‘Keep your undies on.’
The house was depressing. The ceilings and walls were designed for a small race of people. The furniture was too big for it, as if composed of intrusive angles and surfaces. Challis saw a massive television set and an exercise machine. A radio somewhere was tuned to a talkback show. They came to the bedroom. Ledwich was lumped under a sheet and a pink blanket and he looked wretched, his features red and sodden, his breathing rattling with phlegm.
‘What do you bastards want?’
Challis introduced himself but knew that something was wrong. He wasn’t looking at a man who’d gone out earlier that day and abducted and raped and killed or at least hidden a teenage girl.
Ellen Destry knew it, too. Challis sensed her disappointment. She said, ‘Lance, where were you this morning?’
‘Right here. In this bed. Been here since yesterday.’
Challis looked around at the wallpaper, the gleaming white built-in wardrobe, the lace curtains. There was an odour of illness and stale air in the little room. The bed was a costly, vulgar monstrosity, fitted with a silvery-gold vinyl headboard. Rows of brass studs dimpled the vinyl, and there was a radio and a pair of speakers set into it.
He turned to Ledwich. ‘You haven’t been in Penzance Beach?’
‘I’m flaming crook, I tell ya.’
‘Okay, let’s try this. Can you account for your movements on the nights of the twelfth and the seventeenth of December, and around dawn on the twenty-third?’
‘I already told this bitch here-’
Ellen stepped close to the bed and neatly clouted him at the hairline.
‘Ow.’ He rubbed his head.
‘Answer the question, Lance.’
‘Like I told you, I was at work.’
‘According to the foreman, you were often liberal with your hours.’
‘Yeah, but not enough to go out and grab and kill someone and stash her somewhere. And if you arseholes done your homework you’d know I started day shift on the twenty-third. Six a.m. start. The wife’s got it written down on the calendar. I know, because I double-checked after you done me over the last time. So I couldn’t of killed whoever it was that time, and I didn’t kill none of the others.’
Challis nodded to Ellen, who left the room.
‘Before your Pajero was stolen, had it ever been used by another person? A friend, neighbour, member of your family?’
‘My sister, my brother-in-law.’
‘I understand your brother-in-law’s been in Thailand for the past month. Who else has had access to it?’
A blush and a twist of sullenness under the red chapped skin. ‘Look, I know it wasn’t registered, I know I’m not licensed at the moment, I’ll cop to that, but I was desperate, I had to get to work.’
‘So you stored it at your sister’s house and drove it from time to time?’
‘Yes. I had to get to work.’
‘Couldn’t your wife have taken you?’
‘She’s got her own work to go to.’
‘You thought that if the police ever happened to check up on you here-checking you weren’t driving around while unlicensed-they’d not see the Pajero, or see you coming and going in it, and they’d assume you were being a good boy.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Not too bright, Lance.’
Ledwich folded his arms sulkily on the bedclothes at his chest.
‘I’ll ask you again, did anyone else drive your Pajero?’
‘No.’
‘What about the station wagon?’
‘The wife’s car.’
‘But you drive it sometimes?’
‘Not often. Not while I was unlicensed. She had this thing about the police confiscating it if I drove it.’
‘Did you take it out this morning?’
‘The wife did. I needed painkillers. She was only gone ten minutes.’
‘Getting back to the Pajero. Did you have occasion to fit another set of tyres to it before Christmas?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Do you own another vehicle?’
‘Do I look like I can afford three?’
‘I’ll come clean with you, Lance,’ Challis said. ‘An investigator found a Cooper tyre track left by your Pajero in Chicory Kiln Road.’
‘Wouldn’t know what tyres I had on it. They were already on it when I bought it.’
‘The vehicle we’re looking for in connection with the murder of Jane Gideon was fitted with a Cooper tyre of the same size and type.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Can you account for that, Lance?’
‘Account for it? You’re stitching me up. You’re running around like headless chooks getting nowhere, so you think, hang on, let’s frame old Lance.’
‘A Cooper all-terrain tyre, quite uncommon, quite distinctive tread pattern.’
Challis saw Ledwich fight with the information, and then saw his face clear and heard him say, what any good defence brief would say: ‘Yeah, but you’re not saying my tyre’s the exact same tyre that you’re looking for, only that it’s similar.’
‘Where did you have your tyres fitted?’
‘I told you, they were already on it. I didn’t take much notice what they were. A tyre’s a tyre to me. Anyhow, anything could have happened after it was stolen. Maybe those what took it fitted new tyres, or maybe the spare was a Cooper tyre and they had a puncture.’
All good defence brief arguments, Challis thought.
At that point, Ellen came in with the calendar. She looked drawn and pale and defeated. Challis huddled with her in the corridor, where she murmured, ‘According to this, he did have a six o’clock start on the twenty- third.’
‘That could have been written in since,’ Challis said. ‘But check with his employer again.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ellen said, ‘Lance has been in bed all day and clearly couldn’t have nabbed Larrayne. So where does that leave us?’
Outside, Challis spoke into his mobile phone. ‘Sir, a request. It will need to be quick.’
‘Try me,’ McQuarrie said.
‘I need a team of uniforms and detectives at Penzance Beach. Sergeant Destry’s daughter hasn’t been seen since this morning.’
Silence. Then, ‘Oh, Lord.’
‘It might not be related, but we have to treat it as if it is. It’s panic stations here.’
‘I should have been informed the minute you knew.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Okay, you can have your extra men,’ McQuarrie said. ‘Do you have any leads at all?’ he added peevishly.
‘Some,’ said Challis coldly, ‘and we’re about to crack that arson death.’
‘Keep me informed, Hal, okay? Regularly.’
‘Count on it, sir.’
Challis pocketed the phone.
