Upside Down: An Eamon Cowan Story

By Peter Sheldrake

A part-time actor, Eamon Cowan, is drawn into the investigation of a dead, badly bashed young woman, when compromising information makes him a suspect. He links up with a visiting British policewoman, trying to solve her sister's murder. They soon are embroiled in a series of twists and turns, with a second woman killed, and MI6 involved. As they discover how drugs are being smuggled, they get closer to solving the murders, but not before two more dead bodies appear. They also become closer, leading to an unexpected denouement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Travelling North
• Release date: Aug 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780989346665

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Upside Down: An Eamon Cowan Story

Upside Down

An Eamon Cowan Story

Peter Sheldrake

Travelling North

Upside Down, Copyright 2017 © Peter Sheldrake

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Travelling North

4496 Cotswold Road

Pfafftown, NC, 27040

Travellingnorth.com

ISBN Number:978 0-9893466-6-5

Cover photograph by the author

Copyright 2017 © Peter Sheldrake

Portrait of the author by Linda Perri Kent

Copyright 2017 © Linda Kent

Prologue

It was seldom this simple.

The sun was setting, and looking down the path towards the water it was already getting dark.  Tall gum trees and low shrubs created a series of silhouettes against the night sky; a quarter moon was rising above the horizon and with a flood of Milky Way stars appearing in the night sky there was just enough illumination to see clearly ahead.  It was still warm, the heat of the day radiating off the ground, and held close in the still air.  Birds had stopped chirping, replaced by a growing buzz of cicadas, but there was little evidence of any other wildlife to be heard or seen in the fading evening light. 

In other circumstances this would have been an ideal time to be out at a barbecue, or drinking a glass of wine on a terrace before dinner.  However, this was a time for work, and any opportunity to relax was some hours away.

As he moved ahead, he could see two figures, nestled at the base of a clump of eucalypts, their attention focussed on the activity at the other end of the dock.  Even though the ship was being unloaded more than a hundred yards away from them, the work was noisy, the sounds of a crane and men shouting instructions carrying through to where they were hiding.  The racket masked his movements, although it would have been surprising if the man and woman watching the dock would have heard anyone quietly approaching, given their concentration on the scene in front of them. 

Looking up from a vantage point on the gravel road, the two heads were outlined against the sky, easy to observe from the path, even though they must have been quite invisible to the men working on the ship.  Getting closer, it was possible to hear the faint click of a camera shutter.

It was time.  No hesitation:  both were killed instantly, each by a clean silenced shot to the head from a few yards away, the two rounds fired less than a second apart.  The activity on the dock continued uninterrupted.

The man was of no interest.  Already dead, but he decided to shoot him a second time in the chest; it was gratuitous, but it felt good. He checked what little identification he had with him; after taking some papers from his jacket, and a set of keys, he left the rest; with heavy stones packed in to the dead man’s jacket and trouser pockets, he slipped his body gently into the water along with his camera and its impressive telephoto lens.  Far enough away from the dockside activity he disappeared under the surface with no more than a faint gurgle as he slid into the water.  No one on the dock looked around, and no one would find him now.  Had he been hasty?  He could have taken the flash card out from the camera before it was dropped into the water, but it was too late to change his mind.

As for the woman, as he expected there was nothing identifying her to be found.  He took the contents from her jean’s pockets, and put them in his own; just some scraps of paper, and a couple of tissues.  Time was pressing; there was more to be done if his plans for her discovery were to be put in place in time.  He stuffed her body into the boot of the car, unceremoniously, as if she were a piece of garbage.  She was a piece of garbage.  No, worse than that, she was evil.

What was the saying: revenge is sweet?  It would be sweet, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on knowing she was dead at last.  He had to be back on the road, and her body taken back to the city.  He was working to a timetable.

However, before he could leave, he had to find their car.  It didn’t take long, it had been left just out of sight on a lane off Barry Road.  He’d almost parked there himself.  All he had to do was to drive it off the road and into the wooded area of the reserve.  Well hidden by bushes, it might be stumbled on by chance, but unless you were searching for it, he was confident it wouldn’t be spotted.

As he drove away towards the highway, he kept thinking about what would happen over the next few days. It would be fun to see the police grappling with the puzzles the discovery of her corpse would create.  Was fun the right word?  No, not really.  He was driven by anger, anger seeking revenge, and any bumbling investigation of her death would only offer some slight and incidental amusement.

Chapter 1:  Wednesday 8 October

Eamon wasn’t in the habit of going up to a young woman sitting alone in a pub and offering to buy her a drink.  In fact, it was something he never did; approaching women in bars who he didn’t know just wasn’t his thing.  As he was keen to point out after the event, it was only because Joe, the barman, had asked him to talk to her that he had decided to introduce himself.

‘See the young woman over there, Eamon?’

‘Yea.’

‘She’s a tourist, or something like that.  She looks a bit bored.  Lonely, y’know.  Just offer to buy her a drink, would’ya.’

Joe was a big, overweight ocker barman, constantly joshing with the customers who sat at his bar.  But Eamon knew that, despite appearances, Joe was soft-hearted.  He understood.  Joe was asking Eamon to help him because he sensed the young woman in question was on her own, a visitor, and would enjoy having someone to talk with, to pass the time in an unfamiliar pub.  He certainly wasn’t trying to get Eamon to pick her up for the night.  The fact of the matter was Joe didn’t like people to be sitting alone, with no-one to chat with.  Later, when he was asked about Eamon going over to the young woman, Joe explained it was his idea; he just wanted people to be happy when they were in his bar.

‘Who is she?’

‘I don’t know, Eamon.  She’s a pom.  Never seen her before.  Just go over, buy her a drink and make her feel at home.  Only for a short time.  Please.’

Carrying his glass of wine, Eamon wandered over.

‘Hi!  Mind if I join you?’

If she thought about it, Eamon realised it could have seemed a strange question.  There were several empty tables as well as unoccupied seats at the bar.  It sounded like a pick-up line, but she didn’t appear disconcerted.

‘Yes, of course, that’d be fine.’

Her accent gave her away.  Joe was right, she was from the UK.  Tall, with long, black hair, and despite the fact she was dressed for the weather, wearing jeans, a pale blue t-shirt and sandals, she looked hot.  It was a hot afternoon, which is why Eamon had called into the Marquis of Lorne for a drink on his way home. 

She smiled at Eamon.

‘Christine, Christine Anderson.’

‘Eamon, Eamon Cowan.  You visiting?’

‘My accent, I suppose!  Yes.  I got in from London yesterday, and this is my afternoon off.’

Eamon pointed at her glass.

‘Like another?  Looks like you were drinking white wine.’

‘Thanks.  A sauvignon blanc.  You get excellent wine here in Australia.  I had no idea.’

Joe had already poured her glass of wine by the time Eamon reached the bar.  ‘This one’s on the house, Eamon.’

Joe smiled.  ‘But you’ll pay for yours, mate!’

Christine was confident and appeared happy to have someone to talk to.  They chatted for an hour or so, about art, books, places to visit in Melbourne.  Then Christine said she had to leave.  She was meeting a friend in the city, at the Flinders Street Station steps.  Eamon walked her over to the tram stop on Brunswick Street.  They made a tentative plan, depending on how her work panned out: if she was free, they would meet the following evening at the bar for a drink, and then, Eamon thought, they might follow up with dinner.

When he was asked about it, all Eamon could say afterwards was that was it.  He enjoyed talking with her, and was looking forward to seeing her the next day.  Nothing more than that, and it was Joe who had asked him to speak to her.  Every time the topic came up, he felt obliged to explain he didn’t normally go up to strange women in bars and offer to buy them a drink.  It was just the way it was that afternoon. 

She didn’t come back the next day.

Chapter 2:  Thursday 16 October

Eamon Cowan was an actor.  In fact, since he wasn’t working as an actor, but ‘resting between engagements’, he was, at present, a dog walker.  And a sales assistant preparing advertising copy for a real estate company.  And a proof-reader and copy editor for a small publisher.  And a blog writer who specialised in trying to explain complex science in simple terms.  This last activity was not going too well, since he was having difficulty in understanding some of the complex science he was supposed to be simplifying. 

What was more, he reflected, as he lay back on his sofa worrying about income, he wasn’t even Eamon Cowan.  It was a name he had agreed with his agent, who felt David Brown was not good enough, and had been horrified to learn he was ‘Davo’ to his friends.  Looking for an alternative, they had agreed his new name would be Eamon T Cowan.  The T stood for Trahair, but when he was acting he was usually listed as Eamon Cowan.  The T had become something of a private affectation.

As had been true for several years, his major concern was money.  To be more accurate, it was the lack of enough money.  His parents had died when he was 7 years old, killed instantly in a car crash, driving back from a short visit to Sydney.  He had stayed back in Melbourne while they were away, with his Aunt Carrie.  An orphan with no close family, he had spent the next few years wandering from one set of foster parents to another.  His unsettled life came to an end when, at the age of twenty-one, he inherited the family estate, which turned out to be the family home and a few mementos.  All this happened just after he completed a degree in drama at the Victorian College of the Arts. 

For the past eight years, he had been the sole owner of a worker’s cottage in Fitzroy, mortgage free.  However, while he had property he also had expenses, far too many of them.  Quite apart from the regular and annoying demands for rates and utility bills, there were more immediate needs:  he wanted food, drink, and other things.  He needed new clothes from time to time, and he had to spend money ensuring he continued to look good.  Much to Eamon’s frustration it turned out that while looking good was a professional need, it seemed he couldn’t claim it against tax.  The more he thought about it, it seemed his adult life had been spent perpetually close to that dangerous territory where the quantity of money coming in wasn’t quite matching the amount of money going out.

Apart from this pressing issue of income, his other problem was about girlfriends. He knew he had no significant difficulties in attracting a girlfriend, since he was quite good looking, or so young women often told him.  He was just under 6 feet tall, fair-haired, slim, with a slightly canny appearance, as if he knew more than he was willing to admit.  When he did manage to get a job, which increasingly was for a television commercial rather than a play or drama series, he would play the part of a loving husband, or a young man out to have fun.  For most of his acting career he was offered parts where he was expected to play a role close to the person he was, and that was part of the reason young women liked him; he was fun on and off the television set.  He liked them, too. 

However, once things became more serious and the latest girlfriend in turn started thinking about moving into to his cottage, it all fell apart.  She would come to visit, look around his cottage and decide he was lazy, untidy, and, on several occasions, the young woman in question had even called him grubby.  To be called grubby was unfair, Eamon felt; a bit rude, to be honest.  He preferred to describe himself as a little ‘feckless’, knowing most people didn’t even know the word, and for the Scots (like the Trahairs) he believed they used it to describe someone who was ineffective, or easily distracted. 

The truth of it was he didn’t see himself as ineffective.  It was more that he was unsettled.  He enjoyed the bits and pieces of his life, but wished he were ‘a something’, and not just a dabbler in many things.  If there was some truth in thinking of himself as feckless, it was he was ineffective through lack of a central focus.

As for all those hurtful comments about being a grub and the like, the reality was all the work he did meant he had little time for cleaning up.  When he wasn’t labouring away at one or another of his money-making pursuits, he needed to be out to foster contacts, mainly at parties as it happened.  In fact, when he was being honest with himself, Eamon liked parties, and parties were where you met people.  That’s where you met young women, too, the very people who ended up calling him a grub.  It was a vicious circle: all in all, he did have a bit of a problem about girlfriends.

Eamon sighed.  It seemed there were always people making demands on him.  The people he worked for, his agent, the neighbour across the road who wanted to talk about television serials (he had a part for two episodes in one of the most popular soaps earlier in the year), and the owners of the dogs he walked.  At least he didn’t have a girlfriend harassing him right now. The trouble was, he didn’t have a girlfriend – period.  He sighed again. 

There was nothing for it:  he would have to get a coffee at Industry Beans and hope he would find a friend there who would offer to buy him lunch.  Industry Beans was his first choice, as it had super – if rather pricey – food.  A rather smart and modern cafe, it occupied a converted warehouse. They had a ‘roastery’, which Eamon decided was an up-market name for a food outlet.  It was popular, and he often saw people from the theatre or television industry there.  A free lunch would be ideal.

On the off-chance he was out of luck, and there wasn’t anyone there he knew, he could always go along Rose Street to Grace Café.  It was a little less up-market, but at 11 am, there should be someone around who might be willing to offer him a meal. 

Sighing a second time as he completed his review of the indignities of life, Eamon went off to get dressed.  Warm weather meant jeans and a t-shirt.

*******

Fitzroy locals divide their world into ‘NoJo’ and ‘SoJo’:  for the uninitiated, NoJo stands for Fitzroy north of Johnson Street, one of the east-west roads in the grid of roads that covers most of Melbourne, SoJo south of there.  Fitzroy is one of the oldest suburbs in Melbourne, close to the city centre, and yet still largely retaining the feel of 100 years ago.  Many of the streets are narrow, complicated by a tortuous one-way system put in place following a traffic management review undertaken by a team of enthusiastic local government planning officials.  Most of the homes are old.  Some are single fronted Victorian workers’ cottages, just wide enough for a hall to run alongside two rooms and a bathroom, before opening out into a family room and kitchen area.  Every so often the terrace of single fronts will be broken up by a double fronted cottage, with rooms on either side of the hall way.

There are also some two-storey homes, the houses of the gentry of the period, most with a balcony upstairs running all the way along the front, often with the original iron lacework in the corners, and sometimes right along the balcony close to roof level.  Almost all of these original houses and cottages are solid, structurally sound, with ‘good bones’, although many are slowly sinking into the Fitzroy mud.  As a result, from time to time a house will develop another minor crack in one of the plaster walls, or the front door will refuse to close easily.

Fitzroy had become gentrified in the last twenty years, and the homes around Eamon’s were largely inhabited by young affluent working couples without children (he had been told they would have been called yuppies back in the 1980’s), and, to a somewhat smaller extent, by affluent families.  Most lived in the original homes of the area, but a few cottages had been pulled down and replaced by a modern building, supposedly designed to be in keeping with the overall streetscape.

Fitzroy is a suburb of two faces:  most of the area is quiet during the day, almost genteel in its character, with just a few people out and about on the streets as most would be at work; however, in the evening it changes, becoming ‘a place to go’.  Parties and music often shake up the tranquillity of many of the residential areas, and busy restaurants and a vibrant nightlife turn up the volume on the main drag, Brunswick Street. 

Brunswick Street’s night life embraces a range of activities and an equally wide range of participants:  there are the pubs, clubs, and expensive restaurants dominated by those with money to spend, and the noisy and somewhat unappetising street life of drugs, snacks and smokes, attracting those with less money.  Even during the daytime there is still a vibrant and slightly chaotic side to Fitzroy, as you move away from the faded elegance of the quiet back streets. Brunswick Street and the cross streets close by are filled with an illogical mixture of trendy shops, second hand stores, and a range of lunchtime restaurants and bars to cover any level of income.  An expensive restaurant can be found next door to the cheap bar, the busy coffee shop next to the quiet bookshop:  Eamon felt it was a great area to be just around the corner from your home, a higgledy-piggledy street, old buildings next door to new stores, old shopfronts beside modern cafes.

Eamon lived in NoJo, in a small one-way street, and just a very short distance from Fitzroy Street and the Industry Beans coffee shop.  His was a single fronted cottage, sharing walls with the other cottages on either side.  The front door opened on to a narrow hallway running from the front door all the way down to the large living room and kitchen area at the back.  Three rooms led off from the hall, a spare room at the front, and then his bedroom, and finally the bathroom and laundry.  While the large room at the back was kept quite tidy – if you didn’t notice the pile of crockery in the sink and in the dishwasher – his bedroom was a little untidy.  He chose not to look in the front room as he walked up to the door.  He’d have to do some late spring cleaning, but not today.

Like many residents, Eamon didn’t own a car; he considered walking to be the preferred way to travel in Fitzroy.  Somewhat high-mindedly, he would explain that it was both environmentally responsible and it avoided what would otherwise be the daily challenge of finding a parking space. Anyway, the fact of the matter was, he couldn’t afford a car.

Even if he had owned a car, walking had become almost essential in the last week.  For several days, his road had been blocked for long periods, and suffered from continual periods of congestion caused by police, and by sightseers for much of the rest of the time.  The badly battered and naked body of a young woman had been found in a shallow grave towards the far end of his street, in an empty lot next to a very elegant pair of two-storey Federation townhouses which had fallen into disrepair.  Struts set into concrete blocks in the vacant land next door were holding the wall facing the empty block up straight while the house owners were trying – and failing – to agree on some form of repair.  A team of workmen coming to check the emergency work had found the body when one of them noticed the site works had been disturbed and, digging into a pile of dirt, uncovered part of a body. 

For the first few days, it had been very dramatic, with police and white-coated technicians swarming over the area, and all traffic brought to a standstill.  The news leaked she had been shot as well as being beaten.  Without being able to find any clues to her identity, any motive for her murder was simply hypothetical, and the subject of a great deal of press speculation.  Given the attention the case had attracted, now there was a police office in a small white container which had been lifted on the end of the lot as enquiries continued.  Much to the residents’ annoyance, and despite the decreasing level of activity by the police over the course of the week, cars kept coming down the street; sightseers still wanted to see the crime scene, and some blocked the exit as they got out to look over the lot.

Eamon had been interviewed by a policeman the day after the discovery of the body.  He assumed this had been the same for everyone in the street. He hadn’t heard anything, far from surprising as his bedroom was away from the road. 

However, the policeman had recognised him.

‘You’re the guy in the RACV commercial, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘The stupid one, talking about his car insurance.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hope you got paid well to take a role like that.’

The policeman had laughed, and then gone on to the next house.  He clearly thought actors were unlikely to be deranged murderers.

As Eamon went outside, it was already warm, the late Spring sun high in a clear blue sky.  There were occasional trees along the street as he walked over to Rose Street, but they offered little shade.  Eamon could already feel the temperate weather of early Spring was giving over to another hot summer.

Industry Beans occupied a converted warehouse, with a high roof, and what looked like the original timber on one wall.  Long and wide enough to feel spacious, it opened out on to the street, and was still enjoyably cool inside.

When he stood at the counter to order his coffee, Eamon guessed the gossip would still be focussed on the events at the end of his street from the week before.  The dead woman’s face and upper body had been badly bashed, and no one had come forward to identify her.  No missing person was linked to the victim.  Nicknamed the ‘girl in the garden’, she was still featured in stories in newspapers and on television, although now the stories were slowly slipping from the front page, following the current day’s headlines instead of leading them. 

As Eamon walked down to find a seat, he glanced at the newspapers on the table.  Today they were focussed on a scandal involving a politician and his attempt to bribe a traffic cop:  it was said the ‘young woman’ in his car at the time was not his wife, and some stories claimed she was from an escort agency.  Attention on the girl in the garden was dissipating, and it was becoming more likely the media’s level of interest in her case was about to diminish further.  Soon it would disappear completely, unless a new and noteworthy development was reported.

However, as he looked around Industry Beans, Eamon realised she was still a source of speculation among the group of regular coffee drinkers he recognised, all sitting around a large trestle table.  He sat nearby, and listened.

‘Drug deal gone wrong’, stated one.

‘Nah, prostitute got beaten up - as a warning.’

‘You’re all wrong.  Most murders are family members.  Guy killed his wife after she played around.’

‘Half right, mate.  But I reckon it was one of those Arab family things - killing the daughter who was pregnant.’

‘Was she pregnant?’

‘I heard.’

‘She wasn’t that young.  It was a wife killing, that’s why she was beaten up.’

And the group continued their banter unabated. 

Eamon was tired of all the media speculation and gossip, and today’s comments sounded as if the group was engaged in rather macabre game.  Instead of anyone putting forward any real and considered explanations, each of the drinkers was seeing who could be the most extreme: any of the more likely scenarios as to what had happened were being overtaken by wild speculation as the group continued gossiping, coming up with less and less likely possibilities.  A silly way to pass the time, and not something in which Eamon wanted to join.  Someone had been murdered, horribly, and to turn discussion about the women’s death into a form of one-upmanship was, in his mind, demeaning.  Whoever she was, she deserved better than that.

Finishing his coffee, he couldn’t see anyone he knew well, and decided it was time to go further down the street and on to Grace Café.   It would be quieter there, as the Rose Street Artists’ Market was only open on weekends.  It was further away from his house, but he liked the atmosphere there, from the astonishing Renaissance style murals on the outside of what he guessed had once been a private house, to the simple tables and folding green chairs on the inside.

As he entered he saw three young women were seated at one table, but otherwise it was empty.  Eamon’s appearance stopped their discussion for a moment, and then it continued.  These three had been talking about the girl in the garden too, and they resumed their discussion a little less openly.  For them, he realised, the issue was personal safety.

‘Keep a pepper spray with you all the times, in your bag or pocket at night,’ said one of the women quietly. "Somewhere you can grab it quickly.’

They glanced over at Eamon.

Another said, ‘Now you can get one which is both a spray and an alarm.  Double protection.’

Eamon sat down on the other side of the room, and read The Age.  The three women soon lost interest in him and continued talking while he scanned through the arts section, looking for any theatre gossip.  Nothing of note, and there was no one around to buy him lunch today.  He’d have to eat at home.

He walked back through the lanes, up to Leicester Street, then to Westgarth Street, and finally turned to go in to