Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (17 page)

Wishart looked wretched. I dont
know. I doubt it very much. Its not like her. She was so busy at work. She
never stays away overnight. If she has a conference interstate or overseas, I
go with her.

You said she could be out in the
field. Doing what?

Inspecting, issuing warnings,
following up on things. She said something about an old house that had been
illegally demolished. People are always clearing vegetation without a permit.
Stuff like that.

She could be inspecting a property
some distance away. She forgot the time, or she has a fiat tyre or engine
trouble. You called her?

Went to voicemail.

The Peninsula is full of black
spots where theres no mobile reception.

Wisharts bony white fists beat the
desk gently while the duty sergeant looked on. I know that. Ive thought of
that.

Then perhaps you should go home,
said Challis, and sit by the phone.

But I did the right thing, didnt
I, reporting it?

Yes, said Challis firmly, knowing
all he could do at this stage was put in a few calls to hospitals and other
police districts. It was far too soon for anything official.

What if shes been in an accident?
What if shes unconscious? Tears spurted. What if shes dead?

The best you can do this late in
the day, said Challis, is go home. Ill start making some enquiries. Go home
and call someone to be with you, a friend or family member. This uncle, for
example. Im sure youll hear something soon.

Thats all? For Gods sake. Wishart
moped out.

Shes done a runner, the sergeant
said.

You could be right.

Challis went out to examine the
moon. Hed missed most of the eclipse. All he saw was a reddish smudge amongst
the stars and the hard edges of the trees around him.

* * * *

23

Scobie
Sutton, his wife Beth and his daughter Roslyn joined the other hundred or so
adults and kids in filing out of the school hall at eight oclock and on to the
basketball courts. Just for ten or fifteen minutes, the school principal
said. Its not every day the moon turns red.

They stood there, looking up. Wispy
cloud above, atmospheric streaks, and there was a partial moon above them,
blurred, a kind of wine colour. Some enterprising types tried to photograph the
effect, the kids began to run around and there was an air of giddiness. Roslyn
had already played her piano solo and sung Zulu Warrior with her little
choir, and Smoke on the Water had been mangledtwiceso Scobie was feeling
pretty good, his wifes oddness temporarily forgotten. Until he looked down at
her and saw that she was bunching the neck of her blouse in one hand and
muttering some kind of incantation, as though encouraged in further madness by
the moon.

* * * *

Ellen
Destry looked at the moon shadows from Hals kitchen window. It was
eight-thirty and she was warm and pink from her bath, wrapped up in pyjamas and
thick socks. Then a peacock sounded its unearthly cry from the farm on the
other side of the hill and the light painting the yard was sufficiently altered
to draw her out onto the lawn. She craned her neck, but couldnt see what the
fuss was about, and went back inside to zap a lean beef casserole in the
microwave.

She was pouring herself a glass of
Elan red when the kitchen phone rang.

Destry, she said.

Its only me.

I left a message

I got it. I could be late: a womans
missing.

Ellen closed her eyes. Young? I
mean, a schoolie? Shed have to take charge if it was a schoolie.

No.

Ellen said, Do you want me to come
in? She did and didnt want to.

No, Ill be fine. Dont wait up.

But she would, and they both knew
it. She replaced the handset, removed the casserole and ate it with the wine in
front of the TV, some crap on one of the commercial channels. It was during an
ad, her attention wandering, that she began to take stock of the sitting room.
She switched off the TV and stood on the worn rug between the armchairs and
wondered what, exactly, bothered her about it.

The dimensions were pleasing. The
room was long, broad, with a high ceiling and a large window looking out onto a
few shrubs and a paling fence. Bookshelves took up the end wall, with one shelf
for CDs. Then, conscious that she was living a clich, she began to note the
things she itched to change. More colour, for a start: paint the walls,
brighter cushions, a new rug. Vases of flowers every day. New curtains. A few

The phone rang again.

Destry.

A woman chirruped, Is that Mrs
Challis?

Ellen went very still, very tight. No,
it is not.

Can I speak to her, please?

What makes you think theres a Mrs
Challis?

Er, this is Mr Challiss number.

So if a woman answers she must be
Mrs Challis?

There was a long pause, freighted
with doubt and confusion. Ellen said sweetly, Now, as you know, were almost
ten years into the twenty-first century: have you ever heard of a man and a
woman with different last names living together, by any faint chance?

The woman sounded unsure. Ye-es.

All right, how about this: have you
ever heard of a woman
marrying
a
man and keeping her own last
name? Think carefully, now.

The voice came in a rush, almost in
tears, so that Ellen felt mean. This is a courtesy call from Telstra, asking
clients if theyre satisfied with their current plans. If I could speak to the
man or the lady of the house...

Ellen slammed the phone down. Night
was settling around the house and the light was very queer. She finished her
glass of red and poured another.

* * * *

Pam
Murphy stood on a patch of cropped lawn between the coin barbecues and the
foreshore trees, watching the moon turn red in silent stages as the earth
glided between it and the sun. Shed been expecting a blood red, but it was no
red that she could name. It was a chocolaty red, a rusty red, a bruised red
with touches of old blood, rendered mistily by thin, vapoury clouds high in the
atmosphere. Like everyone around her, she stood transfixed. All human activity
except the need to congregate and worship was suspended for an hour or so. If
shed been expecting the schoolies to hallucinate, turn strange,
self-destructive or violent, she was mistaken. The red moon mellowed them. They
swayed to inner choruses and seemed inclined to kiss and hug each other.

As she gazed, a little dreamy, hard,
slim arms slid around her. A pair of dry lips tugged briefly on her ear lobe.
The sensation was there and gone before shed quite registered it, leaving a
tingle somewhere inside her.

She whirled around. That could be considered
harassment, constable.

Sorry, got caught up in the moment,
Andy Cree said.

He gave her a look. Shed seen the
same look on the boys whod snatched a kiss and a feel at high school socials
and shed seen it on young offenders, those who had good looks, nerve and
invincibility on their side. She was fighting down a grin, trying to stop her
body responding to the force-field of his, when she noticed John Tankard
standing nearby, looking daggers at them. She sighed. They had a job to do. Focus,
constable, she said, stepping back.

Andy snapped a salute at her. Aye,
aye, maam.

You know the drill: mingle.

She watched Cree fade into the queer
half-light, past the skateboard ramps and the barbecues toward the strip of
half-a-dozen motels and bed-and-breakfast joints. Meanwhile Tank had wandered
off toward the tents, where some of the kids were clustered around a campfire
with blankets and guitars. They flickered in and out of the firelight and
snatches of Dylan and Baez drifted toward her. Dylan and Baez. Even
Im
too
young for Dylan and Baez, she thought.

Otherwise there seemed to be no
purposeful movement anywhere, only a sense of dreaminess. Waterloo was spread
beneath the gentle moon and so far there hadnt been a single pub brawl, drag race
or outbreak of tears.

Pam took High Street first, going up
as far as Blockbuster Video and the Thai restaurant, and back down to the
foreshore reserve. She saw schoolies congregating outside the pubs and noodle
and pizza outlets, but she also saw plenty of locals and their kids. Everyone
was blissed out and so she developed a sense of waiting for things to go wrong.
Midnight would come and the booze and drugs would run out and the buzz wear
off, and disappointments and grievances would set in. She shouldnt be alone
then. The three of them would need to roam as a unit and watch each others
backs.

Time drifted and Pam drifted. She
wanted to feel alert but the night air was mild, subtly perfumedthe gardens in
bloom; the ozone tang of the sea; even the dope the kids were smokingand full
of benign fellow-feeling.

Half hoping that shed encounter
Andy Cree, she drifted to where it was darkest, the rocks and the occasional
scoops of sandy beach between the parkland and the mangroves. She picked her
way left, toward the refinery, and then right, toward the next town, Penzance
Beach, but not intending to walk anywhere near as far as that. Here and there
she found lovers embracing, solitary dreamers, small huddles of murmuring
schoolies, and all around her there was the suck and surge of the black water,
the scrape of fabric against skin and soft moans, sighs and caught breaths.
None of it was her business.

Then she clambered over a
breakwater, attracted by sounds of distress. In the shredded moonlight she saw
the oily mud and spindly lines of a mangrove pocket, and a kid floundering
there, sunk to his shins. She saw him retch violently, waver upright, wipe his
chin, pitch over at the waist again. He was almost naked, wearing only red
scraps over his groin, as though his underpants had become skewed as he
struggled against the mud and his impulse to retch.

Pam climbed down the slick rocks and
reached the spongy mud. The moon above her was no longer red but a high, misty
white orb that slipped in and out of scrappy clouds. Tricky light, but Pam saw,
as she got closer, that the boy
was
naked. It wasnt cotton fabric on
and around his groin but something like paint or lipstick, applied in thick,
bold stripes.

The bitch poisoned me, Josh
Brownlee said wretchedly.

* * * *

24

Thursday
morning.

The two friends had been walking
between Shoreham and Flinders at seven-thirty when they found the body. Not
that they stumbled upon it: rather, they stumbled upon some cows. Theyd never
seen cows on the beach before. Joggers, yes, dogs, dead seals, daily fitness
walkers like themselves, but never cows, even though farmland abutted the
beach.

Two women aged in their forties, one
with short brown hair, the other with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair. Short
Brown Hair indicated the cliff looming above their heads and said, We climbed
to the top and found a hole in the fence.

Challis followed her pointing
finger. Trees and bushes clung thickly to the sloping face of the cliff and
along the ridge. Hed left Ellen up there with the crime scene officers and
taken the women back down to the beach, so that he could sort it all out. You
saw the cows and went to investigate.

Wouldnt you? Theres a big house
up there. We thought we should tell someone.

Challis smiled a kind of apology. He
really didnt want anyone to be stroppy with him right now. I need to write a
simple narrative of events, he said. You climbed to the top, and then what
happened?

We went to the house, said the
blonde one. Both women were approaching middle age but were lithe and fit,
comfortable with their bodies, the beach and their daily walk together.

There was no one home, the other
woman said.

Challis nodded. Hed already
knocked. A huge new house, Swiss chalet style with sheds and a barn, set a
couple of hundred metres back from the cliff where the land began to rise
again, allowing commanding views along the beach in both directions and far out
to sea. Views achieved at a cost, Challis thought: hed counted five huge ash
circles and dozens of tree stumps.

And thats when you saw the car.

Yes.

Challis pictured the setting on the
headland above him. Apart from bashing your way up through the bushes on the
cliff face, or climbing fences on neighbouring farmland, your only access to
the chalet was via a newly gravelled farm road that wound across paddocks from
Frankston-Flinders Road, a kilometre away. Youd pass the driveway entrance on
your way to Flinders and wonder what lucky sods lived along it. There were
mystery driveways and private roads all over the Peninsula and they all led to
money. This driveway stopped at a double gate in a post-and-rail fence one
hundred metres uphill and behind the house and sheds.

The car was... prompted Challis.

Stopped at the gate with the drivers
door open. We didnt touch it.