Garry Disher - Kittyhawk Down

Then Ellen asked him about Pam Murphy. Lister had waved it away. 'She didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.'

'She came to me and reported the blackmail.'

'So?'

'So I don't want you using it in any way. It won't help in your defence, it'll only make things worse for you if we call it attempting to blackmail a police officer.'

Lister had shrugged. 'I've got nothing against her. Water under the bridge.' He went on without a change of pace: 'I feel shithouse about Skip, can't you see that? I want to get things off my chest.'

Ellen had stared at him in disbelief. 'Constable Murphy is going to sell her car and pay back the loan.'

Lister rubbed his face violently, clearly fatigued now. 'I suppose it will come in handy. Legal fees. Hospital expenses.'

'You disgust me,' Ellen had said.

Challis didn't say any of this to Scobie Sutton now. Sutton wouldn't blab or use it in any way, but the Pam Murphy business should stay buried.

'Here we are,' Sutton said, 'next street on your right.'

They'd taken the Peninsula Freeway to Frankston, then cut across to the Nepean Highway, which hugged the bay one street back from the water, glimpsed now and then down the side streets. It was a cheerless, red-tile stretch of the city, despite the water: flat, sun-baked, a sameness to the houses relieved only by ugly Italianate villas, their terracotta tiles and white plaster columns glaring in the autumn sunlight.

Challis turned right, across traffic and into a narrow street that dropped away in a curve of 1950s triple-fronted brick veneers. Number 40 was in cream brick, the lawn parched, a Mazda bubble car in the carport at the side.

'Someone's home,' Sutton murmured.

Challis gave a faint headshake of irritation. He wouldn't have come all this way without checking that fact first.

Louise Cook was about forty, with shapeless carroty hair and the dry, lined face of a chain smoker. She had a smoker's cough and took them into her sitting room as if desperate for the relief of her armchair and nearby coffee table and ashtray.

But then she struggled to her feet again, saying breathlessly, 'Tea? Coffee?'

'Nothing thanks,' Challis said firmly. He didn't want to stay here for long, and saw her sit back relievedly and give him an expectant look.

'You want to know about Trevor?'

'You went to England with him in 1999.'

'That's right.'

'But you came back and he stayed on.'

'Yes. He was from London originally, but I'm from here, and I got homesick. Plus it was so cold and expensive in London.'

'Did you stay in touch?'

'Off and on. It was a fairly amicable split. No grand passion or anything.'

'What can you tell me about Billings, the man who took over Trevor's rental agreement for the St Kilda house?'

'He was a nasty piece of work. All I wanted when I got back to Australia was a room for a while, till I was on my feet again, kind of thing. Bastard shut the door in my face.'

'Before then. When you and Trevor Hubble first met him, before you went to London.'

'Trev and I had this carpet cleaning business. That's how we met Billings. We got talking, got friendly, he and Trev both came from the same part of London so they had stuff in common, and in the end he invested in our business so we could afford to go to England. He retained financial control, kind of thing.'

'What happened to the business?'

Cook gestured. 'You tell me. We wrote to him from England but he never replied. Then when I came back and tried to see him, he slammed the door in my face.'

'But he was friendly at the start and gave you money?'

'More or less, yeah. It was all legal.'

'I'm not interested in the financial aspects, or not as such,' Challis said. 'Tell me more about Billings.'

'Well, like I said, he was friendly, generous, offered to look after the business for us. I know Trev left a lot of paperwork with him.'

'What kind?'

'Banking matters and stuff like that. Documents. For safekeeping, kind of thing.' She gestured at Scobie Sutton. 'What's his story? Doesn't he speak? Is he your boss or something?'

Sutton, who'd found out about the active accounts and bills in Hubble's name, gave her a tired smile and said, 'When did you last see Mr Hubble?'

'I told you, when I said goodbye in London.'

'But you stayed in touch after that?'

'Couple of letters,' she muttered. 'Couple of phone calls. He didn't seem very happy.'

'With your leaving him?'

'No, well, maybe, but mainly he was unhappy living in London again. Too expensive, couldn't get a decent job, couldn't start up in business, had no family left, no friends to speak of.'

Now Challis knew why no one reported him missing in either country. 'So he came back to Australia?'

She shrugged, which seemed to aggravate her cough. They waited until she'd finished, half concerned that she might die in the meantime, for the coughing fit left her washed out.

'All I know is, he said he thought he'd come back here and take up where he'd left off.'

'Cleaning carpets?'

'I suppose.'

'Did he tell Billings to expect him?'

She shrugged. 'I suppose so.'

'What about you? Didn't you want to be part of the business again?'

'It wasn't like I'd put money into it. Plus Trevor and I were finished, and the chemicals used to give me a rash, and I'd met someone else.' She seemed to incline her head toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. 'We live together. He's at work now. He's never met Trevor or Billings, in case you want to question him.'

Challis shook his head. He leaned forward. 'So it's probable that Trevor told Billings he was returning to Australia.'

She barely shrugged.

'Have you got a photo of Trevor Hubble?'

'Somewhere.'

'And anything he might have handled, like a photo album, a book…'

She frowned. 'I'll have a look, but what's this about? What's he done?'

'Nothing that we know of.'

'But it sounds like you need his fingerprints. That plus a photo…'

'Identification purposes,' Scobie said.

She stared at him and finally said, 'You found a body.'

Challis said gently, 'Yes. In the bay.'

She got excited now, jerking in her chair, coughing, which left her red-faced and gasping. 'Billings had a boat.'

'Did he now?'

'Go and arrest the bastard.'

'Do you know where he is?'

'No.'

'Can you tell us anything about him? Movements, habits… any photographs?'

She was thinking glumly, holding her chest and wheezing a little. She glanced up. 'I've got a mobile phone number somewhere.'

In the end it was Sutton who got up and went into the kitchen for her, coming back with a buttery address book. He looked up 'Billings' and wrote the number in his notebook.

'Try it,' Challis said.

'He's probably changed the number by now, people do that, they chop and change companies.'

'These days you can keep your number even if you change companies,' Louise Cook said, watching them with brightening eyes. She's enjoying this, Challis thought.

'Let me try it,' he said, fishing for his mobile phone.

Scobie read him the number, he dialled, and a calm English voice crackled in his ear immediately: 'Rex Casement.'

Back in the Displan room in Waterloo, Challis called Ellen at home, saying he needed her for an urgent briefing, and when they were all gathered he took them through the Casement story as he saw it. 'So,' he concluded, 'we got him because he kept his old mobile phone number.'

They shook their heads. They'd seen it time and time again. This was a variation on Kellock's illegal parking theory. Ellen said, 'He simply announced his name?'

'Yes.'

'How does he keep track of who he's supposed to be?'

'This guy is focused. He has to be.'