Garry Disher - Blood Moon

It hadn’t been enough to stop Saturday’s sexual assault, however. The victim, an eighteen-year-old from one of the girls’ schools in the city, hadn’t known her attacker, hadn’t seen him, in the dunes late at night, hadn’t been able to identify him in any way. All they had was a spill of semen on her T-shirt and shorts. What was the betting there’d be no DNA match to anyone in the system?

Challis slowed the car, spotting Scobie Sutton’s Volvo station wagon parked outside the Villanova Gardens apartments. The Volvo was twenty years old but still pristine, a car that had never broken the speed limit-which didn’t mean that it was ever driven well, for Scobie Sutton was a well-known lousy driver. There was also a police car and a black Astra soft-top.

The Villanova Gardens was named after an Italian sailor who’d jumped ship a hundred years earlier, when Waterloo was a huddle of fishermen’s makeshift tents and cabins. Challis parked, got out and glanced both ways along the street, spotting Pam Murphy and a uniformed constable knocking on doors. Few street lights in this part of town, he noticed. He eyed the apartments. They were double-storeyed, in a row of ten, each with a small, incorporated garage, hedges for privacy, and an upper-level balcony that he guessed gave a view across the yacht basin and Western Port Bay to the distant smoke stacks of the refinery on the other side. Uninspiring, but you could honestly call it a view.

He approached number 6, fishing ID out of his suit coat and showing it to Andy Cree, the constable who’d been stationed to keep a log of all those authorised to enter or leave the building. Cree was a new recruit to the station, young, athletic, engaging, always wearing the easy air of a kidder. Challis preferred that to shyness, ineptitude or flunkeyism, but Cree was in a lazy mood today, in no hurry as he logged the details. Keeping it light but firm, Challis said, ‘I’ve got all day, Andy.’

Cree flushed. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who’s here? Who’s been and gone?’

Cree checked the log. ‘Ambulance guys have taken the victim to hospital. Constable Murphy’s doing a doorknock along the street with Constable Tankard. The crime scene technicians aren’t here yet. DC Sutton from CIU, and the victim’s brother, name of-’

Challis said, ‘The brother? What’s he doing here? This is a crime scene.’

Cree’s face flickered, then cleared. ‘He said he wanted to take toiletries and pyjamas to the hospital. Constable Sutton gave the okay, sir.’

Challis made to go in, then paused. ‘Where was the victim found?’

There was a low hedge running beside the footpath. Cree pointed over it to the small patch of lawn between the street and the front door. ‘Lying right there, sir.’

There were also hedges on either side of the yard. Given the hedges, the sparse street lighting and the darkness of night, it was possible to see why Roe hadn’t been spotted by his neighbours or passers-by until daybreak.

‘And there’s blood on that rock,’ Cree said, pointing to a hefty stone lying on the concrete pathway leading to the door. It was painted white and had been removed from the border around a bed of roses. Nodding his thanks, Challis walked up the short, narrow path to the open front door and into a hallway that led to a cramped living and dining area with a kitchen through an archway, and beyond that a door that probably led to the laundry and a bathroom. Minimalist but expensive fittings and furniture, he noticed quickly, before glancing up the plain staircase to the upper level, where the bedrooms would be. And where voices were raised.

Challis pulled hard on the banister to propel himself up the stairs. He tracked the voices to a small office at the rear, where Scobie Sutton stood by helplessly as a man dressed in jeans and a polo shirt wrapped a power cable around a laptop computer that had been on the desk under a window. Sutton looked up. ‘Sorry, boss…’

The detective had the bony narrowness and angularity of an undertaker, an impression reinforced by his dark suit and glum air. He gestured feebly as if to grab the laptop. Meanwhile the other man dodged him and turned to Challis. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Challis told him coldly.

‘Well, my name is Dirk Roe and for your information my brother was almost beaten to death last night. Or this morning.’

Challis glanced at Roe’s hands: they were well kept and unmarked. He shifted his gaze to the man’s face, which wore the sour look of someone who’d once been admired and was waiting for it to happen again. Roe was no more than twenty-five, with a round, faintly stupid schoolboy face, reinforced by spiky hair, black jeans, a pale yellow polo shirt and running shoes, which were two fat slabs of vividly-coloured rubber. There was a soul patch above his pudgy chin, rings in both ears.

Challis stepped into the room, saying, ‘I can sympathise, Mr Roe, but I must ask you to leave. This is a crime scene, and our crime scene officers haven’t processed it yet.’

‘But Lachie was bashed outside, on his front lawn.’

‘His attacker might have been inside the house before the assault.’

‘My brother doesn’t know people like that.’

‘People like what?’

‘Violent people. Criminals,’ Dirk Roe said. He tucked the laptop under his arm and made to edge past Challis.

‘Sir,’ Challis said, ‘I must ask you to leave the laptop behind.’

A flicker of something passed across the young man’s face. ‘But Lachie might need it. He could be in hospital for days.’

Challis shook his head. ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. The computer could hold information that would help identify your brother’s attacker.’ He paused. ‘Did you meddle with it in any way?’

Dirk Roe wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘Me? No. Why?’

‘Either way, the computer stays.’

‘I don’t think you know who I am,’ Roe said.

Challis was immediately weary of this game. ‘So, who are you?’

Roe drew himself up. ‘I manage Ollie Hindmarsh’s electoral office-and you know what he thinks of the police.’

Ollie Hindmarsh was Leader of the Opposition in the state parliament and his electoral office was a short distance away, around the corner in High Street. Hindmarsh was a law-and-order tyrant and his way of attacking the Government was to accuse the police force of corruption, cronyism and being run by union thugs. Most cops loathed the man.

Challis smiled emptily. ‘You manage his electoral office?’

‘Yep.’

‘Meaning you answer the phone and lick envelopes.’

‘Listen here, you. I-’

‘Sir, I must ask you to wait outside. Scobie?’

Sutton had been wearing an expression of faint alarm, as if aware of undercurrents that he couldn’t identify. A man with a decent narrowness of range, he went to church regularly, was loyal to his wife, and had almost no insights into human nature. He wasn’t a bad cop. He was dogged. But he wasn’t quite a good cop, either. He shuffled forward apologetically and, after a tussle, removed the computer from under Roe’s arm and took him by the elbow. ‘Sorry, Dirk.’

Challis frowned. Did the two men know each other? He filed it away and they all walked downstairs, reaching the living area just as the forensics officers appeared in their disposable overalls and overshoes. ‘Great,’ said one, ‘a contaminated crime scene.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Challis. ‘Your main area of focus is the lawn outside the front door.’

‘And the bloodied stone on the pathway. What about inside?’

‘Dust for prints, check for blood and fibres, the usual.’

Dirk Roe swayed and stumbled a little, as though finally registering the fact that violence had been used against his brother. Scobie escorted him outside, saying, ‘Don’t stay here Dirk, head across to the hospital. Are you okay to drive?’