The tearoom was next to the photocopy room. Challis crossed to the cluttered sink in the corner, four young uniformed constables falling silent as he filled a cup with tap water. He looked at his watch. Time for the briefing.
He wandered upstairs and found the CIB detectives and a handful of uniformed sergeants waiting for him in the Displan room. The morning light streamed in. It was a large, airy room, but he knew that it would be stuffy by the end of the day. The room had been fitted with extra phone lines, photocopiers, computers, large-scale wall maps and a television set. Every incoming telephone call could be automatically timed and recorded on cassette, and there was a direct line to Telstra so that calls could be traced.
Challis nodded as he entered the room. There were murmured hellos in return and someone said, ‘Here’s the dragon man.’ He crossed to a desk that sat between a whiteboard and a wall of maps. He positioned himself behind the desk, leaned both hands on the back of a chair, and said, without preamble:
‘On Sunday night a young woman named Jane Gideon made an emergency call from a phone box on the Old Peninsula Highway. She hasn’t been seen since, and given that another young woman, Kymbly Abbott, was found raped and murdered by the side of the highway a week ago, we’re treating the circumstances as suspicious.’
He straightened his back and looked out above their heads. ‘You’re Jane Gideon. You work at the Odeon cinema. You catch the last train to Frankston from the city, collect your car, an old Holden, and head down the highway, your usual route home. Picture the highway at night. Almost midnight. No street lighting, cloudy moon, very few cars about, no sense of humankind out there except for a farmhouse porch light on a distant hillside. It’s a hot night, the hills are steep in places, your car badly needs a tune. Eventually the radiator boils over. You limp as far as the gravelled area in front of Foursquare Produce, which is a huge barn of a place, set in the middle of nowhere, but there is a Telstra phone box nearby. No doors on it, very little glass, mostly steel mesh painted blue-grey. Feeling exposed to the darkness, you call the VAA.’
He slipped a cassette tape into a machine and pressed the play button. They strained to listen:
‘Victorian Automobile Association. How may I help you?’
‘Yes, my name’s Jane Gideon. My car’s broken down. I think it’s the radiator. I’m scared to keep going in case I break something.’
Your membership number?’
‘Er-’
They heard a rattle of keys. ‘Here it is: MP six three zero zero four slash nine six.’
There was a pause, then: ‘Sorry, we have no record of that number. Perhaps you allowed your membership to elapse?’
‘Please, can’t you still send someone?’
‘You’ll have to rejoin.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ someone muttered. Challis held up his hand for quiet.
‘I don’t care. Just send someone.’
‘How would you like to pay?’
There was a pause filled with the hiss of radio signals in the dark night. Then Jane Gideon’s voice came on the line again, an edge to it.
‘Someone’s coming.’
‘You don’t require assistance after all?’
‘I mean, there’s a car. It’s slowed right down. Hang on.’
There was the sound of more coins being fed into the phone. ‘I’m back.’
The operator’s tone was neutral, as though she could not sense the black night, the isolated call box and the young woman’s fear. ‘Your address, please.’
‘Um, there’s this shed, says Foursquare Produce.’
‘But where? Your membership number, that’s the Peninsula, correct?’
‘I’m on the Old Peninsula Highway. Oh no, he’s stopping.’
‘Where on the highway? Can you give me a reference point? A house number? An intersecting road?’
‘It’s a man. Oh God.’
The operator’s tone sharpened. ‘Jane, listen, is something going on there where you are?’
‘A car.’
‘Is there a house nearby?’
‘No.’ She was sobbing now. ‘No house anywhere, just this shed.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. You-’
‘It’s okay, he’s driving away.’
‘Jane. Get inside your car. If it’s driveable, find somewhere off the road where it can’t be seen. Maybe behind that shed. Then stay inside the car. Lock all the doors and wind up all the windows. Can you do that for me?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘Meanwhile I’ll call the police, and I’ll also send one of our breakdown vehicles out to you. You can rejoin the VAA on the spot. Okay? Jane? You there?’
‘What if he comes back? I’m scared. I’ve never been so scared.’
Her voice was breaking as her fear rose. The operator replied calmly, but there was no comfort in her advice: ‘Get in the car, lock the doors, do not speak to anyone, even if they offer help.’
‘I could hide.’
Clearly the operator was torn. The Victorian Automobile Association had been taping its emergency calls ever since a member had sued them for offering wrong advice which proved costly, with the result that operators were now careful not to offer advice of any kind-but a young woman alone on a deserted road at night? She deserved wise counsel of some kind.
‘I don’t know,’ the operator confessed. ‘If you think it would do any good. Hide where? Hello? Hello?’
There was the sound of a vehicle, muffled voices, a long pause, then the line went dead.
‘The rest you know,’ Challis said. ‘The VAA operator called 000, who contacted Frankston, who sent a car down there. They found Jane Gideon’s car. The phone was on the hook. No signs of a struggle. They searched around the nearby sheds and orchards in case Gideon had decided to hide herself, but found nothing.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Uniforms started searching the area at daybreak yesterday. Our first task will be a door knock.’
He paused. ‘It’s early days, so try not to let one case colour the other, but we can’t discount the possible links between Kymbly Abbott’s murder and Jane Gideon’s disappearance. Since I’m already working oh Abbott, I’ve brought her files with me. Any questions so far?’
‘What are the links, boss?’
‘The Old Peninsula Highway for a start,’ Challis said. He turned to a wall map. It showed the city of Melbourne, and the main arteries into the rural areas. Pointing to a network of streets which marked the suburb of Frankston, on the south-eastern edge of the city, he said, ‘Kymbly Abbott had been at a party here, in Frankston. The highway starts here, a few hundred metres away. Abbott was last seen walking toward it, intending to hitch a ride home.’ He traced the highway down the hook of the Peninsula. ‘She lived with her parents here, in Dromana. They own a shoe shop. I have her leaving the party at one o’clock in the morning, possibly drunk, possibly stoned, so her judgment would have been shot. No-one at the party gave her a lift, though I will be talking to them all again. Her body was found here, by the side of the highway, just seven kilometres south of Frankston. We’re appealing for witnesses, the usual thing, did anyone see her, give her a lift, see someone else give her a lift.’
‘But that suggests our man’s also prowling in Frankston itself, not simply up and down the highway.’
‘I know. Or he lives in the Frankston area and was just setting out somewhere, or lives down here and was on his way home. Now, other similarities. Both incidents happened late at night. Both victims are young women who were alone at the time.’
He passed out crime-scene photographs. They showed Kymbly Abbott like a cast-aside rag doll in death, her throat and her thighs swollen and cruelly bruised. ‘Raped and strangled. If that was the first time for our man, he might have been on a high for a few days, eager to try again on Sunday night.’