Whispering Death (17 page)

Challis said, ‘Thanks, Freya.'

‘How's Ellen?'

Challis was aware of Murphy and Schiff watching him. ‘Fine. Overseas study tour.'

‘I'd heard. You should join her.'

‘I wish,' Challis said.

His mobile phone sounded in his pocket. He checked the screen, saw McQuarrie's name and knew he couldn't keep avoiding the man. He answered and McQuarrie said, ‘What possessed you, Inspector, walking out on—'

Challis overrode him. ‘A home invasion and then a murder, that's what possessed me.'

Silence, and he found himself adding, ‘Doing my job, in fact,' guessing he was driving another nail into the lid of his coffin.

26

Grace had decided to keep the rarest and costliest items from the Lascar collection for herself. The rest she traded to Steve Finch for $4500, putting up with his usual shit, the guy gazing into her eyes while trailing his knuckles over her breasts. The gaze she gave him was flat, wintry, and he shrugged indifferently, saying, ‘Can't blame a bloke for trying.'

She could, but didn't. She left him there with his weak, moist dreams and continued north, crossing the West Gate Bridge, the windsocks limp today, and then via Kings Way to Dandenong Road. At Springvale Road she headed down to the bay and followed the Nepean to Frankston. When she reached the town's southern edge, a part of her was tempted to drive all the way down the Peninsula, hop onto the ferry, go home and sleep. This was the part of her that was tired of the running, tired of the let-down that always followed the high of breaking in, scooping up, getting out. This part of her was loose, not ordered.

But order won. It always did. She needed to stash her takings before she did anything else.

And so she turned at the Coolstores on Eramosa Road and zigzagged her way to Waterloo. Kept her eyes peeled for the unmarked blue Commodore. Kept 5 km/h under the posted speed limits. The $4500 was in a money belt around her waist, the Lascar stamps between the pages of the Golf's service book, the coins in the engine bay, inside a bolt-on canister that at a casual glance was part of the electrics.

By 4 p.m. Grace had stowed it all in her safe-deposit box and was heading back across the Peninsula, taking Coolart Road this time. And, as the Golf topped a rise and dipped into a hollow again, she saw a mess of red and blue flashing lights in the distance. Up and down another hill, the lights resolving themselves into half a dozen cop cars and stalled traffic. She slowed the Golf, turned on her indicators, headed into a side road named Goddard. The surface was chopped up, powdery, and wound between open paddocks, vines, untidy gumtrees and commercial chicken farms, all of it coated in fine, clogging dust. Tense at the thought of her dust trail and the idle curiosity of the cops on Coolart Road, she was saved by an arrow on a gumtree.

She braked. The arrow was part of an ornate sign that said ‘Lindisfarne, Open Garden Scheme, All Welcome' and indicated a dense cypress hedge broken by a massive open entranceway, a pair of solid wooden gates attached to curving concrete supports. On one support was a painted board that read ‘Lindisfarne' and ‘W. & L. Niekirk'. No sign of the house itself, only the hedge and a hint of driveway. She scanned the road ahead of her: empty. Opposite Lindisfarne was an open farmyard with a droughty lawn in the foreground and a background sprawl of house, garden shrubbery and sheds. A trampoline lay tipped on its side and in a broad area adjacent to the house were a reedy dam and a grove of fruit trees.

Unable to think of a good reason for driving into the farmyard, Grace turned left, through the gap in the Lindisfarne hedge line, and followed the gravel driveway beyond the cypress barrier. On the other side was a park-like stretch of lawn, silvery gums, garden beds and a modern-looking house.

And a woman dead-heading roses. She straightened her back, knuckling a wisp of hair from her cheek. ‘May I help you?'

‘I saw the “open garden” sign,' Grace said.

‘I'm so sorry, that was last weekend,' the woman said.

She was a collection of incongruities. Thorn-scratched forearms; limp brown hair pasted damply to her temples; gold and precious stones glinting on her fingers and earlobes and around her throat; a face you might see seated in a box at the opera, nose tilted to detect odours; a horsy, tennis playing body; an educated voice. She wore stained Levis torn at the knees, a fraying straw hat and a grease smudge on the smile line next to her mouth.

She pushed back the hat. ‘I've been meaning to take that sign down all week.'

Grace looked around now and said, a little wistfully, ‘That's a shame. Such a beautiful garden. Have you been part of the scheme for long?'

‘A few years,' the woman said. She removed a wrinkled glove and offered Grace a limp hand. ‘Mara Niekirk.'

‘Jenny Anderson,' said Grace. ‘The grounds are looking gorgeous. Such a lot of work. You must be so proud.'

‘Oh, you know,' the woman said with a laugh. She swiped the perspiration from her brow. ‘Look, you might as well have a wander, now that you're here. Just ignore the occasional rake or wheelbarrow.'

‘I don't want to impose,' Grace said.

‘Oh, it's no bother. I only wish I could show you around, but I must finish trimming these roses. We all leave for Sydney tomorrow.'

‘Holiday?' asked Grace lightly, looking around at the lawns and native plants, the curving driveway and the cypress hedge. She noticed that neither the road, nor the farmhouse opposite, were visible from where she stood.

‘Part holiday, part business,' the woman said. ‘But a week is better than nothing.'

Grace smiled and continued scanning the grounds of Lindisfarne, this time paying more attention to the perimeter of the rambling public display area: garden sheds, clumps of shadow, coiled hoses and a broad, creeper-choked wire-netting structure. The Niekirk woman had said, ‘
we
all leave'. More than two people.

Just then, movement in the wire netting. A gap, getting wider. Some kind of narrow gate, Grace realised, as a young woman raced out with a small child, both of them shrieking and elated as they slammed the gate behind them. ‘My daughter and her nanny,' explained Mara Niekirk. ‘They've been feeding the canaries.'

Grace smiled and began to stroll. She didn't give a stuff about plants, gardens or wildlife, went through life without seeing them, but she was super-alert right now, all of her senses hard at work. The air was scented, small birds snapped around the bottlebrush heads, bees hummed nearby. There was order in the disordered paths and borders. A small wooden shed wore bright green paint and a tiny cactus grew inside an old boot beside a garden tap, as if to tell visitors not to take the garden too seriously.

Emerging from a long rose arbour, Grace found herself hard against a wall of the house. It was high, full of glass and darkly stained posts and beams. A steeply pitched roof, the apex at least eight metres above her head. Vaguely Tyrolean, but light and airy.

She moved along the wall. Now she could see that the house was in three, disproportionate sections, joined by glassed-in walkways. As with the cactus in the boot, the building resisted categorisation, as if the architect had taken direction from too many people. Grace continued to explore, ignoring the garden at her back, intent on what she could see through the glass. A lot of black leather upholstery, terracotta tiles, white rugs and cushions, a doll and plastic blocks on the tiles, crap art on the walls.

Not all of it was crap.

A small religious icon, hanging on a wall inside one of the walkways, jolted Grace to the core. She strolled once around the house, wanting a way in, hiding the tension that was building inside her.

Messer: the alarm system was a Messer.

Out of nowhere came a sharp pain and a snapping sensation on the crown of her head. Grace dropped into a crouch, ready to run or fight, and saw a magpie climb out of its dive and bank as if to come in again. She hurried to her car, waving her arms about, turning on her heel from time to time in readiness for the hidden threats.

27

The break-in at the Clare Valley house was reported to police on Thursday afternoon by a lawn-mowing contractor who'd spotted a smashed alarm box on one wall and a pane of glass leaning against another.

Now, Friday morning, Clare detectives were poking around, and when an AFP inspector named Towne arrived, Detective Constable Burke was given the task of liaison.

‘Like I told you, nothing much to see.'

Towne nodded, offered a huge smile that had nothing in it, and continued prowling, hands behind his back, peering at the ground. He was young for an inspector. Burke, trailing the man, was guessing university fast-track and all that crap. Being a federal task force hotshot was the second mark against him. The third was the guy's appearance, effortlessly classy.

Burke saw Towne stop, crouch, stand and move on again. He sighed, tugging at his collar, feeling uncoordinated, his suit a rotten fit.

The show pony stopped again. He peered, straightened, said, ‘
Ah
hah!
' half mockingly.

‘What?'

Towne pointed down at the soil between a pair of stubby rose bushes. The roses were giddily perfumed, bees droned and Burke sneezed.

‘Gesundheit,' Towne said.

Burke trumpeted into a handkerchief. ‘Footprints, so what? We took casts.'

‘Size elevens?'

‘Yeah.'

Towne nodded—he was a nodder—and moved on, glancing at the house now, veranda, windows and eaves. ‘Like I showed you,' Burke said, ‘he used a glasscutter on the study window.'

‘Yes. But why didn't the alarm sound?'

‘It probably did but he smashed it. We found a croquet mallet tossed under a bush.'

‘Not wired to the security company or local cop shop?'

‘No.'

‘The blessed ignorance of some people,' said Towne, shaking his head.

Burke had had enough. ‘So what brings a man like you to our humble B and E?'

Towne ignored him, par for the course. Burke felt like smacking the guy over the ear hole. In his long experience, hotshots like Towne liked to keep you offside. Tell you everything was on a need-to-know basis—and of course someone like you didn't need to know.

Towne walked on. Then he stopped and said, ‘I'll need to see the logs for the three days prior to this incident.'

Incident. It was a fucking burglary that had tied up four officers for two days. ‘Looking for what, exactly?'

A car passed by on the dirt road, its suspension rattling. Then dust was pouring across the lawn towards them, Burke amused to see the AFP guy brush futilely as it settled onto the fine cloth of his suit.

‘Burglary logs,' Towne said at last, blinking his eyes. ‘Break-ins, high-end and domestic, anywhere in the Clare Valley.'

‘You think he was active here for a few days?'

‘She,' said Towne. ‘It's what she does sometimes.'

‘A female suspect?' said Burke, using the language of official reports. ‘Wearing size eleven shoes?'

But Towne was walking down the driveway, towards the road. Burke scurried a little to keep up.

‘Do you play golf, Sergeant?' said Towne, tossing the words over his shoulder.

‘What?'

‘It's good for all-round fitness.'

Burke's loathing grew. He joined the federal policeman at the road's edge. ‘What are you looking for?'

‘Trying to get a feel for her, that's all,' Towne said.

The wanky, outer reaches of police work, thought Burke. ‘Do we have a name? Description? MO?'

Towne closed and opened his eyes and suddenly looked deeply fatigued, vulnerable, hair poorly combed. He looked almost human for a moment. But it vanished.

‘She's youngish and presumably very fit, given the kinds of stunts she pulls. Good at throwing us off the scent.'

‘The shoe prints,' said Burke with dawning comprehension. ‘She shoves her shoes into larger shoes.'

‘Exactly.'

‘What else?'

Towne exhibited one of his abrupt mood shifts, spinning around and returning to the house. ‘Highly mobile.'

Burke hurried after him. ‘She gets around?'

‘One month she'll hit a gated community on the Gold Coast, the next a few houses on the Swan River, the next some heritage houses in Battery Point, and so on. Every state, so far, except Victoria.'

Burke brooded on that. ‘Could mean that's where she lives.'

It was clear from Andrew Towne's body language exactly what he thought of this observation. A hick observation. Made by a hick.

But then the federal policeman went very still, looking at Burke with a smoky, hellish darkness in his eyes. ‘What did you just say?'

28

By Saturday morning the station's main briefing room was cluttered, the air poisonous. Additional desks, phones and computers had been scrounged from downstairs, detectives and collators from other police districts on the Peninsula. But it had been a big Friday night for some of these men and women. Breath was sour, alcohol leached from their pores, eyes were grainy and bloodshot.

Challis cranked open the windows and said, ‘This is Sergeant Schiff of sex crimes. She's here because we had an abduction and rape, and now we have a murder that might have started out as an abduction and rape.'

He watched as sets of eyes flickered over Schiff. She cast a last glance at her phone and stood, facing them down, before positioning herself at a commanding spot in the room. An attractive woman, Challis thought. Slim, vivid and implacable, wearing a clinging skirt today, glossy hair not pinned up but swinging about her shoulders. Very attractive, in fact: intelligent, wry, competent, with an air of mischief under it all. He thought she'd irritate some of the women and arouse a mix of desire, hostility and rivalry in some of the men.

He inclined his head slightly, signalling that the floor was hers. She positioned herself between the wall map and portable display board, swishing a pointer. ‘The first victim,' she said.