Snapshot

22

An hour later, Ellen took her place at the incident room table and watched as Challis stood and announced, ‘Before coming to work this morning I was visited by two officers from Witsec.’

Witsec was the federal witness protection program, and she saw Scobie Sutton and the others grow alert and intrigued. She tried to match their expressions, amused that Challis hadn’t said she was with him, but also able to see his point: tongues would wag.

‘Last year,’ he went on, ‘they gave protection and later a new identity to this woman, Christina Traynor.’

He tapped a photograph pinned to the display board behind him. ‘Christina Traynor also happens to be the god-daughter of Mrs Joy Humphreys, who lives at 283 Lofty Ridge Road, where Janine McQuarrie was murdered. In fact, she stayed with Mrs Humphreys for three weeks in April.’

A groan went around the room. ‘So back to square one,’ said one of the detectives on loan from Mornington.

‘Where’s Traynor now?’ asked Scobie.

‘London, Mrs Humphreys says. She left in a hurry, apparently.’

Everyone glanced at the photo display again. The image of Christina Traynor supplied by the Witsec agents revealed only an approximate resemblance to Janine McQuarrie. Both women had fair, shoulder-length hair, but Christina’s was stiff and thick, Janine’s straight, fine and glossy. Christina’s build was solid, Janine’s slight. Christina’s face was lively and ready for a laugh, Janine’s shut down, almost suspicious.

‘Not a close resemblance,’ Challis said, as if reading their thoughts, ‘but close enough if you’re working from a description. What probably clinched it for the killer is that he expected to see Traynor, and so anyone resembling her was assumed to be her.’

‘But he turned up there two months late,’ Scobie said. ‘A bit of a stretch, boss.’

Challis shrugged. ‘Remember that this is the federal witness protection program we’re talking about, so our man did well to track Traynor down that far. As to why someone would want to kill her,’ he went on, ‘it seems she got mixed up with the wrong people, informed on them, and needed protection and a new identity.’

‘She must be important if Witsec agents turn up unannounced.’

‘She is-or was.’ Challis glanced at his notes, and then paraphrased. ‘Christina Traynor grew up in Melbourne, and moved to Sydney with her parents when she was sixteen. She did law at Sydney Uni. Her parents now live up on the Gold Coast. Meanwhile Christinu was doing well-junior in a law firm that took on a lot of criminal cases, owned a flat and a car, didn’t booze or take drugs, no debts, only a couple of speeding fines. But then she got involved with Avery Blight.’

Blight by name and nature. Ellen had heard all of this before, in Challis’s kitchen, so amused herself by glancing around at the others. She saw the recognition in their faces. Avery Blight was based in Sydney, but the police forces in each state-and New Zealand-knew who he was. Blight specialised in armed robberies with violence on banks and payroll vans and had been implicated in two murders, including that of a traffic policeman on the motorway between Sydney and Newcastle.

‘Blight’s married,’ Challis said, ‘but he spent a lot of time at Christina’s flat, which he used as a kind of base whenever he pulled a job: planning, meeting other hard men, storing firearms, even stashing stolen getaway cars in the two parking spaces allocated to Christina. He’s normally hyper-vigilant, but got cocky, assuming that Christina was hooked on him and would never turn him in.’

Ellen knew that it wasn’t unusual for young female lawyers to fall for good-looking crims. She glanced around the room, saw the sour expressions: lawyers were often the enemy, and Christina Traynor’s actions confirmed old prejudices.

‘Then Blight went too far,’ Challis said. ‘A security guard was shot dead when they robbed a payroll van. According to Christina, Blight did it, laughed and boasted about it, so she contacted police and he was arrested.’

‘But too late for the poor guy working security,’ the Mornington detective muttered.

‘Christina was placed in witness protection immediately,’ Challis went on, ‘and moved to a house in Melbourne, where she had armed minders twenty-four hours a day. Blight was tried and convicted largely on her evidence, and after he was jailed she was given a new identity and moved to a secret location. Then in April she came to stay with her godmother, and later flew to London.’

He gazed at them. ‘Not even her parents knew where she was. She would call them from time to time, and sound forlorn, to use her mother’s words, but they didn’t think anything was amiss until recently, when she sounded extra jumpy.’

Ellen thought that she’d better say something. ‘So Christina got wind that Blight was after her?’

‘It seems so. She’s running scared.’

‘How come Witsec weren’t keeping a better eye on her?’

‘Once Blight was convicted and Christina had been set up with a new identity, that was it. They contacted her regularly, and gave her emergency numbers to call, but there was no watch over her as such.’

There was a general shaking of heads in the room. Christina Traynor had been foolish to get involved with a crim like Blight, but she’d done the right thing eventually and now had to spend the rest of her life looking back over her shoulder.

‘If Witsec have finished with her,’ Scobie said, ‘why are they sniffing around here?’

Challis shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose they want to lose a witness, even an ex-witness. And maybe they think Blight has coppers on his payroll, prepared to do his dirty work for him on the outside. And they admitted there’d been stuffups they wanted to atone for. The date of birth on Christina’s new passport doesn’t match that on her driver’s licence, for example, meaning she’s had hassles when presenting documentation to organisations like banks for ID purposes. She’d complained several times, but nothing was done.’

Ellen stirred. ‘She doesn’t need the driver’s licence to fly out of the country.’

‘There’s an alert out for her.’

‘Any point in talking to Blight?’ Scobie asked.

Challis looked weary and sardonic. ‘Assuming the super gives permission and allocates expenses to cover the cost of a trip to Sydney, it’s obvious that Blight will deny everything.’ He shook his head. ‘We keep this local for now, and we keep an open mind. For a start, if Janine was the intended target, we need to know who she’d arranged to meet yesterday.’

Scobie Sutton was dubious. ‘If I were a betting man,’ he announced, ‘I’d put my money on Christina Traynor, and that means we need to know everything we can about Blight: who he might have contacted on the outside, who visited him in prison, who he shared a cell with, anything at all.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Ellen said, realising too late that she was echoing her daughter’s favourite expression, ‘the police and prison service of New South Wales are going to drop everything in order to help us.’

Challis grinned. ‘In an ideal world,’ he said.

She returned the grin.

‘What’s next?’ asked Scobie.

‘Ellen and I will visit Mrs Humphreys. The rest of you, keep digging into Janine McQuarrie. Scobie, I want you to speak to the super’s wife if you can.’