Challis - 03 - Snapshot (23 page)

Yes.

Do you know these men?

They come to our occasions.

Occasions. Thats a good one,
Ellen said. Ill see if I can occasion my husband tonight, if hes not too
tired.

Anton flushed. I can read you like
a book. You think theres something smutty about our parties because you
yourself think sex is a smutty thing. Its not.

I love a bit of smut, Ellen said. Hal?

Me too, Challis said carefully,
wondering if her fury came from disappointment with him. Hed wanted her
yesterday, and the day before that, and shed picked up on it. He hadnt acted:
had she wanted him to?

He placed a photograph of Janine
McQuarrie on the coffee table, the studio portrait taken for Bayside
Counselling Services. Do you know this woman?

They peered with dutiful frowns. Shes
been here.

Been to the sex parties?

Yes, Anton said stiffly.

One of the wives, Laura said, as
if to stress legitimacy.

Ellen leaned forward and with great
sharpness and concentration said, She was murdered two days ago, almost to the
hour.

They knew. Janines likeness had
been plastered all over the TV news and daily press. I fail to see what that
has to do with us, Anton said.

Dont you?

No.

She took these photos at one of
your parties and now shes dead.

A pause.
She
took them? How?

Mobile phone.

The Wavells shifted about as if
kicking themselves for not anticipating that, for not policing it.

But why? Laura asked.

Ellen ignored her. Tell me more
about these orgies of yours, she said in her dangerous, reckless way.

Theyre not orgies! Tell her,
Anton.

Theyre not orgies.

Okay, group-sex gangbangs. Tell me
more about them.

Youre deliberately goading us,
deliberately cheapening everything, said Laura.

Were not doing anything wrong,
anything illegal, said Anton. No drugs, no coercion, no underage girls, no
sexually transmitted diseases, just healthy safe sex for consenting adults.

Multiple
sex acts between
desperate
adults,
Ellen snarled.

Theyre hot desperate. Tell her,
Anton.

Couples,
Anton said, who already have sexual
partners and want to explore and extend the possibilities.

Sounds like desperation and fear to
me, Ellen said. You knew Janine McQuarrie was taking these photographs, didnt
you?

No. Absolutely not.

You encouraged it.

No way.

You
commissioned
it,
Challis cut in. Youre running a nice little blackmail racket and Janine was your
partner. You sent these photographs to four of your potential victims to soften
them up before making demands for money.

Dont be stupid. Why would we do
that? Our parties, as you like to call them, would soon grind to a halt.

Power. Money. Revenge.

Not interested. Were decent
people, not criminals.

Into the silence that followed,
Anton said meekly, Do we need a lawyer?

Ellen pointed to a pale, grainy,
globular backside. Heres one.

He flushed angrily. Are you going
to shut us down?

Shut you down? said Ellen in
amazement. Who do you think we are?

* * * *

34

That
was the early hours of Thursday. A raw wind had risen by the time Challis and
Ellen returned to CIU, and there was a message for Challis to telephone his
elderly next-door neighbour. A huge gum trees come down across your driveway,
Hal. Its sticking out into the road. I tried to cut it up but cant start my
chainsaw.

Try the shire, Challis said,
shrugging out of his coat.

I did. There are trees and branches
down everywhere and they cant promise theyll get around to it today.

Challis cursed. Ten oclock. He was
obliged to attend the Navy inquest at eleven. Ill be there in fifteen
minutes.

He dragged on his coat again,
grabbed his laptop and inquest notes, and stopped at Ellens desk. Ill be out
for two or three hours. I want you to call on Janines sister. I doubt if
Janine was the confiding type, but Im pretty sure Meg intuited something about
her recent activities.

Ellen sat back in her chair, tapping
a pen against her teeth. Everything in this case is a trace of a ghost of a
faint chance of a possibility.

He was relieved to see her smile. Eloquently
put.

Challis drove to his home along
roads festooned with twigs, branches and long scraps of bark. By the time hed
cursed his chainsaw into life and sliced the tree up and rolled the segments of
trunk out of the way, and showered and dressed again, he was late for the
inquest.

The ruling was as expected: the Navy
armourer had shot dead the Fiddlers Creek Hotel bouncer, and then committed
suicide. Hed been drinking heavily in the main bar, but was also under the
influence of a cocktail of drugs bought from a Navy cadet, and this, compounded
by his sense of grievance at being ejected from the hotel, had disturbed the
balance of his mind.

But the coroner went further.
Reading from Challiss own report, he noted that the armourer had used a
Browning automatic handgun from the armoury, and recommended that an
investigation be held into how it had been removed despite electronic
surveillance measures and bi-weekly spot checks on the inventory, and whether
or not other weapons had been removed, and if so, who had them.

The proceedings continued briskly
and by early afternoon Challis was stepping out into a ragged wind, fits of
sunlight and obscuring cloud masses. He hurried to his car, checked his mobile,
and saw that Superintendent McQuarrie had called him. Twice.

Challis, sir.

Finally. Was your mobile switched
off, Inspector?

Coroners inquest, sir, that Navy
shooting.

And?

Murder suicide.

Into the pause that followed, the
superintendent said tightly, I understand you went to see my son again.

Sir.

May I ask why?

Loose ends, Challis said. Surely
Robert hadnt told his father about last nights visit. The sister-in-law?
Nomost probably one of McQuarries spies, he decided.

Such as?

Challis debated with himself. Could
he reasonably expect to keep the super from learning about the photographs?
Either way, he was in a bind: damned if he told the super, damned if he didnt.
It was partly a courtesy call, sir, and we went over old ground to see if he
could remember anything further about his wife.

Old ground? What about new ground,
Inspector?

As if to suggest that Challis hadnt
been thorough the first time around and liked to spend his days upsetting
important and influential people.

In the absence of leads we have to
check phone records again, said Challis, read correspondence, look for holes
and inconsistencies in witness statements, as well as talk to new witnesses who
might come
forward. Jesus.

McQuarrie was silent. Then he said, I
thought we agreed this was a case of the wrong person in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

You
agreed it, Challis thought. Its important
to keep an open mind, sir.

Dig deeper into this witness
protection woman.

Sir.

There was another silence, and then
McQuarrie seemed to tiptoe through his words: Is there anything about Janine
that I should know, Hal? A secret lover? Was she skimming funds from the
clinic? Blackmailing her clients?

Is McQuarrie simply waiting to be
told the worst? wondered Challis, or does he know something that we dont? Whatever
it is, well find it, Challis said. You had to say things like that to your
boss and a fearful public. He meant it, but he was saying it to shut McQuarrie
up. Anxious to get going, he finished the conversation and returned to his
office in CIU and a backlog of paperwork that owed plenty to the superintendents
cost-cutting measures. The budget destroys resources, Challis thought, the
paperwork destroys time, and the jargon destroys reason.

Fed up, he went in search of Ellen. Did
Meg tell you anything?

Yes and no. They werent close, but
she did feel that Janine had seemed happier than usual in recent weeks.

Challis drew his hands tiredly down
his cheeks. An affair? Someone in the swingers scene?

Ellen shrugged. Theres nothing to
indicate a lover in her e-mails, phone records or ordinary mail. She didnt
confide in anyone. If there is a lover, shes covered her tracks well. Do you
want me to keep looking?

He shook his head absently, returned
to his office and attacked his in-tray again. At one point he reached for his
laptop. It wasnt there. It wasnt in his car. Then he remembered: hed left it
on his kitchen table. Hed gone home, changed into overalls, cut up the fallen
tree, raced off to the inquest. Challis always paid attention to his instincts,
and this one was a creeping sensation that told him not to waste a minute of
time.

He ran downstairs to the carpark,
climbed into the loan car and headed out of town. At the second roundabout he
turned northwest, glancing briefly at Waterloo Mowers, where the lights were a
dull yellow through a gauze of water droplets and a man in a japara was despondently
assessing the ranks of lawn mowers parked on the grass outside. His tyres
hissed and other cars tossed dirty scraps of water over his windscreen.

Soon he was driving between a dismal
housing estate and a couple of waterlogged horse paddocks, and then was in
undulating country, where costly lifestyle houses had scant views over
Westernport Bay. Otherwise the houses here were older, faintly rundown fibro,
weatherboard and brick-veneer farm dwellings amid rusty sheds, untidy pine
trees, orchards and dams. It was turning out to be a wet winter, even this
early in the season, and the dams were full, the clay backroads greasy, the
roadside ditches running furiously, the floods washing drifts of grit and
gravel from adjoining dirt roads across the sealed roads.

Thats how Challis knew his own
road, the dirty yellow-brown smear across the bitumen surface. He turned off,
splashing through muddy potholes and hearing the heater fan cut out with a
death rattle. He came to his driveway and turned in, passing the sawn logs and
dead agapanthus stalks, and headed up towards the house, which looked damp,
empty, almost forlorn, but familiar in all of its manifestations, and a true
home, a haven through the years up until now.

And thats when he saw the marks in
the lawn. Dark brown mud gouges stark against the green. His first thought was:
They got bogged.
His second and third were:
Who?
and
How did
they get out?
His fourth, when he found the splintered back door, was:
Did
they take the laptop?

* * * *

35

Challis
made himself a coffee while he waited, careful how he touched things, even
using his elbow to work the door of the fridge, and hooking out the milk
container with the back of his thumb. As for the coffee pot, coffee jar and his
old cops never die mug, hed yet to meet a burglar who paused to brew coffee.
He didnt for a moment think the crime-scene techs would lift any prints other
than his ownand some old ones of Tessa Kanesbut he knew the procedure, the
irony being that, since he was a cop, his place would be given more than a
cursory examination.

It was too cold to sit on his
sundeck, and no sun anyway, only the grey light of a winters afternoon, and so
he set the central heating to high, sat at his kitchen table and made lists for
his insurance company and CIU. Damage: jemmied back door, a broken fruit bowl
(Italian, hand painted, a gift from Tessa), cracked CD covers. After a moment,
he added the twin gouges in his lawn. Stolen: a jar of coins, approx. value
$15; digital camera, $499; DVD player, $250; portable TV, $399; answering
machine, $70; cordless phone, $79; laptop, $2500; laptop case, $60. He walked
through the house again, returned to the kitchen and added: Rockport walking
shoes (new), $299; Swiss Army knife (ten years old, no longer have receipt);
Walkman (broken); leather belt, $45. A third walk through yielded him the
bedside clock, $25, and assorted jewellery (property of late wife), value
approximately $2000.

Angela had wanted to take some of
the rings and earrings into prison with her, but he told her theyd be the
target of the other prisoners, and so, therefore, would she. Theyll tear them
off you, hed said, or theyll resent you. Everything will be here waiting
for you when you get out. And shed said, But will
you
be waiting for
me? and hed had no answer to that. As for the jewellery, hed bought most of
ita watch, a white gold necklace, emerald earrings. The engagement ring had
been his grandmothers, mercifully dead before she knew that Angela had tried
to kill him.