Snapshot

9

Scobie drove, with Ellen sitting tensely in the passenger seat, her hands braced on the dash, her foot on a phantom brake pedal. Sutton’s driving style was full of fits and starts, swivel necking, and hand gestures as he talked, punctuated with occasional swigs from a bottle of mineral water.

‘You know the Cobb family?’ Scobie said. ‘From one of the estates?’

‘One of the kids took a marijuana plant to school for show-and-tell,’ gasped Ellen.

‘Correct.’

‘What about them?’

‘My wife’s had dealings with them.’

Ellen knew that Scobie would get to the point eventually. She’d met Beth Sutton a few times, at police picnics and Christmas parties. A plain, good, churchgoing woman who worked for Community Health and was given to helping the unfortunates of the Peninsula. Nothing wrong with that, except that people involved in good works often seemed to wear an air of piety and satisfaction, which often grated on Ellen. She waited, said ‘Really?’ to prompt Scobie.

‘When I was in court this morning I let slip that I was married to Beth. Now Natalie’s going to be suspicious of her.’

‘Scobie, suspicion of the police is inbred on those housing estates.’

‘I know, but it needn’t be. Beth keeps her work and mine completely separate.’

They lapsed into silence. The road was wide and flat now and Ellen relaxed fractionally. Her mind drifted. There was a possibility that one of Janine McQuarrie’s clients was the killer, but getting access to her records was going to be a headache. At the same time, all of the circumstances of the murder indicated a degree of planning and professionalism, as if the killers had been hired.

The woman’s finances would have to be examined minutely. Did everything come back to money? Ellen wondered, thinking about her husband’s own futile rants centred on money. They were struggling, despite their combined salaries-one of their cars was for the scrap heap, and their daughter’s rent and university tuition fees were crippling-but Alan’s resentment sometimes took strange turnings. Only last night he’d said, with a sidelong glance, ‘Don’t you think it’s interesting that it’s always plainclothed police who go up on theft or corruption charges?’

Plainclothed police like her, he meant. ‘Your point being?’

‘They bring decent police into disrepute.’

Guys like him, he meant. Rarely was the Ethical Standards department of the police force obliged to investigate the guys who worked in the Traffic and Accident Investigation squads.

Alan was full of undercurrents. It was very possible that he was depressed. But, more than anything, Ellen was scared that he’d found her out. Now and then over the years she’d pocketed money at crime-scenes, $50 here, $500 there. Probably no more than $2000 in all, over a ten-year period, and she’d even put one haul, of $500, into a church poor box. But the pathology was there in her and she was afraid. It had started with chewing gum at the corner shop when she was eight years old and although she’d more or less stopped, the impulse hadn’t. Maybe she needed a psychologist. Maybe she needed to make an appointment with Dominic O’Brien.

God, what would Challis think of her if he ever found out? She felt sick at heart at the thought. Her palms were damp. She dried them on her thighs, letting Scobie Sutton wander all over the road and talk and talk.

They arrived to find that Challis had brought in two DCs from Mornington and, with their help, set up the first-floor conference room as an incident room: extra computers, phones, fax machines, whiteboards, photocopiers and scanners, and a TV set. But, more than anything as far as Ellen was concerned, he’d brewed coffee and placed a box of pastries in the centre of the conference table. She sipped and nibbled as he introduced the Mornington detectives and outlined the case, reading from his laptop.

Finally he turned to her. ‘Ellen?’

She brushed flakes of pastry from her lapels and summarised the results of the Bayside Counselling interviews. ‘We need to look at those files,’ Challis said. ‘Meanwhile, I carried out a Google search on the husband. He’s a well-known hard case in the finance world, good at firing and downsizing, so no doubt he’s got some enemies. When Ellen and I have finished talking to his daughter we’ll head up to the city and check him out.’

Scobie Sutton had eschewed the pastries and was fastidiously peeling and slicing an apple. ‘Will the daughter make a good witness, boss?’

Challis shrugged. ‘We won’t know until we talk to her, but she did tell the first officers at the scene that the killers came in an old car, white with a yellow door. That will be your job,’ he said to one of the Mornington DCs. ‘I’ve put in a request for lists of cars stolen, abandoned and burnt, so keep updating it and check with Traffic for cars caught speeding, the usual thing.’

‘Sir.’

‘The car could have come in from outside,’ Scobie said, ‘or they were dumb enough to use their own car.’

‘Or Georgia was quite wrong about the car. Either way, we’ll release details to the media,’ Challis said. ‘Someone might recognise the description.’

They looked doubtful. Cars with mismatched doors, boot lids, bonnets and panels were common in a country where the poor were getting poorer.

Challis glanced at the other Mornington detective. ‘Go back to Lofty Ridge Road and talk to any of the neighbours who weren’t at home this morning. Find out who delivers the mail and the newspapers, supermarket orders, the usual.’

‘Boss.’

‘Scobie, I want you to check Robert McQuarrie’s flight movements and find out what you can about Mrs Humphreys and whoever else might have lived at that address. When she’s recovered from her hip operation, interview her. We need to establish if she knows Janine McQuarrie or if she herself has any enemies.’

‘Boss.’

‘Ellen, the superintendent awaits.’

‘Whoopee-do,’ said Ellen, immediately regretting it, for surely the super was grieving.