‘Not real nice, no. Still, old history now.’
‘Just one drink. Or at least sit with me till I stop shaking.’
He found himself warming to her, to the notion that someone wanted to touch him, that someone needed him. ‘I’ll have to call in and tell them I’m still here.’
‘Tell them you’re following up clues,’ Clara said, with shaky humour.
Four
Seven a.m. and already some heat in the sun. Showers with a weak change forecast for later in the week. Ellen Destry poked her head around the door of her daughter’s room. Larrayne lay on her back asleep, apparently peaceful, but as usual the top sheet was tangled about her slim legs and her hair was fanned over the pillow and across one cheek. She’d been a restless sleeper ever since she was little. Then Ellen returned to the kitchen and kissed her husband, putting her arms around his neck briefly as he read the paper at the kitchen table. She paused on the way out, standing at the door that opened on to the carport. No, Alan didn’t look up, nothing to bid her a good day ahead.
She wound the car past holiday homes and shacks, slowing for the speed bumps. She lived in Penzance Beach, some distance south around the coast from Waterloo (for you didn’t live where you worked, not if you were a copper). On an impulse, she began a sweep of some of the township’s side streets on her way to the intersection with the main road. There had been an 18 per cent increase in burglaries in Penzance Beach over the past year.
Penzance. What did the ‘pen’ prefix mean? Penzance, Penrose, Penhaligon, Penrith, Penleigh, Penbank, Penfold, Pengilly. ‘Town of…’ maybe?
Then she saw the new uniformed constable, what was her name, Pam Murphy, waiting at the bus stop with a surfboard.
Ellen stopped the car, wound down her window. ‘Morning.’
The younger woman stiffened, eyes darting warily left and right before fixing on the car itself. Cop’s instincts, Ellen thought.
‘Sergeant Destry. Didn’t recognise you.’
‘Day off?’
‘Morning off. I’m on again this afternoon.’
‘Surfing. Lucky you,’ Ellen said. ‘Where?’
Pam Murphy pointed farther south. ‘Myers Point.’
They stared at each other for a moment. Ellen said, ‘How are you finding things? Settling in okay?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
Ellen took a chance. ‘What about John Tankard? Or Sergeant van Alphen?’
She saw the wariness in Murphy’s eyes. Who could you trust in this job? ‘I wouldn’t know, Sarge.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Ellen leaned her head out a little more. ‘This is off the record.’
‘Off the record?’
‘Yes.’
The younger woman looked away. ‘They do things differently.’
‘Like how?’
She swung back. ‘They get people’s backs up. Shouting. The odd swift clip over the ear. Pulling old people over and breathalysing them, people who’ve never had a drink in their lives. Always lurking to catch people speeding. Just to increase their arrest rates. They say I’m too soft. Not performing.’
Ellen mused on that, and sighed. ‘I’m CIB, not uniform. There’s not much I can do.’
‘Will that be all, Sarge?’
‘You’ll have to get yourself a car,’ Ellen said. ‘That bus? God.’
She saw the younger woman close up and look away. What nerve had she touched? ‘Well, I won’t keep you.’
‘Have a good one, Sarge.’
Ellen Destry skirted around the naval base and on to Waterloo. Murphy seemed lonely. She tried to imagine life as a uniformed constable again, working with a pair of thugs like van Alphen and Tankard. I could offer to take her to work in the mornings, she thought. Then again, it would only complicate things.
She parked her car at the rear of the police station. It was now seven-fifteen, her normal arrival time for a 8 a.m. start. She stretched the kinks out of her back. There was a gym upstairs. It would do her good to use it sometimes.
The air-conditioning man pulled in at the courthouse next door, his Jeep top-heavy with a roof-rack of ladders and PVC tubes. Ellen noted the name, Rhys Hartnett, painted on the side, and took a moment to watch Hartnett as he got out. She was doing this a lot lately, watching men, the way they moved.
He caught her at it and winked across the driveway separating the courthouse from the police station. ‘Another hot one.’
‘Not even January yet,’ she agreed.
She watched him prop open the rear doors of his van. ‘Typical,’ she remarked. ‘The courthouse is only used once or twice a week and gets air-conditioning fitted. We’re in and out of the police station twenty-four hours a day and can’t even requisition a fan.’
He stood back, began to eye the courthouse windows. He’d lost interest in her.
‘Well, see you. No doubt you’ll be around for a few days.’
‘Couple of weeks, at least.’
On an impulse she said, ‘Maybe you could give me a quote to air-condition my house.’
That got his attention. He could ignore her but not the chance to make another buck or two. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Penzance Beach.’
‘I could drop by sometime. Got a card?’
She closed the gap between them, stepping over a line of white-painted driveway rocks and straggly low shrubs to get to him. There were leaves and pods from the flowering gums scattered over the ground. She registered the snap and buzz of summer heat in the air, and the smell of the gum trees, and the brine of the nearby sea. She proffered her card. He was very graceful, movements delicate, voice soft, and the smile was a real charmer, so no wonder all of her senses were alert.
He looked impressed. ‘Sergeant. Where’s your uniform?’
‘I’m a detective.’
‘No kidding.’
‘Boss of detectives.’
He raised his palm to her. ‘You know how it is, see a cop and immediately feel guilty about something.’
‘I’m flesh and blood,’ she said, to give him something to ponder upon, then tapped the card in his hand. ‘I mean it about the quote. Give me a call.’
‘Will do.’
She entered the station and went immediately to the uniform branch for the previous night’s crime reports. A dozen mailboxes torched, two setting off small fires. Summer’s here, she thought. She flipped through the reports. Three burglaries. A tent slashed at the caravan park. An assault. Three pub brawls. Theft of a car.
Then she logged on to the grid, the Central Data Entry Bureau, a state-wide database which recorded details of crimes, who reported them, victims’ names, who attended, and so on.
There was a knock on the door and Kellock, the station boss, walked in. As usual, he seemed to regard her with distaste: after all, she was plainclothes, and a woman. ‘You left me a note requesting half-a-dozen more uniforms for your door-to-door on the highway.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s not on, Ellen. The budget won’t cover it.’
‘Sir, we’re stretched in CIB.’
‘Not my problem,’ Kellock said.
Kellock was a senior sergeant, middle-aged and comfortable-looking with his uniform and his rank. ‘I can stretch it to two uniforms.’
‘Thank you.’
Kellock left the room. Ellen logged off and headed for the stairs, in time to hear Kellock remonstrating with Kees van Alphen about claiming overtime. ‘All you had to do was get a statement from her. You can’t justify a claim for three hours above your normal load last night.’ Van Alphen, she noted, looked exhausted, as if all of his arrogance had been ground away by the long night, and he wore a dressing on one hand. ‘You smell of smoke, Van,’ Kellock said. ‘Go and have a shower.’
Ellen climbed the stairs to the first floor. She glanced out over the car park. Challis wasn’t in yet.
Challis woke at seven and lay listening to a conversation between kookaburras in the nature reserve opposite his house. It sounded like a dispute: sudden eruptions of name-calling, trailing off into muttered hurt feelings. Then he remembered last night, and Angela’s telephone call, and that Superintendent McQuarrie was coming down to Waterloo sometime during the day to discuss the implications of the killer’s letter.