Challis - 04 - Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Read Free Book Online

husbands would disappear for a stretch of jail time and come
home to find someone else in their beds. Ex-boyfriends and girlfriends,
remembering some old insult or unpaid debt, would come around with a carload of
mates to smash windows and kneecaps. Neighbours were burgled; there were
drunken and drug-crazed arguments and brawls; hotted-up, unroadworthy cars performed
burnouts in the narrow streets and ploughed over lawns, fences and letterboxes.
Scobie had once been called out when a boyfriend or husband, making an access
visit to his kids, had been attacked by his ex-wife, whod come storming out of
the house with her new bloke and proceeded to bash the guy and his car with
steel bars, the kids screaming, Dont kill my dad, dont kill my dad. Which
didnt mean the kids were little angels. In fact, they scared Scobie the most.
They were knowing and cold, and if not the sexual playthings of the adults, or
addicts, they surely witnessed the adults having sex or out of their skulls on
booze or speed.

    All in all, you didnt dare meet the
eye of a Jarrett: you crossed the street or stayed indoors if a Jarrett was around.
You didnt complain: It was never proven but theyd firebombed the house of a
woman whod got up a petition against them.

    It hadnt taken long for public
opinion on the estate to turn against the police. Scobie was sympathetic. The
Jarretts should have been evicted long ago, but the Waterloo cop shop was
understaffed, like many on the Peninsula, the Jarretts were cunning, and the
younger constables found excuses to respond late, or not at all, to callouts to
the Jarrett house. Meanwhile the Housing Commission bureaucrats lived in the
city, not on the estate, and liked to say that they worked for a government
that stood for the battlers in society. In their view the Jarretts paid their
rent (more or less), hadnt trashed the house much), and were a struggling
family deserving of charity, not criticism, from those who were luckier than
they were. Besides, it was argued, the Commissions resources were stretched to
the limit.

    Did they have a fleet of brand-new,
fuel guzzling four-wheel-drives too? wondered Scobie.

    If Nick Jarrett had been convicted,
he thought, we could have made a start on dismantling the whole clan. Pursued
charges against the others, found decent homes for the kids, weakened Laurie
Jarretts power base.

    Now theyd have to start all over
again.

    Just then a marked patrol car pulled
up behind him and tooted. He glanced in the mirror: Pam Murphy and John
Tankard, here to watch the Jarrett house. Scobie waved and drove on to the
Community Centre and there was his wife. Hello, love, she said, taking him
away from all of the badness for a while.

    * * * *

    On
the other side of Waterloo, Ellen Destry was asking Donna Blasko how she was
coping.

    Im a wreck, Donna told her, all
this coming and going.

    It must be hard, Ellen said. Have
you thought any more about where Katie might have gone?

    Donna shook her head. Weve both
been out searching.

    Yeah, said Justin Pedder, doing
your job for you.

    Ellen ignored him. No ones seen
anything? Heard anything?

    Donna shook her head. Maybe Katies
trying to ride her bike to my mothers place.

    Ellen went very still. Bike. Why was
she only just learning about a bike? Why hadnt it occurred to her that there
would be a bike? Katie rides to school?

    Yeah.

    Can you describe the bike for me?

    Just a bike.

    A Malvern Star, said Justin. Gears,
a pannier. I keep it in good nick for her.

    And Katie would have been riding
her bike when she left school yesterday?

    Yes.

    Did she also have a helmet? A
school bag?

    Donna nodded wretchedly. We looked
everywhere. She can be a bit careless sometimes, you know how kids are, shes
coming home from school and meets a friend and just dumps her stuff on the
ground while she has a play, then comes home empty-handed. But no way would she
leave her Tamagotchi on the footpath, it was her favourite thing in the whole
world.

    * * *