by Garry Disher
That had been several days ago. Each morning after that, the pattern had been repeated.
This morning he'd left half an hour earlier, pulled over on to the dirt at the side of the road, raised the passenger-side rear wheel with a quick-release hydraulic jack, removed the hubcap and one wheel nut, and waited.
When she came upon him he was walking around in small circles at the hack wheel, bent over, his hands clasped behind his back. Her feet pounded, coming closer, and began to falter.
'Lost something?'
He looked up at her with relief, flashing a smile. 'Blasted wheel nut. The light's not good enough and I haven't got a torch.'
Half-bent, he continued to search near the jack. She joined him. In these conditions—dawn, air quite still—he'd have plenty of warning if another vehicle were coming. He and number three walked around like that for a short time, then, when she widened the search to take in the area near the exhaust pipe, and crouched to peer beneath the rear axle, he took her.
Now, that was a snatch.
TEN
'Bye-bye, Sprog,' Scobie Sutton said.
'Not Sprog. Roslyn. Ros . . . lyn.'
'Roslyn.'
Her little arms shot up, there at the back door. 'Daddy, you hold me.'
'I have to go to work now, sweetie.'
'You take me? Please?'
'Maybe another day.'
'Scobie, love, you'll give her false hope.'
It was often like this. You really had to think hard before you said or did anything around a three-year-old, for if they got the wrong message about something, a lot of the groundwork could go out the window.
He said, 'Kiss Daddy goodbye. We'll have a barbecue tonight, how would that be?'
'Shotchidge?'
'Shotchidge on bread with lots of sauce.'
'Two shotchidge?'
'As many as you like.'
Through the kisses goodbye, he heard his wife say, 'I'm so lucky, I can't believe it.'
'I'll try to get home early.'
'It is Christmas Eve, my love.'
Pam Murphy went surfing early that morning, hoping to stumble upon Ginger with a class, but he wasn't there. Sunday, Christmas Eve, she should have expected it. The day stretched ahead of her. She rang her parents.
Ninety minutes later she was getting off the Melbourne train and on to the Kew tram. Her parents lived in a turn-of-the-century house set in an overgrown garden on a hill overlooking Studley Park. Visiting them was something she did from time to time, not only because they were her parents, and getting on in years, but because, just once, she'd like them to express approval of the life she'd made for herself.
And today she wanted to put Tankard, Kellock and McQuarrie out of her mind, and give her parents their Christmas presents, and get some presents from them, and generally put her police life out of her mind for a few hours before she had to report for duty again at 4 p.m..
The house was in bad shape, rotting window frames, peeling paint and wallpaper, salt damp in the walls, leaking roof, even if it did sit on half an acre of prime real estate.
She had her own key.
'That you, dear?'
Who else? Pam thought. 'Me, mum.'
Kerlunk, kerlunk, and then a scrape as her mother's walking frame manoeuvred through the sitting-room door, and more kerlunking as the old woman made her way along the hallway. It was dark inside the house, despite the dazzling sun outside. It beat against the heavy front door and barely lit up the stained glass.
Pam kissed her mother. 'How's Dad?'
A considering frown: 'Let's say he's had a so-so day.'
'Typing?'
'Yes.'
Pam rubbed the palms of her hands together, gearing up for the long walk past her mother and down the dim, dampish hallway to the back room, where her father lived now, surrounded by his books. Dr Murphy didn't seem to sleep. He spent all of his time propped up by pillows, a portable typewriter on his lap.
Pam hesitated. 'How's it going?'
'We spent the morning squabbling about the use of a hyphen,' her mother replied. 'He insisted that it should be oil hyphen painting, I said that once upon a time it would have been, but that two single words was acceptable nowadays.'
There were three PhDs in the family. Pam's father, and both of her brothers, who were several years older than her. The brothers were teaching at universities in the United States and were never coming back. That left Pam, who'd still been a child, an afterthought, when her brothers left home to live in university colleges. Some of the family's intellectual sparkle seemed to go with them, and Pam grew up in the belief that her own development hadn't mattered as much to her parents, that the family's brains hadn't been passed on to her. And so she made it clear that she was happy to swim and cycle and play tennis and go cross-country skiing. Solitary sports, mostly. But she made an interesting discovery: these sports taught her to think well, for they encouraged problem solving, solitude and reflection, so that she no longer believed that she wasn't clever. When she graduated from the Police Academy, she was ranked third in her class.
Not that the family registered that fact.
'Hi, Dad.'
'What is this "hi" business? Should I now respond "low"?'
'Hello, Dad, Father, Pater, O Kingly One.'
Her father grinned. The room smelt musty, a smell composed of old flesh and old furnishings and books. Pam crossed to the window.
'Leave it!' her father said.
'As you wish.'
'Sit, sweetie. What are the lawless up to?'
And Pam told him, embellishing, watching her father's avid face. It was more than a simple desire for salacious detail. Pam suspected that he took a certain eugenicist position on crime.
'And what did this fellow look like?'
'Oh, pretty average,' Pam said. 'How's the book going?'
Dr Murphy had been a lecturer in mathematics. He'd led an uneventful life, but was trying to screw an autobiography out of it.
'At the rate I'm writing,' he said sourly, 'I'm likely to die before I've been conceived.'
That afternoon, van Alphen wondered about the relationship between sexual desire and cocaine. Clearly Clara wanted him, but he didn't know how to read it. Simple desire, for him as an individual? Gratitude for his being there when she needed him after the fire? Or was it chemical, the cocaine itself acting on her, and nothing to do with him as a person?
She was discreet. He'd never seen her take the stuff. She'd hidden it away without taking any the night he delivered it, and when he'd called around yesterday it was clear that she'd already had some. No way did he want to see her take it, and she was protecting him, insisting that he always contact her before he called in to see her.
Whatever, she was always ready for him. But did she need to get stoked first? Did she see him as no more than her supplier, who had to be kept sweet, because he didn't want payment in cash but in sex?
He was a long way in, now. He'd given her grams and grams of the stuff. 'Clara, don't be offended, you're not going to sell the stuff on, are you?'
She was shocked, genuinely outraged. 'Van, I told you, it's for my nerves.'
I know.'
'You can see it's helping, can't you? I mean, do I seem as jumpy to you any more?'
'I guess not.'
'No. So don't ask me that. I feel ashamed enough as it is.'
'Okay.'
'It's not as if I'm a junkie or anything.'
There were old scars, scarcely visible. Maybe she had been, once upon a time. 'Forget I said it, Clara, okay?'
'All right,' she said grudgingly, then stretched out fully against his flank. 'God you're good for me.'
She'd drawn the curtains. Incense was burning. In the perfumed dimness he turned and kissed her. She broke away. 'We're forgetting you, Van. You seem edgy.'
'Ahhh,' he said, rolling on to his back and flinging an arm across his eyes, 'it's been a hell of a couple of days. Two of my constables arrested some rich prat two ni
ghts ago, now the mother's making waves, complaining to the superintendent.'
'Plus that girl being found murdered.'
'Plus that.'
They fell silent, began to caress each other. Afterwards, heartbeat and blood flow ebbing pleasantly, he propped himself on one elbow and with the tips of his fingers began to trace her breasts and stomach and the glorious hollows inside her thighs. 'Incredible skin,' he said. 'You wouldn't be part Maori, would you?'
Her body seemed to alter under his gaze, recoiling, shutting him out. 'Here we go,' she said. 'It had to come, sooner or later.'
'What?'
'Does it make a difference who or what I am?'
'Of course not. I just asked—'
'You like a bit of black meat, is that it? Or maybe you're disgusted but can't help yourself? Or are you trying to break it off with me?'
'I only said—'
'Just you remember where the coke came from, big boy. Hurt me again, insult me, get me into trouble, and I'll spill everything so fast you won't know what hit you. "Cop steals drugs for girlfriend," I can see it now.'
'Jesus, I only said—'
'I'm flesh and blood, aren't I, like you? I got feelings?'
'Of course.'
'I deserve respect.'
'I respect you.'
'Well don't say anything insulting to me again. Don't even think it. I especially don't want to hear anything about Maoris or New Zealand or anything about my past, okay?'
'Sure.'
She pushed down on his head. 'Do me with your tongue. That's it . . . that's it . . .'
She was slippery ground, but sex was firm ground, and van Alphen threw himself into it. He heard, through the dampish slap of her inner thighs against his ears, a sound like pleasure and pain.
At four o'clock, just as John Tankard was finishing a cup of tea in the staff canteen before going on patrol with Pam Murphy, someone called, 'Hey, Tank, bad luck, mate.'
'Yeah, thanks.'
'Dropping the charges, what bastards.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'So, did you get to screw old Cindy, or what?'
John Tankard propelled the other man across the room, forearm to the throat, flattening him against the wall. 'You arsehole.'
'Chill out, Tank. He was only joking.'
'Yeah, let him go, Tank. Look, we're all on your side. They think if they've got money they can get away with anything. It's not right. We're on your side. So let him go.'
Tankard released his colleague. It wasn't often—ever?—that the others were on his side.
Challis picked up the phone and heard Tessa Kane say, 'Hal, I thought I'd ring now to wish you Merry Christmas. I'll be with my family all day tomorrow.'
There was a touch of desolation in her voice. Was her life like his? He breathed out heavily. 'Have a happy day.'
'Thank you.'
Then her voice dropped, taking on slow, lonely tones. 'You should have called.'
Challis waited, then said carefully, 'I was going to.'
I wish you hadn't left like that.'
They were silent. Eventually Challis said softly, 'I'd better go. I'd like to see you again soon.'
'Wait! I heard you arrested—'
Challis put the phone down. Arrested Lady Bastian's son, she was going to say, and apparently there were questions all over the arrest, but that wasn't his problem.
He glanced at his watch. Six-thirty. He decided against going home and then coming back again, and walked down High Street to the Fish Bar, a bistro between the shire offices and the jetty. From the window he could see the open ground that the town had set aside for fairs and carnivals. Tonight: Carols by Candlelight. Late January: the Westernport Festival. Anzac Day: dawn service.
He liked eating alone. He often had no choice but to eat alone, but he did like it, most of the time. Tonight it would have been better to have dined with someone, for he felt peaceful and relaxed for the first time in a while—which owed a lot to the fact that it was Christmas Eve and the town—even the police station all that day—was in a slowed-down mood, everyone benign and full of good intentions.
At eight o'clock he paid his bill, and as he was standing, waiting, folding his credit card receipt into his pocket, he saw Scobie Sutton's car draw into the kerb on the other side of the road. The grassy area near the little bandstand was filling rapidly. Sutton and his wife and daughter got out of the car, carrying blankets and hymn books. The child was sleepy. Challis watched them join the crowd. Someone gave them candles from a cardboard box, and they settled on to their blankets. But Challis didn't join them when the carol singing began. He might have, and been welcomed, but he found a corner of the crowd where he could sing and not be expected to talk.
ELEVEN
Challis woke at six on Christmas morning and desolation flooded him. He hadn't expected to feel this way. He'd thought he was above all that. He remembered what he'd read somewhere—if you're depressed, go for a long walk—and swung immediately out of bed and hunted for his Nike gardening shoes, a T-shirt and an old pair of shorts.
He walked for an hour. As the bad feeling lifted, he found himself listening to the birds. He could swear he was hearing bellbirds, the first in his five years on the Peninsula. The world was still and silent, and he was alone and light-footed in it, this morning. He took deep breaths. Yellow-breasted robins watched him and a thrush sang high in the canopy of branches above his head. There were creatures scratching in the bracken. Only a plastic shopping bag caught in a blackberry cane spoiled the morning for him—that, and the realisation that he'd been depressed but wasn't now, yet might be again as the day developed.
At nine-thirty he left the house. Ellen Destry and her husband and daughter lived in a cedar house on stilts in an airless pocket between ti-trees and a small, humped hill at Penzance Beach. The house looked like—and had been, before the Destrys bought it—someone's holiday house. And nothing— not even the new shrubs and herbs and fruit trees, or the fresh paint job and the hanging plants—would alter that. Three cars in the driveway, three out on the street. Challis groaned. He wasn't ready for a crowd. He mostly preferred solitariness yet worked in an occupation that demanded permanent sociality.
Alan Destry came to the door. 'Hal. Come in, come in, Merry Christmas.'
Ellen's husband wore an air of grievance. He was a constable, attached to the Traffic Division in the Outer Eastern zone, married to a fast-tracking CIB detective. That's how Ellen had explained it to Challis once, at the pub, when she wanted to stay and drink and not go home. 'Merry Christmas yourself,' Challis said, offering his hand.
At that moment a light plane passed overhead, following the shoreline. Distracted, Challis looked up. Twin-engined Cessna. He didn't recognise it.
'Some people have their feet on the ground,' Alan Destry said.
It was a clumsy insult, delivered with a grin of Christmas cheer. Challis wanted to say that some people had all the luck, but let it go. People underestimated him, he knew that, and didn't care. They thought that a policeman who liked to restore old aeroplanes and had a wife who'd tried to have him shot was a man who would allow things to happen to him. A man destined to remain stuck where he was in the force, detective inspector, no higher.
He proffered a terracotta pot wrapped in green and red Christmas paper. There was a clump of lobelia spilling over the edges. 'Good of you,' Destry said, looking about for a flat surface and deciding on the verandah floor, beside the door.
They went through to the sitting room. The windows were open, admitting gusts of warm, dusty air. It was an oppressive room. No wonder Ellen intended to have air-conditioning installed. She wasn't in the room. Nor was Scobie Sutton. But the other CIB officers were, and a couple of Alan Destry's colleagues, together with spouses and children. The Destrys' daughter, Larrayne, scowled in a corner, trying to ward off the imploring fingers of a small boy.
'Ellen not here?'
'Ah, mate, a sudden death. A kid.'
Challis felt sic
k. To lose a child on Christmas Day.
He forced down a glass of beer and absently palmed toffeed nuts into his mouth from a bowl on the television set. There were cards on the sideboard and on a loop of string across the far wall. Mistletoe. Parcels heaped at the foot of a tired, tinselly pine-tree branch that was shedding needles. As he watched, a bauble fell to the carpet. The small boy rushed to it, kicked it in his haste, and Challis saw it smash against the skirting board.
The Destrys' daughter looked so miserable and put-upon that Challis crossed the room to her, greeting people as he went. Larrayne saw him coming. She stared fixedly at the floor, as if to hide or appear too negligible to be bothered with. She wore a short denim skirt, a Savage Garden T-shirt and sandals. She'd painted her nails. Her legs, knees together and inclined to one side, seemed too long for her slight frame. Wings of hair furled down about her young round face. She was fifteen but looked at once ten and twenty.
'Hello, Larrayne.'
She was low in an uncomfortable chair and Challis towered above her. She was forced to stretch her neck to see his face, and that strangled her voice. 'Hello.' She said it quickly and looked away again.
Challis crouched beside her. 'Merry Christmas.'
She muttered a reply, leaning her knees away from him.
'It's a pity your poor mum had to go out on a call.'
Larrayne shrugged, then said, 'Me and Dad had to do everything, as per usual. She invites people over, then goes out, leaving us to do everything.'
Challis knee-creaked until he was standing again. He couldn't be bothered with the Destrys' daughter. He wandered across to the main window.
When Alan Destry came by with a bowl of nuts, Challis said, 'Did Scobie go with Ellie?'
'Yep.'
'Do we know what happened?'
'Cot death.'
A cot death. Challis wondered how secure he really was in life. His eyes pricked. He felt very alone again, and welcomed the despatcher's call when it came.
TWELVE
They were country people: decent, bewildered, fearing the worst. They'd been expecting Trina to arrive some time on Christmas Eve. It's a long drive from Frankston to Shepparton, so, although they'd been worried when their daughter hadn't arrived, they'd told themselves to expect her after they'd gone to bed, or Christmas morning at the latest, though they'd have been cross with her if she had left it that late. She'd always been a bit wilful and inconsiderate. Not malicious, mind you, just always went her own way. But when she hadn't arrived by ten o'clock, they'd phoned. No answer. Then, remembering that two girls had been abducted and murdered, they'd phoned the police in Frankston, who sent a divisional van to their daughter's address.
