by Garry Disher
They clattered down the stairs. In the canteen Challis said, ‘The TrackStick helps confirm our instincts about Adrian, but it doesn’t prove he killed his wife.’
Suddenly Ellen couldn’t look at him. Ever since last night a vague, unwelcome anxiety had been settling in her, and now it took shape. It wasn’t so much that she felt bad about stealing the TrackStick, or being found out, as that she thought less of her confessor. Not by much, hardly at all, but in a tiny corner of herself she was disappointed in Challis. Why didn’t he hate her? Why wasn’t he admonishing her, punishing her?
Maybe helping him nail Wishart would cure that. Her mouth very dry, her face probably revealing her wretchedness, she placed a hand on his slender forearm. ‘It comes down to his alibi. I vote we have another crack at the uncle.’
Challis was doing his long stare across vast distances. He blinked, recovered, and said, ‘You’re right. Could you do that? Deep background first. Really check him out.’
****
45
Ellen’s first step was to phone Scobie Sutton. ‘Where are you? We badly need everything you’ve got on Ludmilla’s movements, especially CCTV.’
He sounded fretful. ‘Look, I’m in the car, okay? Taking Ros to a party. My wife isn’t well, so some things will just have to wait. I’ll be in before lunch.’
Ellen closed and opened her eyes. She knew about the wife. But what if Scobie were giving vent to other grievances? Maybe he thinks I’m Hal’s favourite, she thought. Maybe he thinks we don’t respect his work, thinks we’re ganging up on him.
If so, what she asked him next was going to make him crankier. ‘Scobie,’ she began carefully, ‘about Terry Wishart.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s Adrian’s alibi. No reflection on your initial interview, but I’m going to go have another crack at him.’
‘No skin off my nose.’
Relieved, she said, ‘What’s he like?’
She could picture Scobie at the wheel of his car, frowning in his wondering way as he mused on her question-and driving badly, his little girl there in the car with him. She said, ‘Would he lie to protect Adrian? Are they close? Is there any love lost between them?’
‘They’re opposites, apart from being different generations,’ Scobie said finally. ‘He’s blue collar. Adrian’s smooth, educated. Terry mends electrical gear, lives alone, stuck in the past.’
‘The past?’
‘His army days,’ Scobie said. ‘He’s a bit sad, spends all his free time down at his local RSL club.’
‘Thanks, Scobie.’
Army. Who could she call on a Saturday?
With reluctance she kept returning to just one person, her ex-husband. She stared at her desk phone for a while, biting the inside of her cheek. It hadn’t been an easy marriage, not toward the end and not even for many years before that. They might have drifted apart anyway, but when Ellen’s career in the police force took off and Alan’s didn’t, the split came hard and fast. Alan Destry resented not only the fact that his wife belonged to CIU-’The elite,’ he’d say disparagingly-but also that she’d been fast-tracked through the ranks. ‘Because you’re a woman,’ he’d sneer, somehow overlooking the fact that he’d twice failed the exams she’d passed with ease.
Then he’d looked around for other ways to fault her. She was never at home but always out on some case, and so she was not a good wife to him, or a good mother to their daughter. And she’d been sleeping with Challis all that time. Or probably sleeping with Challis. Or wanted to sleep with Challis.
He, on the other hand, had kept more regular hours, which entitled him to call himself a good father. His job wasn’t glamorous-he was a traffic cop, wrote up tickets, manned booze buses, aimed speed cameras, did a bit of accident investigation work-but it was honourable and important. He kept repeating it, like a mantra, as if Ellen disparaged what he did.
Then there were all of the little things she did wrong. Her habit of never switching lights off when she left a room, for example. Or leaving a heater burning with a window open in winter. Forgetting to pass on phone messages or fill the car with petrol. And he hated it that she’d kept herself trim while his body grew slack from beer and the hours he spent behind the wheel of a car.
As desire and love leaked away, Ellen had grown to hate that body. Its bulk, emissions, and hairiness. The way he chewed his food. The way he sniffed instead of blowing his nose. The way his mouth sometimes hung open.
Ultimately, desire and love gave way to disgust, and she moved out as soon as Larrayne had left home to study in the city.
Thinking of all these things now, Ellen saw a connection between herself and Ludmilla Wishart. Had Ludmilla wanted to leave her husband? There were no children to keep her at home, but had she feared what her husband might do if she did leave? Had she been waiting for the best time to leave him?
What exactly would be the best time for someone in Ludmilla Wishart’s position? Finding the courage to leave? Finally suffering some kind of unconscionable mistreatment?
Well, her husband had done something unconscionable, and it had been pretty final.
Then Ellen compared her husband with Ludmilla Wishart’s. Both men liked to control. They had tempers. They were jealous.
But she couldn’t, in good conscience, take it further than that. Alan hadn’t stalked her. He hadn’t tried to kill her, or play mind games with her. He hadn’t wanted her to leave, certainly, but he hadn’t tried to stop her, either, beyond a bit of pleading and the expected kinds of emotional blackmail. In fact, he’d found the separation and divorce liberating, in the end. He soon found a place to live. He found a girlfriend. He was having another shot at the sergeant’s exam and felt pretty confident this time.
‘Been studying like a bastard,’ he told her, later that Saturday morning.
‘Good luck,’ she said, meaning it, touching his wrist briefly.
They’d arranged to meet in the little coffee shop within the Bunnings Warehouse in Frankston. The place was crammed, like it always was on weekends, men and women in a do-it-yourself mood, shopping for paintbrushes, power tools, seedlings from the garden centre. A Bunnings store was Ellen’s idea of hell, but Alan said he could give her a few minutes between chores, otherwise he wouldn’t be free until next Tuesday.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ she said.
‘No worries,’ he said shyly. He paused. ‘You look good.’
In fact, he was looking good. He’d lost weight. He was taking care of his appearance. But he was still a big, hairy man. She didn’t love him any more.
Didn’t want him.
Then he had to go and spoil it. ‘How’s Hal baby?’
‘Cut it out, Alan.’
‘I can be a bit jealous of your boyfriend, can’t I?’
He wants me to be jealous of his girlfriend, she realised.
‘You found yourself someone before I did,’ she countered.
He grinned. ‘Fair enough.’
He’d bought a file with him. It lay between them on the little table, a glass-topped table with metal legs of slightly varying lengths, so that you wouldn’t want to lean your elbow on it or trust your watery coffee not to spill. Or even buy it, Ellen thought. They hadn’t talked about or looked at the file, but now, ostentatiously, Alan opened it.
‘My mate did that digging you asked for. E-mailed the results.’
His mate in the Army Records Office. Alan had been a military policeman before joining Victoria Police, based near Seymour when he met Ellen. Six weeks after he was posted to Townsville, she had written to say: ‘Guess what-I’m pregnant.’ So long ago. Now their baby was a young woman.
She shook off the memories. What mattered was the fact that one of Alan’s service mates had stayed on in the Army and was willing and able to help him.
‘What did he find?’
‘This,’ Alan Destry said with a flourish and a smirk, pulling out a sheet of paper.
Ellen froze. ‘Not funny, Al.’<
br />
The page was blank.
‘I’m not being funny, Ells, honest.’
‘Terry Wishart’s records are sealed, I take it?’
‘Nup. They don’t exist.’
Ellen frowned. ‘Removed?’
‘Sweetheart,’ said her ex-husband in his heavy way, ‘Terry Wishart doesn’t exist. Or he does, but he was never in the Army, never in the Navy, never in the Air Force, never in the reserves.’
‘But he belongs to the RSL. Scobie Sutton checked him out. There are pictures of the guy with his Army mates.’
‘Pictures of him with his RSL drinking buddies now,’ Alan said. ‘Bet there are no pictures of him in uniform or with his mates in 1970.’
‘So he’s a fake.’
‘Got it in one,’ Alan said. He leaned over the table confidingly, a familiar gesture to Ellen, a signal that he was about to instruct her in something. ‘He fabricated the whole thing, and he’s not the only one. My mate says he’s looked into a dozen cases so far this year. Genuine veterans like cooks and drivers saying they saw active service, when all they did was sit around on some base back home, and wannabes like this Wishart joker, who were never in the armed services to begin with. They march on Anzac Day, wearing medals they bought off eBay, join the RSL so they can hear and swap yarns…Makes them feel good, I guess. Fucking losers.’
‘But don’t they get found out?’
‘Eventually. Meanwhile they glean enough detail by just standing around shooting the breeze with genuine vets. If you press them for extra detail, they say their service records are sealed or don’t exist because their work was so secret.’ He shook his head. ‘Pathetic’
It was pathetic. It was also a lever. ‘Thanks, Al,’ Ellen said, and she planted a big, surprising, appreciative and sisterly kiss on his Saturday morning stubble.
****
46
There is a point in a journey when the varying landscape seems unvarying and the motions and sounds of your passage lull you into a dreaming state. That happened to Challis somewhere behind Chelsea, on the Frankston Freeway. He was driving, Ellen was his passenger, and this journey up to the city they’d made many times before, separately and together. The temperatures inside and outside the car were mild, thin cloud had reduced the glare, and the traffic was sparse. He should have been concentrating furiously on the immediate concerns of his life. In no particular order, these were the need to break Adrian Wishart’s alibi, help Ellen feel better about herself and decide what should happen between them. But Challis’s mind strayed and drifted and he couldn’t hold on to any of his serious thoughts for more than a few seconds.
Except one: that as far as he was concerned, nothing much had changed. He felt comfortable driving along with Ellen Destry beside him. He felt comfortable living with her. He felt comfortable being her lover. Did it matter that she had itchy fingers? Was he so perfect?
But her silence and demeanour suggested that she was judging herself, and he tried to hang on to that thought and work through it. Ellen Destry wondered what he was thinking. He was silent and preoccupied, but then, that was his natural state. She wasn’t someone who had a desperate need to fill all silences, but what was this silence about? She’d confessed something momentous to him last night: was he weighing it all up? Was he going to say it was over and kick her out? She half wanted him to, for that would save her from taking the first step. The silence grew and she thought her head would burst and she put her hand on his thigh.
A faint spasm transmitted itself through his clothing to her fingers. She snatched her hand away.
He said hoarsely, ‘Put it back. Please.’
She did. ‘Hal,’ she said, and felt like crying.
‘We’ll work it out,’ he said, and he sounded pretty definite about it.
****
They decided to hit the uncle hard. They barged into Wishart Electronics, Ellen badging a customer and telling him to leave, Challis shutting the street door and turning the sign from open to closed. ‘Hey!’ Terry Wishart said, from behind the counter.
And, just as abruptly, they turned good-cop, all smiles, friendliness and good humour. After announcing that this was merely a follow-up visit, double-checking some matters left over from Constable Sutton’s visit earlier in the week, Challis gazed about with frank admiration. ‘Nice little business you’ve got here. Doing well?’
‘Okay,’ said Wishart warily.
‘I should clone you and install you at my place or in the cop shop. The equipment’s always breaking down.’
Wishart laughed a little desperately.
‘Hey,’ said Ellen, gazing at one of Wishart’s photographs, Wishart leaning nonchalantly against the tracks of an army tank, ‘were you in Vietnam by any chance? So was my dad. I don’t know what he did there: he’ll never talk about it.’
This was the right approach, Challis realised, watching Terry Wishart closely. It would reassure the guy and enable him to maintain his lie without having to elaborate on it. He saw Wishart’s soft chest swell, and heard him say authoritatively, ‘Some of what we did there was hush-hush. We’re not allowed to talk about it.’
‘Sort of like secret missions and stuff?’ said Ellen.
Wishart’s face grew enigmatic. ‘That’s correct.’
‘You must have been scared. You must have been brave,’ Ellen said. She clasped herself as if she felt cold. ‘I know I could never do it.’
‘Well,’ Terry Wishart said modestly.
Then Challis and Ellen both turned and looked at him, and waited, and beamed big smiles at him. Presently Challis said, ‘It’s all bullshit, isn’t it, Terry?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re no more an Army veteran than I am,’ Ellen said.
Wishart spluttered, ‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘You were no closer to South-East Asia than your TV set,’ Challis said.
‘We checked,’ said Ellen.
‘You’ve been telling lies,’ Challis said.
‘All those guys at the RSL club, all those genuine vets…’
‘What are they going to think when they find out?’
‘You’ll be a laughing stock.’
‘You’ll have to sell up and move to Outer Woop Woop.’
‘After they come around here and beat the shit out of you.’
‘After the Herald-Sun and “Today Tonight” demolish you in public.’
Wishart’s gaze flicked from one to the other. He grew sweaty, greasy with it, and seemed smaller suddenly. He collapsed onto the stool behind the counter. ‘Please. Leave me alone.’
‘Who should we inform first, Sergeant Destry?’ said Challis. ‘The newspapers? His mates?’
‘I think we should tell everyone,’ said Ellen, but she was swallowing a little, her heart no longer in it. Who didn’t have pathetic little secrets?
In his delicate way, Challis seemed to read her. He said, in a gravely courteous voice, ‘Mr Wishart, you provided the police with an alibi for your nephew’s movements on Wednesday, the eighteenth of November. Would you care to revise that statement?’
‘All right!’ screeched Wishart. Then, subsiding, he muttered it: ‘All right.’
‘Adrian was here, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You had lunch together?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he didn’t stay with you for the whole afternoon, did he?’
‘No.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Back to check on Mill.’
‘In his car?’
Terry shook his head. ‘Too distinctive. He took my car.’
‘What time was this?’
‘He left around two-thirty.’
‘Half past two on the afternoon of Wednesday the eighteenth of November?’
‘Yes.’
‘What car do you drive?’
‘Falcon station wagon.’
And there were millions of them on the road, thought Challis. ‘What time did he return?’
>
‘Almost seven o’clock.’
‘Early evening, not seven the next morning?’
‘Correct.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to check on his wife?’
‘She was having an affair.’
‘He wanted to catch her meeting her lover?’
‘Yeah. He knew he’d be spotted if he drove the Citroen.’
‘What was his state when he returned?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dress, manner. Was he dirty? Any blood on his clothes? Was he excited, depressed, tearful, agitated?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he’d just murdered his wife.’
‘No way. Uh, uh, no way,’ said Wishart emphatically.
‘He’d cleaned off the blood?’
‘There was no blood!’
‘Did he ask you to get rid of his clothing? The tyre lever? Did you provide him with a change of clothing? Have you checked to see if he replaced the tyre lever from your car?’
The questions were coming thick and fast, and Terry Wishart backed away, saying, ‘He didn’t kill her! He’d never do that! He followed her, that’s all.’
‘We have to arrest you for providing a false statement to the police, providing a false alibi for a suspect,’ said Ellen gently. Mainly she didn’t want Terry to warn his nephew.
‘No, please.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Challis smoothly, ‘you’ll be out in no time.’
‘Just,’ said Terry Wishart helplessly, ‘just don’t tell anyone about the Army stuff. Please?’
****
47
The murdered woman’s husband was returned to the interview room and his lawyer recalled. Adrian Wishart looked tense and wary, but more contained than afraid-as if he were expecting tedium, another session explaining his side of the story to a couple of slow thinkers. Sitting upright, a long-suffering expression on his face, he demanded, ‘What now?’
His lawyer, Hoyt, followed with, ‘Either charge my client or let him go.’
