Challis - 03 - Snapshot (5 page)

They walked on, Ellen changing the
subject. Hows your new job?

Pam shook her head ruefully. Its a
bullshit gig, Sarge.

It was an initiative of Senior
Sergeant Kellock, and involved the Road Traffic Authority, Victoria Police and
a few businesses with vague automotive connections. Pam and her partner were to
tool around in a dinky little sports car for several weeks, rewarding courteous
drivers with showbags that contained goods worth $150: a Melways street
directory, a book of touring maps covering the entire continent, a BP fuel
voucher, five McDonalds coupons, a free wheel balance and alignment from
Tyrepower, and a bumper sticker that read Drive Safely and Live.

Tell yourself its character
building.

Yeah, right, said Pam.

At the end of their walk, Ellen
said, Coffee?

Pam looked briefly stricken, then
rallied. No thanks, Sarge, she said gracefully. Stuff to do before my shift
starts, you know.

Ellen nodded, thinking: She doesnt
want to encounter Alan. Ellens husband liked to refer to Pam as That pushy
little uniform from down the road his contempt for her thinly veiled on the
few occasions theyd met. He didnt like his wife mentoring the younger woman.

They parted at the store and Ellen
walked home. Home was a fibro-cement beach house on stilts. On the plus side it
was two minutes walk from the beach and ten minutes drive from her CIU office
in Waterloo, but it was also uninsulated and difficult to heat and keep warm.
The mornings were the worst, and the late afternoons. She hated waking up in,
or coming home to a cold house. And Ellen felt the cold, always had. Finally,
she had no one to talk to, except her husband, Alan, and he was no comfort.
Things had been better when their daughter had lived at home, but Larrayne was
studying up in the city now.

Ellen entered the kitchen and found
her husband at the kitchen table, in uniform, eating breakfast, wound hard with
frustration and grievances. Have you seen the power bill?

She hadnt. Shed dumped it unopened
and forgotten in the little cane bowl beside the phone at the end of the
kitchen bench, where all the bills and junk mail ended up. She poured muesli
and soymilk into a bowl. How much is it for?

Only almost double what it was for
the same period last year, Alan said.

He actually grabbed a fistful of
bills and credit card statements and shook them at her. With just the two of
us living here I thought our costs would decrease, he said.

He was a solid man, close to being
fleshy from all those hours spent sitting in a patrol car. Hed been
transferred to the Accident Investigation Squad recently, but for many years
before that had worked Traffic. He always tanned up a little over summer,
looked healthier, but in winter his gingery fairness went a shade too pale, an
unhealthy paleness. Not for the first time, Ellen wondered why she stayed with
him, for theirs had long been a loveless marriage. And what did he get out of
it? The sex was perfunctory, they didnt nourish one another and they always
bickered. It would be easy for them to separate, now that Larrayne no longer
lived at home or depended on them.

But it would destroy him if she
left. Hed be helpless and hopeless. That was no reason for staying with him,
but it made the first step towards leaving him difficult.

He narrowed his pouchy eyes as she
sat opposite him with her muesli and a mug of coffee. Have you ever left the
heater switched on during the day?

She had, two or three or maybe a
dozen times this winter. No, she said emphatically.

Liar. Then he was doubtful. Maybe
its the meter, giving a false reading.

It has been a cold winter so far,
she said, and, as if to reinforce the observation, the foghorns boomed from
Westernport Bay.

So?

I think we should install central
heating.

Weve been through this.

We? Theres no we, Ellen thought.
And if Im serious about leaving him, why am I thinking about installing
central heating? Is it because Im assuming Ill get the house? Whoa, she
thought, youre getting ahead of yourself.

Another thing, Alan said, sometimes
you sit there with the heater on and a window open. How stupid is that? Its
like trying to heat not only the room but also the rest of Australia.

Central heating.

No.

A stupid, futile, demeaning
squabble, symptomatic of her husbands simple but dangerous failings and
grievances, which boiled down to two things: hed failed his sergeants exam,
and his wife had been fast-tracked because she was a woman.

The phone rang and Alan sprang for
it, listened, said curtly. Shes got a morning off, sorry, and banged the
handset down.

Who was it?

Challis.

Jesus, Alan.

Ellen picked up the phone and
dialled Challiss mobile. Hal, Im sorry

He cut her off, telling her that the
supers daughter-in-law had been murdered and outlining the circumstances. Ill
set up an incident room and brief everyone at lunchtime. Meanwhile I need you
to sniff around Bayside Counselling: get a feel for Janine McQuarrie and the
people she worked with, see if her diary or calendar tell you anything about
her movements today.

Ill take Scobie with me.

If hes finished in court.

* * * *

6

Scobie
Sutton stifled a yawn; he was sitting in the Frankston Magistrates Court, a
thin man with the look of a mournful preacher. Heather Cobb was appearing this
morning on drugs charges and Scobie, whod arrested her, was there to ensure
that she wouldnt go to jail.

It had started two weeks ago, when
hed been called to a Waterloo primary school. At show-and-tell that morning
Sherry Cobb, barely nine years old, had presented the class with a marijuana
plant in a plastic pot. Scobies interview with the child, and subsequent visit
to her home, had uncovered a typical story of poverty, addiction and neglect.
There were five children in the Cobb family, ranging in age from three to
eighteen; father in jail; mother an alcoholic. They lived in a two-bedroom
weatherboard shack between the railway line and a timber yard.

Now, in the Frankston Magistrates
Court, Scobie glanced at Natalie Cobb. She was the eighteen-year-old, in Year
12, wagging school today to provide moral support for her mother. When hed
first gone to question Heather Cobb, Natalie had been there, dressed in a tracksuit
and slumped in front of the TV. She was a fine looking young woman, but it was
two oclock in the afternoon and she should have been at school. Today she
looked not eighteen but twenty-eight, and as poisedin her best clothes, not
her school uniformas any of the young female lawyers you saw around the
Magistrates Court. Natalie smiled at her mother, then gave Scobie a
complicated look.

Complicated girl, Scobie thought.

The cases droned by, and then it was
Heathers turn. As expected, the magistrate let her off with a caution. While
I accept that you didnt grow the plant, Mrs Cobb, you nevertheless allowed
your premises to be used for the cultivation of marijuana.

Heather, dressed in a thin summer
dress and ragged parka, glanced worriedly at Scobie through pouchy eyes. He
smiled at her, nodded, and mouthed the word
sorry
to her across the
courtroom.

Heather brightened, brushed a greasy
comma of hair away from her eyes, and looked confidently at the magistrate. She
told him how sorry she was, it would never happen again, the man whod grown
the plants was a bully and shed been scared of him, but he was in prison in
Brisbane now, and no way was she going to let him back into her life.

She means it, too, Scobie thought.

Outside afterwards, Heather Cobb
trembled as her tensions eased. Mr Sutton, I dont know how to thank you.

Thats okay, Scobie said. It was
a good result.

The magistrate listened to your
recommendations, Natalie said. You swung it for us. Thanks, she said, and
pecked him on the cheek.

He blushed. My wife knows you. The
youth club on the estate?

Natalie looked guarded. Mrs Sutton,
the social worker? Shes your wife?

Damn, Scobie thought. I should have
kept my big trap shut. If Natalie refuses to work with Beth as a result, Ill
have set back community relations and all of my wifes good work.

A small van pulled into the kerb,
the driver tooting. Got to go, Natalie said. See ya, Mr Sutton. See ya, Mum.

Boyfriend, Heather Cobb said,
watching the van peel away.

Somehow Scobie didnt think the
boyfriend was taking Natalie back to school. His mobile rang. It was Ellen
Destry. You finished?

Yes.

I need you back here, she said,
but didnt explain.

Come on, he said to Heather, Ill
give you a lift home.

* * * *

7

Tessa
Kane had heard about the murder at 9.45 a.m., a call from an ambulance officer,
one of her many contacts. Shed immediately rung Hal Challis, but he was
apparently out of the station and not answering his mobile phoneor not to her,
at any rate. Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton werent available. And nobody else
at the Waterloo police station would talk to her. She felt frantic for thirty
minutes, then asked herself what the point was. She published a weekly paper:
the dailies would have all the scoops on this story, and shed have to be
content with an overview in next Tuesdays edition, when no doubt the case
would be long closed.

And then, at 11 a.m., Challis
returned her call, suggesting they meet for coffee. Five minutes later she was
walking down High Street to Cafe Laconic, where she sat at a window table,
looking out at the canopied, unoccupied footpath tables, a public phone booth
and a plane tree. There had been a dense fog all morning, but it had lifted
here on High Street, as if burnt off by human endeavour. Tessa drew her coat
tighter around her shoulders and glanced at the corkboard on the adjacent wall:
this weeks program at the drive-in cinema in Dromana, a couple of garage
salesshe loved garage salesa scattering of business cards and a federal
election poster eighteen months out of date.

Then a waiter was standing there,
looking appreciatively at her legs, stockinged today, slim and dark under a
skirt. She normally wore jeans or trousers, but liked to dress up on Tuesdays,
publication day.

What can I get you?

She smiled. Nothing just yet,
thanks. Im waiting for a friend.

Fair enough, the waiter said, and
went behind the counter again, a slab of jarrah fronted by corrugated iron.
There was wood and iron everywhere, she noticed, her eyes alighting on the
election poster again. Her vote had made no difference back then. She came from
a family of Labor voters, but Labor had long ago sold out on the things that
mattered to her: social justice issues and an independent foreign policy. Back
when Labor first showed signs of decline, shed voted Communist a few times, to
register her protest, but Communism was a spent force. Now she voted Green, for
the Greens actually held values and beliefs, unlike Labor. Shed probably call
herself Red-Green, like the political movement in Germany, favouring both
social justice reforms and green reforms. Unfortunately the Greens were widely
seen as tree-huggersand indeed there were plenty for whom that was as far as
their beliefs extended. Shed never vote Liberal or Democrat, and would never
again vote Labor, the party whose ex-prime ministers were now millionaires, its
ex-senators and ministers into tax evasion and cozying up to the richest men in
Australia.

She was sitting there getting
quietly steamed up when the lean frame of Hal Challis passed by the window.
Theirs was a complicated relationship. Theyd been lovers for a while, things
fading away rather than ending convincingly. Now she saw him at press
conferences and at times like this, when they exchanged information.

Not that it mattered any more, but
she wondered if he felt free of his wife yet. Angela Challis was dead, but that
didnt mean she was dead in Challiss heart. It had been a huge story at the
time, for Challiss wife had started an affair with another policeman, the pair
of them luring Challis to a lonely rendezvous on a back road one night,
intending to kill him. The attempt had failed and Challiss wife had been
jailed for conspiracy to murder. But instead of divorcing her, washing his
hands of her, Challis had felt obscurely responsible, as if hed failed Angela,
driven her to taking drastic action. Hed gradually stopped loving herso he
saidbut for years had let her call and write to him from prison, let her talk
out her guilt and regret. Move on, Hal, people had said, and God knows Tessa
herself had said it often enough, but hed not moved on, and whenever she was
with him hed seemed disengaged, sad.

And then last year Angela Challis
had killed herself in the prison infirmary. Tessa had taken heart. Shed not
rushed Challis, not jumped for joy, but been patient, kind and commiserative.
Where had that got her? Exactly nowhere. Challis had grown more disconnected,
as though the guilt he felt had not disappeared but compounded itself.
Eventually shed stopped seeing him, stopped waiting, but for a long while the
whole business had been a permanent ache inside her, composed of loss and
emptiness.