Dead Cat Bounce Read online

  Scribe Publications

  DEAD CAT BOUNCE

  Peter Cotton has been the media advisor to three federal cabinet ministers, worked as a foreign correspondent for the ABC, been a senior reporter on the ABC’s AM and PM programs, and had stories published in most major print outlets in Australia. Dead Cat Bounce is his first novel.

  To Claire, with love

  Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

  18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

  Email: [email protected]

  First published by Scribe 2013

  Copyright © Peter Cotton 2013

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Cotton, Peter.

  Dead Cat Bounce / Peter Cotton.

  9781922072542 (e-book.)

  1. Elections–Fiction. 2. Australian fiction.

  A823.4

  scribepublications.com.au

  ‘Evil is unspectacular and always human,

  And shares our bed and eats at our own table …’

  Herman Melville, by W. H. Auden, March 1939

  Channel Four Live Cam

  Wednesday 31 July, 11.15 am

  Hello again, Jean Acheson with the Live Cam, recapping the news that the search for Environment Minister Susan Wright appears to be over with the discovery of a body here by Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin early this morning.

  Mrs Wright disappeared on Sunday night after a party in her office. In the two days since, millions of Australians have been affected by one of the biggest manhunts ever conducted in this country. And now this.

  A major police operation is underway around the lake below me, and while we’ve had no official word yet as to the identity of the body down there, everything points to it being Mrs Wright. For a start, journalists monitoring police communications earlier this morning say officers in the first patrol car to attend the scene repeatedly used the minister’s name when referring to the deceased. Also, the senior policeman who led the search to find Mrs Wright has now taken charge of things here. And most tellingly, Prime Minister Lansdowne cancelled all campaign engagements in Brisbane this morning, and his jet touched down in Canberra just minutes ago.

  Susan Wright was Michael Lansdowne’s most effective minister. She was also his best performer in the parliament, and her efforts over the past three weeks are the only reason his government’s still rated a chance in this election. If she is dead, as seems likely, then Mr Lansdowne’s hopes of a come-from-behind win must surely have died with her. This is Jean Acheson. Back with more in a moment.

  1

  THE ENVIRONMENT MINISTER lay on her side in the mud. Her head rested in the crook of her left elbow, her slits of eyes almost closed, and her mouth half open. It might have been fatigue after the hours I’d spent in the tent with her body that morning, or maybe the halogen lights were playing tricks on my eyes, but, as I stared at Susan Wright’s mouth, ticking off an urgent to-do list in my head, her lips suddenly began to quiver a bit. I stretched my eyes, trying to adjust them to the light. Then her mouth started tremoring at the edges, and, in that instant, Wright looked to have come alive somehow. I swung away, slapped my cheeks hard with both hands, and when I looked back, was relieved to see she was nothing but dead again.

  It was time to let the body contractors have her — they were lined up outside on the access path, waiting to go to work. I was about to call them in, but for some reason I suppressed the impulse, and instead lowered myself down for one last look at her.

  In life, Susan Wright had been a political celebrity — one of Australia’s best-known faces. And while she seemed to pop up on the box every other night, only the most cynical punters were sick of the sight of her, if the polls measuring personal approval were to be believed. Her appeal went beyond the sparkle in her eyes and her high cheekbones. She seemed like a warm and caring person, and she was obviously smart and on top of her game — all of which inspired confidence. ‘A safe pair of hands’, the commentators liked to say about her. And now she was dead. As I gazed at her face, I knew that if we didn’t resolve this case in double-quick time, the outside pressure on us would become immense.

  I tried to dislodge this thought by focusing on the big patch of lividity that spanned the right-hand side of Wright’s face, from just below her eye socket down to the line of her chin. That lividity had had everyone in the team talking throughout the morning. It had a cherry-red edge to it — a classic sign of carbon monoxide poisoning, and something that most of us associated with stationary cars and suicide. The thing was, apart from the lividity, everything else about this case pointed to murder.

  For a start, Wright had been missing for the best part of three days. That fact undercut any suicide theory, especially since those close to her reckoned she’d been mostly happy and that she’d had everything to live for. Happy and fulfilled pollies didn’t voluntarily go missing in the middle of an election campaign, and they were even less likely to choose such a time to top themselves.

  Thankfully, this crime scene had already thrown up some leads. These included evidence that at least two people had been involved in dumping Wright on this sodden little mudflat overnight. They’d immediately become our prime suspects, as there was no way they could have left her like this and still be entirely innocent. The first thing I’d want to know when we caught up with them was why they’d chosen to dump her here. The very nature of the place meant that they were going to leave footprints.

  If we were lucky, it could mean that they’d been incredibly incompetent, and that their prints would soon give us a break in the case. Or maybe they were easily spooked, and something had panicked them into disposing of the body in a hurry. Both scenarios were possible, though I didn’t see either as likely. If the two who’d dumped Susan Wright were the same ones who’d held her these past few days, they’d already managed to elude one of the biggest manhunts ever mounted in this country. That fact alone meant they were probably very good at what they did, and very careful. I figured that all we’d get from their prints was their weight — and as it was winter, who knew what their clothes weighed, or what else they’d been carrying at the time — and we’d get the size of the shoes they’d been wearing.

  What we already knew from their shoe prints was that only one of them had been involved in hauling Wright to the water. The gouges that their heels had made in the mud had survived the body being dragged over them. And the drag marks were unbroken, so the workhorse had done the job with apparent ease. It meant that he was strong and fit, and if the prints were true, he was also very big.

  The second suspect had left much shallower impressions in the mud, so he must have been lighter. He’d followed as his mate had dragged the body to the water, then he’d walked along the shore to where we’d found a recently dead tortoiseshell cat draped over a fallen tree. Maybe suspect number two had placed the dead animal there, or maybe it had been left by someone else and he’d merely walked over to have a look at it. We’d know everything there was to know about that cat once our Forensics people were finished with it.

  My mobile vibrated. It was a text from McHenry — Assistant Commissioner Len McHenry, the Australian Federal Police’s chief of operations. Having headed the search for Susan Wright, he now had charge of investigating he
r death, and he’d co-opted me and most of the Territory Investigations Group to the task. During the morning, McHenry had pulled me aside to say that he wanted me at a media conference he’d scheduled for noon.

  I’d worked with McHenry a few times before he went up to the top floor, and I knew that he rated me. We also got on fairly well, basically because, unlike most people, I wasn’t intimidated by his size or by his manner. My stepfather had been a big bloke, too. And he’d been just as testy as McHenry. In fact, you could say that, growing up, I’d developed an immunity to fearsome authority figures who were a bit oversized.

  McHenry’s text informed me that he was sitting on a bench immediately up the hill from the crime scene and that he wanted me up there. It was still twenty to twelve, so I figured he was after a final word before he fronted the journos. I stepped from the tent into tepid sunlight, and again eyed the news choppers that were clattering in a tight line out over the lake.

  The cameramen up there would have all been waiting for any movement from the tent, and by now live images of me would be showing on all the networks. I secured the tent flap to ensure that the body stayed out of shot, and then texted McHenry to tell him that I’d be straight up.

  A team from Forensics was still working the area between the small carpark on the rise where the body had been unloaded and the spot by the water where it had been dumped. They were mostly picking up bits of blue plastic fibre that they suspected had come from a tarpaulin used to haul the body. I walked one hundred metres around the lake path to avoid them, and then climbed the steepest part of the rise to where more Forensics people were packing away casts they’d made of every mark in and around the carpark.

  From there, I made my way up the hill on a crushed-granite path that snaked through a succession of terraced islands full of low shrubs. The path had been eroded by recent rain, and it was muddy in places. The mud forced me to concentrate on my footing, which meant that for the first time in hours I wasn’t totally consumed by the case.

  As I emerged from the third planting, I spotted McHenry sitting on a narrow bench to the side of the shrubbery. He was scribbling in a notebook. A couple of guys from media liaison hovered nearby, eyeing him intently. Four senior cops huddled some distance away, deep in conversation. And thirty metres further up the hill, eighty or more media people — journos, cameramen, and various production teams and assistants — milled around at the edge of the road, waiting for things to happen.

  When he saw me coming, McHenry slid his bulk along the bench, patted the modest bit of space he’d vacated, and then went back to his notes. His massive thighs were spread so wide that they hardly left any room for me to sit down, so I pushed against him to secure a perch, and then ran my eyes over the journos.

  ‘We’ll get to them soon enough,’ said McHenry, casting his gaze up the hill. ‘But first, tell me, do you still reckon it’s murder dressed up as suicide, or has your thinking changed in the last little while?’

  If the question had come from almost anyone else, I would have told them that we still had the post-mortem to come. And toxicology. And that we had to wait to see what we got from Wright’s clothes. That would have been the reasonable response, but this was McHenry asking, and he wanted to know what my gut told me. So I took it slowly, knowing that any ill-considered words could come back to haunt me.

  ‘Well, the edge on her lividity does suggest suicide,’ I said. ‘But given that she disappeared, and the fact that she was dumped, I’m with everyone else on this one — I’d discount suicide for now. And it doesn’t look like an accident to me, either. I mean, if a high-profile person like Susan Wright killed herself, either on purpose or by accident, what would an innocent person do if they found her? Panic, and bring her down here and dump her? They’d be much more likely to call it in. Either that, or they’d walk away, say nothing, and leave her for the next person to find.’

  ‘Right,’ said McHenry, nodding. ‘So you think it’s murder?’

  ‘Well, there’s a lot pointing to it. At the very least, it’s highly suspicious. And the people who left her here? They’re a brazen pair, you’d have to say — the way they went about it. So, murder? It’s nothing like firm yet, but it is likely. And, of course, we’ll know a lot more in a few hours.’

  ‘Yeah, but that mob’s not going to wait till then, are they?’ he said, again eyeing the journos.

  He grimaced, dropped his gaze to his feet, and took a deep breath. Then he went back to his notes. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes before twelve, so the pressure was on. The two media advisors were feeling it, too. They’d moved away from us when I sat down, but now they were shuffling back towards the bench. I glanced over at the heavies. They still had their heads together in a tight little circle.

  I was taking the whole scene in when Jean Acheson, the Live Cam girl, bobbed into view at the back of the media pack. She was wearing a black brimless hat with a long black feather sticking up out of it. The hat looked a bit frivolous, even out of place, given the nature of the story she was covering, and the feather added to that impression by swaying languidly from side to side as Acheson made her way down through the press of bodies. Eventually, she found a position on the police tape next to a line of cameras, and, once she’d settled in there, began chatting to a young woman who had a bulky recorder hanging from her shoulder.

  Most of the women journos on TV were attractive. It was part of the job description. But of all of them, only Acheson did it for me in any way. Maybe it was her green eyes. They were slightly misaligned, which gave her a vulnerable air. You might say those eyes brought out the inner cop in me.

  Like most of her colleagues, Acheson glanced down at McHenry and me every few minutes, anxious for a sign that the media conference was about to begin. The thing was, each time she moved her head to check us out, her feather swayed back and forth a bit, and caught my eye.

  It happened like that a few times: me, looking up at her and her swaying feather while she looked away to avoid eye contact. Then I looked up, and she was staring at me. She nodded, and her face softened into a smile. Confused, I stared back at her blankly. She held my gaze for a second, and then her face slumped into neutral and she went back to talking to her friend.

  The feather flicked again. I looked up, our eyes met, and this time I nodded and gave her a smile of my own. The one she returned had me looking around for anyone who might misinterpret the exchange, although I had no idea myself what it meant. One thing was certain, though. This was no time for flirting, so I took out my mobile, and, just as I did, the thing vibrated with a call.

  It was Smeaton, my partner, letting me know that the post-mortem was set for Kingston at three, and that a team meeting had been scheduled for immediately after. I thanked him for the info, and smiled as I hung up, visualising him scratching another to-do item from his list.

  ‘Okay,’ said McHenry, slapping his notebook shut. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Without another word, he pushed himself off the bench and strode up the hill towards the journos. The pair from media liaison immediately fell in behind him, and I brought up the rear. It took the group from the top floor some seconds to notice that we were on the move; but, once they did, they quickly made up ground and were soon striding past me. Meanwhile, the swollen mass of journos and cameramen were putting such strain on the police tape that it looked set to snap.

  We were about ten metres from the cameras when McHenry suddenly stopped, bringing the rest of us to a jarring halt behind him. He turned his back on the journos — which instantly had them groaning as one — pulled his mobile from his coat pocket and examined the screen, and then quickly marched down the slope and handed the thing to me.

  ‘Dunno who it is,’ he said. ‘Get a number, will you?’

  Then he swung around, and he and his little entourage resumed their march towards the cameras, leaving me standing there, holdi
ng the vibrating phone. The call was from a private number, so I pressed the answer button and put the thing to my ear.

  It was Commissioner Jim Brady’s assistant. The commissioner wanted to talk to McHenry, she said. It had me wondering why the general headquarters number hadn’t come up on the screen. I told her that McHenry was about to kick off a major media conference, and that she should turn on a television so she’d know when to call back. She asked me to hold, which had me groaning. I glanced up the hill at McHenry and saw that he was well into his spiel, so I walked back down the slope with the phone clamped to my ear. I was almost at the bench again when a rasping voice came on the line.

  ‘You there, Glass?’ said Brady, sounding doubtful that I would be.

  ‘Yes, commissioner,’ I said, in a voice that, even to my ears, sounded vaguely irritated.

  ‘Glass, I’m here with Prime Minister Lansdowne, at The Lodge. I understand Mr McHenry’s not available at this point in time, so we’ll be talking to you. You’ll be on the speakerphone for this.’

  Blood Oath subscription news

  Wednesday 31 July, noon

  Will the body bring a bounce?

  by Simon Rolfe

  When Susan Wright went missing a few days ago, it had everyone fearing the worst.

  So now that the worst has come to pass, what should Michael Lansdowne do? Well, given that his government is six points behind in most polls, dare I suggest that a gorgeous state funeral for the ‘much loved one’ would be a good start.

  Assemble a choir of a few hundred pre-pubescents, all decked out in their flouncey bits. Get Archbishop Pickford back from England to officiate. Pack St Andrews with more flowers than Floriade. And don’t forget a good producer, one who’ll get the cameras in close when the tears start to fall. Then, when the words have all been spoken and the prayers prayed, have her hauled off in a horse-drawn hearse. Eight animals minimum. Big white ones with feathered head-dresses.