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  Challis paused, gathering the strands of his account. 'It's natural to assume that he then set out to settle old scores- first the lawyer-'

  'Why him, boss?' one of the detectives said.

  'He represented Munro against the banks and the shire a couple of years ago. Munro accused him of caving in to them.'

  The detective nodded, satisfied.

  'Then Munro apparently went after Pearce, who may have been a thorn in his side for years, reporting him to the authorities over all kinds of matters. We've discovered that Pearce was notorious for doing that.

  'Also,' Challis went on, 'Munro owns two shotguns and a rifle that we know about, and fired a shotgun at us when we called with the search warrant. All in all, Ian Munro is in the frame for all three murders.'

  'However,' said Ellen Destry dryly.

  'However,' Challis agreed. He paused, thinking how best to frame his next remarks. 'I spoke to Superintendent McQuarrie this morning and told him of my concerns, that there are sufficient differences between the two murder scenes to suggest two killers. I'll come to that in a minute. Basically the super gave good, solid, standard detective-school advice: why look for a complicated explanation when there's a perfectly simple and logical one available?'

  Challis glanced around at them one by one. 'But I'm saying keep an open mind. That should be the first rule of police work. We gather the evidence, analyse it and follow where it leads us.

  'Now, the differences between the two murders. The lawyer was asleep in his bed at about four in the morning when someone came in and shot him at point-blank range. The only other occupant was a small child, who presumably was deeply asleep, but may not have heard much anyway, given that the shooting was muffled and she slept at the other end of the house.'

  He paused. 'Let's suppose it was Munro. After a gap of several hours he walks in on the Pearces who live just a kilometre or so from where he lives and where he'd taken a potshot at police the previous afternoon-and where police are conducting an ongoing search for evidence that he was growing marijuana, incidentally. They're alone, their kid's at school. Munro takes them into the sitting room and conks the husband on the head.'

  Scobie Sutton broke in. 'You know that for a fact?'

  'The pathologist confirmed it. She found skull fragments showing an indentation consistent with a heavy blow from something like a fireplace poker.'

  Ellen frowned. 'What's the wife doing all this time?'

  Challis shrugged. 'Paralysed by fear? Had a gun aimed at her? In any event, she's made to sit on the sofa and the killer then goes around behind her and shoots her in the back of the head-with Mostyn Pearce's own shotgun, incidentally, as we've now confirmed. Finally he shoots the husband, hoping the pellets will obliterate any sign of his being bashed by the poker, and then stages it to look like a suicide, finally calling it in as a murder-suicide.'

  Challis stopped and leaned forward so that his palms were on the table. 'An awful lot of trouble to go to for a man who's on a mission of revenge and had earlier walked in and calmly shotgunned someone in his bed without any elaboration. Why should he care about covering up the murder of the Pearces?'

  'And what was he doing between four and ten in the morning?' Ellen said.

  'Exactly,' Challis said.

  He straightened his back, moved away from the table and began to pace. 'And so we're treating these as separate killings, and acting as if Ian Munro doesn't exist. If we find evidence linking him to either or both killings-an eyewitness would be nice; a fingerprint; a confession-well and good, but meanwhile I want you to keep open minds, do more door-knocking in both areas, check bank accounts, go through their desks and computers, find out if they had any enemies or shady acquaintances. Pearce worked at the detention centre. If he was a bully, maybe an escapee did him in. You know what to do.'

  'There is someone else,' Ellen said. 'A long shot.'

  Challis cocked his head at her.

  'Dwayne Venn,' she said. 'He's vicious enough.'

  'Explain.'

  'Venn and the Tully sisters apparently dumped some rubbish at the side of Five Furlong Road, up near the estate where the Pearces lived. Someone-presumably Pearce- found the rubbish, sorted through it and discovered a letter addressed to Dwayne Venn and Donna Tully. The shire was notified, they investigated, and Venn was fined for dumping rubbish. He threatened to kill the shire officer who served the notice on him.'

  'But how would Venn have known it was Pearce?' Sutton asked. 'For that matter, how would Ian Munro have known that Pearce dobbed him in to the RSPCA?'

  Challis smiled broadly at him. 'Exactly. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe Pearce rubbed someone else up the wrong way.'

  They sat moodily for a while. Ellen said, 'And there's the matter of Janet Casement.'

  Challis put his hands up, as if to tell her to back off. 'Let's put that on the back burner for the moment.'

  'She's been warned that Munro's on the loose?' Scobie asked.

  'Yes. We've warned everyone we can think of. Now, updating the Floater. Scobie, you took a call from a jeweller for me?'

  Sutton glanced at his notebook. 'The Rolex was serviced by a firm called Timepiece, on Collins Street, up in the city.'

  Challis nodded. 'I'll pay them a visit sometime.'

  'One other thing, boss. The anchor that weighed down the body's gone missing from the property room.'

  Someone had light fingers, or someone had been careless. 'Terrific,' Challis said. 'You know the drill-put the word out at trash-and-treasure markets, second-hand dealers…'

  'Boss.'

  Later that morning, Challis went to see Seigert's widow. She was red-eyed, her grief raw. Ostensibly he was there to ask her some gentle questions, but he learnt nothing new and hadn't expected to; visiting and comforting the bereaved was the other side of a murder investigation. Waves of misery and anger can spread from a single act of homicide and swamp a family and its friends. Challis represented order. Where things were falling apart for the bereaved, he was competent, professional, focused, and familiar with a bewildering system. Sometimes his relationships with bereaved families and individuals lasted years. His was a shoulder to cry on; he was a link to the beloved victim; he represented the investigation itself and so offered hope and justice. He'd provide his phone number and find himself talking calmly, patiently, at the darkest hours of the night, and visiting from time to time, and taking people who'd almost lost heart into the squad room and showing them the desks, the computers, the photo arrays- the sense of justice at work. It often meant a lot and the flow was two-way, for as the bereaved felt valued and encouraged, so did he.

  Afterwards he returned to Waterloo and read interview statements. Privately, he was certain that Munro had shot Seigert and a person or persons unknown had shot the Meddler and his wife. That was as far as he'd got when a civilian clerk came around with a message slip and a fax that caused him to mutter, 'Blast from the past.'

  'Sorry?' the clerk said.

  He smiled at her. 'Nothing. Thinking aloud, that's all.'

  She went out. The fax was from the Home Office in London. The HOLMES computer had failed to find any link between the Flinders Floater and anyone known to the authorities in Great Britain.

  The message slip was from Tessa Kane. She was writing about the murders for the next edition of the paper and wanted to interview him. She could come to him or he to her, or they could meet on neutral ground, whatever would suit him best.

  Challis called her. 'Meet me here.'

  'Here' was a small conference room next to the front desk. The double-glazed window looked over a gum tree with scaly bark, and they were seated at a solid metal table, sipping coffee, not bothering with the chipped plate of stale biscuits.

  'Fire away,' Challis said.

  Tessa pounded her small fists on the table and said, 'Hal.'

  'What?' he said-though he knew. She'd put the Easter walk fiasco behind her, wanted warmth between them again, and here he was being clipped, professiona
l.

  'Chill out,' she said.

  He gazed at her, not wanting to be unkind but finding that the old configuration of Tessa Kane was gone. There had been a time-it seemed like years ago-when she'd step unbidden into his mind and he'd feel himself stir, wanting her badly. He'd picture her naked and replay their lovemaking. Now she was sitting opposite him like a vaguely familiar stranger and he didn't want her.

  Why? Because he could never have her while his mad wife continued to step between them? Because Kitty Casement now filled his head?

  'Sorry,' he said, bringing warmth into his voice and face and in fact feeling real warmth for Tessa. He saw her respond, a flash of gratitude and longing. Was it that easy? Was he fickle? Did his affections and desires mean anything, or had they been warped by what his wife had done to him?

  He reached out and rested his hand over hers. She flexed her knuckles and he might have been sheltering a warm small creature there.

  'I haven't seen you for days,' she said. It was a way of telling him that he needn't have gone cool and distant on her, that she'd been mad at him for a while but it had blown over, just as it always blew over with her, and he should have known that about her, or at least given her the benefit of the doubt.

  Challis nodded, squeezing her fingers hard and wanting her again.

  'A bit of decorum, Inspector,' Tessa said, reading his eyes and wryly pulling away from him.

  Then the questions: who found the bodies in both cases? Were there any similarities between them? Differences? Did the police have a suspect? Were the shootings linked in any way to the manhunt for Ian Munro? How was that going, incidentally? Was Munro still believed to be hiding out in the Westernport area? Did Challis place any credence in the fact that Munro had been sighted as far afield as Geelong, Sydney and the Gold Coast?

  More often than not Challis gave her his half-smile and head-shake, saying, 'You know I can't divulge that kind of information.'

  And the more she questioned him the more she stopped being Tessa Kane, his sometime bedmate, and his mind drifted again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was always the same with a door-to-door inquiry. Half the time there was no one home and you had to follow it up later. The other half of the time the occupant would come to the door showing wariness, guilt, anxiety-some reflection of whatever was uppermost in their minds or lives at that time. Never innocence or warmth.

  Of course, no one had ever seen or knew anything. But once they realised that the knock on the door didn't relate to them, they'd be all helpful and start filling the air with a stream of useless information. Or if they didn't like the cops you'd see it in their faces, an expression that said you were on your own and good riddance.

  With this in mind that Thursday, Pam Murphy door-knocked up and down the streets adjacent to the home of the lawyer Seigert, asking if anyone knew anything about his murder. But no one knew anything and after a while it became automatic, the doorknock, the handful of questions, the polite goodbye and the short walk to the next house, and her thoughts returned to what was uppermost in her mind.

  Money. Or rather, how taking out a loan for thirty thousand dollars hadn't given her the liquidity she'd sought or been promised. 'This will free you up,' Carl Lister had said when he'd co-signed the contract and given her his oily smile, except she'd forgotten about the quarterly bills-phone, electricity, gas-and the on-road costs for the Subaru, and then there was rent to pay every fortnight, and she'd done a stupid thing and booked a holiday in Bali for when she got time off in September. Throwing money around like she had stacks of it.

  Now she saw clearly that the thirty thousand wasn't hers- or rather, not hers to keep. It was borrowed. It had to be paid back. And not paid back just when she felt like it but weekly, in instalments. She should have chosen monthly. And now there was no money. It was all accounted for. And this week's instalment was due but her salary was not due. Not till next week.

  How could she have been so stupid? Maybe she could go back and renegotiate the loan. Ask for a grace period maybe, or lower instalments, or monthly or quarterly instalments. Except that Lister had warned her, told her this was a high-interest loan with stringent conditions. 'I lay everything out for my clients, fair and square so there are no misunderstandings,' he'd said. Implying by his words and manner that she was lucky to get this loan and she'd better not abuse it.

  'Pardon?'

  Pam blinked. She found herself on a front verandah, talking to herself while the householder, an elderly man with a watering can, was watching her from a nearby outcrop of potted ferns. 'My name is Constable Murphy,' she said automatically, 'and I'm investigating…'

  John Tankard was doorknocking the Pearce murders, driving up and down the housing estate and wider, into the backroads beneath Upper Penzance. Uppermost in his mind was the replica of the Sig Sauer pistol he'd seen advertised in Sidearm News.

  He was really sold on this Internet thing. The other day he'd found himself forking out five hundred bucks in Coolart Computers for a used PC. They also signed him up with a local service provider and last night he'd surfed the Web and found a handful of excellent sites devoted to handguns, rifles and accoutrements. Crystal-clear images, descriptions, price lists. And your American sites didn't beat about the bush. They knew what a handgun was for-to protect, to fight back with. Forget about shooting at cardboard targets.

  One site even had a tutorial link. Click on and you were in a virtual street, gangbangers, hold-up men and raghead terrorists behind every rubbish bin and power pole.

  'Pow,' Tankard would go, a Sig Sauer or a Glock virtually there in his grasp, a classic two-handed stance, snapping shots. Snapping shots at Ian Munro. Always Munro's knowing, sneering face there on the monitor of John Tankard's home computer. Popping Munro right between the eyes. Blood, bone and grey matter spurting from the back of Munro's skull, John Tankard getting the drop on Munro this time.

  'If it isn't Bradley Pike.'

  Brad Pike waited on the doorstep of the Tully sisters' house, watching Donna Tully's face. She made no move to let him in.

  'Lisa home?' he said.

  Donna shrugged.

  Behind her Lisa called, 'Who is it?'

  Donna yelled over her shoulder, 'Lover boy.'

  A moment of silence and then Lisa was there with Donna. 'Hi.'

  'Hi,' Pike said.

  He waited, and then the Tully sisters turned their backs and disappeared, leaving the door open, so he followed. He caught up with them in the sitting room, Donna already on the sofa lighting up a cigarette, Lisa beside her, flipping through a Myer catalogue. Clearly no one had ever taught them good manners and Pike felt a flash of anger go through him.

  But he swallowed it. 'Can I bot a smoke off yous?'

  Donna shrugged but let her packet of smokes sit there on the glass coffee table, so he helped himself. She didn't snap out her arm and smack his hand away, so that was progress. This time a couple of weeks ago he wouldn't have been allowed through the front door.

  'Dwayne in?'

  That shrug again. Lisa ignored him, bending her head suddenly at something in the catalogue. 'Interest free for the first six months,' she said.

  'What?' Donna said, animated at last.

  'DVD and TV package,' Lisa said.

  'Gis a look,' Pike said, wanting to be part of this, crouching beside her. The carpet was sticky. He let his arm brush hers. She didn't retreat from the contact. Together they gazed at the catalogue, and he found himself saying, 'If yous are interested, I'll buy it for ya.'

  He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and dared to watch Lisa's face. He saw it soften. 'Brad, that's so sweet,' she said.

  Brad Pike grinned. In like Flynn.

  He didn't know how he was going to pay for the DVD and TV package. He didn't even know if he'd have to. He was in with Lisa again and he could always distract her if she started on about it.

  That evening Skip Lister was there when Ellen got home. That made it three times sin
ce Easter. Apparently Skip and Larrayne had been to a four o'clock session at the cinema in Rosebud.

  Ellen did what she always did now and glanced keenly at his face, watching his movements and listening to his voice. She didn't know if he'd been doped to the eyeballs on the evening of Larrayne's party, or simply drunk, but whatever it was he'd been clean since that time.

  'Hello, Mrs Destry.'

  'Hello, Skip.'

  Larrayne was hanging on to Skip's arm. Fortunately there was nothing mooning, goofy or melting about the gesture so Ellen grinned at the pair of them and said something about rustling up some dinner.

  'Take a load off, Mrs Destry,' Skip said. 'It's all taken care of.'

  'You cooked?'

  'Yep,' he said proudly.

  There was a third ring in one of his ears. She wondered when he'd had it done. 'That's very kind of you.' She paused, testing the air. 'I thought I smelt something delicious when I came through the door.'

  'Ready when you are, Mum,' Larrayne said, and Ellen gazed at them, at their unaffected love and their youthfulness and wondered what would happen to that if Skip's father proved to be dirty and she was obliged to arrest him for it.

  Scobie Sutton got home in time to give Roslyn her bedtime bath. Afterwards she curled up in his lap, soft and sweet smelling in her pyjamas. Scobie was overcome: he missed this closeness, and found himself burying his nose into the gap between her collar and her neck, breathing her in, and examining the perfect whorl of her ear. Before long they were examining each other's fingers for splinters, and fortunately he had one at the edge of his right thumb, a souvenir of the search for Ian Munro's marijuana operation, and she fetched the tweezers and more or less pulled it out. Then it was time for her story and finally he sank into the sofa, dinner on his lap, glass of beer on the coffee table.