The Devil's Garden Page 4

  By morning, harried police are on their doorstep, trudging through the gate and walking up the few steps, a walk that will become all too familiar in the following months. Shifting from foot to foot and looking ill at ease, they take down further details. Sarah Spiers's disappearance, albeit treated as a missing persons case until then, had essentially been a local inquiry. But by lunchtime, because both girls have gone missing from the same area, police privately link the disappearance of Sarah and Jane to a serial predator. It is knowledge they do not share with the public. What they do declare publicly is the formation of a special taskforce: Taskforce Macro.

  As the officer in charge of Major Crime, Paul Ferguson's face and personality are well known to the public. He will continue to front the press as head of Macro, a huge task given his other responsibilities. Dave Caporn will remain as case officer, driving the investigation. He allocates teams and people on the ground. It is frantic. In the early days, they juggle 140 people with all the other tasks that have to be dealt with on a daily basis.

  There are not enough trained detectives to make up the teams Macro needs. With the intense pressure for a resolution to the case, they start internal training of uniform staff – used to responding to task questions and low-level crises – to teach them basic investigative skills. 'Prior to Macro,' Ferguson says, 'the force was divided into different squads, such as homicide, drug and vice. This was a whole new concept. It was a rocky road to change, because it was unfamiliar. We had to rape and pillage other districts to get what we needed. And we didn't have the luxury of time to do it.' The teams will be rotated into other areas within Macro every six months to keep them fresh. For the pressed officers, it is akin to Pharaoh's orders – to 'make as many bricks without straw as you've been making with straw'.

  The secrecy rules are also set early. All officers sign confidentiality agreements and under no circumstances is any information to be released to the public. Officers are not to discuss the case, apart from with their Macro colleagues. Even if they leave the force, they are not to discuss the case. They are not to talk about it whenever an outsider is within earshot. Cause of death, weapon used, time or place of death, the condition in which the clothing was found: their mouths are zipped up tight as a body bag. Don't invite copycat killings by leaking any details. Shut up. It is the police version of the military saying, 'Loose lips sink ships.'

  The enforced secrecy stuns officers working in other units – and other states. 'In all my years in the job – and I was there a long time – I had never heard of this before,' a former officer said. 'They actually "used" it to expel two detectives who got pissed and started talking about some facet of the investigation in a pub. They made the fatal mistake of talking within earshot of another copper, who reported them.' The secretive nature of the investigation is also not welcomed by all its officers. Grumbles are frequent: this particular job is hard enough, without the added stress of command heads who keep a stranglehold on information leaks and a tight control-ling hand over all aspects of the case.

  The former hostage negotiator believes Caporn squandered precious opportunities to make the most out of bad situations with the team. 'It was a proud team, and people were happy to be on it,' he says. 'It was an important case and, on another level, it also offered opportunity for a truckload of overtime, which is always appreciated.'

  Despite WA Police assurances that confidentiality agreements are the norm, outside the state police are also amazed at the agreement Macro officers had to sign. A retired Assistant-Commissioner from the eastern states expressed incredulity when he heard of it. 'I was in the job 40 years, in the Major Crime area,' he said, 'but that was never done. Never. It's unusual, to say the least.'

  Paul Ferguson muses that it is vital not to stamp out the natural, inquisitive nature of police officers, vital that they are allowed to talk to each other, exchange information. 'It's that that keeps them on their toes, keeps them hungry. It's ludicrous to take that away.' The Macro team, he says, was so focused on their task, they could have sworn on anything – a dictionary or copy of the criminal code – and they would have stayed silent. They were hot-wired to do that.

  The Rimmer family is appointed two liaison officers to answer any inquiry: Peter Norrish and John Leembruggen.

  In June 1996 police circulate up to 100 copies of a questionnaire to select people that pointedly asks where they were when Sarah Spiers disappeared from outside the nightclub. The questionnaire is given to those people who have, in some way, attracted police interest. But there is a problem. The question 'Describe in detail what you did from midday Saturday, 26 January to midday Sunday, 27 January 1996' is incorrect. Sarah disappeared on the 27th. Embarrassed by the error, the police scrap the questions and start again. But it is the second part of the quiz and the questions 'Did you abduct or murder Sarah Spiers?' and 'Should we believe your answers to these questions?' that creates controversy and no little hilarity.

  Paul Ferguson was quick to point out that the people who were asked to fill in the questionnaire were not suspects, but could have information that would help their inquiries. And individuals could refuse to fill in the quiz. Police would know if they did.

  The questionnaire is based on the Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) technique, which changes a verbal interview into a written form. This then is assessed by the interviewer, to ascertain whether a face-to-face meeting with the person is required. The writing of answers can be done in the interviewees' own time and place and saves unnecessary time in interviewing people who are clearly telling the truth. Supporters of the questionnaire claim success in solving numerous cases in Australia and overseas. Developed in 1984 for the army, it was first used to survey soldiers who had failed urine analysis tests for traces of drugs in their bodies. Requesting a lie-detector test to show there was some error in the test results, the soldiers were asked to also fill out the questionnaire. The results were forwarded to headquarters without the polygrapher knowing the questionnaire results. Twenty-eight per cent of the people who filled out the questionnaire showed incriminating responses.

  But many in the legal profession regarded the questionnaire as a ludicrous waste of time. How likely was it that a guilty person would either fill it out or tell the truth? Lawyer Richard Bailey encapsulated the general feeling. 'You're hardly going to get somebody writing in and answering the question "Did you abduct or murder Sarah Spiers?" with a "Oh yes, I've done it" reply, then sign it "Merv" or whatever and send it back to police. The concept is absurd.'

  Overt criticism of the questionnaire was met with serious admonishment. An academic at a Western Australian university whose work was funded by the police was warned that unless he stopped publicly criticising the form, his funding would be withdrawn. Unchastened, he chose another path. He left the state.

  WA Council for Civil Liberties President Peter Weygers – a distinctive-looking man in his mid-60s, with a stocky build and standing 192 cm tall – was Claremont mayor between 1985 and 1997. A man of means with a substantial property portfolio, including a unit overlooking the street where Sarah Spiers was last seen, and a reputation as an eccentric, he was known as the 'Super-mayor'. Depicted in press cartoons wearing a red and blue suit, complete with cape and a huge S on the front, nothing in his career could compare with the publicity he received when he, too, was outed as a person of interest by the Macro taskforce. He was also the only individual publicly named in The West Australian newspaper as having received the questionnaire. His refusal to fill in the form was accompanied by a gruff admonishment that the whole tactic was 'ridiculous'. Weygers had warned Steven Ross not to insert his name into the investigation by telling police Spiers had been in his cab. Both would come to rue the day Ross ignored that advice.

  Commissioner Bob Falconer, driven by media perceptions, keeps a hawk eye on the Macro taskforce. Any adverse media comments require an immediate explanation. The media, too, become an integral part of the 'think-tank' sessions. Police ask their advice on the bes
t way to get the message out to the public. They need all the help they can get. And they need to manage the media, before the media start managing them.

  The media are relentless, acting like starving hordes foraging for news scraps. Ferguson is cognisant of what police call the 'Three Cs' when dealing with the press. First, Cooperation, when there is enough in the news stories to ensure fresh headlines every day. Second, Competition, the cut-throat jungle journalists inhabit in the desperate rush for exclusive news angles. Third – and most dangerous – Controversy, when the pickings are lean and the media start feeding on each other and investigators, criticising management and pecking at the case like vultures.

  In his easy way of dealing with the press, Ferguson earns their respect. 'They could have chopped me up,' he admits. 'There was so much going on, I didn't have time for the pompous tone some officers take, telling journalists that "this is an operational matter".' Instead, Ferguson chooses a more relaxed style. 'If a reporter came close to something that I couldn't release, I'd tell them, "I can't let that out of the bloody bag and you know I can't. I can confirm that it's correct but I'm asking you, please don't release this detail." ' Most didn't. 'Occasionally a reporter would overstep the mark,' he recalls. 'The suburban Post newspaper was one that sometimes ran with assumptions. My appeals to them not to do this were met with the response that they were journalists with an obligation to give their readers the truth. It wasn't always helpful.'

  8

  Three days after Jane's disappearance, her parents front a press conference. Looking drawn and gaunt but still hopeful that Jane will return home, their confidence is shattered by the first carelessly constructed question. 'Trevor, can you tell us what sort of girl Jane was?' from a young reporter. The question, phrased in the past tense, sends Jenny into a paroxysm of tears.

  The madness begins. The Rimmers endure the same end-less procession of people as the Spiers family. Police. Friends ferrying food. Clairvoyants. Psychics. They have little patience for the seers and rarely return their calls. One psychic with a divining rock stands on the pavement outside the hotel at Claremont before moving to the beach, 15 minutes away, and pointing to a nondescript house. 'Jane is here,' she tells Trevor with authority. 'Or she has been here.' It is useless information, all so obscure. But the Rimmers pass the information on to police, anyway. Who knows? But Jane isn't there.

  The family put hundreds of flyers on lamp posts, beseeching help. Have you seen Jane Rimmer? Phone Crime Stoppers. Jane's face is at every corner. A person calls Jenny's relative with news that they know what has happened to Jane and who has abducted her. It is an anonymous call; always anonymous. The second last sighting of Jane, outside the Continental Hotel, is captured on the hotel's security camera. She is grinning as she swings around the pole outside the pub. The final poignant sighting of her is standing alone on the pavement for a few minutes, on the corner of Bayview Terrace and Gugeri Street. The camera moves to another area of the hotel. When it pans back, Jane is gone.

  Paul Coombes, who started as an investigator and was later promoted to Detective-Sergeant on the Macro taskforce, recalls, '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. Using the insects' life span as a barometer, they count back from the age of the bug or larvae to determine how long they have lived on the corpse.

  Jane is naked, her clothing, handbag and some jewellery items missing. Police delay broadcasting details of the missing jewellery to prevent the killer panicking and disposing of them. The only piece of jewellery found, much later, is Jane's watch, a small distance from her body. The rain, relentlessly pounding her for 54 days, has turned the crime scene into a quagmire, such a washout that Dave Caporn, with pursed lips and extreme understatement, will describe it to the press as being 'not fertile'. It does not provide any clues. But the lilies surround her, tall as a picket fence.

  Trevor Rimmer knows straightaway. Jane has been missing for almost two months and now the police are standing on his doorstep, looking intently at him. They always say 'no news', so as not to get his hopes up, but they don't say this tonight. A handsome man with a gentle face, Trevor says nothing as the police follow him inside. He turns away from them to continue cooking his rack of lamb. The police are used to odd reactions to bad news: shock and overwhelming grief kick the brain into a dull numbness and will keep Trevor buffeted from the pain
for a short time, at least. 'Do you want to come with us while we go and tell your wife, or should we just bring her home?'

  Trevor stares at them, unseeing. 'Bring her home,' he says.

  Jenny Rimmer is at the Shenton Hotel where she works, sharing a drink with friends before they return to the house for dinner. The past two months have been so harrowing that she and Trevor have tried to pretend some semblance of normality. Anything, the small rituals, to pretend Jane will return home to them safely.

  Jenny, sitting in the alcove off the main bar, watches as the police walk toward her. An obscene inner voice starts taunting her: This isn't going to be good, this isn't going to be good. She feels the police are moving toward her in slow motion. She knows these police officers who have liaised with the family over the months but wants to cringe from them as they approach. She stumbles to her feet. 'Can we speak to you outside please, Jenny?' The bar has fallen silent, drinks and conversation poised mid-air. She feels insensate and cold and her chin starts quivering; from somewhere a hand reaches out to catch her lest she falls. 'Can we have a quick word please, Jenny?'

  'You've found Jane, haven't you?'

  They didn't want to tell her here, in a bar with people watching, but they now have no choice. They keep their voices calm and low. 'We're sorry. We have found a body. We believe it could be Jane.' A fog has fallen, shrouding her in darkness and she can't hear anything now but a muted scream in her head. She follows the police outside, not noticing as people stand up as a mark of respect for her as she walks past.

  Jenny recalls pieces of the conversation, small trivialities the police tell her but mostly she sees their mouths move, and she feels numb and ill.