by Garry Disher
‘Ellen! You all right?’
‘I’m fine, Scobie.’
‘I’m on my way there now.’
She got a little short with him. ‘No need. Go back to Clode’s. But keep an eye out for Laurie Jarrett. He’s taken Kellock hostage. It was Jarrett who killed Clode and Duyker.’
Her voice unnerved him, it was so matter-of-fact. But he supposed it always would be and always had been. She broke the connection. Distracted, he tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and so was unprepared for a sudden and dramatic series of percussions under the car. Warning humps: he was approaching one of the dangerous intersections. He braked. The car swerved, alarming a motorcyclist. His face went red, his palms damp: Ellen had never hidden the fact that she considered him a bad driver.
He came to a halt at the stop sign. A white twin-cab was approaching from the opposite direction. It also stopped. Scobie peered intently: dimly through the windscreen he could see Jarrett, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding a shotgun under Kellock’s jaw.
He fumbled for the siren. He hadn’t been in a patrol car for fifteen years. Not that he needed a siren. It was unmistakably a police car that he was driving.
Jarrett accelerated through the intersection and swept past. Scobie made a wild U-turn and went after him. Afterwards he wondered if he should have done that. It panicked Jarrett. He was later told that Jarrett would have killed Kellock anyway, but right then Scobie’s job was to save Kellock and arrest Jarrett.
He put his foot down. Both cars flew along the stretch between Balnarring and Coolart Roads, through undulating farmland, spring grasses tall in the ditches and the roadside trees heavy, sombre and still. Up the gradient and there was Coolart Road and another stop sign and warning humps. The Toyota hit the first one at speed, and Scobie was told later that Jarrett’s finger must have tightened involuntarily on the trigger of the shotgun. All he knew now was, the rear window of the Toyota was suddenly messily red, opaque, and the vehicle was slewing across the road and into a tree.
62
It was several hours before Pam Murphy could go home. She went to her little house in Penzance Beach-weatherboard cottage under pine trees, ten minutes walk from the beach-wondering if she’d participated in something that would alter her perception of the job, and of herself. She went home wondering if she and Ellen Destry could have affected the outcome in any way.
Pros and cons.
On the pro side, their.38s were on the ground and Laurie Jarrett was holding a shotgun on them. Plus, he’d shot out one of their tyres. Plus, they’d done the right thing and formally reported the incident, alerting the police of several local jurisdictions and calling for roadblocks.
On the con side, they hadn’t called it in with any urgency. There had been an air of inevitability about their actions after Jarrett had taken Kellock away. The inevitability had been in the air even before that. Jarrett was going to kill Kellock and they couldn’t stop him. But they hadn’t tried very hard.
On the pro side, Kellock was a killer. He also abused children sexually, procured them for sexual abuse, and stood by and watched and encouraged the sexual abuse of children. He was a police officer. You could argue that he deserved to die.
And Laurie Jarrett was entitled to get his revenge.
On the con side, I am a police officer, thought Pam. So is Ellen. We have protocols to follow, standards to meet. We have a duty to save and protect, just as much as we have a duty to exert justice.
On the pro side, there had probably been nothing they could have done about any of it.
And so Pam went home, showered and poured herself a big, strong gin-and-tonic. ‘My body is my temple,’ she said wryly to the hollow air of her sitting room. Normally she went for a run or a long walk on the beach after work, but that could wait until tomorrow. She didn’t want cheering up, necessarily, or even to wallow in misery. She wanted to think. She wanted to think about ethics, responsibilities, chance and fate. She played a Paul Kelly CD. His wry take on things suited her perfectly just then.
Scobie Sutton went home to his wife all twitchy. To his way of thinking, he’d precipitated a violent death that afternoon.
‘Oh, you poor boy,’ Beth said when he told her all about it. She took him to the sofa and perched there, holding his hands in her lap.
‘There was nothing I could do.’
‘Of course there wasn’t.’
‘It wasn’t my fault. He was holding a shotgun to Kellock’s head.’
‘It’s okay, love.’
‘This has all been such a mess.’
‘I know it has. And I haven’t exactly been a help to you, with my moods.’
Well, that was true. Scobie felt a little aggrieved. But at least she was there. The sensations of her were familiar and welcome, her warm hands and the press of her breasts against his arm.
‘Things will get better, you’ll see,’ she went on.
That’s what his mother had always said. That’s what he and Beth always said to Roslyn. ‘I hope so,’ he said in a small voice.
She said perkily, ‘I’ve got a job interview.’
‘You have? That’s wonderful.’
‘A short term contract with the shire, but better than nothing.’
With the shire that sacks its workers via e-mail. ‘Exactly,’ said Scobie in his bucking-up voice.
As he saw it, his and Beth’s way was modest. A woman like Grace Duyker had a different way. That wasn’t to say that one was right and the other wrong, he didn’t think, just so long as he kept telling himself that.
Ellen didn’t go home. At 11 pm she was still in her office writing up her notes. There was no urgency, she didn’t have to do it now, but the world outside was mad and in CIU it was quiet. She put down her pen, swivelled in her chair and looked out on the purple night. After a while, she went to the incident room and began to dismantle the displays of maps, charts and photographs. So much paperwork. She’d once worked an investigation of six months’ duration. It generated over fifty boxes and folders, containing thousands of search warrants, extradition documents, interview transcripts and field notes.
Well, this was going to be another big one. It wasn’t over yet. Kellock might not have been the end of it: there were surely more men involved, some of them possibly his colleagues in the police. And what of the women? Was Kellock’s wife part of it? And who would look after Alysha now, stop her going off the rails? Most of her abusers were dead but there were various cousins and siblings who’d profited from her abuse. Ellen vowed to see them into jail. That, together with a possible life sentence for Laurie, would dismantle the Jarrett clan. Peace would reign on the estate for about five minutes.
‘Sergeant Destry.’
McQuarrie stood in her doorway. ‘Sir,’ she said, standing but not scrambling about it.
He’d come from some function. He was wearing his full dress uniform, with plenty of ribbons and patches-all earned from staying in power, not merit or achievements. She realised from his voice and manner that she was in trouble about something. She didn’t know what, but if McQuarrie was the kind of policeman to get such a thrill out of dressing up, he’d hate being called away to do actual police work, so she was probably in some deep shit.
‘Hell of a mess.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Unbelievable.’ He shook his well-combed head. ‘If you hadn’t let Jarrett go, this would never have happened.’
Ellen flushed. Her old blackness built in her head, a dangerous blind pressure. ‘As I told you, sir, we had nothing to hold him on.’
McQuarrie took a step back. He looked very fine in his uniform, if short. ‘I don’t like your tone. And what’s this I hear about a circle of paedophiles? Tell me it’s all a huge mistake.’
‘No mistake, sir,’ and she laid it out for him. She was harsh and careless; she wasn’t going to spare him. She also said, ‘I know he was your friend, sir,’ to see what he would do.
The colour drained from his fac
e. He swallowed and recovered. ‘Is that how you see me? One of them?’
She was pretty sure that he wasn’t part of Kellocks ring. It had been a useful speculation, though, back when she was afraid and the men around her seemed sly and creepy.
‘Of course not, sir,’ she said evenly. ‘But there may be others, and we have to root them out.’
She could see him thinking, the murky lights going on in his head. The pressure looming, the top brass and the press and the government leaning on him.
She decided to push it. ‘Oh, another thing, sir, regarding that private lab you hired for our forensic testing. The press are getting wind of their sloppy procedures: shall I refer all calls to your office?’
McQuarrie said nothing but sat slackly, his uniform not quite so immaculate now. Ellen sat with him. And then, out in the car park, there was a familiar rattle, an old, tappety British motor.
‘That would be Hal,’ she said, beaming at the super. ‘Home.’
He must have driven night and day. She felt a little dizzy and apprehensive. She’d left dishes in his sink, and hadn’t replenished his stash of office coffee, and the subject of where she would live now hadn’t been discussed. At the same time, she felt buoyed by her achievements, and by an old, familiar stirring in the pit of her stomach.
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