[Challis #5] Blood Moon

by Garry Disher

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Did he have any enemies in the school community? Staff or students?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Didn’t rub anyone up the wrong way with the “values” he imparted?’

  Ashby glanced at his watch. ‘I have another appointment. My deputy will show you around.’ He lifted the phone on his desk and pressed a button. ‘Kindly ask Mrs Moorhouse to come to my office.’ He replaced the phone, got to his feet, buttoned his suit coat and came around the side of his desk, one hand out in the unmistakeable intention of guiding Ellen out by the elbow or the small of her back. She dodged him neatly, entered the corridor and heard the costly click of his door sealing him in with the leather, the book spines, the gleaming walnut and the glorious sea views.

  Ellen hovered: was she to wait for the deputy principal, or return to the reception desk? There was the snap of shoe leather and a small, round, short-haired woman appeared. Another irritated person of importance, thought Ellen, taking one look at the deputy head’s grim mouth and air of purpose. She decided to take charge.

  ‘Mrs Moorhouse? Sergeant Destry from the Crime Investigation Unit. I’m here investigating a serious assault. The victim is your chaplain. I need full access to his office and files, and I may wish to interview staff and students who had anything to do with him in the past few days.’

  The woman came to a halt, heaved a sigh, gestured loosely with one hand. ‘Yes, I am aware this is serious business. We’ve already had Ollie Hindmarsh on the line this morning.’

  Ellen went very still. This smacked of interference. Of information being controlled, delayed or withheld. ‘What did he say?’

  Moorhouse regarded Ellen for a moment. Then, as if satisfied, she said, ‘What he said was doublespeak. He’s a politician, after all. What he meant was he didn’t want any shit to stick to him or to the school.’

  Ellen grinned. It was possible that Moorhouse was the real driving force behind Landseer but destined to remain unacknowledged and never promoted to the top job. ‘It’s not my intention to ride roughshod over anyone.’

  The deputy head said elliptically, ‘Riding roughshod might be the best thing. Follow me.’

  They passed through endless dim corridors, Moorhouse asking, ‘What happened, can you tell me?’

  Ellen outlined the circumstances, concluding, ‘But Mr Roe’s still in a coma. It was a pretty vicious assault.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Moorhouse said without feeling. ‘Any brain damage? Not that you could tell, necessarily.’

  Ellen snorted. ‘I take it you didn’t like the man.’

  Moorhouse powered on through the corridors, leading Ellen past anonymous offices and up and down bewildering short hallways and staircases. ‘Oh, put it down to sour grapes. I have a psychology degree and specialist training as a counsellor, in addition to my teaching credentials. I’ve counselled kids for years. Why do we need a chaplain?’

  Ellen said lightly, ‘So you bashed Mr Roe over the head out of professional jealousy.’

  Moorhouse snorted, ‘I wish.’

  She stopped at a flimsy door, a sign on the wall reading: School Chaplain. ‘Mind you,’ she said, ‘I did shove him away in a forgotten corner.’

  She unlocked the door and stood aside. ‘Take your time. I’ll be in my office next to the reception desk.’

  ‘Wait.’ Ellen touched the woman’s upper arm fleetingly. ‘Can you give me a few more minutes?’

  ‘Of course.’

  There were two chairs in the dismal office. Moorhouse took the straight-back chair, Ellen the squeaky swivel chair behind the desk. Opening her notebook, Ellen said, ‘Tell me about Mr Roe.’

  The deputy head stared at the wall, appearing to weigh up her words, so that Ellen was afraid the earlier frankness would be replaced by spin, but then Moorhouse said, ‘First, I don’t hold with the government supporting a chaplaincy scheme, not when there are experienced counsellors available. I believe in the strict separation of church and state.’

  ‘This is a private school,’ Ellen pointed out.

  ‘No matter. I believe in a secular education. It protects kids from dogma and superstition. It prioritises rational inquiry, which usually flies out the window when the God-botherers get involved.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Ellen, ‘but what does this have to do with Lachlan Roe?’

  ‘Oh look,’ Moorhouse grimaced apologetically, holding up a finger, ‘it’s possible that many chaplains are able to forget their religious ties and training and give helpful, neutral advice. But not Roe.’

  ‘He preached? Gave bad advice?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘How on earth would a man like that be appointed school chaplain?’

  ‘It’s hardly a system where quality control matters,’ said Moorhouse sourly. ‘Lachlan’s brother works for Ollie Hindmarsh, and Ollie Hindmarsh’s children went to Landseer, and Ollie Hindmarsh championed the chaplaincy scheme, and Ollie Hindmarsh is on the school council.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘No talent required.’

  ‘What do the kids think of Mr Roe?’

  ‘They’re not stupid: they think he’s a joke.’

  Ellen had been searching the chaplain’s desk as they talked, finding stationery items, a lump of chewing gum and an empty bottle of vodka. And a diary.

  ‘But some of them do make appointments to see him,’ she said, spinning the diary around, her forefinger stabbing the name Zara Selkirk. ‘This kid. Yesterday afternoon.’

  Moorhouse peered at the entry. Something in her face shut down. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll need to speak to her,’ Ellen said.

  ‘I don’t believe she’s in today,’ Moorhouse said.

  * * * *

  9

  Ludmilla Wishart finished a morning’s work in her office at Planning East, then drove to Penzance Beach, a secluded holiday town several kilometres around the coast from Waterloo. She was relieved to be out and about, away from both the hovering of her boss and her husband’s suspicions. Adrian had phoned her several times, saying, ‘Just checking in, darling’ and ‘What shall we have for dinner?’ and ‘Keep your receipts if you use the Golf today.’ He needed to know where she was and what she was doing. He’ll phone again, she thought, and someone in the office will tell him I’m out, and he’ll stew on it. Her heart fluttered. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on like this. But you don’t just walk out on a marriage, do you?

  Ludmilla parked her Golf outside a beach shack on Bluff Road and knocked on the screen door. A hazy shape appeared. ‘Mill! Good or bad news?’

  ‘Good news, Carl.’

  She stepped back to let him out. Carl Vernon was in his sixties, whiskery, gnarled and appealingly untidy in shorts, sandals and black-rimmed glasses. ‘The Trust came through for us?’

  Ludmilla showed him a fax. It said that the property known as ‘Somerland’, on Bluff Road in Penzance Beach, had been classified by the National Trust as a building of historical importance. He gave her

  an exuberant hug. ‘Mill, that’s fantastic’

  The grey-haired man and the young woman stood side-by-side and gazed across to the exclusive seaward side of Bluff Road, which ran along the top of a cliff overlooking the township and the sea. Somerland was a small fisherman’s cottage dating from the early years of the twentieth century. In profile it had a nineteenth-century style sawtooth roofline, with a verandah, a crooked chimney and a paling fence. Nestled amid ti-trees and pines, it was the best-situated house in Penzance Beach, with glorious views of the curving sand, the breakwaters fingering the little bay, the yachts puddling about in the stretch of water between the town and Phillip Island.

  Carl himself enjoyed only a small slice of that view, over Somerland’s low roof and between one wall and a clump of ti-trees, for he lived on the wrong side of Bluff Road, the humble fibro shack side. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he and his neighbours lived increasingly in the shadows o
f the vast, prideful glass and concrete structures to the left and right of Somerland, places that were written up in Architectural Digest but didn’t pretend to be homes. Carl and his neighbours didn’t want another monstrosity to go up, and they especially didn’t want the old fisherman’s cottage to be pulled down.

  And Somerland had certainly been under threat. There were two plastic-sleeved notices tacked to stakes at the driveway entrance: a demolition permit dating from May, and a more recent application to build a mansion that would out-monster all of the others. All moot now: using her influence and knowledge, together with the help and drive of Penzance Beach locals like Carl Vernon, Ludmilla had succeeded in convincing the National Trust to classify the old house.

  ‘The next step is an emergency application for heritage protection from the planning minister,’ she told Vernon. ‘I’ve already set that in motion.’

  They gazed at Somerland. It dreamed under the silent pines as if it had taken root there, merging naturally with the soil, the trees and the sky. It might have gone unrecognised and been demolished if Carl Vernon hadn’t decided to keep mentally active in his retirement years by writing a history of Penzance Beach. According to his research, Somerland had been built by the town’s founder and remained in the descendants’ hands until last year, when the elderly owner died.

  Carl gave Ludmilla another hug. Insects snapped in the trees and the perfumed air. Somewhere a radio played in a back yard. A child dressed in a faded yellow skirt and pink T-shirt came banging out of the house next door, grabbed a tricycle and buzzed around on it. ‘Hi, Mr Vernon!’ she called.

  Vernon waved. ‘Hi, Holly.’

  Holly disappeared around the side of the house to the back yard. ‘I thought only leathery old retirees lived up here,’ Ludmilla murmured.

  Vernon noted the hint of teasing, mostly because it was so rare. ‘I represent that remark!’

  She smiled gloriously, just as a small red car crept into view on Bluff Road. A Citroen diesel, a costly, pert little thing. Ludmilla Wishart groaned and swayed. Alarmed, Vernon placed his arm around her. ‘Mill?’

  She recovered. ‘It’s nothing.’

  His arm was still supporting her. She shrugged it off and put some distance between them while the Citroen seemed to speed up a little, as though it knew where it was going now. It swept into the kerb, tyres scratching up dust, and a man got out. He was about thirty, wearing a white cotton shirt over dark blue cargo pants and deck shoes. His face as he came storming up to Carl’s verandah was in a rictus of fury, waves of strong emotion rolling off him, barely contained.

  ‘Ludmilla,’ he said, and Carl thought how apt was the phrase ‘through gritted teeth’.

  ‘Please, Adrian,’ Ludmilla said.

  The guy turned to Carl, switched on a big smile and shot out his hand. ‘And you are?’

  Vernon hadn’t been a teacher for nothing. ‘No, the question is: And you are?’

  ‘Mr Vernon,’ Ludmilla said tonelessly, ‘this is my husband, Adrian. Darling, Mr Vernon is behind the campaign to save that old fisherman’s cottage I was telling you about.’

  She pointed. Adrian Wishart glanced across at Somerland without interest and back again, sizing up Vernon. ‘Is that a fact.’

  ‘I just came to let Mr Vernon know that it’s been classified by the National Trust.’

  ‘You drove all the way here to tell him?’ Wishart said, still with that huge smile, using a reasonable voice. ‘Could have phoned.’

  Ludmilla went white and small. ‘I mustn’t keep you any longer, Mr Vernon.’

  Vernon watched husband and wife leave his front yard, one flinching, the other as stiff and twisted as steel cable. He heard Ludmilla say, ‘Please, Ade, you mustn’t follow me, not when I’m working.’

  ‘You think I followed you, darling? Certainly not. I have a client to see in the next street.’

  Well, no one believed that, under the blue canopy of the sky.

  * * * *

  10

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Scobie Sutton said.

  ‘Nothing to do with you? Scobie, that’s your e-mail address—your official police e-mail address,’ Challis said, stabbing the printout with his forefinger.

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  Sutton was like a sulky adolescent on the other side of Challis’s desk, his bony limbs lost in the folds of his dark jacket and trousers. He wouldn’t meet Challis’s eye.

  ‘You were the recipient of a racist e-mail. What if the press gets hold of this? What if Ethical Standards takes a long, hard look at you?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  Challis had also printed out the many pages of Dirk Roe’s blog. He arranged them side by side where Sutton could read them. ‘Your little pal is also responsible for this crap.’

  ‘Boss,’ pleaded Sutton, finally looking up, ‘I don’t sympathise with this stuff, honestly I don’t.’

  ‘Then how did the guy get your e-mail address?’

  Sutton’s gaze slid away. ‘Beth,’ he said desolately.

  ‘Your wife? I’d have thought she’d be the last—’

  ‘She’s been unhappy,’ said Sutton in a rush. He paused, searching for the words, flinching a little as a couple of officers passed by in the corridor, laughing about something. ‘It hasn’t been easy for her,’ he continued. ‘When she lost her job it really threw her. She’s been out of work for ages and.. .She’s depressed, boss.’

  Challis folded his arms, grim in face and posture, inviting Sutton to get on with it.

  Sutton complied hastily. ‘Very depressed. Thinks the world is a bad place and getting worse, only no one is listening to her. She feels very alone. You can imagine how that makes me feel.’

  He waited for acknowledgment but Challis merely stared. He swallowed. ‘She won’t talk to me about it. Won’t talk to our minister, either, or friends or family. In fact, she stopped going to our church and she doesn’t have anything to do with any of the old crowd.’

  Challis regarded him carefully. Sutton was a decent man, a churchgoer of the family-values kind. In Challis’s experience, people like that were hesitant to extend their decency in certain directions. Towards gays, for example, or Muslims. Still, some sympathy was due. ‘I take it that Beth found someone who would listen?’ Challis said.

  Sutton’s face lit up. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Dirk Roe?’ Challis said doubtfully. He gestured over the array of printouts. ‘The guy’s a moron.’

  ‘Not Dirk—Lachlan, the one who was attacked. He can be quite compelling.’

  ‘I don’t understand. He’s a school chaplain.’

  Sutton squirmed. ‘He’s a bit more than that.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, Dirk and Lachlan were brought up in one of those big fundamentalist churches, the kind where you smile and clap hands for Jesus.’

  Challis knew the kind. One of the smaller outfits—only 40,000 of them worldwide, and half of that number in Australia—liked to bankroll the election campaigns of conservative politicians and attack left leaning or green candidates. They were against voting, reading novels, wearing short pants, attending football matches, letting their kids go to university. Opposed to contraception, mobile phones and computers. Sad crackpots, he thought, but surprisingly powerful. Challis recalled dimly that Ollie Hindmarsh was one politician who gave an ear to those nuts. Sutton continued: ‘Dirk drifted, but Lachlan grew even more devout and narrow and a couple of years ago he broke away to form his own congregation. The First Ascensionists, they’re called.’

  ‘And Beth has joined them?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sutton with a strangled wail.

  ‘How big are they?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘What do they believe in?’

  Sutton shook his head in distress and bewilderment. ‘They’re very strict about a whole range of things, as you’d expect. They believe that you can avoid sin by avoiding non-believers, and that’s why Beth avoids me.
Also Lachlan has convinced everyone he’s the direct spiritual descendant of Saint Paul and the only route to salvation. “I am the vessel,” that’s what he told me. He says that God will lift true Christians out of the world in a rapture. The rest will suffer a period of intense tribulation, then Christ will return to Jerusalem and rule for a thousand years before a final apocalyptic battle with evil.’

  Challis felt his eyes glaze over. People believed this bullshit, it mattered to them. It mattered enough for cynical politicians to get close to people who spouted it.