by Garry Disher
But it would destroy him if she left. He’d be helpless and hopeless. That was no reason for staying with him, but it made the first step towards leaving him difficult.
He narrowed his pouchy eyes as she sat opposite him with her muesli and a mug of coffee. ‘Have you ever left the heater switched on during the day?’
She had, two or three or maybe a dozen times this winter. ‘No,’ she said emphatically.
‘Liar.’ Then he was doubtful. ‘Maybe it’s the meter, giving a false reading.’
‘It has been a cold winter so far,’ she said, and, as if to reinforce the observation, the foghorns boomed from Westernport Bay.
‘So?’
‘I think we should install central heating.’
‘We’ve been through this.’
We? There’s no ‘we’, Ellen thought. And if I’m serious about leaving him, why am I thinking about installing central heating? Is it because I’m assuming I’ll get the house? Whoa, she thought, you’re getting ahead of yourself.
‘Another thing,’ Alan said, ‘sometimes you sit there with the heater on and a window open. How stupid is that? It’s like trying to heat not only the room but also the rest of Australia.’
‘Central heating.’
‘No.’
A stupid, futile, demeaning squabble, symptomatic of her husband’s simple but dangerous failings and grievances, which boiled down to two things: he’d failed his sergeant’s exam, and his wife had been fast-tracked because she was a woman.
The phone rang and Alan sprang for it, listened, said curtly. ‘She’s got a morning off, sorry,’ and banged the handset down.
‘Who was it?’
‘Challis.’
‘Jesus, Alan.’
Ellen picked up the phone and dialled Challis’s mobile. ‘Hal, I’m sorry-’
He cut her off, telling her that the super’s daughter-in-law had been murdered and outlining the circumstances. ‘I’ll set up an incident room and brief everyone at lunchtime. Meanwhile I need you to sniff around Bayside Counselling: get a feel for Janine McQuarrie and the people she worked with, see if her diary or calendar tell you anything about her movements today.’
‘I’ll take Scobie with me.’
‘If he’s finished in court.’
****
6
Scobie Sutton stifled a yawn; he was sitting in the Frankston Magistrates’ Court, a thin man with the look of a mournful preacher. Heather Cobb was appearing this morning on drugs charges and Scobie, who’d arrested her, was there to ensure that she wouldn’t go to jail.
It had started two weeks ago, when he’d been called to a Waterloo primary school. At show-and-tell that morning Sherry Cobb, barely nine years old, had presented the class with a marijuana plant in a plastic pot. Scobie’s interview with the child, and subsequent visit to her home, had uncovered a typical story of poverty, addiction and neglect. There were five children in the Cobb family, ranging in age from three to eighteen; father in jail; mother an alcoholic. They lived in a two-bedroom weatherboard shack between the railway line and a timber yard.
Now, in the Frankston Magistrates’ Court, Scobie glanced at Natalie Cobb. She was the eighteen-year-old, in Year 12, wagging school today to provide moral support for her mother. When he’d first gone to question Heather Cobb, Natalie had been there, dressed in a tracksuit and slumped in front of the TV. She was a fine looking young woman, but it was two o’clock in the afternoon and she should have been at school. Today she looked not eighteen but twenty-eight, and as poised-in her best clothes, not her school uniform-as any of the young female lawyers you saw around the Magistrates’ Court. Natalie smiled at her mother, then gave Scobie a complicated look.
Complicated girl, Scobie thought.
The cases droned by, and then it was Heather’s turn. As expected, the magistrate let her off with a caution. ‘While I accept that you didn’t grow the plant, Mrs Cobb, you nevertheless allowed your premises to be used for the cultivation of marijuana.’
Heather, dressed in a thin summer dress and ragged parka, glanced worriedly at Scobie through pouchy eyes. He smiled at her, nodded, and mouthed the word sorry to her across the courtroom.
Heather brightened, brushed a greasy comma of hair away from her eyes, and looked confidently at the magistrate. She told him how sorry she was, it would never happen again, the man who’d grown the plants was a bully and she’d been scared of him, but he was in prison in Brisbane now, and no way was she going to let him back into her life.
She means it, too, Scobie thought.
Outside afterwards, Heather Cobb trembled as her tensions eased. ‘Mr Sutton, I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘That’s okay,’ Scobie said. ‘It was a good result.’
‘The magistrate listened to your recommendations,’ Natalie said. ‘You swung it for us. Thanks,’ she said, and pecked him on the cheek.
He blushed. ‘My wife knows you. The youth club on the estate?’
Natalie looked guarded. ‘Mrs Sutton, the social worker? She’s your wife?’
Damn, Scobie thought. I should have kept my big trap shut. If Natalie refuses to work with Beth as a result, I’ll have set back community relations and all of my wife’s good work.
A small van pulled into the kerb, the driver tooting. ‘Got to go,’ Natalie said. ‘See ya, Mr Sutton. See ya, Mum.’
‘Boyfriend,’ Heather Cobb said, watching the van peel away.
Somehow Scobie didn’t think the boyfriend was taking Natalie back to school. His mobile rang. It was Ellen Destry. ‘You finished?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need you back here,’ she said, but didn’t explain.
‘Come on,’ he said to Heather, ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’
****
7
Tessa Kane had heard about the murder at 9.45 a.m., a call from an ambulance officer, one of her many contacts. She’d immediately rung Hal Challis, but he was apparently out of the station and not answering his mobile phone-or not to her, at any rate. Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton weren’t available. And nobody else at the Waterloo police station would talk to her. She felt frantic for thirty minutes, then asked herself what the point was. She published a weekly paper: the dailies would have all the scoops on this story, and she’d have to be content with an overview in next Tuesday’s edition, when no doubt the case would be long closed.
And then, at 11 a.m., Challis returned her call, suggesting they meet for coffee. Five minutes later she was walking down High Street to Cafe Laconic, where she sat at a window table, looking out at the canopied, unoccupied footpath tables, a public phone booth and a plane tree. There had been a dense fog all morning, but it had lifted here on High Street, as if burnt off by human endeavour. Tessa drew her coat tighter around her shoulders and glanced at the corkboard on the adjacent wall: this week’s program at the drive-in cinema in Dromana, a couple of garage sales-she loved garage sales-a scattering of business cards and a federal election poster eighteen months out of date.
Then a waiter was standing there, looking appreciatively at her legs, stockinged today, slim and dark under a skirt. She normally wore jeans or trousers, but liked to dress up on Tuesdays, publication day.
‘What can I get you?’
She smiled. ‘Nothing just yet, thanks. I’m waiting for a friend.’
‘Fair enough,’ the waiter said, and went behind the counter again, a slab of jarrah fronted by corrugated iron. There was wood and iron everywhere, she noticed, her eyes alighting on the election poster again. Her vote had made no difference back then. She came from a family of Labor voters, but Labor had long ago sold out on the things that mattered to her: social justice issues and an independent foreign policy. Back when Labor first showed signs of decline, she’d voted Communist a few times, to register her protest, but Communism was a spent force. Now she voted Green, for the Greens actually held values and beliefs, unlike Labor. She’d probably call herself Red-Green, like the political movement in Ger
many, favouring both social justice reforms and green reforms. Unfortunately the Greens were widely seen as tree-huggers-and indeed there were plenty for whom that was as far as their beliefs extended. She’d never vote Liberal or Democrat, and would never again vote Labor, the party whose ex-prime ministers were now millionaires, its ex-senators and ministers into tax evasion and cozying up to the richest men in Australia.
She was sitting there getting quietly steamed up when the lean frame of Hal Challis passed by the window. Theirs was a complicated relationship. They’d been lovers for a while, things fading away rather than ending convincingly. Now she saw him at press conferences and at times like this, when they exchanged information.
Not that it mattered any more, but she wondered if he felt free of his wife yet. Angela Challis was dead, but that didn’t mean she was dead in Challis’s heart. It had been a huge story at the time, for Challis’s wife had started an affair with another policeman, the pair of them luring Challis to a lonely rendezvous on a back road one night, intending to kill him. The attempt had failed and Challis’s wife had been jailed for conspiracy to murder. But instead of divorcing her, washing his hands of her, Challis had felt obscurely responsible, as if he’d failed Angela, driven her to taking drastic action. He’d gradually stopped loving her-so he said-but for years had let her call and write to him from prison, let her talk out her guilt and regret. ‘Move on, Hal,’ people had said, and God knows Tessa herself had said it often enough, but he’d not moved on, and whenever she was with him he’d seemed disengaged, sad.
And then last year Angela Challis had killed herself in the prison infirmary. Tessa had taken heart. She’d not rushed Challis, not jumped for joy, but been patient, kind and commiserative. Where had that got her? Exactly nowhere. Challis had grown more disconnected, as though the guilt he felt had not disappeared but compounded itself. Eventually she’d stopped seeing him, stopped waiting, but for a long while the whole business had been a permanent ache inside her, composed of loss and emptiness.
She’d known that he was struggling. Back when they’d slept together Challis had too often scurried off home afterwards, or the next morning, as if he had to clear his head. He seemed to want her, then feel crowded, compounded by a desire not to hurt her or lead her on.
Anyway, that was Tessa’s two-dollar analysis. She thought all of these things in the time it took for him to spot her, smile, cross the room and kiss her cheek. He pulled out a chair and sat. Their knees banged together; they moved apart politely, almost automatically.
‘This is a privilege,’ she said, ‘morning coffee with you in a trendy cafe.’
‘As trendy as Waterloo gets, anyway.’
She studied his face. ‘You look tired.’
‘It’s a nasty one,’ he said, and told her all he knew. She made notes, trying not to be distracted when his sleeve rode up, revealing a bony wrist and a centimetre of crisp white shirt. Normally she hated white shirts, but Challis was suited to them, with his leanness, and the olive cast of his skin.
‘What happens next?’
‘We speak to the child.’
‘Could I speak to her?’
Challis said tiredly, ‘McQuarrie would never allow it. She’s too young, and he doesn’t like you.’
She smiled ruefully. McQuarrie had friends in Rotary, local businessmen who didn’t want a local newspaper that was left-wing and edited by a woman.
‘But you won’t keep me out of the loop, Hal?’
He shook his head.
‘Of course, you might solve it this afternoon,’ she muttered, ‘and this time next week it will be stale news and no good to me.’
He gave her a twisted grin. ‘So write another story like the one on well-mannered and well-run suburban orgies, where there’s no time imperative.’
‘Yeah, yeah, rub it in.’
‘People look at me oddly, kind of smirkingly,’ Challis said, ‘as if I’m still involved with you and we’re always having kinky sex.’
‘Poor you.’ She stared at him challengingly. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what it was like?’
He shook his head. ‘Your article pretty much covered it. Apart from a mild titillation, it left me unmoved. And it’s hardly a police matter, not unless any of the players are underage.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve had so much crank mail, my head’s spinning. Distribution’s up, but advertising is down.’
‘Crank mail in addition to the other stuff?’
By ‘other stuff he meant a string of hate mail she’d been receiving for the past few months, along with anonymous phone calls and hang-ups, messages in soap smeared across her windscreen, and on one occasion a rock heaved through the glass panel of her front door. It all seemed to be the work of one man, who called her a bitch and said she’d get what was coming to her, one day soon. There hadn’t been much that the police could do about it.
‘It will all blow over eventually,’ she said.
‘What else are you working on?’
‘The detention centre.’
‘But isn’t it being phased out?’
Tessa shrugged. Very few asylum seekers were left in the Waterloo centre. Most of the detainees now incarcerated there had breached or overstayed their visas, and were quickly processed and repatriated. But Tessa, in her role as editor of the Progress, had been critical of the centre from the outset, in the face of massive local apathy, and wanted one last shot at Charlie Mead, the manager. ‘There are still abuses there, Hal.’
She paused. ‘It looks like I’ll be moving on.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘Moving on?’
‘They’re pulling the plug on me. The sex-party story was the last straw.’
She explained. Challis knew some of the details. The Progress was owned by a wealthy man who had a social conscience and tolerated Tessa’s stance on most issues. What Challis didn’t know was the man also leaned towards the Christian right and was furious with her for attending the sex party and writing about it. ‘I’ve got three months of my contract left.’
Challis squeezed her hand and let it go. ‘You’ll be missed,’ he said.
‘I’ll be missed, or you’ll miss me? Which is it, Hal?’
‘Both.’
She sighed. ‘I thought about you the other day. I was out at the airfield doing a story and had a peek at your Dragon, hoping to find you working on the engine or something.’
Neither the plane nor its restoration had meant much to her, when she was seeing Challis, but they’d clearly meant something to him, and his obsession with such an arcane interest had been oddly appealing at the time.
‘I’m thinking of selling it.’
‘No! Why?’
‘I haven’t worked on it since Kitty was shot. It feels like bad luck.’
‘Hal, I’ve never heard you talk like that before.’
‘I’ll take up golf with McQuarrie instead,’ he said.
He grinned, but didn’t mean the grin and she didn’t return it.
Then he was on his feet and planting a kiss beside her ear. ‘I’d better get back,’ he said.
When he was gone, she stayed in Cafe Laconic for a while, checking messages on her mobile phone. Then, on a whim, she tried the detention centre again, and twenty seconds later, against all odds, was put through to Charlie Mead, who for months had been ‘unavailable’. ‘How did you get this number?’ he demanded.
She frowned. ‘Your secretary switched me through.’
‘She’s a temp, stupid cow. What can I do for you?’
‘Now that the centre is winding back its operations, I thought it would be a good time to run a survey article.’
‘The usual crap? Riots, self-mutilation, bullying guards?’
‘Well, you were never available to give me the other point of view, Mr Mead,’ Tessa said carefully.
‘Sure, why not, one-thirty this afternoon.’
Unbelievable. Tessa returned to her office, forgetting all about Challis.
****
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8
Ellen and Scobie were in Mount Eliza, where Bayside Counselling Services occupied a new but nondescript two-storey building in the main street. The bistro and the delicatessen on either side of it might have been lifted from one of the lifestyle magazines, and were inhabited, so far as Ellen could tell, by people who’d stepped from the pages of a lifestyle magazine. She wondered if they ever made independent decisions, and said so.
‘Sorry?’ said Scobie.
‘Never mind,’ Ellen said. Scobie Sutton liked to think the best of people. There wasn’t a sour bone in his body.
They went in, finding an unoccupied reception desk. Ellen picked up a glossy brochure and showed it to Scobie: Janine McQuarrie was a good-looking woman, if surfaces counted for anything. The face in the brochure was contained and humourless.
Just then a man approached the reception desk, looking furious. He was about fifty, balding and as neat as a pin. Ellen disliked him immediately. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she began.
‘Yes?’ he snapped. He didn’t meet her gaze but addressed a point several centimetres above her head.
‘We need to see-’
‘Make an appointment-when our esteemed receptionist returns from wherever she is.’
‘It’s important,’ Ellen said. ‘We need to see someone in authority.’
‘And you are?’
They showed their warrant cards. ‘Well, I’m Dominic O’Brien, one of the senior partners,’ the man said, still refusing-or unable-to make eye contact.
‘Mr O’Brien, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your colleague, Janine McQuarrie, was found murdered in Penzance North earlier this morning.’
There was a moment of silence, a throat-clearing cough, and O’Brien said, ‘Sorry? Who did you say you were? What are you saying?’
Ellen repeated herself. O’Brien’s voice gained in strength and passion. ‘And you thought you’d just bowl up and drop this little bombshell on me?’
