[Challis #5] Blood Moon

by Garry Disher

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ said Wishart peevishly. ‘Do I offer you tea or coffee?’

  Ellen took his elbow and led him through an archway to a kitchen alcove. Here there was a plain wooden table with a scuffed surface, a table for the morning cereal, newspaper and coffee, a table for visitors who might drop in. Challis followed, recognising that Ellen’s instincts had been right again: the sitting areas were too vast and open, the kitchen was intimate. She sat Wishart on a chair at the table, took the adjacent chair and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Wishart, but a body has—’

  A wail broke from Wishart. ‘No, please, please don’t say it.’

  ‘We have reason to believe it’s your wife,’ said Ellen gently.

  ‘I should see her. I should be with her,’ Wishart said, pushing back his chair.

  Ellen stopped him. ‘Soon enough, Mr Wishart. Meanwhile, is there anyone we can call on your behalf? Family member? Friend?’

  The wind went out of Wishart’s sails and he slumped at the table. Then he sprang up again. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Challis said. He’d watch and listen now as Ellen went to work.

  ‘How did she die?’ asked Wishart.

  Ellen told him.

  Challis watched Wishart swallow and ask, ‘Where?’

  Ellen told him, adding, ‘Do you know why she was there?’

  Wishart had almost no energy. The question seemed to defeat him. ‘No idea.’ Then he rallied a little. ‘Sorry, where did you say?’

  Ellen told him again. ‘Do you know why she was there?’

  ‘Her job—she’s the planning infringements officer,’ Wishart said. ‘If it’s the place I’m thinking of, it belongs to Jamie Furneaux. He’s some cousin of the Premier. Anyway, he cut down a heap of trees and burned them. Someone called the fire brigade, and he tried to shut them up with a big donation, but it was too late, someone dobbed him in.’

  ‘He didn’t have permission to remove the trees?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was there to serve him with an infringement notice?’

  Wishart shook his head. ‘To check that he’d carried out reclamation work, you know, planted new trees.’

  ‘The job made her unpopular?’

  ‘Hell, yes.’

  Adrian Wishart’s indignation seemed to swell into fury, and he rose from his seat, stabbing his ringer at Challis, who was beside the bubbling kettle. ‘I told you something was wrong last night. If you’d done something about it instead of, of...’

  Ellen said firmly, ‘Please, Mr Wishart. We believe that Ludmilla was already dead when you contacted the station.’

  He sat, all at sea. His neat, narrow head shaking in big, doubting sweeps he said, ‘Are you sure she didn’t fall and hit her head?’

  ‘We don’t believe so.’

  He looked up. ‘Will I have to identify her?’

  ‘We’ll take you there and bring you home again.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘But your tea, your coffee.’

  ‘After that,’ said Ellen gently.

  Challis poured the tea. He disliked tea, but the only alternative was instant coffee. He delivered the mugs of tea to the table with a bowl of sugar and a bottle of milk, and sat to one side, trying to be unobtrusive but sensing that the husband was powerfully aware of him.

  ‘Is there anyone we can contact, Mr Wishart?’ said Ellen.

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘What about your wife’s family? Would you like us to inform them?’

  ‘There’s only her mother, and she lives in Sydney.’

  ‘Friends. Her friends, or friends you have in common?’

  Here Wishart pitched about in his seat briefly. Eventually he said, ‘There’s Carmen. She and Mill are very close. Were very close,’ he added with a little gasp.

  Ellen scribbled the woman’s address and phone number onto a page of her notebook. Wishart watched her moving hand alertly, Challis watched Wishart. Wishart said, ‘Speak to her workmates if you want the names of anyone who had a grudge against her.’

  ‘We will,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Her workmates,’ Wishart repeated, ‘not her boss.’

  Ellen cocked her head at him. ‘Why not?’

  Wishart waved a hand about vaguely as if he regretted the clarification. ‘Nothing in particular. Apparently he doesn’t spend much time in the office, and when he is there he likes to look over everyone’s shoulder.’

  ‘Your wife didn’t like him?’

  Wishart tried to find the right words. ‘He could be demanding,’ he said finally.

  ‘Demanding,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Yes.’

  She took an exploratory sip of tea, and said casually, ‘Perhaps you could tell us about what kind of day you had yesterday, Mr Wishart.’

  ‘What kind of day? It was all right. Went to visit my uncle Terry.’ Tears spilled as he said, ‘Then Mill didn’t come home and I got worried.’

  ‘You work from home, I believe?’

  Wishart’s gaze was jumping between Ellen and Challis. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a draftsman?’

  Challis had told her the man was an architect. The insult was deliberate. ‘Certainly not,’ Wishart said. ‘I’m an architect.’

  ‘You were working on a project yesterday?’

  Wishart said airily, ‘Oh, there’s always a project.’

  ‘Did you go out, perhaps to confer with a client?’

  ‘I know what you’re doing. You think I killed her, my own wife.’

  ‘We don’t think that, Mr Wishart. The sooner we eliminate you from our inquiries, the sooner we can start looking for the real killer. It’s standard procedure to check with those closest to the victim first.’

  Wishart began weeping angrily. ‘This is awful. Mill and I... we’re not the kind of people to come to the attention of the police.’

  ‘May I ask why you went to see your uncle?’

  ‘He had a present for Mill. It was her birthday yesterday, her thirtieth.’

  ‘He couldn’t give it to her himself?’

  ‘He has a shop to run, up in the city. He can’t get away, whereas I’m more flexible.’

  Ellen added the uncle’s details to her notebook. ‘What time did you see him?’

  ‘All afternoon. I haven’t seen him for a few weeks. I got home about six, expecting to see Mill, waited for a while, then made phone calls and went looking for her before reporting her missing.’

  So it wasn’t a sure-fire alibi. Then again, Challis mistrusted those.

  Wishart swallowed visibly. ‘Was Mill.. .was my wife...’

  Ellen said, ‘She wasn’t interfered with.’

  ‘Her face?’

  ‘Untouched.’

  Wishart flopped in relief. They were all silent for a while, Challis and Destry watching Wishart closely. Eventually Challis said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll need to search the house, Mr Wishart, paying particular attention to your wife’s papers and computer.’

  He looked up at them. ‘But…’

  ‘Standard procedure,’ said Ellen smoothly.

  It wasn’t until they were guiding him out to the car that he said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  Challis felt that old tingle, expecting a confession, but Wishart said, ‘When I reported her missing last night I told you she wasn’t having an affair. But I think she was.’

  * * * *

  26

  Pam Murphy was in Waterloo, the hospital carpark, waiting for Josh Brownlee. When he emerged she fell into step with him and said, ‘So, Josh, want to tell me about it?’

  Josh blinked against the morning light. He was wearing jeans, T-shirt and sandals, clothing that Pam had bundled together from his motel room last night, after delivering him to the hospital. She’d searched the beach and foreshore but hadn’t found what he’d been wearing when he was ambushed.

  And how had he been ambushed? ‘
Josh!’ she snapped, to get his attention, ‘I saved your life last night. Now, tell me what happened.’

  He’d showered but hadn’t shaved and the whiskers stood out like prickles. His eyes were red and his dazed air said that he still had drugs in his system. But what drugs, and had he taken them willingly? Last night she’d waited while the Casualty nurse took blood and urine samples and this morning she’d sent them to the lab for analysis. She suspected they’d find one of the date-rape drugs, like GHB, meaning he wouldn’t remember anything.

  She’d also asked the lab to fast-track Brownlee’s DNA analysis. When the manager demurred, she lied and said it was related to the Lachlan Roe case, remembering that Inspector Challis had asked Ollie Hindmarsh to put pressure on the lab as a favour to him.

  ‘Mr Hindmarsh is keen for a result,’ she said.

  ‘That prick,’ said the lab guy.

  ‘You got it,’ said Pam.

  She was hoping, betting, that Josh’s DNA would match the DNA found on the young woman who’d been sexually assaulted on Saturday night.

  ‘My car’s over here, Josh,’ she said now.

  He followed her dumbly along the root-erupted bitumen paths. The air was heavily scented with eucalyptus from the young gum trees that surrounded the potholed carpark. ‘Hop in,’ she said, ‘and I’ll take you to your motel.’

  Ensuring that he was strapped in, she started the car. ‘We haven’t been able to find the clothes you were wearing last night. Pity: they might have given us some evidence about what happened to you.’

  His mouth hung open. That was pretty normal, Pam reflected. She’d been in close contact with eighteen-year-olds all week and they were all mouth-breathers. It made them look dumb. Many of them were dumb. She shook off this train of thought and said, ‘Who did you meet with last night, can you remember?’

  His face twisted comically in concentration.

  ‘Friends?’ Pam prompted. ‘A girlfriend, maybe?’

  ‘I think so,’ he croaked.

  ‘Well, who? You said, when I found you, “The bitch poisoned me.” Who were you talking about, Josh?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘Were you on anything, Josh? Ice? Ecstasy? It’s all right, I’m not from the Drug Squad.’

  ‘Nothing. Beer. Couple of vodkas.’

  ‘So it’s just a hangover you’re feeling?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Josh, someone took you to a lonely spot in the mangroves, stole your clothes and painted your balls with lipstick.’

  He twisted in his seat, a twist that reached all the way through him. Not revealing her general glee, Pam said in a businesslike voice, ‘You don’t remember any of that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sounds like revenge to me, Josh.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone had it in for you.’

  ‘No.’

  The voice and manner were sulky, Josh leaning against his door, wanting to get away from her.

  ‘Maybe—indulge me here, Josh—maybe you had an encounter with someone at Schoolies Week last year, or this year, and it got a bit out of hand, mistaken signals, she said no and you thought she was really saying yes.’

  ‘Didn’t happen.’

  ‘And she wanted to get back at you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or it didn’t happen to her but to her friend.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Or maybe she was drugged unconscious, which makes it academic whether she said yes or no or gave mixed signals.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’

  Pam reached the roundabout by the post office and turned left, down to the bay and the holiday flats, motels and bed-and-breakfasts. ‘It would take a pretty special person to take that kind of revenge,’ she mused. ‘I can see her in my mind’s eye: clever, patient, determined, very, very brave.’ She turned her head. ‘How brave are you, Josh? Not very, I’d say.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘There’s nothing stopping you, Josh. And heaven knows, I wouldn’t want to hang around here much longer, not when there’s a vengeful female on the loose.’

  ‘Not,’ said Josh, not knowing what it was he wanted to say.

  ‘Someone like Caz Moon. You remember Caz, don’t you? Works in HangTen?’

  Josh went rigid in the passenger seat, pointing agitatedly through the windscreen ahead. ‘That’s my motel.’

  The Sea Breeze Holiday Apartments, dating from the 1960s, cheap, forlorn and barely viable at most times of the year. ‘I know Josh, I collected a change of clothes for you last night.’

  He looked about in a hunted way that kept her smiling on the inside. ‘I found your stash, by the way. But like I said, I’m not Drug Squad.’

  ‘Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Why did you come here, Josh?’

  ‘Schoolies Week. I’m allowed.’

  ‘But you left school last year. Had such a good time you had to repeat it?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Partying, drinking, drugs, sex, you had to come back for some of that good shit.’

  There was a nasty flash in his eyes and his knuckles went white. Pam flinched: if he had an ice habit, he could be violent and unpredictable. ‘Steady, Josh.’

  ‘I’m reporting you.’

  She decided to push a little more, tensing her body in case he struck out. ‘The sex, Josh. Cool dude like you, you always get lucky, right? You wouldn’t need to use a date-rape drug, would you?’

  That nastiness came back, but then he piled out of the car and ran toward his room, a corner room on the ground floor. Pam watched him pat his pockets, saw him remember that his wallet and keys were missing, and change direction, scuffing slowly toward the manager’s office. He’d sort it out, Pam reflected. Mum and Dad would be there for him, just as they always were for kids like him. Her phone pinged. A text from Andy Cree.

  * * * *

  27

  Late Thursday morning, and Ellen Destry was sitting across from Carmen Gandolfo in the Mornington office of Community Health, which was a converted 1940s house on a street of similar houses, some of which were residential but most were clinics now—dental, medical and physiotherapy. Gandolfo’s window overlooked a black wattle that leaned dangerously over the fence dividing it from the next property. Did Gandolfo know what a shallow root system wattles had? Should she say something? But now wasn’t the time...

  ‘Murdered?’ Gandolfo was saying. She looked damp and wretched, sniffing, mopping her eyes.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Ellen said. ‘I understand that you were close to Mrs Wishart.’

  ‘We’re best friends!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Fresh weeping. ‘You want to know who killed her? Look no further than her husband.’

  ‘He was violent? Abusive?’

  ‘Controlling. Incredibly controlling.’

  And so are a lot of people, thought Ellen. She gazed at the other woman for a moment. Carmen Gandolfo was large but compact, with vast, cushiony breasts and auburn hair in a sunburst around her big head. A wry face, under the grief.

  ‘I know this is difficult for you, but I do need to ask you some questions,’ Ellen said.

  Gandolfo said damply, ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Let’s start with your meeting with Mrs Wishart yesterday.’

  Gandolfo opened her mouth to reply, then froze. ‘You think I killed her?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Ellen smoothly, keeping an open mind. ‘But you did have lunch with her, and she didn’t return to the office.’

  ‘She had appointments all afternoon! So did I!’

  ‘You had lunch together...’