Garry Disher - Blood Moon

Using an electrician’s van and a gum tree to screen her from the windows along the front of the station, she slipped across the road, heading for the side door. A voice said, ‘Excuse me? Pam? Excuse me.’

She turned in agitation. A teenage girl, a schoolie by the look of her: miniskirt, a short, tight T-shirt, sandals, a bouncy blonde ponytail, a pretty, untroubled face, confirming Pam’s opinion that a kind of natural selection was operating. If you were granted a private school education and a week beside the sea after your exams, you were also granted healthy blonde good looks. If you were poor, went to the local high school and dropped out before Year 12, you looked like crap.

And sometimes the blondes knew they were born to rule, but not always. This girl was one of the nice ones. ‘Bronte-Mae,’ said Pam with a smile.

It had been last Monday night, Bronte-Mae somehow misplacing her wallet, keys, friends, sobriety and dignity. Pam had saved her. Saving distressed kids was as much helping them see that their circumstances weren’t hopeless as it was lending them twenty bucks and putting them to bed.

And now here was Bronte-Mae again, bubbling over, saying, ‘I found this on the beach.’

A small woven bag, the kind they had in Oxfam catalogues. ‘I’m in the middle of something right now,’ Pam said. ‘Can you take it to the front desk?’

‘Oh,’ said Bronte-Mae, her face falling. ‘Okay.’

She was glowing but full of teenage hesitations and helplessness. Finally she said, ‘It’s just that I think it’s that lady’s, the one who got murdered.’

For a moment then, Pam grew very still. Then she motioned with her hand.

Greatly relieved, sparkling with it, Bronte-Mae released the bag. ‘I found it last night, near Shoreham. I forgot about it till this morning’-she blushed-’when I woke up.’ She looked stricken suddenly. ‘Was it okay to search it? I only wanted to know whose it was. I didn’t take anything.’

Pam worked her fingers over the surface of the little cloth bag, feeling something small, hard and rectangular within. If you were the kind of woman who bought Third World craft items, you’d keep your mobile phone, glasses or tampons in a bag like this. She couldn’t see a name anywhere. ‘What makes you think the bag is Mrs Wishart’s?’

‘There’s a little birthday card inside.’

Pam eased open the drawstring top. An iRiver MP3 player, with earphones, a USB cable, an instruction booklet and a tiny card. Reluctant to touch anything, she said warmly, ‘This is fantastic’

‘Really?’ beamed Bronte-Mae.

‘Really,’ said Pam. She lowered her voice confidingly. ‘This is off the record, but we’ve been looking for this. I have your contact details from last Monday. We may need a statement from you later.’

Glowing, Bronte-Mae began to retreat. ‘Okay, cool. Well, see ya! Thanks for everything! I’ve had the best week of my life!’

A sexual glow, thought Pam. I can relate to that.

She waved to Bronte-Mae, then hurried in through the front door of the station. There was no straightforward route to CIU from there. First she was obliged to use the security keypad beside the reception desk, and then enter the warren of corridors behind it, passing open office doors, the sergeants’ mess and half-a-dozen guys crowding around the noticeboards, before finally climbing the narrow stairs, swerving to avoid a couple of officers clattering down them. And, all the while, there was that continued sense of whispers and subterranean nastiness in the atmosphere of the building. Twice she out-stared a couple of guys who were gaping at her. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Nothing,’ they muttered, hot in the face.

She poked her head around the door of the incident room. Ellen Destry was there, gathering files together. ‘Sarge, I-’

‘Sorry, Pam, can it wait? We’ve just charged the chief planner with the Wishart murder and I-’

‘Ludmilla Wishart’s MP3 player, Sarge. Just been handed in.’

The CIU sergeant went tense. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where and when?’

Pam told her. The sergeant pulled out her mobile phone and dialled. ‘Hal? We’ve got Ludmilla’s MP3 player…Murph…the lab for prints…’

Pam began to edge away, knowing Ellen would find a dozen tasks for her to do. She needed to write those reports first. She reached the corridor, the head of the stairs, the bottom of the stairs, feigning deafness when Destry called, ‘Pam?’

Her bolthole behind the lockup consisted of filing cabinets, shelves of reports, manuals and handbooks, and two computers. A constable from Community Liaison had been pecking away at one of the computers, but he’d been called away to an emergency, and so the room was hers for now. She settled herself at the other computer and began to write her initial impressions of Schoolies Week. Thirty minutes later, she completed the first draft, saved it to her memory stick, pressed ‘print’.

Nothing happened. A message came up to say that the computer was not connected to a network printer. Frustrated, she removed her memory stick, slotted it into the second computer and called up her document. Again she pressed ‘print’. The command went through.

Her gaze wandered to the bottom of the screen. Apparently the guy from Community Liaison still had a window open. Tucked away among the icons were a short banner and an abbreviated Web address. In an idle mood, she clicked on it.

And saw herself spread naked and pale on top of her bed.

Or rather, she didn’t know who it was until her eyes strayed from the groin and breasts to the face. The Web address was www.inandoutofuniform.com. Sure enough, there she was in uniform, too, a copy of that academy graduation shot she kept in the pewter frame on her dressing table.

Then her mobile phone rang and it was Inspector Challis, saying she was needed to help review the evidence against the planner, Groot.

By now it was mid-afternoon, the station quieter, the CIU briefing room very quiet. Smith and Jones had gone home to mow their lawns or whatever it was the two men did on their weekends. Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton were itemising and logging into evidence the contents of Ludmilla Wishart’s little woven bag before it was all sent to the lab. Challis was drumming his fingers, waiting for Pam Murphy to arrive.

She drifted in finally, looking stiff and tight to Challis’s eyes, as if holding powerful emotions in check. He raised his eyebrows at her. She shook her head and took her seat.

He started the briefing. ‘As you know, we’ve arrested the head planner, Groot. The thing is, both he and the husband had motive, both were in the vicinity, both acted strangely. So let’s compare them. Ellen?’

She stirred. ‘The husband had a history of following his wife around. On Wednesday afternoon he was acting true to form-mad and obsessive though it might seem to us. And he knew how weird it would seem to an outsider, so he covered it up. It was a “normal” day, so to speak. When we pinpoint what wasn’t normal about that day, we find Groot.’

Challis nodded. He turned to Pam Murphy, who was chewing the inside of her cheek, staring fixedly at the surface of the table, barely in the room. Was she thinking he’d made a terrible mistake in arresting Groot? ‘Pam? You don’t think Groot did it?’

She blinked. ‘What? I mean, sorry, I was trying to see it from his point of view.’

It was a quick recovery-and a lie. Her mind had been miles away. He couldn’t waste time on her. Crossing to the whiteboard, he scrawled Groot’s name at the top. ‘What do we know about this guy?’

‘He was at the scene,’ Ellen said. ‘He lied about it, but later admitted it.’