Chain of Evidence

8

The evening light was drawing close in Waterloo. Ellen stood at the head of the incident room’s long table, waving around a small plastic object clipped to a narrow woven neck strap. It resembled a flattened purple egg with buttons and a screen. ‘This is a Tamagotchi,’ she said. ‘A pink one resembling this was found on Trevally Street, not far from the foreshore reserve, and identified by Donna Blasko as belonging to her daughter, Katie.’

She’d sent the original Tamagotchi to the new lab, ForenZics. This one belonged to Scobie Sutton’s daughter, Roslyn. He’d gone home for the day, but she’d called him in again. You don’t get time off when a kid’s missing.

Just then, John Tankard hurried in. ‘Nice of you to make it, Constable.’

Tank went red and sulky. ‘Sorry, Sarge.’

Her face tight, Ellen said, ‘To continue, Donna Blasko found her daughter’s Tamagotchi lying on the footpath near her home and-’

Kees van Alphen raised a lazy hand. ‘What the hell’s a Tamagotchi?’

Scobie said indulgently, ‘It’s a little electronic toy. You give it a name and a personality. My Ros spends all of her free time-’

Ellen had to cut him short before he bored the pants off everybody. ‘I was there for an hour before Katie’s mother mentioned the damn thing.’

‘Nothing else?’ asked van Alphen, bored, picking nuggets of Styrofoam out of the rim of a disposable cup. ‘No signs of a struggle? No witnesses?’

‘No.’

‘No sign of the bike, helmet or school bag?’

‘Correct.’

‘So what are you saying?’

They all looked bored, this was just a missing kid, but, in her bones, Ellen was afraid for Katie Blasko. She wanted to act swiftly. There were three whiteboards behind her: photographs of the girl, and headings and notes in her neat hand. ‘Here are the obvious alternatives,’ she said, using a pointer. ‘One, Katie Blasko ran away.’

‘Exactly,’ said van Alphen heavily.

Ellen ignored him. ‘She has a history of it, always returning home of her own accord or being discovered at a friend’s house. But she’s never stayed away as long as this before, and none of her friends have seen her. Second scenario: she’s had an accident, possibly on her bike, possibly while running away or exploring waste ground somewhere. If that’s the case, she’ll be found eventually, but if she requires urgent medical care we need to send out search parties at first light tomorrow morning. Uniforms have already begun searching the mangrove flats, the tip and the quarry.’ Here Ellen nodded an acknowledgement to Kellock. ‘Third alternative, her classmates, or older children, have done something with her. Locked her in a shed, perhaps. An abandoned house. Again, we need to search thoroughly. Four, this is revenge for something. Does the family have any enemies? Five, the mother’s de facto, Justin Pedder. He had access to Katie. She’d go with him willingly. He has an alibi, however, and I didn’t really get a feeling that there was anything amiss in the home situation. But what if his mates are involved? Six, she’s been abducted by a stranger or strangers. She might be found alive, or dead, or never found. For years now there have been rumours of a paedophile ring on the Peninsula.’

‘Rumours, that’s all they are,’ said van Alphen.

Ellen ignored him. ‘Trace, interview, eliminate,’ she said. ‘That’s what police work boils down to in cases like this. Friends, family, neighbours, teachers, everybody. But we don’t have a lot of time. According to statistics, most kidnapped or abducted children are killed in the first twenty-four hours. If a paedophile ring is involved, they’ll abuse her for a few days and then kill her. We can’t sit around worrying about our shift entitlements, childcare arrangements or overtime. This is too important for that. She could be in a car or house on the other side of the country by now This is the worst kind of case: no body, no obvious crime scene, and no clear place to start.’

She hoped she wasn’t communicating her performance anxieties and doubts to the room. Of course she wasn’t Challis, but how would Challis handle this case? Would he move swiftly, too, and hang the criticisms? She visualised the way he liked to stand at briefings, either propping up a wall, pacing at the head of the long table or tapping wall maps or displays of surveillance and arrest photographs. There were always coffee cups and plates of scones and apricot Danish on the table, but her table was bare, apart from reams of paper. She didn’t want him to hear whispers about her. She didn’t want the officers now watching her expressionlessly to smirk, roll their eyes, look bored or later go bolshie on her because they didn’t think she was up to the job.

Friday, early evening. They’d all rather be at home. She glanced out of the window at the darkening night. She could see flags and streamers curling lazily outside, lit by the streetlights, advertising the Waterloo Show. A perfect weekend coming up.

‘The mother and the boyfriend told you she’s run away before?’ van Alphen asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then she’s run away again.’

‘Leaving her favourite toy behind?’

He shrugged as if the whole thing was beneath him.

‘Kees,’ Ellen said exasperatedly, ‘tell us what you really think.’

He pushed away the ruins of his cup and looked at her finally. ‘She has a history of running away, right? And she’s a kid-kids have short attention spans. She dropped her stupid toy and forgot about it. As for running away, maybe she’s reacting to tensions at home; maybe she’s trying to throw a scare into her mother. Note she didn’t leave the bike behind, a bike’s too precious for that. She’ll turn up. They always do.’

‘We’ve tried all of her friends,’ Ellen said, feeling defensive.

‘Yeah, but have you tried her enemies? Her friends are bound to lie, to protect her.’

‘And her enemies are bound to tell us the truth?’ said Ellen, cocking her head at him, even though she knew his idea was sound: an enemy will lie to hurt, just as a friend will lie to protect, but an enemy might also reveal those things a friend will want to conceal-not that she thought little girls of that age had confirmed enemies.

Van Alphen shrugged. ‘It’s just a thought,’ he said, meaning that she hadn’t covered all of the bases yet.

‘Prints on the Tamagotchi?’ Scobie asked.

Ellen turned to him with relief. ‘Too soon. It’s being tested.’

They watched her, and waited. ‘I’ve had a few hundred flyers printed,’ she said, her voice sharp. ‘Van, I’d like you to muster up some uniforms and start distributing them tonight and tomorrow, all around town, especially along her bike route and at the showgrounds. I want a thorough canvass: flyers in shop windows, on bus shelters and light poles, etcetera, a saturation doorknock. The main Melbourne newspapers will run stories tomorrow, and TV and radio this evening. But we do not make public anything about an abduction or a paedophile ring. It’s too alarmist. It’s also too soon.’

Senior Sergeant Kellock hadn’t said a word as yet. He’d sat there, a massive, brooding presence, signifying disapproval, as though she’d gone too far. She sighed inwardly. ‘Senior Sergeant?’

He stirred, his huge head lifting and turning to take in Ellen, the room and the men and women around him. ‘This is a kid, just remember that,’ he growled, and Ellen could have embraced him.

That’s what she wanted them all to remember. This was a kid. A kid was missing. ‘Scobie, you can be incident room manager. If this gets any bigger we’ll want data inputters, a receiver and an analyst, so plenty of computers and phones, please.’

‘Okay.’

The briefing had taken ninety minutes. Before Ellen could wrap it up, her mobile phone rang. She took the call, tried not to show how thoroughly it disturbed her, and crossed to the TV set in the corner. ‘Behold,’ she said sourly, ‘the mother and the boyfriend.’

‘Evening Update’, Channel 5, five days a week from 7.30 until 8 pm. As Ellen watched, it occurred to her that grief, stress and anxiety have many faces: numb, teary, expressionless, defeated. But sometimes-awfully-grief wears a smiling face. The voices coming from the TV were a little hoarse and broken, but Katie’s mother and her boyfriend were smiling for the cameras.

The segment was live, the reporter in Donna’s sitting room. ‘The police fear that little Katie’s been abducted,’ he said. ‘Have you a message for her abductors?’

‘We hope you’ll return Katie to us unharmed,’ said Justin Pedder, showing his teeth. Reptilian teeth, thought Pam.

Ellen Destry whirled around. ‘I never said a word to those two idiots about abduction. How did the media get onto this?’

They looked at her blankly.

‘If I find that anyone in this investigation has been leaking information, I’ll come down on them like a ton of bricks. Understood?’

‘Sarge.’

Ellen scowled and turned to the TV again, where the question of victims-of-crime compensation was being raised. ‘Yes, we think we should be compensated for our suffering,’ Pedder was saying.

‘How do you put a dollar amount on that?’ the reporter asked rhetorically.

‘Katie is priceless to us.’

The reporter nodded, full of feeling, and said gravely, ‘Tell us how you’re feeling right now.’

‘Like I want to rip your wig off,’ snarled Ellen.

‘We feel just devastated,’ said Katie Blasko’s mother.

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes.’

Gently now: ‘You fear the worst?’

‘Yes,’ the mother and the boyfriend said with their blinding smiles.

‘How would you deal with the monster or monsters who have taken little Katie from you?’

Justin Pedder showed his teeth and gums and mimed hanging from a tree.

‘Where’s the public interest in this?’ Kellock demanded.

Ellen was angry, but a part of her was also thinking that the public interest would quickly move on, leaving behind Justin Pedder and Donna Blasko, who surely felt ravaged to the core, even if they hadn’t the means to express it.

She closed the briefing and returned to the paperwork in her office. Thirty minutes later, she had an inkling of what Challis often went through.

‘I understand we have an abduction, Sergeant,’ said Superintendent McQuarrie from her doorway.

‘Sir, I-’

‘I have that on good authority, of course. The media, no less.’

‘Sir, someone must have-’

‘This station has always leaked like a sieve,’ McQuarrie said.

He began strutting back and forth before her desk. She didn’t know what the protocol was. Should she come out from behind the desk? Should she be standing while he bawled her out? She decided to stand. That made her taller than McQuarrie, who was slight, dapper, a bloodless little man. Was it correct protocol to be taller than your boss?

He scowled at her resentfully. ‘I’ve called a press conference. What do you suggest I tell them? That “Evening Update” got it wrong?’

Ellen sat again. Headlights flickered outside. Waterloo was bopping tonight. She could see all the way down High Street to the waterfront and the showgrounds, the Ferris wheel and the wilder rides lit up like Christmas trees. ‘It’s beginning to look like an abduction, sir.’

‘Beginning to look like,’ said McQuarrie flatly.

A snide little turd. She wondered what he was overcompensating for. His size? His total lack of coppers’ instincts? His years of administering rather than policing? The fact that his Rotary pals were company CEOs while his occupation was largely blue collar? She badly needed to go home, pour a gin-and-tonic, soak in a bath.

‘I realise we’re talking about a small child, for God’s sake, but it’s surely too soon to state categorically that it is an abduction, and too soon for teary parents to be making a public appeal. Do you have compelling evidence one way or the other?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you see my dilemma.’

‘Sir.’

‘Are you up to this, Ellen?’

So now she was Ellen, his best pal? What a prick. ‘I am, sir.’

‘Because Inspector Challis is only a phone call and a plane ride away.’

Ellen clenched and felt herself blush, the heat and the colour coming from shame, defiance and anger. When she found her voice she said, ‘That won’t be necessary, sir.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ her boss said, turning briskly and striding out of the station to address the cameras. He loved the cameras and believed sincerely that they loved him.

Ellen stared gloomily at the wall. Presently she got a call from a technician at ForenZics. His name was Riggs; the voice was the kind that sniffed disapprovingly. ‘That toy you sent us. We found prints and partials from the child and the mother, no one else.’

Ellen sighed. ‘Thank you.’

Riggs said, ‘Hours. The state lab sometimes takes days to furnish results.’

Was he after praise? ‘Thank you.’

‘At your service,’ Riggs said, closing the connection with a brisk click.

Ellen stared at the wall again, then picked up her desk phone and dialled.

Fielding occasional calls from journalists, and referring them to the media office, she worked until 10 pm. Without the benefit of daylight or fresh leads, there was no point in hanging on later than that. She’d be of more use to Katie Blasko tomorrow morning, with a clear head, and so she clattered swiftly down the stairs and out into the car park at the rear of the police station. More than once on the drive along the moonlit back roads did she think about turning back and doing an all-nighter at the station. She wanted to be in her office, not in Hal Challis’s unfamiliar bath, kitchen or bed, when the body was found.

For she was sure there’d be a body, crammed into a culvert somewhere, or tossed onto waste ground. Katie Blasko would be torn and bruised, internally and externally. Ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, maybe her neck. Things organic and inorganic would have been inserted into her. She’d have been photographed and videoed by the creep or creeps who abducted her, the images transferred onto compact disc and sold overseas or stored on computers and e-mailed all over the world, catering to a range of perverts: those who liked pre-pubescent girls posed in their cottontails, those with rape and incest fantasies, sodomites, all the way up to those who got a kick out of killing children or seeing it done.

Challis’s house was dark, her footsteps a lonely series of slaps on his floorboards. It was a house to her, not a home. Without Challis there, it was just a house she’d be living in for the next few weeks. None of the angles were friendly, even with all of the lights on.

She’d collected Challis’s mail and rolled copy of the Age from the letterbox at the foot of his driveway. Now she poured herself a gin-and-tonic and tried to free the Age of the plastic film that wrapped it, but couldn’t find the join. Frustrated, she got one of Challis’s kitchen knives and cut and sawed at the plastic, tearing the paper here and there. She could cry.

Instead she did a stupid thing and picked up the phone.

‘Al? It’s me,’ she said in a small voice.

Her husband didn’t know how to read it. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said neutrally.

He was renting a flat in Frankston now. She didn’t know what his life was like. ‘How are you?’

‘All right.’ He was wary. ‘Is everything okay, Ells?’

He hadn’t wanted her to leave him. She heard from his voice that he was a little encouraged that she’d called. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured him hastily.

‘You don’t sound it.’

‘No, honestly, I’m fine.’

‘I heard on the news they acquitted Nick Jarrett.’

‘Yes.’

‘Bad luck.’

Ellen tried to detect satisfaction in her husband’s voice. Like her, he was a cop, but he was also liable to be pleased by any reversal that came her way. She changed the subject. ‘I saw Larrayne while I was in the city.’

‘She told me.’

‘Oh. She had a boy with her.’

‘Travis.’

‘So you know him. You could have told me. Are they living together?’

‘Why don’t you ask her? She’s your daughter.’

‘No,’ said Ellen, feeling hurt and nasty, ‘she’s her dad’s daughter.’

They were silent. The past and the present sat heavily. Ellen sipped her drink and said, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be home.’

He was attached to the accident investigation squad. He rarely had Friday nights free. ‘Meeting up with a friend later,’ he said.

Code for a female friend, a lover? Ellen wondered if he was telling the truth. It hadn’t occurred to her to think about his love life, for she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him again. Now she felt a faint twinge of something she hoped wasn’t jealousy. Was it jealousy because he had a love life, or jealousy because he had a love life and she didn’t? There was a world of difference between the two.

‘Oh yeah? Who?’

‘Are you jealous, Ells? Lover boy’s gone away and you’re all on your lonesome?’

‘Go to hell.’

She almost cut the connection, but found herself telling him about Katie Blasko. There had been a time, long ago, when they’d talked over their day’s work, the hassles and triumphs. That was before she’d become a sergeant and he’d failed the sergeant’s exam. That was before he’d decided she was sleeping with Challis.

‘I might be able to help there,’ he said, when she’d finished.

She sipped her gin-and-tonic. Challis’s sitting room began to take on warmer configurations. She liked its plain furniture and simplicity, the mix of wood and leather, the CD collection under the rows of books along one wall. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know, Ellen,’ he said impatiently, as though she’d doubted his abilities. ‘Check speed cameras in the area, infringement notices, stolen vehicle reports.’

‘Thanks,’ she murmured, oddly touched.

‘Yeah, well…’

Into the pause that followed, she said, ‘Don’t be late for your date.’

‘Oh, okay,’ he said mutedly, and she didn’t know if he’d been hinting for an excuse to break his date, or keeping up a pretence to make her jealous. She felt about sixteen again.

As she was getting ready for bed the phone rang, and Hal Challis said, ‘Burnt my house down yet?’

Relief flooded her. There was no cluttered history, he was rock solid and he’d be able to help her. Then, just as instantaneously, complications took shape in her mind. Her boss was a thousand kilometres away. He had troubles of his own. He’d left her in charge.

She cleared her throat, trying to rally. ‘Burnt the toast,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘How’s the grass?’

‘Long, getting longer.’

He said apologetically, ‘Get someone in to mow it for you. I’ll pay you back.’

They were far apart in the night, the staticky murmurs of the atmosphere sounding on the line between them. ‘Bad news,’ she said. ‘Nick Jarrett was acquitted.’

‘Hell.’

‘Tell me about it. McQuarrie’s steaming.’

‘I’ll bet. Look, don’t beat yourself up about it. We’ll get Jarrett on something else.’

‘Yeah, something minor, no jail time.’

They were silent, acknowledging the frustrations of the job. ‘Hal, there’s something else,’ Ellen said, and told him all about it: Katie Blasko, Katie’s home life, the delay, the indifference of van Alphen, McQuarrie’s grandstanding, and, more than anything, her doubts and fears.

‘You’re right to treat it as a worst-case scenario,’ Challis assured her. ‘When it’s a kid, you can’t afford to take chances.’

‘But I did take chances, Hal. Instead of sticking around this afternoon and mounting a proper search, I left Scobie in charge and swanned off to the city. What if she’s dead because I didn’t take it that one step further?’

‘But you have to cover the obvious bases first,’ he said soothingly, ‘and that’s what Scobie was doing.’

‘I know, but I feel guilty.’

‘And you’ve made up for it.’

She laughed without humour. ‘Now everyone thinks I’m overreacting.’

‘You’ve got good instincts,’ Challis said. ‘Better instincts than I have.’

Did she not believe him, or not believe that he believed it? She was about to reply when he said, ‘Get Kellock and van Alphen on side. They’ll look out for their own interests first, but they’re straight and they’re canny. Above all, don’t let McQuarrie stage-manage everything.’

‘I know. It’s just that I keep imagining Katie Blasko somewhere dark,’ she said. ‘She’s hurt. She’s scared. I know you have to take a step back and not get involved, but it’s hard.’

‘Actually,’ Challis said, ‘I don’t think you can be a good investigator if you don’t feel something. Feelings are an essential part of imagination and intuition. You can’t do those things cold.’

They’d never talked like this before. Perhaps it was the phone. She liked it. ‘You think so?’

‘Positive.’

‘Thanks, Hal.’

They lingered on the line. Eventually she heard him say, ‘Goodnight. Call me if you need me.’

‘How’s your dad?’ she said, because she wanted to know, and to prolong his voice in her ear.