Van Alphen looked at the ceiling again. ‘I formed the belief that she was running away from something.’
‘Like what?’
‘Some heavy people. A vicious husband or boyfriend. Someone she owed money to. Someone she ripped off. Something along those lines.’
‘But she didn’t say?’
‘No.’
‘Running away from trouble in New Zealand, do you think?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But you think they found her?’
Van Alphen looked at Sutton and said carefully, ‘She thought they’d found her. But she was generally predisposed to think that. She was scared. If anything out of the ordinary happened, she misconstrued it, thought it applied to her alone.’
‘Except,’ Challis said, ‘this time she didn’t misconstrue it.’
‘I guess so.’
‘You’re not making this up?’
‘There were firemen there with me the night her mailbox got burnt. They’ll tell you, she was scared out of her brain, when anyone else would’ve simply been pissed off.’
Sutton nodded. They’d already talked to the firemen.
‘So, where does that leave me?’ van Alphen said, challenging them.
Challis said, ‘Senior Sergeant Kellock wants you suspended.’
‘I bet he does, the prick.’
‘But we’re not going to suspend you,’ Challis went on. ‘However, I don’t want you on outside duties while we continue our investigation. I don’t want you talking to anyone. I want you indoors, making a list of anyone you’ve helped put away, or anyone with a grudge against you for anything at all.’
Van Alphen sneered. ‘Feels like a kind of suspension to me.’
‘And you feel like a not-quite-so-straight copper to me,’ Challis snarled. ‘That’s all. You can go.’
Challis bounced at a clip down the stairs. He sounded almost breezy,
‘How’s your daughter, Scobie?’
Sutton hurried to draw alongside him. Was Challis really interested, or going through the motions? ‘A handful now that she’s home all day long.’.
‘Will you send her back to the childcare place when it reopens?’
‘Probably. See how it goes.’
‘Good.’
Maybe Challis had wanted kids, before things blew up on him. They reached the ground floor and Sutton changed the subject. ‘Boss, you don’t think Van killed her, do you?’
Challis pushed through the rear door into the car park. The heat hit them. ‘I doubt it. But he was more than just a concerned copper to her. That’s why I want to have a talk to Stella Riggs. She seems to be the only independent witness.’
‘I don’t know what else she can tell you, boss. Wasted trip.’
‘Scobie, I’m not questioning your interview with her. I just want to be on firmer ground before we start digging any deeper into van Alphen.’
Scobie snorted. ‘She won’t thank you.’
‘Won’t she?’
‘She’s a stuck-up bitch.’
‘Then I’ll have to unstick her. Any luck with the gypsies?’
‘None.’
‘They could be in New South Wales by now.’
They had reached the Commodore. Pam Murphy, lounging on the grass beneath the line of gums that separated the police station from the courthouse, brushed leaves from her uniform and hurried toward them. Challis leaned on the roof of the car. ‘What about Ledwich? Still think there’s something iffy about him?’
‘Boss, we’ve checked him pretty thoroughly. His alibis aren’t crash hot, but we can’t prove that he wasn’t at work each of the times we’re interested in. The Pajero business is a fizzer. The registration had elapsed and he’d lost his licence, yet was still driving around in it, and was scared the police and the insurance company would find out, that’s how I read it.’
‘You think that’s why he was so edgy? Trying to avoid discovery?’
Sutton shrugged. ‘It’s one explanation.’
They drove out of the car park. ‘Back to Quarterhorse Lane, Constable,’ Challis said.
Stella Riggs showed them into a broad, gleaming room with polished floorboards, a vast open fireplace, several roomy leather armchairs and twin matching sofas, an antique drinks cabinet, and windows that offered a view across vineyards and orchards to Westernport Bay in the hazy distance. Around to the right, the ground was scorched bare.
‘As I told your man here, Inspector, I didn’t know the woman.’
Sutton bridled. She wasn’t British, but sounded it, in voice and attitude. Before he could respond, Challis said, ‘Yet you knew something of her movements.’
‘All I knew, Inspector Challis, was that she was often visited by a policeman in a police car. On two occasions I actually saw him. I gave your fellow a description.’ She turned to Sutton. ‘I trust you passed my information on. It wouldn’t surprise me if-’
Challis said, ‘You never visited her?’
‘No.’
‘Never saw anyone else visit her?’
‘No.’
‘Never saw any person or vehicle in Quarterhorse Lane that shouldn’t have been there?’
‘No. Or rather-’
‘Yes?’
‘I was once followed by someone.’
‘Go on.’
‘You must know about it. It’s been in the papers.’
Sutton frowned. What was the stupid cow on about? ‘What, Mrs Riggs?’
She turned to him, her back rigid, her nose tipped back as though to avoid catching his scent. ‘Road rage, of course.’
‘Road rage,’ Challis said.
‘This fellow thought that I’d cut him off, and he followed me all the way home.’
‘But what did that have to do with Miss Macris?’
‘Obviously I didn’t want the fellow to know where I lived.’
Scobie still didn’t get it. ‘So?’
But Challis did. He stared with distaste at Stella Riggs. ‘You didn’t drive to your own house, you drove to Clara Macris’s house.’
‘Yes.’
‘You thought if there was going to be trouble later, then it would be she who copped it.’
‘I must protest. It wasn’t nearly so calculated as that. I-’
‘Many road rage incidents involve quite considerable violence. Clara Macris may be dead because of you.’
For the first time, Stella Riggs’s composure began to break. ‘I didn’t think-’
‘No, you didn’t.’
She shrieked, ‘I turned into her driveway hoping the policeman would be there, or if he wasn’t then he could be fetched to help me.’
Challis closed his eyes. He opened them again and said gently, ‘Then what happened?’
‘The man following me drove past the front gate, then turned around and drove away again, so I left.’
‘You didn’t see or speak to Miss Macris?’
‘No.’
‘What did he look like, this man?’
‘Two men.’
‘Two men. Would you recognise them if you saw them again?’
‘The driver had short hair and wore a singlet, that’s all I can tell you. He looked like a labourer. The other fellow was smaller.’
‘And the vehicle?’
‘It was a Mitsubishi Pajero.’
Challis sat back. ‘A Pajero.’
She sounded almost proud. ‘My late husband drove one for many years. That’s how I know.’
Sutton said, ‘What colour?’
‘Maroon, from memory.’
‘What more can you tell us about it?’
Stella Riggs got up and crossed the room to the mantelpiece above the fireplace. ‘I jotted down the registration. Yes, here it is.’
On their way out, Sutton said, ‘She killed her, didn’t she?’
‘As good as,’ Challis said.
When Pam Murphy knocked on Challis’s door, half an hour later, she was tentative, wondering if he’d be distracted and dismissive.
‘Sir, I heard you talking in the car. You think whoever was driving the Pajero might have come back and killed Clara Macris.’
The inspector switched his attention fully on to her. ‘It’s possible. Do you have something?’
She told him about the litter that she’d bagged where the Pajero had been torched.
‘You did this off your own bat?’
‘Yes, sir.’