Jarretts should have been evicted long ago, but the Waterloo cop shop was understaffed, like many on the Peninsula, the Jarretts were cunning, and the younger constables found excuses to respond late, or not at all, to callouts to the Jarrett house. Meanwhile the Housing Commission bureaucrats lived in the city, not on the estate, and liked to say that they worked for a government that stood for the battlers in society. In their view the Jarretts paid their rent (more or less), hadn’t trashed the house much), and were a struggling family deserving of charity, not criticism, from those who were luckier than they were. Besides, it was argued, the Commission’s resources were stretched to the limit.
Did they have a fleet of brand-new, fuel guzzling four-wheel-drives too? wondered Scobie.
If Nick Jarrett had been convicted, he thought, we could have made a start on dismantling the whole clan. Pursued charges against the others, found decent homes for the kids, weakened Laurie Jarrett’s power base.
Now they’d have to start all over again.
Just then a marked patrol car pulled up behind him and tooted. He glanced in the mirror: Pam Murphy and John Tankard, here to watch the Jarrett house. Scobie waved and drove on to the Community Centre and there was his wife. ‘Hello, love,’ she said, taking him away from all of the badness for a while.
On the other side of Waterloo, Ellen Destry was asking Donna Blasko how she was coping.
‘I’m a wreck,’ Donna told her, ‘all this coming and going.’
‘It must be hard,’ Ellen said. ‘Have you thought any more about where Katie might have gone?’
Donna shook her head. ‘We’ve both been out searching.’
‘Yeah,’ said Justin Pedder, ‘doing your job for you.’
Ellen ignored him. ‘No one’s seen anything? Heard anything?’
Donna shook her head. ‘Maybe Katie’s trying to ride her bike to my mother’s place.’
Ellen went very still. Bike. Why was she only just learning about a bike? Why hadn’t it occurred to her that there would be a bike? ‘Katie rides to school?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you describe the bike for me?’
‘Just a bike.’
‘A Malvern Star,’ said Justin. ‘Gears, a pannier. I keep it in good nick for her.’
‘And Katie would have been riding her bike when she left school yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she also have a helmet? A school bag?’
Donna nodded wretchedly. ‘We looked everywhere. She can be a bit careless sometimes, you know how kids are, she’s coming home from school and meets a friend and just dumps her stuff on the ground while she has a play, then comes home empty-handed. But no way would she leave her Tamagotchi on the footpath, it was her favourite thing in the whole world.’
Two streets away, Sasha was home. A cross between a Shi-Tzu and a Silky Terrier, with a squashed-in face and adenoidal breathing, Sasha was small, guileless and hairy. She didn’t discriminate between humans, for all humans adored her. She sought them out. She sought warmth- human and sun. When she’d jumped into the Tarago van yesterday, it wasn’t the first time she’d done something like that. Last year she’d travelled all over the Peninsula in the back of an electrician’s van, asleep under the guy’s spare overalls. When called on his mobile phone by Sasha’s owner, he’d sworn black and blue that Sasha wasn’t with him. The poor owner had gone out of his mind looking for Sasha, phoning the dog pound, the RSPCA, all the vets in the local phone book. Then, at the end of a long day, he’d received a sheepish call from the electrician: ‘Got your dog here, mate. Sorry.’
Everyone knew the story, and so, when an elderly woman who lived on Trevally Street saw Sasha jump out of an unfamiliar white van that Friday afternoon, she smiled indulgently and watched Sasha race home. The stories she could tell if she could talk, thought the old woman fondly. What adventures has she had this time?
If Sasha had been able to talk, she might have revealed that she hadn’t been fed for twenty-four hours. She also hadn’t been loved for twenty-four hours. Her instincts had told her to cuddle up to the child, but the child had been asleep for most of the time. At one point Sasha had bared her teeth in protection of the child, had even drawn blood, and been kicked clear across the room for her pains.
7
Sitting in the patrol car outside the Jarrett house, John Tankard was thinking about life after Pam Murphy.
He felt betrayed. Sure, he knew that he’d often rubbed her up the wrong way, and she hadn’t appreciated his clumsy attempts to get her to sleep with him over the years, but he’d always counted her as an ally, one of the gang, us against them-them being ordinary citizens, crooks and senior police officers.
Now she was leaving him behind, stepping over a line that would take her into the ranks of the enemy. He didn’t know if he could work with anyone else. Would a new partner put up with his bullshit, or report him? Would a new partner watch his back? Console him when things got a bit rough, personally speaking?
He shifted in his seat, half closed his eyes and gazed at the Jarretts’ wreck of a house. Three cars crowded the front yard: a rusting Toyota twin-cab, a little black Subaru and a lowered silver Mercedes with smoky windows. Just then, four Jarrett kids came out, boys, one of them sauntering over to the front gate, where he turned and swiftly dropped his jeans. Pale, skinny shanks. Tank was furious. ‘We can arrest him for that.’
Murphy said wearily, ‘Leave it, Tank.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Tank uselessly.
Who at Waterloo did he like and trust apart from Pam? Some of the other constables were okay, guys you could have a beer with, but they came and they went. The plain-clothed crew, like Challis, Destry and Sutton, were a bit up themselves. Kellock and van Alphen were okay, old-school coppers crippled by the kinds of procedures and regulations that made it hard to do your job properly. Yeah, John Tankard had plenty of time for Kellock and van Alphen.
Pity they were a lot older than him. Pity they were senior in rank. He couldn’t see either of them becoming his best pal when Murph left. He respected them, that’s all. Looked up to them. Thank Christ he had that in his life.
Two girls aged about ten walked past, beating their knees with tennis racquets. Sweet kids, friends, not a care in the world. Then they saw the Jarretts and veered away, suddenly afraid, and John Tankard acknowledged what was at the back of his mind: an image of Natalie, his kid sister, and how awful it would be if anything ever happened to her.
The radio crackled. Sergeant van Alphen was replacing them. Apparently Sergeant Destry had called an urgent briefing.
Pam was glad of the reprieve. It was close in the patrol car; even closer, with big, sweaty John Tankard behind the wheel, overheated from watching the Jarretts and from learning that she might be leaving the uniform behind. Even so, she couldn’t see any harm in raising the temperature a little. ‘Are you going to miss me, John?’
She usually called him Tank. He scowled and muttered, reading ‘John’ as an insult, and pressed hard on the accelerator pedal.
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that?’
‘Think your shit doesn’t stink.’
‘Charming as ever.’
She looked away at the run of tyre outlets and engineering firms that lay between the estate and the
