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СКАЧАТЬ The next name he mentioned was Paul Daley, a feature writer for The Sunday Age.

      Paul agreed to do it, and for the next year, we took turns to drive to each other’s houses every couple of weeks to write. By then I had obtained an early computer, and the book began to take shape. I sat at Paul’s side and soaked up his knowledge of writing. I learnt words like tautology and added them to my vocabulary. Lessons of grammar, so dry at school, took on new and wonderful meaning when you were using them to craft sentences. I learnt more about the beauty and power of words sitting at Paul’s side than I had in all of my education.

      Slowly, but surely, I became a writer.

      2. Murder on Phillip Island

      

Beth Barnard, holidaying in the Maldives in 1985, a year before her murder.

      There are a number of accounts of what happened on Phillip Island on the night of Monday 22 September 1986 – some were later believed by detectives, some were not. But suffice to say, by the Tuesday morning, when a woman’s mutilated body was discovered in a farmhouse on the Island, events were set in motion that would shatter several local families forever, and send ripples through the peaceful community.

      Sergeant Cliff Ashe had just returned from leave and was working a morning shift at the Cowes police station on Tuesday 23 September. Two well-known locals, brothers-in-law Ian Cairns and Donald Cameron opened the creaking wire door and came over to the counter. Don Cameron had been on the shire council for some years. His family were respected in the small community. Ashe was busy with paperwork, and listened as the two men spoke of some family difficulties.

      ‘There’s been a domestic argument,’ said Don Cameron, before beginning a long rambling explanation. Ashe reckoned it took Don about 10 minutes talking about family fights and family conferences before the police officer interrupted him.

      ‘Donald, exactly what are you trying to tell me?’

      ‘Um, it’s Beth,’ Don said, leaning over the counter and looking at Ashe. ‘I think she’s not well.’

      It was a strange way of putting it.

      Beth’s lifeless body lay on the floor of her bedroom in her family’s house in McFees Road, Rhyll. Don finally said as much to the police officer. ‘We were just at her place and she was lying on the floor with blood everywhere.’

      Galvanised into action, Sergeant Ashe called detectives at the Wonthaggi Criminal Investigation Branch and told them to meet him at the McFees Road house. Ashe and one of his juniors from the station, Senior Constable Peter McHenry, drove behind Don Cameron and Ian Cairns to the house down the lonely country road where homes were secluded and set apart from each other.

      A crime scene needed to be preserved. Ashe and McHenry were responsible for securing the scene and limiting entry. Even so, given the vague descriptions from Cairns and Cameron, Ashe thought it best to enter the house to make sure that the young woman inside was actually dead.

      The sergeant walked carefully up the side driveway until he got to the back of the house – retracing the route that Don and Ian said they took earlier. He saw that both the screen door and the back door were slightly ajar. He opened them carefully and went inside; the house was dark and silent. It took only a couple of steps along the hallway to get to the first bedroom door.

      

Beth Barnard’s body, as it was found on Tuesday 23 September 1986.

      Beth Barnard lay on the floor of the bedroom. Even though a quilt covered her from the nose down, Ashe could see her blue eyes, vacant and staring. A large pool of congealed blood on the carpet around her head made it obvious to the police officer that Beth was dead even though he could see no injuries.

      Ashe carefully lifted a corner of the quilt and pulled it up and saw something that he would remember forever; the young woman’s throat had been sliced to the bone, nearly beheading her. In what was clearly a savage attack, a knife blow to her upper lip had smashed out one of her top front teeth. Ashe gently placed the quilt in its original position, and backed out of the room, shocked.

      While Ashe was in the house, young Senior Constable Peter McHenry stood outside with Don and Ian. Not having seen the carnage inside, nor heard anything but a second-hand account on the drive from the police station, McHenry listened as Don and Ian laughed and chatted as they waited for Ashe to re-emerge.

      McHenry didn’t think much of it at the time.

      Ashe radioed detectives from the Homicide Squad; it would take them over an hour to get to the Island. Minutes later, three local CIB detectives arrived from Wonthaggi – Sergeant Ron Cooper, Senior Constable Alan (Jack) McFayden and Senior Detective Alan Lowe.

      The house had officially become a crime scene.

      Detective Jack McFayden was a no-nonsense country copper and when he wasn’t involved in the business of fighting crime, he loved nothing better than to hang a Gone Fishing sign on his door and disappear to his favourite fishing hole. He’d seen a lot of bodies in his long career, and it never got any easier.

      As McFayden entered the house, he was conscious of the intrusion of a homicide investigation. He knew that the dead woman’s secrets would be poured over by the detectives, and her dignity and privacy would fall victim to the urgency of catching whoever killed her.

      While the body on the floor gave a chilling aspect to the bedroom, the rest of it was achingly normal. Two single beds flanked opposite walls, piles of discarded clothes lay around, and stuffed animals fought for space on top of the chest-of-drawers with photos and bottles of perfume. Next to the clutter were some cold and flu tablets and a bottle of cough medicine. There was also a glass of water and some pain-killers. One of the beds was unmade, while the other was ruffled and blood-stained.

      McFayden took in the bedroom and its contents and made a cursory search of the rest of the house – just in case there were further victims. But everything else seemed in order and there was no sign that the struggle had continued anywhere else, although there was some blood around the bathroom taps. Perhaps the killer had washed afterwards.

      Back into the bright September day, McFayden noticed a couple of drops of blood on the concrete path outside the back door. Did that mean that the killer was injured as well? At this early stage, everything was mere conjecture.

      First things first. Jack McFayden went with Ian Cairns and Donald Cameron to the police station where he would take their statements. He wanted to know how the two farmers came to discover the young woman’s body. From their initial conversations, it seemed Beth was a friend of their family. It also seemed that she had been having an affair with Don Cameron’s brother, Fergus.

      While local cops stood outside guarding the crime scene, Beth’s body lay undisturbed inside. She would not be moved until the crime scene had been fully examined and processed.

      Having made the drive from Melbourne, Homicide detectives Rory O’Connor and Garry Hunter arrived on Phillip Island. In their wake, came crime scene examiners Sergeant Hughie Peters and Senior Constable Brian Gamble along with a police photographer and fingerprint expert to examine the house to try and make sense of what had occurred.

      O’Connor and Hunter got the gist of the story from Don and Ian.

      The previous evening, Fergus had apparently СКАЧАТЬ