Free Mad Dog Moxley by Peter Corris

hands over a silver propelling pencil. Moxley waits until they reach a straight stretch of road and sketches a map. He marks the map with a cross.
    â€˜This is where I left ‘em.’
    MacKay nods, folds the paper and puts it in his pocket. He takes back the pencil and carefully retracts the lead. They drive to Moorebank and stop on Illawarra Road. Moxley leads the police over a decrepit fence and through an overgrown front garden to a cottage in poor repair with a shed set some distance behind it. Encumbered by the cuffs, he stumbles as he steps over roots and fallen branches.
    â€˜Should be able to see some of the girl's footprints round here somewhere,’ Moxley mutters. He bends to look closely at the ground.
    â€˜Play-acting,’ Walsh says quietly to MacKay.
    â€˜Give him some rope,’ MacKay says.
    Walsh hawks and spits. ‘That's what he'll get all right.’
    â€˜We'll have to send a photographer out here,’ MacKay says.
    Walsh looks exasperated and says nothing. They return to the cars. The press contingent has drawn closer.
    Moxley tries to shield his face with his cuffed hands. ‘Can't you get rid of that mob? They give me the creeps.’

    FRANK WILKINSON'S
DEATH CERTIFICATE
    MacKay signals to the uniformed men to keep the reporters at a distance. The two cars branch off Illawarra Road and take the track to where the bodies were found. Moxley is sweating. He leans back against the seat with his eyes closed.
    â€˜You all right, Bert?’ MacKay says.
    Moxley nods.
    â€˜You know where we're going?’
    Moxley shakes his head. ‘No.’

    Back in his cell at the Central Police Station, Moxley drinks tea and eats bread and butter liberally spread with Mira plum jam. He has a Bible open on the narrow bunk. He finishes eating and takes up the book to stare at a passage he has stumbled upon in the Book of James:
    23 For if any be a hearer of the word and not
a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his
natural face in a glass:
    24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his
way, and straightway forgetteth what manner
of man he was.
    He doesn't know what the passage means but it gives him an idea, or perhaps two ideas. He is muddled about what happened that night. He has tried to force the events from his mind and memory and they have become confused and scrambled. In moments of clarity, before he screws his face up and hammers his head to try to achieve the blankness, he sees things happening but they seem to be happening to another person, not him exactly, not quite him. But like him, possibly him. He thumps his head until it aches and a curtain of pain comes down and obscures everything.

    The police take him out again the following day and this time they go to the spot where Dorothy Denzel was buried.
    â€˜Been here before?’ Walsh asks.
    Moxley shakes his head. ‘No, never.’
    â€˜You're camp's just a little way off.’
    â€˜Left that camp a while back. It was waterlogged. Do I have to get out here?’
    â€˜No,’ Walsh says, ‘we just brought you here to protect you from the newshounds.’
    â€˜Stop baiting him, Walsh,’ MacKay says. ‘The poor devil's under enough pressure.’

    DOROTHY DENZEL'S
DEATH CERTIFICATE
    Moxley attempts to stand and bangs his head against the roof of the car. He falls back and everything spins around as his vision blurs. As if through a London fog, he sees someone, a fair-haired man, a soldier…
    MacKay shakes him. ‘Snap out of it.’
    Moxley looks him straight in the face. I have to tell you, Mr MacKay. There was someone else in this with me.’

    Linda Fletcher is a thin, almost gaunt woman in her early forties. Accompanied by the burly MacKay, she looks almost frail. She wears a long grey coat, a scarf and a short-brimmed hat. Moxley is sitting in a chair near the far corner of the room and another chair is drawn up near him. MacKay nods to Mrs Fletcher and takes a seat in the