Snapshot

51

Challis had barely reached home when he got the call. Shocked and numb, he returned to Waterloo, examined the body on the boardwalk, barely choking back his feelings, then acted hard and fast. By midnight he and Scobie Sutton had Raymond Lowry and Robert McQuarrie in separate interview rooms. They were sleepy, bewildered, affronted, and hadn’t thought yet to ask for their lawyers, but that would change.

Lowry first.

‘Where were you between the hours of nine and ten this evening?’

Lowry yawned and blinked. ‘At home.’

‘Can anyone vouch for that?’

Lowry gave another yawn, huge and jaw-creaking. ‘Had a pizza delivered.’

‘When?’

‘Dunno. Some time.’

‘Any phone calls in or out? Visitors? Trips to the bottle shop?’

Lowry, unshaven and smelling strongly of alcohol, shook his head. ‘Must of fallen asleep watching TV.’

Scobie Sutton asked a Scobie Sutton question: ‘You were drinking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Heavily?’

‘I reckon. Look, what’s this about? I feel buggered, I need to get to bed.’

‘Tessa Kane questioned you after we released you on Friday,’ said Challis tightly.

‘That bitch. What’s she saying about me now?’

Challis tensed in the depressing and claustrophobic conditions of an interview room in the dead of night. Images of Tessa s slack body and face, streaked with tidal scum and blood, surfaced in his mind, and he struggled to keep his voice even. ‘You’ve been threatening her for some time now.’

Lowry’s glance flickered. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do. Phone calls, hate mail, rocks through her windows, slashed tyres.’

‘Not me, no way.’

Scobie leaned across the table and its scratched initials, gouges and coffee rings, its calligraphy of despair. ‘You’ve had a grudge against Ms Kane for some time now.’

‘Everyone hates that bitch.’

‘Don’t call her a bitch,’ Challis said in a dangerous voice. He felt close to losing it.

Scobie shot him a warning look and opened a file. ‘Late last year Ms Kane ran a couple of articles about an outfit called Fathers First. Are you a member, Mr Lowry?’

‘So what if I am? I’m allowed.’

Challis chimed in heatedly. ‘Your wife sees a family therapist about the state of your marriage-the violent state of it, to be precise-and soon leaves you, taking the children with her. She gains sole custody of them. You join Fathers First, a motley crew of wife-beaters, given to threatening Family Court judges. Tessa Kane runs an article about you, implying that you’re pathetic. Later she hears that you’ve made threats against Janine McQuarrie, and asks you about that.’

He leaned back, arms wide as if to display the obvious. ‘Two strong women challenge you, and both wind up murdered.’

Lowry froze, his eyes darting, and he managed to swallow and squeak, ‘Both murdered? The newspaper bitch, too?’

‘Don’t call her that,’ snarled Challis. ‘She was shot dead this evening and we need to know how you’re involved.’

He still felt numb. Tessa hadn’t deserved to die like that, hadn’t deserved to die at all, and most of all hadn’t deserved to die when things were unfinished and strained between them. He felt that he’d let her down-just as he’d let his wife down. He’d failed to look after them and they’d died.

‘I was home all evening,’ spluttered Lowry. ‘Plus, I might have hated her but I didn’t want her dead. I mean, Christ.’

‘And one of my detectives was wounded, Ray,’ Challis said. ‘You know how we protect our own. We can get vengeful.’

Lowry shoved out his hands. ‘Test me for gunshot residue or whatever it is you do, if you don’t believe me.’

‘The thing is, you were at home, but what about your mates?’

‘I want a lawyer,’ Lowry said.

Their run at Robert McQuarrie barely got started.

‘I put Georgia to bed at eight, read to her for a while, then went to my study, which is where I was when your heavy-footed colleagues arrested me.’

‘You’re not under arrest, Robert.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said McQuarrie harshly, just helping with enquiries.’

‘Can anyone vouch for your presence this evening?’

‘My sister-in-law.’

‘Who is very protective of you and your daughter.’

‘I’m free to leave, yes? I’m not under arrest?’

‘Well,’ drawled Challis.

‘That’s what I thought. I decline to answer any more questions until my lawyer is present.’

‘Tessa Kane had obtained photographs of you at a sex party- copies of photographs taken by your wife, in fact. You feared that she would publish them and so had her shot dead this evening.’

Robert McQuarrie was sitting well back from the table, as if to avoid dirt and germs, but now he leaned forward with a flicker of interest, almost of hope and relief. But was Tessa Kane’s murder news to him, or had he ordered the hit and here was the confirmation he needed? ‘Shot? Tessa Kane?’

‘Was it the same team, Robert?’

‘What same team?’

‘As shot your wife.’

McQuarrie folded his arms. He wore suit trousers, a white business shirt, a waistcoat and an overcoat. He looked crisp enough to begin a full day’s work, unlike Challis and Sutton, who were ending one, and showed it in their stubbled chins, bleary eyes and rumpled clothing.

‘My lawyer, Inspector. You know the drill.’

And so Challis didn’t get to see Ellen Destry until mid-morning on Tuesday, by which time he felt ragged from grief and lack of sleep. Reporters had laid siege to the entrance to the little hospital in Waterloo, baying because one of their own had been shot dead in a mangrove swamp just one week after the shooting death of another prominent local identity. Challis elbowed through the pack, ignoring their shouted questions and speculations, growling ‘No comment.’

He encountered Mrs Humphreys in the hot air of the corridor. She’d come in for physiotherapy, she told him. ‘If you like, I’ll boot that rabble out of the way when it’s time for you to leave.’

‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Challis said, trying to return her grin. ‘Any news from your god-daughter?’

‘Not a word.’

Challis went on. He found Ellen in bed, her back against heaped pillows, entertaining her husband and daughter. Or not entertaining, it seemed to Challis, for they seemed to have run out of things to say to each other. He shook Alan Destry’s hand after an awkward moment, then nodded hello to Larrayne, whom he hadn’t seen for eighteen months. She’d outgrown her adolescent surliness and plumpness, and although she’d never be a beauty like Ellen-she had her father’s bulky jaw and solid upper body-was nevertheless pretty and poised, and right now watchful and protective. She held a plastic water bottle in one hand and had a memory stick hanging from a strap around her neck, as though she’d come straight from her computer desk. She wore jeans and a heavy jacket over a brief top, her belly button winking at him as she uncoiled warily from the chair beside her mother’s bed, so that Challis was obliged to go around the bed to peck Ellen on the cheek, the husband and the daughter watching him closely.

‘Ow,’ Ellen said, wincing, yet also smiling up at him, one hand going to her neck, which wore a heavy plaster. She looked haggard, embarrassed about looking haggard, and concerned for him.

‘I don’t want to tire you, Ells,’ he said. ‘Just seeing how you are.’

‘I’m fine. Have you caught him yet?’

‘ ’Fraid not.’

He saw in her face then that she was struggling to convey many difficult messages. ‘Hal, I’m so sorry.’

Alan Destry intervened. ‘Come on, pal, give her a break. She’s not up to being interrogated.’

Challis nodded slowly, knowing when he was beaten. ‘Take care, Ellen. Take a few days off…’

Ellen stirred, fury animating her weakly. ‘I’m fine,’ she insisted, looking from her husband to her daughter and back again. ‘I need a couple of minutes with Hal, CIU business, okay? Go and get yourselves a cup of tea or something.’

‘Mu-um,’ said Larrayne.

‘No way,’ said Alan.

Challis waited, guessing that Ellen would win. When they were alone, he said gently, ‘Can you tell me why you were there last night?’

She glanced away and said, ‘I was following up on a recent burglary in the next street, looking for links to your burglary, and happened to be passing.’

Challis knew that she was lying. He let it pass, for he wasn’t innocent either. They were drawn to each other and it was illicit and still playing itself out, even if it led nowhere. ‘Lucky thing that you were,’ he said.

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Why? I didn’t save her. All I did was get myself shot as well.’

‘It could have been worse.’

She touched the graze on her neck as if to say that it was nothing. ‘I couldn’t see a thing. I had to feel my way in the dark. I shot at him, but presumably I missed.’

‘We didn’t find anything.’

‘Apart from Tessa.’

‘Apart from Tessa,’ Challis repeated.

There was a pause. Ellen said gently, ‘Hal, don’t blame yourself’

‘Who says I am?’ he demanded, more forcefully than he’d intended.

Ellen looked away, then back at him. ‘What about Lowry and McQuarrie?’

‘Lawyered up. Alibis.’

She sank back. ‘I couldn’t see anything, but I don’t think it was one of them.’

‘Get some rest.’

‘Alan brought me today’s Progress,’ Ellen said. ‘Tessa’s take on Janine was pretty accurate.’

Challis nodded. He’d read it over breakfast, and heard Tessa’s voice in his head, her special qualities of fierceness and irony coming through clearly. He blinked his eyes.

Ellen affected not to notice. ‘Is there a link between the two murders?’

‘Get some rest.’

‘I’m coming in tomorrow.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m coming in,’ Ellen said, ‘and stop pitying yourself

Challis almost snapped at her, but went out to the carpark, avoiding the cameras and microphones. Behind the wheel of his car, he told himself to breathe deeply, evenly. There was no avoiding it: he was self-pitying. Then he remembered something that Tessa had once said about him, that he tended to feel guilt where it wasn’t warranted or necessary, that guilt in many circumstances was a wasted, a crippling, emotion. That was the truth. She’d given him gifts of wisdom and he’d been too self-involved to see it.