They followed him through to the kitchen, into the odours of fresh coffee and toast.
‘Can I get you something?’
Ellen glanced at Challis and answered for both of them. ‘Coffee, please.’
‘Pull up a pew.’
Coulter poured the coffee and sat across the table from them, precise, contained, watchful, his grey eyes clear and untroubled. He said nothing and betrayed no curiosity or apprehension. He’ll wait us out, Challis thought, sliding a photograph across the table.
‘Is this you, Mr Coulter?’
‘Yes.’
‘What can you tell us about it?’
‘I’m having sex with a woman, on a bed, being watched by other men and women.’
‘Did you receive a copy of this photograph in the mail on Monday?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you make of that?’
‘I made nothing of it. I have nothing to hide. I cannot and will not be blackmailed.’
‘You received a blackmail demand?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know it’s blackmail?’
‘I assume that I’m being softened up for blackmail,’ Coulter said, blowing across the steaming surface of his coffee.
‘You say you can’t and won’t be blackmailed,’ Ellen said. ‘Is that bravado?’
‘I can’t and won’t be blackmailed because I simply don’t care enough,’ Coulter said. ‘So what that I go to sex parties? I have no family who would be shamed if word got out, and my clients certainly wouldn’t care. I represent interests in the horse-racing industry and my reputation with them rests solely on my ability to make and save them money-which I do very successfully.’
Challis disliked the man’s coldness and vanity. ‘Did you build this house yourself?’ he asked, noting Coulter’s work-hardened hands, incongruous against the soft, costly fabric of his shirt.
‘I did.’
‘Impressive.’
Coulter said nothing, aiming for a prohibitive silence.
Ellen drained her coffee. ‘Have you any idea who sent you the photographs?’
‘Janine McQuarrie. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You think I killed her?’
‘Did you?’
Coulter looked bored. ‘Why? What would be the point?’
‘She threatened your reputation.’
‘Perhaps you weren’t listening: I don’t care about my reputation.’
‘The photos-or Janine herself-were a threat in other ways.’
‘I’ve never met the woman.’
‘She was murdered not far from here,’ Challis said. ‘Was she coming to see you?’
‘No. I wasn’t here anyway, but in my office in Mornington and needless to say I can prove it. But perhaps she was on her way here with more photographs.’
It occurred to Challis then that if Janine was murdered because she’d attempted to blackmail someone, wouldn’t that someone want to search her home and office for all copies of the photographs? Yet neither place had been broken into. On the other hand, Robert presumably had access to the keys.
As if reading his thoughts, Coulter said, ‘Did she have copies with her when she was shot?’
Never let them ask the questions. ‘How did you know that Janine McQuarrie took your photograph?’
‘I saw her do it.’
‘With what?’
‘Her mobile phone. Look, I go to these sex parties to look at faces and responses. Everyone else watches the sex. I saw her, I saw what she was doing. It amused me-though I was surprised to get photos in the mail. I assumed she was taking photos to meet some kind of basic and boring erotic need.’
‘Did anyone else see her?’ Ellen asked. Challis could see tension in her jaw, meaning that she loathed Coulter.
‘Possibly, but that’s your job, isn’t it? I can just see it: the police going in heavy-handed, knocking on forty or fifty doors, throwing a scare into people who until then thought their grubby secret lives were safe from scrutiny, and they’re all going to deny knowing anything about Janine McQuarrie and her pathetic photographs.’
‘You’re the one who’s pathetic,’ Ellen said.
Coulter grinned to know that he’d goaded her and Challis saw at last, behind the cool faзade, an empty man.
‘Mr Coulter, you say your clients are in the horse-racing industry.’
‘Yes, and I daresay some of them are dishonest, and a handful know the type of men who will shoot someone dead for a few thousand bucks.’
‘Do you know such men?’
‘If I do, they haven’t announced themselves to me.’
‘Do you hear whispers?’
‘I’ve heard whispers all my life. Am I going to inform? No?’
‘But you might know who to go to if you wanted someone shot dead?’.
‘I might, but I don’t. I don’t care enough about anything to want anyone dead. I can’t raise the emotional heat. There’s nothing I want to preserve, no gain I want to make. The woman could have published my photo on the net, for all I care. Now if that’s all, I have an appointment at a stable in Mornington in thirty minutes.’
‘Early,’ Challis observed.
‘Horse-racing people are early people,’ Coulter said.
That’s how it’s going to be between us, Challis thought. No confession or clear signs of guilt. Just a hard slog through Coulter’s past and present.
33
Robert McQuarrie and the other men had identified the settings of Janine McQuarrie’s photographs as two bedrooms in a house in the old part of Mornington, where solid dwellings sat on leafy streets a short walk away from the park, the beaches and Main Street. Ellen drove, slowing at one point to indicate a low-slung modern building that had gone to seed: drifts of paper and cellophane caught in the fence, untended grass, peeling paint, playground equipment growing a patina of rust and mould. ‘That was a heartbreaker,’ she said.
She didn’t need to explain. A childcare centre; allegations of sexual abuse against the husband and wife who ran the place; no charges laid after a fruitless investigation. But the case remained open.
‘And a hundred metres further on we have the Wavells and their wholesome sex parties,’ she continued.
Anton and Laura Wavell, aged in their early forties, and both at home at 8.45 on a Thursday morning. ‘We work from home,’ Anton explained, showing them into the sitting room. He was a thin, gingery, nondescript man with long pale fingers that fluttered from his belt to his mouth to his neck.
‘We offer IT support,’ Laura explained. ‘System upgrades, data recovery, website design, virus eradication. So, if you ever have any problems…’
She’s drumming up business, Challis thought, even as she suspects why we’re here. He eyed the Wavells. He’d stopped being surprised by the resemblances that husbands and wives developed to each other: like her husband, Laura Wavell was gingery. She sported rampant freckles on a broad face, and coarse red hair tamed by large clips.
‘Would you like to see?’ she asked, indicating a closed door at the end of the room.
There was something desperate about the question, as though Challis and Ellen might think better of the Wavells if shown a room devoted to cutting-edge technology and evidence of plain, everyday hard work. In Challis’s experience, guilt was never very far from the surface when it came to the sexual proclivities of ordinary people. Only hardened paedophiles never showed a conscience or remorse. The Wavells were probably close to protesting sulkily and fearfully that they were only helping others have a bit of fun. Challis had no moral opinion one way or the other about the sex parties: he didn’t care what the participants did; he only cared when someone stopped playing the game.
‘Another time,’ he said, and sat in a pillowy sofa, obliging the others to sit. There was a plasma widescreen TV in one corner of the room, a small bar, a scatter of Ikea easychairs, bright rugs and cushions, track lighting on the walls and ceiling. With the wintry sun picking up dust motes and finger smears, the room held a less than tepid erotic charge. He distributed Janine McQuarrie’s photographs over the surface of a coffee table that had been constructed from recycled floorboards in the form of a low, wide box with a pair of shallow push-pull drawers. ‘These were taken in two of your bedrooms last Saturday night.’