by Garry Disher
Ellen tried to take the initiative. ‘You’ve been identified from a photograph array as being one of the men involved in the sexual abuse of underage boys, Pete.’
According to Kees van Alphen, thought Scobie in disgust. Van Alphen had been evasive lately, supplying partial answers or none at all, and he was never in his office. Running his own investigation, as Ellen had said in frustration last night.
Then, out of nowhere, an appalling thought came to Scobie: van Alphen was running interference for this gang of paedophiles. Van Alphen had assured Ellen that his informant, some kid named Billy DaCosta, had identified Duyker and Clode from a photo array, but maybe that was a delaying tactic, or an outright lie. And where were van Alphen and his mystery informant?
Duyker was yawning. ‘Are we done? Can I go?’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Ellen said. ‘We intend to make the fraud charges stick.’
‘So, make them stick.’
‘We will’
‘My lawyer will have me back on the street so fast your heads will spin,’ said Duyker, showing heat for the first time.
Scobie suspected it was true. A search of the man’s house had found nothing. His van was clean, apparently washed, waxed and vacuumed until it was like new. But Scobie and Ellen knew what Duyker didn’t know: there was a paint smear in the rear compartment. Purple enamel, the same colour as Katie Blasko’s bike, a smear so tiny that it was no wonder Duyker had missed it, amongst all of those other scuffs and scratches, obtained from years of loading and unloading. They were waiting for a paint analysis. They’d already approached the manufacturer of the bike for the composition of the paint that had been used on bikes like Katie Blasko’s.
They didn’t have the bike, though. ‘It will be at the bottom of the bay,’ Ellen had said last night. ‘We might prove he had a bike on board, but not that he had Katie Blasko’s bike.’
Now Scobie heard her ask Duyker to account for his movements on the afternoon Katie Blasko was abducted.
Duyker shrugged. ‘Out and about, probably.’ He shifted in his seat, fishing for his wallet. It was a fat wallet, the leather worn, the cotton stitches unravelling. And full of business cards, receipts and paper scraps. Scobie and Ellen watched as he leafed through it all, wetting his index finger laboriously, loving every minute of it. ‘Here we are,’ he said eventually.
He slid a cash register receipt across the table. Ellen poked it into position with her fingernail. Scobie peered at it with her. At 4 pm on the day Katie Blasko was abducted, Peter Duyker had been buying a photography magazine in a city newsagency, one-and-a-half hours away by car or van. ‘My filing system,’ he said apologetically, ‘leaves a lot to be desired.’
45
Then Duyker’s lawyer arrived and advised Duyker to say nothing more. ‘Nothing more?’ echoed Duyker. ‘I haven’t said anything to begin with.’
‘How long will you be holding my client, Sergeant Destry, assuming you don’t charge and remand him?’
‘The full twenty-four hours.’
‘Is that necessary?’
‘It’s necessary,’ said Ellen flatly.
The door closed on Duyker and the lawyer. In the corridor outside the interview room, Scobie began to apologise. ‘I’m sorry, Ellen. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘No, you weren’t, were you? We still don’t know if the DNA found on Duyker’s skin mags-which might belong to someone else, incidentally-can be matched to the DNA found in De Soto Lane, or to the degraded DNA found on Serena Hanlon.’
‘I thought I’d throw a scare into him.’
‘Well you didn’t,’ Ellen said.
Perhaps she was being unfair. The truth was, she was finding it hard to get Hal Challis out of her head this morning. He’d phoned her with the news about his father, and she could still hear the desolation in his voice, the particular timbre of his grief and sadness. A hint of longing and loneliness, too? She thought so. She wanted to be with him, but could hardly do that, for he’d be too distracted, she didn’t know his family, and she had important investigations to run. And so he resided in her mind.
She made for her office. Maybe DNA evidence would help solve this case, but the lab was dragging its heels, and who knew what appalling errors of procedure it was making. She cast back in her mind, Duyker sitting comfortably across from her in the interview room. No bite marks on his fingers or forearms. Maybe Sasha had bitten him on the leg.
She was leafing desultorily through paperwork in her in-tray when the lab called. ‘That paint chip,’ one of the technicians-not Riggs- said.
‘Yes?’
‘We traced it to a line of children’s bicycles manufactured by Malvern Star between 2003 and 2005.’
‘Yes!’ said Ellen.
‘We aim to please.’
Ellen pressed the disconnect button of her desk phone and sat like that for a while. She should have made a more concerted effort, sooner, to find the bike. Everything that had happened, especially finding Katie alive, had blinded her to obvious matters. She released the button and called the media office, arranging for a wide circulation of descriptions and photographs of the bike. She was in a kind of trance now. She was stepping inside Duyker’s skin, not Duyker the paedophile-she ‘knew’ that side of him-but Duyker with an unwanted child’s bike on his hands.
This Duyker would have left the bike, helmet and schoolbag in his van after taking Katie Blasko to the empty house, but he wouldn’t have wanted to keep them for long. There were remote places he could dump everything, but what if he were seen by someone. Also, a newish bicycle found in the middle of nowhere is going to raise questions, especially if the police have been saying they’re looking for one just like it (here Ellen squirmed in her seat). Dumping the stuff at sea would require a boat. No, she could see Duyker leaving the bike in a public place, where children played-the sort of community where claiming an abandoned bike as your own was not a matter of dishonesty but of keeping your trap shut and thanking your lucky stars. The helmet and schoolbag he could have dumped anywhere.
Her only hope now was a firm ID from van Alphen’s street kid, Billy DaCosta. She went downstairs. Van Alphen was not in his office, or Kellock’s. According to the front desk, he hadn’t checked in yet. She made for the sergeants’ lounge. Kellock was there, flipping through a newspaper, turning the pages in typical style, as if to tear them out. He looked up at her with barely controlled patience. ‘Kel,’ she murmured, turning to go out.
‘Sergeant Destry,’ Kellock roared.
She turned back.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m looking for Van.’
‘Maybe I can help you.’
She tried not to show her frustration. ‘I need a statement from his witness. I need to take it myself, face to face. I can’t take Van’s word for it that this kid of his can identify Clode and Duyker.’
‘Kid?’
‘A street kid called Billy DaCosta. Van Alphen found him and was supposed to be bringing him in this morning.’
Kellock tossed the newspaper aside and lumbered across the room to her. He spoke, a gust of coffee breath: ‘Look, Van’s one of the good guys, but this shooting board investigation of the Jarrett shooting has got him worried. I’m worried. He could lose the plot, crack under the pressure. Go easy on him. Give him time.’
‘He’s running around finding witnesses and collecting evidence,’ said Ellen exasperatedly. ‘If it’s useful, great. But I can’t afford to waste time on red herrings, or fail to act because he cries wolf once too often.’
‘Leave it to me.’
‘He could run into some nasty people, doing what he’s doing.’
‘I know that.’
Ellen cocked her head. ‘Unless he’s protecting them.’
She hadn’t meant to say it. You always divided the officers you worked with into those who made you uncomfortable and those who didn’t. You did it every time you were posted to a new station or squad. It didn’t mean the men or women who made y
ou feel uncomfortable were dishonest in the strictly legal sense, or unlikely to watch your back in a tricky situation, but you knew to be wary of them. You didn’t offer them anything of yourself. Kees van Alphen had always made Ellen feel uncomfortable. Hal Challis had always said, ‘Be careful of that guy.’
Now Kellock had his head on one side. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
Ellen blushed and to defuse the moment said, ‘It’s all a bit too murky for me, Kel, this case.’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll track him down and reel him in.’
‘Thanks.’
She returned to her office and found Duyker’s lawyer waiting in the corridor. Sam Lock was short, damply overweight in a heavy suit, the knot of his yellow tie a fat delta under his soft chins. In all other respects he was hard and sharp. ‘A quick word, Ellen?’
She led him into her office. He looked around it amusedly. ‘Hal Challis’s office, if I’m not mistaken. How is the good inspector?’
‘Get on with it, Sam.’
‘I want you to let my client go. Fraud charges? A few hundred dollars here and there? Resides locally?’
‘Resides all over Australia, Sam. Sure, he owns a place in Safety Beach, but he likes to travel, stay a while, rip off star-struck mothers of young children-amongst other things more serious-and move on again.’
Lock examined his fingernails. Like all lawyers, he was full of little diversions that masked or delayed his real intent. Police officers did it, too. Ellen waited.
‘You think he abducted Katie Blasko?’
Ellen gazed at him, wondering how much to reveal. Sam Lock would battle furiously on behalf of a client but he also had small children, two boys and a girl. ‘He had something to do with it, even if not directly. He was there in that house with her. We also suspect him of the rape and murder of a child back in 1995, and are currently matching his movements nationwide with unsolved rapes and abductions of young girls.’
‘He said you have DNA.’
‘Yes,’ Ellen said neutrally.
‘But is it his? You don’t have strong enough grounds to compel a sample from him, and his DNA is not on file anywhere. I wouldn’t get your hopes up even if you had a sample, and matched it, because your forensic science lab is prone to stuffups. Witness the Neville Clode debacle.’
Ellen watched him carefully. ‘Who told you about that?’
Lock shrugged.
‘You do know that Clode’s late wife was Duyker’s sister?’
‘That was mentioned.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you? Sure, the lab has admitted instances of cross contamination, but what if there wasn’t any contamination in this instance?’
‘It all goes to reasonable doubt, Ellen. You’ll need something stronger if you’re going to charge my client with Blasko. Meanwhile he’s going to walk on that chickenshit charge you brought him in on.’
‘Meanwhile you keep your children where you can see them,’ Ellen snapped.
Lock’s eyes flared, then he was impassive again, and Ellen watched him walk away. Moments later, her mobile rang, Kellock asking her to meet him on the Seaview Park estate.
46
Ellen stared at the body. The blood, bone chips and brain matter had slid down the wall here and there, and were beginning to dry. A couple of flies had got into the house. The left side of van Alphen’s skull had taken the brunt of the shot: massive damage that still left enough of the face intact to confirm identity. Scobie Sutton was sketching the scene in his notebook. Like Ellen, and the crime scene technicians, he wore disposable overshoes.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Kellock, grim-faced in the doorway.
They were friends, thought Ellen, and now he was to inform the super.
‘Who found him?’
‘I did. Went looking for him, as I said I would, and recognised his car.’
‘What do you suppose he was doing here?’
Kellock shrugged. ‘Doing his own thing.’
‘Doing his own thing, and look where it got him. Do we know who lives here?’
‘I looked through the bills,’ Kellock said, indicating a shallow fruit bowl piled with papers, unopened envelopes, spare keys, a hair tie and a half packet of potato chips sealed with a clothes peg. Every house in the land has a receptacle like that, Ellen thought.
‘And?’
‘Rosemary McIntyre.’
Ellen cast back in her mind. ‘The name doesn’t mean anything. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘No. I called it in and they ran it through the computer. Solicitation, twelve years ago.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
When Kellock had left, Ellen looked for a calendar or diary but found nothing. Then the pathologist arrived and she watched him examine the body. She realised that her mouth was dry and she wasn’t feeling her customary remoteness. She was well aware that the job had desensitised her. That was necessary. She was quite able to attend an autopsy and cold-bloodedly note the angle of a knife wound or gunshot, knowing that that information might catch a suspect out in a lie (‘He tripped and fell on my knife’), but right now her eyes were pricking with tears. Van Alphen was a fellow police officer. She blinked and looked keenly at Scobie Sutton. ‘Your first dead copper?’ she murmured.
‘Yes.’
‘Upsetting.’
‘I regret every violent death, Ellen.’
Sometimes he could sound like a churchman or a politician. ‘Come off it, Scobe.’
‘He was a nasty piece of work.’
‘He didn’t always follow regulations,’ Ellen conceded.
‘He and Kellock shot Nick Jarrett in cold blood,’ Scobie said, ‘and more or less warned me not to investigate too hard.’
Ellen blinked. There were spots of colour on her colleague’s gaunt cheeks, his stick-like figure inclined toward her, draped in his habitual dark, outmoded suit. She backed up a step. The technicians and the pathologist were looking on interestedly but hadn’t heard the outburst.
‘All right, settle down,’ she murmured. ‘There’s an estranged wife and daughter, I believe?’
Scobie wiped his mouth. ‘I sent someone to inform them.’
‘Thank you.’
They stood for a while, watching the pathologist, who finally released the body. The local funeral director took charge then, overseeing as the body was loaded onto a gurney and taken out to a waiting hearse for transfer to the morgue. The pathologist sighed and pulled off his latex gloves with a couple of snaps.
‘Time of death, doc?’ Ellen asked.
‘Time of death. It’s always time of death with you people.’
‘Well?’
‘Last night. Late evening. I can’t be more specific than that.’
‘Thanks,’ Ellen said. She paused, then muttered to Scobie, ‘I want you to bring Laurie Jarrett in for questioning. Meanwhile I’ll see if I can find Van’s witness.’
‘If he exists,’ said Scobie heatedly. ‘Van Alphen was probably trying to divert attention away from the Jarrett shooting. Trying to make himself look good.’
‘Even so.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Ellen cocked her head. Was he hoping to find a diary or journal in which van Alphen described the true circumstances of the Jarrett shooting? Before she could reply, a voice called from the front of the house, a woman’s cigarettes-and-whisky voice, full of outrage. ‘What are you lot doin’ here? I live here, you bastard, take your hands off me.’
They heard her pounding through the house. She burst in on them, shouting, ‘You got a warrant?’
Then she spotted the gore, and went white, rocking on her feet. Ellen guided her back to the sitting room at the front of the house. The newcomer was about forty, dressed in high heels, a black, short-sleeved beaded top, a knee-length tan skirt and dark stockings. Thick, dirty-blonde hair. Plenty of gold on her slim fingers. Slim legs and ankles, Ellen noticed, but a bit heftier around the bu
m and chest. A good-looking woman, a woman who liked the nightlife.
‘Rosemary McIntyre?’
‘Who wants to know? Was someone hurt? What’s going on?’
Ellen introduced herself and then Scobie. ‘First, can you tell us where you were last night?’
Not so belligerent now, Rosemary McIntyre gazed about her sitting room, which was dominated by a home entertainment unit, huge white leather armchairs facing it. There were a couple of pewter photo frames and very little else. ‘Out,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘I work up in the city.’
‘Where?’
Rosemary McIntyre folded her arms stubbornly. ‘Siren Call.’
‘The brothel?’
‘Legal brothel.’
‘I’m not making judgements. Were you there all evening?’
‘Since six yesterday afternoon. I’m exhausted, and come home to this.’
Ellen didn’t doubt that her alibi would check out. ‘Does the name Sergeant van Alphen mean anything to you?’
“Course it does.’
Ellen regarded her for a moment. ‘That’s his blood on your floor and wall.’
Rosemary McIntyre screwed up her face tightly, then relaxed it, breathed out, looking bewildered. ‘Don’t know anything about that. I mean, what was he doing here?’
‘Well, you’re the one who says his name means something to you.’
‘Well, duh.’
‘Explain, please. Are you having a relationship with Sergeant van Alphen?’
The woman flushed angrily. ‘Are you having a go at me? Are you? Fucking bitch.’
‘No, I am not having a go at you. I’m trying to piece together what happened here.’
‘Van Alphen,’ said Rosemary McIntyre heavily, ‘is one of the bastards that shot Nick.’
‘You knew Nick Jarrett?’
‘He’s my second cousin,’ said Rosemary McIntyre, as if Ellen and the whole world should have known that.