Challis thought of Tessa Kane and her article and the laughter they'd shared. Pearce had been a figure of fun but hadn't deserved to die like this.
'So what do we know about the Pearces?' The common features of a crime like this were: victim, culprit, motive, evidence, weapon. They had the victims and the weapon-unless there was also a blunt instrument lying around somewhere. They had some limited evidence, but possibly no evidence at all that would help them identify the culprit. And they didn't have a motive.
'A very interesting scrapbook in the study,' Ellen said. They followed her. 'Study' was a convenient word for a room that contained one tiny, heavily lacquered bookcase, a desk with a computer and printer, a sewing machine in one corner, an exercise bike in another.
The scrapbook lay on its side in the bookcase. Ellen spread it open on the desk, and Challis found himself reading clippings of the Meddler's letters to the Progress, together with handwritten drafts of irate letters to shire councillors, the police, Vic Roads, the mayor, the Federal and State Members of Parliament, all meticulously dated and annotated. 'Pearce is the Meddler?'
'Looks like it.'
Challis groaned. 'A man who's offended dozens of people in the past two years.'
Ellen flipped forward through the scrapbook. 'Here's a letter he drafted yesterday.'
Challis read a line or so: 'On Easter Sunday I phoned in a report of poorly treated sheep on the property of Ian Munro-' He didn't read on, but gazed quizzically at Ellen.
She said, 'Munro's property is only a kilometre or so from here. I even saw Pearce walking past it the other day. Given that he likes to dob people in to the authorities, maybe he'd had a run-in with Munro in the past, and maybe Munro decided to get even with him.'
'Bit drastic,' Sutton said.
'Well, he is unhinged.'
'True.'
Challis stared past them, staring into space, thinking it through. Coincidences did happen in murder inquiries, and so did things that were hard to credit, but he knew enough always to search for the simple answer, the most likely answer, first.
Pearce had offended someone. Munro? Would Munro stage something as elaborate as this-or simply walk through the door, blasting away with his shotgun? That's if he would do something so over the top to begin with.
'Check it out,' he said. 'Meanwhile Munro crossed swords with bank managers, lawyers and shire officials. We'd better make a list and start warning them. I also need to know whether or not the Pearces owned a shotgun. It could be Munro's, of course-according to his wife, two shotguns and a rifle are missing.'
Then Pam Murphy was calling him on his mobile, saying that she had another murder for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Pam Murphy stood in a house in Tyabb, numbly watching the pathologist. Inspector Challis and his crew had been and gone, Challis shaking his head and saying, 'Looks like our boy's been busy.' Apparently Challis, Scobie Sutton and Sergeant Destry had spent the morning at another shooting, a married couple shotgunned to death over near Upper Penzance, and now this one. The word was, Ian Munro was settling scores.
Challis had praised her for taking the time to check the old woman's story and finding the body. 'Good detective work,' he said.
She wasn't a detective, merely a uniformed constable, but she'd glowed to hear him say it. Now she was reminded of the everyday shit you see in police work. A shotgun shooting. Her first. Thank God the child hadn't seen it happen-and hadn't herself been shot.
John Tankard had collected Pam from outside the police station and driven her to the house. The real grandmother had arrived just as they were getting out of the car. Her name was Margaret Seigert and she'd tapped on the front door and the child, a very collected and precise little girl, had been clear about the fact that her daddy wouldn't wake up and there was a bit of blood on his pillow.
A bit of blood. While John Tankard, the child and the grandmother remained out in the corridor, Pam had gone in and seen the dead man, on his back in a queen-sized bed, doona up to his chin. Fortunately the child hadn't pulled back the doona and seen her father's chest: massive shotgun wound, the torso a pulpy mess, the mattress soaked in blood.
Then Tank had demanded a look, and she had taken his place in the corridor. When Tank came out again he appeared shocked, pale, sweaty, as though aware for the first time what a shotgun could do to you, aware that he'd been a very lucky man yesterday, outside Ian Munro's back door.
CIB were convinced that Munro had done this. According to a thick folder of correspondence found in a filing cabinet, the victim, David Seigert, had once represented Ian Munro in various legal and civil matters, including a court appearance on a charge of threatening behaviour in which Munro had been fined $875.
Seigert had a wife, but she taught at a university up in the city and often stayed away overnight. Pam had phoned her, the worst call she'd ever had to make, and the woman had returned immediately to this house in Tyabb and, with the grandmother in tow, had whisked the child away.
Shotgun killing. Only there was no shotgun at the scene.
According to Inspector Challis, the double shooting he'd just attended had also been a murder but staged to look like a murder-suicide and so the gun was there at the scene. The Seigert shooting was different, he told her. No gun and no shell casing.
Pam knew that even if he found the gun it wouldn't tell him much. Given that a shotgun fires pellets rather than a solid slug, and the inside of a shotgun barrel isn't rifled, it's more or less impossible to link the pellets from a victim to a particular gun-unless the shell casing is found at the scene, for it will bear characteristic imprints from the firing pin and the loading process. Sometimes a commercial wadding (paper or plastic) can help to trace a shell's manufacturer, but that kind of knowledge hardly puts you closer to the killer. Sometimes shotgun shooters make their own shells, but there was no way of knowing if that was the case with the Seigert shooting. There was no gun and no empty shell.
And now it was the pathologist's turn. Presumably she'd come straight from Challis's double murder. Freya Berg her name was, and she wore white coveralls, paper slip-ons over her shoes, a hairnet. She had a narrow, expressive face and long, quick fingers. Pam remembered her from an earlier case Challis had been involved in. A case in which Pam had also shown initiative and been praised by him.
It was interesting, watching the woman work. Tankard should be watching this, Pam thought. But Tankard was outside, ostensibly keeping nosy parkers away from the house but in reality trying to get his nerve back. 'What a way to die,' he'd said, more than once.
Dr Berg would be performing an autopsy later at the morgue, but right now she was examining the body, speaking into a micro-cassette recorder.
'The apparent cause of death is a massive wound to the chest, probably caused by a shotgun fired at close range. Materials found in the wound itself would suggest that the gun was pressed against the doona and fired through it.' She pushed the pause button and glanced at Pam. 'If that is the case, it might have been done to suppress the sound of the blast.'
Pam nodded. She watched as Dr Berg released the pause button, grabbed each foot and manipulated the ankles before lifting each leg and watching it bend at the knee. Laying each leg onto the sodden mattress again, she pressed down on the abdomen and appeared to watch the surface of the murdered man's skin.