by Garry Disher
‘I need you back here now.’
‘Sarge,’ Pam said, ‘I’m sorry about the radio business, but-’
‘Forget that. I need you on another matter.’
‘Sarge.’
While she waited, Ellen mused. She dipped into her store of Kellock memories, Kellock over the past few weeks. The cuts on his hands, that morning she asked for extra uniforms. Scratches? From a dog, or Katie Blasko? The briefings in which he’d discredited Alysha Jarrett. The briefings in which he’d emphasised the DNA cockups. He’d been protecting Clode and Duyker, she realised. And in murdering van Alphen, he’d been protecting the entire ring.
But how did Billy DaCosta factor into all of this? How had Kellock got to him in time? Had Kellock intimidated or paid the kid into changing his story? Had Billy acted alone, spurred by the murder of van Alphen? Or had van Alphen, a man who would help shoot dead a criminal in the interests of meting out rough justice, not hesitated to create a ‘witness’ to bring down Kellock’s gang?
There were no women in the lives of Clode and Duyker, but Kellock had a wife. A wife who suspected something? Colluded? Knew nothing? Ellen had once investigated a case of child abduction and murder in which the killer had a wife and children. On the surface he was a decent, plausible man, who went to church and was active in youth groups. When arrested, he’d denied everything. Then he’d claimed that the child had been the instigator. Then he said the child had choked in his car and he’d panicked and buried her. A kind of accident, in other words: can I go home now? Finally, as Ellen and the other investigators pulled apart his story, he got angry. A moment later he was full of apologies-not for losing his temper, as such, but for allowing his faзade to slip. Yet it was the man’s wife whom Ellen remembered. She’d known nothing of her husband’s hidden life, or his past convictions for indecent exposure to children. She was protective of him. She dismissed everything that Ellen had to say.
But Ellen had sown a seed. Before long the woman remembered that her husband had washed his own clothes on the day of the murder. He’d never done that before. He’d also washed and vacuumed his car, something he never did unless the family was going on vacation.
Men like him are dead inside, Ellen thought now, feeling spooked by a movement in the window. She’d signed for a service.38 and put her hand on the butt, ready to slip it out of the holster on her hip. But it was only a passing headlight-possibly reflected upwards from a raked windscreen-catching the corner of the whiteboard. On an impulse, she called Challis in South Australia.
Voice-mail.
She badly needed him here. She didn’t deny it. She wanted his stillness. It was a supple kind of stillness. He was respected, and respectful, but people were wary, too, for they couldn’t always read him. He was good at spotting complexities and nuances that others missed, but he also knew when to look the other way in the interests of commonsense and the best outcomes. He was a chameleon sometimes, able to connect with a homeless kid one moment and a clergyman the next. He remembered names: not only of criminals, informants and the people in the corner milk bar but also their families, friends and acquaintances.
She also liked the shadows and planes of his face. The way his backside looked in a pair of pants, too, a nice distracting thought while it lasted. But right now she needed to know what he’d do, if he were stuck in her situation. She swivelled agitatedly in her office chair.
Funny how the mind works. Stuck in her situation. There was that old Creedence song she’d played last night, ‘Stuck in Mobile again’. Why did place names in American popular songs sound mysterious, sad, romantic? She’d also played ‘Sweet home, Alabama’, singing along to the words. Yeah, she could see that working in Australia: ‘Sweet home, New South Wales’…’Stuck in Nar Nar Goon North again’… ‘Twenty-four hours from Wagga Wagga’.
‘Sarge?’
Ellen jumped.
‘I did knock, Sarge.’
‘Sorry, million miles away,’ Ellen said. ‘Close the door, pull up a chair.’
‘Sarge,’ Pam said, obliging.
‘You had a little fun tonight,’ Ellen said, when they were settled. It was now 10 pm.
Pam laughed. ‘Not the first time it’s happened to me. Back when I was fresh out of the academy they sent me to an address, said Mr Lyon was drunk and disorderly. It was the zoo.’
Ellen grinned. ‘They sent me to the arms locker to get a left-handed revolver.’
God, that had been twenty years ago. Without wasting any more time, Ellen told Pam everything, watching the younger woman shift from perky interest to distaste and finally nervy alertness as she responded with the question uppermost in Ellen’s mind: ‘If they can kill Van, what’s to stop them from killing us?’
Ellen felt a tiny surge of hope. Pam had used the word ‘us’. It said that she saw herself as part of a team.
‘We need to work fast. We need to talk to Billy DaCosta again; for a start.’
‘I saw him at Van’s,’ Pam said, explaining the circumstances.
Ellen regarded the younger woman for some time. ‘You were fond of Van, weren’t you?’
Pam nodded, her eyes damp. ‘I know he wasn’t a paragon of virtue, Sarge, but he was on the right side.’
Ellen nodded. ‘You’re going to his funeral?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
There was a brief, fraught pause, then Ellen coughed and said, ‘Here’s my interview with Billy. See if it tells us anything.’
She aimed the remote control and pushed the play button. Pam watched. She stiffened. ‘That’s not Billy DaCosta.’
Ellen paused the tape. ‘That’s not the kid you saw at Sergeant van Alphen’s house?’
‘Positive. Completely different kid. Sure, there are vague similarities-same sort of clothing, same grubby gothic look-but that’s not the Billy I was introduced to.’
Ellen was silent. They looked at each other. ‘The real Billy’s dead,’ Pam said.
‘Yes.’
‘God,’ Pam said fervently, ‘the nerve, the ability, not only to kill Van but also substitute a witness to discredit him.’
‘The substitute could also be dead.’
‘Sarge, I’m scared.’
‘Me, too.’
‘What do we do?’
‘We try to find whoever this is,’ Ellen said, indicating the flickering screen. ‘He might not be dead. He might be a victim whom they’ve turned. He might be one of the gang now, and be willing to talk.’
Pam stared at the false Billy DaCosta. ‘It looks like you interviewed him in the Victim Suite.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s drinking Coke.’
Ellen sat very still for a moment, then went around and hugged the younger woman. ‘Brilliant.’
‘But the cleaners would have cleared the can away, I suppose.’
‘Billy handled every single can of drink in that fridge,’ Ellen said. ‘No one has used the room since. We can lift his prints for sure.’
She stood and placed her hand on Pam’s shoulder. ‘We can’t do any more tonight. Go home. We have a lot to do tomorrow.’
Meanwhile Challis had reported to Sergeant Wurfel and was waiting by the phone. The call came at 10 pm, clamorous in his father’s gloomy house. ‘Was she there?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
The voice was disobliging. ‘And?’ Challis demanded.
Wurfel waited before he spoke again. Challis read hesitation, tact and a hint of impatience in it. ‘Look, I questioned her as a favour to you. You were persuasive, I’ll give you that. But it was a monumental waste of my time and I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.’
‘She and her husband are in it together,’ Challis said heatedly. ‘Gavin intended to prosecute Rex for mistreating his horse, and Rex lost his temper and killed him. They staged his disappearance, and created evidence incriminating Paddy Finucane, just in case.’
‘So you keep saying. She denies it.’
‘Of course she de
nies it.’
‘She says you barged in on her this evening, throwing your weight around. You scared her.’
‘Rubbish. She waved a shotgun at me.’
‘You scared her, Inspector. She looked scared to me.’
Challis shook his head in the cheerless room. ‘Check with Sadler, Gavin’s boss. He’ll tell you that Gavin was going after Rex Joyce.’
‘Look, this is not my case. Sadler’s been interviewed. A suspect is in custody. Case closed.’
‘Do you think I’m making all this up?’
‘Well, are you?’ demanded Wurfel. ‘Isn’t this personal? Mrs Joyce told me that you and she had been romantically involved in the past. She said you had trouble accepting that it was over and have hassled her from time to time ever since. I advised her to file a complaint, in fact.’
‘You bastard,’ Challis snarled. He felt close to losing it.
‘Inspector.’
Challis swallowed. ‘Was Rex there?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t you at least ask where he was?’
‘Rex Joyce is away on business,’ Wurfel said flatly. ‘He often is.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re his little mate, too,’ Challis said, before he could stop himself.
‘Let’s pretend I didn’t hear you say that, shall we?’
He’s going to inform Nixon and Stormare, thought Challis. They’ll inform McQuarrie. And I don’t care.
‘I think it’s worth getting up a search party tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘It’s possible Rex is suicidal. He could be up on the Bluff somewhere. He likes to go there, Lisa said.’
‘Rex Joyce,’ said Wurfel with false brightness, ‘is away on business. Goodbye.’
55
Challis slept badly and at first light on Tuesday morning drove to the Joyce homestead and mounted the steps again.
It was a replay of yesterday evening, except that this time Lisa waited behind the screen door with the shotgun. She looked perky and rested, and said, ‘Hal, I swear I’ll shoot you if you try to touch me.’
He said gently, ‘Has Rex come back? Let me talk to him.’
‘He’s still away. Look, you scared me last night.’
‘Lisa, does Rex have a mobile phone with him?’
She frowned. ‘Yes.’
He took out his own phone. ‘What’s the number?’
She shrugged, told him, and he called. Reaching Rex’s voice-mail, he pocketed the phone again. ‘He’s not answering.’
‘So? Please go.’
‘He could be hurt, Lisa. Please stop the charade.’
She looked discomposed for the first time. Stared past him at the gentle dawn light on her spreading lawns and shady trees. Sparrows and starlings were busy, calling out, squabbling, nest building.
‘Lisa?’ said Challis gently. ‘Let’s go and look for him.’
She snapped into focus again and said briskly, ‘He did receive a call yesterday. He left the house soon afterwards in the Range Rover.’
Challis nodded. ‘What mood was he in?’
She searched for the word. ‘Upset. Rambling.’
‘Let’s try the shepherd’s hut.’
She seemed embarrassed. ‘Because it has significance to him?’
‘Something like that.’
She opened the screen door and stepped out, still holding the shotgun. She smelt of perfumed soap and shampoo, a clean, healthy woman who wore jeans and a sleeveless, crisply ironed cotton shirt that revealed toned, faintly tanned, delectable skin. Challis was repelled. He took the shotgun from her hands and rested it against the verandah. ‘Let’s leave this here, okay?’
‘Whatever.’ She pointed past him. ‘That won’t make it up the Bluff
Challis eyed the Triumph, which sat dented, sun-faded and low-slung on the gravelled driveway. ‘Oh.’
He felt uncertain. Lisa took charge. ‘There’s an old Jeep in one of the sheds.’
She fetched the keys. She drove.
Fifteen minutes later they were deep into the foothills and following sheep pads, the dusty erosions that scribble all over the outback, meandering along slopes, through long grass and around stony reefs. Lisa set the Jeep to four-wheel-drive, the old vehicle wallowing and pitching, climbing steadily toward high ground. Below them lay the town, several kilometres away. The sun flashed on distant windscreens, and crows and hawks wheeled above, sideslipping in the air currents.
Suddenly the Jeep powered over a hump in the ground and they were on a little plateau, startling half-a-dozen sheep. On the far side was the shepherd’s hut, in the foreground the glossy Range Rover, facing away from them. Lisa braked, peered over the steering wheel. ‘He’s sitting in the back seat.’ Suddenly she thumped the heel of her hand against the horn. ‘Rex!’ she shouted futilely.
To Challis there was something unnatural about the shape in the rear of the Range Rover, something wrong about the relationship of the head with the shoulders, the back of the seat and the window glass.
‘Is he asleep?’ asked Lisa.
‘Stay here, okay?’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Lisa,’ he said.
‘I’m coming with you.’
They approached, drawing adjacent to the rear of the Range Rover. Rex Joyce’s head lolled back; there was blood spatter on the glass beside his left ear but more on the ceiling lining above his head. Challis assessed the signs rapidly. Joyce had shot himself. The rifle was between his knees, the muzzle under his jaw. It made a certain kind of sense.
Meanwhile Lisa had gasped and moaned and doubled over, dry-retching. Challis reached out to touch her shoulder. ‘Don’t touch me!’
He snatched his hand back.
She straightened. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Hal. I’ll be all right in a minute. Phew.’ She swallowed, grimaced at the taste. ‘There’s water in the Jeep.’
Challis let her go. He finished making his visual inspection, then followed her. He could see her shape behind the open door of the Jeep, head tilted back as she drank from a plastic bottle.
Halfway there, he stopped. He spun around and strode back to the Range Rover. First he checked the driver’s seat. It sat well forward, as though the last person to drive the vehicle had been short. Rex Joyce was tall. Then he peered through the gap in the seats, noting the rifle between the victim’s legs: it was long-barrelled, a hunting rifle. Too long for Joyce’s arms? He couldn’t be sure about that, but he was sure there should be more blood on the seat back and ceiling.
He closed the driver’s door and opened the door beside the body.
He was sorely tempted to lean in and check for signs of lividity. If Rex had died sitting upright, his blood would have pooled and settled in his buttocks, the underside of his thighs and in his feet and the bottoms of his legs. Challis was betting he’d find lividity all along the body, indicating that Lisa’s husband had died somewhere else, then been laid flat and transported here.
Police work had made Hal Challis an infinitely sympathetic man. That didn’t mean he condoned, necessarily, just that he understood, and now he turned his patient, sorrowing gaze toward the Jeep and Lisa Joyce, even as a hole appeared in the window beside him, glass chips sprayed over his face and chest, and a slipstream plucked at the hairs on his head.
56
While Challis was being shot at, Ellen Destry and Pam Murphy were attending Kees van Alphen’s funeral. They were surprised by the turnout: his wife, daughter and extended family, friends from Waterloo and other Peninsula police stations, McQuarrie and other top brass, and even a handful of snitches and hard men who’d remade their lives.
Back in the CIU incident room they worked the abduction of Katie Blasko and a backlog of minor crimes, using them as cover for more specific actions. Pam searched, without luck, for the missing files mentioned in Kees van Alphen’s notes, and checked, and confirmed, some of his other statements. Ellen drove to the forensic science lab with all of the soft drink cans from the Victim Suite refrigerator, stopping al
ong the way to show photographs of Duyker, Clode and Kellock to Andrew Retallick. He neither confirmed nor denied that they’d abused him, but he did flinch and look distressed.
At lunchtime they met in the lounge of the Fiddler’s Creek pub, taking a corner table where they could not be heard. They ordered meals-fish and chips for Pam, chicken salad for Ellen-and compared notes. Mostly the two women were ignored, but drinkers from the Seaview Park estate were in the main bar, those with criminal records casting occasional glances at them through the archway, curling their lips to keep in training. There was a background cover of shouted conversations, jukebox music and punters at the slot machines.
‘We can’t go after Kellock yet,’ Ellen said.
‘Why not?’
Ellen drained her glass, mineral water with chunks of ice floating in it. ‘There’s no hard evidence. Let’s look at his lack of action back when Alysha Jarrett lodged her complaint: he comes across as insensitive, that’s all, not a paedo protecting other paedos. And is he the only one in the police? I don’t think so, do you? Is he the only one at the Waterloo station? That’s a harder question to answer. What if Sutton or McQuarrie are in on it?’
‘Scobie? God no.’
‘I agree, it doesn’t seem likely, but Scobie’s easily intimidated. He’s very trusting-he probably shouldn’t even be a copper. If we bring him in on this, he might inadvertently reveal the details to the wrong person.’
Their meals were delivered. When the waiter was gone, Pam said flatly, ‘I can believe it of McQuarrie.’
‘It doesn’t matter who, at this stage. The thing is, Kellock is untouchable for the moment. We can’t arrest him, can’t get a warrant for his house or car. We can’t seize his clothing. We can’t trust anyone else. It’s us, Pam.’
Pam brooded. She toyed with her food, popped a chip into her mouth and chewed it. Then she said determinedly, ‘We go after Clode and Duyker, and hope one of them turns on Kellock, and we try to find Billy DaCosta.’
‘The real and the fake.’
‘Yes.’