Signal Loss

by Garry Disher

  ‘Convince us,’ Challis said indifferently. He placed the Hauser photocopy on the desk between them. ‘You left this in the library photocopier a few days ago. In it Mr Hauser describes two men, who probably shot him dead a short time later. We believe them to be from a major New South Wales drug ring. This is huge, Janine, and you’re right in the middle of it.’

  She said wretchedly, ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You admit to using the library copier?’

  ‘Ours was broken.’

  She was being true to form. She would admit, retract the admission, hint, deny, shift blame and generally downplay her role until the cows came home. Perhaps she thought they’d give up and let her go?

  ‘Stop lying. Our photocopiers were not broken or out of paper or toner. You took the Colin Hauser murder case material out of the station and copied it for Raymond Loeb, correct?’

  She looked at the floor. ‘Might have.’

  ‘Are you sleeping with him?’

  She jerked in the chair. ‘What? No. Never.’

  Pam Murphy leaned forward. ‘So why are you helping him, Janine? Partners in crime? It didn’t sound like a very equal partnership on the recording we just heard. It sounded like he was giving you orders.’

  Quine looked around wildly. ‘What do I get if I help you?’

  ‘Satisfaction. A weight off your shoulders. Is Mr Loeb threatening you? We can protect you.’

  Quine couldn’t get comfortable in the chair. It was as if she still thought there might be a way out.

  Challis said, ‘We’ve checked the call history on Mrs Tranh’s phone. You’ve been in almost daily touch with Loeb while she’s been away. That shows a pattern of conspiratorial behaviour. We’re not talking a one-off phone conversation, Janine.’

  An incident rose in Murphy’s mind, chatting with John Tankard last week. ‘What’s Raymond Loeb got on you, Jan? Is it your husband? We heard he’s been acting erratically lately, yelling abuse at a school bus driver…’

  Challis shot her a querying look, but nodded, giving her the okay.

  ‘I understand Jeff’s a gambler,’ Pam said. ‘Does he owe money to Mr Loeb? Is that the threat?’

  Quine whispered, ‘Jeff worked for Ray for a while last year. He stole from him, a few thousand dollars. Ray said he wouldn’t turn him in if I fed him police information from time to time.’

  ‘It started with the register?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How does Colin Hauser fit in?’

  ‘I never met him. All I know is Ray got very agitated when he heard about the murder and said I had to find out everything I could.’

  ‘You passed on information? Copies of documents?’

  She whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it your belief,’ Challis said, ‘that Mr Loeb was not involved in the murder?’

  ‘Yes! He sounded really upset and confused when he heard about it. Scared.’

  Challis didn’t see that he needed to bring Coolidge into this. In his mind, he was dealing with an internal leak and the theft of farm vehicles and machinery. But he had to ask: ‘Is Loeb involved in drugs that you know of?’

  ‘Never. He hates drugs. He wouldn’t know a drug if he fell over it. He just steals stuff and sells it.’

  ‘When you pass documents on to Mr Loeb, how do you do it?’

  ‘We meet various places: down near the jetty, on the boardwalk through the wetlands, on one of the park benches near the coin barbecues.’

  ‘But he lives on the other side of the Peninsula.’

  ‘It’s easier for him to come to me. Like you said, he’s always out and about.’

  ‘So he comes by…’

  ‘Walking his dog,’ Quine said.

  ‘Do you speak, or simply hand over an envelope?’

  ‘He stops and chats while I pretend to pat his dog.’

  ‘Here’s what I want you to do, Janine,’ Challis said, and the steel was there in his voice, a sharkish glint as he smiled. ‘I want you to tell him you were able to make copies of the GPS readouts and aerial photographs relating to the movement of vehicles and machinery in and out of the Hauser farm over the past month. It’s nonsense, but he’ll want to know what it all means, okay?’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Challis said, ‘watching and listening.’

  36

  NOW IT WAS TIME FOR THE DEATH KNOCK.

  Pam had done a few of these over the years, calling on people to say a family member had been found dead. It was a job for junior police. But this time Challis wanted to come with her. ‘I need to eyeball this half-brother.’

  She drove, of course, and, steering into Mornington, found herself falling silent, remembering last Sunday, lunch here with her mother. She might have told Challis about her mother and her fears, but she’d gone to see Michael Traill. Michael listening, a cool hand on her wrist. She might have told Challis that she thought her mother was dying, saying goodbye to the people and places that had made up her life, but she’d told a stranger. Then she’d made love to that stranger, a man she thought she hated.

  And it had meant something.

  She wasn’t sure what, yet. But her life, for so long defined by her job, suddenly had a private dimension of some substance. She didn’t question her decision to keep it all from Challis. It was instinctive and right.

  Finding a park opposite the library, they got out and walked up Main Street to a side street and the Bowie Bakehouse. Nothing in the windows, but the timeless comfort of baking smells inside. Half-a-dozen tiny tables and chairs spaced along one wall, leaving a narrow aisle for customers. Cakes and pastries in glass display cases, breads in wire racks on the wall behind the shop staff.

  Two young women were serving, dressed in tight black skirts and black T-shirts with BB embroidered on the left breast. They were attending to a woman with small children and an elderly man, so Pam took a moment to scope out the shop. There was an open archway at the far end, leading to a corridor. The ovens would be down there somewhere, she thought. The office, a loo, a storeroom. She spotted three CCTV cameras, which she thought seemed a bit excessive: one was trained on the front door, one along the corridor, the third on the young women behind the counter. And it was making them tense, she realised. They were hurrying about their business, dodging one another in the cramped space, wiping wisps of hair from their foreheads with the backs of their wrists.

  Otherwise it was a pleasant place, with gleaming wood and chrome, terracotta tiles, and that lovely smell. Finally Challis and Murphy were asked, ‘How may I help you?’

  Her name was Alicia, about twenty years old, tall but with an unformed face and an awkward manner. Challis said gently, ‘We’re from the police, Alicia. Nothing to worry about, but we’d like to see Mr Bowie.’

  Alicia looked stricken. ‘That was you on the phone, asking where Mr Bowie was working today?’

  It was, but Challis said, ‘I don’t know anything about that. May we see him?’

  Alicia’s gaze darted to the camera watching her and then across at the corridor at the end of the shop. ‘I’m not sure. I mean…’

  ‘Perhaps you could let him know we’re here?’

  That amplified rather than eased her burden. She whispered to the other girl, who seemed stronger and more calculating, casting the detectives a glance almost of anticipation before turning away and disappearing in the direction of the rear of the business. ‘Trina’s getting him now,’ Alicia said.

  She turned to a new customer, messed up the order and darted anxious glances at the yawning archway. Then Trina was back, saying, ‘He’s out in the yard. He said to come through.’

  TRINA LED THEM DOWN the corridor, the kitchen on the left, heat and baking smells rolling out from the bank of ovens and racks of cooling loaves, past three closed doors, to a door that opened onto a small paved courtyard. Potted plants, a small bottlebrush growing in one corner, jasmine growing along the laneway fence at the rear. A garden table and cha
irs under a huge canvas umbrella. A man at the table, working on an iPad, a mug of coffee and a croissant at his elbow.

  He was about forty, slim. When he stood and came around to meet them with an outstretched hand, of average height. Short, sandy hair and a pleasant, narrow face. But he was wearing a bemused frown and under that Pam sensed a man wrapped up in private resentments, and the police coming to his place of business was yet another one. He wore dark grey trousers, a darker shirt, sleeves rolled in precise folds to the mid-point of each tanned forearm. There was a complicated lump of chrome on his wrist. Pam guessed Rolex and spent part of the visit trying to eye the watch face so she could confirm that.

  They shook hands and Bowie offered coffee, which Challis declined.

  ‘Water?’

  To shut down this line of dialogue, Pam smiled. ‘Yes, thanks.’

  Bowie snapped an order at Trina, manner faintly malevolent, then turned with smiles to his guests and gestured at the empty chairs. ‘Please.’

  They sat and contemplated each other. Bowie’s knee jiggled. Challis said, ‘I’m afraid we’re here with bad news, Mr Bowie. Concerning your brother, Owen.’ Pause. ‘His body was found this morning.’

  Pam saw Bowie try for the right expression: bewilderment, shock, grief…He spluttered. ‘Sorry? He’s dead? Overdose?’

  Pam said, ‘Why would you say that, Mr Bowie?’

  An unwarranted question, her tone almost rude, but she didn’t like the man. And he flushed a little, his face tightening.

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious: he’s a crackhead.’

  ‘Were you close?’ she asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘Haven’t set eyes on him for years. I ask again, was it an overdose?’

  Challis said, ‘We believe he was murdered, Mr Bowie. He was found buried in a shallow grave.’

  Bowie swallowed. He reached for and gulped his coffee. ‘He owed money to the wrong people.’

  ‘Do you know that for a fact, Mr Bowie?’

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘But you don’t know for certain?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know anything about his life in recent months?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not aware of anyone making threats?’

  ‘Look, I didn’t want him in my life, all right? Junkie loser.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure it’s him?’

  ‘Judging by his clothing and general size and shape, and his wallet, then yes, I’m afraid so,’ Challis said.

  Pam said, ‘But DNA will confirm it.’

  She saw Bowie search for the words. ‘DNA? Why not dental?’

  ‘His teeth are a mess from the drugs. We have a DNA profile from material found at his house and once that’s compared with DNA from the body, we’ll know for certain.’

  ‘If there’s any doubt,’ Challis said, ‘we’ll compare it to your DNA.’

  ‘But we have different fathers.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Pam said.

  With his pinned-back ears and face suffused with strong, hard-to-read feelings, Bowie looked sleek and dangerous briefly, belying the neatness, the pampered hands.

  Challis, gentler, smiled and said, ‘But that’s for later. Right now, is there anyone we can inform for you? Anyone who can be with you?’

  Bowie shook his head a little wildly. ‘No, I’m fine. I’m sorry he’s dead, but he was a lot younger than me and he was on drugs since he was fifteen. We had very little to do with each other. I haven’t seen him for years. Years. Our mother’s dead, his father’s dead, my father’s dead. There’s nobody. Wait, I think he had a girlfriend.’

  ‘Christine Penford?’

  ‘If that’s the one he had at school, then yeah. Otherwise I can’t help you, sorry.’ He paused. ‘I mean, I’ll pay for the funeral. The least I can do.’

  They gave him empty smiles. Challis stood, handing the man his card. ‘If we can help in any way, please call.’

  ‘Sure,’ Bowie said, as if that were quite unlikely.

  THEY ENCOUNTERED TRINA ON their way out. Flustered, she offered Pam the glass of water, her gaze darting past their shoulders to the garden door and the splash of sunshine out there. Pam wanted to say, ‘Your boss, bit of a bastard, is he?’ but didn’t. Instead, she said, ‘Thank you,’ and gulped the water down and followed Challis out onto the street.

  They were strolling towards the car park across from the library and the shire offices when a voice said, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  Senior Sergeant Coolidge, steaming along the footpath.

  MEANWHILE ELLEN DESTRY HAD lodged Mitch Pyne’s bandage for a DNA profile, and arranged for Judd and Rykert to shadow him. She’d take the evening shift with Katsoulas.

  But now, late afternoon, she had Allie in her car, heading north along the Nepean Highway. ‘You’re being very mysterious,’ Allie said, arms folded, staring out, refusing to look at her.

  There wasn’t much to see, only a strip of houses on one side and the Seaford foreshore reserve and occasional glimpses of the bay at the drainage outlets on the other. ‘Not much of a surprise,’ Allie went on.

  Oh, it will be, Ellen thought, darting a look at her sister. Allie was in full obdurate mode, her skin tight over her cheekbones, her mouth a thin grimace. She’d agreed to this journey, ‘Only to shut you up, Ells.’

  ‘Be patient,’ Ellen said.

  Allie folded her arms under her breasts. Nice breasts, Ellen thought, better shaped than mine. And then: strange how envy works. I’ve envied her figure, she’s envied me my apparent stability, even while she’s sneered at it.

  ‘You know what I think? I think this has something to do with Clive.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I know you, Ellen. You want to teach me a lesson of some kind. You’re pretty predictable.’

  Got me there. Ellen bit her lip.

  Allie went on, ‘I think you’re jealous.’

  ‘I have Hal.’

  ‘Who you rarely see. Why you don’t just move in together, I don’t know—unless you’re holding back because you know it’s not going anywhere.’

  Ellen said nothing. Denial seemed to be Allie’s default state. By the same token, it was significant that she’d agreed to come on this excursion. She knows something’s not right, Ellen thought. She wants reassurance. But she’ll keep sniping and chipping away because to admit her own foolishness would be more than she could bear.

  And I’m about to hit her over the head with what a fool she’s been.

  They came to Seaford railway station, Ellen signalling a turn inland of the sea, the road taking her over the railway line and into a region of small houses on quiet streets. The house she wanted was huddled behind a meagre patch of lawn, pale yellow bricks cringing under a mossy tile roof. Apt enough, Ellen thought, parking on the opposite side of the road and half a block short of the yellow house, giving them a clear view of it through the windscreen.

  ‘So?’ said Allie, staring around grumpily.

  It was warm in the car. Ellen had been racing around like a mad thing all day and needed a shower. Her sister, on the other hand, was fresh and crisp, just the way she’d gone through life.

  Ellen wound down the window, leaned her forearm on the sill, just as Allie stiffened. ‘That’s my car!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s it doing there?’

  ‘Allie, that’s where Clive lives.’

  ‘He does not. He has an apartment in Southbank. He took me there once, a gorgeous place.’

  A detail that Ellen filed away. Whose apartment? An accomplice? Another victim, conveniently not at home that day?

  ‘Believe me, Allie, Clive lives in that house.’

  ‘Probably a friend’s house,’ Allie said. ‘Anyway, have you been following him?’

  ‘He’s not who he says he is.’

  Allie gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘You’re lying. You’re jealous, you always have been.’

  She stared out m
ulishly, building on her story. ‘Egg on your face if you find he’s looking after a friend’s place or asked a friend if he could park his car there while he’s overseas.’

  ‘Your car, the one you signed over to him.’

  ‘I told you the reason for that.’

  ‘Not much of a reason, and I have to ask, what else have you signed over to him?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean, and I don’t think it’s any of your business, people’s private arrangements.’

  ‘Have you given him shares, for example. Property deeds. Valuables. Cash loans. Have you set up a joint account? I could go on.’

  ‘Please don’t, it’s boring.’

  ‘He told you he’s going overseas, right? Did you give him the money for his ticket? First class, perhaps?’

  Allie wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘What was his story?’

  Allie bristled. ‘He swore me to secrecy, okay? You’re in the police, you should know some matters have to fly under the radar.’

  ‘He’s away on a mission, maybe? Dangerous one?’

  Allie said stiffly, ‘It’s related to his work, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Did he tell you he’s an operative of an American intelligence organisation, by any chance? CIA? Homeland Security?’

  Allie’s jaw dropped. ‘Have you been questioning him? Have you arrested him or something? Tell me.’

  ‘He’s going overseas because he fears for his life, right? Extremists are after him?’

  Allie turned away huffily. ‘If you know so much, why are you asking me?’

  ‘He told the same story to a widow in 2011. He married this one, so at least you were spared that. He took her life savings, then vanished overseas. So I’m asking you, how much did you give him?’

  Allie wriggled around and probably considered not replying. She whispered, ‘Only the car.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  Allie chewed her bottom lip. ‘Where did he go overseas?’

  ‘We’re still looking into that. But he was probably monitoring the situation here, and when he heard that the widow had died, he came back to try again. This time, you were his target.’