by Garry Disher
Youre not under arrest, Robert.
Yeah, yeah, said McQuarrie harshly, just helping with enquiries.
Can anyone vouch for your presence this evening?
My sister-in-law.
Who is very protective of you and your daughter.
Im free to leave, yes? Im not under arrest?
Well, drawled Challis.
Thats what I thought. I decline to answer any more questions until my lawyer is present.
Tessa Kane had obtained photographs of you at a sex party copies of photographs taken by your wife, in fact. You feared that she would publish them and so had her shot dead this evening.
Robert McQuarrie was sitting well back from the table, as if to avoid dirt and germs, but now he leaned forward with a flicker of interest, almost of hope and relief. But was Tessa Kanes murder news to him, or had he ordered the hit and here was the confirmation he needed? Shot? Tessa Kane?
Was it the same team, Robert?
What same team?
As shot your wife.
McQuarrie folded his arms. He wore suit trousers, a white business shirt, a waistcoat and an overcoat. He looked crisp enough to begin a full days work, unlike Challis and Sutton, who were ending one, and showed it in their stubbled chins, bleary eyes and rumpled clothing.
My lawyer, Inspector. You know the drill.
* * * *
And so Challis didnt get to see Ellen Destry until mid-morning on Tuesday, by which time he felt ragged from grief and lack of sleep. Reporters had laid siege to the entrance to the little hospital in Waterloo, baying because one of their own had been shot dead in a mangrove swamp just one week after the shooting death of another prominent local identity. Challis elbowed through the pack, ignoring their shouted questions and speculations, growling No comment.
He encountered Mrs Humphreys in the hot air of the corridor. Shed come in for physiotherapy, she told him. If you like, Ill boot that rabble out of the way when its time for you to leave.
Sounds like a plan to me, Challis said, trying to return her grin. Any news from your god-daughter?
Not a word.
Challis went on. He found Ellen in bed, her back against heaped pillows, entertaining her husband and daughter. Or not entertaining, it seemed to Challis, for they seemed to have run out of things to say to each other. He shook Alan Destrys hand after an awkward moment, then nodded hello to Larrayne, whom he hadnt seen for eighteen months. Shed outgrown her adolescent surliness and plumpness, and although shed never be a beauty like Ellenshe had her fathers bulky jaw and solid upper bodywas nevertheless pretty and poised, and right now watchful and protective. She held a plastic water bottle in one hand and had a memory stick hanging from a strap around her neck, as though shed come straight from her computer desk. She wore jeans and a heavy jacket over a brief top, her belly button winking at him as she uncoiled warily from the chair beside her mothers bed, so that Challis was obliged to go around the bed to peck Ellen on the cheek, the husband and the daughter watching him closely.
Ow, Ellen said, wincing, yet also smiling up at him, one hand going to her neck, which wore a heavy plaster. She looked haggard, embarrassed about looking haggard, and concerned for him.
I dont want to tire you, Ells, he said. Just seeing how you are.
Im fine. Have you caught him yet?
Fraid not.
He saw in her face then that she was struggling to convey many difficult messages. Hal, Im so sorry.
Alan Destry intervened. Come on, pal, give her a break. Shes not up to being interrogated.
Challis nodded slowly, knowing when he was beaten. Take care, Ellen. Take a few days off
Ellen stirred, fury animating her weakly. Im fine, she insisted, looking from her husband to her daughter and back again. I need a couple of minutes with Hal, CIU business, okay? Go and get yourselves a cup of tea or something.
Mu-um, said Larrayne.
No way, said Alan.
Challis waited, guessing that Ellen would win. When they were alone, he said gently, Can you tell me why you were there last night?
She glanced away and said, I was following up on a recent burglary in the next street, looking for links to your burglary, and happened to be passing.
Challis knew that she was lying. He let it pass, for he wasnt innocent either. They were drawn to each other and it was illicit and still playing itself out, even if it led nowhere. Lucky thing that you were, he said.
Her eyes filled with tears. Why? I didnt save her. All I did was get myself shot as well.
It could have been worse.
She touched the graze on her neck as if to say that it was nothing. I couldnt see a thing. I had to feel my way in the dark. I shot at him, but presumably I missed.
We didnt find anything.
Apart from Tessa.
Apart from Tessa, Challis repeated.
There was a pause. Ellen said gently, Hal, dont blame yourself
Who says I am? he demanded, more forcefully than hed intended.
Ellen looked away, then back at him. What about Lowry and McQuarrie?
Lawyered up. Alibis.
She sank back. I couldnt see anything, but I dont think it was one of them.
Get some rest.
Alan brought me todays Progress, Ellen said. Tessas take on Janine was pretty accurate.
Challis nodded. Hed read it over breakfast, and heard Tessas voice in his head, her special qualities of fierceness and irony coming through clearly. He blinked his eyes.
Ellen affected not to notice. Is there a link between the two murders?
Get some rest.
Im coming in tomorrow.
Dont be silly.
Im coming in, Ellen said, and stop pitying yourself
Challis almost snapped at her, but went out to the carpark, avoiding the cameras and microphones. Behind the wheel of his car, he told himself to breathe deeply, evenly. There was no avoiding it: he was self-pitying. Then he remembered something that Tessa had once said about him, that he tended to feel guilt where it wasnt warranted or necessary, that guilt in many circumstances was a wasted, a crippling, emotion. That was the truth. Shed given him gifts of wisdom and hed been too self-involved to see it.
* * * *
52
At four oclock that Tuesday afternoon, Vyner wrote, Men are continents, men are islands, but I am a rocky shoal beneath the surface.
Hed just collected $500 from a woman in Glen Iris, the mother of an Army signaller whod stepped on a mine on the Iraqi side of the border with Kuwait. Yep, a hero, great guy, single-handedly saved Vyners life on one occasion, but too modest to claim the credit. The mothers eyes glistened, Vyners glistened. It was very moving, and while it lasted, Vyner believed every word of it.
It was getting hard to remember who he was, though. The personal, private, real Vyner was the Navy guy whod refused the anthrax injection and been discharged for that and a few other minor matters, and later spent a couple of years in prison here and there. The pretend Vyner was the Army mate of some poor prick whod died on foreign soil. The emerging Vyner was a hitman for hireand a part-time conman.
Thats when another text message came in on his mobile phone. No congratulations for a job well done in wasting Tessa Kane last night, only an angry query, wanting to know why descriptions of Nathan Gent and the car had been released to the media. Xplain or no fee, the SMS concluded.
Christ. Vyner hadnt read the paper closely this morning, but now he did. The front page was full of last nights shooting, so he flicked through, and there it was on page 5, an accurate description of the car and a pretty accurate photofit image of Nathan Gent. His mouth dry, he sent back an SMS: Gent ded car torchd.
Who saw us? he wondered. Theres no description of me, so does that mean I wasnt seen clearly, or do the cops have a description and this is some kind of trick?
He did a line of coke to chill out. Hed have to get himself another gun. He was fresh out of Browning pistols after last night.
*
* * *
That same afternoon, Scobie Sutton received a call from the lab. There were several usable prints on the bottles, cans and cellophane hed collected from Andy Asches rubbish bin, and they matched one print not on the Toyota van itself but on the stolen goods recovered from it. That was good enough for Scobie.
You ever have a kid called Andy Asche in your home? he asked Challis.
No, said Challis, looking sad and distracted.
Then hes definitely one of our burglars. He also owns cutting edge computer gear.
Challis rubbed his face. You think he copied my files and printed out the photos? Get a warrant for his computer and bring him in for questioning.
Scobie shifted uncomfortably. I think hes done a runner.
Look for him then, said Challis curtly.
Boss, Scobie said.
In his experience, you didnt often catch crooks through detection and investigation but through chance or luck. Cops arent necessarily smart, he believed, but the bad guys are often dumb. You catch them red-handed, or they give themselves up, remain at the scene, punch a loved one who informs on them, find themselves arrested for a different crime, or draw attention to themselves by breaking the speed limit with a body in the boot, for example.
But now and then you got to detect, and Scobie went looking for Andy Asche on flight manifests. Assuming that Andy would not be flying under his real name, it was a process of elimination. First he rejected womens and unlikely names like Aziz, Hernandez and Nguyen. Then he rejected reservations made some time ago (Andy had left in a hurry, leaving his wheels behind), return reservations, credit card purchases, Frequent Flyer purchases, and special requests (Scobie doubted that Andy was a vegetarian, and in too much of a hurry to request a special meal even if he was). Scobie also couldnt see Andy trying to leave the countryunless he had a false passport, and that didnt seem likelyor flying to a small regional airport. Andy would seek out a big place, a place where he could lose himself. Finally, Scobie concentrated on tickets booked and used recently.
He could feel the panic in Andy Asche. Maybe Im a good cop some of the time, he thought, or good in some ways. And maybe thats sufficient.
* * * *
Andy was on the beach, working on his tan, blending in, another dropout or backpacker amongst thousands of them on the Gold Coast, where the sun never set. Except how many beach bums his age went on-line at the local library to read the Melbourne newspapers?
And how many had twelve thousand bucks in their pockets? Twelve grand, his total savings. He could maybe string that out for almost a year, but kiss goodbye to his dream of buying a BMW sports car.
The way everything had conspired against him. First, that cop, Scobie Sutton, asking if he was Natalies boyfriend, telling him she was missing. Missing? Andy seriously doubted thatold Nat was off somewhere getting coked out of her brainbut it unnerved him to have the cops sniffing around. Then, a day after sending out the blackmail demands, hed been reading an old copy of the Progress in the shire canteen and there, on the front page, had been a photograph of a guy in one of the photos hed found on the laptop. Robert McQuarrie. A cops son. A senior cops son. And, according to the story, grieving husband of a woman whod been shot dead.
So anyone sending this guy a blackmail demand is going to find himself a murder suspect, right?
Time for the lad to make himself scarce.
It had been a low-speed rather than a high-speed escape. Andy had gone straight to High Street and cleaned out his savings account, all twelve thousand. Hed debated going home, but what if they were watching his pad? He stood on the footpath, trying to do a casual scan of High Street. Trouble was, everyone had looked like an undercover cop on stakeout.
So he hadnt gone home. Instead, he went to the travel agent and bought a $99 Virgin Blue one-way flight to the Gold Coast. That was the high-speed part. Getting to the airport was strictly low-speed. Hed walked to the station, waited an hour for a Frankston train, got to Frankston, walked through the shops to the Nepean Highway, waited ninety minutes for the airport mini-bus, ridden the bus for another ninety minutes, then waited another two hours for his flight to leave. Wandered around the airport shops while he waited, almost bought a change of clothes, then told himself not to be stupid, nothings cheap at the airport. Hed go to a jeans and T-shirt place on the Gold Coast and get kitted out there.
Hed stay a week on the Gold Coast, and then head to somewhere north of Cairns. He could keep drifting north. It didnt cost much to sleep on the beach.
* * * *
53
Ellen appeared in the incident room just after lunch on Wednesday, a plaster on her neck, moving stiffly, all of her loose-limbed grace vanished, fatigue lines and pallor marking her face. But she was cheerful and itching to workand itching to know how Challis was. She couldnt read him; he put her with Scobie Sutton, checking the publics responses to Joe Ovenss descriptions of the Commodore and the driver. Before very long she was sighing. It was soon clear thatas usually happened when photofits and vehicle descriptions were released by the mediathe investigation had moved from a position of no help from the public to too much.
Heres a good one, she said, reading from a message slip. To quote: Hypnosis takes the subject into another dimension, and so anything Mr Ovens saw relates to a different time and place.
Scobie grunted. Like her, hed divided the message slips that had come in since Monday evening into two piles: immediate attention and maybe. All would be checked, however: even the crazy and the greedy tell the truth sometimes. Half of these want to know if theres a reward, he said.
And the other half want to do the dirty on their husbands, brothers or ex-boyfriends, Ellen said. She paused. Heres another, female caller, wouldnt give her name: The man in the picture is a well-known al Qaeda operative. He is wearing white face paint to disguise his dark skin. She caught Scobies eye, hoping for a chortle, but Scobie merely looked sad, as if he wanted to help all the crazy, lonely people in the world. She wished she were doing this with Challis. With Challis you could have a giggle. She put the womans message slip on the maybe pile, muttering, Your TV is talking to you again, love.
She glanced across the room to Challiss partitioned office. The door was ajar; he was going through a list of numberplate combinations and matching them to 1980s Holdens. He looked drawn.
She kept sorting, then stopped. Ah, she murmured.
Scobie looked up. Another sad creature?
She ignored him, went straight to Challis, knocking and pulling the spare chair up to his desk. He was on the phone, saying, I deny that. She was good at her job, and hanging up. The super, he said.
Ellen understood. He read Tessas profile of Janine.
Challis nodded tiredly. Whats up?
Something promising. A call early this morning from a mechanic in Safety Beach. Until about six months ago he used to service a 1983 Commodore, off-white in colour, one pale yellow door. In fact, he sourced the door for the owner from a wrecked car.
Owners name?
Nora Gent, an address in Safety Beach, Ellen said.
She watched Challis scan a list, and was relieved to see his mood lighten. Here it is, Nora Gent, registered owner of a 1983 Holden Commodore, QQP-359. He paused. Registration has lapsed. It was due for renewal four months ago.
She sold it? Dumped it? It was stolen?
Who knows? But we have to talk to her. He reached for the telephone directory and leafed through it, muttering, Gent, Gent, Gent. Not listed.
She moved away? Got married and changed her name?
Useless to speculate, Challis said. Ill take Scobie and have a word with her.
No, Ellen said.
No?
Take me.
Your neck...
Im fine.
He shrugged. Grab your coat.
Challis drove, headlights on, heading towards the other side of the Peninsula. It was mid afternoon on a day that would struggle to reach 13 degrees. Another sea fret, the fog mostly burnt away but h
anging in dismal patches here and there over the highway and in the hollows of sodden paddocks. Ellen hunched deeper into her coat, wishing Challis would say something. The recent past seemed to fill the space between his seat and hers like an intrusive backseat passenger. It was made up of guilt, embarrassment and desire that she knew was reciprocated but could notand should notplay itself out.
I have to grow up, she told herself. Im married. I have responsibilities. And workplace romances are tawdry and clichd.
No, this one wouldnt have been, she amended a moment later. This one would have been special. Wrong, but special.