‘You heard. She had a habit. She told you she’d sleep with you if you supplied her with drugs.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
Now, you shouldn’t have chosen those words, Sutton said to himself. They don’t ring true. He decided to push it. ‘Where did you get the drugs? The evidence locker?’
‘It seems,’ van Alphen said, looking at the ceiling, ‘that I should have a lawyer present.’
‘Or did you rip off a dealer? Is that how you kept her supplied?’
‘You’re making an awfully big leap from my visiting her a couple of times on official business to my supplying her with drugs in order to sleep with her.’
‘More than a couple of visits,’ Challis snapped. ‘Your car was seen there several times, by several of the residents of Quarterhorse Lane.’
Van Alphen muttered something sullenly.
‘Speak up, Van.’
‘I said, she thought someone was after her.’
The tension ebbed from the room. Challis said gently, ‘Were you sleeping with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she tell you about herself?’
‘Almost nothing. She came from New Zealand, I suspected she was a user, and that’s about it.’
‘Who did she think was after her?’
‘She didn’t, wouldn’t, say.’
‘What led her to think someone was after her?’
‘She thought the mailbox business was a warning.’
‘You told her about the other mailboxes?’
‘Yes. I think I convinced her, but in general she was pretty agitated. The abductions didn’t help. She told me she thought it was a smokescreen, that she was the intended victim and it was just a matter of time.’
‘You must have formed an opinion of her, Van,’ Sutton said. ‘Who she was, whether or not she was hiding anything.’
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.’
