Free Challis - 04 - Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Page B

hed driven all the way up to Car City, on the Maroondah Highway, and
been told, at more than one yard, Its no good taking this car for a drive
unless you mean to do business today Tank couldnt believe it. How do you
sell cars if you dont let anyone test drive them? The salesmen would gesture
as if they didnt care. Perhaps they didnt. Perhaps there were plenty of
idiots with money to burn. Do I look like a tyre kicker to you?Tank had
demanded. Another indifferent shrug. Dont you want my business? Do you think
Im broke? And theyd said, Are you prepared to do business today, or are you just
looking?

    Tank shook his head now at their
stupidity and the obscure shame hed felt. Anyhow, last weekend hed also
stopped off here in Frankston, and in the third caryard visited hed found the
Mazda. Sleek lines, as new, Yokohama tyres, the paint still glossy and
unmarked. The guy there had no problem with Tank taking the car for a burn: Go
for your life, mate, hed said. Luckily, the freeway was close by, and Tank
was able to really test the car. In the blink of an eye he was doing 140 km/h
on the straight. Effortlessly. The car sat straight and true, braked well, the
exhaust snarling so sweetly it got him in the pit of the stomach. Tank, being
canny, had even run a fridge magnet all over the bodywork. Not a trace of
filler anywhere.

    Ill take it, he said, moments
later. As hed told Murph yesterday, hed negotiated the guy down in price by
$5000. What he hadnt told her was hed arranged a loan through the caryards
finance company.

    We havent had time to register the
car in Victoria, the guy had said last weekend, its only just come in, but
the Northern Territory registration is still current, so you can drive it
around.

    No problemo, Tank had said. All he
needed to do was get a roadworthy certificate from Waterloo Motors, then
register the car at the VicRoads office in Waterloo.

    He strolled into Prestige Autos now,
and there she was, gleaming in the sun.

    * * * *

    11

    The
long day passed. At 3.30 that Saturday afternoon, Pam Murphy uncovered a lead.
Given that her detective training was due to start on Monday, this was possibly
her last act as a uniformed constable. Katie Blasko had been missing for
forty-eight hours.

    This was when? she asked the woman
in Snapper Way.

    After school.

    On Thursday?

    I think it was Thursday.

    Pam gazed at the woman, said politely,
Could it have been yesterday?

    Lets see, yesterday was Friday.
No, it wasnt yesterday I saw her. I dont work on Fridays. It must have been
Thursday. Or Wednesday.

    Pam was door knocking in an area
bounded by Katie Blaskos house, her school, Trevally Street and the Waterloo
foreshore. Some of the houses were fibro-cement or weatherboard holiday and
weekender shacks owned by city people, but most were brick veneer houses dating
from the 1960s and 70s, their old-fashioned rose gardens pointing to leathery
retirees who walked their dogs on the nearby beach and collected sea weed for
fertiliser, and their bicycles, plastic toys and glossy four-wheel-drives
pointing to young families who probably had no cash to spare after paying off
their gadget, car and home loans. Pam met many women aged around sixty that
afternoon, and many aged around thirty, like this woman, Sharon Elliott, the
library aide at Katie Blaskos primary school. Short, round, cheery, anxious to
please, denseand, Pam decided, blind as a bat without her glasses.

    If you could tell me where you
saw her, it might help jog your memory.

    Near the shops.

    In High Street?

    Well, no, Elliott said, as though
that should have been obvious to Pam. Of course, I do my main shopping at the
Safeway, but if I run out of bread or whatever I nip across to the corner shop.
She pointed vaguely. You pay more, but if I drove over to Safeway every time I
wanted bread or milk, what I spent on fuel would outweigh the money I saved.

    Pam felt her eyes glazing over. And
you bought something in the corner shop last Thursday?

    Im