Chain of Evidence

33

Challis pocketed his mobile and hurried through to the kitchen before the phone disturbed his father. Then he realised: Ellen had said ‘Miss you.’ Grinning, he answered the phone.

‘Hal,’ said his sister. ‘They think they’ve found Gavin.’

She sounded panicky. It was seven o’clock and stars hung in the sky, a vastness of sky above the plains, clearly visible through the window above the kitchen sink.

‘Where?’

Meg’s voice was tight, barely controlled, as she explained it to him. It was a vivid account: he could see the lonely cemetery and the body coming into view, the latter image coloured by his years as a homicide inspector. He knew what time and certain conditions-water, air, chemicals, earth, and the lack of these-could do to a corpse.

‘How certain is it?’

‘His wallet was in his pocket. And his keys.’

Challis sat at the table. ‘They will still need to carry out a proper identification. Dental records, DNA.’

‘I know. They told me that. Hal, they said he’d been shot in the head and did I know anything about that and where was I when he disappeared.’

Challis straightened. ‘Who are you talking about? Who’s asking these questions?’

‘Two detectives. They came up from Adelaide.’

Homicide Squad, thought Challis. ‘I’ll come over. Is Eve there?’

‘She’s staying the night with a friend. They’re studying together. I haven’t even had time to tell her.’

Challis checked on his father, wondering what to tell him. ‘That was Meg. She-’

‘I didn’t see her today,’ he replied querulously. ‘Why didn’t she come to see me today?’

The voice and manner were fretful. He had good and bad days, good and bad periods every day. Challis sat on the edge of the bed, where the air was stale, close and redolent of age and illness. ‘Dad, they’ve found a body. They think it could be Gavin.’

The eyes turned sharp. ‘Suicide? Out east? He’ll be a skeleton by now.’

Challis touched his father’s frail wrist. ‘Buried, Dad. They suspect foul play.’

The eyes grew sharper. ‘They suspect Meg, you mean.’

‘Possibly. I’m going over there now. I’ll see what I can find out.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Dad.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

It took Challis thirty minutes to get his father ready. They took the old man’s boxy station wagon, driving in silence, his father leaning forward as though to speed them through the evening to Meg’s house on the other side of the Bluff. It was a ramshackle place, with plenty of small pens and shelters, from when Gavin had rescued orphaned, injured or mistreated animals. The animals were long gone and the garden looked untamed, the spring growth getting away from Meg and Eve. The gravelled turning circle glowed white in the moonlight and the headlights flashed on the lenses of three cars: Meg’s Holden, which was in the carport, a police car and an anonymous white Falcon.

Challis braked and switched off the engine. His father fumbled with the door catch, dropping his cane between his seat and the door. ‘Let me help you, Dad.’

Before he could do that, Meg was there, opening the door. ‘Dad, you shouldn’t have come out.’ She glanced reprovingly at Challis across the roof of the car as if to say, Are you trying to hasten his death? Challis shrugged.

They went into the house, to the shabby but homely sitting room, where three men waited. All three stood politely, the local man, Sergeant Wurfel, saying, ‘Hello, Mr Challis.’

Challis’s father gestured impatiently and turned to the other men, who were hard and suited, but weary looking, aged in their forties. Challis recognised the type: they were dedicated, hard working, cynical and exhausted. They weren’t about to take anything at face value. They also knew that you start looking close to home when it’s a homicide.

They stepped forward expressionlessly and shook hands with Challis and his father, announcing their names as Stormare and Nixon.

Stormare was dark-haired, Nixon carroty and pale. Challis needed to get something out of the way immediately. ‘Did my sister tell you that I’m-‘

‘An inspector in the Victoria Police? Sergeant Wurfel told us,’ Stormare said.

‘May I ask what you have?’

They gave him their flat looks. Nixon jerked his head. ‘Let’s talk in the kitchen.’ He glanced at Wurfel. ‘You stay here.’

Wurfel flushed but nodded.

Challis followed them into the kitchen. Here the three men stood tensely for a moment before sitting, mutually untrusting, around the little table. Cooking odours lingered: a garlicky sauce, guessed Challis.

‘According to Sergeant Wurfel, you’ve been asking questions about your brother-in-law.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s my brother-in-law,’ said Challis with some heat. ‘My father is dying, my sister and my niece haven’t been able to get on with their lives because they didn’t know if Gavin was alive or dead. Wouldn’t you want answers?’

He wasn’t reaching them. He knew he wouldn’t. Like them, he always treated these situations with an unimpressed mind.

‘We don’t want you meddling in this.’

‘At least tell me copper to copper about the body.’

Nixon shrugged. ‘Fair enough. It was found in a garbage bag, which slowed decomposition. Not a pretty sight. Pretty much a soupy sludge.’

Challis nodded. He knew exactly what the body would have looked like. ‘What forensics do you have?’

‘We’ll try to get prints off the bag, but don’t hold your breath,’ Stormare said.

‘We’ve sifted the soil,’ said Nixon. ‘Nothing.’

They stared at him. ‘That’s all we can tell you.’

‘What did the autopsy reveal?’

‘We’re not at liberty to say.’

‘But he was shot. My sister told me he’d been shot in the head.’

‘We can confirm that, yes.’

Both men were watching him almost challengingly, as if to say: We know our job, pal.

‘If there’s any way I can help…’ said Challis.

‘You can’t,’ said Nixon flatly.

‘My sister didn’t do it,’ Challis said. ‘Nor did my father.’

They gave their empty smiles and said nothing. They all returned to the sitting room, where Wurfel sat awkwardly on a stiff-backed chair and Meg and her father shared a sofa, holding hands. Meg looked washed out. The old man looked mulish. ‘Dad,’ she said warningly.

He shook her off. ‘So it’s not suicide.’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Stormare said indifferently.

The old man smarted at his tone. ‘Gavin made enemies. He wasn’t himself at the end.’

‘Is that so?’

‘He rubbed several farmers up the wrong way. He came down hard on anyone who wasn’t treating his sheep or horses or dogs right.’

‘Mrs Hurst, do you own a gun?’

Meg’s hand flew to her heart. ‘No. Of course not.’

‘Surely your husband owned one, to shoot dangerous animals, put sick and injured ones out of their misery.’

She frowned. ‘Now that you mention it, he did. A little.22 rifle.’

‘It was found in his car,’ muttered the old man.

‘It was?’ said Meg. ‘What happened to it?’

‘I handed it in to be destroyed.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

Challis was watching Nixon and Stormare, who were in turn watching the exchange. His sister and his father were asking some of the questions they wanted to ask and getting the answers they wanted to hear. Stormare turned to Wurfel. ‘Dig up the paperwork.’

‘Sure.’

‘Do you have a bullet,’ asked Challis, ‘or fragments?’

Stormare ignored him. ‘Are there any other firearms in the family?’

‘No,’ snarled the old man, ‘but this is a farming area. Rifles and shotguns all over the place.’ ’

‘We’ll be sure to look into it,’ Nixon said, giving a smart clap of his hands as if to say, Time you went home now.

‘You treat my daughter with the respect she deserves. All these years she thought he was alive.’

‘Dad,’ said Meg.

‘Find the person who sent her those letters and you’ll find your killer.’

The Adelaide detectives went very still. Challis watched their minds working even as they gave nothing away.

‘Letters?’ said Nixon.

Wurfel coughed. ‘I was going to tell you. It’s in the Misper file.’

‘Dad,’ said Meg, ‘how did you know? Did Mum tell you?’

He gestured impatiently. ‘Doesn’t matter. Tell them.’

Meg turned to Nixon and Stormare. ‘I thought it was Gavin, mocking me, trying to hurt me. Magazine subscriptions, memberships, credit card applications. I thought it was Gavin.’ She swallowed. ‘Even a subscription to Playboy. That was the hardest to take. We hadn’t exactly been intimate for some time.’

The old man rocked a little and closed his eyes.

‘Did you keep any of them?’ said Stormare.

‘No.’

Both detectives turned to Challis with the kinds of clever, assessing smiles that he’d given over the years. ‘I don’t suppose you saw any of this mail?’

‘No. But look at her. Look at the hurt.’

They sighed. ‘Perhaps you could come to the station and make a statement, Mrs Hurst. Tomorrow morning, nine sharp.’

Meg glanced anxiously at Challis. ‘Can my brother come with me?’

‘No.’

Challis’s father made some phone calls when the police had left. A lawyer friend from a nearby town agreed to accompany Meg the next morning. The family’s dentist confirmed that he’d been asked for Gavin’s dental X-rays. The effort exhausted the old man, and soon he was slumped in his chair, apparently asleep. By now it was 10 pm.

Meg glanced at Challis, the tension tight in her face. ‘First Dad to contend with, now this.’

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘I know you didn’t. I mean, why would you?’

It was a rhetorical question, but Meg looked away and Challis felt his heart thump. ‘Meg?’

‘He was going to divorce me.’

‘And?’

‘He was going to rewrite his will, leaving everything to the RSPCA and sell this house.’

Challis knew that people had murdered for less compelling reasons. ‘Sounds weak to me, sis.’

‘But they’ll investigate and think that’s why I killed him. I mean, not that I did kill him.’

Challis placed his arm around her. ‘Come and sit down and tell me about it.’

They talked for an hour, murmurs punctuated by their father’s snores and heart-stopping silences when he didn’t seem to breathe at all. As Meg told it, Gavin had been subject to violent mood swings for almost two years. Sometimes he was manically happy, but was more often depressed and angry. The mistreatment of animals distressed him deeply, he accused Meg of being unfaithful to him, he became protective and narrow as Eve’s body matured after puberty, and he often threatened suicide. ‘Threatening to divorce me, sell the house and cut us out of the will was typical of what he was like at the time he disappeared. I mean, was killed.’

‘So you had no reason to suspect anything else?’

‘Naturally I thought he must have committed suicide, especially when they found his car abandoned out east, but then I started to get that weird mail and thought he’d staged his disappearance and wanted to taunt me. He’d run away because he couldn’t cope, but still wanted me to suffer.’

‘Tell the police that.’

‘I will’

‘When was the last bit of strange mail?’

‘Two, three years ago. I hired a private detective. He didn’t get anywhere.’

‘Why didn’t you ask me for help?’

‘You’re so far away, and so busy.’

Challis felt mortified. He tried to swallow it. ‘Tell the police that, too. Show them receipts.’

‘Okay. But who sent me the mail? Why would they do that?’

Challis shrugged. ‘The killer, I suppose, trying to throw everyone off track.’

Paying attention to his doubts and suspicions, even uncomfortable ones, had always been Challis’s main tool in detective work. He couldn’t ignore the possibility that Meg, or the old man, or both of them acting in concert, had shot Gavin. The mysterious mail had been a useful bit of misdirection. The rifle that had been handed in for official destruction had been the murder weapon. The desire to find out what had happened to Gavin was fierce in him now.

‘Fancy Dad knowing,’ Meg said. ‘Mum must have told him before she died.’ She laughed, brief and rancorous. ‘Not that it changed anything. Dad’s always been good at holding conflicting beliefs simultaneously. Or his mind’s going.’

Challis patted her back, rocked her against him briefly. ‘Where were you the day he disappeared, assuming he died the same day?’

‘Here.’

‘Can anyone vouch for that?’

‘God, I don’t know, it was so long ago.’

He held her hand. They were not a demonstrative family, but holding her hand felt right to both of them. ‘Meg, I saw the file they have on Gavin at the local station.’

Something closed down in her face. ‘Did you?’

‘Gavin used to hit you.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘Only a couple of times. At the end. But I didn’t kill him.’

He nodded. ‘Did he hit Eve?’

‘If Gavin had hit Eve I would have left him, no mistake.’

‘Anyone else? Dad, for instance?’

‘The whole world would have known about it if he’d hit Dad. As for anyone else, I can’t say.’

‘But he offended lots of people.’

‘God, yes, even before he started going off the rails he was always taking people to court. Paddy Finucane, for example-Gavin brought several prosecutions for cruelty to animals against him.’

They gazed at each other. Challis told her to tell that to the police, too.

She sighed raggedly. ‘I have to tell Eve. I want her here with me.’

‘Shall I stay?’

Meg looked at him sadly. ‘Thanks, but you’d better take Dad home.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he told her, and together they helped their father into the car.

Later he called Ellen Destry. ‘Only me.’

‘Twice in one evening,’ she said, sounding pleased. He told her about the body.

‘Oh, Hal, I’m so sorry.’

‘A couple of homicide guys from Adelaide are sniffing around.’

Ellen was silent. She knew whom they’d be sniffing around. ‘Hal,’ she said warningly, ‘you’re not going to…’

‘Of course not. Not my jurisdiction.’

‘Yeah, right, as Larrayne would say.’

‘But I was missing a good murder,’ Challis said.

Come tomorrow morning, he intended to go in hard, tracing Gavin Hurst’s last days and sworn enemies.