Garry Disher - Whispering Death

The likely scenario, he thought, was that the Saranins had lost the icon to the Krasnovs back in Harbin, a grievance that lingered and festered and was passed down through the generations. Then one day maybe Pyotr Saranin heard something, saw something, picked up a rumour around Sydney’s White Russian emigre community. He’d approached the Krasnovs and it got him killed.

Challis heard Pam Murphy in his doorway: ‘Just scribble your signature on everything, boss. It could be my promotion, a salary upgrade, approval to study policing on the Riviera…’

Challis rocked back in his chair, gave it a squeaky swivel. ‘Or an invitation to address the kindergarten kids at St Joseph’s…’

‘Bring it on,’ Murphy said, looking clear-eyed and ready for a challenge. Rubbing her wrists unconsciously, where Warren Niekirk had ratcheted the handcuffs tight.

‘How did it go?’

He’d sent her west of Melbourne to bring back a prisoner. The shotgun bandit hadn’t left the state but gone to ground in the goldfields country, where he’d held up a lottery agency in suburban Ballarat and been stopped for failing to wear a seatbelt. Nina had been telling the truth, she hadn’t left him lying dead in a drainage channel. Just another one of her smokescreens.

Murphy snorted. ‘He asked me where the siege chick was, he wanted to thank her, maybe she could get him out.’

When the phone rang, Challis stared at it. If he answered, would it jinx his flight plans? Challis on Skype that evening: ‘Sorry, Ellen, something came up.’

It was the front desk. ‘Inspector, someone from the DPP is here. He needs all the evidence for the Niekirk committal hearing on Monday.’

‘It’s in the safe.’

‘We looked. It’s incomplete.’

At once Challis felt a prickling along his arms and over his scalp. He stood, feeling electric and alert. ‘I’ll be right down.’

He rounded his desk and jerked his head at Pam Murphy. ‘Come with me.’

They clattered down the stairs. The evidence safe was no more than a large locked cupboard inside a storeroom located along a side corridor between interview rooms. A cupboard, but securely locked. You’d need to know the key code. It was used to store evidence from on-going cases: dusty packets of cocaine and heroin, pill presses, bundles of cash, knives, pistols, shotguns, knuckledusters, the occasional samurai sword-and the loot from Nina’s safe-deposit box. And that loot was somehow appealing to Challis, as he opened a large cardboard box labelled Niekirk/Grace and peered in. No blood streaks or brain matter attached. A hint of taste and history.

And incomplete. The Sydney Long was there, the coins and stamps, but not the Klee, not the photograph.

Challis stared at Pam Murphy and she at him and somehow the knowledge passed from one to the other. It would have happened in the deepest hours of the night, a young woman arriving at the front desk, looking like a lawyer, waving a convincing subpoena. Convincing manner, too. Whoever she was.