‘From whom?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Challis let it go. ‘Did you have any run-ins with Gavin?’
‘I spoke to him about the complaints.’
‘How did he respond?’
‘Shouldn’t I be telling this to the South Australian police?’
Challis said shamelessly, ‘It will help put Meg’s mind at rest to know these things.’
Sadler looked angry, but answered the question. He said tensely, ‘He blew up at me on the phone.’
‘And?’
‘Then he got tearful. Then he blew up at me again. I slammed the phone down. Then the next thing I know, he’s disappeared.’
‘The police spoke to you at the time?’
‘Yes. I told them his mood had been up and down a lot.’
‘The people who complained: did they make threats against him?’
‘No. He just said to send someone else next time.’
Challis pounced. ‘He? It was a man who complained? One person?’
Sadler looked hunted. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.’
‘I am the police.’
‘Even so, it’s not right.’
That’s all Challis could get out of Sadler. Nixon and Stormare were pulling into town as he was pulling out. He saw them glance with their roving cops’ eyes at his old sports car, because it didn’t belong in the bush, and because it had Victorian plates, and finally because they recognised him. He accelerated sedately, watching his rear-view mirror, and saw them swing around in a U-turn on the long, dusty highway and race after him. A moment later they were on his tail, flashing and tooting. He pulled over onto the gravel verge and they pulled in behind him. A semi-trailer went by in a blast of aggrieved air. He got out. Stormare and Nixon got out. He perched his rump against his door. ‘Gentlemen.’
‘Inspector, you’re out of your jurisdiction here.’
‘Am I?’
‘Don’t play dumb. You went to see Sadler.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll stuff up our investigation if you keep talking to our witnesses,’ Nixon said. ‘Sir.’
‘I’m helping my sister.’
‘You’re putting ideas into the heads of our witnesses,’ Stormare said. ‘Surely you realise that.’
Challis did realise. For all he knew, Stormare and Nixon were very good at their job and would find the killer. He wouldn’t like it if they trampled over one of his investigations. But he wasn’t going to lose face with them or make promises he didn’t intend to keep.
‘My brother-in-law was pretty unstable in the weeks and months leading up to his murder. Moody, hypercritical, even violent. Not only with my sister, but also with his work colleagues, and with the people he was investigating.’
‘We know that,’ said Stormare tiredly. He waited while another truck blasted past. ‘Don’t tell us our jobs, okay? Butt out. Sir.’
‘I’m going to see Paddy Finucane.’
‘Where do you think we’ve been?’ snarled Nixon. ‘There’s no need for you to see him.’
‘How did you hear about him?’
‘Your sister, sir, in fact.’
Challis nodded. ‘What did Paddy say?’
‘Sir,’ Stormare said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to speak to our boss, who will speak to your boss, if you continue to interfere with our investigation.’
Challis thought they would do so anyway. The complaint would take a while to find its way to McQuarrie. He rubbed grit from his eyes as a refrigerated van passed close to their cars, followed by a school bus, the kids waving madly, one kid baring his bum in the rear window. Challis glanced at his watch. Almost 4 pm.
‘Mr Finucane has made a statement,’ Nixon said.
‘Stay away from him. Sir,’ said Stormare.
37
Scobie Sutton was obliged to wait for three hours before the shooting board officers-a man and a woman, both youngish and expressionless-took him into an interview room. With a nod and a grunt, they sat him where suspects usually sat, so that he felt like a suspect and almost wanted to add his mark to the scuffs, scratches and graffiti on the tabletop.
‘You want to ask me about the shooting of Nick Jarrett?’ he said, trying to keep his voice unconcerned and accommodating.
The male officer, an inspector named Yeo, gave him a humourless smile. ‘Correct.’
‘I didn’t see what happened.’
‘We know that,’ said the female officer, a sergeant named Pullen. ‘But you were on the scene soon afterwards, you collected evidence, and took that evidence to the lab.’
‘Yes.’
She, like Yeo, smiled without warmth or humour. ‘We were contacted by the lab. Apparently there were irregularities in regard to the way you collected the evidence.’
Scobie swallowed.
‘Are you protecting Senior Sergeant Kellock and Sergeant van Alphen, DC Sutton?’
Scobie shook his head mutely.
‘We understand that there’s a certain culture in this police station,’ said Pullen.
‘Not sure what you mean,’ Scobie said, his voice betraying his nerves. He was quaking. He’d never been in trouble before. He’d never done anything to warrant trouble. An unwelcome thought came to him that this was punishment for his displeasure with his wife and the feelings he’d had for Grace Duyker yesterday. Could God act so quickly?
‘Oh, I think you do,’ said Pullen. ‘A masculinist culture, arrogant, protective. Kellock and van Alphen are running their own little fiefdom, correct? Men like you do their bidding, protect them, cover up for them. A culture that cuts corners, that likes to get a result, whether lawfully or not.’
The whiplash words were somehow worse coming from a woman, and maybe that was the point. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ Scobie whispered. He wanted his wife’s cuddly arms around him, protective, forgiving.
‘Or maybe it was tunnel vision,’ said Yeo. ‘You went in looking for what you expected to find rather than what was there. You all hated Nick Jarrett, after all. I mean, he was scum, killed the son of one of your civilian clerks.’
‘I followed procedure,’ said Scobie stiffly.
‘I followed procedure, sir,’ said Yeo.
‘Sir.’
‘Don’t make me laugh. Rather than call in bloodstain and GSR experts you gathered evidence and then released the scene before the techs could do their job properly. We lack separate, isolated tests for gunshot residue on Jarrett, van Alphen and Kellock, for example. Too late now. Thanks to your bull-in-a-china-shop methods, we can’t construct a narrative of what happened.’
‘Narrative’ was a new buzzword. Scobie felt a rare anger, but tried to look baffled, an expression he’d seen on the faces of the consummate liars he’d interrogated over the years.
Pullen leaned forward. ‘What did you think you were doing, bundling everything together? Didn’t your training tell you about cross contamination?’
Before Scobie could reply, Yeo hammered another question home to him. ‘And you let the crime-scene cleaners come in the very same morning. Why did you do that?’
‘I didn’t know they’d been ordered to clean up,’ Scobie protested. ‘The others must have arranged it.’
‘We’ve seen the paperwork,’ said Yeo. ‘Your name is on the requisition: Detective Constable Scobie Sutton. Look.’
He showed Scobie a faxed form. ‘That’s not my signature,’ Scobie said.
He swallowed and looked inwards, down long roads of fear and shame brought on by men like van Alphen and Kellock, and their schoolboy equivalents before that. He wanted to admit that he’d been intimidated. But he could picture the scorn and contempt the admission would bring. And he didn’t really mourn Nick Jarrett, he realised suddenly. But van Alphen and Kellock were dangerous. They’d killed a man, after all. So he did what most people did and played dumb.
‘We don’t know who was doing what, or where,’ said Pullen. ‘We can’t verify the sequence of events.’
‘No narrative,’ Scobie muttered.
‘Are you being smart?’
Yeo leaned forward. ‘Why the hell didn’t you photograph the scene, at least?’