Snapshot

39

Meanwhile, Andy Asche was back in Waterloo.

When the Toyota had finally stopped rolling, he’d found himself upside down and half strangled in his seatbelt. He’d released himself, remembering Natalie, but couldn’t find her anywhere. She must have climbed out and scarpered.

So he’d run like hell through grass, bracken and cow shit, dodging around old apple trees, and vaulted a fence, darting into a dense wooded area. Damp in there, leeches probably, mosquitoes in summertime, rotten logs mossy green everywhere, gaunt dead trees, thriving pittosporum. Then out the other side, coming upon a road- Penzance Beach Road, he realised-carrying a fair bit of traffic at this time of the day. He’d ducked back into the trees and considered his options.

Hitchhike?

Hell no. It could take him an hour to get a ride, and the cops would be all over him before then. He remained in the shadows, beneath dripping trees, and finally saw a kid aged about fifteen come riding down a muddy driveway opposite. Saw the kid park his bike in the hedge at the entrance to the property-a winery, according to a wooden sign-and wait at the side of the road with a gym bag. One minute later, this woman in a Mitsubishi people-mover picks him up, the kid high-fiving it with other kids in the back.

Off to footy training. Maybe I’ll be tackling that same kid at footy next Saturday morning, Andy thought, ducking across when the road was clear, jumping onto the bike, cramming the helmet on his head and pedalling away as fast as he could.

Cool bike, too. Lightweight, snappy gears.

Pity about the van and contents, he thought. Maybe I should get out of housebreaking, get into nicking bikes.

He pedalled hard for thirty minutes, down to Penzance Beach, where he met the bike path that meandered across to Waterloo. Here there were always cyclists, so he’d not attract attention. Twenty minutes later, he was home, thinking that he could give the bike to Natalie’s brothers, see the looks on their faces. As for Natalie, she must have hitched out, left him behind, the bitch. He had to admire that. It’s what he would have done.

But none of this would have happened if she hadn’t insisted they pull another job. She was fast becoming a liability. If the pressure hadn’t been on, he might have spotted that they were robbing a cop’s house. Photos, commendations, an old uniform hanging in the wardrobe.

Thinking he’d better delete the files he’d swiped from the guy’s laptop, Andy switched on his PC.

Back at the accident scene, Pam Murphy was standing at the broken fence, watching the crime-scene technicians dust the van for prints and take casts of the tyre tracks. The sarge was a few metres away, pocketing her phone after talking to Challis. Alan Destry called out from the other side of the road. ‘Oi, Constable Murphy, over here, please.’

Pam stiffened. She saw him cast a half gloating look at his wife, then jerk his head and say, ‘Straight away, Constable. I haven’t got all day.’

‘Alan,’ the sarge said warningly.

‘It’s okay, Sarge,’ Pam said, not wanting to get in the middle of a marital row.

‘Don’t let him bully you,’ Ellen murmured, ‘okay?’

‘Okay, Sarge.’

Pam crossed the road to where Alan Destry stood with his rump against a police car. He opened his notebook. ‘And how’s my wife’s little pal today?’

Pam eyed him warily, wondering about the undercurrents. And was she Ellen Destry’s pal? Hardly. The sarge was fifteen years older, senior in rank, a detective, and married with children. Mentor might be a better word.

Did he expect a response? Did she address him as ‘sir’?-after all, he was only a senior constable.

He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Do you know what my job is?’

‘Accident Investigation Squad.’

‘Correct. I was in Traffic for years, drove pursuit cars, manned booze buses, taught defensive driving techniques, and coordinated high-speed chases as a pursuit controller. There’s nothing I don’t know about driving a motorcar. Nothing you can put over on me.’

So, a challenge. Pam frowned as if puzzled by his choice of words. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, yes you do. Do you realise there’ll be an inquest? The state coroner will be involved, possibly the Ethical Standards Department?’

‘The Ethicals? Why them?’

‘That depends on you, how you answer my questions, how your partner answers my questions, and on what I learn about your conduct during the pursuit.’

Pam stood very still, watched, and waited. She wanted to swallow. Maybe Lottie Mead had reported the stone incident after all.

‘Everything suggests high speed,’ Alan Destry said.

‘The Toyota, not the police,’ Pam flashed back.

Destry cocked his head disbelievingly, a solid, arrogant-looking man with cropped hair. ‘If the Toyota was driving at high speeds-up to 130 kilometres an hour, according to John Tankard-then how come you witnessed the accident?’

‘We were not pursuing,’ Pam said, ‘we were following.’

‘Following at high speeds,’ said Ellen Destry’s husband, ‘and spooking the other driver.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Write it up and submit it before the end of the day. I’ve got tomorrow off, so expect a formal debriefing next Monday.’

‘Formal debriefing.’

‘Yes. What did you expect?’

Andy Asche was in a hurry. He had to get to the post office before five. Wearing latex gloves to screen his fingerprints, he loaded his printer with paper fresh from a new packet, clicked on the photo array that he’d transferred from the stolen laptop to his computer, clicked on the four thumbnails that clearly showed the faces of four men, and clicked ‘print’, making multiple copies.

The photos rolled out of the printer and he collated them into five bundles, which he slipped into five express-post envelopes. Before sealing the envelopes he typed up a letter, big font, plenty of bold, and printed out a copy to add to four of the envelopes. He typed a different letter for the fifth envelope. Finally he tore up the highway to Frankston, where no one knew him, and lodged the envelopes at the main post office.

With darkness settling over the mangrove flats beside her house, and feeling cocooned by her fleecy tracksuit and the warmth of her slow combustion fire, Tessa Kane continued to search the net, a glass of wine at hand. Last evening s Google search had been useful for consolidating the readily accessible information on Charlie Mead and ANZCOR-the bland public face-but now she was refining her search parameters, concentrating on the period before Mead and his wife came to Australia. She’d also made dozens of local and international phone calls since yesterday, speaking to men and women who’d once studied with, taught, worked alongside or served under either of the Meads.

At first, the results seemed promising. The deeper she dug, the more Charlie Mead’s profile blurred at the edges. She found several Charlie Meads, or variations of the one. There had been a time in the 1970s and ‘80s-after he’d served with the security forces in Zimbabwe and later worked as a security consultant in South Africa-when Mead frequently changed addresses, but she could not discover why. To avoid creditors? There was also a question mark over his service record: certainly he’d served in the South African military, but had he ever been a highly trained commando with SAS connections, as he’d claimed? Later still he’d worked for a security company in the UK that specialised in surveillance, firearms training, bodyguards for travelling businessmen, and negotiating in hostage and kidnap situations. He was sacked in 1986 after South African authorities had interrogated him regarding an attempt to provide arms and mercenaries to insurgents in the Seychelles. In the early 1990s he’d joined ANZCOR and risen through the ranks.

Apart from references to a position held in the South African public service, she’d found almost nothing on Lottie Mead.

Tessa felt frustrated. The facts were sparse, and although they’d required a little digging, were on public record, and didn’t point to anything obviously criminal or corrupt. What was the point in publishing an expose if there was nothing to expose? Sure, Mead had probably cut corners all his life and his values were non-existent or deplorable, but in the current political climate, which admired cowboys, Mead was bound to have powerful supporters and be seen as a man who got things done.

There was one last strategy she could try. Reaching for the phone, she began to hire private detectives in South Africa, England and the US.

Ellen arrived home that evening to find Alan watching a DVD: a war movie, no surprise there. She almost went straight out again. ‘Have you eaten?’

He gestured with the remote control, his gaze on the screen. ‘Yep.’

So she heated leftovers and ate at the kitchen table. Usually Sunday night was movie night, but Alan had a day off tomorrow. Ellen had treasured Sundays when Larrayne had still lived at home. They’d eat pizza, fish and chips, or cheese on toast, plates on their laps, in front of the box, watching a good movie, like Emma, Sense and Sensibility or Love, Actually. Sometimes Alan watched with them, but it had to be an action movie for him to last the distance, and the only ones that Ellen and Larrayne could stand to watch were old James Bond and Indiana Jones movies, or action movies with a bit of class, like Heat. Or Titanic, which he’d endured more for Kate Winslet’s tits and the ship turning arse up than the characters and storyline.

Now, with Larrayne living in the city, Ellen felt a sense of loss. Larrayne seemed to lurk in the corners of the house, the corners of Ellen’s gaze. Ellen’s widowed mother had suffered the same thing: ‘I keep catching glimpses of your dad,’ she’d say. ‘Not his ghost, I don’t mean that. The particular way he held the newspaper or walked through a door or put the dishes away.’ Well, Ellen kept glimpsing Larrayne here and there, and even missed those quirks of Larrayne’s that had driven her nuts at the time, like the way she would never stay put when cleaning her teeth but wander out of the bathroom and up and down the hall and in and out of rooms, electric toothbrush buzzing in the corner of her mouth.

Ellen picked at her food, seeing the dead horse and rider, the overturned van. Was Larrayne very vulnerable now?-away from home for the first time; drugs everywhere; evening lectures and a long walk home across a shadowy campus and down dark streets; getting attached to an axe murderer disguised as Mr Right; or even getting her heart broken, which was bound to happen sooner or later.

And so she phoned, several times. No answer. Larrayne, and her housemates, were out.

For the evening? The whole night?

Where?

Doing what?

With whom?

The old who, what, where, when and why of police work.

And all the while she was trying to tell herself that she would leave her husband on her own terms and not because Challis existed.