uncapped his pen, tapped his teeth with it. ‘And hello to you, too, Ellen.’
Ellen advanced into the room. ‘Just because she’s a Jarrett doesn’t mean she’s a liar. Before he went to prison, Laurie noticed changes in Alysha. Nightmares, inappropriate sexual behaviour.’
Van Alphen was a few metres away, arms folded and legs outstretched in an old vinyl easy chair. He gave Ellen a chilly smile. ‘Maybe he was diddling her himself. Wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘Or it’s all bullshit,’ said Kellock, rapidly beginning the crossword as he spoke. ‘You know the Seaview poverty, poor parent supervision, parents in jail, all leading to kids wagging school, shoplifting, getting their kicks out of gullible punters…’
‘I’d like to know where the main file is from that time,’ Ellen said. ‘Which one of you two characters got rid of it?’
A couple of Traffic sergeants, rocking an old pinball machine in the corner, looked up with interest. ‘Lower your voice,’ said Kellock contemptuously. ‘And act with professionalism.’
‘I’ve looked everywhere in the system,’ said Ellen. ‘It’s missing, and one or two reports have been tampered with.’
‘Don’t look at us for that,’ van Alphen said. ‘Plenty of agencies are after the Jarretts: the drug squad, major crimes, fraud…’
‘There was nothing to the case anyway,’ said Kellock.
‘The school counsellor thought there was. A psychologist thought there was. And now, after talking to Alysha, I think there’s something worth investigating.’
‘Get more evidence.’
Her face twisting aggrievedly, she told them about Neville Clode’s DNA. Kellock gave her his wintry smile. ‘So you can’t use it in court.’
‘No.’
‘He was attacked last weekend?’
‘I think Laurie Jarrett ordered that as payback for molesting Alysha.’
‘It had nothing to do with the Katie Blasko case?’
Ellen gestured irritably. ‘Clode could be part of a loose circle of paedophiles. They don’t do everything together. Perhaps Alysha Jarrett was his own project.’
Van Alphen was contemptuous. ‘Alysha Jarrett is a little slut.’
‘You decided that before you even investigated the complaint,’ said Ellen hotly, ‘and that’s the story you gave the sex crimes detectives from Melbourne. You didn’t even bother speaking more closely with the other girls who claim Clode molested them.’
‘“Claim” being the operative word.’
‘They support her story.’
Now van Alphen got heated. In the little room where the sergeants got their rest and recreation while in the station, she could smell him, his perspiration and stale aftershave. ‘If there was anything going on,’ he said, ‘it was at the Jarrett bitch’s hands. I know for a fact she was standing over Clode for favours, demanding money, booze and smokes or she’d go to the police and say he’d raped her.’
‘Know for a fact?’
‘Yes.’
‘The fact being that he told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘What amazing insights you have, Van. So you’re saying paedophiles don’t groom their victims, don’t coerce them into abusive relationships. Maybe you even believe that paedophiles are the victims themselves. The children take charge. Is that what you think?’
Kellock interrupted mildly. ‘It’s not unusual, Ellen. Kids enter these relationships willingly in exchange for gifts, then when they get found out or the supply gets cut off, they claim they were forced into it.’
An unholy alliance, Ellen thought, her gaze shifting from one man to the other. Kellock had flown through the crossword. Van Alphen sipped at a mug of coffee-marked, she noticed, like hers: Our day begins when yours ends. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. In effect, you both let Clode carry on abusing children for another eighteen months.’
‘We talked to Mr Clode,’ said van Alphen, smooth now, his outburst forgotten. ‘Alysha’s story was a complete beatup. I’d look more closely at the Jarrett household if I were you.’
Ellen flashed mentally on the Jarrett household and wondered irrationally who Laurie was sleeping with. She sensed all kinds of murkiness, but not father in bed with daughter. But what of the legions of cousins, brothers, stepbrothers, family friends and uncles?
‘The attack on Clode,’ she said.
Van Alphen shrugged. ‘Could be a simple ag burg, could be Laurie decided to get revenge for the kid’s false claims, could be anything.’
‘Laurie is vengeful,’ Ellen said. ‘I’d watch your backs if I were you.’
‘That prick doesn’t scare us,’ van Alphen said.
‘Is that all, Ellen?’ said Kellock. ‘We’re entitled to unwind without plainclothes coming in and hassling us.’
‘Us against them,’ muttered Ellen.
Van Alphen smiled. ‘That’s what policing’s all about.’
She felt tired and discouraged, and changed the subject. ‘Van, have you found any cold cases of interest?’
‘Still looking,’ he told her.
Chain of Evidence
That evening Ellen told Challis about ForenZics and the DNA cockups.
He was perplexed. ‘Go back a step. You used a private lab?’
She told him about McQuarrie’s cost-cutting measures. ‘I’ll call you back,’ Challis said.
She prowled his sitting room, restlessly scanning his CD collection. One caught her eye: k. d. lang, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. She supposed it made sense: Challis seemed to like female vocalists: Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, even Aretha Franklin. What did it say about the role of music in her own life that her car radio was set to a news station and she owned very few CDs-and they were in storage? Her daughter liked techno, her husband the edgier kind of country music, but her CD purchases had always been random and sporadic. Did that denote a formless mind, or the pressures and anxieties of her professional life? She felt obscurely that she’d hate to disappoint Challis.
With her slender forefinger Ellen flipped out the k. d. lang, removed the disc and played it. The strong, sad voice filled her up. She played two of the songs again: Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’ and Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’.
What was keeping Challis?
Twenty minutes later, he said, ‘I had a word with Freya Berg.’
The government pathologist. ‘And?’
‘Good and bad. She’s lost some highly trained people to ForenZics. They pay a lot more and have better equipped labs. But some of their procedures have been suspect or careless.’
He listed a number of instances. Technicians had transported and stored items of clothing with recently-fired automatic pistols, thus transferring gunshot residue; they had stored victims’ clothing with suspects’, thus transferring blood, semen and fibres; they had handled the evidence from different cases over a period of time without changing their gloves; they had even contaminated new evidence with old. In one notorious instance, the DNA of a 2003 rape victim had been found on the clothing of a 2005 murder victim.
‘Great,’ said Ellen. She paused: ‘Maybe McQuarrie holds shares in ForenZics.’
It was good to hear Challis laugh. It was good to hear his encouragement. She told him about Peter Duyker. ‘He and Clode are close, apparently.’
‘If you can’t get Clode, get Duyker.’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’
She’d called his mobile; now she could hear his father’s house phone ringing in the background. ‘I’d better get
