‘Bring them into the kitchen, would you, please? There’s nothing to worry about. They’re not suspects in anything. We’re not going to arrest them, only question them about something.’
She ushered Challis and Sutton into the kitchen, cleaned breakfast dishes from the table and asked them to sit. While she was out of the room, Challis took stock: 1970s burnt-orange wall tiles above the benches, a clashing brown and green vinyl linoleum floor, chrome and vinyl chairs, a laminex and chrome table, a small television set, tuned to a chat show, the sound turned down, dishes in the sink, a vast bowl of dough next to a floury rolling pin and greased scone tray.
The Saltmarsh cousins could have been brothers. They were about sixteen, large and awkward, both mouth-breathers with slack, slow-to-comprehend faces. Challis had an impression of softness, and clumsy angles, of pimples and sparse whiskers, of ordinary teenage stubbornness and stupidity, but not meanness or calculation. They seemed to fill the little kitchen. When they spoke, it was in gobbled snatches, as if they didn’t trust speech and hadn’t much use for it.
‘You boys were at Devil Bend Reservoir yesterday, correct?’
‘Us? No way.’
Challis gazed at them for a moment. ‘But you both like to fish?’
‘Fish?’
Scobie Sutton was impatient. ‘With fishing lines and rods and hooks and bait. You like to go fishing.’
‘Haven’t got a boat.’
It was Brett, Maureen Saltmarsh’s son. Challis leaned over the table toward him. ‘I recently saw you and your cousin, on foot, all geared up to go fishing. You were climbing a fence and crossing a paddock. Not two kilometres from here.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, you weren’t out blackberrying. Now why don’t you tell us about Devil Bend Reservoir.’
Brett stared at the table. His mother said, ‘Brett? What have you boys been up to?’
‘Nothing, Mum.’
Challis said, ‘We’ve had reports of poachers in the district, dams and lakes fished for trout.’
‘Not us.’
‘I’m sorry, but I have no alternative but to charge you with-’
‘You said they hadn’t done anything!’
‘Mrs Saltmarsh, please…’
‘You can’t charge them if they haven’t done anything.’
Challis hated what he was doing. He said, ‘Brett, look at me. I don’t care about the illegal fishing, the trespassing. I don’t even intend to report your names to the local station. But unless you tell me what you saw at the reservoir yesterday, I will have you arrested and charged, believe me I will.’
Brett shot a look at his cousin. The cousin said, ‘We never done nothing. We just found her, that’s all.’
Challis sighed and sat back. ‘You went there to fish?’
‘Might have.’
‘Okay, okay, forget the fishing. You were out for a stroll. You were skirting the reservoir and came upon a body.’
They looked doubtful about the word skirting. Did it mean he suspected them of doing something unspeakable at the reservoir? But Brett muttered, ‘Yeah, we found her.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing! We didn’t kill her! She was already like that!’
‘Did you touch her?’
‘No way.’
‘Did you take anything?’
‘Rob a dead body? No way.’
‘Did you remove anything from the vicinity of the body?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll rephrase the question: Was there anything on the ground near the body? If so, did you take it away with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We wouldn’t charge you with theft,’ Scobie Sutton said. ‘We just need to know.’
‘There was nothing there.’
Challis said, ‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No. Only her.’
Luke said, ‘She the one what was grabbed when her car broke down?’
Challis thought about it. He wanted to give something back to the boys. ‘Yes.’
‘Cool.’
‘What time did you find her?’
‘Dunno. Pretty early.’
Mrs Saltmarsh said, ‘A school morning, you can’t get the buggers out of bed. School holidays and they’re up at the crack of dawn.’
Scobie Sutton asked, ‘Why did you wait before phoning the police?’
The boys looked at each other. Mrs Saltmarsh eyed them suspiciously. ‘They was waiting for me to go out shopping.’
‘Is that right?’
Brett scratched at a burn mark in the laminex with a grimy fingernail. ‘Suppose so.’
‘Your mother left the house when?’
‘About two,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.
Challis had logged the call at 2.45.
‘You’d have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d given us your names, and rung earlier,’ Sutton said.
‘Didn’t take you long to find us anyway,’ Luke muttered grudgingly.
‘We’ll need your gumboots,’ Challis said.
Mrs Saltmarsh narrowed her eyes. ‘What for, if they’ve done nothing?’
‘To check their footprints against those found at the scene.’
‘To eliminate them,’ Sutton explained.
Both boys looked alarmed, as though elimination meant something damaging and final.
‘I’ll get them,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.
‘Pop them in a supermarket bag,’ Sutton called, to her departing back.
The boys looked frightened now. Challis got to his feet. ‘No more sneaking around fishing from the neighbours, okay? Someone could take a shotgun to you, then I’d have another murder inquiry on my hands.’
They went white. ‘Joke, fellas,’ Sutton said.
Their grins were shaky.
On the way out, Challis said suddenly, ‘We’re forgetting something.’
‘Maureen, Mrs Saltmarsh,’ he said, when she opened the door to him again, ‘a quick question. What vehicles do you have on the place?’
She understood, and flushed sullenly. ‘Tractor, Land Cruiser, truck, Holden.’
‘The Holden-a sedan or a station wagon?’
‘Sedan.’
‘The truck. Is-’
‘I told you, he done the big end in a few days ago.’
‘Maureen, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a camera in the car. Couple of quick shots of the Land Cruiser’s tyres and we’ll be on our way.’
‘It hasn’t been out for days.’
He smiled, ignoring her. ‘Do the boys know how to drive?’
‘They’re too young to have their licences.’
‘But they know how to drive?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘Just a quick snap of the tyres and we’ll be gone,’ Challis said again.
‘In the bloody shed,’ Maureen Saltmarsh said, closing the door on them.
‘Really laid one on last night, Murph.’
‘Wacky doo,’ Pam said, stopping at the roundabout for a station wagon that had begun to nose uncertainly around it, as though lost. A rack of suitcases on the roof, a hint of bedding, buckets, spades and foam surfboards in the rear, children staring through the side windows, a woman driving, a man next to her, cocking his head at a map and waving one arm at her. Maybe, Pam thought, they’ll be next door to me in Penzance Beach when I knock off work tonight, ensconced like kings until school goes back in late January.
‘How come we never see you down the pub?’ Tankard demanded.
‘Got better things to do.’
‘Like what? Don’t tell me you’ve got a love life.’
That hurt. She took her attention from the road to flash him a look. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a love life?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against it.’
‘Against what?’
‘If you prefer women to blokes that’s no skin off my nose.’
Pam rubbed her cheek wearily. ‘Give it a rest, Tank. You wouldn’t know the first thing about me.’ She braked for the pedestrian lights outside the post office.
‘Like hell.’ He yawned. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’
‘The photo shop. The manager wants us to check out a roll of film he developed this morning.’
Tankard looked disgusted. ‘Who cares? You get all kinds of stuff now, no-one turns a hair. Holiday snaps in the nuddy, pregnancies, sheilas giving birth. No-one’s stupid enough to drop hard-core stuff off for developing.’
Pam wished that Tankard would shut up. ‘All I know is, the manager called the station, asked for Scobie Sutton, he’s busy, so he gave it to us.’