Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (23 page)

Pam blinked. Caz seemed genuinely
interested. There are moments of boredom, there are disappointments, but theres
also exhilaration and satisfaction when you get it right.

Exactly, said Caz elliptically.
She said, Whats it like for
women
in the police?

Getting better.

Ive seen you with those two
uniformed guys, the fat one and the good-looking one. Whats that like?

Were just colleagues, pitching in
together.

I doubt it, Caz said promptly. She
paused. They both like you.

It came out of nowhere and Pam
blushed. Getting back to

Steer clear of both of them, Caz
said.

Pam scowled. Im afraid Im not
here to

But her mobile phone rang and
Challis said, Where are you?

Pam walked out of the shop to take
the call and heard Caz lock the door behind her and knew she couldnt do a
thing about it. Just down the street from the station.

Briefing room, ten minutes.

But sir...

Briefing room. Murder takes
priority.

* * * *

31

Ellen
Destry should have been at the end-of-day briefing, but she was breaking into
Adrian Wisharts house. A familiar roaring set up in her ears. It had nothing
to do with the noises she made, for she was whisper quiet, but with the
heightened flow of her blood. With excitement, apprehension and a sense of
entitlement, in other words.

Now she stood perfectly still in
Adrian Wisharts sitting room until her blood eased and she could hear the
external world again.

Nothing.

She was alone.

No sirens, next-door voices or
unexpected occupants to undo her.

She flexed her hands in their latex
gloves and began to move. This was not the first time shed broken into someones
house and it wouldnt be the last. It was part of her secret life. It was also
part of her detecting life. She didnt know if other police officers did it or
not. Some surely did, but did not admit it. Perhaps Challis did it, too, but if
he were like her hed never admit it.

Ellen moved swiftly through the
house, checking for unwelcome surprises or obstacles, mapping the layout of
each room and locating the escape routes. Then she went through again,
identifying areas of interest for a more concentrated sweep. She didnt know
what she expected to discover about Adrian Wishart, only that shed formed a loathing
for him and expected to find something that proved his role in the murder of
his wifea phone number, photographs or other evidence of a lover or a hired
killer. The house had been formally searched already, but only to learn if
there were hidden aspects of Ludmillas life. Her computer had been removed.
Correspondence. Financial papers. The warrant hadnt extended to the husband,
not without hard evidence.

She felt alive when she made these
covert forays into other peoples private worlds. The sense of elation was
never far away. She was powerful at these times. Victorious. She had a hold
over Adrian Wishart today and he didnt know it.

Not that shed be able to use
anything she discovered, or not in any formal or legal sense. The search was
illegal and anything she found would be ruled inadmissible by a judge. But she
might find something that guided the direction of the investigation.

As she moved from room to room,
Ellen tried to see the furnishings and decorations as if she were Ludmilla
Wishart making a home, a nest, and failed. It wasnt a failure of the
imagination; rather, it seemed to Ellen as if Ludmilla had played only a small
role in designing and decorating the house. It was as if shed been negated or
sidelined by her husband. Ellen didnt believe that women were necessarily
fussy and decorative, and men harsh and utilitarian, but she was convinced that
Adrian Wishart was responsible for the almost mathematical precision with which
the rooms, furniture and paintings had been arranged, and she itched to soften
the effect. If she lived here shed be afraid to bump a chair out of alignment,
smudge a glass surface, leave a crumb behind or shed a cotton thread. Order and
control ruled this house. Unchallengeable principles governed it.

Ellen began her fine-detail search
in the bathroom. First she took digital photographs of the contents of the
cabinets, then examined labels and shook bottles and tubes, before replacing
everything exactly where it had been, according to the images stored in her
camera. Ludmilla had been prescribed a birth-control pill, Adrian an
anti-inflammatory.

She repeated her search technique in
the other rooms, hunting through all the obvious places: hollow cavities behind
skirting boards, under the cistern lid in the en-suite bathroom, behind
paintings, inside freezer and pantry containers. No drugs, and only a little
alcohol. No pornography, no sex aids, no secret stash of love letters.

Then, tucked under bills, junk mail
and what were probably unopened birthday cards in a bowl on a hallstand, Ellen
found an envelope containing $250 in cash. With it was an invoice in the sum of
$250 made out to Ludmilla Wishart by Grants Gardening, the words cash payment
appreciated at the bottom. Ellen pocketed the envelope and its contents
without thinking and moved on to Adrian Wisharts studio, the only room shed
not yet searched.

She checked the time: 5 p.m. Shed
be late to Hals briefing, and Wishart might be back at any time. Shed seen
him leave, confirming Scobies report that the uncle was expecting him, but
what if Wishart changed his mind about the drive to the city? She picked over
the files, desk diary and drawers desultorily, made a quick search of the mans
laptop, and rummaged through the scraps in his wastepaper bin. On the surface,
his life was clinical and hardhearted. She needed to find where that would tip
over into committing murder.

A car passed by the house. Ellen
darted to the window and saw a taxi winding its way along the street and out of
sight. As a reflex, she grabbed the curtain edge and heard the rings rattle on
the rod above her head. She looked up. A hollow metal rod, with decorative
knobs on each end. Quite a thick rod. Roomy. She remembered her favourite lovers-revenge
story about breaking into the cheating boyfriends home and stuffing his
curtain rod with rotting fish. Taken him days, weeks, to isolate the source of
the awful smell.

Ellen dragged a chair over. One of
the decorative ends was dusty. She unscrewed the clean one and there, nestling
inside it, was a USB memory stick.

* * * *

32

Early
evening in the briefing room, Challis, Sutton, Murphy and the Mornington
detectives, Smith and Jones, arranged around the long table, a table now as
comfortably part of their lives as their kitchen tables and just as battered.
Challis thought how useful CIUs table could be to the forensic lecturers at
the police academy, its surfaces imprinted with DNA traces, prints, stains and
ballpoint pen impressions.

Wheres Ellen?

Dont know, boss.

Challis unfolded from the wall. The
evening was mild, the air heated by the west-facing glass, and so hed provided
bottles of juice and mineral water, potato crisps and salted peanuts. First
things first, he said, tossing back a peanut and perusing a fax from the lab. The
mucus found on Lachlan Roes sleeve came from the attacker, not Roe. Theyve
extracted DNA, but it doesnt match anyone in the system.

No one responded. It was a familiar
disappointment. Even Pam Murphy seemed to gesture philosophically without
actually shrugging her shoulders. Smith and Jones looked bored; it wasnt their
case.

But Roe goes on the back burner,
Challis continued. Our priority is finding who murdered Ludmilla Wishart. Heres
what we know about her last movements.

Just then, Ellen entered, fast and
lithe in her long cotton skirt and sleeveless top but somehow not cool and
collected. Shed hurried to the briefing from somewhere, and that had flustered
her, but Challis saw other disturbances in her mood and demeanour, too. Regret,
perhaps. A hint of waspishness or even guilt. In the four or five seconds it
took for her to enter, apologise and claim a chair, Challis cast his mind back
over his day, wondering if by action or omission hed pissed her off in some
way. He gave her a full-wattage smile that she tried and failed to return.

We were outlining Ludmilla Wisharts
movements yesterday, he told her, before turning to the whiteboard, which had
ceased over the years to be truly white. Pointing with a ruler he said:

Lunch from twelve-thirty to two oclock
with a female friend. Then rather than return to the office she drove to three
separate properties. These movements have since been confirmedthe last because
her body was found at the scene and according to the pathologist she was killed
where we found her, not killed elsewhere and transported there.

He paused. We have to consider the
fact that her murder was work related. She started as a planner for the shire,
then a year ago became Planning Easts infringements officer, a job that took
her all over the place, looking into complaints and non-compliance with
planning restrictions, issuing notices and bans, checking on court- or
tribunal-ordered restoration and regeneration work.

A job that pissed people off, said
Smith. Like Jones, hed settled into a faintly untidy middle age, as if waiting
for retirement and unwilling to over-achieve, or even achieve.

Yes.

Enough to kill her, though? said
Jones.

People have killed for a lot less,
Ellen said. She looked calmer now, focused on the proceedings.

True.

Ellen turned to Challis. What did
you learn about the Shoreham site?

Challis explained that the wealthy
Premiers even wealthier cousin owned it. Name of Jamie Furneaux, but hes
been overseas for four months, so hes more or less out of the frame.

Overseas. Thats handy.

He was being hounded by the press
for chopping down trees without a permit. They were blocking his sea views,
needless to say. He made huge bonfires of the timber, and that involved the
local fire brigadeto whom he made a generous donation. All in all, the press
had a field day. He was fined $20,000 and ordered to replant the whole area
with indigenous trees and grasses. We think the victim was there to check that
hed carried out the work.

Had he? said Sutton.

Yes.

Challis had been resting his hands
on the back of a chair. Now he straightened. These places and times are her
broad movements for the afternoon. We need to know which routes she took, where
she might have stopped, who she might have encountered or visited
between
appointments.
Scobie?

Scobie Sutton was an arrangement of
skinny bones inside his old suit. He rarely looked happy; today he looked to be
at his wits end with life. He stirred and said, I checked her mobile phone
records. She made no calls yesterday.

None?

Several from her office phone
yesterday morning, Sutton amended. It should be mentioned that her mobile
phone was not on or near her body or her car, and its not in her office or in
her home.

Handbag and wallet are also
missing, Challis said. If the phones switched on, maybe the service provider
can locate it?

There should also be an MP3 player,
said Ellen. A birthday present from her friend at lunch yesterday.

Assuming this isnt a mugging but
staged as one, the killer will have dumped everything somewhere, Sutton said. Meanwhile
her credit card use shows one purchase yesterday afternoon at three-forty: she bought
forty-seven litres of unleaded petrol at the Caltex on the way in to Waterloo.

If they have CCTV, Challis said, check
to see who else was there at the same timebuying petrol, using the shop,
lurking.

You think she was followed?

Its possible.

Her husband followed her on
Tuesday, according to one witness, Ellen said. And according to her best
friend, hed call or e-mail her several times a day, hang around outside, visit
her office.

Did he have reason to? asked
Smith.

Do you mean, did he suspect she was
having an affair? Theres no indication she was. Her husbands a pathetic
loser, thats all. A stalker.

Sutton cut in: But the husbands
alibi is sound. He was with his uncle. The guy confirms it.

Challis tapped the whiteboard again.
Next we come to this man, Carl Vernon. Vernon heads a residents action group
in Penzance Beach. When the group got wind that an old house in the area was
about to be bulldozed and a new one erected in its place, they contacted
Ludmilla Wishart. With an uneasy glance at Ellen, he went on: Ludmillas
husband said he feared she was having an affair with Vernon.

So he
did
have
a
reason to follow her, said Smith.

Vernon denies it, Challis said, and
I tend to believe him. In fact, he said that when he was meeting with Ludmilla
on Tuesday afternoon, the husband showed up.

It confirms what Ludmillas friend
told me, Ellen said. Adrian Wishart always seemed to know exactly where and
when his wife had been during the day.