Snapshot

38

Still feeling a tug in the pit of her belly, Ellen watched Challis drive away. She wished she could accompany him, help him face the super, but knew that was impossible. She shook herself and went to greet the crime-scene technicians.

For the next hour she supervised their search for prints, and then directed them to the tyre marks in Challis’s front lawn, watching them spray a fixing solution onto the muddy impressions first, before pouring the plaster.

‘I need to know if these match tracks found at other local burglaries,’ she said.

‘We’re on it, Sarge.’

She’d only just got back to the incident room when her mobile rang.

‘Sarge? It’s Pam Murphy.’

‘Hi. What’s up?’

Something about a crashed Toyota van, full of expensive gear, the driver legging it into a belt of trees. ‘I remembered that you and Scobie Sutton had been working on a series of burglaries.’

Did you indeed, Ellen thought. In anyone else the explanation would have seemed fawning, but Pam Murphy had a good memory and the habit of making connections. She’d make a good detective.

‘Are you sure the gear is stolen?’

‘Well, the driver did a runner, and there’s too much stuff: TV, DVD, digital cameras, jewellery, laptop.’

Ellen tingled. ‘You’re searching for the driver?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘Stay there, I’m on my way.’

She collected Scobie Sutton and an unmarked car and set out for a corner of the map she’d never visited before. The Peninsula was endlessly variable, and here was the Devilbend Reservoir and remote houses set back from a winding dirt road.

‘It’s not as if she’s new,’ said Scobie Sutton as she drove.

Ellen guessed that he was talking about his goddamn daughter again. She’d heard about every cut, bruise, bowel movement, bad dream and spelling-test result. Roslyn Sutton was endlessly fascinating to her father. For Ellen, Challis and anyone else who worked with the man, the daughter had long become background noise. Ellen tried to pay attention. Today it was the child’s dancing classes. Irish traditional? Ellen tried to remember. Riverdance stuff? Scottish jigs and reels? Something like that.

‘She’s as good as any of the other kids, but year after year the medals and honour certificates go to those girls whose mothers help out with the costumes and makeup. It’s not fair, and she knows it’s not. She tries to be grown-up about it, but it hurts her, you can tell. She’d like some acknowledgment, just once.’

‘It’s important,’ Ellen said, thinking of her own daughter, nineteen now, sharing a house with other university students.

‘I mean, Beth and I are too busy to help out with costumes and stuff. Why should Ros be penalised for that?’

‘Exactly.’

A sudden roar and a helicopter flashed above them, low and straight.

‘Just follow the chopper,’ Scobie muttered.

Five minutes later they were at a scene of carnage. Ellen swallowed, feeling sick at heart. Blood, litres of it, had pooled dark as spilt oil across the road. A vet was administering a lethal injection to an injured horse, and a dead woman in full horse-riding jodhpurs, helmet and boots was being loaded into an ambulance. A wire fence had been torn open and deep tyre gouges scored the muddy surface of a paddock of grass and scattered apple trees, the remnants of an old orchard. Several police cars were parked on the verge, roof lights flashing. And there was the helicopter, hovering above an overgrown stand of trees at the far end of the paddock; closer to, one hundred metres inside the ruined fence, was an overturned van.

And there was her husband, questioning John Tankard, who was agitated and shaking his head. Pam Murphy stood watching them, biting her bottom lip.

Leaving Scobie to catch up on the details with Alan and Tankard, Ellen pulled on rubber boots and approached Pam, touching the younger woman’s forearm reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry about my husband. The accident squad has to get involved. But it was a clean chase, right?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘Good, then there’s nothing to worry about. Has he talked to you yet?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll be fine. Now, show me.’

They waded through wet bracken, Ellen glancing across the paddock, which sloped gently up to the stand of trees. Dead gums predominated, dry skeletal arms reaching above shorter, denser pittosporums and wattles. ‘What’s that place?’ she said, pointing.

‘Myers Reserve, Sarge.’

The air was damp, laden with the odours of nature disturbed in the process of decaying. They walked on.

‘Sarge, mind your feet.’

They leapt over a small creek, murky water glinting beneath reeds, and came to the overturned Toyota. The rear doors had fallen open and Ellen peered inside. There, just as Pam had listed them, were several items that, on first impressions, matched items listed as stolen from Challis this morning and the Penzance Beach property yesterday. She went around to the front of the van and crouched at the broken windscreen. Laptop. She drew on latex gloves, reached in, and hooked it out.

‘Sarge?’

Challis’s Toshiba, complete with his initials scratched on the lid.

‘Bingo.’

‘Sarge?’

This was delicate. She needed to secure the laptop and return it to Challis; she didn’t need every cop on the Peninsula to know that his laptop, containing sensitive information, had been stolen. At the same time, she didn’t want to lie to Pam Murphy, or get her into trouble.

‘Pam, I’m giving you a receipt for this, okay? If there are any questions, refer them to me.’

‘Sarge, CIU’s in charge now anyway, you can do what you like.’

Ellen nodded. ‘This laptop was stolen this morning. It contains sensitive material.’ She hoped Pam hadn’t seen the initials, or twigged that they belonged to Challis.

‘Sure, Sarge, whatever you say.’

‘Good. Meanwhile we need the crime-scene people to dust the van for prints and make casts of the tyre tracks.’

‘Sarge.’

Just then a couple of brightly festooned highway patrol cars came screaming in, one of them skidding as it braked. ‘Only about thirty minutes behind everyone else,’ Pam muttered.

‘I’ll need details,’ Ellen said, as they returned to the road.

Pam described the incident at the Coolstores, the chase itself- ‘Strictly by the book, Sarge’-and then the Toyota clipping the horse and veering out of control through the fence.

‘Rolled and landed on its roof. Nothing we could do. Tank stopped to help the woman on the horse, I tried running after the driver, but he disappeared into the reserve.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Almost an hour. It took a while for everyone to get here.’

Ellen looked up. ‘So that chopper is probably wasting its time.’

She drew away, saying, ‘I need to make a call, be with you in a couple of minutes, okay?’

‘Sarge.’

Ellen flipped open her mobile and speed-dialled Challis.

Challis was at regional HQ in Frankston, tight and jittery in McQuarrie’s top floor corner office, when the call came. He fumbled for his mobile, murmuring, ‘Sorry, sir, I’d better take this.’

McQuarrie didn’t glance up but continued to employ an age-old boss’s tactic of frowning over documents with a pen and ignoring him.

‘Hello.’

‘It’s me. Can you talk?’

He felt a surge of spirits, not only from hearing Ellen’s voice but also from realising that its altered timbre-low and throaty-reflected what had happened that afternoon. ‘Not exactly.’

‘You’re with the super? Blink your eyes once for yes, twice for no.’

He grinned, despite knowing that his career was about to be sunk. It probably gave Ellen a curious thrill to rag him like this, knowing he was with McQuarrie. ‘Sergeant Destry,’ he said, ‘if you’re really sure that you want to transfer to the traffic division then I’d be happy to write a reference.’

She snorted. The super glanced up, frowned, and returned to his stack of papers. ‘Good news,’ she said, and told him something about a crashed van loaded with stolen goods, including his laptop. ‘It’s definitely yours.’

His relief was palpable. ‘You’re a wizard.’

‘Have you told the super?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Don’t, Hal. There’s no need to, not now.’

‘Okay.’

‘Catch you later.’

Challis felt buoyant, no longer afraid, no longer depressed by the atmosphere on the top floor, where policing was a rarefied thing, soundproofed and distant from the streets and the law courts. Policing here walked on carpets, wore suits and had university qualifications after its name.

He stretched his legs and gazed around him. There were leather-bound reports on the shelves, photographs of the super shaking important hands, a rubber plant as glossy and vigorous as a plastic fake, and a cluster of tiny silver picture frames in one corner of the huge desk, featuring Mrs Super, Robert and Georgia. Georgia’s image had been scissored from a larger photograph. She’d been sitting on a woman’s lap. Janine’s?

He grew aware that the super had put down his pen and was regarding him with faint irritation and disdain, the face of a busy man on important tasks. ‘You told my secretary this was urgent?’

Challis said, ‘I’m afraid there’s been a development, sir. It’s delicate.’

McQuarrie’s face shut down and he didn’t say anything, but swallowed, as if steeling himself. Thank God I don’t have to tell him about the laptop, Challis thought. I can show him the photos and retain the advantage.

‘Go on, Inspector.’

‘Sir, we found the missing mobile phone.’

‘And? Get on with it.’

‘Certain photographs were stored on it,’ Challis said, taking them from his briefcase and fanning them across McQuarrie’s desk.

For a long time, McQuarrie was motionless, inclined a little to examine the photographs but not touching them. Finally he looked up and said, his voice catching, ‘When?’

‘They were probably taken the Saturday before last. Of course, it’s possible that-’

McQuarrie gestured irritably. ‘I don’t mean that-when did you find them?’

‘Late yesterday afternoon.’

‘You didn’t think to tell me sooner?’

‘We didn’t want to cause any unnecessary distress.’

McQuarrie watched him in apparent disbelief, but then switched tack. ‘I heard all about your raids this morning.’

His spies. ‘The men in the photographs,’ Challis said.

‘You didn’t raid Robert?’

‘We interviewed him last night.’

‘And?’

‘Each man received a copy of his photograph in Monday’s mail.’

‘Janine was blackmailing them? One of them killed her? I take it she took the photos?’

‘We can’t be sure.’

‘I can,’ said McQuarrie emphatically.

‘Sir,’ said Challis, ‘did you suspect something was going on?’

McQuarrie’s faзade slipped. He looked bewildered, pushing his fingers back through his hair and looking about wildly as if for deliverance. ‘There was always something about her that wasn’t quite right. Something missing. The wife and I did our best to make her welcome, make her one of the family, but Janine seemed to resent us, despise us. She was quite critical. I don’t know what it was: jealousy, perhaps? She had quite a sharp tongue, often reducing my wife to tears. She had nothing good to say about anybody.’

His glance settled on Challis helplessly. ‘My wife’s not to hear about any of this. You can’t show these photos to anybody. How many have seen them so far?’

‘Only the members of my team.’

‘Do you vouch for each and every one of them?’

‘Yes.’

McQuarrie turned self-protectively nasty. ‘If our friends in the media learn about these photographs, I’ll know where to look.’

Challis knew how to play at this game. ‘Sir,’ he said, tapping Robert McQuarrie’s photograph, ‘apparently this has been going on for some time.’

McQuarrie flushed angrily. ‘I’m sure she drove him to it. She was a cold little bitch. I bet it was all her idea.’

‘Neither she nor your son gave you any indication that this was a part of their private lives?’

‘Of course not.’

But you had niggling doubts about Janine, thought Challis, and when she was murdered they hardened into suspicions. You feared the reasons why she was murdered would reflect badly on you and your son, and this accounts for your apparent obstructiveness and lack of sympathy.

‘We don’t know why she took the photos or who else might have been involved,’ he said.

‘Are you saying my son’s involved? He was in Sydney when she was shot. He’s in the damn photos, for God’s sake. Are you suggesting he and Janine were in this together and his photo’s a smokescreen? Are you saying he’s next?’

‘No,’ Challis said, remembering Robert’s reactions the night before.

Meanwhile McQuarrie was gaining momentum. ‘Are you saying I had prior knowledge of all this? That I killed Janine to save our reputations?’

‘Did you, sir?’ said Challis mildly.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ said McQuarrie, pitching about in his chair. ‘I resent the implication. Do you honestly think I wanted to bring all this down on myself?’

Challis didn’t. In fact, if the shooting was related to the photographs, then why hadn’t the killer searched Janine’s house and office for further copies? ‘Sir, I have to ask, but did Janine ever approach you, or your wife, with overt or veiled threats or attempts to blackmail you?’

‘Absolutely not. She’d know I’d never have paid up and I’d have had her in handcuffs quick smart.’

McQuarrie had possibly never carried or used handcuffs. ‘And there’s no indication that she blackmailed these men,’ Challis said, pointing to the photographs. ‘We don’t know why she chose them, took their photos or sent copies to them.’

McQuarrie said softly, ‘But it’s a hell of a motive for murder, Hal.’

‘It is indeed.’

‘She could have been at it for months, years.’

Challis had thought of that. ‘Yes.’

‘Was she in it alone? Maybe there’s a lover we don’t know about.’

‘We’re keeping it in mind, sir.’

McQuarrie seemed to want to tear at his sparse hair again. ‘Who else knows? How are we going to keep a lid on it? I’m relying on you, Hal.’