not who had a reason to be in Quarterhorse Lane.
Challis parked and opened the front door. His eyes glanced automatically at the light on his answering machine. One message. He pushed the play button, heard his wife’s voice, low and choked and hectic, and immediately switched it off.
Tessa Kane entered the house behind him, carrying shopping bags. She’d bought fresh fish, a salad mix, a lemon, potatoes to make into chips. It was seven, the skyline pink as the sun settled. They cut the potatoes into chips, oiled them in a pan and placed them in the oven. They had little to say to each other and Challis wondered if he was making a mistake, even as he thought that it was nice, doing this, making a meal with an attractive woman and taking drinks out on to the decking while it cooked. He lit a citronella candle to drive away the mosquitoes and touched his glass to hers. In the half light, she looked not so hard-edged or apt to be secretive. The phone rang. Challis groaned. He knew people who could blithely ignore the phone, and people who were desperate to answer it. If he lived a normal life and wasn’t a policeman, he’d be one of the former, he often thought. ‘Excuse me.’
It was Scobie Sutton. ‘Boss, turn to “Crime Beat”, Channel 9.’
Challis’s kitchen opened on to the sitting room and the little television set he kept in the corner. He found the remote control, turned the set on and returned to the phone. ‘Okay.’
‘Watch.’
There was an outside shot, a modest house in Dromana, then the parents of Kymbly Abbott were seated on a velour sofa that had seen better days. They were raw-looking, anxious, the victims of a poor education and a poorer diet. They seemed to sense the skin-deep sympathy and staged sentiments of the interviewer, a young woman with cropped hair, a short black dress and plum-coloured lips.
Even so, Challis thought, as the interview progressed, they’re getting a kick out of being on television, and that’s almost, almost, overriding their grief. He heard the interviewer say:
‘You’d like the police to do more.’
Kymbly Abbott’s father intended to do all of the talking. ‘Yeah.’
‘You think they should be doing what you and the parents of Jane Gideon are doing?’
‘Yep.’
‘Handing out photographs and talking to people.’
‘Yep.’
‘Are Mr and Mrs Gideon helping you?’
‘We got the idea off them.’
‘You think handing out your daughter’s photograph will help jog someone’s memory?’
‘Yep.’
Then Kymbly Abbott’s mother leaned forward and made the only original observation that Challis had heard so far:
‘Like, the whole time, all youse reporters have done is concentrate on us-’ she poked herself in the chest ‘-our feelings, instead of getting people to try and remember if they saw Kymbly.’
As Challis watched, the screen filled with a close-up of a leaflet, Kymbly Abbott in full colour, the words Did you see who took our Kymbly? across the top, a description and a phone number at the bottom.
The phone to his ear, Challis said, ‘I wish they hadn’t done that.’
‘Boss, when they flash on that leaflet again, check out the description and the photo.’
Challis watched. Another close-up, and a voice-over, describing Kymbly Abbott the night she was abducted and murdered.
‘Scobie, I’m missing something here.’
‘The backpack, boss. They bloody forgot to tell us she had a backpack with her when she went missing.’
Twenty-two
Saturday, 8.15 a.m., Challis standing before the whiteboard saying: ‘Right, it’s going to be another scorcher today, so the sooner we’re not cooped up together in this place, the better.’
He leaned both hands on the back of a chair. ‘Two pieces of much needed luck. One, Pam Murphy, a young uniformed constable, had the foresight to bag a few bottles and cans at the scene of the torching of Lance Ledwich’s Pajero in Chicory Kiln Road.’
He indicated the location on the wall map and swung around again. ‘As you know, we believe the vehicle was stolen by the two men responsible for that ag burg near the racecourse. Their original getaway vehicle had stalled, and they legged it to a nearby housing estate, where they found the Pajero. According to the prints recovered from the bottles and cans, and assuming that the same men are responsible for the ag burg, and stealing and then burning the Pajero, then we’re looking at Boyd Jolic, Danny Holsinger and Craig Oliver, all from Waterloo and all known to the police.’
A voice: ‘I thought you said two men, boss.’
Challis nodded. ‘We believe that one of the three drove out to Chicory Kiln Road to fetch the other two. A call was made on Lance Ledwich’s car phone to The Refinery Hotel that same night. A barmaid has since confirmed that Craig Oliver took a call and left the bar soon afterwards. Now, it’s nice to think we’ve got a lead on that ag burg, but we’ve also had a second piece of luck, a witness who can place that same Pajero in Quarterhorse Lane.’
He went on to explain Stella Riggs’s road rage incident, and how her evasive tactic may have led to the murder of Clara Macris. ‘Jesus Christ,’ someone said. Others shook their heads.
‘We’ve sent three teams out to arrest Jolic, Holsinger and Oliver,’ Challis went on. He looked at his watch. ‘They should be returning soon.’
‘So Van’s off the hook, boss?’
Challis gazed at the room of officers. After a while he said, ‘I’ve heard the rumours-van Alphen was screwing Clara Macris, they had a falling out, he killed her. You all know that we questioned Sergeant van Alphen.’
He paused. He seemed pleasant, offhand, obliging, then suddenly snapped forward, both palms on the desk in front of him. ‘Clara Macris was murdered. You are investigating a murder. You are police officers. That job, and your role, come before fear or favour. If a copper is implicated in a crime, however vaguely-or falsely, through someone else’s agency- then we investigate that copper until we’re satisfied one way or the other.’
He straightened. ‘Have you all got that?’
They coughed, shuffled, murmured, wouldn’t look at him or looked sourly at him.
‘If it will put your minds at rest, Sergeant van Alphen is not high on my list.
‘Now, another development. Some of you may have seen ‘Crime Beat’ on the box last night. The parents of Kymbly Abbott were on, doing a Gideon-in other words, they’ve been hanging around street corners near the start of the Old Peninsula Highway, handing out photos of their daughter.’
‘But she’s dead, boss.’
Challis frowned. ‘Don’t you think they want her killer caught? Poor sods, they hope someone may have seen her getting picked up. The point is, both the photograph and the description that they give for their daughter mention an expensive black leather backpack. I wish we’d known this before. Someone may have found the backpack near where the body was found, for example, and either kept it quiet or not realised its significance. Or maybe the killer still has it. We don’t know.’
He waved a leaflet at them. ‘I called on the Abbotts last night and obtained a few copies of these, so you can see for yourselves what the backpack looks like. Meanwhile Scobie wants to add something.’
Scobie Sutton stood uncomfortably and said, ‘Before Christmas a gypsy woman came to me with some clairvoyant mumbo jumbo about where Jane Gideon’s body could be found. Later I went to question her in relation to a series of thefts. As you know from an earlier briefing, I saw three men at her camp, and a couple of four-wheel drives. The thing is, I also saw a leather backpack. They’d all shot through when I went back to arrest her on the theft charges, and I put out a description, but the backpack makes it imperative that we find them.’ He sat down, red in the face.
Challis stood. ‘I agree. They must be found.’
