Garry Disher - Chain of Evidence

‘This was when?’ she asked the woman in Snapper Way.

‘After school.’

‘On Thursday?’

‘I think it was Thursday.’

Pam gazed at the woman, said politely, ‘Could it have been yesterday?’

‘Let’s see, yesterday was Friday. No, it wasn’t yesterday I saw her. I don’t work on Fridays. It must have been Thursday. Or Wednesday.’

Pam was door knocking in an area bounded by Katie Blasko’s house, her school, Trevally Street and the Waterloo foreshore. Some of the houses were fibro-cement or weatherboard holiday and weekender shacks owned by city people, but most were brick veneer houses dating from the 1960s and ‘70s, their old-fashioned rose gardens pointing to leathery retirees who walked their dogs on the nearby beach and collected sea weed for fertiliser, and their bicycles, plastic toys and glossy four-wheel-drives pointing to young families who probably had no cash to spare after paying off their gadget, car and home loans. Pam met many women aged around sixty that afternoon, and many aged around thirty, like this woman, Sharon Elliott, the library aide at Katie Blasko’s primary school. Short, round, cheery, anxious to please, dense-and, Pam decided, blind as a bat without her glasses.

‘If you could tell me where you saw her, it might help jog your memory.’

‘Near the shops.’

‘In High Street?’

‘Well, no,’ Elliott said, as though that should have been obvious to Pam. ‘Of course, I do my main shopping at the Safeway, but if I run out of bread or whatever I nip across to the corner shop.’ She pointed vaguely. ‘You pay more, but if I drove over to Safeway every time I wanted bread or milk, what I spent on fuel would outweigh the money I saved.’

Pam felt her eyes glazing over. ‘And you bought something in the corner shop last Thursday?’

‘I’m pretty sure. No. Wait. Yes, it was Thursday. I needed the latest Trading Post. I placed an ad to sell a mattress, and wanted to see if it had appeared.’

Pam knew that the Trading Post was published every Thursday. She beamed. The air was briny from the sea, the afternoon sun benign. The Peninsula had erupted with flowers, too, drawing the bees. It was a lazy, pleasure-laden Saturday in spring, and you were apt to forget that children could be abducted or murdered regardless of the season.

‘Good,’ said Pam encouragingly. ‘And you’re sure this was the girl?’

They examined the flyer again. ‘It looks like the girl I saw.’

‘Do you know her? Have you taught her?’

‘I’m just an aide at the school. Almost five hundred children go there. I know quite a few by sight and many by name.’

‘Yes, but did you ever have anything to do with this girl?’ Pam asked, wanting to beat the woman around the head with a damp fish.

Sharon Elliot gazed at her blankly. ‘What do you mean?’

Not for the first time, Pam realised that suspects and witnesses alike looked for traps behind your questions. They anticipated, evaded, lied, glossed the picture, told you what they thought you wanted to know, or got needlessly defensive. Or they were stupid. ‘I’m wondering,’ she said, trying to conceal her irritation, ‘if you recognise this likeness of Katie Blasko precisely because you’d encountered her at school recently, helped her find a library book, perhaps, comforted her because she’d been crying about something, or because you saw her outside the corner shop between three-thirty and four this past Thursday afternoon.’

‘Both,’ said Sharon Elliott promptly.

‘I see.’

‘She was a bit noisy during quiet reading. Mrs Sanders had the Preps that session so I was taking the Grade 6s, and had to ask Katie to keep the noise down, except I didn’t know her name was Katie, this was earlier in the week, so I was surprised when she waved to me.’

Pam didn’t try to sort through the account. Her feet and back ached. She’d welcome a cup of tea or coffee, but Sharon Elliott was keeping her there on the front verandah, beside potted plants that were leaking water onto the decking. Above her the roofing iron flexed in the heat. ‘She waved to you?’

‘Like this,’ said Sharon Elliott, gesturing.

‘Was it a cheerful wave? Did she smile? Or might it have been a gesture of some kind?’

‘A gesture?’

Pam didn’t want to lead this witness, but really, the woman was dense. ‘A beseeching gesture, for example, as if she needed help.’

Sharon Elliott gave her a blank look. ‘I don’t know. It was just a wave.’

‘Did you get a good look at the driver?’

‘No. I just assumed it was her dad.’

‘But it was a man?’

‘I think so. It could have been her mother.’

Did teachers’ aides ever become teachers, Pam wondered. She waited a beat and said, ‘What can you tell me about the vehicle.’

‘It was just a car.’

‘A car? I thought you said it was a van?’

The woman’s face crumpled. ‘Car, van, I don’t really know much about that kind of thing. My husband’s the driver in the family.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Pam, glancing up and down the street. ‘Was it the shape of that silver vehicle over there?’

A bulky four-wheel-drive. ‘Not really.’

‘Like that blue one?’

An old Nissan sedan. ‘Now that I think about it I’m sure it wasn’t small like that or have a lot of windows and big wheels like that silver one. More of a boxier shape.’

A van or a panel van, thought Pam. ‘Colour?’

‘Oh, now, white, I think.’

‘And what time did you see this vehicle?’

‘After school.’

‘Yes, but three-fifteen, three-thirty, quarter to four?’

‘Before four, anyway.’

‘And we’re not talking about separate things here, you’re saying the vehicle and the girl who waved at you are part of the same incident?’

‘I think so,’ said Sharon Elliott.

Pam made a note.

‘She might have been saying “Help me”,’ said Sharon Elliott into the pause.

As Sergeant Destry had mentioned at last night’s briefing, witnesses often save the best till last. And not because they’re artful or mischievous, either. ‘“Help me”?’

‘I can see her mouth saying it.’

‘We may need to speak to you again, Mrs Elliott.’

‘Glad to help.’

At five that afternoon, Tank and the team finished the grid search of Myers Reserve. Tank showered and changed in the station locker room, and then slipped away to the car park behind KFC, where the producer of ‘Evening Update’ slipped him an envelope containing $500. Tank had hoped for more than $500 but the ‘Evening Update’ producer-bearded guy, lots of white teeth and a hint of makeup- reckoned there would be more dosh down the track, depending on the quality of the information that Tank could pass on. Tank put it into perspective: $500 was a year’s registration on his new car. The cash was burning a hole in his pocket, though, Saturday night, Waterloo Show, the district humming. Too bad he was on duty. Could have been having a glass of suds with his mates.

He went home and crashed for a couple of hours. At eight o’clock he returned to the station, yawning his head off, and logged on for his solo patrol.

The long night unspooled. First up was a radio call: would he respond to an agitated citizen, 245 Bream Street, who’d phoned in a complaint, not making much sense. Bream Street-plenty of marine names in Waterloo, owing to the fishing industry in Westernport Bay-hugged the mangrove flats and was one of the main routes into the foreshore area, where the Ferris wheel revolved prettily and overweight families gorged on popcorn and fairy floss. John Tankard was overweight, too, but despised it in the common herd. He pulled up outside number 245, a featureless brick veneer from the 1950s. Just down the road from it was a police presence, plenty of lights and traffic cones glowing in the dark: a booze bus and a roadworthy checking station. We cops can be pricks sometimes, Tank thought, grinning. The local citizenry out for a good time at the Show, and bang, they’re breathalysed and a roadworthy infringement notice is stuck onto the windscreen of the family rust bucket. He knocked on the door of245.