Murderer's Thumb (3 page)

‘I'll need your phone number, Adam,' Barry said.

‘Why? Uh…do you have to?'

‘Got a problem with that?'

‘No it's…it's just I can't quite remember it yet,' Adam lied.

Barry gave him a strange look. ‘Never mind. I know where you live. You might want to think about counselling, you know. Don't want this messing with your head.'

‘I'm all right,' Adam said, turning away from the protruding bone.

Barry clapped him on the back. ‘Come on. You guys can go home now.'

They walked back to the John Deere where Loody was waiting.

‘You'll have to lower the silage,' Barry said. ‘Don't want forensics straining their necks.'

Loody gaped at him.

‘Don't think about it, son, just do it.'

Loody hesitated, spat in the dust. The spittle flew at least a metre and a half, as if he was in a competition. He strode to the tractor, slipped into the seat and lowered the grab. When the jaws reached almost to the ground and could go no further, he opened them slowly so the silage spilled onto the ground. The impact caused the bundle of grass to fall apart. Loody swung down from the yellow tractor and marched back to the John Deere.

‘Come on,' he said to Adam.

‘Tell Colin he'll have to get his silage somewhere else,' Barry shouted after them. ‘This is a crime scene, now.'

Loody spun round. ‘But there's no other feed. Can't we use the other side of the pit?'

‘No one's to come in here, unless it's police. We don't want anyone tampering with evidence.'

‘Colin will go sick.'

‘That's not my problem, son.'

Loody pulled himself up into the cabin. ‘What a fucken mess!' he yelled as he slammed the door.

‘You all right?' Adam asked.

‘I'm fine,' he snapped. But Adam could see Loody's hands trembling. He started up the John Deere and headed for the gate, his face grim.

‘Can't use the silage,' he muttered. ‘Jesus! What are we going to feed the herd? Doesn't he know there's a fucken drought! May as well start looking for another job. Can't milk starving cows.' He hunched over the steering wheel as he drove and lit another cigarette.

Adam sat in silence, numb from Loody's rage. He'd just met this bloke and here he was at his most vulnerable. How could he console him, stop his ranting? It was easier to let him go on.

Loody glanced at him, his eyes wide with fury. ‘What am I going to say to Colin? How do I tell him I've found his daughter's dead body?'

THREE

‘I can't believe it, it's just not possible…what am I going to say?' Loody went on and on like a recorded message.

Adam was silent, but his mind was racing. Here he was, stuck in the country, kilometres from where he thought the action was and he'd found a body. It was like being on the set of
CSI
or
Midsomer Murders
, shows he never missed on TV. But they sure didn't have the impact that he felt now, the buzz of con flicting emotions: fear, curiosity, suspicion, fascination. He imagined his grandfather, Witold, must have felt like this every time he investigated a crime scene. Then there was the nausea. Had Witold spewed too?

Loody dropped Adam off where they'd first met. Adam watched the tractor rumble down the road to the new brick house. It left huge V-shaped tread marks in the dust.

Patterns fascinated Adam. Even as a toddler he had arranged toys in specific order or painted neat recurring lines and shapes. His old man was proud of Adam's accuracy and eye for detail. He'd make a fine draughtsman one day, Kazek often boasted, just like him. Adam's mum Rosemary would sigh and say Adam was just as obsessive and anal as Kazek.

She could talk. Look at her now, pale and anxious, peering out the window at him, her cropped fringe sticking out untidily. She looked like a startled cockatoo with its crest up. Every day she did a dozen circuits of the windows, checking each approach to the house for any sign of Kazek. It gave Adam the shits. Why couldn't she stand up to the old man, press charges and go ahead with an intervention order? Just because it wasn't granted the first time, didn't mean she shouldn't try again. It was too much for her though. Even the Clerk of Courts sneered at her in disbelief. A seventy-year-old stalker! Get real, he'd said. Rosemary was so shattered that she didn't trust the legal process any more. She didn't trust anything any more: phone calls, knocks at the door, letters and parcels.

Now she'd freak out about the dead body.

On the verandah Adam kicked off his expensive sneakers. His socks were wet with sweat. He left them at the door too; they sat squat, like giant vol-au-vents. Meatloaf 's ‘Bat Out of Hell' greeted him as he walked inside. He went into the lounge room and turned off the stereo.

‘What did you do that for?' his mum called from the spare room.

Adam could hear the whirr of her potter's wheel. She was at it again, making those stupid pots that collected dust. The house would fill up with them, like every place they moved to. He looked in on her from the doorway. ‘I can't believe you like that crap, Mum.'

She sat dwarfing her potter's wheel in a pair of old jeans and a dirty oversized T-shirt. Her salt and pepper bob fell forward to shade her face. She looked up and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing clay across her face. Combined with her messed up fringe it made her look scruffy. But then she always managed to drop food on her clothes or smudge her make-up. Empty cardboard boxes were heaped up behind her, and Adam's big white telescope was on its tripod to her right. She was shaping her latest creation, something tall like an urn, but off-centre.

‘No need to switch it off,' she said.

‘You do the same to me.'

‘Because it's always so loud.'

He shrugged. ‘I've got something important to tell you. Come and have a coffee.'

The top of her urn wobbled and collapsed. ‘Damn!' she said, punching down the clay and glaring at Adam.

‘What's wrong? Not my fault your pot crashed.'

‘I've told you not to interrupt me when I'm doing this!' Fuming, she pounded the clay into a lump.

Adam shook his head. ‘Get real, Mum. It's not as if you're making anything important.' He hated her obsession with pottery—she couldn't spare him ten minutes.

‘It's art, Adam, and it
is
important!' Her voice was shrill.

‘Looks crap to me,' he said.

‘Bloody hell, Adam!' Rosemary shouted, bashing the mound of clay in despair.

He retreated before she had time to throw it at him.

‘Just had a look round the farm,' he said to her as she entered the kitchen. ‘Went for a ride with Loody, one of the guys who works here. Drove down the road to get some silage and found a dead body.'

Rosemary stiffened. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said we found a dead body. A cop came and everything.'

She stared at him for a few moments. Then she started clawing at her thighs, leaving grey-white streaks of clay as she ran her fingernails up and down her jeans. She always did it when she was stressed. It pissed him off.

Finally she spoke, ‘Where's that coffee? Put plenty of sugar in yours.'

‘I hate sugar in my coffee,' he snarled.

Rosemary moved to the sink and washed her hands, scrubbing violently.

Adam was sure one day she'd draw blood.

She peered at him over the top of her glasses. ‘You'll be in shock…you need sugar.' She watched him spoon ground coffee into the coffee pot. ‘So what did the police say?'

‘Not much, just took my name. Didn't tell him our number.'

‘Good.'

‘Said he'll catch up with me soon.'

‘Did they offer you help…you know, counselling?'

‘Yeah, if I wanted it.'

‘And do you?'

‘Dunno. Wait and see.' He took his time pouring the water and pushing the plunger.

She sighed and touched her throat, red from heat rash. She rubbed at it then resumed the assault on her legs, scratching up and down, up and down. ‘So…where was this…body?' she said.

Adam summarised the story and passed her a mug of coffee.

‘Do they know who it is?' she asked.

‘Didn't say. Loody reckons it must be one of the two girls who disappeared from here six years ago.'

Rosemary gulped her coffee. She coughed and blubbered, eyes streaming, hand over her mouth.

‘You right?'

‘Mmm…it reminds me of your father. You know when he watched the news and he was totally mesmerised whenever mass graves were found. It didn't matter if it was Albania or Bosnia or somewhere in Africa or Asia. He'd go spare if they found bodies.'

Adam nodded. ‘Yeah, he always went psycho.' He didn't need to be reminded of Kazek yelling at them to shut up, the haunted glint in his eyes, the silence that followed, sometimes for days. Crazy old bastard.

‘As long as you don't react like him.'

Adam shook his head. ‘Nah, I take after Witold, remember: cool in a crisis, tough enough to get to the bottom of any mystery. Ha ha.'

Rosemary shook her head. ‘It's not a joke, Adam. He was so tough he made enemies and was murdered.' She twitched in her seat. ‘Nasty business.'

He drained his cup, screwing up his face as he swallowed. ‘It really is gross with sugar, Mum.'

She smiled to herself. ‘Do you good. Listen, do you still want that bureau for your room? We may as well move it now.'

‘You bet. I'm sick of doing homework in here.'

The desk stood in a corner of the lounge room. Its writing surface was pale and scratched and marked with ink stains. Adam could imagine the colour coming back into the timber if it was restored. The desk would be beautiful then with its sculptured legs, ornate hinges and knobs. But the drawers were the best bit. There were heaps of them and he couldn't wait to fill them with stuff. The desk was part of the old furniture the Thackerays left in the house when they rented it out. Mostly junk, Colin's wife, Olwyn, had admitted, except for the desk and a piano. They'd be worth a bit one day but they had no room for them in the new farmhouse.

Adam dusted the desk with a rag before they each took a side and lifted. Something rolled inside one of the drawers. They repositioned to get a better grip, lifted again and tottered along the wall towards the doorway. As they manoeuvred through, the rolling noise continued.

‘Sounds like a marble,' Adam said. Whatever it was, it was irritating.

FOUR

Adam slid back the desk cover, exposing all the compartments. Some of the drawers had come open. He checked inside. They were empty, but the largest drawer in the middle was locked. He shook the desk and heard the rattling again. Whatever the object was, it was definitely in the locked drawer. He felt in all the compartments for the missing key. Nothing. Then he ran his hand under the desk. His finger-tips brushed against a raised object: cardboard, tape? He got down on his knees and peered underneath. A pale shape was taped to the underside, near one of the legs. He peeled it free. It was a piece of folded paper. Inside, in small loopy handwriting, was a message:

Find me.
A diary.
Look for the eighty-ninth key.
M.T.

Adam squinted at the paper. A puzzle! The ‘eighty-ninth' key? Sounded cryptic. The word ‘key' intrigued him. Did it refer to the key of the desk drawer, or to the diary? Girls' diaries often had a small lock and keys. And whose diary was it? Someone with the initials M.T; must be one of the Thackerays. But why did the note say ‘ find me'? Was the diary lost or hidden? And why leave the note taped to the underside of the desk? Perhaps it was a game played by one of the Thackerays as a child. Adam put the note into a drawer, shut his eyes and concentrated. He knew if he took a few minutes, the answer would come to him; he'd know what the message was about. Normally, there wasn't a cryptic clue he couldn't solve, but this time he couldn't focus on anything except the morning's find at the silage pit.

Frustrated, he lay on his bed. The leg bone and rib cage haunted him. So did the boot. A plain black boot, fastened with a buckle. Girls wore them all the time. Did Emma Thackeray wear them too? Did the goth? It fitted the image. And why did he care? It wasn't as if he knew them or anything.

His grandfather Witold had seen a few dead bodies in his time. Kazek had gone on about how important Witold was in the Lithuanian police force, the equivalent of an inspector back in the 1930s. He'd solved some infamous murder cases, like the baker's wife who'd been poisoned and the young man who was found strangled in a ditch on the outskirts of a village after the snow had thawed. Had they stuck in Witold's mind like this body in the silage was lodged in Adam's?

He reached for his photo album on the bookshelf beside his bed. It was half filled with old family snaps his mum had given him. There were a few scanned photos printed off Brock's computer. A sort of going away present from Deakin Hills. Would he ever see those friends again? The last few months had been great. He'd spent most of the holidays at Brock's place, chilling out to music by his pool while he perved at Brock's sister and her friends. Now he lived in the driest hole ever: Falcon Ridge. The closest swimming pool was at Booradoo, a twenty-minute drive away.

He flipped to the last pages. Tucked inside were two images of Witold, photocopies Adam had made from the pictures in Kazek's scrapbook. It had been a major undercover operation to get them.

Kazek's scrapbook was off limits, hidden in his study where every item was strategically placed. Ring-binders for each taxation year were colour coded on the shelves alongside catalogued and dust-free reference books. Rolls of labelled plans were stacked neatly like wine bottles in a grey filing cabinet. His drawing board was always left bare, the clips arranged in a row beside his draughtsman's square. Even his pencils were lined up in their tray in order of blackness: HB, 2B, 4B, 6B. If any object was touched, Kazek would know someone had been snooping. That's how Rosemary had been caught out. She'd found the scrapbook inside a desk drawer when she was looking for a packet of sticky labels.