A Dark Place to Die Read online

  'That must be the one,' says the security guard. 'If your information's right. Probably just some little fucker making trouble.'

  'Most likely,' says Keane. 'Stay here.' Silencing the man's meek territorial protests with a glance, he and Harris begin walking towards a relatively new-looking red container standing on its own about twenty metres from the Freeport boundary fence. Behind the mesh, the river runs west to east with Crosby Beach to the north. The container squats almost directly beneath a wind turbine, silent and still. The word 'STENZER', the logo of a shipping firm, is painted onto the side of the container in a deeper red colour.

  Even before they go in, Keane knows this is the place.

  He can taste it. Something bad has happened here. Keane has sensed it at other crime sites before. Not always, but often enough to recognise the sensation when it arrives.

  The traffic noise diminishes as they approach; two banks of containers at right angles form a wind and noise shield. In the lee of these protective boxes there is dead air in the space occupied by the red container. Above them, off to one side, the turbine blades rotate.

  Keane notes that the red container can't be seen from the city side of the Freeport and is only partially visible to anyone on the wasteland bordering the site.

  The killers didn't have far to travel to place the victim amongst the iron men. Through the metal slatted fence, beyond an expanse of wasteland and beyond that the rock wall, Keane can see some of Gormley's figures.

  It's high tide and several of the sculptures nearest to the docks are already almost fully covered. In the cold grey light, they contain a powerful energy that Keane isn't altogether surprised by. He doesn't think of himself as an art lover. Like most locals, he was instinctively dismissive of the Gormley installation. Modern rubbish. Cost as much as a hospital wing. He remembers going out there with Julie one sunny Sunday. They parked behind the dunes next to the lake and asked for directions from a shaven-headed man with a dog and wearing the obligatory shiny nylon football shirt – this one the royal blue of Everton – which bulged over his substantial belly.

  'Don't waste yer fuckin' time, mate,' he snarled in an accent so pronounced as to render it a foreign language if he'd been speaking to anyone not born in the city. 'They're absolute fuckin' shite.' And then, to make sure they fully understood the absolute fucking shiteness of the sculptures, he jabbed a finger back towards the beach and spat out the words again. 'Ab-so-lute. Fuck-ing. Shite.'

  He and Julie giggled about the art critique all the way to the beach, imagining it being used word for word in The Observer 'Sunday Review' section.

  Gormley Piece 'Absolute Fucking Shite'.

  And, in all honesty, at first Keane didn't see exactly what all the fuss was about. It was an unusual sight, that had to be admitted; the figures staring blindly out across the water. Keane kept noticing details that got in between him and the art. Bits of litter. Dog shit. A group of youths milling around a couple of younger boys on the promenade. And Keane's policeman core had been moderately outraged by the local additions to the figures.

  He'd seen another Gormley piece over at Gateshead when he'd been there for a training course with Newcastle Police. The magnificent and moving 'Angel of the North' looked out over the confluence of the A1 and A167 roads, the landscape grim, industrial. The sculpture, its sail-like iron wings embracing and defying the wind, had shocked Keane by its scale, its span wider than the Statue of Liberty is high. He'd found that out because he'd parked and gawped up at it, temporarily reduced to childhood again by the sheer confidence and beauty of the thing, the first and only time an artwork had literally stopped him in his tracks. Like the figures on Crosby Beach, the Angel was constructed of the stuff of northern England – iron and steel – yet it appeared light, and was possessed of so much latent energy that Keane wouldn't have been surprised to see it take flight across the north-eastern landscape – steam-driven and belching smoke, naturally.

  But until today, standing outside the container that Keane is sure was the killing place, he hadn't 'got' the Liverpool artworks in the way he had the Angel. Gradually, though, the power of the work begins to emerge. And, in a way that he doesn't want to examine too closely, an echo of what Ferguson said in the mortuary, something about the murder being 'artistic', reverberates with him.

  'Ready?' says Harris. She touches him on the arm and he realises he's been standing motionless.

  He nods and Harris puts a gloved hand to the container door.

  7

  Koop's first call is the distribution shed at the plantation, a ten-minute drive from his place. He backs the ute to the open doors of the building and gets out. He pauses for a few seconds and looks at the neat rows of net-draped coffee trees rolling down the side of the hill into the valley before going inside.

  Koop passes a minute talking about nothing in particular with Annie, the spike-haired company office manager, and a couple of the boys on the packing tables, before he loads up the tray and leaves on his rounds.

  Zoe was right calling him a delivery boy; that's exactly what he is, and exactly how he likes it. After a lifetime working at the sharp end of things, Koop figures he is due a little ordinariness.

  In the truck he punches in The Abyssinians and the reggae loops out, sounding as fresh-minted as the day it was recorded. If this is what ordinary feels like, he can take a bucketload. He turns up the volume and snakes down the hill towards Byron and the first delivery of the day.

  Strictly speaking he doesn't need the work. He holds a fifteen per cent investment in North Coast Coffee, and could easily bring in another driver on the wages they pay locally. But after spending the first six months of his new Australian life lazing around watching his gut grow, he knew he had to find an outlet for his energies other than swimming and drinking coffee, or his brain would have started dribbling out of his ears.

  The deliveries keep him in close touch with the business. Working the deliveries is the ideal way to protect his investment. As a copper, Koop had known the value of attention to detail and he is no different when it comes to delivering coffee.

  A café owner who had found the last batch a little bitter is given a new order free of charge, no questions. Another who confides in Koop that several other coffee companies are prowling his café is offered a discount on subsequent orders, with the discount increasing in direct ratio to the size of the order.

  A café whose barista has gone absent without leave (a common problem on the cruisy North Coast) gets a couple of names from Koop of people who might be able to help them out.

  Each wrinkle, each detail, is dutifully recorded on the voice recorder app on Koop's phone. At the end of each day he sits in the cab and listens, wincing at the sound of his nasal Liverpool accent, and noting down anything usable in a black notebook before gladly wiping the soundbites.

  By lunchtime he has all but completed the run and stops for something to eat at a café next to a pub. A velvety flat white in front of him, and an order of bacon on Turkish to come, he sits in the café garden and hopes his face doesn't look as smug as he feels.

  Koop has just taken the first sip when he becomes aware he's being watched.

  He glances up and sees two men aged around thirty sitting at the bar which divides the pub from the café. Rangy and dishevelled, the pair wear the de rigueur hemp clothing and white-boy dreadlocks common to this area of the shire. Koop thinks there must be a way station on the Pacific Highway where the clothes are handed out to metropolitan refugees on arrival. Somewhere between Ballina and Byron maybe.

  They turn their faces away but there's something familiar about one of them. Koop struggles for a moment before getting it: he's a neighbour of sorts who Koop has seen behind the wheel of a smoky ute rattling past his property now and again. The two bend their shaggy heads together over their half-empty beers, and one of them mutters something which causes the other man to snigger.

  Koop feels the blood quicken in his veins, sure he's the subject of their la
ughter, but he contents himself with drinking his coffee. Dickheads all over. Forget it.

  And then he catches Zoe's name and feels something dormant inside him begin to uncoil. This could go south, he thinks, and tries to ignore the evolutionary instincts triggering his anger. Good coppers don't get angry, they just get even. He's not going to react. He's been called everything before.

  But family. That's a different matter.

  Koop looks up again and this time there's no mistaking that Zoe is being discussed. The two men, growing in cockiness with each swallow of their beer, are openly snickering.

  Koop sighs, takes another sip of his coffee, sets it down carefully and walks across. He's been in this situation a million times and knows exactly how it will play out. He is – was – a professional.

  'I know you?' he says conversationally to the guy he thinks might live nearby, making sure his face is just that bit closer than is usually comfortable, an old copper's trick. The man leans away a fraction, as Koop knew he would. 'Because you look familiar. And I thought I heard you mention my wife's name?'

  The guy glances at his mate and smirks, gains a jolt of confidence. 'Don't think so, mate. You must be goin' deaf, or something. Happens to fellers your age, I heard.'

  His mate splutters and the two high five. 'Fucken classic, Thommo,' says the mate.

  Koop smiles, outwardly patient. 'And your mention of my wife? I heard you say something about Zoe.'

  Thommo, on a roll now, nudges his mate before replying. 'Couldn't have been the same woman, mate,' he says, eyeing Koop, weighing him up, seeing him as too old, too thin. Here it comes, Koop thinks. He's decided I haven't got the juice. 'The only Zoe I know about, I heard she was a Jap-licking pussy-muncher. That couldn't be your missus, could it?'

  Koop knows enough to stop his first instinct which is to grab Thommo by the back of his stupid dreadlocks and break his sun-blistered nose across the bar. Instead he walks away and sits down. Only amateurs react. Thommo's toast. He just doesn't know it yet.

  Thommo and his oppo are creased up. Koop's retreat has signalled open season and attracted the attention of the barman who shrugs apologetically. Koop makes a 'what-can-you-do' gesture before leaving, the sounds of the two drinkers ringing in his ears. Whipped.

  'Didn't think so,' says Thommo as he passes. 'Bye bye, you fucken pussy.'

  Koop doesn't reply. He wants Thommo to think it's over. Wants the barman to think it's over. In case what's going to happen ends badly.

  Outside, the car park deserted, Koop gets into his truck and backs it into a shaded patch behind the pub dumpster and waits, checking the delivery manifest to pass the time.

  He doesn't have to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, Thommo stumbles into the car park and fumbles for his keys next to a dilapidated ute. Koop winds down his window and calls him over, making sure they have the place to themselves.

  Thommo looks around.

  'What the fuck?' he says. 'What do you want?'

  Koop holds his palm up in a conciliatory gesture and opens up the passenger side door.

  'Mate, we just got off on the wrong foot, OK?' Koop says, putting a wheedling tone into his voice. He leans over, hand out. 'No hard feelings, right?'

  Thommo is positively swaggering now. He leans into the cab of Koop's truck. 'So your missus does knock off that Jap bitch? I fucken knew it! I saw them swimming in the creek once. I'll say this, she's got a body on her. For an old bird.'

  Koop forces a tight smile onto his face and looks down at his outstretched hand. An invitation. Thommo takes it and, as he does so, Koop jerks him sharply forward, headbutting him square in the nose. Blood spurts out and Thommo grunts, disbelieving, as Koop grabs his dreads and smashes his face down onto his knee. Koop drags the unconscious Thommo into the cab and pushes him into the passenger footwell.

  Koop checks the windscreen has no splashes of blood visible and drives slowly out of the pub car park. The remaining two deliveries on Koop's manifest for that afternoon will have to wait.

  He's got plans for Thommo.

  The morning has passed quickly for Zoe.

  She always enjoys this stage of a project, when the arguing has been done, the arm-twisting is over, and the final designs are being tweaked and polished. All the components for the BritArt project are arranged around her, both physically and onscreen. Zoe surveys her handiwork and tries to see the potential flaws, the areas that the client will find difficult, but she sees nothing that shouldn't be there. It's good work, an elegant and clever solution. She and the guys in the Brisbane office will do the final presentation at GOMA on Tuesday and Zoe knows it will be received well.

  She opens up a chat link with the Brisbane office and the face of Suze, one of her designers, appears. Zoe methodically goes over the details of what they're going to need for the Tuesday presentation. Behind Suze, Tom, the second of her team, flits backwards and forwards in front of a table piled with design printouts.

  'You staying overnight on Monday, Zoe?' Suze asks.

  'Probably. Depends on how organised I am, Suze. But, yes, most likely.'

  Zoe glances up and out through the window as something catches her peripheral vision. A car turns into the property and Zoe tenses.

  A police car.

  'Suze, I have to go. Talk to you later.'

  Suze waves. 'Speak soon.'

  Zoe closes the chat window, instinctively saves the work onscreen and stands up, her hands smoothing the front of her blouse.

  Years of life with a cop means she knows that the police arriving unannounced at your door is seldom something that turns out well. She breathes deeply and tries not to think about what they want, but in her head is one word, repeating over and over.

  Koop. Koop. Koop.

  The roads around the shire are noted for accidents, and she has a sudden image of her husband dead or dying, surrounded by grim-faced paramedics. She picks up her mobile, her hands trembling, and dials her husband.

  'Shit.'

  Koop looks at Thommo who is crying. At least, Koop thinks he's crying. It's hard to tell. Thommo has his hand cupped over his nose and his face is a streaky mess of snot, blood, matted hair and tears. He is crouched on the grass in a paddock hidden from view off Friday Hut Road. He is naked.

  'You broke my fuggen dose, man!'

  Koop leans across and pats Thommo on the shoulder. Thommo flinches like a whipped dog, any fight in him long gone.

  'You got lucky,' says Koop.

  'Lucky? How the fug is dis lucky, you fuggen loony! You're goin' down, you crazy fug! The fuggen pigs'll be round once I . . .'

  Koop puts a finger to his lips and holds his gaze on Thommo. He leans in close and Thommo flinches. Thommo stops talking, his eyes wide.

  'No, that's not going to happen, sunshine,' says Koop. 'Two reasons. First, as you'll have noticed, you are bollock naked and ten kilometres from home. You've got more chance of being arrested for lewd behaviour than ratting out any story about me. Second, and this is where I want you to pay attention, you little ball of pus, if I get any heat from anyone over this little . . . etiquette lesson, I may have to let the police in on your little secret.'

  'Secret? What fuggen secret?'

  Koop jabs his finger into Thommo's chest. 'Don't act stupid, Thommo. I worked drugs for twenty-five years. I chewed up and spat out grubs like you quicker than I could find 'em. The amount of hydroponic supplies you've got knocking about your place means you're either an overenthusiastic cucumber grower, or you're farming a nice batch of weed in that slum you call home. It's a miracle you haven't been busted already. But, being a reasonable man, I'm willing to let things drop at this point if you are. OK? Now nod.'

  Thommo nods and Koop straightens up. He gets back into the truck leaving Thommo staring up at him through a tangle of dirty hair.

  'Wait!' says Thommo, scrambling to his feet, realisation dawning, his fear-shrivelled dick bouncing pathetically in a tangle of pubic hair. 'You can't leave me here like this, mate! Mate!'
<
br />   Koop guns the engine and pulls away. He leans through the window and waves. 'I think you'll find I just have, mate.'

  As Thommo fades into the distance in Koop's rear-view mirror, his mobile phone blurts into life.

  'Oh thank God,' says Zoe as he picks up on the second ring.

  'Zoe?' says Koop. 'What is it?' Her voice has a panicky quality that he hasn't heard before, and following so closely on the heels of his run-in with Thommo, it rattles him.

  'It's alright, Koop. It's just that the police are here and I . . .'

  'The police? What do they want?'

  'I don't know. They haven't come in yet. I was working and then I saw them and I, well I just thought the worst. Gave me a shock. You know what I mean.'

  Koop knows what it could mean, what it often did mean. He's thought before about what it must be like to be on the receiving end of the news they brought into people's houses, like plague carriers. Dead fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters. The victims more often men than women. And the messenger frequently met with anger or bitterness, a couple of times with actual physical assault.

  'I've got to go,' says Zoe. 'They're at the door.'

  She hangs up and Koop speaks into dead air.

  'I'm on my way.'

  Ten minutes later Koop pulls sharply into the gravel driveway and revs the ute up the sharp incline. He parks next to the police car and hurries into the house, his face set.

  'In the kitchen,' shouts Zoe. Koop relaxes fractionally. Her voice, while containing something he can't yet place, doesn't contain enough to panic him.

  Koop walks through to the large open kitchen that is the de facto centre of the Koopman house. Two uniformed policemen sit on stools drinking coffee, their hats upside down on the counter. They're in the process of standing up when Koop comes in. He exchanges glances with Zoe but finds he can't read her expression.

  'Mr Koopman?' says the taller of the two, a beefy, red-faced man in his late thirties. He holds out a hand which Koop shakes. 'Sergeant Sullivan, Northern Rivers Police, as you can see. Good to meet you. This is Constable Wheater.'