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‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Scobie Sutton said.
‘Nothing to do with you? Scobie, that’s your e-mail address-your official police e-mail address,’ Challis said, stabbing the printout with his forefinger.
‘Nothing to do with me.’
Sutton was like a sulky adolescent on the other side of Challis’s desk, his bony limbs lost in the folds of his dark jacket and trousers. He wouldn’t meet Challis’s eye.
‘You were the recipient of a racist e-mail. What if the press gets hold of this? What if Ethical Standards takes a long, hard look at you?’
‘Nothing to do with me.’
Challis had also printed out the many pages of Dirk Roe’s blog. He arranged them side by side where Sutton could read them. ‘Your little pal is also responsible for this crap.’
‘Boss,’ pleaded Sutton, finally looking up, ‘I don’t sympathise with this stuff, honestly I don’t.’
‘Then how did the guy get your e-mail address?’
Sutton’s gaze slid away. ‘Beth,’ he said desolately.
‘Your wife? I’d have thought she’d be the last-’
‘She’s been unhappy,’ said Sutton in a rush. He paused, searching for the words, flinching a little as a couple of officers passed by in the corridor, laughing about something. ‘It hasn’t been easy for her,’ he continued. ‘When she lost her job it really threw her. She’s been out of work for ages and…She’s depressed, boss.’
Challis folded his arms, grim in face and posture, inviting Sutton to get on with it.
Sutton complied hastily. ‘Very depressed. Thinks the world is a bad place and getting worse, only no one is listening to her. She feels very alone. You can imagine how that makes me feel.’
He waited for acknowledgment but Challis merely stared. He swallowed. ‘She won’t talk to me about it. Won’t talk to our minister, either, or friends or family. In fact, she stopped going to our church and she doesn’t have anything to do with any of the old crowd.’
Challis regarded him carefully. Sutton was a decent man, a churchgoer of the family-values kind. In Challis’s experience, people like that were hesitant to extend their decency in certain directions. Towards gays, for example, or Muslims. Still, some sympathy was due. ‘I take it that Beth found someone who would listen?’ Challis said.
Sutton’s face lit up. ‘Exactly!’
‘Dirk Roe?’ Challis said doubtfully. He gestured over the array of printouts. ‘The guy’s a moron.’
‘Not Dirk-Lachlan, the one who was attacked. He can be quite compelling.’
‘I don’t understand. He’s a school chaplain.’
Sutton squirmed. ‘He’s a bit more than that.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Well, Dirk and Lachlan were brought up in one of those big fundamentalist churches, the kind where you smile and clap hands for Jesus.’
Challis knew the kind. One of the smaller outfits-only 40,000 of them worldwide, and half of that number in Australia-liked to bankroll the election campaigns of conservative politicians and attack left leaning or green candidates. They were against voting, reading novels, wearing short pants, attending football matches, letting their kids go to university. Opposed to contraception, mobile phones and computers. Sad crackpots, he thought, but surprisingly powerful. Challis recalled dimly that Ollie Hindmarsh was one politician who gave an ear to those nuts. Sutton continued: ‘Dirk drifted, but Lachlan grew even more devout and narrow and a couple of years ago he broke away to form his own congregation. The First Ascensionists, they’re called.’
‘And Beth has joined them?’
‘Yes,’ said Sutton with a strangled wail.
‘How big are they?’
‘Not very.’
‘What do they believe in?’
Sutton shook his head in distress and bewilderment. ‘They’re very strict about a whole range of things, as you’d expect. They believe that you can avoid sin by avoiding non-believers, and that’s why Beth avoids me. Also Lachlan has convinced everyone he’s the direct spiritual descendant of Saint Paul and the only route to salvation. “I am the vessel,” that’s what he told me. He says that God will lift true Christians out of the world in a rapture. The rest will suffer a period of intense tribulation, then Christ will return to Jerusalem and rule for a thousand years before a final apocalyptic battle with evil.’
Challis felt his eyes glaze over. People believed this bullshit, it mattered to them. It mattered enough for cynical politicians to get close to people who spouted it.
‘So you’ve talked to this bozo.’
Sutton tensed in his chair and said, ‘I tried to talk to him about Beth.’
Challis went cold. ‘Where were you last night, Scobie?’
Sutton jumped. ‘At home with Roslyn.’
His twelve-year-old daughter. ‘Where was your wife?’
‘At the Chillout Zone, handing pamphlets to schoolies.’
Challis guessed that these alibis could be verified pretty easily. Meanwhile he was starting to wonder how many other Scobie Suttons were out there, men and women who had the inclination to harm Lachlan Roe for taking away their loved ones. ‘Scobie, I’ll ask again, did you assault him?’
Sutton was so appalled that Challis believed it. ‘Me? How could you say that? How could you even think it?’
‘All right, settle down. But you did try to talk to him about your wife. When was that?’
‘A few weeks ago.’
‘So Roe’s a preacher, but how the hell did he become school chaplain at a place like Landseer?’
Sutton shrugged. ‘The Ascensionists are pretty low profile. And respectable-doctors, teachers, local business people…’
‘How does Dirk fit into all this?’
‘He’s less fanatical than Lachlan, but they are brothers,’ Sutton said.
That wasn’t what Challis meant. ‘Maybe it suits these people for Lachlan to be based at that school, and Dirk in Ollie Hindmarsh’s electoral office.’
Scobie Sutton looked all at sea. His take on the situation was small, personal and domestic, and here was his boss floating a conspiracy theory. ‘Don’t know, boss,’ he muttered.
Challis jack-knifed forward. ‘All right. So what are they doing with your e-mail address?’
‘It’s Beth. She’s trying to get me to come across to the Ascensionists, and so now I keep getting all these awful e-mails.’
Challis shook his head slowly. ‘Mate, you’re in a pickle.’
Scobie Sutton began to weep. ‘I’m at my wits’ end.’
‘What I don’t understand is why you called Dirk to the scene this morning.’
Scobie was mildly astonished. ‘But his brother was hurt. Naturally he’d want to help him.’
Challis breathed in and out. God save him from good people. ‘Scobie, I hope you can see that I can’t have you working this case. Your judgment is shot, and you’re a potential suspect.’
‘Boss, please.’
‘We’ve plenty of other cases that need attention.’
‘Yeah, right, a serious spate of ride-on mower theft.’
‘Constable,’ Challis barked.
‘Sir. But sir, can’t I continue the doorknock, work on the periphery?’
‘No. I can’t rely on you to be neutral and alert. And cancel that e-mail address, get yourself another one.’
‘Boss,’ said Sutton miserably.
‘What happens to the congregation if Lachlan dies?’
Scobie blinked and said ‘Don’t know,’ but his gaze also flickered, indicating that he’d thought about it. Challis read his mind. Scobie hoped that Lachlan would die so that the Ascensionists would fall apart and he’d get his wife back. He felt guilty about that desire-but not too guilty.
‘I mean it, Scobie. You stay out of this.’
‘Boss.’
By now it was noon. Challis called Ellen Destry at the Landseer School and told her about finding the White Pride e-mail and Dirk Roe’s blog. ‘Couple of sweethearts, the Roe brothers,’ he said.
‘That concurs with what I’m finding here,’ Ellen replied. ‘I’m still interviewing but the feedback’s pretty consistent: Lachlan Roe was loathed by pretty much everyone. The kids who did go to see him said he didn’t give guidance or advice, just made them get down on their knees and pray for forgiveness-when he wasn’t making sexual innuendoes, that is. The staff are convinced he was hired to please Ollie Hindmarsh. Do you think Hindmarsh knows what the guy was like?’
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Briefing in the pub at six o’clock?’
‘Count me in.’
Challis mused for a while on the notion of blogs, Dirk Roe’s in particular. What had happened to privacy? Dignity, restraint-none of that had meaning to the cyberspace generation. Anyone could run a blog, every half-baked, boring or vicious thought, feeling or grievance out there for all to see. Maybe you don’t feel the normal human restraints of self-consciousness and embarrassment sitting alone at a keyboard in a dark corner. Maybe it all seems instantaneous, ephemeral. But their words could come back to bite them and anyone associated with them.
Like Ollie Hindmarsh, thought Challis with a grin.
He checked with the hospital, learned that Dirk was still at his brother’s bedside, and headed there in his rattly Triumph.
‘No change?’
‘None,’ said Dirk, sounding like a man oddly pleased to find himself at centre stage for a while.
Challis decided to wipe the smug look from the young man’s face. ‘This material,’ he said, ‘originating from you, was found on your brother’s computer.’
One by one he dropped the printouts into Roe’s lap. Roe grew panicky, first recoiling as if he’d been soiled, then scrunching the pages together.
‘Go ahead,’ Challis said, ‘I’ve made copies.’
‘Please.’
‘Please what?’
‘I can explain.’
Dirk was young, soft-looking, still unformed. As if he had no character traits, only impulses. ‘So, explain,’ said Challis.
‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a joke.’
‘Not everyone would think so.’
‘I shut down the blog this morning, honest.’
‘How long has it been running?’
‘Only a month.’
‘Long enough to offend people.’
Roe tried to muster principles and dignity in the antiseptic air. ‘Look, I was expressing a few home truths, that’s all-nothing wrong with that.’
‘Did you receive any threats in return?’
‘No.’
‘Angry posts to your blog, phone calls, letters, knocks on the door?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘How involved was Lachlan?’
They both looked at the blanched, wasted face of the brother. ‘Not very.’
‘I saw at least one post from him on your blog.’
Dirk shrugged his soft, round shoulders. ‘Now and then, when he had something important to add.’
‘Important,’ said Challis, his face, voice and eyes as flat and hard as stones. ‘This e-mail-’
‘I didn’t write it! It was sent to me!’
‘But you forwarded it to dozens of others.’
Roe slumped. His face under the gelled spikes was pink and rounded, like a boy’s. Sweat beaded his upper lip and forehead. ‘Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything.’
‘Where were you last night?’
‘Kaos, in Frankston, ask anybody.’
Kaos was a club where twenty-somethings like Dirk Roe ruined their livers and eardrums. It also had excellent camera surveillance of the dance floors, bars and inner and outer doors. ‘What time did you get home?’
Dirk shifted. ‘I went home with someone, stayed the night.’
‘I’ll need name, address and phone number.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Your parents. They were strict, weren’t they?’ said Challis, guessing.
Dirk’s jaw dropped. ‘How did you know?’
‘Strict, devout, everything regimented…’
Roe shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t see what…’
‘Did your father beat you and your brother?’
Challis saw from Roe’s face that it was true. ‘What about your mother?’
‘They were strict, so what?’
‘What did you and your brother fall out over?’
‘Fall out? Who told you that? Over what?’
Challis shrugged. ‘His new church. The fact that he had a following. The fact that he’s older and more successful.’
‘I’m successful.’
Challis always looked for the chinks and opened them up. ‘You’re a jumped-up office manager.’
‘Yeah-for the Leader of the Opposition, who gave you a hard time on the phone this morning.’
‘Who would sack you in a heartbeat if he knew about your blog.’
At least, Challis hoped that were true. There were men and women in Hindmarsh’s party who would probably like to adopt it as the official party position.
‘Please, I closed it down.’
Challis shook his head wearily. ‘You didn’t think, did you?’ he said as he left the room and returned to the station.