by Garry Disher
Then, when timing and efficiency mattered, she’d been no use at all.
Andy had a special trailer for these Peninsula burglaries, towed each time by a ute or van stolen especially for the job. Andy’s Mowing, like Jim’s Mowing, that franchise operation you saw everywhere these days. High steel mesh sides, the handles of rakes, shovels, pruning shears and a lawnmower showing. A few padlocked aluminium lockers in the well of the trailer: anyone would think they contained secateurs, sprinkler nozzles, lengths of hose, weed poison, bags of blood-and-bone. They wouldn’t think portable TVs, laptops, DVD players, leather coats, jewellery boxes, CD collections.
All that weight on board, he should have thought twice about letting Natalie drive, especially given the rain they’d been having lately. Before he could stop her she’d cut across the lawn on the way out, bogging the van. She’d then proceeded to cack herself laughing as she revved the motor and he pushed, getting himself sprayed with watery mud and grass in the process.
Then a tense moment when a guy delivering leaflets in a big four-wheel-drive had pulled up at the front gate, slipped a leaflet in the letterbox, and noticed their predicament. ‘Need a hand getting out?’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Andy had said, prattling on nervously about gardening work being slow in winter, and you had to be careful on these rural properties, three times he’d been bogged in the past month, and he’d have to come back tomorrow, do the right thing and patch the owner’s lawn.
‘Tell me about it,’ the guy said, shoving a leaflet at him and hitching a towrope to the front of Andy’s stolen Toyota van. Andy glanced at the leaflet as the guy pulled him out of the mud. ‘Dave’s Farm Drainage,’ with a mobile number at the bottom.
‘Thanks, Dave.’
‘No problems,’ Dave said, and was gone-Andy and Natalie forgotten, with any luck.
Andy took charge after that, grabbing the leaflet from the letterbox outside the gate, then removing copies from every letterbox along the road, and finally driving home to his place. With Natalie’s ‘help’ he shifted the stolen goods to the back of the van and unhitched and stored the trailer. Finally he did what he always did with laptops: he transferred the contents of the hard drive to his PC with its 120 gig hard drive. He’d examine the files later. You got all kinds of stuff, porn, bank account details, sensitive documents. You never knew when it might come in useful.
And now it was mid afternoon and they were heading up to the pawnshops in the city. Nat was bored, restless, so he let her fiddle with the stolen laptop. She always got a kick out of scrolling through the intimate aspects of some stranger’s life.
‘Boring,’ she said, her slender fingers flashing over the keys and rolling the cursor ball. ‘Wait a minute.’
‘What?’
‘Wicked,’ she said.
‘What?’
Natalie was silent, her fingers busy. ‘I think,’ she said in a bright, wry, singsong voice, ‘we hit a cop this morning.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Some case he’s working on.’
Natalie continued to search the contents of the laptop. ‘Hello. Dirty pictures.’
Andy thought a cop was as entitled as anyone to visit porn sites. ‘So?’
‘Not what you’re thinking. These look like they might be evidence.’
‘Evidence. Shit, Nat, I don’t like it.’
Andy felt very tense suddenly. If they had hit a cop, and were in possession of evidence pertaining to a case, they were in deep shit. He wanted to put some distance in between the van and the Peninsula-quickly. They were on Stumpy Gully Road, approaching Eramosa Road, which would take them down to the highway. They could be out of the district and well on the way up to the city in less than thirty minutes. But should they hang onto the gear? He made the turn at Eramosa Road and headed down towards the Coolstores.
He slowed for a tractor hauling a trailer load of hay; he couldn’t pass, too many cars coming the other way. ‘Nat, I don’t like it, let’s dump the gear. It feels unlucky.’
She gazed at him, full of dope-head empathy, reached across and stroked him between the legs. ‘Poor baby,’ she said.
‘There’s a dumpster at the Coolstores.’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ she said in her sunny voice, the dope still singing in her.
And so Andy steered into the Coolstores carpark, and a minute later there was a dinky little sports car pulling up next to them, a cop saying, ‘Excuse me, sir.’
****
37
That Thursday afternoon it was Tank’s turn to drive. As he steered the little Mazda through Somerville and headed on down Eramosa Road to the Coolstores, Pam Murphy gazed out at the roadside verges, noting how widespread pittosporum was on the Peninsula. She’d begun to see the place with new eyes, now that she belonged to the Bushrats. ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that pittosporum is considered a weed?’
Tank seemed to shake himself awake. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
He glowered at the road ahead. ‘That woman in the Passat. Do you know if she’s reported us?’
So that was what he’d been brooding about. ‘Lottie Mead? No. And I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’
They neared the roundabout on the highway, stopping behind a build-up of traffic. Pam glanced at her watch: another two hours before they could knock off work. Then she happened to glance across at the Coolstores carpark, where a Toyota van with tinted windows was about to dart into an empty slot. It had the right of way but at the last minute stopped, the driver gesturing graciously to an elderly, panicked-looking woman driving an ancient Morris Minor. With a thankful wave and relieved smile, the old woman steered jerkily into the vacant spot. The van paused, idling, the driver casting about for another parking place.
‘What do you reckon?’ she asked Tankard. ‘We haven’t been exactly overwhelmed with courteous drivers this week. Give the guy a showbag?’
Tankard was rubbing his knee, releasing a powerful odour of athletes’ liniment. He’d injured himself coaching football, and seemed obsessed with it. ‘What? Didn’t see it.’
The old Tankard, who’d liked to brush against her breasts and comment on the up-lift qualities of her bras, was almost better than this defeated slug. ‘Wake up, Tank, you’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you,’ Pam said, reaching across and gently tugging on the steering wheel.
‘Don’t get you knickers in a knot,’ he said, flicking the turning indicator and steering into the carpark.
‘Pull up beside that van,’ Pam said, pointing to where the Toyota had parked outside the caravan owned by the community FM radio station. The other buildings housed a showbiz museum, craft shops, a restaurant and a cafe. The driver was opening his door when Pam’s passenger door slid into view beside him. A young guy, clean cut, wearing sunglasses, and barely out of school, Pam thought, quickly sizing him up, and she reflected that it was almost comical the way everyone’s first reaction to meeting the police was apprehension, tinged with panic and resignation, as if they’d all broken the law and the police had caught up with them at last.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, winding down her window.
And the young guy slammed his door, gunned the engine and reversed with a raw squeal of tyres, shooting out of the carpark onto Eramosa Road. ‘Jesus!’ Tankard said, and then as Pam glanced inquiringly at him, he looked at his hands, which were beginning to tremble. She knew it: the slightest pressure and he would crumble. She didn’t trust him in a high-speed pursuit, and screamed ‘Swap places!’ at him as she leapt from the car and hurried around to the driver’s door and practically dragged him out from behind the wheel. She was already reversing as he hopped and skipped to get into the passenger seat.
The Toyota van had not entered the highway, where it could be tracked easily by helicopter, chased by pursuit cars or stopped by roadblocks, but had headed back towards farmland. Pam followed, now almost twenty seconds behind. A moment later, the van turned right onto a narrow sealed road
that ran between flat, sodden paddocks and was lined by trees and bracken. She followed for three kilometres, the van reaching speeds of 120 kmh and snaking a little, the smaller sports car skittish and volatile on the uneven surface.
Tankard slammed his meaty hand on the dashboard. ‘You’ll never catch the prick if you drive like a girl.’
What a time for the old Tankard to show himself. Pam steered grimly, telling herself to ignore him and do this by the book. She ordered him to call it in: make, colour and registration number of the van, current position, direction, road conditions and other factors.
The radio dispatcher’s voice was calm and unhurried. ‘That vehicle was reported stolen yesterday. Description of the driver?’
Tankard looked to Pam, who muttered, ‘Young male, late teens or early twenties, short dark hair, sunglasses, jeans and black football jumper.’
Tankard relayed the information. He glanced inquiringly at Pam again when the dispatcher asked, ‘Passengers?’
She shrugged.
‘Unconfirmed at this stage,’ Tankard said.
‘I’m sending pursuit cars to take over the chase,’ the dispatcher said. ‘Maintain visual contact of the suspect vehicle but don’t spook him. You know the drill.’
‘Easier said than done,’ Pam muttered. She wanted to catch the driver of the van, but didn’t want to be the target of an internal witch hunt, senior police displeased by another High Speed Police Pursuit Ends in Fatality story on the six o’clock news.
The Toyota shot through the intersection in the little settlement of Moorooduc, barely missing an LPG tanker, and Tankard radioed in that the van was driving riskily, at high speed. ‘Request intercept cars from Waterloo and Mornington,’ he said.
‘Maintain position and report,’ the dispatcher replied, as if ignoring him. ‘Do not chase.’
The van was winding up to at least 130 kmh as it left the primary school and fire station behind. Pam followed, passing between open paddocks and a market garden. Around a bend, into a fold in the landscape, past vineyards, cattle standing in muddy grass, a conference retreat behind a stand of poplars. Kilometre after kilometre, with no sign of a helicopter, let alone other police vehicles. ‘We’re alone, Tank.’
He grunted, ‘Why don’t we just head the prick off?’
The Toyota seemed to be taking them in a wide skirting path, gradually heading southwest around Waterloo, which was several kilometres to their left. The grey rain was lifting; a weak, lowering sun lit the world of the empty backroads and slanted into Pam’s eyes.
‘What’s that on the road?’ Tankard said, pointing ahead.
She steered deftly around a deep pothole and a tangle of blackened pipes beyond it. ‘He’s torn off his exhaust system.’
Tankard shook his head. ‘What the fuck’s keeping the others? They should have headed him off by now. Go on, put your foot down.’
Pam bit her lip. The driver of the van had eased back on the accelerator, she was managing to keep him in sight, and that was all that was required of her officially. But she badly wanted to catch the guy. She’d driven pursuit cars at her last station; she had the training and the experience to chase the van rather than simply shadow it. But there were other police vehicles in the area: she could hear them trying to find the van from other directions. ‘The post office says I live in Bittern,’ one pursuit driver was saying, ‘the shire says I live in Balnarring, the Electoral Commission says it’s Merricks North, and they expect me to know where I am?’
‘Strict radio procedure, please,’ the dispatcher said.
‘Stolen van,’ Tankard muttered. ‘That’s why the guy ran.’
‘Did you get a good look at him?’
‘Didn’t see him at all,’ Tankard said, and in a fit of rage thumped the back of his fist against the removable hardtop of the Mazda. ‘Can’t see a fucking thing out of this sardine can.’ Then: ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, his voice choking.
Pam saw it, too. A woman on horseback, the speeding van, the narrowness of the tree-lined road. The woman pulled back on the reins, trying to coax her horse onto a grassy gap between the trees, but the horse was spooked by the eruption of speed and noisy exhaust behind it. The Toyota clipped horse and rider and fishtailed, brake lights flaring too late, and shot between trees and through a wire fence. It could not sustain the high speed, the terrain or the shift in direction, and a hundred metres in from the fence it began to roll, then flipped onto its roof. Pam stopped, but whether for the horse, the rider or to give chase to the driver, now climbing from the overturned van, she couldn’t say.
****
38
Still feeling a tug in the pit of her belly, Ellen watched Challis drive away. She wished she could accompany him, help him face the super, but knew that was impossible. She shook herself and went to greet the crime-scene technicians.
For the next hour she supervised their search for prints, and then directed them to the tyre marks in Challis’s front lawn, watching them spray a fixing solution onto the muddy impressions first, before pouring the plaster.
‘I need to know if these match tracks found at other local burglaries,’ she said.
‘We’re on it, Sarge.’
She’d only just got back to the incident room when her mobile rang.
‘Sarge? It’s Pam Murphy.’
‘Hi. What’s up?’
Something about a crashed Toyota van, full of expensive gear, the driver legging it into a belt of trees. ‘I remembered that you and Scobie Sutton had been working on a series of burglaries.’
Did you indeed, Ellen thought. In anyone else the explanation would have seemed fawning, but Pam Murphy had a good memory and the habit of making connections. She’d make a good detective.
‘Are you sure the gear is stolen?’
‘Well, the driver did a runner, and there’s too much stuff: TV, DVD, digital cameras, jewellery, laptop.’
Ellen tingled. ‘You’re searching for the driver?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘Stay there, I’m on my way.’
She collected Scobie Sutton and an unmarked car and set out for a corner of the map she’d never visited before. The Peninsula was endlessly variable, and here was the Devilbend Reservoir and remote houses set back from a winding dirt road.
‘It’s not as if she’s new,’ said Scobie Sutton as she drove.
Ellen guessed that he was talking about his goddamn daughter again. She’d heard about every cut, bruise, bowel movement, bad dream and spelling-test result. Roslyn Sutton was endlessly fascinating to her father. For Ellen, Challis and anyone else who worked with the man, the daughter had long become background noise. Ellen tried to pay attention. Today it was the child’s dancing classes. Irish traditional? Ellen tried to remember. Riverdance stuff? Scottish jigs and reels? Something like that.
‘She’s as good as any of the other kids, but year after year the medals and honour certificates go to those girls whose mothers help out with the costumes and makeup. It’s not fair, and she knows it’s not. She tries to be grown-up about it, but it hurts her, you can tell. She’d like some acknowledgment, just once.’
‘It’s important,’ Ellen said, thinking of her own daughter, nineteen now, sharing a house with other university students.
‘I mean, Beth and I are too busy to help out with costumes and stuff. Why should Ros be penalised for that?’
‘Exactly.’
A sudden roar and a helicopter flashed above them, low and straight.
‘Just follow the chopper,’ Scobie muttered.
Five minutes later they were at a scene of carnage. Ellen swallowed, feeling sick at heart. Blood, litres of it, had pooled dark as spilt oil across the road. A vet was administering a lethal injection to an injured horse, and a dead woman in full horse-riding jodhpurs, helmet and boots was being loaded into an ambulance. A wire fence had been torn open and deep tyre gouges scored the muddy surface of a paddock of grass and scattered apple trees, the remnants of an old orchard. Seve
ral police cars were parked on the verge, roof lights flashing. And there was the helicopter, hovering above an overgrown stand of trees at the far end of the paddock; closer to, one hundred metres inside the ruined fence, was an overturned van.
And there was her husband, questioning John Tankard, who was agitated and shaking his head. Pam Murphy stood watching them, biting her bottom lip.
Leaving Scobie to catch up on the details with Alan and Tankard, Ellen pulled on rubber boots and approached Pam, touching the younger woman’s forearm reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry about my husband. The accident squad has to get involved. But it was a clean chase, right?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘Good, then there’s nothing to worry about. Has he talked to you yet?’
‘No.’
‘You’ll be fine. Now, show me.’
They waded through wet bracken, Ellen glancing across the paddock, which sloped gently up to the stand of trees. Dead gums predominated, dry skeletal arms reaching above shorter, denser pittosporums and wattles. ‘What’s that place?’ she said, pointing.
‘Myers Reserve, Sarge.’
The air was damp, laden with the odours of nature disturbed in the process of decaying. They walked on.
‘Sarge, mind your feet.’
They leapt over a small creek, murky water glinting beneath reeds, and came to the overturned Toyota. The rear doors had fallen open and Ellen peered inside. There, just as Pam had listed them, were several items that, on first impressions, matched items listed as stolen from Challis this morning and the Penzance Beach property yesterday. She went around to the front of the van and crouched at the broken windscreen. Laptop. She drew on latex gloves, reached in, and hooked it out.
‘Sarge?’
Challis’s Toshiba, complete with his initials scratched on the lid.
