SYNOPSIS: Guests are turning up dead in a holiday park on the north coast of Tasmania. The proprietor, Rae Cameron, makes the grisly discoveries and joins the hunt for the killer. She’s been expanding the business, in a brave decision after her husband passed away, and the stain of murder is the last thing she needs. This story won a Scarlet Stiletto Award in 2009.

It was 10.30 am. All of the guests who were due to check out had called into reception, except the couple in Cabin Four. No big deal; they’d paid on arrival the previous afternoon. The man said they would probably be leaving early. As long as they hadn’t kept the key.

Rae Cameron pushed herself up from the reception desk. The wings of flesh jiggled under her arms. Lately she’d noticed the drooping skin had begun to pucker. Over fifty and it was all downhill from here.

Outside the clouds were starting to break up, as the buffeting breeze whipped the sky. The yard was littered with fallen gum leaves, damp from recent rain and springy underfoot. She could already see the car was gone from beside Cabin Four. In the distance, past the perimeter of the holiday park, the waves were choppy in Bass Strait.

The key glinted in the door of the cabin. Good, they must have read the reminder notice on the fridge. The curtains were tightly drawn, as if the couple had risen when it was still dark. Rae turned the key and pushed the door ajar, releasing the bottled-up remnants of old cooking fumes.

The contents of the cabin were askew, like an earth tremor had rippled through in the night. The padded vinyl chairs were pulled out crookedly from the table-for-two. A jumble of spare blankets and pillows had fallen from the open closet onto the floor, blocking the path to the ensuite bathroom.

On the double bed, against the nearest wall, was a mound of bedding. But it was not quite the casual mess that it seemed at a glance. There was something elongated beneath it. Then Rae spotted the pale toes protruding over the edge of the mattress. The delicate button toes of a woman, with glimpses of purple chipped nail polish.

An echo sounded from the dripping tap over the miniature kitchen sink. Rae bent closer to the fawn velour bedspread. She knew she had to be sure before raising the alarm. Heart thumping, she pinched the bedspread and pulled softly, far enough to see the gaping mouth. It was the same woman who checked in the previous afternoon; a small, wispy creature with untamed hair and a vague expression.

Rae encircled the cold wrist, pressed firmly and waited for a pulse, but there was nothing.

She locked the cabin and hurried across its wooden deck. The breeze swished in the ragged paperbark next to the empty car space. A backpacker was striding in the direction of the laundry block with an armful of washing. Rae put on a brave face and gave him a tight smile. Stacey, the girl who cleaned the cabins, came trundling down the path with her trolley, stacked with clean sheets, towels and toilet rolls. Rae intercepted her and told her to skip Cabin Four.

Back at reception, she rang the local one-man police station and the call was automatically diverted to Sergeant Bruckner’s mobile phone.

‘Paul Bruckner,’ he answered gruffly.

‘It’s Raelene from Shearwater Holiday Park.’

‘How’s business?’ His voice boomed above the din of a confined space, like a shopping arcade.

‘Probably about to take a dive. I just found a body in one of the cabins. Dead, I’m afraid.’

Half an hour later, two detectives arrived from Burnie CIB. Detective Inspector Ogilvie was tall and dark with quizzical eyebrows, ghostly skin and a thin slash of a mouth. The younger one, Detective Senior Constable Boyd, was stockier, with spiky orange hair and freckles. Rae recognised, in their names and faces, the Scottish pioneering heritage of many of the locals, including her husband Neil.

She let the detectives into the cabin. It looked even smaller with two beefy men in it. Boyd stood next to the table while his superior poked around. Rae hovered outside the doorway, watching.

‘Could be a domestic, and the bloke’s done a runner,’ Boyd suggested. ‘Things disturbed in the struggle.’

Ogilvie nodded at the open cupboards under the kitchen sink, crockery in disarray. ‘Sure, if they’re chucking plates at each other. But this looks more to me like someone’s searched the place. And I don’t think they found what they were after.’

Ogilvie bent over the bed and drew the blanket further back with a plastic-gloved hand, revealing more of the woman’s greyish pallor. A few strands of her hair were caught in a crooked tooth.

He looked across at Rae. ‘You said you felt for a pulse. Touch anything else?’

‘Just the blanket.’

‘Anybody else been in here?’

‘No.’

Next the detectives asked to see the guest records at reception. Rae fished the registration form out of the filing cabinet. The husband’s name was Martin Fletcher. Detective Boyd jotted down the contact details provided on the form.

‘Credit card receipts?’ said Ogilvie.

Rae shook her head. ‘Paid in cash.’

‘Do you remember what kind of car he was driving?’

Rae had only seen the car briefly and could not remember the make or model. ‘It was a smallish sedan or a large hatchback. Reddish in colour, I think.’

Ogilvie said, ‘How would you describe their manner? Did they strike you as typical holidaymakers?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I got the impression they were just passing through. They didn’t act like tourists; didn’t ask about the sights or anything. Only thing he asked me was where he could buy cigarettes last night.’

*          *          *

Rae had told him the shop down the road might still be open. Martin was back in twenty minutes, skulking past the window, empty-handed as far as she could see. So she waved him inside.

‘No luck?’ she said.

He wagged his head. Sharp face, shrewlike features, the kind of bloke who could turn nasty.

‘I just remembered while you were gone, I’ve got a pack of ciggies in lost property. Have those if you like. Someone left them behind in the laundry but the price they cost these days, I hung onto them in case the owner came looking.’

‘I’m game,’ he said.

Rae fetched the cigarettes and showed him the pack. An obscure brand.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ he said, reaching out. ‘Thanks.’

*          *          *

Ogilvie wanted the contact details for all of the guests who had been at the holiday park the previous night but had since checked out. Then the detectives went to interview the longer staying guests – the campers and caravaners – to inquire if they had seen or heard anything suspicious overnight. Secluded in the owner’s residence, Rae had not been aware of any disturbance.

The forensic team dusted, mapped and photographed their way through and around the cabin. The woman’s body was taken away. Rae tried to calm down with a cup of tea. She massaged her fingertips in circles on her temples, and slowly rotated her head. Her chin was hanging downwards, accentuating the jowls, when the labourer who was working on the demolition of the old recreation room slouched into the office. Just what she needed, some problem with the job. Replacing the dilapidated and hardly-used rec room with another paying cabin was her first initiative since Neil died.

The labourer hitched up his sagging shorts and crinkled his leathery face to speak: ‘Sorry, love, but I’ve struck a snag.’

He led Rae to the rear of the holiday park, where the broken shell of the rec room stood. Sheets of corrugated iron roofing leant against the jagged brick walls, awaiting disposal. A wheelbarrow of debris was parked next to a big yellow dumpster.

The labourer pushed together a couple of bricks for Rae to stand on. Barking eagerly, the labourer’s kelpie darted back and forth. Rae’s stomach lurched as she gazed over the edge of the dumpster at the sprawled figure. He was face down, dotted with chunks of rubble. There was something familiar about the straggly hair and the checked green shirt. It was the husband from Cabin Four.

Rae returned in a numb trance to reception and rang Detective Ogilvie, reading the number off the business card he’d left on the counter. He answered through a mouthful of food.

‘Sorry, am I interrupting your lunch?’ asked Rae.

Ogilvie smacked his lips. ‘It’s okay. Just finishing.’

She told him the news.

The air whistled through his teeth. ‘What is it, open season on guests down there?’

The police and forensics were still in attendance for the second time when the tourists started arriving back from sightseeing for the day. They gawked at the police vehicles and loitered outside their cabins. A young couple with toddlers drove up to inquire about the rates but decided against staying.

As soon as Rae had the chance, she rang her brother-in-law, Lindsay, to fill him in on the situation so it wouldn’t be a shock when he arrived to do his shift in the morning.

‘I’ll come straight over,’ he said.

‘Nothing to see now. The bodies have gone.’

‘Why didn’t you call me earlier?’

‘There wasn’t time,’ Rae said. ‘It was go-go-go.’

‘What do the police reckon?’

‘Looks like someone’s bumped off the couple and taken the car.’

‘Who’d want to do that?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Apparently it’s more likely to be someone they knew, rather than a random psycho.’

‘That’s comforting,’ he said dryly.

‘I’ve been thinking whether one person could’ve done it. Killed the husband outside first, then took their time with the wife in the cabin. Or vice versa. Found her alone in the cabin, then tracked him down outside.’

Rae wondered if the husband had gone for a wander to have another cigarette, as the cabins were strictly non-smoking.

‘How did they die exactly?’ asked Lindsay.

‘The wife was suffocated. With a pillow I expect. The husband was strangled. There was a mark around his neck, like a groove. But the cops said it wasn’t the sort of mark that rope or wire would make. They found a thin type of plastic tubing in the dumpster. Could’ve been done with that.’

Lindsay paused to absorb the details. ‘At least there wasn’t a lot of blood to clean up.’

That night Rae tried to take her mind off the murders by flipping through magazines until reception shut at nine. Celebrity Mums: Best Post-Baby Bodies. Young actresses were photographed in gym outfits and baseball caps, carrying bottles of water. Rae marvelled at the concept of the torso snapping back with taut discipline only three or four weeks after giving birth. When she had her children, she went up two dress sizes – one for each baby – and never regained her former figure.

She resolved not to tell her kids about the murders; didn’t want them to worry. There was nothing they could do anyway. Brooke was at university in Victoria, and although Grant was closer, in Hobart, he always seemed so busy at work.

As Rae turned the glossy pages of the magazine, the faces of the victims kept seeping through. Silent straining mouths. Killed with deliberate stealth. No noisy gunshots, no shrieks between frenzied slashes.

Something else nagged at the back of her mind too, piercing the layers of her memory. She located the guest registration form again and stared at it. The combination of letters and numbers it displayed was familiar.

Rae hunted further back through the forms in the filing cabinet. Two weeks, four weeks, bingo! Five weeks earlier, there it was. The same name: Martin Fletcher. The details were entered in different handwriting, which suggested a different man had filled out the earlier form. Perhaps two men using the one alias. Same address: 10 Copper Road, Westerton, TAS. Same licence plates too; probably fake. Was ‘copper’ a joke about the police, or did it refer to the metal copper? Her own hand had marked ‘paid in cash’ across the form, meaning that she’d been on duty. It seemed too late at night to ring Detective Ogilvie’s mobile. So she faxed the guest form to the number on his card with a covering explanation.

Westerton. The name was ordinary enough to sound real, to escape scrutiny. But Rae couldn’t find any such location in Tasmania by searching the internet. On the wall was a giant map of the state. She slid along the edge of the counter for a closer look. The name Westerton instinctively drew her attention to the western side of the island. Much of it was uninhabited wilderness. The biggest settlement was Queenstown. It was a mining town, and a further check of the internet confirmed that the copper mine was in full swing.

*          *          *

Lindsay arrived the next morning at seven when Rae was onto her second cup of strong tea, trying to repair the cracks of a restless night. She gave him a tour of the previous day’s highlights, pointing out what had happened where. Lindsay folded his arms across his paunch and frowned with concentration at Rae’s descriptions. Coming full circle, they stood outside reception.

Rae rubbed her eyes. ‘Thought I might go out for a couple of hours, get away from here.’

‘Good idea,’ Lindsay agreed. ‘I can hold the fort.’ A squad of rosellas flashed overhead, chirruping.

‘Call me on the mobile if anything comes up,’ said Rae.

The vivid blue sky augured well for clearing her head. I’ll get some exercise. Think everything over. She drove a little further up the coast and parked near a headland. A path wound through the coastal heath and rosemary, parallel to the shoreline. Rae followed the track, stopping now and then to scan the undergrowth beside her for partly-obscured burrows. The fairy penguins were out fishing for the day, but their tell-tale droppings near the entrances to the burrows confirmed they would be back, clambering up from the beach after dark.

On the return trip, Rae stopped at a pie shop on the outskirts of Shearwater. Just for a coffee: skim milk flat white, no sugar. She blew a dent in the coffee to cool it as she turned the pages of a food-stained copy of The Advocate. Stirring the swirly liquid, her eyes landed on the headline: ‘ATM Gang Strikes East’.

Police believe that the gang which robbed automatic teller machines last month in Queenstown and Strahan has struck in Orford and Sorell. The same distinctive method was used to blast the front off each machine. Gas cylinders and plastic tubing were found abandoned at the scene of the latest robbery in Orford.

Two words jumped out: plastic tubing. The dead husband was strangled with something similar. She raced ahead to the reporter’s description of an explosive technique called ‘plofkraak’, copied from Europe. Small holes were drilled in the front of the ATM and oxygen was pumped into the holes using thin tubes.

Rae asked the man at the counter if she could buy the newspaper. He smiled and said, ‘Take it. I’ll only be tossing it out.’

Changing her plans, Rae headed for Burnie instead of home. On the Bass Highway, she chased the speed limit. A logging truck appeared up ahead and, as she gained on it, she heard the advancing whine of a motorcycle. It overtook her and streaked towards the logging truck, triggering a phantom replay of an accident. Superimposed on the scene in front of her, the truck swiped the motorcycle which skidded, crushing the rider. Logs rolled across the lanes, and Neil’s oncoming Falcon swerved to avoid a collision. He veered off the road, smashing into a tree. The image froze in the sparkling sunlight. Rae gripped the steering wheel tighter, mouth dry, and pushed on.

The Burnie public library was a concrete slab of a building. In the newspaper section, Rae back-tracked through the previous month’s editions of The Advocate until she found the articles which gave more details about the attacks on the ATMs at Queenstown and Strahan. Rae photocopied the articles for herself and the police. Leaving the library, her mobile phone chimed.

Lindsay’s voice sounded a little flustered. ‘Thought I better warn you, the press have swooped like vultures. TV crew from Launceston.’

‘Don’t talk to them.’

‘All I’ve said is I wasn’t here when it happened, which is the truth.’

‘Okay, I’ll be back soon,’ said Rae. ‘Just one more errand. Something I have to tell the police.’

Detective Ogilvie wasn’t in, but his offsider Boyd was available. He pointed to the seats in the empty waiting area and suggested they talk there. Rae showed him the newspaper reports about the ATM robberies and asked if he thought the same kind of plastic tubing could have been used to strangle the husband at the holiday park.

Boyd scanned the articles, his brow furrowing. ‘We’re exploring several lines of inquiry. All information received will be taken into consideration,’ he recited like a media statement.

‘Have you checked the address for Martin Fletcher?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think it exists.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said. His eyes were blank blue shields.

‘I rang the phone number on the guest form and the line was dead. Then I thought Copper Road and Westerton might have some connection with Queenstown. It’s in the west and it has a copper mine,’ Rae explained.

Boyd’s tone was non-committal. ‘I’ll certainly pass on your thoughts to Detective Inspector Ogilvie.’ He started to hand back the articles.

‘They’re copies for you. By the way, do you know if Detective Ogilvie got my fax?’ She recapped its contents.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Boyd, roughly folding the photocopies as if they were destined for the bin.

Rae left the police station wishing she had phoned Ogilvie instead of turning up without an appointment. Now it would be overkill to call him after just speaking to Boyd. But would Boyd even mention her visit? She bristled on the footpath, clutching her mobile phone.

Neil’s voice crept into her head. ‘Simmer down, darl,’ he said. ‘Take a breather.’ Rae bit her lip and decided to leave it for the time being.

On the way home, her son called. He’d seen the news item on the internet at work.

‘Double murder at a holiday park in Shearwater. Only one place fits that description,’ he said.

Rae pulled onto the side of the road, dodging the furry carcass and smeared entrails of a roadkill victim. She assured Grant there was no immediate danger. ‘I’m in contact with the police and Lindsay’s here too.’

‘Let me know right away if you need me,’ said Grant, a slight quaver coming into his voice.

‘I will. I promise.’

The next day, mid-afternoon, when most of the guests were out, Rae was following a guide to ‘Desk Exercises for Busy People’: Extend one leg until straight. Hold for five seconds. Lower leg almost to the ground but stop short. Hold for a further three seconds.

The reception phone rang. Rae dropped her leg and slid the swivel chair back under the desk to pick up the receiver. It was Detective Ogilvie. He thanked her for the fax and the articles. ‘We think we might have a lead from some security camera footage near one of the ATMs that was blown up. The images are too grainy to use for ID purposes, but we’ve got our suspicions about one of the participants.’

‘Sounds hopeful,’ she said.

‘We’d like you to come down to the station as soon as possible and look at a photo display. Just random shots of ordinary people. See if you recognise anyone.’

‘But it was ages ago that the first man stayed here. I’ve got no memory of him,’ said Rae.

‘You might remember something when you see the photos.’

There turned out to be three batches of photographs to view, for three different persons of interest, although the cops weren’t saying who belonged to which category. Rae was expecting a big book of mug shots, but the photos were all on computer. They appeared one at a time, head and shoulders, closely cropped. The subjects looked dazed or defiant.

Rae picked the dead husband without any difficulty: the tousled hair, albeit a little longer than when he had visited the holiday park, the pointy shrew nose. It was definitely him.

But the other bloke calling himself Martin Fletcher was more difficult. Photo number eight stirred something in her memory. Olive skin, loose dark curls, stubble, busted nose. But she could only say that he looked familiar. She could not specifically confirm that she had met him at the holiday park.

The third batch of photos were of women. Prostitutes and druggies and the molls of crooks, Rae surmised. And there she was, the wife, with her mousy hair and shifty eyes, glancing off to one side.

It was only when Rae had finished the task that she realised her hands were shaking. She grasped one on top of the other and burrowed them into her lap, as Ogilvie came over for some parting words.

‘I wish I could’ve been more helpful on the second bloke,’ she apologised.

‘You’ve done fine.’

She stood up, clutching her handbag tightly, hoping that would be all for the day.

‘Actually, there’s one other thing we really need your assistance with,’ said Ogilvie.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s more a matter of getting your approval. For an operation we want to run.’

The trembling started spreading up her arms.

*          *          *

Another night of broken sleep. It was the third night of being on stand-by. Rae went to bed fully clothed. She lay on top of the sheets with a blanket draped over her, just in case she had to get up in a hurry. On the floor next to the bed was Neil’s rifle. Drifting in and out, she cursed Ogilvie and Boyd, worried that her guests could be in danger. But the detectives had said it was essential that the place looked occupied, that everything appeared exactly as normal.

She lay there and imagined the story spreading like a yellow cloying gas, curling from place to place, mate to mate. In her mind’s eye, she saw a police officer, deeply undercover in the guise of a drug dealer, telling the rumour to his supplier in a pub. The supplier passed the word onto a standover man who acted as his debt collector; down the line to a bikie at a clubhouse, and then to a bouncer at a brothel. Ogilvie had admitted to Rae it was a real long shot, but worth a go. Plant the seed. Lay the bait. His instructions to her if something happened were to sit tight and stay inside.

The sound of shouting jolted her upright. The red glowing digits on the clock radio said 3:18. Rae grabbed the rifle and hurried to the glass sliding door of her cottage where she could see the action. Commandos from the tactical response group were storming across the yard, dressed in riot gear and helmets and brandishing semi-automatics.

Lights snapped on and alarmed faces appeared in cabin and caravan windows. More officers emerged from concealed positions in parked vehicles and a fake campervan.

Rae edged out of the sliding door in time to see Ogilvie and Boyd charge from the darkened Cabin Four wearing bullet-proof vests. Their boots thudded on the wooden deck. Spotlights ignited to illuminate the scene. A man squirmed on the ground, small and streaked with dirt. A large torch and a hand spade lay beside him, with more equipment in a nearby kit bag.

Another man darted away from the sidelines. Staccato shots crackled on the air. One of the cops flew backwards, jerking at the shoulder. Officer down. A voice boomed through a megaphone: ‘Drop the weapon! Come into the open.’

Rae rushed back through the cottage, gripping the polished wood of the rifle, barrel pointing downwards. Out the rear door, she crept along the side of the house to end up at right angles to where the shooter had taken cover behind a gum tree. Nobody else had the side-on perspective, although the distance was quite a stretch. The commandos had retreated to drag away the injured officer and regroup. The shooter was rummaging in a pouch around his waist. He kept his pistol raised and one eye on the cops, while trying to grapple with something, a pinecone-shaped object.

The thought flashed into Rae’s mind that it might be a grenade. In one smooth reflex she flicked the safety catch and raised the rifle. She took aim and fired above his head. Crack. The man jolted with surprise, lowering his pistol. He took a step backwards to regain his balance, one leg protruding beyond the tree.

The wild eyes and busted nose from the police photos flashed in Rae’s direction, and he saw her, flattened against the wall of the house. He whirled his pistol around, but another gunshot intervened. This time it came from ahead of him as a marksman struck the leg that was exposed, unprotected by the tree.

*          *          *

The Keno numbers danced across the soundless TV screen in the corner of the pub. Rae nursed her flute of champagne, watching the chunk of strawberry bobbing in the stream of bubbles.

Ogilvie and Boyd lifted their schooners in unison for a long swig. Setting down his glass, Ogilvie apologised again for not inviting Rae sooner for a celebratory drink. ‘We’ve been as busy as a bunch of blue-tailed flies.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said, remembering their faces disappearing into the scrum of cops on the night and wondering if she would see them again.

Ogilvie rolled a drink coaster by its rim across the polished table as he told the story. The dead couple were Justin and Janine Stoppell, gang members. After the last spate of ATM robberies they intended catching the ferry from Devonport to Melbourne, to hide out until things died down. Hence the attraction of a quiet spot on the north coast of Tassie within easy reach of the ferry.

But they were double-crossed by the ringleader of the gang, Damien Hardacre, the man in photo number eight. He killed the Stoppells at the holiday park in the early hours of the day they were due to catch the 9.00 am ferry. Took their car and luggage so it would look like they’d checked out, figuring it might buy him some time before the bodies were found. What he hadn’t bargained for was that not all of their share of the cash was there. They’d already got rid of a sizeable portion.

‘We know where, from tracing the victims’ bank accounts. But Hardacre didn’t,’ said Ogilvie.

‘That’s why we tried to send the word, to wherever he was holed up, through his mates,’ smirked Boyd.

‘We were hoping he was greedy enough to fall for it,’ said Ogilvie.

‘What exactly was the rumour? You wouldn’t tell me before,’ said Rae.

‘That we had reason to believe a stash of money had been buried near the cabin. Police were conducting a search but due to meagre resources, blah-blah-blah, were taking their time and hadn’t found anything yet. We weren’t guarding the property either, according to this loose-lipped source who knew someone in the force.’

Ogilvie kept rolling the drink coaster like a cartwheel as he continued. ‘My guess is Hardacre wanted to get rid of the Stoppells anyway. Dissatisfied with their performance, or a falling out over something; we’re not sure why yet. He didn’t exactly spill the beans in his interview. We’re trying to encourage Tiny Tony to roll over.’

Rae knew from the papers that Tiny Tony was the small man she’d seen squirming on the ground. Real name: Tony Agostini, a former jockey.

‘Did you come up with anything further about Westerton?’ she asked.

‘As you suspected, it was a fake address inspired by Queenstown,’ said Ogilvie. ‘Hardacre’s little joke. He’s from there originally. Used to work in the copper mine, till he got the sack.’

‘Tell her about Mr and Mrs Stoppell,’ prompted Boyd.

‘They’re not mister and missus. Not even defactos,’ said Ogilvie. ‘Justin and Janine are brother and sister. Or they were, I should say.’

‘Was she actively involved or just tagging along?’ asked Rae.

Boyd got in first: ‘She was the cockatoo.’

It took Rae a second to recall the term from her repository of slang. ‘The lookout,’ she said.

‘Janine kept watch while the blokes blew up the ATMs. Then when they were ready to bolt, she drove the getaway car,’ said Ogilvie. He picked up his beer but stopped short of taking a drink. ‘Bloody good driver too, from what I gather. Checked her record and there’s not so much as a parking ticket.’

Back at the holiday park, Rae savoured the night before going inside. She could hear the whoosh of the waves against the nearby rocks. Stars were peppered above the silvery water. The guests were nestled inside the cosy spaces of their cabins and caravans, behind the soft glow of covered windows. A deep sigh unrolled from Rae’s chest and hovered on the air. She was tired of messing with other people’s lives. Tomorrow she would contact her kids and see which one of them could make time for a visit from her first: Grant down in Hobart or Brooke in Victoria. She had not seen either of them for too long.

Neil’s voice chimed in: ‘Not such a big hassle to get someone to fill in for a few shifts.’

All right, she would have a chat with Lindsay. Some of his family had helped out in the past. Then she could head off, north or south, she didn’t mind which.

© Rowena Helston 2009