Garry Disher - Chain of Evidence

‘Not like our day.’

Meg shook her head vehemently. ‘God, no.’

They glanced at their father again; how terrifying he’d seemed when they were young. He’d wanted Challis to go out into the world rather than marry a local girl-which he’d said would lead to stunted opportunities, bawling babies and debt. On the other hand, he hadn’t wanted Meg to leave, or get an education, but marry locally and raise a family. She’d mostly obliged, marrying Gavin Hurst and producing a daughter with him.

Challis brooded down the years. He remembered the country-dances of his youth, often in far-flung town halls or football clubrooms. It hadn’t been unusual for him to drive his father’s Falcon station wagon two hundred kilometres on a Saturday night, Lisa Acres at his elbow, her hand on his thigh. He’d take her home, pull into the shadows behind her father’s pub, but not get further than that before the light went on above the back door and she’d say in a rush, ‘Dad’s awake, I’d better go in.’ It went beyond birth control: it was desire control.

He could see now that it wouldn’t have worked with her anyway. He had a history of choosing the wrong woman. In fact, Angie, the woman he’d married, had conspired with her lover-a police colleague of Challis’s-to murder him. She’d gone to jail for that. She’d killed herself there.

As if reading his mind, Meg said, ‘We both made mistakes, didn’t we?’

They glanced at their father again, wondering if he was to blame, not wanting to believe that they might shoulder some of it, or that many marriages simply ran their course and ended.

‘Gavin has stopped messing with your head?’ Challis asked.

Meg nodded. ‘Nothing in the past couple of years.’

‘Where do you think he is?’

She shrugged. ‘Sydney?’

‘Why would he want to hurt you like that?’

It was a rhetorical question. Meg shrugged again, then leaned forward, dropping her voice. ‘You won’t tell Dad about the letters?’

He shook his head. He’d promised years ago that he wouldn’t. Their father being such a difficult person, one simply knew not to tell him everything. But now Challis was curious about Meg’s motives. ‘Is there a reason why you told Mum but not him?’

‘You know what he’s like. He wanted me to stick around and marry and have kids, but didn’t want me to marry Gavin. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to believe Gavin had committed suicide. Confirmed what he thought of Gavin. But if he’d known Gavin was still alive, and taunting me, I’d never have heard the end of it.’

Challis gave a hollow laugh of recognition. They were silent for a while. Meg said, ‘Rob Minchin is still sweet on me, you know.’

Rob Minchin was the local doctor, and one of Challis’s boyhood friends. ‘And?’

‘And nothing. He calls in to check on Dad, and that’s about it.’

‘I remember he was pretty jealous of Gavin.’

‘Rob in the grip of passion,’ said Meg, shaking her head.

They stared at the tabletop, too settled to move. Their father snored gently. Soon they would put him to bed, Meg would go home, and Challis would toss sleeplessly on his childhood mattress.

Bucketing rains came through overnight, preceded by thunder and lightning that seemed to mutter around the fringes of the horizon, then approach and encircle the house where Ellen Destry slept, and retreat again. Dawn broke still and balmy, the skies clear, as though nothing had happened. Spring in southeastern Australia, Ellen thought, glancing out of Challis’s bedroom window. The bedside clock was flashing, indicating that the power had gone off during the night. She glanced at her watch-6 am-and went around the house, resetting the digital clocks on the microwave, the oven, the DVD player. Then, pulling on a tracksuit and old pair of Reeboks, she set out for her morning walk.

And immediately returned. Rainwater had come storming down the dirt road and roadside ditches outside Challis’s front gate, carrying pine needles, bark, gravel and sand, which had formed a plug in the concrete stormwater pipe that ran under his gateway. The ditch had overflowed, scoring a ragged channel across the entrance. She should do something about it before the channel got too deep.

Hal had told her the grass would need mowing regularly. He hadn’t told her what a storm could do.

In his garden shed she found a fork, a five-metre length of stiff, black poly agricultural pipe, and a long-handled shovel. She hoisted them over one shoulder and returned to the front gate. There were signs of the overnight storm all about her: twigs, branches, ribbons of bark and birds’ nests littered the road; water-laden foliage bent to the ground; the air seemed to zing with promise.

Ellen forked and poked at the blocked pipe, shovelled and prodded. Suddenly, with a great, gurgling rush, the stopper of matted leaves and mud washed free and drain water flowed unchecked toward the…

Toward the sea? Ellen realised that she knew very little about life out here on the back roads.

Finally she walked. She passed a little apple orchard, the trees heavy with blossom despite the storm. Onion weed, limp and yellowing at the end of its short life, lay densely on both sides of the road, and choking the fences was chest-high grass, going to seed. Sometimes her feet slipped treacherously where the dusty road had turned to mud. The blackberry bushes were sending out wicked new canes and the bracken was flourishing. Now and then she passed through air currents that didn’t smell clean and new but heavy with the odours of rotting vegetation and stale mud revitalised by the rain. Everything;-the sounds, the smells, the textures-served to remind her of Katie Blasko, abandoned, buried, merging with the soil.

She walked slowly up the hill, stunned to see huge cylinders of hay in one of the paddocks, freshly mown and wrapped in pale green polythene. When had that happened? She rarely saw or heard vehicles, and yet here was evidence of the world going on without her.

Without warning she heard a sharp snap and felt a stunning pain in her scalp. Her heart jumped and she cried out in terror. Only a magpie, she realised soon afterwards, swooping her because it had a nest nearby-but she’d hated and feared magpies ever since a long-ago spring day when she’d been pecked and harried across a football field as she’d taken a short cut home from school on her bicycle. Magpies sang like angels but were the devil.

Windmilling her arms wildly about her head, and trying to make eye contact with her tormentor, Ellen trotted home. She missed her morning walks on Penzance Beach with Pam Murphy, where the world was reduced to the sand, the sea, the sky and a few gulls. Out here on the back roads there was too much nature. All around her ducks sat like knuckly growths on the bare branches of dead gums, and other birds were busy, calling out, making nests, protecting their young, and in the paddocks ibis were feeding. A strip of bark fell on her, scratching her neck. Challis’s ducklings were down to six, she noticed, as she entered his yard, and she wanted to cry.

At nine that same Sunday morning, Scobie Sutton was at the little Waterloo hospital. He was entitled to a day at home with his wife and daughter, a quiet time, church and Sunday School, a spot of gardening after lunch, but the station was short staffed. He’d be working the Katie Blasko case later-and it was a ‘case’ in Scobie’s mind: his own daughter was Katie’s age, and if she went missing for even thirty minutes he’d be calling it a case-but right now he was the only CIU detective available to interview the victim of an aggravated burglary.

‘How are you feeling, Mr Clode?’

‘I’ll live,’ Neville Clode said.