by Garry Disher
There was a yellowing photo of him on the fridge, and she glanced at it while she cooked. Taken when he was twenty-two, he was a fine-looking man, grinning widely as he passed out of the police academy. It hurt her to think that so cheerful and invincible a man could be reduced to sourness and futility.
And so she was cooking him a lasagne, to make him feel better, to atone for the morning, to put the world right again. She hated herself for it. Once upon a time, she’d cooked lasagne out of love. Now she cooked it because love had gone. Did lasagne ever bring love back? She thought of Janine McQuarrie then, and wondered about her strategies for enduring a loveless marriage. Ellen and Alan ate early, a habit set years earlier, when they’d had a child in the house.
‘Like it?’
‘It’s delicious,’ he said, chomping away. It occurred to her then that he did eat more than he used to, and exercised less. Maybe he’s depressed, she thought, but she had no idea how she’d ever broach that subject with him.
Meanwhile he was comforted by the food he was eating, so she told him about her day: the circumstances of the murder, the unappealing personalities of the main players, the anonymous caller. ‘Hal thinks-’ she said.
He cut across her. ‘Hal thinks, Hal thinks. You’re always going on about what lover boy thinks.’
Alan’s head was full of sour imaginings, and he half believed that she was attracted to or had even slept with Challis. Fed up suddenly, Ellen said, ‘Keep it up, Alan, and you might get what you wished for.’
He flushed, scowled and looked away impotently, then swung his head back to her. ‘Do you want to know how my day has been?’
‘Why don’t you tell me,’ she said in an uninflected voice.
‘While you and lover boy have been swanning around the Peninsula, mixing with the rich and powerful, I have been measuring skid marks and collecting chips of glass and paint at accident sites. I’ve been sloshing around in blood and motor oil, getting my hands dirty. Welcome to the real world, Ellen.’
This was another old refrain, life as a competition. She didn’t buy into it but packed the dishwasher and settled herself in front of the TV, feeling small and alone. Alan joined her. At once she returned to the kitchen and phoned Larrayne, who was distracted and uncommunicative. The conversation faltered and then Alan was there, tapping his watch face to tell her this was becoming a costly phone call. ‘Have to go, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Want to speak to Dad?’
It was a small victory and she relished it. Alan took the phone from her and talked for a few strangled minutes, clearly counting the mounting dollars and cents. Eventually he hung up and said ferociously, ‘Why do women say in thirty minutes what can be said in five?’
‘She’s our daughter, for God’s sake,’ Ellen said.
She dodged around him and returned to the sitting room, where ‘The 7.30 Report’ was discussing legal definitions of the provocation defence in cases of domestic assault and homicide. ‘Poor bastard,’ said Alan feelingly of one of the studio guests, a league footballer and notorious wife-basher.
‘What would you know,’ muttered Ellen, aware that she sounded about fifteen.
Alan shrugged, strange, conflicting expressions passing across his face, as though he wanted to strike her and felt he had the right, as though he was scared to think he couldn’t control himself, and as though he had access to secret knowledge and courses of action. Fed up, and not trusting herself, Ellen walked to the kitchen pantry and dug out the jar of chocolate biscuits, eating one standing up at the sink and staring out at the night.
‘Don’t I get one?’ her husband said.
Wordlessly she nudged the jar towards him.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
Ellen was saved by the wall phone above the bench. ‘Hal!’ she said, her eyes hard on her husband now.
Challis explained, in his mild, pleasant rasp, that his car was stuffed and asked if she could give him a lift to work in the morning.
‘A lift? Sure, Hal, pick you up at eight,’ she said, her voice animated for her husband’s sake and her own.
****
21
At six-thirty the next morning, Challis walked along the dirt roads near his home, lubricating his stiff joints. He passed an orchard, a berry farm and a plaything vineyard owned by a Melbourne stockbroker. Challis was the odd one out. He had a salary and did nothing with his two hectares but watch the grass grow and turn the fruit from his old plum trees into jam every summer.
Another sea fret this morning, and apparently nothing and no one about, only the blasts of the foghorns, carried mournfully to him from the Bay, reminding him that he was not alone in the world. He increased his pace, his body responding, until he came to a bend in the road and face to face with a kangaroo, as surprised to see it as it was to see him. They faced one another for a taut moment; it was a big roo, at least two metres high, and probably from the small mob rumoured to live in uncleared land near the old reservoir. Then the animal turned powerfully, leapt a fence and was swallowed by the fog.
Challis went on, his heart hammering, to the top of the hill, passing the farm where, as always, four outraged dogs followed him along the fence line. There was no relief from the fog. He turned around and went back down the hill again, while the foghorns called and condensation splashed fatly on the fallen leaves around him. He thought about the child, Georgia, running from the killers, hiding, then emerging again to call for help on her dead mother’s mobile phone, pressing 000, her tongue tip showing in the corner of her mouth. He’d listened to the tape yesterday: a precise little voice, very clear about her name and the name of the street, Lofty Ridge Road, and the street number, and assuring the operator that yes, her mother had been shot dead.
He wondered about the gun. Were the killers local? Had the shooter obtained the gun locally?
And who was their anonymous caller? Someone associated with Christina Traynor? Janine?
Finally, someone would have to interview Mrs Super some time today.
He stopped at his mailbox, retrieved the Age and a litre of milk, and walked up his driveway, avoiding the boggy lawn. At the back door he removed his boots and went inside to shower, dress and make coffee and toast.
He breakfasted where a patch of sunlight slanted across his kitchen table, flicking through the Age, which carried the news of Janine McQuarries murder on the front page, together with a couple of sidebars, one on himself and the other on the anonymous caller. He’d finished and was rinsing his cup and plate when he heard a vehicle and peered out of his kitchen window, which looked onto the gravelled turnaround where visiting cars parked. Ellen Destry. She was early.
She knocked on his back door and he stood aside to let her in. ‘You’ve got pittosporum outside your front gate,’ she announced. And blackberries.’
‘Have I?’
‘You need Pam Murphy. She belongs to a crowd called the Bushrats, who go around clearing weeds on public land.’
Ellen was cheerful but bore the chilly air with her, leaving behind cool, damp eddies as she passed him.
‘Coffee?’
‘Thanks. I love your coffee. Sorry I’m early.’
‘You’re early because you hope I’ll offer coffee.’
‘Nothing wrong with your deductive instincts.’
She strolled ahead of him to the kitchen, unbuttoning her jacket, and that single action, and her easy familiarity with him in his house, rattled Challis. Again he wanted to touch her. What was wrong with him?
It was scarcely easier in the kitchen. She hung her jacket on the back of his usual chair and sat, relaxed and confident, asking, with a kind of bright-eyed gaze, ’Can you froth the milk?’
‘Sure.’
Challis busied himself with cleaning out the espresso pot and filling it with water and fresh coffee grounds. ‘Something to eat?’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her pat her trim stomach. She looked sharp and fresh: tailored pants, a long-sleeved top, wings of fair, staticky hair swingin
g about her shoulders. ‘Better not.’
‘I have croissants in the freezer.’
‘Oh, God.’
He laughed, microwaved a frozen croissant, and placed it before her on a plate, together with a pot of his own plum jam. She reached out a hand challengingly.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Give yourself a sugar hit.’
‘I think I will.’
She tore the croissant into pieces, spread jam and began to eat, her tongue darting after crumbs. Then she froze: a car had pulled up in his driveway. She glanced tensely at the window. ‘Expecting visitors?’
At that moment, he guessed exactly what was uppermost in her mind: she was fearful that her husband had followed her. It didn’t matter that her presence here was warranted. Alan Destry was the type of man to harbour suspicions and act on them. Challis touched her wrist briefly, got up and went to the window. He didn’t know the car. Meanwhile, whoever had been driving it knocked on his front door. ‘Probably Bible bashers,’ he murmured. As he left the room he heard her get to her feet and move across to the kitchen window.
He opened the front door to two men, who were interchangeable in their plain grey suits and cropped hair, but one man was thin, the other bulky. Both looked as if they’d been up for hours. They flashed Federal Police ID and one of them said ‘Christina Traynor’ while the other watched him.
Federal? thought Challis. Have I got myself into a jurisdictional tussle? More and more did he feel that he was living through the clichйs of TV cop shows. ‘We could have done this in my office,’ he said mildly.
‘No we couldn’t,’ said the thin man.
Challis shrugged. ‘What’s your interest in Christina Traynor?’
‘Wrong question,’ said the thin one. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Let’s do this inside,’ Challis said, and he took them through to his kitchen. Ellen sprang to her feet and watched guardedly.
The men stopped, glanced inquiringly at Challis, who thought that he might as well make everything clear. ‘This is Sergeant Ellen Destry, from Waterloo. My car has broken down and she’s giving me a lift to work. In fact, we should probably leave now.’
‘No chance,’ said the thin man.
Challis gave him an empty smile. ‘Then may I offer coffee? Proper coffee, not instant.’
‘We didn’t know you’d have company.’
‘If this is about Christina Traynor,’ Challis said emphatically, ‘then Sergeant Destry stays. She’s part of the investigation and knows as much as I do. So, coffee?’
They shrugged, waited stonily while he brewed the coffee. ‘Grab a seat,’ he said, keeping it light.
The bulky man sat; the thin man didn’t but started the pissing competition immediately. He crossed the room and pointed to a photograph that Challis had tacked to the corkboard on his kitchen wall. ‘Dragon Rapide,’ he said. ‘You’ve been restoring one just like it in a hangar at the local airfield for the past five years.’
So you’ve done your homework, Challis thought. You’ve read my file and talked to people and know me inside and out. I, on the other hand, don’t know a thing about you, which puts me at a disadvantage. He sat at the table and waited.
Eventually the thin man sat and said, ‘You accessed the national computer yesterday afternoon at five thirty-five.’
‘Yes, about then.’
‘I’ll ask again: what’s your interest in Christina Traynor?’
Challis gazed at the man. Clearly by keying in Christina Traynor’s name he’d raised a red flag in the federal system. He wondered idly why they hadn’t expunged Traynor’s name completely but let mugs like him get as far as the screen that read ‘Access Denied’, and then thought it was precisely so that they could catch people like him. Christina Traynor was apparently need-to-know, and he didn’t need to know.
He sipped his coffee. They sipped theirs, and the bulky man nodded approvingly and said, ‘Good brew.’
‘Inspector,’ prompted the other man.
Ellen acted then, pushing Challis’s copy of the Age across the table towards them. ‘Did you know we had a murder here yesterday?’
There was no response. ‘A rural address,’ Challis said, ‘the houses a few hundred metres apart. The owner, an elderly woman called Joy Humphreys, was in hospital at the time. The victim is much younger, and apparently has no connection to the house or Mrs Humphreys. We don’t know what she was doing there. But several weeks ago, Mrs Humphreys had a houseguest for three weeks, her goddaughter, Christina Traynor.’
‘We’re wondering if she was the intended victim,’ Ellen said, cutting in seamlessly.
‘It seemed like a long shot,’ Challis said, ‘but obviously now we’re not so sure.’
They often did this when interrogating suspects, set up a smooth rhythm, a double act, but the two men waited expressionlessly, so he went on. ‘Mrs Humphreys was tired and in a lot of pain yesterday. We’ve yet to interview her properly. But she did say that Christina stayed for three weeks in April and then flew to London. That’s all we know at this stage. Naturally I had to run her name through the system. Access denied. Who is she? Has she done a runner?’
They ignored both questions. The thin man said, ‘What do the neighbours say? Any strangers or strange cars lurking about?’
‘Nothing, so far,’ Ellen said. ‘We’ve put in a request for Mrs Humphreys’s phone records.’
‘We’ll also need to see those,’ the bulky man said.
The thin one said, ‘Do you trust your officers, Inspector?’
Ellen bristled. Challis gestured irritably. ‘Why don’t you tell us what’s going on.’
They seemed to be gauging how much to reveal, or how far he and Ellen could be trusted, or how bent they might be. He was sick of the bullshit, and reached for his phone. ‘I’m going to call my superintendent. The woman shot dead in Mrs Humphreys’s driveway is his daughter-in-law.’
He saw the surprise in their faces. Maybe they weren’t locals but had flown in from Sydney or Canberra last night. He dialled. McQuarrie was abrupt. ‘Yes?’
‘Sir, I’ve got two federal police officers with me. I trod on some toes when I ran Christina Traynor’s name through the system last night. They’ve yet to tell me what it’s about.’
McQuarrie was jubilant. ‘Don’t you see?’ he demanded. ‘Janine was lost. Wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
All along, the prick’s been afraid something grubby might emerge in the life of his son or daughter-in-law, that he’ll be tainted by association, Challis thought sourly. In the super’s system of values, Janine murdered by mistake was better than Janine murdered by a secret lover or rival.
‘Sir, could you have a word with them?’
Challis handed the receiver to the thin man and heard the tinny scratching of McQuarrie’s raised voice. The thin man was scrupulously polite, unbowed by McQuarrie’s bluster, but by the time he’d hung up it was clear that something had clarified for him.
‘Let me explain,’ he said.
****
22
An hour later, Ellen took her place at the incident room table and watched as Challis stood and announced, ‘Before coming to work this morning I was visited by two officers from Witsec.’
Witsec was the federal witness protection program, and she saw Scobie Sutton and the others grow alert and intrigued. She tried to match their expressions, amused that Challis hadn’t said she was with him, but also able to see his point: tongues would wag.
‘Last year,’ he went on, ‘they gave protection and later a new identity to this woman, Christina Traynor.’
He tapped a photograph pinned to the display board behind him. ‘Christina Traynor also happens to be the god-daughter of Mrs Joy Humphreys, who lives at 283 Lofty Ridge Road, where Janine McQuarrie was murdered. In fact, she stayed with Mrs Humphreys for three weeks in April.’
A groan went around the room. ‘So back to square one,’ said one of the detectives on loan from Mornington.
>
‘Where’s Traynor now?’ asked Scobie.
‘London, Mrs Humphreys says. She left in a hurry, apparently.’
Everyone glanced at the photo display again. The image of Christina Traynor supplied by the Witsec agents revealed only an approximate resemblance to Janine McQuarrie. Both women had fair, shoulder-length hair, but Christina’s was stiff and thick, Janine’s straight, fine and glossy. Christina’s build was solid, Janine’s slight. Christina’s face was lively and ready for a laugh, Janine’s shut down, almost suspicious.
‘Not a close resemblance,’ Challis said, as if reading their thoughts, ‘but close enough if you’re working from a description. What probably clinched it for the killer is that he expected to see Traynor, and so anyone resembling her was assumed to be her.’
‘But he turned up there two months late,’ Scobie said. ‘A bit of a stretch, boss.’
Challis shrugged. ‘Remember that this is the federal witness protection program we’re talking about, so our man did well to track Traynor down that far. As to why someone would want to kill her,’ he went on, ‘it seems she got mixed up with the wrong people, informed on them, and needed protection and a new identity.’
‘She must be important if Witsec agents turn up unannounced.’
‘She is-or was.’ Challis glanced at his notes, and then paraphrased. ‘Christina Traynor grew up in Melbourne, and moved to Sydney with her parents when she was sixteen. She did law at Sydney Uni. Her parents now live up on the Gold Coast. Meanwhile Christinu was doing well-junior in a law firm that took on a lot of criminal cases, owned a flat and a car, didn’t booze or take drugs, no debts, only a couple of speeding fines. But then she got involved with Avery Blight.’