by Garry Disher
Scobie frowned. ‘You told me they hadn’t taken anything.’
‘I’ve had time for a proper look since then,’ Clode said. ‘This is just a junkie burglary.’
‘More than that, Mr Clode,’ Scobie said. ‘You were beaten up pretty badly.’
Ellen was watching Clode, and saw him go very still. ‘I’m fine. I don’t want to make a fuss,’ he said. ‘It hardly seems worth bothering about.’
Now, why is that? Ellen wondered. Muttering about briefings and deadlines, she nodded goodbye to Clode and hurried Scobie out to the car. ‘So, what do you think?’
Scobie swung his mournful face toward her. ‘About what?’
‘Scobie, wake up. What did you make of Clode?’
He seemed to make an effort. ‘Er, it’s hard to tell.’
His head was all over the place. ‘Forget it,’ Ellen said. Hal Challis had always been her sounding board, but he wasn’t here.
28
This was his routine now, to leave the house for a couple of hours in the afternoon while his father napped. Meg was usually sitting with the old man when Challis returned. A freelance bookkeeper who worked from home, she had the freedom to come and go.
That Wednesday Challis made for the little library, briefly pausing on the footpath for a road-train as it headed north with huge bales of hay to where the drought was most acute. He crossed the road and went in. The library opened on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, and he was the only borrower. He selected three talking books for his father and took them to the desk.
‘How’s your dad doing?’ the librarian asked.
Retired now, she’d been Challis’s English teacher twenty-five years ago. ‘Fine, Mrs Traill.’
She sighed. ‘And Meg? I bet she needed the break.’
Did Mrs Traill know how demanding the old man could be? Challis smiled neutrally. Nothing was sacred or secret in the Bluff.
Arms went around him from behind and his first thought was: Lisa. Even the words were the same. ‘Guess who!’
More exuberant than Lisa. He turned and kissed his niece. ‘You wagging school?’
‘As if I’d come here-no offence, Mrs Traill.’
‘None taken, dear.’
Eve wasn’t in school uniform, a liberty allowed the senior students, Challis supposed. She was returning a couple of books. ‘Research?’
‘Exams soon, Uncle Hal.’
‘Have you seen Mark?’
Eve nodded. ‘They gave him a ticking off, made him pay for petrol.’ She paused. ‘Sorry I overreacted on Sunday.’
‘You were sticking up for your friend,’ Challis said. ‘That’s important.’
She gave him a brief hug. ‘Thanks. Wurfel’s okay, I suppose. A bit law and order, friends with the local gentry.’ She beamed at him challengingly.
Challis glanced at Mrs Traill, who was seventy years old, round, comfortable and powdered, an old grandmother who had a perspective on everything and a sense of humour. She gave them both an enigmatic smile, as though she understood many of the things that happened in the town but kept them to herself. ‘Let me take those books from you, dear.’
Eve handed them over. ‘How’s Gramps?’
‘The same,’ said Challis.
‘Tell him I’ll try to pop in later.’
‘I will.’
‘Have to go,’ she said, looking at her watch.
Challis glanced through the window. An old car, two girls and a boy in it, bopping to music. ‘See ya,’ he said.
‘See ya,’ and she was through the door and into the car.
Mrs Traill smiled fondly after her. ‘She’s often in here. She studies hard, that girl.’
Challis nodded.
‘A tragedy.’
Challis gazed at her. ‘Did you know Gavin very well?’
‘He wasn’t from around here.’
Challis gave her a half smile. ‘But did you know him?’
‘I was one of your mother’s best friends. She told me about the strange mail Meg was getting.’
‘Mum and Meg didn’t tell Dad about any of that.’
‘Who can blame them? A lovely man, your father, but some things are best kept quiet.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
It suddenly occurred to Challis: the weekly Northern Herald would have covered Gavin’s disappearance. Unfortunately it was based in another town. ‘Do you keep back issues of the local paper?’
‘Of course.’
‘Going back five years?’
‘Gavin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stay there.’
She was gone for some time. After a while, he strolled idly around the shelves, peering at book titles, and then heard the main door open and close. He peered through a gap in the books and saw a woman enter shyly, scurry to one of the little tables, remove a book from her cane basket and begin to read, all of her movements painfully slow and defeatist.
‘You can use the back room,’ said Mrs Traill behind him.
He jumped. ‘Thanks.’
She led him behind her desk to a storeroom, where she’d dumped dusty bound copies of the Northern Herald on a table. ‘That woman who came in,’ he said.
‘Alice Finucane, married to Paddy. She’s here every Wednesday and Friday, her only escape.’
Challis remembered a story that Meg had told him, of how Paddy had been reported to the RSPCA for mistreating his dogs. Gavin had investigated and been kicked and punched off the property.
‘Poor thing,’ said Mrs Traill.
Challis smiled non-committally and sat at the table. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Mrs Traill reluctantly.
When she was gone, Challis began to read. Gavin’s disappearance had been covered in fair detail, but there were no hard facts beyond the abandoned car and a faint hint that Gavin Hurst’s job had been ‘demanding’, which Challis read as meaning Gavin had been unpopular. He wiped dust from his hands, thanked Mrs Traill and left the building.
The library was next door to the shire offices. Parked outside it was a dusty new Range Rover with tinted windows. One window whirred down and Lisa said, from the front passenger seat, ‘Afternoon, handsome.’
Challis glanced automatically at the heavy glass doors of the shire offices. ‘Rex is in there making a nuisance of himself,’ Lisa said.
‘What about?’
‘Council rates. It happens every year.’
Challis stood by her door for a while and they chatted. Life had slowed right down, to this, gentle walks around the town and idle conversation. He half liked it. At the same time, he missed the Peninsula, and catching killers.
Rex came out, looking angry. He wore the uniform of the successful grazier who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty: tan, elastic-sided R. M. Williams riding boots, R. M. Williams moleskin pants, Country Road shirt, even a wool-symbol tie. Then Challis could smell the man: a heavy aftershave, tinged with alcoholic perspiration. Blurry red eyes, heightened red capillaries in his cheeks, dampness under the arms.
Rex edged between Challis and the passenger door of his Range Rover. He placed a pale soft hand on his wife’s forearm, which rested on the windowsill. Everything about him said: I got the girl. The girl chose me, not you.
‘Sorry to hear about your father, Hal,’ he said, probably not meaning it.
Challis nodded. ‘Well, mustn’t keep you.’
Challis nodded again and stepped away from the Range Rover, which sped away soon afterwards, voices muffled inside it.
29
That same Wednesday afternoon, John Tankard sloped off work to pick up his car. He intended to take it to the VicRoads office in Waterloo, wave the roadworthy certificate under their noses, and pay for a year’s registration. But the head mechanic at Waterloo Motors said, ‘Bad news, pal.’
‘What?’
‘I’m pretty sure your car was a grey import that was subject to rebirthing.’
‘Explain,’ Tank demanded.
‘Yo
ur car was never sold in Australia. It came in as a grey import and was fitted with compliance plates and VIN number from a written-off vehicle. There’s no way it complies with Australian design rules. Even if you did spend the thousands and thousands of dollars necessary to make it compliant, there are no parts available locally, and service costs would be high.’
Tank snarled, ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘I can see that,’ the guy said, taking in Tank’s uniform. ‘As a policeman you know we have to abide by the regulations. Your car is missing many of the items necessary for registration here: side intrusion bars, child restraint mounting points, for example.’ He was reading from a list. ‘The seatbelts don’t pass, the cooling system is insufficient for Australian conditions, the speedo is only graduated to one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour, the exterior mirror on the driver’s side is convex…I could go on.’
Tears of rage and disappointment pricked Tank’s eyes. He felt a black cloud hovering. ‘You’re just loving this.’
The mechanic was unmoved. He handed Tank the keys. ‘There’s no charge. I could see immediately what was wrong.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘Busy,’ said the mechanic.
‘I’m going to see what VicRoads has to say about this.’
‘I’ve already informed them. Sorry.’
‘You’re not sorry.’
Tank shot around to the VicRoads office in High Street and asked what could be done. He was hot and blustery and it did him no good at all. ‘I’m afraid we’ve already black-flagged your car,’ sniffed the guy behind the counter, the sniff owing a little to hayfever and a lot to superciliousness. He had very red lips, dampish eyes and nose. John Tankard wanted to thump him.
‘What do you mean, black-flagged?’
Tank had slipped away from work for five minutes. He could see that he’d need five hours.
‘Just what I said. You can’t register that car in Victoria, or anywhere in Australia. We’ve black-flagged it.’
‘But I bought the car from a dealer fair and square.’
‘But not with a roadworthy certificate, apparently. That should have alerted you.’
‘You’re saying it’s my fault?’
‘Sorry, sir, but you’re a policeman. Go back to the dealer and get him to return your money.’
The dealer, then the finance company, thought Tank miserably, and neither one is going to want to know me.
Evening, the light outside setting toward full darkness as Ellen sat with a scotch in one of Challis’s armchairs. The fact that it wasn’t her own armchair, glass or scotch served to underline her estrangement from her old life. She’d had foundations back then-her own house, family life-and now she was living alone in temporary accommodation. She took a gulp of scotch: seeing her situation in those terms was too depressing for words. For a start, it rendered Hal Challis as some kind of remote landlord who might turf her out at any moment. She needed to hear his voice. That would banish the image.
She called him. No answer.
She immediately called Larrayne. ‘Everything okay, babe?’
‘Yes, for the ninetieth time.’
Larrayne’s voice was muffled, her tone distracted, as though she was engaged in some other activity, like painting her nails, taking notes from a textbook or fondling her boyfriend. Ellen didn’t know. Larrayne had a new life now, new daily habits.
‘Just checking.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Larrayne said, and Ellen wanted to slap her.
‘Mum,’ said Larrayne suddenly, her tone focussing, ‘are you working on this paedophile thing?’
‘Yes,’ Ellen said. Maybe she’d get some respect, some acknowledgement.
But Larrayne failed to follow through. Ellen heard chewing. ‘It’s a nasty one,’ she went on.
‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’ Larrayne said, Ellen sensing a shudder of distaste in her daughter. A creature cried in the night. Maybe a fox, maybe after the ducklings.
The call finished, Ellen turned to ‘Evening Update’, which told her that Katie Blasko had been abused and kept dosed with Temazepam. Now, that information could have been leaked by a hospital worker, but just as easily by a member of her team. Shit, shit, shit.
30
Just before lunch on Thursday, Ellen Destry learnt a great deal more about Neville Clode, owing to a visit from a Children’s Services psychologist.
‘I don’t understand why you didn’t come to us as soon as Katie disappeared,’ Ellen said.
‘What good would that have done?’
Jane Everard was about forty, with a cap of pale fine hair, and wore a sleeveless white shirt over a dark blue cotton skirt. Her glasses, costly and fashionable, glinted contemptuously, an impression reinforced by her mouth, half open with a sardonic twist to it. Her teeth were a little crooked, which Ellen found oddly reassuring. In all other respects, Dr Everard was forbidding.
They were in Ellen’s office on the first floor of the Waterloo police station. ‘We would have investigated,’ Ellen replied.
‘Yeah, sure, males investigating males, just like last time.’
Ellen stared at Everard, blinked, then leaned back from her desk, telling herself to be conciliatory, start again. ‘I’m sorry if you got no satisfaction last time,’ she said. ‘But this is all new to me, so please be patient.’
The psychologist evidently weighed it up and returned Ellen’s smile. ‘I hadn’t realised that a woman was in charge of the abduction until I saw a story on the TV news,’ she said. ‘I came forward, hoping you’ll be more amenable than a man. I’m hoping you’re not a part of the masculinist culture of the police.’
Careful, Ellen thought. It’s not your place to point that out to me-even if I do agree. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Dr Everard?’
After a moment, Everard said, ‘Call me Jane.’
‘Jane,’ Ellen said. She didn’t return the favour. She wanted to keep some distance. Maybe they’d become pals, but not yet.
‘It all started eighteen months ago. A couple of teachers from Waterloo Secondary College started hearing rumours that kids from Seaview Park estate had been sexually molested by a man in the town. They went to the police, who seemed unable or unwilling to do anything.’
Ellen made a mental note to check the logs. ‘Did they say why?’
‘Lack of evidence. The teachers didn’t even have names to give them.’
‘Well, there’s not much that we can do if we don’t have possible victims or culprits to interview.’
Again she got a ‘So, what’s new?’ look from the psychologist, who went on to say, ‘To cut a long story short, the principal and the welfare coordinator at the school contacted us to come in and run some workshops.’
Ellen glanced at her notes, hurriedly scrawled when Everard had first come into her office. ‘You are the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Agency, attached to Children’s Services?’
‘We are.’
‘Go on.’
‘We ran several classroom workshops at all age levels, from Year 7 through to Year 12.’
Ellen waited.
‘We discussed the forms and levels of abuse, to help kids realise that they had rights, and the protection of the law, and how to avoid certain situations, and when and how to report abuse.’
‘And?’
Jane shrugged. ‘As expected, it was new and terrifying information to many kids, nothing new to others. Most looked uncomfortable.’
‘Embarrassment is a great prophylactic,’ said Ellen, immediately regretting her choice of words.
Jane cocked her head. ‘You could say that.’
Ellen flushed. ‘Did any of them come forward?’
‘We encouraged them to write down their concerns and pass those to us.’
‘Anonymously?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Two girls in Year 7 and one girl in Year 8 asked to speak to us privately. They gave mobile phone numb
ers. One girl wrote this…’
Jane Everard poked a scrap of paper toward Ellen with a slender forefinger. The nail was blunt, but lacquered a bright red. Out of habit, Ellen prodded the note into position with a ballpoint pen.
‘There is this guy Nev Clode in Waterloo,’ she read, ‘and he does stuff to girls and he tried to do it to me but I run off but one of my friends didn’t, I don’t want to give you her name.’
Ellen looked up.
Jane caught her expression. ‘You know this Clode, don’t you? Incredible. Absolutely incredible. How is it that he’s roaming free?’
‘I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with you, Jane, you know that.’
‘Oh, bullshit. We have a paedophile in our midst, Katie Blasko was apparently abducted and raped by paedophiles…Are you going to look into this or not?’
She’d cast aside her formal enunciation, showing heat, showing a personality that Ellen could relate to. ‘We are.’
‘You know this creep?’
Ellen smiled the kind of smile that answered Jane Everard’s question.
‘Well, Ellen, I’m telling you now, you won’t get very far if you’re relying on Senior Sergeant Kellock or Sergeant van Alphen.’
Ellen didn’t want to hear this. ‘Is that why you’ve come forward now? Because they’re in trouble?’
‘In trouble? They are trouble.’
‘You’d better explain.’
Glancing at her notes, the psychologist said, ‘First, we spoke to the three girls in person. The writer of that note said, and I quote, “Clode tried to kiss me and feel me and he tried to get me drunk. He showed me his dick as well. I ran away but this friend of mine goes back there sometimes.”‘ Everard glanced up at Ellen. ‘The second girl gave a similar account, again refusing to name the friend, who turns out to be the third girl. She gave a clear, unprompted account of being abused. Clode would apparently sit her on his lap and reach around and touch her between the legs. On several occasions he raped her. He also took photographs of her.’
‘Did she consent?’