Chain of Evidence

44

On Tuesday morning Scobie Sutton stared in fascination at the man who had abducted and raped Katie Blasko, possibly abducted and murdered other young girls, and also cheated a stack of people of $395 plus booking fee. Duyker, with his eyes dead as pebbles, dry, heavily seamed cheeks and neck, and patchy, tufted brown hair, did look disturbing close up. At surveillance distance he’d seemed nondescript, a tradesman on his day off, maybe, a man who favoured pale coloured chinos, deck shoes and a polo shirt. You wouldn’t look twice at him. Now Scobie couldn’t take his eyes off the man. He visualised Grace Duyker, sweet Grace, with her skin like ripe fruit, sitting unconsciously close to him as he’d interviewed her about Duyker. Well, the closeness was probably unconscious, but Scobie had liked it, and had ‘unconsciously’ moved his bony thigh closer to hers as she told him about family occasions when she was young, and the creepy way Uncle Peter had looked at her.

He forced himself to pay attention, and heard Ellen Destry say, ‘You’ve been identified by a witness, Mr Duyker. You, Neville Clode and other men have for many years been sexually abusing underage boys.’

An equal opportunity child rapist, Scobie thought, boys and girls. Of course, Ellen was jumping the gun here. Van Alphen hadn’t produced his witness yet, hadn’t even come in to work yet.

Duyker, on the other side of the interview table, folded his arms and stared at the ceiling panels. Scobie looked up, astonished and angry to see wadded tissue stuck up there, as though this was a public toilet. He privately vowed never to leave a witness alone in an interview room. ‘Mr Duyker?’ he prodded.

‘I’m not saying anything until my lawyer gets here.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Scobie saw Ellen lean back in her seat. ‘Now, where have I heard that before?’ she said. Scobie continued to stare at Duyker, looking for the flinch that said to keep pushing. Duyker was expressionless. The air in the little room contained an evil stink, suddenly, as if Duyker exuded contempt through his pores while his eyes remained fiat and dead. Contempt for young girls, police, anything decent at all. Scobie shivered involuntarily and said a few words of prayer to himself.

‘We have enough to hold you, Mr Duyker,’ Scobie said. ‘May I call you Pete? Peter?’

Nothing.

‘Fraud, in addition to the sex offences.’

Nothing.

‘You defrauded my wife of $395,’ Scobie went on. ‘A policeman’s wife. We have a pattern here, don’t we? Your record shows fraud charges in New South Wales and across the water in New Zealand.’

Duyker said flatly, ‘My lawyer.’

‘He’s not helping us with our inquiries, Pete, you are,’ Ellen said.

Scobie pretended to read a page from the file that lay before him on the chipped table, where coffee rings overlapped like Olympic logos rendered by deranged children. ‘This pretend photography. It wasn’t all pretend, was it? You took actual photographs sometimes? Little girls? Naked? Having sex with you and your mates while they were too drugged to resist?’

Scobie found himself reeling in distress at the sudden pictures in his head, of his sweet daughter at Duyker’s hands, and he himself floundering, unable to save her.

Duyker sat unblinking.

So Scobie said, headlong and spiteful, ‘Your DNA matches DNA found in the house where Katie Blasko was found.’

Beside him Ellen threw her pen down softly. Around him the air shifted, and a slow smile started up in Duyker’s face, an empty smile but a smile.

‘I don’t recall giving you a sample from which to make a match. I don’t recall that you asked for one. Meanwhile my DNA is not on file anywhere. Stop playing games.’

‘We’ll be asking for a sample,’ Scobie said, going red. Ellen breathed out her disgust.

Duyker was amused. ‘I wonder what my lawyer will say.’

Scobie and Ellen were silent, Scobie mentally kicking himself. Never give them ammunition to use against you: Challis had drilled that into him time and time again. And this interview was being videotaped: a good copper always keeps his facial expressions neutral in those circumstances.

Ellen tried to take the initiative. ‘You’ve been identified from a photograph array as being one of the men involved in the sexual abuse of underage boys, Pete.’

According to Kees van Alphen, thought Scobie in disgust. Van Alphen had been evasive lately, supplying partial answers or none at all, and he was never in his office. Running his own investigation, as Ellen had said in frustration last night.

Then, out of nowhere, an appalling thought came to Scobie: van Alphen was running interference for this gang of paedophiles. Van Alphen had assured Ellen that his informant, some kid named Billy DaCosta, had identified Duyker and Clode from a photo array, but maybe that was a delaying tactic, or an outright lie. And where were van Alphen and his mystery informant?

Duyker was yawning. ‘Are we done? Can I go?’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Ellen said. ‘We intend to make the fraud charges stick.’

‘So, make them stick.’

‘We will’

‘My lawyer will have me back on the street so fast your heads will spin,’ said Duyker, showing heat for the first time.

Scobie suspected it was true. A search of the man’s house had found nothing. His van was clean, apparently washed, waxed and vacuumed until it was like new. But Scobie and Ellen knew what Duyker didn’t know: there was a paint smear in the rear compartment. Purple enamel, the same colour as Katie Blasko’s bike, a smear so tiny that it was no wonder Duyker had missed it, amongst all of those other scuffs and scratches, obtained from years of loading and unloading. They were waiting for a paint analysis. They’d already approached the manufacturer of the bike for the composition of the paint that had been used on bikes like Katie Blasko’s.

They didn’t have the bike, though. ‘It will be at the bottom of the bay,’ Ellen had said last night. ‘We might prove he had a bike on board, but not that he had Katie Blasko’s bike.’

Now Scobie heard her ask Duyker to account for his movements on the afternoon Katie Blasko was abducted.

Duyker shrugged. ‘Out and about, probably.’ He shifted in his seat, fishing for his wallet. It was a fat wallet, the leather worn, the cotton stitches unravelling. And full of business cards, receipts and paper scraps. Scobie and Ellen watched as he leafed through it all, wetting his index finger laboriously, loving every minute of it. ‘Here we are,’ he said eventually.

He slid a cash register receipt across the table. Ellen poked it into position with her fingernail. Scobie peered at it with her. At 4 pm on the day Katie Blasko was abducted, Peter Duyker had been buying a photography magazine in a city newsagency, one-and-a-half hours away by car or van. ‘My filing system,’ he said apologetically, ‘leaves a lot to be desired.’