Garry Disher - Whispering Death

‘The koala had gone by the time I got here,’ Overton went on, ‘but it was no mystery where.’ She pointed to the tattered tree reserve behind the old woman’s house. ‘So I headed over into the fray. Mosquitoes and blackberries…you get the picture.’

Pam nodded, indicating the woman’s arms. ‘So those aren’t koala scratches?’

Overton shook her head. ‘The poor thing’s still in there somewhere. To get to the point, I came to a clearing and you know the rest.’

She waited until Murphy obliged: ‘A naked body?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Phoned the police.’

Tense, inquisitive, Pam said, ‘Did you touch the body?’

‘No.’ Overton squared her shoulders. ‘I didn’t want to contaminate the crime scene.’

Pam left it at that. She gazed across at the knot of trees. ‘I’d like you to take me there, but not into the clearing itself.’

Overton nodded. Their route was not fully a walking track but a path of least resistance where the undergrowth was thinnest. Blackberry canes snatched at their clothing and ground moisture seeped into their shoes. Twigs snapped; the air was heavy with drowsy mosquitoes and vegetation rot. Overton stopped and froze. ‘I don’t believe it.’

The clearing was empty.

It was a patch of dank grasses and bracken no bigger than a backyard swimming pool, the undergrowth partly flattened near the centre where it abutted a stone reef. Pam remained standing on the rim of the clearing and glanced around. Clearly the body wasn’t dead but had got to its feet and wandered off. Or someone had retrieved it.

Or the story was bullshit. She turned mildly to Overton. ‘The light’s tricky. You’re sure you saw a body?’

‘I swear, lying by that rock,’ Overton said, hands on belligerent hips.

It was unfortunate, but Pam loathed her. The reaction had begun more or less on sight and was growing as they stood there. She didn’t try to fight or understand it. It happened to her once or twice a year, an instantaneous reaction to face, voice, body and manner, the whole package. She used to tell herself she must be a bad person, or perhaps was sensing inherent badness in someone, even that it was chemical. Now she accepted there was no logic to it.

And it didn’t necessarily mean Overton was lying. The dismay struck Pam as genuine. She glanced around the clearing again, reluctant to enter. ‘Perhaps if I could use your telescope thingy.’

‘Monocular,’ said Overton, lifting the strap over her head.

The device was warm from her body. Pam put it to her eye and the clearing swam and then the rock sharpened and filled her vision, the surface a pattern of fissures and lichen. There was staining, but if it was vegetable, animal or mineral, she couldn’t tell. She scoped out the surrounding dirt and grass and still nothing. If there was blood, and, more to the point, a blood trail between the clearing and the back road on the other side of the little reserve, then only Luminol spraying at night would map it. Without a body she wasn’t about to authorise that.

‘I need to hunt around for a while, so perhaps you could go back and keep Mrs McIntosh company?’

Overton scowled and retreated, stumping through the gloomy trees.

When she was gone, Murphy made a notebook sketch of the clearing and the rock. If a crime had been committed here, a stills photographer and a videographer would make a more accurate and permanent record. Then she circled the clearing, keeping to the far edge of it, looking for drag marks, blood, anything at all. It was pointless. She couldn’t tell. Overton had probably seen something, though.

The clearing lurched as she was hit by a wave of dizziness. Another one: the attacks had started a week earlier, and occurred a few times a day. Sudden movements seemed to cause them, but so did no movements at all. She lost a second of her life. It left her opening and closing her mouth and blinking her eyes for a few seconds. A side effect of coming off citalopram? Lisa, her GP, hadn’t warned her it might happen-had wanted her to go on to a higher dose, if anything, not stop.

Pam took her time walking back to the house, and followed the voices to the kitchen. A chilly place, the domain of an old woman who has little money and failing eyesight. Dust, crumbs, crusty forks, low wattage light bulbs, greasy smears across the table and benches. Jan Overton and Mrs McIntosh sitting amid it, waiting as tea steeped in a dented aluminium pot and biscuits staled on a chipped plate.

The old woman was astounded to see her. ‘Are you the meals-on-wheels?’

Pam smiled. ‘Police, Mrs McIntosh.’

‘Never. Where’s your whatchamacallit?’

‘My uniform? I left it home today.’

Jan Overton sniffed. The old woman worked her mouth. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘Of course not,’ Pam said. ‘I was wondering if you’d seen anyone wandering around in the trees behind your house.’

Mrs McIntosh stared wonderingly. ‘Who?’

Overton took a frail hand and stroked it. ‘ A young woman, perhaps? Or anyone at all?’

Distress showed in the old woman’s eyes. ‘Are you from the council?’

‘The council? No. You had a koala in your garden, remember?’

‘I use tank water,’ the old woman said, turning her attention to Pam Murphy. ‘I’m not on mains water. So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

Pam had been told that her smile didn’t always reassure, but she tried it now, pulling up a chair. ‘It’s okay, we know you’re not wasting water. But you do have a lovely garden, must take a lot of upkeep. Does anyone help you with it, Mrs McIntosh? Granddaughter, niece?’

‘Where?’ Mrs McIntosh said, staring about.

Pam tried a new tack. ‘Perhaps you can help me, I’m not that familiar with this area. There’s a dirt road over there, beyond the trees, Waterloo’s in that direction, the council rubbish tip is over there…Do you have any close neighbours, Mrs McIntosh?’

‘Eric and I owned a thousand acres here, once upon a time. All gone now.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I won’t sell. You can tell them that.’

‘Quite right,’ Pam said. ‘It’s lovely and quiet out here. You most probably know all your neighbours, what kinds of cars they drive?’

She bristled. ‘Where?’

‘Mrs McIntosh, did you hear or see anything suspicious last night or this morning? Someone in the trees, strange lights or sounds or cars?’

‘We had a little. 22 rifle. We gave it up in the amnesty.’

‘Very wise. What about your neighbours, do you think they might have seen or heard anything?’

The old woman was scarifying. ‘Them? All they’re good for is uprooting good apple trees and putting in grape vines. They live up in the city and I never see them.’

Overton was glaring at Pam now, so she eased out of the conversation and the house and sat in her car for a while. The next step was Missing Persons, local hospitals and, if that came to nothing, a background check on Jan Overton. Meanwhile, she’d take the long route back to Waterloo-skirt around the nature reserve and back along Waterloo-Dandenong Road.

Mrs McIntosh’s road deteriorated, after a few hundred metres, into powdery drifts and bone-shaking corrugations. Pam eased along, listening to pebbles ping inside the wheel arches. At the T-intersection she turned left, another chopped-about farmers’ road leading her around the far side of the reserve. Here she found a gate in a falling-down fence hung with fox pelts, and a bare patch of ground where anyone mad enough to stroll through the reserve could park. She got out and made a skirting examination of the dirt. A faint suggestion of tyre tracks-but why wouldn’t there be? No drag marks. No blood that she could see.