Garry Disher: Blood Moon

Thinking about her boss reminded her of Adrian, and she sat for a few minutes, her heart hammering. It often happened: Adrian would find fault, and her heart would get the wobbles. The only solution was to stumble into her office, Ludmilla Wishart, Planning Infringements on the door, and stretch out on the floor, one hand over her heart, monitoring its erratic progress.

She wanted above everything else to be a cool, collected person. She thought she’d glimpsed that quality, very briefly, in the young woman detective on Trevally Street. What would it take? Leaving Adrian, according to Carmen.

‘What are you doing?’

It was Mr Groot, squat and heavy in her doorway, wearing the kind of expression that said he didn’t care one way or the other if she were ill, so long as he didn’t have to do anything about it.

John Tankard and Pam Murphy finished doorknocking Trevally Street and wandered back to the Villanova apartments, comparing notes. ‘I found one witness who backs up Lachlan Roe’s neighbour,’ Tank said. ‘He heard two men shouting just after midnight and saw a guy wearing a hoodie running along Trevally Street toward the library. Didn’t get a look at his face.’

Pam snorted. ‘A guy in a hoodie.’

‘Bet you’d like a dollar for every time you’ve heard that,’ Tank said.

He bumped shoulders with her. Until a few weeks ago, Murph had been his partner. Now she was in plain clothes, a CIU hotshot, and he was stuck with that prick Andrew Cree. When their shoulders touched, she moved apart from him. Just slightly, almost nothing to it, but Tank knew it was a rebuff.

Meanwhile Cree, God’s gift to women and policing, was watching their approach.

‘How’s it going, Andy?’ called Murph in a voice that made Tank’s antenna go up.

‘Too much excitement in this job,’ Cree said.

Pam laughed.

Bitch, thought Tank. He knew that he was out of shape and hopeless with women. Here’s Cree, fit, assured, an Arts graduate, for fuck’s sake, and not… direct. Saying things between the lines.

He comforted himself with the thought that he knew something Pam didn’t-the great Andrew Cree was afraid of the dark. True. Before their daybreak callout to Trevally Street this morning, Tank and Cree had been patrolling outside the town limits, on duty since 4 a.m. The darkness had been all around them, their headlights picking out the ghostly shapes of dead gum trees and the coal eyes of foxes on the prowl. Nothing unusual but Tank had begun to wonder why Cree was all hunched over the steering wheel, his shoulders up around his ears. Then, suddenly, he got it: the guy was scared. Young Andrew had grown up in some endless tract of Melbourne, where the night was never truly dark and no snakes or spiders lurked. Not like the back roads of the Peninsula. No streetlights out here, old buddy, old pal, old chum. Out here the darkness closes in tight around you. Ghosts and gremlins roam.

‘Okay, guys,’ Pam was saying now, ‘we’re finished here. Thanks for your help. Grab yourselves some morning tea and then return to what you were doing.’

‘Don’t know if I can stand the thrill of it,’ Cree responded, throwing her plenty of eye and mouth work as if to say he could stand the thrill of her.

Prick.

After leaving the Villanova apartments, Challis drove to the hospital. A forensic science officer, carrying several brown paper sample bags, was trudging purposefully across the carpark as though holding strong emotions in check. She stopped when she saw Challis. ‘A nasty beating, sir.’

Challis nodded. ‘More than one person involved?’

‘Hard to say. Nothing much under the victim’s fingernails. Lots of blood on his hands, face and clothing-probably all his, but we’ll check.’ She rattled the paper sample bags at him. ‘The good news is I found what looks like mucus on the elbow of his jacket. We’ll check the DNA against his DNA.’

Challis thanked her, went in and tracked down the doctor who’d treated Roe. A Russian, Challis guessed. About fifty, exhausted-looking and very thin, with a bony, hooked nose. ‘He is lucky he is found before it is too late, I think,’ the doctor said, escorting Challis down a corridor, the white walls and green linoleum streaked here and there, the black spoor of rubber soles and tyres. ‘The coma continues. Impossible to say when he will regain consciousness.’

Lachlan Roe had sustained cracked ribs, a broken nose, a broken ring finger on his right hand-possibly sustained when he tried to ward off his attacker-and severe swelling of the brain. ‘In my opinion this man was punched quite viciously and then kicked when he was on the ground. Is possible his brain has sustained some damage.’

They entered a small ward, where the doctor pulled back a curtain, revealing the chaplain of the Landseer School lying beneath a window overlooking the rear of the Waterloo Fitness Centre. Roe breathed shallowly out of a badly bruised and swollen face. Broad white bandaging was wound tightly around his head and Challis glimpsed a bandage striped across his chest.

Dirk Roe, plumply miserable, sat in a chair pulled close to his brother’s bed, muttering into the telephone on the bedside table. Glancing around sulkily when Challis and the doctor entered, his face immediately cleared. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said into the phone. ‘The cop in charge just walked in…Yes, sir…I’ll put him on.’ He thrust the phone at Challis, the gesture somehow dismissive and contemptuous. ‘My boss wants a word.’

Oh, hell, thought Challis. He took the phone, said his name crisply.

Ollie Hindmarsh’s reply filled his ear, the voice deep-chested, hectoring and familiar from numerous television and radio interviews. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is a nasty business,’ the politician said, ‘very nasty.’

Challis said nothing.

‘Made an arrest?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Any suspects?’

‘Too soon to say.’

Hindmarsh grunted. After a pause he said, ‘At least you have rank. I don’t want this fobbed off onto a sergeant or a constable.’

Challis said nothing.

‘Did you hear me? I want you to stay on top of this, Inspector.’

‘It will be treated seriously; as seriously as we treat all violent crime,’ Challis said, feeling like a public relations flak.

‘Hardly reassuring,’ barked Hindmarsh. ‘Mr Roe has done enormous good in the local community and I want his attacker brought to justice.’

I’m not Channel 9, thought Challis. I’m not the Herald-Sun. He said, ‘If that will be all…?’

‘Who’s your superintendent?

Oh, Christ, Challis thought, and told him.

‘McQuarrie? Played golf with him once. Based in Frankston?’

‘Yes.’

There was no good-bye, just a click in Challis’s ear. He gave the handset to Dirk Roe, who smirked. To wipe it off his face, Challis said, ‘I will need to question you later in the day.’ He gave Roe his card. ‘Meanwhile if you think of anything pertinent, or if your brother wakes up, give me a call.’

‘Whatever.’

Challis shook his head and left the hospital. Back in CIU he found Ellen Destry at her computer. He told her about the phone call. ‘He’s going to sic McQuarrie on to me.’

‘What a jerk.’

‘At least we’ve got nothing else on of any great seriousness, so all stops out.’

She mock saluted him. ‘Right you are, boss.’

‘I’ll bust you back to uniform if you’re not careful.’

‘I look good in a uniform,’ she said.

Challis walked away shaking his head. In his office he stared at his in-tray for a while, at the paperwork that swamped his days and gave him a permanent, low-level sense of anxiety and aggravation. The memos and reports induced dreaminess, and soon he was staring out of his window at the sky-blue, even and featureless. He got up and stood at the glass, staring down at the carpark beneath his office. It was nothing to look at-cramped, potholed, fringed with peeling gum trees-but more interesting than the sky, with the cops and civilian employees always clocking on and off. Among the vehicles were big four-wheel-drives, humble family sedans, a snappy little European cabriolet, and a couple of boy-racer V8s, all glossy paintwork and testosterone. Not for the first time, he reflected on the police station as a microcosm of the wider community.