‘What have you got against Robert? Is it that he’s successful at what he does?’
Challis felt goaded. He fought it. ‘Identify and eliminate,’ he said. ‘That’s what we do. You know that.’
McQuarrie flushed. He curled his lip. ‘The politics of envy, Hal. My son explained it to me. It’s insidious, spread by people like Tessa Kane, but I have to say I didn’t expect that you would ascribe to-’
Too late he realised that he’d gone too far. ‘No offence,’ he said, taking a step back.
Challis advanced on him, stabbed a forefinger against the man’s softly padded breastbone. ‘She was a better person than you or your son will ever be.’
‘Take it easy.’
‘I will not take it easy. You’ve interfered in this case every step of the way. I’m sick of it. Back off.’
‘All right, all right, you’ve made your point.’
They’d gone well past admitting to a difference in rank, but they’d also talked out their fury. Their chests heaving, they stared at each other. They swallowed. Finally McQuarrie nodded curtly, left, and Challis stood for a while, willing himself to be fully calm again. Then Ellen was there, comfortingly close. ‘Pissing contest over?’ she said, nudging him.
He laughed, and it was a great release. ‘Let’s bring Lowry in again.’
It was late, dark and cold in Waterloo. ‘They were ex-Navy, Ray, just like you,’ Challis said, his voice clipped, in a little interview room along the corridor from Kellock’s office.
Ellen took that as her cue to remove photographs from the file in front of her and slide them across the table. ‘Nathan Gent and Trevor Vyner.’
‘Never heard of them. Never met them,’ Lowry said.
‘At one stage, all three of you were serving at the Navy base in Townsville.’
‘So? It’s a huge base.’
‘On duty, off duty, you had plenty of opportunities to meet them.’
Lowry’s legal aid lawyer, who looked about eighteen, gained sufficient nerve to say, ‘My client has answered your question, Sergeant Destry.’
Ellen ignored him. She tapped the photos. ‘They murdered Janine McQuarrie. Gent was the driver, Vyner the shooter. Then Vyner shot Gent, fearing he was a loose cannon, and later still he shot Tessa Kane.’ She looked up. ‘You had a beef with both women, Ray.’
Lowry’s lawyer said, ‘Unless you have hard evidence that my client knew these men, or conspired with them to kill anyone, then I suggest you let him go.’
‘Trevor Vyner,’ Challis said. ‘Ex-Navy, served two terms for fraud and burglary in New South Wales in 2003.’
‘So?’
‘Some Browning pistols went missing from the Navy armoury. The armourer was your mate. Did Vyner get those pistols direct from him or did you broker the deal?’
‘My client doesn’t know anything about missing guns or these murders,’ the lawyer said. ‘He left the Navy some time ago and is now a respected businessman.’
Challis said nothing but simply stared at Lowry. They had Vyner’s print on the car and he’d sent a pair of Vyner’s walking shoes to the lab, hoping the traces of vegetable matter in the treads would link Vyner to the shallow grave in Myers Reserve. But proving that Lowry had hired Vyner was not going to be so easy. There were no e-mails or phone records to link the three men to each other. Then again, Lowry had a shop full of mobile phones.
That’s when a uniformed sergeant entered the little room and motioned Challis to join him in the corridor. ‘Sorry, Hal, but we’ve got a woman at the front desk who claims her husband ordered the McQuarrie and Kane murders.’
62
‘Is he still at the detention centre?’ Challis asked.
Lottie Mead shook her head. ‘Probably at home,’ she said. ‘Charlie’s generally home by six.’
‘Does he know you’re here?’
‘No! And you mustn’t tell him, not until he’s locked up!’
They were in the victim suite because the interview rooms were being used and they couldn’t question a potential witness amid the files and wall displays of the incident room. Challis was leaning against the wall in his habitual pose, Ellen was perched on the edge of a straightbacked chair, and Lottie Mead sat jittery and scowling at one end of the room’s ugly sofa.
Ellen reached out and touched the other woman’s knee reassuringly. ‘You’re safe here, Mrs Mead.’
Lottie Mead, wearing jeans, boots and an expensive costly-looking jacket, stared glumly at her feet, then up. Challis studied her, recalling the civic function at which she’d given nothing away but allowed Charlie to do all the talking. She had narrow features, tightly compressed, as if she’d never revealed many emotions and was unused to it now. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. You got shot because of him,’ she said, and made as if to touch Ellen.
Challis watched and listened. Lottie’s South African accent was strong: she’s Afrikaner South African, he guessed, not English, poorly educated, unconfident around powerful people. She looked demoralised, and he wondered if Charlie Mead had kept her subjugated. Yet she must have found a spark of courage and will, enough to seek help from Janine McQuarrie-who typically had given her poor advice and false courage.
‘Why didn’t you contact us sooner? Another woman died.’
‘I was scared.’
‘Scared,’ Challis said flatly.
‘Hal,’ Ellen said warningly.
‘Really scared,’ Lottie Mead said, looking at the floor again. ‘I thought he’d find out and kill me.’ Her cheeks were damp when she raised her head. ‘But at the same time, he’s so arrogant he believes I’m too scared to cross him.’
Challis’s mind was racing, imagining this woman’s life with Mead, a man who ruled her thoughts and actions. ‘Tell us again about Janine McQuarrie. Your name’s not on her client list.’
‘I used my maiden name. Charlotte Strydom.’
Challis looked. The name was there. He found the case notes and leafed through them. ‘You started seeing her only a few weeks ago.’
‘Yes.’
The notes were typically cryptic and dashed off: abbreviations, simple words and phrases followed by question marks, virtually unreadable handwriting. ‘What sort of counselling were you seeking from her?’
‘My marriage was unhappy.’
As he often did with interview subjects, Challis let scoffing and doubt rule his features. He waited. Lottie Mead said, ‘Charlie’s being sent to manage a prison in Canada. I want to stay here.’
Challis continued to stare at her, wondering where this was going. Lottie Mead shifted about on the sofa. ‘I was scared.’
‘Scared of how he’d react if you said you didn’t want to go with him?’
Mead’s wife looked astounded that Challis could be so naive. ‘Scared he’d kill me.’
‘Kill you,’ said Challis disbelievingly. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had used a major investigation to make false accusations against a spouse.
‘You don’t know what he’s like! He has to get his own way. He hates to be crossed. It was bad enough that I was seeing Janine, but telling him I wouldn’t be going to Canada with him, well, he’s not the kind of man to take it lying down.’ She paused. ‘He’d make it look like an accident.’
Challis and Ellen exchanged doubtful glances. ‘So you saw Janine McQuarrie for advice. Did you tell her of your specific fears concerning your husband?’
‘Some.’
‘Some. Did she tell you to leave him?’
‘Yes.’
Challis watched Lottie Mead for a moment. The next question was obvious: ‘Did Mrs McQuarrie then confront your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ask her to?’
‘God no! That would be a death wish.’
Challis nodded. Janine had acted true to form. But would a reasonable man respond by hiring a hitman to kill her? Would an treasonable man, for that matter? So far, all that he and Ellen had was another situation similar to Raymond Lowry’s, and there were bound to be still others.
‘So you think he killed Janine because you’d gone to her and she’d confronted him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he say or do anything to you?’
‘He hit me.’
‘Is that all?’
‘He told me to stop seeing Janine.’