Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (33 page)

Challis was doing his long stare
across vast distances. He blinked, recovered, and said, Youre right. Could
you do that? Deep background first. Really check him out.

* * * *

45

Ellens
first step was to phone Scobie Sutton. Where are you? We badly need everything
youve got on Ludmillas movements, especially CCTV.

He sounded fretful. Look, Im in
the car, okay? Taking Ros to a party. My wife isnt well, so some things will
just have to wait. Ill be in before lunch.

Ellen closed and opened her eyes.
She knew about the wife. But what if Scobie were giving vent to other
grievances? Maybe he thinks Im Hals favourite, she thought. Maybe he thinks
we dont respect his work, thinks were ganging up on him.

If so, what she asked him next was
going to make him crankier. Scobie, she began carefully, about Terry
Wishart.

What about him?

Hes Adrians alibi. No reflection
on your initial interview, but Im going to go have another crack at him.

No skin off my nose.

Relieved, she said, Whats he like?

She could picture Scobie at the
wheel of his car, frowning in his wondering way as he mused on her questionand
driving badly, his little girl there in the car with him. She said, Would he
lie to protect Adrian? Are they close? Is there any love lost between them?

Theyre opposites, apart from being
different generations, Scobie said finally. Hes blue collar. Adrians
smooth, educated. Terry mends electrical gear, lives alone, stuck in the past.

The past?

His army days, Scobie said. Hes
a bit sad, spends all his free time down at his local RSL club.

Thanks, Scobie.

Army. Who could she call on a
Saturday?

With reluctance she kept returning
to just one person, her ex-husband. She stared at her desk phone for a while,
biting the inside of her cheek. It hadnt been an easy marriage, not toward the
end and not even for many years before that. They might have drifted apart
anyway, but when Ellens career in the police force took off and Alans didnt,
the split came hard and fast. Alan Destry resented not only the fact that his
wife belonged to CIUThe elite, hed say disparaginglybut also that shed
been fast-tracked through the ranks. Because youre a woman, hed sneer,
somehow overlooking the fact that hed twice failed the exams shed passed with
ease.

Then hed looked around for other
ways to fault her. She was never at home but always out on some case, and so
she was not a good wife to him, or a good mother to their daughter. And shed
been sleeping with Challis all that time. Or probably sleeping with Challis. Or
wanted
to sleep with Challis.

He, on the other hand, had kept more
regular hours, which entitled him to call himself a good father. His job wasnt
glamoroushe was a traffic cop, wrote up tickets, manned booze buses, aimed
speed cameras, did a bit of accident investigation workbut it was honourable
and important. He kept repeating it, like a mantra, as if Ellen disparaged what
he did.

Then there were all of the little
things she did wrong. Her habit of never switching lights off when she left a
room, for example. Or leaving a heater burning with a window open in winter.
Forgetting to pass on phone messages or fill the car with petrol. And he hated
it that shed kept herself trim while his body grew slack from beer and the
hours he spent behind the wheel of a car.

As desire and love leaked away,
Ellen had grown to hate that body. Its bulk, emissions, and hairiness. The way
he chewed his food. The way he sniffed instead of blowing his nose. The way his
mouth sometimes hung open.

Ultimately, desire and love gave way
to disgust, and she moved out as soon as Larrayne had left home to study in the
city.

Thinking of all these things now,
Ellen saw a connection between herself and Ludmilla Wishart. Had Ludmilla
wanted to leave her husband? There were no children to keep her at home, but
had she feared what her husband might do if she did leave? Had she been waiting
for the best time to leave him?

What exactly would
be
the
best time for someone in Ludmilla Wisharts position? Finding the courage to
leave? Finally suffering some kind of unconscionable mistreatment?

Well, her husband had done something
unconscionable, and it had been pretty final.

Then Ellen compared her husband with
Ludmilla Wisharts. Both men liked to control. They had tempers. They were
jealous.

But she couldnt, in good
conscience, take it further than that. Alan hadnt stalked her. He hadnt tried
to kill her, or play mind games with her. He hadnt wanted her to leave,
certainly, but he hadnt tried to stop her, either, beyond a bit of pleading and
the expected kinds of emotional blackmail. In fact, hed found the separation
and divorce liberating, in the end. He soon found a place to live. He found a
girlfriend. He was having another shot at the sergeants exam and felt pretty
confident this time.

Been studying like a bastard, he
told her, later that Saturday morning.

Good luck, she said, meaning it,
touching his wrist briefly.

Theyd arranged to meet in the
little coffee shop within the Bunnings Warehouse in Frankston. The place was
crammed, like it always was on weekends, men and women in a do-it-yourself
mood, shopping for paintbrushes, power tools, seedlings from the garden centre.
A Bunnings store was Ellens idea of hell, but Alan said he could give her a
few minutes between chores, otherwise he wouldnt be free until next Tuesday.

Thanks for seeing me, she said.

No worries, he said shyly. He
paused. You look good.

In fact,
he
was looking good.
Hed lost weight. He was taking care of his appearance. But he was still a big,
hairy man. She didnt love him any more.

Didnt want him.

Then he had to go and spoil it. Hows
Hal baby?

Cut it out, Alan.

I can be a bit jealous of your
boyfriend, cant I?

He wants me to be jealous of his
girlfriend, she realised.

You found yourself someone before I
did, she countered.

He grinned. Fair enough.

Hed bought a file with him. It lay
between them on the little table, a glass-topped table with metal legs of
slightly varying lengths, so that you wouldnt want to lean your elbow on it or
trust your watery coffee not to spill. Or even buy it, Ellen thought. They hadnt
talked about or looked at the file, but now, ostentatiously, Alan opened it.

My mate did that digging you asked
for. E-mailed the results.

His mate in the Army Records Office.
Alan had been a military policeman before joining Victoria Police, based near
Seymour when he met Ellen. Six weeks after he was posted to Townsville, she had
written to say: Guess whatIm pregnant. So long ago. Now their baby was a
young woman.

She shook off the memories. What
mattered was the fact that one of Alans service mates had stayed on in the
Army and was willing and able to help him.

What did he find?

This, Alan Destry said with a
flourish and a smirk, pulling out a sheet of paper.

Ellen froze. Not funny, Al.

The page was blank.

Im not being funny, Ells, honest.

Terry Wisharts records are sealed,
I take it?

Nup. They dont exist.

Ellen frowned. Removed?

Sweetheart, said her ex-husband in
his heavy way, Terry Wishart doesnt exist. Or he does, but he was never in
the Army, never in the Navy, never in the Air Force, never in the reserves.

But he belongs to the RSL. Scobie
Sutton checked him out. There are pictures of the guy with his Army mates.

Pictures of him with his RSL
drinking buddies
now,
Alan said. Bet there are no pictures of him in
uniform or with his mates in 1970.

So hes a fake.

Got it in one, Alan said. He
leaned over the table confidingly, a familiar gesture to Ellen, a signal that
he was about to instruct her in something. He fabricated the whole thing, and
hes not the only one. My mate says hes looked into a dozen cases so far this
year. Genuine veterans like cooks and drivers saying they saw active service,
when all they did was sit around on some base back home, and wannabes like this
Wishart joker, who were never in the armed services to begin with. They march
on Anzac Day, wearing medals they bought off eBay, join the RSL so they can
hear and swap yarns...Makes them feel good, I guess. Fucking losers.

But dont they get found out?

Eventually. Meanwhile they glean
enough detail by just standing around shooting the breeze with genuine vets. If
you press them for extra detail, they say their service records are sealed or
dont exist because their work was so secret. He shook his head. Pathetic

It was pathetic. It was also a
lever. Thanks, Al, Ellen said, and she planted a big, surprising,
appreciative and sisterly kiss on his Saturday morning stubble.

* * * *

46

There
is a point in a journey when the varying landscape seems unvarying and the
motions and sounds of your passage lull you into a dreaming state. That
happened to Challis somewhere behind Chelsea, on the Frankston Freeway. He was
driving, Ellen was his passenger, and this journey up to the city theyd made
many times before, separately and together. The temperatures inside and outside
the car were mild, thin cloud had reduced the glare, and the traffic was
sparse. He should have been concentrating furiously on the immediate concerns
of his life. In no particular order, these were the need to break Adrian
Wisharts alibi, help Ellen feel better about herself and decide what should
happen between them. But Challiss mind strayed and drifted and he couldnt hold
on to any of his serious thoughts for more than a few seconds.

Except one: that as far as he was
concerned, nothing much had changed. He felt comfortable driving along with
Ellen Destry beside him. He felt comfortable living with her. He felt comfortable
being her lover. Did it matter that she had itchy fingers? Was he so perfect?

But her silence and demeanour
suggested that she was judging herself, and he tried to hang on to that thought
and work through it. Ellen Destry wondered what he was thinking. He was silent
and preoccupied, but then, that was his natural state. She wasnt someone who
had a desperate need to fill all silences, but what was
this
silence
about? Shed confessed something momentous to him last night: was he weighing
it all up? Was he going to say it was over and kick her out? She half wanted
him to, for that would save her from taking the first step. The silence grew
and she thought her head would burst and she put her hand on his thigh.

A faint spasm transmitted itself
through his clothing to her fingers. She snatched her hand away.

He said hoarsely, Put it back.
Please.

She did. Hal, she said, and felt
like crying.

Well work it out, he said, and he
sounded pretty definite about it.

* * * *

They
decided to hit the uncle hard. They barged into Wishart Electronics, Ellen
badging a customer and telling him to leave, Challis shutting the street door
and turning the sign from open to closed. Hey! Terry Wishart said, from
behind the counter.

And, just as abruptly, they turned
good-cop, all smiles, friendliness and good humour. After announcing that this
was merely a follow-up visit, double-checking some matters left over from
Constable Suttons visit earlier in the week, Challis gazed about with frank
admiration. Nice little business youve got here. Doing well?

Okay, said Wishart warily.

I should clone you and install you
at my place or in the cop shop. The equipments always breaking down.

Wishart laughed a little
desperately.

Hey, said Ellen, gazing at one of Wisharts
photographs, Wishart leaning nonchalantly against the tracks of an army tank, were
you in Vietnam by any chance? So was my dad. I dont know what he did there: hell
never talk about it.

This was the right approach, Challis
realised, watching Terry Wishart closely. It would reassure the guy and enable
him to maintain his lie without having to elaborate on it. He saw Wisharts
soft chest swell, and heard him say authoritatively, Some of what we did there
was hush-hush. Were not allowed to talk about it.

Sort of like secret missions and
stuff? said Ellen.

Wisharts face grew enigmatic. Thats
correct.

You must have been scared. You must
have been
brave,
Ellen said. She clasped herself as if she felt cold. I
know
I
could never do it.

Well, Terry Wishart said modestly.

Then Challis and Ellen both turned
and looked at him, and waited, and beamed big smiles at him. Presently Challis
said, Its all bullshit, isnt it, Terry?

Pardon?

Youre no more an Army veteran than
I am, Ellen said.