[Challis #5] Blood Moon

by Garry Disher

  Ellen parked and pressed the doorbell of a vast loft house, the roof pitched at sixty degrees, two huge dormers above her head.

  ‘Yeah?’

  A girl, no more than fourteen years old; wearing the Toorak uniform, not Landseer. Ellen introduced herself and said, ‘Are you Zara?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Zara lives here? Zara Selkirk?’

  The girl shrugged.

  ‘May I speak to her?’

  After a second, or a year, the girl replied, ‘She’s not here.’

  The little interrogation continued like that. Eventually Ellen understood that the girl was Chelsea Hooper, Zara’s stepsister. Chelsea hated Zara, hated her stepmother. There were at least three reasons for that: one, the stepmother was an evil witch; two, the stepmother liked to fly to the snowfields of Europe and the States with Chelsea’s father and leave the kids to flounder; three, the stepmother had taken Zara, but not Chelsea, to see Delta Goodrem perform in the city last night.

  ‘We have an apartment in Southbank,’ Chelsea explained.

  Hating the rich, Ellen said, ‘So Zara and her mother stayed in your city apartment last night rather than drive back here to Mount Eliza?’

  Chelsea gave the question a great deal of thought. ‘Yep.’

  ‘When will they be back?’

  Chelsea shrugged.

  Ellen turned to go. Behind her the girl said, ‘Is this about the chaplain?’

  Ellen faced her again, tingling. ‘You knew that Zara had an appointment to see him yesterday?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Ellen tried to tread delicately around this. ‘Did Zara confide in you about why she wanted to see him?’

  ‘Wanted? That’s a laugh. She had to see him. It was part of her punishment.’

  ‘Punishment.’

  ‘Like that was going to work,’ said Chelsea scornfully.

  * * * *

  On the other side of the Peninsula, Josh Brownlee was drunk. He’d started drinking after that encounter in the surf shop, and hadn’t stopped, except to do some ice. That little slag, shouting about rape so everyone could hear.

  Who the fuck was she? Bitch.

  As soon as he’d left the shop he’d ditched the chick he was with, dumped her back at her motel. A whiner. Too clingy. The type you screw once and then can’t get rid of. Fuck that. Josh drove straight around to the beer garden of the Fiddlers Creek pub and got steadily wasted.

  The afternoon had passed hazily by and now it was almost five o’clock. Why the fuck had he come back to Waterloo, this shit hole? Last year was different, a lot of shit happening, the Year 12 exams plus family shit, a lot to forget. Getting wasted with his mates had made sense. They couldn’t afford the Gold Coast, but Luke’s dad had a holiday house near Waterloo, which was better than nothing. Now it was like a year later, his mates had moved on and he was no longer a schoolie. In fact, he kept getting sideways glances from this year’s schoolies. What are you doing here, loser? Did you have to repeat Year 12 at another school?

  And this morning he gets called a rapist in public.

  Josh thought back to last year, pissed the whole time, dope, ice and GHB. The sex. There’d been chicks from Grover Hall, St Helen’s, Mount Eliza Girls’ Grammar...that skank Virginia, any excuse to show her tits, the Virgin’ part of her name long redundant. Who else? That chick. Tori Walker. Walker the Stalker, from Banbury College, fuck her and she’d fall in love with you.

  It hadn’t taken Josh and the guys long to realise that it was better to hook up with the local slags, state school desperadoes from Waterloo and Two Bays secondary, hoping to snare themselves a rich private-school guy. Josh and his mates would do those dogs behind some secluded sand dune, bury their knickers in the sand, piss off out of there while they were too drunk or high to notice. Who were they going to complain to? They’d never seen you before, didn’t know who you were or what school you went to.

  It wasn’t like that this year.

  Josh kept drinking, becoming steadily blacker inside.

  * * * *

  John Tankard, off duty now, was also sitting in the Fiddlers Creek beer garden. He gazed around at the patrons, wondering if he’d spot anyone he’d put away, and saw Josh Brownlee getting drunker and drunker. Schoolie prat, he thought idly. He turned to scowl at Andy Cree. It was Cree’s turn to walk across to the veranda bar and bring back a round, but the guy was still glued to his mobile phone, checking messages, sending messages, his bony thumbs flying over the keypad. Furthermore, he was drinking chardonnay.

  Wanker.

  Just then Cree’s senses registered the full malign force of John Tankard’s scrutiny. He crooked an eyebrow. ‘Got a problem?’

  ‘Got a thirst,’ Tank said.

  Cree gave him the once-over and the message was plain: You drink too much and it’s made you fat. But then he said, ‘Check this out,’ and passed Tank his mobile phone.

  ‘Still got a thirst,’ Tank said.

  ‘Keep your panties on,’ Cree said, getting to his feet and weaving away between the metal tables.

  Tank turned his attention to the guy’s phone, peering at the little screen: Christ, a digital image of a schoolie passed out on the lawn in front of the shire offices. Tank poked inexpertly at the keys, wondering what other photos Cree had taken, and came to a Holden he’d last seen wrapped around a tree two weeks ago. Then Cree was back with their drinks, saying in a mock, true-Aussie voice, ‘Here you go, buddy, wrap your tonsils around this.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Not on a first date, John.’

  Tank knew it would be a mistake to respond. If it came to a battle of words, Cree would win.

  * * * *

  Scobie Sutton went home knowing that he’d better talk to his wife about the wickedness of Dirk and Lachlan Roe. Beth was his special love, and she was his heartache. He knew the pain, bewilderment and sense of injustice that drove her, but didn’t know how to make her feel better.

  Beth felt things too keenly, that was the problem. She’d worked with the shire’s disadvantaged families and kids for many years, and when she came home in the evenings would relate some of the awful things she’d seen or heard about, her voice low, tragic, desolate, insinuating itself into Scobie’s head. Poor Ros: ‘Mum!’ she’d say, ‘talk about something happy!’

  And then a budget-conscious finance manager had sacked Beth, which really pulled the rug out from under her feet. Scobie suspected that she was deeply depressed—tinged with mania. Since last Friday she’d been fired up about saving the schoolies from sex and drugs, and had been seen at the Chillout Zone, distributing leaflets. Not from the Uniting Church—the Suttons’ church—but the damn First Ascensionists.

  Scobie was losing her, and he couldn’t bear it.

  Tossing his keys into a bowl on the little hallway table, he walked through to the kitchen and knew at once that the house was empty, the air was so stale and unlived in. He swallowed and searched the place anyway, sitting room, dining room, three bedrooms, carport and weedy front and back gardens, seeing, with new eyes, the neglect, the dust, the unwashed dishes, the unmade beds. He wanted his wife back.

  Her desk was a card table in the spare bedroom. It was a loveless room, with a single bed, bare walls and a cheap white wardrobe. Beth’s crackpot leaflets were stacked neatly with other literature on the coverlet of the bed and on the floor. The family’s computer took up most of the desk. Beside it was a manila folder containing a stack of e-mails that Beth had printed out, and there at the very top Scobie saw the one that Challis had practically shaken in his face that morning. There were annotations in the margins, green ink, in Beth’s big, childlike hand: My darling husband, some important information for you to think about.

  Feeling an overflowing pool of sadness, Scobie knuckled his eyes. But crying didn’t solve anything. He washed the dishes, made the beds, compiled a shopping list. Soon it was 5.30 p.m. Normally Roslyn was home from school by four, but she’d joined the choir and they were reh
earsing for tomorrow night’s school concert. She wouldn’t be home before six. That gave him time to shop and have it out with his wife.

  But would Beth even listen? That was the question.

  Scobie drove to the supermarket, quietly fracturing inside. Last night when he’d kissed his daughter goodnight she’d clung to him, hadn’t wanted to let go.

  ‘I have bad dreams,’ she said.

  He’d nuzzled the crown of her head. ‘What about?’

  ‘Someone’s going to let a bomb off on my bus.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

  He rocked her for a while, her flannel pyjamas faintly stale, reminding him that if he didn’t do the laundry these days, it didn’t get done.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What if you get shot?’

  ‘I won’t get shot,’ he said firmly. ‘This isn’t America. Hardly anyone owns a gun here.’

  ‘But what if you do?’

  He guessed what was going through her head. She was afraid of being alone if he died. Scobie felt a little resentful then. Hated his wife a little despite her pain and helplessness.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart?’

  ‘You’ll come to the concert?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ he said, knowing that if this year’s concert was anything like last year’s, some eleven-year-old guitarist was bound to play ‘Smoke on the Water’, a great song ruined forever.

  ‘Will Mum?’

  ‘She won’t want to miss it either,’ Scobie had told his daughter, wondering if that were a lie.

  He relived this and other conversations as he wheeled a shopping trolley up and down the aisles of the supermarket. In particular, he relived the special hell of shopping for Roslyn’s concert dress last Saturday, a task that should have fallen to Beth. What did he know about shopping for girls’ clothes? He was none the wiser now, knowing only that his daughter belonged to a class of female for whom there were no suitable clothes. At twelve years old, with tiny, tiny breasts, she was too old for the kids’ section of every store they entered. Too young surely for the truly appalling teen wear: micro skirts and tops that were mere scraps, the flimsy fabric barely extending from bellybutton to nipple. Eventually they bought a plain but pretty skirt and top in Myer and went home.

  And another headache to look forward to: How was he supposed to help Roslyn with her first period?

  He wheeled his shopping to the car, raised the tailgate, stowed it away. Then a kid was there, about Roslyn’s age but years older in all other respects. A nuggetty kid from one of the estates. Full of nerve. ‘Finished, mister?’

  ‘You want to return my trolley and claim my hard-earned money from the coin slot,’ said Scobie evenly.

  The kid pantomimed guilt and embarrassment. ‘You got me,’ he said, slapping his hand against his forehead.

  Scobie offered a smile he only half felt. ‘Go on, then, take the blessed thing.’

  The kid raced away with the trolley, shouting, ‘Suckerrr!’

  That’s about right, Scobie thought. He drove home with his shopping and then he went in search of his wife.

  * * * *

  By late afternoon the schoolies had drifted back from the surf beaches, the bike paths and walking tracks. They’d scrubbed themselves in the shower, pulled on clean outfits—jeans, T-shirts, mini-skirts, cargo pants—and were roaming through the town, looking young, healthy and almost appealing. Pam Murphy found them buying beer, trying on sunglasses, nipping through racks of CDs. They seemed to be taller than she remembered her generation being; fitter, blonder. They formed and reformed in clusters and their sounds were grunts, bursts of laughter, the liquid snap of chewing gum, the scuffling of bare feet and the heel slaps of their sandals. They seemed nice. They didn’t seem very bright. They glanced at her photograph of Lachlan Roe and said they’d never seen him before.

  Pam ranged widely through the streets, takeaway joints and pubs. She handed out identity bracelets, gave a teary kid a $20 bus fare, helped an old woman hose vomit away from the footpath in front of her house. Just as she got to the Fiddlers Creek carpark, John Tankard was leaving. He didn’t see her. She went in, looking for schoolies, and found Andy Cree in the beer garden. He gave her a huge smile, face creasing, the kind that says ‘only you’, and although she didn’t believe it for a minute, it was nice to be on the receiving end. ‘Pull up a pew,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t really stay long.’

  But she sat, and he turned all of his attention to her, full wattage, so she lingered and sipped a lemon, lime and bitters for a while. ‘White wine?’ she said, raising an eyebrow at his glass.

  ‘I’m trying the local wines one by one.’

  It hadn’t occurred to her before that anyone would want to do that. I’ve lived in the area for too long, she thought. I take it for granted. She gave another mental tick to Cree, along with those for his looks, body, ratbaggery, willingness to have a proper conversation and ability to make her laugh. ‘Should keep you going for a while,’ she said. ‘What did Tank have? One of the local pinot noirs?’

  It was Cree’s turn to laugh, and she walked out of there with a date to look forward to.

  She glanced at her watch. Time for Inspector Challis’s end-of-day briefing. First she called in at the Chillout Zone, to tell the volunteers she’d be back that evening, and found Scobie Sutton in a corner with his wife. Beth Sutton seemed distressed, hands scraping down her cheeks, crying, ‘No, it’s not true.’

  * * * *

  14

  Challis got in the drinks and then Ellen told them the story of Zara Selkirk and the chaplain of Landseer.

  ‘Punishment?’ said Pam Murphy.

  ‘Yes.’

  Challis set down his glass. ‘The stepsister told you this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you haven’t confirmed it with this Zara kid yet.’

  ‘Hal,’ Ellen said, ‘she wasn’t home.’

  They were in the little side bar of a pub called the Two Bays, down from the yacht club and next to a maritime museum that consisted of a couple of anchors and a fishing net. The Two Bays was the main watering hole of the Waterloo police because it was favoured by yachting types and not the kinds of men, women and adolescents they’d arrested over the years—which didn’t mean that the yachting types were not criminals, just that they were less likely to have a criminal record and break a beer bottle or billiard cue over the head of a police officer who’d wandered in for a quiet drink.

  Challis was drinking Cascade lager, Ellen gin-and-tonic, Murph lemon squash. He’d stop at one drink. The others would, too. They’d all had experience of long drinking sessions when they were young, in which everyone was expected to buy a round of drinks and the fallout might be a breath test or an accident on the way home and the loss of a career. Or the breakdown of a marriage. Or poor job performance and a spreading waistline. Challis thought back to an early posting, a rural station where he was a sergeant and had lost his wife’s regard to one of his colleagues. They’d all been heavy drinkers. It got incestuous. Eventually his wife and the colleague had lured him to a lonely back road to kill him. He’d been an impediment to their love or their lust and it was as if killing him was their only solution. If it hadn’t been a drinking culture, would they have taken more civilised measures? The pair of them had been jailed. The guy was still behind bars. Challis’s wife had taken her own life there.

  He shook off the memory and said, too sharply, ‘When will you question her?’

  A flicker of emotion in Ellen’s face. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, after a pause.

  Oh, hell, thought Challis. ‘Sorry,’ he said, drawing his palms down his cheeks. ‘I had McQuarrie and Hindmarsh on my back this afternoon.’

  ‘Hindmarsh?’ asked Ellen, appalled.

  ‘Sooner you than me, boss,’ Murphy said.

  Ellen gazed at him sympathetically. Behind her a large tinted window looked on to a little inlet and wharf where the fishing
boats tied up. She said, ‘Did you tell him about the e-mail and the blog?’

  ‘You betcha.’

  ‘Did it shut him up?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Pam Murphy was following the conversation with bewilderment. Challis showed her the printouts, watched her read them. ‘Could be motive lurking here, boss.’