morning tea, she pressed the redial button on Scobie’s phone.

‘Grace Duyker speaking.’

‘This is Sergeant Ellen Destry, of the Waterloo police station-’

The woman cut her off. ‘Are you taking his side? Is that it? Now I’m the ogre?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Look, he’s a nice guy and everything, but it’s inappropriate. I’m happily married. He’s married. I swear I never encouraged him, but he’s got it into his head that I-’

Thinking rapidly, Ellen said, ‘I think he understands that now.’

‘I don’t want to get him into trouble. I don’t want him to get me into trouble.’

‘You have my assurance on that,’ Ellen said.

Pam and Scobie came in, Scobie’s gaze going straight to Ellen on his phone. He looked as though he might burst into tears, but Ellen said pitilessly, feeling like a stern aunt, ‘I was just informing Grace Duyker that she can rely on us to be discreet. Scobie, you’ll endorse that?’

‘Ellen,’ he muttered, head down, while Pam cocked her head and said nothing.

Ellen watched him and pondered. His mortification was genuine: she should trust him. Still, she withheld that. She wanted a stronger indication that he could be trusted.

It came just before lunch. Ellen walked down High Street to the delicatessen, bought three smoked salmon and avocado rolls, and came back to find Pam and Scobie side by side in the incident room, deeply absorbed. She stood back to watch and listen for a couple of minutes, trying to read Sutton. He was explaining the progress and lack of progress in the Katie Blasko case. Pam was asking him questions-but she, also, was trying to read him, Ellen realised. She watched them sift through the statements, photographs and other documentary evidence, Scobie gesturing once or twice as if overwhelmed by the workload. He hadn’t spotted Ellen yet. ‘A ton of stuff to go through,’ he said. ‘Just look at it all: CCTV footage, parking and speeding fines, witness statements to check again.’ He glanced at Pam, trying for humour. ‘I bet you wish you were back in a patrol car.’

‘No thanks, Scobe,’ she said brightly. She peered at the sheet of paper in her hand. ‘Rising Stars Agency,’ she read. ‘What’s this?’

Scobie almost broke then. He told Pam about Duyker’s scam, his voice catching as if he couldn’t comprehend the evil that Duyker represented. ‘My own daughter could have been his next victim.’

Pam was watching Ellen over his shoulder. They communicated silently, instinctively, and Pam said, ‘Oh, hi, Sarge.’

Scobie turned. ‘Sorry. I was just catching Pam up on some things.’

‘Scobie,’ Ellen said, ‘there’s something you should know.’

It took her ten minutes. He was shocked, now and then glancing uneasily at the door, as though Kellock might materialise there.

‘Scobie, keep your cool.’

‘I cant.’

‘Yes you can. You’ll have to.’

They ate lunch hurriedly, and then resumed work, Scobie throwing himself into it, as if work might cure his fear and agitation, and punish him because he’d felt desire for another woman and been naive about human wickedness.

And he found salvation of a kind. ‘I think I’ve got something,’ he said two hours later. ‘Duyker gave us a cash register receipt to prove he wasn’t in Waterloo between three and four on the Thursday Katie was abducted?’

‘Correct. A big newsagency in the city.’

‘Duyker wasn’t there,’ Scobie said, leaning forward and tapping the monitor screen, ‘but Neville Clode was. I’ve got him picking discarded receipts off the floor inside the main door of the newsagency that same afternoon. Five-thirty, to be precise.’

Pam and Ellen joined him. ‘That devious little shit,’ Pam said.

They watched Clode peruse the receipts and dump all but one into a bin. ‘Model citizen,’ muttered Ellen. ‘Back it up, Scobie, to around three-thirty, then roll it forward to five-thirty. We need to double check that neither Clode nor Duyker were there between those times.’

Scobie complied. It took a while. ‘Nope,’ he reported.

‘Okay, let’s pick both of them up. Duyker first.’

They crossed the Peninsula in a CIU Falcon, Scobie directing while Pam drove, flicking the wheel expertly, her pacing and anticipation giving them a smooth ride. Ellen closed her eyes in the back seat and let Scobie twitch and prattle on in the passenger seat.

Finally the car slowed. Ellen opened her eyes. ‘His van’s here,’ Pam said.

‘Scobie, go around the back,’ said Ellen. ‘Pam, you come with me.’

She knocked on Duyker’s door and the fact that it swung open, and the air was saturated with the odour of blood and the buzzing of springtime flies, told her that she was too late, Kellock had got here ahead of her and taken care of a loose end.

60

She went into action. ‘Scobie, head back to Waterloo, grab a couple of uniforms for backup, and arrest Clode.’

‘Will do.’

When he was gone, she made a series of calls, first arranging an all-points apprehension order on Kellock: air, sea and ferry ports, bus terminals, train stations. Then she called Challis. She didn’t need his advice; she wanted to hear his voice, that’s all. But his mobile was switched off or out of range, and had been since yesterday. Finally she called Force Command headquarters and asked for a team of armed response police. There was a pause when she said who the target was.

‘One of ours? You sure?’

‘Perfectly sure. Armed and dangerous. He’s already shot one man dead.’

Another pause. ‘Where exactly are you?’

Ellen gave directions.

‘Take a while to get there. Hour and a half, maybe.’

‘I realise that.’

‘Meanwhile don’t do anything rash.’

‘I won’t,’ Ellen said, immediately taking Pam with her to Gideon House to hunt for Kellock. They’d barely reached the outskirts of Mornington when her mobile rang and Superintendent McQuarrie was barking at her.

‘Tell me this is all a bad joke, Sergeant Destry.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Armed response officers? A warrant for his arrest? What the hell is going on?’

Ellen had to go carefully here. Everyone knew that the super used Kellock for information and influence, but did the relationship go deeper than that? She didn’t say anything about the paedophile ring, or police involvement, but merely said that Kellock was apparently unhinged and had shot dead a witness.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

There had been a time when Ellen might have said ‘So do I’ to herself, but not any more. ‘I do, sir,’ she said with some force.

McQuarrie muttered and broke the call.

Gideon House came into view, set one block back from the Mornington seafront in an overgrown garden. Once a gracious residence, and later a boarding house, it now sheltered street kids and the homeless with funding from the shire and the state government. It looked run-down, and Ellen wondered if the Kellocks were siphoning the upkeep funds into their own pockets, along with abusing the kids in their care.

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