The morning passed. Pam Murphy followed up on a handful of residents’ complaints that probably stemmed from schoolies’ exuberance-used condoms on the front lawn of a house opposite the foreshore tents, a parked car sideswiped in the same area, the shoplifting of Bolle sunglasses from HangTen-but mostly she was waiting for CIU to empty.
Finally Challis left to interview Dirk Roe’s office colleagues and the members of Lachlan Roe’s congregation, and Scobie Sutton headed out to track down a ride-on mower. The poor guy looked wretched.
Still, there was always a lot of traffic on the first floor, uniforms coming and going with paperwork that demanded attention, the station’s new sergeant and senior sergeant keeping an eye on things, the IT geek returning with Lachlan Roe’s laptop, someone from the canteen taking lunch orders… Pam ordered a tuna salad, and she thanked the sergeant for letting her have Tank and Cree as backup that night, during the eclipse, but mostly she kept her head down and waited.
When it was quiet, she logged on to the Law Enforcement Database. Strict protocols were in place for using LED, and she was breaking most of them, but the image of this morning’s wilful destruction wouldn’t leave her alone and soon she had Hugh Ebeling’s details on the screen. The man who’d torn down Somerland just so he could dominate the ridge and the sky above Penzance Beach was forty-two years old, a property developer, married to Mia, aged forty. Mia was a senior executive with Lotto Link, a Swiss company that had recently acquired licences to sell scratch cards and install poker machines in Victorian pubs and clubs. So, not short of a dollar. No children.
They lived in Brighton-pronounced ‘Brahton’, Pam believed, by the nipped, tucked and Botoxed men and women who lived there. Presumably Penzance Beach would be their weekend residence. Two houses overlooking the water, lucky devils.
They owned a Range Rover, a Maserati and BMW. Hugh had lost two points for speeding, Mia nine. Various parking infringements. No criminal record for either person but Hugh had been sued by a consortium of clients for building on a flood plain in northern New South Wales, and Mia was a discharged bankrupt.
But casual dishonesty and steering close to the wind were probably not unusual in the nouveau riche circles the Ebelings moved in. Pam continued her search, and by way of links to the Age and Brighton Argus newspapers and a residents’ action group, discovered that numerous well-established trees on the roadway between the Ebelings’ Brighton house and the waters of the bay had been chopped down or poisoned. The Ebelings had expressed outrage at the destruction, but it was widely believed that they’d ordered it, wanting a sea view from their top windows.
Finally, Mia’s cousin was Justice Stephen Marlowe of the state’s planning appeals tribunal. You might as well give up, Pam thought, throwing down her pen in disgust. You’re never going to beat the bastards.
Scobie Sutton drove to a dealer in second-hand farm machinery in Cranbourne and found the stolen ride-on mower. He knew the dealer was vaguely bent, but he was too deeply fatigued and discouraged to pursue that angle. Instead, he said, ‘Can you give me a name?’
‘I can give you a numberplate.’
Which belonged to a van owned by Laurie Jarrett on the Seaview Park estate in Waterloo. Jarrett was well known to the police.
After that he drove to the hospital and there was his wife, at the bedside of Lachlan Roe. ‘Sweetheart, come home please, we need you.’
‘He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t said anything.’
They looked at Roe’s pinched, bruised face, the bandages swaddling his head. ‘Sweetheart, let the nurses do their job.’
‘I’ve been talking to him non-stop,’ Beth wailed. ‘Not a flicker.’
‘Come home. You’re tired. You need to sleep. It’s Ros’s concert tonight. Please, Beth.’
‘Full moon tonight,’ said Beth in her new, wild-eyed way.
‘Ros’s concert tonight,’ said Scobie firmly, feeling that his heart would break.
She came eventually, as though drugged with something you could never measure or trace.
After viewing the bulldozed remains of Somerland with Carl Vernon, Ludmilla Wishart returned to Planning East and made a flurry of phone calls. Yes, the minister had received the emergency application to protect Somerland, but hadn’t intended to act on it until Friday, after he’d had further advice and consultation. His minder said that the minister wished to convey his deepest regrets, but the demolition had, on the face of it, proceeded lawfully, thank you, goodbye.
Then the calls began. A journalist from the local paper. Distressed Penzance Beach residents. And anonymous callers, abusive callers, placing her in the pockets of wealthy developers. ‘I’m not!’ she insisted, but these were not people who were interested in debating the point.
In fact, she was pretty sure who had tipped off the Ebelings. She’d gathered plenty of evidence over the past weeks and months, but when and how she should use it, she didn’t quite know.
She also fielded calls and e-mails from Adrian. Nothing unusual about that. Sometimes he contacted her several times a day; had done so for the past three years, ever since they got married. This morning the calls came every thirty minutes, always beginning, ‘It’s me: where are you?’
And she’d say, ‘In my office.’
Given that he always seemed to know when she hadn’t been in her office, she found this question puzzling. The morning progressed. At one point she stood in a corner of the window and peered out. The planning office sat with Centrelink, the Neighbourhood House and a childcare centre opposite a small park, and there was her husband, at a park bench with his laptop. The fact that he was sending her e-mails meant that he was piggybacking on someone’s wireless network. Her heart began its arrhythmic palpitations and soon she was on her back gulping for air, one hand over her chest until the scary beat evened out, until she was a normal person.
When she looked again, he was gone.
Then Carmen arrived to take her to lunch, Carmen’s glossy black hair, red skirt and green top brightening the drab grey world of the planning office. ‘For you, madam,’ she said with a curtsy, presenting Ludmilla with a small parcel wrapped in royal blue paper decorated with gold stars and moons, a parcel almost too beautiful to tear open.
A tennis racquet?’
Carmen’s big, clever, expressive face fell. Aww, you guessed.’
It was an MP3 player, sleek and black. ‘I’ve loaded it with some albums I think you’ll like,’ Carmen said. ‘Plus it plays FM radio, video clips and voice recordings-I thought you could use it to record your field notes.’ She snatched it from Ludmilla. ‘Here, let me show you.’
Ludmilla was intrigued. ‘I need never leave home.’
A little cloud passed over Carmen’s face. ‘Oh, you’d better leave home, Mill.’
They went out, Mr Groot coming to his office door and looking pointedly at his watch.
Josh Brownlee rose at lunchtime that Wednesday, feeling wrecked. He wanted some kind of release. He wanted to hurt someone. He stumbled from his motel room opposite the yacht club and made for High Street, passing the Chillout Zone at the Uniting Church, the Zone pretty quiet, no schoolies, only a handful of volunteers wearing the hallowed look of people who work uncomplainingly, sunnily, with Young People.
He wandered up to McDonald’s, where he ate a hamburger, followed by an ecstasy tab washed down with a can of Red Bull, and overheard a slag from Grover Hall say she was taking the ferry across to Phillip Island. So he hung back and followed her, nothing particular in mind, except that she really filled out her T-shirt. But when he reached the dock a dozen other schoolies greeted her, all with that healthy glow, wearing shorts, hats and daypacks, many of them wheeling bicycles. God he despised them, even as he felt a tiny, nasty, carnal bite to see all those bare legs.