by Garry Disher
Challis said, ‘One day that thing will send you into a quarry.’
‘Boss, if I can’t push buttons on a device, I’m nothing.’
Challis snorted. He let her take the route suggested by the GPS. He knew short cuts the gadget didn’t know, but he kept his mouth shut and looked out, mildly sedated by the morning sun, onto a familiar vista. Inland of the little Westernport towns the Peninsula was a patchwork of paddocks—variously overgrown, cropped for hay, home to cattle or alpacas or striped with orderly rows of vines—stitched together by tree-lined roads. Here and there in the distance were dense stands of the kind of timber that might trap an unwary driver in bushfire conditions. Closer to, there might be a winery-cum-restaurant, an unlovely old weatherboard farmhouse or a set of massive stone gateposts at the head of a driveway leading to an eye-searing starter castle on a hill. It was a pattern all across the Peninsula.
He ruminated on many things. The murder, ice crimes, what to get Ellen for Christmas. That led inevitably to thoughts of Serena Coolidge, the drug-squad senior sergeant, her quicksilver changes of demeanour. Alone with him, she was animated, leaning a little too close, sometimes touching. He supposed he knew what it was about. Ellen—his late wife, too—had ribbed him about being attractive but oblivious. But so what? Were they saying he had to act on it if a woman showed interest?
Challis wasn’t able to run far with the idea. His thoughts drifted to Angela, his dead wife. He realised, with some surprise, that he rarely thought about her anymore. That was a good thing. Time and Ellen Destry had been the cure.
Time—years, in fact—had passed; he was with Ellen Destry and there was no hole inside him anymore. He didn’t want to live with Ellen, necessarily, nor she with him, and they didn’t need to spend every night together, but nor did they want to be with anyone else.
How to convey that to the vivid Serena Coolidge?
THEN MURPHY WAS SLOWING THE CIU car and turning into a farmhouse driveway, where a uniformed constable took their details and waved them in.
A house came into view, a hundred metres along a track lined with pines and agapanthus. Coated in decades of road dust and mould, it needed a good scrubbing. Grass spouted in the gutters, paint had peeled away from the veranda posts and no one had tended to the lawn or garden beds for a long time. If there was money here, it had all gone on sheds, Challis thought. He counted six of them, one old and five new, in a cleared paddock some distance the other side of a creaky windmill and a newly strung cyclone fence.
Murphy parked between the crime-scene van and a small white Hyundai. They got out, greeted by the half-hearted barking of a pair of kennelled dogs, and Challis spotted a woman’s jacket on the passenger seat of the Hyundai. Freya Berg, he thought. She’s in there, examining the body.
He joined Murphy at the rear doors of the van, where Scobie Sutton and one of his technicians were pulling on crime-scene overshoes, suits and caps. Inside the van were metal shelves holding plastic tubs of various sizes that slid out like drawers. The larger held spanners, screwdrivers, hammers, saws, wire cutters and flex-claw pick-ups; the medium held evidence kits and collection bags; and the smaller held brushes, tongs, scissors and tweezers. Sizeable items like ropes, pulleys, vacuum cleaners, video equipment and spare crime-scene clothing sat in large open floor tubs.
‘Scobie.’
‘Sir,’ Sutton said. ‘Pam.’
‘Keeping busy,’ Challis said, stating the obvious.
Sutton didn’t smile. He said, ‘If you’re going in, I need you to tog up.’
‘Certainly. Doctor Berg’s with the body?’
‘Yes.’
Drawing on overshoes, Challis said, ‘How do you want to run this, Scobie?’
Sutton glanced along the driveway to the road. ‘No media yet, so that’s a plus.’
Challis nodded. Police at crime scenes were preternaturally wary of the probing lenses of cameras, the proximity of microphones.
‘For now, let’s consider the whole house a crime scene,’ Sutton continued. ‘At least until I know the entry and exit points, which could become secondary scenes.’
Challis nodded as Sutton yawned suddenly, stretching his back. ‘Sorry, not had much sleep since the fire.’
Then he turned abruptly and stepped through a crooked garden gate and headed towards the house. Challis followed, expecting Sutton to enter by the front door, but soon saw why he continued down the side of the house to the kitchen door. The front door hadn’t been touched in years. This was a house in rural Australia. No one used the front door. Everything happened in the kitchen.
THE AIR, STALE AND CLOSE, held traces of old cigarettes and recent blood and decomposition. Flies buzzed sluggishly. Challis, taking in the grimy sink and hallway cobwebs, a drooping curtain here, a torn blind there, thought: the home of a single man. No love felt or given here for a long time.
Sutton led them to the end of the hallway. On one side was a bedroom, dirty crumpled sheets, and opposite was a small study. Here the smell was at its most acute.
‘Please stay by the door for the moment,’ Sutton said.
At the sound of his voice, a head popped into view beyond a desk that had once been a dining table. Dark hair capped inexpertly by a paper bonnet, a clever, elastic face, eyes filled with humour. ‘The cavalry,’ she said.
‘Freya,’ Challis said, breathing shallowly. ‘You know Constable Murphy?’
‘Of course. Hiya, Pam.’
‘Doctor Berg.’
Berg smiled at Sutton. ‘It’s all yours, Scobie.’ She began to remove her gloves.
But she wasn’t following strict protocol, and Sutton made a series of tiny steps on the spot. ‘Your ruling?’
‘Well,’ Freya Berg said, ‘he’s dead. Kaput.’
She came out from behind the desk and Sutton took her place, uttering a faint sound that could have indicated disapproval. She ignored him. ‘Two gunshot wounds, one to the mid-torso, the other to the head. Heavy calibre, and either would have killed him.’
‘Not self-inflicted.’
Berg shook her head. ‘No, and no weapon.’
‘When?’
‘I knew you were going to ask me that. The flies, the daytime heat, rigor has come and gone, decomposition is evident…I’d say several days. Friday, Saturday…’
Challis glanced around the room: partly from instinct, looking for a way out if he needed it, and partly as a detective, trying to understand the killer’s movements. The window looked painted shut. A fringe of cobwebs hung over the upper half. Apart from the desk, the room held a chair, a filing cabinet, no other furniture. The desk was crowded: a bulky old computer, a cheap inkjet printer, a telephone, an in-tray crammed with opened and unopened mail, a desk diary.
‘Shot from the doorway?’ he said.
‘The first shot, yes, that would be my guess. Hit in the torso and flung against the wall, then he slid to the floor.’
Challis had yet to view the body. ‘And the killer came around the desk and shot him a second time?’
‘Looks like it. Fired straight down into the forehead.’
Scobie Sutton expressed another harrumph, as if to say that Berg was guessing. The truth wouldn’t be fully known until he’d run the evidence.
‘And it is the man who lives here? Colin Hauser?’
‘According to his wallet, which is on the floor, yes.’
Sutton, crouched with his back to them, said, ‘Doctor Berg, please.’
‘It’s okay, Scobie,’ Berg said, ‘I didn’t touch it. As you can see, it’s lying there open, displaying his drivers licence photo.’
She winked at Challis, mouthed the words ‘I opened it.’
Challis cocked an eyebrow. He didn’t suppose it mattered.
‘My work here is done,’ Berg said.
On the way out she said, ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’
‘Haven’t had a suspicious death for a while. It’s all ice overdoses and stolen tractors these days.’
�
��How’s Ellen?’
‘Busy.’
Berg turned solemn, gave Challis a pat on the chest and was gone, saying, ‘Give her my best.’
‘Will do,’ Challis murmured. Right now all he wanted to do was view the body. ‘Scobie…’
‘Just give me a few minutes to work the floor between here and the desk, okay?’
‘Okay.’
CHALLIS EXPLORED THE REST of the house with Murphy, starting with the kitchen.
The laminex benches were worn and sticky. A cane basket beside a dusty, empty fruit bowl held car keys, a massive ring of other keys, sunglasses, a few coins and bills. The keys were to a Subaru; glancing out a side window, he saw a Forester parked behind a water tank.
Meanwhile every drawer in the room had been pulled out and the pantry door stood ajar. ‘They were looking for something?’
Murphy shrugged. ‘But what?’
Sitting room, bedrooms, laundry, bathroom. Again, drawers had been left pulled out or dumped on the floor, and cupboard doors left open. It occurred to Challis that the havoc was staged. Sure, it might look as though burglars had turned the place over but not as if they’d really been looking for anything. No mattresses displaced, no seat cushions sliced open or pockets turned out.
He was sure of it when he found a Longines wristwatch in a drawer of the bedside cupboard, partly concealed by a packet of antacids. A proper burglar would have found and pocketed it.
He told Murphy his theory. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. ‘So, not a stranger.’
‘Too early to tell, but I am floating the idea.’
Murphy glanced around the room. ‘Not houseproud, our Mr Hauser.’
Challis nodded. The house and the life lived there depressed him. Dusty, stale, an odour of unwashed clothing under the stink of decomposition. No photographs, no books, one magazine, American Rifleman. Stained bathtub and toilet. Big-screen TV and a collection of DVDs: porn, National Geographic documentaries and live country-and-western concerts.
‘Let’s see if Scobie’s ready for us.’
SUTTON WAS ON HIS HANDS and knees, lifting dust, dirt and fibres with tape. He glanced up. ‘You can view the body.’
‘Finding anything?’
‘A lot of tracked-in dirt and vegetable matter.’
‘Recent?’
‘Some of it.’
‘Okay.’
Challis and Murphy crossed to the desk and looked into the gap behind it. The murdered man lay splay-legged on his back, his head at the base of the wall. A massive wound to the belly, another in his forehead. Blood and other matter streaked the wall and his chest and lap were dark with blood. So much blood, and some of it on his hands. Had he grabbed at his stomach in pain? Had he held up his palms in supplication?
‘Defensive wounds, Scobie?’
‘You’ll have to speak to Doctor Berg about that.’
‘Scobie,’ Challis said, using his patient, slightly irritated CIU boss voice, ‘I’m not asking you to put anything down in writing, I just need your opinion.’
‘Farmer’s hands,’ Sutton said, flushing a little. ‘Old cuts and scrapes, that’s all.’
‘Thank you.’
Sutton sat back on his heels. ‘We found a badly mangled bullet under his head. From the size of it, a rifle bullet.’
‘It didn’t go through the floor?’
Sutton shook his head. ‘There’s a concrete slab under the carpet. But the first shot went right through the wall, it’s just plaster and weatherboard. Good luck finding it. It’ll be out there somewhere…’
Challis glanced through the window, at the dusty paddocks stretching to the horizon.
‘Incidentally,’ Sutton said, ‘no match on the prints found in the drug lab.’
Challis shrugged. If the cooks were students, they might not have been caught and fingerprinted for anything yet.
Sutton rocked forward again, peering down. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’d better carry on.’
CHALLIS AND MURPHY LEFT the house carrying the keyring from the kitchen, the desk diary, the contents of the in-tray and the handful of files in the cabinet. ‘Get all this to Janine Quine for collation.’
‘Boss.’
Challis, leafing through a manila folder, said, ‘We have a divorce here.’ He leafed some more. ‘Dated 2011. The ex-wife lives in Cranbourne. We’d better talk to her.’
He stowed the paperwork in the car, waggled the keys at Murphy. ‘The sheds, do you think?’
‘Worth a try.’
To the music of a windmill rattling in the breeze, they crossed the broad dirt yard to a gate in the cyclone fence and headed for the nearest shed. It was large, the size of a tennis court, its double doors fastened with a padlock and chain. Challis peered into the gap while Murphy searched for a key that fitted. He could see dim shapes, that was all. Large shapes.
‘Bingo,’ Murphy said and the chain rattled to the ground.
Inside were three aluminium motorboats on trailers. ‘Stating the obvious,’ Challis said, ‘who needs three boats?’
‘Hauser and two of his friends?’
‘I think I’d be looking at recent thefts, Constable Murphy.’
‘Tossing all possibilities into the ring, boss.’
One shed was open to the elements, a legitimate back-road farming shed: hay bales and room for a Mazda ute and an old Massey Ferguson tractor. The remaining four sheds were like the first: locked. One contained earthmoving machines: two Bobcats, a small Caterpillar grader. The second housed half-a-dozen ride-on mowers, the third two tractors and a vineyard spray machine, the fourth a small Isuzu truck and a collection of chainsaws and brush cutters.
‘Either it’s his way of preparing for the apocalypse,’ Murphy said, ‘or he’s a thief.’
‘Maybe the man who discovered the body has some idea.’
11
LEAVING CHALLIS TO PHOTOGRAPH the contents of the sheds, run serial numbers and coordinate with the crime-scene unit, Pam Murphy walked across the vast dry yard to the CIU car. The wind had picked up, a constant sad moan through the pine trees, quadrophonic in effect as different tree clumps took up the chorus, behind her, ahead, to her left, to her right. Not spooky, exactly, but depressing, and she was reminded of how dry the land was, how open to another fire.
She drove out of the yard and down the driveway to the constable on duty at the front gate. His name was Wollman. She’d seen him around the station. ‘You the responding officer?’
He nodded. He was about her age, thirty, and also a constable, so not readily impressed with an officer in plain clothes. ‘I was told to stay on and monitor comings and goings.’
He hates it, she thought. Thinks it’s a job for a probationary constable. She said, ‘You took a statement from the man who found the body?’
Wollman took out his notebook. ‘Name of Michael Traill,’ he said, and he stopped at that point, giving Pam a look.
She picked up on it. ‘Traill. I know that name.’
‘So you should. He’s the bloke who king-hit Dave Booker.’
Pam’s eyes gleamed. Her pleasure was almost reverent. ‘Ah.’
Then her gaze narrowed. ‘And you let him go home?’
Wollman wasn’t going to be intimidated. ‘His car hit a roo, no phone signal, so he walked here to ask if he could call a tow truck, and found the body. That part of it checks out, I saw the car, it’s a mess. Plus, he was dead on his feet, night shift at a servo up on the Moorooduc Highway.’
‘How was he getting home?’
Wollman shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Got his address?’
In reply, Wollman displayed a page of his notebook. Pam keyed the information into her phone. ‘Thanks.’
‘Watch for his right hook,’ Wollman said lazily, as though he hoped she wouldn’t.
PAM FOUND THE WRECKED CAR and dead kangaroo, then doubled back, deeper into a network of dirt side roads through tilled and untilled farmland. Slowing for a hand-painted DUST PLEASE SLOW
DOWN sign, she reached a crossroads, the road ahead a laneway blocked to all but local farm traffic. She turned right, taking her to Black Stump Road, where she turned left, following the GPS commands. She was in a region of dead grass, distant pine thickets marking farmhouses, lost wheel trims gleaming dully here and there, shaken loose by the road corrugations. Only the blackberry canes displayed any vigour, green and powerful under a patina of dust.
But she barely took it in, her thoughts racing. She needed to move house by Christmas. Her mother wanted to spend Sunday with her. And she was about to question a man reviled by millions. Thousands, anyway. Hundreds.
For Pam Murphy was a cricket tragic. Going back years, she could name the members of long-forgotten test teams, remember scores, tell you if X was a left- or right-hander, Y a better slips catcher than Z. She’d been half in love with David Booker when she was in her teens. A leg spinner who’d played international cricket for five years, a tall, dark, good-looking, lazily grinning man, always in trouble on tour for some larrikin escapade. Then, as he got older, he captained the Victorian team for a few years, and until his death was a selector and coach. Still remembered, still adored.
He went to dinner with friends one evening in March 2013, the dining room of an up-market hotel on the Melbourne waterfront. He drank, his friends drank, he grew funny and noisy and more and more people came up to shake his hand, clap him on the back, be photographed with him.
Later, on the footpath outside, amid a dozen or so people trying to come and go, there was some good-natured pushing, shoving and fondling, some arguing over who’d had most to drink, who should drive, where was the car, and how about you come back to my place. They were loved and admired. They were loud. There was a complaint.
Michael Traill, the pub’s security manager with a black belt in karate, emerged from the pub to ask them to move along, keep the noise down. A moment later, Booker was dead. Traill’s defence: he’d used reasonable force—Booker, an aggressive loudmouth, had thrown the first punch. But no one corroborated this version of events. What’s more, several of Booker’s friends and acquaintances claimed that Traill had thrown the first punch, and Booker had thrown none.
