Whispering Death

by Garry Disher

  The patrol car drew adjacent. It idled a while, then began to creep past. The driver was trying to steer, watch and manipulate the spotlight. His swivelnecking was inefficient and too regular. Timing it carefully, Grace darted across the road and slithered into the ditch on the other side. A rough-edged stone smacked her knee bone. Mosquitoes whined. She recovered and, at a half crouch, crept along the ditch, keeping pace with the car.

  Soon she reached one of the culverts: concrete drain pipe, heaped sand and storm wrack, water-flattened dead grass. Careful not to trample the grass or leave footprints in the sand and grit, she parted the stalks at the entrance to the pipe, releasing stale air, musty-smelling rather than damp. The gap yawned, too small for her body but not her tools or the paintings. She opened the camera and pocketed the memory card, then stowed the camera in a waterproof bag with the icon and the Klee. She shoved the bag deep inside the drain; kept the pocketknife and change of clothing.

  Meanwhile the police had called in backup. She could hear a siren, see headlights. As she slipped into the grounds of the farmhouse opposite the cypress hedge, a second patrol car arrived, followed by a divisional van. About six cops, she thought, scouting around for the best cover. The closest was a trampoline that had been tipped onto its side. After that, garden beds and the house, sheds to one side. If she could reach the fruit trees and the dam she…

  A shout. She’d been spotted.

  Grace darted behind the trampoline. It was rectangular, black mesh mounted to thick galvanised legs and frame. In daytime it would offer no concealment at all. Grace was relying on the confounding shadows it would throw if a torch swept over it at night.

  As she crouched there, a farmhouse porch light came on, the front door opened and a man and a woman stepped out. They wore pyjamas and the man, clutching at his drooping waistband, said, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘And you are?’ said one of the cops, a heavy man, bristling with belligerence.

  ‘We live here. What’s going on? Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Constable Tankard and I’d like you to step back inside please,’ the cop said.

  ‘But what’s going on?’

  ‘An intruder. Have you seen anyone running past here anytime in the last few minutes?’

  ‘We’ve been asleep.’

  ‘Please, both of you, go back inside. This person could be dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘Please, go inside, lock all your doors and windows.’

  ‘But what if he’s in there?’

  Grace heard rather than sensed the frustration, and watched the man named Tankard approach the house. He banged heavily past the occupants, into the house. Then he came out again. ‘All clear.’

  ‘You sure?’ said the husband.

  Tankard ignored the couple. He began to shout and eventually some order settled on the milling uniforms. Grace heard them call reassurances to each other as they began to split up. She started to back away.

  An elderly woman came wheezing in from the road by torchlight. A constable who’d been left with the cars shouted, ‘Police. Stop right there.’

  The old woman jumped. Her torch jerked, the light finding the trampoline. Grace ran.

  ‘Oi!’

  Grace zigzagged, darting feints left and right, into the lee of a pump shed, then a garden shed, a fowl house, a farm ute, a thicket of oleander bushes. She reached the fruit trees and then the dam as the police converged on the officer who had spotted her. Still carrying her bag of spare clothing, she slipped into the water and submerged herself among the reeds at the water’s edge. She waited.

  Before long, her teeth rattled, her limbs shook, iciness reaching deep into her core. She felt for the pocketknife and clamped the plastic handle between her jaws and continued to shake. The police were shouting, five men and one woman. They were excited, jumpy. One remained standing near the trampoline, the others split up to circle the dam. Grace peeked: they were keeping hard to the edge, shining their torches into the tangled reeds. Scooping mud from beneath her, she pasted it over the paleness of her face and hands. Now she was a black shape among a mess of shapes—indistinguishable, surely.

  It was Grace’s experience that humans possess a kind of sixth sense, a residue of instinct for one another’s proximity, and so she averted her gaze and emptied herself of thoughts, or personality. She was nothing, a featureless blob of matter. She didn’t gasp or move when a heavy black shoe stood on her leg, squelching it deeper into the muddy reed bed. The torchlight fingered the reeds and then the pressure let up and the man moved a short distance away, to step into the mud again and poke around with his torchlight.

  ‘Waste of time,’ said the woman cop some time later.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Grace stayed where she was through the long hours. It was possible that the police had packed it in and gone home, equally possible that they’d left a couple of officers to watch for her.

  At dawn on Thursday there was stirring in the farmhouse. A woman’s voice called, ‘You two must be miserable, how about a cooked breakfast?’

  ‘Coffee would be good,’ the man named Tankard said.

  ‘Yeah, coffee.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, you need more than that,’ the woman said.

  ‘Catch the guy?’ her husband asked.

  ‘He’s long gone,’ Tankard said, disgust and resignation in his voice.

  Grace waited. The woman brought coffee, toast, eggs and bacon to the sentry cops, and now the air was filled with cheery commiserations and bragging. Grace slithered out of the dam. She crawled on her belly and through a fence into a paddock of unmown spring grass. Still she crawled. Later, the vines. Here she got to her feet. She ran.

  The running warmed and loosened her, even as the water sloshed in her shoes and the wet clothing chafed her skin. After three kilometres she came to the township, and, crouching behind a line of bushes, watched her car for several minutes. Nothing, and no action at the house, only a kind of poleaxed stillness that said no one would rise before noon.

  Checking that she was unobserved, Grace stripped off her wet clothes. She used the shirt and knickers to wipe off the bulk of the mud, then washed the rest away with her drinking water. Then she dressed in the clothes from the waterproof bag—underwear, a white satin blouse, tailored black pants and strappy sandals, finally finger combing her short hair. There was still mud in the roots of her hair, her fingernails, even her ears, but at a distance she’d pass for a brisk young woman off to her office job. She got into the Camry and drove away.

  Thursday was rubbish collection day in Waterloo, bins waiting outside every front gate. Grace dumped the soiled clothes into a side street bin. Then she drove to the motel in Berwick, checked out, checked into another in Dandenong. Here she showered and slept fitfully, still shivering a little, a residual chill from the muddy water in which she’d spent the night.

  Late afternoon she bought a small digital camera powered by AAA batteries and replaced its memory card with the one she’d pocketed after the break-in at the Niekirks’. She scrolled through her photographs. They were sharp and clear.

  She collapsed on the thin bed cover and stared at the marks on the ceiling. The icon was a part of her heart and her bones, and now she was falling in love with the Klee. Otherwise she’d walk away this minute, leave them both to rot in the culvert.

  Unless there was a flash flood, they’d be safe until the morning.

  38

  In Waterloo, Challis was pouring coffee and thinking about his date with Ellen on Skype last night. He’d logged on and there was her left breast watching him. The left, not the right. To his mind, both were perfect, but she considered the left better than the right. Then she’d had a fit of the giggles and covered up and they’d tried to talk sensibly. Sensibly with desire palpable in the air. He grinned and thought he’d better get working.

  First the overnight log.

  The usual bar fights, car thefts and break-ins—but one of the latter, on Go
ddard Road, Constable John Tankard attending, had occurred at the home of Mara and Warren Niekirk. According to Tankard: Intruder spotted leaving the house carrying a bag.

  Given that he’d met Mara Niekirk, Challis was mildly curious. There was no answer when he called their home and business numbers. Meanwhile, Tank would be off-duty and asleep, so he called the witness who had reported the intruder.

  Audrey Tremaine’s voice was elderly, but clear and forceful. ‘Young, old, man, woman—it was too dark, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m surprised that Mr and Mrs Niekirk didn’t report it.’

  ‘Been in Sydney all week. I called them last night and they said they’d catch the first flight back this morning.’

  Challis rang off, ordered a crime-scene van to attend, then went looking for Pam Murphy. ‘Feel like checking out a break-in?’

  ‘I don’t know—after a serial rapist the excitement might be too much for me.’

  ‘You’ll manage.’

  They clattered downstairs to the main corridor, encountering the usual crush of civilian collators, support staff and uniformed police, some idling at the water fountain or reading ‘for sale’ notices, others banging in and out of doors with equipment or paperwork.

  ‘I expect we’ll be taking your car, boss?’

  The rat story had got around. ‘Very funny,’ Challis said, making for the front desk to sign out the CIU car. He made his habitual scan of the people in the foyer. No familiar faces this morning, just honest citizens wanting a statutory declaration signed or reporting a missing wallet, but still managing to look shifty, a metamorphosis that afflicts everybody who walks into a police station, Challis thought.

  He collected the key, joined Murphy in the car park. ‘You drive.’

  She got behind the wheel, he into the passenger seat, watching as she jotted time and date in the logbook, set the trip meter to zero, adjusted the rear-view mirror, turned the ignition key. Then they were on the open road and she was flicking through the traffic without surging or braking, eyes everywhere at once. Her competence was palpable, he could see it in the way her driver training flowed through her body to the car and the road, taking in the world of potential hazards that slipped past her window. If he had a squad of Pam Murphys, his clear-up rate would double.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are they going to sack you?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he said slowly, as if giving it some thought. ‘I take it you’ve seen Tuesday’s paper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It seemed clear to Challis that Jack Porteous and the News-Pictorial were playing one side against the other. Porteous had quoted Challis last week, to see what the reaction would be. This week he’d quoted senior police bureaucrats. He hadn’t sought a reaction from Challis, just gone ahead and printed Force Command’s weasel words. ‘Statistics show that in fact…blah, blah, blah.’ ‘Changing times and changing priorities mean that policing methods must keep pace and blah, blah, blah.’ And an acknowledgment that the pressures of the job did in fact put a strain on the work and domestic lives of certain police, such that they might develop a false perspective…Meaning, Challis thought, that one certain detective inspector was having a meltdown.

  ‘They’re trying to discredit me,’ he’d said to Ellen last night.

  ‘And they’ll follow that with ostracism,’ she said. ‘That’s how it works.’

  He said to Pam Murphy now, ‘Look, I embarrassed them, so they’re huffing and puffing a bit. It’s not as if I went on national television. It’s not as if the Melbourne dailies are interested. It’s local. But they still need to respond.’

  ‘They still need to reprimand you?’

  Challis slumped in his seat. ‘Somehow or other, they will do that, yes. Wait and see, Murph, wait and see.’

  ‘If they drive you out, can I have your office?’

  ‘That’s what I like about you Pamela, one hundred and ten per cent support.’

  ‘But seriously, what can they do?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Demote you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Put you back in uniform and send you to the outback?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue.’

  Pam Murphy wriggled behind the wheel, getting comfortable. ‘Think I’m getting the hang of formal crime-fighting language. “Who knows?” “Maybe.” “Wouldn’t have a clue.” If I learn to use these expressions correctly, will it make me a better detective?’

  Challis punched her lightly on the upper arm. ‘No one likes a smartarse.’ He paused. ‘I understand that you asked the lab to check Muschamp’s uniform for pollen traces.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said tensely.

  ‘Sergeant Schiff was concerned about running over budget.’

  ‘So you’re not going to authorise it, is that what you’re saying? Sir?’

  ‘Settle down, Constable. It was a good call, I signed off on it.’

  Murphy subsided. ‘Sorry, it’s just that she got a bit pissed off with me, said pollen is pollen, it might indicate he was at one of the crime scenes but not that he did anything.’

  ‘Murph, it was a good call. That’s how cases are built, one plank at a time. Or grain.’

  She nodded. The car rode with the sun behind it. ‘So, tell me, why are we investigating a break-in?’

  ‘The Niekirks cropped up in another case recently.’

  Challis told Murphy about the Bristol Beaufighter, its questionable provenance and seizure by the government. She laughed. ‘Who’d call an old plane “whispering death”? They all sound like lawnmowers.’

  ‘I’ve noticed this about you, Constable Murphy: you have absolutely no regard for heritage values.’

  ‘That’s right. So these people, the Niekirks, would have a house full of expensive art and antiques?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I’d better add that to my list of crime-fighting terms: “I guess so.”’

  ‘Next left,’ said Challis. ‘Look for a sign saying “Lindisfarne”.’

  Pam Murphy made the turn onto Goddard Road, hand over hand on the steering wheel, her upper body leaning with the motion, and in that brief moment Challis saw her collar gape, saw a fading love bite. Who? The car shuddered on dust corrugations and pebbles pinged inside the wheel arches. Then the sign and a pair of massive gateposts.

  Pam turned in, through to a big house on the other side of a cypress hedge. Eyeing it, Challis said, ‘You might call it ugly.’

  ‘But pretentious.’

  ‘…And yet so much worse inside.’

  A crime scene van was parked on the driveway, two young men beside it, wearing bulky blue oversuits and white overshoes, aluminium equipment cases in their gloved hands. Confronting them was a man dressed in a short woollen coat over black trousers and leather shoes, while, closer to the house, a young woman whom Challis recognised as the nanny was unbuckling a child from the rear seat of a big BMW. Standing back, watching the confrontation, was Mara Niekirk, carrying a purse and an open-topped bag. Soft toys, disposable nappies, the edge of a blanket.

  Challis and Murphy approached, Challis calling, ‘Is there a problem?’

  The man swung around. Tall, fair, late forties, handsome in a blockish, retired-footballer way. A bony nose, sleepless eyes, a crooked front tooth. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Challis gave his name, Murphy’s name, and shot out his hand. ‘You must be Mr Niekirk. We’re sorry to hear about the break-in.’

  The anger evaporated, but Niekirk was tense. ‘Not much of a break-in. Intruder, that’s all. No need for this lot—’ he gestured at the crime scene officers ‘—to trample over everything.’

  Sometimes it helped to play one person off against another. ‘Hello, Mrs Niekirk.’ Challis smiled past the man’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry we have to meet in unfortunate circumstances again.’

  A tight smile. ‘Except that last time you didn’t tell me you were a policeman.’

  Challis made an apologetic
gesture. ‘I was there strictly as a civilian.’

  Warren Niekirk was frowning, a step behind the conversation. ‘You two know each other?’

  His wife explained, and he turned to Challis with an expression of frustration. ‘I bought that plane fair and square and—’

  Challis didn’t want to get into it. ‘I’m sorry, both of you, but I’m afraid we do need to investigate. A report was made, and the police were called to your house, and someone was seen exiting through the front door, carrying a bag of some kind. We’ll dust for prints, have a quick look around, and be out of your hair in no time.’

  ‘I’ve looked,’ Warren Niekirk said. ‘Nothing was stolen or broken.’

  Mara Niekirk gave her husband a complicated glance, then turned to Challis and said, ‘We have no objections.’

  ‘We’ll be quick. Perhaps you could both walk us through the house first, show us to where you keep your valuables.’

  Then the nanny was standing there hand-in-hand with the child, looking on avidly. Mara Niekirk, her face and voice tight, said, ‘Tayla, please, she’s been cooped up in a plane. Why don’t you take her over there to play for a while.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Niekirk, of course.’

  The nanny wheeled around and trotted with the child towards a distant swing set.

  ‘Hasn’t the sense she was born with,’ Mara Niekirk said apologetically.

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Challis. ‘Shall we go inside?’

  ‘If you think it will do any good.’

  They entered the house. Challis found himself walking through a series of sterile rooms. It was as if the decorators had looked at a set of plans and phoned in some suggestions. Not even the presence of a child had softened the place. He could feel the hand of absolute control at work, admonishing, whisking away crumbs, allocating chores.

  Meanwhile the Niekirks were looking about keenly: at walls and shelves, into drawers and cabinets.

  ‘Nothing’s missing.’

  ‘No damage anywhere.’

  Then the bedrooms, and Challis realised that husband and wife slept apart. ‘You had something hanging on that wall,’ he said, in Mara Niekirk’s bedroom.