They all shook their heads. ‘I know, I know,’ Ellen said. ‘One thousand suspects were eliminated in that case, two and a half thousand homes searched, one thousand cars searched, and Duyker wasn’t on the list.’
They were quiet, thinking that Katie Blasko had been lucky, and wondering how many other Serena Hanlons were out there, rotting in the ground.
‘He has a record for sexually deviant behaviour,’ Ellen said. ‘We ourselves have witnessed instances of it. What we don’t have is hard evidence that he also abducts and rapes, let alone kills, little girls. Mounting suspicion, yes. Evidence, no. Meanwhile the super, in his infinite wisdom, has cut down on our resources.’
She noticed, and ignored, the way that Kellock-the super’s friend-was watching her, giving her a sardonic smile, as if she were being unprofessional. ‘Kel?’ she queried.
He shrugged. ‘You could get Duyker for flashing that schoolkid.’
‘And see it thrown out because she won’t press charges? No thanks.’
‘You were there, Ellen.’
‘I didn’t actually see his penis,’ said Ellen, unable to hide her distaste for the word in this context.
‘Come on, Sarge, just say you did see it, and arrest him,’ said John Tankard.
‘Thank you, constable, for encouraging me to pervert the course of justice.’
Tankard flushed and muttered.
Ellen was angry now. ‘You guys just don’t get it, do you? Let’s say I do arrest him. He gets bail because some magistrate decides it’s trivial, and immediately absconds after destroying incriminating evidence. Or, if he sticks around and it goes to court a year from now, it’s my word against his because the girl won’t press charges. Or if he is convicted he gets a rap over the knuckles or a short custodial. I don’t want him to go down for a bullshit charge. I want him to go down for a very long time on charges of abducting and raping Katie Blasko and, if we’re lucky or he confesses, abducting, raping and murdering Serena Hanlon and God knows who else. Understood?’
‘Sarge,’ they said, looking away awkwardly.
‘I’ve got his DNA,’ said Scobie shyly.
Ellen paused, her mouth open. She closed it. Someone else said, ‘How?’
‘The porn magazines.’
‘He’d wanked over them?’
‘Yes,’ Scobie said. He looked around the room. ‘Probably inadmissible in court, but at least we can compare it to the samples found at the Katie Blasko scene and the murder of this other girl.’
Ellen smiled. ‘True. Good work.’
It was a nail in the coffin. That’s how most cases were built, a nail at a time. Even so, too much was resting on DNA matches and Ellen wanted more and better evidence than that. ‘Go home,’ she said. ‘I’ve arranged half-day shifts for each of you over the weekend, and we’ll begin in earnest again on Monday.’
Meanwhile Pam Murphy had come to the end of her second week of intensive study, this time at the police complex in the city. She had another week to go. Her parents had urged her to stay with them, for they lived only fifteen minutes by tram from police HQ, but they were old and frail, and she knew she’d get caught up in their lives, spend all of her free time shopping, cooking, cleaning, ironing and taking them to the doctor. They’d want to domesticate her. It was okay for her brothers to have professional lives but she’d always had the niggling feeling that her parents had assumed she’d get married and have kids.
And so she’d been commuting to the city from her home in Penzance Beach: thirty minutes by car up the Peninsula to the end-of-the-line station in Frankston, then one hour by train into the centre of the city-one hour of madly finishing essays or catching up on her seminar reading. Yeah, she felt guilty because she could have been helping her parents, and was tired from all of that travelling, but she was very glad to sleep in her own bed at night.
Like her-like almost everyone who worked at the Waterloo police station-Kees van Alphen didn’t live in the town. He lived in Somerville, a town some distance away, in a 1970s brick house that was much the same as the others in his cul-de-sac between the shops and the railway line. On her way home that Friday evening, Pam went by, checking his driveway. Good, his little white Golf was parked there.
‘Thought you’d like to read this, Sarge,’ she said, moments later, thrusting a manila folder at him.
Her essay on questioning techniques and strategies, back promptly from her tutor, marked A+. She could have e-mailed it to van Alphen, but wanted him to see the original, with the annotations, the ticks, the big red A+.
Van Alphen looked edgy. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, his feet bare. It was odd to see him in casual clothes instead of his uniform, which always looked crisp and clean. His hair was damp; he smelt of shampoo and talc. He’d come home from work, showered and changed. Was he going out later? Did he have a woman with him? Pam realised that she knew nothing about his personal life and half hoped he’d ask her to dinner or a movie. She was attracted to him, only just realising it, her mind running with the thought. He reminded her of Inspector Challis, the same leanness, olive skin and air of stillness and prohibition. But in Challis the stillness and prohibition spelt shyness, a sensitivity that she didn’t necessarily want. In van Alphen there was coiled anger, and the air of a man who took shortcuts to get results, and she found that attractive right now. He’d always been kind to her.
He didn’t invite her in, and suddenly, she just knew, he wasn’t alone. The confirmation came immediately, a voice calling, ‘Hey, you got any vodka?’
A young guy, blue jeans, tight black T-shirt and vivid white trainers. Fifteen? Sixteen? Trying to pass as twenty, and almost succeeding, owing to the knowingness and deadness in his eyes. How was van Alphen going to explain this? ‘Pam, meet my nephew’? Pam waited, hoping that her face wasn’t betraying her.
‘Pam, this is Billy. Billy, Pam.’
‘Hi,’ Pam said.
The Billy guy smiled prettily and did a little exaggerated quiver and pout behind van Alphen’s back, enjoying himself.
‘Anyway, I’d better go,’ Pam said.
‘I’ll enjoy reading this,’ van Alphen said, gesturing with her essay.
Billy cooed ‘See ya!’ at her departing back.
40
It had been a long week for Hal Challis, too. First there were the mundane tasks associated with arranging his brother-in-law’s funeral. Until the state lab released the body, the family couldn’t even nominate a date, and had to be content with sounding out a firm of undertakers and the local Uniting Church minister.
Then there was the old man’s health. On Monday morning Challis found his father twitching on the sunroom floor, eyes badly frightened, the left side of his face and body entirely slack. He rang for an ambulance, and then for Rob Minchin, and finally for Meg.
The doctor beat the ambulance by a couple of minutes. He bent over Challis’s father, his fingers nimble. ‘I don’t think it’s a stroke, but we’ll take him in for observation.’
Later, in the hospital, Meg and Challis were obliged to wait. They were finally shown to their father’s bedside that afternoon. He looked weak, diminished, but gave them his old mulish, critical, combative glare. ‘Stop fussing. Rob said I can go home in a couple of days.’
‘But Dad-’
He lifted his frail hand but there was no frailty in it for Challis and Meg, who saw only his old sternness and lack of compromise.
On Wednesday, the old man back in his sunroom chair, Challis finally heard from Freya Berg, the Victorian pathologist, who gave him the name of her South Australian counterpart. ‘He’s a by-the-book kind of guy, Hal. Don’t expect much joy. But I did get a bit of information out of him. The techs didn’t find any prints or useful traces anywhere: the garbage bag, the body or the grave.’