Challis - 05 - Blood Moon (5 page)

No one saw anything earlier in the
evening? Someone hanging around, an unfamiliar car on the street?

Scobie threw his hands up. Its
Schoolies Week. The joints full of strangers and strange cars.

Challis uncoiled from the wall,
nodding philosophically. If the attack was random, he said, pulling out a
chair and helping himself to a croissant, and theres no DNA evidence, no
witnesses, were stuck. But Lachlan Roe might have pissed someone off, so lets
look closer at him. Standard victimology: where he works, who his associates
are, finances, hobbies, interests, last known movements, the usual drill. In
particular, the brother and the school.

He paused, looking hard at Sutton. Scobie,
this morning you gave Dirk Roe permission to collect personal items for the
victim?

Scobie wouldnt look at him. Correct.

How did Dirk know that his brother
had been attacked?

Scobie coughed, shifted about in his
seat. I phoned him.

You know these men?

Yes.

How?

Sutton looked hunted and tried to
find a place for his hands. My wife.. .through the church.

You thought youd do the right
thing, said Challis flatly.

Yes.

Scobie, the brother could be our
assailant.

Sutton swallowed. I doubt it. They
were close.

Perhaps you should recuse yourself,
Challis said.

In fact, that was the last thing he
wanted, if only because he couldnt afford to lose the manpower. But he needed
to know that Scobie Sutton wouldnt try second-guessing any aspect of the
investigation.

Im fine, boss. Honest.

Even so, I dont want you talking
to Dirkor his brother, if and when he regains consciousness. Finish the
doorknock, okay?

Boss.

Ellen, if you could check out the
school angle?

Will do.

Challis turned again to Pam Murphy. Murph,
youll continue to liaise with the schoolies.

Shed been sitting quietly, taking
everything in. Sir.

But keep your ear close to the
ground. Maybe they saw something last night. Maybe Lachlan had made himself
unpopular, told them to keep the noise down; maybe he made unwelcome advances
and they beat him up for it.

Boss.

Meanwhile, theres bound to be some
media attention in the next few hours. Some influential people send their kids
to Landseer, and the victims brother works in Ollie Hindmarshs electoral
office on High Street.

He allowed that to sink in. Any
questions?

Headshakes and murmurs.

Okay, see you late afternoon for a
further briefing.

They gathered their folders, coffee
mugs and plates and began to file out, but Pam Murphy said, Sir, there is one
thing, squirming in her seat, looking embarrassed.

What?

The eclipse.

The what?

Wednesdays eclipse.

She squirmed again in the face of
his amused scrutiny, but soon Challis began to glimpse where she was going with
her reference to the eclipse. At present the moon was almost full, sitting high
over the land at night, agitating the crazy people. Like all police officers, he
knew about a full moon. But Wednesday night promised extra craziness, for the
earth was due to pass directly between the sun and the moon, and the latter,
according to the Bureau of Meteorology, would glow eerily red for some time.

He began to nod. You think itll
set off the schoolies?

With relief she said, Theyre
saying its going to be the ultimate high.

Uh huh.

Ellen was amused. Unless its a
cloudy night.

Pam turned to her seriously and
said, In which case theyll be disappointed, Sarge, and looking for other
diversions.

Ellen rubbed her hands together
briskly. Fair enough. Ill speak to the duty sergeant for you. Some extra
uniforms should do the trick.

Thanks, Sarge.

* * * *

7

The
desk phone rang as soon as Challis was alone, a reporter from the
Herald-Sun
in Melbourne. Then he was obliged to go downstairs and speak to a reporter
from the local rag. Finally McQuarrie rang, the superintendent sounding
apologetic for once. Just had Ollie Hindmarsh bending my ear.

Bent mine too, sir.

Getting anywhere?

Too soon to say.

We need to cover ourselves.

That was typical of the man. With
respect, sir, I intend to investigate this
without
one eye on the media
or our esteemed local member of parliament.

After a long pause, McQuarrie said, Fair
enough. Just keep me posted.

The only cure for the aggravation
was more coffee. Challis brewed a fresh pot, shut his door, switched off his
mobile and told the front desk to say he was out of the office until noon.

He started by examining Lachlan Roes
laptop. He expected it to be password protected, which meant long delays until
the departments IT experts got around to examining the machine, but within
moments he was in. Either the chaplains got nothing to hide, he thought, or hed
been confident that no one would ever be poking around in his files.

Challis went straight to Roes
e-mail, finding only a dozen innocuous messages in the in-box. He checked the
folder of deleted e-mails: nothing. Had the brother emptied it? Finally he
scrolled through the e-mails
sent
by Roe, and hit paydirt. Hating to
read anything on-screen, he printed out the offending item. The subject line
was Someone finally spoke up and the message read:

Proud To Be A White
Australian

Someone finally said it.

How many are actually paying attention to
this?

There are Aboriginals, Torres Strait
Islanders, Kiwi Australians, Lebanese Australians, Asian Australians, Arab
Australians, Boat People from all over the place, etc. And then there are just
Australians.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my
Direction.

You Call me Australian Dog, White boy,
Cracker, Honkey, Whitey, Caveman. And thats OK. But when I call you,
Black Fellarr, Kike, Towel head, Sand nigger, Sheep Shager Camel Jockey, Gook or
Chink, You call Me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of
violence against you, so why are the Housing Estates the most dangerous places
to Live?

Question: Why didnt the Aboriginals
explore the world like my European Forebears did? Answer they were waiting 60
thousand years for the water around Australia to go down before they set off.

You have the United Arabs union, College
Fund. You have Invasion Day. You Have Yom Hashoah, You have Mauled Al-Nabi. If
we had White Entertainment Television, Wed be racists.

If we had White Pride Day.. You would call
usRacists.

If we had White History Month, Racists.

If we had any organization for whites to
advance OUR lifes. Wed be racists.

If we had a College fund that only gave
white Students scholarships.....You know wed be racists.

White colleges. That would be racist.

Your allowed to march for Your rights. If
We march for Race and rights we are called racists.

You are proud to be black, brown or
bringle, your not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our White Pride .
You call us racists.

You rob us, break into our homes, even
shoot. But, when a white police officer shoots a Muslim gang member or beats up
a Lebanese Drug-dealer and Rapist when running away and a threat to Society,
You call him a racist.

I am proud.

But, you call me a racist.

Why is it that only Whites can be racist?

There is nothing improper about this
message.

Lets see which of you are proud enough to
circulate it.

Challis had seen plenty of these
things over the years. He was more interested in tracking the e-mail. According
to the printout, it had been forwarded to Lachlan by his brother, Dirk, who had
asked him to forward it to others. Challis put it together: Dirk hears that
Lachlan has been assaulted and races around to the Villanova apartments to get
rid of compromising material before the police can mount a thorough search. He
has just enough time to delete the white-pride e-mail from the in-box of
Lachlans laptop, and again from the list of deleted items, but Lachlan had
forwarded the offending e-mail to various people and Dirk hadnt had time to
remove it from the sent items box.

Challis pored over the message
again, tracking its history.

Originating from
smilingeyes
with
a hotmail address, it had been forwarded to four people:
aquapac, homefries
and
reddog,
who had netspace, optusnet and hotmail accounts respectively...

.. .and
[email protected]
.

Challis breathed in and out. It didnt
mean that Scobie was a racist, or welcomed getting racist messages: he might
simply have given his e-mail address to the wrong person. Challis continued to
scan the printout. Red Dog, bless him, or her, had forwarded the e-mail to
about thirty people. What had those thirtythe Lang Family, kathk67,
wayneheidi, Elissa Devereaux at the defence department, and dirkroe, amongst
othersdone with it? Deleted it in disgust? Read it and nodded sagely? Relished
the hate and passed it on? Clearly Dirk Roe had forwarded it to Lachlan, and
Lachlan to people in his address book. Following a cyber trail like this would
be a nightmare. Challis was hoping that finding Roes attacker would prove to
be simpler than that.

Meanwhile, what else had Dirk
deleted from Lachlans computer? Challis returned to the desktop screen and
clicked on Recycle Bin. It was empty. He entered Internet Explorer and clicked
on Favorites, finding Microsoft, the Commonwealth Bank, eBay and numerous
expected sites, but also links to useful counselling sites and Dirks Blog.
Challis clicked on the former: it took him to a movie site called LolitaClips.
He clicked on the latter and found himself at a blog called The Roe Report
and the strange, ugly world of Dirk Roe.

Roe had plenty to say on many topics,
none of it enlightened. For example, there was his take on education. While in
favour of the Prime Ministers desire for more Australian History to be taught
at school, Dirk believed that 60,000 years of Aboriginal History could be
squeezed into one lesson. As is well known, he wrote, your typical
aboriginal historical site is a mound of rubbish. Lets be honest here,
aboriginals and success hardly go hand in hand. This fact, although racist to
some, is a fact nevertheless, and must be faced.

Something had to be done about the
employment of Indian doctors, too, Dirk argued. He was very clear about that.
What was less clear was why. Challis tried to unpick the incoherent thoughts:
Roe seemed to be saying that Indian doctors were physically repellent or poorly
trained or Islamic terrorists, or all three.

He read on. A lot of it was
innocuous and undirected doodling by Dirk: football tipping, speculations about
the sex lives of Labor parliamentarians, praise for his boss, Ollie Hindmarsh,
a belief that the United Nations was corrupt, and his personal list of the best
fifty albums released since 1 January 2001 (no jazz, no classical). Challis was
mildly disappointed to see that Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harriss
All the
Roadrunning
wasnt listed.

Dirk also invited his readers to
post their replies. These were archived, and Challis scrolled through for a
while. He found some echoes with the White Pride e-mail, reinforcing his sense
of how extensive, subterranean and interconnected racism was. Scratch your neighbours
back, he thought, and uncover a bigot.

Like the Macclesfield Cricket Club
member who had posted his thoughts to The Roe Report on being obliged to play
cricket against a Jewish team. Being of German origin, I have to apologise
that these Yids are in existence at all. My grandfathers did their best during
the war but must have missed a few.

To which Dirk Roe responded: Pity:
now they control all the worlds banking and trade.

With a follow up from Lachlan Roe: And
they undermine the Christian faith.

Feeling grubby and sour, Challis
shut down the computer. He propped his feet on the edge of his desk and stared
out at the sky above Waterloo. Some scraps of cloud had moved in. Nothing much
surprised him any more. He wasnt even astonished that Dirk Roe had been so
stupid as to put his name to the blog, there were other cases of young Liberal
Party wannabes posting their views on the Web. Theyd soon been outed by the
press and party officials, but Challis knew there must be others who were cannier,
more guarded.

Meanwhile, how was he going to play
this? It was his firm belief that most violent crimes were straightforward: you
looked for the simple answer first. Yes, you gathered evidence, but mainly you
asked who hated the victim, and why. Concentrate on the victim, then trace,
interview and eliminate all witnesses, friends, enemies and acquaintances, and
hope you end up with an individual who cannot be eliminated.