‘We have no evidence of that.’
‘Come on, give me a decent quote.’
‘The police are doing everything possible and welcome any information the public can give us,’ said Ellen flatly.
The reporter rolled her eyes.
‘You’ll be at our re-enactment tomorrow?’ Ellen asked.
‘For what good it will do.’
They went to and fro for several more minutes, and then Ellen showed the woman out. Donna Blasko was there, sitting forlornly in the foyer. The reporter leapt on her. ‘A quick word, Mrs Blasko?’
‘Leave her alone, please,’ Ellen said. ‘Have some decency.’ She happened to glance through the glass doors to the street outside. ‘Look, there’s Superintendent McQuarrie. He’ll give you a statement.’
The reporter hurried out with small cries. Ellen turned to Donna, who was wringing her hands, and said gently, ‘Donna, can I help you?’
‘Any news?’
‘Not yet, but we’re hopeful.’
‘I feel I should be doing something.’
You’re doing more than enough, spreading alarm about abductions and paedophile gangs. Ellen took her to a quiet corner of the canteen. They sipped the awful coffee. ‘The best thing you can do is maintain things at home, Donna. For your sake and your other daughter’s. And Justin’s,’ she added. ‘I understand why you wanted to come in for an update, but we all need you to be strong, at home.’
‘It’s hard,’ Donna Blasko said.
In an office just along the corridor, van Alphen and Kellock were looking out at Superintendent McQuarrie, who was standing on the forecourt of the police station, talking to a reporter. A photographer was snapping away discreetly. Kellock exchanged a wry grin with van Alphen and returned to his seat. ‘Close the door,’ Kellock said.
Van Alphen complied and sat too, resting his heels on the edge of Kellock’s desk, ‘Destry got what it takes, you reckon?’
Kellock shrugged. ‘She’s all right. Covering all the bases.’ It was almost lunch time. They had a few minutes before getting back to Katie Blasko. ‘I saw Nick Jarrett in the street yesterday,’ van Alphen said.
Kellock gazed at him bleakly. ‘And?’
‘The prick grinned at me.’
They thought back to Jarrett in the Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon, the crime that had put him there, the fact that he was a killer and roaming free again. ‘I wanted to wipe it off him,’ van Alphen continued.
Kellock nodded. He and van Alphen went back a long way. ‘The Jarrett name cropped up last night. John Tankard ran a plate number.’
Van Alphen stared at him. ‘The Jarretts were out and about, committing burglaries.’
‘Probably.’
‘Let’s get Tank’s version.’
John Tankard had almost fallen asleep over a pile of folders when Senior Sergeant Kellock called him. He made his way downstairs to Kellock’s office, the bad feelings of last night’s creepy encounter on the back roads still on his mind. Kellock’s door was wide open, Sergeant van Alphen sprawled in the office chair across from him. Tank could tell from the way their faces shut down that they were cooking up something.
Kellock spotted him. ‘Come in, John.’
‘Sir?’
‘You were on duty last night?’
Where was this going? Tank hadn’t made a formal report of his encounter with the Jarrett clan. He darted his gaze from Kellock to van Alphen and back again. ‘Sir.’
‘Anything out of the usual happen?’
‘Not really, sir.’
They watched him, expressionless but fully disbelieving and barely civil, a cop’s gaze. After a while, Kellock said, ‘The collators have been looking at a spate of recent burglaries.’
Tank nodded. The civilian collators charted chronologies, friendship networks, incident patterns. He knew where this was going. ‘Sir?’
Van Alphen spoke for the first time. ‘Look, John, don’t fuck us around, all right?’
Tank went wobbly inside. Of course his numberplate requests last night had been noted by Kellock and van Alphen. ‘Sir, the Jarretts.’
‘That’s better,’ Kellock said. ‘Where?’
Tank told them. ‘They weren’t doing anything at the time.’
‘That’s because they’d just done it,’ said van Alphen, ‘an aggravated burglary a couple of kilometres from where you saw them.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was only a matter of time,’ Kellock said. ‘The occupant was home, and they beat the shit out of him, older bloke, put him in hospital.’ He paused. ‘Was Nick Jarrett among these guys you encountered?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Van Alphen gave his sharkish smile. ‘You didn’t log it in.’
‘Sir, there was no crime being committed and-’
‘Our collators depend on that kind of intelligence gathering, John.’
‘Sorry, sir, won’t happen again.’
There was a pause, and then something happened, a silent communication between Kellock and van Alphen that John Tankard couldn’t decipher.
‘That will be all, constable,’ said Kellock. ‘Go home, put your feet up. Big day tomorrow.’
16
In Mawson’s Bluff, Hal Challis was feeling seriously housebound. At mid-afternoon, his father said gently, ‘Take yourself off for a walk, son.’
‘But what if-’
‘What if I die?’
‘Cut it out, Dad.’
‘Vital signs are in good shape. Heart, lungs, liver, bowels, bladder. Well, enough said about the bladder.’
Challis had heard him at night, slipper-shuffling to and from the bathroom. Several times.
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
And so Challis walked around Mawson’s Bluff for a couple of hours. The town was laid out in a simple grid, with side streets branching off the main street, which was part of the highway. It felt good to get his legs and heart pumping. He was curious to see that no one was about. There were clues to the presence of humans-cars parked in driveways and out in the street-but everyone was inside, spending a dutiful Sunday with relatives. Curtains were drawn over every window. Here and there a lawn sprinkler hissed, a cat arched its back, a dog wandered out from a driveway. Challis heard TV sport at a couple of the houses. The town was low, flattened, almost asleep, and all along the drooping telephone and power lines were the small-town birds, waiting.
He wandered into the grounds of the primary school, crossing dry grass and red dirt, stopping long enough to try the hip-hugging playground slide with an antic joy before continuing among the gum and pepper trees, drawing
