vanished, apparently of his own accord. It wasn’t comforting for the Scott family but it could have been worse.
Since serving a gaol sentence for tampering with evidence and other offences and since the retirement of Frank Parker, my stocks with the New South Wales police department have fallen. I used to be able to invoke Frank’s name to get at least grudging cooperation at fairly senior levels. Not any more. The clean-up of the force has worked to a degree which means that the corrupt are more covert, the honest are more careful, and everyone is more secretive.
I drove to the Campbelltown police station where I was treated politely by some young uniformed men and women but made to kick my heels for an hour waiting until Detective Sergeant Morton Grace could find the time to see me. I reflected that in my day cops had names like Frank Parker and Col Williamson. As I sat in the station I tried to work out what was different about the atmosphere. The decor was drab, the noticeboard was untidy and the floor was scuffed and in need of a mop. Then it came to me-the air smelled of sweat, dust and damp but not of tobacco smoke. The old-time cops worked in a fug that would have put this new breed in an oxygen tent.
Eventually Grace came down the stairs and beckoned to me. He was blocky in build with a thick, dark moustache and cropped hair. Neither his shirt nor his tie nor his suit pants looked expensive-that’s something the plain clothes men avoid these days. We shook hands and I followed him upstairs to his office. It was a cubbyhole off a big room where several detectives sat about using telephones and computers. Again, no smoke. There was just room in the office for a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet. Grace waved to a chair, sat down himself and looked at his watch.
‘I can give you fifteen minutes, Hardy,’ he said. ‘If you need that long.’
I’d rehearsed what I’d say while I was waiting and I gave him the spiel, emphasising the possibility of a connection between the disappearance of Clinton Scott and Angela Cousins’ misadventure. Grace had some papers on his desk which he referred to as I spoke. When I finished he looked up.
‘That occurred to me when I was looking this stuff over,’ he said. ‘But there’s not much to go on, is there? No sign of Scott and of course we couldn’t even talk to the girl, poor kid. No-one had any idea where she got the stuff.’
‘Did any of your people talk to Clinton Scott at the time?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? They were an item.’
‘No-one told us. Fact is, we didn’t get a whole lot of cooperation. The parents were too upset and the sporting fraternity closed ranks. The mere mention of steroids scares the shit out of them.’
‘And you’ve got no clues on the source?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s a very private business. Not like dealing dope or smack. It could’ve been any one of a number of sports trainers, or a doctor or a vet.’
‘A vet?’
He flicked through the papers. ‘The chemical analysis suggests that some of the stuff she used was intended for animals.’
‘Jesus. Did you know that they’re turning off the life support today?’
He clicked his tongue. ‘That’d make it a very serious charge if anything could be proved. Any chance that Scott was involved?’
‘None, I’d say.’
‘But you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ He looked at his watch again and shifted in his seat. ‘I’m busy, sorry. Look, a description of Scott’s been circulated and the usual processes put in place. You know what they’re worth. I’m sorry about the girl. It’ll depend on what the Coroner says as to what further action goes on there, but again, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a result.’
I thought I’d save myself one piece of work anyway so I asked if Clinton Scott held a passport. Grace said he didn’t know, and that, along with the feeble attempt to interview Noel Kidman, gave me an idea of how thorough the investigation had been and what justification Wesley had for his scepticism. I thanked Grace for his time and left.
My car was a block away. I walked it without taking any notice of my surroundings or the people in the street. It looked as if I’d come to a dead end and had nothing to offer my client. Not a comfortable feeling. I tried to tell myself that the people I’d use to track Clinton’s paper and plastic trail would come up with something, but I didn’t convince myself.
Mark Alessio was sitting sideways on his motorcycle parked behind my car. He held a mobile phone in his hand and tears were rolling down his cheeks.
He looked up and saw me. ‘She’s gone,’ he said.
I echoed Morton Grace. ‘I’m sorry.’
He closed up the phone and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. ‘Sure.’
‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’
‘I followed you. I wanted to see if you were serious about this. Did you talk to the police about Angie?’
I felt intensely sorry for him. To lose someone you care deeply about at that age is hard. I’d seen that sort of experience twist and distort young people, make them violent or reduce them to ciphers. It all depended on the strength of the character under stress. Mark Alessio seemed to be resourceful, a big point in his favour in my book. I told him I had talked about Angela Cousins and also that the officer had suggested, as he had done, that Clinton Scott had been the culprit.
Alessio shook his head. ‘That was just malice. I don’t really think so. I don’t know what to think.’
‘Neither do I. Did Angie have any close friends, women say, who might have some idea of where she was headed?’
‘I don’t think so. She worked very hard at her courses, so her teachers tell me. She was a journalism major. I tried to get her to write for the paper but she wouldn’t. She trained like a demon, Tanya Martyn says. Work and training, that was it, until the Prince came along. But, like I say, he wasn’t a sports sleaze.’
‘Who gave him that nickname-the Black Prince?’
Alessio almost grinned, the first non-grim expression I’d seen on him. ‘I did, in the paper. Inspired by jealousy, but accurate enough. I’m totally unco, can’t throw a Coke can into a rubbish bin at three paces, especially if there’s someone watching me. But I’m not quitting the way fucking Clinton did. I’m going to follow this through.’
‘Good on you,’ I took a card from my wallet and gave it to him. ‘Give me a call if you think I can help.’ I dug into the wallet again and took out a fifty dollar note. He swayed back and held up his hands. I put the note on the petrol tank of his bike. ‘Buy a wreath for Angie,’ I said.
7
And that was it. I put the computer jockeys onto tracing Clinton’s bank accounts and learned nothing useful. There’d been one big withdrawal since he went missing and nothing since. Wesley told me that Clinton didn’t have a passport, so that was a dead end as well. I talked to Noel Kidman again and learned nothing new. He was grateful for the breathing space Wesley was giving him and thought it might just see him through. I wished him luck and told him where to return the car when the semester was over.
I talked to the coach of the football team Clinton played for. Like Leo Carey he was resentful at the absence of one of his best players. He said that Clinton had turned up drunk at training, been disciplined and hadn’t shown up again. ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘That kid had potential.’ I tracked down some of Clinton’s schoolfriends and university classmates and team-mates. None had seen him or had any idea where he might have gone. I located a former girlfriend, a stunning looking redhead football groupie who’d latched on to Clinton after a game and clung for a while. She wasn’t bitter about him. He’d treated her well while they were together but made it clear that it wouldn’t last. When I asked if he was likely to get back with her, on the rebound from Angela as it were, she laughed.
‘There’d be three or four in line ahead of me,’ she said.
A newspaper clipping arrived in the mail. It was from the student paper, the Southwestern Star, and gave an account of the career and death of Angela Cousins along with a photograph. It didn’t state that her death was due to the use of steroids; there was a reference to ‘aberrant reactions to medication’, but you could read between the
