Whispering Death

28

By Saturday morning the station’s main briefing room was cluttered, the air poisonous. Additional desks, phones and computers had been scrounged from downstairs, detectives and collators from other police districts on the Peninsula. But it had been a big Friday night for some of these men and women. Breath was sour, alcohol leached from their pores, eyes were grainy and bloodshot.

Challis cranked open the windows and said, ‘This is Sergeant Schiff of sex crimes. She’s here because we had an abduction and rape, and now we have a murder that might have started out as an abduction and rape.’

He watched as sets of eyes flickered over Schiff. She cast a last glance at her phone and stood, facing them down, before positioning herself at a commanding spot in the room. An attractive woman, Challis thought. Slim, vivid and implacable, wearing a clinging skirt today, glossy hair not pinned up but swinging about her shoulders. Very attractive, in fact: intelligent, wry, competent, with an air of mischief under it all. He thought she’d irritate some of the women and arouse a mix of desire, hostility and rivalry in some of the men.

He inclined his head slightly, signalling that the floor was hers. She positioned herself between the wall map and portable display board, swishing a pointer. ‘The first victim,’ she said.

With a flick of her slender wrist she tapped a head-and-shoulders photograph. ‘Chloe Holst, twenty years old, worked part-time at the Chicory Kiln restaurant here-’ she tapped the map ‘-and abducted here-’ another tap ‘-when a man dressed in a Victoria Police uniform, and carrying police ID, stopped her car. He got into her car, and forced her to drive around at knifepoint. She was sexually assaulted several times in the hours that followed, and finally dropped at this nature reserve.’

This time Schiff slapped the wall map. It swung as if caught in a gale.

‘Forensics?’ a voice called.

Challis shook his head. ‘Nothing much. According to Miss Holst, her attacker used a condom, and when he was finished with her he washed her down and combed out her hair.’

‘The second victim,’ announced Schiff, into the pause that followed. ‘Delia Rice, twenty-six years old, from-’ she hesitated over the word ‘-Moo-roo-duc.’

‘Moorooduc,’ half-a-dozen voices said fluently, some helpful, others with a faint sneer. There was little that Challis could do about the sneers. Jeannie Schiff would be watched and assessed over the next few days. If she passed, the eye rolling would cease.

‘From Moorooduc,’ Schiff said. ‘Recently divorced and back living with her parents-who reported her missing yesterday afternoon, about the time her body was discovered in the boot of a crashed and abandoned Holden sedan found here.’

The map swayed again. ‘Now, similarities between the two cases. Both were found naked, with bruising around the neck and on the stomach, thighs and genital area. Signs of forced intercourse, with condom lubricant found in the vagina, anus and throat. Both women were washed in a bleach solution and it’s likely that Delia Rice’s hair was combed out, just as the first victim’s was.’

‘Pubes, too?’ said Neil Staines, a Frankston detective. He was young, a smirker.

Schiff said, ‘Since you find the genitalia of even a dead woman arousing, perhaps you’re not the right person for the job.’

There was a stunned silence, then laughter, but Staines’s two colleagues hooted, as if to say that Jeannie Schiff was being overly sensitive, couldn’t take a joke. One of them muttered, ‘Pre-menstrual.’

Schiff indicated both men, and Staines, with the pointer. ‘You, you and you, you’re off the case. Frankly, you’re a dead weight and a disgrace to the force.’

They gaped, looking around for support and finding none. ‘Yeah, well, good luck,’ Staines said, climbing out of his chair in his lazy, fatalistic way.

As he sauntered out, Schiff whacked his backside with the pointer. He was shocked. ‘You hit me.’

‘You bet.’

‘I’m reporting you.’

‘Go right ahead.’

Challis looked on with amusement and faint alarm. If this became an administrative headache, he wanted no part of it, not on top of everything else. And he wondered if he could afford to lose three investigators, even bad ones.

When the three had gone, Schiff said, ‘Yes, I will get into trouble for that. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is catching a rapist and a killer.’

There was a ripple of intensity in her voice and body.

‘To recap: there are similarities between the two cases. But Delia Rice died as a result of the attack on her, and we don’t know if she was abducted or went willingly with her attacker, and, if she was abducted, we don’t know if he’d posed as a police officer. The man seen running away from the scene was not wearing a uniform. Now, how do we read this? One, it wasn’t our man but a random hitchhiker who for some reason strayed onto the driveway of the house around the time the accident occurred, and I doubt very much that that is the case. Two, he was an accomplice of the main offender. Three, the cases are not related, this is a different offender. Four, he changed into ordinary clothes before dumping the body, fearing the uniform would be noticed.’

Challis stirred. ‘Our man is forensically aware, by the way. He’ll have burnt the clothes.’

With grim authority, Schiff said, ‘But not the uniform. He needs it, it’s his main tool, it’s not something he can buy off the rack at K-Mart.’

‘But what if we’re dealing with an actual policeman?’ Scobie Sutton said.

‘Then we keep an open mind. Now, another difference. The first victim was driven around in her own car, attacked in her own car, dumped from her own car, which was returned to the abduction site. We have nothing like that in the case of Delia Rice. She’d encountered financial difficulties after her divorce and sold her car.’

‘So where was she abducted?’ asked a Mornington detective. ‘How did she get there?’

Schiff looked to Challis, who uncoiled from the wall. ‘Miss Rice was driven to the Frankston station by her father on Thursday afternoon. She was to take a train to the city and stay overnight with friends. They’d made dinner reservations and had tickets to a Missy Higgins concert. She didn’t arrive.’

Schiff stepped in again, saying, ‘The friends didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t show. Thought she’d changed her mind. It all came out yesterday morning when Delia’s mother phoned, wanting to speak to her. After that the parents dithered a bit, rang around all of her friends, spoke to the ex-husband-who lives in Sydney, incidentally, we can rule him out-and finally called us. By which time Delia had been dead for several hours.’

She glanced at Challis. He said, ‘Returning to the car business: Chloe Holst states that she was stopped by a man driving a late model white Falcon. She could be excused for thinking it was an unmarked police car. We doubt he was driving his own car. Scobie?’

Scobie Sutton felt the strain of the collective gaze. He coughed, tapped files and folders into neat piles. ‘We looked at the theft of white, late-model Falcons, Holdens and other family-sized cars going back four weeks. Forty-one in Victoria, five on the Peninsula. Most were found quickly, probably stolen by joy riders. Four were torched, two damaged. As for the others, I expect they’ve been through a chop shop.’

‘If it’s the same man,’ Challis said, ‘he used the same tactic. Delia Rice was found in the boot of a white sedan, a Holden this time, stolen from the car park behind the TAFE College in Frankston.’

Schiff gave a bright, hard smile. ‘Which raises the issue of time. Chloe Holst was snatched at night, Delia Rice we’re not sure of. But we do know that it was daylight when her killer was driving around looking for somewhere to dump her. What does that tell us?’

Pam Murphy lifted a hand. ‘Her attacker is unemployed, or he works irregular hours.’

‘Very good. And so we come to the fun part of the proceedings, divvying up the work load.’ She pointed, moving swiftly from person to person. ‘You, get hold of the CCTV coverage in and around the TAFE college. You, Frankston station, ditto-and nearby streets and shops, in case Delia decided to take a later train. You, drive to the city, talk to the friends. You, track down her Peninsula friends. You, another word with the ex-husband. Constable Murphy, you’re with me.’

Challis watched, trying to read the shifts in Pam Murphy’s face and demeanour to tell him if she needed a break from the high-powered sergeant. He saw Pam Murphy give Schiff a little punch to the shoulder as if to say, ‘Loved the way you sorted out that prick from Frankston.’