Snapshot

31

Tessa Kane worked late, stewing about the tone of her interview with Ellen Destry. Interview? Interrogation was more like it. Destry had been clearly hostile. Now it was after ten o’clock and she was locking up for the night, and had just returned the keys to her bag when a voice growled, ‘Stay out of my private life.’

She jumped, convinced that her stalker had waited for her. He was escalating, making personal contact and not relying on hate mail and stones through windows any more. Swallowing, she forced herself to turn around. ‘Mr Mead,’ she said, oddly relieved.

It was short-lived.

‘You called on my wife unannounced.’

He wore a heavy overcoat, his shoes gleamed, and drops of misty rain dotted his face, granting him a look of powerful emotions held barely in check. He took a step towards her, passing out of the range of the nearby streetlight. She glanced past him, seeking helpful passersby or escape routes, but the entrance to the Progress building was at the side, not the front, and screened by bushes. There was no comfort from the steady stream of traffic on the main road, and at that moment no pedestrians on the footpath.

‘I’m not going to attack you, stupid cow,’ Mead said. ‘But I’m warning you to stay away from my wife.’

‘I merely-’

‘Well, don’t, okay?’

There was a spasm of something in his face, not anger but doubt. Tessa felt her courage returning. ‘Another perspective, that’s all I want.’

‘Ask me, if you’re so keen to know.’

‘I have asked you. I get nothing useful.’

Now Mead was his old self again. His lip curled. ‘I don’t do special favours. The information I give you is the same as the information I give the Melbourne and national media.’

‘It’s public relations bullshit, that’s what it is. I write my own stories, not a rehash of some press release. You still haven’t answered my specific allegations regarding falsified staffing levels and falsified reports being filed by your section heads. There are lots of irregularities that I intend to follow up on.’

‘Go your hardest.’

‘And what do you intend to do about the self-mutilations?’

Charlie Mead showed her his sharp teeth as he turned and walked away. ‘My officers have all been offered trauma counselling.’

That was enough for Tessa. When she got home she fired up her laptop, a glass of red at her elbow, and began to trawl through the internet for what it could tell her about Charlie Mead.

Vyner had driven back to Melbourne after burying Gent and stowing the shovel and his outer clothing in builders’ skips on the Nepean Highway. He showered, caught a movie, ate pasta at a sidewalk cafe on Southbank, and now was watching the late news on TV. Thank Christ there’d been no further developments, no more clues found or anonymous callers to cause him a headache. He switched off and peered out at the night through a gap in the curtains he kept permanently drawn. Tenth floor, but he didn’t have one of the river and cityscape views, just views of wet streets and buildings reflecting light like panels of glass or ice. He shivered. No one was out there, but he could feel the world closing in a little. He got out his journal and wrote: Sing out the names of the lost ages. Uncover the warrior codes of the universe.

That was all the boost he needed. He was ready when his mobile phone received a new text message.

Sorted?

Vyner sent back confirmation. Yes, the anonymous caller was dead and buried.

Andy Asche knocked off a few beers in the main bar of the Fiddlers Creek pub after footy training and got home late evening to find Natalie Cobb pacing up and down in his sitting room, Jet blaring away on the CD player, pity the old pensioner who lived in the adjoining flat. She must have found his spare key-on top of the fuse box; he’d have to re-think that-and let herself in. She was still wearing a suggestion of her Waterloo Secondary College uniform and it was clear to Andy that she’d been choofing a weed or dosing herself with E or ice or speed since the burglary they’d pulled that afternoon, and was pretty hyper there in his sitting room.

And paranoid. ‘I think this cop’s wife is spying on me.’

‘Who?’

‘Sutton, a dee at Waterloo. Know him?’

Andy didn’t know any of the detectives, or any of the uniforms except John Tankard, his footy coach. He went to the window and glanced out. Salmon Street was quiet, the bay dark and still beyond the mangrove flats. ‘What about him?’

‘His wife works for Community Health, looks in on me and my sister and my mum, but I know she’s a spy. Fucking cow.’

Pacing up and down, beautiful and agitated and stoned out of her brain. ‘Listen,’ she went on, ‘I need some dosh really badly.’

‘Already? What happened to the cash I gave you earlier?’

As if he didn’t know.

She doubled over then straightened, her fists tight against her breasts, beseeching him. ‘Andy, please, can’t we knock over another house?’

‘Not tonight we can’t,’ he said firmly. ‘People are watching TV, tucking the kids into bed. Besides, it’s too soon.’

‘Please, Andy. I’ll pay ya back.’

In the end he scrounged up $100 and she slowed down enough to offer to do him with her mouth, her hands, even her feet if that’s what he wanted. He smiled sadly. ‘It’s okay, Nat. You don’t owe me anything. Listen, we’ll pull another job tomorrow, okay?’

‘Where have you been?’ her husband demanded, the moment she set foot in the house.

Ellen removed her scarf and jacket unhurriedly and hung them on a hook beside the back door. She checked the time on her watch, still drawing out her movements: almost 9.30. The interrogation of Robert McQuarrie had taken an hour, the drive back to Waterloo-where she’d dropped Challis-and then home had taken twenty minutes. She was in a severely contestable mood anyway, without her husband setting her off. She’d badly wanted to punish Robert McQuarrie, and didn’t trust her feelings around Challis, which made her mad. And now here was Alan, getting right in her face.

‘Interviewing a subject,’ she said, moving around him.

‘I bet.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she said, stalking by him into the kitchen.

‘You gave you-know-who a lift home, right? What, did he ask you in for a drink? Whip you up something to eat? Or maybe you stopped off somewhere first.’

‘Give it a rest.’

Her dinner, a congealed Thai curry from a can dolloped onto rice, sat mute and unloved on the table. The kitchen-table, benches, sink-was spotless. Ellen knew at once that she was expected to be full of praise and thanks. Instead, she wordlessly slid her plate into the microwave, set the timer and poured herself a glass of wine.

‘So, were you?’

‘Was I what?’

‘Out with Challis,’ said Alan tightly.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I told you, we interviewed a subject. In Mount Eliza, if you must know.’

There was a pause, and into it Alan said, ‘Did you have to give him a lift home afterwards?’

She enjoyed being obtuse. ‘Who? The subject?’

His jaw and fists went tight, and it occurred to her that he’d hit her if she pushed hard enough. She felt neutral about that right now, as though it were an unimportant hypothesis to be tested one day.

‘Challis,’ he said in his strangled voice.

She gave him a reprieve. ‘He’s got a loan car.’

Unfortunately, she wanted to add.

The microwave beeped and she fetched her plate, which hissed and steamed. Alan watched her eat. She wished he wouldn’t.

‘Like it?’

‘Not bad.’

‘I waited, but got hungry,’ he said innocently, and she reckoned that she was supposed to see him, in her mind’s eye, as boyish, vulnerable and uncomplicated again, the lad she married. She ate. She was ravenous.

‘Saw the news. Still working the McQuarrie murder?’

‘Yes.’

Any contenders?’

‘A few.’

‘So no time off in the near future?’

‘No.’

‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that we could go up to town, spend a night in the Windsor, catch up with Larrayne.’

In and of itself, this sounded like a pretty nice idea to Ellen, but her instincts told her that Alan was proposing it because he wanted to keep her away from Challis and remind her that she had family responsibilities. Wifely responsibilities. And because he didn’t know her, or know her any more, he thought a romantic gesture would deflect her.

‘Impossible at the moment,’ she said, draining her wine.

‘You’re owed time off for yesterday. I’ve got Friday off.’

‘Alan, we’re in the middle of a major inquiry.’

‘You and Challis.’

‘And the others, several others.’

He held up his hands placatingly. ‘I just want you to look after yourself, that’s all-not run yourself ragged.’

Yeah, right, Ellen thought.

‘I mean, did you really have to rush off early this morning to pick up his highness? Why didn’t he call for a taxi? Instead, you have to detour all that way and pick him up. Where does he live again?’

Ellen told him without thinking, then checked herself and eyed him closely. But her husband was a plausible man, a good actor, and was absentmindedly flicking through the cane basket of household accounts. God knew what fresh hell he’d find there. She poured herself wine that she didn’t really want but which would occupy her hands and mouth for a while.