‘ One woman, last night. And I never even got my end in.’
Muschamp grinned as he said it, confident she’d rise to the bait, but Jeannie Schiff said mildly, ‘Ms Knorr feared for her life, and with good reason, given that you’d murdered your previous victim.’
‘Nup. No way. Wasn’t me.’
‘And before that you abducted Chloe Holst and raped her several times over several hours.’
‘Can’t prove that either.’
‘I think you’ll find that we can. At one point you took Ms Holst into a nature reserve north-east of Waterloo, correct?’
He shook his head. ‘Not me.’
‘But you know the area,’ Schiff said. She glanced at her notes. ‘You’re a part-time delivery driver for Waterloo Rural Supplies, correct?’
‘So?’
‘A witness has you driving one of their trucks on a back road past the reserve about two weeks ago.’
Pam saw another shift in Challis’s shoulders. He’d got lucky with a list of number plates collected by an old man who lived near the reserve. Because the witness was a bit cracked in the head, he’d put the information to one side, almost forgetting it. But then he’d run the numbers and hit the jackpot.
Muschamp grinned again. ‘I deliver all over the Peninsula.’
‘Gives you the opportunity to scout around for body-dump sites.’
Muschamp said heatedly, ‘I never stepped foot in that reserve place, whatever you call it, and you can’t prove I did.’
He sat back, smirking confidently. In his mind he’d been super careful, leaving no evidence at the scene or on his victims.
Challis said mildly, ‘We found several crime-scene textbooks, forensic science textbooks, in your house.’
Muschamp shrugged, gazed critically at his fingernails. ‘I like to read.’
‘Darren,’ Schiff said, ‘I’m renewing my offer: you may have a lawyer present.’
‘Can’t afford it.’
‘The system will provide one free of charge.’
‘Last time it did that I got some kid barely out of school. He never did nothing for me.’
‘As you wish.’
‘So get me bail and let me go.’
‘You say you like to read. That’s admirable, Darren. I’ve been to many houses where there’s not a book in sight. I suppose you know quite a bit about trace evidence-from your reading?’
Edginess crept over Muschamp again, as if he were re-creating the crime scenes in his mind’s eye, looking for evidence he might have left behind.
Schiff continued to push. ‘What do you know about the human voice, Darren? Think it’s possible Chloe Holst would recognise your voice?’
Muschamp processed that slyly. ‘This is the chick worked at the Chicory Kiln, right?’ He sat back, folded his arms. ‘Well, I’ve eaten there a few times, so maybe she would recognise my voice, but so what?’
Unfazed, Schiff said, ‘Let’s look at the pattern.’ She ticked her fingers: ‘The use of a police uniform to gain authority over the victim. The abduction, the sexual assault, the use of a stolen car that resembles an unmarked police vehicle. I could go on.’
‘Wouldn’t want to stop you. It’s a free country.’
‘But what happened with Delia Rice, Darren?’
‘Nothing happened-not involving me, anyway.’
‘Did you mean to kill her? You didn’t, did you, it was an accident.’
‘Didn’t kill her, never met her, wasn’t there.’
‘It was an accident. Let’s call it manslaughter, not murder. You’ll do a few years, less than ten, be out on good behaviour before you know it.’
‘Didn’t murder no one, didn’t manslaughter no one.’
‘You didn’t intend to kill her. Accident, right? You put your hands around her neck in the throes of passion and accidentally throttled her.’
He had his arms folded. ‘Nup.’
‘Or she was crying, is that it, Darren? You hate it when they cry, don’t you? It makes you feel kind of bad inside. You just wanted her to stop.’
‘When you find the guy, why not ask him?’
‘You were seen stumbling away from the scene, Darren. We have a witness. A man matching your description.’
‘What, tall, good-looking guy?’
‘See, what I think happened is, you suddenly had this body on your hands and you panicked. Didn’t know what to do. Shoved her in the boot of the stolen car and just drove around for a few hours, wondering where to dump her, trying to work it out.’
Muschamp stared stonily at the table and Pam Murphy sensed that he was reliving exactly that scenario.
‘You’d been playing with her-for want of a better word-all night, and then she died, and now it’s daylight, people all around, and you can’t keep her at your place and you can’t take her to the nature reserve, can’t go back there, so you simply drive around and around. Maybe hoping to find a deserted back road-except the Peninsula is pretty closely settled, there’s always someone driving along the back roads. Right, Dazza?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Of course, you couldn’t risk driving around wearing a police uniform, not with a body on board. So you changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.’ She paused. ‘I hope you burned them afterwards, Darren.’
He gave her a level smile and Pam knew that’s what he’d done. The thought that they wouldn’t get him on the murder depressed her.
‘I’m finished talking,’ he said, and in a fair approximation of anguish added, ‘Look, I wasn’t myself last night, I’ve been depressed, you know, my judgment’s shot, maybe I’m suicidal, all these mitigating circumstances and I think maybe a lawyer can help me now.’
Schiff faltered then. Challis didn’t see it but Pam did. A short acquaintance, only a few days, but she knew what it meant when Jeannie pursed her lips and examined the ends of her hair. It meant doubt, and Pam wanted to say, Keep pushing him.
Unaccountably, then, she pictured Chloe Holst sitting on her hospital bed, sneezing. Why had she recalled that? Sympathy for the victim? No, it was something else…
It came to her in a rush. She walked down the corridor, scrolling through the numbers stored on her mobile phone. Craig, her favourite lab tech.
‘It’s Spud,’ she announced. He called her that. ‘I wonder if I could run an idea past you…’
36
Ian Galt had been trying since Monday to make sense of the CCTV images he’d scared out of Steve Finch. Anita had a child. Was it his? And elderly parents? Back when he’d known her, she’d had no apparent history at all.
But meanwhile he’d had to fly back to Sydney, word coming through on the grapevine about a body fished out of the harbour. He watched the investigation for a couple of days, standing well behind the scenes, the murdered man on the periphery of his old life.
And now it was Wednesday morning and he was back in Melbourne to begin the hunt.
He started at the childcare centre in Hurstbridge. Huddled under gumtrees on a minor road leading into the town, it looked threadbare, understaffed and underfunded. Meaning it was probably operated by a millionaire type peculiar to Australia, discredited, overextended and obscurely attracted to childcare centres and nursing homes. First flashing his fake Federal Police ID, he showed the administrator a still from Steven Finch’s security camera, a toddler and a young woman standing side by side outside the front gate of the centre. A photograph of a photograph, in fact, with a messy blur in the bottom right that was Anita’s hand in the act of displaying the photo to Finch.
The administrator, round and motherly, would only concede that the photograph had been taken in front of the centre.
‘But the kid did attend?’
‘I’m sorry, Inspector Towne, I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Is she still here?’
‘Perhaps if you tell me what this is about?’
Galt cast around for a story that might tug at the heartstrings and involve the Australian Federal Police. ‘We fear that an attempt might be made by a family member to kidnap her.’