Garry Disher - Chain of Evidence

‘But only one person killed him.’

‘People are saying your sister killed him. I can’t say I blame her. Now, shut the door on your way out.’

She showed her cutting profile, as if Challis were a tradesman with grubby hands. He looked at her consideringly. ‘You’ve always had to cover for Rex, haven’t you. He’s a drunk. Does he hit you, Lisa?’

As a way of turning her, giving her a way out, it failed. ‘The door’s behind you.’

‘Was it Rex’s idea to make that phone call to the RSPCA? I bet he took the photos on Gavin’s camera, too. Did he also drive Gavin’s car out east and make you pick him up?’

‘Hal, I’ll call the police if you don’t leave me alone.’

‘Whose idea was it to bury him in Glenda Anderson’s grave? You’d been to her funeral, is that it? You knew the ground was soft?’

‘Hal,’ said Lisa, frowning and reaching for him across the table, ‘we were lovers, now we’re friends, but you’re spoiling everything. Please stop.’

He jerked back, his spine rigid. ‘Why did you send Meg those letters? Misdirection? You’ve always been good at that.’

‘What letters?’

‘You know very well what letters. It was cruel, Lisa.’

Her face tightened. ‘That’s it. That’s enough. You’re frightening me. Please leave.’

She was unwavering. He didn’t know what would make her break. He didn’t let himself think that he was wrong about her. ‘Where’s Rex?’

‘Why? Want a quick shag before he comes back?’

‘When Sadler phoned, did Rex take the call, or did you?’

‘What call?’

‘Probably no more than an hour ago, as soon as I left Sadler. Rex took a call, heard something he didn’t want to hear, and ran, am I right? Saved his own skin and left you behind?’

Her gaze went involuntarily to the window. Challis stood, looked out. The darkening blue ranges that sheltered Mawson’s Bluff seemed to stretch forever, into the stony saltbush country where people died or disappeared. The sun was barely a fingernail on the horizon now. ‘Is he running? Hiding?’

She joined him, her hip touching his thigh. She was quite small, he realised. She packed a lot into it. ‘You seem determined to make yourself miserable, Hal. All this jealousy. It’s unbecoming. I’m married. Get that through your skull.’

Challis pointed. ‘Is he out there somewhere?’

She bumped his hip and with a low chuckle said, ‘What’s out there is a little plateau, with a ruined shepherd’s hut, just a couple of walls and a chimney. That’s where Rex and I had our first screw.’

It was intended to wound him, on several levels, but what it did was convince him of her guilt. Wondering what he’d ever seen in her, Challis said coldly, ‘I want you to come with me. I’m taking you in. You’ll make a statement to Sergeant Wurfel.’

‘You’re pathetic, you know that?’

He tried to grab her. She was quick, lithe, shrugging him off, almost as if they were young again and it was a Saturday night and she was rebuffing his advances in the back seat of his father’s station wagon. She darted down the hallway and into one of the rooms along it. Fear grabbed him then. He was paralysed, his mouth dry. There would be firearms on the place, for shooting vermin and putting injured animals out of their misery. He called, ‘Lisa, don’t.’

She emerged with a shotgun and motioned with it. ‘Out,’ she said, ‘or I swear to God…’

Challis tried to hold himself upright but his spine tingled as he passed her in the long hallway and on down to the front door and out into the gathering darkness.

Meanwhile Scobie Sutton had arrived home and found Beth getting ready to go out. She was small, round, unfashionable and always did her duty as a wife and a Christian. With a pang, he compared her to Grace Duyker, who seemed to him the kind of woman who’d admit some risk and improvisation into her life. Risk and improvisation like him, in fact. If he dared make the move. If she let him.

‘Anything wrong, Scobe?’

He pushed the fingers of both hands back through his sparse hair tiredly. ‘The van Alphen shooting.’

It was a good diversion, and close to the truth. The Fab Four-Ellen Destry’s term, but entirely apt-had questioned him again, this time concentrating on van Alphen’s role in the Nick Jarrett shooting. ‘Pretty sketchy, these notes of yours, DC Sutton,’ they said, and ‘Perhaps you were steered by Kellock and van Alphen,’ and ‘It would appear that a culture of protection and containment exists in this police station.’ They asked questions that the shooting board officers had asked: Why had he failed to test for gunshot residue on the hands of Kellock and van Alphen? Why had he bundled items of clothing from both men together with the victim? Why had he let them move the body, or at least before he photographed it? Why had he failed to have the blood on the carpet tested, and allowed the carpet to be steam-cleaned?

Scobie was a wreck.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked his wife now.

‘The Community House on the estate.’

‘Why?’

Beth gave him her mild, reproving smile. ‘Sweetheart, I told you, the public meeting. The petition.’

Scobie remembered. The locals were trying again to have the Jarretts kicked out. Five hundred signatures from residents and local shopkeepers. Officials from Community Services and the Housing Commission would be there, together with Children’s Services welfare workers and a senior officer from Superintendent McQuarrie’s HQ.

‘Good luck,’ said Scobie tiredly, looking around the kitchen absently to see if she’d prepared something for his dinner. He could see Grace Duyker coming up with something rare and subtle, a vaguely French sauce over tender veal, a fragrant Middle Eastern dish.

‘I hate to see families broken up,’ Beth was saying worriedly, ‘kids taken away. In my opinion this kind of pressure is only going to lead the Jarretts to more crime, not less.’

Scobie thought approvingly of Grace Duyker’s toughness and scorn, and found himself snarling at his wife: ‘The Jarretts continue to commit crime because they’re evil, and because gullible people like you believe they can be saved.’

Beth stood stock still, her face white and shocked. ‘Is that how you see me? Gullible?’

Scobie swallowed. ‘I think you try to do good where it sometimes isn’t warranted, where it won’t work.’

Her hand went to her throat. ‘Oh, Scobie, I thought I knew you.’

‘Forget I said it. I’m sorry.’

‘I cant.’

Scobie touched her upper arm, his voice gentle. ‘Go to your meeting, love.’

Beth said stoutly, ‘I might just vote to let the Jarretts stay.’

Scobie, punch-drunk with tiredness and strange emotions, said, ‘Do what you like.’

Suddenly he was bawling. Beth, with a brave little face, said, ‘You work out what’s wrong and we’ll talk about it when I get back. For dinner you could zap last night’s leftovers in the microwave.’

Detective Constable (provisional) Pam Murphy still had to sit a Police Board interview, but she’d passed all of her core subjects and been assigned to work with Ellen Destry in Waterloo CIU, so life was looking pretty good by Monday evening.

She didn’t miss the physical training, the theory or the gruelling tests. She didn’t miss the Academy at Glen Waverley or the classrooms at Command headquarters, where each day she’d had to pass through the foyer with its glass cabinets displaying guns and other murder weapons. Instead, she was feeling thankful that it was all over. Sure, she’d be obliged to take a million training courses in the coming years, but none of the really gruelling stuff. God, last week she’d run into a group of guys who’d enrolled for Special Operations Group training: of the sixty candidates, only nine had survived.