‘Any police officers ever come to the Chicory Kiln?’ Challis asked.
‘Police? Like, on a raid?’
‘As customers.’
‘Sure, I guess so, but how would we know? It’s not as if this is a McDonald’s, we’re not handing out free hamburgers and chips to the boys in blue. No offence.’
And so Challis and Murphy stayed on for two more hours, eating dinner, talking, watching, making everyone nervous.
Challis had ordered lasagne, Pan gnocchi. ‘How come you get yours straight away and I have to wait?’
‘They make each gnocchi ball lovingly by hand,’ said Challis.
‘Ha, ha. How come you always order lasagne?’
‘I’m trying to replicate a formative experience, when I ate the perfect lasagne.’
‘Okay, I’ll bite-where and when?’
‘Johnny’s Green Room, Carlton. Late 1980s.’
‘Was I even born then? And are you eating the perfect lasagne this evening?’
‘Not even close.’
‘What you might call a lost cause.’
It occurred to Pam Murphy that she was happy. She hadn’t been happy. Last year she’d gone to bed with a fellow cop who’d posted naked images of her on the Internet. She’d destroyed him, the revenge sweet. Then some kind of reaction had set in, panic attacks, anxiety, jitteriness. And Pam Murphy-athlete, expert pursuit driver, competent detective-was not at ease with the fact that she hadn’t been able to pull herself together.
She’d gone to her GP, who’d ascertained that she wasn’t suicidal and prescribed citalopram. The anxiety went away, sure enough, but so did a lot of things. Pam Murphy considered her few months on the citalopram as lost months. A low-level dullness had ruled her. She lost her spark. She didn’t even give a stuff about whether or not she had sex. And because she still had bad days sometimes, the anxiety returning, the GP had increased her dose from 20 mg to 40 mg per day. If that doesn’t work, the GP said, we’ll go to 60, or try a new generation SSRI.
Not try to find out what was wrong, just up the dose.
So Pam had stopped, cold turkey, and right now she was feeling happy. Yeah, she was kind of attracted to Challis, but she didn’t want to sleep with him. Besides, he was in love with Ellen Destry. It was the fact of sitting in candlelight with a nice man, a man she knew, a man who wouldn’t hurt her or play games with her.
Challis glanced at his watch. ‘I’m calling it a night.’
She wanted to say, ‘Don’t leave.’ But it was eleven o’clock and the dining room was empty. They paid, walked out into the moonlit car park, Challis standing very close to her and she very aware of him as they watched the last cars leave one by one. No CCTV. She thought it likely the abduction had nothing to do with the Chicory Kiln, and found herself saying, ‘It was opportunistic.’
Challis said, ‘Opportunistic choice of victim, but he stalked her first.’
‘Yes.’
A tired-looking man arrived in a station wagon. Kelly hopped in, full of talk. A short time later, Gabi was picked up by a boy in a little Subaru, the car doof-doofing, the speakers almost shaking the car on its springs. When Gabi whispered in his ear, he turned the volume down, shot the detectives a scared look and drove sedately out onto Myers Road.
13
Challis lived on a dirt road inland of Waterloo and woke on Saturday morning to find an SMS from Ellen Destry: Arrvd Spore Yerp 2moro XXX.
Arrived Singapore, Europe tomorrow, kisses. His spirits galvanised, he walked with vigour in the dawn light and planned his weekend. Doorknock the back roads where Chloe Holst was found this morning, talk to the aircraft broker this afternoon, do some odd jobs on Ellen’s house tomorrow.
By 8.30 he was in his old Triumph, heading for the nature reserve where Chloe Holst had been dumped and thinking about a new car. The Triumph was a rustbucket, rattly and unreliable. Distinctive to look at and almost fun with the top down, but unreliable. He should sell it. Sell it and the plane, he could afford to buy a decent one. He’d miss the Triumph’s dampish winds, though, its sensitivity to the Braille of every road surface.
There was a crime-scene van at the reserve, two officers picking around the outskirts. There’d be others inside the reserve itself. He drove on until he’d reached the end of the road and turned into the first driveway.
A small kit house hung with potted plants, a handful of goats in a pen behind it. A young woman, vaguely hippie in a long skirt and leather sandals, with grimy ankles, answered his knock. She was sweetly effete, incense hanging in the fibres of her clothing, and she hadn’t seen or heard anything.
The next house, half a kilometre along, was a severe arrangement of corrugated iron cubes that advertised itself as ‘The Wellness Centre’. No one answered his knock.
No one at home at the next stop, either, a weatherboard house in a yard choked with trail bikes and dogs, the dogs all teeth, ribs, drool and rusty chains. Then he came to a small brick house set in several hectares of unloved apple trees, where a raw-boned woman said viciously: ‘Someone pinched our ride-on mower last month and it took you lot a week to come out and have a bloody look. So no, I didn’t see anybloodything on Thursday night, all right?’
The last house before the T-intersection with the Dandenong-Waterloo road was announced by a rotting gate. A rotting mailbox, a weedy driveway that disappeared betweens the trunks of the highest pine trees Challis had ever seen. He opened the gate, drove through, closed it and bounced the Triumph over ruts to a small fibro farmhouse so deep in the shadows that the walls wore moss. It looked diseased. Weeds spouted in the gutters. Thin hens pecked desultorily and an old dog lifted and dropped its tail. There must be little houses like this all over the world, he thought. Rural America, rural Norway. It’s where the old and the poor and the forgotten go to hide, in the only space they can navigate.
He got out and approached the house. Reaching the front step, he turned to get his bearings. The road was clearly visible: he simply felt like he was buried in the woods. He knocked, and after some time an old man opened the door a crack, revealing one eye and a whiskery cheek. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Challis said, holding up his ID and saying he was from the police.
He didn’t get a chance to say why. The old man disappeared into the gloom, returning a moment later with a spiral-bound notebook. ‘What day?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Night time? Day time?’
He’d scribbled vehicle make and registration numbers in his notebook, together with times and dates. ‘Thursday night,’ Challis said.
‘Thursday, Thursday. Sorry, I was at me daughter’s.’
It didn’t matter, Chloe Holst had been driven to the reserve in her own car. But her rapist might have scouted around in the days and weeks before snatching her, so Challis said: ‘Your notebook could be very useful to the police. May we borrow it? I’ll make a photocopy and return it on Monday.’
He was expecting resistance, but the man stuck out his chest and firmed his chin. ‘Happy to help, happy to help.’
Challis took the proffered notebook, flipped through the pages, frowned and looked more closely at the scribbled information. ‘These are all trucks and vans, not cars.’
‘Well, obviously.’
‘I don’t follow.’
The old man couldn’t believe Challis’s ignorance. ‘You don’t think them people smugglers come into Western Port Bay with just one or two people aboard, do you?’
14
Meanwhile Pam Murphy had awoken feeling jittery, close to panic. That was nothing new. Some deep breathing helped; she avoided coffee.
But the dizziness was starting to bother her. She went on-line, Googling the withdrawal symptoms of her antidepressant, recalling the advice of her GP: ‘I don’t think you should quit, but I can see that’s what you want, so make sure you phase out slowly, over several days.’