She hadn’t meant to say it. You always divided the officers you worked with into those who made you uncomfortable and those who didn’t. You did it every time you were posted to a new station or squad. It didn’t mean the men or women who made you feel uncomfortable were dishonest in the strictly legal sense, or unlikely to watch your back in a tricky situation, but you knew to be wary of them. You didn’t offer them anything of yourself. Kees van Alphen had always made Ellen feel uncomfortable. Hal Challis had always said, ‘Be careful of that guy.’
Now Kellock had his head on one side. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
Ellen blushed and to defuse the moment said, ‘It’s all a bit too murky for me, Kel, this case.’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll track him down and reel him in.’
‘Thanks.’
She returned to her office and found Duyker’s lawyer waiting in the corridor. Sam Lock was short, damply overweight in a heavy suit, the knot of his yellow tie a fat delta under his soft chins. In all other respects he was hard and sharp. ‘A quick word, Ellen?’
She led him into her office. He looked around it amusedly. ‘Hal Challis’s office, if I’m not mistaken. How is the good inspector?’
‘Get on with it, Sam.’
‘I want you to let my client go. Fraud charges? A few hundred dollars here and there? Resides locally?’
‘Resides all over Australia, Sam. Sure, he owns a place in Safety Beach, but he likes to travel, stay a while, rip off star-struck mothers of young children-amongst other things more serious-and move on again.’
Lock examined his fingernails. Like all lawyers, he was full of little diversions that masked or delayed his real intent. Police officers did it, too. Ellen waited.
‘You think he abducted Katie Blasko?’
Ellen gazed at him, wondering how much to reveal. Sam Lock would battle furiously on behalf of a client but he also had small children, two boys and a girl. ‘He had something to do with it, even if not directly. He was there in that house with her. We also suspect him of the rape and murder of a child back in 1995, and are currently matching his movements nationwide with unsolved rapes and abductions of young girls.’
‘He said you have DNA.’
‘Yes,’ Ellen said neutrally.
‘But is it his? You don’t have strong enough grounds to compel a sample from him, and his DNA is not on file anywhere. I wouldn’t get your hopes up even if you had a sample, and matched it, because your forensic science lab is prone to stuffups. Witness the Neville Clode debacle.’
Ellen watched him carefully. ‘Who told you about that?’
Lock shrugged.
‘You do know that Clode’s late wife was Duyker’s sister?’
‘That was mentioned.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you? Sure, the lab has admitted instances of cross contamination, but what if there wasn’t any contamination in this instance?’
‘It all goes to reasonable doubt, Ellen. You’ll need something stronger if you’re going to charge my client with Blasko. Meanwhile he’s going to walk on that chickenshit charge you brought him in on.’
‘Meanwhile you keep your children where you can see them,’ Ellen snapped.
Lock’s eyes flared, then he was impassive again, and Ellen watched him walk away. Moments later, her mobile rang, Kellock asking her to meet him on the Seaview Park estate.
46
Ellen stared at the body. The blood, bone chips and brain matter had slid down the wall here and there, and were beginning to dry. A couple of flies had got into the house. The left side of van Alphen’s skull had taken the brunt of the shot: massive damage that still left enough of the face intact to confirm identity. Scobie Sutton was sketching the scene in his notebook. Like Ellen, and the crime scene technicians, he wore disposable overshoes.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Kellock, grim-faced in the doorway.
They were friends, thought Ellen, and now he was to inform the super.
‘Who found him?’
‘I did. Went looking for him, as I said I would, and recognised his car.’
‘What do you suppose he was doing here?’
Kellock shrugged. ‘Doing his own thing.’
‘Doing his own thing, and look where it got him. Do we know who lives here?’
‘I looked through the bills,’ Kellock said, indicating a shallow fruit bowl piled with papers, unopened envelopes, spare keys, a hair tie and a half packet of potato chips sealed with a clothes peg. Every house in the land has a receptacle like that, Ellen thought.
‘And?’
‘Rosemary McIntyre.’
Ellen cast back in her mind. ‘The name doesn’t mean anything. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘No. I called it in and they ran it through the computer. Solicitation, twelve years ago.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
When Kellock had left, Ellen looked for a calendar or diary but found nothing. Then the pathologist arrived and she watched him examine the body. She realised that her mouth was dry and she wasn’t feeling her customary remoteness. She was well aware that the job had desensitised her. That was necessary. She was quite able to attend an autopsy and cold-bloodedly note the angle of a knife wound or gunshot, knowing that that information might catch a suspect out in a lie (‘He tripped and fell on my knife’), but right now her eyes were pricking with tears. Van Alphen was a fellow police officer. She blinked and looked keenly at Scobie Sutton. ‘Your first dead copper?’ she murmured.
‘Yes.’
‘Upsetting.’
‘I regret every violent death, Ellen.’
Sometimes he could sound like a churchman or a politician. ‘Come off it, Scobe.’
‘He was a nasty piece of work.’
‘He didn’t always follow regulations,’ Ellen conceded.
‘He and Kellock shot Nick Jarrett in cold blood,’ Scobie said, ‘and more or less warned me not to investigate too hard.’
Ellen blinked. There were spots of colour on her colleague’s gaunt cheeks, his stick-like figure inclined toward her, draped in his habitual dark, outmoded suit. She backed up a step. The technicians and the pathologist were looking on interestedly but hadn’t heard the outburst.
‘All right, settle down,’ she murmured. ‘There’s an estranged wife and daughter, I believe?’
Scobie wiped his mouth. ‘I sent someone to inform them.’
‘Thank you.’
They stood for a while, watching the pathologist, who finally released the body. The local funeral director took charge then, overseeing as the body was loaded onto a gurney and taken out to a waiting hearse for transfer to the morgue. The pathologist sighed and pulled off his latex gloves with a couple of snaps.
‘Time of death, doc?’ Ellen asked.
‘Time of death. It’s always time of death with you people.’
‘Well?’
‘Last night. Late evening. I can’t be more specific than that.’
‘Thanks,’ Ellen said. She paused, then muttered to Scobie, ‘I want you to bring Laurie Jarrett in for questioning. Meanwhile I’ll see if I can find Van’s witness.’
‘If he exists,’ said Scobie heatedly. ‘Van Alphen was probably trying to divert attention away from the Jarrett shooting. Trying to make himself look good.’
‘Even so.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Ellen cocked her head. Was he hoping to find a diary or journal in which van Alphen described the true circumstances of the Jarrett shooting? Before she could reply, a voice called from the front of the house, a woman’s cigarettes-and-whisky voice, full of outrage. ‘What are you lot doin’ here? I live here, you bastard, take your hands off me.’
They heard her pounding through the house. She burst in on them, shouting, ‘You got a warrant?’
Then she spotted the gore, and went white, rocking on her feet. Ellen guided her back to the sitting room at the front of the house. The newcomer was about forty, dressed in high heels, a black, short-sleeved beaded top, a knee-length tan skirt and dark stockings. Thick, dirty-blonde hair. Plenty of gold on her slim fingers. Slim legs and ankles, Ellen noticed, but a bit heftier around the bum and chest. A good-looking woman, a woman who liked the nightlife.