by Garry Disher
Hal would be home soon. She pulled the plug, dried herself with a thick clean towel, opened the wardrobe to grab her dressing gown. It was a small wardrobe, stuff crammed onto a shelf above the clothes rail and on the floor, and when she hauled out her dressing gown the tails of it dislodged the lid on one of Hal’s shoeboxes. She crouched to replace it.
She paused. He’d scrawled ‘Bushfire Keepsakes’ on a label pasted to the lid. She should put it back. Instead, she pulled the gown around her and sat on the floor and sifted through the contents. Passport. Bank and insurance statements. His will, inside an envelope. A bundle of letters. Ellen glanced at the sender: his wife, the address of the prison where she’d killed herself. Feeling ratshit, she sorted through the photographs. A studio shot of his wife. Hal and wife on their wedding day. Holiday snaps. His late parents. His sister. His niece. Two graduation photographs.
And, finally, photographs of herself: at that Christmas party last year, a candid shot at her desk, shaking hands with the super, receiving an award from the assistant commissioner. Ellen wept a little as she visualised her lover deciding what he held dear, what he wanted to remember, what he’d save if a bushfire threatened to burn his house down.
‘As for me,’ she muttered, ‘even my dressing gown is stolen.’
Her resistance was so low that Telstra could call now and she’d sign up for the most expensive phone plan they offered.
Ellen replaced the shoebox and headed for the sitting room, seeking distractions. She didn’t want to call anyone. She couldn’t be bothered with music. She switched on the TV idly and flicked through the channels, and there was Ollie Hindmarsh, feigning outrage, greasily explaining to a battery of microphones that he’d sacked Dirk Roe as soon as he’d been informed about the fellow’s blog.
‘Yeah, right,’ said Ellen. Talking back to the TV always made her feel better.
‘Furthermore,’ said Hindmarsh, ‘Dirk Roe was merely my electoral office manager, essentially a clerical role, not an aide or advisor.’
But did Hindmarsh endorse Roe’s views?
Of course not, don’t be absurd.
Ellen, her depression forgotten temporarily, sensed an implication in the denial. Hindmarsh seemed to be saying, in his bluff, strong-chinned way, that he scarcely knew what a blog was, that to a true Australian like himself-male, older generation, ex-armed services-a blog was somehow unsavoury and effeminate.
‘But the Roe Report endorses you,’ a reporter pointed out.
‘I’m not responsible for anything Mr Roe says or does.’
‘You employed him.’
‘And I sacked him,’ Hindmarsh said. ‘Look, I have a sizeable staff. It’s a responsible job. Mr Roe was merely a paper pusher in my electoral office, which is scarcely the seat of power. I spend most of my time in the city, as you well know.’
‘Arsehole,’ said Ellen. Like most Liberal Party supporters and politicians, Hindmarsh was the kind of man who’d endorse white supremacists, anti-Semites and crackpot fundamentalists if the sum effect were just one more vote won than lost.
Buoyed a little, she called her daughter’s mobile phone.
‘Just seeing how you are.’
‘Fine, Mum,’ Larrayne said.
She sounded bright and happy and there were no background noises of the kind that might make a mother tense up-no partying flatmates, pub music or barrelling traffic. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing much.’
Larrayne had always been like this, even as a little kid at school. Ellen would discover weeks later, usually by chance, that her daughter had been appointed captain of the netball team, chosen to recite a poem at assembly or awarded a distinction for a maths test. Larrayne’s world was subterranean. She offered glimpses into it only rarely.
‘How’s work?’
‘Fine.’
Her university exams over for the year, Larrayne was working in a bookshop called Paydirt, a dingy warren of crime paperbacks beneath street level in the heart of downtown Melbourne, within spitting distance of the town hall, the cathedral and the shopping arcades. It was entirely possible that she’d got the job by telling the proprietor her mother was a cop.
‘Want to come down for the weekend?’
‘Have to work. Sorry.’
Larrayne didn’t altogether approve of Ellen’s living with Challis. She didn’t approve of her father having a girlfriend, either. The separation and divorce were still raw, she wanted a return to how things had been, even though she herself had left home and lived in the city now. She’d thaw eventually. Maybe.
‘You at home?’
‘Yes.’
With or without a guy? There were things that Ellen wanted to ask and know, but then Hal’s old car came creeping up the driveway, headlights dipping and levelling as he negotiated the potholes.
‘Speak to you soon,’ Ellen said.
****
Josh was watching the adult channel, $15.95 worth of fake moans and silicon tits, alone for the first time this Schoolies Week and too scared to go out. He jacked off desultorily and thought about his miserable day.
Miserable because he’d accomplished nothing, despite his fine intentions. He was going to report that female cop to the cops who investigate other cops, what were they called, Internal Affairs, Ethical Standards? Hell, he was the victim here. But then he had second thoughts. Cops protected each other, right? You only had to read the paper. Plus, if that bitch explained how she’d found him-naked, his balls painted with red lipstick-he’d be a laughing stock.
And so he’d spent the day doing nothing.
At that moment he spotted a rectangular white shape at the corner of his eye. At first he didn’t want to turn his head and look. Images and great surges of strange energy came to him sometimes, and he feared this was one of those times. Then he did look and saw that somebody had slipped an envelope under his motel room door. Feeling a kind of creeping dread, he opened it.
A poorly lit photo of him on the sand, naked, balls all red.
****
At the start of the evening news, Scobie Sutton opened to a knock on his front door.
‘May I help you?’
The man standing under the porch light shot out his hand. ‘Hello, you must be Beth’s husband, Scobie, correct?’
Scobie’s good manners were automatic. He shook the proffered hand. ‘May I help you?’
‘I’m Pastor Jeffreys of the First Ascensionists Church.’
He was also Pete Jeffreys and he owned the local HomeWare franchise. He sold mattresses, rugs, linoleum and cheap sweatshop furniture. You saw his fleshy, trying-too-hard face everywhere: the local paper, a hoarding outside his shop, flyers in your letterbox several times a year. He was always announcing clearance sales.
Scobie got a creepy feeling, as if forces were aligned against him. He opened his mouth but the shopkeeper got in first:
‘If I could just have a quick word with Beth. Won’t take a moment.’
‘I don’t think…’
With what might have been genuine emotion, Jeffreys said, ‘Your wife was very close to Mr Roe. What happened to him hit her hard. She needs support in this trying time. We’re devoted to her, as she is to us. I know she’d like to see me.’
‘She’s lying down,’ said Scobie truthfully, wondering why he hadn’t said she was out, or wouldn’t want to see the man.
Jeffreys watched him keenly for a moment, then nodded. ‘Tell her I called, will you?’
‘Yes,’ said Scobie, wondering why he’d said that, too.
****
So much for the new ruling that police officers should never patrol solo after dark: five Waterloo constables, including Andy Cree, were off work with some gastric bug, so Tank was on his lonesome in a divisional van, prowling the little towns and back roads around Waterloo.
One domestic, one pub brawl, one road rage incident. He wouldn’t get off work until midnight, then he was expected to go on duty again tomorrow morning, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The
timetabling at Waterloo was completely fucked up as far as he was concerned.
At 10 p.m. the dispatcher directed him to the Penzance Beach area, reports of a drag race. The culprits were long gone. Tank turned the car around, heading back, and just happened to drive past Pam Murphy’s house on his way out. There was a candle flickering behind a curtain in a side window.
Which probably explained Andrew Cree’s Mazda coupe parked in her driveway.
****
34
Friday morning.
Challis checked the overnight incident log as soon as he arrived at work, and buried in Thursday night’s litany of burglaries, car theft and assault were two items of immediate interest to him: Ludmilla Wishart’s handbag had been handed in at the front desk, and there’d been a break-in at Planning East.
He clattered down the stairs. It was 7.45 and a handful of the keener 8 a.m. starters were drifting into work, cluttering up the corridors and yarning with the duty sergeant. Challis edged through them and asked for the handbag. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘Sorry, sir. One of the probationers handled it, logged it as missing property handed in by a member of the public’
Challis checked the log. The handbag had been spotted by an elderly woman walking her dog on the beach below the cliffs at Shoreham at six o’clock on Thursday morning. She had handed it in at Waterloo that evening, after a Probus class. Challis sighed. Someone from the police would have to talk to her, a necessary part of covering all the bases, but it didn’t seem likely that she had anything to do with the killing. He signed for the handbag, hooked a ballpoint pen under the strap and carried it upstairs, where he spread the contents out on the incident room table. He peered at it with the others, separating the items with the same ballpoint pen.
‘On the surface,’ Ellen said, ‘it looks like a simple mugging.’
Challis nodded. Wallet, hairbrush, a packet of tissues, lipstick, Lifesavers, a diary and an address book-both small, bound with thin black leather-ballpoint pens, lint, tampons and crumpled parking receipts. He flipped open the wallet. ‘No cash or cards,’ he said. ‘Medicare card, library card, that’s it.’
‘What about her mobile phone?’ asked Sutton, staring gloomily at the bag and contents.
‘There should be an MP3 player too,’ Ellen said.
‘If she was murdered, they’d both have been tossed into the sea,’ said Challis. ‘If she was mugged, they’ve been sold or kept. I tried phoning her mobile and got a recorded message, saying it’s switched off or out of range.’
He placed everything into individual brown paper evidence bags. ‘These can go to the lab. Meanwhile, Scobie, I want you with me.’ He glanced at Ellen, unwilling to give her a direct order. ‘Ellen?’
She gave him an unreadable look. ‘Pam and I will speak to the demolition contractor.’
‘That leaves Hugh Ebeling, who ordered the demolition,’ Challis told her. ‘Later this morning, you and I will drive up to the city and see what he has to say for himself
‘Yes.’
When he got to the yard with Sutton five minutes later, Challis saw that both CIU cars had been signed out. ‘We’ll take your car,’ he muttered to Sutton, hoping the man didn’t want to talk. He wanted time to think about Ellen: Ellen distant last night and this morning, sometimes watching him with great apprehension and intensity. ‘Nothing,’ she’d said, when he’d asked what was eating her.
But Sutton, driving the elderly Volvo inexpertly and inattentively, did talk, prattling on about his daughter, the way she was always altering the ring tone on his mobile phone or altering the desktop display on the family computer. ‘Kids and their gadgets,’ he said.
‘Huh,’ grunted Challis.
There was a pause, then Sutton rattled out the words, ‘Boss, I think I’ve done something stupid.’
Challis grunted again. Sutton, approaching a school crossing, braked erratically, jerking Challis out of his reverie. ‘What stupid thing?’
‘Sorry, boss. I have to get it off my chest.’
Challis waited, Sutton waited, as the children crossed the road, the crossing guard returned to the footpath and the world turned over. Someone tooted and Sutton trundled on again. Challis was irritated with the man’s abject proprieties. ‘I’m not getting any younger, Scobie.’
‘Sorry. It’s this business with the wife.’
‘Her involvement with that crackpot church?’ prompted Challis.
‘Uh huh,’ Sutton said, and closed his mouth with a click. His Volvo swerved to avoid a double-parked car, found its lane again and a moment later gave every indication of passing a school bus on a blind corner. If Challis hadn’t been so lost in thought since last night, he’d not have let Sutton drive. Ellen had warned him often enough. The side street for the planning office came into view and at the last minute Sutton steered into it.
‘They were at my place last night,’ he said.
‘Who were?’
‘On my doorstep. I think they want to lure her away from me. What if they go after Ros? Kids are so impressionable.’
There was a police car outside the planning office, John Tankard taking a statement from Athol Groot. Tank looked sour about something. His partner, Andrew Cree, was photographing a glass-panelled door at the side of the building. A couple of schoolkids stood nearby, bored rather than curious. A glazier waited to measure and replace the broken glass. Challis noted all of these things as Sutton glided toward the kerb and executed a perfect park.
‘Speak now or forever hold your peace,’ he said.
In a rush, Sutton said, ‘Yesterday I leaked the Roe Report to Channel Seven.’
Challis stiffened. He turned to Sutton. Then he began to laugh.
‘I thought you’d be angry.’
‘You’ve done us a good turn, Scobie.’
They got out and crossed the road to the planning office. ‘I hope you showed the blog to your wife,’ Challis said.
Sutton shook his head unequivocally. ‘Oh no, unpleasant things upset her.’
‘Fuck that,’ snarled Challis. ‘She needs to know what these people are like. Morning,’ he said to Tankard, Cree and the chief planner.
‘Sir, Scobie,’ Tankard said.
‘What have we got?’
Cree jumped in, all bushytailed. ‘The side door was jimmied open sometime last night. Discovered by a cleaner at five this morning.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Andy,’ Tankard said.
Whatever their beef was, Challis couldn’t be bothered with it. ‘Anything taken?’
‘They stole a laptop and a printer,’ said Groot agitatedly. The early morning air was cool, but he looked plumply flushed and moist inside his suit coat.
‘That all?’ Challis asked, stepping through the breached door. The forensic team had been and gone, leaving the frame powder-brushed for prints. More powder on interior doorjambs, desks and filing cabinets.
‘Don’t think so. Haven’t had a close look yet,’ the planner said.
‘Whose computer?’
‘Mine.’
‘The only laptop in the building?’
‘Yes. As you can see, the other members of staff have PCs.’
With state-of-the-art widescreen LCD monitors, noted Challis. Why hadn’t the thieves taken those? ‘Where was the printer?’
‘Here,’ Groot said, pointing to a desk against one wall.
‘Networked?’
‘Yes.’
Challis gazed around at the wall charts, cabinets, blueprints, folders and desk clutter. Why not the slimline cordless phones? The portable hard drive on one of the desks? The wireless router?
Maybe the thieves had been in a hurry.
‘Is there a box for petty cash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘My bottom drawer.’
‘Let’s see.’
The cashbox was there and intact. The drawer would have been easier to jimmy open than the outside door. Trailed by Groot and Sutton, Challis went
from one filing cabinet, work station and office cubicle to the next, running his gaze along each cabinet and desk drawer. Only one desk drawer showed signs of damage-very faint.
He pointed to it. ‘Mrs Wishart’s desk, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s been tampered with.’
‘Oh.’
‘When did that happen? Before last night?’
Groot blinked. ‘Don’t really know.’
‘Perhaps she lost her key one day? Needed to force it open?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Or her husband came around to collect her things after the murder and needed to force the lock?’
‘It’s possible,’ said the planner doubtfully, staring back down the weeks and months. ‘It’s possible her husband came to collect her things.’ He warmed to this theory, saying, ‘He was always hanging around, you know.’
‘Or whoever broke into the office last night also broke into her desk.’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
Then one of the office staff arrived and he seemed to swell and go rigid. He ducked away from Challis and hissed at the woman, ‘You’re late.’
She paled. ‘Sorry, sorry, my kids are sick.’
‘Even so,’ Groot said.
****
35
Meanwhile Destry and Murphy were driving to interview the demolition guy, Ellen at the wheel, trying to concentrate on how she’d approach the questioning. But her thoughts kept sliding back to the break-in and her awful mood last night and this morning, so that at first she didn’t take in what Pam Murphy was telling her.
Then one word registered. ‘Revenge?’ she said, struggling to pay attention.
‘Uh huh. He doped her with GHB at last year’s Schoolies Week, raped her, and forgot all about it. She didn’t forget all about it. She recognised him. I even heard her accuse him: “Raped anyone lately, Josh?” He probably wondered what she was talking about.’