Snapshot

48

At 8 p.m. Ellen sat alone in CIU, unwilling to go home. She’d finished adding some recent findings to the case narrative, noting that Janine McQuarrie’s finances showed no debts or unusual amounts in or out over the past twelve months. In fact, Janine had died a relatively wealthy woman, with savings, shares and insurance bonds worth $300,000. But Robert was also wealthy, so murder for gain was out. Also, there had been nothing on her computers or in her e-mails and ordinary post to indicate a lover or anyone or anything shady or hidden-apart from the photographs she’d taken with her mobile phone, of course.

Finally, with the assistance of the murdered woman’s husband, sister and business partners, and the super’s wife, Ellen had identified everyone who’d attended the Janine’s funeral as being a work colleague, friend or relative-which meant only that no strangers had been present, not that the murderer hadn’t been. She’d also shown photographs of Raymond Lowry to Georgia McQuarrie, who’d shaken her head and said, ‘I haven’t seen him before.’

So, Ellen had put in a good day’s work, but still she didn’t want to go home yet. There were two reasons for that, one unfortunately related to the other but greatly outweighing it-at least in her mind.

First, earlier that day she’d encountered her husband on the ground floor, accompanied by a guy from Ethical Standards. They’d completed questioning Pam Murphy and John Tankard, and Alan had been looking pretty pleased with himself. She’d had to let him peck her on the cheek, and then he’d invited her for canteen coffee. By then she’d collected herself, and declined, to which Alan had said, ‘Hal baby’s got you on the run, has he?’-suspicion and frustration not far under the surface of his grin.

So she couldn’t face him just now.

Second, Hal Challis was taking Tessa Kane out to dinner tonight.

Ostensibly it was to say thank you on behalf of the police, for bringing them Joe Ovens, but Ellen was reading more than that into it. Challis and Kane had been lovers once-no reason why they couldn’t or wouldn’t be again, even if only once more, tonight, for old time’s sake, or simple lust’s sake. They were unencumbered, weren’t they?-unlike me, Ellen thought, gazing at the little array of family snaps on her desk, Larrayne as a toddler and later a teenager, Alan when he was young and worth loving.

And so she was keyed up this evening, her imagination on fire. It was like being eighteen or nineteen years old again, burning to know what her boyfriend was up to. Her feelings were juvenile, but they were powerful.

So powerful that they drove her to stow the photograph of Alan into her bottom drawer and then begin to prowl the dark streets in her car.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tessa Kane, buttering her dinner roll. ‘I thought you wanted to thank me for bringing you Joe Ovens. Instead, you’re as thankful as a wet week.’

Challis had wanted to thank Tessa with this dinner, had wanted to set the universe right a little. But that was before his talk with McQuarrie this afternoon. He toyed with his food, wondering how to begin. They were in a Mornington bistro, one of the few open on a chilly Monday evening in winter. A scattering of other diners, a vaguely Mediterranean decor and menu. Tessa looked fatigued: the pressure of getting copy ready for tomorrow’s edition. To Challis, all of the kitchen sounds were jarring, the soft lighting too sombre, the room offering no refuge from McQuarrie’s news or even the sleety wind and the blackness beyond the windows.

‘You’re holding out on something,’ he said.

She went very still. ‘I am?’

‘According to McQuarrie,’ Challis said, ‘you’re in possession of certain photographs.’

‘Robert told you?’

‘His father.’

‘Ah. And he sent you to warn me off.’

‘This is not about him, it’s about your professional relationship with me in particular and my hard-working officers in general.’

She looked at him with her head on one side. ‘Hal, listen to yourself.’ Then she narrowed her eyes. ‘Robert was sent copies, too, wasn’t he? A blackmail demand?’

Challis wasn’t about to confirm or deny. ‘I need to see the copies you were sent. We need to check them, and the envelope, for prints. Was there also a letter?’

‘Yes. But whoever sent it wouldn’t have left prints.’

‘Even so,’ Challis said.

‘You think it was the killer? I thought it might be a cop.’

‘No.’

Tessa sighed. ‘I’ll make copies for you.’

‘What did the letter say?’

‘It referred to the article on sex parties, and said that for a fee of $5000 I’d learn who the men in the photos were and the circumstances in which the photos were found. The others received blackmail demands, right? The guy’s trying to make as much money from the photos as possible.’

‘Normally I don’t care what you print,’ Challis said, ‘but if you publish those photos, or even allude to them, you’ll jeopardise the investigation.’

Tessa toyed with the food on her plate. ‘Was Janine McQuarrie into the sex party scene?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

‘The family’s not going to like what I’ve written about her in tomorrow’s edition.’

‘Like what?’

‘Janine was a poor therapist, she rubbed people up the wrong way, she enjoyed challenging men and accusing them of being abusive, and she kept inadequate records. In other words, she might have had enemies.’

Challis gave her a rueful shrug. ‘That about covers it.’

‘I need a big story,’ she said, ‘before I finish.’

‘What about Mead and the detention centre?’

She shook her head and twirled her fork in a tangle of tagliatelle. ‘That fizzled out.’ She paused. ‘He warned me off, you know, because I went to see his wife.’

Challis gave her a crooked smile. ‘I met Lottie at a function once. She didn’t strike me as the communicative type.’

‘Correct.’

‘Look, Tess, will you publish the photos, or mention them?’

She scowled. ‘I might, when it’s all over.’

Challis wanted to help her. But he couldn’t point her in the direction of anyone yet, not even Anton and Laura Wavell, not while they, and their party guests, were potentially implicated in Janine McQuarries murder. If Tessa talked to them now, they’d very likely clam up to her and the police, speak only through a lawyer, and feel betrayed. And so he murmured something that meant nothing and within thirty minutes he was driving her back to Waterloo, the heater of the Triumph not working and the windscreen fogging up, obliging him to turn on the air-conditioning to clear it, obliging Tessa to burrow herself into her coat and her scarf and her gloves and scarcely trust herself to speak to him. ‘What is it with the heaters in old British cars,’ she said when they reached the kerb outside her house.

Said lightly, to mask her pain and let him off the hook, he supposed. He decided to take the question literally. ‘They need time to warm up.’

‘Some never do,’ she said pointedly, getting out.

He watched her cross the footpath and approach her front door, bulky in her overcoat, her hair trapped in black folds by the turned-up collar. He knew that on the other side of the door she’d shed the coat and transform herself into someone slender and purposeful, but right now she looked cold, tired and burdened. He didn’t watch her go in but sped off, the exhaust of his car booming down the street.

No shooting, this time, according to orders. This one had to look like an accident. So Vyner was going for a drowning in the mangrove swamp at the rear of the target’s house. A pity: a shooting is quick and relatively clean. By the same token, if he shot her he’d have to get himself another pistol, and his Navy source was no good to him any more.

He had his third and last Browning with him, though, just in case.

8.45. 9.00. At 9.20 Tessa Kane appeared under the light outside the entrance to the restaurant, coat on, collar up, shoulders hunched, waiting for the boyfriend. Hello, trouble in paradise? The body language was spelling out tension. Vyner watched them walk to the boyfriend’s junky car, and five minutes later he was following them back to Waterloo.

Yep, trouble in paradise. Instead of spending the night, the boyfriend dropped her off outside her house and drove away. The target let herself into her house, and Vyner was right there behind her.

Behind her neat behind.