Meanwhile Destry and Murphy were driving to interview the demolition guy, Ellen at the wheel, trying to concentrate on how she’d approach the questioning. But her thoughts kept sliding back to the break-in and her awful mood last night and this morning, so that at first she didn’t take in what Pam Murphy was telling her.
Then one word registered. ‘Revenge?’ she said, struggling to pay attention.
‘Uh huh. He doped her with GHB at last year’s Schoolies Week, raped her, and forgot all about it. She didn’t forget all about it. She recognised him. I even heard her accuse him: “Raped anyone lately, Josh?” He probably wondered what she was talking about.’
‘Sorry, who are we talking about?’
Irritation from Murphy, very faint. ‘Caz Moon, Sarge. Manages the surf shop in High Street.’
‘Got you.’
Ellen couldn’t afford to zone out. She gripped the steering wheel as if that might help her to concentrate. ‘You’re saying she got him back by doping him and leaving him naked on the beach with lipsticked balls?’ The image struck her properly then, and she laughed.
Pam laughed.
‘Did he name her?’
‘No.’
‘So you can’t prove any of this. You haven’t got enough to question her, let alone arrest her.’
‘Not her, Sarge, him. I want to put him away. That sexual assault last Saturday night-I’m betting it was down to him.’
They sat quietly as the road unwound through farmland and then between an industrial park and a new housing estate on the outskirts of Frankston. Ellen slowed: a list of the park’s tenants listed ‘Delaney Demolition, Patrick Delaney, prop.’ A minute later they’d parked outside a nondescript building: prefabricated cement walls, aluminium windows, shrubs struggling to survive in sunbaked bark chip garden beds. There was a chain link fence behind the building, crammed with heavy trucks and dozers, dump bins, and individual piles of recyclable doors, window frames, bricks, baths, stoves, tiles, corrugated iron roofing sheets and fireplace surrounds.
There was no receptionist, only Delaney peering over half-lens spectacles at a keyboard, poking a key, checking the monitor, and cursing. He looked up with relief. ‘What can I do you for, ladies?’
He was solid, his rolled back sleeves revealing decades of sun damage and a glimpse of skin as white as ivory. He wore a check shirt and jeans, grey hair showing at his throat. His job was to break things, and he looked competent to do it, but he also looked genial and grandfatherly. The pages torn from calendars and stuck to the walls were of fishing boats and racing cars. Ellen showed her ID and introduced Pam Murphy.
‘Planning East’s infringement officer was murdered late on Wednesday afternoon. We believe you encountered her earlier that day.’
‘Whoa,’ said Delaney, putting up his hands. Then he frowned in concentration, casting his mind back. His face cleared. ‘That old joint down in Penzance Beach?’
‘Yes.’
‘She arrived just as we were finishing. Spitting chips, but what could I do? I was hired to do a job. The permit to demolish was valid.’
‘Was she angry with you, specifically?’
‘I guess so. Because I was there, if you know what I mean. But like I told her, I was hired to do a job, it was a legitimate job, just as hers was a legitimate job. You’re saying she’s dead?’
‘Murdered.’
‘The same day I saw her?’
‘Yes, so I do have to ask you, Mr Delaney, did you see her again?’
‘Nup. We had another job to go to, fibro farmhouse near Baxter. My boys are there now.’
Pam spoke. She said, ‘Fibro? So there’s asbestos in it?’
Delaney regarded her calmly, a half smile creasing the edge of his mouth. ‘All legit. I have a permit to handle asbestos and my guys are all suited up in bio-hazard gear, all right?’
Ellen recognised Pam’s tactic, but also recognised that it hadn’t got them anywhere. ‘Who hired you to demolish the house in Penzance Beach?’
Delaney cocked his head at her. ‘The guy who bought the site.’
‘Name?’
‘Hugh Ebeling.’
‘How much notice did he give you?’
‘He rang me the night before.’
‘So a rush job.’
‘Yes. He tried calling several demolition firms, but no one could do the job there and then, there’s so much work on at the moment. Then he called me and got lucky. I had a spare crew and a spare few hours between jobs.’
‘Why the urgency, did he say?’
Delaney shifted his massive form uncomfortably. ‘Said he had builders lined up to put in a cement slab before Christmas.’
‘You believed him?’
‘Sure.’
‘But?’
Delaney coughed delicately. ‘But the planning lady, the one who got murdered, told me an application had been made to preserve the existing building. I swear I didn’t know that. As far as I knew, the guy had a permit to demolish and there was no preservation order.’
Ellen nodded. ‘No one’s blaming you,’ she said.
‘It feels like it. I don’t want no one taking me to court.’
‘There was no preservation order,’ Ellen said. ‘There was an application, that’s all. You’re in the clear.’
‘Legally, in the clear,’ Pam butted in. ‘Not morally. That was a lovely old house.’
‘Pam,’ Ellen said.
‘He doesn’t even recognise me, Sarge,’ Pam said. She fronted up to him. ‘Do you, eh?’
Delaney peered at her uncertainly. His face cleared. ‘You were there.’
Ellen cut in. ‘Do you think the man who hired you knew that a protection order might be issued?’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ said Delaney. He looked uncomfortable again. ‘But the planning lady reckoned someone had tipped him off
‘She told you that?’
‘Yes. She was that mad about it.’
‘Did she say who?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘None of my business. But it would have to be someone in the know, right?’
‘Someone in the planning department?’
‘No idea.’
‘I need to see the job order,’ Ellen said.
Delaney fished it out of a tray on his desk. Ellen copied down Hugh Ebeling’s address and telephone numbers, and returned to the car with Pam Murphy. She didn’t say anything to Pam. What right did she have to rebuke her? Pam had justice and a high moral sense on her side. Pam wasn’t a sneak thief.
Settling behind the wheel, Ellen called Challis with an update. ‘Next stop, Ebeling and his wife?’
‘Yes. Collect me at the station and we’ll drive up together. Tell Pam to check on Carl Vernon and the residents’ committee.’
‘Will do.’
She started the engine and eased the lever into Drive. At that moment, Pam’s mobile phone rang. Ellen drove slowly back to the freeway, half listening in on the conversation. ‘You’re kidding,’ Pam was saying. ‘Uh huh…uh huh…But not the sexual assault? Damn… okay, thanks.’
She pocketed the phone and settled a complicated gaze on Ellen. ‘That was the lab.’
‘And?’
‘I’d asked them to run Josh Brownlee’s DNA, thinking I’d get him on sexual assault…’
Ellen gave her a crooked grin, acknowledging the initiative. And?’
‘No luck. But-and I guess you’re going to like this-he did leave that mucus trace on Lachlan Roe’s elbow.’
Ellen felt lighter, some of the badness leaking away. ‘Then let’s go and pick him up,’ she said, stopping the car to call Challis with the change of plan.