Read Online Ladykiller by Candace Sutton - Free Book Online

drive on with Amanda to the shops, alternating supermarkets so as not to spark suspicion. One day it was Bi-Lo at North Richmond, the next the local Coles, the trips always resulting in a full trolley to feed the hungry horde.
    As dusk fell and officers with night scopes stretched out in trenches around the perimeter of Willow Park, Marge roasted, baked and boiled up a virtual conveyor belt of quiches, joints, casseroles and desserts, leaving a bench full of tasty meals for the night team before she crawled off to bed. Her aim was to keep the cops fed and focused, but the cooking was also her way of coping in an unreal situation.
    Marge’s biggest fan was an officer called Peter Walsh, whose job was to guard the ransom money. They played cards while Marge ensured a constant supply of food. When Mick Howe arrived at the house one night he did a double-take when he saw Walsh who, at the end of his shift , was wolfing down another of Marge’s lamb roasts.
    ‘God, haven’t you put on some weight?’ Howe pointed at the waistband of Walsh’s overalls.
    Marge smiled; it had been one of her jobs in the horse business to fatten up show hacks.
    For a while, the adrenaline of being in a house with the police kept Bernie going, but as the days ebbed away he knew they took with them his chances of finding his wife alive.
    Back at the Richmond command post, the taskforce had moved into the high risk phase of the operation. Each detail was planned, down to the police station where the kidnappers would be charged, the officers who would interview them and the court they would face. The detectives drew up a list of twenty-six ‘what if ’ scenarios and procedures to deal with the situation. The myriad scenarios included the possibility that the extortionists would make contact with Bernie but refuse to allow him to speak to Kerry, or would fail to make contact within the specified time.
    The taskforce had consulted Scotland Yard, London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Chief Inspector Laurie Banner, a kidnapping specialist, analysed the ransom letter and concluded that the author had tried to portray that the demand was ‘a highly planned and sophisticated operation’ by an international group. Banner also thought that the method of communication this kidnapper was using—a letter and a newspaper advertisement—was highly unusual. In nearly all cases, phone communication was used by the extortionist to make further contact.
    Around 200 kilometres to the south, on the outskirts of a country village, an SPG team was covertly making its way onto Bruce Burrell’s property. Bungonia was a flyspeck on the map and Burrell lived five kilometres out of town.
    Around midnight on 11 May, officers wearing dark coveralls and balaclavas crawled silently up his driveway. When they reached the weatherboard house, one officer slid up a wall until he could see through a chink in the curtains of the lighted window. It was the lounge room, and Burrell was there with his dog; they appeared to be alone, with no sign of Kerry. The officers slunk away.
    In the township of Bungonia itself, surveillance police were attempting to operate covertly in a community so tiny it did not have a shop. Remaining undercover in a ten-house town would be a challenge.

7 HUEY, DEWEY
AND LOUIE
    Strange things were happening down in Bungonia on the afternoon of Sunday 11 May 1997. Each time Raymond Dole emerged from his house, he could see a man poke a very long camera lens at him from a car window. It was giving Raymond the shits. Whenever he moved, he felt the lens follow him. He rang his father, Ray Dole. The phone line clicked twice and he assumed their phones were being tapped—by someone.
    Around the corner, Mrs Lorraine Brooks, the schoolteacher’s wife, was staring at a car parked on the main street. Whenever Lorraine glanced up Oallen Ford Road at the dark-coloured vehicle, the driver seemed to dip his head down quickly. Bushwalkers and campers often passed