Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (35 page)

Then, at noon, Cree emerged, to
stand beside his car yawning, scratching his balls, hair a sex-tossed mess.
Tank got ready, hand hovering at the ignition key, but Cree went back inside
again. An hour passed before Cree drove away, Tank following him through the
blind dirt lanes of Penzance Beach and out across farmland to
Frankston-Flinders Road, and all the way to Somerville.

Cree lived in a block of flats
behind the supermarket. There was some heat in the air now, forecast top of 34
degrees today, one of those very still days, cicadas buzzing crazily, the world
a little heat-stunned and waiting for a thunderstorm.

Oi, Tank said.

Cree had his key in the lock. He saw
Tank coming up the path and grew tense, casting his gaze behind and to either
side of Tank. To what do I owe the pleasure?

Tank had printed out the Web photos
of Lachlan Roe. You took these shots. You posted them on the Internet.

Cree glanced at them, then up at
Tank, searching Tanks face. Mate, he said mildly, what are you on about?

You took these, Tank said,
experiencing a flicker of doubt.

Now, why would I do that?

Used your mobile phone.

Im going inside, John.

If you fuck with Pam, Ill

So thats it, said Cree, turning
the key in his lock. Not amused, okay?

Then he was inside, beginning to
close the door. I dont know what your beef is, Tank.
Your
problem, not
mine. As for those photos, check with the crime scene techs before you go
accusing me.

* * * *

Dirk
Roe was at his brothers bedside, talking and talking, willing his voice into
Lachlans ear and consciousness. Pictures of you all over the Web. I couldnt
believe it. Its not right.

He peered at the slack face. Can
you hear me? Its meDirk.

He lost interest and gazed at the
pale walls, a kind of beige, not a colour you could name. One of the nurses
came in and he watched her covertly, tight uniform, the seams of her underwear
showing through. Dirk began to hum madly before he caught himself. He
swallowed. More than anything he was trying to stave off utter ruination, for
he had nothing left. Sacked and bereaved and no one left in his life to love
him. Irreparable brain damage, the doctor had said. But the doctor was a
foreigner, what did he know?

I can talk to my brother, right?
Dirk had demanded. Hell be able to hear me? Itll bring him back?

No, the doctor said. Im sorry.

Dirk leaned over Lachlan and said, Someones
got to pay.

* * * *

49

After
delivering his daughter to a church hall behind the shops in Somerville, where
her ballet, jazz and tap teachers had set up stow-away tables groaning with
cupcakes, doughnuts and lime cordial for the end-of-term party, Scobie Sutton
did the shopping, determined not to be rushed just because Challis and Destry
wanted it that way. And so it was lunchtime before he arrived at work that
Saturday.

He began by examining tapes and
speed camera photographs from four locations: Planning Easts carpark, the traffic
lights in Tyabb, the Caltex service station in Waterloo and a stretch of
Frankston-Flinders Road between Penzance Beach and Flinders. Mapping Ludmilla
Wisharts movements had so far involved a mixture of guesswork, her desk diary
entries and tiny amounts of actual evidence. If only Wishart had planted his
tracking device on his wife on Wednesday: all Scobie had to go on so far was a
single credit card transactionat 3.42 on Wednesday afternoon, Ludmilla Wishart
had purchased 47 litres of unleaded petrol from the Caltex service station. The
timing and location indicated that shed been on her way to meet Carl Vernon in
Penzance Beach; according to Vernon, shed been on time.

Backtracking through her diary,
Scobie guessed that shed been coming from Tyabb, where shed investigated an
unauthorised bed-and-breakfast development. Shed stopped for petrol, made her way
to see Carl Vernon, where she stayed for about thirty minutes, then driven to
the big house on the headland near Shoreham, where shed been murdered.

With a ham and gherkin sandwich
under his belt, washed down by dense black tea, Scobie began fast-forwarding
through the videotapes from the Caltex service station. The quality was poor
and the camera had been badly angled. It was also possible that the time and
date notations were inaccurate, so he started running the tape at the normal
speed well before 3.42, the time at which Wisharts credit card had registered
the petrol purchase.

He spotted Ludmilla at 3.37, her
silver Golf edging cautiously into the top segment of the screen and stopping
at pump 5, the pump obscuring the woman and her car a little. He saw her head
emerge, saw her arm take down the nozzle and disappear with it. Then the arm
reappeared and he saw her pass through another quadrant of the screen,
presumably to pay for the petrol. She re-emerged, got into the Golf, drove
away.

But given that the camera had been
poorly installed or knocked out of alignment at some point, only the two pumps
closest to the road were visible. They formed the foreground of the image. The
greater part of the screen was focused on the stretch of main road in and out
of Waterloo, showing clearly the access ramp into the service station, a bus
stop and an Australia Post box.

And a late 1980s Mercedes. Twenty
seconds after Ludmilla Wisharts Golf appeared at the pumps via the access
ramp, a Mercedes sedan had pulled to the side of the road and idled there, a
faint puff of exhaust smoke showing. Twenty seconds after Wishart drove out
again, it followed.

Scobie put his head in his hands and
closed his eyes, thinking hard. Hed seen that car before. He wasnt a petrol
head or a car nut, and an older-style Mercedes isnt a car youd normally
remember, but his brother-in-law had offered to sell him one earlier in the
year. He was trading up to a new car but had been offered only $1,000 as a
trade-in price when the car was worth at least $7,000. Diesel, he told
Scobie, low mileage, full service history. Scobie had been mildly tempted,
but he didnt have $7,000 to spare and Beth had insisted that if they were
going to buy another car, it needed to have airbags. In the end, Scobies
brother-in-law had sold the Mercedes for $5,000 on eBay, and Scobie had been
kicking himself ever since.

So who owned this one and where had
he seen one like it recently? If he hadnt been so miserable in the head about
his wife, hed have been paying more attention to the life around him.

Then he remembered: the break-in at
the planning office. The Mercedes had been parked at the rear. The only staff
member in attendance at the time was the chief planner, Groot.

He replayed the tape. The Mercedes
outside the service station was in profile, so he couldnt get the plate
number. The windows were heavily tinted. No side window stickers, no fox tails
hanging from the radio antenna. But there was a towbar, and one hubcap was
missing.

He ejected the tape and walked
through to the incident room and the photo arrays on the whiteboard: Ludmilla
Wishart, Adrian Wishart, Ludmillas car, the broader crime scene, the clump of
mud that had formed and dried inside a wheel arch before falling out near the
crime scene.

He went to one of the plastic tubs
on the long table, knowing thered be more photos of the mud. He found them,
together with a preliminary report from the laboratory. Wading through terms
like locus, diatoms, vegetable matter and moisture gradient he
understood that the mud had originated near a marsh or a wetland.

And probably from a local marsh or
wetland, Scobie thought, telling himself that mud collected inside a wheel arch
from further afield would have shaken loose long before the driver reached the
Peninsulaor more specifically, the murder scene. He bundled the photos
together and called Challis.

Challis listened, said, Im at the
hospital. Coming back now.

While he waited, Scobie phoned his
house, a kind of trepidation settling in him. He half wanted Beth not to be
home. It would confirm one of his greatest fears, that shed run off with the
Ascensionists. He could see his wife in some remote compound, wearing a drab
and shapeless cotton dress, her hair to her shoulders and tied in a scarf,
chanting ecstatically and doing a cold mans bidding.

But she answered in the dull tones
that had become her habit and to his questions and nervy patter she gave
monosyllabic replies that were, if anything, worse than all of his imaginings.

* * * *

50

The
call from Scobie Sutton came as a relief. Challis, in the canteen, said, Ill
be right up, and pocketed his phone.

The canteen was a depressing place
on Saturdays and Sundays, understaffed, the food stale. He looked despairingly
at yesterdays congealed lasagne and Irish stew and settled for a ham-and-salad
roll, biting into it as he trudged up to CIU. The bread was crusty on the
outside, almost wet on the inside.

He found Sutton in his office, the
detective standing four-square before the desk when another officer would have
taken a seat to wait. Sit, Challis said.

Instead of doing that, Sutton laid
out a number of photographs. I think I know who our killer is.

Intrigued, Challis stood beside him,
looking down at the array. Close-ups of the mud deposit, taken from various
angles; a Golf at the pumps of a service station; a detail of the same scene,
only enlarged to reveal an older-style Mercedes sedan parked on the road
outside the service station.

This car, Sutton said, poking the
Golf, is Ludmilla Wisharts.
This
carthe Mercedespulled in a few
seconds later.

Following her?

I think so. It pulled out again
soon after she did.

There are plenty of these old Mercs
around, Scobie, and we cant see the plates.

True, but I know who owns a car
exactly like this one.

Sutton was spinning it out. Challis
guessed that he was trying to regain lost ground in some way. Good work.

Sutton flushed. Thanks.

So, whose car is it?

Mrs Wisharts boss, Groot.

How sure are you?

Ive just been around to Groots
house. His Mercedes was parked out in the street. I took these pictures.

Sutton was holding a digital camera.
The little LCD screen glowed and then he was scrolling through a dozen images.
It was as if hed set out to create abstract representations of the mechanical
era: Challis saw axles, springs, shock absorbers, brake lines, panels and
under-body insulation, taken at unnatural angles and harshly lit.

See the mud traces clinging here,
and here? I scraped off a small sample.

Excellent, Challis said.

I sent it to the lab.

Challis picked up one of the
photographs. This is enough to bring him in for questioning.

I agree.

But Groot can argue that his job
entailed travelling from site to site. If the mud at the murder scene came from
his car, its not proof of
when
he was there, and a long way from
proving he murdered Ludmilla Wishart.

I checked the phone records of
everyone in the planning office, Sutton said. There were calls to the
Ebelings from his office phone the day before the house at Penzance Beach was
demolished.

But did Groot also call the
Ebelings at other times?

Well, yeah, Sutton admitted.

And did our victim also call the
Ebelings?

Yes, Sutton conceded.

Any calls to the Ebelings from
anyone in the planning office can be explained away as work related, not a
tip-off, said Challis. The Ebelings applied for, and were granted, a
demolition permit. They also applied for planning permission to build a new
house. Youd expect calls back and forth over a long period.

But why was Groot following
Ludmilla?

That,
said Challis, wont be so easy for
the guy to explain away. You collect his financial records. Ill bring him in
for questioning.

* * * *

They
both questioned Groot. Before the planner could muster outrage, Challis came in
hard and fast.

Heres you, in your car, following
Ludmilla Wishart on the afternoon she was murdered. We have photographs from
other CCTV cameras backing it up, and theyre being enhanced to show the
numberplate and your face in more detail.

A lie, but feasible. Groot crumpled
a little. Hed been gardening and wore a long-sleeved khaki shirt, jeans and a
heat flush that might have been from the sun or exertion but was probably his
unravelling nerves. I wasntI mean...

You followed Mrs Wishart to the
house above the beach between Shoreham and Flinders, and you killed her.

No! I was out checking on planning
applications and I happened to spot her on the road! Thats all, I swear.

You followed her. Stalked her. Was
it obsession? You wanted to have sex with her but she wouldnt be in it?

No! Im happily married.