She shook her head determinedly. ‘Talk to Tessa Kane. And I’m coming with you.’
‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘You don’t trust her?’
Challis didn’t, not entirely. ‘Robert can tell us where this took place.’
‘And Tessa Kane can tell us if it’s the same party that she attended. Of course we don’t show her anyone’s faces, only photos that identify the location. If she does recognise the place, then we start digging, making it clear to her that she’ll face obstruction charges if she writes about the photos or tries to contact anyone.’
‘You don’t like her, do you?’ Challis said.
‘Not much.’
They stared at each other. ‘If I’m there she’s going to know it’s related to the McQuarrie investigation,’ Challis said.
‘Then let me question her. I’ll say someone found a photo of themselves on the net and we’re investigating.’
Challis sighed. ‘Okay.’
28
‘I didn’t expect the big guns,’ Tessa Kane said, puzzled to see Ellen Destry ushered into her office, late that Wednesday afternoon.
‘Meaning what?’ said Ellen curtly.
Hello, thought Tessa, the claws are out. She’d often wondered if the other woman had been jealous of her relationship with Hal Challis or troubled for professional reasons. Plenty of cops disliked and distrusted the media. It would be fun to let Destry stew a little, she thought, and said, ‘Say hello to Hal for me, won’t you.’
‘It’s possible we’ve got our wires crossed, Ms Kane,’ Destry said coldly.
Keeping her manner blithe, Tessa gestured for the other woman to sit, then returned to her swivel chair and swivelled in it, smiling across her overcrowded desk. ‘I assume you’re here about my tyres?’
‘Your tyres.’
‘Someone slashed them this afternoon.’
Destry cocked her head alertly. Tessa, irritated to be on the receiving end of a CIU interrogation, with its evasions and games, snarled, ‘Cut the crap, sergeant. What’s this about?’
Ellen Destry leaned forward, looking pleased with herself. ‘It could very well be about your slashed tyres.’
Tessa said nothing.
‘Been up to something, have we?’ the Destry woman continued. ‘Stepping on toes?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I understand you’ve had hate mail, anonymous phone calls, a rock through your window, and now this. Maybe you offended one of your swingers.’
Tessa went very still, her mind racing, her skin tingling. Her article on the sex-party scene had been heavy on atmosphere, mood and human interest, without in any way describing people or place. No one reading it could possibly have identified himself-or herself. She waited. Destry would show her hand soon.
And she did, fanning half a dozen grainy photo enlargements across her desk. ‘Do you recognise anything?’
Tessa looked. The quality was poor: dim lighting, amorphous shapes, no faces. ‘No.’
‘Look at the background,’ Destry snapped. ‘Furniture, light fittings, curtains, bedspreads, paintings on the walls.’ She paused. ‘Or maybe you recognise the odd hairy backside or sagging tit.’
Tessa knew where this was going. The photographs had been taken at a sex party. She’d recently written an article about a sex party. Ergo, there was a connection between the two.
‘I have no idea where these were taken-certainly not at the party I attended. Are you saying I, or one of my photographers, took these photographs for the Progress?’
‘We’re not saying that at all.’
‘Then what have they got to do with me?’
‘How many parties did you attend?’
‘One.’
‘Where?’
‘Rye. Miles from here.’
‘Did you recognise anyone?’
‘Like who?’
‘Just answer the question, please, Tess.’
She hated being called Tess right then. ‘I didn’t recognise anyone. Are you saying someone recognised me, and that’s why I’m being targeted? But what’s this got to do with these photos?’
‘We don’t know that your tyres being slashed has anything to do with these photographs,’ Ellen Destry said. ‘But someone found a photo of himself on the net, part of a series of photos including these, and we’re looking at a blackmail angle. You’re our first obvious point of contact. We need names of those you talked to at the party, and the names of the people who organised it.’
‘Sorry, no can do. Confidentiality issues,’ said Tessa automatically, with a sweet, empty smile.
‘We can get a warrant.’
‘Good, you do that, sergeant.’
It was good to see Destry’s frustration. Even so, she smelt a story. ‘Maybe we can help each other.’
‘How?’
‘Tell me more, and I’ll make contact with my sex-party people and see if they’ll talk to you.’
‘If you didn’t attend this party,’ said Destry, collecting the photographs and slipping them into her briefcase, ‘then there’s no reason to talk to them. As I understand it, there are many such parties in operation.’
Tessa waited until the other woman was going out the door. ‘Tell me, sergeant, was Janine McQuarrie involved in the sex party scene?’
Destry said nothing, didn’t even look back, but the set of her shoulders and spine said plenty.
Tessa Kane’s investigative instincts began to kick in.
29
Challis waited at the door to the incident room, smiling tiredly, waiting for the jokes to subside, as Scobie and the others filed in one by one and spotted the enlargements of Janine McQuarrie’s photographs, which he’d arranged on the display board. Ellen came in last, her movements tight and brisk.
‘Sorry to keep you late,’ he said, turning to the display board. ‘This-’ he pointed ‘-is Superintendent McQuarrie’s son, Robert, husband of our murder victim,’
There were sardonic looks and murmurs, mostly jocular, and Scobie asked who had taken the photos, and where.
‘Ellen and I found them stored on Janine McQuarrie’s mobile phone. We don’t know the location. Does anyone recognise the other men?’
They shook their heads. ‘Presumably the super’s son will know,’ Scobie said. He paused. ‘Are you going to tell him, boss?’
‘Tell the son, yes,’ said Challis. ‘Tell the super? Not yet. I don’t want to cause unnecessary harm or embarrassment, and please, I don’t want copies of these photographs circulating, and I don’t want anyone outside this room knowing that we have them.’
Ellen cut in, apparently still prickly with him: ‘But we have shown select copies to Tessa Kane to see if she recognised the location. She says not. Needless to say, the inspector and I will be talking to Robert McQuarrie this evening.’
‘So it’s coincidental?’ asked Scobie.
‘That’s still to be investigated,’ Ellen said, with a glance at Challis.
‘You think Janine McQuarrie was blackmailing people?’ a Mornington detective asked. ‘Blackmailed the wrong person?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Challis. ‘We know she could be censorious and vindictive.’
‘Blackmailed her own husband?’
‘Could be.’
‘Maybe she was followed by one of her blackmail victims yesterday,’ Scobie suggested. He had a scarf around his scrawny neck; he’d been about to go home when informed of the briefing.
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe she’s been at it for a while,’ Scobie went on, ‘and her husband-or whoever-finally jacked up or discovered her identity.’
‘It’s also possible,’ said Ellen heatedly, ‘that she was getting more and more miserable in her marriage to a man who dragged her along to sex parties. Maybe he made her have sex with his mates and she didn’t like it. Then she read Tessa Kane’s article and decided to take advantage of the fact that everyone was talking about it.’
One of the Mornington detectives cast her a sardonic look, as though to say he’d expect a female detective to speculate about feelings like this. ‘Or she got jealous of Robert for having sex with other women,’ he said, and Ellen flushed.
‘Maybe she was seen taking the photographs,’ Scobie said.
‘These are all candid shots,’ Ellen replied. ‘No one knows they’re being photographed.’
Challis nodded. ‘I shouldn’t think that cameras are allowed at these parties. Janine McQuarrie took her mobile phone with her and either no one paid any attention to it, or it was well concealed-as you can see, some people are carrying towels and bits and pieces of clothing. It’s as if Janine went there with the express intention of taking photographs of certain men in compromising positions. Did she want money? To ruin reputations? To break up relationships?’