by Garry Disher
‘Bet on it,’ Pam said.
‘I’ll radio it in, ask the others to keep an eye open.’
Pam turned right, away from the cars of the gawkers, and drove for one third of a kilometre to the next driveway, which took them to a large wooden structure shaped like a pergola. A sign said, ‘Tasting Room.’
‘Good wine here,’ Tankard said.
Pam stared at him. Had he liked the wine or had he simply liked the drinking? A woman came around the side of the building. She wore overalls and carried a small stepladder.
‘You’ve come about the fire?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s not much I can tell you. We decided to evacuate, just in case. Didn’t come back till this morning.’
‘Actually, we’re after information about the householder,’ Pam said.
‘You mean Clara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Poor woman. What a dreadful thing. Was it an accident?’
‘We believe so. What can you tell us about her?’
‘Not much. In her late twenties, New Zealander. I don’t think I ever knew what her surname was, or I’ve forgotten it if I did know.’
‘Friends? Relatives? Anything like that?’
‘Can’t help you, sorry. She kept to herself.’
The next driveway, at the top of the hill, took them to a large house with a view across Waterloo to the refinery point on the bay. The curtains were drawn in all of the windows and no-one answered when they knocked at the front and back doors. Pam peered through a gap in the lockup garage and saw a newish-looking Mercedes.
Then they heard a tin clatter in the gardening shed and came upon an elderly man pouring petrol into a ride-on mower.
‘God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.’
‘Do you live here, sir?’
‘Me? No. I pop in now and then, do the mowing, watering, check on things. Why? What’s up?’
Pam got out her notebook. ‘Can you tell me who does live here?’
‘Stella Riggs. She’s away for a few days.’
Pam noted the details, including a reminder to come back and question Riggs. ‘Sir, do you know anything about the fire down the road?’
‘Me? Nothing. Should I?’
‘A woman called Clara died in it. We’re anxious to trace her relatives.’
‘Don’t know a thing about her.’
‘Do you live locally, sir?’
‘No.’
Pam looked around pointedly. ‘I don’t see a vehicle.’
The old man indicated a rusty bicycle. ‘What do you think that is?’
Danny had been seen going over the fence. He was also seen coming back, this time by Sergeant van Alphen and a constable in a divisional van.
‘Danny, my son.’
‘Shit.’
‘Now look what you’ve gone and done. Perfectly good VCR, and you have to drop it in the dirt.’
‘I can explain. The heads need cleaning and I was just taking it around to-’
Van Alphen punched him, not hard, but enough to make him reconsider his position. ‘What was that, Danny? I didn’t quite catch that.’
Tears came unbidden to Danny’s eyes and he saw it was true, what they said about van Alphen. ‘Don’t hit me no more. I want to see Constable Murphy.’
‘What do you want to see her for?’
‘She’ll give me immunity.’
‘That’s a big word for a squidgy little shit like you. And I doubt it, somehow.’
They took Danny to the station and charged him. But the Pam Murphy chick wasn’t in the station, so Danny said, ‘I want to call my lawyer.’
Nunn was quick off the mark. There in ten minutes. Danny couldn’t believe it. She demanded time alone with him, and as soon as the door was shut she said, ‘You’re a fuckup, aren’t you, Danny, eh?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Danny looked at her hotly. Thinks she’s so good, all dolled up in her tight skirt and jacket, briefcase, hair looking like its been washed and brushed for hours, smelling like a bottle of perfume’s fallen all over her, nasty superior look on her face. ‘You got no right to call me names.’
‘I’ve got every right. As your lawyer, I’ve got every right. What did you think you were doing? Broad daylight. You’ve got a good job. Can’t you be satisfied with that? I can’t go spending all my time bailing you out of trouble.’
Fucking stuck-up bitch. Who did she think she was? ‘So, am I getting out or aren’t I?’
‘Mate,’ Marion Nunn said, ‘quite frankly I can’t get you out of here quick enough. You can’t be trusted to keep your gob shut.’
Now, what was that supposed to mean? Still, better out than in.
Challis picked up the ringing phone and snapped off his name. It was six o’clock and he wanted to go home. ‘Challis.’
‘It’s Freya. Got a minute?’
Challis sat back in his office chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘This sounds like bad news.’
‘It is.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘The lungs. Fresh and pink inside.’
Challis put his feet up on the edge of his desk. ‘You’re saying she’d stopped breathing before the fire started.’
‘I am.’
‘Heart?’
‘The heart was fine. But you know those bone fractures, and the bleeding?’
‘How will I ever forget.’
‘Well, most were due to the extreme heat, but not all. She’d been bashed around first. Beaten to death, in other words.’
Challis said goodbye and stared at the wall. After a while, he called the Progress and told Tessa Kane, ‘You might want to stop the presses.’
And wondered at his motives.
Twenty
Ellen was late on Thursday morning. Challis’s Triumph was already in the car park, Scobie Sutton’s station wagon, cars she recognised as belonging to the seconded officers from Rosebud and Mornington.
She found Rhys slicing open the tape around a small box with a pocket knife. He smiled, then immediately sobered and touched her forearm. ‘Are you all right?’
She’d been crying for half of the night. ‘Just tired.’
‘Tell me.’
His big hands were on her shoulders. She looked away, blinking hard. ‘It’s nothing, Rhys. I’m okay.’
She felt his fingers relax and finally release her. He turned away. ‘Fair enough. None of my business.’
In a way, it was. She tugged him back and searched his face. She wanted to be able to say that she’d had the most godawful row with her husband, that her husband felt scared and threatened, and had accused her of being fast-tracked because she was a woman, of splashing her money about on air-conditioning just to show him up, and of fucking the man she’d hired to install it. But all she said to Rhys Hartnett was, ‘Things are a bit tense at home, that’s all.’ She paused. ‘Look, Rhys, I don’t know how to say this-I’m sorry, but we won’t be having aircon fitted after all. It’s… the time’s not right.’
He jerked away from her, ‘I didn’t like being the focus of your husband’s dislike anyway. Or your daughter’s.’
‘Oh, Rhys, it’s not that, it’s-’
‘I’m not stupid.’
She watched his face, then said, as firmly as she could, ‘I’m very sorry.’
He looked away and stood there, stiff and chafing. ‘It happens.’
‘You won’t be out of pocket?’
‘It’s summer. People always want aircon.’
‘That’s good.’
His shapely fingers took a small calibrated instrument from the box. ‘I’ll be finished here this morning. Just have to mount a few of these thermostats and I’m done.’
They gazed at the courthouse. ‘I’ll miss seeing you around the place,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well…,’ he said.
‘Look, I feel terrible.’ She fished in her wallet. ‘Here’s a hundred dollars. You spent hours measuring up the house, doing c
ostings, all for nothing. Call it a kill fee.’
He stared at the money. She knew at once that she’d been graceless, and wanted the ground to swallow her up.
Challis nodded at Ellen Destry and waited for her to sit down. He’d called an emergency briefing, and the incident room was crowded with his CIB officers and all available uniformed sergeants and senior constables.
He stood. ‘We’re not downgrading the abduction inquiry, but, until further evidence or leads come in, we can’t do much more than follow through on what we already have. Meanwhile, our fire in Quarterhorse Lane. As you know, it’s now officially a murder investigation.’
He pointed to a photograph pinned to the wall; the body was revealed as a glistening smudge. ‘The victim was one Clara Macris. It appears that she was bashed to death before the fire started. As for the fire, it was intentional but constructed to appear accidental, by someone who knew what he was doing. Was he trying to conceal the fact that it was a murder? Was he getting a kick out of lighting the fire? In any event, we’ll have to follow up the suggestion in today’s Progress that we have a firebug on our hands.’
Challis saw amused and knowing grins. They know about me and Tessa Kane, he thought. He went on:
‘I want you to look again at any fire we’ve had recently. That rash of mailboxes, for example; that Pajero, the attempted torching of that house over near the racecourse. Is our firebug also a burglar? Is he escalating? Are there any nutters fighting fires in the local CFA units? Check with the Arson Squad. Have any known pyromaniacs settled in the district? Sergeant Destry will brief you further on who will do what.
‘Now, the dead woman. Clara Macris. That’s about all we know about her. Her neighbours say she kept to herself. We’ve still to talk to shopkeepers, bank tellers, anyone else who may have come into contact with her. Apparently she had a New Zealand accent, but we don’t know how long she’d been in this country. It may have been years. New Zealand police have been contacted to see whether or not she had a record. We do know she moved into the area about eighteen months ago. Was she renting, or did she buy? I want someone to check that out. Did she go to the pub regularly? Play sport? Travel? Check the local travel agents. Someone else can look at her mail as it comes in.
‘Meanwhile, her car is missing. See if it’s been reported stolen, found abandoned, impounded or taken somewhere to be repaired.
‘See if she ever took taxis anywhere.
‘All of this is necessary because we don’t know who she is, and the fire destroyed any personal papers that might have told us.
‘Now, let’s keep an open mind on this. Maybe our firebug isn’t responsible. Someone else, someone she knew, was let in-or broke in, it’s impossible to tell, given that the house was destroyed-and killed her. Why did he kill her? — assuming it was a man, and I don’t want you necessarily making that assumption. Was he a burglar, caught in the act? In which case, this incident relates closely to our latest aggravated burglary-except that Clara Macris clearly wasn’t wealthy and this one happened at night.
‘Or was it someone she knew, friend, relative or lover, and they had a disagreement over something? We badly need to know something about her personal life. Van, you were investigating officer when her mailbox was burnt. Can you tell us anything?’
The question, the way it was posed, the switch from the general to the particular, seemed to silence the room and draw everyone’s attention on to Kees van Alphen. His lean, pale face coloured. He opened and closed his mouth, then coughed, then recovered completely and said, ‘She was pretty close-lipped, Inspector.’
‘You didn’t meet anyone else there? She didn’t talk about herself?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Your officers have been questioning the neighbours. Have they turned up anything?’
‘Nothing. One neighbour, a Stella Riggs, is still away, returning tomorrow.’
‘We’ll need to speak to her. We need to cover a lot of ground very quickly, so I want you to go out in pairs, one uniform, one CIB, asking questions wherever Clara Macris might have gone.
‘Now, let’s brainstorm a little. Let’s say the killer wasn’t a family member or an intimate, and wasn’t our firebug. We have a house on a quiet back road. Who and what, in terms of people and vehicles, might we expect to see on it? Scobie, do the honours.’
Hands went up, and Scobie Sutton, his eyes wide and self-conscious, made a list on the whiteboard: neighbours, mailman, newspaper delivery, garbage truck, recycle truck, LPG gas truck, meter reader, council grader, power company linesman, taxi, courier, surveyors, council weed-control and fire-control inspectors, rates assessor, take-away food delivery.
Challis said, ‘I live on a similar road. I’ve seen sewage carters, blackberry sprayers, water carriers, repairmen of all kinds. Men delivering firewood-though not in this weather. A man comes with a portable machine to shear my neighbour’s half-dozen sheep. Another slashes grass with his tractor. Young people work in the vineyards. Maybe we’re looking at a contract gardener. Anything else?’
‘Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
Sutton wrote it down on the board. The men and women in the room sank a little deeper into their chairs.
In the canteen John Tankard said, ‘You little ripper.’
He was across the table from her, stretched back in his chair, the newspaper open and concealing his head and trunk, which suited Pam just fine. There was a headline about a firebug, which apparently was causing senior officers in CIB to get very pissed off. She sipped her tea, thought of Ginger.
But the newspaper shook. ‘Listen to this, Murph. “According to police reports, Superintendent Mark McQuarrie of Peninsula District rang the arresting officers on behalf of the Bastian family and charges against Julian Bastian and his girlfriend were withdrawn on the authority of another officer, Senior Sergeant Vincent Kellock.”‘
‘We know that,’ Pam said.
‘But listen to this. “Sources also report that the charges against Mr Bastian had been dropped after his family agreed to drop charges of wrongful arrest and harassment against police.”‘
Pam leaned forward. ‘They did a deal? The bastards.’
Tankard was still behind the paper. ‘Yep.’
‘I thought it was simply a case of, he’s got rich and powerful mates so you can’t touch him.’
‘Nup.’
They fell silent. Pam stared across the table at the newspaper. The Progress seemed to like causes of one kind or another. According to canteen gossip, the editor was having it off with Challis.
Tankard cleared his throat. ‘“Arresting police are reportedly furious.”‘
‘It says that?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’m furious, you’re furious, but how does the Progress know we’re furious?’
Tankard reached around the corner of his newspaper for the half-consumed donut that sat like a fat worm on his plate. His mouth full, he said, ‘You know, sources and that.’
‘Yeah, sure, Tank,’ Pam said.
You had to laugh. Before Christmas, Tankard was no better than a Nazi stormtrooper. Now he stood for justice in a world ruled by cronyism.
Suddenly van Alphen was there, as silent as a cat, looming over them. ‘You two, come with me, please.’
They followed him to his office. It was like the man: tidy, underfurnished, an area of plain surfaces. ‘All hell’s broken loose,’ he said. ‘You’ll be working on that fire for the time being. Forget any minor infringements that come your way. We simply haven’t got the time or the manpower.’
‘Okay, Sarge.’
‘You’ll each be paired with an officer in plain-clothes, door-knocking, talking to shopkeepers, talking to the neighbours again. We need to know Clara Macris’s habits, who knew her, who was seen with her. The usual.’
He pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. Pam scanned it. She was paired with Scobie Sutton.
Tankard, next to her, twisted in his chair to ease the ache in his lower back. ‘
What was she like, Sarge?’
He sounded genuinely curious, but Pam saw van Alphen’s face grow closed and wary. ‘What do you mean, what was she like? How the hell should I know?’
‘No offence, Sarge. I mean, was she a bit iffy? You know, a junkie. Friends in low places.’
Pam said, ‘Tank, that’s what we’re being sent to find out.’
‘Fair enough. Just asking.’
Van Alphen gave her a curious look of gratitude. It was there and gone in an eyeblink. Then she saw him slide a manila folder shyly across the desk toward them.
‘Meanwhile, I’ve written a report for the District Commander.’
She picked it up. ‘On what, Sarge?’
‘Read it.’
Tankard pulled his chair next to hers. He gave off enormous heat; she could hear his body. Then she heard his voice, reading aloud, as she leaned away from him and read to herself:
‘The dropping of charges against Mr Julian Bastian on the day of the listed court date in the Waterloo Magistrates’ Court causes grave concern to myself and the arresting officers, Constables John Tankard and Pamela Murphy.
‘The allegation my officers lied and contrived an arrest situation is false. I have every faith in their ability and judgment. All the evidence supports their charges against Bastian.
‘The situation is potentially damaging to the Force. Already allegations of favouritism, corruption and intervention at the highest levels have been made by the local press, which could soon become state wide.’
Pam found her heart lifting. Beside her, John Tankard was saying, ‘Good one, Sarge.’
Van Alphen murmured, ‘Something had to be done.’
He looked tired, the flesh tight on his skull. Tired, and almost, Pam thought, stricken with a strong emotion, like sadness, heartache.
The briefing over, Challis made his call. He had the Progress on the desk in front of him. The first page asked Is There a Firebug at Work? and went on to outline what Tessa Kane called ‘a rash of deliberate fires in the district’. Twelve mailboxes set alight, one memorable night before Christmas (including the victim of this latest tragedy… Had she seen something? Was this a payback?). A stolen four-wheel drive torched on Chicory Kiln Road. An attempt by burglars to burn down a house near the racecourse.