Ellen slumped in her chair. ‘Witness protection.’
‘I was her case officer. I helped to relocate her.’
‘You think someone over there found out where she was?’
‘It’s possible. I don’t know how, but it’s possible.’
‘Had she been in contact with any of her friends, her family, the people she used to hang out with?’
‘I don’t know,’ the New Zealand officer said testily. ‘However, someone spotted her when she was leaving the country.’
He related the incident at the Christchurch airport.
‘And you think she was followed?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Why wait eighteen months?’
The New Zealand officer said, ‘To lull her into a false sense of security.’
Twenty-three
Pam Murphy was driving Sutton in the same white Commodore.
‘Did I see you at Myers Point the other day?’
He saw her stiffen, her knuckles whitening on the wheel. ‘Might have, sir.’
‘Scobie, call me Scobie. You had a wetsuit on, carrying a board. I couldn’t see all that clearly, so it might have been someone else.’
‘I have surfing lessons there sometimes.’
‘Yeah, you were with a group of others.’
He saw her relax. ‘What were you doing there?’
‘We took our daughter to the beach. New pink bathers to try out. Only she convinced herself there were dragons, so we never made it past the first dune.’
Murphy didn’t respond. Sutton let it go. He picked up one of the leaflets that Challis had given him, then out of nowhere he wanted to cry. He’d had a perfect image of Roslyn as she might be in fifteen years’ time, happy and uncomplicated and ripe for a killer. He coughed, blinked, composed himself.
They were entering the caravan park. Pam Murphy said, ‘Last time we were here the manager didn’t know where these gypsies had gone, so why question him again?’
‘This time we question the whole camp,’ Sutton told her, ‘and see if the backpack’s still in that rubbish bin.’
‘It won’t be. Even if it is, who’s to say it was Kymbly Abbott’s in the first place?’
‘It’s not your ordinary backpack. I’d like to know its history.’
‘Ordinary enough,’ Pam said. ‘I saw one just like it before Christmas.’
The ground had shifted. Marion Nunn looked at her lover in the interview room and said, ‘Did you kill her? Tell me you didn’t kill her. Did you have sex with her first?’
Boyd Jolic stared at the wall, his arms folded stubbornly. ‘Ah, give it a rest, fucking cow.’
‘What were you thinking of,’ she hissed, ‘lighting all those fires?’ God, she hoped there were no microphones in the interview rooms.
Jolic shrugged.
She looked around the empty walls, then touched Jolic, sliding her hand from his knee to his inner thigh. ‘Boyd? What have you got yourself into?’
‘Nothing. And your job is to see it stays that way.’
Stung, she rocked back in her chair, then narrowed her eyes and spat, ‘Just you remember who keeps you out of jail. Who feeds you sweet jobs. Who gives you witness addresses so you can send your frighteners around.’
He twisted his mouth. ‘You fell in love with my cock, admit it, you stupid cow.’
‘You’re pathetic. You’re a psychopath.’ She tapped her skull. ‘You’re not right in the head. A screw loose. I bet you used to pull the wings off flies when you were little. Now you like to light fires. What happens-you masturbate while you watch? That’s a novel way of putting the flames out. Stupid fucking brainless moron.’
‘If I go down, bitch, you go down.’
‘Then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen, shall we? After this, you and I are through.’
He pulled his features into a heavy-handed expression of anguish. ‘Oh, dear, poor little lawyer lady, in an unholy marriage with her big bad client.’
‘Shut up.’
She lit a cigarette and smoked it furiously.
Challis took Ellen with him in the Triumph.
‘Boss, we’re barking up the wrong tree.’ She couldn’t help it, she was losing heart.
He came down hard on her. ‘First things first. Always, in a case like this. If our killer’s a Kiwi hitman, he’s long gone. Meanwhile we’ve still got Jolic and co. in custody, and can’t hold them forever, so let’s see whether or not they can be tied to the Pajero before we start looking elsewhere.’
‘Sorry, Hal, you’re right.’
He steered through the roundabout. She noticed that the Pizza Hut was full. None of the cars looked familiar. The town had filled with strangers since Boxing Day, summer regulars returning to their beach shacks, families camping at the caravan parks, others renting flatr…d houses. They stood out in the shops. They were dressed better, somehow, as though the locals were five years out of date. Despite Tessa Kane’s fears, the holiday trade hadn’t really suffered as a result of the highway killings.
‘Is he expecting us?’
Challis nodded. ‘Mornington office.’
Thirty minutes later, they were examining photographs from the insurance company’s file on Lance Ledwich’s Pajero. ‘Needless to say, we rejected Mr Ledwich’s claim. Not only was the vehicle unregistered, he omitted to tell us that he’d lost his licence a few weeks ago but was still driving around in it.’
‘He’s not too happy about it,’ Challis said.
‘He’s ropeable.’
‘He’s going to be more than that,’ Ellen said. ‘Look at this, Hal.’
It was a photograph showing the rear of the burnt-out shell of the Pajero. Just beyond the border of ash was a lighter area, the dirt road itself, and, along one edge, the shallow road drain. There, caught in the fine, mud-and- sand base of the drain, was a perfect tyre track.
She tapped it with her forefinger. ‘If I’m not mistaken, a Cooper tyre left that.’
The forensic technician confirmed it, peering at the photograph, then at his chart of tyre patterns.
‘Definitely a Cooper. You should be able to match it.’
‘We can’t. All four tyres were burnt.’
‘Ah.’
‘Can’t the photo tell you anything else? The way the tread is worn, splits and gouges in the rubber, that kind of thing?’
‘I’ll scan and do an enhancement,’ the technician said, ‘and compare it with the cast found at the reservoir.’
They watched. Challis felt a curious kind of excitement. It came when the stages of the detection, the methodology, the science and the technological tools were all working together.
He saw the tread pattern enlarge on the monitor screen. The technician isolated one segment, then another,
