‘He rubbed several farmers up the wrong way. He came down hard on anyone who wasn’t treating his sheep or horses or dogs right.’
‘Mrs Hurst, do you own a gun?’
Meg’s hand flew to her heart. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘Surely your husband owned one, to shoot dangerous animals, put sick and injured ones out of their misery.’
She frowned. ‘Now that you mention it, he did. A little.22 rifle.’
‘It was found in his car,’ muttered the old man.
‘It was?’ said Meg. ‘What happened to it?’
‘I handed it in to be destroyed.’
‘You didn’t tell me that.’
Challis was watching Nixon and Stormare, who were in turn watching the exchange. His sister and his father were asking some of the questions they wanted to ask and getting the answers they wanted to hear. Stormare turned to Wurfel. ‘Dig up the paperwork.’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you have a bullet,’ asked Challis, ‘or fragments?’
Stormare ignored him. ‘Are there any other firearms in the family?’
‘No,’ snarled the old man, ‘but this is a farming area. Rifles and shotguns all over the place.’ ’
‘We’ll be sure to look into it,’ Nixon said, giving a smart clap of his hands as if to say, Time you went home now.
‘You treat my daughter with the respect she deserves. All these years she thought he was alive.’
‘Dad,’ said Meg.
‘Find the person who sent her those letters and you’ll find your killer.’
The Adelaide detectives went very still. Challis watched their minds working even as they gave nothing away.
‘Letters?’ said Nixon.
Wurfel coughed. ‘I was going to tell you. It’s in the Misper file.’
‘Dad,’ said Meg, ‘how did you know? Did Mum tell you?’
He gestured impatiently. ‘Doesn’t matter. Tell them.’
Meg turned to Nixon and Stormare. ‘I thought it was Gavin, mocking me, trying to hurt me. Magazine subscriptions, memberships, credit card applications. I thought it was Gavin.’ She swallowed. ‘Even a subscription to Playboy. That was the hardest to take. We hadn’t exactly been intimate for some time.’
The old man rocked a little and closed his eyes.
‘Did you keep any of them?’ said Stormare.
‘No.’
Both detectives turned to Challis with the kinds of clever, assessing smiles that he’d given over the years. ‘I don’t suppose you saw any of this mail?’
‘No. But look at her. Look at the hurt.’
They sighed. ‘Perhaps you could come to the station and make a statement, Mrs Hurst. Tomorrow morning, nine sharp.’
Meg glanced anxiously at Challis. ‘Can my brother come with me?’
‘No.’
Challis’s father made some phone calls when the police had left. A lawyer friend from a nearby town agreed to accompany Meg the next morning. The family’s dentist confirmed that he’d been asked for Gavin’s dental X-rays. The effort exhausted the old man, and soon he was slumped in his chair, apparently asleep. By now it was 10 pm.
Meg glanced at Challis, the tension tight in her face. ‘First Dad to contend with, now this.’
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘I didn’t kill him.’
‘I know you didn’t. I mean, why would you?’
It was a rhetorical question, but Meg looked away and Challis felt his heart thump. ‘Meg?’
‘He was going to divorce me.’
‘And?’
‘He was going to rewrite his will, leaving everything to the RSPCA and sell this house.’
Challis knew that people had murdered for less compelling reasons. ‘Sounds weak to me, sis.’
‘But they’ll investigate and think that’s why I killed him. I mean, not that I did kill him.’
Challis placed his arm around her. ‘Come and sit down and tell me about it.’
They talked for an hour, murmurs punctuated by their father’s snores and heart-stopping silences when he didn’t seem to breathe at all. As Meg told it, Gavin had been subject to violent mood swings for almost two years. Sometimes he was manically happy, but was more often depressed and angry. The mistreatment of animals distressed him deeply, he accused Meg of being unfaithful to him, he became protective and narrow as Eve’s body matured after puberty, and he often threatened suicide. ‘Threatening to divorce me, sell the house and cut us out of the will was typical of what he was like at the time he disappeared. I mean, was killed.’
‘So you had no reason to suspect anything else?’
‘Naturally I thought he must have committed suicide, especially when they found his car abandoned out east, but then I started to get that weird mail and thought he’d staged his disappearance and wanted to taunt me. He’d run away because he couldn’t cope, but still wanted me to suffer.’
‘Tell the police that.’
‘I will’
‘When was the last bit of strange mail?’
‘Two, three years ago. I hired a private detective. He didn’t get anywhere.’
‘Why didn’t you ask me for help?’
‘You’re so far away, and so busy.’
Challis felt mortified. He tried to swallow it. ‘Tell the police that, too. Show them receipts.’
‘Okay. But who sent me the mail? Why would they do that?’
Challis shrugged. ‘The killer, I suppose, trying to throw everyone off track.’
Paying attention to his doubts and suspicions, even uncomfortable ones, had always been Challis’s main tool in detective work. He couldn’t ignore the possibility that Meg, or the old man, or both of them acting in concert, had shot Gavin. The mysterious mail had been a useful bit of misdirection. The rifle that had been handed in for official destruction had been the murder weapon. The desire to find out what had happened to Gavin was fierce in him now.
‘Fancy Dad knowing,’ Meg said. ‘Mum must have told him before she died.’ She laughed, brief and rancorous. ‘Not that it changed anything. Dad’s always been good at holding conflicting beliefs simultaneously. Or his mind’s going.’
Challis patted her back, rocked her against him briefly. ‘Where were you the day he disappeared, assuming he died the same day?’
‘Here.’
‘Can anyone vouch for that?’
‘God, I don’t know, it was so long ago.’
He held her hand. They were not a demonstrative family, but holding her hand felt right to both of them. ‘Meg, I saw the file they have on Gavin at the local station.’
Something closed down in her face. ‘Did you?’
‘Gavin used to hit you.’
She looked at him steadily. ‘Only a couple of times. At the end. But I didn’t kill him.’
He nodded. ‘Did he hit Eve?’
‘If Gavin had hit Eve I would have left him, no mistake.’
‘Anyone else? Dad, for instance?’
