by Garry Disher
Ellen sighed. ‘So plenty of potential enemies.’
‘You think someone killed Janine to get back at her husband?’
Ellen shrugged. ‘It’s as good an answer as any at the moment.’
****
By 2.30 p.m. they were fronting up to McQuarrie Financial Services’ coldly gleaming marble reception desk, thick carpet under their feet, hemmed in by walls hung with posters discreetly designed and framed. The receptionist, a young woman with a pert nose, poised in a business suit, said, ‘May I help you?’
Challis explained the circumstances of their visit, and saw her swallow and go white. ‘Mrs McQuarrie?’ she whispered.
Challis asked for a room gently. ‘We’ll need to interview everyone, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll need Mr McQuarrie’s permission for that,’ the receptionist said, recovering her colour.
‘Let’s not bother him now,’ Challis replied. ‘He’s comforting his daughter. In any case, this is a murder inquiry and I don’t really need his permission.’
‘But he’s just come in to work. Just one moment.’
Stunned, Challis and Ellen watched her make the call. Then Robert McQuarrie was striding towards them, looking more spruce than grieving. ‘This really isn’t a good time.’
Various thoughts raced through Challis’s mind. Robert McQuarrie had spent scant time with his daughter. He apparently valued his work over her, or the memory of his dead wife. And he hadn’t yet informed his staff or colleagues. The murder had been reported on the midday news, but Janine hadn’t been named. Challis felt a twist of acute displeasure, but concealed it, saying softly, ‘This won’t take long. Perhaps we could go to your office?’
McQuarrie seemed to come to his senses. ‘If you insist.’
Challis gave a mental shake of his head. The super and his wife hadn’t seemed particularly grief-stricken about their daughter-in-law, and now the woman’s husband rushes into the office rather than stay with his daughter. Challis knew something about grief-he’d felt it, he’d observed it, and knew it took many forms-but he’d never seen grief expressed as an inconvenience before. Who are these people? he wondered.
Ellen was clearly thinking the same thing. When they were settled in a huge corner office with views across the city to the bay, she said, ‘I must say I didn’t expect to see you here, Robert.’
The use of the man’s first name was a deliberate slight, an indication that she was in a dangerous mood. But it failed to chasten the superintendent’s son. ‘What are you implying? That I’m not observing a decent period of grieving? That I should be at home with my daughter?’
Challis stepped in. ‘Some people might think that, Mr McQuarrie.’
‘Listen,’ Robert McQuarrie was saying, ‘I have responsibilities. Two hours here, then I’m driving straight back to be with her. How dare you presume to question how I feel or deal with things? Georgia’s in the loving care of my parents today, and tomorrow will go to stay with my wife’s sister. I don’t want to take her home yet.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘We’d only rattle around there and be surrounded by memories. Georgia needs mothering and plenty of distractions, okay? Meanwhile I am the chief executive officer of a company that employs a hundred people Australia-wide.’
With a warning glance at Ellen, Challis said, ‘Then we’ll be as efficient as possible, but we do need to question everyone.’
‘Very well then,’ Robert McQuarrie said.
And so Challis and Ellen asked their questions. McQuarrie answered with barely restrained fierceness. No, he could not think of anyone who hated him sufficiently to kill his wife. He vouched for everyone employed by his firm, and as for the Australian Enterprise Institute, it was comprised of men handpicked from law, business, politics, sport, agriculture and the universities, men who were above reproach and met irregularly in various locations, hosted by sympathetic companies around the country. Nothing sinister, nothing underhand. The Institute did not rent premises anywhere or employ staff. It was not that kind of organisation.
‘Do you receive hate mail?’
Something, a flicker, in the man’s face. ‘Naturally,’ he replied, reverting to his old manner. ‘We at the Institute make the kinds of hard observations that offend sad and mad individuals from the loony left.’
‘Loony left,’ muttered Ellen.
‘Have you kept any of these letters?’ said Challis hastily.
‘Generic hate,’ Robert McQuarrie said. ‘Not worth preserving. Will that be all?’
‘We need to speak to your staff and colleagues.’
A weary sigh. ‘If you must.’
They were given a small conference room. A dozen men and women came to them one by one, and it was soon apparent that none could think of a reason why anyone would want to harm Mr McQuarrie-Mack, Robert, old Rob-by killing his wife. He was an exacting boss and partner, but fair. He wasn’t sleeping around. As for his wife, she seemed nice enough. Sad about Georgia, a sweet kid.
They were so crisp and clean, those employees and fellow executives. Buffed and shined and expensively dressed. Yet Challis sensed an awful fear gnawing at them, and could almost hear their thoughts: Am I a winner? Am I being noticed? Is this suit the right cut, this tie the right colour? Will I get a bonus this year? Will I be promoted? Will my ideas be adopted?
Is anyone listening to me?
****
On the way back they called at a house in Sandringham, which had views over the choppy waters of the bay. Janine’s sister, Meg, answered their knock on the door and her resemblance to Janine McQuarrie was startling. She’d been weeping; her face was raw with grief. ‘You’re lucky to catch me: I’m just on my way to Robert and Janine’s house-Georgia needs me.’
Challis exchanged a glance with Ellen. Was ‘Georgia needs me’ code for ‘Robert needs me’? Had he murdered his wife to have the sister?
She showed them through to a cloyingly warm sitting room. Ellen took over, encouraging Meg to talk about herself. Married, but childless; Janine’s youngest sister (‘There are three of us’); a high-school teacher currently on stress leave.
Challis studied her as she talked. A kindly woman, he decided. Motherly. Unsophisticated. Perhaps a woman who’d wanted to have children but couldn’t. Hardly someone to murder or inspire murder. She wore all of her emotions on her face: pity for Georgia and Robert; dismay and apprehension that her sister could be murdered. ‘I’m glad our parents aren’t alive-it would have killed them.’
‘Did Janine have any enemies? Any altercations with anyone recently? Anything like that?’
‘No. Nothing. I have no idea who would have wanted to kill her. I’m sure it was a mistake.’
Challis gazed at her for a couple of beats, then decided to bypass those polite conversational gambits that are intended to comfort the bereaved but waste police time. ‘Your sister was a forceful woman,’ he said.
Meg blinked. ‘Janine had a demanding job,’ she said stoutly, ‘full of responsibilities.’
Ellen saw where Challis was going, and also pushed. ‘Would you say she was happily married?’
Meg smoothed her thighs as though to dry her palms. ‘Of course!’
‘We heard that she was seeing someone,’ Challis lied.
A barely concealed flicker, the eyes shifting sideways. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
Perhaps Meg meant that she wouldn’t do that, but couldn’t vouch for her sister, thought Challis. Meg clammed up then, visibly distressed, and they left, feeling small.
****
16
Scobie Sutton had received word that Mrs Humphreys was ready to see him, but when he reached the hospital, the first thing he saw was his wife’s car parked in one of the reserved slots. He went inside, showed his ID at the reception desk and explained the purpose of his visit. ‘But first,’ he said, blushing a little, ‘could you page my wife? Beth Sutton?’
A call went out on the public address system, and then Beth was there, beaming, and they gave each oth
er a chaste kiss. ‘I wanted to warn you,’ Scobie said, leading her to a vinyl bench seat beside a rubber plant in a huge brass pot.
His wife was round, pink, and easily flustered. Her hand went to her throat. ‘What about?’
He told her what had happened in court that morning. ‘Now that Natalie knows you’re married to a policeman she’ll be suspicious.’
Beth blinked away sudden tears, shook her head, and clenched her fists in frustration and pain. ‘I’m fighting a losing battle, Scobe,’ she said, and it was an old story between them, the social problems on the blighted estates of Waterloo, Rosebud and Mornington. She knew the Cobb family, and dozens more like them, and sometimes it was all too much, there was too much misery, ignorance and indifference for her to bear.
‘There, there,’ said Scobie, rocking her gently, listening as she told him about Seaview Estate, where the Cobbs lived, which offered views of the refinery stacks and wore an air of defeat.
‘There’s this little community hall,’ she said, ‘but no one on the estate ever uses it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s booked solid every day, but by outsiders, like the Gilbert and Sullivan players, the Penzance Beach Cubs and Scouts, the Yoga Club. I’m trying to get the local kids to make it their clubhouse, but we need funds to employ a youth worker, and whenever I approach the Shire for money, the manager of finance and the manager of marketing say no. Their bottom line is always cost. I try to get them to feel something, but they have no feelings. Oh, it makes me so cross.’
That was as close to an oath as his wife could get.
‘The only ray of hope among the kids on that estate is Natalie Cobb,’ she said.
‘Sorry if I’ve stuffed it up for you.’
‘Oh Scobe, you haven’t.’ She brightened. ‘What brings you here?’
He told her about Janine McQuarrie and the connection with Mrs Humphreys. She was appalled. ‘Janine McQuarrie?’
‘Do you know her?’
‘All the welfare agencies know her,’ Beth said. She paused. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said resolutely. ‘We need to know everything we can, the good and the bad. Then we can sort the relevant from the irrelevant.’
Beth’s hands were washing against each other dryly, restlessly. ‘This could be relevant,’ she said.
‘You’d better tell me,’ he said.
He watched her stare into the distance, gathering her thoughts. ‘It was as if she deliberately set out to antagonise people, turn them against each other,’ she said slowly. ‘She was autocratic, had to get her own way all the time.’
To encourage his wife, Scobie said, ‘We heard much the same thing this morning, from the people she worked with.’
Beth nodded. ‘In one case I know of, a fifteen-year-old girl from one of the estates was referred to her because of problems at home. She told the girl to leave home immediately, but failed to do a follow-up, and the girl joined a shoplifting gang so she could buy drugs. It turned out there weren’t problems at home, not really: the girl didn’t like being thwarted by her mother, that’s all. If she’d carried out a proper mediation involving the girl and her family, she would have saved everyone a lot of heartache.’
Scobie nodded encouragingly.
‘Her job was to listen and advise, and if necessary refer people on to other specialists, or place them in shelters or whatever, but often she’d be openly antagonistic, act like judge and jury.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, let’s say a wife came to her for counselling because her marriage was unhappy or acrimonious: Janine would go after the husband, challenge him directly.’
‘Ah,’ said Scobie musingly.
‘In another case I heard about, a man came to her because his wife was beating him. Janine thought he was lying in order to cover up his own acts of violence, and reported him to the police. She doesn’t double check, Scobie. She doesn’t follow up.’
He sighed. ‘Well, someone sure followed up on her.’
‘Who would do such a thing?’
It’s what good people, innocent people, said at such times. Scobie himself still said it, even after years on the job. He suspected that Challis and Ellen didn’t say it: they knew, or were past being baffled.
But Scobie was patient. He waited, and his wife went on: ‘No one deserves to die like that, but she was awful sometimes, just awful. She was a relief psychologist for the prison service, but rarely got invited back. Children’s Services stopped referring kids to her. She’d insult them-you know, blame the victim-and us.’
‘Can you give me any names? Social workers? Kids?’
‘Oh, Scobie, I don’t think any of the social workers would shoot her. And where would a kid get a gun?’
You’d be surprised, Scobie thought. ‘Even so, she clearly made enemies, Beth.’
‘It was all hearsay, I shouldn’t even be telling you this,’ his wife said, and gathered her things to go.
‘What about lovers?’
‘Oh, Scobie, how would I know a thing like that?’
‘Ask around, could you, love? Discreetly? Who she kept company with. Anyone heard making threats, anyone harmed by one of her decisions…We need their names, even if only to cross them off the list.’
Beth’s face twisted in anguish but she gave him a hurried peck goodbye. ‘I’d better call on the Cobbs,’ she said, and a moment later was hurrying out to her car.
Scobie sighed and returned to the reception desk. A minute later he was shown to a corner room where the afternoon light struggled to reach a high, narrow bed and the woman in it, who was observing him with sly good humour, as if she’d never had an operation in her life. ‘Police, eh?’
She was a down-to-earth, big-boned woman aged in her seventies, and Scobie hated to think of those bones failing her. He sat, mustering a knockabout look on his face to suit her canny, expectant expression. ‘Mrs Humphreys, I understand you live at 283 Lofty Ridge Road in Penzance North?’
‘Call me Joy. And out with it, no beating about the bush.’
So he told her.
‘Good lord. You think those jokers were after me?’
‘Were they?’
‘Blameless, son, a blameless life,’ she said, twinkling. ‘All of my enemies are too old and tired to do me in, or I’ve outlasted them. Who’s the dead woman?’
‘Her name’s Janine McQuarrie.’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘You weren’t expecting any visitors to the house today?’
‘No.’
Scobie showed her the photograph of Janine McQuarrie from the Bayside Counselling brochure. ‘Have you seen this woman before?’
‘No.’
He sighed. ‘It’s possible she was lost and went to your house by mistake.’
‘Followed,’ Mrs Humphreys said, ‘or ambushed? If ambushed, why at my place?’
Scobie grinned. ‘You’re trying to do my job for me.’ He paused. ‘Reporters will want to talk to you.’
‘Let them,’ Mrs Humphreys said.
She was tiring now, winced once in pain, and struggled to muster a return grin. ‘I don’t have a soul in the world but my goddaughter.’
Scobie stiffened. ‘God-daughter?’
‘She was staying with me a couple of months ago but she’s in London now.’
Scobie uncapped his pen. ‘I think you’d better tell me all about her.’
****
17
Mead showed Tessa around the detention centre, a tour that avoided any contact with the detainees, and took her back along an exposed path to the administration wing. ‘Coffee before you go? Tea?’
‘We haven’t finished, Mr Mead.’
‘Call me Charlie,’ he said automatically. ‘What else do you need?’
A chilly wind was blowing from the southwest, right off the bay. Tess shivered, as much from Mead’s indifference as the wind. ‘Some grave allegations have been made.’
‘There are always a
llegations. There always will be. But spit it out: what allegations?’
‘According to a nurse, a guard and a section manager who once worked for you, ANZCOR systematically defrauded the Department of Immigration to the tune of millions of dollars.’
‘Prove it.’
‘For example, you and your staff created artificial riot situations in which equipment and buildings were damaged, in order to submit inflated repair bills.’
‘Is that a question or an opinion?’
‘If any of your section managers raised concerns, they were threatened with the sack and their reports were censored or conveniently lost.’
‘Lady,’ Mead said, leaning towards her menacingly, ‘put up or shut up.’
‘Do you care to comment on these allegations, Mr Mead?’
‘Call me Charlie,’ Mead said, swinging around to face her again. ‘Will that be all? Good,’ he said, opening a side door. ‘Someone will show you out.’
As Tessa left the main building, a guard, bored and scowling, ran his metal detector over a steel door idly, listening to it squawk. He did it over and over again. No one else seemed to notice. In fact, a vicious kind of indifference was the pervasive atmosphere of the place, and Tessa wondered if that was all down to Charlie Mead: who he was and who he had been.
She stopped dead in her tracks. Why continue to look at who he was now? He’d be leaving soon, and she continued to run into brick walls. Why not look at who he had been and where he’d come from?
****
Andy Asche was driving: Natalie Cobb back from the city. He marvelled at how great she looked, despite being stuck in court all morning holding the hand of her fucked-up mother, followed by an afternoon ripping off gear in South Yarra. He told her so.
