Garry Disher - Whispering Death

‘Not this time.’

He ran an ultraviolet light over laptop, iPod and cameras. When a name and a phone number showed on the Canon, he thrust it away as if scorched. ‘Get rid of this.’

She would. Several grands’ worth, into the sea.

He was frowning at the ground, working out costs and disbursements. ‘I can go two grand,’ he said.

His tone was always apologetic, but, in Grace’s mind, $2000 was pretty good for an hour’s work, and sometimes he paid a lot more, depending on what she had. The apology also said that he knew how soon she’d run through the money, feeding her habit, but what could he do? He had a business to run.

She showed him her photographs of the vases and the Whiteleys. ‘I might go back for them one day.’

Finch gave her a half nod as if to say yeah maybe, if she lasted that long, then counted out her cut in crisp $100 notes. ‘Stay in touch, okay?’

‘Sure.’

Grace had a landline, an iPhone and several cheap pre-paid mobiles, but no one ever called her, she called them. If someone wanted her, they used the Hotmail account.

Then Finch glanced around at the cracked concrete wastes and said, ‘Can’t stay, can you?’

She never had stayed. She didn’t want to have sex with him, or listen to his crap. Clean yourself up, spend time with your daughter, family’s important…

‘What’s the time?’ she asked, as if she wasn’t rejecting him out of hand.

‘Noon.’

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m having a new fridge delivered.’

‘Fair enough.’

She pointed the Golf at the city, up and over the West Gate Bridge, but wasn’t going home. Home was in another direction, and she didn’t need a new fridge. She was on her way to the Peninsula town of Waterloo. Out of habit and instinct, she would avoid the toll-roads and drive sedately for the speed and intersection cameras.

The best place for lunch in Waterloo was Cafe Laconic. Detective Constable Pam Murphy fronted up to the counter and ordered her usual, focaccia and take-away green tea. Grab a napkin, she told herself, you’re wearing a white T-shirt.

She was walking back to the car when her mobile phone rang. ‘Murphy.’

It was the duty sergeant, something about a naked woman seen in bushland along a back road north-east of Waterloo. ‘Sorry to do this to you Murph, but I don’t have any uniforms available.’

‘All right, I’ll deal with it.’

Her Subaru was parked outside the camping shop. She got behind the wheel, demolished her lunch with some nifty finger-and-napkin work, then crawled up High Street, mindful of the new speed bumps and the 50 km/h signs, mentally plotting her route to the back road where someone had seen a naked woman.

It wasn’t her job, first response. In a perfect world, the duty sergeant would have sent a patrol car to investigate. Then, if they’d found a crime, a victim, the machine would kick into gear: crime-scene examiners, more CIU detectives, a police surgeon, a pathologist, an ambulance…

But this was life in the age of budget cuts. She was often obliged to use her own car on police business. Coming to the roundabout at the top end of High Street, she turned right and found herself stuck behind a muddy Land Rover, which was stuck behind the Frankston bus. The little cavalcade lumbered north past tyre outlets, paint shops, furniture barns and car dealers, the small-town commerce soon giving way to modest factories, storage depots and rural suppliers.

At the outer edge of the town, the Land Rover pulled into a timber yard, and now she was directly behind the bus, which was behind a shire mower, the blade-head at the end of its yellow articulating arm buried in the high grass and bracken that lined the road. Sparks flew; pebbles, shredded plastic, glass and aluminium were kicked up. Pam flinched, thinking of the hassle if she had to claim for a new windscreen. She still owed her parents $5000 on the Subaru. She was due to visit for Sunday lunch soon, and her father would grill her about the car, and was she taking good care of it?

She planted her foot and swung out. The road ahead was clear as she passed bus and mower, and at the next roundabout she took a side road into an unlovely region north-east of Waterloo.

The municipal tip was out here, among unexplained shed complexes and failed yacht builders, their blighted yards crammed with rusted hulls. Dead gumtrees stood in untended paddocks on both sides of the road, etching the sky like pencil strokes. Weeds choked the wire fences, flags of smoke flew from the distant smokestacks on Western Port Bay.

It was a corner of the world that always seemed damp to Pam: mould crept, trees dripped and small animals died in ceiling cavities. It was a dumping ground, a good place to die.

She came to a small brick house in a weedy stretch of farmland. Crouching close to the road, it was crowded with rose bushes and lavender, a couple of gumtrees overhanging the roof tiles. Otherwise there was nothing, only untended paddocks and a ragged stand of pittosporum, wattles, bracken, blackberry thickets and mostly dead gumtrees a hundred metres behind the house.

She got out, watched by two women. The one standing in the driveway next to a grimy Daihatsu van was middle-aged, wearing a monocular on a strap around her neck, faded brown overalls, a woollen cap and work boots. The other, much older, watched from the veranda, her legs frail in baggy stockings, her lips working, her hands trembling on a walking frame.

Pam smiled, raised her hand hello, locked her car and entered the driveway. ‘Police,’ she announced, giving her name, observing the scratches on the overalled woman’s arms and across one cheek, the licheny bark and twigs snagged in her cap. ‘You reported a-’ ‘Body. Over in the reserve.’

The woman turned to point, and Pam saw that something odd was attached to the crown of her cap: a pair of cloth eyes, staring heavenwards, large white ovoids with creepy black pupils.

She dragged her attention away. ‘A body?’

‘Didn’t they tell you?’

As Pam glanced around uneasily, she saw the van was stencilled with the words ANIMAL RESCUE, meaning the woman spent time outdoors. At this time of year the magpies were nesting and would swoop if you got too close. Pam had been pecked as a child. A swooping magpie would still freak her out. Did a pair of cloth eyes on your head really repel magpie attacks?

‘Someone reported seeing a naked woman, not a body. Perhaps you could give me your name?’

‘Jan Overton,’ the woman shook hands briskly.

‘So, you found a body?’

‘Young woman, naked, very dead,’ Overton said. ‘Come on, I’ll take you.’

Even standing she was restless, an outdoors woman who hated stasis, and now she strode with pumping arms to the side gate. Pam called out to stop her. ‘Perhaps you could give me the details first.’

‘As you wish.’ Overton swung back to rejoin Murphy, the monocular bouncing on her chest. She halted, plucking a twig from her hair, the action oddly domestic and intimate, as though she’d found a split end. ‘So here’s the story. Mrs McIntosh-that’s her on the veranda-called me about a sick koala.’ She paused with a hint of challenge. ‘That’s what I do, rescue and nurse sick and injured wildlife.’

Pam nodded.

‘She’d had a young koala in her garden for a few days,’ Overton said. ‘This morning she noticed it had mange. That’s a sure sign of low immunity, maybe chlamydia. The poor things are starving half the time, what with the drought. Not to mention their habitat being bulldozed for all the ugly great McMansions going up everywhere.’

Overton was younger than Pam had first thought, about thirty-five, but baked by the sun, and she carried an air of grievance. Maybe she thought no one appreciated her years of toil on behalf of the animal kingdom.