by Garry Disher
Ellen began her fine-detail search in the bathroom. First she took digital photographs of the contents of the cabinets, then examined labels and shook bottles and tubes, before replacing everything exactly where it had been, according to the images stored in her camera. Ludmilla had been prescribed a birth-control pill, Adrian an anti-inflammatory.
She repeated her search technique in the other rooms, hunting through all the obvious places: hollow cavities behind skirting boards, under the cistern lid in the en-suite bathroom, behind paintings, inside freezer and pantry containers. No drugs, and only a little alcohol. No pornography, no sex aids, no secret stash of love letters.
Then, tucked under bills, junk mail and what were probably unopened birthday cards in a bowl on a hallstand, Ellen found an envelope containing $250 in cash. With it was an invoice in the sum of $250 made out to Ludmilla Wishart by Grant’s Gardening, the words ‘cash payment appreciated’ at the bottom. Ellen pocketed the envelope and its contents without thinking and moved on to Adrian Wishart’s studio, the only room she’d not yet searched.
She checked the time: 5 p.m. She’d be late to Hal’s briefing, and Wishart might be back at any time. She’d seen him leave, confirming Scobie’s report that the uncle was expecting him, but what if Wishart changed his mind about the drive to the city? She picked over the files, desk diary and drawers desultorily, made a quick search of the man’s laptop, and rummaged through the scraps in his wastepaper bin. On the surface, his life was clinical and hardhearted. She needed to find where that would tip over into committing murder.
A car passed by the house. Ellen darted to the window and saw a taxi winding its way along the street and out of sight. As a reflex, she grabbed the curtain edge and heard the rings rattle on the rod above her head. She looked up. A hollow metal rod, with decorative knobs on each end. Quite a thick rod. Roomy. She remembered her favourite lover’s-revenge story about breaking into the cheating boyfriend’s home and stuffing his curtain rod with rotting fish. Taken him days, weeks, to isolate the source of the awful smell.
Ellen dragged a chair over. One of the decorative ends was dusty. She unscrewed the clean one and there, nestling inside it, was a USB memory stick.
****
32
Early evening in the briefing room, Challis, Sutton, Murphy and the Mornington detectives, Smith and Jones, arranged around the long table, a table now as comfortably part of their lives as their kitchen tables and just as battered. Challis thought how useful CIU’s table could be to the forensic lecturers at the police academy, its surfaces imprinted with DNA traces, prints, stains and ballpoint pen impressions.
‘Where’s Ellen?’
‘Don’t know, boss.’
Challis unfolded from the wall. The evening was mild, the air heated by the west-facing glass, and so he’d provided bottles of juice and mineral water, potato crisps and salted peanuts. ‘First things first,’ he said, tossing back a peanut and perusing a fax from the lab. ‘The mucus found on Lachlan Roe’s sleeve came from the attacker, not Roe. They’ve extracted DNA, but it doesn’t match anyone in the system.’
No one responded. It was a familiar disappointment. Even Pam Murphy seemed to gesture philosophically without actually shrugging her shoulders. Smith and Jones looked bored; it wasn’t their case.
‘But Roe goes on the back burner,’ Challis continued. ‘Our priority is finding who murdered Ludmilla Wishart. Here’s what we know about her last movements.’
Just then, Ellen entered, fast and lithe in her long cotton skirt and sleeveless top but somehow not cool and collected. She’d hurried to the briefing from somewhere, and that had flustered her, but Challis saw other disturbances in her mood and demeanour, too. Regret, perhaps. A hint of waspishness or even guilt. In the four or five seconds it took for her to enter, apologise and claim a chair, Challis cast his mind back over his day, wondering if by action or omission he’d pissed her off in some way. He gave her a full-wattage smile that she tried and failed to return.
‘We were outlining Ludmilla Wishart’s movements yesterday,’ he told her, before turning to the whiteboard, which had ceased over the years to be truly white. Pointing with a ruler he said:
‘Lunch from twelve-thirty to two o’clock with a female friend. Then rather than return to the office she drove to three separate properties. These movements have since been confirmed-the last because her body was found at the scene and according to the pathologist she was killed where we found her, not killed elsewhere and transported there.’
He paused. ‘We have to consider the fact that her murder was work related. She started as a planner for the shire, then a year ago became Planning East’s infringements officer, a job that took her all over the place, looking into complaints and non-compliance with planning restrictions, issuing notices and bans, checking on court- or tribunal-ordered restoration and regeneration work.’
‘A job that pissed people off,’ said Smith. Like Jones, he’d settled into a faintly untidy middle age, as if waiting for retirement and unwilling to over-achieve, or even achieve.
‘Yes.’
‘Enough to kill her, though?’ said Jones.
‘People have killed for a lot less,’ Ellen said. She looked calmer now, focused on the proceedings.
‘True.’
Ellen turned to Challis. ‘What did you learn about the Shoreham site?’
Challis explained that the wealthy Premier’s even wealthier cousin owned it. ‘Name of Jamie Furneaux, but he’s been overseas for four months, so he’s more or less out of the frame.’
‘Overseas. That’s handy.’
‘He was being hounded by the press for chopping down trees without a permit. They were blocking his sea views, needless to say. He made huge bonfires of the timber, and that involved the local fire brigade-to whom he made a generous “donation”. All in all, the press had a field day. He was fined $20,000 and ordered to replant the whole area with indigenous trees and grasses. We think the victim was there to check that he’d carried out the work.’
‘Had he?’ said Sutton.
‘Yes.’
Challis had been resting his hands on the back of a chair. Now he straightened. ‘These places and times are her broad movements for the afternoon. We need to know which routes she took, where she might have stopped, who she might have encountered or visited between appointments. Scobie?’
Scobie Sutton was an arrangement of skinny bones inside his old suit. He rarely looked happy; today he looked to be at his wits’ end with life. He stirred and said, ‘I checked her mobile phone records. She made no calls yesterday.’
‘None?’
‘Several from her office phone yesterday morning,’ Sutton amended. ‘It should be mentioned that her mobile phone was not on or near her body or her car, and it’s not in her office or in her home.’
‘Handbag and wallet are also missing,’ Challis said. ‘If the phone’s switched on, maybe the service provider can locate it?’
‘There should also be an MP3 player,’ said Ellen. ‘A birthday present from her friend at lunch yesterday.’
‘Assuming this isn’t a mugging but staged as one, the killer will have dumped everything somewhere,’ Sutton said. ‘Meanwhile her credit card use shows one purchase yesterday afternoon at three-forty: she bought forty-seven litres of unleaded petrol at the Caltex on the way in to Waterloo.’
‘If they have CCTV,’ Challis said, ‘check to see who else was there at the same time-buying petrol, using the shop, lurking.’
‘You think she was followed?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Her husband followed her on Tuesday, according to one witness,’ Ellen said. ‘And according to her best friend, he’d call or e-mail her several times a day, hang around outside, visit her office.’
‘Did he have reason to?’ asked Smith.
‘Do you mean, did he suspect she was having an affair? There’s no indication she was. Her husband’s a pathetic loser, that’s all. A stalker.
’
Sutton cut in: ‘But the husband’s alibi is sound. He was with his uncle. The guy confirms it.’
Challis tapped the whiteboard again. ‘Next we come to this man, Carl Vernon. Vernon heads a residents’ action group in Penzance Beach. When the group got wind that an old house in the area was about to be bulldozed and a new one erected in its place, they contacted Ludmilla Wishart.’ With an uneasy glance at Ellen, he went on: ‘Ludmilla’s husband said he feared she was having an affair with Vernon.’
‘So he did have a reason to follow her,’ said Smith.
‘Vernon denies it,’ Challis said, ‘and I tend to believe him. In fact, he said that when he was meeting with Ludmilla on Tuesday afternoon, the husband showed up.’
‘It confirms what Ludmilla’s friend told me,’ Ellen said. ‘Adrian Wishart always seemed to know exactly where and when his wife had been during the day.’
Challis nodded. ‘We have another angle via Carl Vernon and Carmen Gandolfo. Apparently Ludmilla suspected that someone in Planning East is on the take, receiving payment in exchange for sensitive information that gives an unfair advantage to people who want to avoid or evade planning restrictions.’
He turned to Smith and Jones. ‘What did you guys find out about Groot and the other planners?’
Jones had half-moon glasses suspended on the tip of his nose. He read from a foolscap pad, holding it at arm’s length: ‘No one has a criminal record or known criminal associates. A couple of speeding fines. Groot blew over.05 on the Frankston Freeway a couple of years ago, but no other traffic infringements.’
‘Financial history?’ said Challis.
‘That’s where it gets a little more interesting. The planners aren’t highly paid and all of them have hefty mortgages, but so do I and most of the people I know. But Groot and his wife have had extensive work done on their house: swimming pool, landscaping, sundeck…’
Challis mused on it for a while. It seemed to him that there was a lot of money around, despite talk of recession. Sure, people were suffering, but the middle class seemed to be doing extraordinarily well. They didn’t buy dull, sensible, locally-made cars any more but exotic European models, and they changed cars every year or two. Challis’s father had held on to his car for twenty years, but people of Challis’s generation didn’t do that. They bought flash cars, owned holiday houses and sent their kids to private schools. The money had to come from somewhere. Mostly loans, he suspected. Mostly honestly, in other words. It was money that could be traced.
‘Dig a little deeper,’ he told Smith and Jones. ‘See who paid for the work on his house.’
‘Boss,’ they said.
Scobie Sutton cleared his throat. ‘Anything on her laptop?’
Challis searched through the faxes, reports and e-mail printouts that were the bane of his existence. Finding the one he wanted, he said, ‘The laptop is fairly new, according to the technicians. There’s very little on it apart from drafts of her reports.’
He turned to Pam Murphy. ‘Murph, you met Carl Vernon yesterday morning.’
She’d been slumped in her chair, alert but apparently bored, playing with a plastic cup. Now she went pink and sat upright, as if aware that he knew she’d made her unauthorised LED search as a result of talking to Vernon. Clearing her throat, she summarised how she’d met Vernon during the demolition of the house known as Somerland, and said fervently, ‘It was heartbreaking to watch. People were angry, in tears. That’s when I heard whispers that a corrupt shire employee had tipped off the owner of the property so he could demolish it before it a protection order could be granted.’
Ellen had been doodling in her notebook. She said, ‘There are three ways of looking at that. One, Ludmilla herself was corrupt, and the property owner killed her to protect himself. Two, Ludmilla was about to reveal the identity of the corrupt employee-and it has to be pointed out that this person might not be a Planning East employee or even a shire employee-and he or she stopped her. Three, Ludmilla approached the demolition guy or the developer, saying she intended to take action against them-’
‘-and it got her killed,’ Challis said.
****
33
At the conclusion of the briefing, Ellen scurried away, saying she had a headache. Challis followed her out, wanting to commiserate, wanting to find out what lay behind it, but she brushed him off, saying, ‘Don’t fuss, I’ll be okay,’ so he shrugged and let it go. He’d learn what the matter was eventually. Or he wouldn’t.
He worked for an hour after the briefing, trying to clear the backlog of forms and correspondence. Then the phone rang and Ollie Hindmarsh said, sounding like shovelled gravel, ‘You lousy cow.’
Challis considered his reply. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Don’t get smart. I’ve had reporters after me all day.’
Challis wasn’t in the mood. ‘Yeah?’
‘That little prick and his blog,’ Hindmarsh said. ‘Thanks to you, the whole world knows.’
Challis burned slowly and surely. ‘Are you saying I leaked it to the press?’
‘I am.
The words dripped from Challis: ‘I’m not interested in you or your hurt feelings. I’m only interested in whether or not Dirk Roe attacked his brother or said or did something that encouraged someone else to do it. If you can’t control your staff, that’s not my concern.’
Hindmarsh’s voice shifted, growing phlegmy and strident. ‘He took the blog off-line two days ago, as soon as he realised the police knew about it! So how come the media are quoting extracts at me?’
‘It was a blog, Mr Hindmarsh. It’s probably still floating around out there in cyberspace for all to see.’
‘Do your job, inspector. You can’t even catch the person who beat up a harmless man of the cloth, and now I see you’ve got a murder to investigate. God knows how you’re going to manage that.’
The evening traffic was muted outside Challis’s window and the corridors were almost silent. A line of cars idled along the McDonald’s drive-through lane, headlights burning, toxins rising. Challis said, ‘Let me reiterate: your harmless man of the cloth contributed racist observations to his brother’s blog. He likes to call himself an “elect vessel”, meaning he believes he has the ear of God. He thinks that modern technology is bad-except in that it may be used to influence an election-not that he ever votes. A woman’s role is to cook, clean and reproduce. And at your behest, he was appointed chaplain of Landseer School, where he didn’t counsel troubled adolescents but told them to get down on their knees and pray.’
Hindmarsh said nothing and the night deepened until finally there was a click in Challis’s ear.
Time to go home.
****
Something had happened to Ellen Destry that afternoon. She’d been hurrying to the briefing, conscious that she’d spent too long in Adrian Wishart’s house, when her good opinion of herself began to fracture.
It had nothing to do with breaking into a scumbag’s house and picking over his secret life, for that was exciting, even desirable. Pocketing the money had been exciting, too. It was something she did, something she’d done from time to time over the years.
But always, always, the thieving would come back to haunt her afterwards. It would eat at her. It never went away. And it had kicked in on the way to the briefing. She’d tried telling herself that she didn’t have a psychological problem, and it was okay to steal from scumbags, and even that ordinary rules didn’t apply to her. She tried telling herself that Adrian Wishart was the kind of guy to keep the gardener’s hard-earned money and say he knew nothing about it. She imagined some big guy corning around and roughing Adrian up.
Then she thought: What if the gardener is too tactful to ask for his money? She thought: It’s not my money. She thought: I need help.
She might have made it to the briefing on time, but just as the police station came into view, she’d turned around and driven back to the house where Ludmilla Wishart had lived, feeling sick at heart. She
tried telling herself that she had good professional reasons for returning the envelope of cash-if Adrian Wishart suspected that someone had been sneaking around in his house he might get rid of crucial evidence, or even accuse the police of theft-but she couldn’t sustain it. Quite simply, a part of her was bad. It needed fixing. She wanted to be loved, desired, admired. She knew that if Hal ever learned about this side of her, she’d die.
But she’d left it too late to return the gardener’s $250. Adrian Wishart’s little red Citroen was parked in the driveway. She turned around, raced back to Waterloo, arrived late at the briefing.
Knowing she couldn’t face Challis afterwards, she’d driven straight home, poured herself a stiff drink and climbed into a bath brimming with hot water and fragrant salts.
Now, as the evening light drew in, she was still in the bath, occasionally letting out the tepid water and adding hot, her skin wrinkling like a prune.
Not that it worked to cure her. She still felt estranged from her old self, the competent, dignified self. It wasn’t that she’d broken into Wishart’s house-he was as guilty as sin; she’d do it again in a heartbeat-but that she wanted or needed to pocket the money she’d found there. She was no better than she’d ever been. This was no way to lead her life.
