The house was an architectural nightmare, amid other architectural nightmares. Architectural nightmares worth three-quarters of a million dollars, mind you, and no doubt full of vulgar, newly rich and idle women, but Mrs Plowman herself was a homely sort, grieving for the death of her only child, Lance Corporal Samuel Plowman. The husband grieved by working longer and longer hours in an office building, or attending interstate conferences, leaving Mrs Plowman alone with her memories-which Vyner had teased out with a few tears of his own, a bit of hand-holding on the four-thousand-dollar sofa in front of the bay window, and his trawl through the internet and various newspaper records last month.
‘He was incredibly brave, Mrs Plowman. Not a risk taker, just a guy who kept his head. He got me out of a scrape once. I was pinned down by a sniper, and Sammy crawled across open ground and got me out. I’d lost my nerve. Paralysed. Your son saved my life.’
She looked up at him, hungry for word pictures. ‘They didn’t mention that in his record.’
Vyner waved dismissively. ‘Typical Sammy. As far as he was concerned, he was just doing his job, that’s all. I wanted to put his name forward for a commendation, maybe even a medal, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Mate, I didn’t think twice,” he told me. “You and the other guys, you’re my family when I’m away.”‘
Mrs Plowman’s hand was warm, damp and sad in Vyner’s grasp. ‘What hurts me is last time he was home on leave he had words with his father. They ended up not speaking, and now my husband is just quietly falling apart about that.’
Careful, Vyner told himself. The last thing he wanted was for the silly cow to bring her husband into this. It was harder selling consolatory stories to husbands and fathers than to wives and mothers. He patted her plump wrist. ‘Sammy thought the world of his dad-of both of you, in fact. He spoke about you all the time. He looked up to you. I never heard him say a negative thing about either of you.’
Mrs Plowman’s face was suffused with a dampish joy. ‘You’ve brought me a great deal of happiness these past few days.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘I can’t believe the Army,’ she said. ‘It’s disgraceful.’
‘They can’t afford any negative publicity,’ Vyner said. ‘Sure, Sammy died a hero, but they didn’t want to make too big a thing of it. Seventy per cent of the population thinks Australia should never have sent peacekeeping troops to Iraq.’
As quoted in yesterday’s Herald Sun. But Mrs Plowman said sternly, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean it’s disgraceful the way the Army treated you, Richard.’
For a millisecond then, Trevor Vyner wondered who Richard was. He reached for a biscuit-not some generic supermarket crap but Italian biscotti. Earl Grey tea, too, which he loathed, but it went with the lifestyle in this moneyed corner of the north-eastern suburbs.
‘That’s the way it goes,’ he said.
He’d been dishonourably discharged from the Army for striking an officer-or so Mrs Plowman believed. Not only that, but the officer was a bully, and had been having a go at Sammy, Sammy who’d been sticking up for one of the younger guys, whom the officer had been picking on. Sammy, the selfless hero; Sammy, a protective older brother to the new recruit; Sammy, alive there in that Templestowe sitting room.
‘Not everyone can take the pressure,’ Vyner said. ‘The heat was indescribable, dust storms, Arab fanatics taking pot shots at you all the time, no wonder some guys lost the plot. But Sammy was always there for us. Until one day this total-’ he almost said ‘arsehole’, then did say it’-arsehole of a lieutenant tears strips off him for comforting a guy who’d crawled into a foxhole in tears. Well, it was totally unfair, so I punched him out.’
Mrs Plowman shook her head. And they discharged you? It’s disgraceful, it really is.’
Vyner sighed. ‘I feel good about myself in the sense that I know I did the right thing, even if it was an act of violence, but now I’ve got a black mark against my name and something like that follows you around, makes it hard to get a job, hard to get references…’
Mrs Plowman said firmly, ‘Stay there,’ and left the room. Vyner allowed himself a small grin, then strained to hear the start of the seven o’clock news on the old bag’s TV set, which was quietly murmuring in a little nook on the other side of an archway in the open-plan room. He caught the words ‘anonymous caller’ and ‘police are anxious to speak to’ and his skin went cold. At the same time, his mobile phone rang. He had a text message, but before he could read it, Mrs Plowman returned with her purse, flushing, determined to do the right thing by a friend of her son, a friend who’d been tossed onto the scrap heap by an uncaring system to the tune-Vyner tried to count the notes in her little fist-of around $500.
Well, a guy had to eat. He was still due the remaining $10,000 for this morning’s hit, but it wasn’t like he got paid to top someone every week-or even every year-so meanwhile you took what you could get. Five minutes later, he was in his car, reading his SMS. It said simply: elimin8 anon callr.
It had to be Gent, the fuckup.
Vyner reached into the glove box for his notebook. A latex glove spilled out, a box of matches, a spare brakelight bulb, and finally his chewed Bic pen.
‘I am the jagged tooth of a lone crag,’ he wrote.
He thought some more.
‘I am the doom maker.’
Too bad that he had to return to the Peninsula. Too bad that he wouldn’t be paid for this hit.
Challis received two calls while he waited for a breakdown truck to cart his car away from Lofty Ridge Road and a taxi to take him home.
Tessa Kane got in first. ‘How come I have to hear it on the seven o’clock news, Hal?’
‘Honestly, it slipped my mind,’ he said truthfully.
He was pleased to hear a friendly voice in the darkness, but the conversation went wrong in subtle and obscure ways. ‘Exactly what did this person tell you?’ Tessa demanded.
‘Very little.’
‘A man or a woman?’
‘Is this off the record?’
‘In the last few months you haven’t thought highly enough of me to tell me anything on the record. It seems that I call you, you never call me.’
Challis felt a twist of futility and anger. A part of him wanted to appease her, a part of him wanted to help her, and a smaller part of him wanted to see her again. He tried to get comfortable in the cramped space of the Triumph. ‘He said, quote, “I didn’t think he’d go that far.’”
Tessa absorbed that. ‘What else?’
‘Nothing.’
He waited. But Tessa could outwait him any day of the week. ‘He asked if I was in charge of the case. I said yes. Then he got spooked and cut the call.’
Tessa said nothing.
‘He got agitated and asked if I’d put a trace on the call. I had, and I’d taped it. But the trace failed.’
‘Caller ID?’
‘I rang the number, finally someone answered. It was a coin phone in a supermarket.’
‘Which one?’
‘Look, Tess, I can’t say any more.’
He heard-and in his mind’s eye, saw-her bristle, but the explosion didn’t come. ‘All right,’ she said, and cut the call.
Challis sighed, and at once the phone rang again. ‘Challis,’ he said.
‘McQuarrie here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The superintendent was clipped. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘Sir?’
‘This anonymous tipoff.’
‘Sir, I-’
‘I have to hear about it on the evening news.’
‘It wasn’t a tipoff as such. A man called. He seemed rattled, as though a shooting hadn’t been part of the plan this morning, but hung up before I could question him.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that by plastering it all over the news you’ve scared the shooter off, not to mention that he might start killing his accomplices to shut them up?’
Challis said evenly, ‘It’s a calculated risk.’
‘Be it on your head, Inspector, be it on your head. Anything else?’
‘Not at present.’
‘Well, keep digging.’
‘Sir,’ Challis said, but the line was dead.