The Devil's Garden by Debi Marshall Read Free Book Online

'Police made public statements that they would take all information. The result was that we were flooded with calls from the public, receiving many, many more than even the Milat backpacker investigation. And the case still attracts calls from clairvoyants. But research doesn't back up their claims. There isn't one where it's been proven they have solved a case. In Claremont, no one ever linked any information they gave us with fact. They usually homed in on Sarah, because she is still missing. In the end, we would tell them, "If you know where she is, go out there, take your mobile with you and if you find her, give us a call." We never got that call.'
    Police install a second telephone line to free up calls that may lead to information and are compassionate, gentle in their dealings with the Rimmer family. Peter Norrish and John Leembruggen, the Rimmers' liaison officers, call in frequently, keeping them up to speed.
    A relentless rain teases and taunts the Rimmer family. Trevor continues to go to work, staring at a photo of Jane on his desk. 'Where are you, Janie?' he asks her. 'Tell us where you are.' Jenny pretends normality, returning to work at the Shenton Hotel and telling herself Jane will come home. It is a mantra, and one she knows is nonsense. 'She's probably gone overseas or met a guy. She'll be back soon.' She knows they are feeble excuses. Jane has no passport and no ambition to travel. And she always lets them know where she is.

9
    Hard rain has fallen for months, a lashing, cold rain that daubs her naked body. A canopy of trees protects her; branches thin as whips bow in mourning. It is lonely here, through the winter months of June to August 1996, as the body of a 23-year-old lies hidden from the world in a sodden roadside verge, lightly covered with foliage. Elegant snow-white flowers with elongated leaves and vibrant lemon tongues grow tall around her, surrounding her in a macabre guard of honour. Arum lilies – death lilies.
    A lashing rain has fallen for months, forming stagnant pools that wash the evidence away. Pools in which the death lilies grow.

10
    Jane Rimmer's foot peeks from her rough blanket of foliage. The Arum lilies have kept her disposal site secret. A woman, picking water lilies with her children on the dirt Woolcoot Road in rural Wellard, 40 kilometres south of Perth, pauses, then looks again. It takes only a moment to compute what she sees lying on the roadside verge, sprawled pitifully in death. Oh, God , she thinks, her stomach somersaulting as she turns her children's heads away. It's a body . Within an hour, the area will swarm with police officers.
    Fifty-four days of exposure to the filthy weather have rendered Jane unrecognisable. From the moment of her death, nature started its inexorable march toward decomposition. Within 24 hours of her death the insects, working in their rhythmical, cyclical way, zero in, in successional waves, colonising her corpse, laying their eggs in the body's orifices or wounds. The internal tissue begins to decay, turning into gas and liquids, and after just one week the flesh under the skin is of liquid consistency and skin sloughs off it when touched. As the body moves through its ritual of decay, a month after death hair and nails can easily be removed, the trunk is bloated to twice its size and the tongue protrudes. By six weeks, the body resembles what is described in the trade as a 'soup'.
    Wellard, in the shire of Kwinana, houses Casuarina Prison and the mockingly named Hope Valley. Tucked away here, out of sight in the verge that captures water like a dam, lying for almost two months in nature's shallow bath at the mercy of the tiger snakes and wild animals that inhabit the area, Jane is so putridly decomposed that only dental and fingerprint records can prove identification. But while she can't tell investigators what has happened, her body can, offering clues to the forensic scientist to calculate the circumstance and time of her death.