Signal Loss

by Garry Disher

Making the introductions, Ellen said, ‘They’re letting you leave?’

  ‘My mum’s picking me up in an hour.’

  Robards was a wisp: short, slender, with thin brown hair, her bones hard knobs and ridges under the skin. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. Her right arm was in a sling across her chest, a plaster around her wrist, which had been broken during the attack.

  ‘I asked the hospital to let you know we’d be coming in to talk to you…’

  Robards shook her head. ‘No one told me nothing.’

  A public hospital’s like a police station, Ellen thought. Everyone racing around like crazy, messages delayed or lost. ‘Are you up to talking to us, Karen?’

  Robards looked panicked and gazed at the other beds. ‘Not here.’

  Securing the permission of a ward sister, they settled in a snug room beside the chapel. Ellen eased into the interview with a series of bland questions. She learned that Robards was twenty-six, lived alone, sold CDs and DVDs at a chain outlet in Somerville. No current boyfriend. Her mother lived in Cranbourne and Karen would live with her until she found another home. ‘No way I’m going back to that flat.’ A hysterical edge.

  Ellen tried to sound soothing. ‘I don’t blame you.’

  Gathering herself visibly, Robards said, ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning. You came home from work…’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I finish at four, so about four-twenty.’

  ‘And the man who raped you was—’

  ‘Didn’t rape me.’

  Ellen trod carefully. ‘Okay, the man who assaulted—’

  ‘No, he would’ve raped me but it went wrong.’

  ‘I understand. You got home…then what happened? Not the fine detail, just the broad stages.’

  ‘I walked in and he grabbed me and took me to the bedroom.’

  ‘He was already in the flat?’

  ‘Yes. He got in through the bathroom window, knocked all my bits and pieces flying.’

  ‘Did you see his face at any stage?’

  ‘Depends what you mean. He had this thing over his face, balaclava.’

  ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘When he grabbed me he said he had a knife. I saw it. It was one of mine.’ Robards shuddered. ‘I don’t want nothing from my flat. The landlord can have the lot.’

  ‘So he took you to the bedroom…’

  ‘And he pushed me onto the bed and fell on top of me.’

  ‘Pushed you onto your front or your back?’

  Robards looked at Ellen as if she were dense. ‘Onto my front. Then he landed on top of me. That’s how come I broke my wrist. I put my hand down and he fell on top of me and my wrist snapped.’ She winced, remembering.

  ‘Just to be clear, he tried to force himself on you from behind?’

  ‘No. Listen. The rug slipped and he fell on me.’

  Ellen had it now. Robards was tiny, the rapist a sudden heavy weight slamming her down. ‘That must have hurt.’

  ‘It was…unbearable. I just lay there. I couldn’t think. I think I must’ve fainted.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘He said sorry. Then he looked at his arm and rushed to the bathroom. Told me to shut up and not move.’

  A squeamish rapist? Heard the bone snap and was overcome with nausea?

  ‘Do you know why he went to the bathroom?’

  ‘Cut himself.’

  The forensics team hadn’t found blood. ‘Badly?’

  Robards shrugged. ‘Dunno. Took a heap of my Band-Aids.’

  ‘He accidentally cut himself?’

  Again, Ellen seemed dense to the young woman. ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘Which part of his arm?’

  Robards indicated an area of Ellen’s forearm near the wrist.

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘He come back with some Band-Aids on and started waving the knife around and I thought that’s it, I’m a goner, I couldn’t stop crying either, the pain was killing me, and his phone rang.’

  ‘You’re joking. Did he answer it?’

  ‘Yep. Then he just did himself up and left.’

  ‘When he talked on the phone, did he mention a person or a place by name?’

  Robards shook her head. Her flashes of spirit had disappeared and now she simply looked depleted.

  ‘He listened a bit, then he said, “That would be QF, right?” Don’t ask me what it means.’

  ‘“That would be QF, right?”’

  ‘Something like that.’

  THEN ROBARDS’ MOTHER ARRIVED and Destry and Judd left the hospital.

  ‘QF: mean anything to you?’

  ‘Qantas,’ Judd said. ‘Flight number prefix.’

  He was a still, competent, expressionless presence at the wheel of the car, and Ellen knew at once that he was right. ‘Confirming for himself? Meeting someone?’

  ‘I’d say meeting someone, wouldn’t you? If he booked a flight for himself, why would someone call him with the flight number?’

  Ellen saw it then, the rapist’s mobility, his familiarity with the towns and streets of the Peninsula. ‘He’s a taxi driver.’

  Judd nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘But no one reported seeing a taxi.’

  ‘Who sees taxis? But I don’t think that’s the issue. I think our guy drives for someone, the night shift, leaving the daytime free.’

  ‘For rape and burglary,’ Ellen said.

  Her phone buzzed. She fished it out, read the text.

  Clover Penford had been found.

  32

  CHALLIS PARKED IN THE HOSPITAL grounds and went looking for Ellen.

  He found Lois Katsoulas in a ward corridor. ‘Boss not here yet?’

  Katsoulas eyed him with open curiosity, fully aware of his relationship with Destry. ‘On her way, sir.’

  She paused. ‘This relates to one of your cases?’

  Challis nodded. ‘We have her mother in custody. The mother’s partner is currently missing, but she says he gave the kid to ice cooks as collateral on a loan. I have to admit, I thought we’d find her dead.’

  A flicker on Katsoulas’s face, Challis reading it as rage. ‘Poor little kid. She didn’t say much. She was in a house with two men for a couple of days and then a fire came so they went to another house. She said they didn’t hurt her but they did take pictures of her. With her clothes off.’

  ‘They just dropped her at the playground?’

  ‘Apparently. Told her to run and play with the other children and her mother would be along to collect her shortly.’

  ‘Any cameras down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could she name or describe the men?’

  ‘Only very vaguely.’

  Just then a door opened, a doctor emerged, and through the gap Challis saw Clover Penford, in a tiny gown, sitting on her grandmother’s lap. The doctor gave a confused glance, Katsoulas to Challis, and finally settled on Katsoulas. ‘Her clothing.’

  A dress, in an evidence bag.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘To set your mind at rest, there are no obvious signs of sexual assault or interference. No bruising or tearing.’

  All of Katsoulas’s energy drained away. ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘She said they took photos of her.’

  ‘I know.’

  The doctor watched her with a mix of pity and fatigue. ‘Good luck,’ she said, returning to the room and shutting the door.

  CHALLIS LINGERED LONG ENOUGH to greet Ellen, then raced back to Waterloo, finding Pam Murphy in the main CIU office, leafing through a file marked Hauser.

  ‘Is it intact?’

  ‘According to the inventory, which means nothing, given it was Janine that drew up the inventory,’ Murphy said. She paused. ‘Boss, was it Clover Penford?’

  Challis nodded. ‘She’s okay—more or less. Hungry, thirst
y, possibly sedated. They took nude shots of her.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  Challis said, ‘Have you seen Janine yet?’

  ‘I kept out of her way in case my face revealed our suspicions.’

  ‘Your notorious poker face,’ Challis said. He swung a chair around, straddled it and said, ‘I spoke to Lily earlier. She said the photocopiers have been fine. She also said that while Annette’s away, Janine’s been handling her calls.’

  A silence settled and Challis watched Murphy’s famously transparent face register the dawning thoughts.

  Gleeful. Murphy in hunting mode. ‘That’s how she makes contact.’

  ‘I think so,’ Challis said. ‘It would be worth checking calls in and out—especially out.’

  ‘I’m right across it,’ Murphy said, reaching for her desk phone.

  He stopped her. ‘In a moment. It’s not enough to know who she was calling, we need to know the substance of the calls. If we challenge her, she could ask for a lawyer and refuse to cooperate.’

  ‘So we tap the line.’

  ‘That will take time to arrange. We need to act now.’

  ‘Okay, so we bug the room. Plant a recorder somewhere.’

  ‘And wait days for her to contact whoever it is she contacts?’ Challis shook his head. ‘We also need to give her a push.’

  WAITING FOR JANINE QUINE to head out for lunch, Challis and Murphy installed a voice-activated recorder in Annette Tranh’s office and returned to CIU, discussing Quine.

  ‘It’s not as if she has access to sensitive material,’ Murphy said. ‘She doesn’t see witness statements, case notes, interview transcripts or forensic reports.’

  ‘But she is in charge of the unoccupied dwellings register.’

  ‘So her contact’s a housebreaker?’

  ‘Or someone running an operation that includes housebreaking. Someone who fences stolen farm machinery, for example.’

  ‘This someone was scared Hauser had incriminating information at his house, and asked Janine to copy any paperwork we found.’

  Murphy glanced at the Hauser inventory again. ‘Nothing incriminating that I can see, unless she destroyed it. But what I don’t get is why she didn’t inventory the note she left in the photocopier.’

  They mused on that. Challis said, ‘If Hauser is suspicious enough to make a note describing two men and what they were carrying and what they were driving, would he leave it in plain sight if those same men followed him to his house? He’d hide it. Tuck it away in the back of his desk diary, for example.’

  ‘Meaning Janine didn’t know it was there. It fell out when she was at the library.’

  THE AFTERNOON WORE ON and they worked on a narrative, Challis glancing at his watch occasionally, willing the cadaver-dog handler to call.

  ‘We need her to think Annette’s coming back sooner than next week,’ he said. ‘We need to panic her a little.’

  ‘Why don’t we just let slip that we’re close to making an arrest?’

  ‘Not specific enough. I suggest you take all of the Hauser material back for refiling, tell her thank you, we had an unexpected break after viewing aerial photographs from a police drone and matching these to downloaded GPS coordinates for the stolen vehicles.’

  Murphy snorted. ‘Is that even possible?’

  ‘I dunno. Sounds good.’

  ‘Should ramp up the tension, anyway,’ Murphy said. She piled the folders and loose sheets together and got to her feet. ‘Wish me luck.’

  IT WAS EARLY EVENING before the dog handler called. Unavoidable delays, wouldn’t be able to start the sweep until first light.

  33

  WEDNESDAY, SUNRISE, CHALLIS in his kitchen, agitated, wondering if he should join the dog handler or wait for news.

  He waited. To siphon off the tension, he dragged out the vacuum cleaner. Five minutes into the job, he decided he felt about vacuum cleaners as he did whipper-snippers: he doubted the men who designed them had actually used them. He’d had several different whipper-snippers over the years. With all of them he’d had to stop the machine regularly to dismantle the head and manually extend the cutting line. And his vacuum cleaner—German, top of the range—always tipped onto its back if he looked at it sideways, locked hard against furniture legs rather than slide past and displayed the bag-full indicator after about one pass of his sitting room.

  So he caught up on his post. Half of it was from charities donating to him—pens, envelopes, Christmas cards, address labels…He gave up.

  By 7 a.m. he was sitting in the sun, sipping coffee, reading the paper without concentration. Into the mild spill of sunlight coming over the tall pines at the rear of the house came two protective ducks, seven ducklings. He watched, the ducks watched him, and then they were across the yard and down through the grass to the dam, and all the time he was waiting for his phone to ring.

  At 8:05, it did. He immediately called for a crime-scene unit.

  THE DOG HANDLER WAS at the entrance to Lintermans Lane, loading the dogs into a van.

  Shutting the cage door, he told Challis, ‘For the first half an hour the dogs weren’t picking up anything, which makes me think our victim was already dead and they carried him in.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘And I’d been concentrating on the paddocks on either side, which took time. It wasn’t until I reached the gate at the end that the dogs got excited. It’s possible they dumped the body or tipped it over the top bar of the gate, leaving a trace. After that it didn’t take us long to find the grave.’

  Challis thanked the man and watched him leave, just as Pam Murphy arrived from Waterloo driving the CIU car. She wore pants and a sleeveless top with walking shoes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, so no different from any other day, but her…aura was different; Challis couldn’t think of a better word.

  ‘Your aura is different, Constable Murphy.’

  She went pink and evasive. ‘My aura?’

  ‘Anyone would think you’d had a pleasant night.’

  The pinkness deepened. ‘Well, there’s a euphemism for you,’ she said. Then she pointed down the track. ‘We good to go? Sir? Boss?’

  ‘Okay, change of subject,’ Challis said, and they set out on foot.

  THE GOING WAS EASY, in dappled light between the gums on either side, the only sounds a few warbling galahs and the soft swishing of their shoes on the trampled grass. Here and there yellow evidence markers indicated where the crime-scene techs had already made quick-setting plaster casts of full and partial shoeprints.

  While they walked they talked. ‘Your cunning plan paid off,’ Pam said. ‘Janine made an anxious call to one Raymond Loeb, of Loeb Property Management.’

  Challis filed that away. He’d run the name past Bernie Joske. ‘Does Loeb have a record?’

  ‘No. And the business is legitimate, mainly rural: conveyancing, property auctions, clearing sales, permit applications.’

  ‘Anyone working there would have sound reasons for poking around farms and wineries.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What exactly did she say?’

  ‘She tried explaining about the drone photographs and GPS coordinates, and then she listened for half a minute, and then got a bit panicky, saying, “I can’t do that. I wouldn’t know where to look.”’

  ‘He asked her to get copies.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We’ll hit her hard after lunch,’ Challis said.

  Then he froze, shot his hand out to stop Murphy as a snake flicked at the corner of his vision, slipping unhurriedly into longer grass at the fence line.

  ‘You scared me!’

  ‘Scared myself,’ he said.

  ‘We should get danger money.’

  ‘This government?’ Challis said. ‘We’re lucky to get anything.’

  They walked on, thinking of death around them and the dead man at the end of the track.

  THEY CAME TO A GATE, a hint of muddy, reedy water in the air. Challis couldn’t see the reser
voir but heard voices downslope of the gate, beyond a screen of scrub and blackberry thickets. The gate had been padlocked but Sutton’s crew, or the dog handler, had used bolt cutters and dragged it open.

  They walked through to the water’s edge. It was mostly choked with reeds but here and there were small cliffs, rocky outcrops and muddy clearings. In one such clearing Scobie Sutton’s team was at work disinterring a body and searching the area around the grave as well as between the grave and the track leading back to the gate. Metal stepping plates led to the body, a dark, mud-caked shape in a shallow depression. Yellow markers had been distributed around the site, and Sutton was taking a cast of another shoeprint.

  Good luck with that, Challis thought. The footwear worn by Lovelock and Pym had been reduced to ash. At that moment, as if to echo him, kookaburras laughed in the encircling gum trees.

  Hearing voices, he turned around. Two men with a stretcher, and Freya Berg, dressed in a white forensic suit and rubber overshoes.

  Reaching them she nodded hello. ‘Hal, Pam.’

  ‘Freya.’

  ‘Doctor Berg.’

  She heaved a sigh: ‘Duty calls,’ and carried on down to the body.

  Pam turned to the stretcher bearers. ‘You might have a wait.’

  ‘Story of our lives,’ one of them said and they strolled to the nearest shade, where they sat with their backs to a tree.

  Eventually Scobie Sutton laboured up the slope, saying, ‘The dogs found him at first light.’

  Challis nodded. ‘I talked to the handler. Is it Owen Valentine?’

  ‘Hard to say. The body’s been there for a week and a half. There’s decomposition, but less than if he’d been left in the open. The general size and shape is a match.’

  ‘Clothing?’

  ‘Jeans, T-shirt and trainers. I haven’t looked in the pockets yet.’

  ‘Is his face intact?’

  Sutton shook his head. ‘A mess. Some decomp, but mainly he’s been beaten. His nose is broken, teeth are missing and his cheekbones and eye sockets are damaged.’

  ‘I’ll need a rush on his DNA.’

  Sutton nodded. ‘I found blood under that paint spill in Valentine’s garage. I’ll see if it matches DNA from the body.’

  ‘That won’t prove conclusively that it’s Owen Valentine, only that the dead man was at the house.’