Whispering Death (22 page)

She was expecting him to explode. Instead, he seemed fascinated by her crotch. He poked at her mound experimentally through the miserable cotton. ‘I want to see your sweet cunty.'

She'd never heard it called that before. ‘I'm embarrassed.'

‘Don't be,' he said gallantly. ‘I bet you're beautiful down there.'

Amazing. Suddenly he thinks we're on a date? ‘Please, Darren.'

‘Do you shave? Tell me you shave.' His voice was wobbly with it.

‘Darren, I feel…it's my period.'

He recoiled as if he'd touched something unclean. The stickiness and the smell and the staining. She could see it all in his face. What sort of experience did a man like him have, come to that?

‘Can't stay here,' he muttered.

He jerked her skirt down and shot off down the road, managing the second gear start perfectly. He's taking me somewhere to finish me off, she thought.

But all he did was drive and talk to himself. Up to Dandenong they went, over to Berwick, back down through Cranbourne, across to Frankston, and he didn't shut up once through the long hours. It was winding-down-from-a-high talk, and made little sense to her. She would have signalled to other drivers, or pedestrians, if there'd been any, or if he'd drawn close enough to them, or if he hadn't deliberately kept to back roads and slow lanes, away from civilisation.

The night unfolded, a criss-crossing of the Peninsula, Tina feeling sleepy and acidic, until, in the queer light of dawn, they found themselves on the freeway, heading south. At this hour it was a broad, empty ribbon striping the hillside folds, with very little traffic. Then, somewhere inland of Mount Martha Cove, they spotted a highway patrol car in the act of pulling over a hotted-up Subaru. ‘Losers!' shouted Darren, full of glee, and Tina Knorr reached across and heaved on the Barina's cracked steering wheel. The little car tipped gamely on two wheels, then recovered and ploughed towards the police car until the chequerboard pattern painted along the flank was all that Tina could see.

34

During the passing of the days, Grace had walked the beach at Breamlea and argued with herself. The tides and the wind raced, dog walkers nodded hello, gulls slid through the layers of salty air, and Grace argued that she should never break her cardinal rule.
Don't rob
the Niekirks,
she told herself.
Too close to home
.

In counterargument she pointed out that a one-off robbery would be okay since she wasn't known in Victoria, and the local cops had no MO to compare. Besides, the house behind the cypress hedge was tucked out of sight, the security could be bypassed, and her VineTrust safe-deposit box was close by. And it was clear, according to Google Earth, that plenty of escape routes were open to her. And the clincher? It was personal. In robbing the Niekirks she'd be righting an old wrong.

And then Grace would finish her walk, return home, and log in to online poker and lose money.

By Tuesday, she was running out of time. A week's holiday in Sydney, Mara Niekirk had said. What if they came home early?

So after breakfast she caught a bus to Geelong and hired an eight-year-old Camry from WreckRent, 95,000 km on the clock but V6 power and the gearbox still tight. Fitting it with false plates, she caught the Queenscliff ferry and was on the Peninsula by noon, wearing a charcoal grey pencil skirt and plain white blouse.

The Niekirks' alarm system was a Messer. Grace headed up the freeway to Mornington, a new industrial estate outside the town, where there was a Messer agency in a security installation firm. Using a clipped, professional woman's voice, she said, ‘My mother has a Messer system in her house, and I was thinking I might get one installed, but I couldn't make head nor tail of her owner's manual.'

The salesman drank her in. She knew he would. He actually rubbed his hands together. ‘We have a good deal on Messer at the moment.'

‘Yes, but that's no good to me if I can't understand the technology. Can you explain it?'

‘Sure can,' the salesman said.

He dug out a few catalogues, called in an installer, and together they told her how the system worked. Grace nodded in all of the right places, but with an overlay of doubt. They tried harder. Her doubts receded. Another doubt, another reassurance…

Finally she reached a decision, blessing them with a smile. And when she offered to pay a deposit of $100, any reservations they had flew right out the window.

‘All righty. Address?'

Grace was a mite embarrassed. ‘I've bid on two townhouses on the Esplanade,' she said, ‘I won't hear until the weekend which one's mine. When I find out, I'll call with the address and arrange access for you.'

That was fine with them, and she drove out of the industrial estate and up to Frankston. When she failed to contact them again, they wouldn't follow up very strenuously: after all, they were $100 ahead on the deal.

From Frankston she headed north-east to Dandenong, buying a can of insulation foam in a hardware store. Then out to a chain motel on the Princes Highway in Berwick. The remainder of the afternoon stretched ahead. She ate sparingly but kept hydrated and filled in the hours with a walk, junk TV and a booklet of Sudoku puzzles. She wondered how many more times she'd find herself in a nondescript motel room like this one. It seemed to her that rooms like this had become a big part of her life, a living-from-day-to-day life, with one sad, simple goal, to stay one step ahead of Ian Galt.

Once upon a time she'd dismissed the aims and achievements of ordinary people. It wasn't that she'd thought herself extraordinary. A family, a home, a job, holidays, a circle of friends and someone to love and be loved by—they were extraordinary. They weren't the kinds of things she'd be allowed to have.

But now…

She blamed the icon for unsettling her. The icon gave her hope, and she wasn't sure she wanted that.

By late evening she was scouting around in Lowther, a little town outside Waterloo and only three kilometres across country from the property known as ‘Lindisfarne'. She made a trial run, on foot, in the moonlight, then drove back to her anonymous motel.

35

Pam Murphy leaned against the one-way glass and snatched a few minutes to read the
News-Pictorial
, the weekly hot off the press.

This time the paper had sought the viewpoint of senior police, who'd wheeled out an assistant commissioner to counter Challis's claims. ‘I speak for the Commissioner, the Police Minister and all Victoria Police members in stating that we take very seriously the fight against crime, and…'

And blah, blah, blah. Pam scanned through the article. Crime figures were only
apparently
on the increase. Crime
reporting
was improving, that's all. For example, domestic violence victims had become more confident about seeking police assistance. ‘Other increases are trivial,' the assistant commissioner was quoted as saying. ‘People fitting stolen number plates to their cars so they can drive off without paying for petrol, for example.'

That might be true, thought Murphy, but it doesn't address the issue of
resources
.

There was movement on the other side of the glass and she folded the newspaper under her arm. Darren Muschamp was escorted into the interrogation room by a uniformed officer, who took up position in the corner. Then Sergeant Schiff and Inspector Challis entered, sliding onto chairs opposite Muschamp, Schiff saying: ‘So, Mr Muschamp, three abductions and rapes, one of which ended in murder.'

Muschamp was jiggling in his chair, occasionally sniffing then wiping a sleeve across his nostrils, his gaze flicking into all corners of the room. ‘Wasn't three. Wasn't even two. And I never murdered no one.'

Schiff, sending off sparks of energy, said, ‘Okay if I call you by your first name, Darren?'

He shrugged.

‘Are you feeling all right, Daz?'

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he needed a fix.

‘Because our doctor cleared you as fit to be interviewed.'

‘Hit my head in the crash.'

Schiff narrowed her gaze. ‘I don't see any serious damage.'

He had nothing to say to that.

‘You've been offered a lawyer. I'm renewing that offer.'

‘You got me, fair and square. I don't need a lawyer.'

‘We do indeed have you fair and square. Abduction, assault with intent to rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment, between the hours of midnight last night and six o'clock this morning.'

‘I can do the time.'

Pam knew a little of Muschamp's life story, and had read his criminal record. Grew up near Cranbourne, his mother a hairdresser, his father a taxi driver. Above average student, began an RMIT course but started taking drugs. Dropped out and returned to live among his old high school friends, many of them unemployed, some of them with criminal histories. Soon he was stealing cars and robbing houses to feed his drug habit.

Arrested in 2008, two years in jail for aggravated burglary. The victim, a twenty-six-year-old woman who lived alone, had awoken one night to find Muschamp stealing her plasma TV. He'd punched and kicked her—but Pam was wondering now if he'd also assaulted her sexually, and for whatever reason she hadn't wanted to report it. Maybe that's how he'd got his taste for rape? There was nothing else in his file.

She watched Schiff lean back, twirling a pen in her slender fingers. Gold glinted, and Pam could see, even in profile, the dangerous, full-wattage certainty in Jeannie's face. A look she wore during sex, too.

‘Do the time, Darren? Life in prison?'

‘Get real.'

He wasn't taking Schiff seriously. He was responding to her presence, but mostly watching Challis warily, as if waiting for a proper cop to start asking the questions. Challis was yet to speak or move, and Pam guessed he was stewing over the
News-Pictorial
story. It probably seemed intimidating to Muschamp.

‘Dazza,' said Jeannie Schiff in a matey voice, ‘I've never been more real.'

‘Don't call me that.'

‘Sorry, Darren, Mr Muschamp. You attended a tertiary institution, after all, so you're a bright boy, deserving of my respect. And being a bright boy, you're admitting the offences against Tina Knorr, without benefit of a lawyer, hoping we'll leave it at that and not charge you with anything more serious, like rape or murder.'

‘Because I didn't do no rape or murder.'

Schiff grinned. ‘So, Daz, you like wearing women's clothing?'

Muschamp flushed, picked at a gouge in the table with a grimy nail. ‘A cop uniform is a cop uniform.'

‘Your cousin Mandy's cop uniform, to be precise.'

Pam saw the tension in Inspector Challis's shoulders. He'd given Scobie an earful at the morning briefing for not listing
women
whose uniforms had been stolen.

‘So what if I want to dress up as a cop?' retorted Muschamp.

‘A bit more than that, Darren. You dressed as a police officer in order to give a false sense of security to women so that you could abduct and rape them.'

‘
One
woman, last night. And I never even got my end in.'

Muschamp grinned as he said it, confident she'd rise to the bait, but Jeannie Schiff said mildly, ‘Ms Knorr feared for her life, and with good reason, given that you'd murdered your previous victim.'

‘Nup. No way. Wasn't me.'

‘And before that you abducted Chloe Holst and raped her several times over several hours.'

‘Can't prove that either.'

‘I think you'll find that we can. At one point you took Ms Holst into a nature reserve north-east of Waterloo, correct?'

He shook his head. ‘Not me.'

‘But you know the area,' Schiff said. She glanced at her notes. ‘You're a part-time delivery driver for Waterloo Rural Supplies, correct?'

‘So?'

‘A witness has you driving one of their trucks on a back road past the reserve about two weeks ago.'

Pam saw another shift in Challis's shoulders. He'd got lucky with a list of number plates collected by an old man who lived near the reserve. Because the witness was a bit cracked in the head, he'd put the information to one side, almost forgetting it. But then he'd run the numbers and hit the jackpot.

Muschamp grinned again. ‘I deliver all over the Peninsula.'

‘Gives you the opportunity to scout around for body-dump sites.'

Muschamp said heatedly, ‘I never stepped foot in that reserve place, whatever you call it, and you can't prove I did.'

He sat back, smirking confidently. In his mind he'd been super careful, leaving no evidence at the scene or on his victims.

Challis said mildly, ‘We found several crime-scene textbooks, forensic science textbooks, in your house.'

Muschamp shrugged, gazed critically at his fingernails. ‘I like to read.'

‘Darren,' Schiff said, ‘I'm renewing my offer: you may have a lawyer present.'

‘Can't afford it.'

‘The system will provide one free of charge.'

‘Last time it did that I got some kid barely out of school. He never did nothing for me.'

‘As you wish.'

‘So get me bail and let me go.'

‘You say you like to read. That's admirable, Darren. I've been to many houses where there's not a book in sight. I suppose you know quite a bit about trace evidence—from your reading?'

Edginess crept over Muschamp again, as if he were re-creating the crime scenes in his mind's eye, looking for evidence he might have left behind.

Schiff continued to push. ‘What do you know about the human voice, Darren? Think it's possible Chloe Holst would recognise your voice?'

Muschamp processed that slyly. ‘This is the chick worked at the Chicory Kiln, right?' He sat back, folded his arms. ‘Well, I've eaten there a few times, so maybe she
would
recognise my voice, but so what?'