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‘I guess we need to buy you a new uniform.’

Greener looked at him. ‘That would be good, sir,’ he said slowly, ‘but I couldn’t, in good conscience, put a strain on the police budget.’

Challis laughed. He called for an ambulance and re-entered Ellen’s house just as four uniforms were pouring in. He sent one pair to the neighbouring house, telling them to call Rosebud CIU and issue a description of the attackers, then helped the other pair to free and tend to Larrayne’s friends.

And as he was murmuring encouragement, cutting duct tape, dabbing the blood from shallow cuts, he was looking for hidden truths, revealed in a glance, a mannerism, a flicker of emotion.

It came quickly. As soon as he’d ungagged the other girl, Nikki, she launched herself at her boyfriend, scoring his cheek with her nails, ‘You arsehole. You stupid, stupid-’

‘I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.’

‘It was you?’ said Larrayne. Before Challis could stop her, she whacked him, too.

He sulked. ‘Yeah, well, it was Mark’s idea.’

Larrayne, her face appalled, swung around on the tall, sweet, skinny boy, who didn’t look so sweet now. ‘How could you be so stupid.’

He shrugged, mopped at his torn ear. ‘Yeah, well.’

‘I want him arrested,’ Larrayne said.

Challis glanced at one of the Rosebud officers, giving the nod, then he took Larrayne’s arm and ushered her out of the house, to where the sun warmed the old decking furniture. She wrapped herself in the dressing gown and shivered. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, her voice small.

‘Want me to call your dad?’

In fact, why hadn’t Larrayne called him? Alan Destry was a policeman, after all.

‘ No. No, please don’t. You know him, he’ll overreact.’

‘We can’t keep it a secret.’

‘I’ll tell him later, when it’s over-otherwise he’ll come barging in and start bashing people up.’

She was probably right. Alan Destry had a temper. ‘We need to tell your mum, though.’

Larrayne Destry was in the grip of doubts and frustrations. Her fists clenched. ‘No, please, you can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’ll want to fly straight home. I’m okay.’

Then she slumped. ‘I feel such a fool.’

Challis touched a thick, white, rumpled sleeve. ‘You did nothing wrong. The boys stole the marijuana, not you.’

His words brought no comfort. ‘What happens now?’

‘Is there someone I can call, other than your father? A friend?’

‘They’re all up in the city.’ She thought about it. ‘Dad’s girlfriend.’

Larrayne made the call. She was saying, ‘No, I’m okay to drive,’ when Challis’s mobile rang.

Jeannie Schiff, saying: ‘We have a crashed car, abandoned on Coolart Road, dead woman in the boot. Naked, beaten, bound, strangled, probably raped.’

24

Earlier that day, John Tankard’s team had been breathalysing motorists at the Tuerong Junction end of Balnarring Road, then on a stretch of the Nepean between Mornington and Mount Martha. Finally, in the early afternoon, they set up on Coolart Road. Two pursuit cars-they went like the clappers of hell-two powerful BMW bikes, and four constables and a sergeant. The hotshots got to do anything remotely interesting, like on-the-spot roadworthy checks, running number plates through the on-board computers, processing the drunks, but Tank was given the crap jobs. Setting up a stopping lane and waving cars into it, standing in the middle of the road with his fancy gear on. Hot gear, too. Temperatures in the high twenties, low thirties all week.

Not much action today-a guy taking his kids to school had registered. 059-but Tank knew the Peninsula would be full of thank-God-it’s-Friday booze hounds as the afternoon deepened. He waved another anonymous car into the stopping lane, another anonymous male driver at the wheel. Maybe this loser was the shotgun bandit… Tank peered in as the guy slowed and stopped alongside the officer doing the breath test. Nah. Vague resemblance at best. Besides, there was a pregnant woman in the passenger seat, a toddler in the back, strapped into a capsule. Unless the bandit travelled with his family. God, Tank was bored.

‘Mind on the job, Constable.’

‘Yes Sarge.’

The sun was early-afternoon high, the air still, birds squabbling in the roadside trees. A magpie was getting on Tank’s nerves. It looked fully grown, but hopped around squawking uselessly. Putting the pressure on mum and dad for another fucking worm.

A smell of horse shit wafting across from the adjacent paddock.

A chainsaw in the distance.

And up in the wide blue yonder, ibis wheeled silently and a few game, ragtag little birds were telling an eagle to shove off.

John Tankard sneezed explosively: there was a slasher working on the spring grasses along a nearby fence line. All in all, he felt that he’d pretty much exhausted his appreciation of nature this past week.

An hour or two later, the sergeant ordered them to shift location again, over near the freeway this time, the 80 km/h stretch near Humphries Road. It was Tank’s job to stow the equipment and bring one of the cars so he was the last to leave, and was alone there on Coolart Road when a white Holden came barrelling over a rise, spotted him and snaked to a screaming halt. Tank read it. Drink driving; or drugs or stolen goods.

Thank the Lord, action at last.

Cranking the motor, Tank planted his foot, accelerating up the slope to intercept the Holden even as it reversed into a driveway, turned tail and shot back over the rise.

Just then, he sneezed again. His window was open; grass dust and pollen swirled around his solid head. He gasped, his eyes watered, the sneezes were galloping away from him.

By the time he’d recovered, and could see dimly through his scratchy eyes, the Holden was far in the distance. He radioed it in, pressing hard on the accelerator, and sneezed again, his hand jerking the wheel, his body pitching about in his seat. He brought the car to a stop on the verge of the road, snuffled into a handkerchief, dragged a forearm sleeve across his eyes. He was still on the hilly part of Coolart Road and couldn’t see the Holden.

When he’d recovered, Tank planted his foot again, swivelling his head left and right at the next couple of intersections: Waterloo far off in one direction, Merricks North the other, no white Holden.

He found it a minute later, buckled against a fancy stone gateway, as if the driver had intended to duck inside and hide, hoping the police would keep to Coolart Road and eventually assume he’d disappeared. Only he’d been going too fast, fucking moron, and he’d crashed.

Tank pulled in close behind, blocking the Holden against the stone pillar. He ran the rego number-the car had been reported stolencalled in his location, then got out, approaching the rear of the car with his baton in his left hand, his right hand ready to draw his service revolver.

No one in the rear seat, no one in the front.

He straightened his back, peering around at the lightly timbered paddocks on either side of the road. A man on foot could lose himself in open country pretty quickly-unless he’d decided to steal a farm vehicle or get himself a hostage. Tank glanced uneasily up the driveway to a farmhouse that was scarcely visible beyond a row of cypress and other trees. He pictured a man menacing a woman alone in her kitchen, a child playing outside, a teenage girl just home from school…

Just as he was about to step between the stone pillars and down the driveway, the other members of his team arrived, full of noise and testosterone. Tank, it soon transpired, was to stay with the wrecked car while the heroes searched the grounds and woodland.

‘Wait here for backup, let them know where we are.’

‘But it was me who chased him, Sarge.’

‘Whereupon he crashed into a stone wall,’ the sergeant said, ‘endangering the lives of everyone around him. You know the drill on high-speed pursuits, don’t you, Tank?’