small metal barriers, the kind to protect men working in a pit.

‘He's a telecom tech. I called ahead, found out where he was working.'

They got out of the car and walked over. Two men in orange overalls were standing in a hole in the ground doing something with wires.

‘Hello, Dean.'

Mal Gross addressed the worker with a full beard, pepper and salt. He looked about forty, large, the kind of complexion that burns easily.

‘I'm busy, mate.'

‘Detective Inspector Clement, Major Crime. We need to talk to you a moment.'

Marchant sighed, handed the cable he was working on to his partner and climbed out. He was big, but no bigger than Clement, solid with a bourbon and Coke gut. Gross played herald.

‘Inspector Clement is on the homicide out at Jasper's Creek.'

‘We're looking for a biker who was seen arguing with Dieter Schaffer in the days before he died. Maori or Islander type.'

‘Mal shoulda told you, mate, we don't go around killing people.'

Clement couldn't read him.

Mal Gross said. ‘We just need to talk to whoever it might have been.'

Marchant's grunt suggested he thought that was in the same realm as flying pigs. Clement looked him in the eye.

‘You don't want to get on the wrong side of a homicide investigation.'

‘It's not one of our guys. What do you want me to say? We got two Islanders, Big Willy and Retro, and I know they're on your books so I'm guessing it wasn't them or you would have asked straight out. As far as bikers riding through here, you guys would know a lot more about that than me. It's a free country, or it's supposed to be. What sort of bike was it?'

He looked at Gross for the answer.

‘Kawasaki.'

‘Hoon Boy rides a Kawa but he's no Maori. He's whiter than me. Can I get back to work?'

Clement pointedly thanked him for his time and walked back to
the car. Gross had a few quiet words with Marchant before joining him.

‘I told him it was definitely in his club's interests to cooperate.'

‘He's evasive, but that's natural for his type. Selina looked at the guys he mentioned?'

‘Yeah. I made her go over them a few times. She said it wasn't them.'

Clement had an idea. He called Manners.

‘Could you send the image of that biker to my phone?'

Manners asked when.

‘Right now.'

Manners told him to wait a few minutes. They rested their arses against the car. The day was not yet drugged with humidity. He asked Mal Gross how long he'd been in Broome.

‘Nineteen ninety-nine. Remember that Prince song? I grew up on the wheatbelt.'

‘You must like it here.'

‘I think it's beautiful and I love the people. You grew up here but you left.' It was a question.