The Dark Secret Ii

By Arfer Apple

THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF A FEMALE HEAD OF MAJOR CRIME WITH THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW CRIME TO SOLVE IN EVERY CHAPTER FULL OF DRAMA AND RIVETING SUSPENSE THIS STORY IS FULL OF EMOTION AND FUN A THRILLER RIGHT TO THE VERY END

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796005905

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Arfer Apple.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019912411

ISBN:                  Hardcover                      978-1-7960-0592-9

                            Softcover                        978-1-7960-0591-2

                            eBook                             978-1-7960-0590-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/23/2019

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

797126

Contents

Chapter 1     A Country Town

Chapter 2     The Tide Is Turning

Chapter 3     Branded

Chapter 4     The Break-in

Chapter 5     The Golden Cross

Chapter 6     The Crossbow Killer

Chapter 7     A Series of Events

Chapter 8     The Jewellery

Chapter 9     The Day the Past Returned

Chapter 10   A Conflict of Interest

Chapter 11   Under Pressure

Author Biography

This book is dedicated to all

the people of the world who have

survived cancer,

who continue to live their

lives once again.

Chapter 1

A Country Town

Even a country town has a dark secret.

It was almost three months since I had taken a personal leave from my position of operation director of detectives. It was a fancy title that really did not mean that much to me. I had come to discover that my ex-husband, Bob, was shot dead by my son, David. He had also shot five other people who were involved in the world of drugs. I was saved by the humiliation of a trial when David pleaded guilty, and a deal behind closed doors was done. David received six life sentences. My two daughters, on the other hand, had received ten years in prison for attacking their own grandparents for money. Two more years were added to their sentence for their constant denial of the crime and for calling the judge ‘a fat old cow’. At home, I received no visitors apart from the local birdlife and possums. Once a week, I went out to do my shopping, and at the same time, I also did the shopping for my parents. My mother had become ‘the human vegetable’, a name given by my father because all she did was sit in front of the television all day. Meanwhile, my father was active, playing with his electric toy train set, dressed in a train driver’s outfit and even a hat to make him feel suitable in the position.

After many years of abuse by my mother, my father had told me that it was ‘payback time’. I was surprised one week when my father had employed a builder to remove the wall between the spare room and his bedroom, where his nineteen trains could go round and round all day and sometimes during the night, with my father sleeping upon a single bed in the middle of the train track. A large hi-fi in his bedroom broadcasted the sound of steam engines coming and going out of a London metro station.

I purchased a set of headphones so my mother could hear the television. I had arranged a daily supply of meals on wheels for her. My father had resorted to feeding her only toasted cheese sandwiches with the flavour of tomato sauce. It was a delicacy that my father had read about during the life of a real train driver. My father had even made a flask of tea to drink whilst he was playing with his trains.

I always received the same question from my mother when I arrived with the weekly shopping: ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? And what do you want now? If it’s money, we have not got one penny. Your father spent all the money on his bloody train set!’

Just once, I would have liked to hear from her, ‘Oh, hello, Jonei. Thank you for doing the shopping for us. Did you remember my chocolate biscuits?’The neighbour next door had decided to cut their grass for some mangoes off a tree in their garden. I noticed not one mango had ended up in my mother’s fruit bowl. On top of the television, going to see them both once a week, I found, was a painful experience for me, maintaining watching my mother, who had become another person after she had returned home from hospital after her attack. I would have preferred to remember those days when nearly every word that came out of my mother’s mouth had an acid bite to it.

When I went to say goodbye to my father, all he was concerned about was if I had left him enough sliced cheese and bread for his sandwiches. It was the first time in my life that I had started to feel really alone in this world.

Late one Saturday afternoon, Sam Riley and Mayim Clark had come over for ‘afternoon tea by the pool’. It was like three hens clucking together before I was to return to work on that Monday. I made mango punch with the mangoes from my parents’ garden. Along with a selection of cakes from the local bread shop, I also managed to bake a banana-and-brandy buttercream cake myself.

Mayim managed to get more brandy buttercream on the side of her face and then in her mouth at one point. They had so much gossip from work to tell me. The big question was whether I was going to return to work – the gossip in the kitchen of the staff canteen. I enjoyed my time away from work, just doing nothing except patter around my garden and skinny-dip in my pool at midnight. That made both Sam and Mayim roll their eyes at me.

A new person had entered their lives at work, a Hayley Taylor, who had the nickname of Hayley Hackshaw. She had been given the very same job that I had turned down from Billy Bonnin to take up the position of assistant police commissioner. I then learnt that Paula Jeffries, Rosalind Butler, and Kate Purley had all been removed from the unit, mainly because we were overstaffed, according to Hayley Taylor. Gary Thomset had also gone back to Adelaide. He had been caught in bed with the wife of George Knight when he came home early from the night shift. The final punch-up took place in the staff car park under the watchful eye of Billy Bonnin from his office window. Hayley Taylor was sent down to intervene, and Gary Thomset accidently gave her a black eye for her trouble – much to the delight of Billy Bonnin, rumour has it from the kitchen staff in the canteen. I had to sit through a demonstration by Mayim and Sam with a mouthful of mango cake. I had not laughed so much in ages.

The good news was about Carol O’Sullivan, the disgraced member of my team who had worked for me for almost five years until I found out that Carol O’Sullivan had been spying for Billy Bonnin and giving him the details between the bed sheets in a shady motel room during working hours. Carol O’Sullivan was sent with her knickers on by Billy Bonnin down to a robbery in Melbourne. All this happened after Billy was going to have an ‘afternoon delight’ with Carol in a motel room out on the Stuart Highway behind a petrol station where the wife of Billy, the Duchess, had just happened to pull in for petrol after visiting a plant nursery. The Duchess was the queen of porridge for breakfast and Irish stew for dinner seven nights a week. Billy was spotted coming out of the motel room by the Duchess. On the return home that evening, Billy had found his wardrobe on the front lawn, and his golf clubs had gone on a bender.

I had to upset the party by telling them that I had Billy Bonnin doing a lost schoolboy act on my doorstep that very same night. ‘Can I used your spare bedroom? The Duchess had caught me with my trousers down with Carol O’Sullivan, Billy told me with an Oscar performance.’

‘So what did you say to him?’ asked Mayim.

‘I just told him to eff off. I do not have a lock on my bedroom door. Sorry, Billy.’

‘So what happened then?’ asked Sam.

‘Well, you can forget about the position as assistant police commissioner now, Jonei, Billy replied. I asked him why he didn’t just go and live with Carol O’Sullivan – I mean, they must be good in bed together – and Billy replied that he had his reputation to think about!’

All three of us just screamed aloud with laughter.

‘I have to take a medical evaluation before I can return to work, so I will see you sometime on Monday, ladies,’ I told them when they were leaving.

I arrived about fifteen minutes before my appointment to see the police doctor, a Richard Tyler. I was given a board with what you would call a simple questionnaire. I knew what my name and age were. To the question of sex, I wrote ‘not recently’. To the question of sexual preference, I wrote ‘anything with two legs and not four’. I had to wait for another half hour after my appointment before this Richard Tyler decided to meet me. He had never even read my questionnaire, he just threw it into the bin. I had my blood pressure taken, which was fine. My weight was good, and then the examination went out of control. Richard Tyler, the so-called doctor, asked me to remove my top so he could examine me. I declined the offer unless another female was present.

The death of my husband and all three of my children now locked up in prison must’ve had an impact on me, I was told by Richard Tyler. He then asked me how I slept at night. I told him I slept alone every night. I was asked to give a blood sample at the end of this examination to make sure I was not taking any illegal drugs. I knew he was pumping me now in the wrong direction. If he wanted me to burst a bubble so he could mark me down as a failure, he was going to be out of luck today. I went on to explain that the only drug I was still taking was Bactrim, connected with my cancer treatment last year. I could see he was not interested in my past medical condition, so this was a form of intimidation from him today. My bubble finally burst. After, he told me that I had failed the test to return to work and that I was mentally unfit for full-time duty.

‘Temper, temper, Richard baby,’ I told him. I put on my jacket and took out a recorder. I told him I had recorded this conversation, especially the part where he was doing some heavy breathing on my neck. ‘That’s a medical practice I have not come across before, Richard baby.’

‘I will tell Hayley Taylor that you are unfit for duty!’ shouted Richard at me, whom I thought was now having his own meltdown.

I also realised that this was a bloody set-up, and I doubted that Billy Bonnin was even involved in it. The moment I got outside, I found a nice quiet place to phone Billy Bonnin, and I did. He was not happy to hear my complaint, and I was to learn that I was not the first one to make a complaint about Dr Richard Tyler, who just happened to be the cousin of the police minister, Inga Marston, which would also make him a cousin of Hayley Taylor, of all people.

‘A very nice family’ was Billy’s last comment on the matter before the phone went dead on me.

I put my phone in my pocket when Mayim had told me we were going to a scene out in Humpty Doo, where there had been a murder and where a woman and a child had also gone missing. We arrived at a remote horse farm to find Tony Winston from forensics standing over the body in the farmyard. Sam came over to me with a smile and a fake salute to welcome me back to work.

‘We have a Joe Edmund lying here with only half his face. A shotgun is beside the body. It does look like suicide, but I will wait for the forensics doctor, Tony Winston, to confirm that,’ whispered Sam in my ear.

Frankie was inside the farmhouse with a Sue Redding, the owner of the horse property. Sue had heard the shot. Then the white farm ute was driven, hightailing down the dirt track. It was then that Dr Tony Winston had come inside to find me, to give me his latest update. I thought that Tony Winston was acting like a headless chicken today.

‘It could be suicide. Then again, it could be murder. There are some scuffle marks on the ground,’ Tony Winston told me before he left me, looking up at the clouds to see white cockatoos flying.

Frankie came over to let me know that Sue Redding had just informed her that the man driving the white ute was her brother, Jeff Nitley. The name Jeff Nitley rang a bell for me. I was not in the police force at the time because I was only knee-high to a pile of horse dung. Jeff Nitley was a paedophile who had only served ten years of a twelve-year sentence.

Sue Redding had the face on her like a lizard, long and drawn out, and she kept licking her lips all the time, just like a lizard. Sue was a little drunk, I could see. She had a lisp, so talking to her was easy, but understanding what she replied? Now that was the hard part. Mayim somehow had decided to be the interpreter, which was another hidden talent I did not know Mayim possessed until now.

‘He did not shoot Joe Edmund. My brother ran away in the farm ute because he was bloody scared of you lot.’ Mayim told me that was what Sue Redding was trying to say.

I was to learn that Sue was a little drunk but also in shock. She could not stand the sight of blood ever since she had found his body parts in the wood chipper seven years ago. I told Mayim to put her in the ambulance and let them take her to hospital, where she could be cared for.

I then told Sam and Frankie what I knew about the body in the wood chipper incident in four easy words: ‘Not a pleasant sight’.

The family of Joe Edmund had to be informed, and I put my hand up for that job. Before I left, Sam reminded me that there was a report of a twenty-year-old woman and her ten-year-old daughter who were reported missing. I was to learn that there was a connection to this case. Jeff Nitley, who had driven off in the white ute, was the person who had raped a Mel Cox eleven years ago, and her daughter, Sally, was the evidence.

I told Sam, ‘I will go and see the Cox family after I have seen the Edmund family.’

Frankie had an update that there had been no sightings so far of the farm ute driven by Jeff Nitley. I was also informed by Frankie that the red Toyota driven by Mel Cox had not been seen since yesterday morning, when Mel Cox drove Sally to school, and she did not arrive for class.

Charles and Elaine Edmund, a nice middle-aged couple, were shocked to hear that their son, Joe, was found dead. It was an accident with a shotgun up at the horse farm. A family liaison officer arrived just in time to comfort Elaine Edmund. Mayim became a tea lady, while Charles Edmund told me about his son, Joe.

‘He was a good lad. In fact, some folk would say Joe was a bit simple, going on twenty, and had the mind of a ten-year-old boy. He loved working down at the stables, just doing odd jobs,’ Charles Edmund told me.

I asked Charles Edmund if he knew that Jeff Nitley had come home from prison two years early. Charles told me that his son, Joe, had told him, although he had not seen Jeff Nitley about the village of Humpty Doo himself.

‘He was back living in the same place where he had committed those crimes against lovely Mel Cox, and now people have stopped sending their children up there for riding lessons, and that is exactly what happened before, and Sue Redding went almost broke. It is history repeating itself!’ Charles screamed at me.

That got me a little surprised. I waited for Charles to drink his cup of tea and quieten down so we could continue our conversation. I could see Charles was enjoying his cup of tea. I had no idea. My cup of tea tasted like bloody warm pond water.

‘My boy Joe was in love with Mel Cox. He worshipped the ground she walked on. He kept telling us that one day he would marry Mel Cox, and with little Sally, they would all live together happily for the rest of their lives. My Joe was a harmless dreamer, nothing more. Joe was bloody harmless. He would not even kill a fly,’ Charles Edmund told me with a smile.

Our next port of call was at the Cox residence. All I got from a Jill Cox was a lot of abuse, and she kept repeating herself – ‘So what have you done to find my Mel Cox and young Sally?’

I explained that we had to wait twenty-four hours in a missing person case. Tim Cox, Jill’s husband, knew exactly where I was coming from. Sam sent me a text to say that the white ute that Jeff Nitley had driven had been found in a car park in Palmerston outside a supermarket. Sam was on her way there with George Knight and a new female detective in our team called Ruth Barr. I went outside to give Frankie the update.

When I mentioned the name of Ruth Barr, Frankie just rolled her eyes and said, ‘That woman is heading for one almighty fall.’

I went back inside to talk to Jill and Tim Cox once again.

‘That sick bastard is living up at that bloody horse farm, what some call a fucking riding school, and he has been sniffing around my daughter, Mel, and even my granddaughter, Sally,’ Tim Cox told me with anger in his voice and was having what you could call a meltdown. ‘My Mel works at the supermarket in Palmerston, but before she does start work, she always takes my granddaughter, Sally, to the schoolyard. When my Mel finishes her work, she would go back to the school and then collect Sally and bring her home. Yesterday they left normally, and Sally did not reach the school, and Mel did not go to work, so where are they? What happened to them?’

It was Jill Cox’s turn to have a meltdown now. ‘We were one big happy family until that Jeff Nitley showed up again at the horse farm, only to wreck our lives once again.’ A sad Jill Cox now had a face full of tears.

‘Can I just say? I went up to that bloody horse farm and found that stubborn Sue Redding telling me to eff off. She had not seen Mel Cox or Sally for days,’ Tim Cox said, now with tears in his eyes also.

I felt we were now going in circles, so I decided it was time to leave. We left the Cox home. All we got was abuse from Jill and Tim Cox. It was a good thing that I was not a sensitive person. I thought that they should know, so I went back inside just to say that Joe Edmund had been killed in a shooting accident up at the riding school.

‘He was a nice lad, a bit simple. He had even asked me once if he could marry Mel – with my permission, of course. I mean, what do you say to a childlike man called Joe Edmund?’ Tim Cox told me when I had finally reached the garden path.

I got in the car when George Knight phoned me from the Palmerston supermarket car park.

‘Bad news, boss. I checked the CCTV for this carpark, and I found a picture of Jeff Nitley being picked up by Mel Cox, with young Sally sitting in the back seat of the car with a smile on her face.’

I phoned Justin Biaulik, my office manager, to check all the CCTV footage on the Stuart Highway to see if we could locate the red Toyota of Mel Cox and what direction it was heading in. I arrived back at my own office at last. It was an exhausting morning. Justin Biaulik came into my office to let me know that Hayley Taylor and two people from the IT unit had been trying to get into my computer. The password had baffled them all. Justin laughed aloud.

‘So what is your password then?’ asked Sam.

‘Oh, my name spelt backward and then my date of birth written backward.’ I laughed back at Insp Sam Riley.

I typed in the right code, and my old computer lit up like a Christmas tree. I gave a loud cheer. Then I found Billy Bonnin doing his act of heavy breathing on the end of the phone.

‘Um, Jonei, I told Hayley Taylor to tell her cousin, the prick, Dr Richard Tyler, that his services are no longer required by the police of Darwin.’

I went to make a comment, but the phone line was dead. I started to read my emails – all six hundred of them. I just kept my finger on the delete button. There were two emails from Billy Bonnin to let me know that Insp Carol O’Sullivan was now back in traffic control, wearing a uniform.

At my request, the good working members of my team had been reinstated. Paula Jeffries, Rosalind Butler, and Kate Purley were all back in the fold. Ruth Barr, Frankie’s newfound friend, was returned to robbery, and Garry Robbins had returned to the drug squad, so everything was hunky-dory and back to normal – if there was such a thing. Kate Purley, I had instructed to run the fraud squad with Rosalind Butler. They were a good, honest, hard-working duo together and would get results. I left for the conference room to see what Frankie was doing with the whiteboards. Frankie gave me the low-down on what we knew up to now.

‘Joe Edmund was shot in the face with a double-barrel shotgun. There is a silver kangaroo on the gun butt. A Jeff Nitley was seen driving madly out of the riding school moments after the gun went off by his sister, Sue Redding. Jeff Nitley was only one month out of prison for being a paedophile. His victim was a Mel Cox who is now missing with her daughter, Sally Cox. Last sighting – all three in the car park in a red Toyota driven by Mel Cox. We ask, where has Mel Cox and Sally been hiding for the past thirty hours?’

The dead victim, Joe Edmund, had a one-sided love affair with Mel Cox. This could be related to the discharge of the shotgun at the stables. We had no actual proof that the death of Joe Edmund was even related to the disappearance of Mel Cox and Sally Cox. I told Frankie. I got a bottle of water and went to sit up on the rooftop garden to try and wrap my head around all these events.

The background of all the people involved – now that’s an even bigger mystery, I thought.

I made my way back to the office, only to be met by Sam and Billy Bonnin at the same time. Billy asked Sam to take a walk. He wanted a private word with me.

‘How about dinner tonight at my hotel? Candles, wine, excellent company. We are both single now, after all, Jonei,’ Billy asked me with a little lost schoolboy look, saying, ‘Oh, please say yes.’

‘Um, you will have to take a rain check on that one, Billy. You are not going to get your hands inside my knickers tonight or any other night in the future. Sorry, Billy,’ I replied.

Billy left, and I told Sam, who must’ve heard our conversation, not to say anything to anybody about what she might have just heard. A cheeky smile and her finger on her lips made me smile.

We decided to let Mayim drive us out to the scenic views of Humpty Doo and the Cox residence. We arrived. Both had reddish eyes, and I could see that both had been crying once again, but Tim Cox smelt of stale beer. I got straight to the point and told them that at this moment, Mel and Sally were travelling with Jeff Nitley somewhere out bush. Screams of horror escaped from Jill Cox before she ran upstairs, and then Tim went upstairs to try and calm his wife down.

‘That did not go down too well. So shall I make some tea?’ Mayim commented.

‘Forget the pond water tea, thank you, Mayim,’ I replied with a smile, trying not to laugh with Sam.

After five minutes, I went upstairs and found that Mel Cox had taken all her clothes and, in the small bedroom, all of Sally’s clothes had been also taken.

‘She must’ve taken the clothes out at night because my Tim was home all day yesterday,’ Jill told me.

‘Well, that is not exactly true. I went down to the pub for a couple of hours yesterday at lunchtime.’

‘What? You got pissed, and you have not stopped drinking since then. Even after the police left earlier today, you just had to have a few cold beers!’ Jill Cox shouted at her husband.

When the atmosphere quietened down in the Cox household, I decided to ask Jill and Tim Cox if they knew that their daughter, Mel Cox, was back in a relationship with Jeff Nitley. All I got was a lot of abuse from Jill Cox once again. Then Tim Cox told me that his daughter had paid the price for having sex with him, and she had not been with another man since. I had to ask them about the relationship with Joe Edmund. This was like throwing petrol on the fire; it was time to stand back.

‘Mel would often give Joe a peck on the cheek, nothing more,’ a very tired-looking Tim Cox told me.

I went downstairs to go, and Jill Cox asked me if I thought that Jeff Nitley would hurt her daughter, Mel, and granddaughter, Sally. I could not answer that question.

‘All I know is that on the CCTV in the supermarket car park, they all looked very happy together,’ I replied to a tearful Jill Cox. We drove back to the city when Sam made a comment.

‘They knew when we had first arrived earlier today that their clothes were missing from the wardrobe. I wonder why they were hiding that fact.’

It was a good point, and I replied, ‘Jill and Tim Cox are hiding something.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I know this morning, there were a little dramatic yet not in the way I expect parents to act with their daughter and granddaughter both missing.’

We stopped just around the corner and went in to see Charles and Elaine Edmund, who were what I would call gracious with the loss of their son, Joe, earlier on today. I asked Charles if he was friendly with Tim Cox. I was surprised that Tim Cox did not mix with the local church group anymore; even at the village Christmas party, the Cox family were absent. One strange comment that came from Charles was that Tim Cox had not had a drink of alcohol since his daughter, Mel, had fallen pregnant just over ten years ago. I did not want to tell Charles that Tim Cox was now making up for lost time with his drinking of alcohol.

Sue Redding was our last port of call up at the riding stables. All I could hear was the dog barking on a hot afternoon and saw an empty bowl without water. I did my animal act and filled his bowl up with the hose, and then he wanted a hose-down himself. We eventually found Sue Redding cleaning out the last stable at the end of the building.

‘I saw that rubbish on television about my brother, Jeff, and Mel Cox and little Sally. No riding school today, not one customer, same thing that happened when they placed Jeff under arrest. People stopped coming. It was not until my husband, Rex, had fallen in that bloody tree mulcher and died. People started to come back after feeling sorry for me and were led by Mel Cox herself, of all people.’

I could see that Sue was suffering, with the past taking over her life once again and with nobody to talk to except that dog on the chain and, of course, the horses. I asked Sue about the shotgun with the silver kangaroo on the handle. Sue told me she had no idea where Joe Edmund had got the gun from. The only gun on this horse farm was in a locked gun safe that had not been opened since her husband, Rex, died. He used it for shooting rabbits. Frankie found the gun a little old and a bit rusty. Frankie put the gun back into the gun safe once again.

Paul Jeffries, always looking into the past back at the office, had discovered that the shotgun used in the death of Joe Edmund was also used in a bookmaker robbery just over seven years ago. This was a strange twist of events because the bookmaker at the racetrack was a Kenny Kelly, who was serving my husband, Bob, and standing next to him was the terrorist Al-Deoja, collecting his winnings. Bob got suspended mainly because a member of the Australian Police Force had spotted Al-Deoja and thought that he was a friend to my husband. Kenny Kelly had even given evidence that he thought the two men – Al-Deoja and my husband, Bob – did not know each other; they were just standing in line to receive their winnings. I thought that everybody and everything had a connection to the crime world. Now finding that actual connection can be the problem, I found during my police work.

Sam had been busy talking to two detectives who investigated the death of Rex Redding, while I went with Mayim for something that you could eat from the staff canteen menu. I settled for a fried egg sandwich with chilli and a thick mango shake. Mayim had the same, except a double serving of french fries came next to her fried egg sandwich.

I went back upstairs to hear from Sam. It was what they had described as a ‘bloody affair’, and it still gave them nightmares. The conclusion was that Rex Redding had got his jacket caught on a branch, and it pulled him in. The same two detectives, also two weeks before, had got involved with the investigation of the robbery at the Kenny Kelly home, breaking in through the back door. It was later discovered that it was a false statement because Izabell Kelly admitted to not locking the back door after she had gone outside to turn off the garden sprinkler. Two robbers with black face masks knew exactly where the floor safe was – under the bed in the master bedroom.

I then decided to let all of my team go home. I stayed and studied the whiteboard in the conference room. Just before I was about to leave on my own, Solictor James Ho Davies was downstairs in reception and asked to see me, giving a greeting and then an explanation.

‘Another client, Kenny Kelly, had died two weeks ago, and upon his death, I was to give you this letter.’

I took James into a quiet room. We had some Chinese tea, and I read the letter. It was a confession from Kenny Kelly about the very same robbery that my team and I had been talking about today. I did not tell James Ho Davies that fact. James was looking tired. The pressure of the job or just another late night out at a club in Mitchell Street – it was hard to tell with James, who tried to burn the candle at both ends of his day he did like to keep his finger in many pies was his excuse

.

A confession was made by Kenny Kelly about the robbery seven years ago at his home. In the letter, he disclosed that only he and his wife, Izabell, knew about the floor safe under his bed. He had even installed the safe himself because he trusted nobody. He also admitted that he had lied about the money in the safe. A report of $150,000 was, in fact, only $15,000, the so-called day’s takings he had already placed in the night safe at the bank. Kenny Kelly had long suspected that his wife was having an affair with somebody. Later on, he found out that it was Rex Redding, the owner of some riding stables out at Humpty Doo. The information came from a singing bird, a so-called friend of Izabell Kelly with whom Kenny himself was engaged in a regular sexual adventure together.

I thanked James Ho Davies for his time and went on to tell him, ‘At this moment, we are investigating a shooting which resulted in a death out at the Rex Redding riding stables.’

James left with a smile, saying under his breath something in Chinese that I did not understand.

I then went home and sat by my pool, eating a selection of cheeses and olives and a couple of cold beers. I slept well for a change. The job was not on my mind as usual, keeping me awake with various scenarios.

I told Sam in the morning to get her ass into gear; we needed three search warrants today – one for the riding stables, another for the Edmund home, and a third for the home of the Cox family. The first judge told Sam she was ‘barking up the wrong tree’; there was not enough evidence. The second judge, Sam had found out on the golf course, and all he wanted to do was get on with the game of golf, so he granted the warrants. I was happy with Sam doing her usual act of waving the warrants in the air the next time I saw her.

Our first port of call was at the Cox home. Tim Cox was at work at the local saw mill. Jill Cox was in one of her little-girl tantrum moods, and I was not going to put up with that shit today. Tim Cox had a phone call from Sam, and he came home just in time to plug the steam valve on the side of the head of his wife, Jill. We left empty-handed after a one-hour search with six members of my team. I gave Jill and Tim Cox no explanation as to why we were even there with a search warrant. They were sitting on a lounge in the front room and holding hands like two teenage lovers.

The next stop was at the Edmund residence. Charles Edmund had first denied any knowledge of a shotgun ever being in his home until his wife, Elaine, told us that there was one up in the loft with a silver kangaroo on the handle of the gun, much to the embarrassment of her husband, who looked like he had just shit his pants. Then I had to remind them that this gun had resulted in the death of their son, Joe. Finally, Charles admitted that the gun was his and that Joe knew of its existence up in the loft. I told both Charles and Elaine that they could have saved us a lot of time by being honest with us yesterday. A simple ‘sorry’ came from Charles with a smile on his face until Mayim put the handcuffs on him, and he was led away by two uniformed officers to a paddy wagon, to be taken to the