‘Thank God for that. When will you be back?’
‘I left a note on the table. I’ll stay overnight, work in the library tomorrow, and come home tomorrow evening.’
‘Sweetie, can you stay away longer?’
Larrayne was the daughter of police officers. She said warily, ‘Something’s happened.’
Ellen said simply, ‘Someone might try to do me harm.’
‘Mum! You can’t stay at that house any more, out in the middle of nowhere!’
‘I know that, sweetheart.’
‘Well?’
‘I’ll find somewhere else, I promise.’
‘I don’t like this,’ said Larrayne, a little hysterical now. ‘Van was shot. Are the same people after you?’
‘Not if I get them first.’
Larrayne went into full paranoia mode. ‘Text me, okay? Or send an e-mail with the details. Don’t trust the phones.’
‘I will, sweetie.’
Ellen finished the call and went to the head of the stairs to listen. The station was muted but not dead. She heard voices and laughter. Suddenly Pam Murphy’s voice came crackling out of the public address speaker above Ellen’s head. There was an edge to it. Ellen listened tensely, realising that Pam was in trouble. But as she listened, she relaxed. Soon she was grinning. She said aloud, ‘Good one, Pam,’ and returned to the incident room, where she made a call.
‘I need you back here now.’
‘Sarge,’ Pam said, ‘I’m sorry about the radio business, but-’
‘Forget that. I need you on another matter.’
‘Sarge.’
While she waited, Ellen mused. She dipped into her store of Kellock memories, Kellock over the past few weeks. The cuts on his hands, that morning she asked for extra uniforms. Scratches? From a dog, or Katie Blasko? The briefings in which he’d discredited Alysha Jarrett. The briefings in which he’d emphasised the DNA cockups. He’d been protecting Clode and Duyker, she realised. And in murdering van Alphen, he’d been protecting the entire ring.
But how did Billy DaCosta factor into all of this? How had Kellock got to him in time? Had Kellock intimidated or paid the kid into changing his story? Had Billy acted alone, spurred by the murder of van Alphen? Or had van Alphen, a man who would help shoot dead a criminal in the interests of meting out rough justice, not hesitated to create a ‘witness’ to bring down Kellock’s gang?
There were no women in the lives of Clode and Duyker, but Kellock had a wife. A wife who suspected something? Colluded? Knew nothing? Ellen had once investigated a case of child abduction and murder in which the killer had a wife and children. On the surface he was a decent, plausible man, who went to church and was active in youth groups. When arrested, he’d denied everything. Then he’d claimed that the child had been the instigator. Then he said the child had choked in his car and he’d panicked and buried her. A kind of accident, in other words: can I go home now? Finally, as Ellen and the other investigators pulled apart his story, he got angry. A moment later he was full of apologies-not for losing his temper, as such, but for allowing his faзade to slip. Yet it was the man’s wife whom Ellen remembered. She’d known nothing of her husband’s hidden life, or his past convictions for indecent exposure to children. She was protective of him. She dismissed everything that Ellen had to say.
But Ellen had sown a seed. Before long the woman remembered that her husband had washed his own clothes on the day of the murder. He’d never done that before. He’d also washed and vacuumed his car, something he never did unless the family was going on vacation.
Men like him are dead inside, Ellen thought now, feeling spooked by a movement in the window. She’d signed for a service.38 and put her hand on the butt, ready to slip it out of the holster on her hip. But it was only a passing headlight-possibly reflected upwards from a raked windscreen-catching the corner of the whiteboard. On an impulse, she called Challis in South Australia.
Voice-mail.
She badly needed him here. She didn’t deny it. She wanted his stillness. It was a supple kind of stillness. He was respected, and respectful, but people were wary, too, for they couldn’t always read him. He was good at spotting complexities and nuances that others missed, but he also knew when to look the other way in the interests of commonsense and the best outcomes. He was a chameleon sometimes, able to connect with a homeless kid one moment and a clergyman the next. He remembered names: not only of criminals, informants and the people in the corner milk bar but also their families, friends and acquaintances.
She also liked the shadows and planes of his face. The way his backside looked in a pair of pants, too, a nice distracting thought while it lasted. But right now she needed to know what he’d do, if he were stuck in her situation. She swivelled agitatedly in her office chair.
Funny how the mind works. Stuck in her situation. There was that old Creedence song she’d played last night, ‘Stuck in Mobile again’. Why did place names in American popular songs sound mysterious, sad, romantic? She’d also played ‘Sweet home, Alabama’, singing along to the words. Yeah, she could see that working in Australia: ‘Sweet home, New South Wales’…’Stuck in Nar Nar Goon North again’… ‘Twenty-four hours from Wagga Wagga’.
‘Sarge?’
Ellen jumped.
‘I did knock, Sarge.’
‘Sorry, million miles away,’ Ellen said. ‘Close the door, pull up a chair.’
‘Sarge,’ Pam said, obliging.
‘You had a little fun tonight,’ Ellen said, when they were settled. It was now 10 pm.
Pam laughed. ‘Not the first time it’s happened to me. Back when I was fresh out of the academy they sent me to an address, said Mr Lyon was drunk and disorderly. It was the zoo.’
Ellen grinned. ‘They sent me to the arms locker to get a left-handed revolver.’
God, that had been twenty years ago. Without wasting any more time, Ellen told Pam everything, watching the younger woman shift from perky interest to distaste and finally nervy alertness as she responded with the question uppermost in Ellen’s mind: ‘If they can kill Van, what’s to stop them from killing us?’
Ellen felt a tiny surge of hope. Pam had used the word ‘us’. It said that she saw herself as part of a team.
‘We need to work fast. We need to talk to Billy DaCosta again; for a start.’
‘I saw him at Van’s,’ Pam said, explaining the circumstances.
Ellen regarded the younger woman for some time. ‘You were fond of Van, weren’t you?’
Pam nodded, her eyes damp. ‘I know he wasn’t a paragon of virtue, Sarge, but he was on the right side.’
Ellen nodded. ‘You’re going to his funeral?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
There was a brief, fraught pause, then Ellen coughed and said, ‘Here’s my interview with Billy. See if it tells us anything.’
She aimed the remote control and pushed the play button. Pam watched. She stiffened. ‘That’s not Billy DaCosta.’
Ellen paused the tape. ‘That’s not the kid you saw at Sergeant van Alphen’s house?’
‘Positive. Completely different kid. Sure, there are vague similarities-same sort of clothing, same grubby gothic look-but that’s not the Billy I was introduced to.’
Ellen was silent. They looked at each other. ‘The real Billy’s dead,’ Pam said.
‘Yes.’
‘God,’ Pam said fervently, ‘the nerve, the ability, not only to kill Van but also substitute a witness to discredit him.’
‘The substitute could also be dead.’
‘Sarge, I’m scared.’
