Chain of Evidence

38

‘But you had a history with him, Paddy,’ said Challis on Saturday morning. ‘Gavin had it in for you.’

‘Like I told them city coppers, I never fucking seen Hurst that day.’

They were standing in Paddy’s dusty yard, which was a vast area of soil erosion stained here and there by motor oil, paint and animal droppings. Around it were rusting truck bodies, ploughshares, harrows and car batteries, standing in collars of tall dry grass, and several corrugated iron sheds: doorless sheds for Paddy’s tractor, plough, truck and hay bales, a set of low-slung pig pens, a fenced dog run and a hen house. Challis had set all of the animals into a frenzy when he drove his aged Triumph into the yard.

‘He was due to come here,’ Challis said. ‘There was a report against you.’

Paddy spat on the ground. ‘I tell ya, Hal, the bugger was never here.’

Challis had gone to high school with Paddy and other Finucanes. Paddy and his siblings and cousins liked to steal from lockers, sell exam questions, run sweeps for the Melbourne Cup horse races, and taunt the young teachers. It was mostly good-natured. They were also excellent athletes, although lazy. Their fathers and uncles all had convictions for drunkenness or receiving stolen goods and were often away for short stretches.

None of that had mattered at the time. But then Challis had gone away to the police academy, returning to the Bluff as a uniformed constable, young, pimply and barely shaving. Within days he’d found himself obliged to arrest the very same Finucanes he’d gone to school with. They wouldn’t struggle, argue or appeal to his better nature-they knew they’d been caught fair and square-but they would look at him in a certain way, partly mocking, partly disappointed. It was as if they-the whole district, in fact-thought he’d let the side down. Soon Challis was turning a blind eye. His sergeant, Max Andrewartha, told him to rethink his options. ‘You’re too soft,’ he said. Pretty soon, Challis had resigned and moved to Victoria, where no one knew him. He joined the Victoria Police, eventually becoming a detective, and now was an inspector, living near the sea, not right out here in the never-never. He lived in a landscape where the rain fell and all was green.

But back here in the Bluff he was still the guy who’d gone to school with some of the locals and been a failed town policeman many years ago. He was called Hal. He wasn’t some stranger.

‘Hal?’ Paddy said, breaking into his reverie.

Challis blinked. Paddy’s face was seamed from years in the sun. He was slight, wiry, canny. He was a clean-looking man in filthy work clothes. Challis had no doubt that the clothes were laundered repeatedly by Paddy’s poor, timid wife, but the oil, grease and paint were permanently melded to the cotton weave.

‘Paddy, I won’t bullshit you, they’re sniffing around Meg.’

Paddy nodded. ‘The divorce thing.’

Challis blinked. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The Finucanes knew everything about everybody. ‘Meg thought that Gavin had run off on her.’

Again Paddy nodded. ‘Them letters she got.’

‘She told the police that Gavin had made plenty of enemies those last few months.’

‘Enemies like me, you mean? Mate, he was a prick from the moment he come into the district.’ Paddy swept one scrawny arm over the infinite earth. ‘No people skills, that’s for fucking sure.’ He grinned.

Challis grinned back. Gavin had always seemed an up-tight, lay-down-the-law type to him, too, on the few occasions they’d met over the years, usually at Christmas time. No one in the family had quite known what Meg had seen in him, but she’d seemed happy enough with the guy.

‘Tell me about some of the run-ins you had with him.’

Paddy cocked his head. ‘You sound like them Homicide blokes, you know that?’

‘Well, Paddy, that’s my job, too.’

‘But not here it isn’t.’

‘True.’

‘Mate, you know me; you know where I come from. We cut corners, you know that, but we’re not mean or vicious.’

Challis said, with mock solemnity, ‘I have it on very good authority that you rubbed sawdust in his face.’

Paddy roared, then wiped his twinkling eyes, quite worn out. ‘That I did, that I did. The cant reckoned sawdust wasn’t a fit bed for dogs; it was smelly and bred fleas and disease. I picked up a handful and said, go on, smell it. Well, he didn’t, of course, so I rubbed it in his face and shoved it down his neck. A mistake, yeah, I can see that, but it felt fucking good at the time.’

‘What else?’

‘The usual. Was I washing the shit out of the pig runs regular? Why was I keeping the sheep in an unsheltered paddock? Was I keeping water up to them? Stuff like that.’

‘People reported you? Your neighbours?’

‘Maybe, I don’t know. All I know is, the prick liked to turn up unannounced and walk around like Lord Muck with his clipboard.’

Challis pictured it and grinned at Paddy. Paddy scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot.

‘When’s the funeral?’

‘Monday.’

Paddy nodded, looked off into the distance. ‘I’m no killer, Hal.’

Challis didn’t think he was. But if Gavin hadn’t been at Paddy’s the day he disappeared, who had taken the photographs? Who had made the anonymous report?

‘Sadler came to see you a few days later?’

‘Yep. Told me your brother-in-law left him a shitload of work to follow up on. I gotta say, he was a more reasonable bloke to deal with.’

‘He didn’t find anything wrong here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Did he take photographs of your animals?’

‘Nope.’

‘Could he have, when you were out?’

Paddy shrugged but could see where Challis was going with this. ‘You think Sadler killed him? Who knows? Old Gav must have been a bastard to work with. Complaints flowing in left, right and centre.’

With a half smile, Challis said nothing.

‘When them Adelaide blokes finished with me yesterday, I got the feeling they were going to see Sadler.’

Challis said nothing.

‘They didn’t believe me when I said Gavin Hurst wasn’t here.’

‘Didn’t they?’

Paddy Finucane said, ‘Fuck off, Hal. Look, you going to help us out?’

‘What can I do, Paddy?’

‘Talk to the bastards.’

Challis guessed that Sadler would have shown the photographs from Gavin’s digital camera to Nixon and Stormare, meaning the Adelaide detectives would have even less reason to believe Paddy’s story. With a series of minor gestures that might have meant anything at all, he left Paddy’s farm and drove home to see to his father’s needs, the shadows disappearing from the dusty paddocks and the sun high overhead.

That afternoon, as his father slept, Challis sat in the backyard sun with the Saturday papers, his address book and mobile phone. He’d taken the house phone off the hook, and made it clear to the reporters who knocked on the door from time to time that he had nothing to say. But they knew he was a detective inspector from Victoria. There seemed to be a story in that.

He finished the Advertiser and the Australian and then called Max Andrewartha. ‘I suppose you’ve heard?’

‘Mate, it’s the story of the week-or the day, at least.’

‘There’s nothing in that file, is there?’ said Challis, knowing his voice carried frustration and anxiety. ‘Nothing I missed? Nothing we missed?’

Andrewartha was silent for a moment. ‘Mate, I should tell you a guy from Homicide called me yesterday afternoon.’

‘Nixon? Stormare?’

‘Nixon.’

‘And?’

Another silence, the quality of it making Challis apprehensive. ‘He asked me a lot of questions about the case, but he mainly seemed interested in you, and in me.’

‘You? You weren’t here when it happened.’

‘I know that. But they see us as mates.’

Challis said flatly, ‘They want you to steer clear of me for the time being.’

‘That’s about it. Sorry.’

‘Well, given that I’m family, I am a suspect.’

He’d been one thousand kilometres away at the time, investigating the murder of a man found in the sand dunes near a lonely Peninsula beach.

‘Family first,’ Andrewartha said.

‘Family First is a fundamentalist Christian political party, Max.’

‘I rest my case.’

Challis smiled slightly, enjoying the sunshine. ‘I was going to ask a favour.’

‘I’m fresh out of favours, Hal,’ said Andrewartha warningly.

‘Have you got someone I can call in the forensic lab, that’s all.’

‘Sorry, pal.’

As if to mark the end of something, a querulous voice called to Challis then, and he returned to the dark rooms of his father’s house.