Chain of Evidence ic-4

by Garry Disher

  ‘He was lured, Ellen,’ Laurie Jarrett said.

  It was a shock, his using her first name, and quite out of order. ‘He was a burglar, Mr Jarrett. We’ve found burgled items in his girlfriend’s flat from time to time. He burgled to a pattern. We identified that pattern and intercepted him. He took drugs and was prone to violence. It was always going to be a matter of time before something like this occurred.’

  Jarrett gave her a look, a man with a permanently unimpressed mind. It was a cops’ look, frankly. Eventually he said gently, ‘You’re a sore loser.’

  ‘If that’s all,’ Ellen said, standing, ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘Just the beginning, sweetheart,’ Jarrett said, uncoiling gracefully from his chair.

  ‘There will be a coroner’s inquest in due course.’

  ‘You mean a coroner’s whitewash.’

  Ellen lost it, just a little. ‘Look, we’ve just had the abduction and sexual assault of a young girl. She’s lucky to be alive. I am yet to find the man, or men, responsible. Meanwhile, the shooting of your nephew will be given full attention, but it’s not my concern.’

  Laurie Jarrett, a slender, shapely, dangerous man, a man who had her number, smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Katie Blasko is not the only one,’ he murmured.

  Ellen stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’

  He ignored the question and got to his feet. ‘I have a lot to do, a grieving family, a funeral to arrange.’

  Ellen returned to the CIU incident room and waded through reports and witness statements until mid afternoon. It was all fruitless, until Riggs, the technician from ForenZics, called. ‘We have the results on those Katie Blasko samples.’

  Ellen was impressed: she’d expected the results much later. Maybe Superintendent McQuarrie had done the right thing in contracting CIU’s forensic testing to the private lab. Not that the situation in any way matched the ideal, the ideal being one of those American cop shows like ‘CSI’, where a detective walks down a flight of stairs with a blood or fibre sample, and there is the lab, and the lab is full of experts who process evidence on the spot with state of the art equipment-and who also go out and make arrests. Even so, ForenZics had processed the samples from the Katie Blasko abuse house quickly. In Ellen’s experience, the state lab was often running weeks, even months behind. Not only had successive state governments failed to fund it adequately, but it was also swamped with work, for defence and prosecution lawyers had come to believe that forensic evidence could prove or disprove everything. Even the privately owned labs like ForenZics were overworked in testing samples-giving second opinions, confirming the state lab’s results or throwing them into doubt. Consequently judges and prosecutors were putting pressure on the police to find additional, better and more irrevocable evidence.

  ‘That was quick,’ Ellen said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Just doing our job,’ Riggs said.

  Ellen swivelled in her chair. She gazed at the perforated ceiling battens, then unseeingly through the window that overlooked the car park and its scattering of police and private cars. ‘So, what did you find?’

  ‘The bad news first. Plenty of fibres, but they’re generic to all kinds of cotton and synthetic clothing.’

  ‘DNA,’ said Ellen firmly, ‘that’s what I want.’

  ‘Don’t rush me. We found blood, other fluids and skin traces that are a DNA match to Katie Blasko.’

  ‘As expected. I want to know who else was there.’

  ‘Don’t rush me,’ said Riggs again. ‘For your information, we did find traces of someone other than the victim.’

  ‘Enough for DNA?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ellen felt her skin tingle.

  ‘And he’s in the system,’ Riggs said. ‘Neville Clode. He lives in Waterloo.’

  Ellen left her office and found Scobie Sutton in the incident room, examining the doorknock canvass sheets, studiously ignoring Kees van Alphen, who was thumb tacking a wall map of the Peninsula. Ellen paused. ‘Heard about the shooting, Van,’ she murmured. ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Or good luck. Depends how you see it.’

  ‘Quite.’ She pointed at the map. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Since I’m desk bound, I thought I’d help CIU. I’m mapping sex crimes. The blue pins are the home addresses of known sex offenders.’

  There were not many of these, and most lived in the main population areas: Waterloo, Mornington and the coastal strip from Dromana to Sorrento. ‘The red and yellow pins?’

  ‘The red pins show the locations of sexual assaults on children by strangers, the yellow pins show the locations of related offences.’

  ‘Good work,’ Ellen said. And it was, painstaking and probably pointless. A lot of police work was like that. ‘What do you mean by “related offences”?’

  ‘Women, and young girls, have reported flashers along here,’ van Alphen said, indicating a couple of popular beaches. ‘This woman-’ he indicated another yellow pin ‘-was walking her dog and a man grabbed her breasts from behind. She screamed and he ran. She followed him to a nearby house, then called the police, who promptly arrested him.’

  Ellen shook her head. Most crimes were stupid. Most criminals were stupid. ‘This pin,’ van Alphen went on, ‘indicates reports of men seen lurking near public toilets and schools.’

  ‘Fantastic, Van, thank you. We’re stretched for resources.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘But broaden what you’ve been doing. In addition to incidents that are clearly sex related, I want everything you can find about abductions, abduction attempts, unsolved disappearances and murders, particularly of children and young people.’

  ‘Peninsula wide?’

  ‘Australia wide, Van. Our guy could be very mobile.’

  Van Alphen scowled. ‘I guess that will keep me out of trouble, but I’d rather be out in the field, kicking down doors.’

  Ellen patted him on the shoulder. ‘That’s my boy. But right now I want everything you can give me on a Neville Clode.’ She gave the details. ‘A full background check,’ she urged. ‘Criminal record, vehicles registered in his name, circle of friends, his relatives, work colleagues, acquaintances, you know the drill.’

  Van Alphen gave her an unreadable look and nodded abruptly. She crossed the room and said, ‘Scobie? We have a suspect.’ She told him about Neville Clode and the DNA.

  ‘Neville Clode? I questioned him a few days ago, that ag burg, guy ended up in hospital.’

  Ellen nodded slowly. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘He was knocked about pretty badly, wouldn’t give straight answers. A falling out with his pals?’

  ‘Or maybe it wasn’t an ag burg. Maybe he has a history, and one of his victims got revenge.’

  ‘He didn’t seem the type.’

  Scobie Sutton was easily, and often, impressed by the people he dealt with. He was a churchgoer, a decent family man, and perhaps the police would have a better press if more officers were like him, but the police also needed officers who could step over the line and inhabit the minds of the bad guys. ‘Tell me about him.’

  Scobie perched his bony rear on the edge of the main table while Ellen sat attentively. ‘He works from home.’

  ‘As?’

  ‘Some kind of counsellor or healer.’

  ‘Psychologist? Physio? What?’

  ‘Can’t recall.’

  ‘What can you recall?’

  ‘His place was trashed. A real mess. He was beaten pretty badly.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Scobie searched his memory. ‘There’s a kind of spa room in his house. Spa bath and toys.’

  ‘Toys? Does he have children? A partner?’

  ‘He’s almost sixty.’

  ‘Scobie, does he have children or a partner?’

  ‘No sign of either.’

  ‘Let’s go and rattle his cage,’ Ellen said, rattling her car keys at him.

  27

  Thirty minutes later, Ellen and
Scobie were in an unmarked silver Falcon from the motor pool. Ellen drove. Scobie stretched his stick legs and yawned. The interior was stuffy, for the car had been sitting in the sun. Bird shit streaked the windscreen: trees ringed the car park behind the station and the birds were busy now, building nests. Scobie sneezed. Presently Ellen sneezed. Spring on the Peninsula brought a special kind of hell to hayfever sufferers. The air was laden with pollen. People suffered through it and their eyes itched.

  ‘Roslyn can’t stop talking about it,’ Scobie announced after a short period of blessed silence.

  ‘About what?’ said Ellen before she could stop herself. At least the poor kid’s bowel movements had ceased to matter to her devoted father. Now it was how she coped with maths, friendship crises and the scary bits in Harry Potter.

  ‘About riding her bike, dressed up like Katie Blasko.’

  Ellen stirred, irritated. What mattered was what had happened to the real Katie Blasko, not the pretend Katie’s moment of fame. She didn’t say any of this to Scobie Sutton. He’d be crestfallen, offended or bewildered, and Ellen didn’t feel like coping with any of his reactions. ‘Left or right?’ she said at the next intersection.

  ‘Straight ahead, then the second on the left.’

  He directed her past the fenced boundary of the Seaview Park estate to a low, newish-looking house set behind a screen of trees. Ten years old, Ellen guessed, assessing the architecture and the height of the trees. Not long after she’d settled on the Peninsula with Alan and Larrayne, several streets had been carved out of what had been farmland on the outskirts of Waterloo. Alan had been interested in buying a plot and putting up a house, but Ellen had been adamant that as a copper she was not going to live where she worked, and so they’d bought the old fibro holiday house ten minutes drive away in Penzance Beach. And now that house had been sold and she was marking time in Challis’s house.

  She braked the car. A small sign, burnt into a polished board mounted on a low concrete pillar that doubled as a letterbox, read Wellness Centre. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she muttered.

  Scobie knew what she meant. A hypochondriac, he was defensive. ‘Don’t knock it, Ellen. Our naturopath has really helped my arthritis and Beth’s depression.’

  Naturopaths were probably the acceptable face of what bugged Ellen. It seemed to her that on every back road, side street or strip of shops on the Peninsula, a ‘healer’ of some kind could be found. They set up ‘wellness boutiques’ and read palms, Tarot cards and probably tea leaves, offered massage, crystal therapy or ear candling-whatever that was- and taught certificate courses in automatic writing and angel visions- whatever they were.

  If you wanted to awaken your life-force, then a powerful and ancient Tibetan modality was available in Mornington. A woman in Penzance Beach offered Sandplay and Expressive Therapy. There was a Holistic clinic next door to a shoe shop in Waterloo, and even an Inner Balance Master a few hundred metres along the dirt road past Challis’s house (yeah, she could just see Hal checking in for a treatment). Quacks came through lecturing on ‘Thought Field Therapy’ at $500 a pop, or sold books and CDs that showed you how to become animal spirit intuitives, so long as you forked out $89.99 for a shamanic field guide that offered insight into the wisdom of Mother Earth’s natural creatures.

  The practitioners and devotees of this alternative Peninsula gave their children weird names, wore flower-power and vaguely Indian clothing and entered wispy, inept paintings in the local art shows. Ellen was pretty sure that the intelligence quotient of the Peninsula was lower than anywhere else on the planet.

  She ignored Scobie and got out. There was a small wooden rack mounted to the wall beside the front door. She took out a brochure and read that Neville Clode’s Wellness Centre specialised in wellness for children, promising to cure their irritability, hypertension, nervousness, fears and phobias. ‘Let me unlock the feelings, emotions and hidden belief systems that block the journey process to true maturity,’ he offered.

  Scobie stood beside her. He pushed the bell. She thrust the brochure at him. ‘Jesus Christ, Scobie-he works with kids.’

  Scobie read. Time ticked by. Here on Clode’s street the houses were silent and far apart from each other, separated by trees and high paling fences. No witnesses, in other words. ‘I’m checking around the back,’ Ellen said.

  She prowled down the side of the house, passing a carport hung with grapevines that sheltered a Saab. A moment later she rounded the corner onto a broad yard and a scattering of fruit trees. There was a small aluminium garden shed. Two children, a girl and a boy aged about twelve, were disappearing over the back fence. They looked gleeful, panicky and hard-eyed, as if they’d been in trouble with the authorities for all of their short lives and weren’t about to reform. Even so, they were children, and they should have been in school.

  Ellen shouted futilely, then turned her attention to the rear wall of the house. Scobie was coming around the corner, still reading the brochure. The back door opened and a man stepped out, moving stiffly. Facial bruises were vivid on his face; blood streaked the whites of his blackened eyes; his top lip carried a couple of stitches..

  ‘Mr Clode? My name is Sergeant Destry and you’ve met Constable Sutton.’

  ‘Did you get the little buggers?’ Clode said, his voice melodious, as though remembering that he was supposed to be a healer, a man who brought comfort to people. He approached Scobie warmly and shot out his hand. The two men shook. Then he offered his hand to Ellen and she ignored it. ‘Do you know those children, Mr Clode? Were they visiting you?’

  Through the damage to his face she could see a bleak, scoffing expression. ‘Kids from the Seaview Park estate,’ he said. ‘Surely no strangers to the police.’

  ‘Do you think they’re the ones who attacked you, Mr Clode?’ said Scobie.

  ‘Could well be.’

  Ellen wasn’t having this. She’d read Clode’s statement. ‘I thought you said that men attacked you, not children.’

  ‘Youngish men, I think.’

  ‘All right, did you recognise those children just now?’

  ‘No. I told them to clear off…’

  ‘Would you recognise them again?’

  ‘I only saw their backs.’

  Ellen stared at him, unconvinced. But she doubted she’d recognise them, either. ‘Are you in the habit of inviting children to your home, Mr Clode?’

  He flushed. ‘I didn’t invite them.’

  ‘But you treat children.’

  ‘That’s different. And their parents bring them to me for therapy.’

  ‘May we come inside, please?’

  He looked uncertain, but took them through to his sitting room. ‘Has a parent made a complaint against me?’

  ‘Are the parents present when you treat their children?’ Ellen responded.

  ‘No way. It destroys the energy.’

  Ellen supposed that it probably did. ‘Can you tell us what you were doing between Thursday afternoon last week and Monday afternoon this week?’

  ‘What’s this about?’ said Clode, appealing to Scobie.

  ‘Just answer the question,’ Ellen said.

  ‘I was in hospital for two days.’

  ‘And the other two days?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘I live alone, so no, I can’t,’ said Clode, irritable now.

  ‘Your appointment book might hold the answer.’

  Clode coughed and shifted about. Actually, I didn’t have any appointments. I’m retraining.’

  ‘Retraining? As what?’

  ‘A thought field therapist.’

  Ellen smirked.

  ‘Look, why do you want to know my movements? What am I supposed to have done? I’m a victim, remember.’

  ‘Do you own a white van?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Do any of your friends or family?’

  ‘Don’t think so. How would I know?’

  ‘I understand you ha
ve a spa room, with toys in it.’

  To cover his confusion or apprehension, Clode threw up his hands. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Is it part of children’s therapy?’

  ‘No. It’s for when my granddaughter visits.’

  Ellen watched him for a long moment. He didn’t waver. ‘Is your wife with you, Mr Clode?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ellen said unconvincingly. ‘How many children do you have?’

  ‘My wife had a daughter from her previous marriage. Her name’s Grace.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I rarely see them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Grace is married. Husband and one daughter.’

  ‘They live some distance away?’

  Clode shook his head. ‘Just on the other side of the Peninsula.’

  ‘But you rarely see them.’

  ‘I’m not related by blood,’ said Clode.

  ‘How old was Grace when you married her mother?’

  Clode thought about it. ‘Early teens.’

  ‘How old is her daughter?’

  ‘About seven.’

  ‘An address, please, Mr Clode.’

  ‘Why? You haven’t told me what this is about.’

  ‘Whose white van did you borrow last Thursday?’

  Clode was ready. ‘I didn’t borrow a white van. I didn’t rent a white van. I don’t own a white van. I don’t know anyone who owns or drives a white van.’

  Ellen sneezed and her eyes itched. She fished a damp tissue from her pocket, feeling obscurely undermined by her hayfever.

  ‘Satisfied?’ said Clode. ‘I get beaten up and you lot treat me like I’m a suspect in some crime.’

  ‘We were thinking the assault on you might have been personal,’ Ellen said. ‘I understand they also trashed your house pretty badly.’

  The signs were still apparent in the sitting room: the remains of a chair in the corner and a crooked print on the wall. Clode shook his head. ‘They would have been high on drugs. They stole a digital camera and a coin collection.’