Chain of Evidence

25

The darkest hours, well past midnight. Inside the ambush house, a roomy weatherboard cottage on a quiet street behind the fitness centre, van Alphen examined the expensive gear, the highly polished floorboards. The owner clearly made good money on the oil rigs. A tasteful place, if you discounted the Harley Davidson pennants and Grand Prix posters-which van Alphen didn’t.

A night spent in silence in an unfamiliar house is a long night. From time to time Kellock and van Alphen took turns to prowl through the dark rooms, but otherwise they were still, and rarely conversed. They pinpointed which floorboards creaked, which leather armchair crepitated under their weight. Van Alphen was a smoker but he couldn’t smoke tonight; Kellock badly wanted a drink. They didn’t touch a light switch, rarely used the torch.

At five minutes to four on the morning of Wednesday, 2 October, van Alphen whispered to Kellock, ‘We have a visitor.’

They waited. They tracked the glow of a torch as it passed one window and then another. Nothing happened for ten minutes. Finally there came the sounds of a window being forced. They were in the sitting room. A short hallway led from it. They moved to the hallway, listened again.

The spare bedroom.

Still they waited, allowing time for the guy-Nick Jarrett? — to boost himself through the window and into the room. They heard a soft thump, as though someone had jumped down onto a carpeted floor. ‘Now,’ whispered van Alphen.

Kellock moved first, a torch in one hand and his.38 Smith and Wesson service revolver in the other. ‘Police, don’t move!’ he shouted. ‘Police, don’t move!’

A retired forklift driver lived next door. Owing to his years of shift work at the oil depot on Westernport Bay, he often woke at four in the morning. He heard Kellock’s shout. ‘I heard it twice,’ he told investigators, in the days and weeks that followed.

‘And then?’

‘Nothing for a while, then I heard a couple of shots.’

‘Two shots?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long after the shouted warning?’

‘Hard to say, really. Could have been two minutes, could have been five.’

So much for Scobie Sutton’s vow to stay in all night. He got the call, beating the ambulance, in fact. Kellock and van Alphen met him at the door. He’d always been intimidated by them. They were big men, in size and in the way they carried themselves, and had always treated him with faintly amused contempt, as though he were not a man, as though decent men, churchgoing men, were a joke. It couldn’t be contempt though, could it? What sorts of upbringings had they had? What values had their parents instilled in them? Scobie couldn’t work them out and was afraid, as they stood there in the doorway, not letting him in.

Somehow he found the nerve to say, ‘Unusual for a sergeant and a senior sergeant to be on a stakeout together.’

Kellock made a wide, lazy gesture, snideness in his sleepy eyes.

‘Staff shortages, Scobe old son. Plus I had uniforms watching three other houses.’

Scobie swallowed. ‘Can I come in?’

Both men pantomimed are-we-stopping-you? Scobie edged past them, then paused, looking at Kellock’s arm. ‘You’ve cut yourself.’

‘Defensive wounds,’ van Alphen said matter-of-factly. He was right behind Scobie, practically breathing in his ear. ‘The little cunt pulled a knife on him, didn’t he, Kel?’

‘Yep.’

‘Who shot him?’ Scobie said, backing away from them.

‘I did,’ Kellock said.

‘Where is he?’

‘Along here.’

They took him to the spare bedroom. Nick Jarrett had apparently stumbled backwards, collided with the bed, and then fallen crookedly beside it. He wore overalls and had been shot twice in the chest. Gloved hands, his left clutching a knife. ‘Good riddance, eh, Scobe?’ said Kellock, crowding him there in the doorway.

‘What happened?’

‘Told you, he pulled a knife.’

Scobie said stupidly, ‘That one?’

‘No, a huge Japanese samurai sword that we put back over the fireplace. Of course that fucking knife.’

‘I have to be sure,’ said Scobie defensively. ‘So, he cut you?’

‘No, he gave me a haircut,’ said Kellock, clutching a handkerchief to his forearm.

‘Kel,’ admonished van Alphen mildly.

‘Sorry. Sorry, Scobie.’

Scobie didn’t believe it. ‘Can I see?’

Kellock proffered his arm. Three shallow cuts, parallel to the watchstrap. ‘Defensive wounds.’

Too shallow, too neatly arranged, for that. Scobie swallowed again. ‘That’s what your report will say?’

‘Why? You think I’m lying, Detective Constable Sutton?’

‘I’m just here to note what was said and done, that’s all,’ Scobie said.

‘Mate, you’re a real character.’

They were creeping him out. He heard a vehicle arriving, a heavy motor. ‘That will be the ambulance,’ he said, relieved.

He was gone about a minute, greeting the ambulance crew and showing them to the body. Soon the little room was crowded, and Scobie’s view of the body obscured. ‘Weak pulse,’ one of the paramedics said. ‘We have to get him to the hospital pronto.’

Scobie saw van Alphen and Kellock exchange a complicated glance. Were they relieved? Worried? He couldn’t say.

‘I need to bag the knife,’ Scobie said, pushing through to Nick Jarrett’s body, taking an evidence bag from his jacket pocket. He paused. He could have sworn the knife had been in Jarrett’s left hand. He could have sworn that Jarrett had been wearing gloves. Jarrett gasped then, drawing a painful, rattling breath. His hands fluttered.

‘Mate,’ an ambulance officer said, elbowing Scobie, ‘we have to get him out, now.’

Scobie bagged the knife wordlessly, using his last few seconds to run his gaze over Jarrett. There was a cut above one eyebrow, signs of swelling on one cheek.

‘Mate?’

‘Okay, okay, just remove his overalls first.’

He stood back while it was done. Finally Jarrett was carried out to the ambulance, which tore away, sounding the siren once it had reached the main road.

‘We’ve got a situation,’ Scobie said.

‘No we don’t,’ said van Alphen emphatically.

Scobie trembled and his voice wouldn’t come. There were procedures to follow. But van Alphen and Kellock were his police colleagues. At the same time, he didn’t exactly mourn Jarrett, who was a killer, a man prone to violence. Scobie didn’t doubt that a tox screen would show large amounts of speed in Jarrett’s system. Jarrett would have been volatile, vicious and unpredictable, so it could have happened as described by van Alphen and Kellock.

‘Headquarters will have to look into this.’

‘We know that.’

‘There will be a coronial inquest.’

‘In about a year’s time,’ Kellock said. ‘A lot can happen in that time.’

‘Boss, I need to bag your weapon,’ Scobie said, his voice not holding up. ‘I also need the outer clothing of both of you.’

‘Well, sure,’ said Kellock, not moving.

‘I have to do this by the book,’ gabbled Scobie.

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘I have a couple of forensic suits in the back of my car.’

‘Not a problem.’

Van Alphen and Kellock said nothing more but stared at him. He could feel their eyes at his back as he left the house.

One hour later, dawn light streaking the horizon, Scobie called in at McDonald’s for breakfast, a guilty Big Mac with fries because his nerves were shot. Then he called the hospital, learning that Nick Jarrett had died in the ambulance, and finally called Ellen to report the shooting- a clumsy conversation on his part, he felt. Finally he drove up to the city and delivered the knife, gloves, bagged clothing and.38 to the ForenZics lab, arriving as the doors opened for the day. A guy called Riggs, young, abrupt, irritable, took custody of the evidence, the irritation growing as he removed the items one by one. ‘Jesus, pal.’

‘What?’

‘Cross contamination.’

‘I was rushed,’ said Scobie, feeling sulky. ‘It’s clear enough what happened.’

‘Not to me. Gunshot residue and blood evidence are easily transferred. You’ve got the clothing of several people here.’

‘Three: two police officers and the victim, a burglar.’

‘Oh, well that’s all right, then,’ said Riggs snidely.

‘One officer was slashed with the knife. He then shot the burglar.’

‘Don’t you have procedures for collecting evidence? My findings will be meaningless.’

Scobie felt like weeping. None of this was his fault. ‘Please see what you can do.’