by Garry Disher
They both looked at the blanched, wasted face of the brother. ‘Not very.’
‘I saw at least one post from him on your blog.’
Dirk shrugged his soft, round shoulders. ‘Now and then, when he had something important to add.’
‘Important,’ said Challis, his face, voice and eyes as flat and hard as stones. ‘This e-mail-’
‘I didn’t write it! It was sent to me!’
‘But you forwarded it to dozens of others.’
Roe slumped. His face under the gelled spikes was pink and rounded, like a boy’s. Sweat beaded his upper lip and forehead. ‘Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything.’
‘Where were you last night?’
‘Kaos, in Frankston, ask anybody.’
Kaos was a club where twenty-somethings like Dirk Roe ruined their livers and eardrums. It also had excellent camera surveillance of the dance floors, bars and inner and outer doors. ‘What time did you get home?’
Dirk shifted. ‘I went home with someone, stayed the night.’
‘I’ll need name, address and phone number.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Your parents. They were strict, weren’t they?’ said Challis, guessing.
Dirk’s jaw dropped. ‘How did you know?’
‘Strict, devout, everything regimented…’
Roe shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t see what…’
‘Did your father beat you and your brother?’
Challis saw from Roe’s face that it was true. ‘What about your mother?’
‘They were strict, so what?’
‘What did you and your brother fall out over?’
‘Fall out? Who told you that? Over what?’
Challis shrugged. ‘His new church. The fact that he had a following. The fact that he’s older and more successful.’
‘I’m successful.’
Challis always looked for the chinks and opened them up. ‘You’re a jumped-up office manager.’
‘Yeah-for the Leader of the Opposition, who gave you a hard time on the phone this morning.’
‘Who would sack you in a heartbeat if he knew about your blog.’
At least, Challis hoped that were true. There were men and women in Hindmarsh’s party who would probably like to adopt it as the official party position.
‘Please, I closed it down.’
Challis shook his head wearily. ‘You didn’t think, did you?’ he said as he left the room and returned to the station.
****
11
Tankard’s and Cree’s first call-out after the Lachlan Roe assault scene was a suspicious car in Somerville. ‘The Hoon Hotline called it in,’ said the dispatcher.
‘Wow,’ said Cree. ‘A car parked across some old biddy’s driveway, driver and passenger asleep inside. I mean, can I stand the excitement?’
‘They could be casing the joint,’ Tank said, replacing the handset and settling back in the passenger seat of the divisional van.
‘What’s this Hoon Hotline anyway?’
Tank decided not to let Cree get to him. ‘The guys in Traffic Management set it up. We had hoons running riot every night. Speeding, drag racing, burnouts, generally terrorising everyone. Now all the locals have to do is call the hotline. We show up and lay down the law, on-the-spot fines, driving charges. Confiscate the car sometimes,’ he said. ‘It works.’
The Somerville address was a cul-de-sac. They found a red Holden SS Crewman parked across the driveway of number 7, the tattooed and shaven-headed driver and passenger asleep or stoned. Tank called in the plate number, listened, and beamed at Cree. The vehicle was stolen.
The cameras, mobile phones and laptops inside it proved to be stolen, too. You have to laugh sometimes, thought Tank as he made the arrests. In his experience, most criminals were like the guys in the red Crewman: complete morons. They thought they could lose the police helicopter if they drove faster. They’d cruise around with a broken taillight, and a dead body or a kilo of heroin in the boot. They’d assume the police surrounding their house at 5 a.m. would go away if they ignored the doorbell. They didn’t seem to understand that there were good reasons why the family next door owned a plasma TV and they didn’t; or that actions had consequences.
‘I wonder how their minds work sometimes,’ he said, as he and Cree returned to Waterloo and booked the hungover duo.
Cree gave him a cryptic look and smile. ‘Exactly.’
Stopping for coffee in the canteen they saw Pam Murphy in the distance, sitting with other female officers. Cree said over the steam from his cup, ‘You ever noticed how this joint’s crawling with women?’
‘Not really.’
‘How to get ahead in the Victoria Police,’ Cree said, watching him. ‘Grow a pair of tits.’
Suspecting a trap, Tankard ignored the remark. He knew he could be a bit of a dinosaur, but the women he worked with-his old partner Murph, bosses like Ellen Destry-they’d earned some respect over the years.
Maybe all Cree saw was the dinosaur? Tank sighed. The day stretched miserably ahead. At least I’m not scared of the dark, he thought.
They were scarcely out of the station, Cree driving again, when the dispatcher directed them to a disturbance at the Benton Square shopping centre on the other side of the Peninsula.
‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ Cree said, ‘sending Waterloo cops to fight crime in Mornington. The Mornington boys are sent to Waterloo, I suppose.’
Tank continued to ignore him, but the guy had a point. Police resources hadn’t kept pace with change on the Peninsula. The population levels had soared, but not police staffing levels or budgets. The result was abysmal response times, with some minor crimes like burglaries attended to days late or not at all, and no money to buy, maintain or upgrade equipment. You couldn’t even go to the supply room and expect to find a ballpoint pen or a set of batteries for a crime scene camera. The twelve detectives stationed at Rosebud and Mornington had the use of only two unmarked cars between them, complicated by the fact that each shift employed four or five detectives, each working his or her own caseload, or needing to attend court. No wonder follow-up visits, surveillance and evidence-gathering suffered. Tank, eyes closed, let the mild spring sunshine warm him through the glass.
But Cree never shut up for long. ‘Mickey Mouse policing.’
Tank opened his eyes. In profile, Cree’s features were perfectly proportioned, probably heart-stopping to the women. ‘Not like the big city, right?’
‘You said it.’
Tank slumped gloomily against his door, missing Pam Murphy. But it was early days. Maybe Cree’s larrikin grin would grow on him. Maybe the guy would pull his finger out. Not that Tank himself was the kind of copper to go above and beyond the call of duty, but at ten minutes to knockoff yesterday afternoon Cree had refused to book a guy for public drunkenness, saying the paperwork would eat into their leisure time. Tank didn’t want to get into the habit of letting his new partner take shortcuts like that.
He directed Cree off the Peninsula freeway and east toward Mount Martha, through farmland that was being gobbled up by housing estates, all of the new houses breathing over each other, robbing the air, breeding domestic misery and truancy. Like the kids who terrorised shoppers at Benton Square. This wasn’t the first time Tank had encountered them. They roamed in packs and liked to surround drivers attempting to enter or leave the carpark. Anyone who remonstrated was punched and abused or had their headlights smashed.
Tank wound his window down as Cree steered into the shopping centre. He could hear shouting. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
A clump of people, some of them shaking fists and pushing and shoving each other near a car that had stalled at an awkward angle, one wheel up on the kerb outside the plate glass window of a bakery. An elderly man sat on the kerb nearby, holding his head in his hands.
Cree braked sharply and piled out, pushing through, sending bystanders reeling. Tank followed; he was a big man, overweight, and getting in and
out of the divisional van always slowed him down. He elbowed his way to where two men held a teenage boy to the ground, one on his legs, the other on his shoulders.
‘Okay,’ Cree shouted, ‘what gives?’
His right hand was on the holster of his.38 revolver. His mobile phone was in his left. Jesus, Tank thought, and nudged him aside.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, we’ll take it from here.’
‘The little bastard almost caused an accident,’ said one of the men. ‘We made a citizens’ arrest.’
‘Yeah,’ said the other man.
The people milling about them shouted, ‘Doing your job for you,’ amongst other things.
Then a woman came barrelling through, screaming, ‘I’ll have the lot of you up for assaulting my boy.’
Tank closed his eyes. The paperwork when all of this was sorted would take hours. With any luck, no one would press charges. With any luck, the boy would get a fright, start attending school again, become a model citizen.
And so the morning progressed. Next up was a broken shop window back in Waterloo. Apparently a nineteen-year-old had been ejected from the Waterloo Arms the previous night and taken it out on the neighbouring hairdressing salon. ‘Go figure,’ Tank murmured. The hairdresser was less sanguine. ‘This is the third time in eighteen months, four grand each time to replace the glass, who’s going to insure me now? Why the hell can’t you patrol High Street regularly? Why can’t you install CCTV?’
Good point, Tank thought, scribbling in his notebook while Cree chatted up a young redhead who was cutting an old woman’s hair.
After that, a burglary in Penzance Beach, no signs of forced entry. ‘It has me baffled,’ the homeowner said. She was old, trembly, distressed.
It didn’t baffle Tank for long. He took one look at the dog-a huge, ancient Labrador, and another at the big dog flap on the back door and informed Cree that the man they wanted was Ricky DaSilva.
‘How do you know?’
‘You’ll see.’
Ricky DaSilva was tiny, no bigger than a child. They found him in the pub with the old woman’s purse in his pocket. But was Cree impressed with Tank’s deductive powers? All Cree said was, ‘It has me quite baffled.’
Instinct told Tank to bite his tongue. He knew that envy was making him exaggerate Andy Cree’s faults. Envy, jealousy, sexual jealousy…
After lunch they were called to a domestic in the Seaview housing estate. They found a woman with a black eye and a bruised torso, revealed when she lifted the edge of her T-shirt. ‘Me ex-husband done this,’ she said. ‘Coupla days ago. I want the bastard charged.’
There was a code of practice for these kinds of assaults. First they took the woman back to the station, where a doctor examined her. The next stage was a photographic record of her injuries, ideally in the presence of a senior female officer, but Destry and Murph were out, and no one else was available-same old story, the general and chronic shortage of staff at Waterloo. So they roped in a young female constable from Traffic and took the battered woman into the victim suite, where Cree set up a camera. ‘We need to photograph your injuries,’ Tank explained.
The woman gulped, nodded, and removed her T-shirt, revealing pillowy breasts inside a grimy bra and a pattern of old and new bruises. ‘Not your usual look?’ joked Cree, snapping away with the camera.
The young cop giggled. Cree grinned at her. The woman blushed and looked away. Oh, fuck, thought Tank, grabbing the camera. ‘Andy, maybe you could take a coffee break, start the paperwork or something?’
‘Whatever.’
When Cree had left the room, Tank took the young Traffic constable out into the corridor. ‘She’s a victim, okay? She’s vulnerable. It’s taken her a lot of courage to report this.’
Those words had been said to him, once upon a time. The constable looked at the floor. ‘Sorry, Tank.’
‘Enough said.’
They went back in and finished the job. Afterwards he told Cree: ‘Look, pal, if you and I are going to spend time together, you might want to rethink your attitude.’
‘What attitude?’
‘Exactly,’ Tank said.
****
Four o’clock in the afternoon. Pam Murphy had spotted Tank with that cute new guy but was too busy to chinwag with them. First she made her way down High Street to the foreshore, where the schoolies were already partying. A number of cars were parked facing the mangroves and the yacht basin, tailgates up, revealing mattresses and sleeping bags, surfboards and eskies full of beer and bourbon-and-cola cans. A few dome tents had been pitched nearby. Otherwise the scene was full of kids, most of them standing around blearily, holding bottles and cans, others standing on the roofs of their cars, dancing to the music that blared from competing sound systems. They were all having a bad hair day, and the guys hadn’t shaved for some time. Guys and girls, they wore shorts, boardies, singlets or T-shirts, often over bathing suits. Most were in bare feet, grimy feet. These weren’t the swimming, surfing or bike-riding schoolies, but, by the same token, they weren’t overdosing, harassing the locals or fighting, either. Plenty of energy, though: the girls were on the lookout for a hot guy, the guys for a hot girl. Looking for love. Like everyone.
All kinds of regulations were being broken but Pam turned a blind eye. She wandered among the kids, introducing herself, handing out ID bracelets, informing them about the Chillout Zone, telling them to eat, drink plenty of water; advising them to stay in their own groups and look out for each other.
Then she wandered back up High Street. Many of the shoppers and shopkeepers knew her and nodded hello. There were schoolies here, too, in clumps and pairs strolling, window-shopping. Some of them knew her; some she’d helped. One group, clacking through the T-shirt racks outside HangTen went into a mock panic. ‘Cool it, guys, ditch that ecstasy, hide the vodka, it’s… Schoolie Patrol!’
‘Very droll,’ Pam said.
She lingered to chat with the kids. High Street was mild and docile under the springtime sun. Then a car pulled into the kerb, glossy red, a hot little Subaru-the kind of toy your well-heeled schoolie might drive, she thought enviously. She’d been known to buy the wrong kind of car and pay too much for it. She saw a young guy get out from behind the wheel, his girlfriend from the passenger seat, and saunter into HangTen as if they owned it.
A minute later, they came out, the guy looking royally pissed off.
****
Caz Moon, working one of the cash registers in HangTen, saw the red Subaru pull into the kerb. For just a moment then, everything clenched tightly inside her, but by the time Josh strolled in, holding the hand of a female version of himself, she had recovered.
Before she’d quite known she was going to do it, Caz called across the shop, ‘Hello, Josh. Raped anyone yet?’
He was good-looking in that blond, vacant, mouth breathing, never-had-to-think, -feel, -question-or-want-for-anything private school way. Right now he was staring about vaguely. Perhaps he was stoned, perhaps he hadn’t heard her. ‘Josh?’ she said again, lifting her voice above the racks of brightly coloured scraps of cotton. ‘Raped anyone so far this season?’
She rang up a sale, gave a kid her change. HangTen was pretty cool for Waterloo; had the right labels. The local kids liked to hang out there, occasionally buy a Billabong T-shirt or some Rip Curl board shorts. Not her scene, however.
She continued to stare at Josh. Finally he woke up. He looked at Caz, a dangerous flush settling over him. There were two other sales assistants, a handful of customers, and all were watching, waiting.
‘How about it, Josh?’ said Caz.
He didn’t rise to it. Instead, he said, ‘Fuck you,’ and dragged the girlfriend out. She wore painted-on jeans and heels she couldn’t manage. She wailed ‘Joshua!’ and he told her to shut up.
Caz smiled at her customers, shrugged, said ‘Schoolies,’ as if that answered everything.
When that young copper came in, wanting to know if there was anything wrong, Caz put on a br
illiant smile and said, ‘Not a thing.’
****
12
Late in the afternoon Challis’s desk phone rang, the duty sergeant. ‘Sir, Superintendent McQuarrie’s here.’
Challis had been expecting this, or at least a summons to regional headquarters. ‘Send him up.’
‘He wants you to come down, sir.’
It was petty and needless, meaning that the super was summoning him and not the other way around. Challis trundled down the stairs, but backtracked before he reached the bottom, re-entering his office and grabbing the White Pride e-mail and the photocopied pages of the Roe Report.
As expected, the superintendent was in the ground floor conference room, a dim, quiet enclave that resembled a boardroom done up on the cheap. What was not expected was that McQuarrie hadn’t come alone. He was standing with Ollie Hindmarsh.
‘Inspector,’ said McQuarrie, a small, tidy individual who always wore the look of a man who’d been adored, but only by his mother and long ago. He shook Challis’s hand, then gestured at the politician. ‘I’m sure you know Mr Hindmarsh.’
Challis nodded, reaching his hand to the Leader of the Opposition, who turned the shake into a brief contest of strength and said, ‘In the interests of my electorate, including the school community and Mr Roe’s many friends, I thought it important to see at first hand how the investigation’s going.’
Challis nodded gravely, intimating that he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘I understand.’
‘Lachlan Roe is a very fine fellow. I don’t want this swept under the rug.’
Challis regarded Hindmarsh carefully, wondering how to play it. The man was clearly attaching great importance to the case, coming all the way down to Waterloo when Parliament was in session. That was one thing. The other was that he’d apparently said ‘jump’ to McQuarrie and McQuarrie had jumped-maybe because Hindmarsh was notoriously critical of the police and the superintendent wanted to make a good impression. Would there come a point at which McQuarrie placed his officers ahead of pleasing a shithead like Hindmarsh?
