Pam turned left into the shopping centre, looking for Kwiksnap. Tankard glanced at her keenly, with a touch of not-unkind humour. ‘You’d rather be plain-clothes than driving around in the divvie van, wouldn’t you?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be in uniform all my life.’
Tankard barked a laugh. ‘You’ll see a shitty side of human nature whatever you wear in this job. If the uniform work makes you suspicious of your fellow man, plain-clothes work only confirms it.’
Pam remembered: he’d been a detective for a while, at his last station.
He pointed. ‘Parking spot.’
‘I see it.’ She braked and parked.
There were bridal photos in one window of Kwiksnap, an automatic developing machine in the other, a young woman seated next to it, pushing buttons. Inside the shop were racks of film canisters, display cases of cameras and picture frames, and a booth set aside for passport photographs. The manager twitched aside a curtain and said, ‘I asked for Scobie.’
‘Constable Sutton’s tied up at the moment,’ Pam said. She introduced herself, then Tankard, and said, ‘You’re Mr Jackson?’
‘Yes.’ The manager glanced at Tankard. ‘And I know who he is.’
Tankard bristled. Pam said hurriedly, ‘You called about some suspicious photographs.’
The manager looked agitatedly at the door. ‘Yes. Look, she’s picking them up any time soon.’
‘Who is?’
‘The customer. She dropped the roll in for developing at five yesterday, pick up at ten this morning. That’s-’ he looked at his watch ‘-ten minutes ago.’
‘Let’s see these snaps, shall we?’
The manager hunted around in a shoebox for a Kodak envelope, then took out the photographs and laid them out on the counter top as though dealing cards in a game of patience. Pam peered at them. Exterior and interior shots of a huge house set in a vast lawn. White fence railings, a suggestion of outbuildings. The interior shots, she noticed, seemed to move from the general to the particular: a room, then what was in that room. Paintings in one photograph, a display case of silver snuffboxes in another. A vase. An antique mantel clock. She began to make scratch notes in her notebook.
But John Tankard was unimpressed. He pushed the photographs aside. ‘So what?’
The manager swallowed. ‘Well, see for yourself.’
‘I see sentimental snapshots,’ Tankard said. ‘Or maybe snaps taken for insurance purposes. Maybe the owners are scared a bushfire will destroy everything, so they’re keeping a record.’
‘Look at these two, John,’ Pam said. ‘The alarm system.’
‘See?’ the manager said.
‘If an alarm system set me back a few thousand bucks,’ Tankard said, ‘I’d want photos of it, in case the place burned down.’
Pam stared at him. Everything about him was contestable: his attitudes, his approach to the job, his day to day relations with people. She turned to the manager. ‘Let’s see who left these to be developed, shall we, sir?’
She tried to read the handwriting. ‘Marion Something.’
‘Marion Nunn,’ the manager said.
Tankard laughed. ‘Marion Nunn? Every policeman’s friend. Plus being a lawyer,’ he said, leaning his face close to Pam’s, ‘she deals in real estate. Hence the pictures. Live and learn, Pammy. You’ll run into the lovely Mrs Nunn sooner or later.’
Pam pushed the photographs away. ‘I already have.’
Ellen Destry fielded phone calls from journalists and worked on the sex offenders file again. She’d left it too long; it was clear that Lance Ledwich deserved a closer look. She picked up the phone. She’d try his employer first, then his home number.
By the time Sutton had returned to the station, she was ready to roll. She had the CIB Falcon waiting, a forensic technician in the back seat. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Scobie. You’re coming with me.’
Ledwich lived on a new estate near the racecourse on the northern edge of Waterloo, and they came to his house along a narrow court, creeping over speedbumps to get to it. The area depressed Ellen. A stained pine fence and a metre of air were all that separated the houses from one another on this estate. There were no trees to speak of. The nature strips looked raw, still to recover from trench-digging equipment and the summer’s dryness. There was a steel lockup garage at the end of Ledwich’s driveway, the door closed. A well-kept Volvo station wagon was parked in front of the garage, near a ragged patch of oil drips. The forensic technician went immediately for the Volvo.
As Ellen and Sutton approached the front door, a man slipped out of the metal side door of the garage and padlocked it hurriedly before coming toward them, wiping his palms on his trousers. Ellen recognised him from the photograph in his file.
‘Mr Ledwich? We’re-’
‘You don’t have to tell me who you are,’ Ledwich said.
‘Don’t we?’
There was something oily about Ledwich. Oily hair, an air of surreptitious oozing. ‘You bastards ever going to leave me alone?’
‘That depends, Lance,’ Sutton said.
Ledwich stared angrily at the forensic technician, who was taking photographs of the Volvo’s tyres. ‘What’s that arsehole doing?’
‘Why don’t we come inside, Lance?’ Ellen said, moving to usher Ledwich to the front door.
Ledwich twisted away from her. ‘Whatever it is, we do it out here. I don’t want the wife-’
‘Fair enough, Lance. I can understand that. Why don’t we move over here, let the technician do his job.’
They took Ledwich to the CIB Falcon. Ellen sat in the driver’s seat, Ledwich beside her, Sutton in the rear. ‘You’re all the fucking same,’ Ledwich said. ‘A bloke goes straight, and you lean on him, hoping he’ll fuck up so you can put him away again.’
‘Are you going straight, Lance?’
‘I’m a storeman.’
‘Irregular hours, some night shift work, right?’
‘So what? What’s it to do with you? That other business, that was years ago.’
‘Not that long ago,’ Sutton said.
Ellen leaned confidingly toward Ledwich. ‘About your Volvo, Lance.’
His eyes shifted. ‘What about it?’
‘Nice set of wheels,’ Sutton remarked.
Ledwich was obliged to swivel his head, from Ellen and then around to Sutton and back again. ‘I look after it, yeah.’
‘How did you afford to buy it, Lance?’ Ellen said.
‘Christ, it’s twelve years old. It’s not worth all that much.’
‘How long have you owned it?’
‘Few years.’
‘Why a Volvo?’ Sutton asked. ‘Why not a Ford or a Holden, like everyone else?’
Ellen leaned closer. ‘Is it so people will think you’re an ordinary bloke, Lance, rather than a pervert?’
He flushed. ‘It’s the wife’s car, all right?’
‘How about tyres, Lance, between you and the road. You’d want to fit pretty good ones, yeah?’
Ledwich narrowed his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t know what brand they are. What’s this about?’
‘Do you own any other vehicles?’
Ledwich looked away, out at the forensic technician. ‘Nup.’
‘We can check with the Department of Motor Vehicles.’
‘Check all you like,’ Ledwich said. He turned back to them. ‘You going to tell me what this is about?’
‘You’re well set up, aren’t you, Lance? Roomy set of wheels, the freedom to move around at night.’
Ledwich muttered, ‘Lost my licence a while back.’
‘That doesn’t stop you from driving, though.’
Ledwich folded his arms. ‘I suppose if I sit here long enough you’ll tell me what this is all about.’
Ellen said softly, into his face, ‘Abduction, rape and murder.’
He jerked back. ‘Me? No way.’
‘You can’t get sex the normal way, you have to con women and force yourself on them. We know that. It’s a matter of record. But you began to get more violent toward the end, didn’t you? You started to use your fists.’
‘That charge was dropped.’
‘So what? Doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.’