Whispering Death

35

Pam Murphy leaned against the one-way glass and snatched a few minutes to read the News-Pictorial, the weekly hot off the press.

This time the paper had sought the viewpoint of senior police, who’d wheeled out an assistant commissioner to counter Challis’s claims. ‘I speak for the Commissioner, the Police Minister and all Victoria Police members in stating that we take very seriously the fight against crime, and…’

And blah, blah, blah. Pam scanned through the article. Crime figures were only apparently on the increase. Crime reporting was improving, that’s all. For example, domestic violence victims had become more confident about seeking police assistance. ‘Other increases are trivial,’ the assistant commissioner was quoted as saying. ‘People fitting stolen number plates to their cars so they can drive off without paying for petrol, for example.’

That might be true, thought Murphy, but it doesn’t address the issue of resources.

There was movement on the other side of the glass and she folded the newspaper under her arm. Darren Muschamp was escorted into the interrogation room by a uniformed officer, who took up position in the corner. Then Sergeant Schiff and Inspector Challis entered, sliding onto chairs opposite Muschamp, Schiff saying: ‘So, Mr Muschamp, three abductions and rapes, one of which ended in murder.’

Muschamp was jiggling in his chair, occasionally sniffing then wiping a sleeve across his nostrils, his gaze flicking into all corners of the room. ‘Wasn’t three. Wasn’t even two. And I never murdered no one.’

Schiff, sending off sparks of energy, said, ‘Okay if I call you by your first name, Darren?’

He shrugged.

‘Are you feeling all right, Daz?’

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he needed a fix.

‘Because our doctor cleared you as fit to be interviewed.’

‘Hit my head in the crash.’

Schiff narrowed her gaze. ‘I don’t see any serious damage.’

He had nothing to say to that.

‘You’ve been offered a lawyer. I’m renewing that offer.’

‘You got me, fair and square. I don’t need a lawyer.’

‘We do indeed have you fair and square. Abduction, assault with intent to rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment, between the hours of midnight last night and six o’clock this morning.’

‘I can do the time.’

Pam knew a little of Muschamp’s life story, and had read his criminal record. Grew up near Cranbourne, his mother a hairdresser, his father a taxi driver. Above average student, began an RMIT course but started taking drugs. Dropped out and returned to live among his old high school friends, many of them unemployed, some of them with criminal histories. Soon he was stealing cars and robbing houses to feed his drug habit.

Arrested in 2008, two years in jail for aggravated burglary. The victim, a twenty-six-year-old woman who lived alone, had awoken one night to find Muschamp stealing her plasma TV. He’d punched and kicked her-but Pam was wondering now if he’d also assaulted her sexually, and for whatever reason she hadn’t wanted to report it. Maybe that’s how he’d got his taste for rape? There was nothing else in his file.

She watched Schiff lean back, twirling a pen in her slender fingers. Gold glinted, and Pam could see, even in profile, the dangerous, full-wattage certainty in Jeannie’s face. A look she wore during sex, too.

‘Do the time, Darren? Life in prison?’

‘Get real.’

He wasn’t taking Schiff seriously. He was responding to her presence, but mostly watching Challis warily, as if waiting for a proper cop to start asking the questions. Challis was yet to speak or move, and Pam guessed he was stewing over the News-Pictorial story. It probably seemed intimidating to Muschamp.

‘Dazza,’ said Jeannie Schiff in a matey voice, ‘I’ve never been more real.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Sorry, Darren, Mr Muschamp. You attended a tertiary institution, after all, so you’re a bright boy, deserving of my respect. And being a bright boy, you’re admitting the offences against Tina Knorr, without benefit of a lawyer, hoping we’ll leave it at that and not charge you with anything more serious, like rape or murder.’

‘Because I didn’t do no rape or murder.’

Schiff grinned. ‘So, Daz, you like wearing women’s clothing?’

Muschamp flushed, picked at a gouge in the table with a grimy nail. ‘A cop uniform is a cop uniform.’

‘Your cousin Mandy’s cop uniform, to be precise.’

Pam saw the tension in Inspector Challis’s shoulders. He’d given Scobie an earful at the morning briefing for not listing women whose uniforms had been stolen.

‘So what if I want to dress up as a cop?’ retorted Muschamp.

‘A bit more than that, Darren. You dressed as a police officer in order to give a false sense of security to women so that you could abduct and rape them.’

‘ One woman, last night. And I never even got my end in.’

Muschamp grinned as he said it, confident she’d rise to the bait, but Jeannie Schiff said mildly, ‘Ms Knorr feared for her life, and with good reason, given that you’d murdered your previous victim.’

‘Nup. No way. Wasn’t me.’

‘And before that you abducted Chloe Holst and raped her several times over several hours.’

‘Can’t prove that either.’

‘I think you’ll find that we can. At one point you took Ms Holst into a nature reserve north-east of Waterloo, correct?’

He shook his head. ‘Not me.’

‘But you know the area,’ Schiff said. She glanced at her notes. ‘You’re a part-time delivery driver for Waterloo Rural Supplies, correct?’

‘So?’

‘A witness has you driving one of their trucks on a back road past the reserve about two weeks ago.’

Pam saw another shift in Challis’s shoulders. He’d got lucky with a list of number plates collected by an old man who lived near the reserve. Because the witness was a bit cracked in the head, he’d put the information to one side, almost forgetting it. But then he’d run the numbers and hit the jackpot.

Muschamp grinned again. ‘I deliver all over the Peninsula.’

‘Gives you the opportunity to scout around for body-dump sites.’

Muschamp said heatedly, ‘I never stepped foot in that reserve place, whatever you call it, and you can’t prove I did.’

He sat back, smirking confidently. In his mind he’d been super careful, leaving no evidence at the scene or on his victims.

Challis said mildly, ‘We found several crime-scene textbooks, forensic science textbooks, in your house.’

Muschamp shrugged, gazed critically at his fingernails. ‘I like to read.’

‘Darren,’ Schiff said, ‘I’m renewing my offer: you may have a lawyer present.’

‘Can’t afford it.’

‘The system will provide one free of charge.’

‘Last time it did that I got some kid barely out of school. He never did nothing for me.’

‘As you wish.’

‘So get me bail and let me go.’

‘You say you like to read. That’s admirable, Darren. I’ve been to many houses where there’s not a book in sight. I suppose you know quite a bit about trace evidence-from your reading?’

Edginess crept over Muschamp again, as if he were re-creating the crime scenes in his mind’s eye, looking for evidence he might have left behind.

Schiff continued to push. ‘What do you know about the human voice, Darren? Think it’s possible Chloe Holst would recognise your voice?’

Muschamp processed that slyly. ‘This is the chick worked at the Chicory Kiln, right?’ He sat back, folded his arms. ‘Well, I’ve eaten there a few times, so maybe she would recognise my voice, but so what?’

Unfazed, Schiff said, ‘Let’s look at the pattern.’ She ticked her fingers: ‘The use of a police uniform to gain authority over the victim. The abduction, the sexual assault, the use of a stolen car that resembles an unmarked police vehicle. I could go on.’

‘Wouldn’t want to stop you. It’s a free country.’

‘But what happened with Delia Rice, Darren?’

‘Nothing happened-not involving me, anyway.’

‘Did you mean to kill her? You didn’t, did you, it was an accident.’

‘Didn’t kill her, never met her, wasn’t there.’

‘It was an accident. Let’s call it manslaughter, not murder. You’ll do a few years, less than ten, be out on good behaviour before you know it.’

‘Didn’t murder no one, didn’t manslaughter no one.’

‘You didn’t intend to kill her. Accident, right? You put your hands around her neck in the throes of passion and accidentally throttled her.’

He had his arms folded. ‘Nup.’

‘Or she was crying, is that it, Darren? You hate it when they cry, don’t you? It makes you feel kind of bad inside. You just wanted her to stop.’

‘When you find the guy, why not ask him?’

‘You were seen stumbling away from the scene, Darren. We have a witness. A man matching your description.’

‘What, tall, good-looking guy?’

‘See, what I think happened is, you suddenly had this body on your hands and you panicked. Didn’t know what to do. Shoved her in the boot of the stolen car and just drove around for a few hours, wondering where to dump her, trying to work it out.’

Muschamp stared stonily at the table and Pam Murphy sensed that he was reliving exactly that scenario.

‘You’d been playing with her-for want of a better word-all night, and then she died, and now it’s daylight, people all around, and you can’t keep her at your place and you can’t take her to the nature reserve, can’t go back there, so you simply drive around and around. Maybe hoping to find a deserted back road-except the Peninsula is pretty closely settled, there’s always someone driving along the back roads. Right, Dazza?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Of course, you couldn’t risk driving around wearing a police uniform, not with a body on board. So you changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.’ She paused. ‘I hope you burned them afterwards, Darren.’

He gave her a level smile and Pam knew that’s what he’d done. The thought that they wouldn’t get him on the murder depressed her.

‘I’m finished talking,’ he said, and in a fair approximation of anguish added, ‘Look, I wasn’t myself last night, I’ve been depressed, you know, my judgment’s shot, maybe I’m suicidal, all these mitigating circumstances and I think maybe a lawyer can help me now.’

Schiff faltered then. Challis didn’t see it but Pam did. A short acquaintance, only a few days, but she knew what it meant when Jeannie pursed her lips and examined the ends of her hair. It meant doubt, and Pam wanted to say, Keep pushing him.

Unaccountably, then, she pictured Chloe Holst sitting on her hospital bed, sneezing. Why had she recalled that? Sympathy for the victim? No, it was something else…

It came to her in a rush. She walked down the corridor, scrolling through the numbers stored on her mobile phone. Craig, her favourite lab tech.

‘It’s Spud,’ she announced. He called her that. ‘I wonder if I could run an idea past you…’