Letting a forensic tech dust and scrape, Scobie had done a walk-through of the house. It was evident that a woman had once lived there-a woman slightly haunted by life or by Clode, judging by the face she revealed to the world in the only photograph Scobie found, a small, forgotten portrait in a dusty cream frame, the woman unsmiling in the front garden of the house, Clode with his arm around her. No signs of her in the bathroom cabinet, bedside cupboard or wardrobe. The rooms themselves were sterile, a mix of mainly worn and some new items of furniture, in careful taste, neither cheap nor costly, with here and there an ornamental vase or forgettable framed print. A couple of fat paperbacks, several New Age magazines, some CDs of whale and waterfall music. It was the house of an empty man. The only oddity was a small room taken up with a spa bath, bright wall tiles and cuddly floating toys.
And the damage, of course-the overturned TV set, rucked floor mats, splintered chair and broken glass. And blood.
‘Did you injure any of your assailants, do you think?’ Scobie asked now. ‘There seemed to be a lot of blood in the sitting room.’
Clode put a hand to his cut lip and winced. ‘Don’t know.’
Scobie watched him for a while. ‘Are you telling me everything, Mr Clode?’
Signs of anal penetration, according to the doctor who’d examined Clode. No semen present. ‘Were you raped?’
Clode’s eyes leaked and he shook his head minutely. Scobie waited. Clode swallowed. ‘A bottle.’
There had been no bottles at the scene. ‘Before or after they beat you?’
‘It was part of the whole deal,’ Clode said.
‘You were also kicked?’
‘Yes.’
‘What were they wearing?’
‘Jeans. T-shirts.’
‘What about footwear?’
‘Runners.’
Scobie had scouted around the house: lawn right up to the verandah, so no shoe prints, and none in the blood. ‘You didn’t recognise them?’
‘Happened too quickly, plus I covered my face to protect it.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘About midnight.’
‘Yet you didn’t report it until six this morning?’
‘Unconscious.’
‘I don’t understand why they didn’t take anything else-your DVD player, for example.’
Scobie watched Clode. The man’s face was bruised and swollen, but evasiveness underlay it. ‘Don’t know.’
‘I think this was personal, Mr Clode.’
‘No. Never seen them before.’
‘Are you married?’
‘My wife died a couple of years ago. Cancer.’
‘ Grandchildren?’
‘Yes.’
That explained the spa bath and toys. ‘How old were these men?’
‘Don’t know. Youngish,’
‘You’re almost sixty?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘What about their voices. Did you recognise anyone? Anything distinguishable, like an accent?’
‘They didn’t say much. Didn’t say anything.’
‘What about names, did they let any names slip out?’
‘Nup.’
‘Did they address you by name?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got any enemies, Mr Clode?’
‘No. I’m in pain.’
Pam Murphy, conditioned by years of police duty and triathlon training, was also up and about.
According to the surf report, Gunnamatta Beach was too big and turbulent today, Portsea had messy onshore waves, Flinders onshore waves to 1.5 metres, and Point Leo a fair, one-metre-high tide surf, so she settled on Point Leo. The surfing conditions were right. It was also her closest surf beach and she’d learnt to surf there.
It was uncanny the way certain memories and sense traces hit her the moment she drove past the kiosk and over the speed bumps. Sex, mainly, together with the taste of salt-human and marine-and the sounds of the seagulls, the offshore winds, the snap of wetsuits, kids waxing their boards. Desire flickered in her. The guy who’d taught her to surf had been scarcely seventeen years old, she in her mid twenties. A disciplinary offence, maybe even dismissal from the police force, if it had ever come out. But it hadn’t, and they’d both moved on and no hearts had been broken or psyches damaged. It had been a tonic to her, that summer. She’d never been desired quite like that before. She’d scarcely felt desire herself, or desirous. Her body had always been a beautiful, flexible instrument whenever she swam, ran or hit a ball around, but sexual desire had been its untapped dimension. A male colleague like John Tankard, commenting on her tits in the confines of a police car, was hardly going to awaken her.
She parked on a grassy verge beside a cluster of familiar roof-racked panel vans and small cars, pulled on her wetsuit, and trudged over the dunes with her surfboard, passing the clubrooms, a poster of Katie Blasko pinned to a noticeboard. The beach curved slowly to the west; a few solitary people walked their dogs; gulls wheeled above the sea; surfers-tiny patient dots-rose and fell, rose and fell, as small waves rolled uneventfully to the shore. Pam felt a surge of feeling for the lost summers of her life and for the end of her years in uniform.
Unless she blew it. ‘You have the right instincts,’ Ellen Destry would often tell her, ‘but becoming a detective also means writing essays and passing exams.’
Things that Pam had never been good at.
15
‘Thank you for coming in,’ said Ellen Destry, late morning. ‘I know it’s Sunday, and you’ve all clocked up a lot of overtime, but we can’t afford to drop the ball.’
They shrugged good-naturedly, all except John Tankard, who looked tired and edgy, and Superintendent McQuarrie, who glanced at his watch and said, ‘Let’s get on with it, Sergeant.’
Why was he here? Ellen could sense his impatience. Maybe he was supposed to be meeting his pals on a golf course somewhere. ‘Yes, sir.’
He’d always treated Challis with impatience, too. McQuarrie was a pen-pusher, a man who resented the competence and usefulness of street cops, for they made the kinds of decisions and intuitive leaps that left him bewildered-and so he took it out on them. More so, if a female officer was calling the shots. He was the kind of man who’d want her to fail so that he, or a male appointee, could step in. Sure, he probably wanted Katie Blasko found, but a corner of him didn’t want Ellen to do it. Meanwhile the other men in the briefing room, particularly Kellock and van Alphen, were reserving judgement. If she revealed emotions or doubts, they’d roll their eyes, put their arms around her bracingly, and tell her how things should be done.
So she acted hard and fast, assigning tasks to the CIU detectives and to the uniforms. ‘We’ve interviewed many of these people before,’ she said, ‘but I want you to do it again, and given that it’s a Sunday, you should be able to catch up on those who were not at home yesterday or on Friday. Teachers, shopkeepers, neighbours, school friends, enemies. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. The Show finishes today, everyone’s packing up and moving on to another town, so I want ticket sellers, roustabouts, drivers and hangers-on interviewed and checked before they disappear into the never-never. Search their vehicles.’ She paused. ‘Public transport. Did Katie take a train to the city? Dump her bike and hail a taxi? Go into a shop, accompanied by someone, a friend or a stranger? Check security camera footage again. Re-interview everyone on the sex offenders’ register. And don’t rule out other children: check Children’s Services for local kids who have a record of violence and inappropriate sexual behaviour.’
The acknowledgement, ‘Boss,’ went raggedly around the room.
‘Justin Pedder. So far he checks out, but keep an open mind. All of the open land in and around Waterloo has now been searched, without result, but broadening the perimeter is not warranted yet, there’s just too much of it on the Peninsula. It’s eyewitnesses we want. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon’s bike re-enactment will help.’