He forced himself to calm down, but his mind raced. McQuarrie must have gone swiftly to work in getting those phone records, and as a superintendent he had considerably more juice than a humble inspector. But what was he playing at? Was he trying to bury evidence that might damage his son’s good name, his own good name? What if he’d discovered that Janine had been phoning organised crime figures or toy-boys twenty times a day? Would he have revealed that to the investigating officers?
Is he, thought Challis, our killer?
‘Sir, we need the second phone.’
‘Why? I’ve got a record of the calls she made. All innocent.’
‘I need to see the message bank,’ Challis said patiently, ‘the numbers listed in the memory, and the call list for the most recent incoming, outgoing and missed calls.’
‘Well, I haven’t got the damn thing,’ McQuarrie said peevishly. ‘Georgia didn’t have it, I’m sure of that. Perhaps she gave it to Robert.’
‘It was Robert who alerted me to the fact of its existence,’ Challis said, trying to convey that he thought McQuarrie should have done so, too.
‘Well there you are. It was collected at the crime-scene and has either been misplaced or stolen since then. Rosebud officers were the first to attend; have you tried them?’
Fuck off, Challis thought. He double-checked the record of calls made on Janine McQuarrie’s car phone-there were no calls to the police on the morning of her murder, and so Georgia must have used a different phone. Then he spent a fruitless hour tracking down and calling the Rosebud CIU and uniformed officers. They knew nothing of a mobile phone being found with or near the body.
Finally he talked to Georgia.
‘I used Mum’s mobile,’ she told him.
‘Not the one she uses in her car?’
Georgia’s voice went small, almost scared. ‘No, the one in her bag. I’m not supposed to, but I grabbed it when the man started chasing her. Sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Challis gently. ‘Can you remember what you did with it afterwards?’
There was a gasp and he pictured her hand flying to her mouth. ‘I left it on the ground!’
‘Where?’
‘In the trees where I hid!’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll find it.’
Challis thought about all of the things that might have damaged the phone since the murder: rain, dew, the chilly air, hungry rats, inquisitive magpies. Just then the fax machine sounded: as promised, McQuarrie was sending through Janine’s phone records. Challis snatched up the sheets, and there was Georgia’s call to 000. He noted the number of the missing mobile phone, then drove to Mrs Humphreys’s house in the late afternoon gloom. The crime-scene crew had packed up and gone, and he walked unimpeded down her driveway. After checking the signal strength of his own phone, he dialled the number for Janine’s. A moment later, very faintly, he heard it ring. A voice inviting him to leave a message cut in before he could isolate the location.
He approached the stand of poplars, which were leafless and choked by pittosporums. The latter would have promised a reasonable degree of shelter to Georgia, he supposed. He pressed redial, and this time found the phone, secure inside a small vinyl case deep in a tangle of grass and fallen leaves. He opened the Velcro flap and let the phone slide into his palm. It was a fancy, costly-looking thing; he couldn’t figure out how to work it.
He encountered Ellen Destry in the station carpark, retrieving files from the back seat of the CIU Falcon. ‘Our esteemed leader returns,’ she said. She cocked her head at his loan car. ‘Cool wheels.’
‘It’s a heap of shit.’
She laughed, then said with a slight catch in her voice, ‘So I guess you won’t be needing a lift home tonight.’
Challis gazed critically at the rattletrap Toyota. ‘Too soon to tell.’
They went upstairs to CIU. ‘You busy, Ells?’
‘You know I’m busy. I think you mean, drop everything at once and help me with something tedious.’
‘No one likes a smart-arse. See if you can figure out how to retrieve the numbers and messages stored in this mobile.’
‘Whose is it?’
‘Janine McQuarrie’s.’
‘What makes you think I’d be better at it than you?’
She was in a light, attractive mood. ‘You have a teenage daughter,’ he said, flourishing the mobile at her. ‘I rest my case.’
‘No one likes a smart-arse,’ Ellen said, taking the phone from him. She turned it over, pressed buttons, and gave him a running commentary. ‘Cutting edge. You can use this for calls, SMS, e-mail, video, photography…’
Challis watched her press more buttons, watched her face change as she said, ‘The secret life of Robert and Janine McQuarrie.’
Instead of showing him the tiny screen, she attached the phone to the USB port of her computer, downloaded the contents to her hard drive and made CD copies. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him one of the CDs.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’
‘You’re such a dinosaur. Copy the contents to your hard drive, then print it out.’
She showed him how. What he saw put Janine’s murder in an entirely new light: ten photographs, low-resolution shots of men and women copulating, the women obscured, four of the men in sharp enough detail to be identifiable. Two had flushed, straining, heavy-lidded faces, one man was apparently emotionless, and the fourth was Robert McQuarrie, showing his teeth in a kind of ecstatic snarl.
‘Oh boy,’ said Challis, shifting in his seat. It was a powerful distraction, the snapshots, Ellen’s joshing expertise and physical proximity.
‘We have to assume that Janine downloaded these to her home or office computer,’ Ellen said, ‘or e-mailed them to herself.’
Challis shrugged. The technology was beside the point just now. He told her he was more interested in what had driven Janine McQuarrie to take the photographs, what she’d done with them, and whether or not they’d contributed to her being murdered.
Ellen was with him every step of the way. ‘Blackmail?’
‘Could be.’ He tapped the photographs. ‘But what are we looking at here?’
Ellen snorted, naming and describing a few body parts.
‘Very funny,’ he said, feigning severity. In fact, the mood was electric and precarious.
She sobered and made an effort. ‘Dim lighting,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘A suburban house.’
‘So it’s not a photographic studio or the set of a porn film?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s someone’s house, and they’re not making a film or posing for the camera.’
‘Good. But is it a suburban house that doubles as a brothel?’
‘We’ve both worked Vice in the past, Hal. This is no brothel.’
‘Why not?’ Challis demanded, wanting Ellen to pin it down for him.
‘The body language,’ she said. ‘These people don’t look like pros and their clients. They all seem a little self-conscious. Look here in the background: people standing around watching, and that looks like a bowl of condoms and that looks like a lubricant dispenser. The pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks, the furniture, all point to this being an ordinary house.’
‘I agree.’
‘Do you think the super knew Robert and Janine were attending sex parties?’
Challis shrugged. ‘Could explain why he’s been obstructive and interventionist.’
There was a pause. ‘Hal,’ Ellen said eventually, ‘could you imagine being watched by a roomful of people while having sex?’
Challis couldn’t imagine engaging in any kind of herd behaviour. ‘No.’
‘It doesn’t turn you on?’
‘No.’
‘How about watching?’
‘Unobserved?’
‘No, watching in a roomful of others.’
‘No. I’d still feel watched.’
She seemed to sway towards him a little. ‘That’s pretty much how I feel about it,’ she said.
Then she destroyed the mood. ‘You know what we have to do, don’t you?’
He turned and looked at her. ‘Talk to Robert.’