by Garry Disher
‘But they’d sell that stuff to Asia, Europe or the States.’
‘It’s global, Scobie.’
They passed the Victim Suite. The door was open, the room empty. ‘Think we’ll see Billy again?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘He’s long gone. He’s either on the other side of the continent, running scared, or he’s been paid off, or he’s dead.’
‘Has he got a record?’
Ellen had searched the databases. ‘No.’
They continued on to CIU. ‘Have the shooting board officers finished with you, Scobie?’
He gave her a hunted look. ‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘It will go on my record, failure to follow correct procedure.’
‘What will their report say? They can’t do anything about van Alphen now, but will take action against Kellock?’
Scobie said irritably, ‘I don’t know, Ellen, all right? I’m not privy to their findings.’
‘Scobie, I don’t want any messing up of forensics in regard to the Blasko investigation.’
‘You don’t have to talk to me like that,’ Scobie said chokingly, and he stalked off. When she reached CIU, he was muttering covertly on the telephone.
She’d scarcely made a start on the paperwork cluttering her desk when Superintendent McQuarrie called. ‘I hear you let our cop killer go.’
This aroused conflicting emotions in Ellen. She twirled in her chair, the phone held to her ear. McQuarrie was too neat and precise a man to use the term ‘cop killer’. He was trying out the phrase, trying to sound tough or ingratiate himself. Also, his tone was accusatory. Did he ever praise? Would he ever praise her? Had he ever praised Hal Challis? Finally, the man had spies and cronies everywhere. She couldn’t blame Kellock: it was his job to keep his superiors abreast of things. Still, McQuarrie’s tone was reminding her yet again that the police force was made up of many wheels. Her own was small and barely revolved, it seemed to her. It didn’t exist within, or intersect with, the wheels that mattered.
‘Sir, we didn’t have enough evidence to hold Mr Jarrett.’
‘Gunshot residue?’
‘None.’
‘Then someone from his appalling family carried it out.’
‘They all have alibis, sir.’
‘Good ones?’
‘Yes, sir.’
She was tired of calling him ‘sir’.
‘Jarrett could have washed off the GSR. How’s his alibi?’
‘Solid, sir. We have a witness who heard a shot at eleven o’clock last night and…’
‘This fine, upstanding person didn’t think to report it?’
‘Sir, it’s the estate. At the time Sergeant van Alphen was shot, Laurie Jarrett’s daughter was being examined by a doctor and a nurse in Casualty at the Waterloo hospital. Laurie was with her the whole time. It checks out.’
‘Convenient. What about Jarrett’s wife, the kid’s mother?’
‘She’s in a drug rehab clinic in Perth, heroin addiction, court ordered after she was arrested for burglary and shoplifting offences.’
‘Divorced? Separated?’
‘Never married. She left home when Alysha was born.’
‘Making Laurie a heroic single dad,’ snarled McQuarrie. ‘It makes me sick.’
She suspected he meant the loose family arrangements you found these days. She felt like reminding him that his own family wasn’t squeaky clean, that his own son had taken part in suburban sex parties-then reflected sourly that sex parties were probably seen as an acceptable aberration of the upper classes, whereas children born out of wedlock to addicts was seen as a condemnatory characteristic of the lower classes.
She cast her mind back to her interrogation with Laurie Jarrett. Deciding against a lawyer, he’d opened up finally, seeming almost genial. For the first time, Ellen glimpsed what it was like for him. He was an old-style crim, who didn’t use or condone drugs. He stole to make money, an income, not to feed a drug habit, unlike his sons, cousins, nephews, de facto…He was loyal to his family, bailed them out, but sometimes that love must have been sorely tested.
‘He still could have ordered the hit,’ McQuarrie was saying now.
‘Ordered the hit’ was another expression that sat oddly in the super. ‘We’ll keep checking, sir.’
‘You sound doubtful. In fact, you have doubtful outcomes mounting up all around you, Sergeant.’
He sounded cocky and provocative. He was the kind of man who hated and feared women-the hate and the fear being one and the same thing, really, for he hated women because they made him fear them. She said nothing, but a kind of black light suffused her. If he’d been there with her she’d have struck him. Instead, she hit him another way. ‘Speaking of doubtful outcomes, sir,’ she said, ‘did you know that Sergeant van Alphen had been coaching a witness, a street kid called Billy DaCosta, to give false evidence against the men we suspect of abducting and abusing Katie Blasko?’
There was a silence. Then, in a constrained voice, McQuarrie said, ‘Is he connected to the Jarretts, this DaCosta person?’
Ellen had checked. ‘No, sir.’
‘How can you be sure? The Jarretts are behind this. It’s a revenge killing, of a police officer, and won’t be tolerated.’
‘Sir.’
‘It’s too big for you, for your team.’
‘Sir.’
She felt oddly relieved as McQuarrie went on to tell her that Homicide Squad officers would come down from the city to take over the investigation into van Alphen’s murder. ‘They have the resources and the expertise.’
‘Sir.’
‘Leaving you free to do whatever it was you were doing before this.’
As though Katie’s abduction and abuse were minor things, easily forgotten. In his mind, McQuarrie probably thought that he’d successfully undermined Ellen. She had a creepy sense of the forces at work around her.
50
The days passed and she made no headway. The urgency had gone from the investigation. Not even the van Alphen murder could galvanise anyone, for when the Homicide Squad detectives took over the case, they immediately shut Waterloo staff out. There were four of them, three men and a woman, young, sleek, educated and close-mouthed.
Commandeering one of the conference rooms, they interviewed all thirty of the staff based at the station-uniformed officers, probationary constables, Ellen’s CIU detectives, collators, civilian clerks and cleaners-their manner clipped and impersonal, arousing resentment.
On Friday they interviewed Ellen. They seemed cynical with her. Doubting. Probably because she’d had charge of the investigation for the first few hours, she thought.
‘I didn’t really know him,’ she told them.
‘You had him digging around in that abduction case.’
‘He was assigned to desk duties pending the inquiry into the Nick Jarrett shooting,’ Ellen said. ‘He wanted to be useful.’
‘So useful he left his desk and operated in secret.’
They were well informed. Ellen said, ‘Unfortunately he didn’t confide in me.’
‘Did he like little boys?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘He was shacked up with a street kid.’
She supposed that their besmirching van Alphen was part of a strategy. They wanted to know if van Alphen’s hidden interests and activities had made him a target. They wanted people to be outraged, and talk.
‘As I understand it,’ she said carefully, ‘he was protecting a witness.’
‘Do you still understand that to be the case?’
Ellen shrugged. ‘The witness claimed that he’d been coached by Sergeant van Alphen, so I don’t know what to believe.’
‘Hissy fits, sudden flare-ups of temper, biting, scratching and kicking. It can get quite volatile, the gay scene.’
Ellen wasn’t going to let them provoke her. ‘We don’t know that he was gay. We don’t know that he liked little boys. They’re not even the same thing. Look, I know you ha
ve to examine every contingency, but why this one? It impinges on my case. Why aren’t you looking at the Jarrett clan?’
‘Like you said, we’ll look into everything.’
Ellen watched them expressionlessly, their four clever faces staring back at her, giving nothing away. She’d scarcely registered their names or ranks. Not even gender factored here. The four detectives were interchangeable. ‘I expect, or at least request, full co-operation from you,’ she said firmly.
They said nothing.
‘If your investigation into Sergeant van Alphen turns up anything related to child abductions or the activities of a supposed paedophile ring on the Peninsula, then I want you to pass it on to me,’ she continued. ‘Formal or informal witness statements, names and addresses, case notes, jottings, files, computer records, child pornography, phone numbers scribbled on napkins, anything at all.’
‘And if this material also relates to his murder?’
‘Then we overlap,’ Ellen said. She hesitated. ‘Is there anything? Have you got suspicions?’
She wanted them to articulate her suspicions-that van Alphen had been protecting paedophiles, hence his sloppy police work and indifference regarding Alysha Jarrett. That he’d intended to betray Billy DaCosta by claiming Billy had lied to him, which would have raised doubts about information given by genuine victims. That, even so, the members of his paedophile ring had killed him to shut him up. Killed Billy, too.
‘Have you?’ she repeated. ‘Can I see it? Did you find stuff on his computer?’
‘We’ll let you know if we do find anything,’ they said, with sharkish good will. ‘But a few minutes ago you pointed the finger at the Jarretts. Now you imply that van Alphen was killed because he was doing work for you, or that you would find out about him. You can’t have it both ways.’
‘They are the two most logical avenues to explore.’
‘Sergeant van Alphen must have made enemies over the years.’
‘We all do,’ said Ellen, bored and hostile now.
‘This is off the record, but we understand that the police shooting board findings will exonerate Kellock and van Alphen. Perhaps the Jarrett clan sensed this, and wanted revenge for Nick Jarrett.’
Ellen was expressionless. As far as she was concerned, truth, or at least the police version of it, was never black and white, A or B, but many things together, merging, overlapping and existing simultaneously.
‘If that’s all?’ she said, getting to her feet.
They smiled broadly and emptily as she let herself out of the room.
She found Scobie waiting. ‘Well, that was fun.’
He nodded. He’d already had his turn with them.
‘Some good news for you, though,’ Ellen said. She told him what she’d been told about the shooting board’s findings. She’d never seen a man so relieved, or so troubled. ‘Meanwhile, what have you been doing?’ she said.
‘I tried to get in and search Van’s house. I was refused permission.’
Ellen shrugged. For a long time afterwards, she didn’t reflect on Scobie’s remark. It was Friday. All she wanted to do was go home, pour herself a stiff drink, hang out with her daughter and call Hal Challis.
When she got home at eight that evening, she saw a familiar red Commodore in the driveway. Her husband was in the sitting room, drinking a glass of wine with Larrayne, Larrayne with her long, youthful bare legs curled under her on the sofa. Alan was in the armchair that Ellen normally chose. He raised his glass. ‘The great detective returns.’
He wasn’t being snide. It had been an old joke between them, back when the marriage had been tolerable. She gave her husband and her daughter a wintry smile. ‘Not such a great one this evening.’
Alan nodded soberly. ‘I heard they gave the van Alphen shooting to some hot shots from the city.’
Ellen poured herself a glass of wine. It was a good wine, a Peninsula pinot noir, and therefore probably raided from Hal Challis’s own stock. She glanced from the label to Larrayne, who winked. ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising her glass. ‘To what do we owe the honour of this visit?’
‘Dad said he’d take me out to that new Thai place in Waterloo,’ Larrayne said.
‘You’re welcome too, Ells,’ said Alan, clearly not meaning it.
There was no way that Ellen was going. She glanced at Larrayne, trying to read her daughter, ready to step in if Larrayne wanted to study but couldn’t say no to him. ‘I’m fine with it, Mum.’
Ellen looked more closely at her husband. He’d lost weight. He’d dressed up: new chinos, a new shirt. ‘You look nice.’
He waggled his jaw from side to side. He did that when he was hiding something. He dissembled, glancing around the room. ‘So, this is the boyfriend’s house.’
Ellen felt deeply fatigued. ‘Shut up, Alan.’
He flushed dangerously and sloshed some of Challis’s costly wine onto the hardwood floor. ‘Dad, we’d better go,’ Larrayne said.
It was when they were gone that Ellen remembered Scobie’s remark. He’d wanted to search van Alphen’s house, and been refused permission. Well, naturally, for van Alphen’s murder wasn’t their case. But van Alphen had been working on a case that was theirs, and he was a man full of secrets.
Forty-five minutes later, with a hastily prepared ham sandwich inside her, Ellen snapped latex gloves onto her hands, slid open Kees van Alphen’s bathroom window catch with a thin blade, and let herself in. She’d called at the station first, going to the hardware cupboard and borrowing-but not signing for-a piece of equipment used by electricians to check if power sockets were live. A dead socket could mean that a small safe was concealed behind it.
She went through van Alphen’s house swiftly; all of the electrical sockets were genuine. Then she checked behind the paintings and prints hanging on his walls, kicked baseboards, listening for tell-tale hollow sounds, looked under the dirty clothing in the laundry basket, examined tins, jars and freezer packages. She was an expert at this. Now and-then over the years she’d found small amounts of cash. Sometimes she’d pocketed it. It was a kind of pathology that she should do something about, she thought idly. But she didn’t want to see a counsellor or therapist. She believed that she could control it herself.
Frustrated now, she went through the house again, hoping to avoid searching van Alphen’s garden shed, with its noisy tools, bins and cans, and uncomfortably close to the neighbour’s bedroom window. She pulled out drawers and felt under them. She looked behind the faзade at the top of his old-fashioned wardrobe. The computer had been removed by the Fab Four from headquarters, but wouldn’t van Alphen have concealed backup CDs or floppies somewhere? Books. CD and DVD covers. A tissue box.
She looked at the TV set. It was small, years old, worth nothing to a junkie. She lifted it experimentally. It felt light. Van Alphen had gutted it.
She waited until she got home. The material was a thin folder of statements, forms and photographs, and she quickly saw why van Alphen had hidden it, and she was betting that he hadn’t signed it out from Records. She read right through, glad that he’d been so thorough, heartbroken that the thoroughness had got him killed.
In 2005, a boy named Andrew Retallick, then aged thirteen, had approached teachers at Peninsula High School-who had contacted the Department of Human Services and Waterloo police-to say that he’d been abused by a group of men for many years, in several locations, but mainly at a house on the outskirts of Waterloo. He described the house. He remembered a spa bath and soft toys. He’d been photographed in the spa bath, naked, with the men who’d abused him. He’d been asked to suck his thumb and pose naked with the soft toys. The men varied: there was a hard core of four or five, with others whom he saw occasionally or only once. Some were dressed as policemen. The abuse had started when he was seven years old and continued for many years. He hadn’t liked it but hadn’t let himself think it was wrong. After all, policemen were involved. Whenever he was hurt, someone would tend to him. Going to high school had chang
ed everything: not only was his body changing but sex education classes had opened his eyes to what had been done to him for all of those years. And so he’d told his teachers, and DHS officers, counsellors and, finally, the police. But nothing had been done, and so he’d stopped talking. He changed schools three times. He tried and failed to kill himself by cutting his wrists. That was last year.
Ellen leafed through the file, making sense of the statements and forms. The photographs of Andrew showed a small, hunted-looking boy, although in one instance he was smiling, a sad smile but it transformed his face, so that he looked sweet and exotic. Long lashes, Ellen noted, dusky skin.
Larrayne returned, looking tense. ‘Mum, he’s got a girlfriend. I had to sit there and hear all about her.’
So that was it. Larrayne seemed miserable, like a child who had tried and failed to keep her parents together. ‘It was bound to happen, sweetheart.’
‘It’s not fair.’
Ellen tried to hug her. Larrayne shrugged her off. ‘I’m going to bed.’
When the house was silent again under a barely moonlit sky, Ellen returned to van Alphen’s case notes. She read for some time, finally coming to his summary, written as fragmentary observations in his neat, pinched hand: A litany of errors or wilful obstruction. Two of AR’s statements missing, computer files been tampered with. Parents were urged to let matters drop. Officers interviewed Neville/Shirley Clode, owners of the house where the abuse took place, Sept. 2005. They accepted Clodes’ explanation re spa room-had been set up for granddaughter. Quote: “The Clodes were interviewed and subjected to a background check. This showed them to be normal, everyday citizens, who were completely shocked by the allegations”. AR’s parents angry re Office of Police Integrity’s decision to take no further action, despite independent confirmation that A had been abused (see report, Royal Children’s Hospital’s Gatehouse Centre). Parents told me the senior sergeant in charge was v. aggressive. Warned them kids often lied about being sexually abused; allegations could destroy decent families, etc., etc. Quote: “There is nothing further the police service can do for you”. Meanwhile police members investigating A’s allegations did not contact his psych or the Gatehouse Centre.
