down when he’d dropped her off at eight o’clock. ‘I don’t want to go in! I want to be with you!’ Six weeks earlier the shire council, hit by budget constraints, had shut down another of its childcare centres and forced an amalgamation with Waterloo. Twenty new kids, six new staff, nowhere to fit them all. Kids are conservative. They don’t like upheavals in their routines. The cheery woman who’d been in charge of his daughter’s room, the two-to-three-year olds, had taken a redundancy package-no doubt out of anger and frustration. Now a stranger was in charge of the two-to-three room, and Roslyn threw a wobbly whenever Sutton dropped her off each morning. Was this woman slapping her on the sly? Being mean to her?
At least she was happy now. Sutton started the Falcon and wound his way back through the town to the police station.
The desk sergeant caught him at the foot of the stairs. ‘Scobe, I got a woman out front. Says she’s got some information about Jane Gideon.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘A crank,’ the desk sergeant said simply.
Scobie took the woman through to an interview room. She had to be humoured, like all the cranks.
‘Name?’
The woman drew herself up. ‘Sofia.’
‘Sofia. You say you’ve got information about Jane Gideon’s disappearance?’
The woman leaned forward and said, her voice low and rasping, her eyes like glittering stones, ‘Not just a disappearance. Murder.’
‘Do you have direct knowledge of this?’
‘I felt it.’
‘You felt it.’
‘I am a Romany. I am a seer.’
She stared at him. Her eyes: he’d never seen such intensity. She seemed to be able to switch it off and on, too. His gaze faltered. He examined her hair, black and wild, her ears, ringed with fine gold hoops, her neck, hung with gold chains, and the tops of her brown breasts in a thin, loose, hectically coloured cotton dress. A gypsy, he thought, and wondered whether or not there were gypsies in Australia.
‘You mean you kind of sensed it?’
‘She died violently.’
He doodled on his pad. ‘But you have no direct knowledge.’
‘Water,’ she said. ‘That’s where you’ll find her.’
‘You mean, the sea?’
The woman stared into vast distances. ‘I don’t think so. An area of still water.’
He pushed back in his chair. ‘Fine, we’ll certainly look into that. Thank you for coming in.’
She smiled dazzlingly and waited while he got the door. She was stunning, compelling, in a creepy kind of way. The gold, the hair, the vivid dress and the soft leather, they all seemed to fit her naturally.
‘You have a little girl,’ she said, as she stepped out of the room.
Sutton froze. It was a rule of thumb, never let members of the public know anything about your private life. He looked at her coolly. For all he knew, she might have a kid at the childcare centre, might have seen him dropping Roslyn off in the mornings. She didn’t seem to be looking for a lever to use against him, so he said simply, ‘Yes.’
‘She’s confused by the changes in her life, but she’ll come through. She’s resilient.’
‘Thank you,’ Sutton said, and wondered why-just like that, in a flash-he believed her.
Challis returned to the abduction site that afternoon and later drove to the bayside suburb where Jane Gideon’s parents lived. They had nothing to add to what they’d told him the previous day. Their daughter had moved down to the Peninsula originally because she’d met a cadet at the Navy base there, and had stayed on when he broke up with her. No, he was serving in the Gulf somewhere.
When he got back to Waterloo he found Ellen Destry standing wary guard over Tessa Kane, who was perched on the edge of a steel folding chair and smiling a smile that his sergeant was bound to find insufferable. ‘Tess, how are you?’ he said.
‘Hal.’
‘Published any scoops lately?’
‘Scoops is a relative term in a weekly paper, Hal.’
‘Boss, I said you were busy and-’
‘That’s okay, Ellen,’ Challis said.
‘She says she’s got information.’
‘Got it, or want it, Tess?’
Tessa Kane’s voice was low and deep and faintly amused. ‘Both.’
‘When’s your next issue?’
‘Thursday. Then we miss an issue between Christmas and the New Year, and publish again on 4 January.’
Challis said. ‘A lot can happen.’
‘Hal, a lot has happened.’
Challis watched her stand and smooth her skirt over her thighs. She was shorter than Ellen Destry, always full of smiles, many of them false and dangerous, others lazy and uncomplicated. He liked her plump cheeks. Women disliked her. Challis had no opinion on the matter, beyond knowing that he had to watch what he said to her.
‘This information you say you’ve got,’ he began.
She cut him off. ‘Can we do this in there?’
‘The incident room? Tess, please.’
She grinned. ‘Just a thought. An office, maybe, instead of here in the corridor?’
Challis turned to Ellen. ‘Sergeant, let’s take Miss Kane into your office, if that’s okay by you?’
He saw Ellen sort out the implications. He was including her, not giving her the shove, so she said, ‘Fine with me, sir.’
The office was a plasterboard and frosted-glass cubicle further along the corridor, and once they were inside it Tessa Kane turned and said, ‘I was hoping-’
‘This is Sergeant Destry’s station, her office, her investigation-as my offsider. So, whatever it is you want to tell me, you tell her, too.’
‘Suit yourself.’
They watched her take a clear plastic freezer bag from her briefcase and lay it on the desk. ‘This came in the post this morning.’
A few lines of crisp type on a sheet of A4 printer paper. Challis leaned over to read through the plastic: This is an open letter to the people of Victoria. I would be loosing faith in the Police if I were you. There running around in circles looking for me. What have they got? One body. But where’s the second? Gone to a watery grave? And now there’s going to be a third. She’s in my sights.
‘Oh, God,’ Ellen said.
Are you scared yet? You ought to be.
‘Envelope?’ Challis said.
Tessa Kane took out a second freezer bag. He poked at it with a pencil, turning it so that he could read it. He sighed. Block capitals. There would be no useful prints, and no saliva, for the envelope was pre-paid, with a self- sealing flap, and available at any post office. He saw the words, ‘Eastern Mail Centre’, but no other indication of where it had been posted.
‘You got it this morning, and you waited until now to show us?’
‘Hal, I was out all day. It was left on my desk and I didn’t open it until a few minutes ago.’
He looked at her closely. ‘Have there been any others?’
‘No.’ She hooked a wing of hair behind her ear. ‘I think the spelling tells us a little about him.’
Ellen had been itching to say something. ‘Not necessarily. He’s probably trying to muddy the waters. Look at
