Garry Disher - Chain of Evidence

Extensive bruising to the head and torso, a cut lip, cracked ribs. Clode was swaddled in bandages and lying very still in the bland, pastelly room. The place was overheated and so he’d thrown off the covers, revealing skinny legs and the ugliest feet that Scobie had ever seen: yellowed nails and a blotchy birthmark. No flowers, fruit or books. I’m possibly his first visitor, Scobie thought. ‘You took quite a beating last night.’

The voice came in a strained whisper, ‘Yes.’

‘Did you recognise the men who attacked you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know if they took anything?’

‘Cash,’ whispered Clode.

‘Cash. Do you know how much?’

‘Six…seven hundred dollars.’

Scobie whistled. It was a lot. It would also grow when Clode submitted his insurance claim. ‘Do you always have that much cash on you?’

‘Won it at the horses yesterday. Emu Plains.’

It was the spring racing carnival everywhere, metropolitan racetracks and regional, including Emu Plains on Coolart Road, just a few kilometres from Waterloo. No security cameras, though. ‘Do you think you were followed home from the track?’

‘Could have been.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘And nothing else was stolen?’

‘No.’

Clode hadn’t once made eye contact but stared past Scobie at the TV set bolted high on the wall, so high it was a wonder hospitals didn’t get sued for encouraging neck strain in their patients. Scobie dragged the visitor’s chair around; Clode slid his eyes to the beige door. Scobie said gently, ‘Are you telling me everything, Mr Clode? Was this personal? Did you owe money to anyone? Is there anyone who would want to hurt you?’

Scobie had visited the crime scene before coming to the hospital. Clode lived in a brick house along a secluded lane opposite the Seaview Park estate. Like its neighbours, it was comfortably large and barely visible from the road, a low, sprawling structure about ten years old, the kind of place where well-heeled tradesmen, teachers and shop owners might live, on largish blocks, screened by vigorous young gum trees, wattles and other native plants. Residents like Clode were several steps up from the battlers of Seaview Park estate, and several steps down from the doctors and real estate agents who lived in another nearby enclave, Waterloo Hill, which overlooked the town and the Bay. Clode himself was some kind of New Age healer, according to a sign on a post outside his house.

Letting a forensic tech dust and scrape, Scobie had done a walk-through of the house. It was evident that a woman had once lived there-a woman slightly haunted by life or by Clode, judging by the face she revealed to the world in the only photograph Scobie found, a small, forgotten portrait in a dusty cream frame, the woman unsmiling in the front garden of the house, Clode with his arm around her. No signs of her in the bathroom cabinet, bedside cupboard or wardrobe. The rooms themselves were sterile, a mix of mainly worn and some new items of furniture, in careful taste, neither cheap nor costly, with here and there an ornamental vase or forgettable framed print. A couple of fat paperbacks, several New Age magazines, some CDs of whale and waterfall music. It was the house of an empty man. The only oddity was a small room taken up with a spa bath, bright wall tiles and cuddly floating toys.

And the damage, of course-the overturned TV set, rucked floor mats, splintered chair and broken glass. And blood.

‘Did you injure any of your assailants, do you think?’ Scobie asked now. ‘There seemed to be a lot of blood in the sitting room.’

Clode put a hand to his cut lip and winced. ‘Don’t know.’

Scobie watched him for a while. ‘Are you telling me everything, Mr Clode?’

Signs of anal penetration, according to the doctor who’d examined Clode. No semen present. ‘Were you raped?’

Clode’s eyes leaked and he shook his head minutely. Scobie waited. Clode swallowed. ‘A bottle.’

There had been no bottles at the scene. ‘Before or after they beat you?’

‘It was part of the whole deal,’ Clode said.

‘You were also kicked?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were they wearing?’

‘Jeans. T-shirts.’

‘What about footwear?’

‘Runners.’

Scobie had scouted around the house: lawn right up to the verandah, so no shoe prints, and none in the blood. ‘You didn’t recognise them?’

‘Happened too quickly, plus I covered my face to protect it.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘About midnight.’

‘Yet you didn’t report it until six this morning?’

‘Unconscious.’

‘I don’t understand why they didn’t take anything else-your DVD player, for example.’

Scobie watched Clode. The man’s face was bruised and swollen, but evasiveness underlay it. ‘Don’t know.’

‘I think this was personal, Mr Clode.’

‘No. Never seen them before.’

‘Are you married?’

‘My wife died a couple of years ago. Cancer.’

‘ Grandchildren?’

‘Yes.’

That explained the spa bath and toys. ‘How old were these men?’

‘Don’t know. Youngish,’

‘You’re almost sixty?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘What about their voices. Did you recognise anyone? Anything distinguishable, like an accent?’

‘They didn’t say much. Didn’t say anything.’

‘What about names, did they let any names slip out?’

‘Nup.’

‘Did they address you by name?’

‘No.’

‘Have you got any enemies, Mr Clode?’

‘No. I’m in pain.’

Pam Murphy, conditioned by years of police duty and triathlon training, was also up and about.

According to the surf report, Gunnamatta Beach was too big and turbulent today, Portsea had messy onshore waves, Flinders onshore waves to 1.5 metres, and Point Leo a fair, one-metre-high tide surf, so she settled on Point Leo. The surfing conditions were right. It was also her closest surf beach and she’d learnt to surf there.

It was uncanny the way certain memories and sense traces hit her the moment she drove past the kiosk and over the speed bumps. Sex, mainly, together with the taste of salt-human and marine-and the sounds of the seagulls, the offshore winds, the snap of wetsuits, kids waxing their boards. Desire flickered in her. The guy who’d taught her to surf had been scarcely seventeen years old, she in her mid twenties. A disciplinary offence, maybe even dismissal from the police force, if it had ever come out. But it hadn’t, and they’d both moved on and no hearts had been broken or psyches damaged. It had been a tonic to her, that summer. She’d never been desired quite like that before. She’d scarcely felt desire herself, or desirous. Her body had always been a beautiful, flexible instrument whenever she swam, ran or hit a ball around, but sexual desire had been its untapped dimension. A male colleague like John Tankard, commenting on her tits in the confines of a police car, was hardly going to awaken her.

She parked on a grassy verge beside a cluster of familiar roof-racked panel vans and small cars, pulled on her wetsuit, and trudged over the dunes with her surfboard, passing the clubrooms, a poster of Katie Blasko pinned to a noticeboard. The beach curved slowly to the west; a few solitary people walked their dogs; gulls wheeled above the sea; surfers-tiny patient dots-rose and fell, rose and fell, as small waves rolled uneventfully to the shore. Pam felt a surge of feeling for the lost summers of her life and for the end of her years in uniform.

Unless she blew it. ‘You have the right instincts,’ Ellen Destry would often tell her, ‘but becoming a detective also means writing essays and passing exams.’