Challis - 03 - Snapshot (33 page)

Youre holding out on something,
he said.

She went very still. I am?

According to McQuarrie, Challis
said, youre in possession of certain photographs.

Robert told you?

His father.

Ah. And he sent you to warn me off.

This is not about him, its about
your professional relationship with me in particular and my hard-working
officers in general.

She looked at him with her head on
one side. Hal, listen to yourself. Then she narrowed her eyes. Robert was
sent copies, too, wasnt he? A blackmail demand?

Challis wasnt about to confirm or
deny. I need to see the copies you were sent. We need to check them, and the
envelope, for prints. Was there also a letter?

Yes. But whoever sent it wouldnt
have left prints.

Even so, Challis said.

You think it was the killer? I
thought it might be a cop.

No.

Tessa sighed. Ill make copies for
you.

What did the letter say?

It referred to the article on sex
parties, and said that for a fee of $5000 Id learn who the men in the photos
were and the circumstances in which the photos were found. The others received
blackmail demands, right? The guys trying to make as much money from the
photos as possible.

Normally I dont care what you
print, Challis said, but if you publish those photos, or even allude to them,
youll jeopardise the investigation.

Tessa toyed with the food on her
plate. Was Janine McQuarrie into the sex party scene?

You know I cant tell you that.

The familys not going to like what
Ive written about her in tomorrows edition.

Like what?

Janine was a poor therapist, she
rubbed people up the wrong way, she enjoyed challenging men and accusing them
of being abusive, and she kept inadequate records. In other words, she might
have had enemies.

Challis gave her a rueful shrug. That
about covers it.

I need a big story, she said, before
I finish.

What about Mead and the detention
centre?

She shook her head and twirled her
fork in a tangle of tagliatelle. That fizzled out. She paused. He warned me
off, you know, because I went to see his wife.

Challis gave her a crooked smile. I
met Lottie at a function once. She didnt strike me as the communicative type.

Correct.

Look, Tess, will you publish the
photos, or mention them?

She scowled. I might, when its all
over.

Challis wanted to help her. But he
couldnt point her in the direction of anyone yet, not even Anton and Laura
Wavell, not while they, and their party guests, were potentially implicated in
Janine McQuarries murder. If Tessa talked to them now, theyd very likely clam
up to her and the police, speak only through a lawyer, and feel betrayed. And
so he murmured something that meant nothing and within thirty minutes he was
driving her back to Waterloo, the heater of the Triumph not working and the
windscreen fogging up, obliging him to turn on the air-conditioning to clear
it, obliging Tessa to burrow herself into her coat and her scarf and her gloves
and scarcely trust herself to speak to him. What is it with the heaters in old
British cars, she said when they reached the kerb outside her house.

Said lightly, to mask her pain and
let him off the hook, he supposed. He decided to take the question literally. They
need time to warm up.

Some never do, she said pointedly,
getting out.

He watched her cross the footpath
and approach her front door, bulky in her overcoat, her hair trapped in black
folds by the turned-up collar. He knew that on the other side of the door shed
shed the coat and transform herself into someone slender and purposeful, but
right now she looked cold, tired and burdened. He didnt watch her go in but
sped off, the exhaust of his car booming down the street.

* * * *

No
shooting, this time, according to orders. This one had to look like an
accident. So Vyner was going for a drowning in the mangrove swamp at the rear
of the targets house. A pity: a shooting is quick and relatively clean. By the
same token, if he shot her hed have to get himself another pistol, and his
Navy source was no good to him any more.

He had his third and last Browning
with him, though, just in case.

8.45. 9.00. At 9.20 Tessa Kane
appeared under the light outside the entrance to the restaurant, coat on,
collar up, shoulders hunched, waiting for the boyfriend. Hello, trouble in
paradise? The body language was spelling out tension. Vyner watched them walk
to the boyfriends junky car, and five minutes later he was following them back
to Waterloo.

Yep, trouble in paradise. Instead of
spending the night, the boyfriend dropped her off outside her house and drove
away. The target let herself into her house, and Vyner was right there behind
her.

Behind her neat behind.

* * * *

49

The
darkness was fully settled, an evening full of mist and hazy shapes, the crisp air
laden with the stew of odours from the mangroves. Tessa, unlocking her front
door, was thinking only about Hal Challis and why she should accede to his
request not to pursue Robert McQuarrie and the sex party angle. She removed the
key, stepped into her front hallway, and something punched her hard in the
back, propelling her onto her knees. She heard the door slam. Someone straddled
her; he smelt of the chilly blackness outside and of sweaty agitation. His
fingers were twisted cruelly in her hair, jerking her head back. Then the tip
of something long and metallic, creepily warm from his body, was grinding under
the hinge of her jaw.

A gun, she realised, fitted with a
silencer.

Not a sound, bitch, okay?

She choked her assent.

He kept pulling on her hair,
stepping back, pulling her upright, the object on the end of the gun barrel
travelling down her spine now, probing between her buttocks. You want this? Ill
give it to you, you give me any grief, okay, bitch?

The words were banal, but the heat
behind them, and the mans turmoil and disorder, the rankness of his body, made
her limp.

Stand up.

She tried to straighten her back,
strengthen her knees. She said what she assumed everyone said: Please dont
hurt me.

Shut up!

What do you want?

He probed deeper with the gun.
What
did I just say? Shut up.

She complied.

His free hand snaked around to her
stomach and indifferently explored her breasts and groin. It was a gloved hand.
It parodied foreplay and she felt herself floating free, observing things from
a great distance. She turned her head, glimpsing a dark coat, a dark woollen
cap and narrow features, but his thick black leather fingers pinched a tuft of
her pubic hair and pulled hard.
Eyes front.

She averted her gaze, looked down her
cold, unlit hallway.

Move.

Where?

Shut up. Back door.

He followed hard on her heels, one
hand clasping the hair at the back of her head, the other pressing the gun
against her coccyx, propelling her through to the back door.

Open it.

She tried to sort and assess her
impressions of him. Wiry build, thin face, dark clothing, about her height, a
harsh voice full of strain. Shed never identify him outside of this particular
conjunction of time, place and circumstances.

Then they were through the back door
and crossing her sodden lawn to the gate at the rear of the garden. Her mind
raced. He was going to kill her out on the mudflats and dump her in a drainage
channel. There were stagnant pools out there, covered in scum. Shed never be
found and the fish and birds would strip her to the bone.

Which one hired you? Lowry or
Robert McQuarrie?

Shut up.

He shoved and she stumbled. He
jerked back hard, her hair coming out in his hand. Grass and bracken trailed
wetly over her shoes and pants. Behind her he cursed softly.

Who are you?

Shut up.

She turned her head slightly. Up and
down the fence line were the back walls of her neighbours, lights here and
there: laundries, kitchens, porches, loos. She could hear Extreme Makeover at
full volume.

Is it something I published?

This time he slammed the gun against
her temple and the pain was blinding. She began to cry. Hed destroyed her
nerve and she had to cry.

Stop snivelling.

Now theyd met the serpentine path
through the wetland: the raised gravel bed, the little treated pine bridges,
the boardwalk itself. Tessa knew that Challis liked to walk here; shed never
seen the appeal of it. Then, curiously, someone was calling her name. Not
Challis, but someone close to him.

* * * *

50

Ellen
parked two blocks away and cut through a side street that she recognised from a
burglary shed attended a month earlier. She stopped in the next street, her
stomach fluttering with nerves, fluttering so badly that she thought shed need
to squat behind a bush and relieve herself. The air was still and very dark.
She couldnt see Challiss car anywhere: maybe they hadnt returned yet, or
maybe theyd gone to his house. She burned with jealousy and shame.

She crossed to Tessa Kanes house
and heard voices, but there were no lights on inside, and so she went down the
side of the house, feeling a little shabby about her motives now, ready to
creep away again if she found proof that Challis and Kane had rekindled their
affair.

There was a rainwater tank at the
rear of her house and she barked her shins on the tap. She hobbled around in
circles, silently screaming, and knew from the dampness that shed broken the
skin and blood had formed. She rounded the corner, limping and distracted, in
time to hear the rattle of Kanes gate and then see her, a bulky shape in the
light spilling across the back gardens of the neighbouring houses. For some
reason, Kane was hurrying towards the mangroves.

Something was wrong. Kanes shadow
split into two figures, then reformed, and Ellen read urgency in it. Then she
heard a squawk, abruptly abbreviated.

Was the other figure Challis? Surely
they werent headed into the mangroves to have sex?

The figures were hurrying now, full
of noise and panic, and so Ellen was able to track them. Hal? Tessa? she
called. Is that you?

The figures paused, there was a
flash and she heard a faint spitting sound. Something tugged at her coat
sleeve. Shed been shot at. The coat was a burden suddenly. She shrugged it
off, took out her gun, and stepped onto the spongy path edge, among the reeds
and mangroves that would silence her footsteps and swallow her shape in the
night. For good measure the gunman fired twice more and Ellen uttered a brief Oh
of pain. Her neck. A couple of centimetres to the left and shed be choking on
her own blood now. She fumbled for her handkerchief. Her hands shook. She tried
to find her mobile and scarcely knew if shed lost or forgotten it or if shock
was closing her down.

Then Tessa Kane cried Help me! and
the man with her cursed, as if shed torn free of his grasp.

Ellen cried
Run!
but had
she cried it? There was another muted shot and she ducked, her movements very
slow now. She tried to straighten and go after the gunman but collapsed slowly
onto the muddy ground where the shallow tidal water rose and spread in a
primeval stink around her. She began to pat it like a child in a bath, looking
for her gun and her phone.

There was the killer coming for her.
Ellen tipped her head back to fix the mans shape but the night was full of
hazy shapes. She lifted her hand to say stop or to beg for help and discovered
that her .38 was still there. It bucked once, numbing her fingers.

* * * *

51

Challis
had barely reached home when he got the call. Shocked and numb, he returned to
Waterloo, examined the body on the boardwalk, barely choking back his feelings,
then acted hard and fast. By midnight he and Scobie Sutton had Raymond Lowry
and Robert McQuarrie in separate interview rooms. They were sleepy, bewildered,
affronted, and hadnt thought yet to ask for their lawyers, but that would
change.

Lowry first.

Where were you between the hours of
nine and ten this evening?

Lowry yawned and blinked. At home.

Can anyone vouch for that?

Lowry gave another yawn, huge and
jaw-creaking. Had a pizza delivered.

When?

Dunno. Some time.

Any phone calls in or out?
Visitors? Trips to the bottle shop?

Lowry, unshaven and smelling
strongly of alcohol, shook his head. Must of fallen asleep watching TV.

Scobie Sutton asked a Scobie Sutton
question: You were drinking?