by Garry Disher
Ellen looked at the younger woman as if for the first time. Pam Murphy was no longer the uniformed constable who showed initiative but a fellow detective. For a while Ellen had been her mentor, coaxing her into plain-clothed work, letting her find her potential, but now they were colleagues. Not equals-if you counted age and rank-but a kind of friendship linked them. And Ellen badly needed friends now.
‘Everything all right, Sarge?’
‘Just thinking. I wish Hal was here.’
Pam said, a little sternly, ‘Well, Sarge, he’s not.’
57
Challis risked a peek. Lisa was shooting at him from behind the driver’s door of the Jeep. A semi-automatic rifle with a small clip. He guessed that it had been stowed behind or under the seats. There was a crack and a bullet punctured the tyre beside his foot. She fired again, the bullet punching through the open door. He ran around to the front of the big four-wheel-drive, glad of its bulk. His relief was short-lived: a bullet pinged off a nearby stone. He felt terribly exposed. Lisa Joyce would cripple him and then shoot him where he lay.
Then he heard her call his name.
‘What?’ he shouted.
‘I phoned Wurfel when I saw you arrive.’
She’ll present Wurfel with a self-defence story, he thought. He couldn’t see any point in negotiating, or waiting, and slithered on his belly and elbows toward the shepherd’s hut, using the Range Rover for cover. Lisa fired again, the bullet whining away and dust and stone chips flying.
Just then the sheep, made skittish by the cracks and echoes in the still air, broke away and charged toward the hut, passing close to Challis. He rolled to his feet and ran with them in all of their fear and exultation. Dust rose and pebbles flew and the sheep kicked and bucked. Lisa fired, a desultory shot that went nowhere.
Challis huddled behind a ruined wall. Lisa had the advantage in this engagement, while he had nothing but the hut and small deceptions in the sparsely grassed soil of the plateau. He glanced hurriedly about: only heaped stones and a length of wood, possibly a lintel or part of a window frame. He grabbed it like a club, alerting Lisa, who got off a shot that sent a stone chip into his face. Blood coursed down his forehead, blurring his right eye. He swiped at it with his forearm and another shot smacked numbingly through the wooden club. He lay afraid and very still, and then began to retreat again. If he could reach the far rim of the plateau, he might be able to try an outflanking manoeuvre.
The next shot creased his ear and he pissed his pants. None of his nerve endings would let him alone. He trembled, tics developing in his face, and the blood dripped onto the dust, balling there. He supposed he was sobbing aloud, he didn’t know, but retreated in a mad scramble from the hut until he found a stone refuge, where the rocks were grey and licheny, weathered and streaked with bird shit. It was a good place. He huddled there and, in his visions, Lisa Joyce appeared above him and shot him like a fish in a barrel.
Dimly then he heard a starter motor grinding. He risked a look: Lisa was in the Jeep. That galvanised Challis. He charged forward, making for the Range Rover and Rex Joyce’s hunting rifle.
Instantly Lisa stepped out of the Jeep. Challis was barely halfway to the Range Rover. He ducked and swerved, but she merely stood with her arms wide to the world. ‘I haven’t got any bullets left.’
Challis halted tensely. ‘Then drop the rifle.’
‘I haven’t got any bullets left.’
‘So put the rifle down.’
‘It was all Rex’s fault.’
‘Lisa, drop the rifle.’
Challis advanced, and Lisa stood there with the rifle outstretched.
‘Drop it, okay?’
‘None of it was my idea.’
Still Challis advanced. He reached the Range Rover, leaned in and retrieved the hunting rifle from between Rex Joyce’s legs. He jacked a round into the breech, then emerged from the shelter of the vehicle, blinking furiously to clear his bloodied eye, the rifle to his shoulder. ‘Lisa, I’m warning you.’
‘I suddenly said to myself, what am I doing, shooting at Hal?’
Challis stopped, the rifle aimed squarely at her, and said quietly, ‘Lisa, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Please put the rifle down.’
Lisa grinned and deftly slapped the rifle from one hand to the other and up to her shoulder. Challis shot her legs out from under her.
She screamed and rolled in the dirt. ‘Ow! You shot me!’
‘Yes.’
She tossed in agony, raging at him. Challis retrieved her rifle, ejected the magazine and checked the breech. She’d had one bullet left.
‘I didn’t think you’d shoot me!’
‘In a heartbeat,’ Challis said.
She began to cry and swear and deride him. He found a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his eye, then crouched beside her. ‘Shut up,’ he said, tearing off one of his sleeves.
‘It hurts!’
‘You’ll live.’
He bound her leg and then sat, depleted, not thinking about anything at all but feeling the weariest he’d ever felt. And then a surprising contentment settled in him. He tilted his face to the sun and adjusted his body to the pebbly dust as if he were part of the landscape. Finally Sergeant Wurfel’s Land Cruiser appeared over the rim of the plateau like a breaching whale.
58
Ellen pushed her food away, barely touched. ‘Let’s go back and see if we have a result on Billy’s prints.’
They returned to the station, taking the back stairs to CIU, checking the incident room first. Only John Tankard was there, pecking at a computer keyboard. He didn’t see them.
Ellen closed her office door carefully and called the lab. ‘What?’ said Pam afterwards, seeing the expression on her face.
‘The fake Billy is in the system. The prints we lifted from the drink cans in the Victim Suite belong to a Kenneth Lloyd.’
She logged on to her computer. She knew what she was about to do would generate an electronic record, but would Kellock be checking for that? Had he flagged Lloyd’s name? She had to risk it.
She typed, her hands flying over the keys. Soon Lloyd’s face and record filled the screen. ‘That’s him, all right,’ said Ellen. ‘The false Billy DaCosta.’
She scrolled down. ‘Charged with inappropriate sexual behaviour when he was fifteen. Two arrests for soliciting last year.’ She stopped, then looked up at Pam, who was peering over her shoulder. ‘Arresting officer, Senior Sergeant Kellock.’ She peered at the screen again. ‘Charges were reduced. Rap over the knuckles.’
‘Kellock’s influence?’
‘Probably.’
There was an address for Lloyd. Ellen tapped her finger on the screen. ‘I know this place. Gideon House. It’s a kind of shelter for homeless kids. Let’s see if our boy’s at home.’
Pam shuddered. ‘I don’t hold much hope of that, Sarge. Either Kellock has topped him or given him a thousand bucks to make himself scarce.’
‘We have to try.’
Ellen used her office phone, for its number was blocked. She heard it ring, and then a voice came on. ‘Gideon House.’
‘Please, I’m going out of my mind,’ said Ellen, her voice whiny and adolescent. ‘I’m tryin’ a find me brother. He’s run off
Behind her, Pam snorted. The voice said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t give out the names of our clients.’
‘I’m really, really worried about him. Mum’s desperate. His name’s Ken Lloyd. We call him Kenny.’
There was an assessing silence. ‘Well, I guess it’s all right. He was here, but he left.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘Look,’ said the voice, ‘I’ll put Mrs Kellock on the line. She’s the supervisor here. Please hold.’
Ellen hurriedly cut the connection. Pam saw the tightening of her face. ‘Sarge?’
Shaken, Ellen looked up at Pam and said, ‘I was asked to hold for the supervisor-whose name is Mrs Kellock.’
Pam
sat, her face etched in a kind of fierce concentration. ‘Hell, Sarge.’
‘It could be a coincidence,’ Ellen said, ‘another Mrs Kellock entirely. Or she doesn’t know what her husband’s been up to.’
‘Come on, Sarge, it all holds together. That’s how these guys get their victims.’
Ellen’s desk phone rang. She stared at it in consternation, then answered it. ‘Hello?’
A familiar voice said, ‘Sergeant Destry. I was hoping you’d be in.’
‘Mr Riggs, my favourite forensic tech,’ said Ellen, trying not to let her tension show, and failing.
‘No need to be snide.’
‘Good news, or bad?’ said Ellen. ‘Maybe you’re ringing to tell me you’ve sacked all of your incompetents and our DNA evidence is solid after all?’
The silence was hurt and sulky. ‘Well, if you don’t want to hear this…’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ellen, meaning it. ‘A long day.’
‘Ditto,’ said Riggs.
Ellen sighed. ‘What have you got?’
‘That blood on the dog collar.’
Ellen had completely forgotten about it. ‘You have a match?’
‘Kind of
‘Let me guess, Neville Clode’s, and we can’t use it because you already have his victim sample.’
‘Not Clode’s,’ said Riggs, ‘but yes, it does match with a victim sample.’
‘Who?’
‘One of your officers. He was stabbed in the forearm in an altercation with a burglar.’
‘Senior Sergeant Kellock.’
‘Yes, for what it’s worth,’ said Riggs.
There were heavy footsteps in the corridor. Ellen froze. But it was only John Tankard. ‘Can I knock off now, Sarge? Got some car business to take care of.’
‘Of course, John.’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
Tank walked around to Korean Salvage on the industrial estate, and there was his rebirthed Mazda. ‘She’ll pass scrutiny?’ he demanded, one sausagy hand thumping the gleaming roof.
Under the bluster he felt jumpy, uncertain. Something was going on at work and he didn’t know what it was. Maybe Destry was onto him. He wanted one constant in his life-his car.
‘Yep,’ said the proprietor of Korean Salvage, wiping his hands on a rag.
‘I mean the design and safety regulations. She’ll pass any test?’
‘Yep.’
The sun was streaming through the garage doors, lighting oil spills, car bodies and parts, chrome tools and Tank’s Mazda. On the outside, this was the car he’d fallen in love with, sleek and red, a real head-turner, but on the inside she was a different car. He saw no irony in the fact that he was pinning all of his hopes for fulfilment on an object of false provenance.
‘I don’t want to take her in for a roadworthy and have the guy say she’s iffy.’
‘Not going to happen.’
To be doubly sure, Tank vowed to take his car to a different roadworthy tester next time. He began to feel uncomfortable. Several ethnics were standing around in the shadows, mechanics, car strippers and thieves, watching him inscrutably, some holding wrenches. He played ‘Spot the Aussie’ and scored only two, himself and the boss. ‘Mate,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘I don’t know what you did and I don’t want to know, but I’m pumped, a very happy boy.’
The proprietor of Korean Salvage was not happy. He didn’t like it that a cop had something over him. Sure, he had something over the cop, but he preferred it when it had just been him, his mechanics and the Jarrett kids who stole cars for them.
‘The paperwork’s solid, okay?’ he said sourly. ‘VIN number, engine number, chassis number, it all belongs to a legit car. It all checks out.’
‘Cool,’ said Tank.
It wasn’t cool, but that was the price of doing business in this town, apparently. The proprietor of Korean Salvage watched the beefy young cop get behind the wheel of the Mazda and peel out of the shed. Burning a bit of oil. Maybe the engine was knackered. He took some comfort from that.
Ellen worked until late evening. She drove home under a scudding moon, the shadows tricky, especially when she came to the tree canopy over Challis’s rain-slicked road. But she’d driven this road at this time of the night ever since the Katie Blasko kidnapping, and was familiar with the bends, the contours, the gaps between the roadside trees- particularly the gap where a stock gate had been set in Challis’s front fence. The gate, never used now, dated from an earlier era, when the house had been part of a working farm. She liked to glance through the gap: Challis’s house was set on a gentle slope, and she found it reassuring to look up and see the floor lamps glowing behind the sitting-room curtains, lights that she’d left on that morning to welcome herself home.
This time she saw a shape slip past one of the windows.
Ellen did not vary her pace but continued along the road, up and over the hill, past the farm with the barking dogs, letting the sound of her car apparently dwindle into the distance. She drove for a kilometre, and then pulled into the driveway of a hobby farm. The owner, a Melbourne accountant, was never there during the week.
She went back to Challis’s on foot, avoiding the loose gravel of the road, which would announce her presence and fill her own ears with distracting sounds. Instead, she headed overland, trotting carefully through grassy paddocks, vaulting over the wire fences, until she came to the rear of the house. Behind her was another slope and another hobby farm, several hundred metres away and also empty tonight.
From here she was slightly elevated and could look down on the back of Challis’s house. His rear boundary was another wire fence. She paused for a while, listening. Her eyes were accustomed to the darkness now and she was alert for all sounds and movements. She waited for ten minutes before she saw Kellock. A brief, chancy beam of moonlight caught him, just as she was about to advance on the house. It was not so much his face as his stance, his bulky alertness, that she recognised. He watched and waited, and so did she, for a solid hour. He was patient, she was patient. She could smell him, she realised, an amalgam of aftershave and perspiration. Did he sense her? Her perfume, this morning’s scented shampoo and conditioner? He gave no sign of it. She was distracted by thoughts of Challis then. How would she characterise his smell? Clean, undisguised. There wasn’t much in the way of scented soaps in his bathroom. No old aftershave containers. Skulking like this in the nighttime and its shadows was arousing her.
Kellock broke first. One moment he was there and the next he was gone. Ellen shrank deeper into the grass and waited, just in case he was flanking her. She thought about the blood on Sasha’s collar. Of course it was Kellock’s, and of course he’d got it when Sasha bit him. But a defence lawyer would have a field day with that evidence. He’d cite the discredited lab work and Scobie Sutton’s balls-up at the scene of the Jarrett shooting, and propose another scenario: ‘My client is in charge of the Waterloo police station. Naturally he keeps abreast of all its functions and activities. He patted the dog when it was brought in to the station on its way to the lab. The dog bit him. There is nothing sinister in his blood being found on the collar.’
Ellen tensed. She heard a motorbike fire up in the distance. It revved once or twice, idled, and then howled away. She’d wondered how Kellock had got here, and now she knew. She slipped inside the house, gathered together a change of clothing and spent the night in the Sanctuary Motor Inn, up in the hills northeast of Melbourne, where she paid cash and used a false name.
59
She drove to work on Wednesday wondering if she’d be able to control her face. She’d had plenty of practice over the years, hiding her reactions and feelings from the men around her-hiding attraction and repulsion-but she’d never had to hide something as monumental as the information she held in her head.
She used the front door, feeling almost sick, expecting to encounter Kellock.
But Kellock wasn’t in his office. No one had seen him, and he hadn’t called in. What did that mean? Had the
lab, apologetic, contacted him to say they’d found his DNA on the dog’s collar but it was all a mistake? Ellen had expressly told Riggs not to inform Kellock, but Kellock had cronies everywhere. All kinds of paperwork crossed his desk. Was he out there somewhere, getting rid of evidence? Were his mates covering their tracks?
And so she was predisposed to find significance in anything Scobie Sutton did. When she walked into the incident room and saw him hunched covertly over his desk phone, she was immediately suspicious. When he’d completed the call, she asked, ‘Everything okay, Scobie?’
He looked hunted, a little sulky, and went very red. ‘Just the wife.’
Then Pam arrived. She wore tan slacks and a white T-shirt under a crumpled cotton jacket. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face. She looked scrubbed, athletic, ready for action. They worked in silence and the morning passed, empty coffee cups accumulating. Ellen put Scobie to work watching videotapes from the closed-circuit security cameras; she and Pam read documents. Then, when Scobie and Pam went out to buy pastries for morning tea, she pressed the redial button on Scobie’s phone.
‘Grace Duyker speaking.’
‘This is Sergeant Ellen Destry, of the Waterloo police station-’
The woman cut her off. ‘Are you taking his side? Is that it? Now I’m the ogre?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Look, he’s a nice guy and everything, but it’s inappropriate. I’m happily married. He’s married. I swear I never encouraged him, but he’s got it into his head that I-’
Thinking rapidly, Ellen said, ‘I think he understands that now.’
‘I don’t want to get him into trouble. I don’t want him to get me into trouble.’
‘You have my assurance on that,’ Ellen said.
Pam and Scobie came in, Scobie’s gaze going straight to Ellen on his phone. He looked as though he might burst into tears, but Ellen said pitilessly, feeling like a stern aunt, ‘I was just informing Grace Duyker that she can rely on us to be discreet. Scobie, you’ll endorse that?’
