The Bat(38)

‘Hm,’ Watkins said, thinking aloud. ‘Course it won’t look too good if someone we had right under our noses turns out to be guilty, and we did nothing.’

At that moment the door opened and Andrew entered. ‘G’day, folks, sorry I’m late. But someone has to keep the streets safe. What’s up, boss? You’ve got a frown on you like the Jamison Valley.’

Watkins sighed.

‘We’re wondering whether to redistribute some of the resources here. Drop the serial-killer theory for a while and put all our energies into Evans White. Or Angelina Hutchinson. Holy seems to think her alibi’s not up to much.’

Andrew laughed and plucked an apple from his pocket. ‘I’d like to see a pregnant girl of forty-five kilos squeeze the life out of a sturdy Scandinavian woman. And then fuck her afterwards.’

‘Just a thought,’ muttered Watkins.

‘And as far as Evans White’s concerned, you can forget it.’ Andrew shone the apple on his sleeve.

‘Oh yes?’

‘I’ve just been talking to a contact. He was in Nimbin buying some grass on the day of the murder, having heard about White’s wonderful products.’

‘And?’

‘No one told him White didn’t do business from home, so he went to his flat only to be chased away by a raving lunatic with a rifle under his arm. I showed him the photo. Sorry, but there’s no doubt that Evans White was in Nimbin on the day of the murder.’

The room fell silent. Just the whirr of the fan, and the crunch as Andrew took a large bite out of his apple.

‘Back to the drawing board,’ said Watkins.

Harry had arranged to meet Birgitta in the Opera House at five for a coffee before she went to work. When they arrived the cafe was closed. A notice said it was something to do with a ballet performance.

‘There’s always something,’ Birgitta said. They stood against the railing and looked across the harbour to Kirribilli on the other side. ‘I want the rest of the story.’

‘He was called Stiansen, my colleague. Ronny. Thuggish name in Norway, but he wasn’t a thug. Ronny Stiansen was a nice, kind boy who loved being a policeman. Mostly, at any rate. The funeral took place while I was still in hospital. My boss at the police station visited me later. He passed on the Chief of Police’s best wishes, and perhaps I should have smelt a rat then. But I was sober and my mood was rock bottom. The nurse had discovered the alcohol I’d had smuggled in and shifted my neighbour to another ward, so I hadn’t had a drink for two days. “I know what you’re thinking,” said my boss. “But stop it. You’ve got a job to do.” He thought I was considering suicide. He was mistaken. I was thinking about how I could get hold of some booze.

‘My boss isn’t the type to beat about the bush. “Stiansen’s dead. There’s nothing you can do to help him now,” he said. “All you can do is help yourself and your family. And us. Have you read the newspapers?” I answered that I hadn’t read anything – my father had been reading books to me and I had asked him not to say a word about the accident. My boss said that was fine. That made it much easier. “You see, it wasn’t you driving the car,” he said. “Or to put it another way, there wasn’t a drunk from Oslo Police HQ sitting behind the wheel.” He asked me if I understood. Stiansen was driving. Of the two of us he was the one whose blood test showed he was stone-cold sober.

‘He produced some old newspapers and I could see with my somewhat blurred vision that they had written that the driver had been killed instantaneously while the colleague in the passenger seat had been seriously injured. “But I was in the driver’s seat,” I said. “I doubt it. You were found in the rear seat,” the boss said. “Remember you had serious concussion. My guess is you can’t remember anything about the drive at all.” Of course I knew where this was heading. The press was interested only in the driver’s blood test, and so long as that was clean no one would bother about mine. The incident was bad enough for the force already.’

Birgitta had a deep frown between her eyes and looked shaken.

‘But how could you tell Stiansen’s parents that he had been driving? These people must be totally without feeling. How . . .?’

‘As I said, loyalty within the police is strong. In some cases the force can come before family considerations. But maybe on this occasion Stiansen’s family had been given a version that was easier to digest. In the boss’s version Stiansen had taken a calculated risk to chase a potential drug dealer and murderer, and accidents can happen to anyone on duty. After all, the boy in the other car was inexperienced and another driver in the same situation would have reacted more quickly, and wouldn’t have driven in front of us. Remember we had the siren on.’