Challis - 03 - Snapshot

by Garry Disher

  Keep looking. What about disgruntled clients? Weird clients?

  Were still looking into that, sir, but client confidentiality comes into it.

  How closely did you look at her work colleagues? For all you know there could be simmering resentments, jealousies, that type of thing.

  Not that we could see on a preliminary visit.

  Keep looking. She was at the top of her profession, you know. Bright girl.

  Sir, Ellen said, wanting to tell the super what shed told Challis in the car that afternoon, that husband and wife had been made for each other.

  Constable Sutton, anything to add?

  Scobie nodded. I spoke to Mrs Humphreys, and

  Who?

  She owns the house where Janine was murdered.

  And?

  Shes elderly, currently in hospital recovering from a hip operation.

  McQuarrie semaphored with his arms. What about her?

  She has a goddaughter, Christina Traynor, who stayed with her for three weeks in April.

  The room went very still. McQuarrie cocked his head. Do we know anything about her?

  Not yet.

  Get onto it.

  Sir.

  Challis uncoiled from the wall and sat at the table next to Ellen. He knew that McQuarrie would be leaving soon. Sir, thirty minutes ago I had a call from Janines sister, Meg. She said something that might have a bearing on all this.

  McQuarrie looked put out. Such as?

  Were you aware that Janine hated driving?

  McQuarrie looked puzzled. I fail to see

  In particular, she had a pathological fear of making right turns, of turning against oncoming traffic, and so whenever she had to drive anywhere shed map out routes that involved mainly left turns, meaning that she often drove far out of her way to travel short distances. You werent aware of that? Robert didnt tell you?

  I think he mentioned something about it, McQuarrie said evasively. Then he brightened. But dont you see? Everything points to one thing: Janine was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  But theres no indication that Mrs Humphreys was the right person or that her house was the right house, Challis said.

  And Janine might have been followed, Ellen said.

  McQuarrie said, Keep an open mind, thats all I ask. Any joy on the weapon?

  No ejected shells were found, Challis said, but ballistics confirm that the shooter used a 9mm automatic

  The report had just come in. The usual kind of detail, two 9mm slugs, the lands and degrees of twist possibly indicating a Browning. If our shooter was a pro, he went on, and it seems he was, hed have used gloves and got rid of gun, gloves and outer clothing as soon as possible.

  Not necessarily, McQuarrie said briskly. Were probably not dealing with rocket scientists here.

  Challis gazed at his boss for a couple of beats. Quite right, sir.

  Have you spoken to everybody yet?

  You never reach everybody, Challis thought. We will eventually.

  No time to lose, McQuarrie said, getting to his feet and making for the door in a faint eddy of aftershave. I want to be informed of everything of importance the moment it happens. Meanwhile I think our most promising course of action is to look closely at the woman next door and the goddaughter.

  When McQuarrie was gone, Challis stood by the window to watch and wait. After a couple of minutes, McQuarrie strode across the carpark to his personal car, a Mercedes, finding time to reprimand two constables on their way to a divisional van. One, Challis noted, gave McQuarrie the finger afterwards.

  The world restored a little, he returned to the conference table, saying, That mans been like a father to me.

  Then he waited. Would they think his remark in bad taste? But they grinned. This jobs expanding before our eyes, boss, Scobie said.

  Challis nodded. And were going to be stepping on sensitive and powerful toes, so we do everything by the book. The super is going to stick his oar in at all stages, hes going to want to steer the investigation, and hell try to protect his family. At one level, were going to let him do that. Well listen to him, well follow up the lines of inquiry he suggests, for theyll probably be those weve already thought of, and generally let him think hes the driving force. At the moment hes not calling for a full-scale task force. If things get too unmanageable, Ill do something about it. Just dont let him waste your time, okay?

  Ellen gathered her notes into a folder. Are we ruling out Janine McQuarrie as the intended victim?

  No, Challis said bluntly, no matter what the super thinks.

  He saw Ellen sneaking a look at her watch. Go home, he said. Ill run Christina Traynor through the data bases; Scobie, I want you to keep checking for stolen cars, particularly older ones, pale in colour, but cast a state-wide net.

  Boss.

  Ellen continued to pack up her notes. Did Janines sister say anything else?

  Challis could read Ellen by now, and shot her a look. You think shes trying to divert our attention away from Janines love life, he said.

  Ellen shrugged. I dont think she gave us the full picture this afternoon.

  Challis nodded his agreement, just as one of the phones rang. It was the switchboard, looking for him. They had a man on the line who claimed to have information about the shooting of Janine McQuarrie. Challis told them to record and trace the call and put the caller through to him. He switched to speaker mode and said, Inspector Challis.

  The voice emerged like a mouse from a hole. Are you the guy in charge of the murder of Janine McQuarrie? The one on the news?

  Challis leaned forward, listening hard to the voice, the background noise and everything in between. It was hard to pinpoint the age. Slurred, which meant hed been drinking or was stoned. Suspicious and wary: owing to the situation, or because hed had dealings with the police before? No extraneous traffic or other sounds.

  He said carefully, Do you have something to tell the police?

  It was important to stay low-key: no hectoring, pushing or leading. It was also necessary to establish if the caller was a hoaxer or a sad character after a bit of attention.

  In a rush the man said, What if something happened you didnt think was going to happen?

  Challis said gently, Were not in the business of blaming people for things they didnt do.

  I didnt think hed go this far.

  Is this person a friend of yours? Are you afraid of him? We can offer protection.

  There was silence and the seconds ticked away and then the caller said, as if betrayed, I bet youre tracing this, and hung up.

  Well? Challis said, glancing around at the others.

  He wasnt on long enough for a trace, Scobie said.

  What was your impression of him?

  Genuine, boss.

  Ellen?

  Genuine.

  Challis said, Right, we need it to go out on the evening news and in the papers tomorrow. Reporters are already swarming over this, so we wont need to persuade them. The usual thing: Police are anxious to speak again to the anonymous caller who phoned with information regarding the murder of Janine McQuarrie. Who knows, it might shake something loose.

  * * * *

  19

  In Challiss experience, very few criminals returned to the scene of the crimenot unless they were stupid, retrieving incriminating evidence, or actively seeking capture and punishment. But police officers often did, and on his way home that Tuesday evening, Challis called in at 283 Lofty Ridge Road, and stood for a while in the waning light.

  The lowering sky was dripping and close around him. The crime-scene tape thrummed in the wind and the sounds of engines and tyres on the road above him were disembodied and distorted. His old Triumph ticked as the motor cooled. It had been a bugger to start, drawing amused glances in the carpark at Waterloo, but hed booked it in for a service and tune tomorrow.

  He shook that off and began to think himself into the minds and bodies of this mornings victims and killers. This was a natural condi
tion: Challis did it automatically at every murder scene. In that way he was able to understood the impulse and the circumstances. Very little surprised himwhich is not to say that he condoned or forgave, necessarily.

  But this time his skin crept. All of his senses were resonating with another shooting, in another place, with other culprits and victims.

  Hed been younger then, a detective sergeant based in a large town on the endless wheat plains in the west of the state. He was married, and had thought that he was happily married, but what he didnt know was that his wife was deeply unhappy. She started sleeping with one of his colleagues, a married senior constable. Their affair grew in hothouse circumstances and turned obsessive. In their minds, the only way out was to shoot Challis dead, so they lured him to a lonely place and ambushed him under a moonless evening sky. But Challiss senses had begun to tell him that something was wrong, and he half turned to fish out his service .38, an action that saved his life. The bullet plucked at his sleeve, putting a hole through his jacket and ploughing through the flesh of his upper arm. Alerted now, hed circled around, shot his wifes lover in the shoulder and disarmed the man. He was currently serving twelve years. Angela Challis got ten years, but imprisonment had thrown her off course, and shed killed herself in the prison infirmary last year.

  Challis knew that hed not have liked Janine McQuarrie if hed met her, but had she been set up, too? Had her spouse wanted her out of the way? Ellen and Scobie had uncovered evidence that shed been a poor therapist and a pain to work with: perhaps her bad judgment calls, contempt and secrecy were symptoms of a deep unhappiness, brought on by marriage to Robert McQuarrie and scrutiny by his awful family.

  He stood there, knowing that he was missing something and hoping the scene would tell him what it was. He saw, in his minds eye, the driver and the shooter. Why had the shooter needed a driver? Had they worked together before? From Georgia McQuarries account of the killing, the two men had not brought equal degrees of professionalism to the job. He could see her dialling 000, and made a mental note to check the records for Janines car phone. Speaking of which, how had the killer got his instructions?assuming that hed been hired and didnt have a personal stake in the outcome.

  This led Challis by degrees to the anonymous caller. Was he the driver? An acquaintance whod supplied the gun or the car? Someone whod hired others to throw a scare into Janine, only to see it all go wrong?

  His bones were aching, the chilly dampness creeping into his core. He stamped his feet and began to move, pacing across the driveway to a muddy path along one side of the house. He peered up and saw smears of khaki-coloured mould, for the sun never, penetrated here, and he envisioned Joy Humphreyss life of solitude, poverty and neglect.

  He circled the house, wondering if love or desire, and their perverted forms, had had any role in the murder of Janine McQuarrie. Had she been an obstacle to love or desire, or inspired them? Challis thought of the women in loveless marriages: many endured, some walked out and a handful looked for drastic solutions.

  As did husbands.

  He tried to think of Janine McQuarries husband then, but Ellen Destrys took form in his minds eye. The guy; was paranoid, obsessive, authoritarian. He was wound so tight, and harboured so many grievances, that hed snap one day, and maybe harm her.

  It caught Challis like a blow then, an unbidden image of Ellen at the wheel of the CIU Falcon this afternoon, her fine jaw uptilted determinedly, and his wanting to touch her. He examined that desire, in his orderly way. It was more than friendship and less than knight-in-shining-armour. It was desire, plain and simpleand it probably wouldnt do.

  He rounded the final corner, and came again to the parking circle where Janine had tried to dodge her killer. Visualising that was enough to make an ordinary persons skin crawl and pulse race, but the McQuarrie men, son and father, had been strangely unmoved. Challis didnt think they were numbed, but, if they were not involved in the killing, what were they hiding?

  The light had faded to a mess of shadows in the little hollow. He returned to his car. He was still sitting there, cold and depressed, five futile minutes later. And because hed flattened the battery, he couldnt even listen to the news.

  * * * *

  Vyner, on the other hand, had been listening to the news all day. He liked being the lead item; an added bonus to learn that hed topped the daughter-in-law of a senior cop. No leads, the updates said, no leads.

  Hed hotfooted it back to his flat in the city after the shooting, glad to be free of dirt roads, cows and Nathan Gent, and now, reassured that the cops were running around in circles, he was working at his other job.

  Sammy was a hero, he said, perched on the edge of a sofa in a Templestowe sitting room. He paused. You dont mind if I call him that? We all knew him as Sammy.

  Mrs Plowman, Sammys mother, smiled damply. Everyone called him Sammy. I was the only one who ever called him Samor Samuel when I was cross with him about something.

  The tears flowed again, to think shed ever been cross with her son, his life cut short guarding an oil pipeline in the Iraqi desert.

  Vyner reached out, gently took her grieving hands and kneaded life and hope into them. Sammy always looked on the bright side of life. In a way, he held the unit together. If any of the younger blokes looked like chucking it in, Sammy was there for them. The Army lost a hero, Mrs Plowman.

  Mrs Plowman wiped her eyes. I try to picture his face sometimes and I cant, and that scares me. But you bring him to life for me.

  Vyner went very still. He didnt want to go too far. He wanted her to walk down memory lane but not so far that shed be deflected from him, his needs.

  The house was an architectural nightmare, amid other architectural nightmares. Architectural nightmares worth three-quarters of a million dollars, mind you, and no doubt full of vulgar, newly rich and idle women, but Mrs Plowman herself was a homely sort, grieving for the death of her only child, Lance Corporal Samuel Plowman. The husband grieved by working longer and longer hours in an office building, or attending interstate conferences, leaving Mrs Plowman alone with her memorieswhich Vyner had teased out with a few tears of his own, a bit of hand-holding on the four-thousand-dollar sofa in front of the bay window, and his trawl through the internet and various newspaper records last month.

  He was incredibly brave, Mrs Plowman. Not a risk taker, just a guy who kept his head. He got me out of a scrape once. I was pinned down by a sniper, and Sammy crawled across open ground and got me out. Id lost my nerve. Paralysed. Your son saved my life.

  She looked up at him, hungry for word pictures. They didnt mention that in his record.

  Vyner waved dismissively. Typical Sammy. As far as he was concerned, he was just doing his job, thats all. I wanted to put his name forward for a commendation, maybe even a medal, but he wouldnt hear of it. Mate, I didnt think twice, he told me. You and the other guys, youre my family when Im away.

  Mrs Plowmans hand was warm, damp and sad in Vyners grasp. What hurts me is last time he was home on leave he had words with his father. They ended up not speaking, and now my husband is just quietly falling apart about that.

  Careful, Vyner told himself. The last thing he wanted was for the silly cow to bring her husband into this. It was harder selling consolatory stories to husbands and fathers than to wives and mothers. He patted her plump wrist. Sammy thought the world of his dadof both of you, in fact. He spoke about you all the time. He looked up to you. I never heard him say a negative thing about either of you.

  Mrs Plowmans face was suffused with a dampish joy. Youve brought me a great deal of happiness these past few days.

  Im glad.

  I cant believe the Army, she said. Its disgraceful.

  They cant afford any negative publicity, Vyner said. Sure, Sammy died a hero, but they didnt want to make too big a thing of it. Seventy per cent of the population thinks Australia should never have sent peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

  As quoted in yesterdays Herald Sun. But Mrs Plowman said sternly,
I dont mean that. I mean its disgraceful the way the Army treated you, Richard.

  For a millisecond then, Trevor Vyner wondered who Richard was. He reached for a biscuitnot some generic supermarket crap but Italian biscotti. Earl Grey tea, too, which he loathed, but it went with the lifestyle in this moneyed corner of the north-eastern suburbs.

  Thats the way it goes, he said.

  Hed been dishonourably discharged from the Army for striking an officeror so Mrs Plowman believed. Not only that, but the officer was a bully, and had been having a go at Sammy, Sammy whod been sticking up for one of the younger guys, whom the officer had been picking on. Sammy, the selfless hero; Sammy, a protective older brother to the new recruit; Sammy, alive there in that Templestowe sitting room.