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  ‘Ice, for sure,’ he said. ‘Don’t know about the pills until I test them.’

  ‘Prints?’

  Sutton glanced back at the house and grimaced. ‘A lot of smoke and water damage. And anything still intact seems to have been wiped down. But with a fire at the back door…maybe they rushed it and we’ll get lucky.’

  ‘You found evidence a child had been there?’ said Challis.

  Sutton had a daughter, and the thought of a child in peril would get to him. He closed his eyes, swayed a little. ‘I have no idea where she fits in. Meanwhile, as soon as I finish here I have to process the car from Friday’s fire.’

  Then he was gone, taking the drugs to an evidence-logging officer and re-entering the house.

  Murphy said, ‘Boss, this doesn’t seem like the hub of an ice empire.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Challis nodded glumly. ‘Too small, too haphazard.’

  But there was an ice empire somewhere nearby. The fallout was all around them. ‘Maybe we’ll learn something at the drug-squad briefing.’

  3

  THE DRUG-SQUAD BRIEFING…

  The Melbourne-based squad had recently mounted a series of operations in rural Victoria. The aim was both to investigate ice manufacture and distribution and to educate local police. It was Westernport’s turn, beginning after lunch with a series of talks: a drug-squad senior sergeant, an ex-addict and dealer, and a parent of addicts. Challis saw the sense of the operation, but it would tie up the station all afternoon and he had work to do.

  Returning to his car, he steered out of the estate and onto a winding road that took him to Frankston-Flinders Road and Waterloo. Soon he was passing tyre outfitters, car repairers, a BP service station, Waterloo Mowers, Waterloo Bait and Tackle, a motel, a broad stretch of parkland at the edge of a mangrove belt and the tricky Westernport tidal flats, and finally he was on High Street. Banks, pharmacies, cafes, other small businesses. Then the roundabout at the top where, it seemed to Challis, two of the main industries of Waterloo faced each other: the police station and the McDonald’s.

  Parking in the potholed yard at the rear of the police station, he entered through a side door. Waterloo was a training station. Provisional constables were sent here to work alongside uniformed police, CIU detectives and civilian staff for a few months, then sent elsewhere. They were a blur to Challis. He talked to them at crime scenes, gave them the benefit of his experience, but he didn’t try to befriend them. They always moved on—and some of them were obliged to move on to other careers.

  He cultivated relations with the civilian staff, however. They knew everything and everyone in the station. You’d ask them for more stationery, the key to a cabinet, IT advice, phone numbers, Constable X’s whereabouts. Needing to know that all was ready for the drug-squad briefing, he stepped into the general office, a nerve centre of filing cabinets, desks and civilian clerks at the rear of the building.

  Damn. Lunchtime, so the room was deserted—or so Challis believed until the door to an inner office opened and Janine Quine emerged. Startled, she said, ‘I was just answering Annette’s phone.’

  Challis nodded. Annette Tranh, the office manager, was away on sick leave. ‘We all set for this afternoon’s briefing?’

  Quine was an angular woman, mid-thirties, strain and privation in her face. Prim and efficient, not given to trading insults or gossip with the police or her colleagues, she was also virtually unknowable. Which suited the Waterloo senior officers, like Challis, who managed small teams and often needed clerical and other support. Challis called her Jan, she called him Inspector. The talk was she had a no-hoper husband at home. Alcoholic, gambler; something like that.

  And now she flashed him a jumpy smile and smoothed her palms down the front of her thighs. Bony hands, one tiny engagement ring, one thin wedding band.

  With those hands smoothing, smoothing her thighs, she said, ‘I’ve put in extra chairs, carafes of water, cups.’ She stared at the ceiling for further inspiration and added, ‘An urn, biscuits, tea and coffee.’

  ‘The monitor?’

  ‘In place.’

  ‘Wi-fi?’

  ‘Good to go.’

  She worked her mouth anxiously, as if the technology might fail between now and then.

  ‘That’s great, Jan, many thanks.’

  ‘Pens,’ she said in a rush, her face reddening, ‘pads, spare memory sticks.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Challis said, wanting to edge away.

  She was looking at him, bursting with powerful feelings. ‘Friends of ours were asking…’

  Challis lifted an eyebrow. ‘Asking?’

  In a rush she said, ‘They live on a bush block and with all these mower and tractor thefts they wondered if the police were any nearer to catching anybody.’

  Bemused by the implied criticism, Challis said, ‘The main thing your friends should think about is insurance cover and good locks. They shouldn’t store vehicles and equipment unsecured.’

  She continued to look troubled, so he gave her a smile. It was intended to reassure but Challis’s smiles were sometimes sharkish, the smiles of a hunter. Quine paled and looked away before collapsing into the chair behind her desk.

  ‘Thanks again,’ Challis said, feeling uneasily that he’d offered no help or comfort.

  BUT MENTION OF THE THEFTS—his second main headache after the ice epidemic—prompted him to check if Pam Murphy had returned to the station.

  He found her in the CIU office, a small, open-plan room with desks, filing cabinets, phones and computers, the walls fluttering with paper: cartoons, memoranda, posters, photographs. His own office was a poky sub-room in one corner. Murphy had the landline to her ear, face twisted in perplexity. Her expression cleared when she spotted Challis. She said goodbye, cradled the handset.

  ‘I could have waited,’ he told her.

  Pam shrugged. ‘Just my mother.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Murphy said, frowning. She coughed. ‘Boss, can I have Sunday off?’

  Challis checked the impulse to say okay; spent a moment mentally sifting through the caseload, the work rosters. He didn’t want to say yes and later discover solid reasons why he should have refused.

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said eventually. ‘Everything okay?’

  Faintly embarrassed, Murphy said, ‘Just that my mother wants to go on a little road trip around the Peninsula before the weather gets too hot. She grew up here.’

  ‘Sure,’ Challis said.

  The notion of overtime pay and set hours was laughable if you were a CIU detective. Murphy had worked long hours, weekends and weekdays, for months now. He was happy to make allowances. No whiner or malingerer, she deserved some time off. And he knew that her mother, now a widow, had recently moved to an aged-care home in Malvern.

  He looked at his watch. The briefing was not for another hour. ‘Can I take you to lunch?’

  ‘Cafe Laconic?’

  The Laconic had gone too gluten-free for Challis’s liking, but he said, ‘Sure,’ again, and they walked down High Street, nodding hello here and there.

  Seated at a window seat, where the air was cool, he said, ‘Mini briefing.’

  Murphy unfolded her napkin, used to his ways. ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘According to the log, another hobby-farm tractor was stolen on the weekend.’

  Murphy sipped at her glass of water, put it down, ran her fingers up and down the condensation. ‘Is this a cunning or even clumsy way to keep me working next Sunday instead of spending time with my dear old mother?’

  Challis grinned. One of the town’s bank managers walked by and they exchanged waves through the glass. He returned his attention to Murphy. ‘A tractor stolen now and then, sure, but five in the past two months? Together with spraying equipment, trailers, ride-on mowers…Who’s taking them? How are they transported? Where are they stored?’

  ‘Not to mention the rifles,’ Murphy said.

  ‘Not to mention the rifles,’
Challis agreed.

  He brooded. ‘Several of these places were on the register.’

  Waterloo police station held a register of homes left unoccupied while their owners holidayed or travelled on business. Some were rural, and with limited resources and personnel, the police could only manage an occasional drive-past. Burglars had taken advantage of that to break into four such houses in recent weeks.

  ‘Luck,’ said Murphy, ‘or good intel.’

  Their muck arrived, arranged on white plates.

  BACK AT THE STATION, they were told the drug-squad team had arrived.

  ‘Settling in upstairs, sir,’ the desk sergeant said.

  Challis nodded his thanks, punched in the security code and entered the main corridor with Murphy. Telling her he’d see her at the briefing, he made his way to the first-floor corridor and the small conference room assigned to the drug squad. Knocked and said, ‘Senior Sergeant Coolidge?’

  Two men and two women were setting up laptops and files on two tables. They all looked up and one, an attractive woman with canny features and shoulder-length auburn hair, stalked across the room to him, her hand extended. ‘Inspector Challis.’

  Challis had read Coolidge’s bio: late thirties, a master’s in criminology, but she’d also spent years on the street, including undercover work. Married, no children. Given the weather, she wore a sleeveless white cotton top, a knee-length blue skirt, sandals. Like Pam Murphy she seemed full of suppressed drive.

  They traded a few names and war stories, and Challis asked how she wanted to run the briefing.

  ‘I’ll say a few words, then we’ll hear from our guest speakers’—she inclined her head to the far corner of the room, where two women were perched on the edge of plastic chairs, talking animatedly—‘and I’ll finish with a more police-oriented slant.’

  Challis grew aware of a warm scrutiny from Coolidge, her green eyes searching his face. Almost without appearing to move, she was suddenly very close. ‘I hear,’ she murmured, ‘that you found an ice lab on one of the housing estates.’

  Faintly rattled, surprised by a desire to touch her upper arm, he said, ‘Abandoned. Crime-scene people are going through it.’

  Her scent was subtle. Under the professional veneer she was soft, round, and performing a kind of carnal fathoming of him. Still murmuring, she said, ‘Typically, a lab like that would be here today, gone tomorrow.’ She cocked her head at him; he had the impression of her body saying one thing, her words another. ‘What concerns my team is the probable presence of an organised syndicate on the Peninsula. Whoever’s behind it is importing ice, not making it.’

  Challis felt faintly rebuked. Then Coolidge shot him a broad smile. ‘How about a drink after work? You can show me the sights.’

  4

  PAM MURPHY SHUT DOWN HER COMPUTER, locked her desk and headed along the upstairs corridor to the main briefing room. She paused in the doorway; the space was full. A mix of uniformed and plain-clothed officers sat around the long table, others lined the walls. She spotted a seat beside John Tankard, nodded hello, got out her notebook.

  The room, stuffy in the early summer heat, would be putrid by the end of the briefing. Murphy shifted her bones to get comfortable, stared out of the window. Up here, away from the glass, she couldn’t see much, just the roof of the McDonald’s on the other side of the road, treetops, streetlights hung with pre-Christmas tinsel. A wispy cloud or two.

  She turned her attention back to the room. Pads, pens, disposable cups and laptops distributed along the table, a whiteboard and a screen at the front of the room, a small corner table set with an urn, teabags, instant coffee, plastic cups and a tin biscuit box, almost empty. She fanned her face with her notebook. Challis caught her eye and grinned. As usual, he was propping up a wall.

  Then a disturbance of the air. A woman who exuded a confidence both sexual and professional loped the length of the room, drawing everyone’s attention. She stopped at the front. Clapped her hands: ‘If I could have your attention…’

  The room subsided.

  ‘My name is Senior Sergeant Coolidge and I’m attached to the ice unit of the Major Drug Investigation Division, based in Melbourne. You may have noticed that we’ve commandeered one of your conference rooms’—she bared her teeth, simulating a smile—‘for a small operation we’re mounting in the area. Just go about your business and we won’t get in your way. Hopefully we can help one another in the days to come.’

  Another smile. Murphy sensed that no one returned it. She glanced at Challis, who was expressionless. He rolled his shoulders slightly, as if to relieve pressure.

  Coolidge got down to business.

  ‘We’re facing an ice epidemic.’ She stopped, scowled. ‘I’m not sure why some of you are rolling your eyes. You can’t be bored already; perhaps you don’t like being lectured. Perhaps you think drug dealers and users are scum who should be left to wipe themselves out.’

  Her gaze ranged the room interrogatively. ‘You’re free to leave, but I will say this: ice use, ice crime, has become a nightmare in rural and regional areas like this one. And if you’re sitting there bored and resentful, just consider this: you could be the next one stabbed by a kid high on ice. Or you shoot this kid and spend the next few years being counselled or sued. Or your girlfriend or daughter or brother is an addict, or about to become one. Or your wife, driving home from school with the kids in the back, is beaten to death with a tyre iron because some guy thought she looked at him the wrong way at a stop sign. Or your blameless next-door neighbour is firebombed because his nephew happens to owe a dealer money. Or you find yourself forking out tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, counsellors and rehab when your sister or daughter falls to ice. Or you older ones find yourselves raising your grandkids because your kids are addicts.’

  She had them now. No one wanted to be seen as the officer who didn’t give a shit.

  ‘You must have an inkling of all this,’ Coolidge said. ‘You’d be deaf, dumb and blind not to. Here are some figures. There has been a 165 per cent increase in magistrates’ court convictions related to methamphetamine use in the past three years. Ice counts for 90 per cent of all drug arrests in many regional areas. Almost half the instances of domestic violence in the last few years are due to ice. Deaths where ice has been a factor—accidental or deliberate—have tripled.’

  She paused, intense.

  ‘We’re under-resourced, under-funded and under-appreciated’—that roused a murmur—‘but that doesn’t mean we roll over and let it happen. This is an information session. Some of you have come here not knowing or caring in particular about the uses or effects of ice, but if we’re going to be effective, proud of what we do, we need to be prepared. I will speak about policing matters later. Right now I’ll introduce the first of two guest speakers, Anne Talbot.’

  The woman who entered was about forty, plain-looking, worn-out, a little anxious. She smiled tightly and launched into her address: ‘I have three teenage sons. The youngest is thirteen and scared. He’s scared he’ll go the way of his older brothers, who started taking ice in about Year 10. One of them died of it. The other is in prison for aggravated burglary while high on ice.’

  It was a flat, bleak delivery.

  ‘My son Jamie,’ Talbot said. ‘He was a lovely boy. Sweet, loved his footy, not bad at his studies. But his dad left us when Jamie was ten, and I worked two jobs to put a roof over our heads so I wasn’t always there for him. Yeah, I know, an old story and a guilt trip. But it happens more than you think. Jamie smoked a little marijuana, like most kids, but then he smoked some ice and that was it. By the end—he’s the one who died—he had a thousand-dollars-a-day habit. He’s a kid. He beat me up several times, he stripped the house of valuables and drained my bank account. He stole from other users and pushers.

  ‘Along the way, he became an enforcer. You know, he’d torch someone’s car because they owed money. One day he phoned me, paranoid, saying someone was going to kill him. By now I was br
oke, and I was over the whole thing. I hung up on him. That night, the police came to tell me he’d been stabbed to death. So, on that occasion, it wasn’t paranoia, someone was out to get him.’

  She gave them a wry smile; they shifted in their seats.

  ‘It turns out he’d stolen from another pusher, who’d tracked him down and killed him. That’s the police theory. I have no reason to doubt it.

  ‘By now I was living with my two younger boys in a granny flat at the back of my brother’s house. I’d had to sell our home, but there was such a high mortgage on it I was left with only a few thousand dollars. We stayed there for about four months, and then my second son, David, got hooked on ice and became so agitated and aggressive that my brother asked us to move out. He had his own family to worry about.

  ‘We’re in a caravan now, me and Andrew, my youngest. It’s okay; not great. David was a problem: violent, delusional. His teeth were a mess, he looked like a skeleton, he stank of chemicals, his face and arms were covered in sores where he’d picked at his skin. He jumped off a building, broke his leg, and then attacked the ambulance crew who tried to help him. While he was in hospital the police arrested him. Apparently he’d been with Jamie on a couple of home invasions.’

  Talbot stood there, looking around in some defiance. ‘That’s my story. It’s being repeated in every town and suburb. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I’m holding on by a thread.’

  She clasped her hands together, stared at the floor.

  WITH ANNE TALBOT FAREWELLED and placed in a taxi, a woman named Mandy Reeve was called to the front of the room. To Pam Murphy’s eyes, Reeve was expensively dressed, and she wondered if that had been a wise decision; it was bound to get everyone’s backs up. But then she thought the clothing, flashy jewellery, bright nail polish, discreet shoulder tattoo and vivacity might prove a point: that dealers and users weren’t necessarily all bogans and povos.