Challis - 03 - Snapshot

by Garry Disher

  The cameras and microphones turned questingly to Challis but he declined politely and returned to the car with Ellen. While she drove, heading across to the Nepean Highway, Challis sat slumped against the passenger door full of thoughts and with Georgias drawings clasped in his lap.

  Ellen broke the silence. I notice you didnt tell the super were going to his sons place of work.

  He stirred and grinned. I didnt, did I?

  First impressions of the son?

  Smooth, a charmer, in a private school kind of way.

  Professionally charming, not personally charming. Did you notice that he didnt once look at or talk to me?

  I did.

  And it had nothing to do with rank. Im a woman, ergo I dont have a brain. She paused. Be interesting to know what his relationship with Janine was like.

  Yes.

  After a pause she said, as if testing the waters, Hal, what did you make of the super and his wife?

  Challis cocked his eyebrow at her. Not exactly heartbroken.

  No.

  They praise Janine, but secretly didnt like her, or thought her unworthy of their son.

  Ellen nodded. Thats the impression I got.

  And if youre asking should we consider the super, or even Mrs Super, a suspect, the answers yes.

  There, it was out in the open. With anyone other than Ellen, hed have kept his suspicions to himself. He saw her nod. And your reasons are...? she said.

  Little things: lack of grief, being protective of his son and granddaughter, being faintly obstructive and wanting to guide the investigation. All explicable, but we cant rule him out, or not entirely, and we cant rule out the possibility that he suspects his son and is protecting him.

  Yes, said Ellen simply, confirming that shed come to the same conclusions. He cant take over the investigation, can he?

  Challis shook his head. Regulations wont allow it.

  But hell meddle?

  Yes.

  Then a little Mazda sports car was beside them, tooting. Ellen tooted back and the Mazda shot away along the rain-slicked highway. Challis stirred. Who was that?

  Pam Murphy and John Tankard.

  Challis frowned, then twigged. Kellocks safe driving campaign.

  * * * *

  12

  Constables Pam Murphy and John Tankard, dressed as if they belonged to the Special Operations Group or the FBI, with peaked caps, waisted jackets and pants tucked into their boots, promptly began discussing Challis and Destry. Tankard thought they had a thing going.

  No way.

  Theyre always together.

  Tank, were always together.

  He subsided, muttering, but it was short-lived. What about the newspaper chick?

  What about her?

  Is he still giving her one?

  I dont know and I dont care. Its none of my business.

  Then, with his old nudge nudge, wink wink: Has he given you one yet?

  Tank, grow up, okay?

  It was no joke, cooped up with John Tankard in the little sports car. It was bad enough that he was a big, fleshy man, but ever since coming back from six months stress leave for shooting dead a deranged and armed farmer, hed been a little unstable. His mood today was pretty typical of the Tankard she remembered, the racist and bully whod been called a storm trooper by the locals, the partner who was more interested in her tits than police work, but he was also given to moments of moody daydreaming and insecuritywhich she attributed to counselling that hadnt taken very well.

  She could sense him looking at her, and confirmed it with a quick, sideways glance, disturbed to see and feel a queer, sulky heat coming from him as he asked, Could you do it?

  Do what?

  What that newspaper chick did, have sex with a lot of guys, everyone watching. He cocked his head at her assessingly. Nah, cant see you doing that.

  As if throwing her a crude challenge, hoping shed rise to it and come across for him. She didnt have sex with anyone. She was there as a reporter.

  Yeah, yeah, whatever. Bet Challis was pissed off. But if you cant keep your chick in line, what do you expect?

  She ignored him.

  I mean, he went on, he couldnt even control his wife. She sleeps around on him and tries to have him killed.

  Tank, Pam snarled, only Neanderthals feel the need to keep their women in line.

  He sniggered to see her riled. She drove on, cross with herself. Early afternoon, and still the fog persisted. As they approached a roundabout, she said, Mornington, Tyabb or straight ahead?

  But Tankard was in a reverie beside her and failed to answer. Maybe he was looking inwards again, at his sorrows. Pam was suspicious of Tanks new-found introspection, wondering if it would slow his response times, blunt his survival instincts. Well, she wasnt put on earth to cure him. Still, shed always known where she stood with the old Tankard. Hed been reliably suspicious of everyone, confrontational but not unsteady, with the instincts of a cop driven by self-preservation rather than ambition. In fact, hed been entirely lacking in ambition, relying on the police force for a sense of brotherhood and security, even as he distrusted or despised his fellow cops.

  She chose to drive straight ahead, which would take them to Penzance Beach and Waterloo.

  He stirred. Did you say something?

  Forget it.

  Tankard struggled like a dim schoolboy caught staring out of the window. Finally he said, in the faintly lost manner of the new John Tankard, Do you see the point of this? Spending four hours a day on the roads thanking people for the one time in a thousand they happen to show courtesy to another motorist or signal before turning a corner? This is bullshit.

  True, Pam said.

  They were passing the detention centre near Waterloo when she was forced onto the gravel verge by an oncoming Subaru, which veered across in front of her and onto the centres main driveway, narrowly missing a silver Passat that had emerged to wait for a gap in traffic. Tessa Kane, who clearly didnt deserve a showbag. Pam tooted, and so did the Passat.

  * * * *

  13

  Whoops, shed cut off those cops in their sports car and nearly collected a Passat. Tessa Kane grinned ruefully, shrugging an apology at Pam Murphy and John Tankard. Pam returned the grin, her cap at a rakish angle. A tough little broad, Tessa thought, heading towards the main gate.

  The detention centre was a cheerless expanse of chilly cement-block huts behind razor wire. Originally intended for 350 inmates, it had held almost 500 asylum seekers at one stage, in a concentrated knot of misery. Now the flood of asylum seekers had dried up and most of the detainees had been shipped back and a few granted residence visas. Eighty were left: a handful of asylum seekers from the Middle East, and people who had breached or overstayed their tourist visas. Soon all would be deported.

  The centre had delivered no benefits to Waterloo that Tessa had seen. Most of the locals had been apathetic, a handful angry and ashamed, and the remainder rubbed their hands together at this God-given opportunity to relish their prejudices. They seemed to applaud the perimeter guard whod shouted at a detainee: You are one ugly fucking Arab. There had been plenty of letters to the editor after Tessa had published that quote, objecting to the word fucking; none objecting to the matter of detention itself, of course, or the centre, or the mindset of the guard. It had beenstill wasan unhappy place. Last week there had been a riottermed a disturbance by corrections staffand today Tessa could see men and children on the flat roof of the gymnasium, displaying banners: We Are Human Not Animal. In the first six weeks of operation, two men had been trapped on the razor wire; over a ten-month period in the second year, seven inmates had sewn their lips together; and most had gone on a hunger strike at one time or another. Fires had been lit, rocks thrown, tear gas used.

  That had been the public face of almost all of Australias detention centres, the one you saw on commercial televisions current affairs programs. Tessa had been interested in the hidden stories: mental illness; treatment refused for sexually
abused children; the dubious backgrounds and qualifications of the guards; the attitudes of the Refugee Review Tribunal and Department of Immigration staff. There had also been whispers of corruption. Apparently Charlie Mead and his section heads had routinely defrauded the federal, state and local governments by artificially inflating the cost of repairs, provisions, services and wages, the benefit flowing to their employer, ANZCOR, an American company that managed prisons and detention centres under contract to the governments of Australia and New Zealand. They operated out of Utah and had branches in Canada and the UK.

  And soon the detention centre would close its doors. Tessa wanted one last opportunity to nail the detention system itself, and Charlie Meads role in it, to the wall.

  Why had Mead agreed to see her? For the past three years hed been typically contemptuous of the media seeking interviews, and do-gooders befriending the inmates. Perhaps hed got sick of the way she always concluded her articles with the words Centre management declined to comment, or he simply didnt care, now that hed be moving on.

  Tessa ran through her mental notes on him. Born in Durban, South Africa, fifty-five years ago; served in the army for ten years before completing a law degree in Johannesburg and an MBA in London. Worked in prison management in the UK, then successfully applied for the position of deputy managerand later managerof a maximum-security prison in Brisbane. There his tough line had alienated guards and inmates alike, but that had been no handicap to his being hired to manage the Waterloo Detention Centre. Arrived Waterloo, January 2002. Married to Lottie, about whom Tessas research had found no information. No children.

  She was obliged to wait outside the main gate while the guard confirmed with the administration building by telephone, then was directed to an adjacent carpark. She got out, locked her car, and was turning towards the gate, tucking her keys in her briefcase, when a guard materialised in front of her. Shed not heard his approach. He jerked his head and she followed him, a solid, swaggering figure, through the outer and inner razor-wire perimeter fences and across a paved area to the administration block. It was separated from the other buildings by high, tubular steel railings. A child smiled at her through the bars; two women appeared to be painting the doors to a dormitory; several men stared at her, cigarettes in their hands, while others booted a soccer ball from one side of a stretch of cracked asphalt to the other.

  Tessa closed her coat more thoroughly at her throat, as if to dispel the dense fog and the air of hopelessness. No one glanced at her in curiosity or hope: she no doubt represented another branch of an unfeeling government. Shed been to plenty of prisons over the years as a reporter and newspaper editor. This was worse than a prison because, for many of these inmates, further abuseeven death awaited them on their repatriation to home countries.

  Her briefcase was scanned electronically, then searched manually, and her mobile phone and microcassette recorder confiscated. Youll get these back when you leave, said the man whod searched her. She was obliged to step through a metal detector and even then her coat was removed and the seams, cuffs and collar searched minutely by hand. Tessa stared at the walls, which were bare and painted a comfortless white.

  Finally she was shown to a straightbacked chair in a corridor and told to wait. White walls, photographs of the US president and the Australian prime minister. After fifteen minutes a young woman stuck her head out of a nearby doorway and beckoned to Tessa. Mr Mead will see you now. Her look of appalled fascination was a sure sign that shed read last weeks Progress and half expected Tessa to take her clothes off and have group sex with the guards.

  Tessa entered an office dominated by a desk and the man behind it. As expected, the room was furnished with filing cabinets, shelves of books and spiral-bound reports, and a barred window that looked out onto an exercise yard, but the desk was set up as a security and communications centre, with several telephones, an intercom system, security monitors, two computers, a laptop and a fax machine. The walls were bare but for a couple of framed certificates and a photograph taken during the centres opening ceremony, the mayor and councillors grinning as they clapped Charlie Mead and other ANZCOR dignitaries on the back. Pricks. If you looked closely enough, you could even see the $100 bills changing hands. Even more would change hands once approval was given to refit the detention centre as some other kind of facility.

  Camp for disadvantaged children? thought Tessa sourly. Community centre for the people of the housing estates?

  She caught Mead looking at her. He was a rangy man, all bone and sinew, with a knobbly hard skull and quick, sharp, coldly humorous eyes. He rosehe was very tallfrom behind his desk, reached across it and squashed her hand in his. He pointed to the chair opposite. Sit.

  A growling voice. He watched while she took out her notebook and tested the ink flow of her pen. Then she gave him a brief, automatic smile, and was halfway through thanking him for his time when he said, Kane: is that a Jewish name?

  Well, hello, she thought. Was she going to get the full treatment? Ironical amusement, raised eyebrow, frank appraisal of her legs, overt anti-feminism, overt anti-Semitism, and a whole arsenal of other shock tactics, gestures and attitudes intended to rattle her?

  So she said at once, It could be argued that your guards have been dehumanised by their work here, an attitude encouraged by management. Would you care to comment?

  It was as if hed become bored. He swung back in his chair, crossed his long legs and stared up at the ceiling. He splayed the fingers of his left hand, examined his nails. Dehumanised? Another meaningless word among many.

  According to an ex-employee of

  Who? he demanded.

  I cant divulge that. According to an ex-employee, your guards wake detention centre detainees at random times throughout the night, demanding they quote their detention numbers. Is that meaningless?

  Mead shrugged. Security, he said.

  She stared at him, and went on. Inmates have attested that the Refugee Review Tribunal is often only one individual rather than a panel, and some of these individuals make it a point to refuse all applications.

  Take it up with the RRT, Mead said, jerking forward, his fingers flying over a keyboard. Then, with a soft, impatient grunt, he leaned back again. Next question.

  Mead was tapping his pen against his teeth now, staring out of his window. She could see the back of his neck, his tough, tanned skin. There was a photograph on the windowsill and Mead picked it up, put it down again. A watchful, dark-haired woman offering a reluctant smile to the camera. Lottie Mead, presumablyand, Tessa realised, the driver of the Passat.

  Care for a tour of the place? said Mead.

  * * * *

  14

  Let me drive, said John Tankard after the near miss with the Subaru.

  He didnt expect Murph to accede, and she didnt. The incident hadnt rattled her, and hadnt been her fault in the first place, but he felt in a take-charge mood suddenly, in reaction to her superior attitude, the particularly girlie quality of the wave shed exchanged with the Kane woman, his cramped seat and the job itself. He felt rage building, fine and liberating. Sometimes he worried that his six months of stress counselling hadnt worked; sometimes he was glad that it hadnt.

  And now some prick was tailgating them, flashing and tooting. He turned around in his seat and saw the Passat that had been waiting to merge with the traffic passing the detention centre. A woman was driving, and he felt obscurely satisfied by that. Whats her problem? he snarled.

  Keep your shirt on, Tank, said Murph, pulling over to the side of the road.

  Stay here, he said, getting out.

  He adjusted his gun belt, jacket and cap, and advanced grimly on the Passat. The driver, spotting his uniform, blanched, then looked sulky, and began to open her door.

  Lady, get back in the car, he said.

  She complied. He stood beside her door, gestured for her to wind down her window, then stood there, crowding her space. It felt great. They were near the Fiddlers Creek pub and patrons
were streaming in for the all-you-can-gorge buffet lunch, which finished at two. Got a problem? he said.