Chain of Evidence

24

Operation Calling Card.

While Ellen Destry had been interviewing Katie Blasko, van Alphen and Kellock found their ambush site, a house behind the fitness centre. It belonged to Kellock’s wife’s cousin, who worked on a Bass Strait oil rig and was therefore away for several days at a time. They fed the details to Ivan Henniker, and he fed them to Nick Jarrett. To cover themselves, van Alphen and Kellock obtained three other addresses, of people who were genuinely away on holiday, and arranged for each location to be staked out that night. Ivan Henniker was not told those addresses. ‘We might get lucky and catch Nick Jarrett in the act,’ van Alphen and Kellock told the stakeout teams in one of the little briefing rooms behind the canteen, later that afternoon, ‘or we might sit on our arses all night. It could be weeks before we trap the bastard.’

‘So Jarrett’s been fed four potential locations to burgle?’ asked John Tankard, who was highly motivated. He’d spent a fruitless morning in De Soto Lane with Scobie Sutton, and still cringed inside at the memory of his fear last Saturday night, encountering the Jarretts on that back road behind Waterloo.

‘Yes,’ lied van Alphen. He glanced at his watch. ‘Take the rest of the afternoon off. Meet you back here at eight tonight.’

John Tankard hurried out of the station. Four o’clock. He was anxious to grab this small window of opportunity to do something about his new car. He’d shown it to a few mates at work, and their reactions had ranged from envy to ridicule (which Tank read as envy), but he’d not had a chick in the passenger seat yet-not counting his little sister- and the Northern Territory registration would run out soon.

And so he drove around to Waterloo Motors and booked it in for a roadworthy test. He wouldn’t be able to register the car in Victoria without it.

‘I can fit you in early next week,’ the head mechanic said, flipping through the grimy pages of his desk diary.

‘But the rego runs out on Friday,’ Tank said. He cursed that he’d changed out of his uniform. The uniform gave him authority. In jeans and a T-shirt he was merely bulky.

He’d had a shower though.

The mechanic made tsk sounds and ruminated on the problem. ‘Get it privately, did you?’

‘A dealer,’ Tank said.

‘Dealers are supposed to provide a roadworthy certificate.’

‘The car’s from Darwin, just traded in, not much registration left, so the guy discounted the price if I’d buy it as it is,’ said Tank in a defensive rush.

The mechanic said nothing but was unimpressed. Electric tools whirred and clattered beyond the door that led to the workshop area. Someone whistled, another dropped a spanner, and the air was laden with the odours of oil and grease. Everything was satisfying to John Tankard, except this hitch regarding the mechanic’s busy diary.

‘I could do it first thing tomorrow,’ the guy said eventually.

‘Awesome,’ said Tank.

‘Seven-thirty?’

Tank intended to be still in bed at seven-thirty tomorrow, what with working late tonight on Kellock’s and van Alphen’s operation to nab Nick Jarrett. ‘You couldn’t make it later?’

‘Nope.’

Tank thought about it. ‘How about I give you the car now, you lock it up overnight, and start on it first thing in the morning.’

‘No problem.’

‘Got a loan car?’

‘Sorry, mate, none available,’ said the mechanic glibly.

What he meant was, he didn’t intend to loan Tank a car to compensate for a measly thirty-minute roadworthy test. So Tank walked home to his flat. It didn’t feel right, walking. It put him too close to the populace, some of whom he’d arrested over the years, and all of whom knew him as a bully.

His mobile rang. ‘I’m waiting,’ said the producer from ‘Evening Update’.

That same afternoon, Pam Murphy was trying to do things by the book. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said.

Confronting a guy who looked young, about twenty, and indistinguishable from other guys his age: baseball cap, loose T-shirt, baggy jeans, bulky, expensive trainers on his feet. And hostile with it.

‘I’m Constable Murphy,’ Pam said. One day she’d be able to say Detective Constable, but not yet. She stood about four metres away from the kid, and to one side, the side he’d try for if he wanted to make a run for it. On his other side was a chain-link fence, behind him a brick wall.

‘So?’ said the guy, showing plenty of attitude, reminding her of a Jarrett hoon from the Seaview estate.

‘How long have you been standing here?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Answer the question, please, sir,’ Pam said.

‘Couple hours.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You haven’t moved from here in two hours?’

‘Nup. What’s this about?’

‘There’s been a report of a robbery near here.’

‘Yeah? So? You sayin’ I done it?’

‘Don’t you want to know what kind of robbery? Perhaps you already know?’

‘Listen, bitch, I done nothin’ to no one.’

‘You’re in the vicinity. We have a witness description that matches yours.’

The guy getting edgy now, looking for a way out, even prepared to use violence. ‘Yeah? Who?’

‘If I could see some ID please, sir.’

Last night’s seminar had involved conflict resolution, a visiting American lecturing to them for three hours on how to use speech to deflect or negate threatening situations. ‘The gun you’re carrying isn’t the most dangerous thing about you,’ he’d said. ‘Neither is your ability to use a baton or your fists or your boots. It’s your tongue.’

‘Tongue = danger,’ Pam had written on her A4 writing pad, feeling a little absurd.

‘It’s your tongue and how quickly you use it to show anger or contempt,’ the lecturer continued, ‘how quickly you use it to say the wrong thing or take the wrong tone. In certain situations it can be like throwing a match into a gas tank.’

John Tankard’s approach, Pam had thought, listening to the lecturer drone away. He’d gone on to explain how you should avoid ‘conflict phrases’ such as ‘What’s your problem, pal?’ and use ‘peace phrases’ like ‘May I help you, sir?’

Pam had scribbled dutifully: conflict phrases, peace phrases.

‘It’s all about sublimating ego and anger,’ the lecturer continued. ‘Try to read your customers. What they say and what they mean can be two entirely different things.’

Customers? Jesus Christ. Sometimes Pam could sympathise with the likes of John Tankard. She’d raised her hand last night, the lecturer giving her plenty of lecture-circuit teeth. ‘Yes, young lady?’

‘And when words fail?’

‘Then you kick ass,’ the lecturer said.

So now Pam was trying the softly, softly approach with this twenty-year-old would-be gangster. ‘Perhaps you have a driver’s licence you can show me, sir?’

‘Got no pockets.’

‘You don’t carry a wallet?’

‘Nah.’

‘Your name and address, then, sir.’

‘Why should I tell you my fucking name? This is bullshit. I done nothin’ wrong.’

‘Sir, I’m obliged to investigate. I’d like to be able to eliminate you from our inquiries, let you be on your way, so if you could just give me a name…’

‘Fuck you!’ the kid screamed.

He had a knife. It seemed to materialise in his hand. He was wild-eyed, waving it around, there in that alley that smelt of cat piss and mouldering cardboard.

Just as suddenly, Pam had her.38 centred on his chest. ‘Sir, put the knife down, please. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.’

‘I’m not goin’ back to jail! I didn’t steal nothin’!’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about. Just put the knife down, please, sir.’

The tension left the kid’s face. It was gone in an eyeblink. He tossed the knife aside, said cockily, ‘There. Satisfied?’

Pam bolstered her.38 warily. ‘Thank you, sir. Now, if you could just step away from the knife.

The kid snatched the knife from the ground. He lunged, the blade winking in the dim light, flicking cruelly past her unprotected stomach. Any closer and her guts would have spilt out. She’d relaxed too soon. She might fumble getting her revolver out again, drop it, have it snatched by this quicksilver kid, something she’d never live down-if she lived.

She had a fallback position, her capsicum spray. Before the kid could take another swipe at her, she let him have it full in the face.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, overkill,’ he said, wiping water from his eyes.

She grinned, handed him her handkerchief commiseratively.

‘Not bad, Constable Murphy,’ the training officer said. Behind him the other trainees applauded ironically.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘But you know where you went wrong?’

‘Yes, sir. Didn’t shoot him, sir.’

The other trainees cheered, and the ‘kid’, a senior constable, gave her the finger.

Scobie Sutton got home at six that evening to a house full of cooking smells, but something else registered in his senses, too, an atmosphere. Maybe Beth had been yelling at Roslyn. She did that sometimes. She hadn’t used to, before she was retrenched from her job with the shire-via e-mail. Scobie came to the back door, as usual, removed his shoes in the little space they called the mud room, as usual, and walked in his socks to the kitchen, where the fluorescent light was merciless, showing up the essential tackiness of their out-of-date cabinets and bench tops. They’d had plans to renovate the kitchen, back when Beth still had her job. The atmosphere: it wasn’t frustration or anger, it was guilt.

‘Hello, my darlings,’ Scobie said, wondering if his tone alone would tip the balance toward harmony.

Beth was brushing oil over an uncooked chicken. Cubes of potato and pumpkin ringed it. She hardly dared to glance at him but kept her face and eyes averted as she accepted his kiss. She felt stiff in his arms.

Scobie turned to his daughter, who was absorbed with her homework. She liked to do her homework here. The kitchen was at the centre of things. The cheap pine desk in her bedroom wasn’t. He ruffled her hair and kissed her bent neck. She squirmed delightedly before saying ‘Daddy!’ and throwing her arms around him. He couldn’t get enough of that.

‘How was everyone’s day?’

‘Fine,’ his wife muttered.

His had been miserable. That poor, poor child.

Presently Roslyn wandered into the sitting room to watch ‘The Simpsons’. Scobie turned to his wife. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, his tone a little sharp.

‘I’ve done something stupid.’

‘Such as?’

They kept current bills, letters and junk mail in an old in-tray beside the fridge. Beth took out a brochure. ‘I paid for this,’ she said, her face furiously red. ‘My own money.’

Scobie scanned the brochure. It said Rising Stars Agency in bold type, with a list of the agency’s accomplishments, including modelling contracts in Sydney and New York, and young actors placed in several films and TV shows. ‘I thought it would help our finances if Ros got picked,’ Beth said.

Scobie was pretty blind when it came to his daughter. His coworkers could have told him that-and some did. But even he didn’t think it likely that Roslyn would be hired to model little dresses and tops for the Myer or Pumpkin Patch catalogues, or get picked to play someone’s kid in a TV serial. ‘When was this?’

‘A month ago,’ said Beth in shame.

Scobie dimly recalled it. He’d been embroiled in a murder inquiry at the time, obliging him to spend long hours away from home, and had thought his daughter was having her photograph taken at school. He felt stricken: poor Beth. All she wanted was to help ease the family’s financial situation. But to do it like this! The world must be full of hopeful mothers, he thought, who believed their children photogenic enough to be models and actors. ‘Oh well,’ he said gently, ‘these sorts of things are bound to be a long shot.’

‘It’s not that,’ Beth whispered. ‘They promised they’d deliver the photos within seven days, but it’s been weeks now and they still haven’t arrived. I called the number on the brochure and got a recorded message, “Please check the number and call again”.’

Scobie frowned down at the brochure. No address, not even a post office box. Only a cell phone number.

‘You’ve been conned, sweetheart.’

Beth’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, Scobie, I’m so sorry.’

‘No harm done,’ Scobie said. He’d pass it on to the fraud squad. The guy’s prints might even be on the brochure.

‘You don’t have to go out again, do you?’ Beth said, wringing her hands a little.

Scobie shook his head. ‘I’m staying home all night.’