Signal Loss

by Garry Disher

  Before Challis could speak she went on: ‘I’ve already spoken to the police. I was in hospital most of last week, didn’t get out till a couple of days ago. Knee surgery.’

  Challis knew his smiles could be off-putting. He willed his voice to be pleasant, introducing himself, then Murphy, and saying, ‘A couple of things have come up and we wondered if you could help us?’

  She took them to a sitting room furnished in a fat black leather lounge suite, a pale green carpet and a vast TV set. Monet’s waterlilies on one wall, family photographs on another—and on many of the available shelves, cabinets and other flat surfaces. An ugly herringbone pleated blind dimmed the vast window, allowing a few centimetres of sunlight to show at the bottom. A lifestyle magazine and TV Week on the coffee table, neatly lined up between a remote and a shallow glass bowl.

  ‘You have two children, I believe?’

  A woman of perpetual anger, Wignall said heatedly, ‘They’re at school. I don’t want them bothered.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Ten and eight. So, no, they did not get into my car and drive to the farm and kill my ex-husband.’

  ‘We won’t intrude on their grief, Ms Wignall,’ Challis said.

  ‘Grief! They were barely out of nappies when we left Colin. They see him once a year, if that. He wasn’t interested in them, and that was the thing that caused them grief.’

  ‘They know he’s dead?’

  ‘They do. They’re sad about it, but they’ll cope.’

  Murphy said, ‘Who looked after them while you were in hospital?’

  ‘My parents,’ Wignall said, addressing Challis. ‘And no, they didn’t kill Colin either. Why would they? He was long out of the picture. No money issues, except the occasional late child-support payment.’

  She continued to stare at Challis as if Murphy didn’t exist. Challis was a man, Challis was the boss. He saw that she didn’t want to flirt or impress, or expect some kind of chivalry. She simply didn’t rate women.

  ‘Colin was an accountant when you married him?’

  ‘An accountant with sticky fingers. Surely you know all this?’

  ‘Do you know any of the people he dealt with back then, Ms Wignall?’

  ‘Call me Louise. He dealt, if that’s what you want to call it, with family and friends mostly—and he siphoned their savings away. If you’re asking whether any of them would’ve liked to kill him—maybe, at the time. But that was years ago and he paid it all back—with help from his father, I might add. So no one’s still suffering.’

  She paused and added, ‘Plus he was a drunk. A pathetic one at that.’

  Challis glanced at the toothy children displayed on the mantelpiece, a girl in fancy dress, some kind of book or film character, he supposed, and a boy wearing football gear. The world was awash with similar photographs.

  Dragging his gaze back to the disgruntled mother, he said, ‘Did Colin ever do business with any…ah, questionable types?’

  Wignall looked affronted, as if the question reflected badly on her and the life she’d tried to lead back then. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, criminal types. People who made you feel uneasy, people he tried to keep you from meeting. Was he given to secretive phone conversations or assignations? That kind of thing.’

  ‘He was not having an affair. I would have known.’

  ‘Not an affair,’ Pam said. ‘Anything business- or money-related that made you uncomfortable, suspicious.’

  Wignall continued to ignore her. ‘Nothing like that.’ Her face softened. ‘He was just a sad case, really. Lost. A loser.’

  ‘And in the years since the divorce?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I didn’t have anything to do with him.’

  Challis said, ‘What can you tell us about his farm?’

  ‘Farm! That’s a joke. He grew up on a big property out in Gippsland, went to Scotch College, liked to think of himself as landed gentry, but he was hopeless, even his father said so. He’s dead now, in case you think he did it.’

  ‘So Colin didn’t go back on the land, he trained as an accountant?’

  ‘And made a hash of that, too.’

  ‘Where did he get the money to buy the farm?’

  Challis knew that Hauser had been heavily mortgaged; wanted to hear Wignall’s take on the situation.

  ‘Who knows? You sure he wasn’t deeply in debt? Maybe his father helped him, or he inherited the money when the old fool died.’

  ‘Have you ever been to the farm?’

  ‘Once, when he first bought it. He wanted to show the kids. We didn’t stay long.’

  ‘Could you describe what you saw?’

  ‘What do you mean? A run-down house, a crappy old shed; trees, paddocks. God knows what he was going to farm there. I didn’t stay long enough to hear about it.’

  ‘Just one shed?’

  She narrowed her gaze. ‘We’re getting to the heart of things, aren’t we? Yes, just one shed.’

  ‘There are now several sheds, newish ones,’ Murphy said.

  Wignall said to Challis, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Full of farm vehicles and other heavy vehicles and equipment,’ Murphy said sharply.

  Wignall gleamed at Challis as if he’d spoken. ‘What, he was a dealer? Dealer in stolen goods, more like.’

  ‘We believe so,’ he said. ‘And some of it disappeared before we could secure the property.’

  She didn’t blanch but looked delighted. ‘Got caught out, did you? That wouldn’t have gone over too well at head office.’

  Challis gave a cold smile. ‘So you don’t know who he had dealings with in recent times?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ Wignall said emphatically. ‘And just to be clear, not only do I have a buggered knee, I wouldn’t know the first thing about driving some farm vehicle. And where would I put it?’

  She didn’t have to elaborate: she lived in a treeless satellite town of postage-stamp house blocks and clear lines of sight in all directions. ‘Sorry I can’t be of further help to you,’ she said, hauling herself to her feet, moving to the hallway and the front door. Challis half-expected her to advise him against letting the door hit his arse on the way out.

  ‘YOU NOTICE SHE BARELY LOOKED AT ME?’ Murphy said.

  She was driving. Challis, eyes closed in the passenger seat, warmed by the sun, said, ‘You have to admit you lack presence, Murph.’

  ‘Funny. It’s like when I was growing up. It’s like things now, whenever I see uncles and aunts and family friends: no one asks my opinion, they say things like, “And what do your brothers think?”’

  Challis sensed that this was important. He cast back to the things she’d been saying in conversation in the past few weeks. ‘Are you having a family do this Christmas?’

  ‘It won’t be the same,’ she said sadly, ‘Mum’s in aged care, my brothers can’t decide what they’re doing. Meanwhile I’m trying to find a new place to live.’

  Challis had promised to keep his eyes open. ‘I haven’t heard of anything.’

  She sighed. ‘There isn’t anything.’

  ‘Can your brothers help out with a loan?’

  She shot him a look. ‘So I can afford to look at more expensive places, you mean? I daren’t ask. I can just hear them. There will be this big pause and they’ll look down on me from their lofty heights and stroke their weak professorial chins and say, “Well, I don’t know, Pam,” and then offer me maybe a hundred bucks and tie it up with all kinds of conditions and guilt.’

  Challis laughed. Murphy, fleetingly offended, laughed with him.

  ‘What will you do for Christmas?’

  ‘Spend it with Ellen.’

  ‘Will her daughter be there?’

  ‘Possibly. Probably.’

  ‘You get on with her now, right?’

  ‘I seem to have passed some kind of test.’

  ‘You seem to have saved her life last year, boss. That might have something to do with it.’


  ‘Not my personality?’

  ‘God, no.’

  Challis’s phone rang. He listened at length, then said, ‘Thank you, John, we’ll be there in twenty,’ and closed the call.

  Looked at Murphy and said, ‘Tank was on the front desk today. Had a couple of interesting visitors.’

  14

  THE MAIN DISADVANTAGES of working the front desk, John Tankard believed, were boredom and contact with the public.

  And today had started like all the others. First, he waited for something to happen. He stood at the chest-high counter amid spare pens, phones, logbooks and computer screens, and forms and documents the public might need in their dealings with the police and other government bureaucracies. Wire racks of brochures were screwed to the wall at each end, and the whole lot faced a small foyer fitted with leatherette bench seats and a coffee table stacked with Police Life. Along a short corridor were the toilets, and an inner door to the main part of the station, keypad access only.

  Sliding glass doors opened onto the street, and the sunlight out there was vivid today, promising heat, sleeveless dresses, bare legs. But there was one good thing about desk duty: it took place indoors. Tank suffered in the sun, his fair skin burned, perspiration broke out all over him.

  When nothing happened during the first hour he logged on to the station’s Facebook pages, hoping for a few minutes of peace before some old geezer came in with a noise complaint or a shopkeeper with a burglary report or a kid to say somebody had pinched his skateboard.

  Bored, bored, bored.

  But Facebook was always good for a laugh; sometimes even a bit of crime fighting.

  There were CCTV cameras along High Street now, and last week they’d caught a mugging, two kids in hoodies shoving the Cafe Laconic night manager to and fro before snatching her iPhone. The uniforms hadn’t been able to identify the kids, so Tank had posted the clip and dozens had viewed it. No ID yet, but Dixichik666 believed there should be police patrols along High Street 24/7 and RaZr argued that the night manager should have been watching where she was going instead of texting like she was addicted to her phone.

  ‘And you’re not addicted to yours, fuckwit?’ Tank muttered.

  The sliding doors opened and the first visitor of the day entered, a bland-looking woman who asked him to witness her signature on a stat dec. Then back to Facebook. Shoplifting posts, hoon burnouts near the skate park, rubbish dumping at the charity bins in the Coles car park…

  Tank paused: a respondent had posted a link to a non-police Facebook page. He clicked on it, and Facebook gold: two idiots bragging about drag racing near the skate park and film to prove it.

  Tank called his sergeant and sent him the link. Got a pat on the back.

  AN HOUR PASSED, AND ANOTHER. He read through the incident reports for the past few days. A child’s clothing found at an abandoned meth lab; a burglary at Tyabb referred to the sex-crimes unit; a shotgun reported stolen by an orchardist in Merricks North; numberplates stolen from a Mazda outside the Willow Creek pub; a woman arrested with a carload of stolen electrical items… He scanned down the list, coming to a follow-up to a call a week ago, in which two constables new to uniform had attended at a disturbance on the Seaview Estate. No one home. They left a calling card and drove off like the morons they were, unaware the householder was lying unconscious in a pool of blood at his back door. He was a part-time dealer, so no one was shedding tears, but the fact was that the attending uniforms should’ve checked around the back. That was the big difference between your beginner and your old hand like John Tankard. Tank always satisfied himself nothing was amiss before he left a scene.

  THEN THE MANAGER OF a Stumpy Gully Road vineyard came in, wanting to know if the police had found his stolen tractor.

  ‘We’re still investigating, sir,’ Tank muttered, pulling out the requisite form and scanning the details. ‘We’ve had a rash of stolen farm machinery.’

  ‘You say that with some indifference,’ the man said. ‘Farm machinery, as you put it, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you don’t shove it into a backpack in the dead of night. Surely someone’s seen this stuff being driven about the countryside?’

  After that, two kids came in, girls of seventeen, all glossy hair and nervy giggles, filling the foyer with light and life, and Tank soared a little inside.

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘We’re worried about our friend,’ one said.

  ‘He’s out of control,’ said the other, tears splashing from the limpid eyes.

  ‘Out of control?’ said Tank.

  ‘Drugs. Ice,’ said the first girl.

  ‘He’s like super paranoid,’ the second said.

  ‘Unpredictable.’

  ‘He thinks we’re out to get him.’

  ‘He steals from us.’

  ‘He hit me.’

  ‘We don’t want him arrested…’

  ‘…we just want him to get straight. Like normal.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tank took their names, the boy’s name. ‘Do you know who his dealer is?’

  They shut down in front of him, glancing at each other, the floor and the walls. ‘No,’ they whispered.

  Their dealer’s a friend, or they’re using themselves, Tank thought. He’d pass it on to CIU.

  ‘We’ll have a word with him.’

  ‘But don’t arrest him.’

  ‘Don’t tell him it was us who told you.’

  THEN JANINE QUINE CAME BACK from lunch, carrying a large shoulder bag. She scurried through, as if the bag held loot, and Tank stopped her, saying, ‘Janine, you got a minute?’

  The civilian clerk took her hand from the keypad and stood at the counter mutely, waiting for him to speak. She was a plain woman, her face damp from walking in the sun and pink with what Tank guessed was shame or embarrassment.

  He said, ‘How’s Jeff?’

  ‘Okay,’ she muttered, staring at the floor.

  ‘No more tailing the school bus?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The driver’s still upset, being yelled at like that in front of the kids.’

  ‘But he was speeding over the speed bumps!’

  ‘Jan, how likely is that? Isn’t it more likely that Jeff has too much time on his hands and he’s obsessing over trivial things?’

  ‘S’pose,’ Quine muttered.

  ‘Has he been applying for jobs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something’ll turn up,’ Tank said brightly.

  TONY SLATTER WALKED IN, looking for justice.

  ‘I want to take my complaint to a whole new level.’

  ‘And you are?’ said Tank.

  The name was familiar, but Tank didn’t recognise the man on the other side of the counter. About sixty, wearing shorts, sandals, a T-shirt. Knobbly knees, a hint of old bruising around the eyes, a fresh scratch on one cheek.

  Slatter ignored him. ‘I know I withdrew the original complaint but since then I’ve been to a specialist for shocking headaches and a feeling like my jaw’s dislocated. He says I’m up for thousands of dollars’ worth of dental work.’

  He part-opened his mouth in proof. ‘Not to mention visits to the doctor.’

  ‘This was an accident, sir?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Sir, I must ask you—’

  ‘What’s wrong with you people? Last week, in Moonta, I knock on someone’s door and get smacked in the face and kicked in the ribs.’

  A lightbulb moment for John Tankard. The Moonta Moth. The guy who, after a skinful of booze, liked to knock on people’s doors and invite himself in for a chat or, if he was lucky, more booze.

  ‘I remember,’ Tank said.

  ‘Will wonders never cease,’ Slatter said.

  Tank also remembered that Slatter was a nicer guy drunk than sober. ‘It’s all in hand, sir.’

  ‘That’s what you think. Yesterday I went around intending to ask the guy to cover the extra cost and his girlfriend does this
to me.’ Slatter inclined his cheek to display the scratch. ‘She was high on something.’

  Tank went very still. ‘Excuse me, sir, but you attempted to make contact with your assailant?’

  ‘Assailant? Fancy name for a meth head. And for your information I did not talk to him, he’s not there, according to his girlfriend—who did this to me.’

  ‘Sir, I must advise you against further attempts to approach this man or anyone he lives with. It could be dangerous for you and interfere with our efforts to investigate or make an arrest. Let the law take its course.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Slatter said.

  Tank said nothing.

  ‘And when you do find him, what then? Some Mickey Mouse charge, affray or whatever you call it? And meanwhile he pays me reparation that barely skims the surface of what my real costs will be.’

  Little winds gusted from Slatter’s mouth, old booze and bad food. Tank recoiled. ‘He paid you money?’

  ‘Not enough, hence I went around to ask for more. Aren’t you listening?’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘I’ve got specialist reports here,’ Slatter said. ‘Dental, medical…’

  He took a wad of paper from his back pocket. Warm from his backside, even a tad moist, it didn’t bear touching. Wincing, Tank said, ‘I’ll see to it that Constable Murphy gets these, sir.’

  ‘Her! Jesus.’

  ‘She’s a very competent officer.’

  ‘I bet,’ Slatter said, ‘but she took long enough to get off her fat arse and investigate the original complaint, so I’m not holding out much hope this time around, not if the guy’s disappeared.’

  And Slatter went out, muttering, ‘Hopeless, absolutely hopeless,’ to an old geezer who’d come in to wait, a government form in his hands ready for signature.

  Tank signed, said goodbye, logged on, found Slatter’s original report in the system. Date, time, brief narrative, assailant’s name—Owen Valentine—and the address where the attack took place.

  What caught Tank’s eye was the address. He’d been there. He’d attended a noise complaint there, the day of the fire, on his way back to the station after dealing with Janine Quine’s idiot husband at the primary school.