Signal Loss

by Garry Disher

  Diplomacy was foreign to Coolidge, but it seemed to work. That, and the promise to pay for damages and absolve each business of legal consequences.

  CHLOE WOKE AT SEVEN ON SATURDAY morning, collected her hire car and set off, heading north-west across the city and out the other side, a tiresome trek, only to be followed by another kind of tiresomeness, the flat, dry, hot monotony of rural Australia. She hated these trips for Carl. The hours passed: great! A town! And then it was gone in an eye blink. Another car! And it was gone.

  She could write a road song, the things she saw and felt when she made these trips. A song about love and the road and dreams, dreaming. The road unrolled and the hours passed and here was another call from Carl. ‘All good?’

  ‘Carl, for the thousandth time, everything’s fine,’ she told him. The idiot wanted constant reassurance. You wouldn’t want to spend a lifetime with someone that insecure, no matter how good the sex was. She hoped like hell he was using an untraceable phone.

  ‘CARL? CARL BOWIE?’ COOLIDGE ASKED.

  She was in the mobile command vehicle, a boxy white department-store delivery van fitted with recording equipment, monitor screens, headphones, seats and two detectives beside herself and the driver. The team was also running an unmarked sedan today; it kept pace a hundred metres behind.

  The AV guy checked his screens. ‘If so, he’s not on his mobile, house or office phone.’

  Until today, they’d had nothing on him, except that he liked to sneak visits to Minchin once or twice a week. He was wealthy, but he’d inherited a string of bakeries and the business was prospering. And he was, well, a man who baked bread and cakes for a living. Short hair, wife, two kids in private school.

  ‘She sounds pissed off with him,’ the AV guy said.

  ‘And he sounds tense,’ Coolidge said. ‘So, first thing Monday, we dig a little deeper.’

  She settled back in her seat, breathed shallowly of the stale air. Still, she’d rather be here, doing something, than back in Waterloo, sitting through another mind-numbing briefing with the local plod. She chewed the inside of her cheek in glum concentration. She’d liked the look of Challis the moment she first saw him; he had a kind of lean, quiet, patient menace. But he was a disappointment. She’d given him plenty of cues, but he’d ignored them, and it wasn’t that he was thick, or slow. He didn’t want her. And then she’d seen him in the company of that tedious Destry cow, and someone had said they were an item—which was normally no deterrent to Coolidge, but Challis gave her no opening whatsoever.

  Fuck him.

  She said, ‘What phone is Chloe using?’

  The AV guy shrugged. ‘It’s not tied to her work or personal accounts.’

  THEN THE CAVALCADE WAS drawing into Mildura, Chloe in her rented Camry, followed by a semitrailer and a couple of dusty rural sedans, and finally the drug-squad surveillance van. The Camry turned right, towards the southern bank of the Murray River.

  ‘The motel’s down this way, right?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Coolidge advised the drug-squad sedan, which was already at the motel, and settled back tensely to watch the Camry. She saw the turning light blink, and then it was nosing into the forecourt of the Colonial Motor Inn.

  ‘Drive past,’ she said. ‘Circle the block.’

  Passing the motel entrance, she saw Chloe Minchin lock the Camry and turn towards the main entrance. ‘She’s picking up her key. Let’s hope the reservations clerk doesn’t blow it.’

  Then they were half a block down the street, adjacent to the unmarked drug-squad Holden. A lazy hand lifted as they passed.

  They made a series of turns and came in from the south again, drawing in to the kerb a block short of the motel. Coolidge called the Holden: ‘Did she go to her assigned room?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Coolidge sat in nervy concentration, one leg jiggling, one hand washing the other. The AV technician fiddled and one of the monitors flared with light: Chloe, dumping her bag on her bed.

  But she didn’t stay. She made for the door and disappeared, and the radio crackled, ‘She’s coming out again.’

  All Coolidge wanted to do after hours of sitting was get out, stretch her back and hamstrings, walk around the block. She rolled her shoulders, peered at the screens, at the back of Chloe’s head, at the wheel of the Camry. Then Chloe was looking back through the rear window as she reversed, and fifteen seconds later she was out on the street, heading away from the river. The driver ducked his head as she passed the van; they all tensed.

  CHLOE LED BOTH DRUG-SQUAD vehicles to a McDonald’s. She parked in full view of the dining windows, got out and walked away from the building.

  ‘Did she lock it? Anyone see the lights flash?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  Wanting the Holden ready for any possible high-speed pursuit, Coolidge ordered one of her officers to leave the van and follow Chloe on foot. ‘See where she goes, what she does, who she talks to—if anyone. I think the exchange is about to go down, and she’s supposed to keep her distance.’

  ‘Boss.’

  TWO MINUTES LATER, A MAN sauntered out of the McDonald’s. He was young, short-haired, wiry, carrying a gym bag and dressed for weekend sport in a polo shirt, white shorts and Adidas running shoes. He strolled to the Camry, lifted the boot lid and leaned in.

  ‘He’s counting the money,’ Coolidge said.

  Apparently satisfied, the man stowed his gym bag and walked around to the drivers door.

  ‘She left the key for him,’ Coolidge said. ‘Get ready to follow.’

  She supposed it was smart. A curious person hoeing into a hamburger in the McDonald’s window would be less curious about a customer stowing his bag, getting behind the wheel and driving away than a customer not getting behind the wheel but walking away, only for a woman to take his place.

  The driver led them down the main street to a Coles supermarket and pulled into a slot in the far corner of the vast car park. He got out, walked around to the rear, removed a different gym bag and sauntered out onto the street.

  ‘The exchange has taken place,’ Coolidge said. ‘We need a clear shot of his face.’

  ‘On it, boss.’

  The camera clicked but before they could tail the man, a BMW with New South Wales plates swerved in to the kerb. The man climbed into the passenger seat. The car shot away.

  ‘You got the plates?’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘Send them to Sydney.’

  ‘Boss.’

  Then they waited. Presently Chloe wandered in from the street. She strolled around the car park, her gaze pausing at any vehicle that might have been an unmarked police car, her gaze passing over the surveillance van. She was followed a short time later by the detective who’d been tailing her. Coolidge tensed, half-expecting the detective to knock on the van for admittance, but she entered the supermarket and watched through the plate glass, and only hurried to the van when Chloe finally lifted the Camry’s boot lid and leaned in.

  ‘She’s checking she has the drugs,’ Coolidge said.

  She turned to the detective. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Window-shopped.’

  ‘Talk to anyone? Calls, texts?’

  ‘One call. I heard her say, “Carl, chill, okay?”’

  Coolidge was forming a picture of Carl Bowie: a micro-manager, a fusspot. But potentially dangerous. Access to dangerous people, anyway.

  THEN IT GOT BORING.

  They tailed Chloe to the motel and switched to the room cameras and microphones and saw her shower, change, pour a drink and watch the tail end of a Saturday afternoon sports telecast, golf somewhere on the other side of the world.

  She’s done this a dozen times before, Coolidge thought. When she’s ready, she’ll parcel up the drugs and deal with her runners.

  CHLOE MINCHIN WASN’T READY until Sunday morning. Saturday night she stayed in, eating a room-service club sandwich and watching two pay movies, soft porn, to which she masturbated.
Coolidge’s detectives were stiffly silent. They might have offered some kind of commentary, but Coolidge unnerved them.

  Then Chloe slept.

  Coolidge and the others took shifts, four hours on, four off, dividing their time between the stale air of the van and the chemical air of a room in a budget motel across the street from the Colonial Inn.

  At 8 a.m. on Sunday, the cameras showed Chloe stirring. She sat on the edge of the bed, looking dazed, then hauled herself upright and attempted a few half-hearted stretches before scuffing her way to the bathroom. She came out with wet hair, a towel around her torso, and dressed, packed her bag and ate a room-service breakfast. The show proper started when she unzipped the gym bag and spread the contents on the bench under the wall-mounted TV set.

  ‘What is that?’ Hoddle said, peering at the screens.

  ‘Definitely ice. The pills probably ecstasy.’

  ‘And a set of scales,’ Coolidge noted.

  They watched Chloe divide the drugs into four, a pill at a time and the ice by weight.

  ‘Now what?’

  Chloe was fishing a series of flat, square, cellophane-wrapped packets from her case. She tore off the cellophane from one packet, shook out the contents.

  ‘Looks like a little daypack.’

  Four cheap nylon daypacks. Chloe stuffed each one with ice crystals and pills. She sat back to wait. Coolidge alerted the local police, who would carry out today’s arrests, and sat back to wait with her.

  THE FIRST RUNNER WAS A WOMAN, aged about thirty, driving a bright yellow VW. She wore torn black leggings, a torn black skirt, plenty of piercings, tattoos on each bare shoulder, and black eye makeup under black and purple birds-nest hair. She stayed talking strategy and marketing with Chloe, revealing that she serviced the southern Peninsula district. Twenty minutes later, she left with her little pack of drugs.

  Meanwhile Coolidge had checked the VW’s plates and matched the owner’s licence photo with the goth. Never arrested, not even a speeding fine. She muttered, ‘And the winner of this year’s Miss Junior Chamber of Commerce is…’ and called the lead pursuit cars with the plate number and description of the VW.

  ‘You know the drill, stop her some distance out of town, don’t let her make a single phone call.’

  Twenty minutes later, the call came back: the goth had been pulled over and arrested on possession and suspicion of trafficking charges.

  At noon a young man arrived in a silver Holden ute. Short hair, beige slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt—he could have come straight from church. He stayed, talked business with Chloe, and left with his drugs. His area was Cranbourne, apparently. Coolidge called the drug-squad car. ‘He’s all yours; get cracking.’

  She was starting to see the planning involved. Like the goth, the driver of the silver utility was clean. So, she realised, was Molnar, the dealer who’d supplied Josh Saville.

  This time she waited thirty minutes for news of the arrest. Apparently the young man with his boy-next-door clothes and haircut had threatened the arresting officers with a knife and had to be subdued with capsicum spray.

  Molnar was Chloe’s next visitor. He stayed to talk shop with Chloe, but appeared jumpy.

  ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘You seem nervous.’

  ‘It’s just, I’ve had this feeling like I’m being followed.’

  Coolidge said, ‘Fuck,’ and Chloe said, very sharply, ‘Today?’

  Molnar shook his head. ‘Not today, just in general.’

  ‘How long for?’

  Molnar gestured and twitched and hemmed and hawed as if flummoxed by the question. ‘Few weeks, maybe?’

  ‘Few weeks?’ hissed Chloe. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck,’ Coolidge muttered. ‘Get ready, she could wrap this up and try to run.’

  They watched intently. Almost at once, Chloe twitched aside the curtains. She seemed to focus on the van and ducked away.

  ‘This is it,’ Coolidge said.

  SHE SENT TWO DETECTIVES in the drug-squad unmarked after Chloe Minchin, following more sedately in the van. The passenger kept her informed: Chloe was heading west, towards South Australia, across flat red-dirt country where the main roads are long, straight and built for speed.

  ‘She’s going like a bat out of hell, boss.’

  ‘Keep up, that’s all I’m asking. I’ve arranged for pursuit cars to take over.’

  That would take time. Meanwhile Chloe was streaking across the flats. The Camry had the capacity for some speed, but it was a family car, after all, one of the most common vehicles on the road, and not built for outrunning the police. It was a wallowing box on wheels with a terrible oversteer, and a far cry from Chloe’s regular ride, her nippy Audi sports. But she expected the same handling and performance going into a sixty-degree bend at a hundred and twenty k’s. The car rolled, rammed the only roadside gum tree on that stretch of the highway and split in two.

  The monitors in Coolidge’s van showed snowy conditions, out there on the red dirt plain.

  28

  FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING, Carl Bowie was sitting at his table in the yard behind his Mornington bakery, an expression of concentrated harassment on his face.

  Chloe, dead. He felt a strange, stubborn truculence. He wanted to lash out. But: A cool head prevails, according to the keynote speaker at Grow Your Own Prosperity. He’d written it down and underscored it twice. A cool head. Prevailing. They were his defining characteristics, when you thought about it.

  He fought to recover his equilibrium. Bit by bit then, sounds, smells and other sensations returned to him. He could hear birds squabbling in the trees, a woman walking down the laneway. He could smell baking from his own ovens, feel the sun on his forearms.

  But Carl had developed a seasoned instinct for nuances, for the unspoken and the unconscious, and knew that forces were at work against him. The jitters returned. He bit the inside of his cheek; a tightness came swamping over him. Chloe was dead. Mid-afternoon yesterday she’d texted him on one of his disposable mobile phones: Cops im running, then silence. He’d immediately destroyed the phone and sim card, and then, after sitting and thinking, had begun to move money, burn paperwork and ditch the remaining phones.

  After some agonising, he’d gone to a 7-Eleven and notified Hector Kaye.

  ‘So, mate, I’m out of the game. Finished. Finito.’

  ‘Bullshit you’re out,’ Kaye said.

  ‘I’ve transferred one point five million into your Caymans account. Call it a cancellation fee.’

  Then he’d spent the rest of yesterday monitoring the news, radio, TV and on-line services. At 6 p.m., channels seven and nine had stories with film of a high-speed car chase west of Mildura, resulting in a fatality. In a separate story, three drivers had been stopped, searched and arrested on possession and trafficking charges south of Mildura. They’d shown film of one of the drivers, a woman with purple hair who snarled at the camera. Chloe had said one of his best runners was a goth from south Frankston.

  Carl thought about Chloe and almost wept for a moment. He’d miss her. Not just her body, her air of riskiness. But as the seminar leader had said, There is risk and there is risk. She might have pulled him down in the end, just as Owen might have.

  Well, he was dead.

  And Hector’s heavies were dead. Probably.

  Carl examined himself for twinges of guilt or grief. Nothing, really. Just that momentary lapse when he’d thought of Chloe.

  THAT SAME MONDAY, JOHN TANKARD was working the front desk again. So far, no drama. Nothing to trip him up, only a lost wallet, car keys handed in, a stat dec witnessed.

  But mid-afternoon a wry, twinkling woman with cropped hair walked through the door and headed straight for the counter. She wore dark pants and a pale blue shirt bearing the shire logo and was vaguely familiar. ‘Yes, madam?’

  ‘I work in the library.’

  Ah. Tank placed her now; some guy trying to access porn on a li
brary computer a few years ago. ‘Help you?’

  She had a huge bag over one shoulder and began to dig around in it. ‘Someone from here used our photocopier late last week and left a sheet of paper in the machine.’

  Not the crime of the century, then, Tank thought. Just another day in purgatory. ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘Janine Something,’ the librarian said. ‘I know she works here, but she’s not police. Office staff, maybe? Anyhow, she’s used our copier before, when you’ve had a paper crisis.’

  She grinned as she said it. Paper crisis, as if Victoria Police had been brought to its knees. Well, it was an ongoing process. He’d had to bring in a couple of biros from home for his shift…

  ‘I’ll see she gets it.’

  The librarian was still scrabbling around in her bag. ‘It’s amazing the stuff people leave in the copier. Birth certificates, passports, receipts, house plans, bank statements, garage sale notices, contracts, CVs…’

  ‘Really?’ said Tank.

  In the little back room of his personality, impatience was stirring. He wanted to shake the woman and her damn bag.

  ‘Here we are,’ the librarian said.

  She plonked it on the counter, a slip of paper, handwritten words scrawled in a kind of list. Tank scanned the items. Halfway down, he went very still.

  And the woman said, ‘I would have returned it sooner, but one of our juniors found it in the copier and simply dumped it with the rest of the material that people leave behind. I take it upon myself to go through it periodically, trying to trace ownership, and when I read this’—she tapped the paper scrap—‘about two men and a rifle, I remembered Janine coming in and thought I’d better bring it back straight away in case it’s important.’

  ELLEN DESTRY WAS IN THE sex-crimes cottage, briefing Katsoulas and Rykert.

  ‘You all set for tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  The playground stakeout. Ellen’s unit had been asked to assist Mornington police catch a guy described as ‘creepy’ and given to watching, photographing and approaching children. Nothing more definite than that and no clear descriptions.