The East Park Syndicate

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Carl felt a nudge in his side. He opened his eyes and looked at the screen of the baby monitor on the bedside cabinet. Sophie was standing in her cot and calling out to him, which meant she was ready to get up and start her day. He glanced at their alarm clock. It was five fifty-nine. He hit the off button, slipped out of bed, and went into the nursery.

‘How’s my little princess this morning?’

‘Daddy! Daddy!’

Sophie stretched her arms out to him and he lifted her out of the cot. He kissed her on the cheek. She pulled his hair and grinned at him

‘Drink!’ She pointed to her water bottle on the cupboard next to the change table.

Carl handed Sophie the bottle, and she sucked on its tube as he placed her on the table and exchanged her wet nappy for a fresh one.

‘Come on, let’s go and see what Mummy is doing,’ said Carl, lifting Sophie from the change table and taking her into the kitchen where Nina was preparing breakfast.

‘Mummy! Mummy!’ said Sophie.

Carl held Sophie close to Nina. She kissed her mother on the cheek and pulled her hair.

‘Hello, pumpkin,’ said Nina, as she gently extracted her hair from Sophie’s grasp. ‘Mummy’s making your breakfast.’

Carl put Sophie into her high chair and slipped on her bib.

‘Your eggs are ready,’ said Nina, placing a bowl of soggy cornflakes and a spoon on the tray of the high chair.

Carl ate his breakfast while Sophie spooned most of the cornflakes into her mouth, then went to the bathroom for a quick shave before changing into the suit he wore to work. He looked at his watch as he walked back into the kitchen. It was five to seven. His train left the platform at seven ten.

He kissed his wife and daughter, who tried to wipe her sticky hands on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘I’ll see you when I get home, Sophie. Be good for Mummy.’

‘Let me know if you’re going to be late,’ said Nina. ‘Harry and Jessika are coming for tea tonight.’

‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Carl, giving Nina a hug. ‘Gotta go or I’ll miss my train.’

Carl stood in front of the whiteboard mounted on the wall outside his office. He placed the head and shoulders photograph of Doug Clarke that the crime scene investigators had given them on the whiteboard and turned to face the team.

Wayne looked like he’d had a heavy Saturday night but knowing Wayne’s wife of twenty-six years had left him, Carl knew better than to say anything. He knew Wayne was struggling to accept his new reality, despite it being one many officers experienced. And, he knew how difficult the early days were from his own painful experience when Virginia had walked out on him. He hoped their new case would be enough to distract Wayne from his personal problems. He was a good detective. Carl didn’t want to lose him.

He cast his eye over the rest of the team assembled before him. Harry looked like he’d had a good night’s sleep, but Lisa and Nigel were both a little bleary eyed. He hoped their coffees would kick in soon.

‘Doug Clarke,’ said Carl, pointing to the photograph on the whiteboard. ‘Found dead next to the playing fields inside the East Park forest yesterday morning. He was stabbed in the chest but the cause of death won’t be official until after this morning’s post mortem.’

‘Isn’t he the mayor of East Park?’ said Wayne.

‘You know him?’

‘Know of him. Seen his mug on poles during council elections.’

‘Apparently been elected mayor three times,’ said Carl. ‘At least, that’s what his wife told us.’

‘But you don’t live in East Park,’ said Harry, turning to face Wayne.

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t go there, Sarge. Besides, we’ve got history. He sold me my first house.’

‘Know anything else about him?’ said Carl.

‘I hear he’s in the Premier’s inner circle, one of his trusted advisors, apparently.’

‘How do you know all this?’ said Harry.

‘I’m a member of the party. In fact, I heard last week that one of his sons had been preselected for Lidall, one of the safest seats in the state.’

‘Justin,’ said Carl. ‘We met him yesterday when he came in with his brother to identify the body.’

‘Hope this isn’t going to be difficult,’ said Wayne. ‘Don’t think I’d like to be in the Commissioner’s shoes if this drags on.’

‘Well, we’re starting behind the eight ball,’ said Carl. ‘Sgt Lang thinks he was killed elsewhere and his body dumped in the forest. So, I guess we can expect a bit of heat from upstairs until we get this sorted.’

‘Who found the body?’ said Lisa.

‘A couple of boys out walking their dog, and they seem to have been the only people in the East Park forest at the time.’

‘Did they see anyone?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Do we have a murder weapon?’ said Nigel.

‘Not yet,’ said Carl, turning to Harry. ‘Any luck with that mobile phone number?’

‘It’s been turned off since nine forty-five yesterday morning. So, I'd say he switched it off before he left home, if what his wife told us is correct.’

‘Do we know what he was supposed to be doing yesterday?’ said Lisa.

‘He told his wife he was going to a meeting and that he’d meet her at the restaurant where their son was launching his election campaign. He was supposed to be introducing the Premier,’ said Carl.

‘Pretty cloak and dagger,’ said Wayne, ‘a mayor not wanting anybody to know who he was meeting or where.’

‘Hopefully we’ll find that out when we recover his phone,’ said Carl. ‘Apparently he used it as his diary.’

‘We might be able to work that out from his call log,’ said Harry. ‘They’ve promised me an annotated log first thing this morning.’

‘Any news on his car, Sergeant?’

‘Not yet, Boss. Anything from his wife on his bank accounts?’

‘No sign anyone’s tried to access them,’ said Carl, ‘which suggests theft wasn’t the motive.’

‘So, who would want to kill him?’ said Wayne.

‘That’s where we come in,’ said Carl. ‘We need to start talking to people who knew him. DS Fuller and I will speak to the family, but I’ll need you to speak to members of the East Park Council and members of the Liberal Party, starting with the Lidall branch. Perhaps you can use your connections there, Wayne, and Nigel and Lisa can tackle the members of the council.’

‘Could take a while,’ said Nigel.

‘Start with the council website, Nigel. It should list the councillors and give you some way to contact them. You can always follow up at the City of East Park on Monday if you need to. Besides, it might be a good idea to get an insight from East Park’s CEO as well.’

As the detectives started on their assigned tasks, Carl headed for the elevator to go down to the police morgue under the building. ‘I’ll catch you after the autopsy, Harry.’

Mike Jonas was on the telephone in his office when Carl arrived in the morgue. Carl slipped into the green gown that would protect his suit during the autopsy and waited for Mike to emerge from his office.

‘Bloody politicians,’ said Mike. ‘That was the Premier’s office wanting to know how our friend here had been killed.’

‘What did you tell them?’ said Carl, wondering who would be at work in the Premier’s office on a Sunday morning.

‘That they’d find out in due course like everybody else,’ said Mike, pulling on his gloves. ‘Wasn’t this guy the mayor of East Park?’

Carl nodded.

‘How does that make him important enough for the Premier to want to know how he was killed?’

‘I gather he was one of the Premier’s inner circle of advisors,’ said Carl, ‘but I’m surprised the Premier’s office called you, given he has a direct line to the Commissioner.’

‘Hmmm. Maybe it’s not the Premier but someone in his office that wants to know,’ said Mike.

‘Who called?’

‘Someone called John Jeffries.’

‘I’ll have a word with him,’ said Carl, writing the name in his notebook. ‘Be interesting to find out why he’s poking his nose into our business behind the Premier’s back.’

‘Ready?’ said Mike. ‘This shouldn’t take long. Looks pretty straight forward.’

Carl watched as Mike examined the surface of the body.

‘There’s a wound to the back of the head consistent with a blunt force trauma, possibly caused by the victim falling backwards and hitting his head,’ said Mike. ‘There are traces of what looks like sand in the dried blood around the wound.’ Mike used a swab on a stick to remove some of the dried blood for analysis. ‘Should be able to tell you the color of the sand, at least.’

Carl made himself a note to look out for that in Mike’s report.

Mike examined the victim’s fingernails. ‘Nothing under the nails. It looks like he didn’t get a chance to fight back.’ The pathologist moved his attention to the wound in the victim’s chest. ‘This is a pretty clean cut, Carl. Looks like your killer knew what he was doing.’

‘What do you think he used?’ said Carl.

‘Probably a long-bladed hunting knife or something similar.’

‘Ruptured lungs?’

‘We’d see blood around the mouth and nose if that were the case,’ said Mike. ‘I suspect he’s pierced the heart. I’ll have a better idea when I open him up.’

Carl wondered whether the murderer was a trained killer or someone who’d simply got lucky when he stuck the knife in. He watched Mike open the victim’s ribcage and examine his heart.

Mike lifted the heart out of the victim’s body. ‘Deep gash across the ventricles. He would have bled out pretty quickly, Carl.’

‘What do you think, Mike? Frontal attack or stabbed from behind?’

‘Hard to tell, Carl, but it looks like an upward motion to me. It’s not like the knife went in horizontally. Your killer’s picked the centre of the diaphragm and pushed the knife up into the heart. As I said, I reckon he knew what he was doing.’

Carl waited while Mike completed the steps required to write up his autopsy report.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary, health wise, for a man in his early seventies,’ said Mike. ‘I think we can assign the cause of death to the knife wound to the heart without fear of contradiction.’

‘Find anything on his clothes?’

‘Some dark fibres, similar to those you’d find in the matting in the trunk of a car,’ said Mike, ‘but nothing to help you identify the killer, I’m afraid.’

‘That lines up with Dean’s theory,’ said Carl.

‘Sorry I can’t give you anything else, Carl.’

‘Perhaps we’ll get something when we find his car.’

Harry was staring at the screen of his computer when Carl returned from the autopsy.

‘Get that call log yet, Harry?’

‘He sure talked to a lot of people,’ said Harry, pointing to his screen.

‘What details have they given you?’

‘Names and addresses. I just have to work out who’s who in the zoo.’

‘Did he talk to anyone Saturday morning?’

‘Not on this phone.’

‘Anyone try to call him after he turned it off?’

‘Only members of his family,’ said Harry, ‘and that doesn’t start until twelve forty-five.’

‘What about text messages?’

‘Nothing on Saturday but it looks like most of his text messages are between him and his wife, and occasionally with Justin’s number.’

‘So, anything standing out?’

‘There’s more than a hundred calls in the week leading up to his death, and that looks fairly average.’

‘Didn’t realize a mayor’s life was so hectic,’ said Carl. ‘Is there a pattern?’

‘There are some numbers that appear quite often. I’m just trying to figure out who the people are and where they might fit into his life. Find out anything from Mike?’

‘Nothing we didn’t know,’ said Carl, ‘although, Mike thinks the killer knew what he was doing. Knife went straight into the heart.’

‘Could have been a lucky stab,’ said Harry.

‘Or we’re dealing with a trained killer,’ said Carl. ‘Maybe our victim had some enemies after all.’

‘He’s had a lot of calls from someone called Howard Stenhouse,’ said Harry. ‘Spoke to him three times on Friday.’

‘Find out who he is. Might be someone worth having a chat with.’

The foreshore playground was deserted. The families that had enjoyed the sunshine of the warm spring Sunday he had spent at work had headed home by the time Carl arrived at the playground with Sophie.

He unclipped Sophie from the safety harness of her stroller, pulled her hat down over her ears, and lifted her onto the grass.

‘Swing!’ said Sophie, as soon as her shoes touched the grass.

She ran over to the swing and waited for Carl to lift her in and do up the chain.

‘Hold on,’ said Carl, as he pushed her away from him. He watched a grin spread across her face as the swing rose into the air.

‘More!’ said Sophie, as the swing brought her back to him.

He gave her another gentle push.

After another few pushes she stopped asking for more and lifted her hands in the air. It was time for something else. Carl lifted her out of the swing and followed her to the slide, where he helped her climb the short ladder up to the top. When she was seated, he let her go and stepped to the bottom of the slide to catch her before she hit the ground.

‘Again!’ said Sophie.

They repeated the routine until Sophie had had enough of the slide and wanted to crawl through the tunnels and climb on the tower.

When the street lights came on, Carl bundled Sophie back into her stroller and headed for home, happy he’d spent half an hour in the playground with her, far away from the cares of his job. Life would be so much easier if people didn’t kill each other, he thought, as he pushed her along in the stroller.

It was eight-thirty by the time Carl finally settled Sophie into her cot. As he checked the baby monitor and quietly closed the door to the nursery, he wondered if they should go ahead and try for another child. He knew Nina was nearing the age where they’d have to make that decision soon or resign themselves to being parents of an only child.

He went into the dining room and joined the others at the table.

‘She’s asleep,’ said Carl, as he sat down.

‘How long will she sleep for?’ said Jessika.

‘Until about six in the morning,’ said Nina.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘Has she always slept right through?’

‘I wish,’ said Carl, ‘but she’s been a lot better since her last lot of teeth came through.’

‘Still enjoying being a dad?’ said Jessika.

‘She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ said Carl, ‘after Nina, of course.’

Nina blew him a kiss across the table. ‘Make sure you remember that, mate.’

Harry laughed and topped up Carl’s glass from the bottle of shiraz on the table.

Carl noticed Harry didn’t offer any red wine to Jessika after he topped up Nina’s glass. ‘Not having any wine, Jessika?’

‘Not for the next few months,’ said Jessika. ‘We’re pregnant.’

Carl slapped Harry on the back. ‘Congratulations!’

‘Be a playmate for Sophie,’ said Jessika, as she returned Nina’s hug.

‘I was hoping to talk Carl into having another child myself,’ said Nina, ‘before he gets too old.’

‘Me?’ said Carl. ‘I’m not the one with a time limit on my eggs.’

‘I’ve got a few more years yet,’ said Nina.

‘Perhaps we could do this together,’ said Jessika, winking at Carl.

‘At least Harry won’t have to worry about being mistaken as the grandfather,’ said Nina.

‘I’m learning to take it graciously,’ said Carl.