Whispering Death

6

Mid-afternoon, a room in the Waterloo hospital, Pam Murphy briefly clasping Chloe Holst’s forearm. ‘Do you mind Inspector Challis being here, Chloe?’

Challis was propping up a wall, trying to be unobtrusive. He smiled but remained silent where he was. ‘I don’t mind,’ Holst said, her voice damp, cracking a little.

‘We spoke to your parents and the doctor, and they said if you’re up to it we could ask you a few questions. Meanwhile, no one’s going to carry out any more forensic indignities on you, okay? But we do need to ask you what happened.’

Chloe Holst collapsed against her pillows, stared at the ceiling, and said, in a rapid monotone: ‘I was on my way home when he flashed his lights at me from behind. Then he-’ ‘Could we go back a bit?’ Pam said, her voice low and warm in the chair beside the bed. ‘Home from where?’

‘The Chicory Kiln.’

‘Don’t know it.’

Challis murmured from the wall, ‘It’s a winery-bistro place on Myers Road.’

‘Okay.’

Challis said, ‘Had you been drinking? We have to ask these kinds of-’

The young woman in the bed tossed in anger, then winced. ‘Why doesn’t anyone listen? I work there. I hardly ever drink, and I don’t drink at work. I was simply going home.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Challis said. ‘By the time information gets to me sometimes it’s wrong or inadequate.’

‘I’ve told this story so many times.’

Once, thought Challis, to Pam-and a million times to yourself. And when the sex crimes squad gets involved, you’ll have to go through it all again. ‘When we have all the details we won’t need to bother you again,’ he said lamely.

Chloe Holst shot him a look from her right eye. The left looked pulpy and black, swollen shut, three stitches bisecting the eyebrow. Angry finger-bruising around the neck, bruises to the upper arms, and, hidden beneath the bedclothes, bruising to the thighs and tears to the vagina and anus. ‘What about in court?’ she asked, almost inaudibly.

Pam Murphy mustered a smile. ‘You didn’t see his face, so it may not come to that.’

Holst touched her hand to her split lip and grew teary. She was about to speak but sank again into the pillows heaped behind her.

The little room, like the corridor outside it, smelt of life and death and blood and cleansers and chemical intervention. Murphy knew the smell all right. She’d visited enough suspects and victims in emergency rooms over the years, been treated for cuts and bruises. She glanced around at Challis and then out of the window and saw nothing to guide her through this. Sergeant Destry would know what to do, but the sergeant was on her way to Europe.

She turned to Holst again. ‘What happened after he flashed his lights?’

‘It happened near the intersection with Balnarring Road, so I was slowing down anyway. I hate that corner.’

A high-speed blind corner, a fatal corner over the years, with no clear view of traffic belting down the hill until you were halfway across the intersection. ‘Me too,’ Pam said.

‘He flashed his lights at me from behind, then cut across in front of me as I was stopping. Then he got out and started waving ID at me.’

Challis said, in his low voice, ‘Can you describe the car?’

‘A newish white Falcon.’

‘Sure?’

‘My dad has one. I actually thought it was him for a moment.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About midnight.’

‘No other traffic?’

‘No.’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought maybe my rear lights weren’t working, or I’d hit something, you know. I thought something serious was wrong, so I wound down my window.’

Pam Murphy said, referring to her notes, ‘You told the ambulance officers that you were raped by someone wearing a ski mask. Was he wearing a ski mask when he stopped you?’

‘I know what you’re asking,’ the young woman said, with some wobbly heat. ‘How come I didn’t just drive off, right? But he wasn’t wearing the mask when he stopped me, plus it was dark, plus he had his hand up to his eyes like my headlights were blinding him. Plus he was wearing a police uniform and he shouted at me, sounding really urgent, said for my own safety I had to pull in under the trees.’

Pam pictured the small parking area on the south-east corner, abutting Buckley’s Reserve, a school-bus stop five mornings a week but otherwise used only by drivers taking a mobile phone call, blackberry pickers, road-repair gangs on a tea-break from patching potholes. She pictured it at night, full of tricky shapes and shadows. ‘Just to be clear, the man who abducted you wasn’t Constable Tankard, the policeman who frightened you earlier?’

Chloe Holst shook her head. ‘Too fat. It was…I just saw the uniform and freaked out.’

‘I understand. Then what happened?’

‘I was scared. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I hadn’t been drinking or speeding, but I thought I must have done something wrong, or something bad had happened to my mum and dad or something. Anyway, I did what he asked and before I could get out or anything, he climbed into the back seat and put a knife to my neck. He pricked me with it, look.’

A small, scratched hand pulled down the neckline, the delicate jaw craned upwards, revealing flesh that looked shockingly naked to Challis just then. A short, clean nick.

‘After that I just about lost it.’

‘You didn’t see his face?’

‘He was behind me, and by then he had the mask on. Plus gloves, you know, latex ones.’

‘Let’s stay with him for a bit. He was wearing a police uniform?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jacket over a shirt and trousers, or just the shirt and trousers.’

‘Shirt and trousers.’

‘Short sleeves? Long?’

‘Long.’

Less chance of being scratched, Challis thought. ‘Footwear?’

Chloe frowned, looking from him to Pam Murphy to the ceiling. Then her face cleared. ‘Black lace-ups. He kicked me in the stomach later on.’

Plain black shoes with a featureless flat sole, thought Challis. ‘Uniform cap?’

‘Yes.’

‘What kind of voice did he have?’

Challis didn’t want to suggest that the rapist spoke with an accent. Some victims were conditioned to believe that only an outsider, a foreigner, could have hurt them so badly. ‘I’m assuming he did speak?’

‘Kind of a hoarse whisper. It was put on. I wouldn’t say he had an accent or anything.’

Pam Murphy asked: ‘Any smells that you could identify?’

‘What, like BO?’

‘Anything.’

‘I didn’t smell anything, but he got all sweaty, you know, as he was…’

They nodded.

‘Wait. Bad breath.’

Since starting in the job, Challis had come to believe that rottenness of character often manifested itself physically. He doubted there was any science to support the notion, but believed it all the same. ‘From alcohol, drugs, bad teeth?’

Holst shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You’re doing brilliantly. This won’t take much longer. I’m sure you want to see your parents.’

Holst tossed in distress. ‘This will ruin them, my dad.’

‘I’m sure it won’t,’ said Pam.

‘What would you know?’

Pam patted the skinny forearm. ‘You’re doing so well, Chloe. Let’s get all the details out of the way so you can rest. After the man overpowered you, I assume he took you to his car and-’

‘You assume wrong. He told me to drive.’

Challis shifted from the wall. ‘His car, or yours?’

‘Mine.’

‘He left his car there?’

‘Yes.’

Challis hadn’t been told this. He’d assumed-and so had the others, apparently-that Holst had been abducted and raped in the culprit’s car. He smiled, held up a finger and said, ‘Murph?’

‘Boss.’

‘Give me a moment.’

Challis stepped into the corridor, flipped open his phone and called John Tankard, who was with Scobie Sutton and a forensics team, searching the bushland clearing where Chloe Holst had first been seen. ‘Anything?’

‘We found the clearing, big rock in the centre, blood and tissue,’ Tankard said.

‘Got another job for you,’ Challis said, telling him about the cars. ‘Our guy probably dumped her, then drove back and swapped cars again, but can you get over there and check? If her car’s there, have it trucked to the lab.’

‘Will do,’ Tankard said. He paused. ‘This is not going to follow me, is it?’

‘No John, you’re in the clear. The man who took her claimed to be police. She was just reacting to your uniform.’

‘Thanks, boss.’

Challis returned to the room. Nothing had changed: the space was sterile despite the air of distress, Pam Murphy was sitting in the chair beside the bed, holding Holst’s hand.

‘Sorry, Chloe, please go on,’ he said. ‘He told you to drive. Do you remember where?’

‘I don’t know. It was dark.’

Pam asked, ‘Are you from the Peninsula?’

Chloe Holst shook her head. ‘Not really. Moved down here with my mum and dad last year. Safety Beach. I don’t know the Western Port side very well.’

‘Did he take you to a beach, a park, a house? What can you remember?’

‘Just along some dirt roads. Kind of farm smells.’

‘Was he alone? You didn’t meet up with anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘Did he phone anyone?’

‘He hardly talked at all. Kind of grunted what he wanted me to do. Except he got really angry when I started crying, like he hated it, told me to shut up and punched me in the side of the head.’

‘Edgy? Unstable?’

‘Like he was on drugs,’ Chloe Holst said, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she wailed, ‘how would I know?’

Pam clasped her hand, waiting, and asked gently: ‘He made you take your clothes off?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

Burnt, thought Challis, dumped. Unless he was a souvenir hunter. ‘Where did he rape you?’

‘Where do you think? My mouth, my vagina, my-’

‘I mean, in the car? On the ground?’

‘Both.’

‘What did you do or say?’

‘I begged him at first, then when I tried to bite him he hit me really hard. It really, really hurt.’

Pam said gently, ‘I was called to an incident earlier this afternoon, someone reported seeing a body in a clearing a couple of kilometres from where we rescued you.’

‘We were on this dirt road. He told me to get out and I saw these trees and I just ran,’ Holst said. ‘It was dark and I fell over a stump or something and hit my head.’

Pam clasped Chloe’s forearm. There was a school of thought that you shouldn’t get close to a victim, shouldn’t try to share the burden, because you couldn’t. Pam worked best when she didn’t take that notion too far. ‘We’ve tested for fluids. If he’s in the data base we’ll-’

‘He used a condom.’

‘Oh.’

‘This guy’s like really organised. You know what he did when he was finished? Washed me all over with this wet cloth, then combed my hair and pubes, then ran this kind of sticky roller thing all over me. Like some kind of super CSI freak or something.’

A part of Hal Challis calculated the odds of finding any forensic evidence. Another began to measure the mind of the man responsible. ‘How did he carry all these items?’

‘Backpack.’

‘Colour? Brand?’

She shrugged. ‘A daypack. Really organised.’

‘Have you been aware of any unwanted attention lately?’ Challis asked. ‘At work, or where you live? Anyone following you, accosting you in the supermarket, that kind of thing? Phone hang-ups, heavy breathing, stuff left on your doorstep?’

A miserable head shake. ‘No.’

‘Boyfriend trouble?’

She stared at her hands. ‘Don’t have a boyfriend.’

‘Any unwanted advances? Friend or work colleague who won’t take no for an answer?’

‘Nothing like that.’

Pam squeezed her forearm again, then turned to Challis with a question on her face. Challis stepped away from the wall. ‘Chloe, we’ll leave you in peace now. You’ve been a great help, very observant.’

She was weeping. ‘For what good it’ll do. I don’t know what he looks like, and the way he cleaned up afterwards…’

Pam Murphy stood, gave the forearm a last pat. ‘There’s always something a guy like this overlooks. We’ll get him.’

That’s how Challis and Murphy were going to leave it, rote parting words, said thousands of times over the years by thousands of police officers. But Chloe Holst said, ‘Do you think it was my fault?’

Pam sat again, clasped the limp hand, and said feelingly, ‘Never in a million years, Chloe. Don’t ever let yourself think that. It was his fault entirely.’

The young woman looked away as if she didn’t believe it. ‘He said I made it easy for him, if I’d been more security conscious it wouldn’t have happened.’