The following morning, Anya awoke to the sound of the ocean slapping the shore. Overnight drizzle had made the sleeping temperature ideal. After a lie-in, she cooked French toast and headed for a walk. Even in the off-season, Fisherman’s Bay was active. Older couples walked hand-in-hand on the beach as anglers patiently waited for the next big catch. Toddlers squealed for the sake of it as they chased the waves, then ran away as fast as their chubby legs could manage.
At the end of the beach, she passed a playground opposite the newsagent. Stopping to buy a paper, she asked the man at the counter whether he remembered the Eileen Randall case. The owner seemed less than willing to talk.
“You’re not from the bloody press, are you?”
“No. Definitely not. I was wondering if you know what happened to the policeman who was in charge at the time. I don’t suppose he’s still working?”
“No chance,” the man said. “Charlie Boyd retired years ago.”
Not surprised, Anya paid for the paper, thanked the man and wandered past the tempting smell of hot pastries from the bakery. Sea air definitely increased the appetite, she thought, as kids on bikes rode on the footpath, chomping on pies. The place had such a holiday atmosphere, it was impossible not to feel relaxed.
Just past the hairdresser’s, she felt a tap on her back.
“Excuse me,” a middle-aged woman said. “Were you asking about the Randall case?”
The woman had a broad-brimmed hat tied under her chin. And unlike the tourists, she had on a long-sleeved shirt and long cotton trousers. Her hands were coarse and tanned. She had to be a local used to hiding from the sun, not basking in it.
“Yes, I was hoping to speak to the former policeman, but he’s retired. Do you know anything about the case?”
“You have to understand, people around here are careful about who they talk to. The murder pretty much killed business a while back. And the whole town suffered from the loss of that girl. We don’t want it all dredged up again.”
“I understand, but I’m a pathologist and I just had some questions for Charlie Boyd.”
“A pathologist?” Her eyes widened. “Like on those TV crime shows? Why didn’t you say?”
It astounded Anya that a few years ago no one cared what she did for a living. Now it was flavor of the month.
“Charlie will probably talk to you, then.”
A teenager on a bike whizzed past them, almost clipping Anya. The woman called after him, “I’ll be telling your mother you’ve been riding on the footpath again, Jason Carmichael.”
Anya smiled. People were pretty much the same everywhere.
“Do you know where I could find Charlie?”
“Oh yes, love, down on the wharf. He’s usually there this time of day. You can’t miss him. Looks like Santa Claus with a big silver beard.”
“Thanks so much,” she said, and headed toward the jetty.
Teenagers took turns jumping off the pylons into the water below. She stopped and looked over the side, checking the depth marker.
“It’s deep down there. There’s never been a problem,” a man reassured. He was with the jumpers and was probably used to strangers showing concern about the practice.
Toward the end of the wooden wharf, a man with gray hair sat in a plastic fold-up chair, large fishing rod and basket beside him. On his lap he had a fish clamped to a wooden board. A small radio played.
She approached and asked, “Mr. Boyd?”
“Shhhhhhh,” he said, straining to listen to the news headlines. He squinted up at his visitor. “Who wants to know?”
Anya introduced herself and he repositioned himself in his seat.
She decided to ease into the topic and perched on a bollard nearby. “What have you got there?”
“Bream. Good, pan-size, too. Only take what I can eat,” he said, admiring his prize.
“You’re pretty well set up for it. We used to catch trout in the lakes where I grew up. In the midlands of Tasmania.”
His eyes glistened. “Always wanted to fish there.” He studied Anya for a moment, as though assessing her.
“It’s a long way to come to talk fishing.”
Relieved to have passed muster, she began by briefly explaining her involvement in the current rape cases and the importance of possible links with the Randall case. “I’d like to get a feel for what happened the night Eileen Randall was found.” The wind picked up and blew her hair about her face. “Were you there?”
“One of the worst nights of all my thirty-eight years in the job,” he said, scaling the fish from the tail end. “To see a mate’s daughter killed like that, and then have to go and break the news. But you didn’t track me down to hear that.”
“Was there anything about the scene that seemed out of place?”
He frowned. “In what way?”
“Is it possible she was killed somewhere else and brought to the beach?”
Charlie turned the fish over and removed the remaining scales. “She was killed on the beach, all right. Willard was caught with the body. The bastard had just raped her and still had her panties in his hand.” He gave it one last scrape. “Just like a fish on a hook.”
He stared at Anya with an unnerving intensity. “Why do you want to go raking over this now? Willard’s out and there’s nothing anyone can do. Emily Randall didn’t only lose her daughter that night. She lost her will to live.” He squinted in the distance at an overturned surf-ski. “She died not long after the trial. Her husband passed away a couple of years later.”
The surf-ski rider surfaced and the old man seemed to relax. “I’m just glad they’re not here to see him released.”
“Was there other family?”
He shook his head and tapped the knife on the board. “Don’t think so. Why do you want to know?”
Anya glanced around the jetty. Fishermen packed up their morning’s catches and headed back to town. Seagulls hovered and squawked for burley thrown back into the water after fish had been cleaned.
“I’m reviewing some old cases for comparison with new ones. Old methods versus new techniques.”
“You should be a bloody politician.”
Anya smiled and thought he gave a smirk beneath his beard. The old man swapped knives. This one was flexible and slit the fish from gills to the anal vent. He handled the blade as though it were second nature.
Anya preferred her fish already clean and cooked.
“Do you have any idea how many times Willard stabbed that girl?” he said, without looking up.
“I’ve read Alf Carney’s report.”
“Ah.” Charlie pulled the guts of the fish out with his fingers. “Alf Carney-one of the best.”
Another of Carney’s fans, she thought. Only this time he was on the prosecution side, not the defense.
“It took a hell of a lot of strength to stab that deep that many times,” he said. “Willard was one strong bastard. Nature’s way of compensating, you could say.”
“Something the report didn’t mention was whether Willard confessed to raping and murdering Eileen?”
“Sure did. Then he panicked and spun us some bullshit about watching TV. He was like a walking timetable. Could memorize the TV guide and all he could talk about were shows he’d watched. I didn’t believe anything he said that night.
“Anyways, after something, what was it, The Eleventh Hour, I think, he said he took off on his push-bike for a midnight ride and saw something floating in the water. Then he claimed he realized it was a person and carried her up to the beach. He said he thought she was still alive, which was why he was getting her dressed when Eileen’s young friend, Michele Harris, found them.”
Anya remembered the wet clothes. There was a reasonable chance the body had been immersed. “Was he arrested at the scene?”
“That chicken-shit? No. We found him in his bedroom, hiding in the cupboard. Still covered in Eileen’s blood.”
A couple of boys ran up to Charlie and checked his bucket.
“Hey, mister, what’d you catch?”
“Two bream. Real beauties. Want to know my secret?”
Suddenly, Charlie did resemble Santa Claus. The boys nodded eagerly.
“Here,” he said, reaching down to pull a jar from his basket. “I make up the liquid with sugar, water and salt and drop prawns in for bait.” He urged his audience closer with his grubby index finger. “Then I add two drops of aniseed oil. The fish love it.”
“Wow! Thanks, mister. I’ll go tell my dad.”
“So do the fish end up tasting like licorice?” Anya smiled.
“Not to my reckoning.”
Anya was skeptical of the secret but chose not to question it. “You said that Willard later confessed?”
“Yeah, dopey bastard caved in after questioning. Confessed to everything. Reckons she pissed him off and deserved everything she got.”
He chopped off the fish’s head and threw the scraps into the water.
“Willard was always trouble, real antisocial. Used to peep at girls in the changing rooms, steal underwear from clotheslines, that kind of thing. If I’d had my way, we’d have locked him up long before he killed Eileen Randall.”
Old-fashioned policing, she thought. There seemed little point pursuing discrepancies in Carney’s report with Charlie.
“Do you think he planned the murder?”
“Don’t reckon he had the smarts to plan. My guess is she turned him down, said something he didn’t like, and he went berserk.”
The wind gusted again and she shivered. “Were there any reports of sexual assaults around that time?”
“You’ve got to understand that this is a small town and there’s not much for young people to do. There’s the football club, and all the girls treat the players like heroes. There were always whispers of gang-bangs and some of the girls would have participated willingly. Believe me. Occasionally, a girl would accuse someone who didn’t return her affections, but none of them took it further. In retrospect, I guess there could have been some assaults that went unreported.”
Anya stared in disbelief at a man who had been entrusted with protecting the community. Some Santa Claus.
She couldn’t understand the culture of protecting sportsmen, even non-elite ones. She suspected that things in this town had remained pretty much unchanged over the last twenty years.
Charlie thought back. “There were a couple of serious assaults. A local woman identified Willard as her rapist, but he was never charged for it. She wouldn’t testify. She was too afraid when she found out that he’d killed Eileen.”
Anya knew that if Willard were a serial offender, there were likely to be other victims. She stood up and wiped sand off the back of her shorts.
“Is there a statement about her assault that I can see?”
“Not any more, but I’ll see if she’s prepared to talk to you, given you’re a doctor and all.”
“Thanks for your time, Charlie. I’d better get back to work.” She walked a couple of feet and turned. “There was one more thing. I was wondering whether anyone in town defended Willard, stuck up for him?”
Charlie wrapped the fillets in a piece of his newspaper and placed them on top of his basket.
“There’s a local eccentric who carried on about how Willard had to be innocent. He’s an amateur in town who’s charted every tide for the last forty years. A bit of a hermit, but he badgered us day and night. Old Bill Lalor. Lives in the shack at the end of Koonaka Beach. Come to think of it, he used to have a thing for Willard’s mother. He came out with some notion about the tides that night, which was discounted by the prosecution’s expert. Just some crazy bastard trying to get attention. Old Bill still goes on about it to anyone who’ll listen.”
He began to disassemble his fishing rod. “So what are you really here for?”
“I need to know if there are any similarities between Eileen Randall’s death and that of a teacher recently. This one was raped a week before.” Anya paused. “Willard’s under suspicion. If your victim wants to talk, I’m staying here until tomorrow.” She pulled a card from her wallet and wrote the number and address of the cabin on the back.
“Always said we oughta have the death penalty.” Charlie Boyd wiped his hand on his shirt and took the card. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Anya left the jetty and turned to see Santa Claus speaking quietly into his mobile phone. He bundled his belongings into the cane basket, collected his rod and fold-up chair and cut through the pub car park to the police station.