Snapshot

56

The case began to break open on a Sunday in early August, almost four weeks after the murder of Janine McQuarrie. It started when Pam Murphy drove to Myers Reserve and parked beside the road. She was a little spooked to recognise it as the place where the Toyota van had killed the horsewoman, but it was a Bushrats working bee this morning, clearing the reserve of new pittosporum shoots. She locked her car and walked along the fenceline that divided the reserve from the remnants of orchard and untended farmland beside it. A blustery wind was blowing, cloud scraps scudding across a dismal sky, the ground spongy under her feet. Ten o’clock: the Bushrats would work until noon, and then retire to her house for a barbecue, for it was her turn to have them all for lunch.

She found it a curious experience, involving herself in the local community-even if with a faintly obsessive minority component of it. Most police members spent their leisure time out of the public eye or with other police, for the very good reason that they tended to unnerve the innocent and arouse the hatred of the guilty. But Pam felt welcomed by the Bushrats; it made no difference to them that she was a police officer. And it was a powerful antidote to the daily misery and pointlessness of crime to see ordinary people placing a value on openness, collaboration and benefiting the community without expectation of personal reward.

Last Friday she’d attended a public meeting held to discuss the fate of several stands and avenues of pine trees on the outskirts of Penzance Beach. Some of the pines were immense, casting permanent shadows over nearby houses. Others had died and looked ugly. All had inhibited the growth of grasses and native trees. Some residents had been in tears of fury and outrage that anyone should want to rid Penzance Beach of its pines, but Pam had sided with those who believed the pines should be chopped down and replaced with indigenous plants. A divided community, sure, but one in which the factions were talking and listening.

Reaching a wooden gate, she perched on the top rail and waited for the other Bushrats to arrive. The rail was damp and mossy under her thighs but she wore old jeans and didn’t care. She sat staring out over the orchard where the stolen Toyota had come to rest, and then glanced around at the reserve. The driver of the Toyota had fled towards it, but then she’d lost sight of him and he could easily have doubled back amongst the clumps of old apple trees. Andy Asche was his name, according to Scobie Sutton. Where had he been headed with the stolen gear?

‘Hello, there!’

A voice, torn into ribbons of sound by the wind. Pam turned her head. A fellow Bushrat, slogging across the paddock towards her. He must have parked further down the road; probably feared getting bogged, she thought. He was in his sixties and made heavy work of it. Partly his weight, partly the sodden terrain, for the old orchard was full of corrugations and drainage channels. He waved. She waved back.

Suddenly he stopped dead. Even from a distance of fifty metres, she saw his jaw go slack, his face white. He stared down at his feet, sunk in dead grass and tussocks.

His voice failed him on the first attempt. He tried again. ‘There’s a body in the drain.’