by Garry Disher
He clattered down the stairs. It was 7.45 and a handful of the keener 8 a.m. starters were drifting into work, cluttering up the corridors and yarning with the duty sergeant. Challis edged through them and asked for the handbag. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘Sorry, sir. One of the probationers handled it, logged it as missing property handed in by a member of the public’
Challis checked the log. The handbag had been spotted by an elderly woman walking her dog on the beach below the cliffs at Shoreham at six o’clock on Thursday morning. She had handed it in at Waterloo that evening, after a Probus class. Challis sighed. Someone from the police would have to talk to her, a necessary part of covering all the bases, but it didn’t seem likely that she had anything to do with the killing. He signed for the handbag, hooked a ballpoint pen under the strap and carried it upstairs, where he spread the contents out on the incident room table. He peered at it with the others, separating the items with the same ballpoint pen.
‘On the surface,’ Ellen said, ‘it looks like a simple mugging.’
Challis nodded. Wallet, hairbrush, a packet of tissues, lipstick, Lifesavers, a diary and an address book—both small, bound with thin black leather—ballpoint pens, lint, tampons and crumpled parking receipts. He flipped open the wallet. ‘No cash or cards,’ he said. ‘Medicare card, library card, that’s it.’
‘What about her mobile phone?’ asked Sutton, staring gloomily at the bag and contents.
‘There should be an MP3 player too,’ Ellen said.
‘If she was murdered, they’d both have been tossed into the sea,’ said Challis. ‘If she was mugged, they’ve been sold or kept. I tried phoning her mobile and got a recorded message, saying it’s switched off or out of range.’
He placed everything into individual brown paper evidence bags. ‘These can go to the lab. Meanwhile, Scobie, I want you with me.’ He glanced at Ellen, unwilling to give her a direct order. ‘Ellen?’
She gave him an unreadable look. ‘Pam and I will speak to the demolition contractor.’
‘That leaves Hugh Ebeling, who ordered the demolition,’ Challis told her. ‘Later this morning, you and I will drive up to the city and see what he has to say for himself
‘Yes.’
When he got to the yard with Sutton five minutes later, Challis saw that both CIU cars had been signed out. ‘We’ll take your car,’ he muttered to Sutton, hoping the man didn’t want to talk. He wanted time to think about Ellen: Ellen distant last night and this morning, sometimes watching him with great apprehension and intensity. ‘Nothing,’ she’d said, when he’d asked what was eating her.
But Sutton, driving the elderly Volvo inexpertly and inattentively, did talk, prattling on about his daughter, the way she was always altering the ring tone on his mobile phone or altering the desktop display on the family computer. ‘Kids and their gadgets,’ he said.
‘Huh,’ grunted Challis.
There was a pause, then Sutton rattled out the words, ‘Boss, I think I’ve done something stupid.’
Challis grunted again. Sutton, approaching a school crossing, braked erratically, jerking Challis out of his reverie. ‘What stupid thing?’
‘Sorry, boss. I have to get it off my chest.’
Challis waited, Sutton waited, as the children crossed the road, the crossing guard returned to the footpath and the world turned over. Someone tooted and Sutton trundled on again. Challis was irritated with the man’s abject proprieties. ‘I’m not getting any younger, Scobie.’
‘Sorry. It’s this business with the wife.’
‘Her involvement with that crackpot church?’ prompted Challis.
‘Uh huh,’ Sutton said, and closed his mouth with a click. His Volvo swerved to avoid a double-parked car, found its lane again and a moment later gave every indication of passing a school bus on a blind corner. If Challis hadn’t been so lost in thought since last night, he’d not have let Sutton drive. Ellen had warned him often enough. The side street for the planning office came into view and at the last minute Sutton steered into it.
‘They were at my place last night,’ he said.
‘Who were?’
‘On my doorstep. I think they want to lure her away from me. What if they go after Ros? Kids are so impressionable.’
There was a police car outside the planning office, John Tankard taking a statement from Athol Groot. Tank looked sour about something. His partner, Andrew Cree, was photographing a glass-panelled door at the side of the building. A couple of schoolkids stood nearby, bored rather than curious. A glazier waited to measure and replace the broken glass. Challis noted all of these things as Sutton glided toward the kerb and executed a perfect park.
‘Speak now or forever hold your peace,’ he said.
In a rush, Sutton said, ‘Yesterday I leaked the Roe Report to Channel Seven.’
Challis stiffened. He turned to Sutton. Then he began to laugh.
‘I thought you’d be angry.’
‘You’ve done us a good turn, Scobie.’
They got out and crossed the road to the planning office. ‘I hope you showed the blog to your wife,’ Challis said.
Sutton shook his head unequivocally. ‘Oh no, unpleasant things upset her.’
‘Fuck that,’ snarled Challis. ‘She needs to know what these people are like. Morning,’ he said to Tankard, Cree and the chief planner.
‘Sir, Scobie,’ Tankard said.
‘What have we got?’
Cree jumped in, all bushytailed. ‘The side door was jimmied open sometime last night. Discovered by a cleaner at five this morning.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Andy,’ Tankard said.
Whatever their beef was, Challis couldn’t be bothered with it. ‘Anything taken?’
‘They stole a laptop and a printer,’ said Groot agitatedly. The early morning air was cool, but he looked plumply flushed and moist inside his suit coat.
‘That all?’ Challis asked, stepping through the breached door. The forensic team had been and gone, leaving the frame powder-brushed for prints. More powder on interior doorjambs, desks and filing cabinets.
‘Don’t think so. Haven’t had a close look yet,’ the planner said.
‘Whose computer?’
‘Mine.’
‘The only laptop in the building?’
‘Yes. As you can see, the other members of staff have PCs.’
With state-of-the-art widescreen LCD monitors, noted Challis. Why hadn’t the thieves taken those? ‘Where was the printer?’
‘Here,’ Groot said, pointing to a desk against one wall.
‘Networked?’
‘Yes.’
Challis gazed around at the wall charts, cabinets, blueprints, folders and desk clutter. Why not the slimline cordless phones? The portable hard drive on one of the desks? The wireless router?
Maybe the thieves had been in a hurry.
‘Is there a box for petty cash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘My bottom drawer.’
‘Let’s see.’
The cashbox was there and intact. The drawer would have been easier to jimmy open than the outside door. Trailed by Groot and Sutton, Challis went from one filing cabinet, work station and office cubicle to the next, running his gaze along each cabinet and desk drawer. Only one desk drawer showed signs of damage—very faint.
He pointed to it. ‘Mrs Wishart’s desk, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s been tampered with.’
‘Oh.’
‘When did that happen? Before last night?’
Groot blinked. ‘Don’t really know.’
‘Perhaps she lost her key one day? Needed to force it open?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Or her husband came around to collect her things after the murder and needed to force the lock?’
‘It’s possible,’ said the planner doubtfully, staring back down the weeks and months. ‘It’s possible her husband came to collec
t her things.’ He warmed to this theory, saying, ‘He was always hanging around, you know.’
‘Or whoever broke into the office last night also broke into her desk.’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
Then one of the office staff arrived and he seemed to swell and go rigid. He ducked away from Challis and hissed at the woman, ‘You’re late.’
She paled. ‘Sorry, sorry, my kids are sick.’
‘Even so,’ Groot said.
* * * *
35
Meanwhile Destry and Murphy were driving to interview the demolition guy, Ellen at the wheel, trying to concentrate on how she’d approach the questioning. But her thoughts kept sliding back to the break-in and her awful mood last night and this morning, so that at first she didn’t take in what Pam Murphy was telling her.
Then one word registered. ‘Revenge?’ she said, struggling to pay attention.
‘Uh huh. He doped her with GHB at last year’s Schoolies Week, raped her, and forgot all about it. She didn’t forget all about it. She recognised him. I even heard her accuse him: “Raped anyone lately, Josh?” He probably wondered what she was talking about.’
‘Sorry, who are we talking about?’
Irritation from Murphy, very faint. ‘Caz Moon, Sarge. Manages the surf shop in High Street.’
‘Got you.’
Ellen couldn’t afford to zone out. She gripped the steering wheel as if that might help her to concentrate. ‘You’re saying she got him back by doping him and leaving him naked on the beach with lipsticked balls?’ The image struck her properly then, and she laughed.
Pam laughed.
‘Did he name her?’
‘No.’
‘So you can’t prove any of this. You haven’t got enough to question her, let alone arrest her.’
‘Not her, Sarge, him. I want to put him away. That sexual assault last Saturday night—I’m betting it was down to him.’
They sat quietly as the road unwound through farmland and then between an industrial park and a new housing estate on the outskirts of Frankston. Ellen slowed: a list of the park’s tenants listed ‘Delaney Demolition, Patrick Delaney, prop.’ A minute later they’d parked outside a nondescript building: prefabricated cement walls, aluminium windows, shrubs struggling to survive in sunbaked bark chip garden beds. There was a chain link fence behind the building, crammed with heavy trucks and dozers, dump bins, and individual piles of recyclable doors, window frames, bricks, baths, stoves, tiles, corrugated iron roofing sheets and fireplace surrounds.
There was no receptionist, only Delaney peering over half-lens spectacles at a keyboard, poking a key, checking the monitor, and cursing. He looked up with relief. ‘What can I do you for, ladies?’
He was solid, his rolled back sleeves revealing decades of sun damage and a glimpse of skin as white as ivory. He wore a check shirt and jeans, grey hair showing at his throat. His job was to break things, and he looked competent to do it, but he also looked genial and grandfatherly. The pages torn from calendars and stuck to the walls were of fishing boats and racing cars. Ellen showed her ID and introduced Pam Murphy.
‘Planning East’s infringement officer was murdered late on Wednesday afternoon. We believe you encountered her earlier that day.’
‘Whoa,’ said Delaney, putting up his hands. Then he frowned in concentration, casting his mind back. His face cleared. ‘That old joint down in Penzance Beach?’
‘Yes.’
‘She arrived just as we were finishing. Spitting chips, but what could I do? I was hired to do a job. The permit to demolish was valid.’
‘Was she angry with you, specifically?’
‘I guess so. Because I was there, if you know what I mean. But like I told her, I was hired to do a job, it was a legitimate job, just as hers was a legitimate job. You’re saying she’s dead?’
‘Murdered.’
‘The same day I saw her?’
‘Yes, so I do have to ask you, Mr Delaney, did you see her again?’
‘Nup. We had another job to go to, fibro farmhouse near Baxter. My boys are there now.’
Pam spoke. She said, ‘Fibro? So there’s asbestos in it?’
Delaney regarded her calmly, a half smile creasing the edge of his mouth. ‘All legit. I have a permit to handle asbestos and my guys are all suited up in bio-hazard gear, all right?’
Ellen recognised Pam’s tactic, but also recognised that it hadn’t got them anywhere. ‘Who hired you to demolish the house in Penzance Beach?’
Delaney cocked his head at her. ‘The guy who bought the site.’
‘Name?’
‘Hugh Ebeling.’
‘How much notice did he give you?’
‘He rang me the night before.’
‘So a rush job.’
‘Yes. He tried calling several demolition firms, but no one could do the job there and then, there’s so much work on at the moment. Then he called me and got lucky. I had a spare crew and a spare few hours between jobs.’
‘Why the urgency, did he say?’
Delaney shifted his massive form uncomfortably. ‘Said he had builders lined up to put in a cement slab before Christmas.’
‘You believed him?’
‘Sure.’
‘But?’
Delaney coughed delicately. ‘But the planning lady, the one who got murdered, told me an application had been made to preserve the existing building. I swear I didn’t know that. As far as I knew, the guy had a permit to demolish and there was no preservation order.’
Ellen nodded. ‘No one’s blaming you,’ she said.
‘It feels like it. I don’t want no one taking me to court.’
‘There was no preservation order,’ Ellen said. ‘There was an application, that’s all. You’re in the clear.’
‘Legally, in the clear,’ Pam butted in. ‘Not morally. That was a lovely old house.’
‘Pam,’ Ellen said.
‘He doesn’t even recognise me, Sarge,’ Pam said. She fronted up to him. ‘Do you, eh?’
Delaney peered at her uncertainly. His face cleared. ‘You were there.’
Ellen cut in. ‘Do you think the man who hired you knew that a protection order might be issued?’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ said Delaney. He looked uncomfortable again. ‘But the planning lady reckoned someone had tipped him off
‘She told you that?’
‘Yes. She was that mad about it.’
‘Did she say who?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘None of my business. But it would have to be someone in the know, right?’
‘Someone in the planning department?’
‘No idea.’
‘I need to see the job order,’ Ellen said.
Delaney fished it out of a tray on his desk. Ellen copied down Hugh Ebeling’s address and telephone numbers, and returned to the car with Pam Murphy. She didn’t say anything to Pam. What right did she have to rebuke her? Pam had justice and a high moral sense on her side. Pam wasn’t a sneak thief.
Settling behind the wheel, Ellen called Challis with an update. ‘Next stop, Ebeling and his wife?’
‘Yes. Collect me at the station and we’ll drive up together. Tell Pam to check on Carl Vernon and the residents’ committee.’
‘Will do.’
She started the engine and eased the lever into Drive. At that moment, Pam’s mobile phone rang. Ellen drove slowly back to the freeway, half listening in on the conversation. ‘You’re kidding,’ Pam was saying. ‘Uh huh.. .uh huh.. .But not the sexual assault? Damn... okay, thanks.’
She pocketed the phone and settled a complicated gaze on Ellen. ‘That was the lab.’
‘And?’
‘I’d asked them to run Josh Brownlee’s DNA, thinking I’d get him on sexual assault...’
Ellen gave her a crooked grin, acknowledging the initiative. And?’
‘No luck. But—and I guess you’re going to like this—he did leave that mucus trace on Lachlan Roe’s elbow.’
Ellen felt lighter, some of the badness leaking away. ‘Then let’s go and pick him up,’ she said, stopping the car to call Challis with the change of plan.
