Whispering Death

by Garry Disher

  ‘Still here, Larrayne.’

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘On the way, and I’ve called it in.’

  Challis glanced at the instrument panel. Greener was doing 130 km/h, sometimes 140. Even so, they were fifteen minutes out, at least.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  Challis pictured Larrayne in Ellen’s vast white dressing gown. If she were naked under it, or dressed in flimsy nightwear, her sense of fear and vulnerability would be greater than usual, probably paralysing. ‘I know you are,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve a right to be. But don’t let these guys see it.’

  There were sniffles and he thought about her remaining phone credit, his own phone credit and battery life. ‘Are your friends still in the house?’

  ‘They’re tied up. They’ve got tape around their arms and legs and across their mouths.’

  Challis was puzzled. Overkill, he thought. Students, a modest, slightly run-down house, why a home invasion?

  Pretty soon Greener had them barrelling past the glassblower at the Red Hill turn-off and down the hill towards the coast, a pretty drive, a slow, winding drive, but Challis, blind to the charms, was pressing a ghost accelerator with his right foot. ‘Larrayne, is it a robbery?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Sexual assault? He was looking for a way to ask it when she went on, ‘They came bursting in saying we stole their girlfriends’ marijuana plants. They’re acting crazy.’

  ‘What girlfriends?’

  ‘Next door.’

  Challis pictured the house with the two women with bikie boyfriends. The timing made sense when you realised that students and junkies—and students who were junkies—tended to sleep until noon. ‘Did you steal their plants?’

  ‘No. We—’

  ‘Get your arse out here, bitch.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Larrayne, don’t let them—’

  ‘Now, bitch.’

  Challis heard Larrayne Destry call out to the man on the other side of the door, ‘You’re scaring me. You just made me sick over everything.’

  ‘Well, make it quick.’

  Challis waited. She’d done well, lodging a word picture in the bikie’s head: human waste and odours and messiness.

  Then her voice was in his ear again. ‘He’s gone but I don’t have much time.’

  ‘We’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  There were crackles in the atmosphere and no reception bars on his phone. ‘Fucking black spot,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sir?’ Greener said, not looking at him, accelerating the CIU car down the long hill to the flat paddocks at the bottom, whisking it right then left onto the road into Dromana. Past the drive-in theatre, Challis pointing Greener towards the freeway entrance, holding the phone close to his face, waiting for reception.

  One bar, two, then three, and Larrayne’s panicky whisper, ‘What happened?’

  ‘I lost reception. Look, hold on, we’re almost there.’

  ‘I can hear them yelling at the others. Hitting them. Give us back the plants or we’ll cut her tits off, cut your dicks and your ears off, stuff like that. I’m so scared.’

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ said Challis feelingly. ‘You’re using your brain, you’re strong and you’re going to be okay.’ He thought and said, ‘Is it possible one of the others stole the plants without your knowledge?’

  A pause. Too late, he saw the misstep. ‘My life’s in danger and you turn cop on me? That is so typical.’

  Probably a good thing, the old Larrayne showing itself. Outrage was better than panic and fear. But then Challis could hear thumping sounds in the background, tearing wood, a snarl: ‘Get your fucking arse out here, right now.’

  And the line went dead and Challis dumbly pointed the way for Greener, up onto the on-ramp, up the hill to an exit that looped down and under the freeway. His heart was beating hard.

  Realising his phone was on, he broke the connection. It rang immediately. ‘Inspector Challis? Rosebud cars are on the way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Challis pocketed the phone. It rang again; he checked the screen, saw it was McQuarrie calling and let it go to voicemail. They were on a paved street now, and then dirt side streets, the car bottoming out on potholes. He pointed again and Greener pulled into Ellen’s driveway, right up to the rear bumper of the green Hyundai. The sun was breaking through, the wind dropping, sprinklers ticking on a nearby lawn. They got out, Challis glancing across at the house where the marijuana growers lived. A curtain twitched and he imagined a hurried mobile phone call.

  He said to Greener, ‘Go around the back. If they come out, try to stop them, but no heroics. We’ll find them again, the stupid fucks.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Challis climbed onto the deck and looked through the glass. In the dimness there was chaos, almost too much to take in, but then his crime scene management priorities kicked in, a habit so ingrained he’d never shake it: preserve life, preserve the crime scene, secure evidence, identify the victim or victims, identify the suspect or suspects.

  Chairs upended, plates broken, the coffee table leaning on a broken leg. One of the boys was strapped to a fallen chair, the girl still upright, hands bound behind her back, legs bare under black knickers, T-shirt torn from neck to hem, spilling her breasts. The second boy was in another upright chair, bleeding from the mouth and nose. A strange stillness, as if it were all over. But then Challis shifted his gaze, attracted by movement. A man in greasy jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt had a mobile phone to his ear, shouting, beckoning to the other man, who was similarly dressed and struggling with Larrayne Destry. They’d seen Challis, a shadow against the glass, and began to pantomime doubt, confusion, belligerence and fury.

  He slid open the glass door and saw the men vanish towards the rear of Ellen’s house, and heard the squeak of the back door, screams of ‘Drop it, copper’ and ‘I’ll do you, you fucking dog’.

  Larrayne was bent over, gasping. Challis put an arm around her shoulder, bent his head to her cheek. ‘You okay?’

  She bucked immediately, striking him with her fists, then was holding on for dear life, crying hard. After a moment, he disentangled himself. ‘Help your friends, okay? I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I have a man in trouble,’ he said, communicating reluctance and urgency.

  She heaved a wobbly sigh. ‘Sorry. I’m okay, honest.’

  Challis hurtled out of the room, through the kitchen and into the back yard. He found Greener standing alone on the strip of dust beneath Ellen’s rotary clothesline holding a handkerchief to a bloodied lip.

  ‘Sir.’

  Challis dropped an arm across his shoulders. ‘Thought you were a goner.’

  For a brief moment, Greener relaxed against the contact, then muttered that he was okay and moved away. ‘I considered shooting them, but think of the paperwork.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Shrieks and bellows were coming from the next house. Heavy bikes firing up.

  Sirens in the distance.

  ‘Not the Hollywood ending I was after,’ Greener said.

  ‘True,’ said Challis, who’d never known real life to be anything other than messy, with a little bravery and commonsense thrown in if you were lucky. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ said Greener, bending to tug at his trousers, which were torn and bloody at the knee.

  ‘I guess we need to buy you a new uniform.’

  Greener looked at him. ‘That would be good, sir,’ he said slowly, ‘but I couldn’t, in good conscience, put a strain on the police budget.’

  Challis laughed. He called for an ambulance and re-entered Ellen’s house just as four uniforms were pouring in. He sent one pair to the neighbouring house, telling them to call Rosebud CIU and issue a description of the attackers, then helped the other pair to free and tend to Larrayne’s friends.

  And as he was murmuring encouragement, cutting duct tape, dabbin
g the blood from shallow cuts, he was looking for hidden truths, revealed in a glance, a mannerism, a flicker of emotion.

  It came quickly. As soon as he’d ungagged the other girl, Nikki, she launched herself at her boyfriend, scoring his cheek with her nails, ‘You arsehole. You stupid, stupid—’

  ‘I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.’

  ‘It was you?’ said Larrayne. Before Challis could stop her, she whacked him, too.

  He sulked. ‘Yeah, well, it was Mark’s idea.’

  Larrayne, her face appalled, swung around on the tall, sweet, skinny boy, who didn’t look so sweet now. ‘How could you be so stupid.’

  He shrugged, mopped at his torn ear. ‘Yeah, well.’

  ‘I want him arrested,’ Larrayne said.

  Challis glanced at one of the Rosebud officers, giving the nod, then he took Larrayne’s arm and ushered her out of the house, to where the sun warmed the old decking furniture. She wrapped herself in the dressing gown and shivered. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, her voice small.

  ‘Want me to call your dad?’

  In fact, why hadn’t Larrayne called him? Alan Destry was a policeman, after all.

  ‘No. No, please don’t. You know him, he’ll overreact.’

  ‘We can’t keep it a secret.’

  ‘I’ll tell him later, when it’s over—otherwise he’ll come barging in and start bashing people up.’

  She was probably right. Alan Destry had a temper. ‘We need to tell your mum, though.’

  Larrayne Destry was in the grip of doubts and frustrations. Her fists clenched. ‘No, please, you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’ll want to fly straight home. I’m okay.’

  Then she slumped. ‘I feel such a fool.’

  Challis touched a thick, white, rumpled sleeve. ‘You did nothing wrong. The boys stole the marijuana, not you.’

  His words brought no comfort. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Is there someone I can call, other than your father? A friend?’

  ‘They’re all up in the city.’ She thought about it. ‘Dad’s girlfriend.’

  Larrayne made the call. She was saying, ‘No, I’m okay to drive,’ when Challis’s mobile rang.

  Jeannie Schiff, saying: ‘We have a crashed car, abandoned on Coolart Road, dead woman in the boot. Naked, beaten, bound, strangled, probably raped.’

  24

  Earlier that day, John Tankard’s team had been breathalysing motorists at the Tuerong Junction end of Balnarring Road, then on a stretch of the Nepean between Mornington and Mount Martha. Finally, in the early afternoon, they set up on Coolart Road. Two pursuit cars—they went like the clappers of hell—two powerful BMW bikes, and four constables and a sergeant. The hotshots got to do anything remotely interesting, like on-the-spot roadworthy checks, running number plates through the on-board computers, processing the drunks, but Tank was given the crap jobs. Setting up a stopping lane and waving cars into it, standing in the middle of the road with his fancy gear on. Hot gear, too. Temperatures in the high twenties, low thirties all week.

  Not much action today—a guy taking his kids to school had registered .059—but Tank knew the Peninsula would be full of thank-God-it’s-Friday booze hounds as the afternoon deepened. He waved another anonymous car into the stopping lane, another anonymous male driver at the wheel. Maybe this loser was the shotgun bandit… Tank peered in as the guy slowed and stopped alongside the officer doing the breath test. Nah. Vague resemblance at best. Besides, there was a pregnant woman in the passenger seat, a toddler in the back, strapped into a capsule. Unless the bandit travelled with his family. God, Tank was bored.

  ‘Mind on the job, Constable.’

  ‘Yes Sarge.’

  The sun was early-afternoon high, the air still, birds squabbling in the roadside trees. A magpie was getting on Tank’s nerves. It looked fully grown, but hopped around squawking uselessly. Putting the pressure on mum and dad for another fucking worm.

  A smell of horse shit wafting across from the adjacent paddock.

  A chainsaw in the distance.

  And up in the wide blue yonder, ibis wheeled silently and a few game, ragtag little birds were telling an eagle to shove off.

  John Tankard sneezed explosively: there was a slasher working on the spring grasses along a nearby fence line. All in all, he felt that he’d pretty much exhausted his appreciation of nature this past week.

  An hour or two later, the sergeant ordered them to shift location again, over near the freeway this time, the 80 km/h stretch near Humphries Road. It was Tank’s job to stow the equipment and bring one of the cars so he was the last to leave, and was alone there on Coolart Road when a white Holden came barrelling over a rise, spotted him and snaked to a screaming halt. Tank read it. Drink driving; or drugs or stolen goods.

  Thank the Lord, action at last.

  Cranking the motor, Tank planted his foot, accelerating up the slope to intercept the Holden even as it reversed into a driveway, turned tail and shot back over the rise.

  Just then, he sneezed again. His window was open; grass dust and pollen swirled around his solid head. He gasped, his eyes watered, the sneezes were galloping away from him.

  By the time he’d recovered, and could see dimly through his scratchy eyes, the Holden was far in the distance. He radioed it in, pressing hard on the accelerator, and sneezed again, his hand jerking the wheel, his body pitching about in his seat. He brought the car to a stop on the verge of the road, snuffled into a handkerchief, dragged a forearm sleeve across his eyes. He was still on the hilly part of Coolart Road and couldn’t see the Holden.

  When he’d recovered, Tank planted his foot again, swivelling his head left and right at the next couple of intersections: Waterloo far off in one direction, Merricks North the other, no white Holden.

  He found it a minute later, buckled against a fancy stone gateway, as if the driver had intended to duck inside and hide, hoping the police would keep to Coolart Road and eventually assume he’d disappeared. Only he’d been going too fast, fucking moron, and he’d crashed.

  Tank pulled in close behind, blocking the Holden against the stone pillar. He ran the rego number—the car had been reported stolen— called in his location, then got out, approaching the rear of the car with his baton in his left hand, his right hand ready to draw his service revolver.

  No one in the rear seat, no one in the front.

  He straightened his back, peering around at the lightly timbered paddocks on either side of the road. A man on foot could lose himself in open country pretty quickly—unless he’d decided to steal a farm vehicle or get himself a hostage. Tank glanced uneasily up the driveway to a farmhouse that was scarcely visible beyond a row of cypress and other trees. He pictured a man menacing a woman alone in her kitchen, a child playing outside, a teenage girl just home from school…

  Just as he was about to step between the stone pillars and down the driveway, the other members of his team arrived, full of noise and testosterone. Tank, it soon transpired, was to stay with the wrecked car while the heroes searched the grounds and woodland.

  ‘Wait here for backup, let them know where we are.’

  ‘But it was me who chased him, Sarge.’

  ‘Whereupon he crashed into a stone wall,’ the sergeant said, ‘endangering the lives of everyone around him. You know the drill on high-speed pursuits, don’t you, Tank?’

  ‘So what’s the point of having a pursuit car with all the fancy shit on it?’

  ‘Just stay with the car, all right? Check the registration. Search the glovebox. Make yourself useful.’

  John Tankard made himself useful to the extent of finding a dead woman in the boot of the car.

  25

  Challis arrived to find Tankard directing a long line of traffic past the car and the crumpled gate post. Coolart Road on a Friday afternoon was always a nightmare of school buses, private cars, farm vehicles, delivery vans, 4WDs; of school kids, parents, tradespeople, city wor
kers getting an early start on the weekend. Right now, they were content to be rubberneckers, in no hurry to arrive anywhere.

  The first thing Challis did was order the traffic unit to set up a detour at Hodgins Road. Presently the flow of vehicles ebbed, then ceased. The departure of the unit’s cars and motorbikes also eased congestion at the crash site, leaving only Challis’s CIU car, an ambulance to convey the body, the pathologist’s BMW, the sex crimes Holden and a vehicle belonging to the crime scene unit.

  Then he joined Schiff and Murphy at the rear of the crashed Holden. Today the sex crimes sergeant looked like a cross between a slinky schoolteacher and a certain young criminal lawyer famous for her front-page cleavage, client list and corner-cutting. Schiff wore black leggings under a short red skirt, black top with a dramatic scooped neck, hair in a corkscrew at the back of her head. And different glasses, he noticed: rimless lenses, silvery titanium frames. Meanwhile Murph was dressed in thin cotton cargo pants, white running shoes, a fawn cardigan over a vivid white T-shirt. She shot him a grin, her body taut, almost quivering with energy, as if all she wanted to do was run, climb, swim or knock heads in. The old Murph back again, after weeks of the doldrums?

  He stood with the women, looking over the bowed back of the pathologist, Freya Berg. First impressions: a bloodied face, bruising, the slackness of death. A closer look. The victim was aged in her early twenties, plump, all tension gone from her trunk and limbs. Bruised thighs and neck, a bitten nipple, stubbled pubic hair. Her nose, squashed to one side, was caked with blood.

  He backed away.

  ‘Not getting any easier, Hal?’ Dr Berg said.

  The pathologist had registered his presence without looking at him. ‘Nope.’

  ‘I hear you’ve been ruffling feathers.’

  ‘Some other dude,’ Challis said.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Berg said, continuing to palpate the flesh and work the limbs. ‘If you three fine police officers could just give me another five minutes…’

  Schiff said, ‘Raped, punched and strangled?’