Whispering Death Read online

  Dusk was deepening. Grace turned on the lights, the radio, tipped leftover stew into a saucepan and lit the gas under it. There were always leftovers in her fridge, and she always heated them properly, not by microwave. Tomorrow she’d cook.

  She showered, stepped out with a towel wrapped around her head, pulled on tracksuit pants and a T-shirt, no underwear. She was home, there were no protocols to follow. Home: well, it had been for two years; she didn’t know if she’d ever find anywhere she could put down deep roots. Home, and fully paid for.

  But hers was a day by day, week by week kind of life, and there was a better than even chance she’d have to walk away from it one day— away from the warm light on the slate floor, the comfortable sofa, the patchwork bed cover made by a local woman, the local jams and chutneys in her fine dresser. The tiny Hans Heysen watercolour (legitimate) on the wall. The ground-cover plants clinging to the dunes, the windy beaches and the wheeling gulls.

  She’d bought an Elan shiraz and a Merricks Creek pinot in Waterloo. Shiraz with the stew, she thought. The pinot tomorrow with salmon, maybe. She drank half of the bottle, and mused, but the itch was upon her. Grace took her wine glass to her study, powered up the computer, and gambled away $7600 in a little under thirty minutes.

  11

  Grace’s Sandy Bay break-ins might have gone unnoticed until early evening, except that the owner of the Sydney Long aquatint happened to slip home at lunchtime. He worked in downtown Hobart, he told the attending police constables, and discovered, late morning, that he’d left his mobile phone on the kitchen bench. ‘Still plugged into the charger,’ he said. ‘Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, but I needed a couple of numbers.’

  He told the story again when the detectives arrived, taking their sweet time about it. Eventually those detectives arranged a door knock, and so a second break-in was discovered, and the owner was notified, and, in halting and not very urgent stages, an investigation was mounted as the day progressed, a detective senior constable named Wilmot in charge.

  Wilmot was making a sketch of the loft house grounds late that afternoon, the front door in relation to the driveway, garden beds and street, and noticed a man watching him from the other side of the road. A thin, taut wire of a man. Contained, snidely amused. Charcoal jacket, white shirt, jeans, walking shoes. Casual, but costly, and worn with assurance. Wilmot was thinking Sandy Bay toff, someone idle and pointless, when the stranger headed towards him across the road and came through the gateway, not a care in the world.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Wilmot said, ‘this is a crime scene. I must ask you to leave.’

  ‘She was wearing a tennis dress,’ the man said, ‘carrying a gym bag.’

  Wilmot’s mind scouted around for guidance and direction. ‘Er, who was?’

  ‘Your burglar.’

  Before he could tell himself not to engage, Wilmot said decisively, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but it was a guy, he trod all over the garden in size elevens.’

  The man offered a mild grin but there was a snake in it. ‘It’s what our girl does.’

  ‘If you know anything about a crime, sir, I must ask you to—’

  The newcomer wasn’t listening. He turned side-on and gestured towards the end of the street. ‘Check the pub on the corner. Their car-park camera. It catches her walking past the entrance at 8.37 this morning, wearing tennis gear and carrying a gym bag. The cute, bouncy type. At 9.15 she came by again, heading out.’

  ‘You checked their CCTV? On what authority?’

  The guy spun around, shot out his hand. ‘Andy Towne. Got in at four-thirty.’

  He gave Wilmot the kind of grin that means nothing at all.

  ‘Don’t fly Virgin Blue, by the way.’

  Hostility rose in Wilmot and he ignored the hand. ‘I don’t give a rat’s arse who you are or how you got here. Why you’re here and what I’m going to do about it is another matter.’

  Towne creased his face good-naturedly but the eyes stayed flat. He struck Wilmot as someone on whom everything had an equal impact: small children, chaos, a visit to the dentist, blood letting.

  ‘Mate? You hear me? How about you piss off and let me do my job.’

  Slipping a slender hand into an inside pocket, Towne waved identification at Wilmot, still wearing the smile. Wilmot saw a likeness of Towne and the words ‘National Crime Commission’ before the ID was secreted again.

  Wilmot flushed. ‘Whoopy do.’ He felt inept and tongue-tangled. Andrew Towne, he sensed, had summed him up at first sight as a time-server. Or the cunt treated everyone with barely concealed contempt.

  Wilmot looked away. The Derwent River had been flat and grey under the morning fog, then glinted briefly when the sun banded it. But the afternoon was drawing to a close now, the sun losing the fight to the mountains and a new fog shroud.

  He turned to Towne again. ‘Mate, all I’m looking at is a couple of simple burglaries. What makes it federal?’

  Towne looked bored. ‘We’ve been tracking this bitch for the past two years. She operates all over the country, always where the money is—Noosa, Port Douglas, North Shore, Adelaide Hills.’ He nodded. ‘Here in Sandy Bay.’

  Wilmot absorbed that. ‘You got here pretty quick.’

  Towne offered one of his arid smiles. ‘Our intel is good.’

  Any information system could be programmed to raise a red flag, Wilmot knew. Depending on the parameters. ‘She work alone?’

  ‘Let’s just say she’s part of something loose and shadowy,’ Towne said. ‘ATM skimming, credit cards, identity theft, burglary to order, shoplifting raids.’

  ‘Foreign gang?’ said Wilmot.

  Towne bared his teeth.

  Wilmot snapped. ‘So what do I do now?’ Irritated. ‘Kiss your sweet arse and go home?’

  Towne crinkled his eyes again, but they remained as flat and fogged as the river.

  12

  In the Chicory Kiln that evening, seated at a window overlooking vineyards on Myers Road, Pam Murphy read from the boxed paragraph on the front of the menu:

  ‘“The Chicory Kiln—so called because there was once a chicory kiln where the bistro now stands—offers the ultimate in relaxed dining on the Peninsula, and…”’

  She glanced at Challis. ‘Boss? Know what a chicory kiln is? Or chicory, for that matter?’

  ‘Edible plant,’ said Challis, his face dark and hawkish in the candlelight.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Rarely grown anymore.’

  She cocked her head.

  ‘Edible in what way?’

  ‘Salad leaves and coffee.’

  ‘Aha. Coffee. Hence your interest.’

  The only coffee that Challis trusted was the coffee that he made. Wouldn’t touch the canteen coffee. Always asked for tea if a doorknock witness offered coffee.

  He smiled at her blithely. ‘They used to roast and grind the roots. During the Second World War, it was added to coffee or used as a substitute.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  Challis was unmoved. ‘Early in my career I was posted to Phillip Island. Chicory kilns everywhere.’

  Then she saw his face shut down, as if a shadow from his past had crept in. She’d heard the whispers over the years. He’d met his wife on the island and she’d gone with him from one rural posting to another as he rose in the ranks. Then, somewhere in central Victoria, she’d started sleeping with one of his colleagues and she’d conspired with her lover to kill Challis. Something about an anonymous call and a lonely bush track. The wife was dead now. Suicide in jail. The lover was due for parole in a year or so.

  Pam thought about these things as she tore off a hunk of coarse bread and dunked it in a small bowl of olive oil. Local olive oil, according to the menu. She chewed the pungent bread, wiped her mouth and fingers.

  ‘Have you ever drunk chicory coffee?’

  Challis shuddered. ‘God, no.’

  Pam grinned, then glanced around the Chicory Kiln’s interior, which evoked Tuscan villa, New
England barn and Bedouin fort in roughly equal parts: gnarled posts and beams, terracotta floor tiles, vaulted ceiling, whitewashed earthen walls. The diners sat at heavy wooden tables, cooled by ceiling fans in summer and warmed by an enormous stone fireplace in winter.

  The diners, this Friday evening, were a mix of locals and weekender tourists. Young, middle-aged, old. Kids on a first date, a hen’s party of shire office workers, the Waterloo postmaster and his wife, a family singing Happy Birthday to an ancient crone.

  And Murphy and Challis, who’d come to question the staff and stayed for dinner.

  Eva—German backpacker, twenty-six years old, charged with washing the Chicory Kiln’s dishes, making the salads, sometimes clearing the tables—had talked to them during a cigarette break in the stinking air beside the bins in the rear courtyard, smoke dribbling from her mouth. ‘I am not knowing this girl Chloe so much. I am here three weeks only. I make the oranges from the trees on the river, I serve the food in Sydney, I cleaning houses in Byron Bay. That is all who I am. I know nothing. I hope you catches this man. You see my visa if you want.’

  That was at 5.30. Over the next hour, as other staff arrived for work, Murphy and Challis had taken them aside and asked them the same questions. How well do you know Chloe Holst? Did anyone ever visit her at the restaurant, take her home, meet her in the car park after work or during a work break? Are you aware of any confrontations between Chloe and a stranger, a customer or another member of staff? When did you last see her? Where? What was she doing at that time?

  The other waitresses, Kelly and Gabi, grew frightened and tearful. Kelly was in Year 12 at Westernport Secondary College, Gabi was on a gap year between school and university. Neither knew much about the world beyond home, school, the Peninsula and the Chicory Kiln. They’d been vaguely aware that something had happened to Chloe, but snatched? Raped? She was just so nice, always friendly and cheerful. They looked out over the car park with dark eyes and wrapped themselves inside their arms. Pam asked how they were getting home.

  ‘Dad,’ said Kelly.

  ‘My boyfriend,’ said Gabi.

  ‘Did anyone ever pick Chloe up after work?’

  ‘She’s got a car,’ they said, forgetting Chloe briefly, thinking about what a car would mean for them.

  The boys who flicked around the kitchen, darting from cutting board to frying pan, freshly washed plate and pinned-up dinner orders, said they barely knew Chloe. ‘Take a look around. We’re flat out. We’d divvy up the tips at the end of the night, say goodbye and that was that.’

  Poor Chloe.

  We barely knew her.

  She hadn’t been working here that long.

  She was nice. A fun person.

  She kept to herself a bit but she wasn’t, you know, a snob or anything.

  It’s so dark out there at night. The car park and that.

  Myers Road is always a bit creepy at night.

  Yeah, you get your perverts. They, like, put their hand on your hip while you’re telling them the specials, even when their wife is sitting right there.

  Look down your top and that.

  Ask what time you get off work.

  Complaints? Sure. Sometimes. You know, this fork’s dirty, my meal’s cold, this hasn’t been cooked properly, if you think I’m giving you a tip you’ve got another think coming—that kind of thing. No big deal.

  Not enough to stalk and abduct and rape a girl over.

  The owner-manager lived on the premises. She and her husband— retired accountant, liked to grow the Chicory Kiln’s herbs and vegetables and manage the wine cellar—would clean up when everyone had gone, then unwind in front of the television, and last night had been no different. Skype conversation with their daughter in Salzburg. Studying violin.

  ‘Any police officers ever come to the Chicory Kiln?’ Challis asked.

  ‘Police? Like, on a raid?’

  ‘As customers.’

  ‘Sure, I guess so, but how would we know? It’s not as if this is a McDonald’s, we’re not handing out free hamburgers and chips to the boys in blue. No offence.’

  And so Challis and Murphy stayed on for two more hours, eating dinner, talking, watching, making everyone nervous.

  Challis had ordered lasagne, Pan gnocchi. ‘How come you get yours straight away and I have to wait?’

  ‘They make each gnocchi ball lovingly by hand,’ said Challis.

  ‘Ha, ha. How come you always order lasagne?’

  ‘I’m trying to replicate a formative experience, when I ate the perfect lasagne.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll bite—where and when?’

  ‘Johnny’s Green Room, Carlton. Late 1980s.’

  ‘Was I even born then? And are you eating the perfect lasagne this evening?’

  ‘Not even close.’

  ‘What you might call a lost cause.’

  It occurred to Pam Murphy that she was happy. She hadn’t been happy. Last year she’d gone to bed with a fellow cop who’d posted naked images of her on the Internet. She’d destroyed him, the revenge sweet. Then some kind of reaction had set in, panic attacks, anxiety, jitteriness. And Pam Murphy—athlete, expert pursuit driver, competent detective—was not at ease with the fact that she hadn’t been able to pull herself together.

  She’d gone to her GP, who’d ascertained that she wasn’t suicidal and prescribed citalopram. The anxiety went away, sure enough, but so did a lot of things. Pam Murphy considered her few months on the citalopram as lost months. A low-level dullness had ruled her. She lost her spark. She didn’t even give a stuff about whether or not she had sex. And because she still had bad days sometimes, the anxiety returning, the GP had increased her dose from 20 mg to 40 mg per day. If that doesn’t work, the GP said, we’ll go to 60, or try a new generation SSRI.

  Not try to find out what was wrong, just up the dose.

  So Pam had stopped, cold turkey, and right now she was feeling happy. Yeah, she was kind of attracted to Challis, but she didn’t want to sleep with him. Besides, he was in love with Ellen Destry. It was the fact of sitting in candlelight with a nice man, a man she knew, a man who wouldn’t hurt her or play games with her.

  Challis glanced at his watch. ‘I’m calling it a night.’

  She wanted to say, ‘Don’t leave.’ But it was eleven o’clock and the dining room was empty. They paid, walked out into the moonlit car park, Challis standing very close to her and she very aware of him as they watched the last cars leave one by one. No CCTV. She thought it likely the abduction had nothing to do with the Chicory Kiln, and found herself saying, ‘It was opportunistic.’

  Challis said, ‘Opportunistic choice of victim, but he stalked her first.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A tired-looking man arrived in a station wagon. Kelly hopped in, full of talk. A short time later, Gabi was picked up by a boy in a little Subaru, the car doof-doofing, the speakers almost shaking the car on its springs. When Gabi whispered in his ear, he turned the volume down, shot the detectives a scared look and drove sedately out onto Myers Road.

  13

  Challis lived on a dirt road inland of Waterloo and woke on Saturday morning to find an SMS from Ellen Destry: Arrvd Spore Yerp 2moro XXX.

  Arrived Singapore, Europe tomorrow, kisses. His spirits galvanised, he walked with vigour in the dawn light and planned his weekend. Doorknock the back roads where Chloe Holst was found this morning, talk to the aircraft broker this afternoon, do some odd jobs on Ellen’s house tomorrow.

  By 8.30 he was in his old Triumph, heading for the nature reserve where Chloe Holst had been dumped and thinking about a new car. The Triumph was a rustbucket, rattly and unreliable. Distinctive to look at and almost fun with the top down, but unreliable. He should sell it. Sell it and the plane, he could afford to buy a decent one. He’d miss the Triumph’s dampish winds, though, its sensitivity to the Braille of every road surface.

  There was a crime-scene van at the reserve, two officers picking around the outskirts. There’d be others inside
the reserve itself. He drove on until he’d reached the end of the road and turned into the first driveway.

  A small kit house hung with potted plants, a handful of goats in a pen behind it. A young woman, vaguely hippie in a long skirt and leather sandals, with grimy ankles, answered his knock. She was sweetly effete, incense hanging in the fibres of her clothing, and she hadn’t seen or heard anything.

  The next house, half a kilometre along, was a severe arrangement of corrugated iron cubes that advertised itself as ‘The Wellness Centre’. No one answered his knock.

  No one at home at the next stop, either, a weatherboard house in a yard choked with trail bikes and dogs, the dogs all teeth, ribs, drool and rusty chains. Then he came to a small brick house set in several hectares of unloved apple trees, where a raw-boned woman said viciously: ‘Someone pinched our ride-on mower last month and it took you lot a week to come out and have a bloody look. So no, I didn’t see anybloodything on Thursday night, all right?’

  The last house before the T-intersection with the Dandenong-Waterloo road was announced by a rotting gate. A rotting mailbox, a weedy driveway that disappeared betweens the trunks of the highest pine trees Challis had ever seen. He opened the gate, drove through, closed it and bounced the Triumph over ruts to a small fibro farmhouse so deep in the shadows that the walls wore moss. It looked diseased. Weeds spouted in the gutters. Thin hens pecked desultorily and an old dog lifted and dropped its tail. There must be little houses like this all over the world, he thought. Rural America, rural Norway. It’s where the old and the poor and the forgotten go to hide, in the only space they can navigate.