Snapshot

55

And there both investigations stalled. A search of Nathan Gent’s house uncovered evidence only of an arid life. No diary or personal letters, no computer, and neighbours who were indifferent and unobservant. Gent seemed to have been entirely jobless and friendless. Of the man himself there was no sign. If he had been the driver, and had gone on the run-as seemed probable, given the empty fridge and the hold on his mail-then he had a pretty unbeatable head start on the police.

There was one recent photograph, but it showed Gent with a full head of hair, and Georgia McQuarrie couldn’t be certain that he was the man she’d seen behind the steering wheel of the Commodore. She was more confident about the likeness generated by Scobie Sutton and Joseph Ovens.

As a second, then a third week passed since the murder of Janine McQuarrie, the investigation concentrated on Gent’s and Lowry’s Navy records.

Nothing tied either man to the murder of Tessa Kane.

Meanwhile, there were no further blackmail demands and gradually Superintendent McQuarrie receded as a thorn in Challis’s side. A warrant to examine Janine McQuarrie’s files was finally granted, but Janine had kept minimal records and no warning bells sounded when Challis read through them. Dominic O’Brien, only barely helpful, said, ‘Janine was a true professional. If any of her clients had failed the three-threats test-i.e., they were a threat to themselves, another person or the criminal code-she would have reported it immediately.’ Challis nodded, ignoring him, jotting down names, dates and addresses.

Then came news that Blight had been knifed in the showers of Long Bay prison. Dead. But while there was still a faint chance that Blight had put out a contract on Christina Traynor, and it was still active, Challis thought it best that she remain overseas, and so he kept the news from Mrs Humphreys.

The only relief for Challis came when he spent two days in Shepparton with the Homicide Squad, short-staffed owing to a strain of Hong Kong flu. A market gardener had been shot dead, execution style. The man sold his produce to the Victoria Market, in Melbourne, and that pointed to organised crime. Either the man had belonged to the wrong side in a dispute, or he hadn’t paid protection, or he owed money, or he’d been skimming off the top. The murder was unlikely to be solved, so Challis was released from the investigation.

Otherwise, he spent hours trawling through the written material that had accumulated since the murder: reports of attending officers; preliminary CIU and autopsy reports; investigation and crime-scene worksheets; witness lists and statements; canvass field notes; crime-scene sketches, photographs and videos; taped interviews; the ongoing investigative narrative, consisting of terse updates provided from time to time by himself, Ellen Destry, Scobie Sutton and other officers. There was also a folder of clippings from the metropolitan newspapers, and finally Georgia’s drawings and Janine McQuarrie’s phone records.

Nothing clarified for him, and he tried not to think of Tessa Kane or Ellen Destry. The Progress came out under a new editor and, as expected, it was utterly lacking in character. He saw his parents a couple of times. He managed to talk them out of investing, sight unseen, in a housing development on the coast of Queensland.

One night the phone rang. It was the man from the aircraft museum in San Diego. ‘Mr Challis, sir,’ he said, gravely courteous. ‘We got your e-mail. I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on your fine airplane at this time. But keep us in mind, sir, keep us in mind.’

Suddenly, Challis no longer wanted to sell. He felt obscurely that Tessa would have been disappointed in him if he had.

Ellen Destry used the hiatus to leave her husband, making a clean break of it. Why postpone the inevitable with marriage guidance and endless recriminations, breast-beatings and blame-laying? She told Alan that she was leaving, and simply left.

He was stunned. He was hurt, he was suspicious and he was nasty. ‘Is it Challis?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Believe what you like. The answer is no.’

Sure, Hal Challis had been a catalyst, but she wasn’t leaving Alan to be with Hal, or make herself available to Hal. She was leaving to be with herself, for herself. She’d waited until she was damn sure of that.

Her new place was a house in Mornington, sharing with another woman, a recently divorced DS from the Community Policing squad. When she gave Challis the address and phone number, he gave her a searching look but then simply nodded. It was his way of saying that he understood how things would be.

Larrayne was furious, no sisterhood there. ‘Are you having an affair or something?’

‘No.’

‘Dad’s really upset.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re a selfish bitch sometimes, Mum.’

Ellen’s hand went to her neck, still faintly puckered from where the bullet had grazed her.

One day Scobie Sutton came home to find his daughter, Roslyn, mute and scared in front of ‘The Simpsons’ and his wife in the kitchen, in semi-darkness, still wearing her overcoat. She must have been sitting like that for over two hours. ‘Sweetheart, what’s wrong?’

She thrust a crumpled sheet of paper at him. It was a print copy of an e-mail, addressed to her at work. He scanned it rapidly, then looked at her in dismay. ‘They sacked you?

‘By e-mail, Scobie,’ Beth said furiously. ‘Seven of us on the Peninsula. We’re run by managers who are too scared, contemptuous or ignorant to tell us to our faces.’

In that moment, Scobie Sutton’s politics shifted minutely to the left. The world is getting more callous, he thought. Goodwill doesn’t work any more. The needs of business now outweigh ordinary human needs. The heroes of business are those who can cut costs rather than create jobs and add to happiness. Cutting costs means cutting staff, and it’s an abstract exercise for those faceless people and their MBA degrees. Nothing messy and human like gently taking someone aside to apologise, explain and praise. Bad enough that it should infect the business world, but to bring that same heartlessness to bear against public servants, especially those-like Beth-who helped the disadvantaged, really sucked as far as he was concerned.

‘One day it’s going to rebound on the bastards,’ he said.

‘But what am I going to do?’ wailed his wife.

He rocked her, thinking about it and not getting very far.

One day in late July, Senior Sergeant Kellock called Pam Murphy and John Tankard into his office and said, staring at each of them in turn, swinging his huge, bull-like head, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that the accident investigation boys have completed their inquiry and don’t intend to take further action against you.’

Relief surged through Pam; her body felt looser suddenly, and she realised how tense she’d been for the past weeks. Even her daily jogging and training had been painful. Maybe now she’d enjoy the easy articulation of her joints and limbs again.

Tank asked, ‘Sir, what will our records show?’

‘Nothing,’ Kellock assured them. ‘No black marks, no long memories.’

‘The civil suit, sir,’ Pam said. ‘The dead woman’s family wants to sue us.’

‘The Federation will support you, there’s a fighting fund to cover legal expenses.’

That was good to know, but what Pam wanted was for the lawsuit to go away. ‘No one else’s put in a complaint about us?’ she asked, thinking of Lottie Mead.

‘No. Meanwhile,’ Kellock said, smiling as if doing them a huge favour, ‘there’s a forty grand sports car sitting in the yard.’

‘Sir, have you driven the thing?’Tankard protested. ‘It’s-’

Kellock went still and dark. ‘Constable…’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘Sir,’ they said, and took to the roads again, looking for polite drivers-a contradiction in terms, as they well knew.

Vyner waited and waited, then sent an SMS: U O me 15 thou.

He sent it again, and again.

Sometime later came the reply. Even rendered in SMS symbols and abbreviations, the tone was blistering. He’d fucked up. He’d shot Tessa Kane instead of staging an accident, and he’d shot a cop in the neck. ‘You can whistle for your money.’ seemed to be the main thrust of the message.