For some time there was silence. Anton’s hands were busy and he swallowed; Laura straightened her back, slanted her knees to one side, and folded her hands in her narrow lap.
‘We did nothing wrong,’ she said.
‘We certainly didn’t take these photos,’ Anton said. ‘Search the place if you like. No hidden cameras.’
‘Cameras are strictly forbidden.’
‘Against etiquette.’
‘Oh, etiquette,’ Ellen said, and Challis saw something dangerous in her face and voice. Ellen in full flight could be something to see. It even produced results from time to time.
‘We have standards,’ Anton said.
‘Standards,’ said Ellen flatly.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know these men?’
‘They come to our occasions.’
‘Occasions. That’s a good one,’ Ellen said. ‘I’ll see if I can occasion my husband tonight, if he’s not too tired.’
Anton flushed. ‘I can read you like a book. You think there’s something smutty about our parties because you yourself think sex is a smutty thing. It’s not.’
‘I love a bit of smut,’ Ellen said. ‘Hal?’
‘Me too,’ Challis said carefully, wondering if her fury came from disappointment with him. He’d wanted her yesterday, and the day before that, and she’d picked up on it. He hadn’t acted: had she wanted him to?
He placed a photograph of Janine McQuarrie on the coffee table, the studio portrait taken for Bayside Counselling Services. ‘Do you know this woman?’
They peered with dutiful frowns. ‘She’s been here.’
‘Been to the sex parties?’
‘Yes,’ Anton said stiffly.
‘One of the wives,’ Laura said, as if to stress legitimacy.
Ellen leaned forward and with great sharpness and concentration said, ‘She was murdered two days ago, almost to the hour.’
They knew. Janine’s likeness had been plastered all over the TV news and daily press. ‘I fail to see what that has to do with us,’ Anton said.
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘She took these photos at one of your parties and now she’s dead.’
A pause. ‘She took them? How?’
‘Mobile phone.’
The Wavells shifted about as if kicking themselves for not anticipating that, for not policing it.
‘But why?’ Laura asked.
Ellen ignored her. ‘Tell me more about these orgies of yours,’ she said in her dangerous, reckless way.
‘They’re not orgies! Tell her, Anton.’
‘They’re not orgies.’
‘Okay, group-sex gangbangs. Tell me more about them.’
‘You’re deliberately goading us, deliberately cheapening everything,’ said Laura.
‘We’re not doing anything wrong, anything illegal,’ said Anton. ‘No drugs, no coercion, no underage girls, no sexually transmitted diseases, just healthy safe sex for consenting adults.’
‘Multiple sex acts between desperate adults,’ Ellen snarled.
‘They’re hot desperate. Tell her, Anton.’
‘Couples,’ Anton said, ‘who already have sexual partners and want to explore and extend the possibilities.’
‘Sounds like desperation and fear to me,’ Ellen said. ‘You knew Janine McQuarrie was taking these photographs, didn’t you?’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘You encouraged it.’
‘No way.’
‘You commissioned it,’ Challis cut in. ‘You’re running a nice little blackmail racket and Janine was your partner. You sent these photographs to four of your potential victims to soften them up before making demands for money.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Why would we do that? Our parties, as you like to call them, would soon grind to a halt.’
‘Power. Money. Revenge.’
‘Not interested. We’re decent people, not criminals.’
Into the silence that followed, Anton said meekly, ‘Do we need a lawyer?’
Ellen pointed to a pale, grainy, globular backside. ‘Here’s one.’
He flushed angrily. ‘Are you going to shut us down?’
‘Shut you down?’ said Ellen in amazement. ‘Who do you think we are?’
34
That was the early hours of Thursday. A raw wind had risen by the time Challis and Ellen returned to CIU, and there was a message for Challis to telephone his elderly next-door neighbour. ‘A huge gum tree’s come down across your driveway, Hal. It’s sticking out into the road. I tried to cut it up but can’t start my chainsaw.’
‘Try the shire,’ Challis said, shrugging out of his coat.
‘I did. There are trees and branches down everywhere and they can’t promise they’ll get around to it today.’
Challis cursed. Ten o’clock. He was obliged to attend the Navy inquest at eleven. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
He dragged on his coat again, grabbed his laptop and inquest notes, and stopped at Ellen’s desk. ‘I’ll be out for two or three hours. I want you to call on Janine’s sister. I doubt if Janine was the confiding type, but I’m pretty sure Meg intuited something about her recent activities.’
Ellen sat back in her chair, tapping a pen against her teeth. ‘Everything in this case is a trace of a ghost of a faint chance of a possibility.’
He was relieved to see her smile. ‘Eloquently put.’
Challis drove to his home along roads festooned with twigs, branches and long scraps of bark. By the time he’d cursed his chainsaw into life and sliced the tree up and rolled the segments of trunk out of the way, and showered and dressed again, he was late for the inquest.
The ruling was as expected: the Navy armourer had shot dead the Fiddlers Creek Hotel bouncer, and then committed suicide. He’d been drinking heavily in the main bar, but was also under the influence of a cocktail of drugs bought from a Navy cadet, and this, compounded by his sense of grievance at being ejected from the hotel, had disturbed the balance of his mind.
But the coroner went further. Reading from Challis’s own report, he noted that the armourer had used a Browning automatic handgun from the armoury, and recommended that an investigation be held into how it had been removed despite electronic surveillance measures and bi-weekly spot checks on the inventory, and whether or not other weapons had been removed, and if so, who had them.
The proceedings continued briskly and by early afternoon Challis was stepping out into a ragged wind, fits of sunlight and obscuring cloud masses. He hurried to his car, checked his mobile, and saw that Superintendent McQuarrie had called him. Twice.
‘Challis, sir.’
‘Finally. Was your mobile switched off, Inspector?’
‘Coroner’s inquest, sir, that Navy shooting.’
‘And?’
‘Murder suicide.’
Into the pause that followed, the superintendent said tightly, ‘I understand you went to see my son again.’
‘Sir.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Loose ends,’ Challis said. Surely Robert hadn’t told his father about last night’s visit. The sister-in-law? No-most probably one of McQuarrie’s spies, he decided.
‘Such as?’
Challis debated with himself. Could he reasonably expect to keep the super from learning about the photographs? Either way, he was in a bind: damned if he told the super, damned if he didn’t. ‘It was partly a courtesy call, sir, and we went over old ground to see if he could remember anything further about his wife.’
‘Old ground? What about new ground, Inspector?’
As if to suggest that Challis hadn’t been thorough the first time around and liked to spend his days upsetting important and influential people.
‘In the absence of leads we have to check phone records again,’ said Challis, ‘read correspondence, look for holes and inconsistencies in witness statements, as well as talk to new witnesses who might come forward.’ Jesus.
McQuarrie was silent. Then he said, ‘I thought we agreed this was a case of the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
You agreed it, Challis thought. ‘It’s important to keep an open mind, sir.’
‘Dig deeper into this witness protection woman.’
‘Sir.’