He followed the driveway around. There were no vehicles parked near the house. No sign of life, either, until he’d parked at the bottom of the verandah steps and got out, when the huge front door swung inwards and Lisa appeared behind the outer screen door. She stood waiting for him, a hazy shape behind the fine wire mesh.
‘Hal?’
Challis climbed the steps warily. ‘Lisa.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Is Rex here?’
‘He’s away. Why?’
Challis let some silence build. ‘I think you know why.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did Sadler call you?’
She didn’t say ‘Who’s Sadler?’ but frowned. ‘No. Why? What’s going on?’
‘I’ve just come from him. He claims that Gavin intended to prosecute Rex for cruelty to a horse. I think Rex killed Gavin, not Paddy.’
She looked astounded. ‘What?’
‘Lisa, those Homicide detectives will be back eventually.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about’
‘Let’s talk. Tell me what happened. Did Gavin push too hard? Did Rex snap? You can’t go on protecting him.’
‘Stop it, Hal.’
He took a step closer. She took a step back. He stayed where he was. ‘Let’s sit down and talk,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can make me a cup of tea. I almost crashed on the Pass and I feel a bit shaken.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Pity you didn’t go over the edge.’
He considered the words and her mood, and realised that things had gone beyond her control and she was merely striking out to deflect her guilt or misery. ‘Lisa,’ he said gently, approaching the screen door and extending one hand to the knob. The hinges squeaked as he opened it, and then he could see her clearly. She was dressed in spotless riding boots, jeans and shirt, as if about to exercise her horse, but her hair was awry and her eyes red and darting.
‘Hal, don’t.’
He entered a cool, echoing hallway as she retreated. At the end of the hallway he glimpsed a white door, sufficiently ajar to reveal a huge black enamel kitchen range. ‘Let’s sit at the kitchen table and talk. Please?’
She looked sour, thwarted, but stood back to let him pass, and then followed him. They sat at a long wooden table. Lisa watched him tensely, and then her face cleared. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, placing her hand on his. ‘I’m sorry about your father, I really am.’
Challis withdrew his hand. ‘Where’s Rex?’
‘Away on business.’
That irritated Challis. ‘Did you make that anonymous call to the RSPCA all those years ago, Lisa? Did you set up Paddy Finucane?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Did Rex mean to kill Gavin? I bet he didn’t. There was a struggle and he went too far and when he realised what he’d done he came to you for help.’
She said sharply, ‘Hal, stop it. You’re making a fool of yourself. You’re being offensive. Just go, all right?’
‘Rex was relying on you to get him out of trouble, just as he’s always relied on you.’
She gestured curtly. ‘This only involves Rex in the sense that your precious brother-in-law was a pig to everyone.’
‘You’re right, he was, toward the end.’
He said it gently, to encourage an admission, but Lisa said, in her hard, emphatic way, ‘So why are you coming after us? Gavin harassed a number of people.’
‘But only one person killed him.’
‘People are saying your sister killed him. I can’t say I blame her. Now, shut the door on your way out.’
She showed her cutting profile, as if Challis were a tradesman with grubby hands. He looked at her consideringly. ‘You’ve always had to cover for Rex, haven’t you. He’s a drunk. Does he hit you, Lisa?’
As a way of turning her, giving her a way out, it failed. ‘The door’s behind you.’
‘Was it Rex’s idea to make that phone call to the RSPCA? I bet he took the photos on Gavin’s camera, too. Did he also drive Gavin’s car out east and make you pick him up?’
‘Hal, I’ll call the police if you don’t leave me alone.’
‘Whose idea was it to bury him in Glenda Anderson’s grave? You’d been to her funeral, is that it? You knew the ground was soft?’
‘Hal,’ said Lisa, frowning and reaching for him across the table, ‘we were lovers, now we’re friends, but you’re spoiling everything. Please stop.’
He jerked back, his spine rigid. ‘Why did you send Meg those letters? Misdirection? You’ve always been good at that.’
‘What letters?’
‘You know very well what letters. It was cruel, Lisa.’
Her face tightened. ‘That’s it. That’s enough. You’re frightening me. Please leave.’
She was unwavering. He didn’t know what would make her break. He didn’t let himself think that he was wrong about her. ‘Where’s Rex?’
‘Why? Want a quick shag before he comes back?’
‘When Sadler phoned, did Rex take the call, or did you?’
‘What call?’
‘Probably no more than an hour ago, as soon as I left Sadler. Rex took a call, heard something he didn’t want to hear, and ran, am I right? Saved his own skin and left you behind?’
Her gaze went involuntarily to the window. Challis stood, looked out. The darkening blue ranges that sheltered Mawson’s Bluff seemed to stretch forever, into the stony saltbush country where people died or disappeared. The sun was barely a fingernail on the horizon now. ‘Is he running? Hiding?’
She joined him, her hip touching his thigh. She was quite small, he realised. She packed a lot into it. ‘You seem determined to make yourself miserable, Hal. All this jealousy. It’s unbecoming. I’m married. Get that through your skull.’
Challis pointed. ‘Is he out there somewhere?’
She bumped his hip and with a low chuckle said, ‘What’s out there is a little plateau, with a ruined shepherd’s hut, just a couple of walls and a chimney. That’s where Rex and I had our first screw.’
It was intended to wound him, on several levels, but what it did was convince him of her guilt. Wondering what he’d ever seen in her, Challis said coldly, ‘I want you to come with me. I’m taking you in. You’ll make a statement to Sergeant Wurfel.’
‘You’re pathetic, you know that?’
He tried to grab her. She was quick, lithe, shrugging him off, almost as if they were young again and it was a Saturday night and she was rebuffing his advances in the back seat of his father’s station wagon. She darted down the hallway and into one of the rooms along it. Fear grabbed him then. He was paralysed, his mouth dry. There would be firearms on the place, for shooting vermin and putting injured animals out of their misery. He called, ‘Lisa, don’t.’
She emerged with a shotgun and motioned with it. ‘Out,’ she said, ‘or I swear to God…’
Challis tried to hold himself upright but his spine tingled as he passed her in the long hallway and on down to the front door and out into the gathering darkness.
53
Meanwhile Scobie Sutton had arrived home and found Beth getting ready to go out. She was small, round, unfashionable and always did her duty as a wife and a Christian. With a pang, he compared her to Grace Duyker, who seemed to him the kind of woman who’d admit some risk and improvisation into her life. Risk and improvisation like him, in fact. If he dared make the move. If she let him.
‘Anything wrong, Scobe?’
He pushed the fingers of both hands back through his sparse hair tiredly. ‘The van Alphen shooting.’
It was a good diversion, and close to the truth. The Fab Four-Ellen Destry’s term, but entirely apt-had questioned him again, this time concentrating on van Alphen’s role in the Nick Jarrett shooting. ‘Pretty sketchy, these notes of yours, DC Sutton,’ they said, and ‘Perhaps you were steered by Kellock and van Alphen,’ and ‘It would appear that a culture of protection and containment exists in this police station.’ They asked questions that the shooting board officers had asked: Why had he failed to test for gunshot residue on the hands of Kellock and van Alphen? Why had he bundled items of clothing from both men together with the victim? Why had he let them move the body, or at least before he photographed it? Why had he failed to have the blood on the carpet tested, and allowed the carpet to be steam-cleaned?