Whispering Death Read online

  The old woman was scarifying. ‘Them? All they’re good for is uprooting good apple trees and putting in grape vines. They live up in the city and I never see them.’

  Overton was glaring at Pam now, so she eased out of the conversation and the house and sat in her car for a while. The next step was Missing Persons, local hospitals and, if that came to nothing, a background check on Jan Overton. Meanwhile, she’d take the long route back to Waterloo—skirt around the nature reserve and back along Waterloo-Dandenong Road.

  Mrs McIntosh’s road deteriorated, after a few hundred metres, into powdery drifts and bone-shaking corrugations. Pam eased along, listening to pebbles ping inside the wheel arches. At the T-intersection she turned left, another chopped-about farmers’ road leading her around the far side of the reserve. Here she found a gate in a falling-down fence hung with fox pelts, and a bare patch of ground where anyone mad enough to stroll through the reserve could park. She got out and made a skirting examination of the dirt. A faint suggestion of tyre tracks—but why wouldn’t there be? No drag marks. No blood that she could see.

  Maybe lovers had come here last night; something went wrong and the girl ran off. Or they had drunken sex in the clearing and she was left behind to sleep it off. Or nothing happened at all.

  Pam returned to the Subaru and followed the track to the end, relieved to turn left onto bitumen for the fast run back to Waterloo. That’s when she saw the fancy gateway and there was her CIU colleague, Scobie Sutton, gloomily scribbling in his notebook. She pulled over, got out. ‘Scobie.’

  Sutton was tall, morose and thin, his black suit gaping and flapping around his fleshless limbs. ‘Pam.’

  ‘Breaking the back of local crime, I see?’

  Sutton seemed to think about taking the question seriously but then a smile transformed his face. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘I came with John Tankard. He’s up at the house.’

  ‘You sent Tank to question a citizen?’

  Scobie scowled. This time he’d failed to read her. ‘John’s all right,’ he said loyally.

  They stood side by side and contemplated the gateway. One of its pillars dripped with the words: I’M COMPENSATING FOR A SMALL DICK. Pam grinned. The spraycan vigilante had been active for two months now, always targeting ostentatious driveway entrances, a recent fashion trend on the Peninsula, a sign of brash money. She ran her gaze over the cream-coloured pillars, the irregular fieldstone blocks, the curving, baronial wings rising from the dying spring grasses, the oiled hardwood gates. The house itself was out of sight, at the end of a long driveway that wound through trees to a hillside overlooking Western Port Bay.

  The graffiti was a variation on the others she’d seen in the past few weeks: A CASHED-UP BOGAN LIVES HERE, and JUST BECAUSE I’M RICH DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TASTE and, simply, WANKER. Pam thought the vigilante deserved a medal, but he—or she—had become a headache for CIU. A victim with money and clout had put the hard word on the local member of Parliament, who had put the hard word on Inspector Challis’s superintendent, who had put the hard word on Challis, who had tried to put the hard word on the rank-and-file. Pam had told him he must be joking if he thought these people were victims and if he thought police resources, already overstretched, should be wasted investigating a bit of graffiti.

  So Challis handed the investigation to Scobie Sutton, who never complained.

  Pam lingered a while, yarning with Scobie. He hadn’t seen anyone—certainly not a naked woman, he told her, blushing a little.

  Then, almost immediately, they heard a voice, ‘Help me, please help me.’

  Startled, they glanced across the road.

  Jan Overton’s victim, thought Pam, beginning to move. Young, naked, filthy, she must have stumbled through bushland to get here.

  Sutton followed her across. The woman was clasping the top fence wire with both hands, rocking and keening like an abandoned child. As though the notional obstruction of the fence was a kind of last straw.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re safe now,’ Pam crooned, helping her bend between the wires.

  ‘I was raped, someone raped me,’ the young woman said.

  Scobie draped his suit coat around the thin shoulders and Pam noted the scratches automatically, the blood, the bruises, looking for drifts of dry semen. Then they were at the car. ‘Scobie, could you get my first-aid kit from the Subaru?’ She gave the woman a drink from a bottle of water.

  ‘My name is Pam, and that’s Scobie,’ she said. ‘We’re police officers.’

  The woman stiffened as if she might bolt. ‘I’m Chloe,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you know who did this to you, Chloe?’

  At that moment, a police car came down the driveway from the house, the engine decelerating, tyres growling on the gravel as the car nosed through the gate posts. John Tankard got out, a man with a barrelly torso and vast thighs barely contained inside his constable’s uniform. ‘What’s up?’

  The response was instantaneous. Bucking violently in Pam’s arms, Chloe screamed: ‘Keep him away from me, keep him away from me.’

  5

  Hal Challis was stroking Ellen Destry’s bare feet, thinking how shapely they were, and how much he was going to miss them over the next eight weeks.

  Noon, an early lunch on the deck of her house before the taxi came to collect her. Five p.m. flight to London with a stopover in Singapore, so she needed to be at Melbourne Airport by three. Allowing ninety minutes for the taxi ride—covered by her study grant—she’d need to leave by 1.30. Plenty of time for lunch in the sun.

  They’d already had the quickie.

  Challis kneaded an instep absently. Ellen’s feet seemed light in his lap. He admired the fine down on her legs, the taut length of her calves. She was watching him with a drowsy smile, so he halted his gaze at the hem of her shorts and admired the view beyond her side veranda.

  Ellen had bought this house in Dromana, on the southern slope of Arthurs Seat, two months ago. He could see why she liked living here. Small, shaded houses on narrow, sleepy streets, some sealed, others no more than potholed dirt tracks marked ‘no through road’. The bay visible between the houses and trees further down the slope. A village atmosphere, with shops at the bottom of the hill and the beach close by for her morning walk. And the freeway only a quick couple of blocks away.

  But it wasn’t a place he could live in—not that either of them wanted that. But they did want each other, so it was all right. A modern arrangement, some nights spent together at his place or at hers, others spent apart.

  ‘You could fly to Europe with me,’ she said.

  ‘I could.’

  No he couldn’t. Spend eight weeks as a tag-along boyfriend while she studied regional sex crimes policing in the UK, Ireland and parts of Germany, France and Holland? Ellen busy with her European colleagues during the day and writing up her notes at night, while he trudged over the hard flagstones of one cathedral after another?

  It was only for two months. He had ongoing criminal investigations and junior detectives to oversee, and anyway he’d rather travel with Ellen when they both had time off.

  ‘But I know you won’t,’ she said.

  He gave her a sweet, tired smile. They would talk often, as close to face-to-face as you could get with a webcam.

  A seed pod dropped from one of her garden trees and bounced off the bonnet of his Triumph, which was parked in her driveway. Watching his gaze shift to it, Ellen said, ‘Why don’t you use my car for the duration?’

  His TR4 was uncomfortable and frequently unreliable, and she said so now, again.

  ‘Or,’ she added, ‘surprise me while I’m away and buy yourself a new car.’

  He’d already thought he might do that, in fact. ‘Am I someone who doesn’t surprise you?’

  She jumped from her chair and onto his lap. ‘God, Hal, constant surprises, most of them welcome.’

  ‘I thought a BMW.’


  ‘Another surprise.’ She paused. ‘Though I’m not sure I could be with someone who drives a BMW.’

  They kissed and the weather-rotted fabric of his deck chair began to tear under their weight. They stood and surveyed the damage. ‘I’ll fix it while you’re away. New canvas, upholstery tacks…’

  Not only that: her lawn was no better than a patch of dirt and dry grass, the decking needed a couple of coats of stain, several windows were stuck, the TV antenna resembled a kite caught in a tree, and weeds grew in the gutters. He gazed at the outside walls: new paint job.

  She gave him a complicated look. ‘I don’t want…You’ll have plenty…’ she said, trying to find her meaning.

  He knew. She didn’t want him to be her knight in shiny armour, didn’t want to be beholden. By the same token, he didn’t want to throw himself into doing everything for her. It was complicated. The relationship was new, and they were still drawing lines in the sand, in an amiable kind of way.

  As if to dispel any hint of tension, she came to him, wrapped him close so that he felt the beat of her heart. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

  ‘Me, too.’ He paused. ‘I could come to the airport.’

  She shook her head under his chin. ‘Please don’t, I couldn’t bear it, all that hanging around. Besides, Larrayne will be there.’

  Ellen’s daughter was at university now, but still a little hostile around Challis. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Sighs of relief all around.’

  They fetched two kitchen chairs and Ellen lowered her feet back into his lap. ‘How will you spend the weekend?’ She sounded as if she needed to know he wouldn’t be miserable with her gone.

  ‘I thought I’d make tentative steps to sell the Dragon.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Really?’

  In her practical way she said, ‘Look, I thought it was great you were restoring an old aeroplane. Totally un-cop like. But I can see your heart isn’t in it anymore.’

  Challis was relieved. ‘My interest seemed to evaporate the moment I tightened the last screw.’

  She nodded. ‘How do you sell an aeroplane?’

  ‘I thought maybe a broker. There’s a man called Warren Niekirk, deals in vintage planes.’

  ‘A local?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s handy.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better change.’

  But she didn’t move. An explosive racket drove the birds from the trees and Challis glanced across at the neighbouring house. Two women lived there, gardeners at the maze on Arthurs Seat, each with a bikie boyfriend, and one of the boyfriends was firing up his Harley Davidson.

  ‘The music of the suburbs,’ Challis said. ‘Do they know you’re police?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  His phone rang. He stared at it, sitting there on Ellen’s warped veranda table, and willed it to stop.

  ‘I hate your ring tone.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s the same as that woman’s in Love, Actually.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘The one with the mad brother.’

  Challis couldn’t remember the film or the ring tone. He wasn’t someone who had favourite films. Ellen was. On her reckoning, she’d seen Love, Actually a million times.

  He pressed the talk button. ‘Challis.’

  ‘Boss, we’ve got a rape,’ Pam Murphy said.

  And Ellen Destry, about to jet off and learn how to deal with rape cases, read his face and swung her graceful feet to the floor.

  6

  Mid-afternoon, a room in the Waterloo hospital, Pam Murphy briefly clasping Chloe Holst’s forearm. ‘Do you mind Inspector Challis being here, Chloe?’

  Challis was propping up a wall, trying to be unobtrusive. He smiled but remained silent where he was. ‘I don’t mind,’ Holst said, her voice damp, cracking a little.

  ‘We spoke to your parents and the doctor, and they said if you’re up to it we could ask you a few questions. Meanwhile, no one’s going to carry out any more forensic indignities on you, okay? But we do need to ask you what happened.’

  Chloe Holst collapsed against her pillows, stared at the ceiling, and said, in a rapid monotone: ‘I was on my way home when he flashed his lights at me from behind. Then he—’ ‘Could we go back a bit?’ Pam said, her voice low and warm in the chair beside the bed. ‘Home from where?’

  ‘The Chicory Kiln.’

  ‘Don’t know it.’

  Challis murmured from the wall, ‘It’s a winery-bistro place on Myers Road.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Challis said, ‘Had you been drinking? We have to ask these kinds of—’

  The young woman in the bed tossed in anger, then winced. ‘Why doesn’t anyone listen? I work there. I hardly ever drink, and I don’t drink at work. I was simply going home.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Challis said. ‘By the time information gets to me sometimes it’s wrong or inadequate.’

  ‘I’ve told this story so many times.’

  Once, thought Challis, to Pam—and a million times to yourself. And when the sex crimes squad gets involved, you’ll have to go through it all again. ‘When we have all the details we won’t need to bother you again,’ he said lamely.

  Chloe Holst shot him a look from her right eye. The left looked pulpy and black, swollen shut, three stitches bisecting the eyebrow. Angry finger-bruising around the neck, bruises to the upper arms, and, hidden beneath the bedclothes, bruising to the thighs and tears to the vagina and anus. ‘What about in court?’ she asked, almost inaudibly.

  Pam Murphy mustered a smile. ‘You didn’t see his face, so it may not come to that.’

  Holst touched her hand to her split lip and grew teary. She was about to speak but sank again into the pillows heaped behind her.

  The little room, like the corridor outside it, smelt of life and death and blood and cleansers and chemical intervention. Murphy knew the smell all right. She’d visited enough suspects and victims in emergency rooms over the years, been treated for cuts and bruises. She glanced around at Challis and then out of the window and saw nothing to guide her through this. Sergeant Destry would know what to do, but the sergeant was on her way to Europe.

  She turned to Holst again. ‘What happened after he flashed his lights?’

  ‘It happened near the intersection with Balnarring Road, so I was slowing down anyway. I hate that corner.’

  A high-speed blind corner, a fatal corner over the years, with no clear view of traffic belting down the hill until you were halfway across the intersection. ‘Me too,’ Pam said.

  ‘He flashed his lights at me from behind, then cut across in front of me as I was stopping. Then he got out and started waving ID at me.’

  Challis said, in his low voice, ‘Can you describe the car?’

  ‘A newish white Falcon.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘My dad has one. I actually thought it was him for a moment.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About midnight.’

  ‘No other traffic?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought maybe my rear lights weren’t working, or I’d hit something, you know. I thought something serious was wrong, so I wound down my window.’

  Pam Murphy said, referring to her notes, ‘You told the ambulance officers that you were raped by someone wearing a ski mask. Was he wearing a ski mask when he stopped you?’

  ‘I know what you’re asking,’ the young woman said, with some wobbly heat. ‘How come I didn’t just drive off, right? But he wasn’t wearing the mask when he stopped me, plus it was dark, plus he had his hand up to his eyes like my headlights were blinding him. Plus he was wearing a police uniform and he shouted at me, sounding really urgent, said for my own safety I had to pull in under the trees.’

  Pam pictured the small parking area on the south-east corner, abutting Buckley’s Reserve, a school-bus stop five mornings a week but otherwise used only by drivers
taking a mobile phone call, blackberry pickers, road-repair gangs on a tea-break from patching potholes. She pictured it at night, full of tricky shapes and shadows. ‘Just to be clear, the man who abducted you wasn’t Constable Tankard, the policeman who frightened you earlier?’

  Chloe Holst shook her head. ‘Too fat. It was…I just saw the uniform and freaked out.’

  ‘I understand. Then what happened?’

  ‘I was scared. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I hadn’t been drinking or speeding, but I thought I must have done something wrong, or something bad had happened to my mum and dad or something. Anyway, I did what he asked and before I could get out or anything, he climbed into the back seat and put a knife to my neck. He pricked me with it, look.’

  A small, scratched hand pulled down the neckline, the delicate jaw craned upwards, revealing flesh that looked shockingly naked to Challis just then. A short, clean nick.

  ‘After that I just about lost it.’

  ‘You didn’t see his face?’

  ‘He was behind me, and by then he had the mask on. Plus gloves, you know, latex ones.’

  ‘Let’s stay with him for a bit. He was wearing a police uniform?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jacket over a shirt and trousers, or just the shirt and trousers.’

  ‘Shirt and trousers.’

  ‘Short sleeves? Long?’

  ‘Long.’

  Less chance of being scratched, Challis thought. ‘Footwear?’

  Chloe frowned, looking from him to Pam Murphy to the ceiling. Then her face cleared. ‘Black lace-ups. He kicked me in the stomach later on.’

  Plain black shoes with a featureless flat sole, thought Challis. ‘Uniform cap?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of voice did he have?’

  Challis didn’t want to suggest that the rapist spoke with an accent. Some victims were conditioned to believe that only an outsider, a foreigner, could have hurt them so badly. ‘I’m assuming he did speak?’

  ‘Kind of a hoarse whisper. It was put on. I wouldn’t say he had an accent or anything.’

  Pam Murphy asked: ‘Any smells that you could identify?’