by Garry Disher
'Abbott and Gideon were dumped. We don't know what traces from the murder scene may have been transferred with their bodies because we don't know if our man kills inside a house or a vehicle or somewhere else. But we do know they weren't killed where they were abducted, out in the open, for the only signs of dirt or grass found on the bodies came from where they were found.
'Now, the victims. They have in common that they were young, unaccompanied women, and abducted on the Old Peninsula Highway at night. We've found nothing to suggest that they knew each other, and I think we can say that they didn't know their killer.'
He paused. 'All we have is a set of off-road tyre tracks from the vehicle that must have dumped Jane Gideon. Ellen can tell us more.'
He saw her cough, as though he'd caught her with her attention wandering. 'We found identical twin tracks—from the rear tyres if he backed in, and presumably he did to make dumping the body easier—and they've been identified as Coopers, an American tyre, this particular one an off-road tyre, quite distinctive, and rather uncommon in this country.'
A Rosebud detective said, 'Ellen, I've seen utes with off-road tyres.'
Others murmured their agreement.
Challis stepped in. 'But try to think your way inside his skin. He snatches a young woman, subdues her, and needs to hide her. He's not going to hide her on the front or rear seats. Too risky. And if he were driving a utility, would he risk putting her in the tray, under the tarp or a blanket or a few old bags? I can't see it, myself.'
'A ute with canvas sides and roof,' someone said.
'Yes, possibly,' Challis said, 'but that would entail getting out of the cab and walking around to the rear, and when he dumped Gideon he didn't leave footprints. The only footprints we found at the scene belong to the kids who found her. My gut feeling is, our man tossed the body out from the rear of his vehicle, and did it without alighting from the vehicle itself, suggesting a four-wheel drive or similar, with rear-opening doors.
'But keep an open mind,' he went on. 'Now, prevention. You've probably observed lately that a mild panic has settled over the community. Many women are scared, and who can blame them? That's going to make it more difficult for our man to operate. Maybe he'll shut down, maybe he'll move to another part of the Peninsula—but everyone's wary, not just here in Waterloo. Maybe he'll move interstate and become someone else's headache, but that doesn't mean we stop investigating what he's been getting up to here. I've found similar cases interstate, so maybe he's been active before, but we're going back ten years or so, and the details are sketchy and it's hard to recognise a pattern unless you're looking for one.
'Any questions?'
Scobie Sutton had been tapping his long teeth with a pen. 'That Land Cruiser we saw at the Saltmarsh house.'
Challis turned to Ellen Destry, who shook her head, saying, 'Different brand, different rim size. The Cooper we want fits a 235-75-15 rim, meaning a smaller vehicle, like a Jackaroo or a Pajero.'
'And not a Volvo station wagon?'
'No. Ledwich's in the clear.'
'And we have to ask ourselves,' Challis put in, 'whether or not a man like Ledwich—essentially a coward who relies on knock-out drugs and deception—is capable of graduating to the kind of violence and risk-taking needed to snatch young women from a public highway.'
Sutton slumped. They all did, a little.
Danny Holsinger finished work at 1 p.m., went home, pulled off his T-shirt and jeans, which were dusty and damp from his morning on the recycling truck, and stood under the shower for ten minutes. Just the thought of Megan Stokes made him tug on his tackle, his mother on the other side of the door, screaming, 'You going to be in there all day?'
'Ah, get stuffed, you old bitch.'
'Don't you talk to me like that.'
He waited. Nothing more. His mother slagged off at him just to keep in practice. He towelled himself dry and pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and sandals. Poofter gear, yuppie gear, he privately thought, but it was humid out and Megan had given him the gear as a present a few weeks earlier and he needed to keep in her good books.
He found her in a shifty mood. Wouldn't look him in the eye, half-ducked away from his kiss. 'Check out the shorts, Meeg,' he said.
'You look good in them,' she said absently.
'How's the backpack?'
'Oh, good.'
'Your enthusiasm overwhelms me,' Danny said, immediately pleased with the way the words had come out. 'Your mum in?'
'Gone to see Gran.'
Danny jerked his head toward the bedroom. 'You on?'
'Suppose so.'
She was like a damp rag. She just lay there, saying things like, 'Ow, that hurt,' or not saying anything at all.
'Got your period?'
'Yeah.'
'Fair enough. But you could wank me, suck me off. Doesn't mean we have to stop.'
'I don't feel right.'
Danny opened his mouth to complain, then flopped onto his back next to her magnanimously, and eyed her room: a poster of Hutchence, screaming into a microphone; Lady Di; a cat with huge, soulful eyes; scarves hanging from her dressing-table mirror; an impression of smudged make-up on the mirror.
'Where's the backpack?'
He'd seen her hang it on the back of her door yesterday.
She burst into tears. 'That fucking cow.'
'Who?'
'Mum.'
'Why?'
'She let it get stolen, that's why.'
'Stolen? I only gave it to you yesterday.'
'This lady come round with a kid. Said she was going to bless the house. Mum lets her in, the stupid cow, and when her back's turned they nick her purse, the cordless phone, Dad's watch, stuff like that. I didn't realise till later they'd also nicked the bag. Dan, I'm really sorry. I'll make it up to you.'
That bag's getting around, Danny thought. Maybe I can pick something else up for Megan, this job Jolic's got lined up for us.
'Don't hit me, please.'
He stared at her. 'Hitcha? What do you take me for?'
'You'd have a right,' Megan said, 'that beautiful bag.'
The daily postal deliveries were arriving later and later in the lead-up to Christmas. Jolic wasn't even sure that the package would arrive before the weekend. But it was there, waiting for him in his letterbox when he came back from the pub at five o'clock. He walked through knee-high weeds to his backyard, punching a mobile phone number into his own mobile. 'The stuff arrived.'
'You can mock up a floor plan from it?'
'No problem.'
'The owners are going away after Christmas, two weeks in Bali, so you won't be obliged to bash anyone this time.'
'Oh, thanks a lot,' he said. 'You're a funny woman.'
'Take only the stuff on the list. If there's any spare cash lying around, it's yours, but don't get greedy. Don't stay too long and get caught, in other words.'
'If I go down, you go down with me.'
'I'll ignore that. Is Danny all right on this?'
'I can handle Danny. He does what I tell him.'
'As long as he stays in the dark.'
Jolic laughed. 'Danny's always in the dark, O Beautiful One.'
'How come whenever you say something that's the least bit nice about me, it's in a mocking voice?'
Jolic registered the shift in her tone. He knew how to mend the situation. Working a shy, tentative note into his own voice, he said, 'I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at we, if you want to know, in case you think I'm coming on too strong, you know, saying things you don't want to hear.'
Phew.
He heard her voice shift again. 'Boyd, I'm not so hard that I don't want a touch of romance now and then.'
Challis arrived home at seven. He was due at Tessa Kane's house at seven-thirty, and he almost called to say he wouldn't be coming. He didn't want to rush but to sit and watch the sun go down with a glass of red. Read a book. Microwave something from the freezer. Let the day ebb, in other words, his cares dropping away as the light fade
d in the west.
But he hadn't had a dinner date—if this could be called a dinner date—for some time. His invitations to dine with police colleagues had declined in the past six years. Part of it was his single status. An unattached person at the dinner table was a reproach to coupledom. And Challis wondered if those husbands and wives saw him as jinxed, an unhappy ghost or shell of a man.
He stripped and stepped into the shower. There was a shower head over his bath, but Challis preferred the shower cubicle inside his back door, next to the laundry. He thanked the foresight of the people who'd built the house. He liked being able to step in from an hour's gardening or walking and dump his clothes in the basket and step into a box of steaming air and water.
He worked shampoo into his hair and left it there while he soaped his body. Slowly the bucket at his feet filled with sudsy water.
Then there was no water hitting his head and shoulders and he hadn't rinsed the shampoo away and he knew that the electric water pump above the underground tank would be screaming, sucking air.
Challis burst naked through his back door and switched off the pump. He needed to rinse his hair. He filled a saucepan with water from the corrugated iron tank attached to his garage and poured it over his head. It was like ice. He did it again, then worried that he was being wasteful. The third time he tried to stick his head in the saucepan and swish the water through his hair. He looked at the result. The water was mildly soapy. He poured it at the base of an old and possibly dying lemon tree. He wasn't convinced that his hair was free of shampoo.
Finally he dressed, dragged a comb across his itchy scalp and went back outside. Clearly he'd need to buy water, but no carrier would come at this hour and possibly not for several days, if there was a rush on in the district. Challis found three lengths of hose in his garage and joined them together. He attached one end to the tap at the bottom of the iron tank, fed the other into the overflow of his underground tank, and turned on the tap. He'd let the water drain over several hours. He reminded himself to prime the pump.
The phone was ringing inside.
'Hal, it's almost eight thirty.'
She was trying not to sound hurt or let down. Challis glanced at his watch: eight fifteen. 'Sorry, Tess. A small emergency here.'
'Police wives must feel like this. Hal, you hadn't forgotten?'
'Coming now.'
He left, feeling scummed and scaly, and more jittery than at any time he could remember in his puzzling life.
John Tankard and Pam Murphy were assigned to the night shift for the Christmas weekend, routine patrol, Tankard behind the wheel of the divisional van for a change, figuring that driving would keep his mind off the pain in his lower back. He found the scratchy murmurs of the police band comforting.
They rode around in silence, lit greenly by the instrument panel. Nine p.m.. Ten. Eleven.
Then Murph the Surf had to break in. 'Not much happening.'
'Wait till New Year's Eve. On for young and old, parties all over the joint.'
She nodded. 'The town's gradually filling up, have you noticed? More traffic during the day down where I live. People arriving for their holidays.'
Tankard grunted.
Silence. Then: 'You should see a physio, or a chiropractor.'
Tankard blinked. What was she crapping on about now? 'What?'
'You look like you're in pain, Tank. Is it your back?'
'I'm all right.'
'It's all the gear we have to lug around on our waists. Heavy belt, handcuffs, baton, capsicum spray, holster, gun. Puts a strain on the lower back. Plus the weight's not evenly distributed.'
He glanced at her. To his mind, she was as ugly as a hatful of arseholes. 'You don't say.'
'A sports medicine clinic should be able to help you.'
'I'm fine.'
'No, you're not. It's not weak to admit your back needs adjusting.'
'Look, Murph, why don't you just rack off, okay?'
He saw her slump against her door. 'Suit yourself.'
A car shot out of a side street, BMW sports, going like a bat out of hell.
Tankard chortled. 'Okay, dickrash, let's see how you like this,' and he activated the siren and planted his foot.
As they drew closer, a lazy hand appeared, giving them the finger, and the BMW twitched under heavy acceleration and drew rapidly away.
'Oh, mate, will I have you for breakfast.'
Beside him, Pam Murphy was sitting intensely, peering ahead, her hands on the dash. 'Careful, Tank.'
'Careful? You don't chase someone carefully.'
'Just watch where you're going.'
The BMW sped away from Waterloo, heading south-west, inland from the coast. Tankard didn't want to lose him. The Peninsula was stitched together with narrow roads and lanes, where there was no lighting, only shadowy driveways and screening trees and hundreds of access gates.
Then they did lose him. They were on Tubbarubba Road when the BMW vanished. 'Slow down,' Pam Murphy said. 'I saw something.'
'What? Where?'
'Behind that funny building on the corner.'
'Automatic telephone exchange,' Tankard said. 'What did you see?'
'A light, like someone opened the door of a car.'
Tankard reversed so hard and fast that the engine howled and the van snaked, leaving rubber on the road. 'Spot on. There he is, the cunt.'
He parked, switched off, got out. 'You wait here. Call the plate in, see if the car's stolen.'
He could see that she didn't like it, but she did as she was told. He approached the BMW, which was parked in long grass next to a cyclone fence, and shone his torch at the driver's door. 'Step out of the car, please, sir.'
It was a woman. She was young, and inclined to totter and giggle. Plenty of blonde hair, including a rope of it that she was chewing while she looked him over. Legs up to her arse and showing a bit of tit, too. John Tankard had an image of wealth and privilege disporting itself while the workers were slogging away. He called, 'Murph, come here a minute?'
He didn't take his eyes off the girl. When Pam Murphy was standing next to him he said, 'This young lady got out of the driver's seat.'
'Impossible.'
'Exactly.'
The blonde screwed a look of bafflement on to her face. 'What do you mean?'
'Miss, is there someone with you?'
'You mean my boyfriend?'
Tankard tipped back his head and called, 'Sir, would you get out of the car, please?'
Pam Murphy edged away, and now she was staring along the flank of the car, at the passenger seat. She had her hand on her gun. 'We don't want any trouble now, sir.'
'God, lighten up, why don't you?' the blonde said.
They watched the door open. A young man emerged from the car. 'Why the strongarm act?' he asked.
Pam said, 'Sir, are you the owner of this car?'
'So?'
'Were you driving it?'
'No way.'
'We have reason to believe that you swapped places with your lady friend.'
'Are you for real?'
Tankard said, 'Sir, we have reason to believe that you were driving this car. You were driving above the speed limit and we'll be breathalysing you to see if you were driving while under the influence of alcohol. We also believe that you changed places with your friend in an effort to escape possible prosecution. I'd like to see your licence, please, sir, and yours, young lady, and ask you both to submit to a breath test.'
'Come off it! You bloody coppers don't know who you're dealing with. You've made a big mistake this time.'
They ignored him. They separated the couple and took them one at a time to the van for a breath test. When Tankard had the woman alone he said, 'You could make it easy on yourself.'
'How do you mean?'
'You give me something, I give you something.'
She said nothing, but her eyes narrowed, waiting for more.
'What's your name?'
'Cindy Price.'
/> 'Cindy. Well, Cindy, do you really want to be booked for drunken driving and making a false statement to police?' Tankard jerked his head. 'Just to protect some arsehole? Your boyfriend, is he?'
'Sort of.'
'Sort of. So you don't feel too strongly. That's good. Well, Cindy, we're going to have to chuck the book at someone, so why don't you go easy on yourself. Tell us what really happened, how he asked you to swap places with him, and I'll see you don't get charged with anything.'
'And?'
'And what?'
'Is that all?'
They were closing in on it now. They were on the same wavelength. 'If you wanted a watertight assurance, Cindy, you'd have to do one more thing for me.'
She said challengingly, 'Try me.'
He waited a beat. 'I intend to.' He fished out his notebook. 'What was the address?'
These days, his only way of pulling a bird. They rejoined the others.
'You'll be sorry about this,' the boyfriend said.
He was like the girl, young, drunk, stamped with privilege. 'I'll punch you out in a minute, you don't shut up,' Tankard said.
'You don't know who you're dealing with here.'
Tankard said to Pam Murphy, 'There's this joke, only it's about Porsches, not BMWs, but it still applies. What's the difference between a Porsche and a cactus?'
'With a Porsche, the pricks are on the inside,' Pam said.
NINE
What are you doing?'
Challis had thought she was asleep. He himself had been asleep, but then he'd awoken, and the strangeness of the bed, the house and the situation had swamped him suddenly, there in the darkness lit only by the digital display of her bedside clock and a glimmer of moonlight from behind the curtain that he remembered was heavy, too heavy for the room, and he'd been dragging on his clothes, and was hunting for his shoes, ready to leave, but she'd caught him.
He stretched across the bed and kissed her. 'I have to go, Tess.'
She stared at him, then looked away. 'I'd thought we'd have breakfast together.'
He sat for a while, one hand cupping her neck until the tendons there told him that she was unrelaxed. He removed the hand. 'I couldn't sleep.'
