When the forensics officers had finished with the scene, Challis and Destry left, Ellen driving, Challis working his mobile phone, arranging for the loan of a couple of detectives from Mornington. That completed, he folded his arms in the passenger seat and mused for a while. ‘The victim’s car,’ he said.
‘What about it?’
‘There was no mud inside the wheel arches.’
‘Or the road corrugations shook it loose.’
Challis shaded his eyes, for they were heading into the rising sun. ‘The mud Scobie found wasn’t from her car. The shape was wrong.’
‘Or it came from a car that was on that road legitimately.’
‘Yeah, yeah, rain on my parade.’
‘Just doing my job,’ Ellen said. It was what they did, floated scenarios and sank the weak ones.
Challis placed his hand on her thigh. That was wrong on all kinds of professional levels but McQuarrie had offered a way out yesterday and besides, he wanted to feel the coiled strength in her, the heat and promise.
‘Don’t,’ she said, adding, ‘boss.’
He folded his arms. ‘Approximate time of death, according to Freya Berg, was sometime late yesterday afternoon or evening. The husband came into the station at around eight.’
‘It was cool by late afternoon, early evening,’ Ellen said, ‘but she hadn’t put her cardigan on, it was still on the back seat. She was wearing just a T-shirt. That points to an earlier rather than a later time of death.’
‘Unless she was someone who never felt the cold; or she’d been sitting in the car, waiting for someone.’
Ellen turned down the corners of her mouth, thinking about it. ‘Either way, we need to know the husband’s movements for the whole afternoon.’ She paused. ‘Does it seem personal to you, Hal? She was bashed by someone she knew rather than a passing fruitcake?’
Challis thought about it. ‘There was real anger there. Same with Lachlan Roe.’
‘God, they’re not connected?’
‘I didn’t mean that, only that we might not be looking at a stranger in either case.’
They crested small hills and slowed for the township of Balnarring, stuck behind a Landseer School bus, which pulled into the shopping centre and stopped to collect a handful of kids. Ellen accelerated away, past the garage, the fire station and dwindling houses until they were in a region of rampant spring grasses, kit homes, boutique wineries and alpaca herds. There was a sign outside one house, ‘Giant Garage Sale Saturday’. A low, moist field was dotted with ibis and herons. A bouquet of flowers lay wilting at the base of a tree, a death tree, scarred where a car had collided with it.
Challis daydreamed. He’d miss working with Ellen. He wouldn’t miss being her boss, though. She should head the new sex crimes unit, he thought suddenly. With the population explosion and increased social distress on the Peninsula, reported rapes and sexual assaults were on the increase, meaning that the true figures were much higher. The only drawback was that Ellen would be expected to operate out of Mornington. ‘I can’t have you both in the same station, Hal, surely you see that,’ the super had said.
But Mornington was only twenty minutes away.
Soon Ellen was steering past more houses and over a school crossing, and the smudge in the distance was Waterloo. On the outskirts she turned left and up a winding rise to where big new homes sat on large lots and the sounds of the weekends were ride-on mowers, trail bikes, clopping hooves and barbecues. Professional people like the Wisharts lived on this estate, alongside prosperous shopkeepers and expert tradespeople. They had huge mortgages, distant bay views across Waterloo on the flatland below and all the space they needed for their kids and their gardens.
A prosperous enclave, but still a million dollars away from the cliff-top property where Ludmilla Wishart had died. What had she been doing there? Who lived there? City people, guessed Challis, remembering the long grass and dusty windows. They visit the place only occasionally and therefore don’t need a vast chalet but merely want one.
‘Where to?’ asked Ellen.
She’d come to a couple of branching roads named for ex-prime ministers. ‘Menzies,’ said Challis. ‘Lot 5.’
She steered with a twist of the wrist. Challis liked watching her, even as he was thinking about the murder and how he’d inform Adrian Wishart that his wife was dead. ‘Where was her handbag?’ he said suddenly.
‘Exactly.’
‘Opportunistic? A mugging? But it’s not a through road. The handbag was taken to make it look like a robbery? They missed the laptop under the seat.’
‘Scobie’s checking out her credit card, so that might tell us something. Especially if it’s been used to buy a surfboard or something.’
Ellen eased the CIU Falcon gently over the kerb and into the driveway of a corrugated iron house. Challis decided that he liked the house. It was partly the iconic appeal of the corrugated iron, which could be found on every roof and woolshed in rural Australia, and partly the design of this particular house, which was saved from looking like an outback shed by dormer windows set in a steeply pitched roof, a balcony and broad verandas. And he was feeling anticipatory: he wanted to take a closer look at Wishart, know that he was the killer, and wrap this up by teatime, but, at the same time, he was dreading being the bearer of bad news.
A red Citroen was parked in a carport hung with vines. ‘Won’t be a moment,’ he said, and as Ellen marked time with her seatbelt, keys, mobile phone, jacket and notebook, he trotted to the Citroen and crouched at each wheel arch. There was dust, no mud, and the recess was a different configuration from the one that had shaped the mud found at the murder scene.
He rejoined Ellen and they walked along a patterned concrete path to the front door, which opened before they reached it. Adrian Wishart, unshaven, red-eyed, hair awry, in tracksuit pants and a T-shirt.
‘You’ve found her.’
Ellen said gently, ‘May we come in, Mr Wishart?’
‘You’ve found her.’
‘Let’s go inside,’ Ellen said, Challis admiring the ease and effectiveness of her ways. It was a combination of her voice, level gaze and decisiveness. It worked on bullies, drunks, the grieving, the hostile and the disturbed.
The door opened onto a short hallway, rooms on either side, one of them a working studio with drafting tables, pens, rulers, angle-poise lights and coiled blueprints. At the end of the hallway was a vast room with thick beams, a fireplace, wall-to-ceiling bookcases, island benches and discrete sitting, dining and TV watching areas. Four huge sofas, shaggy rugs on wooden floors. Framed architectural drawings shared wall space with avant-garde photographs, watercolour paintings and a couple of Central Australia dot paintings.
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ said Wishart peevishly. ‘Do I offer you tea or coffee?’
Ellen took his elbow and led him through an archway to a kitchen alcove. Here there was a plain wooden table with a scuffed surface, a table for the morning cereal, newspaper and coffee, a table for visitors who might drop in. Challis followed, recognising that Ellen’s instincts had been right again: the sitting areas were too vast and open, the kitchen was intimate. She sat Wishart on a chair at the table, took the adjacent chair and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Wishart, but a body has-’
A wail broke from Wishart. ‘No, please, please don’t say it.’
‘We have reason to believe it’s your wife,’ said Ellen gently.
‘I should see her. I should be with her,’ Wishart said, pushing back his chair.
Ellen stopped him. ‘Soon enough, Mr Wishart. Meanwhile, is there anyone we can call on your behalf? Family member? Friend?’
The wind went out of Wishart’s sails and he slumped at the table. Then he sprang up again. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘I’ll do that,’ Challis said. He’d watch and listen now as Ellen went to work.
‘How did she die?’ asked Wishart.
Ellen told him.
Challis watched Wishart swallow and ask, ‘Where?’
Ellen told him, adding, ‘Do you know why she was there?’
Wishart had almost no energy. The question seemed to defeat him. ‘No idea.’ Then he rallied a little. ‘Sorry, where did you say?’
Ellen told him again. ‘Do you know why she was there?’
‘Her job-she’s the planning infringements officer,’ Wishart said. ‘If it’s the place I’m thinking of, it belongs to Jamie Furneaux. He’s some cousin of the Premier. Anyway, he cut down a heap of trees and burned them. Someone called the fire brigade, and he tried to shut them up with a big donation, but it was too late, someone dobbed him in.’
‘He didn’t have permission to remove the trees?’
‘No.’
‘She was there to serve him with an infringement notice?’
Wishart shook his head. ‘To check that he’d carried out reclamation work, you know, planted new trees.’
‘The job made her unpopular?’
‘Hell, yes.’
Adrian Wishart’s indignation seemed to swell into fury, and he rose from his seat, stabbing his ringer at Challis, who was beside the bubbling kettle. ‘I told you something was wrong last night. If you’d done something about it instead of, of…’
Ellen said firmly, ‘Please, Mr Wishart. We believe that Ludmilla was already dead when you contacted the station.’
He sat, all at sea. His neat, narrow head shaking in big, doubting sweeps he said, ‘Are you sure she didn’t fall and hit her head?’
‘We don’t believe so.’
He looked up. ‘Will I have to identify her?’
‘We’ll take you there and bring you home again.’
‘Now?’
‘The sooner the better.’
‘But your tea, your coffee.’
‘After that,’ said Ellen gently.
Challis poured the tea. He disliked tea, but the only alternative was instant coffee. He delivered the mugs of tea to the table with a bowl of sugar and a bottle of milk, and sat to one side, trying to be unobtrusive but sensing that the husband was powerfully aware of him.
‘Is there anyone we can contact, Mr Wishart?’ said Ellen.
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘What about your wife’s family? Would you like us to inform them?’
‘There’s only her mother, and she lives in Sydney.’
‘Friends. Her friends, or friends you have in common?’
Here Wishart pitched about in his seat briefly. Eventually he said, ‘There’s Carmen. She and Mill are very close. Were very close,’ he added with a little gasp.
Ellen scribbled the woman’s address and phone number onto a page of her notebook. Wishart watched her moving hand alertly, Challis watched Wishart. Wishart said, ‘Speak to her workmates if you want the names of anyone who had a grudge against her.’
‘We will,’ Ellen said.
‘Her workmates,’ Wishart repeated, ‘not her boss.’
Ellen cocked her head at him. ‘Why not?’
Wishart waved a hand about vaguely as if he regretted the clarification. ‘Nothing in particular. Apparently he doesn’t spend much time in the office, and when he is there he likes to look over everyone’s shoulder.’
‘Your wife didn’t like him?’
Wishart tried to find the right words. ‘He could be demanding,’ he said finally.
‘Demanding,’ said Ellen.
‘Yes.’
She took an exploratory sip of tea, and said casually, ‘Perhaps you could tell us about what kind of day you had yesterday, Mr Wishart.’
‘What kind of day? It was all right. Went to visit my uncle Terry.’ Tears spilled as he said, ‘Then Mill didn’t come home and I got worried.’
‘You work from home, I believe?’
Wishart’s gaze was jumping between Ellen and Challis. ‘Yes.’
‘You’re a draftsman?’
Challis had told her the man was an architect. The insult was deliberate. ‘Certainly not,’ Wishart said. ‘I’m an architect.’
‘You were working on a project yesterday?’
Wishart said airily, ‘Oh, there’s always a project.’
‘Did you go out, perhaps to confer with a client?’
‘I know what you’re doing. You think I killed her, my own wife.’
‘We don’t think that, Mr Wishart. The sooner we eliminate you from our inquiries, the sooner we can start looking for the real killer. It’s standard procedure to check with those closest to the victim first.’
Wishart began weeping angrily. ‘This is awful. Mill and I… we’re not the kind of people to come to the attention of the police.’
‘May I ask why you went to see your uncle?’
‘He had a present for Mill. It was her birthday yesterday, her thirtieth.’
‘He couldn’t give it to her himself?’
‘He has a shop to run, up in the city. He can’t get away, whereas I’m more flexible.’
Ellen added the uncle’s details to her notebook. ‘What time did you see him?’
‘All afternoon. I haven’t seen him for a few weeks. I got home about six, expecting to see Mill, waited for a while, then made phone calls and went looking for her before reporting her missing.’
So it wasn’t a sure-fire alibi. Then again, Challis mistrusted those.
Wishart swallowed visibly. ‘Was Mill…was my wife…’
Ellen said, ‘She wasn’t interfered with.’
‘Her face?’
‘Untouched.’
Wishart flopped in relief. They were all silent for a while, Challis and Destry watching Wishart closely. Eventually Challis said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll need to search the house, Mr Wishart, paying particular attention to your wife’s papers and computer.’
He looked up at them. ‘But…’
‘Standard procedure,’ said Ellen smoothly.
It wasn’t until they were guiding him out to the car that he said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
Challis felt that old tingle, expecting a confession, but Wishart said, ‘When I reported her missing last night I told you she wasn’t having an affair. But I think she was.’