Chapter 51

chapter fifty-one

‘No criminal record,’ said Christina. ‘No evidence of violence or threats of violence. No life insurance policy.’

‘There’s still a financial benefit,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘They were cashed up from selling the tennis school. He’d be in a better position financially than if they divorced.’

‘I’m not talking about the Delaneys. I’m saying you could have said all of the above about this charmer.’ She jabbed a finger at the newspaper on her desk.

The body found in bushland had been identified as Polly Perkins. Polly was a woman who’d lived in a suburb close to Joy Delaney. Thirty years ago, Polly’s husband told everyone his wife had left him and gone back to New Zealand. She’d left a ‘cold, hurtful’ note. The neighbouring women had been sad for him. They’d brought around casseroles and carrot cake.

The truth was that Professor Andrew Perkins had hit his first wife, Polly, over the head with a new Sunbeam steam iron, after he had expressly forbidden her from buying it because he was under ‘significant financial stress at the time’. His full, frank confession included the rueful admission that he ‘really hadn’t intended to hit her quite that hard’. He’d buried his wife’s body in bushland within a short drive of his home. If it wasn’t for the landslide caused by the storm, Polly would be there still. Polly had been estranged from a scattered dysfunctional family, but there had been a missing persons report filed by her best friend in New Zealand. Over the years this friend had valiantly tried to get the Australian police interested in her missing friend, to little avail. Records showed just one visit by police officers to the Perkins house, three years after Polly ‘left’. The two officers had enjoyed some carrot cake baked by the kind neighbour who had become Andrew Perkins’s second wife.

The second wife had used the murder weapon to iron her husband’s shirts for a good twenty years before being given permission to buy a new one.

She had this week told police about an ongoing pattern of financial, verbal and physical abuse that had left her a prisoner in her home.

‘This man enjoyed thirty years of freedom after he murdered his wife. He could easily have gone to his grave without justice.’ Christina pressed her thumb on Polly’s husband’s murderous, well-fed face. ‘We may not have Joy Delaney’s body yet, but –’

Her phone rang. It was probably just as well. There had been too much emotion in her voice. It was Constable Pete Novak, the ground search coordinator. ‘We’ve found an item of clothing in the bush reserve behind the Delaneys’ house that you’ll want to see. I’m sending you a picture now.’

She opened her email and clicked on the photo attached. It was a t-shirt screen-printed with a distinctive design of three flowers: orange, red and yellow. Gerberas.

‘Is that –?’

‘Yes,’ said Pete. ‘It’s covered in blood.’