Garry Disher - Chain of Evidence

Behind her, Pam snorted. The voice said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t give out the names of our clients.’

‘I’m really, really worried about him. Mum’s desperate. His name’s Ken Lloyd. We call him Kenny.’

There was an assessing silence. ‘Well, I guess it’s all right. He was here, but he left.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘Look,’ said the voice, ‘I’ll put Mrs Kellock on the line. She’s the supervisor here. Please hold.’

Ellen hurriedly cut the connection. Pam saw the tightening of her face. ‘Sarge?’

Shaken, Ellen looked up at Pam and said, ‘I was asked to hold for the supervisor-whose name is Mrs Kellock.’

Pam sat, her face etched in a kind of fierce concentration. ‘Hell, Sarge.’

‘It could be a coincidence,’ Ellen said, ‘another Mrs Kellock entirely. Or she doesn’t know what her husband’s been up to.’

‘Come on, Sarge, it all holds together. That’s how these guys get their victims.’

Ellen’s desk phone rang. She stared at it in consternation, then answered it. ‘Hello?’

A familiar voice said, ‘Sergeant Destry. I was hoping you’d be in.’

‘Mr Riggs, my favourite forensic tech,’ said Ellen, trying not to let her tension show, and failing.

‘No need to be snide.’

‘Good news, or bad?’ said Ellen. ‘Maybe you’re ringing to tell me you’ve sacked all of your incompetents and our DNA evidence is solid after all?’

The silence was hurt and sulky. ‘Well, if you don’t want to hear this…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ellen, meaning it. ‘A long day.’

‘Ditto,’ said Riggs.

Ellen sighed. ‘What have you got?’

‘That blood on the dog collar.’

Ellen had completely forgotten about it. ‘You have a match?’

‘Kind of

‘Let me guess, Neville Clode’s, and we can’t use it because you already have his victim sample.’

‘Not Clode’s,’ said Riggs, ‘but yes, it does match with a victim sample.’

‘Who?’

‘One of your officers. He was stabbed in the forearm in an altercation with a burglar.’

‘Senior Sergeant Kellock.’

‘Yes, for what it’s worth,’ said Riggs.

There were heavy footsteps in the corridor. Ellen froze. But it was only John Tankard. ‘Can I knock off now, Sarge? Got some car business to take care of.’

‘Of course, John.’

‘Thanks, Sarge.’

Tank walked around to Korean Salvage on the industrial estate, and there was his rebirthed Mazda. ‘She’ll pass scrutiny?’ he demanded, one sausagy hand thumping the gleaming roof.

Under the bluster he felt jumpy, uncertain. Something was going on at work and he didn’t know what it was. Maybe Destry was onto him. He wanted one constant in his life-his car.

‘Yep,’ said the proprietor of Korean Salvage, wiping his hands on a rag.

‘I mean the design and safety regulations. She’ll pass any test?’

‘Yep.’

The sun was streaming through the garage doors, lighting oil spills, car bodies and parts, chrome tools and Tank’s Mazda. On the outside, this was the car he’d fallen in love with, sleek and red, a real head-turner, but on the inside she was a different car. He saw no irony in the fact that he was pinning all of his hopes for fulfilment on an object of false provenance.

‘I don’t want to take her in for a roadworthy and have the guy say she’s iffy.’

‘Not going to happen.’

To be doubly sure, Tank vowed to take his car to a different roadworthy tester next time. He began to feel uncomfortable. Several ethnics were standing around in the shadows, mechanics, car strippers and thieves, watching him inscrutably, some holding wrenches. He played ‘Spot the Aussie’ and scored only two, himself and the boss. ‘Mate,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘I don’t know what you did and I don’t want to know, but I’m pumped, a very happy boy.’

The proprietor of Korean Salvage was not happy. He didn’t like it that a cop had something over him. Sure, he had something over the cop, but he preferred it when it had just been him, his mechanics and the Jarrett kids who stole cars for them.

‘The paperwork’s solid, okay?’ he said sourly. ‘VIN number, engine number, chassis number, it all belongs to a legit car. It all checks out.’

‘Cool,’ said Tank.

It wasn’t cool, but that was the price of doing business in this town, apparently. The proprietor of Korean Salvage watched the beefy young cop get behind the wheel of the Mazda and peel out of the shed. Burning a bit of oil. Maybe the engine was knackered. He took some comfort from that.

Ellen worked until late evening. She drove home under a scudding moon, the shadows tricky, especially when she came to the tree canopy over Challis’s rain-slicked road. But she’d driven this road at this time of the night ever since the Katie Blasko kidnapping, and was familiar with the bends, the contours, the gaps between the roadside trees- particularly the gap where a stock gate had been set in Challis’s front fence. The gate, never used now, dated from an earlier era, when the house had been part of a working farm. She liked to glance through the gap: Challis’s house was set on a gentle slope, and she found it reassuring to look up and see the floor lamps glowing behind the sitting-room curtains, lights that she’d left on that morning to welcome herself home.

This time she saw a shape slip past one of the windows.

Ellen did not vary her pace but continued along the road, up and over the hill, past the farm with the barking dogs, letting the sound of her car apparently dwindle into the distance. She drove for a kilometre, and then pulled into the driveway of a hobby farm. The owner, a Melbourne accountant, was never there during the week.

She went back to Challis’s on foot, avoiding the loose gravel of the road, which would announce her presence and fill her own ears with distracting sounds. Instead, she headed overland, trotting carefully through grassy paddocks, vaulting over the wire fences, until she came to the rear of the house. Behind her was another slope and another hobby farm, several hundred metres away and also empty tonight.

From here she was slightly elevated and could look down on the back of Challis’s house. His rear boundary was another wire fence. She paused for a while, listening. Her eyes were accustomed to the darkness now and she was alert for all sounds and movements. She waited for ten minutes before she saw Kellock. A brief, chancy beam of moonlight caught him, just as she was about to advance on the house. It was not so much his face as his stance, his bulky alertness, that she recognised. He watched and waited, and so did she, for a solid hour. He was patient, she was patient. She could smell him, she realised, an amalgam of aftershave and perspiration. Did he sense her? Her perfume, this morning’s scented shampoo and conditioner? He gave no sign of it. She was distracted by thoughts of Challis then. How would she characterise his smell? Clean, undisguised. There wasn’t much in the way of scented soaps in his bathroom. No old aftershave containers. Skulking like this in the nighttime and its shadows was arousing her.

Kellock broke first. One moment he was there and the next he was gone. Ellen shrank deeper into the grass and waited, just in case he was flanking her. She thought about the blood on Sasha’s collar. Of course it was Kellock’s, and of course he’d got it when Sasha bit him. But a defence lawyer would have a field day with that evidence. He’d cite the discredited lab work and Scobie Sutton’s balls-up at the scene of the Jarrett shooting, and propose another scenario: ‘My client is in charge of the Waterloo police station. Naturally he keeps abreast of all its functions and activities. He patted the dog when it was brought in to the station on its way to the lab. The dog bit him. There is nothing sinister in his blood being found on the collar.’