Anya arrived at the cabin by the beach and unpacked the car. She’d booked the weekend away at the last minute, to examine first-hand the site at which Eileen Randall had been murdered, and was grateful for cheap, decent accommodation. The drive to Fisherman’s Bay had the normal Friday night exodus crawling along the freeway. So much for getting away, she thought, but as the traffic thinned along the coast road, the drive became more relaxing-and liberating. Even in the moonlight, the scenery was impressive.
She placed a box of groceries and wine on the kitchen bench and opened the sliding door. The fresh sea breeze cooled the cabin almost immediately.
The best part was no interruptions, just privacy, sea air and the sound of the ocean. And the pile of papers to review. The clock on the wall chimed eight. She decided to go for a walk to buy milk and other perishables. And maybe even fish and chips followed by some decadent, fat-filled ice-cream.
The Bay was smaller than the internet pictures suggested, but there were a number of takeaway shops, equipment-hire sheds and a discount supermarket on the way into town. Two cafés, a restaurant and all but one of the takeaways were closed.
Over the jazz band, Anya asked at the pub why almost everything was shut on a Friday night. The woman at the bar just laughed.
“Darl, people moved here to get away from the city. None of the locals wants to work twenty-four hours, seven days a week.” She poured a beer. “Here’s a tip. If you want a hot chicken tomorrow, you’d better pick it up in the morning or they’ll be sold out. They only cook once a day.”
Anya had to smile. Tourists wanted it all-the nature and unspoilt atmosphere of a coastal town, with round-the-clock conveniences.
“We never asked for tourists,” she said, not hesitating to take a hundred-dollar note from a group who looked anything but local.
On the way back to the beach cabin, kids hovered on the corner, some riding bikes, others egging drinkers on; all of them smoking. Friday nights and boredom in a country town hadn’t changed since she was a child.
With an increased appetite, she opened the wine as soon as she reached the house, devoured the hamburger-beetroot included-and consumed half the calamari. Why was it that the smell inside takeaways always made her buy more than she could ever eat?
A cushioned wicker sofa proved much more comfortable than it suggested. Anya put her glass on the wooden floor and began to read the musty file.
The half-dressed body of Eileen Randall was found at two a.m. on Koonaka Beach. From the police report, a local teenage girl and friend of the deceased had seen a man with blood-stained clothing holding the dead girl’s underpants. The witness identified the man as Geoffrey Willard.
At the time, Willard had been arrested for malicious damage to a car and had been cautioned about antisocial behavior. One of his former teachers said that Willard had always been different from the other children and, as a result, was the victim of bullying. His temper got him into trouble, usually when people teased or made fun of his learning difficulties. He tried hard at school and had what appeared to be a photographic memory. The problems he had were in making friends and socializing. At times he behaved inappropriately, but the teacher suggested that was due to his need for attention.
His boss at the service station said Willard was a hardworker, but became angry when a local woman called him a pervert and demanded another petrol attendant. The then eighteen-year-old responded by kicking in her car door.
On the night of the murder, Eileen Randall had been to the only cinema in town. Willard had shown interest in one of her friends, and Eileen told him to “rack off.” Witnesses said he responded by swearing at Eileen and telling her she was a stuck-up bitch. They all walked home, and a girlfriend thought Eileen was meeting a new “mystery” boy later that night, but didn’t know his name.
The melodramatics of adolescence read like a soap opera, Anya thought, sipping the sparkling Pinot noir. The miniature bubbles danced in her glass. At times, being an adult definitely had its advantages. She could drink alcohol inside, not on a street corner. Then again, at times life still played like a soap opera.
So Eileen Randall sneaked out without her parents knowing and was murdered that night.
Anya began laying out piles of documents on the sofa and floor. The PM photos had faded a little, but were still reasonable images. The upper body was streaked with multiple stab wounds, some deep and others superficial. Most of the wounds were inflicted pre-mortem. Just like in the Dorman murder.
The police had collected her clothes, which they described as damp. The girl’s jeans showed some blood splatters, but her feet were unmarked and clean.
Anya took mental note of that. Normally in a stabbing, unless the body is horizontal the whole time, blood drips onto the legs and feet.
There appeared to be little blood at the scene, although some may have soaked into the sand and been difficult to identify on photographs. Some hairs had adhered to her shirt, found later to be canine, not human.
Anya grabbed a pad and pen. “Wet clothes, clean feet,” she wrote. With the pen between her teeth, she searched for a weather report. Twenty-two degrees Celsius, with high-level humidity, winds of twenty to thirty knots.
Beneath the weather report was a photograph of Geoffrey Willard on arrest, holding both arms out. The front of his shirt was smeared with blood. His arms appeared free of injuries. There were no “stabber’s wounds,” left when the attacker’s hand slid over the handle of the knife and on to the blade. His hands were free of scratches and bruises as well. Eileen Randall may not have had the time nor the strength to fight Willard.
She flicked back to the PM report. Alf Carney had listed time of death as between one and two a.m., the time Willard was found with the body. The conclusion was based on stomach contents and the time of the last meal. Anya scribbled “time of death questionable,” and underlined it twice.
Time of death was one of the most misunderstood aspects of pathology and one of Anya’s pet annoyances. Former criteria such as analysis of stomach contents had long been proved inaccurate. Rates of digestion were so variable that it was a notoriously unreliable gauge.
Genital examination had found sperm in the vagina. The only tests available at the time found that the ejaculator had the blood-group O negative.
Anya took a closer look at some of the crime-scene photographs. Evidence on beaches could be difficult, thanks to the continuing tides. She’d occasionally thought that the best place to commit a murder was far out at sea, or, if on the beach, preferably during a storm.
She read through the organ systems on the PM report. Despite no saltwater in the larynx or lungs, Carney had found some in the pleural space between the lungs and ribs. He performed a Gettler test to determine chloride levels in the heart. The results showed there was no evidence of saltwater inhalation. Eileen Randall hadn’t been drowned, despite her clothing being so wet. At least Carney was thorough enough to check, she thought. Maybe the clothes were damp because of the high humidity that night. She wrote a question mark on the pad.
Flicking through the histology results on the back page, Anya noticed something she’d never seen before. Some kind of infestation, deemed crayfish larvae, was found in the pleural cavity.
She paused and performed a web search on her laptop. Crayfish larvae only lived in water. They were not found in the sand. Anya felt herself shiver. The tiny creatures had crawled in through the stab wounds. It was the only probable explanation. She would probably avoid eating crayfish from now on.
Tired, Anya wondered why the photo of a young Geoff Willard showed a relatively small blood smear on his shirt. If he’d stabbed Eileen Randall in excess of thirty times, why wasn’t he covered in splashes and spurts consistent with her injuries? More importantly, why hadn’t Carney’s pathology report commented on that?