The Lost Women Read online

  Chapter 2

  Thursday, November, 17, 1988

  Harry de Groot

  Swinging Doll

  I walked through the open gate which was moving idly in the nimble, inland wind and walked toward a small, grey, metal building, with a flat roof, which said ‘Office’ and put my head through the open window. The security guard was asleep, but there was an empty bottle of grog, on a small laminex table, next-to to his dangling hand.

  ‘He-lo’ I called out, my voice echoing strangely.

  ‘Who de hell, are you!’ the leprechaun of a fellow yelled, staggering to his feet and looking about wildly.

  ‘Harry de Groot, police’, I said, as I flashed my ID through the window, in front of his bloodshot eyes. ‘I’m just going to look about the grounds, if that’s OK?’

  The leprechaun said nothing, just shook his turnip shaped head slightly and windmilled his arms about a bit. His hair was sticking up, like he had been electrocuted and he was clearly under the influence of at least the alcohol. I didn’t wait for a reply, but turned around and began to walk, buffeted by the wind, toward the grand ruin, which once used to operate as an orphanage; run with predictable cruelty.

  The once beautiful Federation style building, which had been abandoned over ten years ago, was now being vandalised at an alarming rate. However, Peter Ruslen, the shonky businessman that I was currently investigating, had recently laid down plenty of coin on this property, which in my book, made the place worth a serious look.

  I walked up the stone steps, set in the middle of the sprawling building, and pushed the rotting timber door open: it was not locked. I found myself in the main office with a water-stained, pine desk, drawers hanging out haphazardly and decaying papers and files spread across the mouldy floor. A coffee cup, decorated with what looked like a burning heart, was sitting alone upon a rusty metal serving trolley, with missing wheels. Looking about, I saw that the paint on the walls was peeling off in huge strips, revealing many layers and colours of paint. The smell which hit me with a punch, was a soup of mould, rotting timber and stagnant sewers, but I ventured further in, and picking my way carefully across the chaotic mess on the floor, made my way toward another door, which led to one of the outside verandas, which ran in front of the building, on each side of the office.

  Each veranda was the same, with similar piles of deteriorating rubbish piled up, and veranda rails, covered by a high, chain-link fence –which hadn’t kept the vandals and explorers out, as they entered right through the open front door. I turned around, continued on down the central wide corridor, which was covered with brittle, laminated flooring, which suddenly brought to mind my grandmother’s house, when I was a kid. I was thrown back in time, as my grandmother’s voice came from somewhere inside my head, telling me in that soft, wood smoke voice of hers, of life back in Amsterdam, when she was a child, long ago. It must be the silence and loneliness of this place, which is playing tricks with my mind, I thought. I then began to mull over how it must have been to live here, for those lost children.

  Up ahead, I could see a staircase, a simple timber affair, at odds with the grand, ornate ceiling, which went straight up to the next floor.

  Stepping as near as possible to the wall, where the steps seemed more solid, I reached the top floor, without incident, and walked along a creaking, timber landing. I saw a room, great and grand, balloon out in front of me, with more high ceilings and ornate plaster work. Many broken metal beds were lined up along two sides of the walls; some still had diseased looking foam pillows and mattresses on them, which made me, think of rancid fat, and an autopsy I once attended. But that’s another story.

  There was a great gaping hole in the ceiling, covered with black plastic, like a monster’s mouth. And a single, open fireplace at one end of the large room, which couldn’t have contributed much to heating this huge room in the winter; especially, when it snowed, as it did occasionally around here. I looked down and saw a single, rigid, plastic doll, wearing a dirty, red, nylon headscarf, with staring, blue eyes and a missing leg; she was lying forgotten upon the soiled floor. I shook my head and got out of there; it was too sad to contemplate the diminished lives of those children, in this splendid, yet loveless place.

  Across from the main bedroom was a shower room, tiled from floor to ceiling, in a flesh-like colour, with about ten cubicles lined up, and a couple of deep, white enamel baths. Each cubicle had its own window, where light streamed in unforgivingly. There were no doors.

  I suddenly remembered a story a mate of mine had told me, about how he had spent some time living in an orphanage back in the late 1950s, when his mum had dropped him off there, so that she could run off with one of her boyfriends. He said it was a strange and cold place, where silence reigned, but what haunted him the most, to this day, about his experience, was how the girl inmates’ were made to bath the other children. He said, twice a week he was bathed by various girls, only a few years older than himself. It was a torture, he said. A torture.

  I headed down the stairs again and continued along the dark corridor where huge graffiti words lined the walls; some of the words were offensive and others were strange, fading and unintelligible. At the end I came to another staircase, built in the same style as the one that I had just taken to the upstairs level. It was dark down below, but I was prepared for that, as I had a torch, which I pulled out of my bag. And down I crept.

  My shadow loomed monstrously next to me, as I made my descent into the dark basement. The smells were even worse here; the air was cold and the floor was of packed earth. I walked along and shone the torch and saw a few broken washing machines and dryers; a line of old cement washing tubs and a tottering collection of shelves, sporting only a single, fossilised packet of Rinso washing powder. I moved along past a stack of broken cradles, and a couple of high chairs covered with dirt and mould, and then, came to a huge, plastic, rubbish bin filled with glass babies’ bottles. On the ground, beer bottles were scattered about and many diseased-looking cigarette butts.

  ‘What the….!’ I cried out loud, as I walked blindly into an old fashioned timber chair, with a hole for toileting and leather straps to restrain the arms, legs and torso of a child. I stumbled away from it, repelled and disturbed, and walked straight into a noose, from which another old, plastic doll hung, without eyes, dangling innocently from the heavy, timber beam. Extracting the instamatic camera from my bag, I took several photos.

  I know it’s crazy, but I was shaking like a madman and feeling claustrophobic, with my breathing going at a gallop.

  Before I got out of there, though, I darted the torchlight here there; then I crouched down and aimed the torch under the rotting fringe of a leatherette, low slung 1970s style couch, and there, I saw a discarded, red patent, ladies stiletto, lying on its side. I moved closer and noted that the shoe was a size 5 and it looked fairly new. The brand name was Paragon.

  I flew out of there and headed back to my car, to radio back my report to headquarters. The Crime Scene Operations Branch would need to send an investigator out here, to collect evidence, like hair, clothing fibres, blood, semen, finger and footprints. Officially, I was only involved with the team investigating Ruslen for money laundering, though real estate renovations, but I think that there was a very good chance that I may have just found a clue to one of the missing women, who had been connected to Ruslen. I smiled, as I thought about my sometime partner in solving crime -and between the sheets -Dana Roberts, who was presently undercover tracking down the whereabouts of these women. She would owe me a beer……at the very least.