They were posed like that when the husband bustled in, full of concern. Challis stiffened in embarrassment but Rex Casement gave him a quick, shy smile of thanks and took over, murmuring, 'It's all right, I'm here now, it's all right,' as Kitty stood and flung herself against him. Casement wore a pair of old, belted cords and a blue polo shirt, sunglasses pushed back to nestle in fading red hair shot through with grey. Challis backed away with a brief nod and wave and was rewarded by a relieved smile from Casement over his wife's shoulder. Casement mouthed, 'Thank you,' then buried his face in his wife's abundant hair.
CHAPTER NINE
Easter Monday. Two days since the lovers' lane arrest and her daughter's party, and Ellen Destry was still bone-tired. She wasn't obliged to work today but had paperwork to catch up on, so she'd driven in to Waterloo after breakfast and now she regretted it. She'd found nothing on Carl Lister beyond the fact that he was new to the Peninsula. She swivelled in her ergonomic chair and leafed moodily through some new cases. A dangerous driving incident at the Waterloo airfield, involving a friend of Hal Challis. A break-in at the chainsaw and ride-on mower place out at the industrial estate. And a spate of incidents related to the new detention centre: two inmates on the run, a broad daylight assault on two Malaysian students, who'd had their headcoverings torn off, the words 'Bomb Moslems back to the stone age' spraypainted across the 'Keep Out' sign on the razor-wired cyclone fence around the centre.
She sighed and shoved the files to the other side of her desk. Refugees, asylum seekers, queue jumpers, fanatics, terrorists: the inmates of the detention centre were called many things and were hated and feared, but to Ellen they were starved-looking, psychologically frail wretches. The good locals had been outraged when the old Navy barracks were converted, even as the Chamber of Commerce welcomed a shot of federal money and renewed life for the worthless, empty buildings on the piece of marshland beside a mangrove swamp on Westernport Bay. As far as Ellen could see, the detention centre had provided only half a dozen jobs for the locals, lined the pockets of the American corrections company that operated it, and stirred up the local bigots. It had brought no joy to anyone.
She worked desultorily through the morning, breaking for coffee she made using Challis's espresso pot and stock of Lavazza grounds. Plenty of burglaries and a couple of robberies at ATMs; the thing was, they could be traced back to drugs, to the income needed to feed a drug habit, and they were on the rise, which to her was further evidence of increased drug activity on the Peninsula. She made notes, wondering if they would ever be usefuclass="underline" for example, ecstasy tablets had brand names, the preferred brand was the Euro Dollar, everyone said the Snoopy was no good.
Around midday, discouraged, she wandered down across the railway line to the High Street shops, looking for something to eat. Most of the shops had shut for the Easter break. There were one or two more empty shop windows, with 'Support Your Local Traders' pasted across the glass. A new $2 bargain shop had opened, making three in two blocks.
Cafe Laconic was open, three women at an outdoor table talking raucously over the squalls and complaints of half a dozen toddlers and babies. As Ellen passed them, a two year old climbed into his mother's lap, undid her buttons and latched on to one of her breasts. The mother shifted automatically to improve his access to her nipple and kept on talking, scarcely registering that he was there.
Ellen crossed to the other side of the street. The bakery was open. Next to a rubbish bin outside it was a wood and metal seat, occupied by a gaggle of teenage girls dipping into potato cakes wrapped in butcher's paper. Just then a lowered Valiant crawled by, teenage boys inside, headbanging music detonating in Ellen's ears.
The car stopped. The boys pressed a pornographic magazine against the rear passenger-side window, a gynaecological close-up pasted to the glass.
The girls tittered, hid their smiles behind fistfuls of greasy chips, and called out to the boys.
Not a good look. Those girls would fall pregnant at seventeen to no-hopers like Brad Pike and end up grieving like Lisa Tully, or sitting around like slovenly cows in the main street.
Ellen sighed. She was being unfair. What was happening to her? What was happening to the Peninsula? Maybe the reminder of Lisa Tully's missing daughter was getting her down. Some cases affect you more than others. When it was a little kid it hollowed you out. You don't forget them but reflect on them at odd moments-in the car, at dinner, with your own kid, watching TV When a kid is raped or murdered it turns everything around. All the goodness leaks away. In fact, you almost stop believing in goodness.
Scobie Sutton was at home with Beth and Roslyn that day, combing nits out of Roslyn's hair. The TV was on to keep his daughter calm while he did it.
The best way was to use hair conditioner, really slapping it on like axle grease, then run a special nit comb through it, wiping the gunk off onto tissues. You had to do it several times. You were after not only the lice themselves but also the eggs, which clustered at the roots, often behind the ears or at the back of the neck.
Roslyn had been infected four times now. It meant that Scobie and his wife had to wash and treat everything each time-towels, bedding, clothing, their own hair. They were fed up. They did the right thing, treated their kid and didn't send her back to school if there was any doubt, but still she got infected. Got infected because the other parents couldn't believe that their own precious little darlings could have nits. Couldn't believe that clean, wholesome families such as theirs could have nits. Dirty people got infected with lice, not them. Well, have I got news for you, Scobie thought, wiping the comb onto a sodden tissue.
It was worse with girls. They had long hair and liked to lean forward over their little classroom tables, their heads resting against one another's companionably, the lice cheerfully jumping from one little head to the next.
He wondered who kept reinfecting his daughter. Someone from a slapdash, hard-pressed or ignorant family. Like the Pearce kid, or the youngest Munro kid. Roslyn played with them at school, shared a desk with them, had them over after school. Strange, troubled kids. The Munro kid lived on a farm, the daughter of a bully. The Pearce kid's father kept a ferret. Somehow, it seemed to Sutton, both sets of home circumstances suggested neglect, and therefore head lice.
He paused for a few minutes, caught by an animated character on TV Why was it that British children's television was obsessed with vehicles that talked and adult characters like Bob the Builder, Postman Pat and Fireman Sam? And what did the dully decent, lower middle-class, nice-cup-of-tea, socks-and-sandals tone of British children's television have to do with childhood?
'Dad? Daddy?'
'Mmm?'
'Daddy?'
'Mmm.'
'Daddy?'
'I said yes.'
'No you didn't.'
Scobie breathed out. 'Sweetheart, tell me what you want.'
'Who do you go for?'
Scobie didn't understand. 'What?'
'Jessie Pearce goes for the Bombers,' his daughter said. Her voice rose, growing anxious. 'I don't know who to go for. Who do you go for?'
She's talking about football, Scobie realised. He loathed football, knew nothing about it, was relieved when a daughter and not a son had been born to him. But now this. 'If Jessie goes for the Bombers,' he said, 'you could too.'
She absorbed this. She didn't seem satisfied, as though she wanted guidance from him, not Jessie Pearce. Then: 'Can Jessie come over to play?'
Scobie thought of the strange, silent child of the ferret man and said, 'Sorry, sweetheart, not today.'
Easter Monday and John Tankard had to fucking work. They were short-staffed because it was Easter, so he was cruising the streets of Waterloo alone, feeling stiff and sore, giving the local hoons the evil eye from the driver's seat of the divisional van.