Challis - 03 - Snapshot (14 page)

The light had faded to a mess of
shadows in the little hollow. He returned to his car. He was still sitting
there, cold and depressed, five futile minutes later. And because hed
flattened the battery, he couldnt even listen to the news.

* * * *

Vyner,
on the other hand, had been listening to the news all day. He liked being the
lead item; an added bonus to learn that hed topped the daughter-in-law of a
senior cop. No leads, the updates said, no leads.

Hed hotfooted it back to his flat
in the city after the shooting, glad to be free of dirt roads, cows and Nathan
Gent, and now, reassured that the cops were running around in circles, he was
working at his other job.

Sammy was a hero, he said, perched
on the edge of a sofa in a Templestowe sitting room. He paused. You dont mind
if I call him that? We all knew him as Sammy.

Mrs Plowman, Sammys mother, smiled
damply. Everyone called him Sammy. I was the only one who ever called him
Samor Samuel when I was cross with him about something.

The tears flowed again, to think shed
ever been cross with her son, his life cut short guarding an oil pipeline in
the Iraqi desert.

Vyner reached out, gently took her
grieving hands and kneaded life and hope into them. Sammy always looked on the
bright side of life. In a way, he held the unit together. If any of the younger
blokes looked like chucking it in, Sammy was there for them. The Army lost a
hero, Mrs Plowman.

Mrs Plowman wiped her eyes. I try
to picture his face sometimes and I cant, and that scares me. But you bring
him to life for me.

Vyner went very still. He didnt
want to go too far. He wanted her to walk down memory lane but not so far that
shed be deflected from
him, his
needs.

The house was an architectural
nightmare, amid other architectural nightmares. Architectural nightmares worth
three-quarters of a million dollars, mind you, and no doubt full of vulgar,
newly rich and idle women, but Mrs Plowman herself was a homely sort, grieving
for the death of her only child, Lance Corporal Samuel Plowman. The husband
grieved by working longer and longer hours in an office building, or attending
interstate conferences, leaving Mrs Plowman alone with her memorieswhich Vyner
had teased out with a few tears of his own, a bit of hand-holding on the
four-thousand-dollar sofa in front of the bay window, and his trawl through the
internet and various newspaper records last month.

He was incredibly brave, Mrs
Plowman. Not a risk taker, just a guy who kept his head. He got me out of a
scrape once. I was pinned down by a sniper, and Sammy crawled across open
ground and got me out. Id lost my nerve. Paralysed. Your son saved my life.

She looked up at him, hungry for
word pictures. They didnt mention that in his record.

Vyner waved dismissively. Typical
Sammy. As far as he was concerned, he was just doing his job, thats all. I
wanted to put his name forward for a commendation, maybe even a medal, but he
wouldnt hear of it. Mate, I didnt think twice, he told me. You and the
other guys, youre my family when Im away.

Mrs Plowmans hand was warm, damp
and sad in Vyners grasp. What hurts me is last time he was home on leave he
had words with his father. They ended up not speaking, and now my husband is
just quietly falling apart about that.

Careful, Vyner told himself. The
last thing he wanted was for the silly cow to bring her husband into this. It
was harder selling consolatory stories to husbands and fathers than to wives
and mothers. He patted her plump wrist. Sammy thought the world of his dadof
both of you, in fact. He spoke about you all the time. He looked up to you. I
never heard him say a negative thing about either of you.

Mrs Plowmans face was suffused with
a dampish joy. Youve brought me a great deal of happiness these past few
days.

Im glad.

I cant believe the Army, she
said. Its disgraceful.

They cant afford any negative
publicity, Vyner said. Sure, Sammy died a hero, but they didnt want to make
too big a thing of it. Seventy per cent of the population thinks Australia
should never have sent peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

As quoted in yesterdays
Herald
Sun.
But Mrs Plowman said sternly, I dont mean that. I mean its
disgraceful the way the Army treated
you,
Richard.

For a millisecond then, Trevor Vyner
wondered who Richard was. He reached for a biscuitnot some generic supermarket
crap but Italian biscotti. Earl Grey tea, too, which he loathed, but it went
with the lifestyle in this moneyed corner of the north-eastern suburbs.

Thats the way it goes, he said.

Hed been dishonourably discharged
from the Army for striking an officeror so Mrs Plowman believed. Not only
that, but the officer was a bully, and had been having a go at Sammy, Sammy whod
been sticking up for one of the younger guys, whom the officer had been picking
on. Sammy, the selfless hero; Sammy, a protective older brother to the new
recruit; Sammy, alive there in that Templestowe sitting room.

Not everyone can take the pressure,
Vyner said. The heat was indescribable, dust storms, Arab fanatics taking pot
shots at you all the time, no wonder some guys lost the plot. But Sammy was
always there for us. Until one day this total he almost said arsehole, then
did say itarsehole of a lieutenant tears strips off him for comforting a guy
whod crawled into a foxhole in tears. Well, it was totally unfair, so I
punched him out.

Mrs Plowman shook her head. And they
discharged you? Its disgraceful, it really is.

Vyner sighed. I feel good about
myself in the sense that I know I did the right thing, even if it was an act of
violence, but now Ive got a black mark against my name and something like that
follows you around, makes it hard to get a job, hard to get references...

Mrs Plowman said firmly, Stay
there, and left the room. Vyner allowed himself a small grin, then strained to
hear the start of the seven oclock news on the old bags TV set, which was
quietly murmuring in a little nook on the other side of an archway in the
open-plan room. He caught the words anonymous caller and police are anxious
to speak to and his skin went cold. At the same time, his mobile phone rang.
He had a text message, but before he could read it, Mrs Plowman returned with
her purse, flushing, determined to do the right thing by a friend of her son, a
friend whod been tossed onto the scrap heap by an uncaring system to the
tuneVyner tried to count the notes in her little fistof around $500.

Well, a guy had to eat. He was still
due the remaining $10,000 for this mornings hit, but it wasnt like he got
paid to top someone every weekor even every yearso meanwhile you took what
you could get. Five minutes later, he was in his car, reading his SMS. It said
simply:
elimin8 anon callr.

It had to be Gent, the fuckup.

Vyner reached into the glove box for
his notebook. A latex glove spilled out, a box of matches, a spare brakelight
bulb, and finally his chewed Bic pen.

I am the jagged tooth of a lone
crag,
he wrote.

He thought some more.

I am the doom maker.

Too bad that he had to return to the
Peninsula. Too bad that he wouldnt be paid for this hit.

* * * *

Challis
received two calls while he waited for a breakdown truck to cart his car away
from Lofty Ridge Road and a taxi to take him home.

Tessa Kane got in first. How come I
have to hear it on the seven oclock news, Hal?

Honestly, it slipped my mind, he
said truthfully.

He was pleased to hear a friendly
voice in the darkness, but the conversation went wrong in subtle and obscure
ways. Exactly what did this person tell you? Tessa demanded.

Very little.

A man or a woman?

Is this off the record?

In the last few months you havent
thought highly enough of me to tell me anything
on
the record. It seems
that I call you, you never call me.

Challis felt a twist of futility and
anger. A part of him wanted to appease her, a part of him wanted to help her,
and a smaller part of him wanted to see her again. He tried to get comfortable
in the cramped space of the Triumph. He said, quote, I didnt think hed go
that far.

Tessa absorbed that. What else?

Nothing.

He waited. But Tessa could outwait
him any day of the week. He asked if I was in charge of the case. I said yes.
Then he got spooked and cut the call.

Tessa said nothing.

He got agitated and asked if Id
put a trace on the call. I had, and Id taped it. But the trace failed.

Caller ID?

I rang the number, finally someone
answered. It was a coin phone in a supermarket.

Which one?

Look, Tess, I cant say any more.

He heardand in his minds eye,
sawher bristle, but the explosion didnt come. All right, she said, and cut
the call.

Challis sighed, and at once the
phone rang again. Challis, he said.

McQuarrie here.

Yes, sir.

The superintendent was clipped. Why
wasnt I told?

Sir?

This anonymous tipoff.

Sir, I

I have to hear about it on the
evening news.

It wasnt a tipoff as such. A man
called. He seemed rattled, as though a shooting hadnt been part of the plan
this morning, but hung up before I could question him.

Didnt it occur to you that by
plastering it all over the news youve scared the shooter off, not to mention
that he might start killing his accomplices to shut them up?

Challis said evenly, Its a
calculated risk.

Be it on your head, Inspector, be
it on your head. Anything else?

Not at present.

Well, keep digging.

Sir, Challis said, but the line
was dead.

Then he made a call of his own.

* * * *

20

Ellen
cooked lasagne for dinner, knowing that it would please her husband. She
recognised the impulse, one familiar to social workers, counsellors and the
police from endless domestic violence situations, in which womenand sometimes
menstrove futilely to please their spouses, patch up squabbles, mend cracks,
keep the peaceuntil it all blew up again.

She hated herself for it.

But did you just throw away twenty
years of marriage without trying? She knew the pressure that Alan was under.
The man shed marriedbig, bluff, competent and cheerfulhad gradually been
ground down by disappointments. He felt left behind by his colleagues
and
his
wife, and hadnt the strategies to adjust to or rise above the situation.

Hed been an only child, that was
part of the problem. Because his parents had indulged him, and hed never
disappointed their modest expectations, or encountered significant setbacks or
challenges early in life, hed coasted uncomplicatedly through school and later
the police academy. Life to him was easy, predictable and not all that serious.
But then had come the regular, mundane but testing responsibilities of
full-time work, marriage, fatherhood and a mortgage. The world wasnt small any
more, but big, and full of ambitious, talented and hardworking men and women.
He was ill-prepared and only moderately talented. He didnt take to drink,
drugs or sleeping around to make himself better; instead, he developed biting
suspicions and grievances, which he kept barely contained. He fumed, his brow
permanently dark. He hated the world and, Ellen suspected, hated himself.

There was a yellowing photo of him
on the fridge, and she glanced at it while she cooked. Taken when he was
twenty-two, he was a fine-looking man, grinning widely as he passed out of the
police academy. It hurt her to think that so cheerful and invincible a man
could be reduced to sourness and futility.

And so she was cooking him a lasagne,
to make him feel better, to atone for the morning, to put the world right
again. She hated herself for it. Once upon a time, shed cooked lasagne out of
love. Now she cooked it because love had gone. Did lasagne ever bring love
back? She thought of Janine McQuarrie then, and wondered about her strategies
for enduring a loveless marriage. Ellen and Alan ate early, a habit set years
earlier, when theyd had a child in the house.

Like it?

Its delicious, he said, chomping
away. It occurred to her then that he did eat more than he used to, and
exercised less. Maybe hes depressed, she thought, but she had no idea how shed
ever broach that subject with him.

Meanwhile he was comforted by the
food he was eating, so she told him about her day: the circumstances of the
murder, the unappealing personalities of the main players, the anonymous
caller. Hal thinks she said.

He cut across her. Hal thinks, Hal
thinks. Youre always going on about what lover boy thinks.

Alans head was full of sour imaginings,
and he half believed that she was attracted to or had even slept with Challis.
Fed up suddenly, Ellen said, Keep it up, Alan, and you might get what you
wished for.