'Perhaps when he bought the photo from her last year he did so because it showed the cannabis crop and he didn't want anyone else to see it. Kitty presumably seemed to be unaware of what it showed and so he thought he was safe. But then he started having second thoughts. Asked himself what if she kept the negatives for clients who wanted further copies, for example.'
'Intending to kill her is a bit drastic, though, unless he really had something to fear from her.'
Challis nodded. 'I know. We can't discount the possibility that she recently recognised what was in the photo and made contact with him, or that she's known all along and has held it over him all this time.'
'Blackmail?'
Challis shrugged. 'Or she wanted a share of the action.'
'She's your friend, Hal.'
'So?'
'Do you want to be involved?'
'It's your case at present, Ells.'
'Or,' she said, 'someone else tried to kill her, if that's what it was.'
They were silent for a time and then Challis said carefully, 'Scobe, would an ordinary farmer like Munro have the means to grow, harvest, dry, package, transport and distribute marijuana?'
Sutton shook his head. 'Not the Munro I know. But he's struggling financially and could have been receptive to the idea of growing marijuana. There's big money to be made. One hydroponic plant can produce five hundred grams of cannabis worth four thousand dollars or more. Ten plants producing three or four times a year would bring in up to a hundred and sixty thousand.'
Challis nodded. He knew the profiles: there were the 'ferals', who grew a few plants on crown land for their own use; the more organised who grew up to one hundred plants per season to supplement their incomes; big-time growers who used the income to finance legitimate businesses; and struggling, erstwhile property owners who harvested larger plots to supplement struggling farm incomes.
He said, 'Surely Munro would be too well known to sell it locally, so who's helping him? And is he distributing further afield, like the city? Does he have contacts there? And what does he do if a crop gets diseased? It wouldn't be the first time that a grower has used an ex-CSIRO botanist to doctor a struggling crop. These are some of the questions we have to answer.'
'True.'
Challis glanced at Ellen. 'Sorry if I seem to be telling you your job.'
Ellen shrugged offhandedly. 'Doesn't bother me. The more heads working on this the better I like it. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of increased drug activity, not necessarily marijuana. I blame South Australia.'
Challis knew what she meant. Owing to the relatively relaxed marijuana laws, South Australia had become a mecca for hydroponic marijuana crops. But this meant extensive trafficking routes out of that state and into Victoria and New South Wales via cars, buses, aircraft, long-haul trucks. Now the police were stopping and searching interstate traffic more intensively, threatening the supply routes, so dealers in Victoria and New South Wales were forced to depend on local suppliers.
And that's where the matter stood. They mulled it over for another kilometre and then Ellen froze in her seat. 'It's Venn. Look. Walking around large as life.'
'The lovers' lanes rapist?' Challis asked.
'None other.'
Challis searched faces in a knot of people entering the McDonald's on the roundabout at the end of High Street. After a moment he picked out Dwayne Venn and the Tully sisters.
'I heard he got bail.'
Ellen said in disgust, 'They should have thrown away the key.'
'Don't be hard on him, Ells,' Challis said. 'He's just an average disenchanted bloke, made a mistake, like we all do. We shouldn't condemn him for it.'
'A model citizen by modern standards,' Scobie Sutton said, picking up on Challis's tone.
Challis pointed a finger at Ellen. 'All he did was rape and assault and terrify three defenceless women. Who are you to condemn and harass the poor guy and treat him like a criminal?'
'It's not as if he's murdered anyone,' Scobie said.
'Even if he has,' Challis said, 'there was probably a good reason for it.'
Ellen was grinning by now. 'Like what?'
'Like someone made fun of him when he was little.'
Ellen looked away and sighed.
Challis turned serious. 'Who dobbed him in?'
'Pam Murphy heard a whisper and told me. She's reluctant to reveal her source.'
'She's a good officer,' Challis said.
'She is.'
In the carpark at the rear of the Waterloo police station Challis said, 'It's one o'clock now. Let's meet back here at two-thirty. That should give you enough time to do the paperwork and brief Murphy and Tankard, and me time enough to talk to the owner of that Land Rover.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They were in an unmarked car this time, not the divisional van, and in T-shirts and jeans, not their uniforms, a quick change into plain clothes for this library stakeout. But first Pam asked Tank to pull over so that she could check her account balance at the automatic teller machine outside the Commonwealth Bank in Main Street.
Good, the thirty grand from Lister Financial Services had gone into her account. She still didn't quite believe that her application had been approved, but there had been no questions from Carl Lister. 'A member of the police? No problem, girlie.'
Girlie. She was almost thirty, but got 'girlie' a hundred times a day, from work colleagues, civilians, even her father. Maybe when she'd bought her car and no longer took the bus they'd all stop calling her 'girlie'.
Constable Murphy to you, arsehole.
A bit of spending money wouldn't go astray. She keyed in $100 and while the machine counted it out she glanced at her watch. Would she have time to pay for and collect the car later? Maybe tomorrow, Wednesday. But then it would be Thursday and her first loan repayment would be due, and no salary going into her account until Thursday fortnight. She felt the first, faint stirrings of panic and returned to the unmarked police car, John Tankard watching how the seatbelt bisected and defined her breasts inside the Riptide T-shirt as she buckled up. 'Satisfied, Tank?'
'Never,' Tankard said, in his pinkish, dampish, beer-bellied, faintly bovine way. He pulled into the traffic without signalling, drove to the library and parked hard against the box-hedge border.
'I can't open my door,' Pam said.
But he was already crossing to the front steps of the library. She slid across to the driver's seat-it was unpleasantly heated by him; she pictured his hairy arse and shuddered-and got out and locked the car. A breeze was blowing in from the bay. There was a small circus on the foreshore grassland, lingering after the Easter break.
She climbed the steps and entered the library. Clearly the librarians hadn't expected perverts when they'd gone on-line, for they hadn't given much thought to the positioning of the computers or the moral sickness of the local punters. According to Sergeant van Alphen, who briefed them quickly before they went out, someone had downloaded child pornography onto a hard drive. Someone else had left behind a screenful of fellatio thumbnails. It was impossible for the librarians to monitor everyone, so they'd called in the police.
'Sarge, I don't know much about the Internet,' Tankard had complained at the briefing.
'No big deal,' van Alphen said. 'Just sit and read, wander around a bit, browse the shelves, but keep an eye on who logs on and what they're downloading, without being too obvious about it. And leave your radios in the car. Use the library phone if you have to.'
Pam had managed not to smirk: the thought of John Tankard in a library. 'Good exercise for the beer arm, Tank, raising a few hardcovers.'
'That's enough, Constable,' van Alphen had said.
Pam reached the library doors just as they slid open and Tank came hurrying out. He was in the grip of a glittering, mouth-twisting, fist-against-the-palm emotion.
'Case solved,' he said.
'What?'
'It's Brad Pike.'
Pam glanced past his big torso but Pike was concealed by the inner doors, the loans desk and a quarter-acre of shelved books. 'What's he doing?'