by Garry Disher
'Not exactly,' Pam Murphy said. 'I worked on the weekend, so today I go on at four.'
She was strapping her surfboard to the roof rack of her new Subaru, mobile phone to one ear, listening to him with a lump of apprehension settling inside her.
Lister went on chattily: 'Though how they can let any of you have time off at the moment, I don't know. Have you caught Munro or those escapees yet?'
Lister had a battery of smiles: cheerful, blokish, winking, conniving. Pam could picture his smile now, probably sharkish and bearing no relation to what he was saying. 'I'm not at liberty to say.'
Lister laughed. It came at her harshly through the mobile phone. 'Now, Pam, a little matter that might have escaped your attention, what with manhunts and murders.'
Pam glanced guiltily at her new car. She knew what Lister wanted. She'd gone in to explain her side of things to him the day that Munro had bailed up Tankard in the street, only Lister had been with a client. She'd waited for almost ten minutes then left without seeing him. Still, she said, 'Yes?' in a puzzled voice.
'A little matter of your first weekly loan instalment. It was due last Thursday.'
'Oh.'
'Oh, indeed. Now I must insist on payment by the end of business today, understood?'
It was ten o'clock on a Monday morning, a lovely autumn day, the surf was up, and she was broke.
She began to stammer something when Lister interrupted her. 'If you can't manage payment then perhaps we can renegotiate the terms of your loan to make it easier for you. I'm not an unreasonable man, and you are a police officer, after all, and I have a lot of respect for the police, always have had.'
That was another line she got from time to time. If she wasn't called 'girlie' she was told she was respected because she was a copper. She got it from her landlord, she got it from shopkeepers, and now Lister was at it. For all they knew, she was corrupt, a rowdy tenant, a bad driver, chronically light-fingered.
She certainly couldn't manage her finances.
'When?' she said. She looked lovingly at the waxed surface of her board.
'No time like the present.'
And so she stacked the surfboard in the hallway behind her front door again and drove in to Waterloo, parking the Subaru where Lister wouldn't see her arrive or leave. She didn't know how reasonable he was. He might even commandeer the Subaru, though she doubted he could do that legally. Even so, he could make waves for her, like a quiet word to Senior Sergeant Kellock—for all she knew, they both belonged to Rotary—or an anonymous call to Ethical Standards.
At the street door to Lister's building she glanced across at the bank where Tank had encountered Munro. How would she have managed that situation? The way she was feeling now, butterflies in her stomach, she'd have wet her pants.
She pushed through the glass door stencilled with the words 'Lister Financial Services' and went up the stairs. The same receptionist was there, a blonde with big hair and hooked red nails the size of paperclips. God knows how she managed a keyboard or the telephone.
'Yes?' the receptionist said, staring at Pam as if she'd never seen her before.
'Mr Lister is expecting me.'
'And you are… ?'
'Father Christmas,' Pam said, stalking by her into Lister's office, expecting a protest, but the woman was silent.
Lister's office overlooked the street. Lister himself sat with his back to the window, the sunlight, banded by the slats of a venetian blind, falling across his head and shoulders and into her eyes, so that she couldn't see him clearly, and she immediately lost some of her resolve.
He didn't stand for her but gestured airily, 'Sit down, Pam.'
The only other chair was directly in front of his desk. Pam shaded her eyes with one hand and watched him, hoping he'd take the hint.
'Now, your interest payment,' he said.
'I've had a lot on,' Pam said. 'This Munro business, the mur—'
He halted her with his hand. 'I'm afraid that's irrelevant, sweetheart. You entered into an obligation and—'
'Surely I'm not the first one late with a payment?'
She'd heard things about Lister since she'd taken out the loan. How he targeted the battlers, giving loans to hopeless cases and subsequently repossessing their cars and houses; how he'd change pay cheques on the spot, but take a hefty percentage. Not quite a loan shark, no whispers of coming round with a baseball bat to get what was owed him, nothing the police could act on, but there was a strong impression of the predator about Lister nevertheless.
'No, Pam, you're not the first to miss a payment. And you won't be the last. But I—'
'I get paid this Thursday.'
'Do you now?' he said mildly. 'But you'll be a week behind by then and be obliged to make two payments, plus your penalty.'
'Penalty,' Pam said numbly.
'It was there in black and white in the contract. You did read the contract?'
Pam mumbled something. She hadn't read the contract, and he knew she hadn't. Tears came unbidden then. She could have been a child again, called into her father's study about something. Her brothers had never been called into his study. They were high achievers, university academics now, like their father. Pam had been good at sport, hopeless at all kinds of other things, and often found herself in her father's study, her father's voice quiet and full of reason, subtly putting her down.
'Pam, I'm a reasonable man,' Lister said. 'I don't like to see you get into a mess.'
She gulped and nodded, willing away the tears, hoping that with the sun banded across her face, he hadn't seen the wetness.
'We can come to some arrangement.'
'Thanks,' she said. 'What kind?'
'Would it help you to go onto a monthly schedule?'
'I don't know…'
And she didn't know. When she'd first negotiated the terms of the loan, the monthly instalment amount had seemed enormous, the weekly instalment much more palatable. But she couldn't even manage the weekly…
'Or you could pay less.'
She glanced at him. 'Over a longer period of time, you mean?'
She thought she could manage that, but to be beholden to Carl Lister for years and years was a terrible thought.
'Quid pro quo,' Lister said, lacing his fingers together over his chest.
'I don't understand.' 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine.' She sat upright. 'I'm not going to sleep with you.' He seemed genuinely astonished. 'God, no, sorry, didn't mean that at all.'
Now she felt bad for offending him. 'Oh. Sorry.' 'No, what I'm getting at is, I'm a businessman, right? I have fingers in lots of pies, I lend money to individuals at all rungs of society, I contribute to the community. Which all boils down to one thing: I'm vulnerable.' She didn't understand.
He flashed her one of his grins, lopsided owing to his facial burns. 'Let's say I lend a young house painter ten thousand dollars to help him over a slump in business. Only he spends the ten thousand to… I don't know, buy stolen goods or finance a drug deal. What happens to my ten grand if he gets busted? Clearly I would have needed to know more about that young man before I lent him money.' 'A private detective could do more than I could.' Lister shook his head. 'I'd need to know if the police were interested in my mythical young man.'
The world went still for a while. Pam Murphy, snitch, mole, spy, informant.
She coughed and said, 'I don't know if I can do that.' Lister gestured, playing it down. 'Piece of cake, Pam. Nothing to it. I'm a discreet man. I won't use the information, I won't say where I got it from, I won't put anything in writing.'
In a small voice she said, 'What do I have to do?' 'Just keep me up to date. Who the police are interested in, whispers, advance notice of raids, that kind of thing.'
Her jaw dropped. 'Sounds like you want to know a lot.'
He shook his head. 'Just where it concerns drugs. That's my main fear, as a lender of money. I like to know what my money is being used for. So, keep me informed of who you're keeping your eye on. I'll
make it worth your while.'
'How?'
'Let's say that for the first year your instalments are a measly fifty dollars a week. Think you can manage that?'
She nodded. Fifty? Piece of cake. Relief flooded through her.
'Okay then.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A search of immigration and airline records on Monday morning showed that a Trevor Hubble, travelling on a British passport, had arrived in Australia a week before the body of the Floater was found. He'd not been reported missing in the UK and was not known to Interpol or Scotland Yard.
Nothing remarkable there. What was remarkable was that Trevor Hubble had a credit record in Australia and in fact had been making purchases by credit card for at least a year before he died—purchases in Australia, when apparently he'd been living in England.
But no spending since the Floater was found. Challis had just updated the file on Tuesday morning when the phone rang and Superintendent McQuarrie said, 'All eyes are upon you, Hal.'
Why did McQuarrie always bark down the phone? Challis held the receiver away from his ear. 'Yes, sir.'
'Munro shoots three people,' McQuarrie went on, 'and steals a policeman's gun—it's like he's running rings around us.'
'Sir,' Challis pointed out, 'I've nothing to do with the manhunt. My job is investigating the murders.'
'One and the same, Hal, one and the same.'
Well, no, they weren't, and it wasn't Challis's job to soothe his superintendent. 'Sir, I don't think the murders are related.'
'Have to be. Have to be. What's forensics tell you?'
'It's difficult with shotgun shootings, sir.'
Surely McQuarrie knew that? Ordinarily, the superintendent thought that forensic evidence was everything. In Challis's experience, forensic evidence was often imprecise and forensic experts were rarely expert enough, and in some instances had little or no training, or tried to do CIB's work for them. He didn't say any of this to McQuarrie, but went on to deflect the man, saying he'd seen him on television the night before.
'I thought you handled it well, sir. Impressive. Struck the right note.'
And in his mind's eye saw the man swell and beam on the other end of the telephone.
But he felt the pressure and called a briefing. The Special Operations commander reported first, brief and clipped as if he were a busy man and wanted to get this wrapped up so he could return to Melbourne where the air didn't smell of fishermen and orchardists.
'No sightings of Munro lately, but we did find those illegals,' he said with satisfaction. 'They were camping out at the tip.'
He said it as if he'd expected nothing less, and Challis was pleased to notice distaste in the faces of Ellen, Scobie and a couple of the others.
When the man was gone, Challis asked for updates from the CIB detectives investigating the shooting. 'Scobie?'
Sutton's lean, mournful face grew longer. 'I've been concentrating on Pearce's correspondence with the Progress and the shire. Both kept a file of his letters and I've been contacting those people he'd reported for littering, etcetera, etcetera. They were all puzzled, said, "How did you learn about that?" or "I'd forgotten about that". No one seemed pissed off enough to want to kill Pearce.'
'Did any of them say that Pearce contacted them direct, before he reported them?'
'No. That doesn't seem to have been his style, Hal.'
'True, but if he was impatient with officialdom dragging its heels, maybe he did take direct action. Also, check daily in case he sent letters that have been delayed in the post.'
'Done.'
'And his phone records.'
'Done.'
'And check the wife. Maybe she was the main target.'
Sutton nodded glumly. Challis turned to Ellen Destry. She looked tired. She'd hinted in the carpark earlier that there were problems at home. The daughter, the daughter's boyfriend, her husband, Challis thought. Or all of them. 'Ellen?' he said.
'I don't want to see another lawyer's caseload,' she said. 'Seigert dealt with wills, conveyancing and small business contracts. All deadly dull, all formulaic, nothing there to give rise to murderous passions. Except in someone like Ian Munro. There's a fat folder devoted to correspondence from Munro, Munro saying in effect that Seigert had sold him out and all lawyers are bastards and Seigert was going to get it in the neck one day when he least expected it.'
'A clear threat to kill?'
'More or less,' Ellen said.
'No witnesses? No sightings of Munro or his vehicle?'
'Nothing.'
Challis looked from Ellen to Scobie. 'What about correspondence received by Pearce? Anything at the house?'
Scobie shrugged. 'His mother wrote sometimes, there were some bills, receipts, junk mail, bank statements.'
'Any unusual payments in or out?'
'No.'
'That all?'
'Apart from his scrapbook,' Ellen said, glancing at Scobie, who muttered: 'You saw it, Hal, that day we found the bodies, all those Meddler notes and clippings from the local paper.'
Was Challis imagining it, or were Sutton and Destry stepping carefully where it came to Tessa Kane? They knew of his involvement with her. They probably wondered about its nature: mainly sexual? True love? Or was Challis using her to offer, and gather, information? Then his heart began to hammer: he hadn't told Tessa that Mostyn Pearce was the Meddler. He owed her that. Wanting to get Ellen and Scobie out of his office now, he said, 'Anything else in the house to interest us?'
'Only the damn ferret,' Ellen said. 'Which has escaped, by the way.'
'And the tapes,' Scobie said.
'What tapes?'
'Videos.'
Challis remembered. TV programs, films, documentaries, football grand finals… Nothing there to stir the heart.
'Any personal stuff on tape?'
'Their wedding.'
'My weary bones,' Challis said, his way of saying that it was time to go back to work and it would be thankless.
When they were gone, he dialled Tessa's mobile number. 'It's me.'
There was a pause, then a bright, 'Hello, me.'
He didn't want to banter just then. 'I thought you should know—Mostyn Pearce was the Meddler.'
This time the pause spoke volumes and her voice when it came was strained. 'You're only just now telling me this? It's been days. Are you sure? No, forget I said that, of course you're sure—but didn't you think I was important enough, central enough, to be informed?'
The phone went dead in his ear before he could add that the escaped asylum seekers had been found; and he thought absurdly that he didn't want to lose her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Carl Lister had said he wanted to be kept informed, he hadn't said it would be every bloody day. Here he was, Tuesday morning, on her doorstep.
Pam yawned. 'I was on till midnight. I'm on again this evening. I'll be hopeless if I don't get my sleep.'
He pushed past her and she seemed to blink and find herself making him instant coffee in her kitchen. The autumn sun was streaming in and ordinarily she'd have loved to sit there at the table over a steaming coffee, half awake in the warm splash of sunlight.
'I haven't got anything for you,' she said.
'You must have something. Dealers, pushers, runners, importers, addicts, the local Mr Big. Who's supplying the local school kids, the clubs? Who's pushing in the mall? Who's growing it, who's manufacturing it? These are the type of people who might come to me for money. I need to know beforehand if they're known to the police.'
So she told him about Ian Munro's marijuana crop.
He dismissed Munro with a wave of his hand. 'Everyone knows that. What else have you got?'
The Waterloo police station was full of names and drug-related activities: possession, possession with intent, all small-time stuff. She gave Lister a few names. 'Dwayne Venn,' she said. 'Brad Pike.'
'Pike? Piece of shit,' Lister snarled. He looked at her closely. 'Do you think he's respo
nsible?'
Pam looked at him in bewilderment. Surely Bradley Pike wasn't a major league player in the local drug scene?
'For killing his girlfriend's kid,' Lister explained irritably.
'Oh. Yes. Guilty as sin.'
'I agree. Any other names?'
'No.'
Lister got up to leave, his coffee untouched. 'I'll need more, girlie. Otherwise I start calling in your loan the old-fashioned way.'
What did that mean? Court action? Bailiffs? A knee-capping?
John Tankard was on duty but felt so miserable half the time that he wanted to cry. Plus he was knackered, but unable to sleep. And his judgement was shot to pieces.
So he went herbing off to Penzance Beach in the divisional van and sounded the siren outside Pam Murphy's place for a bit of a giggle. Maybe she'd ask him in or he could talk her into going to the Fiddler's Creek pub later for a glass of suds.
Fat chance. She really spewed when she saw him, said she'd been on duty and was catching up on sleep, so why didn't he just bugger off and leave her alone.
'My second visitor this morning,' she snarled. 'What the hell do you want?'
So who'd been the first visitor? 'Don't be like that,' Tankard said.
'Like what? You come here in broad daylight, siren blasting when I'm trying to sleep, and you expect me to like it? God knows what the neighbours think.' She laughed without humour. 'Probably take one look, see who's making the racket, and think to themselves: typical, it's the stormtrooper.'
Last year someone had gone around placing anonymous leaflets on windscreens complaining about John Tankard's Nazi stormtrooper tactics. He flushed. 'Can I come in?'
'No. Why?'
'Pammy please, I'm falling apart here.'
And she must have seen something in his face and manner that convinced her, for she gave him a subtle look of understanding and stood back as he stepped past her into the house. She was wearing pyjamas. Half of him was thinking, God I want a piece of that, and the other half wanted to grab hold of her for dear life and cry his heart out.
'Five minutes tops, okay?' she demanded.
'Okay,' he mumbled, and he watched her disappear into her bedroom and come back wearing a dressing gown guaranteed to kill all desire.
