'The dogs didn't alert you?'
She put her head to one side and regarded Challis amusedly, as if to say: use your noggin, Inspector. 'The flaming dogs bark twenty-four hours a day,' she said.
That was all. He drove back to Waterloo.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
This wasn't a homicide, so what was Challis doing there? That's what Ellen Destry read in the faces of Pam Murphy and John Tankard as the two police vehicles met at the entrance to Ian Munro's farm. They were only uniformed constables, so it wasn't a question she was obliged to answer, but it was a useful reminder to her that this was her case and Challis was along for the ride.
The driveway, a narrow track between fenced paddocks, opened onto a broad, flat area scattered with gumtrees, hedges and farm outbuildings. The house itself was set further back in the dank, gloomy shade of massive pine trees. The driveway was the only apparent exit, so Ellen directed John Tankard to seal it off with the divisional van.
Scobie Sutton knocked on the screen door. The man who opened it had the coiled look that many men get when cornered. He eyed them assessingly his gaze flicking from one to the other then resting on Challis as the senior man. 'What do you want and why send in an army?'
Ellen saw Challis shake his head and step to one side. She took over. 'Ian Munro?'
Munro ignored her. He turned to Pam Murphy and John Tankard and said, 'Let me guess-you two stuffed up earlier, so your bosses had to come along and show you how it's done.'
'Are you Ian Munro?' Ellen said.
He shifted his gaze to her with an air of weariness and contempt for her gender. 'So what if I am?'
'I have here a warrant to search your property. That includes all-'
He plucked it from her hands, screwed in into a ball and tossed it underhand to John Tankard. 'Catch, fat boy.'
Ellen stiffened. She didn't want Munro to take control or distract her in any way. She said, 'You have been properly served with a copy of the warrant and now my officers and I will search your property. Do you understand?'
But she felt a tightness inside her and perhaps they all did, for Munro was lithe and full of barely contained power. His eyes glittered, looking for the core of her and easily dismissing it. She read a kind of animal intelligence in him and knew she shouldn't trust or attempt to outguess him.
He grinned. And, grinning, stepped back into the house, slamming the screen door in their faces.
Ellen immediately turned to the others. 'Take out your weapons. He may have a gun in the house. Pam, stay here with Inspector Challis. Tank, around the back. Scobie, come with me.'
She opened the screen door. The interior of the house smelt closed-in and stale. No sun ever penetrated the windows and the walls and linoleum floors looked dingy. No dirt anywhere, just an atmosphere of unhappy use and disappointment. No toys or childish crayons displayed, though she knew there were children in the family. Ellen scoped the front room on the right, Scobie the one on the left, and they met in the hallway again with brief headshakes before proceeding in the dim light to other empty rooms. In the kitchen they found a tired-looking woman who was slumped at the table like a sackful of river stones, moodily playing with a cup of tea and a cigarette in an ashtray. She barely registered their presence.
'Mrs Munro, where did your husband go?'
She didn't answer. She was rawboned and sullen and stared at the window above the sink. An incongruously brand new Miele dishwasher sat white and gleaming under the bench. The benchtop was a dark, pitted laminate, scarcely visible in the weak light coming through the window above the sink. Pine needles hung here and there in the insect screen.
'We know he's somewhere inside. Is he armed?'
Then Ellen heard a shout somewhere at the rear of the house.
It was an old place, the style reminding Ellen of her childhood. The back door opened onto a screened porch, with sleepout bedrooms at either end behind fibro walls. A screen door on a return spring opened onto a couple of mossy concrete steps and a back yard choked with oleander bushes. It was the kind of backroads farmhouse that needed bulldozing, and the Peninsula was full of them.
But what mattered right now was John Tankard. He lay curled up on the ground, gasping for breath.
Ellen crouched with Scobie. 'Tank? You all right?'
'The bastard come at me with a shotgun. Never saw him coming.'
'He shot you?'
'Clubbed me in the guts with it.'
Ellen glanced up and across the yard, trying to spot Munro. A rickety hayshed, an implement shed, a chook shed, a bulk-fuel tank on steel legs, a rusting truck cabin, splintered pallets, bricks, empty apple crates, an incinerator, two bony, chained dogs hurling themselves at her on their chains across the ravaged yard.
Her gaze returned to the implement shed and a hint of movement from the shadowy reaches inside it. A starter motor ground once, twice, and a heavy engine snarled into life.
A Toyota traytop utility fishtailed out of the shed, solid-looking, its heavy steel tray swinging as the big tyres bit into the dirt. An empty drum bounced on the tray and toppled out, and in watching it Ellen almost lost her life, for Munro held the shotgun out of the open window with one hand and fired it at her.
There was nothing they could do. The Toyota disappeared around the front of the house, there was a grinding crash and then another crash, and when Ellen got there and began mentally preparing for a manhunt, she found that the divisional van had been rammed and pushed against the fence.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ellen got home late, roast dinner warming on a covered plate in the oven, her husband shut away with his books and notes, her daughter and Skip Lister at opposite ends of the sofa as if they'd spun apart when they heard her car in the driveway. The TV was on. After a while Ellen realised that they were watching the 'Movie Show' on SBS, of all things. In this household, that was a first.
She stood there for a while, watching from the doorway, her meal getting cold on the kitchen table behind her. Sensing her interest, Skip said, half apologetically, 'I wanted to see what they had to say about the latest Todd Solondz.'
Never heard of him, Ellen thought. She fetched her plate of congealed roast chicken and vegetables, and a glass of white wine, and perched on the armchair next to the sofa. Skip and Larrayne, she noticed, had edged a little closer to each other. Well, good, she didn't want them to be afraid of her.
'Are you a film buff, Skip?'
'Is he ever, Mum,' Larrayne said warmly. 'Aren't you?' she said, turning her knees toward Skip and touching his wrist fleetingly.
Go on, Ellen urged, cuddle up to him, I don't mind.
Then she saw that Skip was wearing short-legged cargo pants, revealing his shins and a series of bruises. Knocking into things? Falling down? Falling down stoned, or drunk? Beaten by his father, maybe?
At least the 'Movie Show' had him absorbed, his habitual edginess at bay. He was leaning forward, lips slightly apart, and Ellen found herself thinking that Larrayne needed a boy who had a passion about something. She continued to watch him, musing: Skip, I hope you straighten out; I hope you don't let her down or lead her astray.
When the 'Movie Show' was over and Skip had flicked off the TV, she told them about Ian Munro and the arrival of Special Operations police from the city. 'It's in their hands now.'
Skip closed his eyes briefly. Ellen felt an absurd desire to hug him and make everything better, whatever it was, the poor, motherless kid.
Where was the mother, incidentally?
She discovered the answer sooner than she'd expected to. An innocuous question did it. She said, 'Some people at work are going to the opening of the footie season. I can get tickets, if you're interested. Skip?'
He shook his head violently. 'I hate the game.'
And that's when it came out, a much-loved older brother, running around with an undetected heart defect, dies playing football. 'Mum blamed Dad, Dad blamed Mum, they weren't getting on anyway, so she cleared out on us.'