The call from Scobie Sutton came as a relief. Challis, in the canteen, said, ‘I’ll be right up,’ and pocketed his phone.
The canteen was a depressing place on Saturdays and Sundays, understaffed, the food stale. He looked despairingly at yesterday’s congealed lasagne and Irish stew and settled for a ham-and-salad roll, biting into it as he trudged up to CIU. The bread was crusty on the outside, almost wet on the inside.
He found Sutton in his office, the detective standing four-square before the desk when another officer would have taken a seat to wait. ‘Sit,’ Challis said.
Instead of doing that, Sutton laid out a number of photographs. ‘I think I know who our killer is.’
Intrigued, Challis stood beside him, looking down at the array. Close-ups of the mud deposit, taken from various angles; a Golf at the pumps of a service station; a detail of the same scene, only enlarged to reveal an older-style Mercedes sedan parked on the road outside the service station.
‘This car,’ Sutton said, poking the Golf, ‘is Ludmilla Wishart’s. This car’-the Mercedes-’pulled in a few seconds later.’
‘Following her?’
‘I think so. It pulled out again soon after she did.’
‘There are plenty of these old Mercs around, Scobie, and we can’t see the plates.’
‘True, but I know who owns a car exactly like this one.’
Sutton was spinning it out. Challis guessed that he was trying to regain lost ground in some way. ‘Good work.’
Sutton flushed. ‘Thanks.’
‘So, whose car is it?’
‘Mrs Wishart’s boss, Groot.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘I’ve just been around to Groot’s house. His Mercedes was parked out in the street. I took these pictures.’
Sutton was holding a digital camera. The little LCD screen glowed and then he was scrolling through a dozen images. It was as if he’d set out to create abstract representations of the mechanical era: Challis saw axles, springs, shock absorbers, brake lines, panels and under-body insulation, taken at unnatural angles and harshly lit.
‘See the mud traces clinging here, and here? I scraped off a small sample.’
‘Excellent,’ Challis said.
‘I sent it to the lab.’
Challis picked up one of the photographs. ‘This is enough to bring him in for questioning.’
‘I agree.’
‘But Groot can argue that his job entailed travelling from site to site. If the mud at the murder scene came from his car, it’s not proof of when he was there, and a long way from proving he murdered Ludmilla Wishart.’
‘I checked the phone records of everyone in the planning office,’ Sutton said. ‘There were calls to the Ebelings from his office phone the day before the house at Penzance Beach was demolished.’
‘But did Groot also call the Ebelings at other times?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Sutton admitted.
‘And did our victim also call the Ebelings?’
‘Yes,’ Sutton conceded.
‘Any calls to the Ebelings from anyone in the planning office can be explained away as work related, not a tip-off,’ said Challis. ‘The Ebelings applied for, and were granted, a demolition permit. They also applied for planning permission to build a new house. You’d expect calls back and forth over a long period.’
‘But why was Groot following Ludmilla?’
‘That’, said Challis, ‘won’t be so easy for the guy to explain away. You collect his financial records. I’ll bring him in for questioning.’
They both questioned Groot. Before the planner could muster outrage, Challis came in hard and fast.
‘Here’s you, in your car, following Ludmilla Wishart on the afternoon she was murdered. We have photographs from other CCTV cameras backing it up, and they’re being enhanced to show the numberplate and your face in more detail.’
A lie, but feasible. Groot crumpled a little. He’d been gardening and wore a long-sleeved khaki shirt, jeans and a heat flush that might have been from the sun or exertion but was probably his unravelling nerves. ‘I wasn’t…I mean…’
‘You followed Mrs Wishart to the house above the beach between Shoreham and Flinders, and you killed her.’
‘No! I was out checking on planning applications and I happened to spot her on the road! That’s all, I swear.’
‘You followed her. Stalked her. Was it obsession? You wanted to have sex with her but she wouldn’t be in it?’
‘No! I’m happily married.’
‘Your wife didn’t look too pleased just now.’
‘Leave her out of this.’
Challis said thoughtfully, ‘Of course, a more sinister explanation suggests itself. You tipped off the Ebelings that the old house they’d purchased in Penzance Beach was about to come under a heritage protection order, so they’d better move fast if they wanted to demolish. Ludmilla found out about it and threatened to ruin you. Or was it blackmail?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How much did the Ebelings pay you?’
‘I have a passionate commitment to protecting the Peninsula’s heritage,’ spluttered Groot. ‘Flora, fauna, heritage buildings…’
There was a pause while he wiped his forehead and temples and under his soft jaw. ‘I’m a conservative planner.’
‘We have your financial records going back five years,’ Challis said. He didn’t elaborate.
Groot looked lost and bewildered.
Challis poked the photographs again. ‘You followed her.’
‘I didn’t! I mean, I did, but only because I’d spotted her on the road by chance and was wondering what she was doing in that neck of the woods. We at Planning East are aware of accusations that we take bribes. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Ludmilla’s job placed her in a very sensitive position.’
Challis was disgusted and let it show. ‘Blame the victim, right?’
Groot shifted his bulk. His shirt collar had darkened as his body, his guilt and the rising heat of the interview room betrayed him. ‘It’s my responsibility as department head to-’
‘You followed her, you murdered her to protect yourself from being outed as corrupt.’
‘No! I saw her turn off the main road and realised she was going in to check on that house where all the trees had been cut down. It was a legitimate detour for her, so I just kept going. Went back to the office.’
Challis switched tack again. ‘You’ve had some work done on your house.’
Groot flushed. ‘So?’
‘A developer like Hugh Ebeling would have plenty of tradespeople in his pocket. His bribe payments don’t go directly into your account but into theirs: that’s how he pays you.’
‘Certainly not.’
Challis displayed more photographs. ‘These clumps of mud were found at the murder scene. They’re unique. First, they can be matched to a marshy area on the Peninsula. Second, they can be matched to the wheel arch of a Mercedes 190 E-your car, in fact.’
Groot looked aghast. His mouth was as dry as his big, fleshy trunk was soaked through. ‘There are plenty of these old cars around.’
‘But not plenty that still have traces of mud clinging to them, traces that can be shown by chemical analysis, computer enhancement and 3D digitalisation to match exactly the clumps that had once adhered to the passenger side rear wheel arch and later fallen off at the murder scene, traces that can be shown to come from a marshy area that you’d visited as part of your duties.’ More bullshit, but it sounded good.
‘I think I need a lawyer.’
‘I think you do,’ Challis said.
Scobie Sutton hadn’t said a word but was as happy as a habitually gloomy man can be, Challis thought, glancing at the man beside him.
The lawyer arrived an hour later, a property lawyer from Mornington, a slender, quick-moving man with a clipped manner and a sharp, off-centre nose. He conferred with Groot, and emerged after five minutes saying, ‘My client wishes to make a statement.’
By now Ellen had joined them and the interview room was stifling, so Challis moved the interrogation to a conference room that had taping facilities. When the equipment was ready, he announced their names and the place and date and said, ‘Please go ahead, Mr Groot.’
‘It’s true that I followed Mrs Wishart last Wednesday,’ Groot said, and stopped.
Challis said, ‘For the record, this was on the afternoon of Wednesday the eighteenth of November?’
‘Yes.’ Another pause.
‘Please make your statement, Mr Groot,’ Ellen said.
‘I followed Ludmilla because I wanted to talk to her, alone, out of the office.’
Pause. Challis, Ellen and Sutton merely stared at Groot this time.
Groot swallowed. ‘I believed that Mrs Wishart possessed potentially damaging information about me and I wanted to clear the matter up with her. I have a wife and two kids and a huge mortgage to worry about. If she made this information public, I faced losing my job, being fined, maybe even going to jail. Plus people adversely affected by the planning decisions made by my department would begin suing us for millions of dollars. I couldn’t allow that to happen.’
Challis noted the word ‘allow’. He watched and waited.
‘I followed her to where her body was later found but I swear I didn’t kill her. She was alive when I left her.’
He was begging to be understood, begging to be believed. Challis waited.
‘I asked her not to ruin my career. I said we could work something out. Sure, the Ebelings had demolished that old house, but maybe I could swing it so the shire blocked their new one. She didn’t say anything. I don’t know what was going through her head. I got really upset and yelled at her but I didn’t kill her. She was alive when I left. I swear it.’
The planner folded his short arms; the arms seemed to pop out again. Challis said, ‘The break-in at the office. You staged that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were looking for any evidence that Mrs Wishart might have against you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you find it?’
‘She’d followed me! She had photos of my car parked at the Ebelings’ house in Brighton!’
He sounded outraged. Challis said coldly, ‘Just for the record, the wetlands mud inside your wheel arch came from French’s Reserve?’
‘Yes.’
Challis was relieved to have established that. ‘Your conversation with Mrs Wishart got heated?’
‘She wouldn’t even look at me!’
Ellen leaned forward. ‘What did you hit her with? A tyre iron, was it?’
‘I didn’t hit her.’
The lawyer had been scribbling notes and listening without interruption. Glancing mildly at Challis, Ellen and Sutton, he said, ‘You have your statement, people. There is no admission of murder.’
Challis ignored him. ‘Athol Groot, I’m placing you under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Ludmilla Wishart on…’ he began, going on to recite the familiar formula, thinking that all the guy’d had to do was maintain his story that it wasn’t unusual for him to be driving around the Peninsula, and claim that he’d visited the Shoreham site on a separate, earlier occasion. But he hadn’t and now he was sunk.