Challis - 03 - Snapshot (2 page)

A few quick snaps, a few seconds of
video, family doctors, businessmen, headmistresses, lawyers and accountants
bonking strangers in some ghastly suburban bedroom. Even a few snaps of Robert.
Janine shivered with glee. What if she showed them to his father, the
superintendent of police, the custodian of good order?

Nah, maybe some other time.

Shed posted one photograph to each
of the four men whose faces were clear enough for ID purposes. No demands for
money, no note of any kind. She wanted to infect the swinging scene with a bad
case of nerves, thats all. She grinned now, like a shark. The fear of finding
themselves posted on the internet cant be too far from the surfaces of their
tiny little minds, she thought.

Clearly Robert had opened his
envelope at work yesterday. Shed had a little fun when he got home, rubbed up
against him, felt for his cock, and said, Can we go to another party next
weekend? I cant stop thinking about it. You were right, its been liberating.

Hed squirmed away from her, mouth
wrenched in panic and distaste. I dont think that would be a good idea, hed
said in a choked voice, before turning nasty and almost striking her. Shed
always suspected that he had a propensity for violence. Robert was the kind of
man to kill his wife and plead a provocation defence, and Janine knew there
were plenty of other menjudges and defence lawyerswhod allow him to get away
with it. In the end, hed shut himself in his study all evening. At 6 a.m.
tautology, hed flown to Sydney.

Just then her daughters voice cut
in on her reverie. Can I put the heater on?

Sure.

It was chilly for early Julymeaning
a long, dreary winter, Janine supposed. She watched Georgia expertly adjust the
Volvos heater and fan controls, the concentration fierce on her sweet face
with its halo of fine blonde curls. How did Robert and I produce her? she
wondered. They drove on through the misty landscape, and eventually Georgia was
perched alertly on the edge of her seat, asking, Mum, is it far now?

Dont think so, Janine said,
sounding more confident than she felt.

They were on a ridge road, with
milk-can letterboxes every couple of hundred metres, signs for horse poo, and
dense trees and bracken concealing driveways that led down to houses and
cottage gardens tucked into the hillside. I think its this one, Janine
continued, indicating squat brick pillars and an open wooden gate. She braked
cautiously, not wanting to alarm the driver of the car behind her. She
signalled, steered off the road, and drove in a gentle curve down a gravelled
track to a parking circle beside a weatherboard house.

Look, sweetie, she said, pointing
ahead, the fog parting briefly to offer gorgeous views across a dramatic
valley, the sea and Phillip Island beyond. But Georgia wasnt buying it. Its
creepy, she said, meaning the grimy old weatherboard house. Do I have to wait
in the car?

Im sure youll be allowed to watch
TV or something, Janine said.

She was double-checking their
location with the street directory, completely rattled, and welcomed the sound
of the car that came in behind them with a growl of its tyres.

* * * *

2

There
were two of them, wheelman and hard man, and they rolled down the driveway in a
Holden Commodore, a model dating from 1983 but still plentiful on the roads,
though maybe not in dirty white with one light yellow door.

A woman, thats all Gent knew. He
didnt know what shed done, only that Vyner had to sort her out, a warning,
maybe a slap around the chops. That was Vyners expertise, not his. He was the
wheelman, along to provide the car and knowledge of the twisting roads in and
out of this part of the Peninsula, an area of small towns, orchards and
vineyards. And a sea mist had rolled in, choking the roads and waterways, providing
good cover for the job.

The driveway was a steep plunge from
the main road above, the Commodores brakes dicey. Shitheap car, said Vyner
in the passenger seat.

Gent shifted uncomfortably behind
the wheel. Vyner had told him to steal a decent car, plenty of power but
nothing fancy. Best I could do, Gent muttered, guiltily pumping the brakes of
his cousins Commodore.

The guys a whinger, thought Vyner
in the passenger seat, drawing out a pistol with one gloved hand and screwing
on the silencer with the other. He waited with barely concealed patience for
Gent to stop the car, then got out and advanced on the womans car, a silver
Volvo station wagon. The woman got out; big, apologetic smile. Vyner despised
that. Where he came from, you acted first and asked questions later. Childrens
Court at thirteen, ward of the state at fourteen, sentenced to a youth training
facility at fifteen. Then the Navy, where for a few years he channelled all of
that energy into useful skills like long-range, technologically enhanced
killing techniques. He was discharged in 2003, an incident in the Persian Gulf,
the shrink who assessed him concluding:
Leading Seaman Vyner possesses a
keen intelligence but is manipulative, lies compulsively and has demonstrated a
capacity for cruelty.

Well, as Vyner had noted in his
journal this morning,
No comet has showered sparks of joy and light over me.
Life snapped at his heels even as he sought higher rungs of knowledge.

Like now, what it meant to gun a
woman down in front of her kidfor there was a kid in the passenger seat,
should have been at school, given that it was a Tuesday. The kid not scared
yet, merely curious, but the woman was, the woman had seen the gun.

She held both hands out, pleading, No,
please, it was just a joke, I wasnt going to show them to anyone, I wasnt
going to ask for money. Then she slammed the door on her kid and began to back
away from Vyner. Said a few other things, too, like Youve got the wrong
person and What did I ever do to you? and Dont hurt my daughter, but
Vyner was here to do a job.

He strode on, and when the woman
turned and scuttled around to the front of the Volvo, Vyner didnt alter pace,
merely raised the pistol and closed in on her. She rounded the front of the
car, ducked back along the other side, towards the tailgate, so Vyner turned
patiently, retracing his steps to meet her. It was cat and mouse, the woman
whimpering, Vyner registering the measured rate of his own heart and lungs.
Lines for his journal:
Today I was served by angels.

Nathan Gent, behind the wheel of the
Commodore, came to a shocking realisation. Sitting there with his mouth open,
the Commodore shaking arrhythmically on about four out of the six cylinders, he
finally twigged that this was a killing hed been hired for. He closed his
mouth with a click of rotting teeth and goosed the accelerator a little,
hearing the motor idle more evenly. A bit of business, Vyner had said. Wont
take long. Vyneras hard, thin and snapping as a whiphad always been tough,
but Gent had never known him to kill anyone except maybe a few Iraqi ragheads.
Gent felt himself go loose inside. He watched, squeezing the old sphincter, and
saw Vyner and the woman reach the rear bumper of the Volvo simultaneously, from
opposite sides of the car. The woman jerked, ran back the way shed come, half
bent over. Vyner, all the time in the world, went after her.

Then she broke cover. She knew the
end had come and intended to draw Vyner away from the kid trapped there in the
back seator so Gent hoped, an old bitterness rising in him as he flashed back
to his own mother, whod never sacrificed a thing for him. He watched the woman
dart away from the carport towards a little garden shed, a tangle of rakes,
shovels, fence pickets, whipper-snipper and mowerlooked like a Victa to Nathan
Gent, he could come back with a mates ute, load up, flog the mower for fifty
bucks in the side bar of the Fiddlers Creek pub.

Maybe not. Crime-scene, police tape
around it, the cops wanting to know what business he had on the property.

But a murder. Jesus, accomplice to a
murder. For comfort, Gent rubbed the stump where his right ring finger had
been, the finger torn off by a ships chain somewhere in the Persian Gulf.

Again he remembered what Vyner had
said about stealing a car, and silently thanked God for the concealing fog. And
for the location: the house was below road level, the road winding along the
top of a ridge, the ground sloping steeply away on either side. Passing drivers
would have to get out of their cars and stand at the head of the driveway and
look down on the turning circle and carport in order to witness anything. No
neighbours to speak of. But Jesus, why hadnt he
stolen
a car like Vyner
said?

While Gent watched, Vyner aimed at
the woman, now cowering beside the garden shed, and shot her twice, a couple of
pops, softened by dense fog and silencer. Then Vyner returned to the womans
car, hurrying a little now.

The kid knew. A little girl, maybe
six or seven, she came bounding out of the Volvo in her red parka, running,
curls bouncing, Vyner tracking her with his pistol. Gent saw him fire, miss.
Now she was heading towards the Commodore, Gent thinking, no, piss off, I cant
help you. He put his hand out of the window, waved her away. She gaped at him
for a long moment, then darted towards a belt of poplars at the edge of the
garden. Gent saw Vyner take aim, pull the trigger. Nothing. Vyner looked at the
gun in disgust, then strode back to the garden shed, searching for ejected
shells. A moment later he was piling into the Commodore, shouting, Lets go.

* * * *

Keep
the prick moving, Vyner thought. Gent had been sitting too longthough it was
what, less than two minutes, tops? He hoped the guy wouldnt turn out to be a
liability. Gent was only in his early twenties but going to seed rapidly
through beer and dope; a pouchy, slope-shouldered guy who claimed to know every
back roadand probably every backyard and back door, Vyner thoughtof the
Peninsula.

Well, Gent was getting $5000 for his
part in the hit, and knew what would happen if he didnt keep his mouth shut.

They neared the top of the driveway,
Vyner removing the clip from his Browning and cursing it. Youd think the Navy
would stock reliable handguns, border protection and all that. Not that hed
ever intended to hang on to this gun, keep incriminating evidence around. Hed
do what hed done before, seal it in a block of concrete, and toss it into a
rubbish skip on some building site. There were two more Navy Browning pistols
in the wall safe of his Melbourne pad, and hed better examine and clean them
tonight. Didnt want them jamming on him, especially when firing in
self-defence. Shit gun. Unfortunately it was too late to get back his $500 per
weapon because the Navy armourer whod sold them to him was dead. Shot himself
in the head.

He unscrewed the silencerat least
that
workedand slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket, then shoved the
Browning into another pocket, the hammer catching, tearing the fabric. Useless
fucking thing. Vyner had wanted something more cutting edge from the armoury, a
Glock automatic or a Steyr short-barrelled carbine and a high-end night-aiming
device, but all the Navy guy would sell him was three old Brownings from the
stock used for cadet training and which were gradually being phased out. I can
lose these in the paperwork, no dramas, his mate had said, but the new stuff,
no way.

Vyner removed his gloves and folded
down the sun visor to check himself out in the vanity mirror. Nothing caught in
his teeth. His old familiar face looking back at him. He pocketed his cap,
smoothed back his hair.

Shit! shouted Gent, braking hard
as the Commodore levelled out at the top of the driveway. It rocked to a halt
just as a taxi came out of the fog and disappeared into the fog, gone in an
eyeblink.

* * * *

3

Normally
Hal Challis started the day with a walk near his home, but he wanted to catch
Raymond Lowry unprepared, to ask about the stolen guns, so at 6.30 that morning
he shrugged into his coat, collected his wallet and laptop, and got behind the
wheel of his Triumph. Five minutes later, he was still trying to start it. When
finally the engine caught it fired sluggishly, with a great deal of smoke, and
he made a mental note to book it in for a service and tune.

He set out for Waterloo, heading
east through farmland, a sea fret licking at him, shrouding the gums and pines
along the side of the road, reducing the universe. Sea fretas if Westernport
Bay, vanished now but normally a smudge of silvery water in the distance, was
chafing. Challis supposed that it was chafing, in fact: thered been a sudden
and bitter chill in the air last night, which had come into contact with sea
water still warm from a mild autumn, and the result was this dense, transfiguring
fog. He knew from experience that it would sit over the Peninsula for hours, a
hazard to shipping, school buses, taxis and commuters. And a hazard to the
police. Challiss job was homicide but he pitied the traffic cops today.
Maniacs passed him at over 100 kmh, before being swallowed up by the fog;
irritated with him, the sedate driver in his old Triumph. Old, lacking in
compression and the heater didnt work.

Soon he reached a stretch of open
land beside a mangrove belt, and finally the tyre distributors, petrol stations
and used-car yards that marked the outskirts of Waterloo. New, cheap houses,
packed tightly together, crouched miserably in the fog. There was high
unemployment on the new estates; empty shops in High Street; problems for the social
workers. Yet on a low hill overlooking the town was a gated estate of
million-dollar houses with views over Westernport Bay.