‘Is there something you wanted me to be doing?’ she asked eventually. ‘While you’re getting around?’
‘Oh. Uh. Well. I mean, you don’thaveto help me. But it’s just that you’re young, Birds. You’re good with computers. You couldfind me everything you can on Chloe Lutz and what she was working on.’
‘I’m not a cop, though. I don’t want to get in trouble.’
‘The only person you could get in trouble from is me. I’m lead on this.’
‘But won’t there already be other cops digging around in that stuff? Dodge’s people?’
‘None of Dodge’s people look like they’re under thirty. You’ll know things about the internet that we don’t know.’
‘Okay then.’ Bridie nodded, energised. ‘You got it.’
She got up and refilled her coffee, wiped down the sink, put the teaspoon in the dish rack, her long delicate hands lit by that new, hopeful light.
‘I’m really sorry, Bridie,’ I said. ‘We should be at the Dendy Premium Lounge right now, eating a baked wheel of brie with fig jam and water crackers and watching something foreign.’
She smirked. ‘You’re the only one around here who’s actually sad about that,’ she said.
EVAN
Isat in my car in the forensics centre’s car park, too annoyed by Officer Yang’s typing to hang around in the waiting room. Maybe I was procrastinating logging in to the New South Wales transport authority’s Police Control Intranet to view the cams coming in and out of Redbelly, dreading seeing my son there. But I went immediately to the photographs on my phone, of the notebook the tech had found in Chloe Lutz’s handbag. I had drafted a message to Russell on the walk back to the car about the discovery, but some childish desire for his approval stopped me from sending it. I wanted to go to him in person and tell him about the find, to be able to brief him on what the book contained, my theories about it. See the look on his face.I’m a good little cop, aren’t I, big brother?I cringed at myself and went to the pictures.
I opened the first image and zoomed in on the loopy upright handwriting of Chloe Lutz. The first page was titledFORD CAPRI.
Initial questions:
What colours do they come in?
Was racing stripe standard?
Were they loud cars? Able to fit muffler? Chase down muffler dealer?
How many ever imported into Australia?
Weird to own one of those in a rural area? Dirt roads?
Similar cars Ford Capri might have been mistaken for?
I sat staring at the words, running over them a couple of times. The list had me thinking, in the beginning, that I was looking at a series of idle questions written by a kid journo who was planning to write an article about a vintage car. The final two questions in the list knocked me a little off that course. Was she planning to write about a specific car? Maybe someone out in Redbelly who owned an old Ford Capri? But what relevance would the ‘mistaking’ of this person’s car for similar cars have? I googled a couple of the phone numbers scribbled at the margin of the page and found one was listed on the webpage of the Vintage Ford Enthusiasts of Australia. The other number I followed to the landline of an administrative assistant at Ford Australia.
On the following page, a vague diagram expanded across one of the notebook’s small pages: a house with what looked like two sheds; a road that began and ended with two labels,Into townandTowards city. There was what appeared to be a stopping bay off the road, shielded from the road proper by little scribbled trees. A box labelledFC, which I supposed must be the aforementioned Ford Capri, was parked in the bay. This was good stuff. I didn’t know how it was good, but it felt juicy. Like I was holding the key to something, just needing to find myself the right lock. I looked at the diagram of the house and the sheds. The larger-sized building was a basic cartoon of a peaked-roof structure with little square windows. The two smaller buildings had crosshatching across their lower sections. Chicken coops? Dog runs? Garden sheds? I was looking for a house with two smaller structures accompanying it. So, essentially, every house from Dural to Mangrove Mountain.
I reached into the back of the car and grabbed the backpack I’d haphazardly tossed in there that morning when I left the house, abandoning Delle with the gaggle of teens. I drew out my laptop, logged in to the New South Wales transport authority’s Police Intranet. With the state having long ago abandoned the laboriousprocess of police officers seeking individual approvals from government-employed traffic authority staff to access motor registrations, I could now search fifty years’ worth of car registration history using my own log-in. I put some search terms in, looking for owners of Ford Capri vehicles in the Hawkesbury region.
There were none. No one living local to Redbelly currently owned a Capri, and from what I was seeing, no one ever had. I chewed my lips, went back to the photographs of Chloe’s diary. There was a new list on the next page entitledFB MARKETPLACE CARS.
Leonard Yi—FC MK1—Bought new by father in Prospect, 1969. Originally and still is pale blue. No muffler.
Donna Hickson—FC MK2—Previous owners from new all within family, sending list. No muffler.
Fred Galloway—FC MK1—Mustard yellow but no racing stripe. No muffler. Asked for prev. owners. No answer. Chase up.
The list went on for a page, random names, descriptions of cars, mentions of whether the cars had a racing stripe or a muffler. There was a determined focus on whether the car was, or had ever been, mustard yellow. Heading to Facebook, and with some difficulty, working out how to open up the marketplace section, I searched for Ford Capris and saw that indeed some of the people on Chloe’s list were trying to sell such a vehicle. At some point, Chloe’s written list switched to Gumtree, then to Carsales.com.au. Chloe seemed to be searching for a specific car. I went back to the diagram of the house, the sheds or chicken coops or whatever they were, the car parked in the stopping bay. Whose house was this drawing of? And if Chloe knew the house, what relationship did that homeowner have to the missing Ford Capri?
The lists broke off into a stream of words that made no sense to me, and seemed not to be connected to each other, separated as they were by large gaps or slashes with the pen.
Inquest proceedings—Freedom of Information request—Is the requester name made public on the website?
