Garry Disher - Snapshot

‘Waterloo.’

Well, that was convenient. ‘Does she live alone?’

‘I think her husband died a few years ago.’

Challis said patiently, ‘But since then-any long-term visitors, tenants, anyone like that?’

The woman shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know, really. I’m new to the area and I don’t know all the comings and goings.’

Challis pocketed his pad and pen. ‘Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.’

He saw her swallow. She was holding herself tensely. ‘Can you tell me what happened? Was her house broken into?’

Challis hesitated. It was always possible that this woman was the intended target. If so, would she run when she learnt what had happened next door? Rather than make another trip out to question her, he said, ‘Ms Welch, there was a shooting. A woman is dead. Not Mrs Humphreys,’ he said, holding up his hand, ‘but a younger woman.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Do you have any enemies?’

She shrank away from him. ‘Everyone has enemies. You really think they went to the wrong house?’

‘We have to check everything.’

‘What if they come back? I live alone here.’

‘Is there anyone you can stay with tonight or the next few nights?’

‘My parents live up in the city.’ She gave him an address and phone number in Highett.

He said gently, ‘I don’t think you’re in any danger. Whoever did this is long gone. But it would be wise for you to stay with your parents for the next couple of days until we sort this out.’

He agreed to wait while she packed a suitcase, locked up and drove away in her car. He noted the make, model and number, and then headed for Waterloo.

Unfortunately, his route took him past the local airfield. Inside one of the hangars was a Dragon Rapide, a 1930s biplane that he was supposed to be restoring, but some things had gone wrong for him and the old plane was still only seventy per cent complete. He’d lost all enthusiasm for carrying out the remaining tasks, such as hunting down the correct tyres. Besides, the hangar spooked him. He could feel Kitty there sometimes, at work on restoring her World War II Kittyhawk fighter. Of course, both plane and woman were long gone, but she’d been a companionable presence-almost a friend-until her husband had sneaked in one evening a year earlier and shot her dead while she worked. Challis had arrested the man but that had been the start of a shift in him, a loss of faith. His visits to the hangar had tailed off; meanwhile he’d recently received an invoice to renew his lease of the hangar space. Deciding that this was a good time to cut his losses and sell the Dragon, he’d fired off an e-mail to a Californian collector who’d expressed interest in buying it at the air show last March.

He reached Waterloo’s little hospital and parked beside a line of golden cypresses. The interior colours were pastelly pinks and greys, the air scented with lemon, the rooms and corridors flooded with natural light. Even so it was a cheerless place.

‘Mrs Humphreys?’ the receptionist said. ‘She’s being operated on this morning. No visitors until much later today.’

Challis returned to his car and called Ellen Destry. It was her morning off, but he needed officers to work the Bayside Counselling angle as soon as possible.

Detective Sergeant Ellen Destry had begun her half-day off with a walk on Penzance Beach with Pam Murphy, a senior constable who lived nearby and was also based at Waterloo. The fog had been dense and clammy around them, the foghorns distant and muffled as Pam had told Ellen about a local conservation group called the Bushrats that she’d recently joined. ‘We spend one Sunday morning a month clearing cape weed and pittosporum from roadsides and nature reserves,’ she said. ‘It’s fun, educational, the Shire helps out with tools and sprays, there’s even a newsletter. And we finish with a slap-up lunch.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Ellen neutrally.

On the surface, there were more differences than similarities between the two women. Where Ellen was forty, married and content to limit her exercise to a daily walk, Pam was twelve years younger, single and outdoorsy, an athlete. But Pam was tired of wearing a uniform and working as a patrol cop. She had shown investigative skills and initiative on a couple of important cases, so Ellen had taken the younger woman under her wing with a view to grooming her for plainclothes work. They were not exactly friends-the differences got in the way-but enjoyed walking and talking together when their schedules allowed it.

‘The next working bee’s in four weeks’ time,’ Pam said. ‘We’re clearing pittosporum in the north-west corner of Myers Reserve, if you’d like to come.’

‘Not my cup of tea,’ Ellen said. ‘Sorry.’

She was not as bad as Hal Challis, who’d once advised her, ‘Never join anything,’ but couldn’t comprehend people like Scobie Sutton and his wife, who joined everything from the school council to the pool of Meals on Wheels volunteers, or Pam, who belonged to four sporting clubs and was involving herself in the community. If pressed to join a club, Ellen would have said she was too busy, but in truth she’d never been asked and it had never occurred to her to join anything. As for the community, she kept it at a healthy remove.

They walked on, Ellen changing the subject. ‘How’s your new job?’

Pam shook her head ruefully. ‘It’s a bullshit gig, Sarge.’

It was an initiative of Senior Sergeant Kellock, and involved the Road Traffic Authority, Victoria Police and a few businesses with vague automotive connections. Pam and her partner were to tool around in a dinky little sports car for several weeks, rewarding courteous drivers with showbags that contained goods worth $150: a Melways street directory, a book of touring maps covering the entire continent, a BP fuel voucher, five McDonald’s coupons, a free wheel balance and alignment from Tyrepower, and a bumper sticker that read ‘Drive Safely and Live’.

‘Tell yourself it’s character building.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Pam.

At the end of their walk, Ellen said, ‘Coffee?’

Pam looked briefly stricken, then rallied. ‘No thanks, Sarge,’ she said gracefully. ‘Stuff to do before my shift starts, you know.’

Ellen nodded, thinking: She doesn’t want to encounter Alan. Ellen’s husband liked to refer to Pam as ‘That pushy little uniform from down the road’ his contempt for her thinly veiled on the few occasions they’d met. He didn’t like his wife mentoring the younger woman.

They parted at the store and Ellen walked home. Home was a fibro-cement beach house on stilts. On the plus side it was two minutes’ walk from the beach and ten minutes’ drive from her CIU office in Waterloo, but it was also uninsulated and difficult to heat and keep warm. The mornings were the worst, and the late afternoons. She hated waking up in, or coming home to a cold house. And Ellen felt the cold, always had. Finally, she had no one to talk to, except her husband, Alan, and he was no comfort. Things had been better when their daughter had lived at home, but Larrayne was studying up in the city now.

Ellen entered the kitchen and found her husband at the kitchen table, in uniform, eating breakfast, wound hard with frustration and grievances. ‘Have you seen the power bill?’

She hadn’t. She’d dumped it unopened and forgotten in the little cane bowl beside the phone at the end of the kitchen bench, where all the bills and junk mail ended up. She poured muesli and soymilk into a bowl. ‘How much is it for?’

‘Only almost double what it was for the same period last year,’ Alan said.

He actually grabbed a fistful of bills and credit card statements and shook them at her. ‘With just the two of us living here I thought our costs would decrease,’ he said.