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  Challis knew what she meant. Owing to the relatively relaxed marijuana laws, South Australia had become a mecca for hydroponic marijuana crops. But this meant extensive trafficking routes out of that state and into Victoria and New South Wales via cars, buses, aircraft, long-haul trucks. Now the police were stopping and searching interstate traffic more intensively, threatening the supply routes, so dealers in Victoria and New South Wales were forced to depend on local suppliers.

  And that's where the matter stood. They mulled it over for another kilometre and then Ellen froze in her seat. 'It's Venn. Look. Walking around large as life.'

  'The lovers' lanes rapist?' Challis asked.

  'None other.'

  Challis searched faces in a knot of people entering the McDonald's on the roundabout at the end of High Street. After a moment he picked out Dwayne Venn and the Tully sisters.

  'I heard he got bail.'

  Ellen said in disgust, 'They should have thrown away the key.'

  'Don't be hard on him, Ells,' Challis said. 'He's just an average disenchanted bloke, made a mistake, like we all do. We shouldn't condemn him for it.'

  'A model citizen by modern standards,' Scobie Sutton said, picking up on Challis's tone.

  Challis pointed a finger at Ellen. 'All he did was rape and assault and terrify three defenceless women. Who are you to condemn and harass the poor guy and treat him like a criminal?'

  'It's not as if he's murdered anyone,' Scobie said.

  'Even if he has,' Challis said, 'there was probably a good reason for it.'

  Ellen was grinning by now. 'Like what?'

  'Like someone made fun of him when he was little.'

  Ellen looked away and sighed.

  Challis turned serious. 'Who dobbed him in?'

  'Pam Murphy heard a whisper and told me. She's reluctant to reveal her source.'

  'She's a good officer,' Challis said.

  'She is.'

  In the carpark at the rear of the Waterloo police station Challis said, 'It's one o'clock now. Let's meet back here at two-thirty. That should give you enough time to do the paperwork and brief Murphy and Tankard, and me time enough to talk to the owner of that Land Rover.'

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They were in an unmarked car this time, not the divisional van, and in T-shirts and jeans, not their uniforms, a quick change into plain clothes for this library stakeout. But first Pam asked Tank to pull over so that she could check her account balance at the automatic teller machine outside the Commonwealth Bank in Main Street.

  Good, the thirty grand from Lister Financial Services had gone into her account. She still didn't quite believe that her application had been approved, but there had been no questions from Carl Lister. 'A member of the police? No problem, girlie.'

  Girlie. She was almost thirty, but got 'girlie' a hundred times a day, from work colleagues, civilians, even her father. Maybe when she'd bought her car and no longer took the bus they'd all stop calling her 'girlie'.

  Constable Murphy to you, arsehole.

  A bit of spending money wouldn't go astray. She keyed in $100 and while the machine counted it out she glanced at her watch. Would she have time to pay for and collect the car later? Maybe tomorrow, Wednesday. But then it would be Thursday and her first loan repayment would be due, and no salary going into her account until Thursday fortnight. She felt the first, faint stirrings of panic and returned to the unmarked police car, John Tankard watching how the seatbelt bisected and defined her breasts inside the Riptide T-shirt as she buckled up. 'Satisfied, Tank?'

  'Never,' Tankard said, in his pinkish, dampish, beer-bellied, faintly bovine way. He pulled into the traffic without signalling, drove to the library and parked hard against the box-hedge border.

  'I can't open my door,' Pam said.

  But he was already crossing to the front steps of the library. She slid across to the driver's seat-it was unpleasantly heated by him; she pictured his hairy arse and shuddered-and got out and locked the car. A breeze was blowing in from the bay. There was a small circus on the foreshore grassland, lingering after the Easter break.

  She climbed the steps and entered the library. Clearly the librarians hadn't expected perverts when they'd gone on-line, for they hadn't given much thought to the positioning of the computers or the moral sickness of the local punters. According to Sergeant van Alphen, who briefed them quickly before they went out, someone had downloaded child pornography onto a hard drive. Someone else had left behind a screenful of fellatio thumbnails. It was impossible for the librarians to monitor everyone, so they'd called in the police.

  'Sarge, I don't know much about the Internet,' Tankard had complained at the briefing.

  'No big deal,' van Alphen said. 'Just sit and read, wander around a bit, browse the shelves, but keep an eye on who logs on and what they're downloading, without being too obvious about it. And leave your radios in the car. Use the library phone if you have to.'

  Pam had managed not to smirk: the thought of John Tankard in a library. 'Good exercise for the beer arm, Tank, raising a few hardcovers.'

  'That's enough, Constable,' van Alphen had said.

  Pam reached the library doors just as they slid open and Tank came hurrying out. He was in the grip of a glittering, mouth-twisting, fist-against-the-palm emotion.

  'Case solved,' he said.

  'What?'

  'It's Brad Pike.'

  Pam glanced past his big torso but Pike was concealed by the inner doors, the loans desk and a quarter-acre of shelved books. 'What's he doing?'

  'Sitting at a computer.'

  'Yes, Tank, but what's he doing?'

  'Take a wild guess.'

  And so Pam took a reasoned guess, mentally linking Internet pornography with that day, ten months ago, when Bradley Pike, aged twenty-two, unemployed and unemployable, had been babysitting his defacto's two-year-old daughter, Jasmine Tully. It had been a Saturday, and to settle Jasmine for her afternoon nap he'd driven around with her in his car. When she was asleep he slipped into a milk bar for cigarettes. 'I was gone five minutes,' he said. 'No, three minutes. Three minutes tops.' When he got back, the child was missing. He hadn't bothered to lock the car. The car hadn't yielded forensic evidence except what you'd expect from a car shared by people like Bradley Pike and Lisa Tully. They were young, poor, badly educated, neglectful and stupid. Lisa Tully had taken the train to Frankston with her sister Donna that day, and when she got back to Waterloo, smelling of perfume samples and rattling with shoplifted aerosols, and found her child missing, she'd started spitting and screaming. 'You done it, Brad, I know you done it.'

  The police were of a similar view and had searched the house and garden. Nothing. They grilled Pike for days on end and search teams had scoured the Peninsula: culverts, rock pools, bracken thickets, rubbish tips and farmland. The child was never found. Pike was never tried.

  Like a moron, Pam thought, Pike had stayed on in Waterloo. And just to show how fucked-up some people are, he could still be seen with Lisa from time to time, although the rest of the district would have nothing to do with him.

  'You know what it is, don't you?' Tankard demanded. 'No one will fuck him anymore so he gets off on pornography.'

  It could be true, Pam thought. The latest in Pike's on-again, off-again relationship with Lisa Tully was the restraining order that Lisa had taken out on him, claiming harassment. Before that she'd had a change of heart and said she no longer believed he'd been behind her daughter's disappearance. Before that she'd been adamant that he had been responsible. Pike was challenging the restraining order-because no one else was stupid enough to fuck him, the town said, and he needed her back again. Pam knew that the restraining order didn't mean much. It kept Lisa and Donna Tully in the public eye, though.

  'I'd like to flatten the little cunt,' Tankard said now, clenching his fist.

  Pam nodded absently. They'd have to get into the library unobserved and try to see what Pike was doing on the computer. That was their main conce
rn. Unfortunately, Pike knew both their faces. After all, they'd had plenty of contact with him ten months ago. Since then he'd been beaten up a couple of times. And there was the night he'd gone to hospital with minor scorches to his face and hands after siphoning petrol from an abandoned car and using a cigarette lighter for illumination. He'd also come into the police station in an outrage one day because the marijuana plant he'd been cultivating in a pot on his back verandah had been nicked. Then just the other day, when she'd seen him on the street and he'd told her about Venn being the lovers' lane rapist, he'd claimed that he was being stalked. Pam shook her head. Not real bright, our Bradley.

  'How are we going to do this?'

  'For all we know, he's doing research on his car, not downloading kiddie porn.'

  Pike drove an unroadworthy Torana.

  'Simple. We just go over and hassle him. I'm looking forward to this. We might get lucky.'

  Pam knew all about Tankard's approach to crime: hassle offenders and suspected offenders until they commit a crime, then arrest them. She shrugged. 'Okay go for it.'

  They went in, Tankard heading like a bull on heat across the room to a partitioned corner. Pam followed, threading her way around a scattering of tables filled with Year 12 kids doing research projects, elderly men reading the daily papers in armchairs, a photocopy machine, a portable noticeboard displaying breast cancer posters.

  She reached the computers in time to see Pike's screen go blank as Tankard grabbed-too late-at Pike's mouse hand. Pike, expressing indignation, began to shout, 'Leave us alone, I'm being stalked, okay? I'm just doing research on stalking, okay?'

  'Still on about that, Brad?' Pam said, cocking her head and looking at his emaciated face, sunken chest and unwashed hair worn mullet style. God knew what Lisa Tully had ever seen in him.

  Just then a librarian stopped them. 'Excuse me, you're wanted on the telephone,' she said, eyeing Pike with mingled apprehension and glee.

  Pam took the call. It was Sergeant Destry, saying drop everything, CIB wanted her and Tank to help with a search of Ian Munro's farm. 'I'll see you at the station in five minutes for a briefing.'

  'Yes, Sarge,' Pam said.

  'Your lucky day, Bradley,' she told Pike as they left.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was nerve-wracking, sure, but somehow liberating at the same time. The old Meddler would have made an anonymous call, tipping off the police to see justice done, but receiving none of the glory and certainly not profiting in any way.

  Like cash in hand.

  Stung by the 'wanker with the ferret' article, Mostyn Pearce was shaking off the old Meddler. No more lurking in the bushes or selflessly standing by. The meek shall inherit the earth? Fuck that for a joke. The strong shall inherit the earth. The strong take action. The strong take.

  So, before going to work that afternoon, Pearce grabbed his shotgun, fully licensed, no problems with the paperwork given that he worked in law enforcement, and knocked on the guy's front door.

  The guy opened the door and saw the shotgun and the Meddler saw a flicker in the guy's eyes, no mistake. Fear? Acknowledgement that the Meddler wasn't to be trifled with? Resignation? All of the above.

  Anyway, he had the guy's immediate attention, and said, without preamble: 'I know who you really are.'

  The guy said nothing.

  'Your real name is Michael Trigg.' No reaction.

  'I was thinking a one-off payment of a hundred grand,' the Meddler said. Nothing. Then: 'You'd better come in,' the guy said.

  After his run-in with the cops in the library, Bradley Pike walked back up High Street via Coolart Computers. Last week they'd had a second-hand trade-in there. Five hundred bucks got you a PC with a monitor, internal modem, sound card, speakers, keyboard, a couple of gigs on the hard drive, Windows 95 already installed. Surf the Web in the privacy of your own home.

  Better than some easily shocked sheila peering over your shoulder in the library and dobbing you in to the cops.

  Except he didn't have five hundred bucks. Went via the shop anyway and discovered they'd sold the trade-in and didn't have another.

  'But keep dropping in,' they told him.

  Or the young guy serving said it. He didn't know Brad Pike from a bar of soap. But the manager of the shop recognised Pike, and Pike could tell from the dirty look that he, like the rest of the good citizens of Waterloo, thought that Bradley Pike was guilty of murdering Lisa Tully's little girl.

  So on the way out of the shop, Pike made a point of getting in the manager's face and saying, 'Charges were dropped, okay?'

  Without batting an eyelid the manager replied, 'That's not the same as being found not guilty, though, is it?'

  That hurt Pike and he continued up High Street punching his fist into his palm.

  And saw Dwayne Venn and the Tully sisters on the other side of the street. His first thought was to run and hide. But then he realised that would look bad. He had to tough it out like he'd toughed out the past few months in this town, all the whispers and slights and bad-mouthing he'd had to endure.

  Besides, if he ran now it would look suspicious. It was he who'd tipped off that female cop, Murphy, about Venn and the lovers' lane rapes. Venn had been doped to the eyeballs around at the Tully sisters' house, bragging about this sheila he'd done over in the Stony Point carpark one night and flashing this matchbox full of pubic hair. Genuine blonde, too.

  The Tully sisters-also on dope and giggling-getting a kick out of hearing the sicko brag about it.

  It was an on-again, off-again thing, Pike's relationship with Lisa Tully. Sometimes she'd let him visit, other times she'd scream at him, 'I know you killed my baby, you bastard,' and not let him through the door. So that was another reason why he couldn't run and hide. He wanted to keep sweet with her.

  He crossed the street breezily and said hello and tried to gauge from their faces whether or not he'd made a big mistake.

  'So I usually cut her nails when she's asleep,' Scobie Sutton said.

  'Uh-huh.'

  'I mean, she's into clothes and hair and makeup, traditional female stuff, you'd think she'd take an interest in her fingernails, let me trim them for her, but no way, Jose. Toenails are even worse.'

  They were climbing the stairs to CIB, Ellen beside him with an armful of files.

  'Was Larrayne like that as a kid?'

  'Like what?'

  'Interested in clothes and hair,' Sutton said.

  'Not particularly.'

  'Is she now?'

  Ellen had been distracted, but now mention of her daughter snapped her out of it. 'She's got a boyfriend so, yes, she's into clothes and hair and makeup.'

  That reminded Scobie of another of his daughter's quirks and he laughed and said, 'Apparently Roslyn's the main pusher of stick-on earrings in Prep.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  Scobie Sutton knew that he sometimes bored the others with his stories of his daughter. It was just that she was the biggest thing to have happened to him, and she was endlessly new, an endless revelation. He could sense Ellen drifting away so he tried a different tack, asked for advice.

  'I don't know how to help her cope with this triangular relationship she has with two other little girls,' he said. 'She can't bear to be separated from them even though they sometimes gang up on her.'

  But Ellen's mobile rang as they entered CIB and she motioned him away and went into her cubicle to take the call.

  'DS Destry.'

  An immature male voice said, 'Mrs Destry?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's Skip.'

  'Hello, Skip.'

  'I just wanted to thank you for returning my jacket. Sorry I wasn't home.'

  'That's okay, Skip.'

  He paused, then said slowly, 'I'm sorry I vomited and everything.'

  'These things happen,' Ellen said, wanting to ask him about ecstasy tablets and amphetamines and whatever else he might have taken at Larrayne's party, or even been pushing to her friends.

  'And if my fat
her was a pain I'm also sorry about that.'

  Skip seemed decent, plausible, and Larrayne was clearly fond of him, so Ellen wished she could tell him not to burden himself with guilt for what his father had done. Instead she asked if he'd like to come to dinner. There was a pause, then he said yes in a rush and hung up.

  She sighed, poured herself a mug of coffee and called to see if the search warrant for Ian Munro's farm was ready.

  Tessa Kane had seen the unmarked police car leave the Waterloo aerodrome, Challis in the back seat, Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton in the front. They'd been conversing animatedly and failed to see her or recognise her car. It had given her a quite peculiar feeling to see Challis like that, unexpectedly, with his colleagues, working, talking about the things he talked about when he worked. When last she'd seen him he hadn't been animated but miserable-looking. Her fault, kind of.

  And kind of not her fault. It wasn't as if she wanted to move in with him or anything. She wasn't putting pressure on him. She was simply tired of the baggage he carried around with him, that's all. It seemed to make him a degree or two remote from her when they were together, and she was tired of it. Though God knows it wasn't simple baggage he was carrying around. His own wife had connived with her lover to murder him, after all, and it had almost happened. He was trying to put it behind him but had a way to go yet. She was prepared to wait, but only up to a point.

  All in all, she felt put upon today. Just before she'd left the office there'd been an angry caller who'd said he'd been the man with the ferret and until then a loyal friend to the Progress, but now it was no holds barred and she'd better watch her step. It could come at any time, day or night, but it would come, and it wouldn't be pretty. She'd flung the phone down as if it had bitten her.

  And more flack about her asylum seekers article. In part she'd been arguing about the power of labels to create and channel public opinion. When an 'asylum seeker' became a 'terrorist', a 'queue jumper', an 'illegal immigrant' or a 'fanatic' he was no longer seeking shelter but an opportunity to destroy, undermine or cheat. He didn't deserve pity but fear and hatred. And now she was learning about labels at first hand. Just a few months ago she'd been an admired critic of the authorities' inability to jail Bradley Pike, a 'seeker-out of the truth', a 'champion' of the Peninsula. Now she was a 'traitor', a 'do-gooding bitch', a 'dyke', a 'fucking intellectual' and too big for her boots.