Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (18 page)

Go on.

At first we didnt know if it
belonged to the house or to someone visiting, said the short-haired one, but
we needed to tell someone about the cows.

So you approached the car...

The friends, until then enlivened by
their adventure, seemed to flinch. And thats when we saw Ludmilla lying on
the ground, said the blonde.

Challis was astonished. You
recognised her?

When I got closer, the blonde
said.

Hed already called in the
numberplate. The car, a silver Golf, was registered to one Ludmilla Wishartnot
that hed made the mistake of assuming victim and registered owner were one and
the same person, a fuck-up hed made many years ago, back when he was a
probationary constable. But hed taken one look at the body and recognised her
from the photographs left by Adrian Wishart last night.

I need to know if either of you
touched the body.

I did, said the woman with short
hair. Im a midwife. I couldnt feel a pulse.

Did either of you stand or crouch
near her?

Yes.

Challis nodded. The ground around
the body was hard, but the women might have shed hair, lint or threads. One of
them had vomited some distance from the car and the body. The other
contaminants? The weather, the killer, the various experts attending at the
scene.

You called it in by mobile phone?

Yes. The ambulance got here first,
the police soon afterwards.

A couple of uniforms from Waterloo,
who had called CIU, getting Scobie Sutton. How well did you know Mrs Wishart?

I recognised her, but I dont..
.didnt know her except professionally. She struck me as strict about
regulations, but also fair. Not a planning Nazinot with me, anyway.

Challis tried to put that with what
hed seen up on the headland thirty minutes earlier. Ludmilla Wishart was lying
on her side at the rear of the car, blood pooled beneath the spread of auburn
hair, upper body in the dirt, feet in the roadside grasses. The drivers door
was open.

Shed been felled with one powerful
blow to the back of the head, according to Dr Berg, the pathologist on duty
today. Rigor was fully established, Dr Berg said, meaning shed been dead for
twelve hours or more.

No one else came along while you
waited?

Its not a through road.

Challis nodded. Thanks for your
time.

He took their details and watched
them walk back toward Shoreham, shoulders touching, deep in conversation. If
the owners of the chalet were away and no one used the access road, the body
could have remained undiscovered for days. He turned and made for the
shallowest incline on the cliff face, where a rudimentary path switchbacked
between bracken, ti-trees, mossy logs and blackberry canes. Two minutes later
he was at the top again, scratched, burred and out of breath. With one hand on
a rotting post for a fulcrum, he vaulted the fence. It was a poor excuse for a
fence, broken wires snaking through tangles of grass, the top barbed strand
almost rusted through, the posts leaning or fallen away to friable remnants.

He trudged along a newer fence line
that ran perpendicular to the cliff top and past the chalet. The grass was damp
and cow pats sat like broad plates of evil black mould wherever he put his
feet. But at least hed thought to bring rubber boots with him.

And there was Ellen, by the victims
car. Since yesterday evening hed almost told her several times that McQuarrie
wanted her to head a new unit, but the super had sworn him to secrecy for the
time being. He wanted Challis to think about
which
unit, given her
abilities and inclinations. Take your time and get back to me, hed said.

Feeling burdened suddenly, Challis
waved as he climbed the slope. She waved back. Having fun? she called.

He joined her, replying, My daily
exercise. Any joy?

Not yet.

Together they gazed past the silver
Golf to where Scobie Sutton and the two uniforms were performing a grid-pattern
search for the murder weapon. The doc thinks a tyre iron.

From the victims car?

Ellen shook her head. Hasnt been
disturbed.

At that moment a tow truck appeared.
Scobie put up his hand to stop it. The driver nodded, switched off, settled
with a newspaper. He might be there an hour before the scene was released so
that he could load the car and cart it to the forensic science centre in the
city.

Meanwhile the pathologist was still
examining the body and the crime scene officers were searching the immediate
area around it, stepping from one metal plate to another and often ducking with
paper sacks and tweezering up some tiny fragment of possible evidentiary value.
Others were examining the dirt for tyre impressions, and one was poking around
inside the car.

Are we thinking the husband? asked
Ellen.

Hes first on the list. But she was
the shires planning infringements officer, so she probably made enemies.

Ellen nodded. Scobie was
approaching, holding an evidence bag carefully. Found some dry mud.

This is the countryside, Scobie,
Ellen said.

He flushed. Its not soil from this
area. This is dark clay, the mud is reddish.

They peered into the evidence bag. A
faint odour of the grassy earth wafted from the neck. Not an ordinary clump but
smooth and regular on two sides. Well spotted, Scobie, Challis said. From
the inside of a wheel arch?

Looks like it.

Get it to forensics along with
everything else, ask them to work out the make and model of car, if possible,
and where on the Peninsula the mud comes from.

Will do.

And when you get back to CIU, start
checking the victims last known movements since lunchtime yesterday. Check if
she used her credit card anywhere, phone calls, the usual.

Boss, said Sutton. He looked more
alive than hed done for days, Challis thought.

We also need to know who owns this
property and why Mrs Wishart was here.

Cant Pam do that?

Pams working an assault from last
night.

Fair enough, Scobie said. He
looked inquiringly at Challis and Ellen. The husband?

First port of call.

The technician searching inside the
car called, Found a laptop, inspectorunder the passenger seat.

Challis called his thanks and sat in
the CIU Falcon with Ellen, trying to think his way into the desires, hurts and
fears of the killer. He always did it, always did it immediately, even at the
risk of jumping to early conclusions. Of course theyd look at the husband
first. Statistics told them to look at a family member ahead of anyone else.
Also, Challis knew to search for the simple answer first. It would involve the
five key factors of victim, motive, weapon, evidence and culprit. So far, all
he had for sure was a victim and by implication a culprit.

* * * *

25

When
the forensics officers had finished with the scene, Challis and Destry left,
Ellen driving, Challis working his mobile phone, arranging for the loan of a
couple of detectives from Mornington. That completed, he folded his arms in the
passenger seat and mused for a while. The victims car, he said.

What about it?

There was no mud inside the wheel
arches.

Or the road corrugations shook it
loose.

Challis shaded his eyes, for they
were heading into the rising sun. The mud Scobie found wasnt from her car.
The shape was wrong.

Or it came from a car that was on
that road legitimately.

Yeah, yeah, rain on my parade.

Just doing my job, Ellen said. It
was what they did, floated scenarios and sank the weak ones.

Challis placed his hand on her
thigh. That was wrong on all kinds of professional levels but McQuarrie had
offered a way out yesterday and besides, he wanted to feel the coiled strength
in her, the heat and promise.

Dont, she said, adding, boss.

He folded his arms. Approximate
time of death, according to Freya Berg, was sometime late yesterday afternoon
or evening. The husband came into the station at around eight.

It was cool by late afternoon,
early evening, Ellen said, but she hadnt put her cardigan on, it was still
on the back seat. She was wearing just a T-shirt. That points to an earlier
rather than a later time of death.

Unless she was someone who never
felt the cold; or shed been sitting in the car, waiting for someone.

Ellen turned down the corners of her
mouth, thinking about it. Either way, we need to know the husbands movements
for the whole afternoon. She paused. Does it seem personal to you, Hal? She
was bashed by someone she knew rather than a passing fruitcake?

Challis thought about it. There was
real anger there. Same with Lachlan Roe.

God, theyre not connected?

I didnt mean that, only that we
might not be looking at a stranger in either case.

They crested small hills and slowed
for the township of Balnarring, stuck behind a Landseer School bus, which
pulled into the shopping centre and stopped to collect a handful of kids. Ellen
accelerated away, past the garage, the fire station and dwindling houses until
they were in a region of rampant spring grasses, kit homes, boutique wineries
and alpaca herds. There was a sign outside one house, Giant Garage Sale
Saturday. A low, moist field was dotted with ibis and herons. A bouquet of
flowers lay wilting at the base of a tree, a death tree, scarred where a car
had collided with it.

Challis daydreamed. Hed miss
working with Ellen. He wouldnt miss being her boss, though. She should head
the new sex crimes unit, he thought suddenly. With the population explosion and
increased social distress on the Peninsula,
reported
rapes and sexual
assaults were on the increase, meaning that the true figures were much higher.
The only drawback was that Ellen would be expected to operate out of
Mornington. I cant have you both in the same station, Hal, surely you see
that, the super had said.

But Mornington was only twenty
minutes away.

Soon Ellen was steering past more
houses and over a school crossing, and the smudge in the distance was Waterloo.
On the outskirts she turned left and up a winding rise to where big new homes
sat on large lots and the sounds of the weekends were ride-on mowers, trail
bikes, clopping hooves and barbecues. Professional people like the Wisharts
lived on this estate, alongside prosperous shopkeepers and expert tradespeople.
They had huge mortgages, distant bay views across Waterloo on the flatland
below and all the space they needed for their kids and their gardens.

A prosperous enclave, but still a
million dollars away from the cliff-top property where Ludmilla Wishart had
died. What had she been doing there? Who lived there? City people, guessed
Challis, remembering the long grass and dusty windows. They visit the place
only occasionally and therefore dont
need
a vast chalet but merely want
one.

Where to? asked Ellen.

Shed come to a couple of branching
roads named for ex-prime ministers. Menzies, said Challis. Lot 5.

She steered with a twist of the
wrist. Challis liked watching her, even as he was thinking about the murder and
how hed inform Adrian Wishart that his wife was dead. Where was her handbag?
he said suddenly.

Exactly.

Opportunistic? A mugging? But its
not a through road. The handbag was taken to make it look like a robbery? They
missed the laptop under the seat.

Scobies checking out her credit
card, so that might tell us something. Especially if its been used to buy a
surfboard or something.

Ellen eased the CIU Falcon gently
over the kerb and into the driveway of a corrugated iron house. Challis decided
that he liked the house. It was partly the iconic appeal of the corrugated
iron, which could be found on every roof and woolshed in rural Australia, and partly
the design of this particular house, which was saved from looking like an
outback shed by dormer windows set in a steeply pitched roof, a balcony and
broad verandas. And he was feeling anticipatory: he wanted to take a closer
look at Wishart, know that he was the killer, and wrap this up by teatime, but,
at the same time, he was dreading being the bearer of bad news.

A red Citroen was parked in a
carport hung with vines. Wont be a moment, he said, and as Ellen marked time
with her seatbelt, keys, mobile phone, jacket and notebook, he trotted to the
Citroen and crouched at each wheel arch. There was dust, no mud, and the recess
was a different configuration from the one that had shaped the mud found at the
murder scene.

He rejoined Ellen and they walked
along a patterned concrete path to the front door, which opened before they
reached it. Adrian Wishart, unshaven, red-eyed, hair awry, in tracksuit pants
and a T-shirt.

Youve found her.

Ellen said gently, May we come in,
Mr Wishart?