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

the detail may be. It is their daughter, they say. They have a right.
    The police agree. As far as they can tell, there was no sexual assault and definitely no mutilation, dismemberment of the body or bondage. And Jane was not left in a staged, set pose.
    At home, they eat in silence the rack of lamb Trevor has prepared, tasteless and chewed over and over in their mouths. By morning, Jenny Rimmer will assume a foetal position, and stay curled that way until her daughter's funeral and for months after.
    Jane – meaning 'God is gracious' – comes to Jenny in dreams. Not as the young woman heading off to Claremont for a night out clubbing with friends, but as an 8-year-old child, swinging androgynous hips as she dances to Abba and sings into the broom handle. She wakes and tells Trevor, 'Jane has been here again,' and he knows not to ask. He knows she would only be eight years old. In Jenny's dreams, Jane never grows up. She never goes to Claremont.
    Woolcoot Road is meticulously searched, media choppers flying overhead as every object from cans, cigarette butts and hairs are picked up and sealed. An infra-red scanning system is employed to search the bush around the disposal site, detecting objects and other materials foreign to the area by heat radiation. Forensic teams vacuum the bush and tracks near Jane's disposal site, using gauze pads that they repeatedly change. Entomologists, who calculate the time of death from the life cycle of insects and the age of flies that have gorged on the body, go about their grisly task.
    Police are also quietly briefed to look for Sarah Spiers, who has now been missing for seven months. They have no doubt she has been murdered and reason the killer would feel comfortable returning to the Wellard area. Sarah's body hasn't been found. He may have dumped her there, and later Jane, believing he would not be caught.
    The taskforce goes over and over the 'points of fatal encounter' as geographical profilers call it – the area from where the victim is abducted. Very often it proves to be close to the killer's home, always much closer than the disposal site. The more victims the killer murders, the cockier he – or they – becomes, dumping bodies increasingly closer to home.
    Trevor and Jenny have been married 40 years and still touch hands tenderly as they discuss their murdered daughter. They move effortlessly around each other, as couples do after years of intimate familiarity, but they cope very differently. Jenny, brown eyes set in a face chiselled with grief, is not afraid to cry and does so, often. Trevor, quiet and circumspect, is more controlled. Look closer and his heart is splintered into tiny shards, like the spidery lines that criss-cross his gaunt cheeks.
    Trevor borders on angry when the police ask him pointed questions about his relationship with his daughter, and when they take blood samples for possible DNA testing. But he understands their reasons. Everyone is under suspicion. Still the phone calls flood in to police, thousands of people offering clues to the killer's identity. Mothers nominate sons. Wives point the finger at husbands. Bisexual men suggest former partners. Early on police form a list of names whose calls should be ignored. They don't have time for crackpots. Prostitutes are asked to go through their 'ugly mugs' file, the photos and names of clients who they know to be sexually perverted or violent.
    It is a simple symbol, on a tiny badge: the Arum lily, chosen after Jane's body is found. Underneath, there is an equally simple, one-word inscription. Macro. Normally, the names of taskforces are spat out of a computer at Canberra's Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. Not this time. 'Macro', meaning 'to look at everything', was chosen by taskforce members themselves. 'To look at everything'.Every possibility.
    The taskforce officers choose the symbol as a sign of respect, to honour Jane Rimmer and Sarah Spiers, to keep them focused on the girls'