After Azaria

There's not too many choices when you try to second guess a serial killer. Particularly one whose victims appear to be random, even after trawling through so much evidence and background biographic information that you're more at home in the victims' lives than your own. It's no use falling back on comforting theories of evil so deep it's irrational. Leave that nonsense to the journos. Instead you must decide between two options -at least as the basis for your pursuit. You ask - is the link between the killings the mode of death? A ritual so intense and fulfilling it doesn't matter who is killed? Or is there a connection – as yet hidden, secret - between the victims? A link the killer thinks only they know. Which appears to give reason, and permission. The two options are like two shades of lipstick, both blood red. They're also the essence of solving the crime.

I went to Uluru, to the heat-throbbing centre of the continent, to explore the first option. A serial killer who might be hooked on ritual. And who might kill again soon.

“Carter”, Ray Nowlands rang my inner-city Sydney two-up, two-down late on the 31 st October. “I've got a job for you.”

“Halloween joke?” I asked. Ray and I worked together years back. Worked well. But he's wary. I'm still scoring kudos for solving the case that nearly sent him to what he calls a shrink. A case with three mutilated bodies, no sexual involvement, no other apparent motive, almost no evidence at the scenes. There was story, though, in the way the killer murdered. A lust for power which gave him away in the end.

“Plenty of pumpkin-heads up here, without bloody Halloween, I c'tell you.” Ray replied. “Now listen to me, Annabel, I'm over hard feelings. M'wife's just had plastic on the upper parts and my m'pension fund's chocka. I'll retire a happy man s'long as we can sort this arsehole of a case.”

Ray'd been married for thirty years so I figured he was joking about his wife. Marcia's a great woman. And I was pleased he'd turned to me. Forensic psychologists aren't everyone's favourite fact finders.

“Which case?” I was truly puzzled. I hadn't had a whiff of another serial in the NT.

“How would you feel about five murders? Over six years. All the victims found crushed at the base of Ayers Rock. Or Uluru, as you probably call it.”

I swore to myself. “Five? Six years? At the Rock? And the media don't know?”

Of course I could see why the police'd want to keep it quiet. Would have to keep it quiet. Ever since the Azaria Chamberlain case, murder at Ulura has been a super-sensitive issue. That time a baby disappeared, the mother called ‘ a dingo's got my baby', popular opinion screamed ‘infanticide', the corpse never found and the mother charged. The Territory police got more international coverage than if they'd won the World Cup. But Lindy Chamberlains's conviction was quashed. The police and prosecution had cheated, used dud evidence.

“The media ain't gonna hear about it. Not ever, if we can help it. But that don't mean y'should jump to any bloody conclusions. The past is the past.”

I began to ask more questions. Ray interrupted, which surprised me. He's generally polite, sometimes too polite. “Can you be on tomorrow's plane? Leaves around lunchtime. I don't want to talk over the phone.”

There was no point in arguing. If Ray had a set about talking on the phone he'd have good reasons. Which I was eager to find out. And there was no point in playing hard to get. Ray knows that forensic work won't buy more than cheap bread and butter, but to me it's not a job - it's my gamble, my drug, it's what drives me.

Midday Wednesday, I was on a plane flying into a fierce head-wind en route to The Alice, the town nearest the middle of the oldest landmass on earth. I couldn't help feeling I was heading into territory that played by rules more mystical than rational. Which was what half the world claimed after Azaria, but for someone like me - who loves logic - is a little unusual.

On the plane I reviewed my brief. Straightforward enough. Work out why some bastard would seek satisfaction – or thrill or relief - in pushing or throwing five people from the top of a thousand feet of near sheer rock. If the victims were truly unrelated, part of the excitement must be the voyeurism of watching the bodies blistering down the life-breaking rock, the panting at the sound of their screams, perhaps the orgasm that came as they landed, battered beyond belief, in the pool Aboriginal people regard as sacred.

The steward handed me a cardboard box. A sandwich still cold from storage, a miniature chocolate bar - which I ate first - and a plastic container of spring water. I dreamt briefly of the day I'd be flying business class. What did I know about the victims? Five people, aged eighteen to sixty two, both genders, one Greek-Australian, one Scot settled here for four decades, and three Aussies with genetic histories like a squashed pack of Arnott's assorted creams. No indigenous Australians. No children – or babies. A variety of jobs. Victims from different states, whose only conjunction under the stars was their apparently unexpected, inexplicable, and terribly painful death.

The temperature on the tarmac at Alice was beyond my comprehension. Last time I'd been here it'd been winter, and that was hot enough. I'm small and, I like to think, strong. A decade of lifting weights, long runs, longer uphill hikes in the harsh terrain of the Blue Mountains . Nights and the odd precious morning of lust – nothing had made me sweat like this. What my mother calls perspiration - if she ever mentions it - spurted from me like water being pumped from the artesian basin.

I collected the hire-car. Four wheel drive. High clearance, big engine, chips out the windscreen, a certain gritty reality to it . I felt Ray beside me as I zapped the doors open.

“Good to see yer,” he said, looking like he meant it. He climbed into the passenger seat, grinning at my raised eyebrows. “Constable dropped me out here. Thought we should have a yarn before you meet Heinrich.”

Michael Heinrich is the detective in charge of the actual investigation. Brought in from Darwin when it was finally realised that four accidental deaths, on or around the same date – the summer solstice – in four years running, all bodies found at the same sacred waterhole, was getting beyond chance. None of the deaths witnessed. Since then, no action the following year, then one more, same place, same MO, out of synch, time-wise. In August, in fact, on the date Azaria disappeared. Heinrich's original report had been tough on the Alice police. Now he'd done little better himself, so he had a few chips on the shoulder to burn.

“Heinrich's theory held no water? You couldn't find an indigenous person angry enough at the invasion of their sacred land to kill?” I asked, as we hit the highway. The traditional owners had argued for years that the Rock climb should be closed - for spiritual reasons, rather than safety. There was plenty of anger out there.

“Come on, you know as well as I do that the Aborigines have always been too bloody kind to their invaders. And most of ‘em would rather wrestle with Arnie Shwazenegger than take on the spirits at Uluru. Anyway, nothing holds water around here, mate. Look around. Just rocks, big rocks, small rocks, sand, red, yellow or bleached like the hair on your head, young Annabel.”

I didn't mind the remark about my hair. A) because I like it look seriously bleached and B) because Ray has that old-fashioned courtesy that city men seem to have thrown out with the ability to change a car tyre. “Has to be someone who knows the Rock well, though?”

“Mate, it's like there's a big red x on a spot a thousand feet up from Maggie's Spring. They had to go over in an absolutely exact position. That puts the rangers in the frame, just as much as the locals.”

“So, let's hear your theory.”

“The obvious is that the date's the significant thing, yeah? The Solstice always attracts a few baggie-trousered spiritual types. But maybe it's the only time a'year the arsehole gets of work. “

“Which might give us a hint of what he does for a job. A workplace that closes the week before Christmas.” I liked the direction Ray was going. A mid-summer sacrifice seemed far too simplistic.

A road train settled itself on my back bumperbar, making the big car feel suddenly fragile. Ray checked the left side mirror. “Idiot,” he remarked. “So, I've done a bit of sifting. You'd know that one consortium owns most of the hotel beds in the Territory? Well, they're not too willing to give over info, but Marcia works with a girl who's got a bit of influence. Got hold of a list of guests who'd been here more'n once. And a bigger list of workers who've been around for a few years. Which is pretty bloody unusual round here.”

“Heinrich hadn't checked this?”

“Cursory. He's convinced it's someone local.”

“Is there any way they could've been murdered and carried up the Rock? Or was the knife shoved in as they were pushed?”

“You'll see the pathology reports when we get in. We're not sure with two of them what bloody killed them. Which means the bodies were so smashed those clever dicks can't be sure whether the jugular was cut by a blunt knife or a sharp stone on the way down.”

The road-train – four petrol tankers swaying and shimmering in the heat – was clinging to our rear like it might swallow us any moment. “This the usual way of welcoming visitors round here?” I asked, nodding my head at the rear-view mirror.

There was a pause before Ray responded. “Nah,” he said slowly, “curious behaviour. Maybe I'll ring through, check the plates.”

We were entering Alice now, the slow sweep of colour-bond clad suburbs. Not much building wood round here. I let Ray make the call but wondered why he was bothering. He'd left basic copper duties behind twenty years back and there didn't seem to be any other reason to worry about a bad driver.

“Hum,” was all he said when he'd got the reply. Scribbled something in his notebook.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah. You thought I was hard to work with. Well, Heindrich looks like he comes out of some women's magazine. It's all surface. He'll hone in on you being an attractive young woman. But watch him.”

The next two days I spent closeted in the air-conditioned police building. Three of the bodies had been exhumed when the stab-wound on the fourth was noticed. Pics were pretty vile. I was glad I hadn't had to sit through the autopsies. Interviews with the poor buggers who'd found the bodies weren't very revealing. No forensics to speak of either top or bottom of the Rock. Literally impossible to inspect the four hundred meters of the fall.

On the third morning I searched for a coffee shop. I only drink one cup a day and I like that to be stronger than the French Foreign Legion on full pay. The tourist trade in Alice is huge so there's a surfeit of cafes. I chose the one with the haphazard decor and the piles of newspapers. The smell proclaimed coffee which was strong and unburnt. I picked up a Northern Territory News – the national and southern papers only arrive on the first plane in at lunchtime – and found myself an outside seat. There always a chance of overhearing something useful.

As I stirred sugar into the coffee a shadow dropped the temperature about ten degrees. “Good morning,” Michael Hendrich said, seating himself without asking.

I paused. I'm not a great morning person. Should I be rude? On the other hand my job is get inside the head of a killer and I need all the access to evidence, possible leads the police can supply. “Michael. What're you doing here?” I kept my voice polite.

“Looking for you.”

Ray's right, Heindrich's a good-looking bastard. Tanned, muscular, haircut smart enough to be Lygon St or Paddington. So, the ‘looking for you' line is destined to work on most women, and some men.

“Is there more information I should have before I go down to Uluru?”

He picked up the back-pack he'd dropped by the chair. He's plain-clothes, of course, and adopts a sort of up-market park ranger look. “I thought you might appreciate these.”

I whistled. Photos of the victims, at the time of death. And years before. From moments of their lives. Personality shots. I looked at Heinrich, hoping he'd think the narrowing of my eyes was due to the searing heat. Not many police would have realised how useful these photos might be.

“Thanks. But I thought you were convinced this was a ritual, the targets themselves weren't important?”

Heinrich went slightly red under the tan. Or did he? Was he just a good actor?

“Listening to you and Ray yesterday made me rethink that theory,” he said. “The repetitive use of such an extravagant place, the precise siting of the bodies in the waterhole which is supposed to be like a well of life, and the Solstice timing do seem to indicate a need on the killer's part to have these aspects complete in his own schema. On the other hand, perhaps Ray's right and it's all a little too obvious.”

“So, you did psych at uni?”

This time the blush seemed real.

“Did I sound pompous?”

“No, it was the word ‘schema'. Jargon for people putting things together in their heads according to their particular experience and set of values. Not conscious necessarily.”

“A good way of explaining it. You're quick with words.”

Was ‘quick with words' a discreet put-down? Michael was proving to be extremely clever. Every comment, every move carried a double edge. And potential danger? Ray had more than implied the guy's ambitions were causing problems. Nothing proven. Rumours that evidence stayed in his drawer, so only he could use it. Case notes that, on occasion, seemed incomplete. I decided to take the photos and put my worries on hold.

“I appreciate the info. I've got to go now, it's four hours to the Rock, isn't it?”

“Maybe more. Look, Annabel, why don't you wait til tomorrow? We could go through the photographs together, I can fill you in on some of the more personal background of the victims. And maybe we could have dinner?”

My cup clattered as I put it down. “Thanks all the same. I'm only away a couple of days. Perhaps when I get back.” For some reason I thought it best not to tell him I had a meeting with an Aboriginal elder.

Ulura, home of the rainbow serpent, scene of battles at the beginning of time, now the most visited rock in the whole bloody world. Half a million people or more a year, each of whom could be the killer. And that's without the traditional people near the Rock, the thousands of travellers and tired souls who staff the resorts, and all those others in the communities and townships on the way to The Alice - the nearest decent shopping centre, four hundred kilometres up the road.

I was within fifty K. by lunchtime, the LandCruiser and I already having developed a close relationship. Although, even with the V8 engine, it'd taken an hour to shake off the road-train that'd tailed me out of Alice . Now I was relaxed, it was hard to keep my eyes on the road. I passed Mt Connor, and the top of the Rock itself reared through the passenger window and then disappeared. Tantalising.

I decided to go straight onto the viewing place I remembered from last time I was in the Territory. Behind me was another LandCruiser, in sight since the turn-off from the Lasseter Highway . Perhaps my speed explained why it hadn't overtaken me. I slowed. Put on my left indicator, as if I were going into the resort town of Ylara after all. The Cruiser slowed. I stepped on the gas, pushing myself past the speed limit with style. Two minutes later the Cruiser was back. Shit.

I pulled into the parking bay as near to the last minute as I could, not indicating. Behind me the brakes squealed, the Cruiser hesitated, drove past. Trouble was, there's basically only one road out here so it wouldn't be hard to find me.

Putting what could be paranoia aside, I clambered out of the car and set my boots in the sand. There, as if it were proclaiming the centre of the world, was the Rock. Still 15 K. away but filling almost the entire landscape. Immense, solid, immutable, rising incongruously from the flatness. Childhood memories are stored in wholes – glorious paintings, rather than jigsaws with the potential for lost pieces – without the complex networks Heinrich'd referred to as schemas. My theory about Uluru is that it's like the perfect childhood memory. Far, far beyond the ordinary and very, very whole. Words like grand and magical slip away, useless. It doesn't bring tears to the eyes. Instead the breath is drawn in, a deep, primeval echo within the body.

Back in the car I felt cleansed. Which is pretty wild when you think about the amount of sand and grit I'd just shipped into the Cruiser. I was beginning to understand why you'd think there was a religious significance behind the killings.

I drove in, paid my park fees, forgot the receipt for my tax. Thought about going to the murder site before my meeting, decided on having my mind uncluttered. I don't go all misty-eyed about indigenous culture like some of my friends but I'm very aware that the traditional owners will see the place and the events with a whole different mind-set. Heindrich's schemas again.

Dorothy had asked to meet in the cultural centre about two k. from Uluru itself. The Centre attempts to be discreet but it's a group of big tourist shops and cafes really. Still, inside it was comparatively cool and the flies were occasional rather than smothering. While I waited – I was early – I did a bit of people-watching. Would our killer sit like this, eyeing off a likely candidate? Did he – the likelihood of it being a woman was slimmer than a Vogue model – did he follow his target, get to know them in a peculiar way? Beforehand. A guy in the UK did a peeping-tom routine for weeks before the actual deed. Said in his confession that killing was the ultimate intimacy, so it was essential he was close to the victim. Charming.

Dorothy strolled in just as I was feeling eyes on the back of my neck. Maybe I'd been sitting too long, staring too obviously.

“Green, good colour,” she said in greeting. Referring to the shirt she'd asked me to wear so she could recognise me. “My sister, she green.”

I offered a cup of tea. Colour needs to be noted for its individual and cultural significance, not just its aesthetic, I thought as I brought the pot of tea back to our table. Interesting, because one of commonalities the police had bypassed was that each of the victims was wearing a shirt or blouse which was either red or had red on it.

“Red?” I asked Dorothy.

She considered, sucking her tea, nodding.

“You know talk-cure?” she replied.

“Psychoanalysis?”

“Yep. Him that one. Think red, keep saying things. Follow path in head.”

Shit, I thought, am I just a prejudiced gub or is it indeed weird to have a seventy year old Anangu woman telling me – a white psychologist – to use the method of word association bonded with Freud's talking cure?

The interview continued like this. My questions felt inept but Dorothy treated each one with respect. She had soft eyes and a sharp wit, had spent the past thirty years trying to get education for her people, had a daughter who was a health worker and liked to attend conferences on indigenous mental heath. Some woman, this one.

At the end of an hour we came back to colour. “Think red,' she advised.

Outside, red was everywhere. Red was earth, sand, dust, sunset, sunrise, blood. The blood of life, of roo killed and a feast to follow. Red gave succour. Was it death? No, death-blood dried brown. I paced the murder site. Red was the Rock, too, of course. If you wore red you wouldn't be so easily seen from below. Did this have meaning?

I hung around while one busload of German tourists, one eco-tour group with a cacophony of accents, and about a dozen walking groups went by, sweat hanging over their eyes. From here I couldn't see the road to suss whether the LandCruiser had reappeared. It was August since the place'd last been roped off as a murder scene. Was it about to happen again?

Toward sunset everyone cleared out, to get back from the Rock and watch the colour change from red to purple. I remembered it as almost unsettling in its beauty, but today I took the opportunity sunset gave me to be alone. I stared up and up at the point of departure, peered into caves, crannies, dips, scuffed around the edges of paths. The cleanliness was remarkable. One tissue, no other waste. Then a bone. I picked it up, dusted it off, shoved it into the long pocket of my cargo trousers. I could just about feel the spirits of the Ancestors watching me but I figured they'd understand what I was doing.

The hotel in the manufactured resort-town was comfortable. I'd remembered my bathers and was pleased to find a pool with a lap-lane of sorts. Back and forward, twist turn, back again. I ignored the soft whistle of the bloke with tattoos when I got out.

In my room I looked at the bone and thought about red. The red coat of a dingo. Each time there'd been a killing, a single dingo bone was found among the small amount of debris and paraphernalia at the site. Natural enough perhaps, but dingoes and death at Ayer's rock have a poignant history. Azaria Chamberlain was the link. Despite the talk at the time we knew now her disappearance was not, in any way, sacrificial. The notion of ritual had been false. So, twenty-odd years later we were dealing with a killer who'd made five deaths look like accidents, and then like rituals. Was he trying to prove, in a warped way, that Lindy really did it? Or had he been there? Was there guilt that he was assuaging? Did he have something to do with Azaria's death?

My stomach threw a fist at me. I hadn't eaten all day – I'd think better with some food in me. I turned on the mobile first, seeing I was back in range. Four messages from Ray to ring immediately. He didn't sound happy.

“Jesus, Annabel, I've been shitting myself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you ring Heinrich and ask him to come down there to meet you?”

“Did I what?”

“You heard. Did you?”

I thought about the LandCruiser. Could the driver have been Heinrich in hat and sunglasses? Possible.

“Not in a million years. Wasn't he at work with you all day?”

“Yeah, until about half past four. Came back from arvo tea to find a message on my desk – Heinrich saying you'd rung. It was urgent and he'd gone. Like I said, I've been shitting myself ever since.”

Ray didn't have a decent proposition for why Heinrich would risk such a blatant lie. I told Ray about my notion I'd been followed. Not Heinrich, though, given he'd been in the office for hours after I left town.

“Annabel, I reckon you oughta get outta there.” He paused for a minute. “It's too dangerous to drive. Leave the car, and your stuff. Put a hat on and some different clothes and go check into one of the other hotels. Sails in the Desert, it's the swankiest. Department'll foot the bill. I'm on my way.”

“I'm a big girl, I can handle this. It's just as bloody dangerous for you to drive. There's cattle and camels and roos running amok. Maybe one will get Heinrich. Maybe he's innocent. Go home to Marcia.”

“I really meant it. I'm less than a hundred from you, I left forty minutes after Heinrich.”

Bloody mobiles, you can be ringing anywhere. I did a quick calculation based on Ray's timing. Heinrich had to be damn close. “OK. I'm going to hang up and change. Meet me in an hour.”

“OK, see you at Sails.”

“No. I'll call with a location.”

I rang off. Sure, I trusted Ray but you can never be certain whose listening in. It was a police phone, after all.

Red. A dingo's bone. A mad copper. Is copper red? Yes. Was Heinrich the killer? Not my gut feeling, but unlikely his alibis'd been checked. I wished I didn't feel that wearing a skirt was my best disguise. It made me feel vulnerable.

The sound of yet another bus passing outside. Two more. Then a car, a big car, slowing. stopping. This hotel was an odd design, with the bathrooms on the outside wall, no windows from the bed-sit area. I slunk into the bathroom, thanking whatever deity that I had a liking for the dark and hadn't turned the lights on inside. Yep, it was the LandCruiser.

The block-out curtain was partly pulled. I crammed myself in against it. The man in the Cruiser was lit by a street light. He was surveying the rooms, his movements suggesting calm, loads of self-control. The sort of control you'd need if you were going to follow a fellow being up a climb nearly as steep as Everest, then thrust a knife in their neck and shove them over the edge. Without being noticed.

“The killer's outside my window.” I said as soon as Ray answered the phone. “I'm still not sure it isn't Heinrich - same kind of body. Tall, looks lithe.”

Expletives hissed down the phone. And advice. I was just about hyperventilating but I was going to get through this. There were people everywhere. If I could keep the bastard in sight I'd survive. Although I wouldn't say unscathed. He was still sitting, watching.

“Listen. The link is the Chamberlain case. Do you have a list of the people camped near Azaria's tent that night?”

Ray knew me better than to argue about distractions. “There's some sort of list. Incomplete, natch. A couple of families close by had a bit to say.” He couldn't help himself. “What the fuck are you asking me this for? Now.”

“My hunch is that if you match that list with the single males who've been working in the area for the past six or so years – or maybe driving trucks through – you'll find a name. Someone – maybe even a kid – who was there on August 17 th , 1980 – and who came back. Either riddled with guilt, or anger. He believes the dingo story – that's why the bones. Something to do with Azaria not being saved.”

Red dust blew across the Cruiser outside. The man picked up a mobile. I shuddered. If he had back-up, reinforcements, I was in serious trouble. As he put it down and began to get out of the car, I heard feet pounding the pavement. I closed my eyes for a second. Heinrich appeared, just about frothing at the mouth.

I ran.

Twenty seconds later it was like a bushfire'd jumped the road. A screeching siren, staff and tourists slapping into eachother, kids taking no notice and being screamed at by their parents. Shouts of ‘police, police.” Just like in the movies. I pulled myself out of the crowd and raced out the front.

Heinrich was there, holding his look-alike on the ground and shouting orders to the security guards who'd joined him. When he finally saw me, he grinned. “Cheers,” he said, “you led me to him.”

It turned out Heinrich was indeed over-ambitious. And an arse-hole. He'd seen the connection with Azaria, he'd also been right about the killer being local. So, he leaned on Ray to invite me up and spread the story of my past success and my imminent arrival as widely as he could. In the Territory word of mouth is highly valued. He'd been kind enough to try to keep me in Alice long enough to catch the killer there. Great.

I was right, too. Jason Trevalley had been a kid in the camping ground the night Azaria disappeared. Probably would've had no effect on him except that he found out several of the campers had seen the dingo but never told the police. Including himself and his father. They dispersed but he kept hold of the names and addresses, tracked those who moved. Over the past six years he arranged to meet them, one at a time - a kind of purging reunion, he'd said. For our crime of silence. At a safer time of year. Wear red, he told them, we'll know each other, and blend with the Rock. The Rock of life. The apparently accidental deaths received no coverage interstate. When I came along he only had one victim to go. John Trevalley was to meet his son at the Rock this Solstice.

The worst of it was that the Trevalley name wasn't on the police files. So, without me as bait, he might never have been caught.