Challis - 03 - Snapshot

by Garry Disher

  Nathan Gent, behind the wheel of the Commodore, came to a shocking realisation. Sitting there with his mouth open, the Commodore shaking arrhythmically on about four out of the six cylinders, he finally twigged that this was a killing hed been hired for. He closed his mouth with a click of rotting teeth and goosed the accelerator a little, hearing the motor idle more evenly. A bit of business, Vyner had said. Wont take long. Vyneras hard, thin and snapping as a whiphad always been tough, but Gent had never known him to kill anyone except maybe a few Iraqi ragheads. Gent felt himself go loose inside. He watched, squeezing the old sphincter, and saw Vyner and the woman reach the rear bumper of the Volvo simultaneously, from opposite sides of the car. The woman jerked, ran back the way shed come, half bent over. Vyner, all the time in the world, went after her.

  Then she broke cover. She knew the end had come and intended to draw Vyner away from the kid trapped there in the back seator so Gent hoped, an old bitterness rising in him as he flashed back to his own mother, whod never sacrificed a thing for him. He watched the woman dart away from the carport towards a little garden shed, a tangle of rakes, shovels, fence pickets, whipper-snipper and mowerlooked like a Victa to Nathan Gent, he could come back with a mates ute, load up, flog the mower for fifty bucks in the side bar of the Fiddlers Creek pub.

  Maybe not. Crime-scene, police tape around it, the cops wanting to know what business he had on the property.

  But a murder. Jesus, accomplice to a murder. For comfort, Gent rubbed the stump where his right ring finger had been, the finger torn off by a ships chain somewhere in the Persian Gulf.

  Again he remembered what Vyner had said about stealing a car, and silently thanked God for the concealing fog. And for the location: the house was below road level, the road winding along the top of a ridge, the ground sloping steeply away on either side. Passing drivers would have to get out of their cars and stand at the head of the driveway and look down on the turning circle and carport in order to witness anything. No neighbours to speak of. But Jesus, why hadnt he stolen a car like Vyner said?

  While Gent watched, Vyner aimed at the woman, now cowering beside the garden shed, and shot her twice, a couple of pops, softened by dense fog and silencer. Then Vyner returned to the womans car, hurrying a little now.

  The kid knew. A little girl, maybe six or seven, she came bounding out of the Volvo in her red parka, running, curls bouncing, Vyner tracking her with his pistol. Gent saw him fire, miss. Now she was heading towards the Commodore, Gent thinking, no, piss off, I cant help you. He put his hand out of the window, waved her away. She gaped at him for a long moment, then darted towards a belt of poplars at the edge of the garden. Gent saw Vyner take aim, pull the trigger. Nothing. Vyner looked at the gun in disgust, then strode back to the garden shed, searching for ejected shells. A moment later he was piling into the Commodore, shouting, Lets go.

  * * * *

  Keep the prick moving, Vyner thought. Gent had been sitting too longthough it was what, less than two minutes, tops? He hoped the guy wouldnt turn out to be a liability. Gent was only in his early twenties but going to seed rapidly through beer and dope; a pouchy, slope-shouldered guy who claimed to know every back roadand probably every backyard and back door, Vyner thoughtof the Peninsula.

  Well, Gent was getting $5000 for his part in the hit, and knew what would happen if he didnt keep his mouth shut.

  They neared the top of the driveway, Vyner removing the clip from his Browning and cursing it. Youd think the Navy would stock reliable handguns, border protection and all that. Not that hed ever intended to hang on to this gun, keep incriminating evidence around. Hed do what hed done before, seal it in a block of concrete, and toss it into a rubbish skip on some building site. There were two more Navy Browning pistols in the wall safe of his Melbourne pad, and hed better examine and clean them tonight. Didnt want them jamming on him, especially when firing in self-defence. Shit gun. Unfortunately it was too late to get back his $500 per weapon because the Navy armourer whod sold them to him was dead. Shot himself in the head.

  He unscrewed the silencerat least that workedand slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket, then shoved the Browning into another pocket, the hammer catching, tearing the fabric. Useless fucking thing. Vyner had wanted something more cutting edge from the armoury, a Glock automatic or a Steyr short-barrelled carbine and a high-end night-aiming device, but all the Navy guy would sell him was three old Brownings from the stock used for cadet training and which were gradually being phased out. I can lose these in the paperwork, no dramas, his mate had said, but the new stuff, no way.

  Vyner removed his gloves and folded down the sun visor to check himself out in the vanity mirror. Nothing caught in his teeth. His old familiar face looking back at him. He pocketed his cap, smoothed back his hair.

  Shit! shouted Gent, braking hard as the Commodore levelled out at the top of the driveway. It rocked to a halt just as a taxi came out of the fog and disappeared into the fog, gone in an eyeblink.

  * * * *

  3

  Normally Hal Challis started the day with a walk near his home, but he wanted to catch Raymond Lowry unprepared, to ask about the stolen guns, so at 6.30 that morning he shrugged into his coat, collected his wallet and laptop, and got behind the wheel of his Triumph. Five minutes later, he was still trying to start it. When finally the engine caught it fired sluggishly, with a great deal of smoke, and he made a mental note to book it in for a service and tune.

  He set out for Waterloo, heading east through farmland, a sea fret licking at him, shrouding the gums and pines along the side of the road, reducing the universe. Sea fretas if Westernport Bay, vanished now but normally a smudge of silvery water in the distance, was chafing. Challis supposed that it was chafing, in fact: thered been a sudden and bitter chill in the air last night, which had come into contact with sea water still warm from a mild autumn, and the result was this dense, transfiguring fog. He knew from experience that it would sit over the Peninsula for hours, a hazard to shipping, school buses, taxis and commuters. And a hazard to the police. Challiss job was homicide but he pitied the traffic cops today. Maniacs passed him at over 100 kmh, before being swallowed up by the fog; irritated with him, the sedate driver in his old Triumph. Old, lacking in compression and the heater didnt work.

  Soon he reached a stretch of open land beside a mangrove belt, and finally the tyre distributors, petrol stations and used-car yards that marked the outskirts of Waterloo. New, cheap houses, packed tightly together, crouched miserably in the fog. There was high unemployment on the new estates; empty shops in High Street; problems for the social workers. Yet on a low hill overlooking the town was a gated estate of million-dollar houses with views over Westernport Bay.

  Waterloo was the largest town on this side of the Peninsula, hemmed in between farmland along one flank and mangrove swamps and the Bay on the other. Three supermarkets, four banks, a secondary college and a couple of state and Catholic primary schools, some light industry, a fuel refinery across from the yacht club, a library, a public swimming pool, a handful of pubs, four $2 shops, several empty shopfronts. A struggling town to be sure, but growing, and less than an hour and a quarter from Melbourne.

  Challis slowed for a roundabout, and then headed down High Street to the shore, where he passed the swimming centre and the yacht club on his way to the boardwalk, which wound through the mangrove flats. Here he parked, got out and walked for an hour, his footsteps muted and hollow on the treated pine boards. Beneath him the tidal waters ran, and once or twice there was a rush of air and a hurried warning bell as a cyclist flashed past him, too fast for such a narrow pathway in such struggling grey light.

  Seven-thirty. He stopped to watch a black swan and thought about his dead wife. Shed never understood his need to wake early and walk, or his need to walk alone. Maybe the rot had set in because of that essential difference between them. His solitary walks focused him: he solved problems then, plotted strategies, drafted reports, did his best l
oving and hating. Other peoplelike his wifewanted to chat or drink in their surroundings when they walked, but Challis walked to think, get his blood moving and look inwards for answers.

  Strange the way he kept referring to her in his mind. Strange the way she continued to be the person to whom he presented arguments and information, as if she still mattered more than anyone else, as if he still hoped to shine in her eyes, as if she hadnt tried to kill him and her own death hadnt interrupted everything.

  Seven forty-five. He swung away from the swan, returned to his car and drove back to High Street. Here the early birds in the bakery, the cafe and the newsagency were opening their doors, sweeping the footpath, seeding their cash registers. He entered Cafe Laconic, bought takeaway coffee and a croissant, and consumed them in his car, watching and waiting.

  At five minutes to eight, Lowry appeared, walking from the carpark behind the strip of shops. The man wore jeans, a parka and a woollen cap, a tall, thick-bodied guy who liked to show a lot of teeth when he talked. Challis watched him fish for keys and open the door to his shop. Both the windows and the door were plastered with advertisements for mobile phones and phone plans. Waterloo Mobile World the shop was called.

  Challis gave Lowry a couple of minutes and then entered, setting off a buzzer. We dont open until... Lowry began, then something stopped him, some stillness and focus in Challis. What do you want?

  Another talk, Mr Lowry, Challis said.

  Raymond Lowry showed indignation and bafflement with his mouth and shoulders. What about?

  The inquests on Thursday, Challis said. Im finalising my report to the coroner.

  Let me get the door, Lowry said resignedly. He locked it, then gestured for Challis to follow him into a cramped back room, where he immediately sat at a desk and began to make notes in a ledger. It was airless in the little room. A fan heater blew scorching air at Challiss ankles. Eventually Lowry looked up. Sorry about that. Theres a lot of paperwork in this job.

  Challis glanced around at the grey steel shelves loaded with boxes of mobile phones and phone accessories. Business doing all right?

  Cant complain.

  Better than life in the Navy?

  Lowry shrugged.

  The Navy base was a few kilometres away. Lowry had served there for a while, met a local girl and eventually quit. You cant raise kids in that kind of environment, he said, getting posted all over the place. And I make a decent living at this.

  Lowry, the solid businessman and decent family man. Challis didnt reply but waited, an old trick. Look, said Lowry with a disarming grin, baring his large, glorious teeth, what more can I tell you? I barely knew the guy.

  On a Saturday night in May, an armourer from the Navy base, high on a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, had been ejected from the Fiddlers Creek pub. Two hours later hed returned unnoticed with a pistol from the armoury and shot dead a bouncer, then returned to the base. Later still, hed killed himself with the same pistol. The fallout was far-reaching: eighteen cadets had been dismissed after testing positive to drugs, and the operation of the armoury was under investigation. According to a preliminary check, some of the pistols were missing, older stock that was being phased out. Challis badly wanted to know where those guns were.

  Barely knew him? Thats not what I heard, he lied. I heard you were pretty pally with him. Were you his contact on the outside? He falsified the paperwork to cover the theft of several guns, and you fenced them for him?

  No way. Not guns.

  Meaning that yeah, hed been caught handling stolen property last year, but no way would he handle stolen handguns. Then who did handle the guns for him?

  Lowry opened his arms wide. How the hell would I know?

  Hows the wife? said Challis.

  Lowry faltered at the direction change. He had close-cropped hair and now he floated a hand above the spikes as if to gather his thoughts. Were separated.

  Challis knew that from Lowrys file. Mrs Lowry had taken out an intervention order on her husband last year, and later left him and been given custody of their children. Lowry had joined an outfit called Fathers First and made a nuisance of himself. Sorry to hear that.

  Lowry flushed. Look, am I under arrest? Are you going to charge me or what?

  Challis smiled without much humour. Well see, he said, and returned to his car, hoping it would start and not let him down with Lowry watching from his shop window.

  * * * *

  The police station was on two levels; offices, cells, canteen and interview rooms on the ground floor, and conference rooms, the Crime Investigation Unit and a small gym on the first floor. Challis entered by the back door and headed for his pigeonhole in the corridor behind the front desk. He reached in, took out a sheaf of memos and leafed through them.

  Most he shoved into the overflowing bin nearby, but paused in futile wrath over one from Superintendent McQuarrie, addressed to all senior officers: The Assistant Commissioner will be asking some tough questions this year, and you will be expected to deliver balanced budgets. The budget situation is taking over as the main management challenge for the region, and so every order, every item of expenditure, will be reviewed with a critical eye.

  Challis had lived through budget constraints before. The usual result was that paper expenditure skyrocketed, to deliver the ever-increasing flood of memos, while the money for torch batteries, interpreters, pens, cleaning materials or calls on mobile phones dried up. More seriously, any squad could be charged for using the services of another squad, access to telephone records of victims and suspects had been reduced, and there was only minimal funding for phone taps. Crime fighting by committee, that was Challiss view.

  He turned and made for the stairs that led to the first floor. Hal, said a voice before he reached them.

  He swung around. Senior Sergeant Kellocka bull of a man, befitting his surname, and the uniformed officer in charge of the stationwas beckoning him. Challis nodded a greeting and entered Kellocks office. This came for you, Kellock said.

  It was a parcel the size of a wine carton wrapped in heavy brown paper. Complicated feelings ran through Challis when he saw the senders names: his dead wifes parents. He was fond of them, and they of him, but hed been trying to draw away from them. Thanks, he muttered.

  Mate, were not a postal service, said Kellock.

  Challis knew that the parcel would have been delivered to the front desk. There was no reason, other than nosiness, for Kellock to take charge of it. Profoundly irritated, Challis carried the box upstairs to the first floor.

  The Crime Investigation Unit was a vast room of desks, filing cabinets, phones, wall maps and computers. Ellen Destry, the CIU sergeant, was having a half-day off work; Scobie Sutton, one of the DCs, was spending the morning in court. A third DC was taking a week-long intensive course in the city, and the fourth was on holiday. It was going to be quiet in CIU today.

  Challiss own office was a partitioned cubicle in one corner, offering a dismal view of the parking lot behind the building. Here he dumped the box on the floor, switched on his office computer and checked his e-mail. There was only one message, from Superintendent McQuarrie, who wanted him to write a paper on regional policing. Challis printed it out and tried to make sense of the guidelines, a low-level fury burning in his head. Was there a clear distinction between a mission statement, an aim and an objective? Words, meaningless words, thats what policing had become.

  Fed up, he brewed coffee and reached behind him to the dusty radio on his shelf of law books, police regulations and tattered manilla folders. With the 9 a.m. news murmuring in the background, Challis fired up his laptop, got out his notes, and brooded over his report for the coroner on the Navy shooting.

  But really, he was putting off the inevitable. Retrieving the parcel from the floor, he tore open the paper and found a sealed cardboard box with a note taped to the lid.

  Dearest Hal,

  These things of Angles arrived here a few days ago. Apparently theyd been in storage at the jail an
d overlooked. We thought you should have them to do with as you wish. Take care, dear Hal. We often think of you.

  Love,

  Bob and Marg

  Challis opened the lid and looked at the sad remnants of his wifes life: paperback novels, a brush and comb, makeup, a pocket-size album of photographs, a wristwatch, the clothes shed been wearing when arrested. He swallowed and wanted to cry. And then, as the habits and imperatives of his days asserted themselves, he dumped the box and all of its contents in the bin.

  Too soon to know if it was a gesture that meant anything.

  He returned to his report. The phone rang. It was Superintendent McQuarrie, but a broken McQuarrie, not the dapper golfer and Chamber of Commerce toady.

  * * * *

  4

  According to the DC who greeted Challis at the murder scene, the 000 switchboard had given the job to Rosebud police. Suspecting a prank, a kid playing around with her mothers mobile phone, they had eventually sent two uniforms in a divisional van. The uniforms had taken one look at the scene, secured it and called in Rosebud detectives. Then the child, remarkably calm but smeared in her mothers blood, had revealed that her grandfather was a policeman, an important policeman, Superintendent McQuarrie.