Garry Disher - Snapshot

Afterwards Challis was to remark on how fiercely Georgia had concentrated. There were two men, she said. One stayed in the car and she hadn’t seen him clearly, except that he wore dark glasses and had a kind of round face. The man who’d shot her mother wore a beanie and a jacket with the collar up, so she couldn’t give a clear description, except that she thought his face was thin. The jacket was blue, no, black, no, blue. The car was kind of white.

The gun was a little one, not a rifle, but it had something stuck on the end of it, and the man carrying it had chased her mother around and around the car. She’d undone her seatbelt to fetch something from her Hi-5 backpack by that stage, and so she was able to move about inside the car and follow the action. Then her mother had made a break for it and she saw the man point the gun and her mother fell to the ground.

‘Did you hear the gun?’

‘It made a kind oiphht sound.’

Challis exchanged a glance with Ellen: probably an automatic and fitted with a suppressor.

‘I wanted to go to her but I was scared and he turned around and looked at me.’

That was when she darted out of the car and ran towards the other car. ‘I thought he would help me, but he didn’t.’

‘You mean the man driving?’

‘Yes. He just waved me away, so I ran into the trees. I tried to hide but it wasn’t a very good hiding place and the man with the gun could see me, but when he tried to shoot me nothing happened and he said something bad and looked at his gun and went back to the car.’

McQuarrie murmured, ‘Any ballistics, Hal?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Automatic pistol, do you think? It jammed on him?’

‘Possibly. What did you do then, Georgia?’

When she heard the white car start up she raised her head and watched it leave. It made a lot of smoke. Yes, a white car. A kind of old car, she thought, with a funny door.

‘Funny door?’

‘Not the same colour. Kind of a yellow. Look,’ she said, pointing to one of the drawings. An off-white car with a pale yellow door and the driver inside, his arm out of the window, presumably waving her away.

‘If the original door was rusted or damaged,’ Ellen murmured to Challis, ‘it may have been replaced by one from a wrecking yard.’

Challis nodded. It was a job for Scobie.

‘Do you think you could look at some photographs for us, Georgia?’

That quick shrug again. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Pictures of men’s faces, sweetheart,’ her grandfather said. ‘You might recognise the men who hurt Mummy.’

‘Okay.’

‘If you do,’ he said, ‘we’ll catch them and have an identity parade. Do you know what that is?’

Challis let the super prattle on. Identity parades were only useful to back up solid evidence. A failed lineup was like manna from heaven to a defence lawyer. And the idea of putting Georgia McQuarrie through an identity parade was galling to him. He’d tried, and failed, to observe a distance with regard to the child. The job swamped you if you didn’t learn to see the blood and the damaged flesh and lives as outcomes or problems to solve. But you couldn’t go on thinking like that without giving the pressure some kind of outlet. Humour-of the blackest kind-was a common outlet; booze; a hobby; the exclusive company of other cops. Without an outlet, your heart would fracture. That little girl with her wintry face…Challis didn’t have children but Ellen and Scobie did. What went through their minds every day? Did they ever stop worrying about their kids? Abused kids, bloodied kids, orphaned kids.

‘Is there anything else you remember about the two men, Georgia?’

‘What colour was their skin?’ Barbara McQuarrie wanted to know.

‘Dear, please,’ McQuarrie said.

‘Same as mine,’ Georgia said.

Challis rested his forearms on his knees. ‘You couldn’t see their faces very clearly.’

‘No. The man with the gun had a beanie on. It was all pulled down and his collar was turned up.’

‘Was he fat? Thin?’

‘Medium.’

‘Tall? Short?’

‘Medium.’

‘What about the way they spoke?’ Barbara McQuarrie asked. ‘Did they speak English?’

‘Love, please,’ McQuarrie said.

‘It’s a fair enough question.’

Ellen broke in. ‘What about the other man, Georgia, the driver of the car. Was he wearing a beanie, too?’

‘No.’

‘What colour was his hair?’

‘He was kind of bald.’

‘Bald, or had he shaved his hair off?’

‘I think shaved.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He just waved at me to go away.’

‘Anything else about his face that you can remember?’

‘He was kind of a bit younger than the other one.’

‘As old as your dad?’

Georgia screwed up her face assessingly. ‘Younger.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Sort of a round face, a bit fat,’ Georgia said.

Then she went alert in McQuarrie’s arms as a door opened in the hallway and a voice called, ‘Mum? Dad? Georgia?’

She hurled herself out of the room.

Snapshot

Robert McQuarrie came in looking pale but composed, frowning a little as the clamouring hands of his daughter pulled his suit askew. Then his mother rushed to him with a small, incoherent cry, which seemed to break his resolve. He blinked his eyes. Finally the superintendent was clapping an arm around him in a clumsy embrace.

Challis watched, unmoved. Robert McQuarrie seemed to notice him then over the shoulders of his parents. He had an open face, smooth and well tended, like his hands. A little button nose, inherited from his mother, gave him the appearance of a plain, over-sized schoolboy dressed in a costly suit.

He broke the embrace and approached with his hand out. ‘Robert McQuarrie,’ he said. ‘And you are?’

Challis made the introductions, McQuarrie scarcely glancing at Ellen.

‘I’ll be available later, but right now I need to comfort my daughter.’

‘I understand,’ Challis said. He glanced at Ellen, and by unspoken agreement they edged towards the door. The superintendent followed them into the hallway. ‘You’re going?’

Challis nodded. ‘I’m not sure that Georgia can help us any further at the moment. We may need to show her photographs of cars later, and mugshots.’

McQuarrie waved a hand as if to say, ‘Of course, of course.’

‘And we’ll need to speak to your son.’

McQuarrie looked at the floor, then up at Challis. ‘My son is devastated by this.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I know you’re just doing your job. I’m a policeman myself, remember? I know you have to eliminate him from your inquiries. But go gently, all right? He’s exhausted, in shock, he’s just lost his wife. His daughter has just lost her mother.’

Challis nodded, waiting for McQuarrie to wind down.

‘And he couldn’t have shot Janine. He was in Sydney.’

Sooner or later, Challis thought, he’ll make the necessary leap: Did my son hire someone to shoot Janine?

‘I understand.’

‘Should be plenty of witnesses, too. He was guest speaker at a seminar.’ McQuarrie gave a ragged sigh. ‘Look, Hal, whatever resources you need, they’re yours. Extra manpower, overtime, anything at all. But for God’s sake keep the media out of this.’

‘We’ll have to tell them something.’

‘It’s an unholy alliance, sometimes, police and press. But this is my son and his wife and daughter we’re talking about, so no quiet words in the ear of that girlfriend of yours.’

Challis flushed angrily. Ellen saved him. ‘Sir, before we go, could you tell us a bit about your daughter-in-law?’

McQuarrie glanced at his watch, looked back over his shoulder to the sitting room and sounds of grief and bewilderment. ‘Can’t it wait?’