Challis - 03 - Snapshot (27 page)

Pam stood very still, watched, and
waited. She wanted to swallow. Maybe Lottie Mead
had
reported the stone
incident after all.

Everything suggests high speed,
Alan Destry said.

The Toyota, not the police, Pam
flashed back.

Destry cocked his head disbelievingly,
a solid, arrogant-looking man with cropped hair. If the Toyota was driving at
high speedsup to 130 kilometres an hour, according to John Tankardthen how
come you witnessed the accident?

We were not pursuing, Pam said, we
were following.

Following at high speeds, said
Ellen Destrys husband, and spooking the other driver.

It wasnt like that.

Write it up and submit it before
the end of the day. Ive got tomorrow off, so expect a formal debriefing next
Monday.

Formal debriefing.

Yes. What did you expect?

* * * *

Andy
Asche was in a hurry. He had to get to the post office before five. Wearing
latex gloves to screen his fingerprints, he loaded his printer with paper fresh
from a new packet, clicked on the photo array that hed transferred from the
stolen laptop to his computer, clicked on the four thumbnails that clearly
showed the faces of four men, and clicked print, making multiple copies.

The photos rolled out of the printer
and he collated them into five bundles, which he slipped into five express-post
envelopes. Before sealing the envelopes he typed up a letter, big font, plenty
of bold, and printed out a copy to add to four of the envelopes. He typed a
different letter for the fifth envelope. Finally he tore up the highway to
Frankston, where no one knew him, and lodged the envelopes at the main post
office.

* * * *

With
darkness settling over the mangrove flats beside her house, and feeling
cocooned by her fleecy tracksuit and the warmth of her slow combustion fire,
Tessa Kane continued to search the net, a glass of wine at hand. Last evening s
Google search had been useful for consolidating the readily accessible
information on Charlie Mead and ANZCORthe bland public facebut now she was
refining her search parameters, concentrating on the period before Mead and his
wife came to Australia. Shed also made dozens of local and international phone
calls since yesterday, speaking to men and women whod once studied with,
taught, worked alongside or served under either of the Meads.

At first, the results seemed
promising. The deeper she dug, the more Charlie Meads profile blurred at the
edges. She found several Charlie Meads, or variations of the one. There had
been a time in the 1970s and 80safter hed served with the security forces in
Zimbabwe and later worked as a security consultant in South Africawhen Mead
frequently changed addresses, but she could not discover why. To avoid
creditors? There was also a question mark over his service record: certainly hed
served in the South African military, but had he ever been a highly trained
commando with SAS connections, as hed claimed? Later still hed worked for a
security company in the UK that specialised in surveillance, firearms training,
bodyguards for travelling businessmen, and negotiating in hostage and kidnap
situations. He was sacked in 1986 after South African authorities had
interrogated him regarding an attempt to provide arms and mercenaries to
insurgents in the Seychelles. In the early 1990s hed joined ANZCOR and risen
through the ranks.

Apart from references to a position
held in the South African public service, shed found almost nothing on Lottie
Mead.

Tessa felt frustrated. The facts
were sparse, and although theyd required a little digging, were on public
record, and didnt point to anything obviously criminal or corrupt. What was
the point in publishing an expose if there was nothing to expose? Sure, Mead had
probably cut corners all his life and his values were non-existent or
deplorable, but in the current political climate, which admired cowboys, Mead
was bound to have powerful supporters and be seen as a man who got things done.

There was one last strategy she
could try. Reaching for the phone, she began to hire private detectives in South
Africa, England and the US.

* * * *

Ellen
arrived home that evening to find Alan watching a DVD: a war movie, no surprise
there. She almost went straight out again. Have you eaten?

He gestured with the remote control,
his gaze on the screen. Yep.

So she heated leftovers and ate at
the kitchen table. Usually Sunday night was movie night, but Alan had a day off
tomorrow. Ellen had treasured Sundays when Larrayne had still lived at home.
Theyd eat pizza, fish and chips, or cheese on toast, plates on their laps, in
front of the box, watching a good movie, like
Emma, Sense and Sensibility
or
Love, Actually.
Sometimes Alan watched with them, but it had to be an
action movie for him to last the distance, and the only ones that Ellen and
Larrayne could stand to watch were old James Bond and Indiana Jones movies, or
action movies with a bit of class, like
Heat.
Or
Titanic,
which
hed endured more for Kate Winslets tits and the ship turning arse up than the
characters and storyline.

Now, with Larrayne living in the
city, Ellen felt a sense of loss. Larrayne seemed to lurk in the corners of the
house, the corners of Ellens gaze. Ellens widowed mother had suffered the
same thing: I keep catching glimpses of your dad, shed say. Not his ghost,
I dont mean that. The particular way he held the newspaper or walked through a
door or put the dishes away. Well, Ellen kept glimpsing Larrayne here and
there, and even missed those quirks of Larraynes that had driven her nuts at
the time, like the way she would never stay put when cleaning her teeth but
wander out of the bathroom and up and down the hall and in and out of rooms,
electric toothbrush buzzing in the corner of her mouth.

Ellen picked at her food, seeing the
dead horse and rider, the overturned van. Was Larrayne very vulnerable
now?away from home for the first time; drugs everywhere; evening lectures and
a long walk home across a shadowy campus and down dark streets; getting
attached to an axe murderer disguised as Mr Right; or even getting her heart
broken, which was bound to happen sooner or later.

And so she phoned, several times. No
answer. Larrayne, and her housemates, were out.

For the evening? The whole night?

Where?

Doing what?

With whom?

The old who, what, where, when and
why of police work.

And all the while she was trying to
tell herself that she would leave her husband on her own terms and not because
Challis existed.

* * * *

40

Challis
spent most of Friday morning in CIU. It was proving to be difficult to get fast
or accurate information from Witsec or the New South Wales prison service.
Meanwhile, according to the findings of the DCs on loan from Mornington, Hayden
Coulter was guilty of no more than massaging the books of his clients. Nothing
solid tied himor any of the other men in the photographsto Janine McQuarries
murder. Several people, including a racehorse owner, a trainer and a groom,
alibied Coulter; various secretaries, receptionists and work colleagues alibied
the other men. Finally, the investigation had not turned up a secret lover for
Janine, and Challis could only suppose that shed seemed happy to Meg because
shed thought of a way to stick it to her husband. The anonymous caller hadnt
called back.

He checked with Scobie Sutton, who
was manipulating the images stored on Janines mobile phone into simple
head-and-shoulders shots of Coulter, the surgeon and the funds manager, and
which Challis would later show to Georgia McQuarrie. Scobie was hunched in
front of his monitor, his whole body revealing distaste for the task, as though
he feared hed be soiled. Not for the first time, Challis wondered if the man
was too sensitive and moralistic for the job. He said nothing and returned to
his cubicle, wondering how Ellen was doing. She was out, following up on
forensic evidence found at the murder and accident scenes, and talking to
anyone who might have met or seen Christina Traynor.

Challis poured another mug of coffee
and turned on his radio for the 10 a.m. news. First up was another young
Australian arrested for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia, followed
by an account of yesterdays inquest, in which a Navy public relations officer,
responding to a question regarding cadets and drug abuse, said that the Navys
position was one of zero tolerance. Challiss mind drifted. What would his
parents make of the story? He often found himself measuring the world against
them. He was the late-in-life child of a father whod been a World War II RAAF
navigator and a mother whod been an Army nurse. Not much drug use back then,
he didnt suppose, apart from alcohol and tobaccoand a bit of cocaine and
heroin amongst inner-city bohemians. The two world wars had also established a
simple set of values: Australians were defined as brave, practical,
resourceful, egalitarian, clean-living and loyal to their mates. Conservative
governments and the popular press continued to hold that view, but Challis
thought that things
had
changed. Bravery, loyalty, egalitarianism,
patriotism and a fine young mind in a fine young body were media images trotted
out to suit sixty-five-year-old politicians, sports commentators and shock-jock
talkback radio hosts who kept one eye on their ratings and another on their
sponsors kickbacks. Outmoded, irrelevant concepts that bore little relation to
the real world. Drugs belonged now; the old Australia didnt. Drugs had made
crime more prevalent, vicious and unpredictable, too, making Challiss job
harder, but no one wanted to know about that.

When the walls seemed to close in on
him he returned to the open space of the incident room with the McQuarrie file
and sat and stared at a wall map of the area. The killers could have driven to
Mrs Humphreyss house from anywhere on the Peninsulaor further afield.

Feeling Georgias sombre gaze on him
then, he took out her sketches and arranged them side by side, trying to think
his way into her skin: her vantage point, what shed seen, what she couldnt
have seen, what she might have invented. Her representations of the crime-scene
seemed to be truthful if rudimentary. Shed not shown the shooter as a monster
but a man with dark glasses, a coat, and a thin face. The driver had a round
face and a shaven head, and shed shown his arm hanging lazily out of the
drivers side window.

Challis stared at that arm. Georgias
sense of perspective was skewed but her pen strokes were generally clean and
precise, which didnt explain the lumpy appearance of the hand. He picked up
the phone.

* * * *

By
late morning he was knocking on Robert McQuarries door in Mount Eliza.
McQuarrie himself answered, demanding, with a red face, What do you want?

Challis had assumed the man would be
at work. I need a quick word with Georgia. I cleared it with Meg.

Well, she should have cleared it
with me. My daughters grieving, you know.

I must talk to her, Robert.

Again the guy flinched at the use of
his first name, and glared at Challis. You think I did it, dont you.

It was a statement, not a question. Did
you?

Absolutely not.

Challis regarded him. Then you have
nothing to worry about.

With a kind of sob, Robert McQuarrie
said, You showed my father the photos, you bastard.

It couldnt be avoided.

Youre a shit, you know that? Am I
going to see myself in the
Progress?
Have you been flashing copies
around?

Dad?

It was Georgia, peering around at
Challis from behind her fathers legs. She wore a pink tracksuit and her hair
had been freshly washed. Challis put his hands on his knees. Hi there.

Have you come to see me?

I have indeed.

Im in the kitchen.

McQuarrie, his face suffused with
anger, stood back to let Challis enter. Challis followed Georgia to the
kitchen, where she promptly sat at the table, a hot milk drink and half a honey
pikelet on a plate at her elbow. Meg stood beside her, glancing nervously past
Challis to the hallway. Challis turned his head: Robert McQuarrie stood there,
and the moment extended, full of tension. Then McQuarrie turned irritably and
stalked away down the hall.

Challis swung his gaze back to Meg
and grinned. She returned it meekly and began to fill the kettle at the sink.

Georgia, munching the rest of her
pikelet, said, I think I might go back to school next week. Do you think thats
a good idea?

Challis glanced at Meg helplessly,
then smiled at Georgia. I think that sounds like a very good idea. Do you miss
your friends?

Uh-huh, Georgia said.

Are you up to answering a few more
questions for me?

Uh-huh. What do you want to know?

Challis spread the photographs of
Coulter and the other men across the table. Scobie had done a good job: there
was nothing to indicate that the men had been photographed naked. Do you
recognise any of these men?