Challis was less enthusiastic. ‘But you’re not off the hook?’
‘Well surely-’
‘So long as you’re not behind bars, sis,’ he said hastily.
She was disconcerted. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Bye,’ Challis said to the empty air.
‘That was Mum?’
‘She’s back home.’
‘I should be with her.’
Challis nodded and they drove back to Mawson’s Bluff. He ran Eve through the gauntlet outside her house and then drove to the hospital, where he was directed to the cafeteria, an airy, clattering room in the east wing. Minchin sat at a window table, staring out at the scrubby trees that separated the town from one of the adjacent farms. He’d pushed a partly consumed plate of lettuce, spinach, fetta, olives and bamboo shoots to one side and was dreaming over a mug of black coffee.
‘Not fond of grass?’
The doctor gave him a tired smile. ‘Trying to lose weight.’
‘And bound to succeed if you don’t actually eat.’
‘Yeah, yeah. You’re here about Gavin?’
‘Is he still in the morgue?’
Minchin shook his head. ‘The lab.’
Meaning the forensic science lab in Adelaide, three hundred kilometres south. Challis was disappointed: he’d wanted to view the body. ‘But you did the preliminary examination?’
‘I pronounced death,’ said his friend.
‘Very funny.’
‘Well and truly deceased.’
‘Gunshot to the head?’
‘Gunshot to the back of the head.’
‘Shotgun? Handgun? Rifle?’
‘A single entry wound, single exit wound with massive damage, so not a shotgun. And probably not a low calibre handgun or rifle.’
‘Gavin apparently travelled around with a.22 rifle. You’re saying it couldn’t have been the murder weapon?’
‘Very doubtful.’
‘Any fragments?’
‘Hal, I don’t have the resources to determine things like that. Contact the lab.’
‘I will. But you did match his teeth to his dental records?’
‘Yes, and there were a couple of broken ribs, old knitted fractures.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Gavin was kicked by a horse about ten years ago. I patched him up. Still have the X-rays.’
‘In that case you needn’t have taken a DNA swab from Eve.’
‘Just covering bases, Hal, you know that.’
Challis scowled and they brooded together, two men who’d once been close and had complicated ties to the dead man.
‘So he couldn’t have shot himself,’ Challis said after a while, ‘and he couldn’t have buried himself
‘But someone could have shot him by accident and panicked.’
‘You’re doing my job for me.’
‘But is it your job, Hal?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Those Adelaide detectives.’
‘What about them?’
‘They asked me about you.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Did they ask you where you were? And if you own a rifle?’
Minchin opened his mouth, shocked and appalled, then swiftly angry. ‘Fuck you.’
‘Rob, sit down, I’m only asking questions that you’ll be asked sometime or other, by the police or the coroner.’
‘Just because I went out with Meg a few times twenty years ago.’
There was more to it than that, Challis thought. ‘Yes.’
‘Yours is a pretty shitty job, you know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know where I was when Gavin disappeared? In the UK.’
‘The UK?’
‘Medical conference. On providing distance health care.’
‘In the UK?’
‘Some of those moors towns are several miles apart, Hal.’
Challis grinned. ‘True. So that lets you off the hook.’
Minchin was relaxing slowly. ‘I could have put out a contract, of course.’
‘Let me jot that down.’
They stared out at the drying landscape, some wildflowers here and there, aroused by a short-lived springtime rain before Challis had arrived in the district.
‘I have to do my rounds now.’
‘They questioned Meg this morning,’ Challis said.
‘Is she okay?’
‘Well, she’s not under arrest.’
‘Should I, you know, call on her?’
Challis weighed it up, even though he knew the answer. ‘Not yet.’
‘You know, Hal, not once did I make a move on Meg after Gavin disappeared.’
Challis gazed at his friend. Did Rob want forgiveness, understanding, absolution? Did he want permission to woo Meg now? Meg had once bawdily confessed to Challis that she hadn’t wanted Rob as the family doctor, taking pap smears, squeezing her breasts for lumps. And forget about him putting his hands on Eve. She didn’t mean that Rob was creepy, just a little inept, a little pathetic, as he’d tried to go beyond first base with her in the backseat of his car when they were growing up. There had always been a kind of gingery, soft-fleshed lack of appeal about Rob Minchin, poor sod. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of murder. Challis said, ‘I think she’ll need plenty of time and space, Rob.’
‘Point taken.’
35
‘Peter Duyker,’ said Ellen Destry that same morning.
Faces tired, glum and plain resistant stared back at her. Van Alphen hadn’t even bothered to attend the briefing. Kellock was flipping through and annotating a folder of reports and statements unrelated to the Blasko case. She wanted to say: What is it with you people? Is it because Katie’s a child? Is it because she wasn’t murdered? Suddenly irritated, she rapped the display board with her knuckles. ‘Neville Clode’s brother-in-law,’ she explained, her voice sharp and loud.
There was a stir of interest. The photographs were candid shots, taken with a telephoto lens by Scobie the previous afternoon, and showed a fibro shack on stilts, tangled foliage, Duyker carrying groceries into the house, a
