Whispering Death (23 page)

Unfazed, Schiff said, ‘Let's look at the pattern.' She ticked her fingers: ‘The use of a police uniform to gain authority over the victim. The abduction, the sexual assault, the use of a stolen car that resembles an unmarked police vehicle. I could go on.'

‘Wouldn't want to stop you. It's a free country.'

‘But what happened with Delia Rice, Darren?'

‘Nothing happened—not involving me, anyway.'

‘Did you mean to kill her? You didn't, did you, it was an accident.'

‘Didn't kill her, never met her, wasn't there.'

‘It was an accident. Let's call it manslaughter, not murder. You'll do a few years, less than ten, be out on good behaviour before you know it.'

‘Didn't murder no one, didn't manslaughter no one.'

‘You didn't intend to kill her. Accident, right? You put your hands around her neck in the throes of passion and accidentally throttled her.'

He had his arms folded. ‘Nup.'

‘Or she was crying, is that it, Darren? You hate it when they cry, don't you? It makes you feel kind of bad inside. You just wanted her to stop.'

‘When you find the guy, why not ask him?'

‘You were seen stumbling away from the scene, Darren. We have a witness. A man matching your description.'

‘What, tall, good-looking guy?'

‘See, what I think happened is, you suddenly had this body on your hands and you panicked. Didn't know what to do. Shoved her in the boot of the stolen car and just drove around for a few hours, wondering where to dump her, trying to work it out.'

Muschamp stared stonily at the table and Pam Murphy sensed that he was reliving exactly that scenario.

‘You'd been playing with her—for want of a better word—all night, and then she died, and now it's daylight, people all around, and you can't keep her at your place and you can't take her to the nature reserve, can't go back there, so you simply drive around and around. Maybe hoping to find a deserted back road—except the Peninsula is pretty closely settled, there's always someone driving along the back roads. Right, Dazza?'

‘If you say so.'

‘Of course, you couldn't risk driving around wearing a police uniform, not with a body on board. So you changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.' She paused. ‘I hope you burned them afterwards, Darren.'

He gave her a level smile and Pam knew that's what he'd done. The thought that they wouldn't get him on the murder depressed her.

‘I'm finished talking,' he said, and in a fair approximation of anguish added, ‘Look, I wasn't myself last night, I've been depressed, you know, my judgment's shot, maybe I'm suicidal, all these mitigating circumstances and I think maybe a lawyer can help me now.'

Schiff faltered then. Challis didn't see it but Pam did. A short acquaintance, only a few days, but she knew what it meant when Jeannie pursed her lips and examined the ends of her hair. It meant doubt, and Pam wanted to say,
Keep pushing him
.

Unaccountably, then, she pictured Chloe Holst sitting on her hospital bed, sneezing. Why had she recalled that? Sympathy for the victim? No, it was something else…

It came to her in a rush. She walked down the corridor, scrolling through the numbers stored on her mobile phone. Craig, her favourite lab tech.

‘It's Spud,' she announced. He called her that. ‘I wonder if I could run an idea past you…'

36

Ian Galt had been trying since Monday to make sense of the CCTV images he'd scared out of Steve Finch. Anita had a child. Was it his? And elderly parents? Back when he'd known her, she'd had no apparent history at all.

But meanwhile he'd had to fly back to Sydney, word coming through on the grapevine about a body fished out of the harbour. He watched the investigation for a couple of days, standing well behind the scenes, the murdered man on the periphery of his old life.

And now it was Wednesday morning and he was back in Melbourne to begin the hunt.

He started at the childcare centre in Hurstbridge. Huddled under gumtrees on a minor road leading into the town, it looked threadbare, understaffed and underfunded. Meaning it was probably operated by a millionaire type peculiar to Australia, discredited, overextended and obscurely attracted to childcare centres and nursing homes. First flashing his fake Federal Police ID, he showed the administrator a still from Steven Finch's security camera, a toddler and a young woman standing side by side outside the front gate of the centre. A photograph of a photograph, in fact, with a messy blur in the bottom right that was Anita's hand in the act of displaying the photo to Finch.

The administrator, round and motherly, would only concede that the photograph had been taken in front of the centre.

‘But the kid did attend?'

‘I'm sorry, Inspector Towne, I'm not at liberty to say.'

‘Is she still here?'

‘Perhaps if you tell me what this is about?'

Galt cast around for a story that might tug at the heartstrings and involve the Australian Federal Police. ‘We fear that an attempt might be made by a family member to kidnap her.'

‘Really.'

Sensing that he was on thin ground, Galt said, ‘This is a routine inquiry. We have not been able to track down all members of her extended family and—'

‘This child did attend here, yes, but has since moved on.'

‘You mean she's attending primary school now?'

There was a long pause. ‘No, I don't mean that.'

‘Look, this is a preliminary inquiry,' Galt said. ‘We were alerted anonymously that the child might be at risk.'

Another silence that lasted for a few centuries. ‘The family moved back to England, that's all I know.'

‘Back to England?'

‘Both parents took her.'

The sun had passed the midpoint of the sky, and the light, filtered by the dense tree canopy, fell to the ground in a pattern of interlocking circles. But Galt was in no mood for spring or beauty of any kind. ‘Madam, are you sure you can't tell me more about this child?' He tapped the photo. ‘Or her mother?'

‘The thing is, that isn't her mother. I don't know who that is.'

‘They're standing next to each other.'

‘And so are other children, and if I'm not mistaken, the photo has been cropped, that's the arm and shoulder of another parent.'

The woman was correct, of course. Galt kicked himself. He said, ‘So a stranger insinuates herself into a group of parents and children.'

‘She could be anybody. An aunt. A friend.'

Or a red herring, Galt thought.

37

Every small community has its eyesores.

Lowther was a pretty collection of houses but here and there on the outer edges rundown dwellings stood on largish blocks, the kinds of places defined by unexplained traffic night and day. Car bodies and truck chassis melded with unmown grass, and newish cars, utilities and 4WDs crammed the driveways, the parched lawns, the kerb outside.

Inside, through the dope haze, the décor would be beer-can pyramids and pizza boxes, the detritus of the residents and assorted uncles, cousins, girlfriends, neighbours, temporary pub mates and hangers-on. Long periods of stunned calm would be punctuated by flaring violence around who swiped the last beer.

On Tuesday night Grace had picked out one such house on the outskirts of Lowther, and now, 10.30 on Wednesday evening, she parked the rented Camry outside it, squeezed between a hotted-up Holden panel van and a rustbucket Kombi. No one would look twice at the Camry; it could belong to anyone on that street.

She got out, carrying a nylon duffle bag. Inside it were two similar bags folded to the size of paperbacks, spare clothes in a waterproof compartment, a bottle of drinking water and the tools for this job: screwdriver, Swiss Army knife, wire cutters, a chisel, nail pullers, torch, duct tape, prepaid mobile phone, digital camera, a thin steel pry bar and the spray can of insulation foam. No size eleven shoes this time. She didn't want the cops to link this break-in to any of her others.

It was a three-kilometre walk across country to Lindisfarne. First she skirted the little town, then climbed a fence and passed through wooded areas and across vineyards to Coolart Road. The vines hemmed her in, high on either side. The white netting that draped them was rendered a ghastly silver by the moonlight. Good cover, though.

She crossed Coolart Road, climbed through the fence on the other side and walked parallel to Goddard Road. When she reached the farmhouse opposite Lindisfarne's cypress hedge, she stopped for a while, watching and listening. When she was satisfied, she crossed to the hedge and got down on her hands and knees to force a way through to the other side.

About one hundred metres further down Goddard Road, Audrey Tremaine slapped at a mosquito. The compensating twitch of her buttocks on the camping stool almost tipped her into the bracken. She lathered herself in Rid again and continued to fume.

Only one car since 10 p.m. It had raised a plume of dust, dust in her eyes and tiny grit missiles stinging her cheek. But sufficient moonlight for her to recognise the car and the husband and wife schoolteachers from the mud brick house further along the road. They hadn't stopped to spray-paint a slogan on her new gate, and she'd have been most surprised if they had.

She continued to watch. Third night in a row. It wasn't as if anyone else was willing to mount guard—not the shire's environment protection officer, the police, or her don't-want-to-get-involved neighbours.

‘Leave it, Audrey,' they'd said, in the weary tones they used with her now, complete with a bit of eye-rolling if they thought she wasn't looking and even when they knew she was.

‘It's not right!' she'd said, fists clenched.

‘Yes, but what can you do?' A shrug in the voice.

‘Catch them red-handed.'

‘How? Wait behind a bush all night, being eaten alive by mosquitoes?'

‘If necessary,' Audrey said stoutly.

‘Then what? Chase after them and make a citizens' arrest?'

Audrey had thought about that. ‘Write down their number plate, plus time, date and location. Collect empty spray cans so the police can take fingerprints.'

Like that's going to happen, their looks said. But it wasn't just the desecration of property that got to Audrey, it was the vicious boredom of the young people responsible. What made them like that? It was the puzzle element as much as the outrage that drove Audrey Tremaine, aged seventy-one, retired bookkeeper and owner of the lavender farm with a brand new set of gateposts a short distance further along Goddard Road.

She'd set up surveillance on the bend halfway between her farm and the cypress hedge at the front of the Niekirks' big house. Perched on a camping tool among the bracken and roadside gums, she could see for long distances in each direction. Well set up, too: flask of coffee, pocketful of muesli bars, torch, notebook and pen, mobile phone. She was plugged into Radio National and had all night at her disposal. The only danger she could envisage was being conked on the head by a spray can.

The light was tricky, the shadows fluid. Audrey blinked: one shadow had detached from the others. It crossed the road and ducked into the cypresses.

First Grace watched the house from inside the hedge—but without focussing, as if she were daydreaming. The focussing would come next: right now a wide-eyed stare was the best way to detect movements in the foreground and at the periphery of her vision.

All was still. No dogs, sentries or insomniacs. Thirty minutes passed. At 11.30 a light came on in an upstairs room and ten minutes later in a downstairs room. She waited; eventually both went out, one some time after the other. She ignored the lights for now and eyed the house and grounds, restricting her focus to one narrow field of vision and then the next, from left to right. Tennis court, shrubs, bushes; an overturned wheelbarrow, then the veranda, doors and windows of the house itself, and finally more shrubbery and a garden shed.

Nothing. Only the lights, on the same cycle as last night, the ground floor light switching off and on at ten minute intervals, the other at fifteen. The Niekirks were still in Sydney.

All the while, she listened. She heard a couple of cars far away on Coolart Road, here and there a wind eddy in the trees, night creatures restless in the undergrowth. She windmilled her arms at one point, heart in her mouth, as a silent death dealer swooped at her head.

Some kind of bird. An owl, probably. She was a hindrance in its hunting field.

Time to move. Grace approached the house, keeping off the driveway and gravel paths, the crunch and rattle that might wake a light sleeper. On the veranda she paused to listen, then made her way to the front door, which was fitted with a fanlight and glass side panels. A faint gleam leaked out from somewhere inside the house. This light wasn't on a timer. She took the mobile phone from a buttoned pocket of her jacket and dialled the Niekirks' number. A moment later, a telephone chirped softly within the dim reaches of the house. After eight rings the answering machine cut in. Grace repeated the process several times, watching the glass around the door. There was no sudden increase in the light intensity, no angry householder turning on a bedroom or hallway light as he or she stumbled to silence the bell.

She continued to wait and listen. If she'd breached an infrared beam outside the house, stepped on a pressure pad, made an unwelcome sound, then there should have been a police car or security patrol by now, flashing lights, a caterwauling alarm sounding under the eaves. Not for the first time, Grace reflected that people like the Niekirks had a misplaced faith in their seclusion.

Finally she walked around the veranda to the Messer alarm box. According to the security installer she'd spoken to yesterday afternoon, in the event of a break-in, a power cut or the box being tampered with, the alarm would sound at both the house and Messer HQ.