Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (24 page)

Challis nodded. We have another
angle via Carl Vernon and Carmen Gandolfo. Apparently Ludmilla suspected that
someone in Planning East is on the take, receiving payment in exchange for
sensitive information that gives an unfair advantage to people who want to
avoid or evade planning restrictions.

He turned to Smith and Jones. What
did you guys find out about Groot and the other planners?

Jones had half-moon glasses
suspended on the tip of his nose. He read from a foolscap pad, holding it at
arms length: No one has a criminal record or known criminal associates. A
couple of speeding fines. Groot blew over .05 on the Frankston Freeway a couple
of years ago, but no other traffic infringements.

Financial history? said Challis.

Thats where it gets a little more
interesting. The planners arent highly paid and all of them have hefty
mortgages, but so do I and most of the people I know. But Groot and his wife
have had extensive work done on their house: swimming pool, landscaping,
sundeck...

Challis mused on it for a while. It
seemed to him that there was a lot of money around, despite talk of recession.
Sure, people were suffering, but the middle class seemed to be doing
extraordinarily well. They didnt buy dull, sensible, locally-made cars any
more but exotic European models, and they changed cars every year or two.
Challiss father had held on to his car for twenty years, but people of Challiss
generation didnt do that. They bought flash cars, owned holiday houses and
sent their kids to private schools. The money had to come from somewhere.
Mostly loans, he suspected. Mostly honestly, in other words. It was money that
could be traced.

Dig a little deeper, he told Smith
and Jones. See who paid for the work on his house.

Boss, they said.

Scobie Sutton cleared his throat. Anything
on her laptop?

Challis searched through the faxes,
reports and e-mail printouts that were the bane of his existence. Finding the
one he wanted, he said, The laptop is fairly new, according to the
technicians. Theres very little on it apart from drafts of her reports.

He turned to Pam Murphy. Murph, you
met Carl Vernon yesterday morning.

Shed been slumped in her chair,
alert but apparently bored, playing with a plastic cup. Now she went pink and
sat upright, as if aware that he knew shed made her unauthorised LED search as
a result of talking to Vernon. Clearing her throat, she summarised how shed
met Vernon during the demolition of the house known as Somerland, and said
fervently, It was heartbreaking to watch. People were angry, in tears. Thats
when I heard whispers that a corrupt shire employee had tipped off the owner of
the property so he could demolish it before it a protection order could be
granted.

Ellen had been doodling in her
notebook. She said, There are three ways of looking at that. One, Ludmilla
herself was corrupt, and the property owner killed her to protect himself. Two,
Ludmilla was about to reveal the identity of the corrupt employeeand it has to
be pointed out that this person might
not
be a Planning East employee or
even a shire employeeand he or she stopped her. Three, Ludmilla approached the
demolition guy or the developer, saying she intended to take action against
them

and it got her killed, Challis
said.

* * * *

33

At
the conclusion of the briefing, Ellen scurried away, saying she had a headache.
Challis followed her out, wanting to commiserate, wanting to find out what lay
behind it, but she brushed him off, saying, Dont fuss, Ill be okay, so he
shrugged and let it go. Hed learn what the matter was eventually. Or he wouldnt.

He worked for an hour after the
briefing, trying to clear the backlog of forms and correspondence. Then the
phone rang and Ollie Hindmarsh said, sounding like shovelled gravel, You lousy
cow.

Challis considered his reply. Whos
this?

Dont get smart. Ive had reporters
after me all day.

Challis wasnt in the mood. Yeah?

That little prick and his blog,
Hindmarsh said. Thanks to you, the whole world knows.

Challis burned slowly and surely. Are
you saying I leaked it to the press?

I am.

The words dripped from Challis: Im
not interested in you or your hurt feelings. Im only interested in whether or
not Dirk Roe attacked his brother or said or did something that encouraged
someone else to do it. If you cant control your staff, thats not my concern.

Hindmarshs voice shifted, growing
phlegmy and strident. He took the blog off-line two days ago, as soon as he
realised the police knew about it! So how come the media are quoting extracts
at me?

It was a blog, Mr Hindmarsh. Its
probably still floating around out there in cyberspace for all to see.

Do your job, inspector. You cant
even catch the person who beat up a harmless man of the cloth, and now I see
youve got a murder to investigate. God knows how youre going to manage that.

The evening traffic was muted
outside Challiss window and the corridors were almost silent. A line of cars
idled along the McDonalds drive-through lane, headlights burning, toxins
rising. Challis said, Let me reiterate: your harmless man of the cloth
contributed racist observations to his brothers blog. He likes to call himself
an elect vessel, meaning he believes he has the ear of God. He thinks that
modern technology is badexcept in that it may be used to influence an
electionnot that he ever votes. A womans role is to cook, clean and
reproduce. And at your behest, he was appointed chaplain of Landseer School,
where he didnt counsel troubled adolescents but told them to get down on their
knees and pray.

Hindmarsh said nothing and the night
deepened until finally there was a click in Challiss ear.

Time to go home.

* * * *

Something
had happened to Ellen Destry that afternoon. Shed been hurrying to the
briefing, conscious that shed spent too long in Adrian Wisharts house, when
her good opinion of herself began to fracture.

It had nothing to do with breaking
into a scumbags house and picking over his secret life, for that was exciting,
even desirable. Pocketing the money had been exciting, too. It was something
she did, something shed done from time to time over the years.

But always, always, the thieving
would come back to haunt her afterwards. It would eat at her. It never went
away. And it had kicked in on the way to the briefing. Shed tried telling
herself that she didnt have a psychological problem, and it was okay to steal
from scumbags, and even that ordinary rules didnt apply to her. She tried
telling herself that Adrian Wishart was the kind of guy to keep the gardeners
hard-earned money and say he knew nothing about it. She imagined some big guy
corning around and roughing Adrian up.

Then she thought: What if the
gardener is too tactful to ask for his money? She thought: Its not my money.
She thought: I need help.

She might have made it to the
briefing on time, but just as the police station came into view, shed turned
around and driven back to the house where Ludmilla Wishart had lived, feeling
sick at heart. She tried telling herself that she had good professional reasons
for returning the envelope of cashif Adrian Wishart suspected that someone had
been sneaking around in his house he might get rid of crucial evidence, or even
accuse the police of theftbut she couldnt sustain it. Quite simply, a part of
her was bad. It needed fixing. She wanted to be loved, desired, admired. She
knew that if Hal ever learned about this side of her, shed die.

But shed left it too late to return
the gardeners $250. Adrian Wisharts little red Citroen was parked in the
driveway. She turned around, raced back to Waterloo, arrived late at the
briefing.

Knowing she couldnt face Challis
afterwards, shed driven straight home, poured herself a stiff drink and
climbed into a bath brimming with hot water and fragrant salts.

Now, as the evening light drew in,
she was still in the bath, occasionally letting out the tepid water and adding
hot, her skin wrinkling like a prune.

Not that it worked to cure her. She
still felt estranged from her old self, the competent, dignified self. It wasnt
that shed broken into Wisharts househe was as guilty as sin; shed do it
again in a heartbeatbut that she wanted or needed to pocket the money shed
found there. She was no better than shed ever been. This was no way to lead
her life.

Hal would be home soon. She pulled
the plug, dried herself with a thick clean towel, opened the wardrobe to grab
her dressing gown. It was a small wardrobe, stuff crammed onto a shelf above
the clothes rail and on the floor, and when she hauled out her dressing gown
the tails of it dislodged the lid on one of Hals shoeboxes. She crouched to
replace it.

She paused. Hed scrawled Bushfire
Keepsakes on a label pasted to the lid. She should put it back. Instead, she
pulled the gown around her and sat on the floor and sifted through the
contents. Passport. Bank and insurance statements. His will, inside an
envelope. A bundle of letters. Ellen glanced at the sender: his wife, the
address of the prison where shed killed herself. Feeling ratshit, she sorted
through the photographs. A studio shot of his wife. Hal and wife on their
wedding day. Holiday snaps. His late parents. His sister. His niece. Two
graduation photographs.

And, finally, photographs of
herself: at that Christmas party last year, a candid shot at her desk, shaking
hands with the super, receiving an award from the assistant commissioner. Ellen
wept a little as she visualised her lover deciding what he held dear, what he
wanted to remember, what hed save if a bushfire threatened to burn his house
down.

As for me, she muttered, even my
dressing gown is stolen.

Her resistance was so low that
Telstra could call now and shed sign up for the most expensive phone plan they
offered.

Ellen replaced the shoebox and
headed for the sitting room, seeking distractions. She didnt want to call
anyone. She couldnt be bothered with music. She switched on the TV idly and
flicked through the channels, and there was Ollie Hindmarsh, feigning outrage,
greasily explaining to a battery of microphones that hed sacked Dirk Roe as
soon as hed been informed about the fellows blog.

Yeah, right, said Ellen. Talking
back to the TV always made her feel better.

Furthermore, said Hindmarsh, Dirk
Roe was merely my electoral office manager, essentially a clerical role, not an
aide or advisor.

But did Hindmarsh endorse Roes
views?

Of course not, dont be absurd.

Ellen, her depression forgotten
temporarily, sensed an implication in the denial. Hindmarsh seemed to be
saying, in his bluff, strong-chinned way, that he scarcely knew what a blog
was, that to a true Australian like himselfmale, older generation, ex-armed
servicesa blog was somehow unsavoury and effeminate.

But the Roe Report endorses
you,
a reporter pointed out.

Im not responsible for anything Mr
Roe says or does.

You employed him.

And I sacked him, Hindmarsh said. Look,
I have a sizeable staff. Its a responsible job. Mr Roe was merely a paper
pusher in my electoral office, which is scarcely the seat of power. I spend
most of my time in the city, as you well know.

Arsehole, said Ellen. Like most
Liberal Party supporters and politicians, Hindmarsh was the kind of man whod
endorse white supremacists, anti-Semites and crackpot fundamentalists if the
sum effect were just one more vote won than lost.

Buoyed a little, she called her
daughters mobile phone.

Just seeing how you are.

Fine, Mum, Larrayne said.

She sounded bright and happy and
there were no background noises of the kind that might make a mother tense
upno partying flatmates, pub music or barrelling traffic. What are you up to?

Nothing much.

Larrayne had always been like this,
even as a little kid at school. Ellen would discover weeks later, usually by
chance, that her daughter had been appointed captain of the netball team, chosen
to recite a poem at assembly or awarded a distinction for a maths test.
Larraynes world was subterranean. She offered glimpses into it only rarely.

Hows work?

Fine.

Her university exams over for the
year, Larrayne was working in a bookshop called Paydirt, a dingy warren of
crime paperbacks beneath street level in the heart of downtown Melbourne,
within spitting distance of the town hall, the cathedral and the shopping
arcades. It was entirely possible that shed got the job by telling the proprietor
her mother was a cop.

Want to come down for the weekend?

Have to work. Sorry.

Larrayne didnt altogether approve
of Ellens living with Challis. She didnt approve of her father having a
girlfriend, either. The separation and divorce were still raw, she wanted a
return to how things had been, even though she herself had left home and lived
in the city now. Shed thaw eventually. Maybe.