Snapshot

27

Challis had put in requests for assistance from the police and prison services in New South Wales after the morning’s briefing, but when nothing had transpired by lunch time, he grabbed a sandwich from the canteen and checked his pigeonhole. The top circular read, Where circumstances and protocol allow, Victoria Police and civilian staff members will use both sides of a sheet of paper rather than two sheets. He almost crumpled it up and tossed it into the bin, but the circular’s reverse side was blank, so he did the right thing and took it upstairs with him, to be used for making rough notes.

Then Waterloo Motors called to say that his loan car was ready. He shrugged on his coat and left the station through the rear door to avoid the reporters camped outside the front door. Waterloo Motors was choked with cars awaiting service or repairs or to be collected by their owners. He picked out his loan car quickly, a rusted-out Toyota, with mag wheels, a fluffy steering wheel and the words ‘Waterloo Motors’ pasted all over it. He collected the keys and drove it back to the station, enduring the blokey jibes of a few car-mad constables.

By mid afternoon some preliminary information had come in from New South Wales. Blight’s prison visitors consisted of his parents, wife, brothers and two men who’d once driven cabs for him. He’d shared a cell only once, with a man who was still incarcerated. Since then he’d been in a single cell in a segregated block.

What next? Fly to Sydney and interview every one of Blight’s visitors, every inmate in the prison? A sheer waste of time, and Challis couldn’t see McQuarrie giving budget approval.

Meanwhile he wasn’t ruling out Janine McQuarrie as the intended victim-or not entirely-but was prompted to close certain avenues related to her case by a bleating phone call from Robert McQuarrie: ‘When are the police going to release my wife’s body?’

‘Should be in the next day or two,’ Challis said, making a note to check with the pathologist.

‘There’s also the car and her mobile phones. Surely you’ve finished checking them for evidence?’

A little chill crept over Challis’s skin. Why the hurry? What was so important about these possessions ahead of the welfare of his daughter? ‘These things take time in a murder investigation, sir,’ he said.

McQuarrie said nothing but Challis could feel the man’s irritation and impatience. ‘You said “phones”? I understood that there was only one phone,’ he said, searching through the files on his desk for the crime-scene inventory.

‘Two phones: one that she uses-used-hands free in the car, and another that she carried around with her.’

Challis found the inventory. There was only one mobile phone listed, clip-mounted to the dash of the car. He’d assumed that was the phone Georgia had used to call 000. Had she used the second one instead? If so, where was it?

‘It will still be in the property room,’ he said confidently. ‘I’ll see that it’s returned to you first thing tomorrow. My apologies.’

‘I hope that light fingers haven’t been at work, Mr Challis.’

Fuck you, thought Challis savagely. He immediately made two phone calls. From the first he learned that Janine’s car had been tested for prints but none were found to match those stored on the national computer. Then he called a number at the regional headquarters in Frankston, Superintendent McQuarrie answering on the first ring, saying peevishly, ‘I was just on my way to a meeting.’

‘Sorry, sir, a quick question: when you took Georgia home from the murder scene yesterday, did she have a mobile phone with her?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘According to your son, Janine had two phones. We only recovered one.’

‘Not to worry,’ McQuarrie said, ‘I’ve seen her office, home and mobile phone records, and there’s nothing on any of them to arouse concern. Nothing dodgy, only business calls and calls to my son’s mobile and work numbers. I’ll fax them through to you, if you don’t have them-though I’d be disappointed if you don’t by now, Hal, I must say. Obtaining phone records is surely basic groundwork in a murder investigation.’

In fact, Challis had requisitioned Janine’s phone records-except those for the second mobile phone, which he hadn’t known existed. He wanted to drive to Frankston immediately and slap his boss about the face, demanding to know whether or not the man considered himself a proper policeman, or even a policeman, or even a man of ordinary decency and common sense.

He forced himself to calm down, but his mind raced. McQuarrie must have gone swiftly to work in getting those phone records, and as a superintendent he had considerably more juice than a humble inspector. But what was he playing at? Was he trying to bury evidence that might damage his son’s good name, his own good name? What if he’d discovered that Janine had been phoning organised crime figures or toy-boys twenty times a day? Would he have revealed that to the investigating officers?

Is he, thought Challis, our killer?

‘Sir, we need the second phone.’

‘Why? I’ve got a record of the calls she made. All innocent.’

‘I need to see the message bank,’ Challis said patiently, ‘the numbers listed in the memory, and the call list for the most recent incoming, outgoing and missed calls.’

‘Well, I haven’t got the damn thing,’ McQuarrie said peevishly. ‘Georgia didn’t have it, I’m sure of that. Perhaps she gave it to Robert.’

‘It was Robert who alerted me to the fact of its existence,’ Challis said, trying to convey that he thought McQuarrie should have done so, too.

‘Well there you are. It was collected at the crime-scene and has either been misplaced or stolen since then. Rosebud officers were the first to attend; have you tried them?’

Fuck off, Challis thought. He double-checked the record of calls made on Janine McQuarrie’s car phone-there were no calls to the police on the morning of her murder, and so Georgia must have used a different phone. Then he spent a fruitless hour tracking down and calling the Rosebud CIU and uniformed officers. They knew nothing of a mobile phone being found with or near the body.

Finally he talked to Georgia.

‘I used Mum’s mobile,’ she told him.

‘Not the one she uses in her car?’

Georgia’s voice went small, almost scared. ‘No, the one in her bag. I’m not supposed to, but I grabbed it when the man started chasing her. Sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Challis gently. ‘Can you remember what you did with it afterwards?’

There was a gasp and he pictured her hand flying to her mouth. ‘I left it on the ground!’

‘Where?’

‘In the trees where I hid!’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find it.’

Challis thought about all of the things that might have damaged the phone since the murder: rain, dew, the chilly air, hungry rats, inquisitive magpies. Just then the fax machine sounded: as promised, McQuarrie was sending through Janine’s phone records. Challis snatched up the sheets, and there was Georgia’s call to 000. He noted the number of the missing mobile phone, then drove to Mrs Humphreys’s house in the late afternoon gloom. The crime-scene crew had packed up and gone, and he walked unimpeded down her driveway. After checking the signal strength of his own phone, he dialled the number for Janine’s. A moment later, very faintly, he heard it ring. A voice inviting him to leave a message cut in before he could isolate the location.

He approached the stand of poplars, which were leafless and choked by pittosporums. The latter would have promised a reasonable degree of shelter to Georgia, he supposed. He pressed redial, and this time found the phone, secure inside a small vinyl case deep in a tangle of grass and fallen leaves. He opened the Velcro flap and let the phone slide into his palm. It was a fancy, costly-looking thing; he couldn’t figure out how to work it.

He encountered Ellen Destry in the station carpark, retrieving files from the back seat of the CIU Falcon. ‘Our esteemed leader returns,’ she said. She cocked her head at his loan car. ‘Cool wheels.’

‘It’s a heap of shit.’

She laughed, then said with a slight catch in her voice, ‘So I guess you won’t be needing a lift home tonight.’

Challis gazed critically at the rattletrap Toyota. ‘Too soon to tell.’

They went upstairs to CIU. ‘You busy, Ells?’

‘You know I’m busy. I think you mean, drop everything at once and help me with something tedious.’

‘No one likes a smart-arse. See if you can figure out how to retrieve the numbers and messages stored in this mobile.’

‘Whose is it?’

‘Janine McQuarrie’s.’

‘What makes you think I’d be better at it than you?’

She was in a light, attractive mood. ‘You have a teenage daughter,’ he said, flourishing the mobile at her. ‘I rest my case.’

‘No one likes a smart-arse,’ Ellen said, taking the phone from him. She turned it over, pressed buttons, and gave him a running commentary. ‘Cutting edge. You can use this for calls, SMS, e-mail, video, photography…’

Challis watched her press more buttons, watched her face change as she said, ‘The secret life of Robert and Janine McQuarrie.’

Instead of showing him the tiny screen, she attached the phone to the USB port of her computer, downloaded the contents to her hard drive and made CD copies. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him one of the CDs.

‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘You’re such a dinosaur. Copy the contents to your hard drive, then print it out.’

She showed him how. What he saw put Janine’s murder in an entirely new light: ten photographs, low-resolution shots of men and women copulating, the women obscured, four of the men in sharp enough detail to be identifiable. Two had flushed, straining, heavy-lidded faces, one man was apparently emotionless, and the fourth was Robert McQuarrie, showing his teeth in a kind of ecstatic snarl.

‘Oh boy,’ said Challis, shifting in his seat. It was a powerful distraction, the snapshots, Ellen’s joshing expertise and physical proximity.

‘We have to assume that Janine downloaded these to her home or office computer,’ Ellen said, ‘or e-mailed them to herself.’

Challis shrugged. The technology was beside the point just now. He told her he was more interested in what had driven Janine McQuarrie to take the photographs, what she’d done with them, and whether or not they’d contributed to her being murdered.

Ellen was with him every step of the way. ‘Blackmail?’

‘Could be.’ He tapped the photographs. ‘But what are we looking at here?’

Ellen snorted, naming and describing a few body parts.

‘Very funny,’ he said, feigning severity. In fact, the mood was electric and precarious.

She sobered and made an effort. ‘Dim lighting,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘A suburban house.’

‘So it’s not a photographic studio or the set of a porn film?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s someone’s house, and they’re not making a film or posing for the camera.’

‘Good. But is it a suburban house that doubles as a brothel?’

‘We’ve both worked Vice in the past, Hal. This is no brothel.’

‘Why not?’ Challis demanded, wanting Ellen to pin it down for him.

‘The body language,’ she said. ‘These people don’t look like pros and their clients. They all seem a little self-conscious. Look here in the background: people standing around watching, and that looks like a bowl of condoms and that looks like a lubricant dispenser. The pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks, the furniture, all point to this being an ordinary house.’

‘I agree.’

‘Do you think the super knew Robert and Janine were attending sex parties?’

Challis shrugged. ‘Could explain why he’s been obstructive and interventionist.’

There was a pause. ‘Hal,’ Ellen said eventually, ‘could you imagine being watched by a roomful of people while having sex?’

Challis couldn’t imagine engaging in any kind of herd behaviour. ‘No.’

‘It doesn’t turn you on?’

‘No.’

‘How about watching?’

‘Unobserved?’

‘No, watching in a roomful of others.’

‘No. I’d still feel watched.’

She seemed to sway towards him a little. ‘That’s pretty much how I feel about it,’ she said.

Then she destroyed the mood. ‘You know what we have to do, don’t you?’

He turned and looked at her. ‘Talk to Robert.’

She shook her head determinedly. ‘Talk to Tessa Kane. And I’m coming with you.’

‘That’s not a good idea.’

‘You don’t trust her?’

Challis didn’t, not entirely. ‘Robert can tell us where this took place.’

‘And Tessa Kane can tell us if it’s the same party that she attended. Of course we don’t show her anyone’s faces, only photos that identify the location. If she does recognise the place, then we start digging, making it clear to her that she’ll face obstruction charges if she writes about the photos or tries to contact anyone.’

‘You don’t like her, do you?’ Challis said.

‘Not much.’

They stared at each other. ‘If I’m there she’s going to know it’s related to the McQuarrie investigation,’ Challis said.

‘Then let me question her. I’ll say someone found a photo of themselves on the net and we’re investigating.’

Challis sighed. ‘Okay.’