by Garry Disher
‘Who should we inform first, Sergeant Destry?’ said Challis. ‘The newspapers? His mates?’
‘I think we should tell everyone,’ said Ellen, but she was swallowing a little, her heart no longer in it. Who didn’t have pathetic little secrets?
In his delicate way, Challis seemed to read her. He said, in a gravely courteous voice, ‘Mr Wishart, you provided the police with an alibi for your nephew’s movements on Wednesday, the eighteenth of November. Would you care to revise that statement?’
‘All right!’ screeched Wishart. Then, subsiding, he muttered it: ‘All right.’
‘Adrian was here, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You had lunch together?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he didn’t stay with you for the whole afternoon, did he?’
‘No.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Back to check on Mill.’
‘In his car?’
Terry shook his head. ‘Too distinctive. He took my car.’
‘What time was this?’
‘He left around two-thirty.’
‘Half past two on the afternoon of Wednesday the eighteenth of November?’
‘Yes.’
‘What car do you drive?’
‘Falcon station wagon.’
And there were millions of them on the road, thought Challis. ‘What time did he return?’
‘Almost seven o’clock.’
‘Early evening, not seven the next morning?’
‘Correct.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to check on his wife?’
‘She was having an affair.’
‘He wanted to catch her meeting her lover?’
‘Yeah. He knew he’d be spotted if he drove the Citroen.’
‘What was his state when he returned?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dress, manner. Was he dirty? Any blood on his clothes? Was he excited, depressed, tearful, agitated?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he’d just murdered his wife.’
‘No way. Uh, uh, no way,’ said Wishart emphatically.
‘He’d cleaned off the blood?’
‘There was no blood!’
‘Did he ask you to get rid of his clothing? The tyre lever? Did you provide him with a change of clothing? Have you checked to see if he replaced the tyre lever from your car?’
The questions were coming thick and fast, and Terry Wishart backed away, saying, ‘He didn’t kill her! He’d never do that! He followed her, that’s all.’
‘We have to arrest you for providing a false statement to the police, providing a false alibi for a suspect,’ said Ellen gently. Mainly she didn’t want Terry to warn his nephew.
‘No, please.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Challis smoothly, ‘you’ll be out in no time.’
‘Just,’ said Terry Wishart helplessly, ‘just don’t tell anyone about the Army stuff. Please?’
* * * *
47
The murdered woman’s husband was returned to the interview room and his lawyer recalled. Adrian Wishart looked tense and wary, but more contained than afraid—as if he were expecting tedium, another session explaining his side of the story to a couple of slow thinkers. Sitting upright, a long-suffering expression on his face, he demanded, ‘What now?’
His lawyer, Hoyt, followed with, ‘Either charge my client or let him go.’
Challis gazed levelly at each of them, turned his attention to
Wishart, and said, ‘We’ve just come from a long talk with your Uncle Terry.’
The hesitation was no longer than a millisecond, but it was there. ‘So?’
‘Fought in Vietnam...’
Wishart eyed him. ‘So?’
‘He must have seen some pretty terrible things.’
The lawyer leaned forward. ‘Inspector Challis, I hope you’re not about to suggest that Terry Wishart isn’t a reliable or a credible alibi witness for my client, owing to his war experiences. He’s telling the truth.’
‘Truth,’ said Ellen. She looked tired, wilting in the stifling air, but still tense and focused. ‘I don’t think we’ve heard much truth from the Wishart boys. And they are boys.’
The lawyer ignored her, addressed Challis. ‘Terry Wishart was formally interviewed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Re-interviewed.’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘There are some anomalies,’ Challis said.
A nerve twitched at the corner of Adrian’s left eye. His veins stood out. He was tightly wound but otherwise inclined to be impatient and contemptuous. ‘What anomalies?’
‘We need to go back several years,’ Challis said.
Wishart blanched, but Hoyt frowned, looking for a trap. ‘Are you suggesting a family tiff? A falling out?’
‘No.’
The lawyer stared intently at her client. ‘Adrian, is your uncle competitive with you? Jealous? Envious?’
Ellen could see where this was going. Before Wishart could open his mouth to reply, she cut in: ‘Ade,’ she said, with a big, blokey smile, elbows on the table, ‘remember all those photos on Terry’s wall? His Army mates, excursions to the War Memorial, stuff like that?’
‘What about it?’
‘He served in Vietnam, didn’t he?’
‘Where’s this going?’
‘Your parents ever talk about that time, Terry going off to war?’
‘No, not really.’
‘No stories of waving him off, greeting him on his return?’
‘No.’
‘And what about Terry? Any tall tales from the trenches?’
‘It was pretty hush-hush, his Army work,’ Wishart said desperately. ‘He can’t talk about it.’
‘I wonder why.’
Faint alarm showed in the lawyer’s eyes, as though she sensed hidden shoals ahead. ‘Getting back to the matter at hand—’
Challis ignored her. ‘What your uncle can’t talk about,’ he said, ‘is the fact that he didn’t serve in Vietnam.’
Wishart’s mouth was dry. ‘Rubbish. He—’
‘He wasn’t even a soldier. He made it all up.’
‘He’s a sad, pathetic little man,’ said Ellen. ‘With emphasis on the words “sad”, “pathetic” and “little”.’ She paused. ‘A bit like you, really.’
Wishart glanced wildly at his lawyer, who’d thrown down her pen tiredly and apparently lost some of the will that had got her out of bed that morning. She examined a spot on the lapel of her blouse, ignoring him.
‘Your Uncle Terry has a desperate need to be loved and admired,’ said Challis, with a kind of gentleness that only a fool would underestimate, and Wishart was no fool.
‘A need to belong,’ Ellen said.
Still Wishart wouldn’t fold. ‘He has medals...’
‘Oh, cut the crap, Ade. He bought them on eBay, and you know it.’
‘I need time to be alone with my client,’ Hoyt said.
Challis continued to watch Wishart. ‘You knew the shame of being found out would kill him. You were counting on it.’
‘Of course, we haven’t told anyone his secret,’ Ellen said.
‘We’re not cruel.’
‘But he has agreed to stop the charade and tell the truth.’
‘The thing he fears more than anything is his mates finding out.’
‘He’d do anything to avoid that.’
‘All right!’ said Wishart, slamming his hand onto the table between them. His head slumped. ‘So he lied for me. So what.’
‘Emotional blackmail,’ Ellen said. ‘Families, eh?’
‘I want time with my client,’ Hoyt said.
Wishart turned to her. ‘Forget it, I need to say what happened.’
Hoyt made a broad gesture with her arms as if to say it was his funeral. Wishart nodded at her, turned to Challis and Ellen and said, ‘I admit I followed my wife.’
‘On Wedne
sday afternoon?’
‘Yes.’
‘In whose car?’
‘Terrys.’
‘Because yours is too conspicuous?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you follow her?’
Wishart bowed his head. ‘The tracking device had showed her regularly going to Bluff Road in Penzance Beach. Sometimes twice a day. I couldn’t stand it any longer, I had to know, so on Tuesday I followed her in my car. I’ve never done that before, I swear.’
‘And?’
Wishart said woodenly, ‘And I saw Mill with that fellow from the residents’ committee. I thought they were having an affair. But they spotted me, so on Wednesday I followed her in Terry’s car.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘Nothing. I mean, nothing suspicious. All they did was look at the site where that old house was.’ Wishart twisted his mouth. ‘I now accept they weren’t having an affair.’
‘Did anyone see you? Did your wife or Mr Vernon see you?’
‘No. I was careful about that.’
‘And then?’
‘I thought I’d attract attention if I waited too long in the vicinity, so I drove back to the city.’
‘You didn’t follow your wife to the murder site?’
‘On my honour, no.’
‘You weren’t in the habit of following her but you were in the habit of tracking her movements with the GPS device?’
‘Yes.’
Challis folded his arms, sat back comfortably and said, ‘I put it to you that you followed your wife to the house near Shoreham and murdered her.’
‘No!’
‘What, then? Are you saying she was murdered by someone else?’
‘Yes!’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I’d tell you if I knew.’
‘What time did you leave the area?’
Wishart frowned, making a production of it. ‘Between four-thirty and five, I guess.’
Challis supposed that it could be true. A good defence barrister would add some definition to the hazy outline and make it seem probable. We need hard evidence, he thought.
‘Why didn’t you tell us this before? Didn’t you want us to find your wife’s killer? You know how crucial the early stages of an investigation are.’
‘I was ashamed,’ said Wishart with a burst of feeling. He turned to Ellen, eyes damp, and seemed to shrink before her. ‘You said I was pathetic. Well, it’s true, I am.’
‘How awful for you,’ said Ellen.
* * * *
48
All Pam Murphy had wanted to do that Saturday was spend it in bed with Andy Cree, but tomorrow was the end of Schoolies Week and she was expected to be around until then. So, late morning, she kissed Andy goodbye, drove to Waterloo and tackled the paperwork on Josh Brownlee for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Josh had been remanded in the lockup and would appear before a magistrate on Monday. He might not get bail, owing to the serious nature of the attack on Lachlan Roe. Or maybe his parents would fork out for a good lawyer, one who’d air the damage that Roe had caused. She almost felt sorry for Josh, but recalled that the little shit was also a rapist—probably a rapist—and for that she hoped they’d throw away the key.
The only cure for her sour mood was to think about Andy, his body and smile and the way he made her feel. She glowed, a tingling low in her abdomen.
The hours wore on. The paperwork mounted. Eventually she grew aware of sniggering in the corridor outside CIU. What the hell was going on? There were fewer people around, as usual on a Saturday, but all morning she’d sensed an unmistakeable undercurrent of cloaked conversations and sudden, red-faced silences. And now the sniggering.
She looked up, catching Smith and Jones staring at her from across the office.
* * * *
John Tankard had spent the last few hours watching Pam Murphy’s rented house in Penzance Beach. He saw Murph leave for work, but Andy Cree had remained, the shit.
What made it worse, he was starving. He’d also been obliged to take a slash against a ti-tree, hoping the people in the fibro holiday shack behind him weren’t watching. That would be great, a patrol car comes out from Waterloo and says, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Tank? We got a report of some guy waving his donger around.’
Then, at noon, Cree emerged, to stand beside his car yawning, scratching his balls, hair a sex-tossed mess. Tank got ready, hand hovering at the ignition key, but Cree went back inside again. An hour passed before Cree drove away, Tank following him through the blind dirt lanes of Penzance Beach and out across farmland to Frankston-Flinders Road, and all the way to Somerville.
Cree lived in a block of flats behind the supermarket. There was some heat in the air now, forecast top of 34 degrees today, one of those very still days, cicadas buzzing crazily, the world a little heat-stunned and waiting for a thunderstorm.
‘Oi,’ Tank said.
Cree had his key in the lock. He saw Tank coming up the path and grew tense, casting his gaze behind and to either side of Tank. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
Tank had printed out the Web photos of Lachlan Roe. ‘You took these shots. You posted them on the Internet.’
Cree glanced at them, then up at Tank, searching Tank’s face. ‘Mate,’ he said mildly, ‘what are you on about?’
‘You took these,’ Tank said, experiencing a flicker of doubt.
‘Now, why would I do that?’
‘Used your mobile phone.’
‘I’m going inside, John.’
‘If you fuck with Pam, I’ll—’
‘So that’s it,’ said Cree, turning the key in his lock. ‘Not amused, okay?’
Then he was inside, beginning to close the door. ‘I don’t know what your beef is, Tank. Your problem, not mine. As for those photos, check with the crime scene techs before you go accusing me.’
* * * *
Dirk Roe was at his brother’s bedside, talking and talking, willing his voice into Lachlan’s ear and consciousness. ‘Pictures of you all over the Web. I couldn’t believe it. It’s not right.’
He peered at the slack face. ‘Can you hear me? It’s me—Dirk.’
He lost interest and gazed at the pale walls, a kind of beige, not a colour you could name. One of the nurses came in and he watched her covertly, tight uniform, the seams of her underwear showing through. Dirk began to hum madly before he caught himself. He swallowed. More than anything he was trying to stave off utter ruination, for he had nothing left. Sacked and bereaved and no one left in his life to love him. ‘Irreparable brain damage,’ the doctor had said. But the doctor was a foreigner, what did he know?
‘I can talk to my brother, right?’ Dirk had demanded. ‘He’ll be able to hear me? It’ll bring him back?’
‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Dirk leaned over Lachlan and said, ‘Someone’s got to pay.’
* * * *
49
After delivering his daughter to a church hall behind the shops in Somerville, where her ballet, jazz and tap teachers had set up stow-away tables groaning with cupcakes, doughnuts and lime cordial for the end-of-term party, Scobie Sutton did the shopping, determined not to be rushed just because Challis and Destry wanted it that way. And so it was lunchtime before he arrived at work that Saturday.
He began by examining tapes and speed camera photographs from four locations: Planning East’s carpark, the traffic lights in Tyabb, the Caltex service station in Waterloo and a stretch of Frankston-Flinders Road between Penzance Beach and Flinders. Mapping Ludmilla Wishart’s movements had so far involved a mixture of guesswork, her desk diary entries and tiny amounts of actual evidence. If only Wishart had planted his tracking device on his wife on Wednesday: all Scobie had to go on so far was a single credit card transaction—at 3.42 on Wednesday afternoon, Ludmilla Wishart had purchased 47 litres of unleaded petrol from the Caltex service station. The timing and location indicated that she’d been on her way to meet Carl Ve
rnon in Penzance Beach; according to Vernon, she’d been on time.
